by Richard Hull
6
It has been terrible, perfectly terrible. I must put it all down, every moment of it, just as it was all presented to me.
Lunch was grim. For various reasons no one was quite normal. Naturally enough I was not entirely self-possessed. Considering what I had to do that afternoon I should hardly have been human if I had been. Even at that last moment I found my resolution wavering. That my aunt deserved fully all she was going to get, I was as fully convinced as ever, but was there no other way round it? Couldn’t she be persuaded to let me go away and live my own life? After all, I had never asked her. I half made up my mind to give her one last chance. So far my eyes had been fixed firmly on my plate; I lifted my head with a view to giving her that possibility of reprieve directly after Mary left the room. As bad luck would have it, my eyes caught hers instead of my aunt’s, and what must the silly girl do but blush. Apparently she, too, was not entirely self-possessed. Remembering my aunt’s insults and innuendoes of the morning, I felt a flood of colour come across my face. Significantly my aunt looked at me, and then at her retreating form. That look did much to steel my nerves.
After all, perhaps it was dangerous to give her a last chance? Supposing inquiries started, was it wise that our last conversation should be a passionate appeal by me for freedom, for escape from the endless nagging, nagging, nagging to which I was subjected day in and day out? Of course no one would know what topic we had discussed when we were alone, but such a theme, once started, would not be finished in a minute, and my aunt, who was capable of such remarks as she had made in the presence of Williams, might not be restrained by the return of Mary with the pudding. A scattered sentence at least, probably sounding all the worse by being torn from its context, would certainly reach Mary, and after what had happened I was no longer sure that I could trust that girl. They say that everyone who contemplates doing what I was going to do makes one slip. I felt that to make such an appeal would be that slip. No, I must be firm, ruthless, resolute.
I turned my mind, thus made resolute, to my pudding. The spoon with which I was eating it crumpled in my hand. In silence my aunt seized it and straightened it.
‘The Powells, my dear Edward,’ she said, ‘have lived at Brynmawr since 1658. That spoon was over a hundred years old.’ She peered over the mark on the silver. ‘Yes, over a hundred. We have always held our head high in the country. It’s a pity to break old spoons in a fit of temper because you can’t have your own way in everything. It’s a pity to depart from old traditions. No cheese, thank you.’
It was so like my aunt to spoil her dignity by such a conclusion. It was so like my aunt to seize the pretext of an accident to deliver a sermon. And what a sermon! Ever this harping on the merit of perpetuity, on absence of change.
Still, there was something rather fine about it. Now that she had come to the last few hours of her life I could not help a little sentiment creeping in. Should I, after all, relent? I have really a very kind, unselfish, and forgiving nature. I stole quietly away to a disused attic to think. Kindly feelings were stealing over me. Below, I heard my aunt going to my room. I congratulated myself, prematurely, on my wisdom in selecting the attic.
‘Edward, Ed-ward,’ came my aunt’s voice. ‘Ed-ward. Damn the boy. I never can find him when I want him. Ed-ward.’ A pause followed, during which I heard my aunt move across the hall. This was followed, to my horror, by a violent beating on the gong. This was more than I could bear. I emerged wearily.
‘Yes, Aunt.’
‘Going deaf, dear?’
‘Rapidly – that gong.’
My aunt’s glance suddenly turned from the vaguely aggrieved to the actively suspicious. ‘What on earth are you doing up there?’
Had she but known it, this was a very difficult question to answer, and one, moreover, it would have been better if she had not asked. As it was I found a reply difficult. ‘I – er – was thinking.’
‘In the attic? Thinking? Why not in your own room? Why on earth go up to the maid’s part of the house? Really, Edward, if I thought –’
This was more than I could stand. I faced her squarely.
‘Aunt Mildred, you have a filthy mind.’
For once in her life my aunt was so taken aback that I had the last word. I was able to leave her gasping, her large mouth opening and shutting feebly, and showing her badly stopped teeth in great and revolting detail. With So-so at my heels I strode from the house. Quickly I made my way round to the garage, though by a circuitous route. In a few seconds I had perfected the last details of my plan. Then I walked off a little way up Yr Allt, the hill behind the house on the other side to the drive. There I produced a book from my pocket and ostentatiously sat down to read in full view of the house.
Presently I saw my aunt come out into the garden. She apparently felt the need to work off steam, for she fell to work on clearing away the vines of some early peas which were over. Pull, tug, up came the old plant; jerk, and the sticks on which they were grown were pulled up; heave, and they were stacked neatly at the end of the garden for future use. From where I was I could see her hurrying to and fro in the full afternoon sun. I could imagine the state she must be in all too easily. How glad I was that I was out of the way! Probably it was to help her in this degrading occupation that she had called to me, and all for what purpose? To make the idle Evans’ life a little idler.
The afternoon was pleasant. I sat in the shade of a beech, so still that a butterfly rested on a flower just by my hand, a little chalky-blue piece of finery. The sheep cropping the grass were clearly unaware that I was there. Across over the house and the dingle I could see the flag flying on Pentre Castle, which meant that Lord Pentre had come down from London. Beyond lay the Golfas, rising steeply, their sides clothed with oak, sycamore, and fir, to those summits underneath which most of the Midlands is laid out on one side like a map, while the other shows the jumbled, meaningless hills of Wales in wild and pointless confusion. It is to England that I look when I am dragged up there, as I have been, reluctantly, for you have to walk at least a part of the way up an unpleasantly steep path. There is, however, I must admit, something attractive in the Golfas, something which has compelled even me to consent to climb to the top of each point. Once, however, is quite enough.
I drank in the scene deeply. At moments of emotion one does notice one’s surroundings vividly, clearly. Below me, my aunt was still wrestling, all unsuspectingly, with armfuls of pea-sticks. I glanced at my watch and observed with satisfaction that she was running her hospital meeting a bit fine. It would be all to the good if she had to hurry down the drive. Soon, however, she must go in and tidy up, preparatory to starting for that meeting to which, if my plans went right, she would never get to. It was time for me to move.
Casually I got up and sauntered down the side of Yr Allt until I was out of sight of the house. Then I moved fast. Quickly I made my way below the bottom of the orchard. So well shall I always remember every detail of that afternoon that I recollect now, what I hardly observed then – that the apple trees gave every sign of a promising crop, but I could see no signs of damsons. I am glad of that. Damsons, to my mind, taste like boots stewed in ink. Pickled, however, they have a pleasantly sweet, but astringent flavour.
After coming out from the shelter of the orchard I had to be careful. This was the one point I had noticed in my earlier reconnaissance as being dangerous for a few yards. At the bottom of the orchard runs a little brook which goes pretty straight from there across the meadow in front of the lawn and joins the Brynmawr brook not far from the bridge. The slope of the lawn is continued across the meadow, and just before this little brook it drops quite steeply, so steeply as to be almost a bank, before rising again to a local crest, over which one can see four or five miles away the sides of the Broad Mountain. Directly I was behind this bank I should be out of sight once more, but on the way there were a few open yards.
Seizing up So-so, partly for fear of stray cattle and partly to prevent his lingeri
ng across the dangerous gap, I shot quickly across from the corner of the orchard to the shelter of the bank of the little brook. So far as I could see, all was well. Once behind the bank I made my way rapidly to the point I had settled on and placed the biscuit on the left of the road; So-so struggled in my arms, whined, and tried to lick my face as he saw his dainty as before put out for him. Fortunately, however, he did not bark. He knew that it would shortly be his. He could trust me. Then quick as lightning I crossed the road, fixed the string round So-so’s collar and retired behind the tree hidden in the deep bracken. I had not realized before that crouching right down I should not be able actually to see the road. No matter, I could hear accurately enough. I was in time.
In fact I was a little early. I do not know how long, in fact, I had to wait. I suppose it was not really very long, but it seemed eternity to me, and I suppose to So-so, too, waiting for the glad sound of ‘Paid for’. The ironic correctness of those words suddenly appealed to my mind. ‘Paid for’ indeed! How many insults were going to be paid for? I thought of the recent ones, of Williams and his fence, of Mary’s blushing cheeks, of the frequent snubs, of Herbertson’s sneers and Hughes’s giggles; I thought further back of the frequent repressions of my childhood, of the everlasting ‘Don’t, Edward’ that pervaded all my nursery days. Ay, paid for, indeed. It was in a transcendental mood that I heard my aunt’s car coming down the road, that I steeled my nerves to hold So-so back till I judged the exact second had arrived and then with a loud shout or a hoarse whisper – I know not which – the words were said, the string was loosed.
From the road I heard, I could not see, a yell, a snap as the steering went, a howl from So-so, a grinding of brakes for a fraction of a second only, and then the sound of the car plunging off the road completely out of control. I leapt to my feet to see the car disappearing over the edge of the bank. As it went I could see the door of the driver’s seat being pushed open from inside and pushed back by the force of the air. Then the car disappeared from my sight.
Hurriedly I scrambled through the hedge. No one would object if I made a gap now; it is strange how such trivial thoughts will intrude at such moments. In front I could hear crashes and bangs as the car gained speed down the slope, cannoned sideways from tree trunk to tree trunk and, pitching over and over, eventually landed with a stunning thud at the bottom of the dingle. I was just in time to see the last crash. I do not think I shall ever forget it. It was tremendous in its unrestrained violence. The car seemed bent on dashing itself into the smallest possible fragments. There could not have been a bone unbroken in my aunt’s body.
But my aunt had been partially successful in her attempt to get out of the car. In fact she had got out, but I could see that it had been of little avail. She had been thrown out violently and was lying limp and inert, with little more than her feet showing, her head buried in a tangled thicket of blackberries. I went down to her. Judging by her position and the stillness with which she lay, there could be little doubt. I am no doctor and I could not make any examination, but I was quite sure of the result. I cannot bear the thought of touching a dead body, so I left her alone. I am ashamed to say that I was a little sick.
It was not until I got back to the road, that I realized that a tragedy had occurred. By the side of the road, his nose only an inch or two from his dearly loved biscuit, lay poor So-so. It did not need any medical knowledge to see that he had gone. I must have let him loose a fraction of a second too late, the merest fraction, and heedless of the car he had dashed across the road and gained the other side, but that Juggernaut, plunging heedlessly on, had gone right over him. So-so would be my companion no more. I could not help recalling my aunt’s phrase, that if he did not conform to her standards, she would ‘take action’. She had indeed, even if involuntarily.
Poor So-so! Picking up the biscuit and casting it away into the nearest patch of brambles, I nerved myself to pick up his limp body and made my way back towards the house. It was no time to mourn his loss. It was a time for action. Worked up as I was, I could barely restrain my tears.
I had of course had the sense to think out exactly what I would do beforehand. I had deliberated whether it was best simply to remain absent and leave someone else to discover the accident, a course which would have the advantage of dissociating me entirely from it. But I had always felt that perhaps it would be wiser for me to be, if not an eye-witness, at any rate somewhere where I could have heard the crash. It was fortunate that I had based my plans on this idea, for So-so was seldom far from me, and since he, poor dear, had become so tragically involved with it, I must have been somewhere near.
Putting down his rapidly cooling form on a table wrapped in the duster my aunt kept in the hall, lest Athel and Thruthel should disturb his rest, I moved swiftly to the telephone.
‘Llwll 47, quick – Dr Spencer, please.’ I carefully made my voice sound agitated. ‘Dr Spencer, come at once, please. An accident to her car – my aunt. Come quickly.’
‘In five minutes, Edward.’ Dr Spencer wasted no time on words.
Turning round, to my annoyance I found Cook at my elbow.
‘Oh, Mr Edward, what has happened? We thought we heard a crash.’
It is at moments like these that it is so easy to make a mistake, so easy to appear to know something which it would really be impossible to know. I kept my head.
‘I don’t really know, Cook. So-so ran across the road in front of the gate and I heard a yell and a series of crashes. Miss Powell’s car’s at the bottom of the dingle; there is So-so.’ I pointed to the duster and saw Cook shudder.
‘But, Miss Mildred!’ she gasped.
‘I don’t know, Cook. I’m frightened. She must have been thrown out going down. She’s –’ I gave way to emotion.
‘Oh, poor lady. You didn’t never leave her? Oh, where is she, where is she? Let me get to her, let me go.’
On the whole I thought it best that Dr Spencer should find my aunt. ‘Calm yourself, Cook. Dr Spencer’s just coming.’
‘Then let’s meet him on the road, it would save minutes for the precious lady. Run, Mr Edward, run,’ and with that, Cook started to propel her fat body in an ungainly trot towards the front gate. Before, however, she had gone more than a few yards she stopped. ‘Better get Mary,’ she wheezed, ‘she’s taken lessons with the Girl Guides in bandaging.’
‘All right, Cook. You get her. I’ll go and fetch Evans. We might want someone to help carry her.’
On the whole, let them all come was my feeling. They would distract attention from me; besides, if there were any signs left of my movements, they might be obliterated by the trampling of other people.
Returning with the gardener, I saw Cook and Mary in front of us opening the gate on to the road. Following them was the kitchen-maid, a grubby handkerchief applied to her eyes. Save for the girl’s sobs we reached the bend of the drive in silence. I was rather sorry to see Spencer’s car already drawn up on the side of the road. I should have liked to have had one more look round to see there was no possible clue lying about. However, I reassured myself quickly. It was extremely improbable. Indeed, what was there that could be incrim – careless.
The rest of the household got there before me, including Evans, who, from the moment I had called him, had moved incredibly fast for a man of his age. I found myself quite out of breath with the unusual exertion of running. From below came Spencer’s voice.
‘Come on everybody and help get Miss Powell out of this thicket. That’s right, Mary, loosen that thorn from her dress. Come on, Edward. Don’t stand doing nothing. Give a hand, man. This thorn bush may have saved her, but it’s very hard to get her out of it. Youngish bush, fortunately, so that the boughs and the brambles have broken her fall, but were not too stiff. Good man, Evans; nearly free now. There we are.’
Thus talking volubly and encouraging everyone to exert himself, he supervised the operation of disentangling my aunt’s form from the brambles and blackthorn bushes. For myself I though
t it was obvious wisdom to exert myself to my utmost and, by the time the work was done, my clothes had been torn in several places and my face and hands were badly scratched. Eventually my aunt was extricated and laid out on as level a piece of ground as we could find. Dr Spencer knelt down by her side instantly, and for a second there was complete silence. Then Cook began to sob quietly on Mary’s shoulder and the kitchen-maid began to show every sign of having hysterics. I was curious to find that the reaction due to lack of employment after our exertion was affecting even me.
‘Damn you, girl, keep quiet; and control yourself, Cook.’
Spencer’s voice was sharp and peremptory. He continued his examination, quickly but methodically. Suddenly he gave a grunt, then another as some further test was finished. I hoped he would not be long, for to tell the truth there would always be something incredibly ghastly about that particular spot in the dingle – not that I intended to stay at Brynmawr.
Spencer looked up. ‘She’s alive, anyhow.’
‘Oh, my God!’ The exclamation was torn from me. The whole world reeled round. Had I gone through all this for no purpose? I nearly fainted and had to sit down suddenly.
Spencer fortunately misunderstood my motives. ‘It’s all right, Edward. Does you credit and all that, but I think I can give you a good report. Concussion, of course, and that sort of thing; but she’s certainly alive and, as far as I can see, nothing broken. Too early to say yet; tell you that when we get her back to the house.’
I looked down at my aunt’s face, cruelly scratched by the blackberries. I remembered the crashing of the car and the pace it had attained before it reached the bottom of the dingle. I looked down and saw its remains. It seemed impossible that my aunt should have escaped, apparently comparatively lightly.
