In the Middle of the Fields

by Mary Lavin

  ‘I see,’ he said for the second time, and he threw down another leaf on to the water. Then he straightened up. For a moment, she thought everything was ended. ‘Where is your car?’ he asked. But nothing was ended. ‘We can’t settle this here,’ he said. ‘I’m coming down to the farm with you. We’ll have to have a long talk.’ He paused. ‘Unless you could stay the night in town?’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly do that,’ she cried.

  ‘Well then, I’ll come down,’ he said.

  ‘And stay with Tim?’ She was distractedly looking in her pockets for the keys of the car. They were going out of the park gates into the street. But when she looked at him, she saw that he was staring strangely at her.

  ‘Where else?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, I know there is nowhere else,’ she said, but she felt the ground was slipping from under her as if she were the one who was young and inexperienced, even endangered. But it was only that she was out of practice in a game where every word, every gesture counted for ten. ‘I only meant that your uncle might think it odd for you to go down unexpectedly.’

  ‘I never go any other way,’ he said. ‘Are you sure that’s what you meant?’

  ‘And if it wasn’t?’ she asked, startled at the chancy note in her voice. ‘What would be the gain?’

  ‘If we got rid of the tension that has built up between us, we might salvage something,’ he said, but there was a trace of despondency in his voice again.

  ‘There might be nothing to salvage,’ she said. ‘And supposing the bonds only tightened?’

  ‘Would you care?’ he asked.

  ‘Not then. But I care now, while I’m still able to care.’

  ‘Tell me one thing. For whose sake would you care, your own or mine?’

  She looked away from him, over the street into which they had entered. ‘Not for either of our sakes, I think,’ she said. She nodded at the people in the street hurrying by in all directions. ‘For them, perhaps.’

  ‘Don’t be nonsensical,’ he said, and as they reached the car he caught the handle of the door. ‘I’ll come down. And you must let me stay the night, Vera. Just to talk.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s a bit bright to go down yet, though, isn’t it? We ought to wait till it’s darker, in case it would get about that I was down.’

  ‘And stayed with me?’

  He nodded.

  For a minute, she let herself dwell on the thought of having him in the house with her, under the same roof, however separate in all else. ‘I’d have to drive you up again very early before it was light, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘You could go to bed for a while,’ he said. ‘I’d call you.’

  She knew then that they fully understood each other. They got into the car.

  ‘There’s just one thing I have to do before I can go,’ he said. ‘I have to call at Hume Street to collect another lot of exam papers. Can we stop there? I won’t keep you a minute.’

  She started the car.

  ‘You didn’t really think that you could walk out of my life like that?’ he asked as they drove along. ‘I feel certain that no matter what happens you’ll never altogether leave it.’

  She said nothing, and in a few minutes they had reached Hume Street. Before he got out of the car, he looked at her. ‘There’s something I want to say now, before we go any further,’ he said. ‘No matter what happens, I want you to promise me that if you ever want me for anything, you’ll tell me. Will you promise that?’

  ‘Why do you want me to promise now?’ she asked, she leaned across him and opened the door. ‘Never mind. I promise,’ she said quickly. Then, knowing he must have guessed what she had in mind to do, she waited till he went up the steps and she drove away.

  It was nearly a year later. She had not seen him in the time between, nor did she expect to, when late one afternoon there was the sound of a car at the door. ‘Well?’ she said weakly when she opened it and saw him standing there.

  Like the first time of all, they looked at each other, and this time, too, the look was one of surprise, but not a happy surprise.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked. There was a keen edge to his voice. ‘I didn’t need to ask,’ he added quickly.

  ‘And you?’ she asked. He looked well.

  ‘I wasn’t going to call at all,’ he said then. ‘But I changed my mind.’ He paused.

  It saddened her to see him ill at ease, standing so stiffly. Why did he come, she wondered. ‘You were anxious about me? Is that it?’ she asked laughingly, thinking that by making light of it she would dispel the shadow of what had been between them. But she saw at once she had only brought it back. In a moment, the old atmosphere of intimacy was recreated, and yet it was not the same, or anything like the same.

  ‘It was because of the old man I called,’ he said dully. ‘He thought it odd that I hadn’t come over to see you. I’ve been down here for two weeks.’

  ‘Ah, well,’ she said, ‘he didn’t understand.’

  He looked at her intently. ‘I’m not so sure about that,’ he said. ‘I didn’t tell you something he said last year, one of the nights I went back late. He gave me a queer look. ‘If you were better favoured,’ he said, ‘you’d be putting ideas into my silly old head.’

  ‘I’m not so sure.’ They were still standing in the doorway. ‘May I stay awhile?’ he asked.

  Almost imperceptibly, she hesitated, but he noticed it. ‘You were not going out, were you?’ he asked.

  ‘I was going out,’ she said reluctantly.

  ‘Must you?’

  ‘I’m afraid I must.’

  He seemed really surprised. ‘Will you be long? Could I come back later? As a matter of fact, I have to go to Dublin for an hour or two. I only intended calling for a minute.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I could be back in two and a half hours. Where were you going, anyway?’

  ‘Today is Richard’s anniversary,’ she said, still more reluctantly. ‘I was going to the cemetery. Normally I never go near it, only I got word to say the headstone has slipped, and that it must be seen to at once, in case it falls altogether. It would break, or do damage to other graves. I have to go and see what is to be done, and make arrangements about it.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ he said. ‘But it can’t be all that urgent, surely? Isn’t this a bad day to go in any case? Or do you usually go on his anniversary?’

  ‘I told you I never go. Never, never. This is purely a coincidence.’

  ‘Well, then. You certainly shouldn’t go today. Besides it’s getting late. Put it off to another day.’

  ‘I think I ought to go this afternoon,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind, really.’ Suddenly an idea struck her. ‘It would make it a lot easier if there was someone with me. I don’t suppose—’ She paused, and for a minute she thought he had not seen any connection between him and her unfinished sentence.

  But he had. ‘Of course I’ll go. There should be someone with you. You certainly should not go alone. Don’t think of it. Leave it till tomorrow or the next day, and I’ll go with you gladly. Better still, I’ll go without you and see what’s to be done. It’s not a job for a woman anyway. Where is he buried, by the way?’

  ‘Kildare.’

  ‘So far?’

  ‘It’s not so far from here, only a few minutes.’

  ‘I’d probably be going from Dublin, but no matter. Put it out of your head now, and I’ll take care of it.’

  ‘You couldn’t come this afternoon?’

  ‘With you?’

  ‘With me, of course. I know it must sound superstitious, but I hate to think of getting word about it today of all days, and not going, not wanting to go.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ he said easily. ‘Anyway, it’s my affair now.’

  ‘You couldn’t possibly come now?’ she persisted. ‘Why do you h
ave to go back to Dublin? Is it urgent?’

  ‘Oh, it’s not exactly urgent, but I’d like to go. I’ve arranged to give a driving lesson to someone. It need only take half an hour, but I promised to do it. A half an hour would be plenty; that’s why I said I’d come back if you agreed to it, but of course the light would be gone by then, for the other job, I mean.’

  She was listening very attentively. ‘Is it a girl?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘You know it’s not a girl.’

  ‘Why not? I only asked because if it was a girl I’d know you couldn’t possibly break your word.’

  He stared. ‘You wouldn’t mind?’

  ‘It would be natural,’ she said.

  ‘Was that your remedy? Another man?’

  She didn’t bother to reply to that. ‘Well, if it’s not a girl, who is it?’ she asked flatly.

  ‘It’s just a fellow who works in the Department of Education. It’s through him I get the exam papers to correct.’

  ‘Couldn’t you get in touch with him?’

  ‘He’s not on the phone.’

  She pondered this. ‘You could send him a telegram.’

  ‘He wouldn’t get it in time.’

  ‘He’d get it afterwards, and he’d understand, surely?’

  ‘I don’t know if he would. And anyway, I couldn’t leave him up there in the park, hanging around waiting for me, thinking every minute I was coming and afraid to go away.’

  She gave a short laugh.

  ‘I suppose you think that if it was last summer I’d have gone with you no matter what!’ he said.

  ‘Oh, no!’ she cried. ‘Last summer I wouldn’t have let you come. I wouldn’t have needed you. It would have been enough to know you’d have come if you could.’ Her coat was lying across the hall table. She took it up. ‘I must go,’ she said simply.

  ‘So you were right,’ he said, blocking her way. ‘We salvaged nothing.’

  She put on her coat. Then she looked into his face. ‘Don’t blame me for being right,’ she said. ‘I sometimes think love has nothing to do with people at all.’ Her voice was tired. ‘It’s like the weather. But isn’t it strange that a love that was so unrealised should have—’

  ‘—given such joy?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she said. Then she closed the door behind them. ‘And such pain.’

  ‘Oh, Vera, Vera,’ he said.

  ‘Goodbye,’ she said.

  Goodbye.

  One Summer

  Above the wind and the rain she called her goodbyes to him again from the edge of the pier, as the steel hawsers splashed back into the water and the ship eased out from the dock. If there was an answering message she did not hear it in a blast from the funnel. And in the mist she could not be certain that the figure to whom she waved was him. A few minutes later and there was no distinguishing anyone. Only the portholes shone. Yet she did not leave. She sat in the car till the last speck of light was quenched in waves of darkness.

  It was late when she reached home. Getting out to open the gates at the end of the avenue she could see through the trees that the light was out in her father’s room. A light burned in the maid’s room, but as the car swept up to the front steps this light was put out. Lily in all likelihood thought her mistress had been jilted. Vera sighed. Cramped, cold, and worn-out, she went to her room. In a few minutes she was in a dead sleep. Was it any wonder she heard nothing during the night? It was getting on for morning when Lily ran in and shook her awake. An awful moaning was coming from her father’s room.

  ‘God, Miss, I think he’s dying,’ the girl sobbed.

  ‘Stop it,’ Vera said sharply. Yet her mind fastened on Lily’s hysterical words. If they were true, how badly she herself had been served by time. Alan was no further than London. It would be hours before he boarded the Orcades.

  Her father moaned again. Shamed by her thoughts, she sprang up and ran across the landing. ‘Oh, Father, what is the matter?’ she cried. But from the doorway she could tell by a strange, unnatural strength in his stare that he could not speak. His glaring eyes seemed all of him that was alive. Spread-eagled on the bed as if flung from a great height, he lay inert. Then the pain caught him up again and he was once more gathered into a living mass. Putting her arms under him she tried to drag him to a sitting position, but he gave her such a bitter look she let him fall back. Oh, why had she gone defiantly to bed without going in to him! He might have been lying miserably awake in the dark. ‘Don’t be angry with me, Father,’ she pleaded, as if she were at fault, not him. Then she turned on Lily. ‘Stop that nonsense,’ she said, ‘and go for the doctor.’

  Because Lily was running around frantically filling hot water bottles, making stoups and compresses, forcing brandy between his lips. She had lights burning everywhere. Even out in the yard a light streamed unnaturally into the fields of dawn. ‘Oh, Miss, I hate to leave him,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t you go? You’d be no time going in the car.’

  Vera shook her head: It was not to have him die without her that she had given up Alan. So Lily pedalled off in the greyness and the wet.

  Standing back out of range of the sick man’s angry eyes, Vera stared helplessly at him. The first onslaught of pain was over, and he lay in a sheet of sweat. Yet it seemed an age until the doctor’s car came up the drive, with Lily sitting up importantly beside him on the front seat, her bike strapped to the back. Vera ran down to meet them.

  ‘Sounds like a blockage,’ the old doctor said, as he got out of the car. ‘Don’t worry; we’ll do all we can.’

  Indeed the doctor’s presence had helped already, and as they went in to her father he managed a few words. ‘What’s wrong with me, Doctor?’ he whispered.

  The doctor turned down the bedclothes. ‘Tell me, have you been dosing yourself?’ he demanded.

  Vera went limp with relief. So it was that? As long as she could remember he was always dosing himself. ‘Cleans you out,’ he used to say when she protested, and defiantly he’d pour himself out another spoonful of a vile concoction of cascara and treacle which he called blackjack. Turning eagerly, she was about to tell the doctor about it when a look from her father silenced her.

  But Lily spoke up. ‘I told him he’d blast the insides out of himself with that stuff he takes, Doctor, but he wouldn’t heed me.’

  The doctor nodded gloomily.

  ‘It was that made him throw up too,’ the girl said.

  ‘When was that?’ Vera asked sharply.

  ‘He was always at it,’ said the girl defiantly as if she felt herself doubted. ‘You could hear him all over the house.’ She shuddered. ‘And a couple of times I saw him doubled up out in the fields.’

  Vera put her hands to her face.

  ‘That’s enough!’ the doctor said to Lily. He turned to Vera. ‘I’ll give him something to ease him,’ he said in a low voice, ‘but I’m afraid it’s a blockage all right. We’ll have to get him to Dublin.’ He patted her on the shoulder. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he said kindly, but later, when they were going downstairs, he looked more keenly at her. ‘You should get some sleep,’ he said. ‘You look exhausted. Let Lily sit up with him for what’s left of the night.’

  ‘Oh, but she must be jaded,’ Vera said.

  ‘What matter! She’s young,’ said the doctor. Through the great high window on the landing they could see the doctor’s battered car looming indistinctly in the morning mist, and as they went out on to the glittering granite steps Lily came towards them, half-wheeling, half-carrying the bicycle she had unstrapped from the car. Like the gravel under her feet, her cheeks were freshened and brightened by the damp. The stress of the night had left no mark on her. ‘What did I tell you?’ cried the doctor, his own eye brightening. ‘This one doesn’t need any sleep. She’s fitter far than you to stay up.’

&nb
sp; The girl laughed. ‘A spin is what I’d like now,’ she said.

  The doctor laughed good-humouredly, but to Vera he spoke severely. ‘You go and lie down,’ he said.

  Vera shook her head. Intermittently through the hours that had passed, her mind had guiltily travelled after Alan. At one minute she thought she would wire to him. At the next she thought no. It was like the moments when she had stood on the dark pier and watched the light of the ship that carried him away from her, it came and went several times in the sea mist before she knew finally that the light was finally engulfed in it. Now in the cold air of dawn she came to a firm decision. ‘I can’t lie down, Doctor,’ she said. ‘I have an important letter to write.’

  The doctor looked oddly at her. ‘Well, we all have our own anodyne,’ he said, and he got into the car. ‘I’ll call later when I’ve got in touch with the hospital. Don’t be blaming yourself for anything. He must already have felt some discomfort when he was taking those doses.’

  To satisfy him she nodded her head. But he only knew about the blackjack and the retching. What about his black moods all year, his black looks, and his fits of black, black silence? Was he not then already gravely ill? Filled with remorse, she ran upstairs.

  Her father was lying as they left him. He was staring up at the ceiling. ‘Do I have to go to hospital?’ he asked.

  Had he heard what the doctor said? Or was he only trying to find out?

  ‘Are you frightened, Father?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he said decisively. ‘As long as it’s not what I dreaded. Anything but that.’