Except in the case of her maid, Ruth Joyner. Here the mistress was chastened by what intuition taught her. To a certain extent affection made her suffer with the girl, or it could have been she was appeased by a sensuality she had experienced at second hand.
When the maid told her mistress of her approaching marriage, the latter replied:
“I hope you will be terribly happy, Ruth.”
Because, what else would she have said? Even though her words were dead, the shape and colour of their sentiments were irreproachable, like those green hydrangeas of the last phase, less a flower than a semblance, which such ladies dote on, and arrange in bowls.
“I have been happy here,” Ruth replied, and honestly.
“I would like to think you have,” her mistress said. “At least, nobody has been unkind to you.”
Yet she could not resist the thought that nobody is unkind to turnips, unless to skin them when the proper moment arrives.
So she had to venture on:
“Your husband, will he be unkind to you, I wonder?”
She positively tingled as the blade went in.
Ruth hesitated. When she spoke, it sounded rather hoarse.
“I know that he will,” she said slowly. “I do not expect the easy way.”
Mrs Chalmers-Robinson was almost gratified. It related her to this great, white, porous-skinned girl as she could not have been related otherwise. Then her loneliness returned. Because she could not have been gathered into the bosom of anything so comic, or so common, as her starched maid.
She began to buy herself off then.
“I shall have to give you something,” she said. “I must try to think what.”
“Oh, no, m’mm!” Ruth protested, and blushed. “I was not expecting gifts.”
For, as she understood it, poverty was never a theory, only a fact.
The mistress smiled. The girl’s goodness made her feel magnanimous.
“We shall see,” she said, taking up her book to put an end to a situation that was becoming tedious.
As she closed the door, Ruth Joyner suspected that what she had done in innocence was bringing out the worst in people. If she had seen her way to explain how she had surrendered up the woundable part of her by certain acts, everybody might have striven less. But to convey this, she was, she knew, incompetent.
So the house continued to bristle with daggers looking for a target.
The cook said;
“One day, Ruth, I will tell you all about the man I did not marry.”
And:
“It is the children that carry the load. It is the children.”
“My children will be lovely,” Ruth Joyner dared to claim. “My children will not fear nothing in the world. I will see to that.”
Looking at the girl, the cook was afraid it might come to pass.
Then, a couple of evenings later, the bell rang from Mrs Chalmers-Robinson’s room. She had gone to bed early, after a poached egg. So Ruth climbed towards the mistress from whom, she realized, she had become separated.
“Ruth,” Mrs Chalmers-Robinson began, “quite frankly I am unhappy. I have something – no, that is underestimating – I have every, every-thing on my mind. Why do you suppose I was picked on? Upon? On! You know I am the last person who should be forced to carry weights.”
And she would have eased hers from off her hair, but encountered only the parting, which needed attending to.
It was obvious Mrs Chalmers-Robinson had had a couple.
“Sit down, won’t you?” she invited, because that was what one said.
But Ruth remained standing. She had never faced the better-class people except on her two legs.
“Ruth,” said the mistress, “Science, I find – though this is in strictest confidence, mind you – Science is, well, something of a disappointment. It does not speak to me, me personally, if you know what I mean.”
Here she beat her chest with her remaining rings. By that light the skin appeared as though it had been dusted with the finest grey dust.
“I must have something personal. All this religion! Something I can touch. But nothing they can take away. Not pearls, Oh dear, no! Pearls get snapped up amongst the first. Or men. Men, Ruth, do not like to be touched. Men must touch. That is not even a secret. Give me your hand, dear.”
“You would do better with an aspro and a cup of strong black coffee,” advised the maid, almost stern.
“I should be sick. I am already sick enough.” Mrs Chalmers-Robinson shuddered.
Her mouth had wilted and faded to a pale, wrinkled thing.
“What do you believe, Ruth?” she asked.
Though she did not want to hear. Only to know.
“Oh dear, madam,” cried the girl, “a person cannot tell what she believes!”
And much as she regretted, she was forced to wrench her hand away.
Then, it was realized by the woman on the bed, who would have given anything for a peep – she was all goggly for it – this white tower, too, was locked against her.
So she began to bare her teeth, and cry.
Although rooted firmly in the carpet, the white maid appeared to be swaying. The light was streaming from her shiny cuffs. But it no longer soothed; it slashed and blinded.
“If I was to tell,” the creature attempted, “it doesn’t follow that you would see. Everybody sees different. You must only see it for yourself,” she cried, tearing it out helplessly at last.
“Tell, Ruth, tell!” begged the mistress.
She was now quite soppy with necessity, and ready to mortify herself through somebody else.
“Tell!” she coaxed with her wet mouth.
One of her breasts had sidled out.
“Oh, dear!” cried the girl. “We are tormenting ourselves!”
“I like that!” shouted the woman in sudden fury. “What do you know of torments?”
The girl swallowed her surprise.
“Why, to see you suffer in this way, and nothing to be done about it!”
So obvious.
“My God! If even the patent saints fail us!”
There were times when her teeth could look very ugly.
“I am ignorant all right,” admitted the maid, “and helpless when I cannot use my hands. Only when it comes to your other suggestion, then I feel ashamed. For both of us.”
Indeed, she streamed with a steady fire, which illuminated more clearly the contents of her face.
When the woman saw that she had failed both to rob and to humiliate, she fell back, and blubbered shapelessly. She was screwing up her eyes tight, tight, as if she had taken medicine, but her words issued with only a slack, spasmodic distaste, which could have been caused by anything, if not herself.
“Go on!” she said. “Get out!” she said. “I am not fit. Oh God, I am going round!”
And was hitting her head against the hot pillow. She could not quite succeed in running down.
“Take it easy, m’mm,” said Ruth Joyner, who was preparing to obey orders. “I daresay you won’t remember half. Then there will be no reason for us not to stay friends.”
“See?” her starch breathed. “After you have had a sleep.”
She had to touch once, for pity’s sake, before going.
In the short interval between this scene with her employer and her marriage to Tom Godbold, Ruth Joyner was engaged by Mrs Chalmers-Robinson in noticeably formal conversation. For the most part the mistress limited herself to orders such as:
“Fetch me the grey gloves, Ruth. Don’t tell me you forgot to mend the grey! Sometimes I wonder what you girls spend your time thinking about.”
Or:
“Here I am, all in yellow. Looking the purest fright. Well, nothing can be done about it now. Call the taxi.”
On the latter occasion, Mrs Chalmers-Robinson was bound for a meeting of some new company formed round about the time her husband got into trouble, and of which she had been made managing director. But Ruth, of course, did not understand
anything of that.
Only once since the débâcle had the maid encountered her employer’s husband. Standing in a public place, he was engaged in eating from a bag of peanuts. His clothes were less impressive than before, though obviously attended to. He had developed a kind of funny twitch. He did not recognize the maid, in spite of the fact that she approached so close he could have seen the words she was preparing on her lips. He was comparatively relaxed. He spat out something that might have been a piece of peanut-shell, from out of the white mess on his tongue. And continued to look through and beyond strangers. So the girl had gone on her way, at first taking such precautions of compassion and respect as she might have adopted for sleepers or the dead.
And then, suddenly, there was Ruth in her ugly hat, standing before her mistress in the drawing-room. Her box had been carried off that morning. The ceremony would take place early in the afternoon.
It was evident that for the occasion of farewell Mrs Chalmers-Robinson had decided to appear exquisite, and to send her servant off, not, perhaps, with a handsome cheque, but at least with a charming memory. She was firm in her refusal to attend the service in the dreary little church. Weddings depressed her, even when done in satin. But she would lavish on the stolid bride a sentimental, though tasteful blessing, for which she had got herself up in rather a pretty informal dress. She had made herself smell lovely, Ruth would have to recall. As she received her maid from the Louis Quinze fauteuil, assurance, or was it indifference, seemed to have allowed her skin to fall back into place. Even by the frank light of noon, the parting in her hair was flawless – the whitest, the straightest, the most determined. And as for her eyes, people would try to describe that radiance of blue, long after they had forgotten the details of Jinny Chalmers’ décor, her bankruptcy, divorce, and final illness.
Now she said, trailing a white hand:
“I expect you are the tiniest bit excited.”
And laughed with the lilt she had picked up early on from an English actress who had toured the country.
Ruth giggled. She was grateful for so much attention, but embarrassed by some new stays, which were stiff and tight.
“I won’t be sorry when it is over,” she had to answer, truthfully.
“Oh, don’t hurry it! Don’t!” Mrs Chalmers-Robinson pleaded. “It will be over soon enough.”
Then she moistened her lips, and remarked:
“You girls, the numbers of you who have been married from this house! Falling over one another! Still, it is supposed to be the natural thing to do.”
In certain circles, this would have been considered deliciously comic.
Yet Ruth could not help but remember sad things. She remembered stepping back on to a border of mignonette, along the brick path, in front of her father’s house, while trying to disguise her misery, and how this had risen in her nose, sweeter, and more intolerable, as people said good-bye with handkerchiefs, to wave, and cry into.
“Oh, madam,” the words began to tumble clumsily. “I hope it will be all right. I hope this Violet will look after things.”
“She has an astigmatism,” Mrs Chalmers-Robinson revealed with gloom.
“The milk is on the ice. And bread in the bin. If Ethel is not back. And you want to cut yourself a sandwich.”
If, indeed.
At last the nails were driven. Ruth realized she was biting on a mouthful of hair. It became untidy, always, without her cap.
Mrs Chalmers-Robinson took the stiffly gloved hands in both her cajoling, softer ones.
“Good-bye, Ruth,” she said. “Do not let us prolong last moments; they can become ridiculous.”
For that reason, and because emotion disarranges the face, she did not kiss her departing maid. But might have, she felt, if circumstances had been a little different.
“Yes,” said Ruth. “They will be expecting me. Yes. I had better go now.”
Her smile was that stupid, she knew, but something at least to hang on to. So it stuck, at the cost of strain. She listened to her shoes squeak, one after the other, as she crossed the parquet. She had polished it the day before, till her thoughts, almost, were reflected in it. A fireworks of light, brocade and crystal cascaded at the last moment on her head, just before she closed the door in the way she had been taught to close it, on leaving drawing-rooms.
So Ruth Joyner left, and was married that afternoon, and went to live in a shed, temporary like, at Sarsaparilla, and began to bear children, and take in washing. And praised God. For was not the simplest act explicit, unalterable, even glorious in the light of Him?
Mrs Godbold was sitting on the edge of the chair, in that same shed which had started temporary and ended up permanent. Several of the children continued to cling to their mother, soothed by her physical presence, lulled on the waves of her reflective mind. Kate, however, was going about sturdily. She had rinsed the teapot, saving the leaves for their various useful purposes. With an iron spoon, she had given the corned breast an authoritative slap or two. Soon the scents and sighs were stealing out of pan and mouths, as fresh sticks crackled on sulky coals, and coaxed them back to participation. Eyes could not disguise the truth that the smell of imminent food is an intoxicating experience.
Even Mrs Godbold, who had felt herself permanently rooted amongst the statuary of time, began to stir, to creak, to cough, all of it gently, for fear of disturbing those ribs which had copped most of her husband’s wrath. She would have risen at any moment, to resume her wrestling, as a matter of course, with the many duties from which it was useless to believe one might ever really break free. When Else, her eldest, came in.
Else Godbold often got home later of an evening now. Since it had been decided that her fate was secretarial, she had learnt to bash out a business letter, and would take on any other girl, for speed, if not for spelling. As for her shorthand, that was coming along, too: she accepted dictation, with disdain, and sometimes even succeeded in reading her results. In her business capacity, she caught the bus for Barranugli, every morning at 8.15, in pink, or blue, with accessories of plastic, and a cut lunch. Else had begun to do her lips, as other business young ladies did. Cleverly balanced on her heels, she could make her skirt and petticoats sway, in a time which might have provoked, if it had sounded less austere. Else Godbold was ever so impressive, provided her younger sisters were not around.
Now, when she had banged the shed door, because that was the only way to shut it, and kicked off her shoes, because she always felt happier without, she went up close to her mother, and said:
“Mum, I ought to tell you, I just seen Dad.”
Her breath was burning, not to say dramatic.
“Ah,” replied the mother, slowly, not altogether rousing herself.
For Mrs Godbold never tired of examining her eldest, and now that the lipstick was all but eaten off, and Else looking warm, yet dewy, the woman saw the hedges rise again in front of her, in which were all the small secret flowers, and bright berries, with over them the loads of blossom, or pretty fruit.
“Yes,” – she cleared her throat to continue – “your dad went out not so very long ago.”
“And is drunk as sin,” hissed Else, “already!”
Because in Godbolds’ shed, it would have been silly, everybody knew, to mince matters at all.
Mrs Godbold compressed her nostrils in a certain way she had.
“He was coming from Fixer Jensen’s.” The messenger refused to relent.
“He will likely be catching the bus,” suggested Mrs Godbold. “Your father was not in the best of tempers. He will almost certain make for the city. Oh, dear! And in his work-things, too!”
“Not him!” said Else, and now she did hesitate, for one who had learnt that time is not to waste. She did go red, and incline a little, as if she would have touched their mother. “Not him!” she repeated. “Dad,” she said, “was making for Khalils’!”
Then Else began quite suddenly to cry.
So natural a noise, it sounded worse, a
nd that such a secretarial young lady should act like any little girl.
Mrs Godbold had to get up, no longer so careful of her ribs.
“To Khalils’,” she said. “From Fixer Jensen’s.”
The youngest of the children understood their father had fallen from a low level to perhaps the very depths of the pit.
And Else heaving and sobbing like that, hot and red, in her business dress. Several others saw fit to join her.
But they did not know how to share her shame.
“Let me see now,” said the mother, really rather confused, when she could least afford to be. “You will attend to the mutton, Kate. And don’t forget there’s cabbage to warm. Else! Else! This house is too small for having the hysterics in. Grace, keep an eye on Baby. Whatever is she doing with that nasty-looking nail?”
Although it was warm, even sultry, Mrs Godbold put on her coat, for decency’s sake, and for moral support, her black, better hat.
To everybody, her preparations appeared most awful.
“I am going out now,” she announced, “and may be a little while. I want you girls to behave, as you can, I know. Else! Else! You will see to it, won’t you, when you have pulled yourself together?”
Else made some sort of sound out of her blurry face.
Before their mother was gone.
Mrs Godbold went up the hill towards the road, along the track which all of them had helped to wear deep. A blunderer by nature, she was fair game for blackberry bushes, but would tear free, to blunder on, because she was meant to get there, by pushing the darkness down if necessary. And dark it was by now. Once she slithered, and the long, green smell told her of cow-pats. Once she plunged her foot right up to the ankle in a rusty tin. Empty bottles cannoned off one another, while all the time that soft, yet prickly darkness was flicking in her face the names of Fixer Jensen and Mollie Khalil, with the result that the victim’s knees were trembly as the stars.
If she had lived less retired, she might have been less alarmed, but here she had undertaken an expedition to the dark side of the moon. Fixer Jensen was a joke, of course, even amongst those inhabitants sure enough of their own virtue to enjoy a paddle in the shallows of vice. “Better see Fixer,” they used to say, and laugh, anywhere around Sarsaparilla, if it was a matter of short-notice booze, or commodities that had disappeared, or some horse that had become a cert almost too late in the day. Fixer could fix anything, after picking his nose for a while, and denying his gifts. Who would not overlook a certain unloveliness of behaviour in one who served the community, and supported the crippled kiddies, besides, and bred canaries for love? Yet, there were a few humourless blobs and wowsers who failed to appreciate that obliging, and all in all, respectable cheat. Why, they asked, did the law not take steps to ensure that Jensen toed the line? Those persons could only have been ignorant or imbecile as well, for it was commonly known that two councillors, at least, accepted Fixer’s services. Moreover, Mrs McFaggott, wife of the constable himself, was dependent on him for a ready bottle, and she, poor soul, without her grog, could not have turned a blind eye to the constable’s activities. It was obvious, then, that Fixer Jensen’s position was both necessary and legal, and that he would continue to oblige those who found themselves in a hole. Nuns had been seen arriving with ports, and little girls with dolls’ prams, at Fixer Jensen’s place, while almost any evening, after work, and before wives might claim their rights, the sound of manly voices, twined in jolly, extrovert song, could be heard blurting through the vines which helped to hold that bachelor establishment up.
Riders In the Chariot Page 34
