Myra Carrol

by Noel Streatfeild

  Myra came home to Chelsea. All through the journey she fought against tears. Anything could start her tears. She was incapable of looking at Joe’s photograph. She had only snapshots in a case but the case alone was more than she could bear. Dishes they had eaten together, their favourite cocktails; it did not matter much what and she was flooded with pitch-hued melancholy. It was all new to her, this giving your heart to somebody else. Joe, sailing eastwards, might have been digging pins into that heart, he hurt her so abominably. She had not imagined what missing a person meant. The lump in the throat and the catch at the heart-strings for every reminder were only a small part. It was the hopeless waking to days devoid of all colour or shape. It was the terror of not sleeping the whole night, of waking in the small hours to such emptiness and loneliness that had been, until her meeting with Joe, outside her imagining.

  She came back to Chelsea. The children were still at Sandgate. Only Andrew’s bedroom and his study had been unshrouded from dust sheets. The maids were on holiday and a woman called Mrs. Finch, of almost intolerable good intention and unfortunate achievement, was “doing” for Andrew. Mrs. Finch had gone when Myra arrived. Myra was deadly tired and the taxi-driver was rude about her cabin trunk, as well he might be, for it was a cumbersome thing and heart-straining to lift. Myra was almost too depressed and tired to turn on her charm, but she could not keep the taxi all night, so she managed a smile and a semblance of her famous eyelash play, and the taxi-driver decided he could after all get the trunk inside the gate and perhaps the lady’s husband would find somebody to get it up the stairs later on.

  Andrew found the trunk by the gate. Life was being dreary for him. A nasty breakfast cooked by Mrs. Finch and something left in the oven hardly made home life. Though he knew the trunk for Myra’s, never for a second did he suppose it meant she was in the house. She might have sent it home for a variety of reasons, but she certainly would not come herself, if she ever came at all, in August.

  Myra had in her less grief-sodden moments planned what to say to Andrew. She must get the divorce off her chest; it was not by keeping going to be easier to ask for. But Andrew arrived when she had not the spirit to ask anything of anybody. The dust sheets had conquered her. There were so many of them and even when they were off the rooms looked so ill-kept and unlived in. Andrew heard somebody moving upstairs and, wishing to know about the trunk, called out to what he supposed was Mrs. Finch. Myra, with a dust sheet in her hands, came to the stair head. Andrew’s ecstatic “Myra!” was too much for her. She sat on the stairs and cried.

  Andrew was charming. He had not known Myra like this since the day Fortesque died. He found her, as he had then, intensely lovable when she was helpless with grief. It was wonderful to have her depending on him, and be allowed to do things for her. He thought at first that it was really exhaustion and the state of the house which had upset her, but presently, when he had managed to find help and had got her trunk into the house, and she had washed and had made up her face, he knew it was something more. This Myra was not the Myra who had left Folkestone for St. Jean de Luz.

  Always in their life together Myra had dominated. Her wishes had been within reason accepted as orders and been carried out. The new subdued Myra Andrew dominated. He made plans and decided what should be done. She said she just wanted to go to bed, and did not want any dinner. He discovered that she had scarcely eaten anything all day and refused to listen to her. He took her arm and led her into the kitchen. On the table was a note. “There’s fish pie in the oven for hotting and some blamange in frig. Mrs. Finch.” He showed it to Myra and she laughed for the first time for days. Not a very amused laugh, still, even the little there was of it did her good.

  “Let’s look at the fish pie and see if we’ll hot it,” she suggested.

  The fish pie was tolerable and so was Mrs. Finch’s “blamange.” They ate them in the kitchen, washed down with champagne, a bottle of which Andrew had insisted on opening. To Andrew it was a memorable dinner party. Myra had to be tempted to eat, and he was filled with tenderness and pride when he saw his efforts rewarded, and a dim light come back into her eyes and a little colour to her cheeks. He saw she did not want to talk so he chatted on. What John had said, what Jane had worn, how Nella was learning to count. The children as a subject running dry, he told her about his latest play. He did not hope he was amusing her, but he was making her feel less strained. Presently, when the champagne was finished, he said:

  “Now, pop up to bed. I’ve felt the water and it’s hot if you want a bath.”

  She hesitated. She had meant to tell Andrew what had happened straight away, but he had been so nice and seemed so happy she did not like to.

  “What about the washing up?” she asked, looking at the table.

  “Mrs. Finch does it. I clear and what she calls ‘put it on the side.’”

  She came over to him and laid a hand on his arm.

  “You are kind, Andrew.”

  He gave her shoulder an awkward pat.

  “Don’t be an ass. You get on up and see you sleep.”

  The days went by and still Myra said nothing. The trouble was that Andrew was so happy. She could not see why he should be, but the fact remained that he was. He looked happy, more so than she remembered him looking for years. He whistled about the house and he treated these days they were alone together as a stolen holiday which ought to be enjoyed in an exceptional way. “We can’t spoil these few days by bothering about that,” or “I refused, I wasn’t going to have this little bit of a time ruined by extra work.” Myra, because she did not care what she did or where she went, and also because Andrew’s unexpected pleasure in her company made her feel ashamed, fell in with any plan he made. They dined in out-of-the-way places; they saw long-running plays which they had either seen before or which they had for some reason missed when they came on. They went one evening on the river and dined at Hampton Court, and another night to Greenwich.

  “We ought to do something rather spectacular to-morrow night,” Andrew said one evening. “The children come back the next day, you know.”

  Myra had not even one-third of her mind in Chelsea; the rest wandered over leagues of sea picking up fragments to keep Joe alive, his voice, the way he smiled, his slow movements, his special inflection on certain words. At home she merely drifted from one occupation to another and did not think ahead, so she had no idea the children were coming back. Andrew’s words forced her to face things. Would the children make what she had to say to Andrew easier or more difficult? She was certain, though probably he had not clearly defined his feelings, that it would not be entirely a shock to Andrew that she had come home for a purpose. That she was not herself must be clear to him; that he knew her to be unhappy was shown in his extra thoughtfulness and gentleness. She was, she knew, in a strained state and easily got upset. Andrew allowed for this and with diversions and soft words warded off what might turn into little scenes. On the whole the children would make things easier and she did not think she had come to this conclusion because she wanted to procrastinate. Cook and Bertha were now back but even so the house felt a bit empty; it would be miserable for Andrew to have to be on his own after she had said what she had to say. She did not see exactly what would happen after she had told Andrew about Joe, but she supposed she would go away, probably to an hotel somewhere, for she did not feel like seeing anybody. It would be obviously pleasanter for Andrew to be left with the children to cheer him up. He could not feel quite such a failure as a husband when he had them to look at.

  The children bounded into the house full of anxiety that nothing had been changed while they were away. They raced from room to room peering, feeling, smelling. They hurried out into the little bit of garden and only when sure that nothing important had been touched did they turn to their parents and then they showed, even Jane, a flattering pleasure at finding their mother waiting for them. John, particularly, hung about her. He was ret
urning to school in two days’ time and he had patches of depression at the thought, which made him pathetic in a lost dog way, which for the time being took from him his eldest-of-the-family schoolboy grandeur and made him seem a small child again. Myra was moved by him; it was clear how he felt though he took his troubles in exactly the opposite way to herself. He was silent and clinging where she, at his age, would have been noisy and aloof, but his suffering was the same; odd though she found it he loved the Chelsea house and, quite apart from the school aspect, he disliked leaving it.

  “It was lovely at Sandgate,” he told Myra, “but, of course, nothing’s as nice as home, is it?”

  He detested being parted from Archibald, a grief Myra could whole-heartedly share.

  “He’s such a careless dog,” he confided. “When he’s in the mood simply nothing stops him running across roads without looking.”

  Myra devoted John’s last two days to amusing him. It pleased him and putting off another two days talking to Andrew could make no difference. She tried to keep out of the way in the evenings so that John and Andrew could spend them together, but John frustrated her.

  “Why can’t Mummy come to the cinema with us?” he asked Andrew.

  “I expect she’s doing something else, old man.”

  “Well, don’t let’s go to the cinema. Let’s stay and do whatever Mummy’s doing.”

  It ended in the two evenings being spent by the three of them together, the last night in grand style at the theatre with supper when they got home. Over supper John asked Myra if she was going with him to the station the next day. Seeing John off to school was one of Andrew’s jobs. He took time from the office for it. They were sitting at the dining-room table when John’s request rang out. He did not make any particular point of it but went on stolidly eating, but his request fell in front of his parents as if it were a solid object which must be picked up. It linked in Andrew’s mind with John’s questions at Sandgate, which he had been forced to answer so unsatisfactorily. To Myra it was awkward because of the way it was framed.

  “Can you come and see me off to-morrow as well as Daddy?”

  It was high time she told Andrew that she was leaving him. It was making it much worse if John were going to miss her. Not that he would for long, but he was old enough to have to be told something.

  Andrew decided that in fairness to his son he must press Myra.

  “Yes, will you?”

  Myra smiled evasively.

  “We’ll see. I hate stations and, really, one person is enough.”

  “Most of the boys have both their fathers and mothers there,” said John. “I’m quite peculiar, only Daddy ever showing up.”

  Andrew felt John had stated his case so clearly that any further words would spoil the effect. He turned the conversation to football.

  John, sublimely unconscious of the part he was playing, made one more contribution to his mother’s discomfort. When he was sent up to bed he hung about at the door, unwilling to take the step that wrote “finis” against the last and best evening of his holidays.

  “Go on, old man,” said Andrew.

  In spite of his stammer Andrew’s voice could be firm. John recognised the note.

  “If I’m awfully quick, will you both come up and say good-night?”

  Nobody could say no to such a request. “Though really it’s like the most sickening sort of film,” thought Myra. “In all the terms he’s been at school why choose this one for this Mummy and Daddy act! Anyway, that settles it. I must get Joe off my chest to-night.”

  John looked small and defenceless in his pyjamas. Myra stooped to kiss him and was dismayed by the fervour with which he clung to her, and was moved yet at the same time aggravated when he said:

  “You’re the loveliest mother in the world. Isn’t she, Daddy?”

  “It’s a pity,” she thought, “that there isn’t somebody here to see the funny side of this. I can see it would make other people howl with laughter.”

  Andrew saw the expression on her face.

  “Poor lamb!” he thought. “John’s done his stuff with a vengeance. I think I’ll leave it to sink in,” and giving John a pat on the head and Myra a nod he went to his own room. There he did not at once start to undress. Instead, he re-lived the evening and the past days and hope stirred in him. Myra was plainly very unhappy; something had gone wrong somewhere. Andrew had already faced the likelihood of whatever was wrong being mixed up with some man. His guess was that Myra might have let herself get too fond of someone and run away from temptation. If that were so, if that was why she had come so unexpectedly home, fate might be taking a hand. She was softer and easier in her present mood; John’s sudden outspokenness might just have tipped the scale. It was unlikely she would come back to him again, certainly not right away, and especially not if she had been a bit too fond of someone else; but she might at last settle down a bit, take an interest in the children and her home. His heart and mind were full of prayer.

  Myra stood outside Andrew’s shut door. How tiresome of him to go off like that just when she had screwed herself up to speak to him! She could, of course, she reminded herself, go in and have it out with him, but she did not really consider it. She and Andrew had grown so apart that her entrance into his room would be awkward and awkwardness was not the atmosphere in which to say what she had to say, which was difficult enough anyway.

  It was in the early hours that Myra was wakened by knocking on a door and voices. She listened for a moment and then, wondering if it were burglars or a fire, she got up, put on her dressing-gown and went into the passage. Andrew was at the head of the stairs; he turned as he heard her door.

  “Oh, I’ll use the ’phone by your bed as you’re awake.”

  She followed him into her room.

  “What is it?”

  He finished dialling before he answered.

  “Nella. She had a cold, you know. She seems worse; she woke crying and Nannie says there’s a stiffness she doesn’t like.”

  Myra felt as if ice were forming all over her.

  “What’s she afraid of?”

  He was speaking to the doctor.

  “It’s Andrew Carrol speaking. Nurse wants you for Nella. She’s afraid of infantile paralysis.”

  Myra was back in the barn. The cold of that moment and the cold of this moment seemed one. That time had been a shock not only to her but to Lady Carrol, Andrew, Nannie and probably everybody else who took an interest. Who would have thought that she, the heartless, careless mother, could care so desperately? That ghastly time When she was tied to suffering! It was as if Fate said, “run, would you? Well, now I’ve caught you.” Hours of agony watching Nella. Hours of agony wanting Joe. If Joe had been there his arms could have helped, could have crushed back some of the gnawing terror. Was Nella going to die? Little, ridiculous Nella; surely not! If Nella lived was she going to be a cripple? She had gone into all the crevices of suffering. She had been a bad mother, this was her punishment. She made wild bargains with Heaven. If Nella lived she would be a different person. She would be a proper mother. She would even give up Joe.

  Joe had been kept more or less up-to-date with Myra’s news. He had received reams written so obviously in a time of stress that he had discounted a large part of what she wrote. She was going through an anxious period and was not thinking clearly. Then came the news that Nella was better, and then that Nella was likely to make an almost complete recovery. Here was where the tone of the letters might have changed. Nella might have slipped now into the background, but she did not; she had taken hold of Myra and did not seem to be letting go. Joe had finished his business without hurrying, and nine months after he had said good-bye to Myra he was in London speaking to her on the telephone. He was home. Would she dine?

  Joe sat down to dinner knowing he had lost Myra. He did not want the whole evening spoilt by the things tha
t they had not said, so as he unfolded his napkin he remarked, exactly as if there had not been a nine months gap:

  “So you couldn’t ask for the divorce?” She opened her mouth to answer but he stopped her. “It’s all right. That, after all, was why I left you, to make up your mind.”

  “I was going to the very day Nella was taken ill.”

  “How is she?”

  “She drags one leg still but that’s all and they think that will get better.”

  He ordered their food and drink and Myra watched the nine months during which she had not seen him turn into vapour. She had ached for this meeting; she had been in a state of trembling excitement since she had heard his voice on the telephone, but it was not until she was actually with him that she was conscious of how appallingly she was in need of him.

  “I think I’ve been moribund while you’ve been away. Just seeing you I feel like a flower that’s been lying for hours without water, and is suddenly put in a vase.”

  “But you’re not going to marry me.”

  She crumbled her roll of bread.

  “I’m in a worse muddle now. When I came back from St. Jean it was only a matter of screwing myself up to hurt Andrew and I was going to do it. Now it’s a lot of things.”

  “The children?”

  “Yes. You see, once Andrew knows, I must go away.”

  “And you couldn’t do that?”

  “Not just now. Not till Nella’s quite strong again. She’s got very dependent on me.”