Cordelia

by Winston Graham

  ‘Are you all right; answer me: are you all right!’

  ‘Oh, Stephen,’ she said. ‘I’m … I think so. And you?’

  His face was black, his coat gone, his waistcoat and shirt torn. He kept saying: ‘I tried to stop it, I tried to stop it.’ He released her hand and put his head in his hands.

  She was just able to stand against the wall, taking great breaths of the fog. ‘Is it on fire?’ she said. ‘There’s no sign.’

  He straightened up slowly, trying to stave off collapse, trying to shake himself free of the nightmare. ‘I thought you were gone. By all the Saints, I thought you were lost. Are you sure you’re not hurt?’

  ‘Bruised. Better in a minute. Oh, Stephen, thank God! It was horrible!’

  His eyes went up to the building. As he recovered, professionalism grew in him again, the instinct of years.

  ‘I must go in again and see. I’ll get you a cab. You must go home.’

  ‘Don’t go back. You’ll do no good. I’m afraid for you.’

  A man came stumbling out. ‘They’re lying there!’ he shouted hysterically. ‘Dead! Dozens of them. All down the stairs! I can’t face it! Has anyone seen my brother? He was just in front of me, but I can’t go in – I daren’t go in again and look.’

  ‘Ah, now stop your shouting!’ Stephen started forward and took him by the shoulders. ‘Hold all that hysterical talk or you’ll start another panic!’

  ‘Panic! My cripes, it’s a disgrace–’

  A cab came out of the fog, and now two policemen. The cab was commandeered to take three injured people to the infirmary and another one nearly bumped into it as it turned away.

  Stephen said: ‘There’s a cab rank round the corner. Quickly, I must get back.’

  He led her down the side street; they crossed in the fog.

  ‘I don’t know whether I’m on my heels or my head,’ he said bitterly. ‘And all our fine plans. If I can’t come with you tomorrow – you’ll leave just the same?’

  ‘If you want me to. But don’t go back, I’m afraid for you. Or let me stay too.’

  ‘And have you mixed up with all the police? Not likely. Praise to God, here’s a cab. I want you to drive this lady to Grove Hall, please, as fast as you can.’

  ‘Quick as I can? Lucky if we get there at all. It’s a proper thick ’un.’

  He glanced back, torn both ways, put his head in after her. Almost absent-mindedly: ‘You have the address? The time of the train?’

  ‘You wrote it all down.’

  ‘Oh, my Delia, what an evening. When I’d hoped–’

  ‘I feel it was all my fault–’

  ‘Ah, nothing of the sort at all.’

  ‘You really want me still to go tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes, yes, what else could we do? You were right about that fellow. Bad luck! My God, I could murder him!’

  ‘Take care, take care.’

  ‘I’ll write you tomorrow to London, let you know everything. Keep out of this mess. Now go home and don’t worry. Good-bye, sweetheart. I must go.’

  With the pressure of his lips on hers she sank back into her seat, trembling, exhausted, and the cab moved off into the fog.

  She leaned back then and for a time she must have fainted, because when she came round the cab had stopped and the cabbie was groping across the road towards where a lamp feebly gleamed. Presently he came back.

  ‘Nay, I didn’t know which end o’ t’ street we was.’ He coughed. ‘Reckon we’re summat like right.’ He got up and the cab began to move again.

  The smell and feel of the crowd was still in her lungs, in her mind. She wanted to be sick, her mouth was dry and bitter. Skirt torn, arms bruised, knee bleeding, hair down. Those terrible minutes would live with her for ever; she would never again be content in a crowd; there would be terror of the great beast. She feared for Stephen, but her exhaustion was such that she allowed herself to go on, to be driven farther and farther away, out of his reach and his danger.

  Presently a change in the sound of the wheels showed they were off the sets, and she knew she must be nearly home.

  Old instincts serving, she struggled to sit up, tried to put up her hair, to smooth her clothes. She didn’t know what the servants would think, what her face looked like. If she could get in without being seen.

  She stopped the cab at the gates and paid the cabbie. Then, limping unsteadily, painfully, she went in, up the drive. Lights in the house. What time? No idea. Hallows not put the bolt up yet.

  Stand in the porch between the big pillars, cool your head on the cold stone. Grope for a handkerchief to wipe your face; is it dirty? Pat your hair. An accident. That was it, an accident in the fog.

  She went in. The hall was lighted; nobody about. Gather your skirts; make for the stairs boldly. What did it matter? Tomorrow …

  Uncle Pridey came into the hall.

  ‘My cello: someone’s been fiddling with it, let the strings down. D’you think it’s that new maid, Flossie, Florrie, or something? Why, what’s gone wrong with you, young woman? Where’ve you been?’

  ‘There was an accident,’ she said, stumbling over the words. ‘My cab and another. The fog was so thick.’

  ‘Are you hurt? Don’t tell me you’re hurt?’

  ‘No, no. I just want to lie down for a little.’

  ‘It’s confounded annoying,’ he said, peering at her. ‘If we’d a child in the house … When the tension’s let down it won’t stay up, you know. Keeps going flat in the middle of a piece. You’re the second one that’s come in like that, just wanting to lie down for a little. I expect you know. Or do you?’ He wrinkled his eyebrows. ‘Afraid your gallivanting’s over for a bit, young woman. Have you been gallivanting? Don’t know and I don’t want to know. We’re a dull lot. But it’s over now. Brook’s back.’

  She stared at him stupidly, looking into his eyes.

  He said: ‘ Tut, look at your skirt. Looks like an umbrella that’s

  been struck by lightning. You know, nobody’d any business to

  touch the thing. I’ll keep the cello in my room in future.’

  ‘Did you say – Brook?’

  ‘Up in bed. He’s got a feverish cold or something. The usual

  thing: sniffle, sniffle, that’s why he came home. He’ll be glad to

  see you; you can hold his hand.’

  She went upstairs and into their bedroom.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  She went into their bedroom: Brook’s and hers. Her box, half packed, was in the dressing-room; he must have seen it. This would mean facing … She could not face him just now, on the verge of collapse.

  He was lying in bed; the same Brook, the long sensitive nose, the hair curling in front of the ears, the inlooking brown eyes; eyes unnaturally bright tonight; was it with a temperature or with the growing suspicion of the truth about her?

  ‘Cordelia!’ he said. ‘I thought you were never coming. Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Why, Brook,’ she said, ‘ I didn’t know. I didn’t expect you.’ She hesitated, then bent over him.

  ‘Don’t kiss me,’ he said. Oh, she thought, and then he added: ‘I’ve got a fearful cold. That’s why Father sent me home.’

  She kissed his forehead; the kiss of Judas, head hot, feverish. Did he notice anything? ‘What’s the matter, Brook? Is it your throat again?’

  ‘No, not really.’ He explained exactly how he felt. A cold last week and a fresh chill on top of it; he’d been awake coughing all last night and this morning his father had told him to come home at once. He’d shivered and sweated all the way in the train.

  ‘But we must send down to the Polygon at once,’ she said. ‘ It’s bad to neglect a temperature. Dr Birch will be able to give you something.’ The homely mothering things, the pampering things she had learned these last two years.

  ‘I’ve taken some fever curer,’ he muttered, half unwilling to be persuaded that he was really ill, yet desperately absorbed in his own symptoms.

 
She said: ‘I’ll just change my frock; then I’ll slip down and send one of the maids.’ She met his gaze for a second, frankly, assessingly. ‘I was in an accident, Brook, the cab I was in – in the fog, you know – it collided with a wall.’

  ‘Ah? That was bad. It was thick at eight when I came home. It’s made my cough worse.’ He wasn’t interested in her accident, in her lies; she was ashamed of them as soon as uttered.

  In the dressing-room her case stared at her accusingly; she had not even bothered to close the lid; anyone could see it was half full. She turned to the glass. Dreadful! Hair pinned up anyhow, face streaked with dried perspiration. But inwardly she was a little steadier; the shock of Brook’s arrival had countered the effects of the ordeal. Hastily she sponged her face, changed her frock, pushed the case into a corner. She didn’t know what effect his return would have, and for the moment she was too sick and exhausted to care. For the moment her body carried on in the old familiar routine, acting and moving without her mind’s direction. She heard Brook coughing. It was a thick, rustling cough, heavy and ugly.

  She returned to the bedroom, slipped out, and fled down the stairs. Aunt Tish in the hall, heavy with a tale of the servants’ neglect; she greeted her kindly, soothingly, and slipped past. On her way back she again met her and this time the old lady would not be thwarted and she said, ‘Yes, Aunt Tish,’ and, ‘ No, Aunt Tish,’ and, ‘I’m sorry; I’ll speak to them,’ hearing nothing of the complaint. Oh, to be free from all this, to be in bed and forget the happenings of tonight.

  Robert Birch was not long in coming. He couldn’t afford to neglect his best patients; perhaps he didn’t dare to neglect them, suggested Massington’s old poison, working, stirring in the blood still. Tall, reticent, rather ugly in a not unattractive way, he strode up the stairs with her, greeted Brook, talked of the fog. Brook as usual was a bundle of nerves at the sight of his friend, curiously anxious to deceive him into thinking there was nothing wrong, as if the doctor were the final arbiter of his condition and not merely the assessor. Robert took out one of the new clinical thermometers and found that his patient’s temperature was 102 degrees. Not agreeable, but not yet cause for alarm; Brook’s temperature shot up like a child’s at the least thing. He sounded his lungs and said: ‘Well, stay in bed for several days; a very nasty cough; nothing solid, Mrs Ferguson, but plenty to drink, must try to get the temperature down; the windows open as soon as the fog is gone; I’ll make you up a bottle if the boy can come back with me; I’ll be round in the morning; good night, good night.’

  Cordelia had been watching him. Outside on the landing he said slowly:

  ‘I’m very sorry, Mrs Ferguson, I’m afraid I’ve bad news for you. There’s pneumonia well developed on both lungs.’

  She stared at him unbelieving, almost asked him if he were sure. Cry wolf, cry wolf.

  ‘Does that mean …’

  ‘It means he’s seriously ill, to say the least. With his constitution … Where is Mr Ferguson? His father, I mean.’

  ‘In London.’

  ‘I should wire him, them.’

  ‘As bad as that?’

  He stared at the wall with his deep-set eyes. ‘I certainly hope not, but it’s as well to be sure. D’you think you’ll be able to manage tonight?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘We’ll see about nurses in the morning. I’m afraid you may not get much sleep. Give him a sip of brandy every two hours. If I don’t hear I’ll be round at eight.’

  That’s the end of flight for a little while, Stephen. A rat can desert, but not surely the most faithless wife. Brook never did me any harm, unless to marry a woman before she discovers … I’ll write in the morning; Stephen’s got to stay in Manchester himself now; it will mean postponing for a few days, a week, or until Dan Massington denounces. But he is probably one of the injured. I can’t leave with Brook ill. Suppose this illness solved our problems. Traitor thoughts … ‘I try to be merry but it is no use. My case is very hard …’

  ‘All right, Brook, it’s me, Brook, Cordelia. Drink this.’ He was a bit delirious; once he had called her Margaret, but at least not in a voice of love. Heavens, I’m tired; I shall be asleep in a minute: mustn’t drop off. That dreadful panic: it’s still in my ears, in my stomach. Poor Stephen, I pray he’s safe; I hope that man wasn’t right, shouting about people dead. Did I really tread on people? It felt like it. It was go on or go under. I shall never forget it. ‘No, Brook, not out of bed; it’s not morning yet: look, the curtains are back and it’s dark …’

  I wonder if Dan Massington will come. And is Val Johnson safe, and … ‘ I try to be merry but it is no use …’ It will all be in the papers. A police inquiry? Shall I be called? ‘No, it’s brandy, Brook. The doctor said you were to have it … He’s not here, he’s in London; don’t you remember?’ I shall be wandering myself soon; if only I could sleep.

  In the end she did sleep and Brook slept, too, in the early morning just before daylight came. And then he woke with a terrible cough, and when Robert Birch came he was hollow-eyed and exhausted.

  All that morning she was busy. Birch insisted they should engage a day nurse, Cordelia undertaking to see the nights through. A special surgical woollen jacket had to be bought to secure the patient against chill, all the requirements of a prolonged siege laid in. Brook watched it all keenly, suspiciously, like one viewing preparations for his downfall; he was aware now that he was seriously, perhaps dangerously ill for the first time in his life; all the other false alarms were as nothing, all the sore throats, the bronchial colds, the attacks of colic, the bouts of indigestion. Yet he did not ask about his ailment, as if he were afraid of its being given a NAME.

  Immediately after breakfast she ran downstairs and asked for the Examiner, but Uncle Pridey had taken both it and the Guardian up to his room. She had no time to slip out for one and so waited until dinner. At dinner, to which she came late, Uncle Pridey had forgotten to bring the papers down. She was dead tired and had no appetite, and Aunt Tish’s advice about Brook seemed interminable.

  She said at last, interrupting: ‘Was there anything interesting in the papers today, Uncle Pridey?’

  ‘What? What papers? Oh, yes. Yes, there was indeed. Some ignoramus writing of Verdi’s revolutionary harshness. Always intend replying to these silly people. Never get the time. By the way, did you interfere with my cello last night, Tish?’

  ‘There was that there terrible accident,’ said Aunt Tish. ‘Eh, they were telling me about it in the kitchen. It’s what comes of going to those places.’

  ‘What places?’ said Cordelia.

  ‘Theaytres, dear. There’s been a terrible fire at one of the theaytres in Town, so they were saying in the kitchen. Dozens burned to death. Fire engines and ambulances and police …’

  ‘People shouldn’t write about what they don’t understand,’ said Pridey. ‘They forget that all genius looks revolutionary to the dullards and the stick-in-the-muds.’

  ‘Did you see it, Uncle Pridey, about the theatre?’

  ‘What? Oh, yes. At that place belonging to that friend of Brook’s. The one we went to the concert with.’

  ‘Mr Crossley?’

  ‘That’s it. Stuff and nonsense, Tish, there weren’t any burned to death at all. Crushed in the panic. Cattle in a stampede. Can’t reason with a crowd. I just glanced at the headlines. Twenty-three, it said.’

  ‘Twen– You mean injured, Uncle Pridey?’

  ‘No, dead. This toast is like biscuits, Patty. You cut it too thin and cook it too slow.’

  ‘Sorry, sir. I’ll tell cook.’

  Cordelia stared at her plate.

  ‘Twenty-three,’ said Uncle Pridey, chewing. ‘More than twice as many as were killed in the Peterloo massacre. But these people won’t be sentimentalized over. You see? The coroner will say there ought to have been another exit door; jury will pass a rider; nobody’ll do anything about it, and the music hall will be open and playing to capacity again within a week.’

>   ‘Were there – many injured?’

  ‘Don’t know. Just scanned it. Believe it said young Crossley got knocked about a bit. Agreeable fellow, I thought. Agreeably impudent.’

  There was silence.

  ‘I think I’ll go for the papers,’ Cordelia said, getting up blindly. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘On my dressing-table. Send Patty if you’re in all that hurry.’

  But she wouldn’t listen. She had to see what it said in print, alone.

  Trembling, she sat on his bed and read it, her eyes skipping in panic down the page.

  ‘Injured.’ ‘Among the injured were …’ No sign of it there. Dear God … ‘The theatre was bought by Mr Patrick Crossley two years ago when extensive alterations …’ No.

  She couldn’t hold the paper steady and had to spread it on the bed. ‘Mr Crossley, in an interview this morning, stated …’ So he was that well. But which Mr Crossley?

  Here it was. ‘Mr Crossley, Jr, re-entering the theatre with the fire brigade, had the misfortune to be on the stage when part of it collapsed, and he was admitted to the Royal Infirmary with a fractured leg and bruises.’

  Somebody was arriving downstairs. Mr Ferguson; he was due about one. There didn’t seem to be any release, any relief for her in what she had read, in knowing at least that Stephen was not permanently injured. She stared at the great headlines. You could hardly expect anything else: it was the worst disaster of its kind that had ever happened in the Town. Eye-witness accounts of the panic, editorial comment, lists of the dead and injured. She felt so terribly sick again at the thought of all those people, as if their death lay on her conscience. Tears began to run down her cheeks, but they were not tears of remorse. Weakness and unhappiness and sheer desperate fatigue. She could have collapsed on Uncle Pridey’s bed with all the mice and the shrews staring at her with bright, quiet, inquisitive eyes.

  ‘The cause of the panic is not yet known but is believed to have been caused by some drunken men.’

  Must go down. Nothing has happened, Mr Ferguson; the dutiful wife, the business-like daughter-in-law; your son is desperately ill; if I look tired and colourless it is after being up all night nursing him. ‘ She left me as silly as a farmyard goose when she married that railway guard!’ That song; it went round and round in her head, round and round, endlessly repeating. She would die with it.