The Habit of Widowhood

by Robert Barnard

  “The will? My brother’s will?” Alice heard uneasiness in her voice and repressed it firmly. “We have had no time to see the family solicitor as yet. Christmas, you understand. . . .”

  The woman bit her lip.

  “Oh, I see. Well, I’m glad, miss, because you might have wondered . . .”

  “Wondered?”

  “Oh, no need to be uneasy, miss.”

  Alice drew herself up.

  “I am not uneasy. Merely bewildered what my brother’s will could have to do with you.”

  “O’ course, miss. Well, you see, he told me as how he was going to leave me something. Oh, not a great sum. Something you could easily afford.”

  “I see.” But it was said faintly, and Alice Furnley clearly did not see.

  “And o’ course it’s not for me, not for myself.”

  “He left you money, but not for yourself?”

  “That’s right, miss. It’s because he knew he could trust me, and because I know a bit about banks and accounts and that. It’s for me to keep, to help any of us girls.”

  “Any . . . of . . . you . . . girls,” said Alice, more faintly still.

  “If we’re in trouble,” said the woman, growing almost confiding. “In the nature o’ things a lot of us get into trouble from time to time.”

  “You do?”

  “Us being independent girls, working on our own, on the streets a lot. . . . There’s a lot of rough men around in Leeds, you know, miss.”

  Alice looked at the carpet.

  “I know that I see them.”

  “That’s all you want to do, miss. Anyway, there’s lots of us girls have been helped over a bad patch by your brother—when we’ve been swindled, or beaten up, or put in ’orspital—that’s when they’ll take us in there. And he knew, when he was beginning to feel poorly, that if he left the money to me I’d keep it and give it or lend it as the need arose.”

  “I see.” Alice began walking up and down the little room to get a better look at the woman. She did indeed look honest. Rough but honest. “Let me get this right: my brother has left you a sum of money—”

  “A thousand pounds.”

  “A thousand pounds!” Alice couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice. “My brother has left this sum to you so that you may relieve the distress of your . . . sisters.”

  “My friends, like. He didn’t trust the churches and organizations. He said there was always strings attached.”

  “That sounds like Roderick.” Alice was getting her confidence back. That did sound like Roderick. He was always direct and warm in his charities. This must be one he preferred—perhaps naturally—not to tell his womenfolk about. “He was so generous,” she said. “So open.”

  “Oh, he was! Is this his room?” The woman looked around the book-lined little office, with copies of old Punches, pipes and boots, and a chessboard by the fire. “I can imagine him in it. We all worshiped him!”

  “All?”

  “All the girls he was kind to. He never gave a lecture with it, that was the great thing, and you knew he was there in need.”

  “That’s true.”

  “And he was always very considerate and gentle in—you know, in personal things.”

  Alice could not begin to think what she meant, so she stayed silent.

  “Oh, you mustn’t think badly of him,” said the woman hurriedly. “All he wanted was a bit of comfort, a bit of relaxation, like.” Seeing the bewilderment, then the horror, on Alice’s face, she turned to go. “I won’t take up any more of your time. Oh—just one more thing. That business with Mr. Johnston. He told me he was going to tell you about that, and I’m the only other one who knows. I swear to God it’ll go no further. The man’s quite safe as far as I’m concerned, and always will be.”

  And she marched from the room, showing herself out through the front door. Alice watched her safely to the end of Acacia Avenue, then sank exhausted into a chair. What had she meant—comfort? Relaxation? Just when she had reconciled herself in her mind to the idea that Roderick had quietly been dispensing charity to women who . . . to fallen women (that must, surely, be what this woman had implied), there came this new revelation: that he had gone to this woman—these women—for comfort and relaxation. What could that mean except . . . ? Impossible to believe!

  Yet even as she told herself that, Alice remembered those late evenings of Roderick’s at the Liberal Club twice a week. And remembered too that her brother had never felt the need to be particularly active in the party cause at election time, nor had he ever shown great familiarity with the Liberal candidate, or even with party officials when he met them.

  Alice took the decision to go to the family solicitor next day, and take only her sister Sarah—her once-married sister—with her. When the main provisions of the will were read, the division of the estate into three equal portions for his sisters, the two women nodded: they had known that was what Roderick had intended. When the will said that the deceased trusted his dear sisters’ generosity to give adequate remembrances of himself to the family’s servants and dependents, Alice whispered: “We must give them something they’ll be very pleased with.” And when one thousand pounds was left to Mrs. Sally Hardwick, of Crow Lane, Armley, Alice whispered: “One of those poor people Roderick was always so kind to—large family, father dead.” If Sarah Furnley thought that one thousand pounds was an awful lot of money to leave a poor family, even a fatherless one, she said nothing: it would have been unseemly, almost blasphemous, to question Roderick’s judgment.

  The next day Alice went to the bank and on her return gave seventy-five pounds to Cook, fifty pounds to the ladies’ maid, the same to Frank the gardener, and ten pounds to little Mary, with strict instructions to save most of it against the time a respectable young man asked her to marry him.

  Which left Alice with the problem of Mr. Johnston. What on earth could the woman—could Sally Hardwick—have meant? The Furnleys had no close friends called Johnston. Racking her brains, Alice could recall that there was a Mr. Johnston among the congregation at St. Michael’s. He was a bachelor and an elderly man, almost as old as their mother. Surely there could be no secret concerning him that Roderick had kept? She looked in trade directories, asked Walter Wakeham, who now ran the family clothing manufactory, if he knew of a Mr. Johnston that her brother Roderick was close to. All to no avail. It was a blank wall. When she decided that the woman could have got it wrong, or she had misheard, and it was a Mr. Johnson who was meant, her perplexity increased. There were just too many Johnsons around—and even so, no family or man of that name with whom the Furnleys had been close.

  It seemed like an unsolvable puzzle. Alice could think of nothing more she could do, short of employing a private detective. But that was all but unthinkable: she had the impression that these were most unsavory individuals who would not scruple to use any discreditable information they found out against their employer, so she put that possibility from her mind. Though she acknowledged to herself her own helplessness, she found that the name Johnston jumped out at her from the pages of the Leeds Advertiser or the Yorkshire Post in the way that names one is interested in have a habit of doing (other names which thus leapt off the page for Alice Furnley were the Prince of Wales and Marie Corelli, whose novels she found painfully exciting).

  But it was not from the pages of a newspaper that the name of the Johnston she had been looking for sprang at her. She was sitting in the family pew at St. Michael’s in early autumn, praying for her mother, whose life was drawing to a sad close, and the vicar was reading the banns of marriage:

  “Francis Johnston, bachelor of this parish, to Ellen Currey, spinster of this parish . . .”

  Alice had started involuntarily at the name and looked round. Her sister Emily smiled and patted her arm. “Frank,” she said. “Isn’t it nice?” Alice nodded and subsided into her pew.

  Frank the gardener. She knew he had got engaged to a girl—no, to a woman—who worked for old Mrs. Macklin rou
nd the corner in Galton Road. She’d heard the name Ellen—that was why several bells had rung when the banns were read. Because she had never to her knowledge heard Frank’s surname: he had always been Frank to her, and nothing more. She might, if she racked her brain, remember little Mary’s surname (probably a gift of the good Dr. Barnardo): but Frank was outdoor staff, and as such she had had in her brother’s lifetime little to do with him beyond an occasional commending of his diligence or the excellence of his brussels sprouts.

  It was three days before Alice had matured a plan of action in her mind. Sarah was shopping in Leeds and Emily was nursing their mother when she ventured into the long, leafy garden that stretched from the back of the house. Frank was busy separating daffodil bulbs and she approached him circuitously, collecting a little bunch of autumn flowers in a basket. As she drew near him he straightened himself respectfully. He was about middle height and capable-looking, but with strongly etched lines on his face that gave him an unhappy air.

  “I was so glad to hear the banns read for you, Frank,” Alice said.

  “Thank you very much, miss.”

  “You must be looking forward to a happier time ahead.”

  There was a tiny pause before Frank said: “I am that.”

  “Because you’ve had a lot of trouble in the past, haven’t you?”

  This time there was a quite measurable pause before Frank said: “Did Mr. Roderick tell you about that? He said he was going to when he . . . took me on, then he changed his mind. Said he thought it would worry you, and you wouldn’t understand.”

  “Before he died he told me,” lied Alice, mentally excusing herself by her need to know. “He thought it was his duty, you see, as we would be left alone.”

  “I see, miss. I’m sure Mr. Roderick would always do what was right.”

  “But it was a very brief account—him being so weak. I didn’t really understand the circumstances of your . . . problem.”

  “It must have sounded bad enough, miss, without the circumstances.” Frank drew his sleeve across his forehead, which was beaded with sweat. “And it was bad, I acknowledge that freely. We were farm workers, you see, from down Lincolnshire way, me and my wife.” Alice tried not to let it show that she was surprised he had had a wife, having been proclaimed a bachelor in her own church. “We were never well off, but when this depression hit the farmers we got poorer and poorer, hungrier and hungrier. I was just about to leave, to try and find work in the town, when it happened.”

  He looked at her as if hoping that she would supply the words he didn’t want to say. Alice could only nod.

  “First the boy, then the little girl—the light of my life. I won’t say they died of hunger, not right out, but they were powerful weak when the influenza struck. We’d been going to lose our cottage the week after, but the farmer gave us another month, out of compassion. My poor wife was mad wi’ grief, tearing her hair, miss, and crying from noon to night. As the time came for us to lose our home she kept saying: ‘I don’t want to live’ and ‘There’s nothing left to live for.’ And—to cut a long story short—we came to a sort of agreement.”

  “A suicide pact,” whispered Alice, stunned by the wickedness of the idea.

  “That’s what they called it in court. We didn’t have the words for it, not being educated people. I was willing, miss—didn’t take no persuading. I had nothing to live for either. We went down to a little coppice, I wi’ my gun, we kissed for the last time, and I shot her. It were like putting an animal out of its misery. I were just seeing that she was really dead, not going to come round, when the farmer ran up, wrestled the gun from me, and forced me back to the farm. I pleaded with him to let things take their course, but he locked me up and fetched the authorities.”

  “But you were not . . . ?” Alice began faintly.

  “Hanged? No, miss. That were the sentence, but it was commuted. Maybe it’d have been better for all if it had been carried out. I got fifteen years’ hard labor, and if my life had been hell before—pardon my language, miss—it was double hell in jail. I served three years, and if I could have ended my life I would have done it. They made sure I couldn’t. But I got away while I was in prison in York—escaped from a working party. It’s easier if you don’t care if they shoot you or not.”

  “But how did my brother come to know about you?”

  He twisted the cap which he was holding in his hand.

  “That was through a . . . lady I knew and he knew. She told him my story, and he offered me this job. He was a saint, your brother, miss.”

  Alice made noises that she hoped sounded like assent. Once it would have been spontaneous, full-hearted agreement.

  “I had my own contacts by then. I gave myself a new name, and got a birth certificate to prove it. I can never forget my poor wife, and my lovely children, but now I’ve got the chance of a new life. I’m very fond of Ellen, and I mean to take it.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course. Thank you for telling me all this. I wish you luck in the future.”

  And Alice made her way back to the house more directly than she had come from it. She went straight to her bedroom, sat by the little fire there, and tried to compose her thoughts. Her overwhelming feeling was anger: her brother had introduced into the house a murderer—a dreadful man who had killed his own wife, served only part of his prison sentence, and was in effect a convict on the run. And now a household of women—and Roderick had always been the sickly one, had often said he would be the first to go—had been left through his lack of thought or consideration with a brutal killer whom they daily came into contact with. She had not been able to say so to Johnston, for she would not have brought out into the open a disagreement with her late brother, but she thought it was wicked. It was contempt of the law, it was endangering his own family, it was condoning the sin of suicide. She could never, ever, think well of her brother again.

  Meanwhile there was daily life to be got through, and a decision to be made about that. That decision bothered Alice sorely. She could hardly give Johnston up to the law, which was her first instinct: that would be to go against her brother’s judgment totally and publicly, and she had always deferred to him as the eldest and as the head of the house. It would also destroy his reputation in the community by revealing the shaming fact that he had connived in defeating the proper workings of justice.

  And yet, to have the man there, working around the house, to see him every day, a man who had killed his own wife! Alice could hardly bear to go out into her own garden.

  In the end it was Johnston who ended the awkward situation. He contrived to be in the front garden when she was coming home from a sewing bee at the vicarage a week after their conversation.

  “Oh, Miss Furnley, could I have a word?”

  “Well, er . . . I’m very busy . . . a quick one, Johnston.”

  “I can see, miss, that you’re not happy about . . . what we spoke about. No reason why you should be. I should have told you when we were talking that before he died, when he knew the tuberculosis had come back, your brother talked to me, said he wanted me to be set up in a small way, so as to be independent. He gave me seven hundred and fifty pounds. Walked away when I tried to thank him. Well, there’s a small market garden I’ve had my eye on, and I’ve managed to buy it with part of the money. My wife and I will be able to live off that, and I’ll be out of your way, not in front of your eyes every time you look out of the window.”

  Alice was surprised at the perceptiveness of this rough man, but of course she could not say so. She said: “I wish you well in the future then, Johnston, and I’ll advertise on Saturday for a replacement.”

  And that, though it did not exactly solve the problem, made it much less pressing. She had other things to occupy her mind. Her old mother died before the next Christmas, and the daughters were left alone in the house. Sarah married for a second time, not wisely or well, and within five years was back again. The younger sisters died first, but Alice lived on and on, ramrod straight,
sharp of eye.

  She saw Johnston from time to time, sometimes with his wife, eventually with children. She nodded to him graciously, in a way that did not encourage the exchange of words. Johnston himself never attempted that. The only time they talked was when she was a very old lady, in her late eighties, still walking the streets of Leeds dispensing charity to the deserving poor and attending church as one of the dwindling congregation of St. Michael’s. The slaughter of young men which was the Great War had happened, and so had the influenza epidemic, which had slaughtered less unfairly as to sex. It was in the middle of the gay twenties, which were not particularly gay in Leeds, that she came upon Johnston, now a bent man in his seventies, with a bright, forceful young man, walking down Boar Lane. On an impulse she stopped.

  “It’s Johnston, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right, Miss Furnley.”

  “And this is your son?”

  “It is—Sam, our youngest.”

  “A prop for your old age. You are so fortunate. So many of my friends lost sons and grandsons in the war.”

  “I were just too young to serve, miss,” said Sam. “Thank God.”

  “That’s not a very patriotic sentiment,” said Alice Furnley severely. “I sometimes think the dead were the lucky ones. ‘They carried back bright to the coiner the mintage of man,’ as the poet says. They never grew old and tarnished, as so often happens.”

  She looked meaningfully at Johnston. He stared doggedly back.

  “If you mean your brother, miss, he went to his Maker as bright as any man ever did.”

  “Oh, come, Johnston, you know that’s not true,” she said, in a low voice, preparing to pass on. “You of all people know that.”

  And she marched on, determinedly continuing about her business.

  “Silly old biddy,” said young Sam. And for once his father did not reprove him.

  PERFECT HONEYMOON

  By the time Carol reached her unspoiled Greek honeymoon island, she was beginning to wish it could have been just that tiny bit spoiled. After the ceremony, and the wedding breakfast with the speeches, there had been the drive off, the wait at Manchester airport, the night flight, the coach ride from the Athens airport, and now the long ferry trip to Mathos. As the island approached on the horizon, Carol was inclining to the view that an airstrip would have improved the place enormously.