The Long Corridor

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘She told you this?’

  ‘Yes. She’s talked of nothing else the whole journey.’

  ‘Well,’ he hunched his big shoulders, ‘it’s not unusual for children to wish death on their parents, not unusual at all.’

  ‘But she’s not a child, Paul. Don’t you realise that? She’s a child no longer. And what’s more she’s older than her years…Oh,’ she put her hand up to her head, ‘why didn’t you get in touch with us and bring us back?’

  ‘It wouldn’t have made any difference, would it, if she thinks like that? I can’t see that it would have helped in the least.’

  ‘Of course it would. It would have been different coming from you. But having it shot at her in that strange hotel miles away, and then to face that awful journey feeling like that.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ He sat down on the couch and leant his elbows on his knees and supported his forehead with his hands. ‘It wasn’t that I didn’t want you back. I—I thought, coming so close on everything else it might affect her.’

  ‘You would really have let us stay there a full month and not told me? I cannot understand it.’

  ‘No, perhaps not.’ He shook his head wearily.

  She stood looking down intently at him for a moment. Then slowly she lowered herself into a chair to the side of the hearth and asked, ‘Who found her?’

  ‘Maggie.’

  ‘That Mrs Turnbull said she had taken a full bottle of sleeping tablets. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes. She came downstairs around twelve and went to the surgery cupboard. It was the easiest thing in the world; she knew where the keys were.’

  ‘And it wouldn’t have happened if I’d been here.’

  He brought his head up quickly. ‘What! Now don’t you be silly, Jinny.’

  ‘I’m not being silly. I know for a certainty in my own mind that if I hadn’t gone away she would never have done it. I knew I shouldn’t have left her. She was ill, almost demented—yes, almost demented, and I left her with you and Maggie, and neither of you had a grain of sympathy for her.’

  He looked at her steadily before saying, ‘But there you are wrong. I felt more kindly towards her that last day than for many a year, and I told her so as best I could. But it didn’t make the smallest difference to her; she was determined to break me.’

  ‘If that’s the case, what made her take the tablets?’ Her mouth now fell slightly agape and she eased herself up from the chair by gripping the back rail. ‘Paul, you…you…?’

  ‘…No. No, I didn’t, Jinny.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You needn’t be, for I won’t say there weren’t times I didn’t think about it. But my opinion is she took her life because she couldn’t bear the thought that she had contracted the disease.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I think too, and that’s why I’ll never be able to forgive myself for leaving her.’

  ‘Now, now don’t be silly.’

  As he made a move to go to her, Lorna came into the room carrying a tray, and after placing it on the table she silently handed Jenny a cup and then one to her father, and taking the other cup she sat down on the edge of the couch and slowly and methodically she began to stir her coffee.

  They were sitting now like three strangers in a waiting room, quietly ill at ease, waiting as it were for a signal to move. When the silence of the room became unbearable, Paul, leaning towards Lorna, said, ‘Are you very tired, dear?’

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded, still looking down into her cup.

  ‘Have an early night, eh? You’ll feel better in the morning.’

  Again she nodded.

  ‘We’ll all have an early night. I’ll go and switch the blankets on.’ He was in the act of putting his half-empty cup on the table preparatory to leaving the room when Jenny said, ‘I’ll be going home, Paul.’

  Before he could protest, Lorna exclaimed loudly, ‘Oh no, Aunt Jenny!’

  ‘Yes, Lorna, I think it’s better this way, but I’ll be back in the morning.’

  As Paul stood looking helplessly at Jenny’s profile he sensed in her face the beginning of a battle that would be harder for him to fight and win than the straightening out of the relationship and re-establishing the love between himself and Lorna. Just a short while ago he had pictured what it would be like to have them both in this room. Now the picture had come alive and the reality held no promise of happiness, not even contentment, it simply posed another problem. How had he expected Jinny to react? He had known that she would be upset, but not that she would take the blame for Bett’s death on her own shoulders…Brian, Lorna, Jinny, and himself, all feeling responsible for Bett’s death…And she wasn’t worth it. The thought appeared blasphemous, but he held on to it and attacked it by repeating, no, she wasn’t worth it. In life she hadn’t done one good thing that he was aware of, and in death she had the power to rob four people of their peace of mind. Well, he wouldn’t let her. He had already done what he could for the boy. He was positive he could explain Lorna’s guilt feelings away. For himself he was damned if he was going to let her get the better of him after all; he would deal with his own conscience…But could he deal with Jinny’s? He would have to talk to her. It suddenly became the most important thing in life that he should get things straight with her. But he must go careful.

  When he heard Lorna say, ‘I think I’ll go up, Daddy,’ he answered quickly, ‘Yes, yes, dear, I think that’s the best thing you can do. I’ll come in and see you in a little while. Go on now.’ He went to her and kissed her gently and said softly, ‘It’ll be all right, it’ll be all right.’ Then he watched her go to Jenny and cling to her for a moment before turning swiftly away and running from the room, not like an adult as Jinny had suggested, but, to him, like a very young girl. And he saw this as a hopeful sign.

  When the door had closed he did not turn immediately to Jenny and say, ‘Why do you want to go home?’ It was some seconds before he spoke, and then he forgot all about going careful for he said outright, ‘You’re going to hold the whole thing against me, aren’t you? I can see by your face you are.’

  It was a full minute before she said, ‘No, not against you, against myself.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nonsense. You did everything possible you could for her for years. You did more for her than anyone else.’

  ‘Except when she needed me most.’ She turned and faced him fully now. ‘Paul, I knew that morning I shouldn’t go. I almost didn’t take the plane; I had a dreadful feeling on me. I might as well tell you now that we quarrelled bitterly before I left the house, but when I’d time to think I realised it was because she was ill and lonely and frightened. I phoned twice and couldn’t get through; I wanted to say to you I was coming back. I tell you I had a premonition that something was going to happen. And now,’ she spread out her hands, ‘it’s with me for life.’

  He moved slowly towards her and when he was within touching distance of her he stopped. ‘Jinny.’ His voice was soft and had a note of pleading in it. ‘I know how you feel, believe me, for there’s part of me eaten up with remorse, but we’re human beings and time will bury these feelings. Later on we’ll be able to look to the future…we will, Jinny.’

  ‘You think so?’ She was staring into his face. ‘You really think so? I wish I could feel the same.’

  ‘You will.’

  ‘I doubt it.’ Her lips were trembling and she began to pluck at the front of her suit with her fingers, and when his hand came over hers she screwed her eyes tight and the tears pressed from beneath her lids and rolled down her cheeks.

  ‘Jinny. Jinny, don’t. Please.’

  ‘You…you know how I feel.’ She was sobbing and gasping now. ‘There’s no need to go into all that, but as impossible as the situation was for me when she was alive I felt nearer to you…But…but now, well now, her going has made a gulf so wide that I can never see myself crossing it.’

  He brought her hands to his breast and held them tightly and he looked at her long, still o
rdinary-looking face, drenched with her tears, and he knew that in her and her alone lay his future peace and what happiness there still remained for him. He knew now that he had always needed her, but he needed her most at this moment. Yet he also knew that if he were to press that need he would lose her, perhaps for good.

  ‘When is…when is she to be buried?’

  ‘Monday.’

  She withdrew her hands from his, and turning slowly from him she walked towards the door, saying, ‘I’m going back to work as soon as I can.’

  Again he took the opposite course from that which his mind and caution prompted. He knew this was neither the time nor the place, but he had to say it. ‘Jinny. There’s a job waiting here for you if you want it.’

  She stopped but she didn’t turn round. ‘Thanks, Paul.’

  He stood still as he said, ‘You don’t consider taking it? I mean, just to look after the house…and us?’

  ‘I couldn’t. But thanks all the same.’

  He warned himself again, but it was no use, he had to ask her. ‘Do you think you would later on?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Paul. I don’t know. Don’t ask me now…the way I’m feeling…’

  When he moved to her side and took her arm she looked at him and all the hidden sadness of her life was in her face. For years and years she had dreamed of what it would be like to be loved by this man. She’d had to fight her jealousy and envy of Bett. She had thought that if he would only love her, take her once, just once, she’d live on it for the rest of her life. And here he was, offering her everything and she couldn’t take it. She doubted whether she’d ever be able to take it, for what he didn’t know, and what he wouldn’t lay much stock on, if she were to tell him, was that she, like Lorna, had wished Bett out of the way. That it had been a deep hidden wish, and that she hadn’t really acknowledged it until Lorna had blurted out her feeling for her mother, didn’t alleviate her guilt. She felt almost buried under it. She doubted if Paul would ever understand how deep her feeling of responsibility for Bett’s death went.

  ‘No-one knows the weight of a conscience except the owner.’ She’d heard that somewhere and now she knew just how true it was.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Nothing. I—I was just thinking.’

  ‘Try not to think too much, and don’t judge anything on the way you’re feeling now. I won’t press you, I’ll leave it to you. But the job will always be there, Jinny. I just want you to know that.’

  She bowed her head deeply; then turning from him, she went into the hall. And as he watched her there came to his nostrils a scent, a scent that he had always associated with Bett, a particular perfume she used; it was as if Bett herself were crossing the hall, passing between them. And now the scent was a smell and he actually felt Bett’s presence. For a moment he imagined he heard her laughing as she turned his own phrase, indicating her victory: ‘She’s tipping the scales towards me again.’

  Dead or alive, it seemed that Bett would win. The hell she would! At this instant there came the sound of movement from the kitchen. Maggie was back.

  As if attacking the still warm bitter spirit that stood in the space between him and Jinny he gripped the door and flung it wide, bouncing it back against the wall.

  When Jenny turned her startled face towards him, he advanced to her, smiled, and, taking her arm firmly in his hand, led her towards the kitchen saying, ‘Maggie’s just come in. Let’s go and have a natter with her, eh? Her home-spun wisdom has a habit of clarifying things. Oh, to be as uncomplicated as Maggie! What do you say, Jinny? Wouldn’t life be simple if we could accept things like Maggie does?’

  Jenny, seeing him through her blurred vision, thought that at the moment he looked boyish, and that there was even something childlike about his way of thinking, as childlike as his Maggie’s.

  PART FIVE

  MAGGIE

  One

  It was many years since Maggie had been in Newcastle and she felt slightly lost when she walked out of the Central Station but, she reasoned, Northumberland Street would still be in the same place, and St Clement’s Church wasn’t likely to have moved itself. Nevertheless, she noticed, as the bus took her towards St Clement’s, that there had been some changes over the last few years, and also that some were desperately needed still. She alighted from the bus and went along a street that she remembered well, and when she saw the old iron and taggerine heaped up in the little railed gardens in front of the houses she thought to herself, ‘It’s a bulldozer they want along here; you would have thought that they’d have pulled such streets down years ago.’ But still, she had to concede when she came to a square that held towering blocks of new flats that they were getting on with it.

  St Clement’s, as she surmised, was still in the same place. It had always served the poorer quarters and would likely go on doing so, new blocks of flats or no. They had always held confession here on a Thursday night and she hoped to God they still continued to do so, or her journey would have been in vain.

  When she entered the dim church and saw half a dozen people scattered in the pews before the confessional to the right of the door she thanked God; then taking a seat she slowly lowered herself on to the wooden kneeler and prepared herself for confession.

  By the time her turn came there were at least another eight people waiting to go in after her, and for this she also thanked God.

  When she entered the confessional box she had to grope for the arm rest and the kneeler and when she was settled she raised her eyes and saw the outline of the priest’s hand that was cupping his face. His nose protruded beyond the stub of his little finger; it was a fleshy nose as far as she could make out, with wide nostrils. The rest of him was all in shadow, beyond the light of the solitary candle.

  ‘Father, I want to make a confession.’ It wasn’t the set type of approach to the making of a confession, which usually began along such lines as, ‘Pray, Father, give me your blessing for I have sinned.’

  ‘Make your confession, my child.’

  Child is it, she thought. It was nice to hear that again. It was many, many years since she had heard that phrase.

  ‘Make your confession, my child.’ Aw, yes, it was nice, sort of comforting. So she began: ‘I haven’t been inside a church for years, Father.’

  ‘When did you last make your Easter duties?’

  ‘Oh—’ she stopped herself from saying begod! ‘Oh, many a long year since, Father; I’ve lost count.’

  ‘Ten? Twenty years?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve been about twice in that time I should say, but I’ve done no harm to anybody in my life up to recently. I’ve got a sharp tongue, I’ll admit, but I’m loyal, aye, I’m loyal in me way.’

  Maggie stopped here and the priest waited. This certainly wasn’t the usual line he had to listen to. When the penitent didn’t go on he proffered in a whisper, ‘And now you’ve done some wrong to someone?’

  ‘Aye, in a way, Father. Aye, yes, that’s it. To tell you the truth I’ve poisoned a woman.’

  The priest’s middle finger knocked sharply against the end of his nose, and then, his voice lower still, yet the words piercing, he said, ‘You mean you’ve committed a murder?’

  ‘You could say that, Father, but I don’t look upon it like that. It was somethin’ I had to do.’

  ‘Nobody has to commit murder; it—it’s the greatest of sins to take a life.’

  ‘There are different ways of killin’, Father. You can watch someone being killed slowly each day. An’ you can see them bein’ driven to the limits of their endurance until you expect them in their turn to kill…’

  ‘Was she old?’

  ‘No. No, she was youngish, but she was bad. And she’d got a disease.’

  ‘And you killed her because of that?’ There was the sound of horror in the young priest’s voice.

  ‘No, not because of that, but because her husband had been goin’ to divorce her because he couldn’t stand any more. And then she goes and gets
this thing from goin’ with other men. And I could see him sacrificing the rest of his life to her because he blamed himself for what had happened afore, or what hadn’t happened for years atween them. It’s all the way you look at it. You see, they hadn’t been like man and wife from shortly after they were married, and I could see him goin’ on until he was an old man tryin’ to make amends an’ being broken on the wheel of her. I just couldn’t let it happen.’

  There was a long pause before the priest asked, ‘How did you do this?’

  ‘I got some sleeping tablets and I mixed them up in a glass, and I woke her out of her sleep—she’d already had a few of them—and I made her drink it.’

  ‘This is terrible, terrible.’

  ‘Perhaps you bein’ a priest of God may think like that. It’s understandable.’

  ‘Don’t you? Aren’t you laden with remorse?’

  ‘Truthfully speaking, no, Father.’

  ‘Then why have you come to confession?’

  ‘Well, I thought I’d make me peace with God, because this is atween Him and me entirely. He knows the rights and wrongs of the case. He knows me motives. He knows that there was no personal feeling in it at all, for although I didn’t like her, I wouldn’t have got rid of her on me own account. He knows the real reason why I did it, that’s why I’ve come.’

  The priest was stunned by this logic. He knew that the person on the other side of the grid was no longer young, over middle-age, perhaps old, yet the voice gave no indication of age, for it was strong and vibrant. He had a duty here that was clear; he must make her see that this crime, for crime it was, was not only between her and God, but between her and man, her and justice. He said to her, ‘I must talk to you further about this. Would you be willing to see me after confession?’

  She paused for a moment before saying, ‘Yes, Father, as you will.’