The mist wavered and vanished, and he could see a young woman bending over him. It was she, no doubt, that had spoken. Her right arm pillowed his head, and her left hand held to his lips a teacup from which rose the fumes of brandy. A fire tingled in his throat. Fve been ill, he thought, I’ve been run over. Obediently he swallowed a little more brandy. He stared dazedly, first at the young woman, then at the room: at the brick floor, at the dresser full of shining crockery, at the fire on the hearth. How did I get here?
‘Have I been ill?’
‘You sort of fainted, that’s all.’ The young woman smiled; a wonderful kind face, he thought, and smiled back at her.
‘Fainted? First time in my life!’ He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to puzzle things out. ‘Where’s Carrie? Does she know—about me fainting, I mean?’
‘It was only for a minute,’ said the young woman. ‘And you’re not quite yourself yet, darling,’ she surprisingly added. ‘But you’re better. Your colour’s coming back.’
To be called darling by this lovely young stranger gave Egg a very queer feeling, and the thought crossed his mind that perhaps he was dreaming or had died and was now in heaven. Am I young again? I feel young. The kindness shining in her face made it impossible for him to take his eyes off her. He could well believe her to be an angel. And she recalled to his mind someone who had been very precious to him.
‘I feel,’ he said, ‘sort of funny. I don’t seem to quite know what’s been happening and … where I am. And I don’t seem to know you, young lady.’
‘You don’t know me!’
Her cry, whether of pain or fear he hardly knew, made him feel ashamed of having blundered into speech. Staring, he searched his mind for some clue to her. He clutched eagerly at a fancy. ‘Are you … you’re not … you’re not Monica, are you?’ The name, so long unspoken even in his thoughts, surprised himself.
‘I’m Jane, of course. You know me, Dad. Of course you do. I’m Jane.’
‘Jane?’ His face fell. ‘I don’t remember … now what Jane would that be, my dear?’
‘Oh dear!’ He saw that she was distressed. ‘Your Jane. Nicky’s Jane. Jane Pandervil.’
‘Oh!’ A light began dawning in his eyes. ‘Then you’re my little sister.’ He spoke his thought aloud. ‘So it is heaven, because,’ he argued triumphantly, ‘you died a year or two back, didn’t you, Jane!’ He got out of his chair and gaped round the room. ‘And this is our old kitchen again.’ His glance coming to rest at last on Jane, he marvelled anew: nearly fifty when she died, his sister Jane was now, in this blessed place, a young girl. ‘Are they all here, Mother and Willy and all?’
‘Listen!’ she said, taking his two hands in her own. ‘I’m Nicky’s Jane.’ Fear stared from her eyes. ‘Not your sister, your daughter-in-law.’
‘I don’t understand.’ He felt puzzled beyond endurance, and hurt, and on the verge of tears. His mouth trembled.
‘Your son Nicky. I was his wife.’
Egg frowned. Was she playing some silly trick on him? ‘No son of that name.’
‘Think, Dad. Try to remember. Your youngest son, Nicky.’
‘No,’ said Egg. ‘I don’t know what makes you say things like that. Harold’s my youngest. Eleven, Harold is; and his brother Bobbie’s fourteen. And’—his face grew anxious—‘where’s Carrie? I want to speak to Carrie.’
The young woman who called herself Jane had sunk into a chair and was quietly crying. She answered him through tears. ‘There’s no Carrie here. There’s only me.’
‘Don’t cry, my dear.’ He put out a thin hand and stroked her bowed head. ‘You meant no harm. But I must be getting back to my wife, don’t you see, or she’ll be flying into one of her tempers.’ He paused, his hand still resting on the girl’s head. Could he tell her more? She seemed the understanding sort: not one to be shocked. ‘You see, young lady, my wife’s what they call expecting, almost any day now it might be. And at her time of life, which is near fifty, folks can’t be too careful with themselves.’
Jane, wiping her eyes, resumed her patient maternal role. In this moment she envied him. She was both bitter and glad. I’ll let him be: ’tis best so. She addressed herself to the task of persuading him to accept his strange situation and go to bed and think no more for a while of Carrie and the unborn child.
‘Now, Dad, please to take a good look at me/
‘Why d’you call me that?’
She ignored the question. ‘Please to take a good look at me, Mr Pandervil. You don’t think I mean you any harm, do you?’
Looking into her eyes he could not think that. ‘No, my dear child.’
‘Very well then. Now, listen …’
Ten minutes later she led him to his room. ‘If you want anything in the night, I’ll be within call. I’ll be just over there. You won’t forget?’
He promised, gratefully, not to forget: bewildered though he was, there was still room in him for gratitude. She lightly kissed his cheek and left him, and he stood musing in a strange bedroom: strange yet not quite strange, for after staring about him, and looking out of the window into the dove-grey night, he at last realized, recovering the savour of an old experience, that this was the very bedroom he had shared with his brother Algy a lifetime earlier. That remote past lay stretched before his mind’s eye like a self-luminous pictorial map. His memory, keen-edged, cut through the deposit left by the years of his Farringay exile, and discovered to him the intimate features of the former time. Seems like yesterday, he thought. But it isn’t: I wasn’t much moren a boy those days, and now I’m a man turned fifty-three; nor did he think to glance at the dressing-table mirror, from which would have looked back at him an old, time-written face with sunken cheeks and a child’s eyes dark with wonder and perplexity. It was a problem, but that other and more urgent problem left him not at peace to consider it. How came he to be here at all; who would see after Carrie and the shop in his absence; and who was this young woman, this Jane, so gentle and beautiful? Yes, she’s beautiful, she takes me back … And she’s a rare kind one, whoever she may be. He slowly undressed and got into bed: a strange bed, he thought; it’s queer to be sleeping alone; and he pictured himself lying awake all night worrying conscientiously about Carrie.
But he did not think of Carrie for long: he fell into a half sleep, in which pictures flowed endlessly past him and a voice babbled. Jerked awake from time to time by a convulsive movement of his body he found that he himself was the author of this babble. He hungered for deep sleep, but his mind thronged with images for which some chatterbox in him, the moment he released control, was quick to find a monotonous accompaniment of words. He heard his thoughts rattling along and was powerless to stop them. Willy in the Cavalry. Don’t be a gert fool, Willy. Killed, poor butty, and all because that bitch of a girl likes red. May I send ’em for you, ma’am—oh, no trouble, no trouble at all, no hubble and bubble at all. I called you a beast, Father, down in the kitchen I did, a beast and I want you to beat me, please, and make me a good boy, Crussuk Amen. An’ all kind friends, Monica Wrenn. Let’s go the orchard way, grass and water the orchard way, it’s longer. Ladies go nim nim nim … grass, water, fountains, mountains … mountains of milk and snow.
In the morning, before it was quite light, the door of the bedroom opened. He sat up, startled. But he was not surprised to see Jane, for he had not slept: under the surface ripple of fancy he had remained awake all the time, awake and aware without ceasing of the strangeness of what had befallen him. He was eager for explanations, so eager that he could hardly listen to Jane asking how he had slept and saying that here was a nice cup of tea for him.
‘How did I get here? I want to know. I must know.’
‘Yes, yes,’ she said soothingly. ‘Would you like to get up to breakfast, like you always do?’
‘I want to know. I’ve a right to know. I’m not a child.’
But not till he was washed and dressed, and had broken his fast, would Jane begin to answer his questions w
ith anything beyond evasions. Like a child he sulked a little, and like a child he suffered himself to be coaxed into good behaviour. She stayed with him while he dressed. ‘I’ll look out of the window, Mr Pandervil. So you needn’t be shy of me.’ But she stood, not by the window, but in front of the mirror, which, presently, when she fancied him absorbed in his own thoughts, she picked up and carried out of the room.
‘Whad you do that for?’ he demanded, on her return.
She pretended not to understand. ‘That looking-glass. Why did you take it away?’
‘’Tisn’t safe,’ said Jane, ‘that’s why. It’ll fall over one day and break. And that’s bad luck, they say, breaking a looking-glass.’
‘H’m!’ He was not satisfied. ‘How’m I to shave myself then?’
‘Now don’t be quarrelsome, please!’ She smiled winningly. ‘I’ll see about your shaving, after breakfast. You’ve been a tiny bit ill, don’t you see, and I’ve to take care of you.’
At the breakfast table, after he had eaten all he could be persuaded to take, the questions began again; and now Jane tried to answer them. A score of times she had to say: ‘No, please don’t interrupt. Let me finish. I’m only trying to help you.’ And when she had told, without mention of Nicky, all she knew, the old man sat staring at her with pain and vexation in his eyes.
‘So there isn’t any Carrie. Is that what you’re telling me?’
‘She died years ago. Nearly ten years.’
‘And I’m … I’m an old man, eh?’
Jane nodded, biting her lip.
‘How you can sit there,’ cried Egg, ‘a nice girl like you, a nice kind-looking girl I’d have said, how you can sit there and tell such lies…!’ He brought his fists down on the table with a crash, making the crockery jump; and tears began Streaming from his eyes.
4
Before many hours had gone by he felt bitterly ashamed of that outburst, for he could see that it had frightened the young woman. He tried to make amends, arguing, entreating, and sometimes, seeing what a youngster she was, humouring her whim. For indeed she was very young, not much above twenty-two or three, and already a widow, poor thing: her husband, she told him, had been killed at the front not a week ago. It’s bin a long war, he reflected sadly: those Boers are harder nuts to crack than we thought ’em. And she had a child to care for, a bonny little chap: did that make it better or worse for her? Better, he supposed: it would help to keep her mind off her trouble; and when, back from roaming perplexedly but not unhappily the once familiar fields of his old farm, he chanced to surprise her in the act of suckling her babe, the beauty of the picture—the mother bending, the child clinging—drew tears into his eyes. But talking to her proved a sad waste of time. She would not listen to reason, but clung stubbornly to her fantastic story. It seemed to Egg more and more probable that the shock of that recent bereavement had unsettled the poor lass’s wits. He resolved that during his stay with her—and he had quite forgotten to make plans for getting back to Farringay—he must try to be very patient and kind.
At noon the comparative serenity of his mood was shattered by the visit of a man from Mercester. ‘This is the doctor, darling. He wants to have a talk with you,’ said Jane, slipping her hand into his. Darling again! Egg would have none of her darlings and pettings. He was suddenly suspicious and afraid. This fellow was too sleek and suave; too knowing by half; he meant mischief.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Pandervil. We’ve met before, you know. I helped your young grandson into the world only a while ago.’ Egg would not answer. He was convinced now that whatever he said would be used to prove him mad. He was cornered; the world was against him. ‘Yes, we’ve met, Mr Pandervil. But you don’t remember me, do you? You’re a bit dazed.’
‘P’raps I am a bit dazed,’ said Egg. Surely it was safe to admit that much.
‘Ah,’ said the doctor, ‘ I know the feeling well, I should just think I do. When I was a student I was very keen on biking. No one pushes a bike nowadays: it’s all this motor stuff. Well one day I smashed into a brewer’s dray, and it knocked me silly, I can tell you. Couldn’t remember who I was or what I was when they picked me up.’
Egg was listening intently, but he made no response.
‘What I needed,’ went on this talkative doctor, ‘was a good long rest …’
Something sinister in that phrase broke down Egg’s rigid self-control and sent him tottering towards Jane, whose arms opened to receive him. ‘ You won’t let him put me away, my dear? You wouldn’t do that, would you?’ He clung to her shoulders. ‘I’m sane. I … I think I am.’
‘You’re as sane,’ said the doctor, ‘as I was after that accident with the bike. A night’s good sleep is what you want first of all. Lucky for me it wasn’t a boneshaker I was riding.’
Egg, with a twinge of shame for his bad manners, put fear away from him and remembered his duties as host. ‘Shall we all sit down?’
‘Thank you.’ The doctor sat down.
‘I remember those boneshakers very well,’ remarked Egg, ‘though I’d never trust myself on one.’
‘Don’t blame you,’ said the doctor heartily. ‘The only one I’ve seen was at a music hall …’
He began to talk about the music halls of his youth. His eyes kindled with pleasant memories … and ten minutes later, quite liking the fellow by now, Egg offered no objection to having his pulse felt, his heart examined, his temperature taken.
‘And these little pellets,’ said the doctor, rising at last to go, ‘are to help you sleep. Take one or two, not more than two, just before you get into bed. With a little water or milk … And may I come and see you again to-morrow? Thanks, then I will.’
The young woman, though she still cast anxious glances at him, seemed on the whole happier for the doctor’s visit. But Egg was not happy. That doctor had meant well; he was harmless and good-natured and no doubt clever in his own way. But he was siding with this deluded or deceiving girl; though no mention had been made of it Egg knew that the doctor, too, would have him believe Carrie dead, and himself, Carrie’s husband, an old man. As to that last theory, there was one way of proving it nonsense, thought Egg with a flash of his former anger; and, as he moved quietly out of the room, he looked sidelong at Jane, thinking how cunning it had been of her to take the looking-glass away from him.
Which bedroom should he look in first? Not his own and Algy’s: it wouldn’t have been put back there. Sarah’s perhaps, or Flisher’s. Undecided, and fearing detection, he stood listening for the footsteps that he feared might follow him, the voice, gentle but authoritative, that would forbid him; but after an anxious moment, remembering the room that his mother and father had occupied, he tiptoed down the passage and grasped the handle of the door. He pushed open the door, went in, and raising his eyes saw a figure crouched, a face that watched him, giving back stare for stare: the face of a very old man whose chin bristled with white stubble. Egg gasped and drew back, clutching at his temples. The movement was reflected; he understood. A cloud came between himself and himself in the mirror; came and enfolded him in a darkness through which, moved by an unknown compulsion, he tunnelled his way up towards a speck of light infinitely far above. The tunnel was vertical and slippery; its sides were sleek and moist like a dog’s nose, but he, against his will, was sliding up it, he couldn’t stop, up and up, with his head craned back flat against his neck, and his sick gaze turned towards that point of light, that dagger piercing to his very brain, he thought, and I don’t want to go up, I want to go down and get to Australia and make a fresh start with the grocery, but now with a rush he was at the top of the shaft, and the light was burning and blinding him … He came to himself.
5
He came to himself burdened with the conviction that Jane was hiding something from him. Her behaviour with the postman, her behaviour at the market—it was a great worry to a man, and even his astonishment and alarm at finding himself stretched on the floor of Nicky’s bedroom could not distract him from the
worry. How did I get here? Must have fainted or something. And what time of day is it? He glanced at himself in the wardrobe mirror and tut-tutted when he saw that he had forgotten to shave. He was profoundly puzzled. The last thing he could remember was sitting in the lamplit kitchen with Jane; and now it was daylight. He looked out of the window. It seemed like afternoon; but it was giddy work gazing at strong sunlight and he was glad to turn his eyes away. I must go and see what that Roger’s about. I’ve had a bad turn, there’s no doubt of it. It doesn’t do to leave things to other folk. There’s the wheat to be sown; and quickly, or we’ll get behind with things.
The Pandervils Page 40