Cordelia

by Winston Graham

  He was gone. She turned as in a nightmare, climbed the stairs, trembling, and reached her room, shut the door, stood with her back to it, taking deep difficult breaths. There were still four hours till morning.

  She slept a little, like a storm-tossed ship rent by the gales of nightmare. Faces peered at her, great voices whispered, she was discovered or nearly discovered a dozen times, she crept away from following footsteps, she tried to lock doors against insinuating hands, she fell out of windows and started into wakefulness to find the darkness as intense as ever and the rain drumming steadily on the roof.

  Dawn was an age, and when it had fully broken she got up and washed her face and hands and then lay quiet for a time listening to the noises of the slow-awakening house. What was the house waking to – to another normal day or to accusations and scandal?

  Mr Ferguson did not approve of tea before prayers, but while he was having his bath she slipped down to the kitchen, got the cook to brew some, and drank it quickly.

  At twenty-five past seven the servants began assembling in the hall, and at twenty-nine minutes past exactly Mr Ferguson came in. He said good morning to his brother and sister and to Cordelia without particular significance of expression, and prayers were read. Then they went in to breakfast.

  The meal as usual. Uncle Pridey said the rain had spoiled the roses; Aunt Tish said she’d said all along it had been going to rain yesterday, her corns had been springeing that bad. Mr Ferguson was a little more silent than usual. Cordelia forced her breakfast down, though each mouthful stuck like a lump in her throat.

  While the servants were out of the room Mr Ferguson said steadily: ‘Did you hear anything last night, Tom?’

  Pridey grunted. ‘Rain in plenty. Mr Gladstone was restless. Perhaps he’s got corns like Tish.’

  ‘There was someone about.’

  ‘Someone about? What d’you mean: burglars?’

  ‘Eh, don’t say it was burglars, Frederick. I’d never rest easy in my bed, nay, I wouldn’t that.’

  ‘I came down for a book shortly after midnight and found the french windows in the library not only unlocked but swinging open.’

  ‘At that time? What was Hallows doing?’

  ‘That I have yet to inquire. I locked the windows and considered rousing the house, but that seemed a little alarmist; also I thought if there were an accomplice within the house … So I waited in my study until well after two. The top bolt of the french windows makes a distinct noise, and I knew I should hear it if anyone opened it again. No one did, but this morning I examined the flowerbeds carefully, and two geraniums had been broken off in the bed under the dining-room window.’

  ‘The dining-room window! Was that open?’

  ‘No, securely locked. Did you hear anything in the night, Cordelia?’

  She said indistinctly: ‘I’m afraid I fell asleep rather early.’

  ‘I shall see Hallows straight after breakfast and see what he has to say,’ said Mr Ferguson, breathing. ‘In any case I shall inform the police. In the meantime say nothing to the other servants. I intend to get to the bottom of this.’

  So we are safe. Just safe. Hallows will get a blowing up. And the police will be warned. Warn Stephen. He mustn’t walk into a trap. But how? Can’t go to Town because the Griffins and Dr Birch and the Vicar are coming to tea. A message. Who would take it?

  Upstairs in her bedroom she took a piece of notepaper and wrote:

  All well but you must not come. Danger. C.

  She sealed the envelope and addressed it to Stephen at his home. He must go back there some time during the day or evening.

  About eleven she put on her outdoor things and walked down the Grove in the direction of Town. The day was warm and sultry but fine, and the heavy rain of the night had washed the drains and killed the dust. She walked on for half a mile until she came to an old man sitting with a wicker basket of artificial flowers. He had a cataract over one eye and was here most days of the week. She asked him if he knew where Moss Side was. He said he did. She then offered him a shilling if he would deliver the letter for her, promising to give him another shilling if the message reached its destination. He agreed eagerly and she returned to Grove Hall with an easier mind.

  The tea-party in the afternoon went its humdrum way. In the middle of it Dr Birch was called away, and this made things worse, for she liked his alert, modest, definitive way of talking. At supper Mr Ferguson said Hallows had sworn he locked the window. The police had been told and would keep a special eye on the house.

  She spent some time in the garden but was careful to put a handkerchief under the sash of her window just in case Stephen had not had her message. As dusk fell the gases were lit, and she read a book and watched Aunt Tish falling to sleep in her chair and wished she could do the same. At a quarter after ten Mr Ferguson came out of his study, and that was a general sign for the household to move. By half-past ten, as usual, everyone was upstairs and the lights going out.

  Alarm had slowly died in her. They had been tremendously lucky to escape, but chance and Stephen’s enterprise had saved them. Now all the old perplexities remained but not, not the dreadful expectation of immediate exposure. She took the handkerchief out of the window-sash and began to undress. Because of this awful scare they had not been able to make any plans for meeting again. Just now even that didn’t seem to matter beside the relief of being safe from discovery. If it ever did come to some break with her present life, then, please God, let it be open and above board, not secretive, not turned up ashamed to the light like a slug under a stone.

  She folded her clothes and dropped on her knees beside the bed. She didn’t seem to know the solution to anything any more. Last night she had prayed for deliverance from discovery, but tonight that didn’t seem quite a respectable prayer. Even to return thanks for it–

  She heard a footstep in her dressing-room.

  On her feet in an instant, she turned and backed towards the curtains at the head of the bed and saw the door of the dressing-room slowly open.

  It was Stephen.

  He was hatless, wearing an old tweed jacket, grey trousers, soft rubber shoes. His eyes were narrowed with the light. They stared at each other.

  ‘Stephen! Didn’t you get my message!’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ he said grimly. ‘What was wrong?’

  ‘They thought it was burglars – told the police. They’re on watch.’

  ‘Oh – the police. I wouldn’t worry about the police. They didn’t suspect you?’

  ‘No … How did you get in?’

  ‘Through the window – like last night. Practice makes perfect.’

  She picked up her dressing-gown and struggled into it.

  ‘When I heard your footstep I couldn’t move, couldn’t think–’

  ‘You’re shocked?’

  ‘Not – exactly. But supposing someone saw you …’

  ‘No one could. It’s like a coal cellar outside.’

  ‘But I told you to stay away.’

  ‘I know. You can tell me.’ His eyes were heavy on hers, with something sombre and positive in their brown depths. ‘I know you can tell me; but it doesn’t work, Delia. Brook will be back tomorrow. I had to see you tonight.’

  ‘It was madness to come.’

  He said: ‘Will anyone hear us talking?’

  ‘Not – like this.’

  ‘Is your door locked?’

  ‘No …’

  He went across and carefully turned the key in the lock. Hands behind her back, standing against the curtains of the bed in her white dressing-gown and white nightgown, she moved her head and watched him.

  An unrelated act can sometimes change the note of an encounter. The turning of the key seemed to cut off from their minds all the substance of their first sentences. Last night – the police – the risk of discovery: they were locked out, outside the door; within was a sphere of its own, intimately held within four walls, close, personal, secret. He turned and stood with his back to
the door and looked at her. And she looked back at him.

  He came across. She seemed young and unprotected. But there was no self-doubt in his love just then. She put her hands on his shoulders with a half attempt to hold him off; she struggled in his grasp, turning this way and that, but with a feebleness that showed her own love.

  ‘Don’t be frightened, sweetheart, please,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to be scared of. We love each other, don’t we? That’s all that matters. You can’t go on being lonely and unhappy all your life. What’s the use of fighting against ourselves …’

  He went on talking, and she listened, not to what he said but to the tone of his voice, which flowed like a wave over her reluctance, softening and sapping the last reserves. She seemed to be sliding into a darkness without time or thought, and there came a moment when her life was lost and she allowed herself to go on madly without effort down the increasing slope.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Brook was in exceptionally good spirits. A letter had been forwarded on to him from the Athenaeum inviting him to read some of his poems at a conversazione to be held there next month. It was an honour he had hoped for for years, and it had fallen to him just at the right time, when his self-esteem was at its lowest ebb.

  He was well, too, something so rare that his spirits went bounding up. He chatted away to Cordelia, his minor grievances forgotten. He didn’t even seem to mind that she had been down to the dye works three times in his absence. Had she been in a mood to appreciate it, she would have realized that he lived perpetually with a sense of inferiority and for his very salvation he fought against admitting further encroachments.

  They talked about holidays.

  At length he said: ‘What’s the matter, dear? Don’t say you’re not feeling well.’

  ‘No, I’m very well,’ she said. ‘It’s this sultry heat.’

  ‘Did you miss me?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Did you have any visitors?’

  She told him about the Friday tea-party.

  ‘Friday?’ he said. ‘D’you mean yesterday?’

  ‘Oh … Was it only yesterday? Yes, I suppose so. It seems a long time ago.’

  ‘There is something the matter,’ he said. ‘Is it Father?’

  ‘No. It’s nobody. I told you. The weather’s oppressive. I think I’ll lie down for a while.’

  ‘Just as you say, dear.’

  Lie down for a while but not to sleep. Friday was yesterday. No, it wasn’t, it was another life ago. You live a life in a few hours. At first, at the first onset of his love-making she had felt sick, half angry, humiliated, desperately frightened of discovery. He could not have chosen a worse time – with the previous night’s escape still fresh, with the probability of police about, with some of the household certainly on the qui vive. She submitted to his caresses in a condition of mind which could hardly have been worse had she known Mr Ferguson to be sitting in her dressing-room.

  Somewhere, too, in the depths of her mind, hardly formulated as thought, was resentment that for this final acquiescence he had left her no freedom of choice. Yet he had conquered in the end. Her horizons of experience were enlarged beyond imagining.

  Brook did not press his questions any more, but several times he glanced at her and wondered. Like most ailing people, he was self-absorbed, but he was by no means insensitive to other people’s feelings, and he felt there was some change in her adverse to him.

  She saw no more of Stephen for a long time. She kept closely to Grove Hall and wrote to her mother saying that she was helping Mr Ferguson and would not be able to see much of them for a month or so. Then she pressed Brook to take her away, and they spent part of July at Southport. She strove constantly to recapture her old feeling for Brook, but could not because she had never actually lost it. It was only that something stronger had come between. She could have fallen out of love with Stephen tomorrow and it would have made no difference. One can never go back on experience.

  Brook, utterly lost as to causes, fumbled blindly with effects, which she could not altogether hide from him. His own love for her, perversely provoked, grew stronger, and there was an odd personal kindliness in their relationship with each other.

  As for Stephen, she did not know what efforts he had made to see her; she only knew they had not been successful. But in fact Stephen had only made one or two attempts, and they were half-hearted. For most of the time they were in Southport he was in London.

  On an afternoon in late July he walked down a pleasant street in Maida Vale and knocked at the door of a small house at the end of a row. A maid came to the door and he asked if Mrs Crossley was in. She was a new maid and he had to give his name. She said she would inquire, and after rather a long wait she showed him into a white-painted sitting-room. There was no one there, but some needlework lying on a table looked as if it had just been put down.

  He stared about him, gazed out of the window at a hansom setting down a passenger, picked up a book, glanced at the title.

  A young woman came in.

  ‘Well, my dear, how are you?’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t know I was in London, I suppose? I thought I’d give you a surprise. You’re looking very well.’

  She was in the middle twenties, with a slender yet voluptuous figure. When she saw him her fine dark eyes had lit up, but at something in the tone of his voice she looked sulky again.

  ‘Yes, it’s a surprise,’ she said. ‘Have you had tea?’

  ‘I’ve had some, but I’d like some more.’

  They chatted conversationally while the maid brought tea. He talked more than usual, she less; but gradually under his easy influence she thawed again.

  ‘D’you like Manchester?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, it’s all right. I get along all right.’

  ‘Trust you. I picture it sometimes,’ she said. ‘ Drab streets, smoking mills, cobbles, and clogs. Is it like that?’

  ‘Oh, no. And yes. It’s got a social side. The people are interesting. Full of contradictions. They’ve been generous enough to me. We’re doing well at the Variety.’

  She glanced at him.

  ‘When are you going back?’

  ‘Tomorrow or Wednesday.’

  ‘Is this just a friendly call?’

  He smiled uneasily. ‘Could it be anything else?’

  ‘Can you blame me for wondering?’

  He got up, went to the window, stirring his tea. ‘ I didn’t think you felt anything any more.’

  ‘Oh.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know that I do.’ But it was a lie and it made his task more difficult.

  ‘I think you used to like having me about. I think that was it.’

  ‘Is that the way you remember it?’

  ‘No. No, it isn’t. We had fun for a couple of years. Lots of fun. Then – well, then it didn’t work – things stopped going right for us. So what did we do? The only sensible thing surely.’

  She stared at him. ‘Of course. The only sensible thing … What is it you’ve come to say, Stephen?’

  ‘We separated,’ he said. ‘All that side – all our married life is over, but there’s no bitterness or hard feelings. It’s all been for the best.’

  The best. Easy word. She said nothing. A fly was buzzing endlessly against the window.

  ‘But we can’t go on like this for ever,’ he said. ‘Tied and yet not tied. Like a horse on a rope. Don’t you ever feel you want your complete freedom, so that you can finish the chapter entirely? We could still be friends. Much better friends. It must be irksome to you.’

  ‘Does that mean it’s irksome to you?’

  He said: ‘ I’ve been thinking a lot about it for some time.’

  She put more milk into her cup but did not reach for the tea.

  ‘Who is she, Stephen?’

  He turned, his clear brown eyes a little embarrassed.

  After hesitation he said: ‘Nobody you know.’

  ‘Someone you’ve met in Manchester?’

  ‘Ye
s.’

  ‘What makes you think it’s – likely to last?’

  ‘I just know it this time.’

  ‘Didn’t you – ‘‘know it’’ when you married me?’

  ‘I was a lot younger then. I’m – sorry, Virginia.’

  She poured her tea. ‘Yes, I’m sorry too.’

  ‘But in any case,’ he went on. ‘In any case it would be better for our break to be a complete one. It’s all wrong to be as we are.’

  ‘Does she know about me?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘You think she’ll marry a divorced man?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘It’s a terrible stigma – even on me. People would whisper, ‘‘Oh, she’s divorced,’’ and turn away and not trouble to ask whose fault it was.’

  He began to walk up and down the room. ‘ It’s no good pretending to you. You know I’ve not been an angel. But I’ve not felt like this ever before. It’s only two important affairs there have been in my life: yours, and now this.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘ I’m glad I’m ‘‘placed’’.’

  He bit his lip. ‘I hope you’ll do this for me. It means a great deal. It means everything, in fact.’

  ‘I’m not at all sure. I’ll have to think it over.’

  That wasn’t enough. He began to explain his case. But after a moment she interrupted him defiantly.

  ‘I’d like to meet the girl. What’s her name?’

  ‘That’s not possible.’

  ‘Why? Are you ashamed of me?’

  ‘No, don’t you see, I want to keep her quite separate. I want this to be – to be nothing at all to do with her.’

  ‘When in fact it’s everything to do with her.’

  ‘No, no, it is not.’ He was worried by her attitude. ‘ Can’t one begin–’

  ‘Well, I think I’ll wait some months before I decide,’ she said. ‘It can’t do her any harm to wait.’

  ‘I’ve got to tell you,’ he said. ‘I don’t like it but I’ve got to tell you that it won’t make any difference. If you won’t do this, then we’ll go ahead just the same and let the legal fetters stand.’