The Comforters

by Muriel Spark

  Standing by her desk when he had finished phoning, Laurence had torn a few outdated pages off the calendar.

  ‘That brings you up to date,’ he said.

  She remarked ruefully, ‘I tear off the weeks automatically, when I’m sitting at the desk. It’s a reproach when the calendar gets behind the times. Really, I must get down to my book soon.’

  They were ready to leave. Laurence lifted the suitcases. But she was still staring at the calendar.

  ‘What’s today?’ she asked. ‘It isn’t November the first, is it?’

  ‘That’s right. November already. Do make haste.’

  ‘All Saints’ Day,’ she continued, ‘you know what that means?’ Like most people who are brought up in the Catholic faith, Laurence was quick in recollecting such things. ‘A Holiday of Obligation,’ he said.

  ‘And I haven’t been to Mass!’

  ‘Oh, it can’t be helped. Don’t worry. It isn’t considered a mortal sin if you genuinely forgot.’

  ‘But I’m obliged to attend a Mass if there’s an opportunity, since I have remembered. There’s probably a late Mass at the Oratory. Probably at six-thirty. I’ll have to go to that. You do see that, don’t you, Laurence?’

  ‘Yes, I quite see that.’ So he did; he found it easy to see the obligations of the Catholic religion; it was part of his environment. He found it much easier to cope with Caroline’s new-found Catholicism than her new-found psychicism He also found it easy to say, ‘We can’t let Grandmother down again. Wouldn’t that be a valid excuse for missing Mass?’

  And he quite expected her reply, ‘You go ahead by car, and I’ll come by a later train.’

  And therefore, happy at regaining his liberty on the question of taking his car, he said with ease, ‘It would be more fun if we both went by car after your Mass. We could make it by eight o’clock.’

  She felt relieved on the whole. Her great desire to travel by train was dispersed by the obvious necessities of going to Mass, and of not messing Laurence around any further.

  Presently he said, ‘Sure you won’t mind,’ for he understood the question was safely settled for her, and he did not wish to play the tyrant. So he had the luxury of asking her several times, ‘Quite sure, dear, it’s all right? You don’t mind coming by car?’

  ‘After all,’ she told him, ‘it isn’t a moral defeat. The Mass is a proper obligation. But to acquiesce in the requirements of someone’s novel would have been ignoble.’

  He gave academic consideration to this statement and observed, ‘The acquiescence is accidental, in which sense the nobility must oblige.’

  She thought, ‘The hell of it, he understands that much. Why isn’t he a Catholic, then?’ She smiled at him over her drink, for their immediate haste was over and Laurence had fished out the bottle which she had packed in his suitcase, very carefully in its proper corner.

  Brompton Oratory oppressed her when it was full of people, such a big monster of a place. As usual, when she entered, the line from the Book of Job came to her mind, ‘Behold now Behemoth which I made with thee.’

  Before the Mass started, this being the Feast of All Saints, there was a great amount of devotion going on before the fat stone statues. The things worth looking at were the votive candles, crowds of these twinklers round every altar; Caroline added her own candle to the nearest cluster. It occurred to her that the Oratory was the sort of place which might become endeared in memory, after a long absence. She could not immediately cope with this huge full-blown environment, for it antagonized the diligence with which Caroline coped with things, bit by bit.

  Having been much in Laurence’s company for the fortnight past, and now alone in this company of faces, in the midst of the terrifying collective, she remembered more acutely than ever her isolation by ordeal. She was now fully conscious that she was under observation intermittently by an intruder. And presently her thoughts were away, dwelling on the new strangeness of her life, and although her eyes and ears had been following the Mass throughout, it was not until the Offertory verse that she collected her wits; Justorum animae … from sheer intelligence, the climax of the Mass approaching, she had to let her brood of sufferings go by for the time being.

  ‘You’re always bad-tempered after Mass,’ Laurence observed as they cruised through the built-up areas.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s one of the proofs of the Faith so far as I’m concerned. It’s evidence of the truth of the Mass, don’t you see? The flesh despairs.’

  ‘Pure subjectivism,’ he said. ‘You’re something of a Quietist, I think. And quite Manichaean. A Catharist.’ He had been schooled in the detection of heresies.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Scribe and Pharisee,’ he said, ‘alternately according to mood.’

  ‘The decor of Brompton Oratory makes me ill,’ she told him, as another excuse. For when he had met her after the Mass she had turned most sour.

  ‘You don’t refer to the “decor” of a church,’ he said — ‘at least, I think not.’

  ‘What is it then?’

  ‘I’m not sure of the correct term. I’ve never heard it called a “decor.” ’

  ‘Very useful, your having been brought up a Catholic,’ said Caroline. ‘Converts can always rely on your kind for instruction in the non-essentials.’

  Eventually, they had clear road. Caroline pulled their spare duffle from the back seat and arranged it over her head and shoulders, so that she was secluded inside this tent, concealed from Laurence; then he guessed she was trying to suppress her irritable mood. In fact, it was getting on her nerves more and more that the eyes of an onlooker were illicitly upon them. Her determination to behave naturally in face of that situation made her more self-conscious.

  Laurence was thinking about his grandmother, and as he did so he speeded up.

  Two days had passed since Mrs Hogg had paid her bleak visit to Helena. Strangely, when Caroline had heard of this, she had seemed incredulous: and now, when he reverted to the subject:

  ‘No. Helena must be mistaken. I can’t conceive Mrs Hogg as a blackmailer.’

  ‘But you’ve seen what she’s like.’

  ‘I don’t think that particular vice is quite in her line. Opening your letter — that I do visualize. I got the impression that she’s a type who acts instinctively: she’d do any evil under the guise of good. But she wouldn’t engage in deliberate malice. She’s too superstitious. In fact, Mrs Hogg is simply a Catholic atrocity, like the tin medals and bleeding hearts. I don’t see her as a cold-blooded blackmailer. Helena must have imagined those insinuated threats.’ And so Caroline rattled on, overtaken by an impulse to talk, to repeat and repeat any assertion as an alternative to absolute silence. For in such a silence Caroline kept her deepest madness, a fear void of evidence, a suspicion altogether to be distrusted. It stuck within her like something which would go neither up nor down, the shapeless notion that Mrs Hogg was somehow in league with her invisible persecutor. She would not speak of this nor give it verbal form in her mind.

  Laurence could not see her face, it was behind the duffle coat. He felt exasperated by Caroline’s seeming to take Mrs Hogg’s part, if only that little bit.

  ‘We’ve known her for twenty-odd years. We know her better than you do, dear. She’s vicious.

  She snapped back at him. And so, in his need for their relations to return to a nice normal, he said peaceably, ‘Yes, I suppose old Georgina means well. But she’s done a lot of harm one way and another, and this time she’s gone too far. We can’t have Grandmother tormented at her time of life, no matter what mischief the old lady’s up to. We can’t, can we?’ So Laurence tried to calm her testiness and engage her sympathy.

  Caroline did soften down. But she surprised him when she declared vehemently, ‘I don’t know that Mrs Hogg wants to torment your grandmother. I don’t really think your grandmother is involved in any suspicious activity. I think you’re imagining it all, on the strength of a few odd coincidences.’


  It was strange. Normally, Laurence’s concession, his ‘Yes, I suppose old Georgina means well’ should have evoked something quite agreeable from Caroline.

  So he tried again. ‘There’s something else to be considered. That clue I got from Eleanor’s cigarette case. I’m sure the crest is the same as Georgina’s. There is some connexion between Georgina and this Hogarth couple, I’m convinced of it.’

  She did not reply.

  ‘Strange, wasn’t it, my discerning that crest, quite by chance?’

  ‘By chance.’ Caroline repeated the words on a strained pitch.

  ‘I mean, said Laurence obligingly, but misunderstanding her, ‘that God led me to it, God bless him. Well, it’s a small world. We just bump into Eleanor and —’

  ‘Laurence,’ said Caroline, ‘I don’t think I’m going to be much help to you at Ladylees. I’ve had enough holiday-making. I’ll stay for a couple of days but I want to get back to London and do some work, actually. Sorry to change my mind but —’

  ‘Go to hell,’ Laurence said. ‘Kindly go to hell.’

  After that they stopped at a pub. When they resumed their journey Caroline began patiently to state her case. They had lost half an hour, and Laurence drove swiftly into Sussex.

  ‘From my point of view it’s clear that you are getting these ideas into your head through the influence of a novelist who is contriving some phoney plot. I can see clearly that your mind is working under the pressure of someone else’s necessity, and under the suggestive power of some irresponsible writer you are allowing yourself to become an amateur sleuth in a cheap mystery piece.’

  ‘How do you know the plot is phoney?’ he said, which was rather sweet of him.

  ‘I haven’t been studying novels for three years without knowing some of the technical tricks. In this case it seems to me there’s an attempt being made to organize our lives into a convenient slick plot. Is it likely that your grandmother is a gangster?’

  Just ahead of them two girls in a shining black open racer skimmed the wet road. Automatically Laurence put on speed, listening intently to Caroline at the same time, for it was difficult to grasp her mind at this fantastic level.

  ‘That’s a Sunbeam Alpine,’ he remarked.

  ‘Are you listening to what I’m saying, dear?’

  ‘I am, truly,’ he said.

  ‘Your grandmother being a gangster, it’s taking things too far. She’s an implausible character, don’t you see?’

  ‘She’s the most plausible person I know. She’d take in anyone. That’s the difficulty.’

  ‘I mean, as a character, don’t you see? She’s unlikely. So is Mrs Hogg. Is it likely that the pious old cow is a blackmailer?’

  ‘I think it likely that she’s done you a lot of harm. She must have got properly on your nerves. She’s an evil influence. You haven’t been the same since you met her.’

  Above the throb and tapping of the engine and the rain, he heard her, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about!’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Do you really think, Laurence, that the coincidence of the crest on Eleanor’s cigarette case with the one on Mrs Hogg’s hairbrushes is plausible?’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I didn’t invent the coincidence. There it was.

  ‘Quite,’ she said.

  They were losing on the Sunbeam Alpine. Laurence put on speed, so that the noise of the engine made conversation impossible. But when he had regained his ground, doing an easy fifty over the bright wet road, she asked him, ‘Do you want to understand my point of view, Laurence?’

  ‘Yes, darling, I do. Try to be reasonable.’

  ‘It’s a question of what you choose,’ she said. ‘If you hadn’t been on the look-out for some connexion between the Hogarths and poor Mrs Hogg you wouldn’t have lit on that crest. And you wouldn’t have been looking for it if you hadn’t been influenced in that direction. I nearly fell for the trick myself, that night I stayed with the Baron. He happened to let fall a remark; it seemed to point to the suspicion that he’d been seeing your grandmother secretively during the past year, and quite often. But personally, I reject the suspicion — I refuse to have my thoughts and actions controlled by some unknown, possibly sinister being. I intend to subject him to reason. I happen to be a Christian. I happen —’

  ‘You think the Baron’s been seeing Grandmother?’ Laurence pressed her. ‘How did you come to think that? It’s very important, dear, do tell me.’

  The Sunbeam Alpine was still ahead of them. The girl at the wheel said something to her companion, who looked round. They obviously expected a race. Laurence accelerated.

  ‘No,’ Caroline said. ‘That’s just the point. I won’t be involved in this fictional plot if I can help it. In fact, I’d like to spoil it. If I had my way I’d hold up the action of the novel. It’s a duty.’

  ‘Do tell me what the Baron said about my grandmother,’ Laurence said. ‘That would be the reasonable thing, my dear.’

  ‘No, it would involve me. I intend to stand aside and see if the novel has any real form apart from this artificial plot. I happen to be a Christian.’

  She said a good deal more against the plot. Laurence thought in his misery, ‘She really is mad, after all. There’s no help for it, Caroline is mad.’ And he thought of the possibility of the long months and perhaps years ahead in which he might have to endure the sight of Caroline, his love, a mental chaos, perhaps in an asylum for months, years.

  She said a great deal more about the artificial plot. Once she broke off to warn him.

  ‘Laurence, don’t try to chase those girls. They’ve got a supercharger.’

  But he took no notice, and she continued to assure him of her resolution not to be involved in any man’s story.

  It was all very well for Caroline to hold out for what she wanted and what she didn’t want in the way of a plot. All very well for her to resolve upon holding up the action. Easy enough for her to criticize. Laurence speeded up and touched seventy before they skidded and crashed. The Sunbeam Alpine slowed down and turned back. Laurence was still conscious, though the pain in his chest was fierce, when he saw the girls get out of their shiny racer and come towards his, where he lay entangled in his wreckage.

  He saw Caroline too, her face covered with blood beside him, one of her legs bent back beneath her body most unnaturally, a sight not to be endured after he had noted her one faint moan and one twist.

  PART TWO

  SIX

  A woman came in three days a week to do housework for Louisa Jepp. It was on one of these days that Mrs Hogg called at the cottage.

  Mrs Jepp, keeping her on the doorstep, said, ‘I cannot ask you to come inside, Mrs Hogg. My woman is all over the floors. Is it anything in particular?’

  ‘Perhaps this afternoon,’ Mrs Hogg said, and she was looking over Louisa’s shoulder into the interior, right through to the green back garden.

  ‘No. This afternoon I’m going to see my grandson in hospital. Master Laurence has had an accident. Is it anything in particular, Mrs Hogg?’

  ‘I would like to inquire for Laurence.’

  ‘That’s kind of you. Master Laurence is progressing and Miss Caroline, though she’s more serious. I shall say you inquired.’ Louisa did not for the world suggest that Mrs Hogg might have anything further to say.

  ‘I have a message for Laurence. That’s why I came personally.’ ‘All the way from the North of England,’ stated Louisa. Mrs Hogg said, ‘I’m here for the day. From London.’ ‘Come round to the back and we shall sit in the garden.’ It was a day of mild November light and sun. Louisa led the way among her pigeons across the small green patch to the bench in front of her loganberry bush.

  Mrs Hogg sat down beside her, fished into her carrier bag, and pulled out an old yellow fox cape which she arranged and patted on her shoulders.

  ‘This time of year,’ she said.

  Louisa thought, ‘My charwoman is turned out more ladylike, and yet this woman is of good
family.’ She said, ‘Is it anything special, your message for Master Laurence?’ And while there was time she added on second thoughts, ‘He is quite able to read although not sitting up yet, if you would care to write a note.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Mrs Hogg.

  Louisa thought, ‘I thought not.’

  ‘No, I shouldn’t trouble him with a letter, poor Laurence, letters can cause trouble,’ Mrs Hogg said. She seemed glad of the rest after the up-hill walk from the station. Observably, she gathered strength while Louisa sat beside her expressly making no reply.

  ‘I learn,’ said Mrs Hogg, ‘that you call me a poisonous woman. ‘One is always learning,’ Louisa said, while her black eyes made a rapid small movement in her thinking head. Mrs Hogg saw only the small hands folded on the brown lap.

  ‘Do you not think it is time for you,’ said Mrs Hogg, ‘to take a reckoning of your sins and prepare for your death?’

  ‘You spoke like that to my husband,’ said Louisa. ‘His death was a misery to him through your interference.’

  ‘I nursed Mr Jepp day and night—’

  ‘No,’ said Louisa, ‘only night. And then only until I discovered your talk.’

  ‘He should have seen a priest, as I said.’

  ‘Mrs Hogg, what is your message for Master Laurence?’

  ‘Only that he is not to worry. I shall take no legal action against him. He will understand what I mean. And, Mrs Jepp,’ she continued, ‘you are lonely here living by yourself.’

  ‘I am lonely by no means. I shall give no such foolish message to Master Laurence. If you have any grievance against him, I suggest you write to Sir Edwin. My grandson is not to be troubled at present.’

  ‘There is the matter of slander. In my position my character in the world is very important.’

  ‘You have got hold of Master Laurence’s letter to Miss Caroline,’ Louisa said in a voice she sometimes used when she had played a successful hand at rummy through guesswork.