Cordelia

by Winston Graham

  ‘I remember it well,’ said Frank Slaney-Smith. ‘ It was like a red rag to him when Charles went over to Rome. It was just after Father died and after there’d been all that trouble with the kitchen maid claiming … We were all strung up at the time.’

  ‘Mr Slaney-Smith thought this message had come from Charles. He couldn’t get it out of his mind. He says he tried to forget it, and tried to tell himself that it was all telepathy. But he said he hadn’t so much as thought of Charles for a month before that night. You know what a man, what a person he was for scientific proof. He said he tried to find Mr Gustave afterwards but he couldn’t, and so one day he answered an advertisement in a paper and got in touch with another medium, and joined her circle, just to see, he said, just to inquire scientifically, he said, into it further. And that’s where he’s been spending so much of his time, his leisure, with these people, these spiritualists, and his money, for over two years.’

  ‘He should have told me. What results did he get?’

  ‘He became convinced, Mr Ferguson. It must have got hold of him very strongly. He kept it secret even from me, you know, who might have shared his confidence, his trust. And I – I suspected something quite different; I shall never excuse, never forgive myself …’

  ‘Did something – go wrong?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Ferguson. Only last Saturday night, a week last Saturday, I should say, he went as usual to the Victoria Music Hall, and on the stage, he said, doing conjuring and disappearing tricks, was this man, this Frenchman, under another name.’

  Oh, Heaven! thought Cordelia.

  ‘So Mr Slaney-Smith went to see Mr Gustave after the performance …’

  Mr Ferguson said: ‘ I shall write to Crossley tonight and–’

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Slaney-Smith. ‘It’s no good writing to Mr Crossley. It was Mr Crossley’s idea …’

  ‘What–’

  ‘Why did your husband go to London?’

  ‘He went to see Mr Crossley, Doctor. I think perhaps he was hoping … I don’t know what he was hoping …’

  He was still hoping that it wasn’t true, thought Cordelia. But Stephen is away, and even–’

  ‘Oh, yes, he found him, discovered him. He’d just come home from abroad, Mr Slaney-Smith said. He taxed him with it all. Mr Crossley agreed, admitted everything. He said he’d been challenged – that was the word – challenged to put on a spiritualist turn, and he’d done it.’

  The woman made a little grimace as she lowered her head. You could see the thin hair scraped away from the central parting.

  ‘We’ll have tea,’ she said. ‘My friend Mrs Appleton has offered. I wonder why I’m so calm when this terrible thing has happened to me. I remember two years ago a woman coming to the door, rather a common type of woman, I recall. From the way she spoke, the questions she asked, I thought she had known Charles as a boy. I told her what I knew about him, never thinking she must have been sent to ask, to get the information. I never told Mr Slaney-Smith about it because sometimes he’d fly into a temper if you brought up Charles’s name …’

  Robert said: ‘But when it’s admitted that all this is true, does it prove that these other people–’

  ‘That’s what I said to him, and he said: ‘‘Of course they’re cheats. If the first step’s a lie the rest is lies too. All life’s a cheat,’’ he said. ‘‘From the cradle you’re fed on lies, with your milk,’’ he said – forgive me, that’s what he said. ‘‘Life’s a sham, an impertinence, a vulgar insult.’’ I can’t remember all the words he used, and some I wouldn’t venture to repeat. ‘‘Humanity’s a festering sore,’’ he said, ‘‘with all the microbes crawling over each other and feeding on each other and decaying together. There’s only one way of making a protest, there’s only one sane way out.”’

  ‘I’m sure you did what you could.’

  ‘Indeed, I did. But he was too strong for me, Mr Ferguson. You know what I mean, too clever. I couldn’t argue with him. If you had been here, it might have been different. I could only speak to him of myself and of the children. I said was it fair to leave us, all ten of us, practically destitute, to fend for ourselves in the world today? What, I said, would become of Alec and Bernard and Susie and James? But he said: ‘‘ Perhaps they’ll grow up free, as I never had the chance to. Those that are fit to survive will trample on the others, and those that aren’t will be crushed out. That’s the law and it’s the only law.’’ I said to him then: ‘‘And what of your work? Who will carry on?’’ He laughed. He said: ‘‘What’s the good of denying God when there isn’t any God to deny!”’ Mrs Slaney-Smith looked up, glancing from face to face with intent humility. ‘It was the only time when I thought his mind – when I couldn’t quite follow him …’

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Hallows, the fire was almost out in my study before prayers.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

  ‘And the new servants were late coming in for prayers this evening. I had to wait for them.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I’ll see it doesn’t happen again.’

  ‘The household is getting lax. It needs a tightening hand.’

  Is this where our pretty story is ending? Perhaps it wasn’t so pretty. Perhaps it was just a sordid little love story, shadowed all the time by anxieties and fears, doomed from the start by his superficiality and my timidity. Those three or four evenings together; and the dance when I knew I loved him and we went round and round lost in a lovers’ dream; the afternoon sitting quietly by the river bank in the misty November sun …

  ‘No, thanks,’ said Brook shortly. ‘I don’t want anything more.’

  ‘You don’t eat enough, my boy. That’s one of your chief troubles. You’re so finicky in all your meals.’

  ‘I eat as much as I can.’

  Brook was sulky tonight. He had had words with his father; not an unusual thing these days; for the goodwill which had existed at the time of Ian’s birth had long since worn away.

  Aunt Tish had been disturbed in her afternoon rest and was trying to fall asleep at the table. Pridey was the only cheerful one, seemed the only likeable one. By the afternoon post he had had an invitation – the first of its kind – to write the programme notes for a forthcoming concert. Among the pieces was Liszt’s Symphonic Poem, ‘The Slaughter of the Huns’, and he was considering how offensive he could be without having his notes cut.

  Nobody else knows, she thought; I can turn to no one for comfort or advice. No one to tell about this morning, or how I feel now. If I were a Catholic and could confess … How the priest would agree with my decision. But it isn’t for that, it never has been for that …

  Mr Ferguson said: ‘Did Cordelia tell you that Stephen Crossley called today?’

  Brook looked up, startled out of his moroseness. ‘No! … Did he come about Mr Slaney-Smith?’

  ‘That is a matter of doubt. Cordelia refused to see him.’

  What else could I do? she thought, with Ian at my skirts and you beside me. What else could I do?

  ‘I wondered at his asking for Cordelia. No doubt he concluded that no one else would be at home, that he could expect a sympathetic hearing from her.’

  ‘He’d be disappointed then,’ said Brook. ‘Cordelia’s never liked him. As a matter of fact, I’d have been rather interested to hear what he had to say.’

  ‘I too,’ said Mr Ferguson, ‘ though not with the weak goodwill you no doubt would have brought to the meeting. I should have told him what I thought of his kind.’ He blew through his lips. ‘Cordelia, however, chose to override me.’

  Brook glanced at her in quick surprise.

  ‘He asked for me,’ she said, just keeping the break out of her voice. ‘I didn’t wish to see him.’

  ‘I believe you have always received courtesy from me,’ said Mr Ferguson. ‘I have some call to expect it in return. And in front of a servant you were a little high-handed.’ He rose. ‘Will you come to my study when you have finished your supper, Brook?’

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sp; I said: ‘No, it is for me to decide. I am not at home, Betty. I am not at home.’ And that was all. If only I could have sided with him against them. And walked out to meet him … A common opinion is a potent thing, and there were no two opinions about the Slaney-Smith affair. But she had done her best to ignore that. All this week she had told herself she must ignore that; she had her own personal inner knowledge and must judge by that alone. Anyway, it had nothing to do with the main issue. A joke turned sour. Forget it. But he had come when, with Mr Ferguson there, there had been no possible half measures, no neutral ground …

  In his last letter he had said he was coming to see her as soon as ever he was home – and he had come as promised. And she had sent him away without even seeing him, without even giving him a chance to speak, sent him away perhaps for the last time.

  Brook said: ‘ When did he call?’

  She stared at her plate. ‘About eleven. I was in the nursery with Ian. Your father had come in to see me about the new sewing-machine.’

  ‘Which sort are you getting?’

  ‘The Wheeler and Wilson.’

  ‘I wonder what brought him here this morning. He must have heard. It was a poor joke he played, really. All the same, I shouldn’t have minded learning how some of the tricks were done. Those candles. It was pretty clever. What made you not see him?’

  ‘There was – nothing to say to him.’

  ‘Well, I should hardly have imagined it worth quarrelling with Father about.’

  ‘I thought of beginning something like this,’ said Uncle Pridey, putting down his pencil and picking up his fork. ‘“In Mr Liszt’s latest essay in the Symphonic Poem, which I confess to finding neither poetic in inspiration nor symphonic in form, the keen concert-goer, if he attends, will distinctly hear in the ninth and succeeding bars the sound of Count Bismarck’s feet pacing up and down the chancellery in the Wilhelmstrasse. This is followed by a long confused passage which may be taken to indicate the beginning of that slaughter of the Huns of which many of us these days would feel inordinately proud.’’ Think that would do, eh? Think they’d print that?’

  ‘You’re supposed to be writing programme notes,’ said Brook. ‘Not criticism. Besides, it’s nothing to do with modern history.’

  ‘Everything’s to do with modern history. That’s the trouble with people, they seal things off in water-tight compartments, trying to assess a man without knowing what his father was. Just like mice. There’s only one science, really, and that’s the science of everything.’

  What if I told Uncle Pridey, what would he say? But could he, or anyone knowing Stephen so little, see why I still want to go to him and what is in my way?

  After supper Brook was with his father for some time. When he came out he said with an angry expression:

  ‘Father wants to see you, Delia. In his study.’

  Go in, ready for conflict. It had been threatening some days. This morning’s little brush … But it was the wrong night to criticize. She didn’t care what she said.

  ‘You wanted me, Mr Ferguson?’

  ‘Yes. Sit down, please. I’ll be ready in a moment.’

  The only sound then his steady breathing. Queer, his personal force. In whatever mood one came here one soon felt like the applicant after a new post, the schoolboy brought before the Head. But he was puffy, grey. In the three days since the funeral he had not been near the dye works, only once left the house. It was a measure of his disarrangement. He had lost his best friend.

  After a minute he put aside his papers.

  ‘You will remember I mentioned this morning I had something to discuss with you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s about Brook and yourself. I have for some time felt a little dissatisfied with your relationship. It has lacked something – some cohesive force. I have been pondering the reason.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. Perhaps Stephen had come to say he was sorry. Dear God, I wish I could die.

  ‘Yes. Some cohesive force. Let me say too, Cordelia, that during these last three months I have been conscious of some coolness in our own relations. Let us not for the moment consider whose ‘‘fault’’. Nothing is ever so simple as that. The first step towards removing it is to recognize it.’ He stared past her, judicial, impersonally fair, blew a little through his lips.

  ‘Yes,’ she said again, thinking: He will be on his way back to London now.

  ‘For my part I have been overworking, busy in too many ways. For your part you have a very active brain and perhaps too little to employ it. You have been much with your son, of course. It seems to me that Brook’s discontent, and perhaps yours, may come from a lack of identity with the things I stand for. You know perhaps that Mr Slaney-Smith died in debt.’

  ‘Yes. Brook told me.’

  ‘He leaves a widow and nine children. It’s very serious for them. I feel I must do something to help them. In considering them it has given me the opportunity to review all my affairs afresh.’

  She waited, while he tapped the papers with his finger. He went on to explain.

  His proposition was to draw up a new partnership agreement, increasing the partners in Ferguson’s Dye Works from three to six, two of the new partners to be herself and Brook, the third to be a fifteen-year trust fund administered for the benefit of the Slaney-Smiths, the money then to revert equally to the other partners.

  ‘The active partners would virtually be yourself and Brook, and I would continue to exercise a directing influence. The result would be to free me considerably and would give you both, I hope, a new sense of security.’ He clasped and unclasped his hands. ‘I try to put this before you in detail so that you may consider it all round.’

  One came expecting carping criticism, a sharp quarrel perhaps, instead this. It was a gesture. She knew she ought to be surprised, gratified. Instead she thought: What would have happened if I had gone out to meet him? But I couldn’t. There was no choice.

  ‘Slaney-Smith’s death brings home to one the futility of allowing small differences to loom large in one’s life. I am getting no younger. I have long wanted to give more time to civic duties. So I should get my own satisfaction out of the change.’

  She began to say something but he went on unheeding.

  ‘I want you to think very carefully of this. It’s fortunate you have had some experience: you know what is entailed. I’ll confess’ – he stared at her now with his steely, opinionated eyes – ‘though this is between ourselves, I should not feel justified in making this offer to Brook alone. Though he’s my own son, I know his limitations. Frankly this offer is made to you.’

  She attended with difficulty. Flattery again. He wanted something.

  No. People didn’t back hypocrisy with a lifetime’s work. He was not to know the underlying causes of today. It was not the first time he had followed up some rather cheap little squabble with a sudden change of front which put her in a position of thinking herself ungracious or mean.

  ‘I have no doubt,’ he said, ‘that there will be business associates of mine in the city who will be anxious to advise me of my imprudence in putting such responsibility in the hands of a woman. That, however, need not concern us.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, trying to force warmth into her voice. ‘You’re more than kind. I expect Brook – will be delighted.’

  He said: ‘Living the daily life, one comes to see things without perspective. Tragedy withdraws one temporarily, gives one a brief escape, the opportunity for a new judgment, a new beginning. Brook? Oh, Brook is seldom delighted about anything these days. But go and talk it over with him. You may help him to see it with greater enthusiasm.’

  ‘What doesn’t he like about it?’

  ‘For one thing he sees any invitation to you as a reflection on himself.’

  ‘Yes – I know …’

  ‘For another, this rather absurd notoriety my brother has achieved … Brook has been very difficult lately, inclined to resent the smallest thing.’
r />   ‘I think it would be better if I were not named as partner.’

  ‘I should not go on with the proposition unless you were.’

  ‘But I can’t accept if he doesn’t want me to.’

  He got up. ‘I’ve been thinking. When on another occasion a king divided his kingdom, one of his daughters was called Cordelia. But he was a blind old man without any perception of her failing, which was pride, or her real virtue, which was loyalty. Ours is a different case.’

  She looked at him quickly.

  ‘Quite a different case,’ he said. ‘I flatter myself I’m not blind. And you are not proud … Though I sometimes think it’s possible for loyalty to be a failing. Don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Your loyalties are so strong. There is a certain danger in that.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem at all true to me,’ she said, speaking from her heart, almost in tears. ‘Or of me.’

  ‘Well, I hope you’ll be able to accept this offer.’

  ‘Thank you for making it,’ she said.

  Before she left he had turned to the window and was gazing out over the lighted shrubbery.

  When his surgery was over that evening, Robert Birch had an unexpected visitor.

  Half the house was still used by his predecessor’s widow, and for his bachelor rooms he kept only a daily servant who left with the last patient.

  For a few seconds he did not recognize the man standing there; then Stephen moved into the light.

  ‘Oh – it’s Crossley. I – didn’t for the moment – Will you come in?’

  His voice had shown various changes of tone and Stephen noticed them.

  ‘Thanks.’

  He followed the tall doctor upstairs and glanced round casually at the small book-stacked room with its two shaded lamps and the old spaniel crouching on the hearthrug.

  ‘Am I disturbing you? Patients or anything?’

  ‘No, not a bit. Sit down. Do you smoke?’