by Ursula Bloom
‘But you have not seduced me …’
‘That doesn’t matter. He’d have to think so. Besides, I might just as well have done.’
It was curious that he could attract her so intensely, when he was the very antithesis of anything she had ever thought before. ‘I should never lift up my head again if there was a divorce. I don’t believe in it, and it’s wicked.’
‘Right ho! Then it’ll have to be pistols, and the survivor will probably be hanged. Like that, you’ll get rid of both of us. I should have thought it was far less satisfactory from the male viewpoint, but I don’t suppose that’s worrying your selfish little head.’
‘Michael, you shan’t interfere with my life so much. I wouldn’t marry you even if I were free to do so, and I’m not free. This is a flirtation, it’ll pass. We have got to forget it because it is the only sensible thing to do.’
‘I shan’t let you forget it, and I don’t agree that it is the only sensible thing to do. Let me tell you this, my girl, if I have to wait for years I shall get you in the end. I may have to poison your silly husband to do it, but that won’t worry me as much as it’ll worry him. I shall get you.’
‘You’re being idiotic,’ she said, and would have taken up the tray to go and finish her duties, but he had her by the wrist. She tried to put on her quelling look, but somehow she couldn’t be quelling any more. Not with Michael! She tried to avoid his eyes, and all the time she knew that he would kiss her, and then she would kiss him, and once they kissed, no escape was possible. Suddenly she broke down.
‘Oh Michael, what do I want?’ she sobbed.
‘Me!’ said the outrageous Michael, ‘and what is more you’re getting me, though as yet you haven’t made up your mind to it. But I have, so what does anything matter?’
Fifteen
Edward Benson had a stroke when in his pulpit on the following Sunday. For some time he had been changing; he had grown quiet, morose, and he had long periods when he was difficult to approach. In the dreadful autumn of 1918 he had contracted the pneumo-influenza, when people had died like flies. Everyone thought that he had escaped lightly, and he had got up from his sickbed to take burial services, which trailed to the little churchyard one after the other. He said that he had a cast-iron constitution, but he had never really recovered from the illness.
The young doctor in Mainwaring urged him to take a rest and have a good long holiday. He could get a locum in for a time. Edward was one of those people who believe a good holiday to be a significant sign of weakness. He prided himself that he kept going in harness, and would until the day he died. He would expand this foolish philosophy of his, and insist that he was perfectly well. But he was ageing considerably, and Kay had been over-anxious for him.
The war years had been hard on people in the sixties, not only because of the war itself, but because of the changing world in which they found themselves. Amongst other things, Edward insisted on being a special constable, he got wet through on duty several times, and although Kay had implored him to give it up, he stuck to his post obstinately. She admired him for the motive and principles behind it all, but wished that he had not been made that way.
The strain told. He had little appetite for his food, and dozed off in his chair on occasions when one would have thought that he should stay awake. He refused even to take a tonic or agree with anything that the young doctor said. He was particularly resentful of interference, or the suggestion that he was out of sorts. He lost weight. But there was nothing that anybody could do for him.
This was the afternoon service, on a cold blowy Sunday, not unusual in the height of the English summer. He had worked himself into a temper at lunch, which was hot, and which he thought should have been cold to conform to the letter of the law, ‘Thou shalt do no manner of work, thou, and thy … maidservant’, old Emily being thus included, and having been contaminated through thrusting a joint into the oven prior to matins.
He had refused to eat the meat, partaking only of the vegetables, which was ridiculous because they were hot too, but then Edward was never very logical in his arguments. He flounced off to afternoon service in one of his moods. He looked ashy grey, Kay thought, as she watched him from the harmonium. The service dragged on, and at the end of his sermon, a long one prepared with elaborate care, they sang ‘The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended’ and he remained praying in the pulpit. This was a foible of Edward’s. By the fifth verse, Kay saw that he was holding on the pulpit edge, his hands tensed, and his face grey. She signalled desperately to the clerk, who went to him and helped him down the steps. The clerk got him into the vestry, one side sagging, one leg trailing after him, and his wife doubted if he saw anything, or knew what was going on.
They pulled the curtains, and she knelt beside him as they propped him up in the chair reserved for visiting bishops. The clerk thought of the vinosacro, and got it out of the cupboard, putting the bottle to the old man’s lips. It dribbled out of the sagging side, and fell in a small purple staining pool on his surplice.
Kay got him home in one of the farmers’ cars, and the farmer helped him upstairs. By the time the young doctor came, Edward was almost conscious but the left arm and leg were useless.
‘It’s a slight stroke,’ said the doctor.
‘I guessed that.’
‘That influenza weakened him, and he works himself up so. He ought to go away for a very long time; he needs a month by the sea the moment he is well enough to travel. You could get a locum, I suppose?’
It was so easy for a doctor to talk; Kay wondered if he really knew how difficult Edward would prove in all this. ‘Edward wouldn’t do it.’
‘If he goes on this way, he’ll get worse. He’ll die. I’ll talk to him about it, maybe it’ll come better from a stranger.’
However, when it came to it, the doctor found Edward Benson a tougher proposition than he had expected. Recovering from his stroke and feeling uncommonly ill, he would not admit it. He adopted a schoolmastery air of disapproval. He got up before he should have done, and defied them all by making the leg and arm work when they had thought it impossible. His iron will commanded it and he managed to get along.
The village had thought that he would die, and he did not die. He emerged again, moodier, angrier, and more silent, but he intended to go on, and in harness.
He’ll kill himself, his wife thought.
She had the Herrick child to tea. Edward had hired a car and had gone off to see the bishop, so she knew that he could not possibly return until nightfall. That made it much easier. Old Emily had gone to see a sick brother the other side of the county, so that Kay had the rectory to herself, and intended to spend the time amusing herself with Kay.
In Mainwaring she had laid in a store of attractive cakes, and had fetched young Kay from the ’bus stop. He was a gay little boy, excited and chatty, which she much preferred to a shy child. He talked of bird’s-nesting, of the caterpillar season, of the hundred and one subjects so close to his heart. He had a grand new catapult his mother didn’t know about, because she didn’t like catapults, but they were the thing to have. He came into the rectory, where young echoes never stirred, and young laughter so seldom rang.
‘So this is where you live?’
‘Yes, do you like it?’
‘No,’ he said simply, ‘no, I don’t. It’s very grand, but it’s empty, isn’t it?’
It was true. She knew that the rectory was empty, like her own heart. Nothing real ever came inside the sagging maroon gate, and she realized it. They went into the dining-room where she had spread out the tea before she went to meet him.
‘It’s a good tea,’ he said, eyeing the little iced cakes with appreciation.
It was lovely to be sitting here with the boy opposite cramming buns at incredible speed into his mouth. He was surprised to be allowed butter and jam at one and the same time. He swilled down the food with tea, going on eating ravenously, with his mouth half open all the time. Little scraps of his home life wer
e revealed, baby-minding, cleaning-up. He confessed that his mother was angered easily, and that his father hardly noticed him. Harold was his father’s boy, and Kay was often in trouble. He wiped his mouth carelessly with the back of his hand.
Yet afterwards he accepted the washing-up as all part of the day’s duties, and they put the rest of the cakes into a bag for him to take home. He wanted to go all over the house, its size interesting him, and they went up the wide stairs with the threadbare drugget.
‘Funny to have stuff on the stairs,’ he said. He had never seen it before.
They went into Edward’s study, prim and austere, they went into Kay’s higgledy-piggledy bedroom, the little one in the corner, for Edward occupied the big room. Young Kay liked the little room in spite of the untidiness, which he was well used to.
‘Aren’t the trees nice?’ he asked, looking from the window. He said that he always thought of trees as being people who one day would live again.
‘You know,’ said she, ‘there is a proverb “He that plants trees, loves others besides himself.” The boy nodded.
‘I’d like to plant trees. Men like them. Birds like them too. They’re very kind things.’
‘Perhaps you’d like to go in for forestry?’
‘Would I? Isn’t that cutting them down.’
‘It’s planting them, too.’
‘I wouldn’t want to cut them down.’
She said, ‘I sometimes think that very old trees grow tired of being up there against the sky, and are glad to come down. I think they weary like men who grow old.’
They went afterwards for a stroll in the garden, and she showed him the low springy branch of the wide yew in the corner; when she had first come to Fincham, she had sat on it sidesaddle, prancing up and down with her toe, and playing a game with herself, pretending that it was a horse. Not recently, of course; she hadn’t been near it recently. She could confide such nonsense in young Kay, knowing that he did not consider it to be nonsense. He flushed with excitement and thought it a very good idea. Now she saw him seated astride the bough, flying up and down, and laughing. His flat fair hair rose and fell from his head as he rode; his small face was eager with the thrill of it.
‘Now, you, you!’ he urged.
‘I’m much too old.’
‘Nobody’s too old. Come on!’ He was all boy, pushing her towards the branch with eager thrusting hands that were greened with the yew bark. She sat there, toed the ground, and felt the bough rising and falling, up and down she went, with excitement suddenly filling her, so that she was young again. ‘Faster, faster!’ he urged her.
She went faster, it seemed that now she rose on the bending branch, and widened her own horizon, for she was above it and could see further. She felt gay; she felt as she had done when she was a girl.
The glorious afternoon had to end. As she came back alone after returning the boy to the cottage, she thought with yearning of the difference that a child could make to one’s life. The shaggy cottage had been over-crowded with them, and she did not suppose that poor Alice had really wanted any of them. For one fascinating moment she wondered if she could ever persuade Edward to allow her to adopt the boy? To take him into her own house as her own child. To watch his progress, and live again in him. They would never have children of their own now, and she was acutely aware of having missed one of the most profound happinesses of living. The delicious idea would not be turned aside, however unfeasible. It offered itself again and again to her.
Then, the illusion of it dying, she found that her day had become sadder and dimmer for ever having thought of it. It would have been so immensely satisfying if she could have had the boy here for always. Now the drabness of every day had only become drabber by contrast with the momentary gold.
She walked home feeling rather miserable.
Edward refused to take the holiday about which the doctor was so emphatic, because he said that he could not be spared, nor could he afford it. Edward had always cherished a poverty complex, glorying in it. He was for ever telling people that he was not worth so much as a postage stamp, and that he existed on a starvation stipend, which embarrassed Kay horribly. It sounded like polite begging.
‘We’re poor, we knew that when we started life together, don’t let’s make a fetish of it,’ she said once.
Edward was very hurt at the mere suggestion. ‘Nobody makes a fetish of being poor,’ said he sententiously. ‘I’m sure that I am very humble about it. I really don’t know why you think I should ‒ as you put it ‒ make a fetish of it. Most extraordinary of you.’
He was looking very ill. He had never recovered his normal colour, and was ashy with a certain greyness that was frightening, and about his lips a bluish shade that she hated to see there.
She knew that Aubrey Lester had come back from the war, looking very fit and well, the villagers told her, and although there was certainly no reason for him to do so, she was a little disappointed that he had not come over to see her. Of course he would have a lot to do. Frances and his mother; the office at Mainwaring, reports said that he was buying Mr. Clement’s practice.
Then one day she heard the door bell ring, and went in answer herself because old Emily was getting deaf, though she did not like anybody to suspect it. To her surprise, Aubrey was standing on the mat, looking extremely well, older, more sure of himself, a great deal happier. The change in him was very noticeable.
‘Hello, Kay! I heard that your husband had been ill, so came over to enquire. I do hope he’s better?’
‘How very nice of you, Aubrey! Edward’s out at the moment, but he may be back soon, he’s only visiting in the parish. Come in and let’s talk.’
She took him into her own den, where the school books were thrust into an untidy shelf that rose to the ceiling. Nothing matched. The place was strewn with her sewing, and painting, her notebooks and housekeeping accounts, all jumbled together on the cluttered table. She wasn’t a tidy person, and here in her own den she could afford to be untidy. Her slippers were thrust under the torn frill of the chair, but she liked the room, for it was warmly friendly, and represented much of herself.
‘You’re looking awfully well,’ she said.
‘I know I am. The funny thing is that once I got used to the army life, I quite liked it.’
‘Oh, Aubrey, I can’t imagine that of you.’
‘It was appalling at first, quite shocking. I think the boots were the worst thing of all, getting up at dawn, and sleeping en masse. That was frightful. I never got used to the smell of wet khaki, and the men who sleep in their pants. At first I think I prayed to die. There were actually moments when I envied the men who died in battle, at any rate their troubles were quickly over.’ His tongue had not been unloosed this way for ages. He was himself.
‘Then it got better?’
‘Much better. That phase passed when I landed in Bombay. The journey out was one of the most hideous things in my whole life, if not the most hideous. Then it was beautiful. You ought to see India, Kay, it is superb. Far, far better than Switzerland.’
‘I’m sure it’s wonderful.’
‘It’s the most glorious part of the world, and I’d hate to think that I shall never go back there, but of course Francie would loathe it, even though she is awfully pukka memsahib in many ways.’
‘Yes, she wouldn’t like it.’
‘And how is your husband? He’s been pretty bad, hasn’t he?’
‘He had a slight stroke. The war affected him a lot, and he is growing older though won’t admit it. He won’t take a holiday, or rest as much as the doctor wants him to do, and he works himself up into little spasms of irritation which are so very bad for him. I really am at my wits’ end to know what to do for the best for him.’
She could unburden herself to Aubrey, and for a while they talked about Edward, then, abruptly, he turned the conversation in the direction that concerned him most. ‘Kay, you’ve been awfully good to the Herrick boy.’
‘He’s a pe
t!’
‘I’ve seen him. I wouldn’t have believed that anyone could have done so much for him. You know, of course, that he has got an eye on Haileybury?’
‘Yes, it was my idea. I think he ought to go there. There are many things that should be changed in his life. It isn’t possible for him to live really satisfactorily whilst he stays on with the Herricks. The idea had occurred to me that perhaps ‒ if I could persuade Edward ‒ I could adopt him myself.’
‘You don’t mean to say you’d do that much?’ She looked at him with those vivacious eyes of hers.
‘I have thought of it. Edward is the stumbling-block, of course. He’d never agree to it, though it would help the boy enormously. He can’t be himself against that background.’ Aubrey walked over to the window and stood there staring out across the field, with the course of the river marked by the frail silvery green of the willows. He said very slowly indeed, ‘The right course would be if I adopted him myself.’
‘You couldn’t. Francie would not tolerate him. You couldn’t expect it of her. Frances has been so circumscribed for outlet, she couldn’t see life broadly enough to forgive young Kay for being ‒ well, for being who he is.’
‘Perhaps you’re right. Yet the boy is clever. He’ll go far.’
‘No, Aubrey, you’re wrong there. He can’t go far if he is being continually pulled back to the Herrick establishment, it isn’t fair to expect that of him.’
He turned round. ‘What do you suggest?’
‘I want to get hold of him before he goes to Haileybury. He’ll get the scholarship, of course, do it on his head. I want to get his manners right, stupid little things, silly little habits that must be changed before he goes. You can’t pitchfork a child into his big school if he eats like a ploughboy, and behaves like a ploughboy. Other boys will take it out of him. Not kindly. It’s got to be done before that. Either leave him where he is, which I’m not content to do, or pick him up and take him right away.’ She spoke passionately. He had not believed that she had so much emotion in her, and was quite bewildered by it. Then after a long time, he said,