by Ursula Bloom
‘Yes, sir, but it’ll do. To me the mint flowering is the first sign of winter coming. The first winter after the war, and that’s something.’
‘Yes, indeed that’s something.’
‘It must be good to be back, sir,’ said Mrs. Parkin, expressing the thoughts nearest to her faithful heart, ‘very good, after being with all those horrid black men, and that.’
‘Very good to be back,’ he lied.
Frances was worried about the state of affairs between herself and Michael.
Rumour had it that there was every chance of the convalescent home closing down for the winter; it was situated in low-lying country, with a large lake spread like milk before its door, so that with the autumn the mists rose and wrapped the house in their wet greyness. Sister mistrusted dampness for the patients. Frances had never really liked Sister, and disliked her even more on this score. If Sister got the home closed for the winter, Frances would never forgive her. She could not imagine the misery of life without constantly seeing Michael. The thought was horrifying.
Hilda Stevens meeting her at two sharp in the butler’s pantry with the dirty crocks hurriedly stacked regardless of extra work for the oncoming shift, said, ‘So the place is going back to London. If you ask me, it’s a damned good job. I’m sick of it all, and I’m sure you must be too.’
‘I don’t get tired of the jobs I undertake,’ said Frances. ‘I like seeing them through.’
‘Oh well, you will have seen this through if it goes back. You’ve had a lot of fun out of it, whilst mine’s been darned hard work,’ announced Hilda.
‘I hadn’t noticed that I had escaped all the work.’
‘No, I never meant that. I meant ‒ other things. Oh, come and get on with this damn-awful washing-up,’ said she, slipping off her cuffs and dropping them with a plop on the dry end of the draining-board.
After that there was a marked silence. Frances was miserable. She did not know when she had felt quite so dreadful about it. Until now, she had not known that she could not part with Michael, it was something that had become far too big for her. The emotion had overstepped the limits, she had thought all along that she could draw back, now she knew that she couldn’t. It was perhaps all the worse in that Frances had never been highly emotional before, in that she had not realized how tremendously strongly she could feel.
When she took the afternoon milk on its rounds, she searched for Michael and lost heart when she could not find him. She was told that he was on the putting green with Major Boyes, whom she considered to be a detestable creature with a silky moustache, the violet and white ribbon of the M.C. on his breast, and the black flash of the Welsh on the back of his tunic. He had very little time for Frances, or the milk, and always said so in the most ungentlemanly tones.
She went to the edge of the putting green, and stood there helplessly with the tray in her hands. Both men ignored her. It was too bad of Michael; much too bad. Did he then know that he could afford to behave this way to her, because she was so desperately in love with him? In the end, coldly furious, she returned the milk to the pantry, and had to run into Sister in the hall.
‘Who have missed their milk?’ asked Sister.
‘Major Boyes and Captain Carey, Sister.’
‘And how did you come to permit it, Nurse?’
Although she herself invariably used this same tone when speaking to her inferiors, Frances very much resented it when it was applied to herself. Nettled, she retorted, ‘They were on the putting green, Sister, and wouldn’t come for it.’
‘Come with me,’ directed Sister.
They pattered out again, Frances with the tray two paces behind Sister, and wishing she could hit her over the head with the thing. Sister led off, the little cape swinging, arms worn as orb and sceptre, and down the gravel path they went in procession to the putting green. With annoying obedience the moment they saw what was happening, the men stopped playing.
‘Ah, here’s my poppet!’ said the atrocious Major Boyes to Sister, who although she would not admit it was always considerably amused about being teased.
‘Your milk, Major Boyes?’
‘What about it?’
‘Nurse says you have not had it. Nor yours, Captain Carey?’
‘Good heavens! What an oversight! Now how on earth could that have happened?’ They advanced, took the glasses from the tray, and lifted them to Sister, carefully avoiding Frances’s penetrating stare. ‘To your bonnie blue eyes, and may your shadow never grow less.’
That always put Sister in a good humour.
Frances turned with the empty tray, leaving them all chattering, and feeling like a disgraced child. Perhaps it was a good thing that the home was returning to London, but the thought of the interminable winter that stretched before her was horrifying. She could not bear to think of it. She considered that Simla had disimproved Aubrey; he wasn’t the same. Not that she wanted him to be the same, but she didn’t want him to be as he was now. She knew that she wanted to cry. Her head ached, and she felt desperately depressed. Ahead of her she could see no future at all, and probably half of it was her own fault, but now she seemed to be caught up in a mesh of events which had led to this miserable present.
At six, just when she was reaching for her coat and slipping out of the side door to the car, she saw Michael.
He said, ‘I’m coming a little way with you.’
‘I’d much rather you didn’t, after the abominable way you and that beastly Major Boyes behaved today.’
‘Now don’t be a little fool. Talking like that, you’re only asking for trouble, and you’ll get it. You’re your own worst enemy, Francie, and you know it. Now make room for me, because I tell you I’m coming with you.’
She got into the car, sitting dumbly beside him. They turned down the drive where the chestnuts were thinning with the plucking fingers of autumn, and out of the iron gates with the little lodges on either side of them. They were compactly squat little lodges, with geraniums on the window ledges, grown leggy with the time of year, and looped lace curtains within like a woman’s centre parting.
‘Michael, all this has got to stop. And now.’
‘All this is going on,’ he snapped back. ‘Oh yes, I know what you think. You imagine that because the home is going back to London, you’re going to escape. Well, you’re not! I have an idea that I’m the only man in the world for you. I won’t let you bully me, I won’t let you go prudish on me. I could make quite a different woman of you, Frances, a much happier woman, so different that probably you wouldn’t recognize yourself. What’s more, I’m going to.’
‘You’re doing nothing of the sort. The home is to return to London in early November. Lady Epsom says so.’
‘Lady Epsom, my foot! Who gives a damn for that old bag? You’re only impressed by her because the old trout has a handle to her name, and you haven’t. You ought to take some of those funny traits of yours in hand, Francie. No, you and I are not ending this affair here, and don’t you think it.’
She wished that suddenly hope should not spring so wildly in her heart. She lived again. Michael had the power to make her live. He could break down all those foolish inhibitions of the years set round her life like a fence. He could change her and she knew it. ‘Oh Mike, I’m so unhappy. I don’t know what to do next.’
‘You’ve got to be brave, you know. You and I have got to take what is coming. I suppose that your husband will behave like a gentleman? That’s the expression, I believe?’
‘Now what do you mean by that?’
‘There’s that village bit of nonsense of his, that two pennyworth of fun he’s got up his sleeve. You told me about it. We could get a divorce on that?’
Inwardly she was very shocked. ‘Heavens, no! It all happened before we were even married, it wouldn’t even count. It would be shocking.’
‘Good Lord! By the fuss you made I thought it was of very modern vintage. But anyway he must know that you don’t want him, and no decent chap stays
where he isn’t wanted.’
‘Aubrey would never countenance a divorce, and if it came to it, neither should I. I think it’s a horrible idea.’
He looked at her. ‘Sometimes, Frances, I wonder why it is you attract me at all. I suppose I’ve always had a foible for loving the difficult women, for melting hard hearts, and for riding roughshod over prudery. All that is combined in you. You don’t mean to tell me that you intend to ruin your whole life ‒ and mine too ‒ by trying to stay with a man you refuse to live with?’
‘I couldn’t leave Aubrey.’
‘But he doesn’t want you. I do.’
‘Michael, please …’
‘Oh Frances, don’t be such a little fool. I love you, God knows why I do, but I do,’ and he caught her in his arms.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said helplessly.
She dropped him at the cross-roads, which would just give him sufficient time to walk back to the home for dinner. It was one of those pale amber and amethyst evenings that come up with September twilights. As she neared the green, she saw the Hayworth Arms all lit up like a Christmas tree, and Mrs. Biddlecombe considerably over-dressed in the tea garden coquetting with a sailor. Frances had always disliked Mrs. Biddlecombe, and thought even less of her for coquetting with a sailor. She walked up her own garden, with the mist closing in on it, and the damp earthy smell of autumn and wood smoke clinging to the trees.
Aubrey was sitting in her chair by the side of the drawing-room fire. It was so unusual to see Aubrey in the drawing-room that she was quite startled. He always said that he hated the lovely colouring that she had chosen for the room ‒ and which originally had been so much admired ‒ and that it set his teeth on edge. She must have shown her surprise, when she came into the room, because before she could stop herself, she had exclaimed, ‘Whatever are you doing here?’
‘I was waiting for you. You’re later than usual, aren’t you?’
‘Sister gave me some extra duty to do.’ She was ashamed to think that the lie should slip out so glibly. When it came to it, she was extraordinarily like every other woman in covering her own tracks, and the realization of this was defeating.
‘I often wonder how you take all that. It isn’t like my little Francie to allow herself to be ordered about,’ and he grinned. He had a schoolboyish grin that had never aged; she knew that he was in a good mood, he probably had something pleasant to say, one of his silly lectures he wished her to attend, or something of that sort. Instantly she steeled herself against weakness. The memory of Michael and his hands, his caresses, and his whisperings was strong within her.
‘Well,’ she asked, ‘what do you want?’
‘I’ve got news for you, Frances.’
‘I gathered that.’
‘At last I’ve managed to do the thing that you have always wanted me to do, and I know that you’ll be pleased. Listen, darling the Herricks are leaving Hayworth for good.’
‘The Herricks?’ Inside herself something seemed to have gone surprisingly still. She looked at him and she knew that this was a shock. The blood receded from her face. If the Herricks were really going away, and this wasn’t just another of Aubrey’s ruses (as she had come to expect), her last excuse had been banished. ‘I can’t believe it. They’ll never go.’
‘Yes, they will. George is giving up the cottage; it has practically collapsed on him anyway; the roof leaks, and it is most insanitary.’
‘Didn’t I always say so? It was you who kept harping that they adored it.’
‘Yes, you did say so. He is taking a new job with the Burdons the other side of Mainwaring, and they are moving at Michaelmas. All of them.’
‘It surprises me,’ she said.
She went across to the fire pretending to warm her hands, but they wouldn’t warm. She was cold all through, yet the evening wasn’t really cold. When she looked round Aubrey had come to her, and was standing beside her. He tried to take her into his arms.
‘Darling, you know you always promised if they went away …’
‘It’s too late now. Much too late.’
‘Too late?’ Somehow he had never thought that Frances would not abide by her word. Loyalty was surely her strong suit?
‘Yes. Much too late. You ought to have got rid of them ages ago. How can it be all right when for all this time you have made a positive laughing stock of me?’ She was standing there in her crumpled V.A.D. uniform, with the splashed apron, the stiff little cuffs, and the cap with the red cross on her brow. ‘No, Aubrey, you married me and made a fool of me; you’ve changed me so that now I’m probably the most bitter woman that ever was. I’m ashamed of it, and terribly unhappy. I won’t live with you under any circumstances, I don’t love you and I don’t want to be with you. You’ve hurt me too much.’
For a moment he was so amazed that he could say nothing. Then, a trifle nervously, he began again.
‘Frances, my dear, couldn’t we try to make a fresh start?’
‘No, we couldn’t. Love only gives people one chance, surely you realize that? There is no going back and trying to retrace your footsteps, because it doesn’t work that way. It isn’t that kind of emotion, and you ought to know it.’
‘Then why did you always promise that everything would be all right if only I got rid of the Herricks?’
‘Perhaps I didn’t understand myself so well then. I don’t know. I just don’t know.’
‘But‒’
‘It’s no good pestering me, Aubrey.’
‘I’m sorry you feel it is pestering. I shan’t ask you again. But you’ve been horribly unfair to me. I think I’ve had an extremely raw deal. You knew about Alice before we married, in our engaged days you glossed it over. Now look at your behaviour.’
‘And what about my raw deal? You once told me that you had a facade, so you have. I suppose we all have, but you took more trouble over yours than most people do, and it has made you very difficult to understand. I’m miserable, I’ve always been miserable with you. I hope you’re satisfied.’
He stood helplessly there, listening to the sound of the flames crackling in the Adam fireplace. It was the funeral pyre to a dead emotion, he told himself; and as he realized that he had never cared for Frances in the right way, and never would now, he could not regret that it was a funeral pyre. At last! he told himself.
He went across the room and out into the hall, shutting the door after him, and feeling as though he were a very changed man. Now he knew where he stood. He had crossed the parting of the ways, and for good. He went into the dining-room to the tantalus. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a good strong drink.
At Fincham rectory young Mr. Woodburn arrived, quite a nice placid young man unlikely to make difficulties of any kind. In the big bare bedroom Edward lay with one side paralysed, and hardly ever speaking. He no longer questioned where he was or why, but was now wholly subservient to the will of those who nursed him.
Young Mr. Woodburn was twenty-seven, ardent and willing. He had the appetite of an ox, worrying Kay to death as to how she would ever feed him. (‘It’s a wonder he don’t burst,’ said old Emily as she cleared the depleted meals away.) Financially Kay knew that they could not afford the services of young Mr. Woodburn, and had been at her wits’ end to know what to do for the best. Edward might be ill for quite a long time.
To supplement the income she had advertised in the Mainwaring paper as to her ability to give lessons in French and German, both of which languages she knew proficiently. The advertisement appeared at a bad time; with the war just over, many people who otherwise would never have done so, had an active service smattering of the languages, and were wholly satisfied that they could teach. Kay was up against keen competition. However, she managed to get together a small class of little girls whose mothers had social ambitions for them, and she laboured twice weekly in the untidy sitting-room at the rectory. Mr. Woodburn had got to be paid somehow or other.
Once a week young Kay came to tea with her.
Alice’s pride in her gentlemanly son was subservient to her indignation that her other children should compare unfavourably with him. The moment there was any argument, she would use the grammar school as a weapon against the boy. She had grown irritable; she wouldn’t stand any nonsense. As to this business about some silly place or other called Haileybury, she wasn’t having that neither, and she said so forcefully. Young Kay would go to work, that he would, like his dad had done before him (perhaps that was a slight exaggeration of terms, but good enough for her).
The little family was hard-up, and she maintained that young Kay’s place was with the plough when the time came, not learning all that silly Latin. She always argued about the homework; after all, why should he be messing about with a lot of daft books when he ought to be helping his mum to clean up? Other sons did, why not Kay? she argued. Listening to the little scraps of conversation that the boy let drop, Kay Benson was most worried for him.
There came the afternoon, prior to the Michaelmas move, when, after confiding in her, he suddenly burst into tears. There had been trouble at school about the Latin. He admitted that his homework had not been done, but he had been kept busy until bedtime cleaning up and fetching water and seeing to the kids. There had been no time. Ultimately in bed, he tried to keep the candle alight to study by, but George had seen it under the chink of the door, and had come in and had thrown the primer out of the window.
‘I’ll fail,’ Kay sobbed on her shoulder, and holding on to her with his small stained schoolboy hands, ‘oh, if only I could be somewhere quiet like this to learn in! Somewhere quiet.’