‘Oh, no!’ said Jonathan, struck to the heart. He hesitated, then added: ‘She is more likely to feel guilt towards her brother.’
The doctor gave him a look which meant: You are inventing this: it is a rationalisation.
Jonathan fought against this judgement, for if Susie could no longer rest absolutely upon him, surely she would indeed despair. He took all possible pains to show her how great was his love and desire for her, how happy he was to come home and find her by his hearth, how greatly he admired her beauty, her taste, her soft little voice. He talked to her, carefully and simply, of events in the University and the outside world, to show how highly he valued her intelligence and opinion. But Susie did not improve.
At last there came an evening when, sitting at the supper-table with her husband—he had been talking about Vietnam—and picking up a fork in the customary way, she suddenly appeared to forget what it was and why she held it, and stared blankly at the implement in her hand.
‘Susie!’ exclaimed Jonathan. (In spite of himself alarm and anguish crept into his voice.)
Susie returned to herself and employed the fork normally. But in a moment she said in her soft sweet tones:
‘I’ll have some treatment, Jonathan, if you think it will make me better.’
‘And will you—go away—to have it?’ said Jonathan, his words sticking in his throat.
Susie sighed. ‘Yes, if I must,’ she said mildly.
It was arranged, and she entered the institution the following day.
Jonathan, with leaden heart and outward cheer, visited her as often as the institute doctors would allow; he had thought of taking the children, now nearly four years old, to see her once a week, but the doctors advised against it.
Perhaps this was fortunate, for within ten days another blow fell. Mrs Willoughby, the widow who had made whatever comfort had existed in their home for the last few years, came to him weeping and handed in her notice. It appeared that her daughter’s youngest boy had developed polio, and her aid was needed in nursing him.
‘Of course you must go at once, Mrs Willoughby,’ said Jonathan, sick at heart. ‘But what I shall do without you, I don’t know.’
‘I hope you think I’ve done my duty by you, Mr Oldroyd.’
‘I do indeed.’
‘It hasn’t always been easy, with Mrs Oldroyd as she is, and that’
‘I fully appreciate your great services, Mrs Willoughby,’ said Jonathan, giving her a handsome present.
‘What will you do with the two poor mites?’ pursued Mrs Willoughby.
‘Until Mrs Oldroyd returns,’ began Jonathan.
‘Ah!’ said Mrs Willoughby shaking her head.
‘I think I must put them in the care of their aunt,’ concluded Jonathan, thinking with a rush of relief of Ruth’s homely warmth.
‘Yes. Your mother’s a bit tired for two such young ones,’ agreed Mrs Willoughby,
‘If you can just find time to pack for them before you go, I shall be grateful.’
Mrs Willoughby ironed out a slight frown at this suggestion and found time to perform this service.
On the following Saturday Jonathan put the twins into his car and drove to Stanney Royd.
6
Two Daughters
Robin had recovered from the two or three infantile ailments and had become able to toddle when one Saturday morning Chuff by chance reached home rather early. He had just received the second half of his income tax demand and was feeling bad-tempered; still, there would be golf in the afternoon. As he dismounted from his car he saw a small fair sprite watching him with great interest from the nearby rockery. The very fair long hair, the charming short little shift which children wore nowadays, her white socks and shoes, made a delicious sight, to which Chuff was not unsusceptible.
‘Well now, who are you?’ he said, smiling and extending a hand to her. The sprite with a radiant smile skipped over the rockery and confided her small paw to his. They advanced along the side of the house. Ruth came out of the front door, looking rather harassed. At her side, but not holding her hand, stood another little sprite almost identical with the first, except that her little white shift was starred with blue roses, whereas his sprite’s had pink.
‘Who are these, then?’ called Chuff laughing.
‘They’re Susie’s twins, of course,’ said Ruth. ‘This is Amanda, yours is Linda. Amanda’s a few minutes older.’
‘They’re raving beauties,’ exclaimed Chuff with satisfaction.
‘What did you expect?’ snapped Ruth. ‘They’re Susie’s children.’
Chuff held out his hand to Amanda. She did not move, but gazed at him with disapproval. He now observed that she was slightly less pretty, though perhaps more beautiful than her sister, for her forehead was higher and the dressing of her fair silky hair, tied back rather severely on top of her head with a black ribbon, made her profile appear rather austere.
‘Is Susie here, then?’ said Chuff.
‘No, Jonathan brought them. Don’t say anything, Chuff. Twins, run along to Mrs Jessopp and tell her Uncle Chuff is here.’
The sprites vanished obediently.
‘I must say I think Jonathan and Susie might have accepted our holiday invitations and brought them here before,’ said Chuff.
‘We shall have to keep them, Chuff, at any rate for a while,’ whispered Ruth, taking his arm.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Susie’s had to go into a nursing home.’
‘Well they might have told us sooner. What’s wrong?’
‘A nervous breakdown.’
‘You don’t mean——’ began Chuff, halting suddenly.
‘Yes, I’m afraid I do. She’s never been herself since they were born, you know, and now she’s broken down completely.’
‘Susie!’
‘Jonathan’s here—he’ll tell you about it. Or perhaps he won’t,’ said Ruth. ‘Don’t press him too hard.’
Her face contorted and she appeared near to tears. From Ruth, who was not given to displays of emotion, this was serious.
‘We’ll keep the twins as long as necessary,’ she said unevenly.
‘Of course,’ said Chuff.
7
Disagreements
The two cousins gazed at each other in astonishment. From a series of apparently trivial causes which sprang from deep divisions, they had not seen each other since the night of the twins’ birth, and each perceived startling changes in the other.
To Chuff, Jonathan, though only in his early thirties, looked a man in middle life, and a worn man at that. For he was thin to emaciation, greying at the temples, his face haggard, deeply lined. His eyes still shone, but no longer with ardent life; they were the eyes of a man who had learned strength through grief.
Chuff, on the other hand, appeared to Jonathan not only exceedingly sleek and well groomed, but almost handsome. Lines round his mouth showed sophistication, and his eyes had lost their boyish frankness. He held himself Well and walked with confidence. In a word, he had grown up.
‘Chuff!’ exclaimed Jonathan, smiling and offering his hand.
‘Long time no see,’ said Chuff, taking it. ‘What will you have to drink?’
‘Nothing, thanks.’
‘Well, sit down anyway,’ said Chuff, mixing himself a rather strong whisky and soda—seeing Jonathan look so old had upset him. ‘I’m sorry to hear this about Susie. It’s not—permanent, is it?’
‘No, no. Just a few weeks. Perhaps a month or two. I should be very grateful if you could keep the twins until she’s well enough to return home. Mrs Willoughby has had to leave, you see, owing to illness in her own family, and term is just beginning, so I am not free. But if it should be troublesome to Ruth, I’m sure Mother—’
‘The place of Susie’s children is here,’ said Chuff firmly.
At this point the elder twin ran in, and took up her position by her father’s knee, leaning one arm across him with a protective air.
‘Thi
s one’s Amanda?’
‘Yes.’ Jonathan gently stroked the child’s gleaming head. ‘They’re very like Susie, don’t you think?’
‘Yes and no,’ said Chuff, who personally read in Amanda’s defiant little face a likeness to Jonathan which intimidated him.
Ruth, holding Linda’s hand, with Hal and Robin skirmishing on the sidelines, now entered to announce that lunch was ready. Linda—what a beauty that child is! thought Chuff—glided across to her father and took his extended hand.
‘Who are those?’ said Hal, pointing.
‘Don’t point, dear,’ said his mother. Those are your cousins Amanda and Linda; their mother is ill, so we are looking after them for a while.’
‘Oh,’ said Hal, his face slightly softening. ‘They look like dolls.’
‘We’ll go to Annotsfield this afternoon and buy than some dolls,’ suggested Ruth.
Hal appeared to consider this non sequitur doubtfully. Robin drew near the twins. He stood and gazed at them, his hands clasped over his thin little stomach, but said nothing.
Lunch, with four young children present, was a meal messy and often interrupted. Jonathan was used to this and took it calmly, but Chuff, he noticed with some surprise, was irritable and impatient.
In the intervals of tears, spoon-feeding, refusals to eat and mopping up mouths and bibs, Ruth contrived to ask:
‘But what do you do at University, Jonathan?’
Jonathan explained the preparation and delivery of lectures—he had two courses this year—tutorials, the return of essays and so on; they listened in awe.
‘Return the compliment, Chuff, and tell us what you do.’
‘I can’t describe it all,’ said Chuff sulkily. ‘We design cloth and weave it, Hamsun’s other subsidiaries finish it and the group markets it.’
‘It’s in the design you miss Uncle Harry most, I expect,’ said Jonathan wanting to show interest.
‘Yes.’
Something in the haste of this curt answer, and an odd look on Ruth’s face, showed Jonathan that the subject was unwelcome; he bent over Linda and adjusted her ‘pusher’.
Afterwards Ruth took the children away and the two men sat alone together over coffee.
‘I should like to say again how deeply I regretted the affair of the Morcar shares,’ said Jonathan in a formal tone. ‘As I told you at the time, I knew nothing of it till after the sale was completed.’
‘Oh—it proved to be a good thing put of a bad one,’ said Chuff carelessly.
Jonathan felt chilled, but he persevered, determined to show concern for his cousin’s affairs.
‘There’s a City Takeover Panel now, isn’t there? Didn’t the Government tighten up a bit recently?’
‘I daresay. I have nothing to complain about in our takeover,’ said Chuff as before. He hesitated, rather wanting to tell how he had tried to protect the interests of the Daisy Mill men, but he decided he was too proud to seek his cousin’s approval, and said nothing.
There was a silence. Jonathan broke it by saying with forced cheerfulness:
‘How is G.B.?’
‘We haven’t seen him lately. He went for a job in London.’
‘Electronics?’
‘No. Trade Union. But now he’s got into Parliament, you know. The previous member conveniently died.’
‘Is he Trade Union sponsored?’
‘Don’t mention Trade Unions to me. More than four million work hours lost through strikes this year already! Did you ever hear anything like it? With our adverse trade balance!’
‘Perhaps the Trade Unions are not the only ones to blame—it may not be altogether their fault,’ suggested Jonathan mildly.
‘Well, it’s not mine,’ snapped Chuff. With an effort he recalled his temper and said more pleasantly: ‘G.B. doesn’t write to Ruth, but he writes to his mother pretty regularly, I believe, and we hear his news that way. He’s only called in here once since he left Annotsfield. He looked very prosperous.’
‘There has been a general rise in the standard of living, rather than a better distribution of wealth, I think,’ said Jonathan stiffly.
‘That’s what you think. We always did disagree. What do you think about these student riots, then, eh?’
‘I regard these protesting University students as one of the hopes of the century,’ said Jonathan, losing his temper in his turn.
Chuff’s eyes opened so wide, in such horror, at this sentiment, that Jonathan repented. He laughed and added: ‘At least sometimes I do so.’
‘And sometimes not, I hope.’
‘Well, I must be off. I must call to see Mother,’ said Jonathan. He rose, feeling that further talk would only bring further disagreement.
Chuff, who agreed with him on this point, did not try to detain him.
The parting between Jonathan and his children was agonising. Linda screamed and sobbed till her little face lost all its beauty in crimson distortion; she clung to her father with all her strength. When Chuff lifted her away and raised her to his shoulder, she beat at him with clenched fists; Chuff however, retained her in his arms, he felt curiously drawn to this convulsive resentful little organism. Meanwhile Amanda stood motionless, pale and silent. Her parting embrace with her father was long but without sound. For his part Jonathan felt as if some ruthless god were digging out his heart with a sharp grape-fruit spoon. He was obliged to pause for several minutes at the entrance to the drive of Emsley Hall, to regain his composure and put on a cheerful countenance.
‘Mr Jonathan, madam,’ announced the old Armitage retainer who had lived at Emsley Hall since Nat was an infant.
The Armitages were sitting comfortably in armchairs on either side of their enormous hearth. The furnishings of the huge room were (in Jonathan’s opinion) hideously Victorian, dating from the 1870’s when a former Armitage, profiting by the distress of French textile firms after the Franco-German War, added enormously to a fortune already two hundred years old, and redecorated the Hall.
His mother tried to start up to greet him, but the stick she had recently taken to using slipped from her reach and she sank back. Nat rose and shook his stepson warmly by the hand.
‘Jonathan! Why didn’t you let us know you were coming, dear? Is Susie with you? Have you brought the twins?’
Nerving himself to an ordeal he dreaded, Jonathan bent over his mother and kissed her still handsome cheek, then explained calmly:
‘I’m sorry to say Susie is not very well and has had to go into a nursing home for a spell. I have brought the children over to spend a few weeks with Chuff and Ruth.’
‘What is the matter with Susie?’
‘A kind of nervous breakdown, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh, Jonathan!’ mourned his mother. She gazed at him sorrowfully. ‘You’re not looking at all well, Jonathan.’
‘I can’t say the same for you,’ returned Jonathan in a sprightly tone.
This was the merest truth; his mother’s blonde hair was slightly greying, but its handsome dressing displayed its abundance, her grey eyes were bright, her fair complexion unblemished. Life as Nat Armitage’s wife was clearly easy for her, thought Jonathan with a pang of perhaps jealousy, perhaps envy.
‘I’ll just pop off and write a letter or two, Jennifer, and then you two can have a heart to heart talk,’ said Nat with his customary friendly courtesy. ‘You’ll stay for a cuppa, I suppose, Jonathan?’
He waved a valedictory hand and left them.
‘Oh, Jonathan! A nervous breakdown! I always knew that would happen in some form or another,’ grieved Jennifer. ‘Susie was always unstable, Jonathan, you could see it as well as I could. Everyone saw it—your Uncle Harry saw it clearly, though he was so fond of her. Why did you ever marry her?’
‘Mother, I love Susie,’ said Jonathan.
He did not have to pretend to make this statement; it was the merest truth and it carried conviction. His mother sighed.
‘And the twins! Why didn’t you bring them to me, Jonathan?’
This was not quite so easy to explain.
‘They would be too much for you, Mother, nowadays —with your rheumatism,’ said Jonathan. He could hardly say that he thought Ruth would be a more yielding and cheerful hostess than his mother. ‘They’re very active little minxes, you know—they gallop about all over the place all the time,’ he finished on a descending note.
His mother was not deceived. Her lips quivered and her eyes filled with tears. ‘Your father’s grandchildren, Jonathan,’ she murmured.
Jonathan, a posthumous child who knew his father only from photographs of him in parachutist uniform, now through his own experience of married love, understood his mother’s feelings much more clearly than he had done as a boy.
‘I’m sorry, Mother,’ he said gently. ‘But Chuff, you see, is Susie’s brother.’
There was a pause.
‘Ruth will be kind to them,’ he added.
‘Oh Ruth will be good to them,’ agreed his mother. ‘Ruth is a good girl, kind and warm-hearted. But as for Chuff, that’s a different matter. Chuff has changed very much of late years. Chuff treated Nat very badly over the takeover.’
‘Surely not,’ protested Jonathan.
‘Oh yes, he did. He didn’t obtain a seat on the Hamsun Board for Nat, you know—never even asked for one.’
Jonathan was silent; he felt there might be another version of this affair.
‘Could you perhaps arrange with Ruth for her to bring the twins up here for tea one afternoon a week regularly? Every Wednesday for instance, or Saturday perhaps when I could be here. That would be a good way to keep in touch and not too demanding,’ suggested Jonathan, trying as always to find a friendly solution to a problem.
In this case he seemed successful, for his mother’s face brightened.
‘That’s a good idea. I’ll telephone her. I’ll ring her now, shall I?’
‘Why not?’ said Jonathan encouragingly.
Jennifer went to the telephone, but returned looking dissappointed.
‘She’s out,’ she said. (Jonathan remembered the projected Annotsfield expedition in search of dolls.) ‘But I’ll ring her tonight. I’d rather the twins came alone, you know—I mean, without Chuff’s boys. Hal is a very rough little boy, and Robin is always ailing.’
Ring in the New Page 11
