Cordelia

by Winston Graham

  Quickly.

  ‘Cordelia!’ he said. ‘Are you sure? Are you absolutely positive?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘ Yes. Of course I’m sure.’ Only ten minutes before the whole realization had come. ‘But there’s something else I must tell you too. You’ve got to listen–’

  He was standing beside her. ‘ By God, this is the best news you could possibly give me!’ He took her by the shoulders. ‘Oh, my dear, you don’t know how delighted I am! It’s the greatest possible joy for me! Why didn’t you tell me before? How long have you known?’

  To blurt it out madly like this: the last thing ever thought or intended. But the chill of horror, the abyss of nervous collapse, and Brook persisting, persisting.

  ‘And you crying over it! Yes, I know. I expect it’s the way of things at these times. I thought I’d offended you! It was before I went away, wasn’t it? By God, Father will be pleased!’

  She stared at his flushed face. He looked as if someone had left him a fortune. He looked thin and weak and flushed and revitalized.

  She said: ‘It was while you were away–’

  ‘I wonder if Father is in bed,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t usually put his light out until eleven. I’ve a good mind to go and see him tonight. I could just slip across–’

  ‘Brook, there are other things–’

  ‘Another Ferguson, eh? He’s always wanted a grandson. It’s been – it’s been– Sorry, dear, if I go on like this. I know you must feel off colour and a bit below par, but I can’t help feeling the way I do, can I? You wouldn’t want me to feel any other way, would you?’

  He turned away, then abruptly turned back as if he had forgotten something, and awkwardly kissed her. She watched him put his feet tremblingly into his slippers.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she asked hysterically.

  ‘I’ll see if there’s a light under his door.’

  ‘But not tonight!’

  ‘Yes, indeed, tonight,’ he said, smiling at her, and moved to the door.

  She said: ‘Brook! You mustn’t!’

  ‘But I’m going to. Sorry to offend your modesty, my dear, but we must at least tell him. I’ll be back in two jiffys. Brrr! It smells cold on the landing. I think there is a light. Yes! My Lord, won’t he be surprised!’

  She said: ‘Brook!’

  ‘Yes?’

  Half out of the door, he turned at last. His weak, kindly face was suffused with an enthusiasm she had never seen there before. He waited for her to speak.

  ‘Yes, dear, what is it?’

  She sat in her chair at the dressing-table and struggled with words, and when they wouldn’t come she watched him turn again and go out. Nausea had seized her, and behind that was a sudden new impulse to burst into hysterical laughter.

  She fought it down and fought it down, and sat there silent but quivering, her head in her hands.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Sham and deceit. Those are the words. Lie and pretend.

  Will they all be taken in? Well, if the lie’s to go on …

  Did you ever intend to tell him? Yes, I tried, I began, he kept interrupting. Why didn’t you blurt it out, then? People can get anything out if they really want to. Did you ever really intend …

  She won’t divorce him. Whatever Brook did, my child would be illegitimate. All its life, that stain. Marked on its birth certificate, branded for life. It’s wrong, society’s wrong, the parents if you like, but not the child. A social leper, that’s how they treat it; I remember Sally Farmer, when they got to know, and it’s worse if it’s a boy.

  But for the hysteria she would never have flung the thing at him. The maddest thing, before even a chance of reflection, before reason … Tell him the whole truth, she thought. Face him: if you will go on asking, if you want to know the worst. But at the last moment his delighted face had broken her intention. Several rimes since she had been on the brink again. Let them turn her out of the house. She wouldn’t go to Stephen. She wouldn’t go to her family. Right away somewhere. It was the thing one read of, woman with child staggering through the snow. (Only there was no snow, only rain, and no child as yet.)

  Life had cheated her, and now it was cheating her even of the melodrama. Instead of scorn and contempt …

  ‘My dear child,’ said Mr Ferguson, ‘what Brook told me last night. I don’t think you can realize how happy. For reasons, for various reasons that I do not wish to explain, succession is to me the most important thing.’

  ‘It was their half-hour of business; but the house was forgotten. He was staring at her with extraordinary benevolence in his steely eyes. She had never seen such a look. It was doting. It’s easy to say, tell him the truth. Hard, incredibly hard to do it. Yet how long can I go on with it in face of such an attitude? Why can’t they be normal, treat it normally? Just for a little while.

  He got up. ‘My father started the dye works. Did I ever tell you how we came to the town?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘My grandfather was a farmer from Carlisle. He heard of the prosperity to be found in this growing city and he decided to move here. I was a child at the time. It was a great upheaval, almost like emigrating to a foreign land. We came by boat and the journey took fourteen days. Then the vessel stuck on a sandbank and we had to take a small boat and row the last twenty miles down the coast to Liverpool in a strong wind and sea. We were all sea-sick, my mother tells me, even the rowers. From Liverpool we came here by a carter’s wagon. We had very little money, but my grandfather took a shop and in time saved enough to buy some land on the edge of the canal, and there my father began dyeing velveteen. The present works wasn’t built until just after I married.’ He turned and breathed at her through his lips. ‘The bare accounts. Only one who has been through it from the start. The toil and endeavour, the scheming and contriving, the borrowing and the building. Can you wonder that my greatest desire is to be assured – to be reasonably assured that all the effort shall not be wasted – to see another of the same name and blood …’

  And what of Stephen? What would Stephen say?

  ‘I feel I must get away, Mr Ferguson,’ she said in panic. ‘I’m so tired with nursing Brook I’d like to go away somewhere quiet – for a month or perhaps longer.’ A month would be no use. Twelve months. Time to think. What am I doing? Is it even possible?

  He said: ‘I confess it was silly of me, but I thought it was not to be. That was why I wanted to take you into the business. At least that way the name would go on for a time. Brook, I had always felt, would not live to be old. Perhaps that is wrong; after this last illness one thinks of the creaking gate.’

  Had he really much affection for Brook except as an instrument of his will?

  ‘Your – other sons, Mr Ferguson; were they young when you lost them?’

  ‘What d’you say?’ He puffed out his lips a little disapprovingly. ‘Yes. They– It was scarlet fever. One was seven and one was four. It was a great blow.’ She saw that his disapproval was at being reminded of the greatest loss of his life. In weakness he’d referred to it that night of Brook’s illness. But not now.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘We had such hopes of Vaughan, the eldest. The Lord moves in a mysterious way …’ He shook his head. ‘Oh, well. It is old sorrow now. We must think of the future. The future is bright.’

  The future is bright. From now on she would be the Queen Bee, jealously guarded, cared for, nourished.

  Kindness itself. But how long? Supposing rumour, which she had not cared about until yesterday … Massington might not be the only one who could whisper, and sooner or later a whisper might drop into the wrong ears.

  Kindness itself. Margaret’s death was perfectly natural. Was there really no mystery, nothing important to hide, to hush up – their silence, their reticence nothing more than a normal wish not to talk of something unpleasant in front of a young and impressionable second wife?

  That afternoon when Robert Birch called he stayed talking to her for
a while in the drawing-room. She knew he liked to talk to her, and she thought his outward reserve prevented him from having many friends.

  She said abruptly: ‘Brook was telling me yesterday – I’d never heard before – about Margaret’s death. I’d heard rumours, rather unpleasant ones, but–’

  He flushed. ‘There was some unpleasantness with her family, yes.’

  She said: ‘Could you please tell me exactly what happened?’

  His penetrating brown eyes met hers in some surprise. She did not look away. He said after a moment: ‘ Brook’s first wife suffered from sleeplessness. I used to prescribe her a simple narcotic. I supplied her with a bottle of twenty pills the day before she died. At her death only four could be found. There was nothing unusual in the death, but I thought it necessary to draw Brook’s attention to this – and the nurse’s when she came. It was a very unpleasant duty on my part. Fortunately the pills were found; but not before there had been a certain amount of talk. The nurse was indiscreet, and Mr Dan Massington chose to believe there was more in the incident than there really was.’

  She thought: The first time I saw Dan he was sober and didn’t mention it. After that, every time, the brooding spiteful mind inflamed with drink …

  She said in distress: ‘Could you answer me one thing, Robert – as a friend?’

  ‘Anything I can. Believe me.’

  ‘Dan Massington also implied it was the fault of the Fergusons that Margaret was ill because she was so unhappy with them here.’

  He put one hand in his breeches pocket, frowned with uneasy distaste. ‘You’re asking me something I can’t possibly answer with any certainty. I can only give you my opinion – and that–’

  ‘Please tell me what you think.’

  ‘The pernicious anaemia she suffered from was nothing whatever to do with them. But I’m simply not qualified to tell you that the state of her mind had no effect on her physical condition. In entirely happy surroundings she might have lived longer – another six months, a year.’

  ‘Why was she so unhappy, Robert? Was there anything between her and Mr Ferguson except–’

  ‘Except fundamental dislike? I don’t think so. Only–’ He stopped and she knew instantly what he could not say, ‘Only there were no grandchildren.’ ‘It’s very difficult for me to be frank, Mrs Ferguson – Cordelia – may I call you that? – because I should feel disloyal. Mr Ferguson is a man of – very strong will. To live with him I think you must be weak enough to give way – or strong enough to give way. Margaret was neither.’

  She got up then. ‘Thank you so much for telling me.’ She wondered which he thought she was.

  They left on the Friday for North Wales. Brook was hardly well enough for a long journey, but he was ready now to indulge almost any whim. And her whim, if he only knew it, was a panic-stricken need for flight. Once the first move to retreat is taken, each step is faster than the last.

  They went to Llandudno for a few days and then, at her suggestion, took rooms at a farm near Abergele; the nearest she could get to complete obscurity.

  She wrote Stephen a dozen letters before leaving home but never posted any. Then, half an hour before they must leave for the station, she scribbled a hurried note and sent it off.

  STEPHEN,

  Brook is still very frail and needs me. I married him quite freely and no one persuaded me into it. Therefore it’s my duty to keep my promise and to stick to him.

  This is the end, Stephen. Really the end. Please don’t call. We have had such happiness together, and I shall never forget it. But let’s both realize that the other way would have meant unhappiness for us all – for all four of us and for many others besides.

  Good-bye, Stephen, C ORDELIA

  It had been an agony to write; and almost when she got to Wales she wrote again contradicting it all and telling him the whole truth and saying she would join him anywhere at his bidding.

  The first two weeks were the blackest of all. She was distraught, on edge, turning her problem over endlessly, leaning first one way and then the other; waking in the night with a sudden start of fear, convinced she must fly before she was found out; sinking slowly back on the pillows in resignation, her mind in control again, working out the risks, the sacrifices.

  Brook, curiously, was the greatest help. He was kind and considerate, and unexacting in his own needs. His own health improved, so that very soon he was able to walk with her over the fields to the sea.

  Mr Ferguson travelled down sometimes to keep an eye on them, but his absences were a relief to them both. Every time he came she would watch his face carefully to see if it showed any sign of his having heard rumours.

  Christmas came and went so differently from last year and the year before. No house to think of, no suppers or evening parties to prepare for.

  Emotionally she at last came to a state of semi-quiescence. At bottom she was no less unhappy, no surer than when she left Grove Hall, but all the stresses of the previous months had left her worn out, defeated.

  Just after the New Year they went to Rhyl for the afternoon. They drove along the promenade, went on the new pier, walked as far as the end. They peered over into the sleek grey-green water swelling and shrinking under them and then retraced their steps and had tea in the pavilion. As they sat down Brook said:

  ‘Good Lord! Isn’t that Stephen Crossley?’

  So it’s come …

  ‘Hullo, Crossley. Astonishing meeting you like this. Didn’t know you had any interest in Wales. Won’t you join us at tea?’

  ‘Thank you. Good day to you, Mrs Ferguson. I thought I saw you walking but I couldn’t believe it.’

  An exchange of courtesies, old but not intimate friends. The same charm, the same easy-going masculine gracefulness which she half loved and half feared. He sat opposite her at the table, virile and clean-cut and strong.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I doubt if it ever will be re-opened. We’ve sold it, you know.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Brook. ‘No. I didn’t know. I’ve been very much out of circulation for two months.’

  ‘Some people called Pemberton. I think they will be pulling it down and building a block of offices. They’re not in the show business.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I rather enjoyed my two evenings there. I’d like to have brought Cordelia some time.’

  ‘Ah, I was looking forward to it,’ said Stephen gently.

  ‘What are your plans, then? Shall you stay in Manchester?’

  ‘No, I shall manage one of the London places.’

  ‘Are you thinking of opening a hall in this district?’

  Stephen smiled politely at the joke. ‘ I am not. It’s business connected with my divorce.’

  Brook looked startled and a little uncomfortable. He glanced at Cordelia, saw her looking at him.

  ‘You’re serious, are you?’

  ‘Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t even know you were married.’

  ‘Few people do. It’s not in me to boast about it. We didn’t get on from the start, Ferguson. You wouldn’t realize all that means, you who are happily married and maybe have hardly had a cross word with Mrs Ferguson all the time. My wife was madly jealous and possessive. She couldn’t bear to see me talk to another woman. If I went out I had to tell her everywhere I’d been. It got in the way of my work … Now, pardon me, am I boring you, Mrs Ferguson?’

  ‘Oh, no certainly not …’ Her eyes moved away; passionate feeling stirred somewhere in their clear depths, flickered and was hidden again.

  ‘But what?’

  ‘As a woman I think it’s a pity your wife is not here to speak for herself.’

  ‘Don’t you believe my story?’

  ‘Of course. But perhaps it has two sides.’

  ‘Every story has two sides, Mrs Ferguson. Only prejudiced people deny a fair hearing to both.’

  ‘That’s what I meant,’ she said.

  There was a brief silence.

  ‘Well, I w
asn’t blameless,’ Stephen said. ‘One meets a lot of attractive creatures. But it was all harmless and meant no more than that scud on the sea, as she ought to have known. I make myself out to be no saint, I assure you … But a woman of character, a woman with love in her heart as well as petty pride, should be able to set aside the unessential things and see the truth in a man.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s hard for her to know the truth if she never hears it from his lips.’

  ‘It’s hard if she can think of nothing but her own self-esteem.’

  ‘Perhaps she would say that what you call self-esteem is really self-preservation.’

  Brook passed his cup. ‘I think you told me once that you were interested elsewhere,’ he said pacifically.

  ‘Yes. As you put it.’

  ‘Didn’t you say, though, that she was married also?’

  ‘That’s so. But I think that if people love one another truly enough, then nothing can stand in their way, no man-made laws are going to stop them from coming together as they ought.’

  There was silence.

  She said: ‘I think we ought to go back, Brook. You’re not supposed to be out after dark.’

  They talked for a little while longer, and then parted amicably enough. As they were jogging home Brook said:

  ‘It’s queer, you two always rub each other up the wrong way. You never have liked him, have you?’

  ‘Oh, it isn’t that.’

  ‘He’s not a bad fellow really … Though I did think it a bit unnecessary for him to go into details of his divorce in front of you. After all, it’s not a very savoury subject.’ He brooded. ‘ It only shows.’

  ‘Shows what?’

  ‘One doesn’t know one’s friends. One reads of the loose morals of people connected with the stage, but I’d thought of Crossley as different.’

  She said: ‘Well, if people have made a mistake and recognize it, isn’t it better to try to put it right than to live in misery all their life?’