“Did you ask Grannie Crabtree to talk to me about going away to school, May?”
“No—yes—not exactly,” stammered May, her heart beating fast. “She knew I wished to go—but I didn’t ask her. That is——”
“I believe I mentioned it to Aunt Crabtree,” put in Janet quietly.
“Never dare to do such a thing again!” cried Lavinia at her most imperious. “May is not fit to live a normal school life and the sooner she accepts that fact the better.”
She swept from the room. After a moment’s pause, during which May sat white and trembling, her delicate mouth a-quiver, her large eyes full of tears, Janet sprang to the girl’s side and took her in her arms. May buried her face on Janet’s shoulder and the two wept together.
May was a clever, scholarly child, and another attempt was made to give full play to her undoubted ability when she reached university age. This time the attempt was supported by May’s headmistress, whom most parents found formidable. But Lavinia easily defeated her.
“You are not a mother, Miss Pannell—you cannot quite enter into my feelings,” she said.
After this insulting thrust at Miss Pannell’s spinsterhood she went on to hint at dark secrets in May’s physiology; Miss Pannell withdrew her support from the university project and it fell to the ground.
So May stayed at home. Her life was not without its compensations, however. Lavinia indulged all her wishes save the one that really mattered, and May attended lectures and concerts and theatres, not only in Annotsfield but in Leeds and Bradford and even Manchester across the Pennines. It was observed that sometimes May was accompanied by her father, whom she loved dearly, sometimes by her mother, who loved her dearly, almost always by that nice Janet, her devoted companion, but never by Walter and Lavinia at the same time. There seemed to be a tacit understanding between husband and wife not to spoil each other’s pleasure in their daughter’s company. As the years went on it became generally recognised in Annotsfield that May Egmont—such beautiful eyes, my dear, and the sweetest disposition, musical too, such a shame about that foot— looked quite happy whenever her mother was not with her, and fortunately Lavinia was so busy nowadays with public Good Works (where bossiness had full scope) that she accompanied her daughter less frequently than of old.
Thus it happened that when one of the Armitages, a quiet, nice man in the thirties, a distant connection of the Egmonts with a university post in Oxford, began to pay “attentions” to May, Lavinia was not there often enough to perceive their trend. She knew nothing of them, indeed, until one cold dark afternoon in the December of 1938. On sweeping into Mount Hall with her usual imperious step, smiling with triumphant glee over her chairmanship of the meeting that afternoon—she had got her own way by beating down a good deal of opposition—she learned from the maid that Miss Crabtree was upstairs reading the newspaper to old Mrs. Crabtree, and Mr. Egmont in the library having had tea.
“Where is May, Walter?” demanded Lavinia, sweeping in.
“She’s gone to the Choral concert.”
“Oh—I’d forgotten it was tonight. But who’s with her? And surely it’s too early?” began Lavinia.
“Herbert Armitage has called and taken her off to the George for a bite before the show. I gave him my ticket,” drawled Walter.
“Herbert Armitage?” cried Lavinia in capital letters. “You’ve let her go out alone with him?”
“Why not? I think he may possibly be attached to May, you know. A very nice fellow,” said Walter approvingly. “No harm in being a little older. Suitable. Same tastes.”
“You don’t mean to say he’s thinking of marrying her?”
“He’s hinted at it once or twice to me,” said Walter. “In fact, I think he means to bring it to the point tonight.”
“She’s much too young to think of such a thing.”
“She’s eighteen.”
“It’s preposterous! It’s out of the question! You’ll marry her off and then I suppose you think you’ll be free to go off with your woman!” shouted Lavinia at the top of her voice.
Walter looked at her.
“Haven’t you forgotten that yet, Lavinia?” “No! And you haven’t either,” said Lavinia brutally. “Don’t try to pretend to me that you have.”
“I’ve kept my word to you in the matter, however.” “I’d soon have made you know it if you hadn’t.” Walter looked at her again.
“You were not like this when we married, Vinny,” he said. “Whose fault is that?” cried Lavinia, rushing from the room.
She went straight out of the house by the side door to her car, which in spite of all her orders and instructions Brigg had not yet put away. Although this disobedience was at the moment convenient, it enraged Lavinia. The whole world seemed to conspire to thwart her, she thought as, panting slightly for she had put on weight the last few prosperous years, she climbed into the driving seat and slammed the door. Brigg delighted to misunderstand her instructions, Walter’s whole heart was set on frustrating her, and now May! At the bottom of her heart Lavinia was deeply, painfully, unforgivably wounded by May’s lack of confidence in her mother. That Walter should know about this Armitage man and not Lavinia! But Lavinia would show May! May should find out her mistake! May should learn she had a mother! Lavinia would confront the pair at the George. Of course, if May really wanted this Herbert Armitage . . . But how could she? He was far too old, a dry old stick, not well-off—besides, May was not suited to the requirements of marriage, thought Lavinia, remembering with a pang compounded of jealousy, anger and protective love, the misery of her own confinement. No! May must not marry! She must stay peacefully at home with her loving mother! It was important to catch them before the proposal was actually made, reflected Lavinia, swinging the car masterfully round into the front drive and pressing her foot on the accelerator.
7
The next moment, as it seemed, Lavinia opened her eyes to find herself gazing into the grave faces of Walter, May, Janet, old Mrs. Crabtree, their family doctor and a starched white person who was presumably a nurse. It was daylight; the chill gloomy daylight of a winter dawn. The familiar furniture of her bedroom stood around her.
Lavinia had always been quick in the uptake, as the Yorkshire phrase goes, and she did not linger in comprehension now. She knew at once that in the dark she had driven full tilt into the left-hand pillar of the Mount Hall gateway, had smashed up herself and the car, and was now about to die.
She foresaw the consequences with her usual shrewdness. May would marry Herbert Armitage after her mother’s death. Well, let her have him if she wants, thought Lavinia, feeling very virtuous at thus yielding to her daughter’s wish, though in reality her motive was: “If I can’t be with May, neither shall Walter.” But Walter won’t need May, she raced on; as soon as I’m dead Walter will of course rush after that woman of his, whoever she may be; he’s only in his forties, he’s still a good-looking man.
As she thought this, and gazed up into Walter’s serious, pitying, but not grief-stricken face, a spasm of hatred convulsed Lavinia’s heart.
“I’ll stop it if it’s the last thing I do,” she thought, grimly sardonic.
A smile of triumph curved her pale hps as in a flash she saw how the thing might be done.
“Walter,” she murmured. It was an effort to speak, but luckily, though her words came out in a hoarse croak, they were quite audible and distinct.
Walter gravely took her hand. For a moment his familiar clasp reminded her of the days when his touch had been an ecstasy, but this only strengthened her determination. He should not confer ecstasy on another woman.
“Walter,” she said: “Look after May when I’m gone.”
“Yes, Vinny,” said Walter quietly.
“Walter, I want—I want—so as to be sure May is well looked after—I want you and Janet to marry and take care of her,” said Lavinia.
Walter’s eyes widened and he gave her a strange look, while from the other side of the bed came a ga
sp. Lavinia decided not to make the effort needed to turn her head, but she knew that the gasp, of course, came from poor dear Janet. Oh, it was a wonderful stroke, wonderful! thought Lavinia with vindictive glee; killing two birds with one stone was nothing to it. A Crabtree cousin was handsomely provided for, a burden added to the Egmonts, and Walter kept for ever from his love. For he wouldn’t dare to marry anybody but Janet after his wife had expressed a death-bed wish for the match. If he did everybody would talk, for of course the nurse would chatter; nurses always did. Lavinia smiled up at Walter in cruel triumph.
Just then a loud cackle came from old Mrs. Crabtree, who was holding herself upright by clutching the foot of the bed in her gnarled hands. Lavinia looked at her. She read —correctly—what was in her mother’s face. In horror she made a supreme effort, turned her eyes towards Janet and then towards Walter. Janet was softly radiant, Walter puzzled but content. Of course, of course! It was Janet whom Walter had been in love with all these last years! The good, quiet, nice Janet! Of course! They’d been too honourable to do anything about it, naturally, thought Lavinia with contempt, but Mrs. Crabtree’s basilisk eye could pierce the secrets of the most cunning hearts, let alone those so simple and straightforward as Janet’s and Walter’s. In a lurid flash of rage Lavinia perceived that her malice had overreached itself; her death-bed utterance had simply made it easy for Walter to marry his love. “Well,” thought
Lavinia angrily, “at least I’ll poison it for them; I’ll——”
But it was too late now for Lavinia to do anything of any kind.
“You See . .”
(1950)
The Mayor Of Annotsfield, short, stout and shrewd if a trifle pompous and ungrammatical, rose to address the meeting.
“I have called this conference in the Council Chamber here tonight,” he began in his solid Yorkshire tones: “in order to take thought, as you might say, for the welfare of the strangers in our midst.”
“Old humbug,” thought Amos Cainge angrily.
“Those that some people call Displaced Persons,” continued the Mayor—“but of course the proper name for them is European Voluntary Workers. And by the way, I can’t put that point too strongly, ladies and gentlemen.” (Indeed his gold chain quite rattled with his emphasis as he pounded the mayoral forefinger on the handsome mahogany rostrum.) “Because we don’t want them to feel displaced any more. We want them to become part of our community. Of course, some of these E.V.W.s here seem to cling to a hope, cherish a hope as you might say, of returning to their native lands, to their own homes. But I’m bound to say that as things look to me now, in this New Year of 1950 just beginning, I think it’s very unlikely that they will ever be able so to do. They will be with us, ladies and gentlemen, for always, and therefore it behoves us—each and every one of us—to try and help them to settle down.”
“Hear, hear,” said a big man with a flower in his buttonhole, lounging in the front row.
“That’s Walter Egmont,” thought Cainge, cranning forward to get a better view. “Of course— he would.”
“We want to encourage them to fit in to the English way of life. Then they’ll become a real asset to this country and make a valuable contribution to our life.”
“Let ’em join a Trade Union,” whispered Cainge to his neighbour, who nodded. “That’s the English way of life.”
“Now I know,” continued the Mayor, “that some people in this town have been upset by a number of disturbing cases coming before our law courts, in which these newcomers have been involved and indeed they’ve been convicted.”
“Serve ’em right,” muttered Cainge.
“These cases only put the point more strongly that we must do something to make these strangers feel at home with us, or these cases might increase and then where should we be? It would be too little and too late all over again.”
“Claptrap,” said Cainge contemptuously.
“So in my capacity as Mayor of this town I have invited to this meeting representatives of all the organisations in Annotsfield which are concerned with this problem. Employers, Trade Unions, Churches, social service and welfare organisations, Red Cross and so on—oh and of course women’s organisations,” he added hastily, “who do such valuable work in our town—and the manager of the Annotsfield Employment Exchange is here on my left to represent the Ministry of Labour. And on the other hand we’ve invited two representatives from each of the various——” he paused and looked a little uncertain, then went on: “the various national groups who we have with us in Annotsfield today.”
“’National groups’ is good. There’s two lots of Poles and two lots of Yugoslavs not on speaking terms with each other,” whispered Cainge with relish into his neighbour’s ear.
“We have also a few friends here who have travelled in these various countries and can speak some of their languages. I’m very glad to see such a large attendance here tonight,” said the Mayor, glancing a trifle uneasily in Cainge’s direction: “And I hope some really practical suggestions will be put forward at this meeting as to how we can help these strangers in our midst.”
The Mayor sat down.
“Old windbag,” thought Cainge.
He glanced round and estimated the volume, length and origin of the applause. All the E.V.W.s clapped with immense fervour—“though they mostly won’t have understood a word of it,“ sneered Cainge—and went on clapping in a loud unEnglish way until one of their number, a tall, slender, grey-haired, intelligent-looking chap with a long scar down one side of his face, turned round and smiled deprecatingly at them, when they all stopped at once. On Cainge’s right a group of well-dressed, essentially middle-class-looking men sitting in the front row—”Wool Textile Employers’ Council and such,” thought Cainge with bitterness—gave the Mayor’s speech solid approval. Most of the women, of course, with their usual sentimental silliness, thought Cainge, clapped their gloved hands excitedly. But the benches round Cainge, occupied by fellow Trade Unionists, men and women, gave the speech only the few claps necessary to show a decent respect to the town’s first citizen; their looks were glum.
The applause ceased and silence supervened.
“The subject is now open for discussion, ladies and gentlemen,” said the Mayor encouragingly, looking round.
A very thin woman at the back arose.
“It seems to me, Mr. Mayor,” she said in a clear acid voice: “That such a great amount is already being done for the E.V.W.s by employers, churches and other similar organisations, that anything this conference might do would only be very small by comparison.”
“Aye, that might be so,” agreed the Mayor, getting up: “But an unofficial, non-political, non-religious body such as this might be better able to do some things than an official organisation, you see. By the way, would speakers in future announce their names and the organisations they represent? Of course we all know Councillor Gladys Soskin,” he said, nodding and smiling towards the thin woman, “but if future speakers wouldn’t mind—just for the convenience of the meeting.”
He sat down, Councillor Soskin thanked him for his convincing explanation, and silence fell again. Cainge was longing to speak; indeed the whole of his slight, gingery, fiery person was quivering with impatience to do so. But he felt that it was too soon. There was nothing to answer yet. He must wait. He must let those Employers’ Council chaps make speeches, get into it up to the neck, and then he would spring out and devour them in a searing flame. His hands shook with his eagerness, but he controlled himself, tightening his lips and looking away from the Mayor so as not to be tempted.
A tall solid man with a bush of grey hair rose from what Cainge resentfully designated the employers’ bench.
“Morcar, Textile Employers’ Council,” he said.
The reporters who had been lounging at their long desk sat up quickly and began to scribble, for Henry Morcar was a big man in the Annotsfield textile world.
“Would it start the ball rolling, Mr. Mayor, if each gr
oup of E.V.W.s told us what they specially lack, what they specially require?”
“That’s a very constructive suggestion, Mr. Morcar,” said the Mayor. “Could our interpreters—and you, Mr. Edelmann, if you will, please—explain to our new citizens what we should like them to tell us?”
At this a babel of outlandish sounds arose, as loud discussions in various Eastern-European languages began, accompanied by vigorous gestures.
“I suppose Edelmann is that chap with the scar,” said Cainge’s neighbour, watching the scene.
“Aye, I suppose,” returned Cainge impatiently.
“He’s got a name you can pronounce, anyway.”
“He’s happen Englished his real name so as to take us in, like.”
“Aye, happen,” agreed the neighbour.
Silence having been restored, the Mayor addressed each national group in turn. It appeared that the Ukrainians’ most urgent want was a priest of their own faith. (“A priest!” thought Cainge, quite shuddering with repulsion at this word, to him a symbol of intrigue and oppression.) The Lithuanians, speaking through Mr. Edelmann, wanted a room where they could meet in the evenings and dance. Councillor Soskin arose and offered a small room in the Sunday School of the church she attended. Mr. Edelmann thanked her on behalf of his group with great politeness and in surprisingly good English, but in a rather cool tone.
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