Twenty past eleven. She got up sharply, so that Ian looked at her in puzzlement.
‘We’ll go now,’ she said.
‘Where are we going, Mummy? Can we go to the toy shop? There’s a lovely cannon that fires real cannon balls.’
She looked into his wide round childish eyes with deep and passionate affection. Let me always, she thought, be able to keep my love in check so that it never becomes inverted and a source of hate.
She led him to the door. ‘Quiet now, darling, please. We mustn’t disturb Grandpa.’
She moved with him out on to the landing.
Mr Ferguson was slowly climbing the stairs …
Quickly she pulled Ian back towards the bedroom. He went protesting, chattering irrepressibly, and she waited breathless behind the closed door, wondering if the old man had seen them. The slow creak-creak of his shoes went past.
‘Mummy, shall we play hide-and-seek? Oh, let’s! You put your hands over your eyes and I’ll call when I’m ready–’
‘Not now, darling. You must be quiet when I tell you. Let’s – let’s pretend that we’re Indians and have got to get out of the house without Grandpa noticing–’
‘Yes, and Grandpa’s a bear, and we’re ’ fraid of him. Like I used to play with Uncle Pridey. And we’re Indians with arrows …’
She opened the door again. Mr Ferguson was in his room.
‘Now,’ she said, and like conspirators they tiptoed across the landing and down the stairs. It would be ten minutes before the carriage was got ready. What to do in that time? The kitchens were the safest place.
Betty crossing the hall. ‘The cab’s here, mum. Farrow’s just got back. He said there wasn’t one nowhere.’
‘Oh, thank you.’ Relief. Get right away. ‘Come along, Ian. We’re going out together.’
‘He wouldn’t come in, mum, Farrow said, because he was afraid of turning. He’s at the gates.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Better still. Betty was standing with the front door held open.
‘Oh, shall I take that for you, mum? Let me.’
‘Thank you. It’s very light.’
‘You’ll be back to dinner, mum?’
The last lie. ‘I’m – not sure, Betty. Tell Mrs Meredith not to wait.’
So out, and down the snowy, slushy drive. So to the cab and the driver sitting hunched up in his cape and the horse stamping its feet, its steamy breath rising in the grey morning, and a glance back at the roof of the house black-patched in the thaw, and the heavy lace curtains and the interbranch of trees, and far away in the quiet distance the sound of an engine shunting.
She took a deep breath. ‘London Road Station.’
She said to the cabbie: ‘This is the address. It’s just off a place called Soho Square.’
‘Soho Square. Orright, lady. I know.’
For the first time in her life she was in London. It was not quite dark yet and the press of the traffic outside the station was startling and exciting. Because Ian had slept a good deal on the journey she had had plenty of time for thought, and breaking in on the sombreness of her memories had come sudden waves of excitement and apprehension about the future.
She thought: Well, it is all thrown overboard now; I am beginning a new life; and the hansom lurched out into the stream of buses and cabs and carts and carriages and coster-barrows, and she thought, It is all past, I can forget what I ever knew about Persian berries and the coal-tar greens and ordering Pernambuco wood; and I must forget the old man who has dominated every day of my life since I married his son, the old man who is sitting at home now in that great house … And the horse struck sparks off the dry frosty road as they turned a corner past a policeman, and the traffic thundered to a sudden knot, halted, and then was free again. And somewhere in the future is Stephen, whose faults that sombre household caused me to see out of perspective, so that I was blind to the richness and colour of life and was frightened into accepting its narrow code.
The early darkness was closing in as the hansom turned into a quiet square and clop-clopped across it to a narrow street at the farther side. An organ-grinder was churning out unrecognizable tunes by the kerb, and some urchins were gathered round watching the antics of the monkey. At the far end of the street a man was selling muffins. Suddenly she recognized one of the confused bronchial tunes as ‘The Railway Guard’.
Heavens, what that brought back to her! For a moment she could not push open the folding doors of the cab, though it had stopped outside one of the narrow houses.
I try to be merry but it is no use,
My case is very hard …
Bitter-sweet memories of the theatre and Stephen and the warm buttery smell of that afternoon at Northenden, and dreadful memories of the panic in the theatre with the smell of burning cloth and the press of angry urgent bodies; and later memories of the sick-room and the smell of cough medicines and steaming gruel and watching the glow of the night fire on the ceiling. The strength of her sensations frightened her. They seemed to belong to another person yet to have been intimately experienced by her. She was detached from them, but dreadfully affected by them. It was like remembering some mental illness of childhood. For the first time she realized how much she had suffered, and how much she had changed.
A woman opened the door. She had sharp but friendly eyes and a thin cockney voice. Yes, Mr Ferguson lived here. Yes, he was in. Yes, he was better. First floor. She’d show the way.
They went up. She tapped on a door. Pridey opened it, bow in hand. He looked younger but bonier and he walked with a stick.
‘Uncle Pridey!’ screamed Ian, leaping at him.
‘Good gracious,’ said Pridey, gathering him. ‘And I was just thinking of muffins.’
They had had a meal, and it had been arranged they should spend the night there, as she had hoped might be possible. Ian was already in bed but his sleep on the train had left him wakeful now. The door of his bedroom was open, and every few minutes he thought up some new demand to lure one or other of them inside. Over supper Uncle Pridey had promised to take him to the Zoo tomorrow and to the Tower of London on Wednesday. They had discussed trains and mice and balloons and soldiers and ships and the icing on cakes and how to make paper hats.
If she had been in a fit condition of mind to appreciate it, she would have seen that London and his success had already changed Pridey. He talked less jerkily, less aggressively. He was just as eccentric, but now it was with a faintly rakish, jaunty air. He had bought a new suit and some good linen. He was blooming late.
When at last Ian was settled, she told Pridey in detail the whole story of Brook’s death. She also told him all that had happened last night.
He was silent for some time, scratching his head. Then he shifted his position.
‘Damned sciatica. Catches me just round the great trochanter of the thigh bone. Makes me very angry. When I had it bad I used to swear at Mrs Cowdray every time she came in. Long-suffering woman. Wish she hadn’t got that accent. I was having an argument about accents the other day. When I say I’m going to have a bath I snap it, I don’t sing it. Whether I sing or not in my bath’s another matter. Great sense of propriety, Mrs Cowdray. Have to mind my P’s and Q’s. Wonder if that lad’s asleep yet. I must feed my mice.’
He got up painfully and limped off into the bedroom. He was gone some minutes and then came back with a bag.
‘Have a sweet.’
‘Thank you.’
‘If my brother was a mouse,’ he said, ‘I’d inbreed from him. Specimen. Find out the relative incidence of the type. Homo napoleonus. Dog Latin. Top-dog Latin. He was always the same. He’d always charm or bully himself into top place. Even did it at school. Made the wrong marriage, you know. Ruination of him. Should have married a woman who would have stood up to him. Not, ‘‘Yes, Frederick. No, Frederick.’’ Oh, I’m sorry for him now. He can’t take more than six feet of his factory with him.’
‘I’m sorry for him too,’ she said.
‘I’ve said before – all this dibbling and dabbling is – useless – all nonsense. Everybody’s catching it – it’s the fault of the age. They all want to be certain – sure and certain. Babyish. If they push over one dogma they must put up another in its place. Proof, proof! It’s a form of egoism. What does religion hold for me? The I, I, demanding survival. Proof that I shall live, precious self.’ Pridey chewed hard and wrinkled his eyebrows at her. ‘We all want to live on, I suppose. Some way. I do. Seventy years is no time. So far as I can see it, seems to me, if God has lit a spark in us, even the smallest, why should He let it go out? Doesn’t satisfy me, but it comforts me. There’s purpose in most things. This constant fiddling of Frederick and Slaney-Smith, where does it lead you? The railway siding or the mental dust-heap. Those who know don’t argue, and those who argue don’t know. Did you love Brook?’
She glanced up quickly in surprise and met his eyes. She looked away. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘Brook was all right. When he married Margaret I thought: Two of a kind. But not the man for you. I said to Frederick the day I first saw you: ‘‘ You’re marrying April to a wet September.’’ He didn’t like it.’
‘Brook was always kind to me. Kind and generous and considerate. I was very fond of him.’
‘You got that poem you were telling me about?’
She took the crumpled papers from her bag and handed them to him. After he had read it he sat up tapping the papers with his big bony hands.
‘Shouldn’t publish it.’
‘I’m glad you feel the same.’
‘May have merit, I don’t know. But too vindictive. Try it out in twenty years. Brook won’t be any older then.’
They were silent together. A queer thought. Brook wouldn’t be any older then.
Pridey passed the sweets. ‘Got a lot of money belonging to you. Ninety pounds odd. People won’t stop buying the book. Half of ’em don’t read it, I bet.’
‘I don’t want any more money, Pridey. It’s your book. My money was a loan, not an investment.’
‘I’m going back next month, you know. Back to Manchester. For a while anyway.’
‘To Grove Hall?’
‘I’ve an idea for a monograph on the rat. Get more peace there, not so much of this inviting out. And the climate’s better. London’s too dry. A bit of damp in the air suits me.’
He brooded for a few moments.
‘In a way I’m glad,’ she said. ‘I think they’ll welcome you back now.’
Her phrasing showed that she would not be there herself, but he made no comment. Probably he hadn’t noticed. But you could never tell what Pridey had noticed. She felt comforted, released by this talk. He seemed to make things clear for her, to unravel the knots she felt powerless to attempt herself. Almost for the first time since Brook’s death her nerves were at rest.
He said: ‘That fellow Huxley. More in him than I thought. And Darwin. Still disagree with them both. Disagree profoundly. But they have their points. Credit where credit’s due … The people here are odd. Only last night – my first time out since this sciatica … Was that the boy?’
‘No. He’s gone off at last.’
‘A curious fracas. Went to the theatre with a man called Wilberforce. Stuff and nonsense about an earl. Right in front of me there was a woman with a bare back – couldn’t get away from it. In the second interval, while Wilberforce was polishing his eyeglass, I saw a flea. Naturally I put my finger on it.’
‘What happened?’
‘She screamed. Very flat. Might have been some indecent assault. The man with her was offensive. I showed what I’d caught – explained it, a common pulex irritans. No difference. No sense of proportion. I tried to explain that the plague of London was largely carried by the common flea. I was acting in the interests of normal hygiene. For reasons not apparent they took this as a further insult. Think there would have been trouble but the curtain went up.’
Cordelia said after a moment, struggling with her voice: ‘Wouldn’t they have done the same in Manchester?’
He said reasonably: ‘Well, her back wouldn’t have been so bare. Incidentally, do you know that this street is where they buried nearly six thousand of the plague victims? I told Mrs Cowdray. It didn’t upset her. A staunch woman.’
Cordelia struggled with her voice again, and the laughter in it nearly broke into a sob.
‘Oh, Pridey …’ she said, breathing it out.
‘Have a sweet.’
‘I – don’t love Brook, Pridey. I never did. Not properly, not the way one expects to. You know that.’
‘It’s not all the world.’
‘I’ve – loved someone else – for years. Did you – guess that too?’
‘I never guess; I leave that to the scientists. Wilberforce isn’t a scientist; you must meet him. He droops.’
‘Pridey, I’ve been in love with Stephen Crossley for five years. Now that Brook’s gone I couldn’t stay in that house with Mr Ferguson any longer. I’ve come to London to find Stephen. I’ve come to you to help me to find him, because you’re the only person who knows where he may be.’
Uncle Pridey began to crack his fingers. ‘Wish I did, young woman; I’d find him for you. Why should I know? There’s four million of us in London.’
‘But you met him and he invited you to some music hall. You said he was the manager there.’
‘What? Oh, months ago. But I never went. Not my cup of tea. What did he say the name was? Royal Varieties. But he’s running two or three. May be miles away by now.’
‘I know. Yes, I know that. Anything may have happened. But it’s a chance. And I felt I’d – after all this time – you see, Pridey, last time he came to Grove Hall I wouldn’t see him, and the time before that I sent him away. This week – after Brook’s death – I felt I couldn’t breathe, and I felt I must go at once to Stephen, to see him, to explain everything, to try to make things up. All these years – I felt all these years have been lost …’
Pridey said after a moment: ‘That week Brook was away – before he was first ill, were you meeting Crossley then?’
‘… Yes.’
He shook his head. ‘The way you used to come in. Like a daffodil that the wind’d been ruffling. Royal Varieties is not far from here. Found it once when I was looking for Nelson. Like to go?’
She looked at him, startled. ‘When? Tonight?’
‘Please yourself. It’s not nine yet.’
Confronted with the thing she wanted, she had the impulse to flee from it in panic. Enough for one day … Perhaps about Wednesday. But what excuse? She had to write to her mother and father – and there was …
‘Like me to come with you?’
‘Oh, if you would! But–’
‘Free tonight or Thursday. Do what you please. I’m going to Wilberforce’s tomorrow to see some rabbits. He’s bred a black one with two white rings. Uninteresting things, rabbits: no versatility …’
Well, why not tonight? ‘ There’s Ian,’ she said almost hopefully.
‘Mrs Cowdray can look after him. She’s used to my mice.’
‘… You’d really come with me, Pridey?’
‘If you want me. Don’t want to be in the way.’
‘Oh, no, I’d like you to come. That’s if you promise not to take any mice with you …’
A faint satiric spark showed in Uncle Pridey’s glance.
‘I’ll get my galoshes,’ he said.
Chapter Eight
They travelled by bus down the Charing Cross Road, facing each other in the blue plush lamp-lit interior, jogging and shaking with the other eight passengers and shuffling their feet in the straw. She felt sick, and tried to persuade herself it was the jolting and the lack of air.
After a while the conductor let down a sort of trapdoor and put in his head and said: ‘Charing Cross,’ and they got out. Pridey was limping badly.
‘Get this side of me,’ he said, ‘or I’ll be sure to poke you with my stick.’
They
turned along the Strand. There was fog near the river and the street lamps shone fitfully. All the shops were lit and many open, the orange stalls and the tobacco shops, the wine shops and the public houses flaring. Buses, carts, and cabs were still plentiful on the streets and boys and girls quarrelled, selling matches and newspapers.
They walked along, jostled by the crowds. She was surprised at seeing so many people. Bare-footed urchins, foreigners in long ulster coats, men with their tins of evening beer, women’s painted faces, young girls in pairs with dyed yellow hair, well-dressed theatre-goers, crowds at the doors of the public houses, potboys, old men whispering in the gutters. The smells and the noise and the fermenting thrusting life were oppressive; she was glad when they turned off down a narrow street.
They came to a gas-glaring entrance not unlike the old Variety.
‘Well, this is it, young woman.’
She said: ‘Let’s go in in the ordinary way, please, just as if we’d come to see the performance. We can ask afterwards.’
In five minutes now am I to see Stephen? …
The show was already on. Four girls in tights and frilly black frocks were singing a song about their first young man. Perhaps because there was no balcony the place seemed different, one had to plunge right into the heat and the light and the noise. Larger than the Variety. The bar ran down one side instead of across the back. Many more women present.
They were given a table at the side against one of the pillars. It suited them well enough.
Uncle Pridey said: ‘Music hall’s a gross misnomer. No one can surely mistake that brassy noise. Extraordinary thing.’ He put his stick on the table and said to the waiter: ‘Well, if you haven’t got lemonade you can get it. Sciatica. Bring this lady her sherry. Can’t see him, Cordelia, can you?’
She was staring about. The interior of the place was well-worn and a little shabby, some of the tables were sloppy with drink, and the air was smoke-thickened. The chairman was a fat husky-voiced man with a mottled red complexion. There were still a few empty seats at his table.
Cordelia Page 39