Seven Lean Years

by Celia Fremlin

  And as if all this delay—and the smell of the frying mackerel as well—wasn’t enough, Father must needs treacherously entertain the doctor with a zestful account of his new method of getting the garden roller up the steps by the rockery.

  He didn’t think of it as treachery, of course, Ellen had to remind herself. It wouldn’t have occurred to him that she was involved in the matter in any way. If he had any ulterior motive at all in his unfortunate choice of subject it was simply to put the whipper-snapper young doctor in his place—mustn’t lift weights, indeed!

  And, after all, the doctor didn’t reproach Ellen with carelessness about her father’s health. On the contrary, he congratulated her on the old man’s looks; and when, in the course of conversation, she mentioned Cousin Laura’s startling arrival all on her own, he suggested of his own accord that he should have a look at her and make sure that the escapade hadn’t done any harm.

  And it hadn’t. The old lady was rather tired, of course, and should have a good rest this afternoon; and wouldn’t it be possible for her to stay here until her son got back? Though still affable, the doctor seemed a little shocked at the idea that Cousin Laura was to have been left alone in Leonard’s flat; and he did not endorse Leonard’s opinion that Mrs Clarke was a suitable person to look after her.

  “She needs more than just her meals and her bed made, you know,” he told Ellen, a little reproachfully. “She needs to be among people she knows. All alone in a strange place like that—she’ll get very confused and depressed, and, at her age, she may not pick up again very easily. Surely you could find room for her here, just for two or three days?”

  What could Ellen say to all this but “Yes”? Any other answer would have sounded—to herself as well as to her hearer—grossly selfish. Leonard’s misgivings, when you contemplated trying to explain them seriously to a third person, seemed simply silly—a lame excuse for getting out of an obvious duty.

  And so it was arranged that Cousin Laura should stay. Ellen decided that the simplest thing would be to give up her own room to the old lady, who needed to be on the ground floor, and to sleep in the attic herself. The roof was still unmended, of course; but it didn’t look as if it could possibly be going to rain during the next few days. If it did, then she would just have to move the bed away from the leaky places; it wouldn’t be too bad, just for two or three nights. And it was lucky, really, that the builders never came for months after you asked them; if they’d been up there already, pulling the roof to pieces and filling all the attics with tools, it really would have been awkward.

  And that afternoon, of course, the builders came.

  CHAPTER XI

  MELISSA COULD BE a great help at times of crisis. She arrived home just as the four builders were climbing back into their lorry after having explained to Ellen, a little reprovingly, that the ladder they had brought wasn’t long enough to reach the roof of her house. Even at its full extension, the foreman elaborated, with gentle remonstrance; and did she know about the dry-rot in the joists under the gutters? He did not mention anything about coming again; but as he and his men had completely filled one of the small attics with tools and equipment, and had left four gigantic boards leaning against the banisters in the hall, Ellen guessed that there was at least a 50–50 chance of them turning up again some time or other. She was glad, therefore, to have Melissa’s organising ability on hand to help solve the problem of coping with Cousin Laura’s visit and the invasion of the builders at the same time.

  Melissa’s first, and most helpful, contribution was to drive round to Leonard’s flat to collect Cousin Laura’s things and to explain to the greatly relieved and therefore only perfunctorily offended Mrs Clarke that her responsibilities were at an end. Her second, as it turned out, less helpful idea was that Ellen would be more comfortable on the couch in the billiard room than in the spare bed in the attic. With the unreasoning fervour of the born organiser (unreasoning since Ellen’s choice of bedroom couldn’t possibly affect Melissa in any way whatever) she pointed out that the attics would be quite uninhabitable while the roof was being done; and that the billiard room would be ideally convenient since it was on the ground floor, near the old people, and anyway was never used for anything, least of all billiards.

  Of course, it was the very fact that the billiard room was never used for anything that made it quite exceptionally inconvenient, or so it seemed to Ellen. A very few weeks of complete disuse is usually sufficient to fill an average room moderately full of worn-out mattresses, fireguards, bicycles, and reading lamps that don’t work; and the billiard room had been unused for years and years. However, Melissa, in the grip of an altruistic enthusiasm in which kindness and officiousness were so equally blent as to paralyse all protest, volunteered to clear the billiard-room couch of its old boots, broken fishing tackle, and the remains of the croquet set, and to help Ellen make up a bed on it.

  And this was where the trouble started; for it was Melissa’s brisk, clattering movements, her sensible but rather high-pitched exhortations, that attracted Father’s attention. He came in from the garden, shears in hand, just as the second sheet was being spread across the couch.

  Beds! Beds in the Billiard Room! Never had Father heard of such a thing! Were they out of their minds? The Billiard Room! Why, even that evacuee woman twenty years ago hadn’t dared to suggest that!

  “But Uncle! Don’t be so absurd!” Melissa’s short laugh was shriller than usual as she faced an obstinacy at least as powerful as her own aggressive common sense. “It’s only for a few nights. And anyway, you can’t call it a billiard room now—just look at it! It’s a junk room—it has been for years. Why, you can’t even see the billiard table under all those boxes and things!”

  A more ill-chosen remark could hardly have been imagined. For ten years and more Mr Fortescue must have been comfortably blinding himself to the gradual accumulation of objects on his precious billiard table. Now, suddenly, he saw them; and once they had been seen of course they must be removed. Now. Immediately. Such desecration must not go on for another hour.

  The ensuing brief conflict between obstinacy and logic ended, as Ellen could have told them both from the start, in her, Ellen, clearing the billiard table by herself, while Melissa went off upstairs in a huff to cook her family’s supper. Father stayed behind poking about in search of ancient balls and cues, and lecturing Ellen on the care of a billiard cloth; and finally, as his temper improved, and extensive areas of green baize became visible, he began demonstrating to her some of the breaks and cannons at which he could still display considerable skill.

  His good temper continued, much to Ellen’s relief, throughout the evening, and even carried him over the inevitable moment when it dawned on him that Cousin Laura was actually staying with them. Not that this fact had been hidden from him—indeed, Ellen had already told him of it twice, and he had already encountered Cousin Laura several times. But apart from enquiring balefully if it was she who had gone off with the preserving thermometer (which was again mislaid) he had made no comment, apparently relegating Cousin Laura to the same convenient non-existence as was habitually enjoyed by his tenants.

  But when he came into the morning-room after supper, and found her already settled in one of the deep armchairs in front of the empty summer grate, he seemed quite pleased. He offered her a glass of whisky, and, by way of consolidating his welcome, began lecturing her, too, about the care of billiard tables.

  And so Ellen left them with an easy mind, and slipped off to the kitchen to wash up and to put things ready for Mr Fortescue’s early tea—if everything was at hand, he was less likely to wake the Butlers with his multifarious early-morning chores. She then went to her own room and arranged Cousin Laura’s things in the top drawer of the chest of drawers, put a hot water bottle in the bed—she thought the old lady would find this comforting even on a summer night—and then returned to the morning-room.

  The atmosphere now was not merely amiable—it was positively jubilant.
It seemed that Cousin Laura had been telling Father that she wanted him to be executor to her will, and he was delighted, both at the idea that she was going to die first, and also at the thought of the job itself. Father still had a very good head for business matters, Ellen reflected, and, apart from his tendency to keep important documents distributed among all the pockets of all his clothes, would manage very well.

  Ellen noticed now that Adela was in the room—the child often wandered down in the evenings when she had finished her homework, to chatter to Ellen about the current excitements and disasters at school. But this evening—probably awed by the presence of the unfamiliar great-aunt—she was not chattering. Instead, she was sitting quietly on the window-seat, sucking an iced lolly and turning over the pages of the Radio Times. The lolly was not actually dripping on to anything, but was looking continually and unnervingly as if it was just going to; it was a measure of Father’s good humour tonight that he had not already summarily expelled her from the room. But then, Adela had probably accurately assessed the state of her great-uncle’s temper before ever venturing in with such an object. She must have heard all the conversation about Cousin Laura’s will, but Ellen couldn’t see that it mattered. The idea of death probably came as naturally to her as it must to Cousin Laura herself.

  Did it? To either of them? Why this assumption that the very old and the very young are endowed with a special wisdom, a clarity of vision, denied to other people? It was somehow reassuring to assume that they were—but was there any evidence for it …?

  “Puis-je put on le wireless, s’il vous plaît, Aunt Ellen?”

  “Y-yes, I suppose so. But keep it down, Adela; the others may not want to listen.” She wondered if she should reprove Adela for this silly pseudo-French way of speaking; Melissa always did. But then Melissa must be more irritated by it, hearing it all the time—and she didn’t have to worry about whether her irritation was spinsterish or not. One of the wonderful things about being a mother, Ellen reflected, must be that you could afford to be bored by your children.

  Adela obeyed. A faint little tinkle of sound saddened the air of the room, and a silvery thread of a voice rose into the twilight:

  “Oft in the stilly night….”

  This programme of sentimental old-time ballads that Adela had picked—or had she lighted on it by accident?—took on a strange poignancy in the presence of this aged couple. Hadn’t these been the pop songs of their youth—the framework of their romances? What was it like to hear them again after sixty or seventy years? What memories of vanished youth, of long-dead gaiety, were coming back into this room right now?

  None, apparently. Father was still scowling over his patience cards, muttering imprecations on the three of clubs. Cousin Laura was lying back in her chair, her eyes closed, her face impassive.

  It was Adela who was crying.

  “… The smiles, the tears of bygone years

  The words of love once spoken….”

  Blissful tears of second-hand sadness were pouring down her cheeks as she revelled in nostalgia—perhaps on behalf of the two old people sitting here, perhaps on behalf of a third old person; an aged Adela who would one day sit as they were sitting now. And how could you laugh at her, or claim that she was indulging a vicarious emotion? For wasn’t time indeed passing for her just as relentlessly as it was for the old? As she sat there, silhouetted against the greenish sky, why should she not be aware of the passing of life, of youth, of her childhood nearly gone….

  “Ad-e-la! Bedtime!”

  Melissa’s voice rang down over the banisters and across the hall; and then her sandals could be heard clicking away at top speed, and a door slammed, putting her safely out of range of any argument that Adela might decide to yell back. It was an effective technique; and of course it wasn’t Melissa who would have to discuss its side-effects with Mrs Butler tomorrow morning.

  But this time Adela didn’t argue. She moved slowly from the window-seat, and, with tears still flowing, her iced lolly still not quite finished, she drifted from the room—her slow steps changing to thunderous leaps, taking the stairs three at a time, as ordinary life in the shape of bedtime and unfinished homework swept down to meet her.

  Now, suddenly, Ellen noticed that Cousin Laura was crying too; slow, sparse tears from the corners of her closed eyes. Ellen reproached herself for having imagined the old lady indifferent to the melancholy songs.

  “Shall I switch it off, Cousin Laura? Is it upsetting you?” she asked hastily; and the old lady nodded. She couldn’t think what Ellen meant, for the light wasn’t even on yet, so how could you switch it off? But it would never do to let Ellen know how homesick she felt for the nursing-home; for the cool, familiar sheets, for the kindly voices telling her exactly when to go to bed; the capable hands urging her from her chair when she was inclined to dawdle. They would never have left her sitting up like this, hour after hour, not even knowing what the time was.

  But Ellen had been so kind … was taking so much trouble … she must never know that one felt like this. And anyway, one wouldn’t in the morning. It would all seem all right again in the morning.

  CHAPTER XII

  LAURA LAY WIDE AWAKE in the unfamiliar bed, and again repeated to herself, as she had learned to do of late: “It will be all right in the morning.” In the morning she would remember everything; would understand exactly why she was here and what she was supposed to be doing. In the morning she would be in charge of herself again. It was hard to believe it now, but she knew by experience that it would be so.

  Would it, though? This time? For it was awful not knowing exactly how the morning worked in this house—what time people got up, whether they brought you a cup of tea, who was supposed to help you dress. Laura had felt like this at Leonard’s flat too, but somehow not quite so badly; it was this second move within a few days that was so bewildering. Besides, Leonard’s flat had been completely strange, whereas this house—the house that she had known more intimately than she would ever again know any place, or person, as long as she lived—this house was fluid and unpredictable as a ghost. It was familiar and menacingly unfamiliar at the same time: it was like two photographs printed one on top of the other. To live in it now was like living in the fourth dimension with only three-dimensional powers—and failing ones at that—to guide you.

  But it was fun to be sleeping in the library all the same! Fancy Ellen’s having turned the library into a bedroom! What a daring thing to have done! And where had she put all the books—and the shelves too, for that matter? For only one wall of shelves remained; there were cupboards, now, all along by the door, and a big wardrobe facing the window. What would Papa have said if he could see it now! Laura gave a little shiver of mixed delight and guilt; why, as children they hadn’t been allowed in the library at all, and now here she was lying in bed there, and all her clothes thrown over a chair. Over a library chair!—Laura just couldn’t get over it.

  But how quiet the house was now! In the old days there had been murmurs of sound from everywhere; the tinkle of china and soft laughter from the guests in the drawing-room; the solid, satisfying thumps and rustles that Nurse made in the day-nursery across the landing; Bessie’s heavy breathing in the nearby bed. And always, eternal as the sea, had sounded the muffled, ceaseless clatter from the kitchen quarters where six servants had once reigned. The six servants were gone now, the baize door that had blurred the sound of them was gone. Nurse—Mama—the elegantly laughing guests—all gone, in their graves these fifty years, and Laura was left, alone in an empty house.

  When you are very, very old, the fears of childhood begin to return. As you lie and stare at the dark shape of the curtain against the window it once again begins to stir, to billow inwards, as it used to eighty years ago. Once again you hold your breath, and your eyes seem to bulge out into the darkness as you watch for the edge to twitch a little at the touch of a very white, very tiny hand. How did you know, all those years ago, that the hand would be so white and tiny,
and very cold? And that the stunted, spidery body it belonged to would move stiffly, like a jointed doll, as it clambered down over the sill, making the curtain stir and bulge ever more wildly? And now you could just begin to hear the eager, cruel breath, whistling through teeth too big for the shrunken face, white and pinched with evil….

  Laura had never actually seen the face, of course; nor the stiff, squat body; nor even the cold, tiny hand. For always, just as the white knuckles were about to appear round the edge of the curtain, she had screamed.

  “Nurse! Nurse! Nurse!”

  The evil thing had heard the all-powerful words, and it had vanished, driven away by the stout, rustling, scolding presence that brought with it a lighted candle, sharp words, and infinite, immeasurable safety….

  Laura had sometimes wondered, in the terrible depths of those nights when she was six years old, what would happen if Nurse ever didn’t come? If Nurse, perhaps, was dead? …

  And now Nurse was dead. She had been dead for more than half a century, and all that time the evil thing could have been waiting and growing unmolested….

  Could have? Perhaps had been? Laura recalled that only the other day Leonard had been saying that psychologists have now proved that such imaginary fears of evil presences are really fears of oneself—of one’s own wickedness—one’s own cruelty. He hadn’t been saying it to her, of course—he wouldn’t expect that anyone of her generation would understand such a remark. Of course, he couldn’t be expected to know that people had been talking about the “new” discoveries of psychology in exactly the same way when Laura was a young woman. Odd, and rather pathetic, this perennial obstinate novelty of some kinds of idea: generation after generation extract them from their perfunctory studies, just as generation after generation bring back the same souvenirs from Blackpool.