The Comforters

by Muriel Spark

  ‘You really must remember your age,’ said Mrs Hogg. ‘No good carrying on as if you were in your prime.’

  ‘I will not have you to stay with me,’ Louisa said.

  ‘You need a companion.

  ‘I am not feeble. I trust I shall never be so feeble as to choose you for a companion.’

  ‘Why do you keep diamonds in the bread?’

  Louisa hardly moved nor paused at all. Indeed it entered her mind: how like Laurence to have found the hiding place!

  ‘I will not deny, that is my habit.’

  ‘You are full of sin.’

  ‘Crime,’ said Louisa. ‘I would hardly say “full”. …

  Mrs Hogg rose then, her lashless eyes screwed on Louisa’s brown hands on her brown lap. Was the woman really senile, then?

  ‘Wait. Sit down,’ Louisa said, ‘I should like to tell you all about the crime.’ She looked up, her black old eyes open to Mrs Hogg. The appealing glance was quite convincing.

  Thus encouraged, ‘You must see a priest,’ said Mrs Hogg. None the less, she sat down to hear Louisa’s confession.

  ‘I am in smuggling,’ said Louisa. ‘I shan’t go into the whys and hows because of my memory, but I have a gang of my own, my dear Georgina, what do you think of that?’ Louisa peered at Mrs Hogg from the corner of her eye and pursed her lips as if she were kissing the breeze. Mrs Hogg stared. Was she drunk perhaps? But at seventy-eight, after all —’A gang?’ said Mrs Hogg at last.

  ‘A gang. We are four. I am the leader. The other three are gentlemen. They smuggle diamonds from abroad.’

  ‘In loaves of bread?’

  ‘I won’t go into the ways and whats. Then I dispose of the diamonds through my contact in London.’

  Mrs Hogg said, ‘Your daughter doesn’t know this. If it’s true.’

  ‘You have been to see Lady Manders, of course? You have told her what was in that letter you stole?’

  ‘Lady Manders is very worried about you.’

  ‘Ah yes. I will put that right. Well, let me tell you the names of the parties involved in my smuggling arrangements. If you know every-thing I’m sure you won’t want to worry my daughter any more.

  ‘You can trust me,’ said Mrs Hogg.

  ‘I’m sure. There is a Mr Webster, he is a local baker. A real fine person, he doesn’t go abroad himself. I had better not say what part he plays in my smuggling arrangements. Then there’s a father and son — such a sad affair, the boy’s a cripple but it does him so much good the trips abroad, the father too. Their name is Hogarth. Mervyn is the father and Andrew is the son. That is my gang.

  But Mrs Hogg looked in a bad way just then. The dreadful fluffy fur slipped awry on her shoulder. Violently she said, ‘Mervyn and Andrew!’

  ‘That is correct. Hogarth they call themselves.’

  ‘You are evil,’ said Mrs Hogg.

  ‘You won’t be needing that letter,’ said Louisa, ‘but you may keep it just the same.

  Mrs Hogg gathered her fur cape around her huge breasts, and speaking without a movement of her upper lip in a way that fascinated Louisa by its oddity, she said, ‘You’re an evil woman. A criminal evil old, a wicked old’, and talking like that, she made off. Louisa climbed to her attic, from where she could see the railway station set in a dip of the land, and, through her father’s old spyglass, Mrs Hogg eventually appeared like a shady yellow wasp on the platform.

  When Louisa came downstairs, she said to her charwoman, ‘That visitor I had just now.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Jepp?’

  ‘She wanted to come and look after me as I’m getting so old.’

  ‘Coo.’

  Louisa opened a drawer in the kitchen dresser, took out a folded white cloth, placed it carefully at the window end of the table. She brought out her air-mail writing paper and her fountain pen and wrote a note of six lines. Next she folded the letter and laid it on the dresser while she replaced the white cloth in the drawer. She put away her fountain pen, then the writing paper, took up the note and went out into her garden. There she sat in the November mildness, uttering repeatedly and softly ‘Coo, Coo-oo!’ Soon a pigeon flashed out from its high loft and descended to the seat beside her. She folded the thin paper into a tiny pellet, fixed it into the band on the silver bird’s leg, stroked its bill with her brown fingers, and let it go. Off it flew, in the direction of Ladle Sands.

  It is possible for a man matured in religion by half a century of punctilious observance, having advanced himself in devotion the slow and exquisite way, trustfully ascending his winding stair, and, to make assurance doubly sure, supplementing his meditations by deep-breathing exercises twice daily, to go into a flat spin when faced with some trouble which does not come within a familiar category. Should this occur, it causes dismay in others. To anyone accustomed to respect the wisdom and control of a contemplative creature, the evidence of his failure to cope with a normal emergency is distressing. Only the spiritual extremists rejoice — the Devil on account of his crude triumph, and the very holy souls because they discern in such behaviour a testimony to the truth that human nature is apt to fail in spite of regular prayer and deep breathing.

  But fortunately that situation rarely happens. The common instinct knows how to gauge the limits of a man’s sanctity, and anyone who has earned a reputation for piety by prayer, deep breathing and one or two acceptable good works has gained this much for his trouble, that few people bring him any extraordinary problem.

  That is why hardly anyone asked Sir Edwin Manders for a peculiar favour or said weird things to him.

  He had coped, it was true, with the shock of the car accident; Laurence and Caroline were seen into safe hands. He floated over Helena’s anxiety on the strength of his stout character. He might have managed to do something suave and comforting about Helena’s other worry — her mother’s suspected criminal activities. He might have turned this upset of his social tranquillity to some personal and spiritual advantage, but then he might not. Helena instinctively did not try him with this problem. She did not know what Louisa was up to, but she understood that the difficulty was not one which the Manders’ cheque book could solve. Helena would not have liked to see her husband in a state of bewilderment. He went to Mass every morning, confession once a week, entertained Cardinals. He would sit, contemplating deeply, for a full hour in a silence so still you could hear a moth breathe. And Helena thought, ‘No, simply no’ when she tried to envisage the same Edwin grappling also with the knowledge that his mother-in-law ran a gang, kept diamonds in the bread — stolen diamonds possibly. Helena took her troubles to his brother Ernest who sailed through life wherever the fairest wind should waft him, and for whom she had always prayed so hard.

  ‘I feel I ought not to worry Edwin about this. He has a certain sanctity. You understand, don’t you, Ernest?’

  ‘Yes, of course, dear Helena, but I’m the last person, as you know, to cope with Louisa’s great gangsters. If I could invite them to lunch at my club —’

  ‘I’m sure you could if they are my mother’s associates,’ Helena said.

  A week later, Helena went to the flat at Queen’s Gate where Caroline had lodged. It was the job of packing up the girl’s possessions. Caroline’s fracture would keep her in hospital for another month at least. The housekeeper, a thin ill-looking man, who, on Helena’s delicate inquiries, proved not to be ill but merely a retired lightweight boxer, let her in. Nice man, she thought, telling herself that she had a way with people: Laurence and Caroline had said he was frightful.

  Helena was expecting Ernest to join her. She sat for a moment on Caroline’s divan; then, it was so restful, she decided to put her feet up and recline among the piled-up cushions until he should arrive. The room had been tidied up, but it was clear that Laurence and Caroline had made a sort of home of the place. The realization did not really shock Helena, it quickly startled her, it was soon over. Years ago she had come to a reckoning with the business between Laurence and Caroline and when they had parted
, even while she piously rejoiced, she had felt romantically sad, wished they could be married without their incomprehensible delay. But still it was a little startling to see the evidence of what she already knew, that Laurence had been sharing the flat with Caroline, innocently but without the externals of innocence. The housekeeper had asked her, ‘How are Mr and Mrs Manders? What a shame, so newly married.’ Helena had kept herself collected, revealed nothing. That sort of remark — and this place with Laurence’s tie over the back of the chair — caused the little startles, soon over.

  ‘I was resting. I’m so tired running backwards and forwards to the country,’ she told Ernest when he was shown up by that nice little man.

  For the first few days after the accident, till Caroline was out of her long bruised sleep, Helena had stayed intermittently at a local hotel and at Ladylees with her mother. She had been watchful, had said nothing to upset the old lady. Once in the night she had turned it over in her mind to have it out with Louisa — Mother, I’m driven mad with anxiety over this accident, I can’t be doing with worry on your account as well. Laurence told me … his idea … your gang … diamonds in the bread … tell me, is it true or not? What’s your game … what’s your source of income …?

  But supposing there was nothing in it. Seventy-eight, the old woman. Helena considered and considered between her sleeps. Suppose she has a stroke! She had refrained often from speaking her mind to Louisa in case she caused the old lady a stroke, it was an old fear of Helena’s.

  So she said nothing to upset her, had been more than ever alert when, on returning to the cottage one evening after her hospital visiting, Louisa told her, ‘Your Mrs Hogg has been here.’

  Then Helena could not conceal her anxiety.

  ‘But I sent her away,’ said Louisa, ‘and I don’t think I shall see her again.’

  ‘Oh, Mother, what did she want?’

  ‘To be my companion, dear. I am able to get about very nicely.’

  ‘Nothing worrying you, Mother? Oh, I wish you would let us help you!’

  ‘My!’ said Louisa. ‘I vow, you are all a great comfort to me, and once the children are recovered we shall all be straight with the world.’

  ‘Well,’ said Helena, ‘I brought you a present from Hayward’s Heath, I was so happy to see Laurence looking better.’

  It was a tin-opening gadget. The old woman got out the tomato basket in which she kept a few handy tools. Helena held the machine against the scullery door while her mother screwed it in place, the old fingers manipulating the screwdriver but without a tremor.

  ‘It’s a great life if you don’t weaken,’ Louisa remarked as she twisted the screws in their places.

  ‘That will be handy for you,’ said Helena, ‘won’t it?’

  ‘Yes, certainly,’ Louisa said. ‘Let’s try it now.’ They opened a tin of gooseberries. ‘It was just what I wanted to open my cans,’ said Louisa. ‘You must have guessed. You have a touch of our gipsy insight in you, dear. The only thing, you don’t cultivate it.’

  ‘Now that’s an exaggeration, really, Mother. Buying you a can-opener doesn’t prove anything specially psychic, now does it?’

  ‘Not when you put it that way,’ said Louisa.

  Helena had already taken advantage of one of her mother’s outings to search the bread bin. There were no diamonds anywhere evident, neither in the bread nor in the rice and sugar tins, nor nestling among the tea nor anywhere on the shelves of the little pantry. There Louisa also kept the sealed bottles and cans of food, neatly labelled, which she canned and bottled herself from season to season.

  ‘Georgina wasn’t horrid to you, or anything?’ This was Helena’s last try.

  ‘She is not a pleasant woman by nature. I can’t think why you ever took up with her. I would never have had her in my house.’

  ‘She’s had a hard life. We felt sorry for her. I don’t think she can do any harm. At least … well, I think not, do you?’

  ‘Everyone can do harm, and do whether they mean it or not. But Mrs Hogg is not a decent woman.’

  Everything stood so quiet, Helena wondered if perhaps Laurence had been mistaken, his foolish letter useless in Mrs Hogg’s hands.

  And that was what she told Ernest when he was shown up to Caroline’s flat. She had allowed this hope to grow on her during the weeks following the accident when, sometimes alone, sometimes with her husband, she had motored back and forth between London and the country hospital. Laurence was a case of broken ribs, he could be moved home very soon. Caroline had come round, her head still bandaged, her leg now caged in its plaster and slung up on its scaffold. She had started to make a fuss about the pain, which was a good sign. Everything could have been worse.

  ‘I doubt very much that there was anything in that suspicion of Laurence’s. It caused me a lot of worry and the accident on top of it. Everything could have been worse but I’m worn out.’

  ‘Do you know,’ said Ernest, ‘my dear, so am I.’

  Those revelatory tones and gestures! — she watched Ernest as he picked up Caroline’s blue brocade dressing-gown with the intention of folding it, helping Helena to pack, but there — before he knew what he was doing he had posed himself before the long mirror, draping the blue stuff over one hip. ‘Sumptuous material!’

  Helena surprised herself by the mildness of her distaste.

  ‘The room is full of Caroline,’ she remarked. ‘I feel that I am seeing things through Caroline’s eyes, d’you know?’

  ‘So do I,’ said he, ‘now you come to mention it.’

  Helena knelt by the large suitcase she had brought. Her fair skin was drawn under its frail make-up.

  ‘We could make a pot of tea, Ernest. The meter may need a shilling.’

  He put on the kettle while she considered his predicament in life. Caroline had always been able to accept his category. It was easier, Helena thought, to accept his effeminacy now that he had given up his vice and had returned to the Church, but even before that Caroline had declared, on one occasion of discussing Ernest, ‘I should think God would say, “Don’t dare despise My beloved freak, My homosexual.”‘

  Helena had replied, ‘Of course. But if it goes against one’s very breathing to respect the man —? Oh, love is very difficult.’

  ‘I have my own prejudices,’ Caroline had said, ‘so I understand yours. Ernest doesn’t happen to be one of mine, that’s all.’

  Helena, adrift in these recollections, caught herself staring at Ernest. She lifted the phone, spoke in reply to the housekeeper’s ‘Yes, what number?’ — ‘May we have a little milk, please? We’ve just made some tea and we have no milk.’

  Whatever he said caused Helena to exclaim when she had put down the receiver.

  ‘Rather beastly abrupt that man! I thought him so nice before.’

  She apologized for the trouble when the man brought the milk, to which he made no reply at all.

  ‘The man’s a brute, Ernest,’ she said. ‘He knows the sad circumstances of our being here.’

  But she settled down with Ernest now, observing the peculiar turn of his wrist — he showed a lot of wrist — as he poured out their tea. Caroline with her sense of mythology would see in him a beautiful hermaphrodite, she thought, and came near to realizing this vision of Ernest herself.

  ‘I managed to see Laurence yesterday,’ Ernest said, ‘remarkably well, isn’t he, considering?’

  ‘Thank God,’ Helena said.

  ‘He gave me this’ — a red pocket notebook — ‘and told me what he knew about your mother’s friends.’

  ‘D’you know, Ernest, I don’t think there’s anything to fear. I kept my eyes open those few days I spent at the cottage, but I noticed nothing suspicious. Laurence must have been mistaken, I can’t help thinking. And apparently Mrs Hogg has come to the same conclusion; she actually descended on my mother while I was out. Mother was very calm about it — simply sent her away. I’ve no doubt — though Mother didn’t say so — that Mrs Hogg came about Laurence’s
letter.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I should have thought. Exactly that.’ Ernest was now folding Caroline’s blue dressing-gown, very meticulously. ‘But,’ he said, ‘I happen to know vaguely one of the men in Mrs Jepp’s gang.

  ‘Oh, who’s that?’

  ‘Mervyn Hogarth. Eleanor used to be married to him. Now, he’s most odd. Laurence thinks Mrs Hogg may be related to him.’

  Helena said it was unlikely. ‘I’ve never heard her mention the name Hogarth.’ She took the notebook from him and turned its pages. The meagre dossier Laurence had prepared had a merciless look of reality. It revived Helena’s fears. She was happiest when life could be reduced to metaphor, but life on its lofty literal peaks oppressed her. She peered at the stringent notes in Laurence’s hand.

  ‘What do you think of this, Ernest? Is my mother involved or not?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask her?’

  ‘Oh, she would never say.

  Ernest said, ‘Laurence thinks we should investigate. I promised him we would, in fact.’

  Helena read aloud one of the unbearable pages of the notebook:

  ‘Mervyn Hogarth: The Green House, Ladle Sands. Lives with crippled son (see Andrew Hogarth). No servants. Ex-library workshop. Bench tools. Mending (?) broken plaster statuettes. St Anthony. S. Francis. Immac. Concept. — others unrecognizable. No record in S.H. Ex Eleanor.’

  ‘I can’t make this out,’ she said, ‘broken plaster and the saints — are they Catholics, the Hogarths?’

  ‘I think not,’ Ernest said.

  ‘What does “S.H.” stand for?’

  ‘Somerset House. There’s apparently no record of them there. They may have been born abroad. I shall ask Eleanor, she’ll know.’

  ‘Laurence has explained all these notes to you?’

  ‘More or less. Please don’t upset yourself, Helena.’

  ‘Oh, I did hope there was nothing more to be feared. Explain all this to me, please.’

  She kept turning the pages, hoping for some small absurdity to prove the whole notion absurd that her aged mother should be involved in organized crime. She had a strong impulse to tear up the book.