Cordelia

by Winston Graham

  Her mind turned back to Margaret and dwelt on her more than it had done for years. It seemed to her now that her original suspicion had not been so far from the truth. Poison of a sort existed in the very relationship.

  First Margaret; now Brook. Who next?

  It was all she could do to stay in the house an hour longer; she wanted to push a few things into a box, and snatch her son up in his sleep. Hardly noticed, the process of subjection and dominion might already be far advanced.

  So far she had done nothing about Brook’s poem. No doubt Mr Ferguson deserved to read the considered epithets his son had heaped on him, yet she shrank from this last vindictiveness. The damage was done and nothing could restore the past. If she could have seen behind the suffering mask of the old man’s face and assured herself once and for all that it was only a mask …

  Dignified sorrow. ‘The great loss I have suffered.’ ‘So kind and dutiful a son.’ ‘ It has pleased God to afflict me in my old age.’ Hypocrisy or the simple truth as he saw it? The important thing was not to decide but to get away from a decision. Someone else could sit in judgment, not she. She was too tired, too grieved to condemn.

  It was possible to be entirely sincere and yet still to crush and extinguish the life of those around you.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Thorpe, it’s so kind of you to come and see me. No, Mr Ferguson’s seeing nobody at present. Most of the day he sits in his study quite alone … Thank you, thank you, yes, yes, I’ll give him your message.’

  And I am free to go, Mrs Thorpe. Wake up, heart, and beat more quickly at the thought. But the loss of Brook is still too close.

  I will plan. Today is Saturday and the funeral already twenty-four hours behind. Tomorrow Ian comes back from Mother’s. On Monday Mr Ferguson will go down to the works. He must go, for he has not been near since …

  ‘Oh, thank you, Father, for bringing him. I was coming over later. Are you sure he hasn’t been any trouble? But, darling, what a beautiful clock! Did Grandpa make it for you? And does it really go? … Yes, it’s been a dreadful week, but I think the worst’s over. Everybody’s been – so kind. No, Mr Ferguson’s been no trouble. But at times he’s looked so ill that I’ve wondered … Uncle Pridey’s ill, you know, that’s why he wasn’t at the – why he wasn’t here on Friday. We wired him but he wired back that he was in bed with sciatica … Yes, I’ll do my best to get a holiday – I’ll get away as soon as ever I can …’ Tomorrow, in fact, but I can’t tell you yet. I’ll leave a note tomorrow – a note for you and a note for him.

  Her father stayed all the afternoon, and by the time he left it was snowing again. She stood at the door watching him tread sturdily down the drive. The light from inside the house showed up the drifting flakes wandering aimlessly down, the thin damp crust of snow on the ground. Footsteps showed black where the snow had clung to his heels.

  It was time for prayers and Sunday supper and the servants were gathering uncomfortably in the hall. Three times during the last week Mr Ferguson had not come out of his study to say prayers and as there was no one to deputize she had had to dismiss the servants again. She did so tonight; and she and Aunt Tish went in to supper. She sent Hallows to remind Mr Ferguson and he said he would have his meal in the study. Relief. Although the dining-room dwarfed her and the simple-minded old woman, the silence between them was a harmless silence untainted with passion or fermenting grief.

  When it was over, Aunt Tish said she was going to bed. She had never really stopped crying since Brook’s death: even now there was a moisture in her eyes which oozed out whenever she spoke or was spoken to, and the dewdrop on the end of her nose was not a permanent resident but a fresh visitor constantly wiped away and renewed.

  Cordelia went up to see if Ian was comfortably settled, talked for a while with Nanny Grimshaw, came down listlessly into the drawing-room, and picked up one of yesterday’s papers which still lay folded and unopened on the top of Friday’s on the table by the door.

  The fire had gone down and she pulled it together until it broke into a blaze. One somehow needed the warmth and light of the fires for other reasons than the cold. Warm your hands while there is still feeling, draw comfort where you can, for outside is the churchyard and the dark.

  Chapter Six

  He said: ‘You blame me, don’t you? Blame me for it all?’

  They had been sitting for ten minutes in silence, she pretending to read, waiting the excuse to escape. He had been staring into the fire. They had hardly been alone together all this week.

  ‘You need rest,’ she said. ‘Aunt Tish has gone to bed, so I haven’t had the fire made up.’

  ‘You blame me entirely, don’t you? Answer me.’

  ‘I don’t know …’

  ‘I had three sons,’ he said. ‘ Only one survived to manhood. It wasn’t fair. If they’d all lived, things would have been so much different. You don’t understand. No – don’t go.’

  ‘It won’t help, talking of it now.’

  ‘What do you feel about death? What is it to you – is it an end, a beginning?’ He turned his hands over slowly and stared at them. The firelight made the fingers a flickering yellow. ‘“And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God’’ … ‘‘He cometh up and shall be cut down, like a flower’’ … I had three sons, not one. You were brought up to believe in the family, your own family. You should be able to feel …’

  ‘Does it matter what I feel now?’

  ‘The value of our family, the value of succession. I’ve told you, we came from Cumberland, we were very poor, badly clothed, ill fed. That sort of thing makes for cohesion in a family, a sense that the rest of the world is unfriendly, against you. From a few sovereigns carried in a leather bag we came in three generations to what you see us. It’s something to be proud of. It’s not just an ambition personal to me: it’s a credo, a faith. The good of the family is more important than the good of one generation. I’ve made great sacrifices – it was true, though Brook … I thought he understood. It came as a great blow …’

  She did not answer. Outside it was still snowing, coming down stealthily and secretive; now and then you could hear a betraying drip on the window-sill.

  ‘You are a mother now. At least you must know how I felt when Vaughan and Joseph died …’ He eased himself in his chair, by the arms, stared at the fire. ‘It was scarlet fever – I’ve told you that; they all got it, all my boys and my wife. They were isolated in the west bedrooms. It was Dr Bagshawe in those days. He prescribed port wine every hour – and biscuits soaked in beef tea. When Joseph got so very bad I sent for a specialist from Town. When he came he said, ‘‘Mr Ferguson, by whose orders …’’ I made a gesture and he said, ‘‘You’re killing these children.’’ I often wonder …’ He sighed and was silent.

  She watched him warily, half fascinated, half repelled. His memory went back so much farther than hers, gave him some claim on her attention, her sense of fairness.

  ‘They were clever boys, Vaughan particularly. With them nothing was impossible. Progress wouldn’t have stood still when my generation passed. It could have gone to the limits. When only Brook was left it was clear that the best I could hope for was a generation’s pause. If I can hold on, I thought. When I have a grandson and my grandson is old enough … If I was possessive, then circumstances made me possessive. That’s why I felt such great joy at the birth of Ian.’

  Suppose I told him, she thought.

  He said with sudden emphasis: ‘My brother Tom was a great disappointment. My father wanted him in the business, but he wasn’t any use. For a time there was talk of making him a doctor, but even for that he wouldn’t study. So when my father died, though he left shares to Tom and Letitia, he left me with a controlling interest. At the time it may have seemed unfair to the others – but he wanted to safeguard the future. He bound up the money so that it could not be carelessly frittered away or withdrawn. The same principles as those I have acted on. But he had me to fall ba
ck on. I had no alternative to Brook – except you. When he wished to take you away as well – and also my grandson – could I do anything but stand in his way?’

  She said: ‘Brook had his dreams too.’

  A dusky red came up to his forehead. He hesitated, seemed about to stop, then said, half lisping, with an obstructive tongue: ‘“Men are not in Hell because God is angry with them; they are in wrath and darkness because they have done to the light as that man does to the light of the sun who puts out his own eyes.’’ Did you ever read that? I have been in wrath and darkness for many years … That is something you will not understand, Cordelia. No one knows it. My father wasn’t in the same position at all. He was strong, strong …’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t tell me,’ she said, moving to get up.

  He put his hand out to restrain her, touched only the edge of her chair. He was fighting the iron reticences of a lifetime.

  ‘You think I’m a religious man, don’t you; a man who makes religion a part of his daily life? Isn’t that so?’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, it’s not so. Only the outward form … Oh, I was brought up with a firm belief. I held to it all my early married life. But it was when my children died – I tried to see it differently, rightly, as the will of God … But have you ever seen a child, two children, who last week were running about the house, lying there …’

  ‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘Don’t tell me.’ This has tapped a spring of fear and pity. She mustn’t respond.

  ‘I fought it,’ he said. ‘I tried to put the thoughts away. I began to work doubly hard. I tried to believe the old things. But all the time some erosion … Intellect fighting faith. To cover over the doubt I began to go deeper into the tenets of religion. Where one form of religious belief didn’t satisfy I turned to another. Then I met Mr Slaney-Smith …’

  He blew his nose. The eau de Cologne was faint, a little stale.

  ‘Our friendship was not so strange as some people thought it. We were each seeking the truth from opposite positions. We used to argue – long into the night. There was so much common ground … Neither of us would stoop to admit that. It was a tremendous shock to me when I knew he had come to believe in spiritualism. I should never have thought it possible. Perhaps it would be just as much a shock to him to know what I am saying to you. It’s possible, I’ve thought since his death, that though neither of us would give way an inch, the arguments of each had an effect … While he preached his unbelief he was secretly dabbling in this thing, coming to believe in it. And as for me, while I continued to speak of my beliefs, the faith I had rotted, and rotted away …’

  His lips were parting with each breath as if gently blowing dust. She saw that he must go on now, say all that he had in his mind.

  ‘Perhaps it’s true that I put out my own eyes. But what is the choice? Life after death to me seems – an impossibility. Perhaps you’re lucky enough to believe it all without question. I still accept God. But as for some sort of existence after death – I have no faith at all. I see no hope of it. The biological elements destroy, destroy; building up something different in their place. To me, Cordelia, there’s only one survival of personality, one continuance of personal qualities. That is through the family, through inheritance, through the begetting of one’s children. That’s immortality – the only sort we can hope for. Oneself goes down, the discarded husk, leaving the young plant to flourish in its stead. All through nature it’s the same. One can hope for nothing else.’

  In the fireplace one of the big pieces of coal was roaring with a bright gassy flame.

  ‘D’you see now why I care so intensely what happens to my son and to my grandson? I’ve been wrong – I know it. I should have let Brook go. But it was not in me to do it. If he came back now I don’t think I could do it. I want you to try to understand.’

  She found she was trembling.

  ‘Do you mean,’ she said, ‘that you’d rather have Brook dead than working in London?’

  ‘No. Words are so ineffective. I loved my sons … If the choice was before me now I should have to say to Brook, ‘‘Go free, gladly go and be done.’’ But it would be the sacrifice of my life for his …’

  He got up then.

  She said: ‘ Brook couldn’t possibly have given way again. It would have been the end of him – just as surely as now. All he wanted was the chance to prove himself. If you could only have compromised, have given way a little …’

  ‘Once I was tempted to, to accept your suggestion of a year’s trial. But the thought represented itself as weakness.’

  She was silent. Did she believe that he had ever really contemplated giving way? Wasn’t it an afterthought, put out of its sequence by convenient memory?

  ‘You blame me for Brook’s death,’ he said. ‘I know you do. I’ve seen it in your face all along, though you’ve been considerate enough not to put it into words. Well – whatever it led to, whatever the truth – I know that mine has been the wrong. I know it now. I’ve paid for it, and I shall go on paying … If there was a personal God – if there was a personal God and I had to account for what has happened I should ask not for forgiveness but for understanding.’

  The coal had exhausted itself as quickly as it blazed up, the flame had vanished into a thin grey curl of smoke.

  ‘What I tried so hard to preserve,’ he said, ‘it’s been destroyed – in the most final of all ways. There’s only one thing left to me, and that’s the hope that through you and your son – in time, not now but in time, we may build up something again. A new foundation of trust. I can say no more. In all sincerity I can only ask you – you must feel bitter, I know – to try to – to see that what I’ve been trying to do is not to destroy but to create. I had it all. I thought I had it all. But there was a flaw, and I – pressed too hard on the mould. Now there’s only the useless pieces in my hands.’

  Chapter Seven

  He did not go to the works the next day. It upset all her plans, but she knew she must leave just the same. During the night, when she had slept little, she kept repeating to herself, ‘It’s all decided. It can alter nothing now. Soon the break will be made, this will be behind me and I can forget it all.’

  She knew her decision to go at once was the right one. There must be no more emotional scenes like last night, plucking at her sympathy, her understanding. She could not forget the things he had told her, could not get them out of her head. Frederick Ferguson and his pride of house and his loss of faith; Slaney-Smith and his inverted atheism; and Brook and the dye works and continuity and spiritualism and possessiveness and love.

  After breakfast she packed her own small box with a few personal belongings, one frock, a change of clothes for Ian, the jewellery that Brook had bought her. She didn’t know where Mr Ferguson was, but she took a chance and carried the box boldly down the stairs. A door opened as she reached the foot, but it was Hallows.

  He hastened across. ‘Can I take that for you, madam?’

  ‘… Thank you. Will you just put it in the porch, please?’

  ‘Do you want it delivered somewhere, madam?’

  ‘No, leave it there. Where is Mr Ferguson?’

  ‘In his study, I think. I’ll inquire.’

  ‘No. I don’t want him disturbed.’

  Ian usually went out with Nanny from ten to eleven-thirty, but she had told the nurse that she wanted him back by eleven today. There had been a thick fall of snow in the night, but it had thawed as it fell and all the trees were adrip.

  By ten-thirty she was ready, and she took out a piece of note-paper and began to write.

  DEAR MR FERGUSON,

  In spite of what you said last night, I feel that I can no longer live with you in this house. Please understand I am not trying to sit in judgment. Nothing we can do or say can alter what has happened. We have to start a new life, but my life I know can’t begin again as you suggest. So I am leaving with Ian.

  Good-bye, C ORDELIA

  She read it
through. Unsatisfactory, partly because it only stated half-truth. She had given him neither of her main reasons. But it was better left unsaid.

  She put the note in an envelope and left it on her dressing-table. When Ian and Nanny came back she was sitting ready in hat and coat and gloves.

  ‘Oh, are you going out, Mrs Ferguson? It’s a horrid day with a thaw wind.’

  ‘Yes, don’t bother to take Ian’s coat off. I want to take him to Town with me. Just change his shoes, will you, these are wet. Betty, will you get a cab for me? One of the gardeners will go.’

  ‘Yes’m.’

  Now to wait. This was a trying time. She hadn’t written to her father and mother. Do that as soon as ever she reached London. But until the irrevocable move was made she could settle to nothing.

  Ian came bounding back.

  ‘Mummy, what makes snow? Nanny wouldn’t tell me. I don’t b’lieve she knows …

  ‘Yes, but what makes it white, Mummy? …

  ‘Mummy, where are we going? Is Grandpa coming? Whose was that box in the porch when we came in?’

  Waiting now. Round and round in her head; thoughts of last night, thoughts of today. Suppose there were no cab about. It was a nasty morning and she might wait here and wait here. Panic kept rising. She could only wait until twenty past eleven. If there was no cab by then she would have their own carriage out. Foolish timidity not to have it in the first place. What did it matter that anyone should know?

  ‘Mummy, I throwed a snowball and it hit a cat and the cat jumped like anythink and slipped on the ice. It was proper fun. And there were some boys, big boys, throwing snowballs over on the cricket field and Nanny said they were naughty because they were shouting rude words but that we were to pity them because they didn’t know any better and hadn’t got any shoes and stockings on.’