‘Donald! It’s too awful! You were quite right, I feel it will break up at any moment, and Betty and Hannah will go off in a huff—for Hannah’s furious, too, and has turned against Powell. And now we shall never get away.’
‘You’re leaving on Wednesday—the day after tomorrow.’
‘The day after tomorrow?’
‘I knew you’d put off doing anything, so I fixed it all up this morning. I couldn’t get a direct flight, so you’ll have to change at Amsterdam, and spend a night in Athens, and go on from there by a plane that carries freight and one or two passengers. But you’ll find it all perfectly easy and straightforward.’
‘The day after tomorrow!’
‘You can make some excuse—the dentist or something—and travel up with me on the 8.5. And I’ll see you off. So all you’ve got to do now is to pay me for your tickets and behave as if nothing were up.’
‘And tell Mother.’
‘I will tell Mother.’
‘You will tell Mother? Donald, do you mean it?’
‘Certainly. I shall tell her that evening, when I get back. I’ve been thinking it out. It will be far better to tell her then, when it’s all past praying for. The shock will draw them together.’
She stared at him. In the dusk of the tool shed his face was smug and moon-like—as the face of some all-sufficing, all-managing, miraculously intervening angel would naturally be.
‘I’m hungry,’ he said. ‘Let’s go in and hurry up Hannah. And we’ll have a bottle of Graves. I feel like celebrating.’
On Wednesday, after a day during which her efforts to exercise a calming influence brought down on her a lecture from Betty about showing more consideration for Poppy’s blood pressure and a considered critique from Mother wherein her stupidity, her virginity, her grovellings at St. Botolph’s, her lifelong failure to exhibit a spark of initiative and her parsimony over buying new toothbrushes were severally laid forth and enlarged on; after a night of being alternately devoured by conscience and by a conviction that one or other of those planes would crash, Audrey caught the 8.5 with Donald. He accompanied her to the airport, assuring her from time to time that once she was on the plane everything would be easy and from time to time glancing covertly at his watch. At the airport they had twenty minutes to wait. Donald ordered coffee. His conversation was repetitive, and he seemed to have something on his mind. Remembering what lay before him, Audrey thought this was only reasonable. They sat at a little table and round them other people sat at other little tables, and it was as though this were some unnaturally hospitable out-patients’ department. Another group of doomed travellers, these doomed to perish on a flight to Brussels, was summoned and rose up. The doors opened on a roar of propellers, and closed behind them. Swallowing with terror, Audrey said, ‘Donald, I shall pray for you this evening. When will you do it? Before dinner or after?’
‘Do it? Oh, tell Mother, you mean. As soon as I get back. After all, I shall have to explain why you’re not with me.’
‘About quarter to seven.’
‘Or thereabouts. They should be back from their outing by then.’
‘I’m afraid she will be very angry.’
‘Yes. That’s what I’m counting on.’
The surmise that Donald had something up his sleeve darted back and transfixed her. ‘Counting on?’
‘Yes. You see, I shall be killing two birds with one stone. First I shall tell her about you going off to Africa. Then about my marriage.’
‘Donald! Are you going to marry?’
‘I am married. I married Lorna—my secretary—ten days ago. And I’ve been waiting to get you safe off to Africa so that I can begin with that, and draw the worst of her fire. As a matter of fact, I mean to say that you promised to break the news to her at the weekend while I was away—and that you forgot to. It can’t hurt you, you’ll be safe out of it. And it may make a great difference to me.’
‘Then if there’s a crash and I’m killed, it will serve me right!’ The words burst from her. It was as if her fear, raw and bleeding, had been torn out and lay on the table between the coffee cups. ‘Donald, I must go back! I can’t think why I gave in to you. How could I do such a thing? Leave Mother without a word? Why, it might kill her. Oh, poor Mother! And you wouldn’t have the slightest idea what to do for her. You’ve never even seen her in one of her attacks.’
‘Hannah will be there.’
‘I must have been mad to think of it. And just to make things easier for you—for that’s all it amounts to. Really, Donald, for cold-blooded selfishness … Why are you looking at me like that?’ He continued to look at her. ‘No, I must go back. I must be there when you tell her about your being married. Besides, if I’m there, you won’t have to tell her. You’ll be able to leave everything to me. As usual!’
Donald appeared to be considering this. Then he shook his head. ‘No, Audrey. I know what I’m about, and it will be far better if you are out of the way. For years, you’ve been getting on Mother’s nerves——’
‘Oh!’
‘—and she’s been getting on yours. Look at the state you’re in now, working yourself up, as if planes crashed every time someone who’s left a mother is on board. Besides, everyone with a vocation goes through something of this sort. Think of St. Chantal, walking over her son’s body. Concentrate on your vocation, Audrey. They’re expecting you. The tickets are bought. You can post a letter to Mother from Amsterdam, if you want to—in fact, I think you should. It’s all perfectly straightforward, and by this evening …’
‘Attention, please,’ said the impartially summoning voice.
‘Oh, poor Mother, poor Mother!’
‘Audrey! Pull yourself together. People are beginning to look at us.’
That did the trick. Appearing only moderately distraught, Audrey let herself be put on the plane, sank into an embracing seat, fastened her belt and began to read the advertisements. As the plane taxied interminably along the runway, everything became a certainty. A few minutes of remorse; then an explosion in which her cry for forgiveness would be lost. The plane rose. She looked down on reeling buildings, roofs fleeing like frightened sheep, a surprising quantity of trees. A moment later, she forgot everything in the realization that she was going to be sick.
In Athens a cable was handed to her: ‘MOTHER DIED CLIMBING BOX HILL.’
TOTAL LOSS
WHEN Charlotte woke, it was raining. Rain hid the view of the downs and blurred the neat row of trees and the neat row of houses opposite which the trees had been planted to screen. This was the third wet morning since her birthday a week ago. There would be rain all through the holidays, just like last year. On her birthday, Charlotte was ten. ‘Now you are in double figures,’ said Professor Bayer. ‘And you will stay in them till you are a hundred years old. Think of that, my Lottchen.’ ‘Yes, think of that,’ said Mother. Charlotte could see that Mother did not really wish to think of it. She was being polite, because Professer Bayer was a very important person at the Research Station, so it was a real honour that he should like Father and come to the house to borrow The New Statesman.
Charlotte’s cat Moodie was awake already. He lay on the chair in the corner, on top of her clothes, and was staring at her with a thirsty expression. She jumped out of bed, went to the kitchen, breaking into its early morning tidiness and seclusion, and came back with a saucer of milk. ‘Look, Moodie! Nice milk.’ He would not drink, though he still had that thirsty expression. ‘You silly old Moodles, you don’t know what you want,’ she said, kneeling before the chair with the saucer in her hand. Moodie had come as a wedding present to Mother. His birthday was unknown, but he was certainly two years older than Charlotte. Ever since she could remember, there had been Moodie, and Moodie had been hers—to be slept on, talked to, hauled about, wheeled in a doll’s perambulator, read aloud to, confided in, wept on, trodden on, loved and taken for granted. He stared at her, ignoring the milk, and forgetting the milk she stared back, fascinated as ever by the
way the fur grew on his nose, the mysterious smooth conflict between two currents of growth. At last she put down the saucer, seized him in her arms and got back into bed. ‘We understand each other, don’t we?’ she said, curling his tail round his flank. ‘Don’t we, Moodie?’ He trod with his front paws, purring under his breath, and relaxed, his head on her breast. But at the smell of his bad teeth she turned her face away, pretending it was to look out of the window. ‘It’s raining, Moodie. It’s going to be another horrible wet day. You mustn’t be a silly cat, sitting in the garden and getting wet through, like you did on Tuesday.’ He was still purring when she fell asleep, though when her mother came to wake her he had gone. Sure enough, when she looked for him after breakfast he was sitting hunched and motionless on the lawn, his grey fur silvered with moisture and fluffed out like a coat of eiderdown. She picked him up, and the bloom vanished; the eiderdown coat, suddenly dark and lank, clung to his bony haunches. ‘Mother, I’m going to put Moodie in the airing cupboard.’
‘Yes, do, my pet. That’s the best plan! But hurry, because Mr. and Mrs. Flaxman will be here to fetch you at any moment. They’ve just rung up. They want you to spend the day with them.’
‘And see the horses?’
The cat in the child’s arms broke into a purr, as though her thrill of pleasure communicated itself to him. Though of course it was really the warmth of the kitchen, thought Meg.
‘Yes, the horses. And the bantams. And the lovely old toy theatre that belonged to Mrs. Flaxman’s grandmother. You’ll love it. It’s an absolutely storybook house.’
‘Shall I wear my new mac?’
‘Yes. But hurry, Charlotte. Put Moodie in the airing cupboard, and wash your hands. I’ll be up in a moment to brush your hair.’
She had made one false step. The Flaxmans lived twenty miles away, and if they had just rung up they could not be arriving immediately. Luckily Charlotte, though brought up to use her reason, was not a very deductive child; the discrepancy between the prompt arriving of the Flaxmans and the long drive back to Hood House was not likely to catch her attention. But perhaps a private word to Adela Flaxman—just to be on the safe side.
‘Mother! Mother!’
At the threatening woe of the cry, Meg left everything and ran.
‘Mother! There’s a button off.’
The Flaxmans arrived, both talking at once, and saying what a horrible day it was, and Oh, the wretched farmers, who would be a farmer? in loud gay voices. Mrs. Flaxman was Mother’s particular friend, but today Mother didn’t seem to like her so much, and was laughing obligingly, just as she did with Professor Bayer. As Charlotte stood on the outskirts of this conversation she began to feel less sure of a happy successful day out. She would be treated like a child and probably given milk instead of tea. Moodie hadn’t drunk that milk. ‘Mother! Don’t forget to feed Moodie.’
‘Charlotte! As if I would——’ At the same moment Mr. Flaxman said, ‘Come on, Charlotte! Come on, Adela! The car will catch cold if you don’t hurry,’ and swept them out of the house.
Meg went slowly upstairs, noticing that the sound of the rain was more insistent in the upper storey of the house. The airing cupboard was in the bathroom. She glanced in quickly and closed the door. She gave the room a rapid tidy, went down, and turned on the wireless.
Meg believed in method. Every morning of the week had its programme; and this was Thursday, when she defrosted the refrigerator, polished the silver and turned out her bedroom—a full morning’s work. But today she did none of it, wandering about with a desultory, fidgeting tidiness, taking things up and putting them down again, straightening books on their shelves, nipping dead leaves off the houseplants, while the wireless went on with the Daily Service. There was bound to be a mauvais quart d’heure. In fact, everything was well in hand; Charlotte was safely disposed of with the Flaxmans, Moodie was asleep in the airing cupboard and the vet had promised to arrive before midday. It would be quite painless and over in a few minutes. But it was, for all that, a mauvais quart d’heure. There are some women, Meg was one of them, in whom conscience is so strongly developed that it leaves little room for anything else. Love is scarcely felt before duty rushes to encase it, anger is impossible because one must always be calm and see both sides, pity evaporates in expedients, even grief is felt as a sort of bruised sense of injury, a resentment that one should have grief forced upon one when one has always acted for the best. Meg’s conscience told her that she was acting for the best: Moodie would be spared inevitable suffering, Charlotte protected from a possibly quite serious trauma, Alan undisturbed in his work. Her own distress—and she was fond of poor old Moodie, no other cat could quite replace him because of his associations—was a small price to pay for all these satisfactory arrangements, and she was ready to pay it, sacrificing her own feelings as duty bid, and as common sense also bid. Besides, it would soon be over. The trouble about an active, strongly developed conscience is that it requires to be constantly fed with good works, a routine shovelling of meritorious activities. And when you have done everything for the best, and are waiting about for the vet to come and kill your old cat and can’t therefore begin to defrost a refrigerator or turn out a bedroom, a good conscience soon leaves off being a support and becomes a liability, demanding to be supported itself.
The bad quarter of an hour stretched into half an hour, into an hour, into an hour and a quarter, while Meg, stiffening at the noise of every approaching car and fancying with every gust of a fitful rising wind that Moodie was demanding with yowls to be let out of the airing cupboard, tried to read but could not, looked for cobwebs but found none and wondered if for this once she would break her rule of not drinking spirits before lunchtime. She was in the kitchen, devouring lumps of sugar, when the vet arrived. She took him to the bathroom, opened the cupboard door, heard him say, ‘Well, old man?’
‘Would you like me to stop? Is there anything I can do to help?’
‘If you could let me have an old towel.’
She produced the towel, and went to her bedroom where she opened the window and looked out on the rain and the tossing trees and remembered that everyone must die. A last she hear the basin tap turned on, the vet washing his hands, the water running away.
‘Mrs. Atwood. Have you got a box?’
‘A box?’
He stood in the passage, a tall, red-faced young man, the picture of health.
‘Any sort of carton. To take it away in. A sack would do.’
She had not remembered that Moodie would require a coffin. In a flurry of guilt she began to search. There was a brown paper carrier; but this would not do, Moodie could not be borne away swinging from the vet’s hand. There was the carton the groceries had come in; but it was too small, and had Pan Yan Pickles printed on it. At last she found a plain oblong carton, kept because it was solid and serviceable. Deciding that this would do, she glanced inside and realized that it would not do like that. Moodie could not be put straight into an empty box: there must be some sort of lining, of padding. She tore old newspaper into strips and crumpled the strips to form a mattress; and then, remembering that flowers are given to the dead, she snatched a couple of dahlias from a vase and scattered the petals on top of the newspaper. The vet was standing in the bathroom, averting his eyes from the bidet, the towel neatly folded was balanced on the edge of the basin, and on the bathroom stool was Moodie’s unrecognizably shabby, degraded, dead body. Before she realized what she was saying, she had said, ‘If you’ll hold the box, I’d like to put him in.’
Yet what else could she say? She owed it to Moodie. She lifted him on her two hands, as she had lifted him so often. The unsupported head fell horribly to one side, lolling like the clapper of a bell. She got the body in somehow, and the vet closed the lid of the carton and carried it away. She knew she ought to have thanked him, but she could not speak. She had never seen a dead body before—except on food counters, of course.
She went downstairs and drank a stiffish whisky. Her
sense of proportion reasserted itself. One cannot expect to be perfect in any first performance. She had not behaved at all as she had meant to when Charlotte was born. It was a pity about the makeshift box; it was a pity not to have thanked the vet; but the essentials had been secured, Charlotte was safe and happy at Hood House, Alan was happy and busy in his laboratory; neither of them need ever know what agony is involved in the process of rationally, mercifully, putting an end to an old pet. She would make a quick lunch of bread and cheese, and then be very busy. She heard a distant peal of thunder, and welcomed the thought of a good rousing thunderstorm. Something elemental would be releasing. After a few more long, grumbling reverberations the storm moved away, but when she went to defrost the refrigerator she found it darkened and cavervous, and the current off throughout the house. The power lines on Ram Down were always getting struck. She left the refrigerator to natural forces, and as she couldn’t use the Hoover either, she polished the silver and sat down to do some mending. She was a bad needlewoman; mending kept her mind occupied till a burst of sunlight surprised her by its slant. She had no idea it was so late. Charlotte would be back at any moment.
Just as the current had gone off, leaving the refrigerator darkened and cavernous, the support of a good conscience now withdrew its aid. Charlotte would be back at any moment. Charlotte would have to be told. Time went on. Suppose there had been a car smash? Charlotte mangled and dying at the roadside, and all because she had been got out of the house while the vet was mercifully releasing Moodie? Meg’s doing—how could one ever get over such a thing and lead a normal life again?
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