by James Wilson
‘But the answer is yes, probably: he was a French angel. Because everyone was French in those days. Apart from my governess – and she was the least angelic person you can imagine.’
‘Everyone?’ I said. ‘Why? Where were you living?’
‘In Paris.’
‘So are you French, then?’
She shook her head. ‘But France is where I was born. And where my mother chose to abandon me.’
Her voice had dropped almost to an inflectionless stage-whisper. I inched my head sideways until I could see her. She was
swallowing repeatedly, as if trying to shift something in her throat.
‘Why did she abandon you?’ I said.
She turned towards me. The skin had tightened around her eyes, giving her face the flat look of a mask.
‘Why do you suppose?’
‘I don’t know. I could guess, of course, but –’
‘Guess, then.’
I shook my head, refusing the responsibility of saying it.
‘Because I am a bastard.’
I tried not to blush, but could not help myself. ‘That’s scarcely your fault.’
‘No, of course it isn’t!’ she snapped. ‘Any more than it’s the fault of all those thousands of poor little mites who clutter up the workhouses. But that doesn’t save them from being … thrown away, does it?’
‘No,’ I said, as gently as I could. ‘But the difference is: most of the poor little mites in the workhouses are there simply because their mothers can’t afford to keep them. Which can hardly have been the case with your parents, can it, if they were able to provide a nurse, and a governess –?’
‘Oh, an entire household! Everything I could possibly need! A housekeeper. A piano. Music lessons. Sur le pont d’Avignon. Just as long as I didn’t trouble them by … by …’Her voice faltered, and she shook her head, to express some depth of disgust she couldn’t trust speech to convey.
‘Did she never come to visit you?’ I said.
‘Mm?’
‘Your mother. In Paris?’
‘No.’
‘And you have not met her since?’
She shook her head again.
‘Have you tried?’
‘What?’
‘To meet her?’
‘I told you before,’ she said unsteadily. ‘I have no idea where she lives.’
‘I had no idea where you lived, and I managed to find you. Surely someone at your old school would know? Or would at least be able to point you in the –?’
‘Why should I want to find her?’
‘To bring about a reconciliation.’
‘It is not up to me to be reconciled to her. She –’
She stopped suddenly, unable to go on – not because she was weeping, but because her whole body was trembling so uncontrollably that she could not form the words. She looked so helpless and bereft that, without thinking, I put a hand on her arm. She started to lean towards me, shoulders hunched, like a small child seeking comfort – and then abruptly pulled away again, crying furiously:
‘What are you doing? What are you doing?’ She hurriedly smoothed her dress and straightened her hat.
‘I’m sorry. I –’
‘Someone will see!’ she said. And then, with a kind of perverse triumph, nodding at the road ahead: ‘Look!’
Coming towards us were a dozen or so people on bicycles. Most of them stared directly in front of them as they puffed and wobbled up the hill, too occupied with the business of merely turning the wheels to pay any attention to anything else. When they were almost upon us, however, a boy of fifteen or sixteen looked up and called:
‘Morning!’
‘Good morning,’ I replied.
Mary Wilson said nothing, but kept glancing back at them as they passed. Finally, when they were out of earshot, she whispered:
‘What do you think?’
‘Mm?’
‘Those people. Did they notice us?’
‘Yes, of course they did. Or at least the young chap did …’
‘Will he say anything, do you imagine?’
‘To whom? About what?’
‘About us!’
‘Look,’ I said. ‘I do understand that you’re concerned for your reputation. But I really don’t believe you are putting it at risk by being seen walking down the road with me on a Sunday morning. If you act as if you have nothing to be ashamed of, people will just naturally assume that to be the case, and won’t give it another thought. Look: my hotel’s just over there. Why don’t we go in and have some coffee?’
She followed the direction of my outstretched finger. ‘The Midland, you mean?’
I nodded.
‘But I’m known in there.’
‘That is exactly my point.’
We sat in the over-heated lounge, and drank tepid coffee from scuffed silver-plate jugs that looked as if they had been retired from a railway dining-car. It was the first time I had seen Mary Wilson in a social setting, and I was struck by the change in her behaviour. She made a heroic effort to appear easy – muttering sly little jokes about some of our fellow-guests, and asking me polite questions about myself, and whether my life at home had improved since our last meeting. But the instant I began to reply, her gaze flickered away, and she started glancing round surreptitiously to see if anyone was watching us. It was perfectly obvious that, try as she might, she could not free herself from the quicksand of her own anxiety; and after a few minutes, as she turned back towards me for the tenth time, and suddenly caught the look of pained concern in my face, she gave up, and acknowledged as much herself:
‘I’m sorry, I’m not being awfully good company, I know.’ She forced her lips into an unwilling smile, which promptly sprang out of shape as soon as she started speaking again. ‘But this really is very dangerous for me. My husband … My husband and I are not … not what we should be. But still: a wife is all I am. If my marriage is ruined, I have nowhere to go. No family to take me back. Even the child I thought might grow up to care for me is … is …’
I nodded, and touched her hand. ‘What about your guardian?’
She shook her head. ‘He was kind to me when I was at school. But he would not help me now.’
‘You cannot be sure –’
‘I can. I am sure.’
There was a kind of saw-blade sharpness to her voice that warned me not to press her further on the subject. I said:
‘Well, there’s always the school itself, isn’t there? You did say you were happy there. And –’
‘What, Sussex Place? I was happy there, but it’s closed now. And the Misses Robinson are old, and very frail. Besides, a school-mistress is always a school-mistress, isn’t she? She can never really be a friend. That’s a different thing altogether.’
‘What about Miss Shaw –?’
She started as if I had slapped her.
‘What do you know of Miss Shaw?’
‘What you told me. That you used to spend holidays with her, and still go to see her sometimes, even now. She is obviously a true friend – someone you could really count on, if it came to –’
‘How do you know her name?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I didn’t mention that she was called Miss Shaw, did I? Only that she was an old school-mistress of mine, and had a motor-car.’
I was so unprepared for this sudden attack that for a moment I did not know how to respond. Then, very cautiously, I said:
‘Yes, and that was enough to identify her. It’s thanks to her that I am here at all.’
‘But she has gone to India!’
I laughed. ‘All right, then. Thanks to her housekeeper –’
‘Her housekeeper? I barely know the woman. What did she say about me?’
‘Nothing. She just told me she remembered seeing your railway ticket. And it said “Langley Mill” on it. So we knew where to start, at least.’
‘We?’
I was at a loss. I frowned and shook my hea
d.
‘You said “we knew where to start”. Who else was looking for me?’
‘Oh, I see. My friend, Cyril Jessop.’
‘Why? He’s never met me, has he? I’ve never so much as heard of him.’
Even frowning was beyond me now. I merely stared blankly at her, like a boxer slumped against the ropes. I thought seeing the state she had reduced me to might jolt her into apologizing for her rudeness, but she seemed more pleased than ashamed, and could not, indeed, repress a tiny smile – as if, again, witnessing the full extent of her own power had dulled her fear, and momentarily made her feel safer.
‘Well?’ she prompted me, when I didn’t answer.
‘Cyril Jessop’s my oldest pal,’ I said. ‘And the best fellow alive. So when he saw my predicament, he immediately offered to help me find you.’
‘What predicament?’
I pulled out the copy of She, and laid it on the table. ‘I found this in the church, and wanted to return it to you.’
I braced myself for another onslaught: you’re lying; I don’t believe you; no one would have taken so much trouble just to deliver a book. But to my astonishment, the shrewishness left her face, and she gave a shiver of delight.
‘Oh,’ she said quietly. ‘Thank you!’ She turned to the first page and read a few lines, before looking up at me again and saying: ‘No one’s ever been so kind to me. It must’ve taken you days.’
‘Longer, actually. But we’ve only ourselves to blame. We decided to come by caravan.’
Her brow puckered, as if she suspected I were pulling her leg.
‘Honestly,’ I said. ‘That’s how we did it. Two weeks on the road, living like gypsies.’
‘Where is it, then?’
‘What?’
‘You said you were putting up here. So where’s the caravan?’
‘Oh, oh, I see. There was nowhere we could stay in it in Langley Mill. So it’s at Divot’s Dairy.’
‘Truly?’
I nodded. She gazed at me – but with a kind of steady, unblinking abstraction that suggested she was really seeing something in her own imagination. Then – tentatively, as if she expected me to say no – she asked:
‘Could I look at it, do you think?’
I glanced at my watch. ‘Well, there should just be time, I suppose. But we’ll have to hurry, if you’re not to be late for your lunch.’
I paid, and we set off through the town. The streets were far less crowded than they had been the day before, and we reached the dairy in no more than ten minutes. It being Sunday, the gates were locked; but by craning our necks we could look into the yard where the van was standing, and see one of the wheels, and the gracefully curving yellow shafts, and the brightly painted canopy above the driver’s seat, and a dab of the red panelling behind it.
‘It’s true!’ said Mary Wilson. She grasped two of the upright bars of the gate and pressed her face between them, like a prisoner peering longingly at the outside world. ‘How beautiful!’
‘It is a lovely thing,’ I said. ‘Though not altogether practical, I have to say. There are times when you find yourself wishing devoutly for a bath and a proper bed.’
‘But still, you are free, aren’t you?’ She gazed at it for a few seconds more, then turned away abruptly – and for the first time, to my immense surprise, I saw tears in her eyes. ‘I don’t like seeing it penned up like that,’ she said. ‘It makes me sad. Like looking at a zebra in a zoo.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘It’ll soon be at liberty again. We’ll be back on the road in a day or two.’
‘I wish I could go with you.’
I felt a vertiginous rush – whether of desire, or dread, or simple astonishment, I was too dazed to know.
‘Are you not feeling well?’ said Mary Wilson.
I shook my head. ‘Just a little tired, that’s all. But you really ought to be on your way, or you won’t be at the rectory in time.’
She sighed, her breath wavering with a kind of infinite resignation – as if, having tantalized her, yet again, with some tempting prospect, life had once more vindictively snatched it from her grasp.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I suppose you’re right.’
*
We barely spoke on the way back – though this time it was not awkwardness that silenced us, but rather the knowledge of our impending separation, which, as it approached, seemed to drive us both further and further into our own trains of thought. I had no idea what she was thinking – although from time to time, when she imagined I wasn’t aware of it, I would catch her looking in my direction, as if she was still trying to reach some firm conclusion about me. And I, meanwhile, was snatching curious glances at her, and wondering whether Jessop was right after all, and the truth was that I was in love with her? Certainly, the sight of her pale heart-shaped face provoked, every time, a violent spasm of emotion in me. But, powerful though it was, it still did not quite feel like love – or, at least, not the conventional, romantic love he meant. It was more elemental: a sense that I was touching the very marrow of life, and that everything else must seem, in comparison to it, insipid and unimportant.
‘Would you like me to walk you back to Heanor?’ I asked, as we drew near to the hotel.
She hesitated a second, then shook her head sadly.
‘No,’ she said. ‘We must say goodbye at the station, as we agreed.’
When the moment came, neither of us seemed quite to know what to do. In the end, unable to think of anything more appropriate, we merely shook hands again, as limply and formally as a couple of strangers. Only when she had already started to leave did she suddenly look back and say:
‘It isn’t fair to say I have no friends. You are my friend.’ She held up her book, like a priest displaying the word of God. ‘Perhaps you are an angel after all.’
I shook my head, grimacing with embarrassment.
‘An angel who doesn’t know it,’ she said.
Then she turned back, and went on up the hill.
*
I stood watching her, promising myself that I would wait until she was out of sight, and then – since by this point my mind was lagging so far behind events that I no longer knew what I thought or felt about them – take a long solitary walk, to give it time to catch up. She had not gone more than ten paces, however, before there was a sudden explosion in my temple, so violent that it felt as if my skull would crack open. For perhaps five seconds, I didn’t know where I was – or, rather, I seemed to be in three places at once: in front of Langley Mill station; crouched under the yew tree in the churchyard; and somewhere I couldn’t identify, though it was dazzlingly bright, and smelt faintly of starch. Then – though the tumult continued unabated – the tree and the light shrank back to the very edges of my vision. Clutching my head, I blundered into the hotel, ignoring the startled glances of the handful of guests in the lounge, and started towards the stairs.
‘Are you not feeling well, sir?’ asked the pleasant woman at the desk.
‘Migraine,’ I muttered.
‘Have you tried aspirin?’ She proudly produced a small bottle from her drawer and shook a couple of white discs on to my hand. ‘Take these with a glass of water. See if they help.’
Once inside my room, I locked the door, closed the curtains and swallowed the tablets. Then I lay down on the bed and shut my eyes. Whether it was thanks to the aspirin or not I couldn’t tell, but almost immediately the movement in my head started to grow less frantic, until, after a few minutes, it was no more than an insistent steady pulse. Safe in the calm of my own little sanctuary, I suddenly began to feel limp and drowsy. I needed to think, but I couldn’t hold on to the disconnected flashes in my mind for long enough to fashion them into a train of thought. Soon, a sense of gentle dissolution was spreading through my body, and I felt an invisible current starting to carry me away.
When I woke, the room was almost dark. I groped for the light switch and looked at my watch. Nearly seven o’clock: I had slept through th
e entire afternoon. I didn’t feel ill, exactly, but I was strangely tired, as if some succubus had battened on me and was draining me of energy. I lay down again, and shut my eyes. Immediately, I was aware that something had changed: not only could I feel the movement now, but I could see it, too – a vague shadowy mass stirring at the edge of the light-prickled night sky behind my eyelids.
I panicked, clenching my fists and thrashing my head from side to side in a frantic attempt to dislodge it. For a moment I thought I had succeeded; but when I stopped long enough for my jangled vision to clear again, I realized it was still there – stronger and more obtrusive, if anything, than it had been before.
‘What are you?’ I said, startling myself with the loudness of my own voice.
I thought I caught something in reply – a muffled cry or whimper – but it might just have been the hum in my ears, or a dog barking half a mile away in Langley Mill.
‘What are you?’ I said again.
The next moment, as clearly as if she had been sitting in the room with me, I heard Mary Wilson saying:
The best of me. The truest part of me.
I opened my eyes. There was nothing there.
‘Roper! Roper!’
I jumped violently, ricking my neck. Jessop was rapping the door.
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t want to intrude, but it’s dinner-time.’
The small of my back was a puddle of sweat. But at least – as if it, too, had been frightened by the noise – the thing in my head was suddenly still.
‘All right,’ I called, levering myself from the bed. ‘Give me five minutes, and I’ll be with you.’
*
I felt so unsettled – so precariously balanced on the edge of some unfathomable river that might sweep me away to destruction – that I made up my mind, in the short time it took me to wash and change my shirt, to say nothing to Jessop about my strange experience. But this resolution crumbled within seconds of my reaching the dining-room. I had not even finished sitting down before he looked up sharply and said:
‘Who were you talking to?’
‘I beg your pardon?’