Cordelia

by Winston Graham

  Presently she lay back on the pillow, knowing she would not sleep for a long time. She had said her prayers, praying for common sense and peace of mind, but the second at least seemed very far away. Thoughts were racing round in her head. She had also said a short prayer for Stephen, praying that he should be given the strength to get over his infatuation and that he should be able to leave her alone and marry some nice girl and that they should be happy all their lives.

  Her mother had always taught her to end her prayers with the words: ‘Nevertheless let not my will but Thine be done.’ It was usually the hardest prayer of all to say. Tonight, with a peculiar sense of discomfort, she found it easier to say – and that ease of itself seemed an irreverence of the worst kind.

  Chapter Eight

  In spite of Mr Ferguson’s silent disapproval, she still continued to pay her family about three visits a fortnight. The distance from Grove Hall to the shop, if one cut through the lanes, was not great, and often she would walk, another act that Mr Ferguson disapproved of. But she found it ostentatious to draw up at her old home with a coachman to hand her down.

  Today was fine and rather warm for April, and she looked forward to being able to detect the first stirrings of spring in the gardens and among the trees. Only just a little way along the Grove he was waiting for her.

  She half hesitated with the shock, considering how to avoid him, until he turned and took off his hat and she knew then this was not a chance meeting.

  He looked thinner and less buoyant. There was no contrivance in that. In a queer way it suited him. His was a face with good bone structure; plumpness would mask it, leanness gave it strength.

  ‘May I walk with you?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, if you wish to.’

  He turned with her and they went some way in silence. It was an ominous, explosive silence.

  At length he said: ‘Do you dislike me all that much for loving you?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Then I may go on loving you?’

  She moistened her lips. ‘How can I stop you?’

  ‘Do you want to stop me?’

  ‘It would be better for us all if you did.’

  ‘Why would it be better?’ he said obstinately. ‘I don’t see that.’

  ‘Well, it is only making you unhappy – and me unhappy – and it would upset Brook if he knew.’

  ‘Doesn’t it depend how you want to live?’ he said. ‘How intensely you want to live. Is it drifting along in peace and comfort you want or the excitement of swimming against the stream? Yes, I’m unhappy but I wouldn’t change it. I’ll take the rough with the smooth. Even if there’s only frustration in it, I’m the richer for knowing you.’

  ‘Why do you say things like that?’

  ‘Because they’re the very truth.’

  ‘You don’t know me, Stephen. And if you did – none of this is – going to help.’

  ‘You’ve just said you’re unhappy because of me. That means you’re not indifferent. Are you? Cordelia, are you?’

  ‘I’m married to Brook. That’s all anyone can say …’

  ‘Whatever I feel? And whatever you feel?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve told you so before.’

  ‘Supposing you were deeply in love with me. Would you still stay married to Brook?’

  ‘Yes …’

  He took a deep breath. ‘I don’t believe it!’

  ‘You must …’

  He was silent for some seconds. ‘Very well.’

  Some of the young trees were showing green and the birds were twittering in the mild afternoon, but she saw none of them.

  He said suddenly: ‘You’re sorry for me, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m – sorry this has happened.’

  ‘No more?’

  ‘Well, I can’t seem to – condescend. Not to you, of all people.’

  ‘Thank you. But you’re grieved all the same?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then will you do something to help me?’

  ‘If it’s – reasonable.’

  ‘Will you let me meet you sometimes when you go to see your family and let me walk with you part of the way?’

  Say no. Say no.

  ‘But if I do that it will only make things far worse.’

  ‘Who for?’

  ‘For you.’

  ‘I’ll take the chance on that. I’ll bear the risk. I don’t think it will. Just to see you is what I’m needing.’

  ‘No … If we met and you talked like this it wouldn’t be fair.’

  ‘If we met I should promise not to talk like this.’

  ‘And would you keep your promise?’

  He smiled slightly. ‘I would.’

  ‘You want me to begin to deceive everyone? From the first I should have to tell lies. Heaven knows where it would lead.’

  ‘Why should it lead to anything at all? It’s your family you would be visiting in the ordinary way. I should have business in this district and should come across you and stroll a few yards in your company. No wickedness in that. Tell Brook you’ve met me, if you like. Would there be anything improper in being gracious to a friend?’

  She puckered her brow in an effort to see it in a detached way. Yet she knew she must refuse.

  ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘it is a small thing, this. Isn’t it? If I were a beggar, would you deny me a crumb? There are twenty-four hours in your day, seven days in your week. If you don’t dislike me and you’re sorry for me, as you say you are, d’you think it overgenerous to give me your company for twenty minutes in a fortnight?’

  ‘You make me seem narrow-minded and mean.’

  He touched her arm. ‘It’s only my way of putting the thing. I overstate the case to make you see it the way I want you to. Maybe it’s bold of me to ask it, but I ask it all the same.’

  They had walked so far that in a few moments they would be at the shop.

  She said: ‘ I don’t want you to think me narrow-minded and mean.’

  ‘I don’t, Cordelia. How could I, now? How could I love you if the thought ever entered my head?’ She said: ‘ You mustn’t come any farther. I’m nearly – Good-bye,

  Stephen.’

  He hesitated a moment, looking at her, peering at her for

  indecision.

  ‘And is it really good-bye?’

  ‘I usually,’ she said, ‘I usually come to see my family on a Monday

  and every other Thursday. On fine days I walk. If you do – care

  for me, as you say you do, please don’t come too often …’

  He took off his hat. ‘Thank you. Good-bye.’

  The older Crossley had been in the town over the weekend and was dissatisfied with his son’s stewardship, which had been adequate but not exceptional. Knowing what talent Stephen had, Patrick Crossley was angry and disappointed.

  ‘Mother of Heaven!’ he said. ‘ I can’t follow you, Stephen, that I can’t. Haven’t you had enough to do with women these ten years past to know by now that one’s much like another when you take away the frills they disguise themselves in; and if one won’t have you, then bad cess to her and take up with the next! This muling and puking isn’t sense for a grown man at all. You were always a spoilt boy, and that’s my doing and I know it and I take the fault; but sure at twenty-six it’s time you stopped crying for the moon and came down to earth for a while.’

  Stephen lit a cigar and looked at his father with an even gaze.

  ‘This one’s different.’

  ‘So you’ve said before. Louisa was different. Caroline was different. And what about Virginia? Wasn’t she different, now?’

  ‘Oh, so I thought. So I thought. But now it’s not a question of thinking: it’s a question of knowing.’

  ‘Very well; very well. You know this one is different. This one …’ Mr Crossley scratched his fat neck in irritation. ‘I’ve forgotten her name.’

  ‘Cordelia.’

  ‘This one is different, but unfortunately she’s already got a husb
and and she’s a prude. So you’re beaten. Confess it: you’re beaten.’

  ‘I’m nothing of the kind.’

  ‘Well, you will be beaten. I know the type. I recognize the type, me boy. You’ll play her for six months, for twelve months, and in the end, just when you’ll be thinking you’re going to land her, away she’ll slip off the hook and you’ll be left high and dry on the bank cursing the day she ever was born.’

  Stephen drew at his cigar. His handsome brown eyes had a staunch look.

  ‘I happen to be in love with her, Dad. Why won’t you accept the words when I tell you them?’

  ‘Oh, faith, well, suppose ye are–’

  ‘There’s no supposing about it. But even supposing I wasn’t, I’d still go on.’

  ‘And where’s it going to lead, tell me that.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘No. That’s it. All this year you’ll be fussing and fretting over it, while my interests here go to pot, and then at the end you’ll be up in the divorce court with all the notoriety and bad odour. All the respectable people of the town will turn up their noses and our business will go back to what it was when we bought it.’

  Stephen stared moodily at the fire. There was a good deal of conflict in him this morning, and the feeling of unresolved stress made him irritable. His father’s words spoke direct to that hard sense which the show business had bred in him. But his association with Cordelia appealed to a side of his nature which, despite his other love affairs, had not fully emerged. Against it the old loyalties beat in vain.

  ‘Now look, boy. Why not cut free at this stage? There’s a chance of acquiring a nice property in Birmingham – belonged to the Taylors; it’s got a fair reputation and could be worked up in a very pretty way. I’ve had me eye on it for some time. Supposing now I bought it and made it over to you, lock, stock–’

  Stephen shook his head. ‘Sorry, Dad, I couldn’t find it in me to go. Thank you for the offer.’

  Patrick Crossley’s neck grew redder. ‘And if I gave you no choice?’

  ‘It wouldn’t work. You’ve given me my way all my life and now it’s too late to change. I could always get work in this town if you turned me out.’

  The older man threw the butt of his cigar irritably into the fire.

  ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with you, boy; I was never such a fool about women. Or only once maybe … Well, go on. But do what ye can to hurry the thing on and get it out of your system. And if you’ve no other consideration for me at all, try to keep it dark for the sake of our good name. Will you promise me that? No scandal.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘And try to spare a little attention each day for the work I pay you for. Look on it as a filial duty.’

  ‘I will,’ said Stephen. ‘ I’ll see to things all right. I promise to do that.’

  Another father was feeling a sense of disappointment in his son, but its expression was more devious. Frederick Ferguson was not so blunt in his frustration. He criticized his son’s velvet coat, telling him it was time he got a new one and that the foremen at the works were tidier-dressed. Then when Brook mentioned a poem he was writing on Spring, Mr Ferguson said didn’t he think the subject overdone and it would have been more original and to the point if he wrote one about a dye works. When Brook spoke of Blackpool, Mr Ferguson corrected him sharply on a matter of detail. Cordelia, who usually smarted for her husband, was in a brown study of her own, and she came out of it only in time to find an open conflict.

  Brook, very white, was standing up to his father for once and answering back.

  ‘It doesn’t matter what you meant, it was a very unpleasant thing to say, Father. I – I’m sick of it all. Leave us alone, can’t you? Things will turn out all right in the end. And if they don’t – well, they don’t, that’s all I’ve to say. I can’t stand – sarcasms!’

  ‘My dear boy, there’s no need to raise your voice. And if you read sarcasm in the merest pleasantry to your wife … Even Cordelia must agree with that.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘ I didn’t hear what you said.’

  ‘I said I was coming to have a regard for your administrative talents. It seemed to me a not uncomplimentary remark, even if partly in jest.’

  ‘That wasn’t all you said,’ Brook muttered, and left the room with a slam of the door.

  Frederick Ferguson raised his eyebrows. ‘Juvenile and ill-mannered. I thought Brook was above it.’

  ‘Eh, Frederick,’ said Aunt Tish, putting down her crochet work. ‘The lad’s sensitive, that’s what it is. He was always a touchy lad, was Brook.’

  Mr Ferguson said: ‘ I was telling Brook I had promised to take you over the works, Cordelia. You will find them well worth a visit.’

  ‘Thank you. I should like to go.’

  She was aware of his continuing look. Sometimes he would so brood on a person, embarrassing them without any self-consciousness on his own part.

  He said: ‘ To anyone with business acumen it should be specially stimulating. A pity that because you are a woman you have had no opportunity to develop.’

  When she and the old lady were alone for a few minutes Cordelia said:

  ‘Aunt Tish, what was it Mr Ferguson said that upset Brook?’

  ‘Why nothing all that bad. He was giving praise to you and saying what use you’d be to him down at the works. Then he said maybe Brook would stay at home instead of you and look after the cooking.’

  ‘Oh … That wasn’t very nice …’

  ‘Frederick’s been on to him lately. Like what he was with Margaret sometimes. But he’ll suffer for it – Brook, I mean. Frederick always pays him out somehow.’

  Tish’s weak, placid, pouchy face seemed less inert than usual. She was devoted to Brook.

  ‘Aunt Tish, do tell me more about when Margaret was alive. I’ve been living in this house eighteen months now and sometimes I still think I don’t know any of you – really – except Brook, of course. Sometimes I think if you’d talk to me more, tell me more, I should be more useful to you all.’

  Aunt Letitia fumbled with the white embroidered muslin of her old-fashioned over-jacket. All her face was puckered up in an effort of concentration to answer what Cordelia had said. Then abruptly it cleared and relaxed into its accustomed lines.

  ‘Frederick told us not to,’ she said.

  ‘Told you not to what?’

  ‘Not to talk of Margaret in front of you. Eh, I remember, he said it would upset you.’

  ‘But what is there to hide? What is there to upset me and what is there to hide?’

  ‘Nay, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?’ She stopped and scratched her head. ‘But true enough I don’t know myself. If you asked me I wouldn’t know. Except that they were often squabbling. Except for that I wouldn’t know the difference from now. Except that things are better seen after now. Except that at the end them and the doctor were arguing. And Margaret’s ma came and there was a set-to.’ She glanced at Cordelia with her round blue eyes, and then they went flickering off to the easy, familiar, comforting things: the fire, the crochet work, the armchair, the footstool. ‘But I didn’t hear it. I didn’t hear anything for I was crocheting and didn’t have the time to listen. But don’t tell Frederick I told you, mind. He’d be ratty if he got to know.’

  She found Brook upstairs, lying on the bed, scribbling couplets on the back of an envelope. He started a little when she came in, and she wondered if he expected his father.

  ‘It’s cold up here,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you go down to one of the fires?’

  He grunted but did not reply.

  She pretended she had come for something and pottered about the room for some minutes. Then as she moved back to the door he crumpled up the envelope and flung it across the room.

  ‘Oh, God, I wish I were dead!’

  She paused, hesitated, thinking that at the merest suggestion of death or illness … Yet that was unsympathetic.

  She came over to
the bed. ‘What is it, Brook?’

  He turned over, showing his wretched face.

  ‘You think I love my father, don’t you?’

  ‘Mm …’ She nodded.

  ‘You think I like being treated like a child and told what to do and what to eat and nearly what to say?’

  She was silent.

  ‘Well, I don’t. Sometimes it’s all right. I know I’m weak – I live off him, I haven’t the initiative. I tell myself he means well. But it doesn’t always work. I wish to God I could get away. If I could be sure of making a living with my pen – even working for a newspaper like Hugh Scott – I’d go! I’d clear out tomorrow. There’s not room for us both.’

  She sat on the bed and began to stroke his hair and she noticed that his forehead was damp. She was sorry for him, but she did not take his words seriously. She knew him better than that. In the morning he would be the usual docile son.

  Chapter Nine

  Stephen began to meet her alternate Mondays and Thursdays. He wanted it to be a weekly arrangement, but illogically she felt that an interval of ten days made it less flagrant.

  Otherwise he kept to his side of the bargain, never pressing his attentions and always accepting her decisions with the greatest respect. Veils were fashionable, and she took to wearing one. She was conscious of carrying a tremendous burden of guilt.

  Yet in spite of this she looked forward to the meetings and soon could not hide it from herself. Now that he was not to be completely cut off from seeing her he was so lively and full of animal spirits that it was a stimulus to be in his company. They came to laugh and joke and tease each other. Laughter was one of the things she so greatly missed in Grove Hall, and in a very short time they had found a new and more friendly understanding of each other.

  But although he took his cue from her, it was often hard for her to know where to draw the line. The simplest fun between them had a tendency to slip imperceptibly into something like a flirtation. Twice her mother asked her what the news was because she looked so flushed and excited when she got there.