No Talking after Lights Page 23

  She lifted her tea-cup and drank without noticing that the tea had gone cold. She heard the heavy wooden front door creak open - Peggy must be back -and at the same moment there was a timid knock at the study door.

  ‘Who is it?’ she called, irritable at the interruption.

  Constance King entered.

  ‘Not now, dear,’ said Mrs Birmingham. ‘Not unless it’s something really important. I’m busy just now. Come back after Prayers tomorrow.’

  Constance stood back to allow Miss Roberts to enter, then closed the door silently behind her and walked away.

  ‘Peggy, tell me, what news?’

  ‘Good news. Katherine Wilson is going to be all right.’

  ‘Thank the Lord for that. So the doctor thinks they’re through the worst?’

  The worst is over. Except that poor Waterman is very ill. He, I fear, may be the one to be paralysed.’

  ‘We can look after him. We will. He can live in the cottage, he and his wife and that howling dog of theirs. Poor Waterman. But, oh Peggy, thank heaven the girls are going to be all right!’

  In the midst of life we are in death. But at least the young will live. Nothing is worse than the death of a fine, vigorous young body.

  It was late in the evening. Henrietta had gone home, but had not yet been able to face Lionel. She sat downstairs in the Lodge’s darkened drawing-room, holding a photograph of her brother Jamie taken just before he had left for the front. The photograph in its silver frame had stood on her piano for so long that it had become invisible. It must be years since she had looked at it. She switched on the standard-lamp beside her chair and scrutinized his square young face, still very much the face of a boy. How her James resembled him! She had never seen it so clearly before. She bent the prongs at the back of the frame to take it out and look at it more closely. Behind it was another picture, long-forgotten: Jamie and Roly, spanking smart in their brand-new uniforms, posed side-by-side.

  Roly! Her hands trembled with shock. She had never expected to look at his face again. He had been a good-looking young man, arrogant, certainly, but with reason. The crisp black hair curled over his forehead despite the military hair-cut and his dark eyes looked back at her across a gap of nearly four decades. She had never learned what became of him. After the visit to Raeburn House and the episode on the hillside, he had refused all other invitations. Jamie was hurt and couldn’t understand why his best friend did not come to see him. Henrietta had pretended to be equally puzzled.

  A letter had arrived for her, just one, some weeks after that visit. It was a formal note of apology, so elaborately and archaically worded that she could not be sure he wasn’t laughing at her. A phrase swam up from her memory: ‘Should you need my assistance, be it financial or practical, allow me to assure you that I shall be at your service.’ No, she had not needed his assistance. How old would he be now? … The same age as brother Jamie, two years older than she was - he would only be in his mid-fifties. Fifteen years younger than Lionel. There was every reason to suppose he was still alive.

  On impulse she took down Debrett from the bookshelf. ‘Graham, Roland Alastair,’ she read, ‘see 6 Baron Mountfordham.’ She turned over the heavy pages. ‘B. 22 Sept 1898. Educ’ - yes, yes, she knew all that. Her eyes swept on. ‘Marr. 1933, Alice Warren-Eagleton … 2s. Id. Suc. on death of er. bro. Hugh, 5 Baron, 1944. Marr. diss. 1947. Heir, s. James …’ So, she thought: married late, and it didn’t survive the war. He hadn’t married again. Son: James. Well, that was something. ‘Clubs: Athenaeum, Brooks’s. Address:’ She slammed the heavy book shut. She didn’t want to know his address.

  Ironic, to realize only now how suitable he would have been! No wonder her mother had been so gracious. Just the right age, a young hero and, unlike so many heroes, a survivor. She sighed at the belated discovery that her mother had been matchmaking; that their solitary walks across the moors had probably been taken with her parents’ knowledge and connivance. She looked at the photograph again. There was bitterness, even sadism in the drooping lips, as she had discovered for herself, and that roving eye would not have rested on her alone for very long. No, she realized, the man of her life lay upstairs.

  For a time she had thought her brother would be the man of her life and had sworn naively to dedicate herself to his care. When he began to venture downstairs, he had leant on her shoulder for support, cursing as he manipulated the crutches and swung his ungainly artificial leg. She had learned to drive, so as to take him out in their parents’ car, to visit the friends of their childhood. She needed their support. They had been welcomed at first but Jamie was so bitter, and swore so vilely, that soon most people’s tolerance vanished. They would have cosseted a returning hero, maimed for his country; but this sour-faced young cripple reproached them all, a living reminder that most of them preferred to push away. Those whose sons or brothers had been killed thought him lucky to be alive. Jamie would have preferred to be dead.

  Gradually, he had spent more and more time brooding at Raeburn, resenting his solitude and inactivity, angry that his best friend stayed away, and still haunted by exploding nightmares. He took to sitting up late with his father over bottles of port and brandy. He became a drunkard; his formerly handsome face blurred and coarsened. His coming-of-age was a humiliation.

  Henrietta, meanwhile, entering her twenties, became increasingly conscious of how few young men crossed her path. She wanted to marry; she was, after all, the only one left who was likely to continue the ancestral line. Jamie raged about the young girls he met, calling them brazen hussies or else witless infants. He never seemed to consider that she might want a husband; he took it for granted that she would nurse him for the rest of his life. No wonder he had hated and despised Lionel.

  When she returned from Egypt, no longer the Hon. Henrietta Campbell-Leith but Mrs Birmingham, it was to the news that Jamie had shot himself. Late one night, after drinking heavily as usual, he had gone to the gunroom, leaned his crutches against the wall, carefully selected the .455 Webley revolver, his old army pistol, and put to his forehead. No, they said, he had left no message.

  At first she had thought she would be crushed by guilt. ‘I shouldn’t have left him!’ she had wept.

  But her Scottish nanny had been brisk. ‘Nonsense, my lassie, don’t let me hear ye talk like that again! You have your own life to lead, just as he had his. Ye’ve a husband to think of. Now, will you act like a wife and no’ like a bairn!’

  Her mother had been straight-backed, monumental. ‘I grieved for James long, long ago,’ she said. The war killed him, just as certainly as it did Alistair and Hugo. Control yourself, Henrietta. We must carry on.’

  She had been left with Lionel. He is, she thought again, he is indeed the man of my life. For nearly a quarter of a century we shared the same bed. We marry for better reasons than we know, and without him I would have been less of a person. I have never given him credit for enabling me to be myself. And what did I enable him to be? He is the man of my life, and now he is dying.

  She slid Debrett back into place beside Who’s Who and reassembled the photograph frame before replacing it on the piano. Then she climbed the stairs, calling as she did so, ‘Darling? My darling, I’m back!’

  Once again she entered to find him apparently asleep. She sat on the chair beside the bed and gazed at his shrivelled, putty-coloured face. His eyelids were wrinkled like string, the eyebrows sprouting with incongruous vigour. His sparse hair was white. Around his nose and mouth were deeply engraved lines, caused, she was sure, by the sixty cigarettes a day he had smoked ever since she had known him. The deep suction as he pulled the smoke down into his lungs was now etched permanently on his face. The flesh had sunk around his temples, eyes and cheeks so that his prominent nose jutted out, making him look harsh and beaky.

  He had never been a handsome man. She had never found him physically attractive, although shyly and in secret she had imagined the joys of the marriage bed. Had he been skilled, had he been patient a
nd conspiratorial, coaxing her towards their joint and private pleasure, it might have been different. But he had not; and so they had never properly known each other.

  It was not only that. He had never been an active man. She loved walking, but it had been a struggle to persuade him to come with her. Yet this body had fathered her son, these gnarled hands had held hers, had kneaded and needed her. How many years ago had that been? As young James grew from babyhood into boyhood and then adolescence, she had recoiled from the thought of her son - lying awake with a book, perhaps - overhearing his father’s panting struggle. All sexual congress between them had ceased ten years ago, perhaps more. For her, it had been a relief. Had it been a deprivation for Lionel? She never knew. She had never asked. Have I failed him, she thought; did I deny his manhood? For if he is the man of my life then I am the woman of his. She recalled a Victorian saying that her mother had quoted, enigmatically, the night before her wedding. ‘Never forget that your husband is also a man.’ She had forgotten, and now he was a man no longer.

  She closed her eyes and shivered with remorse. Her parents’ prurience, or Roly’s impatient, callous initiation, or - why blame other people? - the distaste she had come to feel for her husband’s hot, sour-smelling body had precluded any pleasure in their marriage bed. Well, soon she would sleep alone for the rest of her life.

  His breathing rose and fell with agonizingly long gaps between one wheezing intake and the next. She took his wrist: it was cold and the pulse was faint, fluttering irregularly, pausing between beats.

  I have been a passionless wife, and now it is too late. He would be embarrassed if I tried to explain - and, besides, after a lifetime of sexual modesty how would I bring myself to frame the words?

  Lionel’s hand jerked convulsively, he drew a couple of quick breaths and opened his eyes.

  ‘Don’t worry, old girl,’ he said. ‘It said in James’s letter, her brother’s at Harrow.’

  He smiled, and his eyes closed again. She took both his hands between her cupped fingers and sat holding his life within her grasp.

  Twelve

  Friday was the last day of exams. It was followed by ten carefree carnival days before the school broke up. Teachers turned a blind eye; lessons were cursory; matrons pretended not to know about the midnight feasts that were being organized. End-of-term parcels arrived containing tinned cream to pour over tinned peaches and fruit cocktail; chunky squares of concentrated jelly in acid colours; packets of shortbread and chocolate biscuits; home-made cakes. These were hidden in bedside lockers, together with sardines, spam and packets of crisps. Someone’s alarm clock would go off at midnight and sleepy girls forced themselves awake, spread out their hoard on each other’s beds, shushed and giggled, and gorged straight from the tins. They drank Ribena and orange juice out of tooth mugs, and - if someone’s mother had been a really good sport - cider from a bottle passed round between the beds.

  ‘Mm, yummy!’ everyone said, and, ‘Greedy guzzler!’ They fell asleep with tight, gurgling bellies, the sweet taste of jelly turning sour in their mouths.

  In the evenings, down in the junior common-room, records in square brown paper sleeves were scattered across the floor and the wind-up gramophones blared noisily. ‘How much is that doggie in the window?’ and ‘It’s cherry pink and apple blossom white/When your true lover comes your way …’ The juniors sang irreverent songs celebrating their coming freedom. ‘No more Latin, no more French/No more sitting on the hard school bench!’ The tables were turned, and now it was the staff who had to submit to the discipline of marking exam papers and doing school reports, working out class positions and percentage marks, while the girls lolled outdoors, exposing their already suntanned limbs to yet more sun, shading their faces under battered straw hats, comparing sock-marks and watch-marks, beaded with the lustre of heat and indolence.

  The temperature had risen buoyantly all through the term. The thermometer outside the changing-rooms shimmered in the heat. In the final days of term it finally reached ninety-five degrees, and stayed there as though becalmed, vibrating like a mirage.

  Heat blanketed the school. During exams the girls had had to sit still, in forced silence, concentrating. Now, as marked papers were handed round, they fidgeted, uncrossing their legs stickily to wipe off sweat that had trickled between their thighs and made rivulets along their brown legs. Some of the girls smelt of perspiration, especially the seniors, and many revealed wet crescents when they lifted their arms. Everyone’s cotton frocks were creased and clammy, sticking between their shoulder-blades and at the backs of their legs. The school was torpid. Everyone breathed slowly, heavily, fanning themselves with hats or exercise books. The temperature was unrelenting, inescapable. Only the swimming-pool, and cold showers afterwards, gave relief from the humid, clinging heat.

  In the slanting light of evening, when the sun seemed suspended, never to set, they played Kick the Can. By now, twelve weeks after term had started, all the obvious hiding-places were known. The game was more difficult and the players more skilful. Their brown, outflung arms, rocking skirts and twinkling white feet darted like fireflies over the dry grass as the catcher counted down the numbers in metronomic rhythm.

  At night everyone slept under a single crumpled sheet. Waking up sometimes, restless, in the small hours, only then was it possible to recall how it felt to be cool. Next morning the skies would be clear and blue and cloudless again.

  The fear of polio had receded. Familiarity made people indifferent to those who still lay, pale and bored, in St Patrick’s Hospital. The Head and her Deputy continued to visit on alternate days; and the gardener’s wife had been summoned, comforted, and assured that she and her husband would be looked after for the rest of their lives in the cottage. Mrs Birmingham fell unconsciously into the practised tones her mother had used in speaking to the servants. ‘You’ll be able to sit him in his chair out on the lawn, Mrs Waterman, and he can watch all the hustle and bustle of school life. He will still be an important member of the Raeburn family. And I’m sure we can find some work for you in the kitchen, so put your mind at rest’

  This arrangement led to an awkward meeting with Miss Parry and Miss Monk. They sat tensely, not side-by-side, waiting to hear why they had been summoned. Was there some new development involving Hermione? She had been sent home early, that much they knew, but not whether she had added anything to Sylvia’s clipped account of the evening on the heath.

  ‘I have asked you both to see me so that I may explain the new arrangements for next term,’ the Head began. ‘As you know already, our head-gardener, poor Mr Waterman, has been severely affected by polio. The doctor says he will almost certainly be in a wheel-chair for the rest of his life. Naturally, it is my responsibility to take care of him and his wife. I have therefore offered them a lifetime tenancy of the cottage. This means that next term you will be found accommodation along with Miss Valentine and Miss Pope in the flat above the garage. I expect you know it. There are four single bedrooms and a shared bathroom and small sitting-room. It is, I’m afraid, a little more cramped and less private than you have become accustomed to, but no doubt you will welcome the additional company.’

  She paused, daring Sylvia to speak. Sylvia stared impassively back.

  ‘You may, of course, if you prefer, look for accommodation in the village. I believe some local people let rooms. Perhaps you will let me know before term ends what you decide. As for Hermione, she has been very shaken by what happened, as is only natural. Her parents will let me know their decision regarding her future here.’

  Sylvia was containing her rage, though the purplish islands of colour on her neck betrayed it. Diana drew a deep breath and spoke in a tense, high voice. ‘I would like your assurance, Headmistress, that this change of accommodation is not in any way a punishment. I think you may not appreciate how lucky it was that we happened to be there. Hermione had already been assaulted, and would undoubtedly have been violated if we had not intervened.’

  �
�Yes, Miss Monk, I am indeed aware of that. I do not quite follow your reasoning. Why should you regard being moved as any sort of punishment?’

  A dangerous silence fell. The three women looked at one another, wary and poised in the charged atmosphere. Sylvia thought, good God, she’s going to make the supreme sacrifice. She’s going to own up like a loyal little friend protecting her accomplice. I can’t let that happen.

  ‘Of course we are not being punished,’ she said icily. ‘We are, however, being inconvenienced. I personally shall be considering whether to offer my resignation. And now, if you will excuse me, I still have a number of reports to write.’

  How painful, O Lord, are the workings of the human heart, thought Henrietta, slumping briefly in her great wing-chair as she gazed at the door that closed abruptly behind them. Shed Thy light upon these two misguided women, that they may see the infinite blessings Thou dost offer to all who follow Thee.

  The rooks croaked harshly in the woods and from below her window came the sound of giggling. ‘Education! Education!’ someone sang, and other voices took it up: ‘You are nothing but vexation!/Stupid pupil, harassed teacher/Each is an unhappy creature…’

  Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, thought Henrietta Birmingham. She worried briefly about whether she would have to give William Truett a reference. ‘Capable gardener - not to be trusted with young girls.’ She could hardly say that. Perhaps (she smiled wryly to herself) it was the fate of young girls to meet untrustworthy men.

  Sylvia and Diana walked to the cottage in silence. Diana was afraid - of Sylvia, of losing her, of her own cowardice, of the uncertain future. She could not resign from yet another school. She didn’t want to leave Raeburn. She had been happy, and not just because of her love for Sylvia. Her mother and uncles depended on her. She dare not risk the loyal grand gesture. But Sylvia would regard it as a betrayal if she stayed.