Over a cup of mahogany-coloured tea and a plateful of rough-looking cakes, he sat in the back room of a baker’s shop and thought about the future. Before he was aware of it he found himself adding up sums on the tablecloth. One after another the totals came out wrong, and it was always wrong by whatever amount he thought of allowing Mrs. Sneyd. Looked at dispassionately the position was simply that he couldn’t help her.
It wasn’t even as though he could make a sacrifice and say that he would do without this or that; hire purchase and instalment payment doesn’t let a man turn economical and suddenly cut down his expenses. And as he sat there he realised sadly that he didn’t belong to himself any more. For the privilege of turning on a Majestophone wireless set in a Tudor villa he had bartered peace of mind and a free hand.
Gerald finally arrived in Tadford at seven-thirty and went straight round to the house. The road was everything that he had remembered it. With ten shillings off the average wage it would have come down pretty close to a slum, and with ten shillings on top of it, it would have been middle class. As it was, Station Approach just kept its head up despite the Board-Lodging notices and the fact that two of the houses, with scarcely any alteration at all, had been converted into shops. It was the sort of birthplace a man can look back on with pleasure only when he has made a conspicuously good thing out of life.
To his surprise, there were two cars outside number six; and then, as he got out on to the pavement, he saw that the front room was completely full of people. The window was blocked with rows of black shoulders, and the drone of voices carried right through on to the road. It was some time before they even heard him knock. There was certainly a party going on in there all right.
When at last she came to the door, Mrs. Sneyd was transfigured. In the midst of so much friendliness and conviviality, she had temporarily forgotten to feel miserable. Her eyes were still a little watery and red rimmed, but her whole appearance was different. She now wore an expression that was dazed and almost happy.
“Come on in,” she said delightedly. “We’ve been expecting you. I wouldn’t let any of them go until you came.”
She let Gerald into a room that was blue with tobacco smoke. Through the haze he could see the massed figures of men he didn’t know; somehow he felt that Mr. Sneyd should have been there. But Mr. Biddle was among them, and his social genius had evidently worked again. They were all his friends by now. He introduced them enthusiastically one by one. And they were very polite. It seemed, in their eyes, to confer a special prestige on Gerald that, having missed the ceremony, he should still come along to pay his respects.
“I remember you when you were so high,” one of the mourners remarked suddenly. He was a tall man and he indicated something on the level of his knee. “It was just after your Dad went over to the Bon Marché.”
After that they all remembered Gerald as a boy. There was an embarrassing five minutes during which they competed among themselves for the honour of having known him first: their memories went back almost to the birth stage. It was obvious that they were all distinctly impressed with him as he was now; and remembering him as he had been, served to keep him in his place and maintain their self-respect.
It was young Violet who interrupted them. She had been out in the kitchen washing up when Gerald arrived and she felt she had been cheated in being allowed to miss a moment of him. She came into the room flushed and breathless, trembling to see the wonderful Gerald. There he stood talking to all these Mariners, the most influential men in Tadford among them, as though they were of no account at all, this amazing stepbrother of hers who had made a fortune in London and lived in a villa of his own and had a car and an enormous wireless set and a bathroom like a film star’s. Being poor didn’t seem bad at all with a prince like Gerald in the family.
“Hallo, Gerald,” she said.
He looked at her with some misgiving; he hoped that she didn’t think that he was going to become one of them again. And young Violet, in any case, was not the sort of child who attracted him. She had her mother’s golden hair—a lot of it—and her mother’s large, empty-looking eyes. She was like another Elsie. It was no fault of hers, of course, that she was at an awkward age, but the effect which she presented was that of a Hollywood juvenile film star, a little monster bubbling over with precocious feminine charm. She was dressed all in black velvet like a diseuse.
“Hallo, Violet,” he said.
“Hallo,” she answered, delighted to reflect that she had made a conquest. And then, for no reason, her delight and embarrassment overcame her. She just stood there colouring. “Elsie’s in the kitchen,” she said at last.
“I’ll go and see her,” said Gerald.
“I’ll take you,” Violet answered shyly. She put her hand confidingly in his. It felt warm and sticky to the touch.
They met Lily, the musical one who was now in Woolworth’s, on the stairs. She had changed a good deal in the last five years. She was now a smart, self-possessed young lady with a taste for artificial jewellery. It was the pearl and gem counter that she was stationed at; and, when she could afford it, she bought the choicest pieces for herself. Even in mourning she looked fashionable. She shook hands with him like a hostess.
“I’m so glad you’ve arrived,” she said. “We were all getting anxious.”
Gerald was about to explain himself—it seemed a queer business explaining himself to someone whom he remembered as a delicate, rather backward child, but Lily had no time for him. “See you later,” she said and went through to the drawing-room. She was sixteen and partial to male company; and in there where Mr. Biddle was, was more than she had ever known of it.
The encounter with Elsie was not so easy. She made no pretence of being flattered that he had come.
“So you’re here, are you?” she said. “I thought you’d probably changed your mind.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said.
“Well, you don’t exactly come here often, do you?” She tossed her head as she said it.
“If that’s how you feel,” he answered quietly, “I don’t think there’s much point in me staying here.”
“Just as you like,” she said.
She turned her back on him as she spoke and called through to someone in the scullery beyond.
“Are you there, Fred?” she asked. “You’d better meet Gerald. He’s going back home again.”
There was the sound of something being put down outside and the door opened. The young man who came in was evidently very much at home. His coat was off and the sleeves were rolled back as far as the expanding links would let them go. Across the neat black waistcoat ran an imitation gold and platinum watch chain. As Gerald looked at him he remembered that he was contemplating someone who was a very bright light indeed at the local Co-op.
“Hallo, old man,” he said. “Excuse shirt sleeves.”
“How-do-you-do?” Gerald answered.
“Have a spot of bother with the car?” the young man continued.
Gerald nodded.
“I expect you feel like a drink,” Fred said understandingly. “I kept this back in case you turned up.”
He brought out a bottle that had been hidden at the back of the dresser and poured out a glass of sherry. Gerald drank it gratefully. He was rather surprised that there should be sherry in the house. In his day he remembered it only on special occasions like Christmas. And then he reflected that in a sense this was a special occasion, too; a very special one. All the same, he wondered how Mrs. Sneyd in the grip of widowhood had been able to afford it.
Over the second glass of sherry, Fred went out of his way to be friendly. And then the horrifying significance of it slowly broke upon Gerald. Far worse than treating him as a superior, Fred was treating him as an equal. Through the bright, rimless pebbles of his glasses he was regarding him with the understanding eye of someone who, too, in the affairs of life was on the up and up.
Gerald finally managed to break away and rejoin the pa
rty in the front room. It had thinned out considerably since he had last been there. It was as though his arrival had been the climax of the afternoon; and, having seen him, they had all left happy. There was now only a little group standing over by the mantelpiece.
“Well, Brother,” said one of them, “are you satisfied?”
Mr. Biddle shook the hand that was offered to him.
“Couldn’t have been better,” he said. “It was a credit to the Order.”
“I told you, you could rely on us,” the fellow Mariner replied.
“One of the most successful funerals I’ve ever attended,” the small man on the outside of the group remarked. “Easily one of the most successful.”
“Must have been a great comfort to the widow,” the first Mariner went on. “She’s got our Brother here to thank for this.”
Mr. Biddle shifted his feet.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Things like this usually work out somehow.”
After a final round of handshakes and salutes, the last of the party broke up and went into the hall in search of hats and umbrellas. Mr. Biddle went out with them to superintend; he was the natural host in any company.
As soon as he returned, Gerald buttoned up his coat and began looking businesslike.
“Well, I suppose I ought to be saying good-bye, too,” he said briskly. “Have you seen Mrs. Sneyd?”
Mr. Biddle jerked his thumb towards the ceiling. “She’s upstairs resting,” he said. “I think it all became just a bit too much for her.”
“I’ll go up and find her,” Gerald replied. “Think I shall disturb her?”
Mr. Biddle seemed almost shocked. “You’re one of the family, aren’t you?” he said.
Gerald went upstairs cautiously. If Mrs. Sneyd were resting he did not want to disturb her. The last thing he looked forward to was having to comfort an hysterical woman. But Mrs. Sneyd was not asleep. She was sitting alone in her untidy bedroom staring blankly in front of her. She started when Gerald approached her.
“Have they gone?” she asked.
“There’s only Mr. Biddle there now,” he told her.
She got up from the sagging wicker chair and went over to the dressing-table to powder her face. The powder she used was a dead, chalk white. It gave her a blanched, dissipated appearance.
“I’ve got to be going, too,” Gerald said gently.
For no reason at all she began crying again.
“I know,” she said. “It’s all over now.”
When he went over to kiss her she clung to him. She rubbed great smears of the white powder into the shoulder of his coat as she nestled her head there.
“Don’t you cry,” he said awkwardly. “It’ll all come right in the end.”
“It’ll come out all right if they let it,” she answered.
“What—what do you mean?” he asked.
“It’s the bills,” she said. “They’ve started to come in. I knew they would as soon as people heard about Stan.”
He paused. This was the moment he had been waiting for; the moment which, ever since that night in St. Martin’s Hospital, he had foreseen was coming.
“How—how much are they?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said miserably. “They’ve gone on and on Ever since Stan had to leave the Bon Marché.”
He tried to harden himself and behave brutally.
“What’ll happen if you leave them?” he asked.
But Mrs. Sneyd saw through him.
“They’ll go for the furniture,” she said. “That’s what they’ll do.”
The remains of the wad of notes which Mr. Plymme had given him made a hard, crisp ridge in his pocket; he could feel them pressing into him as he stood there.
“How much do you want?” he asked sadly.
“Could you spare five pounds?” Mrs. Sneyd asked timidly.
Spare it! The damn silliness of the question annoyed him. But it was his own fault. He had asked her and she had told him. Those five pounds represented the cost of making the front room into a nursery and the next instalment on the Majestophone—and it was all to go into the cash tills of a lot of miserable little Tadford tradesmen. Besides, Fred was on the spot. He could leave him to keep up the high name of the Co-op the next time the local shopkeepers became really insistent. But he unbuttoned his coat and removed the wad of notes. Carefully and deliberately he peeled off five clean one-pound notes
Mrs. Sneyd’s hand closed over them.
“There’s one thing more,” she admitted in a low voice. “Just one more thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s all the stuff for to-day.”
“What stuff?”
“The drinks and things.”
“Well, what about it?”
“It’s—it’s got to be paid for.”
“Well, then I should pay for it while you’ve got the money.”
“I can’t”
“But what about that five pounds?”
“That’s for the other bills. I told you they won’t wait any longer.”
Gerald buttoned his coat up. “I can’t afford another penny,” he said. “Not another penny.”
“But they only let me have it because I said we’d pay for it to-night.” Mrs. Sneyd was weeping loudly again by now. “I told them about you. I said you were coming.”
“I’ve done all I can,” he said.
It was at that moment that Gerald heard a cry behind him. He turned round and there was young Violet standing there. Her face was scarlet and her mouth was wide open ready to cry. She had witnessed everything. She had crept upstairs to catch one last glimpse of her Prince Charming before he went away again and she had seen—this. Rows were nothing new to her; as money had gradually grown tighter and tighter in the family she had been present at many scenes when Mrs. Sneyd’s impatience with her sick, useless husband had culminated in words. But this was different. This was the collapse of a whole civilisation. She felt utterly abandoned in the world. Pushing back her hair from her eyes she ran forward and flung herself into her mother’s arms.
The resemblance between them had often been commented on. As they hugged each other in a frenzy of devotion the spectacle was that of Mrs. Sneyd bending forward and embracing her own childhood.
Something inside Gerald weakened.
“How much is it?” he asked.
There was silence for a moment. Then the answer came.
“It’s thirty-two and six,” Mrs. Sneyd told him in a strangled, gulping voice. “You can see the bill if you want to.”
He pulled out the envelope containing the notes—there were fewer of them by now: they scarcely bulged the pocket at all—and extracted a pound note and one for ten shillings. He searched in his pocket and finally produced a half a crown as well.
“There you are,” he said, and put the money down on the end of the bed.
His eye caught young Violet’s as he spoke. Her expression troubled him. She was gazing at him with overwhelming adoration. He knew that if he waited even a second longer she would come running forward and kiss him. Without another word, he turned on his heel and left them.
At the foot of the stairs Mr. Biddle was standing.
“Bit of trouble upstairs?” he asked.
Gerald shrugged his shoulders.
“Are you coming?” he asked.
“Better make sure I’m not wanted here,” he said.
“O.K.,” said Gerald.
They were still standing there when Mrs. Sneyd’s voice, weak and tremulous, was heard from the front bedroom.
“Don’t leave me yet, Mr. Biddle,” she said. “I can’t bear it here alone.”
Mr. Biddle finally got away after lunch the next day. Mrs. Sneyd was reluctant to let him go even then. She did everything in her power to make him comfortable and got young Violet to wait on him as well. During those eighteen hours Mr. Biddle lived like a rajah. He was pampered. He had only to raise a finger to have the paper or the matches
brought to him; cups of tea, with extra lumps of sugar in the saucer, appeared at his elbow as if by magic. And the atmosphere became particularly cosy and enfolding after young Violet had been sent to bed. Elsie had left on Fred’s arm, and Mrs. Sneyd and Mr. Biddle were left alone to entertain each other. Lily, after hanging about self-consciously by the window had grabbed her beret and gone out with someone.
“I expect you know what it’s like to feel lonely, too,” Mrs. Sneyd remarked, fiddling with some sewing she had brought down with her.
Mr. Biddle nodded.
“I know the feeling,” he said. “I had it all right, after Mrs. B. passed on.”
“You keep on remembering it when you’re not thinking about anything,” Mrs. Sneyd continued.
“It gets better,” said Mr. Biddle slowly. “That’s the one comfort.”
Mrs. Sneyd sniffed and began dabbing at her face with her handkerchief.
“But I’m being selfish,” she said. “It isn’t fair, expecting you to be around here while I’m like this.”
“It’s not your fault,” Mr. Biddle assured her. “We all get like it.”
There was a pause.
“Do you play draughts?” Mrs. Sneyd asked at length.
Mr. Biddle uncrossed his legs. “Thanks,” he said. “I’d like a game of draughts.”
“Stan used to like a game, too,” she said.
She found the pieces and they moved a small table up between them. Mrs. Sneyd played badly and disjointedly, interspersing the game with little snatches of conversation.
“It’s Violet I mind about,” she said. “I think a girl needs a man in the house just as much as a boy does.”
“Huffed you,” said Mr. Biddle. “That gives me another King.”
Love in Our Time Page 16
