Seven Lean Years

by Celia Fremlin

  “Oh, don’t harp Roger,” snapped Melissa cheerfully. “And anyway, it was the Butlers complaining about it, not me. I only told you what Ellen said they’d said. No, it’s much more interesting than that. Our Ellen’s going to marry Leonard at last! Isn’t it splendid? I never thought she’d bring it off, did you?” With brisk and unembarrassed zest she recounted to him the substance of their conversation, including most of her own observations and advice.

  But to Ellen’s dismay, and Melissa’s discomfiture, Roger did not share her enthusiasm.

  “You’re not, Ellen, are you?” he asked, turning to her with a look of concern. “But the chap’s insufferable! Self-important. Neurotic——”

  “Well, who isn’t?” broke in Melissa before Ellen could speak. “And as for self-importance, my dear Roger——”

  “Hush, my sweet. Save your compliments till we’re alone. This is Ellen’s problem, and I want to concentrate on it. What on earth makes you think you’ll be happy with him, Ellen?”

  “Well …” Ellen found herself at a loss. It was fortunate that Melissa hastened to answer for her:

  “Oh, Roger, do be practical! She’ll be happy enough. And it’s high time she was married. She’s thirty-four, you know—think of her complexes and repressions!”

  “I don’t think Ellen has many complexes and repressions,” remarked Roger mildly, spearing up a sausage on his fork. “Besides—”

  “No complexes!” Melissa was nonplussed at the idea that a spinster of thirty-four might not have any complexes. “But of course she has! Haven’t you, Ellen? Look at the way you never get into rages and shout at people—not even at Uncle Richard, and I should have thought he’s enough to set the very saucepans shouting on the shelves. Why, you’re almost as repressed as Mrs Butler, with her icy politeness——”

  “But you know, Melissa,” argued Roger through his mouthful of sausage, “you’re begging the question. I don’t think Mrs Butler is icily polite because she’s repressed. I think she does it because she’s good at it—she finds it makes people give in to her. You, Melissa, are good at shouting—that’s the way you find you can make people give in to you. Everyone naturally uses the weapons they’re good with and not the ones they’re bad with. It’s common sense, not complexes. What do you think, O Repressed One?”

  Ellen smiled a little wryly.

  “I think,” she said, “That one of the nicest things about being married will be that I shall be able to be repressed whenever I like without anyone lecturing me about it, or even noticing. All the while you’re a spinster people watch out for inhibitions to appear in you like ladders in a stocking. But, Roger, you’re all wrong about Leonard—you don’t really know him….”

  “O.K. O.K. Sorry, I shouldn’t have blackguarded the fellow like that. But, honestly, Ellen, it was a bit of a shock. I know it sounds silly to say it’s sudden, after a seven-year engagement. But all the same, it is sudden. You know it is.”

  Ellen did know. The uneasy knowledge had been ringing in her brain ever since she had laid down the telephone receiver; but she wished Roger would not remind her of it just now, just when she was beginning to feel confident.

  “I’ll bet you anything,” continued Roger, pursuing his train of thought, “that you’ll find the old lady is leaving you all her money, and Leonard has just discovered it. I’d check on that if I were you. I really would.”

  “She isn’t, then!” declared Ellen triumphantly. “She’s leaving everything to Leonard—she told me so, only today. And anyway——”

  She stopped, realising that she had been on the verge of revealing Leonard’s secret. To her surprise, Melissa finished the sentence for her:

  “Anyway, the poor old thing hasn’t anything to leave. Didn’t I ever tell you, Roger? She’s quite dependent on Leonard, only he doesn’t let her know it. More fool him,” she added complacently, arranging the new zip in place on Adela’s school skirt.

  “Oh, well.” Roger shrugged his shoulders. “I suppose you know your own mind, Ellen; and of course the fellow has his good points. But do make sure it’s a wife he wants, and not just an audience for his self-pity—shut up, Melissa, if I’d just wanted an audience for my self-pity I’d have chosen a more sympathetic one than you! Do think about it, Ellen. Such a rôle can be flattering to a woman for a time, but does it add up to a worth-while life work? Sorry—here I go again. But honestly, when I think of all the nice, ordinary, kindly men you might have chosen—might still choose if you’d only look around more, and stop behaving like a donkey chained to a post! Oh, well. Who am I to act Dutch Uncle? Look what I picked for myself—sitting there on her backside while her husband starves to death! Hey! Melissa! What have we after the cold sausages? Nice bit of cold suet pudding?”

  Melissa made a hideous face at him.

  “Greedy brute,” she remarked amicably; to which he replied, equally without rancour: “Lazy bitch!” and wandered out into the kitchen, whistling, to forage for himself.

  Ellen suddenly felt very solitary. If Leonard had miraculously appeared at that moment she would have flung herself into his arms, all doubts forgotten. But he didn’t.

  CHAPTER XVI

  UP IN THE Rose Room that night Ellen went to bed early, while the luminous summer sky still gave enough light to read by. She had hoped and planned that this should be so, for up here on the top floor the electric light had been cut off. The wiring was in a dangerous condition, the builders’ foreman had informed her, with sombre relish, and it wasn’t fair to ask the men to work there under the roof with bits of exposed wire in a state like that, now was it? But of course not, Ellen had agreed; it must be turned off at once. Of course, the foreman had continued, ignoring her interruption, he was sorry to inconvenience her, but really, you couldn’t expect men to work under such conditions, now could you? In vain Ellen agreed with him again, and assured him that it wasn’t even inconvenient since the attics were on a different circuit from the rest of the house: he merely pointed out to her, reprovingly, that what she didn’t realise was that it wasn’t just the risk that one man might get an electric shock, but that the whole place might go on fire, and then where would they all be, right up there on the roof? For several minutes Ellen continued to beg him to turn the electricity off, while he continued to explain how impossible it would be for the men to continue their work if it was left on; until at last, like any minor illness, his grievance ran its course, and he went off to the mains in the cellar with an air of modest triumph at the victory of his rhetoric.

  This evening, Ellen no longer felt annoyed at the memory of his unreasonableness. Indeed, she felt positively grateful to him. For it just showed that all men were unreasonable—if you waited to find one that wasn’t you’d wait all your life. You just had to smile at the silly creatures, and learn to love them as they were.

  What a sensible, Melissa-like thought that was! Ellen seemed to feel her cousin’s vigorous, practical good sense flowing through her own veins, as if it had been administered as an injection….

  How hot it was in this little room! Ellen thrust the small window open as wide as it would go, but there was no breeze; the day’s heat seemed trapped under the low ceiling, and no breath of coolness entered with the pale greenish light from the vast, fading summer sky.

  Ellen had made up the bed with sheets only—the very thought of blankets tonight half stifled her—and the blank white expanse looked bleak and unfinished; she felt quite homesick for her own comfortable room downstairs where she had just settled Cousin Laura.

  For Cousin Laura was still here, after all. Leonard’s fierce protestations that she must not stay here for another hour had curiously weakened when he confronted the old lady herself. To Ellen’s surprise, Cousin Laura had calmly said “I won’t!” to his proposal that she should return to the flat with him. Equally to her surprise, Leonard had given in almost at once. Why, Ellen had thought, anyone would think he was afraid of his stepmother!

  Now, sitting gingerly on the edge
of the bed in darkening room, the same thought came to her again. Was it just her fancy, or was there an odd, uneasy feeling between Leonard and his stepmother? And if there was, then was it something new, or had it always been there …?

  Somehow, as these thoughts revolved in her mind, Ellen found her eyes focused on the old oak chest standing in the shadows under the low, sloping ceiling; and in a sudden, queer flash of insight she knew that the direction of her gaze was not fortuitous. The chest had something to do with the problem. But what? What connection could there possibly be? Her half-forgotten childhood fear of the old chest—what could that possibly have to do with her present problems? It was absurd … yet Ellen’s conviction grew that there was some connection. There was some link … some memory … hovering on the very edge of her consciousness….

  If only she could remember….

  Staring down at the bare, rough boards beneath her feet, Ellen tried to marshall the past before her, to extract from the incoherence and inaccuracy of childhood impressions some core of adult sense.

  Had Leonard been frightened of his stepmother—long ago, as a child? Could he have been? Vague, insubstantial grievances on his part drifted back into Ellen’s mind now—his stepmother had been unfair about this—mean about that—had punished him for the other. Had it amounted to anything more than schoolboy complaining? Gould it possibly have had any serious basis? Wicked stepmothers, of course, belong to fairy tales, but all the same there can be ways of treating a child which fall just short of wickedness…. Ellen could not remember now the details of Leonard’s complaints. While listening with interest—even excitement—at the time, the allegations, whatever they were, had never really registered on her mind. Any more than that bitter, vengeful letter had ever registered…. The discrepancy between the Cousin Laura Ellen actually knew and the woman who must have written that letter had never worried her at all, until——

  Well, until what? Something made Ellen raise her eyes from the floor, and gaze slowly round the room, as if seeking some vital clue. Everything was just as it had always been; the huge old chest with its formidable iron key; the flimsy cane chair; the brown patches of damp among the fading roses on the wallpaper; fading with age, fading, now, in the dying greenish light.

  All at once the heat and the shadowy clutter of the little darkening room seemed to be closing in round her, and Ellen had a horrid sensation of being trapped—a sensation so strong, and yet so irrational, that almost against her will she hurried over to the door and tried it.

  No, it wasn’t locked. Why on earth should it be? There wasn’t even a key to it, so far as she knew. Hurriedly Ellen recrossed the room and scrambled into bed before the dying light should be all gone. She had counted—until now she did not realise how much she had counted—on having some time to read after she got into bed, to take her thoughts off——

  Take her thoughts off what? Ellen realised with annoyance that she was on the point of embarking all over again on the struggle to recapture lost memories; and again it would be fruitless. If a memory is gone it is gone; no point in letting your mind go round in circles all night trying to recall it. Determinedly, and with painful concentration of both brain and eye, Ellen turned to her book. She read, and read, in the ever weakening light, until reading became totally impossible. Then, reluctantly, she put down the book, rolled over on her side, and laid her head on the pillow.

  She had not been quite right in supposing that when a memory is gone it is irrevocably gone. For it can sometimes happen that when you have forgotten something, an address perhaps, or a verse of poetry, you have only to go back to the very place where you were when you learnt it, place yourself in the very same position, facing in the same direction, and with any luck it will all come back to you, accurately and completely.

  Thus it came about that as soon as Ellen’s head touched the pillow, she remembered everything. For it had been while she lay here, in this very bed, in this very position, her eyes fixed on that very stain of damp, curved like an arch from rose to rose, that the thing had happened.

  Or, rather, hadn’t happened; for after all, this memory that had been nagging at the back of her mind for so long could only be the memory of a dream. A very terrible dream it had seemed at the time; one of those rare and dreadful nightmares that seem, for minutes and hours afterwards, to have been unreal not in the sense of being something less than real, but in the sense of being something more.

  It had been a hot summer night, just like this, and Ellen had been nine years old. She had been lying here, just as she was now, with only the sheet covering her: Ellen could remember—indeed she was experiencing all over again—the uneasy, unprotective lightness of such a covering; and yet anything heavier would be intolerable on such a night. The house must have been full of visitors—no doubt that was why she had been put up here to sleep; and Ellen remembered feeling bored rather than nervous. Bored, and restless, and worn out by the endless midsummer twilight with its endless lingering heat, which made sleep seem impossible ever again.

  And yet she must have slept, because when she opened her eyes—or fancied she opened them—something impossible was happening. The door was opening, and gliding through came a figure, which, in her dream, she had fancied was Cousin Laura. It was wearing Cousin Laura’s brown lace dress, her cream-coloured shawl; but it moved strangely, clumsily, as if half-blind; and when Ellen caught a glimpse of the dream face it was grotesque and hideous, like a painted clown. Caught in the paralysis of nightmare, Ellen had seemed to watch as the figure moved across the room. Not towards her—somehow that would have been less terrible—but towards the old chest. Slowly, silently, it had raised the lid; and as it did so, Ellen had known, with the strange certainty of dreams, that the hideous figure intended to put her in the chest, close the great lid on her, and lock it.

  Ellen could not remember exactly how the nightmare had ended. She knew she had screamed and screamed; and the dream figure was there no more; instead there was the real Cousin Laura, comforting and soothing, bringing her downstairs, and declaring that she must not be made to sleep in that dreadful little room any more. Cousin Laura had seemed angry, Ellen remembered, but not with her; to her she had been most kind and sympathetic, and the episode had ended in cocoa and biscuits and a camp bed in Cousin Laura’s own room.

  Queer that the memory should have lain hidden at the back of her mind for so long. Queer, too, that she should have a shadowy, uncertain recollection of something else as well: that somehow mixed up with that nightmare—either before or during it, she could not say—there had been a series of faint vibrations through the house. Sixteen of them, just as there were a few nights ago.

  Determinedly, Ellen turned to face the wall, so that she could no longer see the door, nor the great chest, nor the brown arch among the roses. “Think of something pleasant,” they had always said: and Ellen set herself to think about her impending wedding. It would be great fun telling everyone. “I’m getting married on Saturday,” she would say; and she would hear their congratulations, see the new respect in their eyes. The Butlers—Mrs Hammond—everyone. And that foreman would have to call her “Madam” now, instead of “Miss” in that disagreeable way—not as if he thought she looked too young to be married, but as if he thought she looked too spinsterish. Oh, it would be fun! No need to dread birthdays any more—she would be a “young wife” suddenly instead of an ageing daughter. No more need of skimming through magazines to see if any of the heroines were as old as thirty-four…. No more need of this…. No more fear of that…. No more … No more … Ellen, growing sleepy, did not notice that her bright hopes were all such negative ones. It was almost as if her wedding day was not to be a beginning at all, but an end…. As it is, after all, in the fairy stories.

  CHAPTER XVII

  IT WAS FUN telling everybody, just as she had foreseen. “That’s the ticket!” had commented the milkman approvingly, slapping the bottles down on his favourite bit of sun-baked stone; and: “How very delightfu
l! Oh, I am pleased for you!” had exclaimed Mrs Butler—most magnanimously, considering her recent trials; and even the silent Mr Butler had added his grave congratulations.

  Melissa must have very rapidly spread the news, for by nine o’clock three of Ellen’s acquaintances had rung up to express their delight; and hardly had she laid the phone down after the last of these calls when Howard staggered into the kitchen with a roll of roofing felt.

  “Bit of all right, eh?” he congratulated her, just as he had about the rock cakes; and then, propping his roofing felt against Father’s tub of rhubarb wine, and himself against the dresser, he proceeded to recount in loving detail the circumstances of his younger daughter’s wedding six months ago.

  Since Ellen had heard about this daughter’s projected marriage at the time (it was the period of the dry rot under the stairs) and it had been presented then as a shattering family disaster, she took a minute or two to realise that it was the very same wedding that was now being recalled with such nostalgic pride and satisfaction. All the same, she listened to the story eagerly (somehow, the mere fact of another woman having married recently gave her a vague feeling of support)—her pleasure in the recital marred only by the sight of all that dust and fuzz suspended precariously over the rhubarb wine. But it seemed impolite to go and move the roofing felt in the middle of the story; and anyway, if you didn’t actually see the bits dropping into the wine you’d never know the difference; not with all that scum and froth, and with Father stirring it three times a day with anything he could lay hands on over two feet long.