Love in Our Time

by Norman Collins

  It wasn’t mourning on the ordinary scale that she was wearing. Everything about her was crêpe. She was a large woman and she had swathed herself in the stuff. From her hat was suspended a dense mesh veil of the kind that people, in happier circumstances, wear when hiving bees. There was something provincial about it all, something that didn’t fit in with his own grey suit and neat, black tie.

  When he reached her the first thing that he noticed was that the front of her dress was covered with crumbs. She must have been nibbling biscuits all the way down, and then have been too much overcome to tidy herself up properly before alighting. And now that he was close he saw that she had altered hardly at all. She was still the same florid, high-bosomed woman whom his father had brought back eleven years before to Station Approach to introduce to his son. Her face under the veil had not changed; it wore its old expression of expectant helplessness. But now she had been crying as well, and her eyes had red rims to them. Standing there in front of him she looked like a big demented schoolgirl.

  Then impetuously she rolled back the veil and kissed him.

  “Oh, Gerald,” she said. “I knew you’d come.”

  He took hold of the case that she was carrying—it was a cheap, cardboard thing like a laundry-box—and led her down the platform. Being nice to Mrs. Sneyd was, he realised, the last atoning tribute which he could render to his father.

  “Oh, Gerald,” she kept saying at intervals. “Oh, Gerald.”

  “You look tired out,” he said. “Come and have some tea.”

  Her step quickened at the suggestion. Somewhere underneath all that black she was gratified. But all she said was, “Oh, Gerald.”

  They went into the long buffet together and found a small round table in the corner. Mrs. Sneyd sat down with a little gasp as though standing had been an effort almost beyond her.

  The room presented the strangely impersonal appearance of all railway bars there were palms and imitation stained-glass windows and rows of sandwiches underneath bell-jars, like specimens. The place smelt of beer and stewed tea and train smoke.

  “What’ll you have?” Gerald asked.

  “Just tea,” she said. “Just something hot.”

  He leant back and watched her drink it. Upon contact with another human being she had started crying again. Tears kept on rolling out of the corners of her eyes as she sat there. The waitress had brought a plate of cut cake and she had absent-mindedly taken a piece. Her veil was thrust right up over the top of her hat and she was pursing her lips as she ate. He wondered what she was thinking about. For she had reached that state of misery when she was living in a remote, desolate world of her own. She probably wished that she were dead, too. Yet there “she was, sipping tea that was too hot for her and eating a slice of almond Madeira.

  “When can we see him?” she asked at last.

  “I dunno,” he said blankly. “I didn’t ask.”

  “Take me to him,” she said as though she hadn’t heard. “Just let me get a few flowers first and then take me to him.”

  Gerald got up.

  “You wait here,” he said, “and I’ll find out first.”

  He went out leaving Mrs. Sneyd like a tripper with all the empty tea things round her. On the way, he crossed over to a bookstall and bought her the Daily Mirror to occupy her mind. She was quite overcome when he gave it to her. At first she seemed surprised to find him back so soon and then, when she found that it was something for her, she started crying again.

  “Oh, Gerald,” she said. “I shall never be able to repay you for all this.”

  “That’s O.K.,” he said.

  The hospital was perfectly businesslike and matter-of-fact.

  “There’ll have to be the usual post mortem first,” they said on the phone, “and then you’ll be able to make your own arrangements.”

  “What sort of arrangements?” he asked blankly.

  “With the undertaker.”

  “Oh, yes, of course,” he said. “I—I’ll have to see about that.”

  “Any friends or relations should go round to the undertaker’s,” the voice from the hospital was saying.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll tell her.” Then just as he was ringing off he remembered something. “Are you there?” he asked.

  “Yes,” the voice answered, “What is it?”

  “Excuse me?” Gerald said; “but can you recommend me someone?”

  “What for?”

  “An undertaker, I mean.”

  “I’m sorry, but we’re not allowed to recommend any particular firm.”

  It seemed strange this reluctance to help him to bury his own father. He did not know quite what was the next move expected of him.

  “I’d be awfully obliged if you could———” he began.

  “There’s a firm the name of Umble in the Pentonville Road,” the voice said. “You could ring them.”

  “How do you spell it?” he asked.

  The voice told him.

  “O.K.,” said Gerald.

  He found the firm in the telephone book, Samuel Umble and Son, Undertakers, and he spoke to Mr. Umble himself; the man was evidently sitting there by the telephone waiting upon Death. And Mr. Umble was very helpful. He seemed to understand just how Gerald was placed.

  “From St. Martin’s,” he said. “Just so, I quite understand. We’ll attend to everything. We have our own private chapel.” He paused. “Where will the funeral be?” he asked.

  “Tadford,” said Gerald.

  “Tadford?”

  “That’s where he lived,” Gerald explained.

  “Just so, I quite understand.” The smooth voice of Mr. Umble continued. “Had you any special wishes as to the style?” he asked.

  “Style?”

  “The coffin. Will it be oak or ?”

  “Make it oak,” said Gerald.

  “And the handles?”

  “Just ordinary handles.”

  Mr. Umble seemed just a little taken aback. “It might be easier,” he said, “if you could call in. Then we could show you our catalogue. Or we could send a representative. We’re always pleased to send a representative.”

  Gerald found himself suddenly disliking the voice of Mr. Umble.

  “I’ve told you what I want,” he said. “I want an oak coffin with plain handles.”

  “Just so,” said Mr. Umble. “I quite understand.”

  There was a pause and Gerald screwed up courage to ask the final question.

  “What’ll it cost?” he asked.

  “For a plain oak coffin,” Mr. Umble said, “with ordinary handles and our standard lining, fifteen pounds.”

  “O.K.,” said Gerald.

  Mrs. Sneyd had exhausted the Daily Mirror by the time he got back. Its pages lay in a disordered mass on the chair beside her.

  “Can I see him now?” she asked.

  “Not just for a bit,” he told her. “They’re taking him round to the undertaker’s. They’ll let us know when they’re ready.”

  “Well, what can I do?” she asked. “I can’t just stop here.” Her eyes filled with tears as she said it, and she started crying again.

  He paused. “You come home with us,” he said. “We’ll put you up.”

  “Oh, thank you, Gerald,” she said.

  It appeared to give her a little tremor of excitement when she found that she was going up to Finchley by sports car; it was evidently something better than she had expected this funereal day to provide. Almost before they were out of the Station yard the novel experience began to show its effect on her; she wound her veil tightly round her chin and became more motorist than mourner.

  And all the time she was explaining over and over again how it was that she had not been with Mr. Sneyd at the end.

  “They never delivered the telegram until next morning,” she said. “And of course I had to be up there because of young Violet. I couldn’t leave her. And Stan kept saying he’d be all right. So I didn’t worry. And they never delivered the teleg
ram until next morning. I went cold all over when I saw it. So I got some clothes and came straight down. Mrs. Heppell’s looking after Vi. And Stan kept saying he’d be all right so I didn’t worry. And you see they never delivered … ”

  What was worrying Gerald was how Alice was going to take it all. It had been one thing to say that she could go there if she had nowhere else to go; but it was going to be something quite different actually to have her. And when Alice had offered she hadn’t actually seen Mrs. Sneyd. She was, Gerald reflected, going to get a bit of a shock when this outsize figure in black with the cardboard suitcase came over the threshold.

  But Alice seemed to understand at once. She did everything she could to be nice to Mrs. Sneyd. And Mrs. Sneyd kept thanking them. Whenever there was a pause in the conversation Mrs. Sneyd said how grateful she was. There was something shameless and pathetic about so much gratitude; she seemed to be afraid that, unless she were desperately polite, they, top, like the rest of Fate, might turn on her.

  And Alice, Gerald noticed, had actually brightened up since their arrival. He wondered if, in a way, she had resented the fact that so much drama from which she was excluded had been going on all round her; now that she was in the thick of it and doing something she seemed happier. She took the unhappy woman into the drawing-room to rest while she made her some tea and then led her upstairs into the bedroom—their bedroom—to lie down. She even pulled the blinds so that Mrs. Sneyd could snatch a few minutes’ sleep.

  The thought of the fifteen pounds began to worry Gerald again; he kept on remembering it like a piece of bad luck. To take his mind off it he went across and turned on the radiogram. There was something strangely comforting about the instrument: it was so opulent looking that it seemed impossible to be hard up and live in the same house with it. He had just found a station and sat down to enjoy it when Alice came in.

  “Turn it off at once,” she said. “You’ll wake her up.”

  He went over obediently and turned the switch. “I didn’t know she was asleep,” he said.

  “Then you ought to have thought,” she answered briskly. “It’s the only thing for her after what she’s been through.”

  “Well, what about me?” he asked. “Haven’t I been through it?”

  “You’re a man,” she said. “That’s different.”

  He pulled out his case and lit a cigarette.

  “And you’d better get used to the idea,” Alice went on, “because she’ll have to sleep there to-night as well.”

  “But—but why can’t she sleep on the couch?” he asked.

  He felt ashamed as he said it: it was a wretched business, not having a spare room in which they could put anyone up.

  “Because she’s just lost her husband, that’s why,” Alice told him. “How would you like to sleep on a couch if you’d just lost your husband?”

  He did not attempt to reply; it was a piece of feminine logic which no man could answer.

  “And I suppose we sleep on the couch?”

  “There’s nowhere else to sleep.”

  “O.K.,” he said.

  Alice went over to the door; she had a busy, important look.

  “When she wakes up I’m going out to phone,” she said. “She’s worried about that little girl of hers. I’ve got the number of someone who’ll take a message.”

  “All right,” said Gerald. “Don’t be long.”

  He sat back in his chair and pondered on things. Half an hour ago he had been wondering if Alice would scold him for bringing Mrs. Sneyd back to the house. And now the two of them were in league against him. They were going to stop him using his own radio, and turn him out of his bed, and waste his money telephoning to the provinces about nothing. He didn’t count any more. He was nobody. It was simply up to him to get them out of the mess that they were in.

  He spent most of Sunday morning phoning up Mr. Umble. It was Alice who made him keep at it; she felt sure that Mrs. Sneyd would feel better once she had seen her husband. But Mr. Umble was not to know that. He seemed to think that it was simply impatience on Gerald’s part.

  “As soon as the hospital lets us know, sir,” he said, “we’ll make arrangements. We shan’t lose any time. We’re all motor here.”

  The hospital evidently let Mr. Umble know about three, for when Gerald phoned up at tea-time he was told that Mrs. Sneyd could come down.

  “He’s just laid out very simple,” Mr. Umble explained, “I’ve arranged one or two flowers that we happened to have by us. I think you’ll find everything to your liking.”

  “Thank you,” Gerald said. “Thank you very much. We’ll be along about six.”

  The words hurt him as he said them; there was no sense in them. Mr. Sneyd was past caring whether they went or not. But it was Mrs. Sneyd who had to be considered; she had absolute rights at a time like this.

  “I’ll take you down,” he said to her when he got back. “We’ll go straight down now if you like.”

  “It’s ever so good of you,” Mrs. Sneyd replied. “I can’t think what I’d have done without you. But you oughtn’t to trouble. You ought to stay here with Alice.” She had been crying a lot and her voice was husky and uncertain.

  But Alice, to Gerald’s surprise, said that she was coming too. She whispered to Gerald that it was going to be an ordeal for Mrs. Sneyd and that there ought to be another woman there as well. Mrs. Sneyd overheard the remark and thanked her impetuously. She was still thanking them when Alice went upstairs to change.

  Now that Gerald was alone with Mrs. Sneyd again the feeling of embarrassment which he had experienced at the station returned. He had always disliked her and now found that it was possible to dislike someone and be sorry for her at the same time. He could not forget that she was the woman who had stepped into the middle of a ready-made household and had disrupted it; if only she hadn’t looked so fascinatingly helpless in her first widowhood behind the grille of the cash-desk in the Bon Marché, Mr. Sneyd would have gone on living a quiet widower’s existence and Gerald would have stayed at home.

  “Have—have you any idea how he left you?” he asked.

  Mrs. Sneyd gave him one look, a desperate ashamed look.

  “Don’t talk about it,” she said.

  There was a pause and then Gerald opened the conversation again.

  “Didn’t he carry any insurance?” he asked.

  Mrs. Sneyd shook her head.

  “You mean he wasn’t covered?”

  She shook her head again.

  “That’s what made him so afraid of—of anything going wrong,” she said.

  “I see,” said Gerald.

  There was another awkward pause during which Mrs. Sneyd played with her handkerchief and finally sat with it screwed up in a ball in her hand.

  “Will there be any ready money?” Gerald asked.

  He supposed that he might as well know the worst.

  “Not from him there won’t,” she said significantly.

  “Do you think the Bon Marché will help?” he suggested. Throughout his childhood, the Bon Marché had seemed all-powerful. Its twelve plate-glass windows on Queen Street had stood for social position and security.

  “They’ve never helped us yet,” she said. “We gave up asking them.”

  “There must be something,” Gerald said vacantly.

  “I know,” said Mrs. Sneyd, all her old helplessness returning. “I’d try to get a job myself if it weren’t for Vi. But I daren’t leave her. She’s not strong enough. Besides, I’m too old. They wouldn’t want me.”

  When Alice rejoined them, she had changed into something dark. She looked young and pretty. He saw Mrs. Sneyd looking at her with a kind of devouring envy. “It’s very good of you … ” Mrs. Sneyd began.

  She did not speak again till they got to the undertakers. She just sat huddled beside Gerald in a kind of stupor. When they spoke to her she merely nodded. But she woke up when they came to Mr. Umble’s. She sat for a moment surveying the black and gilt window front wi
th the wax flowers and two marble urns, and then seemed abruptly to come to her senses.

  “Is he here?” she asked.

  Gerald nodded and helped her out of the car. She began smoothing down her dress as though anxious to make a good impression and the three of them filed in, almost filling the little office. Only half the shop was office; the other half was workshop. Along one wall were stacked the stock sizes’, pieces of unpolished oak and mahogany, cut to a grim, unmistakable pattern. Mr. Umble himself was doing a bit of planing. A pale, unmuscular man like a despondent verger, he came forward pulling on a coat over his stiff shirt front as he walked.

  “Mrs. Sneyd?” he asked.

  “That’s right,” said Gerald.

  But Mr. Umble had turned all his attention on the widow.

  “Everything’s ready,” he said.

  He led the way through to the private mortuary. It was a high, sedate chamber with imitation panelling and a glass roof upon which sparrows played. A thick strip of drugget ran from the door to the central dais which was looped in with a decorative brass chain. Under the coffin a rich red cloth was stretched and Mr. Umble’s two or three vases of flowers were arranged upon it. There amidst all this elegant splendour lay Mr. Sneyd. His face wore a new expression of waxy contentment.

  The only sound was a little moan from Mrs. Sneyd. She had been quiet and restrained before, now on Alice’s arm she suddenly gave way to her feelings. Standing where she was she started to cry openly and unashamedly like a child.

  “They’ve parted his hair on the wrong side,” she said.

  Then she sat down on a straight-backed chair and wept with her head in her hands.

  Mr. Umble showed the nice thoughtfulness of a man who has witnessed many painful and distressing scenes.

  “I’ll leave you,” he said. “If you want me I shall be in the office outside.”

  He went out and a moment later the sound of planing recommenced.

  When Mrs. Sneyd had recovered she went over and stood by the coffin. She reached out a hand, timidly, caressingly, and stroked back the wisp of grey hair that trailed across the bare forehead. She was a different woman now, no longer helpless and appealing In the presence of death she had become dignified. There was an infinite, maternal tenderness about everything she did. She might have been trying to put him off to sleep. It was as though Mr. Sneyd were a child of hers that had been taken away from her. Very gently she rested her hands upon his clasped ones and withdrew them only because the chill was too terrible.