Starlight (Vintage Classics)

by Stella Gibbons

  At length he turned to his motionless assailant.

  ‘I’m not going to keep away,’ he said firmly. ‘You both need help.’

  ‘Keep away. Leave us alone. I can take care of her,’ Pearson repeated, but without spirit.

  ‘Not alone, Mr Pearson. You must have help. She would never have got into this state if you’d been able to take care of her alone. She says you won’t let her see a doctor …’

  ‘She doesn’t want a doctor.’

  ‘But she may need one.’

  Pearson turned away, repeating in a voice of hollow bravado – ‘Go away. We don’t want you. Leave us alone.’ He walked slowly on towards Lily Cottage.

  ‘I’m going to help you,’ Mr Geddes called after him. ‘I shall come again. I … I warn you.’ The wind seemed to blow his words away.

  Shaken, ashamed, and also exultant, he retained enough consciousness of the outside world, during the walk home, to pause at the busier crossings.

  ‘Dear! You looked downright battered,’ his mother exclaimed, coming into the hall at the sound of his key in the lock, ‘… coffee or chocolate?’

  ‘Chocolate, please. Yes, I’ve been in a punch-up – I think that’s what they call it nowadays.’

  Mrs Geddes neither asked whether he was all right or any other questions, but did slightly show some disturbance in her feelings by muttering, as she turned to the kitchen, ‘He’s been in a punch-up,’ to Gerald, who came loping down the stairs at that moment with some question about Saint Gregory of Nizam.

  ‘I say! Are you all right? I say,’ as Mrs Geddes disappeared through a door, ‘are you all right, sir?’ Saint Gregory of Nizam was forgotten.

  ‘Oh yes. It wasn’t much – a man spat at me and I hit him.’ Mr Geddes smiled. ‘Quite a neat uppercut, in fact, knocked him down.’

  ‘Good for you!’ cried Gerald, all admiration. ‘Really – I mean, at your age, that was pretty good … (I beg your pardon). How did he take it?’

  ‘Oh – meekly. I was relieved, I don’t mind telling you, I thought a knife would be the next thing. No, it wasn’t much, really. He soon cooled down – poor brute.’

  ‘You’d better let me come with you the next time you go out at night – I’ll take my alpenstock.’ Gerald’s eyes were sparkling.

  ‘Of course not, don’t be absurd – I can take care of myself – besides, trotting round with a bodyguard – and by the way, Gerald, you will keep this absolutely to yourself, please. It isn’t to go an inch further.’

  ‘Yes of course – have you any idea who it was?’

  ‘I know who it was. Mrs Pearson’s husband.’

  ‘The rackman, as Miss Barnes calls him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He felt that his curate’s next remark was going to be, ‘I say, how exciting,’ and though he made allowances for youth, and even for his own satisfaction over that neat uppercut, he did not intend the situation to become a kind of dramatic comic-strip.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ Gerald said. ‘I just wanted to say I’m … so glad you’re all right … did you manage to see her first?’

  ‘I did. We had a long chat and I’m going again – or you can.’

  ‘I’d like to,’ Gerald assured him at once. ‘Do you think he’ll go for me with the knife?’

  ‘Of course not. (I said I expected a knife, not saw one – and that was only at first.) He’s a cowardly creature, I should think – and miserable, certainly. Very unhappy. Worried about her, I expect – she seems fond of him anyway. She’s certainly very ill. Written all over her.’

  His mother came in at this point. ‘Gerald, supper is on the table. Will you very kindly go and see Cat doesn’t get it? I’ll be there in a minute … dear, here’s yours.’ It was on a tray; the events of the last hour conspired to make it seem even more appetizing and beautifully arranged than usual.

  ‘Really, Mother … what a blessing you are.’ Mr Geddes’s voice trailed off in a grateful mutter.

  She smiled, and went out of the room.

  He sat beside the fire in his study, looking into the flames for a long moment.

  What he remembered most vividly out of the events of the evening were not the spittle on his coat, nor the cool timing of the uppercut, nor the feel of his knuckles against Pearson’s flabby cheek, nor the lost girl looking out of Mrs Pearson’s face; what continued to pursue a mysterious, twisting dance in and out of his tired mind was a sentence.

  Put my feet down on the pavement. Not walk, as everybody else said. Put my feet down on the pavement. As a foreigner speaks; as a newcomer to … some unfamiliar country.

  The lives led by the rich fascinated Mrs Lysaght.

  She herself enjoyed the sort of income that is called comfortable, in that she need not think once about taking a taxi or hiring a car. But to winter in Bermuda, to spend four or five hundred guineas on a brooch, to ‘run’ a big car and a chauffeur – the size of the income implied in such luxurious expenditure was irresistibly interesting to her.

  She happened to be in the High Street one bright afternoon, and as she was coming out of Boots’, she met an old acquaintance.

  They were exchanging news as they left the shop when her companion’s eye was caught by an ancient Rolls, temporarily halted just opposite in the flow of traffic.

  ‘There’s Mrs Corbett – J. H. Corbett’s widow – the aircraft designer, you know – enormously rich – I met her once at a party – what a hat – she must be nearly eighty. I beg your pardon’ – cannoning off the hips of a ripe, trousered intellectual who was manoeuvring a laden pram. ‘Do look, Helen. And four dogs … I do think …’

  Mrs Lysaght looked, and felt mingled emotions; envy at the enormous car and the air of being in some way Somebody, which surrounded Mrs Corbett; curiosity as to how she might spend her days; satisfaction at the unbecoming lines of the twenty-guinea hat.

  Having parted from her acquaintance, she went for a stroll, and was making her way homewards, about four o’clock, with thoughts of Transcendence and Immanence mingled with those of tea in her mind. These subjects, and others equally incongruous, frequently shared shelter there.

  Barking, growling, and cries of alarm fell upon her ear as she emerged from a path leading up to the Spaniards Walk, and there, almost on top of her, was the stout mink-clad shape of Mrs Corbett, the Rolls parked near by, the chauffeur hastily clambering out of it, and the four little dogs barking frenziedly, and snarling and swirling about their mistress.

  The aggressor was an unusually large Alsatian, and in the midst of the agitated group, shouting and waving her arms, was its owner, the very kind of owner that every other dog-owner dreads being involved with; a huge war-like woman belonging to the newly affluent class, whose stony eye challenged every object, living or inanimate, which it encountered.

  ‘That’s right, Billy, you go for them, nasty little brutes, ought to be ashamed of yourself, taking up half the pavement –’

  ‘Cee! Cee! Come here at once … Dee! Frobisher – can’t you do something – oh dear … oh dear … Bee … come here … oh dear, now it’s all round my leg … Frobisher …’

  ‘If you could just grasp his neck, madam … Dee! Sir! Down, you ugly beast, sit!’ to the Alsatian.

  Frobisher was keeping well outside the combat area.

  ‘I’ll sue you, setting your dirty little beasts on my dog, think you own the place, I s’pose … bloody dogs all over the pavement …’

  ‘Bee! Oh,’ as the Alsatian sank its teeth in Bee’s neck, ‘oh, oh my boy – oh help –’

  Mrs Lysaght had a recurring fantasy of herself interfering in a dog-fight. Unhesitatingly, though with suddenly accelerated heartbeats, she walked into the struggling, hovering, swaying shouting group, gripped the Alsatian by its collar, and began to pull.

  ‘You leave my dog alone,’ bellowed the huge woman, touched in the agonizingly tender spot of possession, ‘leave him alone. My husband’ll do you, he will –’

  The Alsatian took no notice of Mrs
Lysaght’s action, but A. unhesitatingly flew at her and bit her in the leg. She shrieked; the pain was shockingly keen, and the surging, furry sensation of the great dog pushing and struggling under her hands was frightening. But it was also exhilarating.

  She hung on. She could see blood streaming down her stocking, and she set her teeth – a thing she had always read about and wanted to do. I set my teeth, she thought exultantly, just set my teeth and hung on. I didn’t give in … I’ll master you, I thought …

  But when Cee, perhaps maddened like a shark by the sight of blood, launched himself at her and bit her other leg she shrieked again, and dropped the Alsatian – which flew at Mrs Corbett, who screamed piercingly, as well she might. Mrs Lysaght struck at the dog’s behind with her bag. Frobisher, surrounded by shrieking women, snarling dogs, and gore – for the pavement was now scattered with dark drops – looked distractedly over everybody’s head in search of men.

  ‘Oh – oh,’ shrieked Mrs Corbett, also swiping wildly at the Alsatian with her bag, ‘call him off – oh call him off … how can you … help …’

  Her mink coat had so far protected her. The huge woman was yelling, ‘Serve you right, your dogs started it,’ and Mrs Lysaght, bleeding copiously now, but with re-set teeth, had her bag in both hands and was banging it up and down with all her force on the Alsatian’s rump. In for a penny, thought Mrs Lysaght, weirdly enjoying herself, in for a pound.

  At this point three young men ran up. They were not civilians, they were sailors, and therefore, instead of standing about and watching to see what would happen, one of them gripped the Alsatian by its muzzle and another took it by the throat, while the third with a series of swift light kicks that suggested practice on the football field, scattered, A., Bee, Cee and Dee, like the leaves of autumn. Their outraged yelps brought a shriek of a different quality from Mrs Corbett.

  ‘Oh – oh – my boys – my poor boys,’ while Frobisher, to whom the newcomers looked like avenging angels, seized her and hustled her towards the car. Mrs Lysaght, still belabouring, was left to face the huge woman.

  ‘Bits of boys, now,’ screamed the huge woman, ‘you leave my dog alone or I’ll –’

  ‘Belt up, ma, the Navy’s here,’ said one, without a smile, almost absently, and caught at Mrs Lysaght’s wrist and gripped it, ‘here, lay off – he’s all right now – get out, you,’ with another lifting kick, not hard, that checked A. in mid-spring, ‘let’s break up this here little party, shall we.’

  The Alsatian had a wound in the neck, inflicted by Dee, which was now attracting his attention; he had expended some energy, and he was prepared to calm down. His growls rumbled off into silence. The huge woman continued to shout threats. Mrs Lysaght suddenly felt sick. Mrs Corbett was exclaiming:

  ‘Oh do come into the car – I’m afraid you’re dreadfully bitten – so brave of you – really, I don’t know what I should have … I can’t thank you enough … do come in, all of you, please.’ Mrs Lysaght hurried towards the car.

  They left the huge woman explaining her wrongs to a small crowd of mildly interested strollers, and Frobisher drove away, the young sailors having grinningly but politely declined a lift.

  Mrs Corbett, after a struggle with maternal feeling, told Frobisher to drive to New End Hospital rather than to the nearest vet’s.

  ‘So wonderfully brave of you – really the bravest thing I’ve ever seen – I’m afraid you must be in shocking pain …’

  ‘Oh, it was nothing, really. We always had dogs at home … I’m used to them …’

  ‘We’ll go straight to the Casualty Department … just like Emergency-Ward Ten, isn’t it? I am afraid you must be in great pain.’

  ‘I do begin to feel it now, yes.’

  ‘Here we are,’ as the car slid to a stop. ‘I’ll come in with you …’

  ‘Oh please don’t trouble …’

  ‘But of course I will … and Frobisher will help you to get out. No, boys, no more walkies, bad little boys to fight that great big Alsatie, but brave little boys too … come along …’ to Mrs Lysaght.

  It was early evening when they at last got away, Mrs Lysaght walking stiffly on her disinfected and bandaged legs and Mrs Corbett worried about the bite in sulky Cee’s neck.

  She insisted that Helen – it had been Mrs Lysaght’s suggestion that Christian names should be used between them – must come back with her for a drink, ‘Unless you’re dying to get back to your own nest at once,’ she added.

  ‘Oh no, I should love it … a drink is just what I need.’

  Sitting back in one of Mrs Corbett’s great brocade-covered chairs, with a strong pink gin in her hand, Mrs Lysaght felt that the expenditure of energy in pain and fright had been worth it. The luxury here was of just the old-fashioned, comfortable kind that she liked; and there were even glimpses of servants; all very old, of course, and in a kind of shirt-andjacket-white-apron-overall contemporary uniform (you could not expect caps, of course), but there must be three or four of them, and she was also introduced to a dark girl who was Mrs Corbett’s companion, and to a middle-aged man who was her son.

  Her enjoyment was only spoilt by the thought that the incident would all too soon be ended.

  But Mrs Corbett’s heart, never hard or ungrateful, had been touched, and she also recalled that, lately, she had been thinking about the desirability of making new friends: Dorry and Madge and Cis, thought Mrs Corbett, get me down sometimes. I’ll ask her to tea, she decided.

  ‘Now Arnold will drive you home, of course –’ she announced, when Mrs Lysaght, getting up carefully and testing her throbbing legs, at last said that she must go.

  ‘Oh that’s terribly sweet of you but I’m sure Mr Corbett won’t want to turn out again.’

  ‘Oh he’d love to, wouldn’t you?’ to Arnold.

  He said that it would be an honour.

  ‘As if we’d let you go home by taxi! And Frobisher will be there punctually to-morrow to take you to Emergency–Ward Ten.’

  26

  Mrs Lysaght settled herself with a sigh of satisfaction; it was pleasant to ride in a car with a personable, prosperous man.

  Arnold really detested elderly women, and the sweeter they were the more he hated them. They thrust at him the fact that young women were sweet in a different way; and that in seven more years he would be fifty, and compelled to spend even more money and skill on attaching them to himself.

  ‘How strange life is,’ began the specimen at his side, in a musing tone, ‘really weird … isn’t it, Mr Corbett? Don’t you find life weird?’

  ‘Oh … I don’t know.’ He half-smiled at her, running the car too fast up the hilly road, ‘Is it? Sure you’re quite comfortable? That thing not too tight?’ That thing was the safety belt.

  ‘It’s perfect, thank you … for instance, in the last week, after really months of just nothing happening at all, I’ve been in a dog-fight, and talked to a medium.’

  ‘Yes … well? …’ he said vaguely. He could feel his sorrow waxing, and, as he glanced out of the window he knew why; some trees on the other side of the road, with their leaves blanched to colourless sprays in the chemical light, brought Peggy to his mind; Peggy, walking beneath them with the dogs.

  ‘I have a dear friend – a parson; I call him my guru, you know, like the Hindus have, a spiritual guide, philosopher and friend – and of course he’s very against my having anything to do with this Mrs Pearson – the medium.’

  ‘Pearson?’ He was edging the car into the beginning of the High Street and did not glance at her, but she caught the note of interest.

  ‘That’s her name – and such a pretty, unusual address for the dreadful part she lives in – Lily Cottage, Rose Walk. Isn’t it charming? – and in the heart of a slum. All bomb-ruins.’

  ‘My mother’s companion is a Miss Pearson,’ Arnold explained; some reason must be given for his obviously awakened interest.

  ‘Oh yes, of course – I remember now – I’m so bad at names. (I always look at peop
le’s faces.) Rather a nice-looking girl, I thought. But not warm. I do like warmth in a face,’ enlarged Mrs Lysaght, who in fact did not mind what was in a face so long as it promised some form of entertainment ‘Has she been with you long?’

  ‘About four months … she’s very good with the dogs. My mother’s had some trouble getting the right girl; foreigners don’t understand them, she says.’

  ‘Well, I agree with her. It takes an English person to understand a dog … I wonder if they’re related? But how absurd I’m being … it’s a common name.’ Arnold murmured something in answer.

  So her mother told fortunes. He wondered in what the ‘invalidism’ consisted? It might be mental; it might be drugs. We’ll cultivate Mrs Lysaght, anyway, he thought, she can probably tell us more … and if Peggy doesn’t want my mother to know about all this, that might come in useful too.

  Poor kid. The words floated up, unexpected and pure, from somewhere, and he put them angrily aside.

  *

  Some weeks later, in the lengthening twilight, Mr Geddes was locking the door of the vestry. It was after a service ill-attended but for the church’s faithful ladies, and the Vicar had remained in the vestry after it to attend to one or two small tasks.

  The side door of the vestry opened on to a narrow slip of turf, set with old elder bushes, that faced the Vicarage, and led into its garden; there was one of those false impressions of rural solitude here that linger in London, and Mr Geddes was always reminded, on crossing the turf, of more congenial days in another parish.

  He tried the door, slipped the key into the pocket of his cassock and turned away, then started violently.

  A dark, silent figure stood beside him in the dusk. ‘What do you want?’ Mr Geddes demanded loudly, with thoughts of that evening’s collection darting through his mind.

  ‘I came to … You remember me … Pearson. Thomas Pearson …’ the man answered in a low tone.

  ‘Is your wife worse?’ Mr Geddes asked instantly.