by A. J. Cronin
‘I suppose,’ she said, in a lowered voice, after assuring herself that they were not overheard, ‘I’d better begin at the beginning. You know nothing?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Well … as if we hadn’t had enough trouble,’ she gathered herself to sustain the pain of her communication, ‘we are leaving the Rectory.’
He did not seem to understand.
‘Leaving … Why?’
‘We are forced to sell it.’
He looked at her in surprise.
‘But surely … as a church entail it can’t be sold.’
‘The ecclesiastical commissioners have given Father permission … under the circumstances … provided we still live near the church.’
There was a pause.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To a horrid little house on the warren. One of Mould’s brick bungalows with no view, no garden, and only four rooms, all so small you couldn’t swing a cat in them. Oh dear, oh dear, it’s unbearable.’
Even in her distress, as the words came tumbling out, reducing her anew by their frightful import, she could not fail to note how little the dreadful news disturbed him. He considered her in silence, with a strange calmness. Then:
‘I thought you liked a small house. I’ve often heard you complain that Stillwater was far too large and old-fashioned for you to manage. It may well be that you’ll find the bungalow more convenient.’
‘How can you say that?’ she exclaimed with sudden heat. ‘Stillwater has been the home of the Desmondes for two hundred years. You know how proud Father is of it. How he loves it. The very ground is sacred to our family. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’
‘No,’ he answered, after a moment’s reflection. ‘At one time it did. But not now.’ He paused. ‘Who is buying it?’
‘Can’t you guess?’
‘Mould?’
She nodded, bitter tears starting to her eyes.
‘He’s bought ever so much land near the village. There’s talk of him starting a cement works on the Downs, just by the old limestone quarry, in front of the house. It’s unbelievable … the view will be gone … everything. When I think how Sussex has changed I could sit down and weep. Beauty spots despoiled, estates broken up, ribbon development, cheap cinemas and dance-halls everywhere, not a maid to be had, and as for politeness, even common civility, in the village shops – it has simply ceased to exist.’
He brought her back to the point.
‘You haven’t told me how this came about.’
She choked down a dry mouthful of cake which, unknowingly in her agitation, she had placed between her lips.
‘It was Mother. You know how she always was … with no sense of economy, or caution, no idea of the value of money. When she went away on these holidays we always thought she had private means, a little income of her own that she had never mentioned to us. But oh dear, it wasn’t so. Just twelve months ago we discovered that she was in the hands of moneylenders, two creatures from the City who appeared one day and threatened Father with a lawsuit if he didn’t pay up. You see …’ Caroline faltered … ‘ over the last few years Mother had … had signed papers making herself liable for a large amount.’
‘How much?’
‘Almost ten thousand pounds. Of course,’ Caroline rushed on, ‘she’d only received a small part of it, but with the exorbitant interest charged, that was the sum they made out she owed. It was sheer extortion, blackmail if you like, but rather than face the series of cases that would be instituted against her, Father decided we must pay. Better to be ruined with honour, he said, than to face another disgrace …’
‘Like the one I inflicted on him.’ As she broke off, he mildly completed the phrase for her.
She averted her gaze, which remained, for some moments, distressed yet censorious, upon the panorama of chimney-pots grotesquely blurred by the blown-glass window-panes.
‘Couldn’t Hubert have done something? Or Geoffrey?’
She shook her head.
‘They are quite hard put to it themselves. Taxes and high wages have hurt Hubert – the orchards aren’t paying. And I believe Geoffrey has mortgaged Broughton.’ She added: ‘We scarcely see anything of them these days.’
‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘the old girl certainly had her fling. In a way I always admired her for doing exactly what she wanted. Where is she now?’
Caroline straightened, then, in a suppressed voice, with the air of one forced to disclose the final disaster:
‘In a private asylum in Dulwich.’
He stared at her blankly for a moment, then all at once burst into a shout of laughter. Stupefied, pale and distraught, she watched him, so paralysed with indignation she could not speak. What in Heaven’s name had come over him to behave in this shameful manner? She remembered that Claire, in one of their long discussions, attempting to excuse him, had once told her that no artist was a completely balanced person. Could there be a strain of madness in him too? With nervous agitation, she bent forward and shook him.
‘Don’t! Are you out of your senses?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he apologised, recovering himself. ‘ It just struck me as the most wonderful finish to a thoroughly amusing career.’
‘Amusing! You’re absolutely heartless. I … I’m ashamed of you.’
‘Oh come now, Carrie, don’t be so sorry for everyone, yourself included. I’ve known people with far more trouble than you’ve had, or ever will have. In Spain I lived with an old blind woman who had less than nothing, not even enough to eat, who froze in winter and sweltered in summer, who knew not only absolute penury but the desolation of utter loneliness, and yet never once complained about it. You needn’t be so cast down.’
‘How can I help it, when I think of the way things have gone? If you’d only been a good son, stayed at home, gone into the Church and helped Father, kept control over things, and over Mother, we’d still be all happy at Stillwater. You’d be loved and respected …’
‘Instead of hated and despised.’
‘Stephen.’ Again she leaned forward, but it was to place an entreating hand on his arm. ‘ Even now, it isn’t too late. Father needs you. He still …’
‘For God’s sake, Carrie,’ he interrupted her harshly. ‘You know I’m married. Do you want us both down there in your four-roomed bungalow? Really, you have a genius for suggesting the impossible.’
‘Then there’s nothing more to be said.’ She sighed, drew on her damp cotton gloves, picked up the ruin of her umbrella.
‘By the way.’ A thought occurred to him. ‘Isn’t that place at Dulwich rather expensive? How do you manage?’
‘Claire is helping. She is so kind.’ Carrie added. ‘ I’m going out to visit Mother now. It may not interest you in the least, but she often speaks of you.’
‘Then shall I come with you? I’d quite like to see her.’
As she stared at him, taken aback, wondering if he were serious or if this were merely some new iniquity of his incomprehensible nature, deciding finally that it was one action she must commend, he added, with a queer smile, destroying her faint approval even before she gave expression to it: ‘The light’s no good for painting anyhow.’
When Stephen had paid the bill at the counter downstairs they went out of the shop, crossed to the station and, after some waiting, boarded a train bound for the South London suburbs. It was not a long journey, and presently they emerged from the smoke and grime of central London into the fresher atmosphere of Dulwich, where fortunately, it was dry. The asylum, situated in an open stretch not far from the station, was a weathered grey-stone mansion in the extreme baronial style, with twin towers, castellated pediment and pointed windows in the Gothic taste, apparently a conversion from an early Victorian country house, set in extensive grounds, and enclosed by a high brick wall surmounted by a fringe of broken spikes. At the gate lodge, where Caroline produced a visiting-card, they were admitted by an attendant who directed them up a gravelled drive, flanked
by beech trees, towards the house. Along another avenue a procession of inmates, dark-coated figures profiled against the grey sky, could be seen taking their daily walk, quietly, and quite at ease. Others, apparently of a humbler category, were occupied in a leisurely manner in the vegetable garden. To the right, distantly, on a strip of lawn outlined against a hedge of yew, an underhand game of tennis between two middle-aged gentlemen was lazily in progress, over a sagging net. Adjacent, some ladies with croquet mallets were in the process of propelling balls through a variety of hoops. And in the foreground, from a group of both men and women seated with a nurse in a red-tiled shelter, there came little recurrent wafts of laughter. A sense of remoteness and repose permeated the air, which, with the odour of decayed leaves and vegetation, the formal box planting, the dark shrubbery – enclosing a derelict grotto where damply, amidst ferns, stood a Grecian statue, broken unfortunately – and, overlooking all, the turrets of the mansion, gave to the place a character not of the world, unreal, sedate, stately.
At the main doorway they rang the bell and were ushered through the vestibule, tiled in black and white marble, to a curtained waiting-room, ornate and old-fashioned perhaps, but furnished with dignity, mainly in buhl, with a row of four chairs against each wall. Here also there was evidence of animation, from next door a murmur of voices, the cheerful clink of crockery, and from upstairs the sound of a Strauss waltz played with considerable brio upon a piano so mellow and dulcet that Stephen could almost see the broken yellow keys flashing under that animated attack. And it was to the tuneful strains of The Vienna Woods that Julia, gently prompted by hands from behind, entered the room.
There she stood, looking from one to the other, smiling at them with the same blank detachment that, even in moments of the most acute domestic crisis, had all her life distinguished her. Dressed in one of her flowing frocks, to which she had added some pieces of lace, adaptations of her own conception, with a length of tulle about her neck, and on each of her wrists a bow of pink ribbon, her hair frizzed en pompadour, her features floury with powder, a mask of white in which her velvet eyes were ringed with black, she had an appearance admittedly eccentric, yet both striking and elegant.
‘How are you today, Mother?’ Caroline asked.
‘I am well, naturally. As I am every day under Sagittarius.’
‘Stephen has come to see you.’
‘So you have made the trip from Paris.’ Ignoring Caroline, she advanced and took a chair beside him in the most cordial manner. ‘How do you find the French?’
‘Very nice. And it’s nice to see you again.’
‘Thank you, Stephen. Are you still living with that woman over there? The one your father was afraid of?’
‘No. I’m leading an almost respectable life, for a change.’
‘Don’t you remember, Mother?’ To prevent further indiscretions, Caroline intervened, in a pained and helpful voice. ‘Stephen returned from France a long time ago. And since then he has been in Spain.’
‘Ah, Spain. I remember as a girl when I was in Madrid with Father, we had great trouble with a waiter who refused to boil the water …’
‘And now,’ Caroline persisted, ‘he is working at his painting, in London.’
‘Of course,’ Julia answered brusquely, and again presenting a shoulder towards Caroline, addressed herself to Stephen. ‘ Your painting. Only the other day I was recollecting how when you were a very small boy you used to go around the gallery at Haselton with my dear father, before he sold our pictures and took to helicopters. There was an afternoon when we thought you were lost, drowned in the lake perhaps, a great outcry. And you were found alone in the gallery, seated on the floor, before one of the paintings.’
‘Yes,’ He nodded. ‘A really lurid Teniers, The Butcher’s Shop, full of the bloody carcases of bullocks. It fascinated me.’
‘And it was after that,’ she pursued with animation, ‘that your father gave you the box of water-colours.’
‘Perhaps that was my undoing.’ He laughed.
Julia did not respond. She could be deeply serious in the presence of laughter, her own came unexpectedly when others were grave.
‘No, no, my dear.’ She shook her head, raised one finger in a regal gesture. ‘ What is in us, we will do, in spite of others.’
He did not answer, but he thought: That is the most sensible remark I have heard all day. A silence followed, then, moved less by curiosity than by an unusual solicitude, he asked:
‘Do you like it here?’
‘Very much. It does not interfere with my comfort or bring extra fatigue upon me. It seems to combine the qualities of a spa, which I have always appreciated, with a more intimate and selective atmosphere. We have an excellent physician, a young man well versed in the therapeutics of elimination, whom I find most attentive. The nurses are willing, poor things, they do their best for one. The life is restful, I enjoy my walk in the morning, in the afternoon we sit a great deal, then in the evening we have quite a social life, with concerts, occasional dances, a visiting conjurer, and our own orchestra of twelve pieces. Believe it or not, I have actually been approached, quite correctly of course, by one of our gentlemen guests to see if I would not consent to sing. I used to think when I was a romantic young girl and passing through a religious spell under the late Canon Pusey, that I should like one day to retire to a monastery … I should say,’ she corrected primly, ‘a convent. Now, since it appears that I must be confined, this, I assure you, is considerable improvement.’
Stephen nodded in sympathy, impressed by Julia’s spirit, realising more clearly than ever before how much he had in common with this strange woman who was his mother. From her, unquestionably, came his disregard of convention and contempt of the banal, his complete indifference to what went on around him, and also, no doubt, that strain of singularity, self-recognised, which made him feel himself an oddity, someone apart from the rest of the world. Yet, while he would not have minded a lively aberration such as Julia’s, unhappily all the queer tendencies of his nature took him in precisely the opposite direction. Her head was serenely in the clouds, his bent resolutely towards the abyss.
As he reflected in this manner, Caroline, in lowered, serious tones, had engaged her mother in conversation relating to more practical affairs. Questions of linen, laundry, and the need for warm winter underwear were brought up, lightly considered by Julia and airily dismissed. Messages from Bertram were then communicated and accepted with an air of benign amusement. Presently a bell reverberated through the building, and a moment later there came a tap on the door, which opened partly, discreetly, to admit a cajoling voice.
‘Lunch time, Mrs. Desmonde, dear.’
Julia, with a confiding glance as though to say, complacently, you see how they attend to us, rose and, having smoothed her skirt and arranged the ribbons on her wrists, assumed a modish attitude.
‘How do you like my gown?’ She touched the extravagant flounces coquettishly, inviting their admiration. ‘Nurse was rather against the lace but I think it quite becoming.’
‘It’s a superb dress,’ Stephen said. ‘It suits you. And if you are not careful I’ll come back one day soon and paint you in it.’
‘Do come, Stephen dear,’ she murmured, in her old, charming manner, as she swept from the room. ‘Any day … in Sagittarius if you can … never in Scorpio.’
Outside, dark clouds had blown across from the city, it had begun to pour heavily – a considerable disadvantage, since Stephen had no coat, merely the scarf he wore always on his shoulders, and Caroline, of course, was bereft of the protection of her umbrella. On their way down the drive, bent forward against the slant of the rain, neither of them spoke. Stephen, for the life of him, despite his disturbed mind, could not help regretting that he had been unable to make a sketch of Julia as she stood there in the bizarre dress, gracious, charming, and absurd. What marvellous and fanciful effects he could produce against the background of this strange place, this refuge of unreality, vibrati
ng still, it seemed, with the tap of croquet balls, the echoes of light laughter, the giddy rhythms of that tinkling Strauss waltz. At last, as they turned towards the shelter of the station, he broke away from his thoughts.
‘She didn’t appear too bad,’ he said, trying to inject a note of encouragement into his words. But Carrie would have none of it.
‘You haven’t seen her when she’s really outrageous.’
He bit his lip, annoyed.
‘At least she’s not unhappy.’
‘No,’ signed Caroline. ‘I suppose not. But the doctor says her mind will get progressively weaker. Softening of the brain, he called it.’
In the train, as they rattled through tunnels, intermittent flashes of daylight affording wet-roofed vistas of the suburbs, of traffic-clogged streets and streaming umbrellas, moving like tortoises, over wet pavements, she kept her head turned from him. A surreptitious glance revealed that, pretending to look out of the window, she was weeping quietly, her handkerchief clutched damply in one hand. Although he despised it, this perpetual lamentation affected him. Already it had worn down his earlier cheerfulness, now it left him wretched and subdued, attacked by pangs of self-abasement, a sudden realisation of his uselessness in the material world. After all, was there not reason in Caroline’s attitude? – in this family crisis she must naturally look to him for help. Yet he could not, or would not, give it. Now, more than ever, no human attachment, nor force on earth could divert him from the course that he had chosen and which, like a man obsessed, he must follow to its bitter end. Abruptly, he shook off a sudden sense of giddiness. His habit of forgetting about food – for he had a few coins in his pocket and could easily have stopped at Dulwich to take a meal with Carrie – undoubtedly contributed to his lowness of spirits. Yet beyond that he felt confoundedly seedy – his wet feet were icy, his head throbbed, and he was more than ever aware of that strange, recurrent numbness in his throat.
