Gerald looked away because he was afraid that he, too, might start crying. He was aware of a strange feeling of loneliness within him. For the first time in his life he knew himself to be an entirely isolated human being. He suddenly saw life as a long, unceasing procession, at one end his father dead in that long oak box, with the plain, inexpensive handles, and Alice’s unborn baby at the other. And those weren’t the two ends either. They were only two tiny points on the way. They marked off a certain span of things. And within that span it was left for him to carry on. Eventually it wouldn’t matter, and he would be the one inside the oak box while somebody else stood by and looked on, and muddled out a view of things. But for the moment it was up to him; it was his hour of life.
The room was very silent; a stale, deliberate dusk hung over it. The only sound was an occasional, suppressed sob from Mrs. Sneyd. But, on the whole, she was behaving with great control: he had never imagined that she could show so much restraint. Then Mr. Umble came in, and through the open door a smell of cooking drifted in from somewhere upstairs. Mr. Umble was wearing his frock coat again. He stood there for a moment in a respectful, negative fashion and then with careful, silent tread—he was wearing felt slippers—he went across and opened the windows a little. He gave a last glance round to satisfy himself that everything was looking its best and approached Gerald.
“Is there anything more that I can do?” he asked.
Gerald shook his head.
Mr. Umble stood by him for a moment.
“Has the lady seen enough?” he asked in a low half-whisper.
“I—I should think so,” said Gerald
He walked over and put his arm round Alice. She had been sitting on one of the hard little chairs over against the wall. It was not until he put his hand on her shoulder and found that she was shivering that he realised what a strain all this must have been for her. He was sorry now that he had let her come: in her present state it must have been about the worst thing in the world for her.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
She nodded and got up.
“It’s for her to say,” she whispered. She looked at Mrs. Sneyd as she spoke.
Mrs. Sneyd was kneeling on the dais, leaning half over the coffin. She had taken a pair of nail scissors out of her handbag and was cutting off that one straggling lock as a keep-sake. In the quiet of the place they could hear the faint squeak of the blades. Mr. Umble stood by respectfully until she had finished.
“Is the lady ready now?” he asked.
“I’ll see,” said Gerald.
He went over and touched Mrs. Sneyd on the arm. “Are you coming?” he asked.
Mrs. Sneyd shook off his hand. “I want to be here with him,” she said.
“Quite so,” said Mr. Umble when Gerald had rejoined them. “I quite understand.” He went across and opened the door to his own private staircase: the smell of cooking increased and seemed to fill the little mortuary. They heard Mr. Umble padding upstairs in his soft shoes and a moment later he returned to them.
“Is the lady likely to be long?” he said.
“I dunno,” Gerald answered.
“Very good,” said Mr. Umble.
He made no kind of protest; raised no objection. He just stood there beside them wondering when the widow would release him. Upstairs there were the undisguisable sounds of someone dishing-up.
Five minutes had passed and still Mrs. Sneyd had not moved. Mr. Umble gave a little sigh—it was the nearest he came to impatience—and went on pairing. Then he turned to Gerald.
“Are all the arrangements fixed?” he asked.
“She wants him buried at home,” he said. “Up in Tadford.”
“Tadford?” he said. “That’s rather far for a motor job. It really ought to be a train.”
“O.K.,” said Gerald.
They waited for another five minutes and then Mr. Umble spoke again.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “But the lady isn’t doing herself any good by stopping here. She’s only working herself up.”
It was perfectly true. The tears were running down her cheeks again. She had the lock of hair in her hand and was kissing it.
“She could come down again in the morning,” Mr. Umble suggested. “We open at nine.”
Gerald turned to Alice. “Shall I get her?” he asked.
Alice nodded.
“You’d better,” she said.
Gerald buttoned up his coat with an air of finality and went over to Mrs. Sneyd.
“It’s time to go now,” he said gently.
“I’m not going,” Mrs. Sneyd replied.
“But you’ve got to go,” Gerald explained. “They’re shutting.”
“I’m going to stop here.”
“You can come down again in the morning.”
“I’m going to stop here all night.”
Mr. Umble’s self-possession left him for a moment.
“Oh, no, lady,” he said. “We couldn’t have that. It wouldn’t be right.”
Mrs. Sneyd turned on him.
“I’m stopping here,” she said. “He’s my husband.”
Mr. Umble turned to Gerald with an expression of helplessness.
“Of course if she insists,” he said. “But somebody’ll have to stop with her. She isn’t fit to be left alone. I wouldn’t like to be responsible.”
It was, Gerald decided, a moment for quick decision: Mrs. Sneyd clearly needed protecting from herself. He wasn’t going to have her exhausting herself before the greater ordeal of the funeral. And, besides, he couldn’t have Alice sitting up all night. He therefore decided to remove Mrs. Sneyd. Going up to her he took her firmly by the arm and used just the kind of voice that he imagined a half-hysterical woman would instinctively obey.
“Come along,” he said. “It’s for your own good.”
Having said it, he was utterly unprepared for what was to happen. Mrs. Sneyd turned on him and tried to scratch his face.
“I’ve heard you whispering,” she said fiercely. “I’ve heard you scheming. Well, I’m not going. I’m stopping here. And I don’t want any of you. What have you ever done to help him, I’d like to know? If you’d been half a son he wouldn’t be lying there now. It was worry that killed him. Just worry.”
“Sshh,” said Gerald. “Sshh.”
“I won’t sshh,” Mrs. Sneyd cried, her voice rising almost to a scream. “You killed him, I tell you. You killed him.”
“Come along, please, Mrs. Sneyd.” Alice said. “You’re tired out.”
But Mrs. Sneyd only swung round and faced her, too. “You’re as bad as he is,” she said. “You knew he’d got a father. Well, why didn’t he ever see him? Because he was afraid he might have to do something. That’s why. Talk of charity. Putting me up in the best bedroom and pretending you’ve saved the world.”
She started to say something else, but her tears choked her. She swayed for a moment and then sank down on a dais and tried to cover her face with her hands. One of Mr. Umble’s vases of flowers went over on its side and a wet stain showed across the red. Her hat came off and rolled under the brass chain on to the floor. She was breathing in short, delirious gasps.
“She ought to be quite easy now,” said Mr. Umble. “You’ll find she’s much quieter.”
He lent a hand and together they got Mrs. Sneyd to the door. She did not resist. She was simply a feeble, drooping mass that had to be supported. Her arm which Gerald tried to get right round his shoulders to steady her, kept falling down to her side like a dummy’s.
Mr. Umble was very helpful and insisted on helping her right into the car. She did absolutely nothing for herself. Before she was tucked away beside Alice, a small crowd had collected. They had never before seen a fat woman in black being lifted into a yellow sports car. The fact that she was weeping noisily was just as remarkable. They stood and stared. She still had her face covered with her hands and cared nothing for any of them. Gerald let in the clutch with a jerk and they shot off down the st
reet. He was biting his lip as he drove.
Mr. Umble stood watching them off and then went back into the shop. He gave no recognition to the crowd that he had seen anything unusual. His work lay inside. He mopped up the spilt water in the mortuary, opened the window as wide as it would go, and turned the lights out.
At the foot of the stairs he paused.
“Coming, dear,” he said.
It was supper-time.
Chapter Eleven
Gerald and Alice lay in each other’s arms that night and talked. It was easier to talk than sleep. The convertible settee which had been advertised as a luxurious couch by day and a restful double bed by night was somehow not so restful when you came to lie on it: the ingenious concealed hinge made a ridge half an inch high across the line on the sleeper’s hips. The two of them lay there in their own drawing-room with the curtains drawn and went over the events of the day. Upstairs in their bedroom Mrs. Sneyd lay asleep. She had been very contrite and feeble by the time they got back and had kissed Alice good night, frantically and affectionately. Then she had taken a sleeping tablet—she carried a little tube of them about in her handbag—and had lapsed into merciful unconsciousness.
“My God, what a life,” Gerald suddenly remarked.
“She didn’t mean it,” Alice said slowly. “I should probably have felt the same if it had been you.” She moved closer against him as she said it. He put his arm round her.
“It’s going to be nice having your baby,” she said at last.
“Is it?” he asked dully.
He wished that she wouldn’t talk about it. But Alice did not yet know about the fifteen pounds. She didn’t realise what that pathetic, half-drugged figure upstairs was costing them. All that she was thinking about was her baby. It was the whole of her future; and he didn’t want to be the one to spoil it for her.
“I’m so glad now I’ve told you,” she said. “It will be all right, won’t it?”
“Of course it’ll be all right,” he answered. “Quite all right.”
“We can manage somehow if we’re careful,” she went on.
“We’ll have to be careful all right,” Gerald said.
“I don’t mind. I shan’t want any new clothes.”
He did not reply. If she thought the next year was simply a matter of no new clothes it wasn’t any good trying to explain to her. At the moment he saw the future very clearly: it was going to be an endless succession of remittances to Mrs. Sneyd. It might even mean a regular pound a week or something of the kind with occasional postal orders for five shillings in between, to meet emergencies. It was a future with all the fun and sparkle knocked out of it …
Alice stirred slightly.
“Won’t it be lovely,” she said, “when we’ve got plenty of money.”
He put his hand up and began to stroke her hair.
“How much do you want?” he asked.
“Oh, not an awful lot,” she said. “Just enough not to have to worry. About another two hundred a year.”
He smiled. Another two hundred a year! He supposed that was what it would always be. No matter how much he made they would never quite catch up.
“We’ll move into the back room and make the front room into a nursery,” she went on. “It’s sunnier.”
He did not reply, and a moment later Alice repeated what she had said.
“Are you asleep?” she asked.
But because it seemed simpler that way, he still didn’t answer. He had too much on his mind to want to talk. And after a moment, Alice gave up asking him.
Towards one o’clock the ridge across the bed ceased to trouble him and he slept.
Mr. Biddle got back from the Margate Conference late on Sunday evening and came straight round to see Alice and Gerald. He was remorseful and conscience-stricken about the whole affair and wanted to know everything that had happened since he had been away. The last that he had seen of Mr. Sneyd was in that dreadful bed behind the screens when the Mariner’s salute had gone unanswered. Now that he was home again he wanted to do everything he could to be of service.
“Is the funeral fixed up?” he asked.
“Mrs. Sneyd wants to have it at home,” Gerald told him.
“Very natural,” said Mr. Biddle.
“It’s a long way,” Gerald reminded him gloomily. “It means an all-day job.”
“Can’t be helped,” Mr. Biddle replied. “It’s only once in a lifetime.”
“Do you really think Gerald’s got to go?” Alice asked suddenly. “I don’t want him going getting killed on the railway or something.”
She had lately found herself worrying about Gerald whenever he was not actually with her. It was her constant fear he would be killed and she would be left alone with the baby coming.
Mr. Biddle, however, knew nothing of the baby. He looked at her in surprise.
“Of course he’s got to go,” he said. “It wouldn’t be proper if he didn’t.” He paused. “Where’s the widow?” he asked.
“She’s here,” Gerald answered him. “Upstairs.”
“When did she get here?”
“Next morning.”
Mr. Biddle shook his head. “That’s terrible,” he said. “She’ll never forgive herself. It was her place to be there.”
“It wasn’t her fault,” Alice pointed out.
“Doesn’t make any difference,” he said. “It’s something that she’ll remember always.” Mr. Biddle paused. “How’s she taking it?” he asked. “Well?”
“Very well,” said Gerald.
“She’ll be worse yet,” Mr. Biddle said complacently. “Still a bit stunned by it, you know. It’s in about a week it’ll begin to show.”
The news that Mr. Biddle was there seemed to have a tonic effect on Mrs. Sneyd. The one thing that she could not bear was to feel neglected and here was someone new, a man, a stranger, with whom she could share her desolation. She got up and tidied herself carefully in front of the mirror. There was a bowl of Alice’s powder on the dressing-table and she tried hard to obliterate the marks of her sorrow. She was a plastered, unnatural-looking creature by the time she came downstairs. Her hair, her beautiful fair hair that Mr. Sneyd had been so fond of was simply a wispy, intractable bundle; without curlers she could do nothing with it.
But it was worth coming down simply to talk to Mr. Biddle. He was so understanding. Never before, she thought, had she met anyone so spontaneously and endlessly sympathetic. From the way he talked of her husband, he might have known him all his life instead of for about eight days.
“He was a very gallant gentleman,” Mr. Biddle was saying. “A very gallant gentleman indeed. He was on his death-bed and he didn’t want to worry us.”
Mrs. Sneyd started to cry again. “He was like that,” she said. “He never told me anything.”
“We paid a little tribute to him down at Margate,” he said. “We all stood in his memory for half a minute.”
“That’s very kind of you,” said Mrs. Sneyd gratefully. “But it won’t do any good. He didn’t keep up his subscriptions.”
“That wasn’t why we did it,” said Mr. Biddle. “We did it for the memory of a brave man. We honoured the spirit.”
“I see,” said Mrs. Sneyd. She was silent for a moment as though resolving a problem in her mind. “Do you think it might count?” she asked. “He paid for seventeen years.”
“Once a Mariner always a Mariner,” Mr. Biddle replied vaguely. “There’s no middle course.”
“How much do you think it might be if they did do anything?” she asked eagerly.
But Mr. Biddle seemed rather shocked at the question.
“That’s a matter for a full Harbour Sitting to decide,” he said. “All I can do is to propose it.”
“That’s very good of you,” Mrs. Sneyd replied. “You’ve all been so nice. I should never have got through it without you.” She paused. “But all the same,” she added, “it does seem a shame. All those subscriptions and nothing to show for it.”
Mr. Biddle expertly turned the conversation.
“I shall be coming up for the funeral,” he said. “Gerald and I’ll be going up together.”
“That’s nice of you,” Mrs. Sneyd replied. “That really is nice of you.”
“We’ll be there,” said Mr. Biddle.
“I’m sure Stan would have appreciated it if he’d known,” said Mrs. Sneyd. “You must come back to us afterwards.”
Then she took out her handkerchief and began crying into it again. She did not cry openly at first and neither Mr. Biddle or Gerald knew that she was affected. It was Alice who noticed it first time and she got up and went over to Mrs. Sneyd.
“You’re worn out,” she said. “You ought to come and lie down again.”
“All right,” said Mrs. Sneyd weakly. “I’ll take another of those tablet things. Then perhaps I shall be able to forget it for a bit.”
She went out on Alice’s arm and the two men were left alone together. There was a constrained awkward silence; it was difficult to start a conversation after that remark of Mrs. Sneyd’s. It seemed a heartless arrangement that they should be in their arm-chairs chatting convivially while upstairs, only ten feet or so above their heads, Mrs. Sneyd was fighting misery with a bottleful of Sleepene.
When Mr. Biddle did break the silence, he spoke with the air of a man saying something that he has had on his mind for some time.
“Gerald,” he said quietly, “I killed your father.”
“You did what?” said Gerald.
“Killed him,” Mr. Biddle replied. “If I hadn’t taken all that crowd in to see him he’d never have had that relapse.”
“You don’t know he wouldn’t,” said Gerald.
“Oh, but I do,” Mr. Biddle insisted. “The Matron said so. They didn’t want him to see anyone that night. They’d given him something and they wanted him to sleep.”
Love in Our Time Page 13
