by A. J. Cronin
For all her agitation, for all the slightness of her figure, she had an air almost formidable. With a tightening of her throat and a quickening of her heart she entered Anna’s room.
Anna was in bed – now she never rose for breakfast – lying with her hair strewn darkly upon the pillow, the marks of sleep unerased about her eyes, her nightdress open, edged at the neck with a frill of lace. Her breasts showed round, her under lip that interminable fullness, her face no shadow of surprise at this unusual and wholly unexpected entry.
Silently Lucy sat down upon a chair: so close she could see the points of yellow flecking the brown of Anna’s eyes; and in silence the two looked at each other steadily.
‘You’re not up yet?’ said Lucy at length, calling on all her strength to keep the quiver from her voice, to make the words deliberate, cold.
‘So it would seem,’ answered Anna easily.
‘You take things very easily.’ It came more quickly, louder than she intended.
‘Isn’t it the best way?’
Lucy drew herself together; moistened her lips, which felt dry and stiff.
‘I cannot understand you, Anna,’ said she with a suppressed intensity.
‘What is there to understand?’
‘You have no occupation, no standards, no religion – nothing. You exist solely for your own pleasure.’
‘What’s life for?’ said Anna carelessly. ‘Get what you can out of it. It’s a race for what you want. And the devil take the hindmost.’
‘So that’s what you believe,’ said Lucy sharply. ‘That explains your attitude.’
In answer Anna smiled – was it a smile, that expression mingling indifference, amusement, contempt, which emanated entirely from her unresentful eyes? At that look, so exasperating in its negligence, Lucy turned pale.
‘So that’s your idea of life,’ she persisted in a hard voice. ‘You haven’t a single loyalty.’
‘And have you?’
‘I have my husband,’ stammered Lucy, with a sudden vivid flush. ‘And my son. And – and my religion.’
‘The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen,’ said Anna with a sort of meditative mockery.
There was a sharp pause, during which Lucy felt a sudden uprising of all the restrained and accumulated emotion of the past week.
‘That’s horrible!’ she cried out. ‘ Simply horrible! How can you talk like that? It’s sordid – it’s blasphemous. You make a fool of everything in life that’s good and noble.’ Swept away by her own emotion, she used the final word without self-consciousness.
Anna raised herself upon her elbow, her manner suddenly scornful, her voice harsher than before.
‘Don’t make me sick,’ she exclaimed with unexpected vehemence. ‘All that sentimental mush. You’re like the rest of them – standing on the wrong foot. The sanctity of marriage! The beauty of motherhood! What is it when all’s said and done? You marry for something you’re afraid to get other ways. Then, because of that something, you have a kid. That’s how life begins. The voice that breathed o’er Eden.’ She paused, and threw an ineffable derision into her stare. ‘Isn’t it sweet? And as for the other, you may kill yourself looking after your nice little son and in the end he’ll turn and spit in your eye. And that last piece of clap-trap. The immortality of the soul! Wait till you die – then you’ll find out you’ve been chasing balloons.’
‘How dare you talk like that?’ gasped Lucy, quivering with anger. ‘How dare you? I’ll not have it.’
‘Not have it! That’s just your trouble. You squeeze the balloon that hard you’re, going to burst it one of these days – then you’ll find your fancy notions up in the air, like smoke.’
‘I’ll see them go before I believe you,’ threw back Lucy in a voice strained by her exasperation. ‘I’d rather die than have your idea of life – your – your explanation!’ Abruptly she paused, strung to an irresistible impulse. ‘But when you’re about it – can you explain this?’ she exclaimed; and, suddenly stretching out her hand, she opened the green box upon the dressing-table.
But the dramatic gesture was entirely ineffectual – the case was empty. And all at once Anna laughed outright, her unusual, harsh, scornful laugh; her whole manner was unusual, her habitual mildness gone, her full eyes alight, she seemed equally ready to give and to receive.
‘That was real funny,’ she said. ‘No, I chucked the photo in the fire the very day after you spied it out.’
A small spot of colour now burned high on Lucy’s cheek, and her eyes burned too, with a steady anger.
‘I’m glad you find it amusing,’ she cried. ‘Perhaps you’ll tell me the joke.’
‘It’s gone stale now. Not worth the telling.’
‘You never did say much about it, I understand.’
‘No, sure enough I didn’t.’
‘You don’t need to,’ cried Lucy, strung to an intolerable pitch. ‘I know all about you – and the child you had.’
‘Well, it was me that had it,’ said Anna mockingly. ‘You don’t have to worry.’
There was a pause while Lucy, outraged, choking back her indignation, clenched her hands and fixed the other with a determined eye.
‘You’re going to tell me;’ she declared in a desperate voice, ‘something that I want to know.’
‘Yes?’
‘Yes! Why did you come here at all?’
‘You asked me, didn’t you!’
‘I didn’t know you then.’
‘And do you know me now?’ The words, provocative, levelled with a deadly irony, made Lucy flinch, and again that frightful aggravation welled up violently in her. She cried out fiercely:
‘What does Frank mean to you?’
‘Well – I’ve always liked Frank,’ answered Anna, in a reasonable, taunting voice. ‘When I came here I’d almost forgotten. But you – you’ve sort of made me realise it again. If it hadn’t been for you, I don’t believe I’d have taken a bit of notice. No, ’deed and I wouldn’t.’
‘He’s my husband, you understand,’ said Lucy in a low, vibrating tone.
‘Does that mean that you own him – body and soul and divinity? You won’t let him out to graze occasionally?’
‘It means that I love him. Sneer as much as you like. I don’t care.’ A note of defiance crept into her tone. ‘I don’t care what you think. I’m not ashamed of it. Even if he was mixed up with you in the past, it makes no difference.’
‘Then why worry?’
A look that was dangerous flared into Lucy’s eyes. Her lips quivered; it seemed as though she might fly at Anna.
‘This,’ she cried out. ‘This is how you return the hospitality I offered you. You’ve come here, you’ve traded on something that’s past and forgotten, you’ve estranged my husband from me – yes, you’ve done your very utmost to take Frank away from me.’
For a moment Anna calmly returned that stare, then slowly the old look drifted into her face.
‘You’re all wrong,’ she said evenly. ‘I’ve done nothing. You’ve done it all yourself.’ She paused, turned her head, and gazed out of the window. ‘I admit I did try to shake Frank up a bit. He looked that much as if he belonged to you I thought he needed it. But I’ve done no more.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ panted Lucy. ‘You’re lying. There was something between you. For the last time I ask you to tell me.’
‘What good would it be?’ said Anna negligently, ‘ You’ve just said it. You wouldn’t believe me in any case.’
‘If you don’t,’ threw back Lucy in a suffocating voice, ‘you’ll – you’ll leave my house today!’
‘Well,’ said Anna reflectively, ‘I knew we were coming to that. It’s easy enough done.’
Speechless, Lucy faced the other, fighting to control that sudden inward rush of intolerable resentment. It was the last straw! No longer could the same house contain this woman and herself. Abruptly she rose.
‘You’ll go then,’ she said in a low voice, ‘ and at once. Tha
t’s the best way. There’s a train at twelve.’
‘I hadn’t meant to stay more than a week when I came,’ said Anna slowly. ‘Just think that over.’
Without a word Lucy spun round; the door closed behind her with a snap. Her face was pale, almost drawn, as she went downstairs. She had done it – Anna was going – but strangely, she had no sense of victory. Instead, she had a curiously dull feeling of distress.
‘She’s inhuman.’ she thought bitterly, ‘quite inhuman!’ To accuse her of creating this frightful situation, she who loved Frank, who had sought merely to defend the integrity of her home. Yet a dry sob rose in her throat. She had to pause in the hall, her hand pressed to her side, before she entered the kitchen.
‘Netta,’ she said quickly, her head averted, ‘ run along to Frew’s and ask them to send a cab.’
Netta’s red hands moved slowly to her apron strings.
‘She’s not – is she going?’ And her tone epitomised her surprise.
‘Go and get the cab,’ answered Lucy, in a strange subdued voice.
Netta went out; returned; and thereafter the cab arrived and stood for a long time significantly at the door: the cabman upon the box crouched beneath his hat, the horse stretching its neck towards the vision of a nosebag, striking an impatient shoe upon the metalled road.
At last Anna came down, calm, negligent, indifferently averse; and smiling – was it a smile? – that enigmatic mingling of amusement and contempt. Now, as at the moment of her entry, she conveyed that same strange sense of stillness.
‘Here I am, you see,’ she declared lightly. ‘ Doing what you want. Now you’ve got it all your own way.’
In the half-light of the hall Lucy’s face looked small, white, with eyes strained to a dark intensity. It struck at the rooted instincts of her being to do this thing; but it was, she knew, the right the only thing to do.
‘Good-bye,’ said she, feeling the violent beating of her heart. And she put out her hand. But Anna did not take it.
The jarvey, activated at last, staggered out with the trunk upon his back.
‘Good-bye, then,’ said Anna. She halted a moment on the step, then over her shoulder she remarked: ‘ You’ll think it strange. But I can’t help feeling sorry for you. Don’t forget what I said about that balloon.’ Then, with a crunching of the wheels, she was gone.
Lucy turned with a painful constriction of her throat and closed the door. A faint elusive perfume, all that remained of Anna’s presence, drifted to her nostrils with a sickening sweetness, and almost hurriedly she moved, went unknowingly into the front room. She felt weak suddenly, and there was a vague trembling in her limbs, but, relieved of that oppressive presence, she felt calmer, lighter somehow in her spirit. Yes, she was relieved, immeasurably assuaged. With lips still quivering she stood, one arm leaning upon the mantelpiece, gazing into the fire. The flames leaped upwards – alive they seemed and eager, soaring towards some ultimate desire. For a moment, born of her agitation, the old intangible longing gripped her, that curiously poignant yearning that often took her, welling upwards, as it were, from something long, long past. What was that desire? Bent forward, the light dancing warmly within her dark eyes, swept by that flowing qualm, she was a figure ageless and universal. What was her desire? It was, it must be, her love for Frank, her wish to see him happy, secure from the danger which had threatened him.
And she had made him secure. Out of that emotion came conviction. Yes, she had done well. She knew it. And through all her agitation she felt suddenly appeased.
Chapter Ten
That evening before Frank returned from business she made an especial effort with her preparations for his reception. In the afternoon, impelled by some urgent need, she had cleaned her house until it shone: Anna’s room particularly she had scoured and polished, changing the bed-linen, flinging wide the windows letting the breeze lift the curtains and pour in freshly from the sea, removing every trace of that hateful and contaminating presence.
Something symbolic was in that action: a purification of the temple of her home. And now, with this same straining eagerness, she cooked his favourite dish, tilted his slippers to warm against the fender, assumed carefully her grey voile, did her hair with unusual care. She took infinite pains with her appearance – unique solicitude in one who dressed usually with brisk severity! – and in the end she was not satisfied. She felt that she was ‘ at her worst’, that Frank might think her lips pale, her face pinched, at this crisis when she desired most ardently to attract him. Turning from her mirror with a faint sigh, she descended and went into the front room, where she began nervously, needlessly, to arrange the Goss china on the corner bracket.
How unendurable these last few days had been, how frightful this situation she had been forced to meet. But she had met it, had faced the worst, and it was not insupportable. She had confronted the situation and she had mastered it. Anna was gone. And Frank was here, her own, ready with her to forget the past, and to recapture the rapture of their happiness. Ah! She was thinking of Frank, and of the fact that he and she would be together, alone in the house: a feeling at once so poignant and so rare it moved her with a tremulous appeal.
Gone now was the immediate effect of the recent departure, with its momentary assuagement of her nervous tension. Gone was that subsequent quiescence, and in its place had come an eager tenderness, an emotional impulse to forgive, to love and to be loved. Perhaps she had been severe during the past week: a little sharp to Frank; and rude, especially rude to Anna; torn by the pangs of her suspicion that had been supremely natural. But by accepting the actuality she had shown her fortitude, and now by her own act she had achieved, if not a victory, at least salvation – the salvation of her happiness, of Frank’s happiness, of her home. Had she not heard somewhere of women in history – or was it legend? – women who fought to protect their homes, who cut away their breasts so they might draw the bow. A long time past. Yet she could understand. That was she. She had defended her home, and now, with inevitable reaction, she celebrated by a sweet surrender, not to circumstance, but to her love.
Nervously, keyed to a high expectancy, she waited. He was late. On most Saturdays he had an afternoon of leisure, but today he had been required by Lennox to journey to Leith Docks in connection with arrangements for the delivery of consignments from Holland. And, though her gaze turned often towards the clock, it was close on five when, listening intently, she heard the familiar click of the front gate. At once she jumped to her feet, a faint flush rising then fading quickly from her cheek. Although she did not go into the hall – that would have been too full a revelation of her altered disposition – she stood, her eyes alight, her lips parted, awaiting the moment of his entry.
It was, as usual, an unobtrusive entry: his head was down, his shoulders forward, his air the slight sardonic mildness that was he.
‘Tea ready?’ he enquired, rubbing, his hands with a quiet rustling sound. ‘Turned colder outside, it has. And a mist coming off the water fit to choke you.’
‘It is colder,’ she answered quickly, eagerly – yet it took a powerful effort to control the tremor in her voice. ‘ But I’ve got a fine hot shepherd’s pie for you.’
He looked at her sharply, surprised, but, withdrawing his eyes, he advanced to the fire and began to warm himself without speech.
‘Have you hard a hard day?’ she asked warmly.
‘Not too bad,’ he answered non-committally. ‘It was a longish trip. Just like L., asking me to do it Saturday.’ He paused, seeing more fully the favourable import of her manner.
‘Get the boy away all right?’
‘Yes,’ she said, pulling the bell. ‘He got off nicely.’
Tea and toast and pie were brought by Netta, hot and crisp and savoury. Then in silence Netta withdrew.
‘Sit in,’ said Lucy from the head of the table.
He raised his head sharply, as though questioning his first perception of her mood.
‘But Anna?’ he exc
laimed. ‘You don’t want to begin without her.’
‘She won’t be in for tea,’ she answered, her eyes averted, her hand which poised the sugar-tongs taken by a faint tremor. ‘She went out some time ago.’
‘Went out?’
‘Yes.’ With an effort she achieved a casual air. She would exhibit her action in her own time, and not a second before. And, manifestly surprised, he sat in, accepted his cup, and stirred it thoughtfully.
‘Has anything gone wrong?’ he said at length.
The last few days had turned him more moodily mistrustful of the universe.
‘Nothing at all, Frank,’ she answered, flushing. ‘It’s the other way round. I hope we’re going to get things right now.’
Slowly he picked up his knife and fork.
‘I hope so,’ he said significantly.
The meal progressed, and with its progression the colour upon her cheeks intensified. Handing his second helping of pie, she remarked suddenly:
‘It’s nice to be by ourselves again, don’t you think?’
With one eye on the paper that lay beside his plate, he nodded, as though merely half hearing her question.
