by Francis King
For two days she moved about the garden, cutting the heads off roses, reclining in a deck-chair, trailing over wet lawns in a rustling frock. Already she seemed to have become a ghost, a legend.
Then on the third day at lunch, even while she was sipping beef-extract and breaking toast in weak fingers, she suddenly groaned, clutched her side, tipped forwards, bruising her forehead and splashing water out of the vase.
They carried her upstairs.
But even that wasn’t the end. There were another three weeks.
Of that last period, lulled in bandages and morphia and febrifuges, Hugh remembered only one incident. He had gone up to the sick-room to see Lucy, on tip-toe, wrinkling his nose at the smell of disinfectant. But she was asleep, her hands carefully placed outside the blankets, like a child’s. He noticed for the first time the decalcification of the nails.
A new nurse sat beside her, reading a book, a buxom girl with undisciplined hair under the starched cap, an unpowdered face, large feet. She smiled at him as he came in, blushing a little: and because he could not talk to Lucy and wished to be friendly he asked her: "What are you reading?"
"The Conquest of Mexico."
He looked surprised. "Where did you get hold of that?"
"You brought it up for Lady Weigh. I hope you don’t mind, sir. I had nothing else—"
"Oh no, of course not." He waved a hand in dismissal. "Do you like it?"
"Oh yes. Oh yes. It’s a wonderful book." She was too inarticulate to say more. But he could see it had impressed her.
"Would you like to go to South America?"
"Oh, yes. I should. I should." Again the struggle to fit her emotions to words. "If only I could save up enough money—fifty pounds even... I’ve always wanted to travel."
"Yes. It’s a great thing," he said, sinking down on the end of the bed. "And Mexico’s a great place. I hope you get there."
"You’ve travelled a lot, haven’t you, sir?"
"Yes, I suppose I have."
"I read that book of yours. I did so like it."
At that moment Lucy turned over, groaned, cried out. The nurse hurriedly took a china basin and held it under her chin. Then, tears rolling down her cheeks, Lucy began to vomit a greyish-green fluid...
All that remained of that devoured body, the shell, the husk, was burnt at Golders’ Green. "My poor girlie," sobbed Lady Korrance, who had come up from Henley-on-Thames in a Daimler and was staying at Bailey’s Hotel. " Still—it was a beautiful sight. A beautiful sight. I wish she could have seen it herself." A widow now, she wore mourning from Bradley’s.
Afterwards, a will was found, made two or three days before the end. Half of Lucy’s little fortune was left to the R.S.P.C.A.; Tiggsie and the other half was left to Miss Thompson. But the nurse was to have fifty pounds—‘for a ticket to South America’.
"So kind," said Mrs. Meakins of this last legacy.
He was handed the ashes. But before that final symbolical action, before Lucy became three lines in the newspaper and a handful of photographs, some decisive change had already occurred in Hugh. Looking back, he saw the beginning of it in two incidents which had happened within a week of each other: out of these two incidents had come a transmutation, they had been decisive.
The first incident was when his car broke down, in London, just by Shepherd’s Market. He had been in the Club when a telephone message had come through: Lucy had had a relapse; she might die in the night. It was very cold and bright that evening, there was frost in the air. His hands were trembling as he drove, his mouth dry. He felt many things. Relief, that this should at last be the end, not only for poor tormented Lucy but for himself and the children. Exasperation, that he should have to leave a glass of whisky and a circle of friends to drive for two hours through darkness and cold. Fear, that the sight of her death might suddenly unnerve him. But no grief. He was an entirely honest person; and he could not grieve for her.
The Lucy he grieved for had died long ago, an Edwardian beauty, high-stepping, in green silk, whose parasol had swung in diminished arcs as she ran away from him. He could not grieve for this twisted woman who whimpered and retched in sleep, clutched at him with claw-like hands, asked questions. She was only pitiable, like an animal which cannot get well.
He cursed when the car broke down, tried to mend it himself, failed, and eventually wandered down an alley in search of a garage. His teeth chattered, the cold seemed to make a heavy aching lump in his chest. Over and over again he clapped gloved hands together, distended his cheeks, stamped. Far away a church clock sprinkled the hours on the crisp air—two o’clock. And Lucy was probably dead. Voices cajoled him from doorways, someone brushed against him and giggled, a dog barked; and for no reason he found himself thinking of that distant night in Paris, with the "Viens, petit garçon! Viens, viens!" He smiled.
"Could you please tell me where I can find a garage?"
The policeman peered at him, tall, stupid, a droplet glistening on the end of a long nose. Then he gave some directions. But the premises were locked, there was no one there. The mews seemed deserted. But no. Above, in the room above, uncurtained, a fire threw roseate handfuls of light and warmth. Numbed fingers felt for the bell, pressed it. Click of a light, footsteps. Someone humming "The Man who broke the Bank at Monte Carlo".
"Yes? Who is it? Is it you, Mr. Warrington?" The voice was soft, sleepy, with a trace of a West Country accent. One hand touched her coiled hair, the other drew her wrap together against the cold. She seemed very tall, possibly because she spoke from a step above him, and she brought with her smells of cigarette, spirits, perfume.
"Is the garage open? My car’s broken down. It’s rather urgent."
She stared at him for a moment, without speaking, her eyes gleaming as though with tears in the moonlight. But she was smiling, her teeth white, large, gleaming like her eyes, and her black hair gleamed in great coils, and her arms gleamed. "He’s gone," she said laconically. "There’s no night service. He doesn’t live here. He’s nothing to do with me."
"Oh—I see. I’m sorry." He hesitated for a moment, swaying before her, undecided, at a loss what to do. His teeth began chattering again. "Then perhaps—"
"Why don’t you come up?" she put in, slowly, distinctly, as though she were speaking to a foreigner. "You seem cold. Why not?" Again he smelled those female smells—Coty, ‘Soir de Paris’; again the arms gleamed, visionary, lulling. The cold struck up at him from the pavement.
"Thank you," he said. "Just for a moment. This frost ..."
"Just for a moment," she echoed, leading the way up un-carpeted stairs in a pair of feathered mules. One hand hitched up the long wrap so that she shouldn’t slip; and he saw bare legs, downed with hair, and ankles grey and soiled. She spoke over her shoulder: "I was expecting someone else, an American. He should have been here three hours ago. But as he hasn’t come ..." She laughed, a deep-throated laugh, and shrugged her shoulders.
The room was lit only by an immense fire piled with logs; but this gave light enough for him to see stockings, a rubber corset, a dress thrown over one chair, copies of Esquire, the New Yorker, Bystander lying in another; a crucifix over an unmade bed; some tea-cups in the hearth, with cigarette ends, corks, a handkerchief; and on a table, a cactus, spiky, stiff, painted white.
"Well?" she said, turning to him. She was about thirty-five, with a scar on her throat, not beautiful but voluptuous.
"Well?" he responded.
"Do you want to undress?"
Slowly he slipped off his overcoat, his scarf, his dinner-jacket. She watched him all the time, her eyes bright, enormous as though with belladonna. He said nothing, perhaps felt nothing. Lucy was certainly forgotten, the car, the children. The fire was hot; a dry wind came off it, like a sirocco, making his skin tingle, his eyelids prick. He sighed, deeply, for no reason that he could think of.
Then she, too, undressed, slipping off her wrap, and cr
ouched in a chair, waiting. The fire pelted her body with red blooms; her body glowed as though the fire were lambent beneath its flesh. She rubbed one foot against the other, crossed her hands over her lap, a gesture of modesty.
He touched her, first her breasts, then her thighs, then her belly. She put out a hand and touched him. The fire threw up great ruby chunks of light.
When she saw him down the stairs and out at the door they were clinking milk-pails in the near-by street and it was already morning. Rain fell, horizontally, into her face. She shivered, heavy with sleep, yawned, rubbed the back of one hand against her cheek. "Tom’ll be there now," she said, pointing to the garage doors where a mechanic showed a greasy rump from under a Morris.
"Thank you." He, too, was sleepy, tousled.
Then, suddenly, she put both her arms round his neck. "Come again," she whispered. "Come again, my dear."
"Yes," he said, "I will. I will."
It was only later, driving through the desolate countryside, hungry, haggard, his eyelids dropping incessantly, that he realised that he had paid her nothing: and she, strangely, had made no demands. This omission irritated him. And yet, and yet... Did it not give him an excuse to go back?
Lucy had not died that night. She had survived miraculously, and was to survive for another week. But she seemed to know that he had failed her: for when he went up to her room she said nothing, did nothing, but stared at him fixedly, the tears rolling down her cheeks; and when he took her hand (remembering that other hand on his shoulder) she drew it away with an exclamation of anger or surprise.
Miss Thompson, too, showed her disfavour in numberless ways. When he made the excuse that his car had broken down she shrugged her shoulders and smiled; and even as he spoke to Lucy, she came and elbowed him away with a thermometer in a small glass. He noticed then, for the first time, that her plump hands had dimples in place of knuckles.
He went back to the room near Shepherd’s Market on the night of Lucy’s death.
After it was all over he felt that he must get away from servants who had once hated her and now wept; from Miss Thompson who drew blinds; from the heavy weight of silence and mourning which lay upon the scene. So he took out the car, and drove through the night, and went to the room, and found her there.
"You’ve come back," she said, meeting him as she had done on that other night. "I knew you would." And with a gesture of tenderness she slipped an arm over his shoulder.
Again it was the fire, the untidy room, the removal of the wrap. But something had slipped, had gone astray; so that even as he caressed her, upon the unmade bed, he was suddenly absorbed, abstracted. He suddenly got up and, still without saying anything, began to put on his clothes.
"What is it?" she asked. "Aren’t you well? Aren’t you well, dear? Are you going already?"
He did not answer her. But as he went to the door he took some notes from his wallet. "For you," he said.
She looked at him, her eyes filling with tears, still naked, her shoulders heaved miserably so that the breasts sagged. She shook her head. "No," she said. "That’s too much. I don’t want anything. You took nothing."
"For you," he repeated.
Mutely she put out a hand, crumpled the notes into a ball and tossed them on to the bed.
Then, as though she knew she were seeing him for the last time, she caressed him, momentarily, a brush of the fingers, with great intimacy.
"Good-bye," she said.
"Good-bye."
And she began to hack at the fire with a poker.
These two events, these two visits to a woman whose name he did not know, were decisive. Perhaps not as decisive as they would have been in a novel or film. He did not immediately change, overnight, as they say. She was not the last person that he slept with. But from that time began the asceticism which became his most characteristic trait. His ferocious sexual appetite was curbed; blunted; he lived simply, with the rigour of a monk; he slowly became a misogynist.
Why? Was it a sudden remorse? Or was it the feeling, ‘Never again’, ‘Once bitten ...’? He was not sure himself. Only the cynic or sentimentalist can really be sure. But the change was there.
While Lucy had lived he had taken little notice of the children. They were there, like the dogs, to be petted or taken on walks or told to be quiet. But now they were his responsibility. And he set about the task with great thoroughness.
For the children the change was impossible at first. Life with Lucy had been so different. Not that they had ever really loved her. Coming back that morning from Shepherd’s Market, with Lucy lying dead upstairs, he had found them quarrelling in the hall. "What is the matter?" he asked. At first they would not answer. Then Judith said: "Dennis says he can have Mummy’s walking-stick now. But it’s a lady’s stick. Shouldn’t I have it?"
How easily they had accepted her death—with relief almost! And he could not scold them, could not say: "You are being heartless" for he, too, accepted it in the same mood.
No: the difficulties of the change lay elsewhere—in the need for adaptation. They had got used to one kind of life, and now Father was forcing another on to them. And children are creatures of habit. When so much is unstable within they like stability without.
With Lucy they had been left alone for long periods to do as they liked under the supervision of Miss Kahn, a benevolent German governess. Then suddenly, without warning, there would be a visit to the nursery: Judith’s nails were dirty, Dennis had ink on his collar, she would like a word with Miss Kahn. And afterwards everything went on as it had always done.
Or she would have them up to her sick-room. They hated that. There was always Miss Thompson in one corner saying, "Sh, children! Don’t talk so loud", or, "You’ll have those bottles over"; and there were smells, strange, terrifying; and there was Lucy herself, panting, breathless, one hand pressed to her side, while with the other she forced chocolates or grapes upon them. "Come nearer, my pets," she would say. And an arm, skinny, blue-veined, encircled their waists. It reminded Judith of the witch in Hansel and Gretel.
But now it was all different. Miss Kahn left, in tears, with a good testimonial, and Captain Allbright, who was over forty and had lost an arm in the last war, took her place. Not that he was any more formidable. He was short-sighted, and his face twitched nervously when he spoke to them. It was easy to squirt ink behind his back or throw bread-pellets. "Oh, do stop it!" he would say plaintively, still a boy, who became excited over bird-nesting or tree-climbing.
No: he didn’t make much difference. It was Father himself. A few days after Mother died a time-table appeared in the nursery. This was the outward symbol of the change. The old easy-going ways disappeared: the clock became their master, ticking, always ticking, on the nursery wall. Time for work. Time for lunch. Time for games. Time for bed. Time, time, time. They had not been aware of it before. Miss Kahn would say, "Now for some fresh air," and they would troop into the garden. Miss Kahn would say, "You look sleepy, Judith," and they would be hurried up to bed. But now even Captain Allbright watched the clock: he, too, was its slave.
They became typical of all motherless children—Dennis tough, independent, insensitive; Judith old, too old for her years, maternal yet tomboy, a useful fielder when Hugh joined them in cricket. But it was Dennis, rather than Judith, who felt the greatest change. Hugh didn’t care about Judith then: she sniffed, she tended to howl, she wet her knickers, she was a woman. But Dennis, his son ...
So he planned for him. ‘Issues from the hand of God the simple souk...’ Issued from the hand of God the complex soul with all its separate aims and claims; and Hugh set about simplifying it. What was fluid, unstable, uncertain became suddenly petrified. Do this, do that, Hugh said. He was like a dentist freezing a nerve. And the whole essential glory of childhood was sheared off like a crop of hair.
Discipline: he believed in that. Every morning, all the year round, Dennis had a cold bath. No very gr
eat hardship there. He did the same thing himself. And the morning-room, what Lucy used to call her ‘Watteau Room’ because the furnishings had faded from bright blue to grey, this was now a gymnasium with boxing-gloves, a punch-ball, parallel-bars.
Round the grounds of the house they made a track for running, ‘The Cresta’ Hugh called it. This was for winter use when the ground was too hard. In a white polo sweater Dennis circled six times, his hands clenched. If only he could do it in under ten minutes! But he never could. And each day there was the shame of saying to Father’s question at lunch: "No, sir. It took eleven minutes." So that in the end, before that winter was over, his eyes used to fill with tears of exasperation even while he ran.
For the great thing was to succeed. And yet ... When Cousin Paul had come to stay with him and Dennis had lost to him at ping-pong, because he looked miserable at his defeat Father had thrashed him for ‘not being a sport’. It seemed as if one should care, but not show it.
Cousin Paul was pink and plump, about Dennis’s age, the son of a stockbroker and Hugh’s sister. Sometimes Dennis envied him. When he was staying at the house Hugh constantly matched the boys against each other—at boxing, tug-o’-war, tennis. But as soon as Paul had had enough he would say, "Oh, Mummy, I do feel tired"; and she would answer, "Well, of course, dear. Come and sit down."
Dennis never said things like this. He never dared to. So he went on, doing everything that Father told him to do, though his arms ached and his back ached and his head became dizzy.
But he loved Father. And by suffering in this way he thought he could prove his love. And, of course, if Paul beat him at ping-pong, well, didn’t that mean that he had let Father down?
He wanted to be like Father, to have to shave and to smoke a pipe and wear a uniform. He loved Father’s smell, and his strength when they wrestled, and the touch of his hairy forearm.
But, of course, he never said so. That would be unmanly. It was terrible to be unmanly. Father said that Paul was an effeminate prig; and that was because he kissed his mother in public and once said, " Oh, Mummy, you oughtn’t to have worn that hat! The other’s much, much nicer." And Paul called his father ‘Pop’, and said ‘O. K.’, and played an April Fool on him by giving him an inverted egg-shell instead of an egg at breakfast.