Since He Went Away

by Marie Joseph

  ‘And I’m here to see that you’ll never be bothered.’ Wesley dropped a light kiss on her cheek. ‘Now that I’ve got the car I can visit all three shops at least every other day.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I must go, sweetheart, but I’ll be back tomorrow. Try and have a little sleep.’

  How good he was . . . Phyllis obediently closed her eyes. Edgar had always maintained that Wesley lacked moral fibre, but already the boy was proving him wrong. She sighed. What a pity he wasn’t married to a girl of his own sort, with children at private schools, a dog, and a house in a better district.

  She glanced at the telephone on its little round table. Amy would be ringing soon from a call-box asking for the umpteenth time was there anything she could do, anything at all that might help. Phyllis felt a teeny touch of guilt about refusing all Amy’s offers, but surely the girl ought to realize that it would look far better if news of the trouble in the marriage didn’t come out until after the funeral. She could cope with one, but not the other, not both together.

  Anyway, Wesley had made it obvious he didn’t want Amy round the house. He’d been most upset at bumping into her inside the Chapel of Rest where she’d apparently taken it upon herself to go and pay her last respects. Phyllis had seen the annoyance he tried in vain to hide. What did the girl look like with that red and bulging forehead and swollen mouth?

  ‘I fell,’ she’d said, which was obvious to anyone with eyes in their head. Besides which, she’d gone there in a fawn coat and hat trimmed with red, no decent black. It was a wonder the undertaker had let her in. But Amy had never had the slightest sense of occasion, always dressed as if she was going somewhere entirely different. God alone knew what she would turn up in for the funeral.

  Looking up she saw an Inner Wheel friend coming up the path, bearing a huge sheaf of pink and white flowers and a suitably pious expression. Her car and chauffeur waited outside in the drive and as Phyllis let her in she knew for certain she had been right to keep Amy away.

  Marriages in the Cresswell family didn’t break up, they endured, they lasted through Silver and Ruby wedding celebrations, going on triumphantly to Gold. ‘My son and his wife have split up . . .’ Phyllis shuddered. How common it sounded. She’d read that two in every hundred marriages had failed last year. Just two, and her lovely Wesley had to be one of them.

  Mrs Cresswell’s son had married into Biscuits, and her daughter into Stainless Steel over in Yorkshire. A Paris-trained cordon bleu cook, the daughter gave dinner parties attended by the rich and famous. Phyllis was almost certain that J. B. Priestley had dined there a few years ago when he was in Yorkshire researching a book.

  ‘Families are such a comfort at a time like this,’ Mrs Cresswell was saying, looking round as if she expected to see a relative or two popping out of the wainscoting.

  ‘My Cousin Ethel is coming to stay with me,’ Phyllis said, making it up on the spot. ‘Her parents were in Soap.’

  Amy telephoned just before one o’clock. ‘It’s Amy. How are you, Mrs Battersby?’

  She didn’t really mean how are you; what she meant was you shouldn’t be sitting up there in that big house all alone at a time like this. It wasn’t natural. Amy’s maternal grandmother had been a lapsed Catholic and she’d fascinated the young Amy with tales of family get-togethers that went on in Ireland from the moment of death to well after the funeral.

  ‘There’d be cousins on every stair, babies asleep in the middle of the coats on the beds, and total strangers passing round the refreshments. Ater all, what is dying but the passing from one room into another?’

  Amy wondered what her mother-in-law was making of death.

  ‘Mr Battersby looked very peaceful,’ she told her own mother. ‘That awful jaundice seemed to have disappeared.’

  ‘They touch them up,’ Gladys said. ‘I knew a woman with terrible acne, but in her coffin you could have taken her for Joan Crawford. Not a blemish!’

  ‘If there’s anything I can do . . .’ Amy turned her back on a queue of one forming outside the call-box. ‘I’m not working, you know. I could come at any time.’

  ‘Dora’s here this afternoon, and a friend called and brought me some lovely flowers. I was just arranging them when the telephone rang.’ She sounded so cool, so composed. It was hard to believe what had happened. ‘Wesley is being a tower of strength.’ Phyllis’s voice was tinged with pride. ‘I always said his father didn’t give him enough responsibility. Now he’s proving his worth. I’m like any other woman who’s been cherished all her married life. Now it’s all left to me, I’m entirely at sea.’

  ‘At least you would be if it wasn’t for Wesley?’

  ‘That’s right, Amy. That’s definitely right.’

  What a strange conversation it was. The man outside the kiosk was glaring at Amy as if she’d been talking for at least an hour.

  ‘Then I’ll see you at the funeral, Mrs Battersby. Would you like me to go straight to the church?’

  ‘Of course not. Wesley will come and pick you up around eleven and bring you here so that you can be in the first car following the hearse.’

  Was her mother-in-law so bowed down with grief that she didn’t know what she was saying? People often behaved strangely at times like this. Amy remembered her own mother busily unpicking and turning a blue skirt, pressing the seams with a thump thump of the iron, rushing to finish it even though she had no intention of ever wearing it. All that with her father lying in his coffin in the front parlour surrounded by flowers from practically every neighbour in the street. Had the truth not dawned on Mrs Battersby yet? Was she in shock?

  ‘In shock?’ Dora asked. ‘She’s in her element more like. She’s already handed the car over to Wesley and yesterday I saw him loading the boot up with stuff.’

  ‘What stuff?’

  ‘Things from the house. I saw a small chair and a picture, and that little wine table that used to sit by Mr Battersby’s chair, the one he kept his reading glasses and his smoking paraphernalia on. The one that was supposed to have belonged to Lord Derby at one time.’

  ‘It did. Wesley told me once that The Cedars is stuffed with priceless antiques. The Battersby family goes right back.’

  ‘So does mine. So does yours.’

  ‘Who to, though? That’s the question.’

  ‘To Adam and Eve,’ Dora said triumphantly. ‘What I can’t get over is the lack of modern equipment at your ma-in-law’s. Did I tell you about Charlie Marsden’s Aga cooker?’

  ‘Only needs filling once and riddling twice.’ Amy smiled. ‘You have mentioned it once or twice.’

  ‘And gas fires in every bedroom, and curtains with linings in, a brand new Hoover and a full set of tools. Best of all, a toilet upstairs. A white one with a polished mahogany seat.’ She paused for breath. ‘Did you know all that?’

  ‘Wesley used to say the Marsdens were “jumped-up” because they’ve got rich quickly and all their possessions are new.’

  ‘Therefore less posh?’

  ‘Definitely less posh.’

  Dora pondered on this. ‘So a bedding chest that’s all scratched and full of knot ’oles is of more value than a Lloyd Loom basket job with velvet padded seat?’

  ‘Without a single doubt.’

  ‘So the Battersby sideboard with woodworm scars at the back and drawers that won’t open is supposed to be beautiful just because Oliver Cromwell once walked past it?’

  ‘You’re getting the idea, Dora.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be . . .’

  Dora said a rude word, then in the very next breath asked Amy had she planned what to wear for the funeral?

  ‘It all went off very well,’ Dora remarked, after most of the mourners had gone. She filled a kettle and put it on the gas stove to boil. ‘They didn’t eat much, but I don’t suppose they liked to tuck in, with it being a funeral.’

  She thought that Amy looked as if she’d been carved out of a wooden plank, still and cold with no life in her eyes at all. In church earlier on,
it had turned Dora’s stomach to see her best friend standing there in the front pew on one side of Mrs Battersby, with the wonderful Wesley on the other. Just for the look of things; just so the rest of the mourners could blink tears from their eyes and thank God for the never failing support and loyalty of families in their hour of need.

  The black costume Amy had resurrected from the spare room wardrobe wasn’t long enough in the skirt to be entirely in fashion, but the hat made up for it. Between them they had fashioned it from the top of a black woollen stocking, shaping it into a pirate’s cap, pulling the top up into two points like small ears. Worn slightly on one side to cover the still visible mark on Amy’s forehead, it suited her down to the ground. With her hair tucked behind her ears, turned under in a page-boy bob, her complexion glowing with Suntan powder and a touch of coral rouge, she looked Myrna Loyish, all sleek sophistication.

  ‘It needs brightening up with something,’ Dora had told her. ‘A sparkly brooch or a link of coloured beads to fill in the neck.’

  Amy said plain and simple were more her style, but she had accepted the loan of a pair of black silk stockings still in the cellophane wrapping, given to Dora as a token of gratitude when one of the boss men at the mill had moved to Manchester.

  ‘Dora?’ Wesley appeared in the doorway, smoking a cigarette. ‘Mother says will you take the tea in now. I’ve just carried Cousin Ethel’s luggage upstairs. She’s in her element because she’s staying on with Mother. I never knew they were all that friendly.’

  In his dark suit, white shirt and black tie, with the brilliantine gleam of his thick hair catching the dying rays of the late afternoon sun, he looked handsome, strong. Twice the man he really was, Dora thought, only just managing to subdue an urge to bash him in the ribs with a corner of the heavy tray as she manoeuvred it past him.

  As soon as she left the kitchen Wesley turned to Amy. ‘Does it matter to you that I’ve hardly slept since . . .’ He looked up at the ceiling as if unable to finish. ‘You know that it wasn’t me who did that?’ He nodded at her swollen mouth.

  ‘Who was it, then?’

  ‘Amy . . . Amy . . . don’t take that attitude. It doesn’t become you.’ He stubbed the cigarette out in an ashtray on the flat top of the old-fashioned wash boiler by the sink. ‘What does become you is that costume and that very fetching hat. New, are they?’

  Amy was sorely tempted to ask him where he thought the money would have come from to buy herself a new outfit, but she couldn’t bring herself to say such a cheap remark at a time like this. For the past two hours the mourners in the drawing room had been carrying on as if it was a party, not a funeral. Wesley had chatted to everyone, the life and soul. If there’d been a piano in sight she wouldn’t have put it past him to sit down and give them a turn. She had seen him topping up his mother’s glass every time Phyllis put it down, and she had seen him sitting in his father’s chair with his long grasshopper legs stretched out to the fire, smoking one cigarette after another.

  ‘I’d like to say how much I appreciate the kindness you showed to the old man in the past few months. Mother told me you’d become good friends. He always had a soft spot for you.’

  Amy could hardly bear to look at him. ‘You don’t need to thank me for being kind to your father. It wasn’t exactly a trouble.’ She swallowed. ‘I liked him very much.’ She bowed her head to hide the tears filling her eyes. ‘I loved him, as a matter of fact.’ Forgetting the tears she raised her head. ‘What I can’t help wondering is why I never really got to know him before . . .’

  ‘Before what?’ Wesley gave her a smile tinged with patience and gentle understanding.

  ‘Before you went away.’

  Wesley’s smile became uneasy. ‘Is that a stab in the back, love?’ he stretched out a hand to flick the lapel of the black costume. ‘You’ve gone all glamorous on me. Do you know that?’

  The anger inside her was about to burst. She had held on to it tightly for the past hours, all through the droning church service, the walk down the aisle behind the coffin to the waiting cars outside, seeing nobody – except, from the corner of her eye, Bernard Dale sitting alone in the back pew – the ride through the streets out to the cemetery on its windy hill, the standing round the open grave with Wesley’s hand on her arm in a public gesture of husbandly concern. How desperately she had wanted to jerk away.

  ‘I’ll remind you of where you last saw this costume,’ she said, gritting her teeth so hard that her jaw ached. ‘The last time I wore it was at another funeral, but the coffin was white and very small that time, Wesley. So very, very small.’

  Instantly his anger flared. ‘It was my baby too! My little son! Sometimes I think you forget that.’

  For a moment she saw her own deep hurt reflected in his eyes, then almost as if she had imagined it his expression changed.

  ‘I’ll run you home if you like. Dora and Cousin Ethel are here to help Mother clear up. I’ve got to get back.’

  ‘Well of course you have,’ Amy said, hating herself but saying it just the same. ‘She’ll be waiting for you, won’t she?’

  In the end Wesley drove off alone, this time with a wrapped blue vase underneath his arm. Phyllis, according to Dora, had sherry coming out of her ears and would be better going upstairs for a nice lie-down.

  ‘I’ll go up with her,’ Amy said, leaving Dora and Cousin Ethel to make a start on the clearing up.

  Upstairs in the cold bedroom with its dark mahogany furniture and long heavy curtains, Amy persuaded Phyllis to take off her skirt and shoes and lie on her bed beneath the bottle-green taffeta eiderdown. Phyllis looked ill, not at all like herself, with her immaculately set hair mussed up and an untidy wave falling into her eyes.

  ‘It went off very well, didn’t it?’ She was already half asleep. ‘Wesley was so kind to everyone.’ She closed her eyes. ‘What would I do without him?’

  ‘It was a beautiful funeral.’ Amy lingered at the foot of the bed, trying not to look at its twin alongside. ‘I thought the vicar spoke very well.’

  ‘Remind me what he said.’ Phyllis startled Amy by opening her eyes wide and raising her voice. ‘I must ask him if he has a copy – if he has it written down.’

  ‘He talked about Mr Battersby being a man for all seasons.’ Amy sat down on the bed.

  Phyllis’s eyes closed. She felt as if she was falling down and down, through a soft warm cloud. ‘Tell me what he meant by that, Amy.’

  ‘It was said over four hundred years ago, Mrs Battersby. About Sir Thomas More . . .’ Her mother-in-law was asleep – suddenly and without warning, like a tired child. Amy went on speaking: ‘It was so right, so very true. When Mr Battersby laughed he sometimes looked as if he was coming apart at the seams, and yet he could be . . . was so sad. He had a gift of matching the mood of the person he was talking to, of understanding right away what a person was trying to say. He was a very special man, Mrs Battersby.’

  ‘She’s gone off,’ Dora said, coming up behind Amy. ‘I’ve just settled Cousin Ethel in the guest room for a nice-lie down. She’s a pleasant little body, isn’t she?’

  ‘She’s had a hard life.’

  ‘Who hasn’t?’ said Dora, following Amy down the stairs.

  They worked together, like a team. Amy emptied ashtrays, carried plates through into the kitchen and started on the mammoth washing up. Dora ran the sweeper over the carpets, chunnering to herself all the time about the difference between the dilapidated Ewbank and the shining Hoover at the Marsdens’ house. She was tired out as usual, hungry too.

  ‘I know old Ma Battersby’s upstairs on her bed in a drunken stupor,’ she told Amy, ‘but does she care that not a bite has passed my lips all day?’

  ‘I don’t suppose she realized.’

  ‘Then she should have flamin’ realized!’ Dora’s feet in the too tight court shoes, worn specially for the funeral, were giving her gyp. Her empty stomach had gone past the rumbling stage and was a yawning, aching void. Amy, she could see, was f
eeling just as bad, but struggling gamely on. As was her wont. Dora liked the sound of that so said it again – as was her wont.

  There she was, her friend Amy, like the good little girl she had been born to be, wiping the sticky marks off the sideboard with a damp cloth, face flushed, the toffee-coloured hair falling round her face, the smart black hat discarded, the Tangee lipstick chewed away. There she was, being sweet and kind, playing the part of a dutiful daughter-in-law, when all the time they treated her as less than the dust beneath their feet. Dora had seen the wonderful Wesley talking to her in the kitchen, and she had also seen him in the little den by the front door, at his father’s roll-top desk, ferreting through a pile of papers. Up to no good, she would stake her life on it.

  It was almost seven o’clock before they got away, what with Amy insisting they must make sure that Mrs Battersby was up and about and fully compos mentis before they left, and Dora spending a long time wrapping things up in greaseproof paper and transferring them to her zipped-up holdall.

  ‘There’s still enough left over to see her and her cousin right through next week,’ she told Amy, covering plates and putting them on the marble slab in the walk-in pantry off the kitchen. ‘If she had a fridge like at the Marsdens’ she could have kept this lot fresh till Whitsuntide. Did I tell you about his fridge?’

  ‘American. Bigger than the Titanic. Sets jellies before you can blink, with a compartment that makes ice cubes for the cocktail hour at six o’clock. Fancy his wife leaving all that behind.’

  ‘And for such as Wesley, too.’

  She looked quickly at Amy, but no offence seemed to have been taken. The telephone rang and was immediately answered from upstairs. Within minutes Mrs Battersby was back downstairs, hair neatly brushed into place and, apart from a cold pinched look to her nose, apparently in full control of herself again.

  Amy had always found conversations with her mother-in-law almost impossible. Phyllis said things with such an air of finality that if she’d added ‘Class dismiss!’ at the end of her sentences, Amy wouldn’t have been surprised.