Caroline

by Richmal Crompton

  She saw very little of the Dicksons. Sybil had tired at last of giving invitations, only to have them refused. “I like you, Fay,” she had said, “and I’m always here if you want me, but—” she shrugged and left the sentence unfinished. With Billy she had definitely quarrelled. Waylaying her, in an attempt to “have it out,” he had said things about Caroline that had infuriated her. She had turned on her heel and walked away, telling him never to speak to her again, and she hadn’t seen him after that till yesterday, when she had found him waiting for her at the end of the road on her way home.

  “Fay,” he had said humbly, “I’m terribly sorry.”

  “It was my fault, Billy,” she began unsteadily, then, as she met his eyes, felt, to her horror, the uprising of tears and the shaking of the wall she had built around herself, the wall that could never be built up again once it had fallen. She turned from him abruptly and ran home through the gathering dusk. . . .

  Aunt Philippa was lighting the candles now, and Uncle Charles was drawing the curtains. Aunt Maggie was so much excited that she couldn’t keep still but danced about in her seat, all her necklaces jingling. . . . Richard was making a speech, very solemnly but with twinkling eyes, congratulating Aunt Maggie and wishing her many more birthdays and inviting himself to all her birthday parties till she was a hundred and two. Caroline sat back in her chair, gazing into the distance, as if the whole thing were too childish for her notice. Her mouth was set in that new tight line of suffering.

  Then Uncle Charles went out to do some shopping, saying that he would call back for Aunt Maggie in about an hour’s time. The maid cleared away the tea things, and a silence fell, broken only by Maggie’s excited twitterings. Suddenly she stopped, as if struck by a new idea, and looked from Fay to the piano that stood in the corner of the room.

  “You can play here, dear,” she said. “There’s a piano. . . . Do play. . . . You play so nicely.”

  “No, Aunt Maggie, the child’s tired,” said Caroline sharply, but Fay was already crossing the room slowly, dreamily, as if walking in her sleep. She sat down at the piano and began to play . . . fumblingly at first, then gradually with more sureness. They listened to her in silence, aware of some new tension in the atmosphere that they did not understand. She stopped playing abruptly, with a little gasp. It had happened. . . . While she was playing she had forgotten everything else in the world and—she had let go. The dreadful thing was going to happen. It was too late to stop it. Even now she didn’t quite know what it was, but—whatever it was—it was going to happen. Her eyes, Unnaturally brilliant, were fixed on Caroline. She spoke in a voice that seemed to come from a long way off.

  “Caroline,” she said, “I’m not coming back to Bartenham with you. . . . I’m not going to take the exam.”

  There was a sudden silence. Everyone looked at Caroline. She had gone very white.

  “What on earth do you mean, Fay?” she said.

  “Just that,” said Fay. “I can’t—go on with it. It’s all over.”

  “What’s all over?”

  “Everything,” said Fay unsteadily. “Oh, don’t you understand? I can’t go back there. I can’t go on living there. I know I’m wicked, but I can’t help it. I can’t go on. . . . I’ve tried, but I can’t. . . .”

  “Fay,” said Caroline sternly, “you don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “I do know. I mean it,” cried Fay hysterically. “I can’t go on. Oh, I wish I could die.”

  “You’re overwrought. We should have put off your exam, till next year, after all.”

  “It’s not that. Oh”—wildly—“you’ve got to let me go. . . . I don’t care where I go, but I’ve got to go. I shall die if I don’t. You’ve made me hate you. . . . I feel I never want to see you again. I can’t help it. I’ve tried not to. I’ve tried not to. . . . I won’t go to college or go on living with you or teach. I won’t, I tell you.” She was sobbing restrainedly now. “Music was all I cared about, and you took it from me.”

  From among the ruins of her kingdom Caroline spoke in a hard angry voice.

  “That was your own choice.”

  “You made me choose it, you know you did,” sobbed Fay. “Nothing in all my life’s ever been my own choice. I can’t bear it any longer. Oh, it isn’t just that. It’s—everything. Even Sybil . . . even Billy.” Caroline pursed her lips disapprovingly. “It wasn’t what you think. It was only a friendship. Billy didn’t want anything else and neither did I. But you spoilt it. You’ve spoilt everything all my life . . . everything. . . .”

  Suddenly Maggie said soothingly: “You should live with Philippa, dear. That will be the best. She’ll look after you. She understands. It was just the same with her and Gordon. She had to go. I understand now. She wasn’t wicked. She felt just like you. . . . And there’s a piano here, which is so nice. I always thought it was a pity that Caroline got rid of the piano.”

  “Oh, let me, Aunt Philippa,” sobbed Fay wildly. “Let me live with you. . . .”

  “Fay, are you mad?” said Caroline.

  Philippa went up to the piano and put her arm around the slender sobbing figure.

  “Come, darling . . . come and lie down for a moment.”

  She drew her out of the room and closed the door!

  Caroline rose to her feet, but there was a thick mist before her eyes, and her knees felt too unsteady to walk. She sat down again, staring at the door through which Philippa and Fay had gone.

  “You see, there’s a piano here,” said Maggie again. “That makes it all so simple. And Philippa’s so kind. . . .”

  The sound of the sobs across the passage gradually died away, and soon Philippa returned alone, closing the door behind her.

  “She’s lying down,” she said. “I’ve given her a bromide, and she’s going to try to sleep. She’s on the edge of a very bad breakdown,” She looked at Caroline for a moment, then said, “Will you let her stay here, Caroline?”

  “I suppose so—just for tonight,” said Caroline in a hard stony voice. “She’s hardly in a fit state to go home.”

  “I don’t mean just for tonight,” said Philippa slowly. “I mean—will you let her stay here and study music at the Academy? I’ll be responsible for the financial side, if you’ll allow me to be. I’d love it. . . .”

  Caroline’s face was ashen.

  “How dare you suggest that?” she said. “Haven’t you done me enough harm without—this?”

  “What harm have I done you, Caroline?”

  Caroline gave a short unsteady laugh.

  “You ask me that?”

  “Come, Caroline, it’s Fay we have to think of now. Her whole future’s at stake.”

  Caroline made an obvious effort to control herself.

  “My dear Philippa,” she said, trying without success to recapture something of her normal manner, “I know Fay better than you, and I’ve had more experience of schoolgirls than you. If you think I’m going to take a child’s hysterical vapourings seriously . . .”

  “Caroline, this isn’t a child’s hysterical vapourings and you know it.”

  Caroline turned to her and spoke in a low tone of concentrated fury.

  “You’ve taken them all from me . . . one by one. Couldn’t you have left me just Fay? It wasn’t much to ask of you.”

  Philippa threw out her arms in a little helpless gesture.

  “Oh, Caroline, if only you’d understand. I’ve taken none of them from you—none. You’ve sent them away yourself. . . .”

  “Robert . . . Susan . . . and now Fay,” said Caroline. “I wish to God you’d never come back. You ruined my father’s life, and now you’re ruining mine. I think you’re a devil. You’ve bewitched them. You’ve no right to take them from me. I worked for them and slaved for them, I denied myself everything for them, while you were living in luxury without a thought of them, and now—you come back, and all I’ve done for them goes for nothing.”

  “Caroline, it’s not me,” said Philippa gently. “It would h
ave happened just the same if I hadn’t come. . . . You can’t make people—belong to you, as you’ve tried to. They must belong to themselves.”

  Caroline dropped her head onto her hands.

  “It’s the ingratitude that hurts me so. Fay . . . after all I’ve done for her. . . .”

  “What have you done for her?” said Philippa.

  “What have I done for her?” repeated Caroline, raising her head and staring at Philippa in slow amazement. “I’ve loved her as if she were my own child——”

  “No, you haven’t,” said Philippa, speaking with sudden passion. “You haven’t loved any of them. You’ve loved yourself in them. You’ve loved your power over them, their dependence on you. You’ve hated their real selves, their individualities. . . . You’ve thwarted them at every turn. You’ve been jealous of Effie, of Kenneth, of every friend and interest of Fay’s that lay apart from you and your interests. You didn’t care how unhappy you made Robert, provided you took him away from Effie. You didn’t care how unhappy you made Susan, provided you took her away from Ken. It was jealousy . . . it wasn’t love. And Fay . . . you’ve just seen what you’ve done to Fay. Why didn’t you let her take up music? Why did you force her to take up a subject that you knew in your heart she hated? Because you were jealous of her having any interests that you couldn’t share with her, because you wanted to possess her. Caroline, one human soul can’t possess another. It’s the unforgivable sin. It kills them both. . . . Oh, don’t you see it?”

  She stopped, her voice trembling with emotion, her cheeks flushed. It was the first time any of them had seen her other than calm and poised.

  “You must see it, Caroline. . . . It’s a sort of poison. It’s killing you. . . .”

  There was a silence. The two women had quite forgotten the others. Maggie looked at them with an expression of bewilderment. Richard stood on the hearth-rug, gazing into the fire with a frown.

  Suddenly Caroline laid her head on her hands along the arm of her chair and began to sob, slow difficult sobs that seemed to tear her thin frame.

  “I’m not like that . . . I’m not. . . . It’s you . . . you’ve made me seem like that. . . . Even to myself. . . . I’ve seemed like that since you came. . . . I’ve tried not to see it . . . but—I wasn’t like that before you came. . . . I wasn’t . . . I wasn’t. . . . I’m not like that now. . . . It’s you. . . . You’ve made me seem like that. . . . Even to myself . . . I hate you. . . .”

  Richard turned and looked at her. He had loved her for her perfection, her freedom from every human frailty, then that love had slowly died. Now that he saw her sobbing there in misery and abasement, his love woke suddenly to life again, not the old distant reverence, the humble devotion of the worshipper, but a new protective tenderness, a deep yearning pity that wrung his heart. He longed to take her in his arms and comfort her. He longed to charm away her unhappiness, to give her back the youth she had spent so ungrudgingly, to make life sweet and gay and easy for her. She had faltered in the high task of lonely duty she had set herself, but what other woman would ever have set herself such a task? Her sacrifice, her self-denial, her untiring effort, had been real enough. Her failure made her human—human and infinitely dear. He felt a faint resentment against Philippa. Need she have been quite so brutal?

  Caroline raised her head. “I’m going in to see Fay,” she said in a strangled voice. “I shall ask her to choose, and, if she chooses to stay here, I’ll let her. I shan’t ask her again.”

  She went from the room, and they heard her open the door into Philippa’s bedroom.

  “I don’t understand,” said Maggie. “Is Fay going to stay here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She ought, you know, because of the piano. She plays so nicely.”

  Then Charles returned. There was a subdued excitement in his manner. He had been to see his hairdresser, and his hairdresser had given him a new specific that, he said, was guaranteed to make the hair grow again (and not only grow again but grow again luxuriantly) on bald patches on the temples. He said that the first application made a noticeable difference, and Charles was longing to go home and make the first application.

  “We’ve only just time to catch the train, Maggie,” he said. “Is Caroline coming?”

  “No, she’s catching a later one,” said Philippa.

  “It’s all about the piano,” said Maggie mysteriously. “You see, there is one here, and Fay plays so nicely.”

  Charles hurried her down to the waiting taxi.

  “I’ve had a simply lovely birthday,” she said, as she went.

  As the door closed behind them, Philippa turned to Richard.

  “Richard,” she said, “you loved Caroline before I came, didn’t you? Have I spoilt it?”

  He shook his head.

  “No one knows as well as you how splendid she’s been,” she went on. “She’s right in saying she sacrificed everything. She did. If her motive wasn’t quite the one she thought it was—well, God knows the motives of pretty few of us will stand close examination.”

  “I know. . . . I was thinking that just now.”

  The door opened and Caroline came in. Her face looked ravaged but quite composed. She held her head erect, and there was about her an air of dauntless courage.

  “Fay wants to stay here,” she said quietly. “She’d like to take up music at the Academy as you suggested. We can arrange the business part of it later, can’t we? I’ve said goodbye to Fay.” Her lips trembled for a moment, then she mastered her emotion and went on in a low steady voice: “Go to her, will you, Philippa? She’s terribly upset by all this, of course. And impress upon her that I’m not angry or disappointed, that I’m—glad she chose it. I think she’s made the right choice.”

  Richard’s heart ached with love and pity as he looked at her.

  She held out her hand to Philippa.

  “Goodbye, Philippa,” she said. “I’m sorry I made such a fool of myself just now.” She turned to Richard. “Goodbye, Richard.”

  He looked at her for a moment in silence.

  “I’m coming back with you, Caroline,” he said.

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  Richmal Crompton

  Richmal Crompton (1890-1969) is best known for her thirty-eight books featuring William Brown, which were published between 1922 and 1970. Born in Lancashire, Crompton won a scholarship to Royal Holloway in London, where she trained as a schoolteacher, graduating in 1914, before turning to writing full-time. Alongside the William novels, Crompton wrote forty-one novels for adults, as well as nine collections of short stories.