The Running Years

by Claire Rayner

  She turned he head as the door open and stared at him, somehow unsurprised. It was a though she had know he’d be there, for there was no lurch inside her, no surge of breathtaking excitement of the sort she used to know when he came to Eaton Square.

  ‘Hello, Daniel,’ she said.

  ‘Hannah.’ He stood with is hat held before him, clutching the brim in both hands and he looked as exotic as a parakeet, in spite of the fact that his coat and cravat were a respectful black. But the coat was so silken, and his linen was so blazingly white and his neat black bowler was so impeccably brushed that he could not fail to look different from the other men who inhabited this sad sour corner of London.

  ‘I'm so sad for you. I offer my condolences.

  Thank you, she thought with passionate gratitude. Thank you for not wishing me a long life. But she said nothing, just sat and looked at him, her head slightly bent.

  ‘You … are you well? You look … you don’t look too well,’ he said and then shook his head in impatience at his own ineptitude. ‘Damn it, I'm a fool. Of course you don’t. You’ve had a bad time. I heard when I came last night.’

  ‘Last night?’ Her voice was a little husky from fatigue.

  ‘Yes. I came to fetch … to tell you something. I saw the people and someone told me. They said the morning would be better if I had to talk privately. So I’ve come back.’

  "What is it?’ She said sitting very upright now staring up at him. ‘Mrs Mary?’

  ‘I hate having to do this,’ he said wretchedly. ‘You’ve had enough to … but what can I do? I can’t help it.’

  ‘Mrs Mary,’ she said. It wasn’t a question.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She … I told her I’d come to tell you. I couldn’t refuse. I didn’t want to come. Not till last night. But I have to do it.’

  ‘You’d better explain.’ She moved her head to indicate a chair beside the table. ‘Sit down and tell me.’

  ‘After they sent you away she got ill. Uncle Emmanuel said it was temper, but it went on and on, and it was Mrs Sarson who called my Aunt Susan, and she came and said Aunt Mary needed a doctor, so Emmanuel had to agree. And of course he was wrong.’

  ‘What is it?’

  There was a small silence. Daniel looked at her, at the pinched white face over the black of her mourning clothes and thought, how can I tell her? How could she live with the knowledge of what Mary had done, and why she had done it? His father had made it clear to him yesterday: Mary had been systematically dosing herself with morphine laced chlorodyne and aspirin and whatever else she could find to dull her senses, including brandy, ever since Hannah had gone away. The doctor had been horrified, he’d said, at the cadaverous state she was in.

  ‘If she’d jumped out of the window she couldn’t have done herself more damage,’ Albert Lammek had said to Daniel, seeming unaware of the significance of what he had said. Daniel felt himself go cold as he realized what had happened. And almost certainly why. But how could he explain it to Hannah? How could he put that burden of guilt on her? So he said the first thing that came into his head, which had a certain logic, for Mary had indeed seemed to his horrified eyes when he had seen her to have wastes away.

  ‘Cancer,’ he said and the word hung in the air between them.

  ‘Cancer,’ Hannah said after a long moment, almost dreamily. ‘They told us that was what my mother had. Had it a long time. In her womb. It art into the artery and she bled to death. Cancer.’

  Daniel whitened. ‘Please, Hannah, don’t’

  ‘It is too disagreeable for you?’ she said harshly. ‘Does it upset you? I'll try not to mention it again.’

  He shook his head. ‘I know how you must be feeling and I'm truly … well, it’s Mary now. She’s really very ill. It’s as though… to tell you the truth, I don’t think she wanted to be well once you’d gone.’ He could risk that much.

  ‘She sent no messages.’ Hannah knew her voice sounded stark and cold and didn’t care at all. ‘Not a word. Nothing.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Hannah,’ he said sharply. ‘You know perfectly well what Emmanuel’s like when he gets a notion? He’d made up his mind to it that you were out, and that was that. Do you think he’d let her get any messages to you? Do to think she didn’t try?’

  Hannah was silent. He said even more wretchedly, ‘And I, dammit, I should have realized she’d want some help, but I was so involved with my own affairs, I didn’t see her for a while, so I didn’t know. Or I’d have sent her messages to you, But I was busy … ’

  ‘Busy with Leontine?’ She grinned at him, a tight little grimace that showed how much she hated herself for the absurdity of even caring what his business had been.

  There was another pause and then he said with all the dignity he could. ‘Yes. With Leontine, There seemed no reason why I shouldn’t please my family after that. No reason. The notice of our marriage next spring was put in The Times a month ago.’

  ‘I didn’t see it.’ She grinned again, almost with real amusement. ‘It isn’t a newspaper we see much in this part of London. We're a long way from Eaton Square here.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  They sat silent then. Below, she heard the door slam as the boys came back, listening to them rattling up the stairs. She stood up.

  ‘Jake, Solly,’ se said. ‘This is Mr Lammeck. Mr Lammeck, my brothers.’

  ‘How d'you do,’ he said punctiliously and held out his hand. ‘I wish you a long life. My regrets at your bereavement.’

  They glanced sideways at Hannah. She came round the table to stand beside them, almost protectively. She was as tall as them now, though much more fragile, yet she felt she had to look after them in the face of this exotic creature who so abashed them.

  ‘Wassa marrer? Nathan stirred in the armchair and sat up.’

  ‘I wish you long life, sir, and comfort in your loss.’ Daniel said. He shook hands with Nathan who peered up at him owlishly from the depths of the chair. ‘I am Daniel Lammeck, sir, a friend of your daughter.’

  ‘He’s come to tell me she’s ill,’ Hannah said harshly. ‘Mrs Mary is ill.’

  After a moment Daniel said, ‘Dying.’

  ‘Mrs Mary?’ Nathan struggled to his feet, his hand at the small of his back. ‘That one, that woman who threw my Hannah out, I should care she' dying? You come and tell a man who’s mourning, who sits crying for the loss of his dear wife may her sweet soul rest in eternal peace, that another woman who treated my girl so bad is dying? You want I should care? A choleria on her, you hear me? The way she treated my Hannah, may she die at once and rot for ever!’

  Hannah had gone white. She took a deep breath to speak, to cry Nathan down, but Daniel was too swift for her.

  ‘I know how you must feel sir. This is a dreadful time for you. I meant no disrespect, I do promise you. As for what my aunt did, believe me, she is not to blame. If any blame is to be apportioned it is to me, for not fighting hard at the time of our … of what happened. It was all so quick, you see. One minute there we are at the ball and the next there’s Uncle Emmanuel shouting and the King there and … ’

  It was as thought there was no one else in the room, just herself and Daniel, as she felt the coldness in her begin to melt at the look on his face. When he ended awkwardly, ‘I'm sorry. It was all my fault, and I'm sorry,’ the last vestige of the ice dissolved. For five days now she had been wrapped in a veneer of bitter cold, and now it had gone. Now she had to think and decide for herself again, and not just stand by as things happened around her.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t anyone’s. It just happened. Is she dying, Daniel, truly?’

  ‘Yes.’ She shook his head, his eyes suddenly bright. She wanted to go to him and hug him and soothe the tears away, but she stood very still, and without moving her eyes from Daniels' face said. ‘Poppa? She’s asking for me. And you heard … it wasn’t her fault. She’s dying and she’s asking for me.’

  ‘Your mother’s already dead!�
� Nathan shouted. ‘You hear me? Your mother’s already dead, and you got to sit here a week to mourn respectful for her, what do you mean, do I hear? What sort of a question is that a girl asks her father, a bereaved man who sits with his face unshaven and his clothes torn? You want you should go already? It’s mad, it’s wicked, you should be ashamed of yourself.’

  ‘Mrs Mary isn’t dead. That’s why I have to go.’ She felt the stubbornness rise in her. She had to put it right with Mary. Bloomah had died with the words unspoken between them, leaving the guilt to lie heavy on Hannah’s head. To let Mary do the same would be more than she could bear. She had to see her, had to tell her how much she cared. To let her know disappear into the blackness with no word from Hannah would be to consign herself to the same darkness. So she told herself, deep inside, staring at Daniel beseechingly, knowing she was being over-dramatic, but needed to indulge herself.

  ‘You go from here, and you never come back!’ Nathan roared. ‘You hear me? You understand what I'm saying? You got to stay here to look after me and your brothers, you can’t go because some madam from the schnorrers' shop crook a finger.’

  ‘Mrs Lazar, believe me, it isn’t like that!’ Daniel said. ‘She isn’t being … I don’t think I explain well. She’s dying. The doctors say it’s matter of days. She looks so bad, and she’s fretting for Hannah. All she wants is to say a few words. Believe me, I'll have her back in no time. A few hours, no more. My carriage is at the end of the street in Commercial Road. I can be there and back in hardly any time at all, before evening prayers tonight, I promise. Just a few hours?’

  ‘She goes now, you don’t bring her back, you hear me?’ Nathan was standing every erect, his face suffused a deep red. It was as though all the feelings of the past days had coalesced into one single furious emotion, all of it directed at Hannah. She stared at him feeling sick, all too familiar coldness rising in her belly. It seemed as if Nathan were someone else, not her father at all.

  ‘Jake,’ she said.’Solly?’

  Jake shook his head, his eyes troubled. ‘You want to go, it’s up to you. Poppa knows what’s what, though, and if he says no, well … ‘ His voice died away. Solly just shook his head and said nothing.

  ‘You go and you don’t come back. You got no more respect for your mother than you go running to someone else, not a week after she’s in her grave, I got no use for you. Not now or ever. You understand me?’ He thrust his hands behind his back with a theatrical gesture that was almost funny, but there was no humour at all in the expression on his face.

  She couldn’t help it. She lost her temper. ‘You fool!’ she shrieked at him. ‘You half witted fool. Momma’s dead. She’s dead and buried! I can’t do anything for her. But Mary isn’t, and I'm going to her, and I'll be back tonight. And if you don’t like it, I don’t care, you hear me? I just don’t care!’

  31

  They travelled to Eaton Square in silence, sitting as far part in the carriage as it was possible to do so. She was wearing an old black dress with the collar which had been ceremoniously cut at Kesirah, the ritual tearing of the mourner’s garments, on the day of her mother’s funeral, and with a grey shawl over her head. She was aware how shabby and poor she looked, and took a perverse pleasure in that. They would see, the people at Eaton Square, to what she had come. Not Mary, of course, but the others. Especially Emmanuel.

  She tried to imagine how it would be with Mary. She would go up the broad thickly carpeted stairs and along the corridor with its niches and little marbles statues and heavy oil paintings and bowls of flowers on gilt tables and tap on Mary’s bedroom door and walk into its white and gold magnificence and stand beside her bed and …

  And what? She couldn’t see Mary’s face, however hard she tried. Just a blank on a pillow. She couldn’t feel words for her, or any response that Mary might give her, and that distressed her. She stared out at the blur of passing traffic trying to compose herself, but it was difficult. The confusion of feelings in her could only be composed by tight control. All she could do was push the anxiety down and try to pretend it wasn’t there.

  To Daniel, sitting on the other side of the carriage and staring at her, she looked unapproachable, pale and thinner than he remembered her, with shadows at her temples. She had always been an amusing little thing in his eyes, someone who was part of his Aunt Mary’s life and who made him feel comfortable and interested when he went to visit; it had only been in the past few months that he had noticed how attractive she was, with her heavy breasts and that curving waist. She looked beautiful still, even under that hideous shawl, and he wanted very much to reach out and touch her, to try and offer her some comfort in the tangled situation she was in, but he dared not. She was wrapped in a silence that could not be broached.

  The carriage came round the Square and the wheels muffled as they passed over the straw that had been set in the roadway. Hannah lifted her chin for the first time a real awareness of the severity of Mary’s state came to her. If they had strewn the street this way then indeed it was very bad. She began to feel sick.

  Daniel seemed to be aware of the chink in her control. He helped her down from the carriage, and tucked his hand tightly into one elbow, and she was grateful for this support and leaned against him a little. So it was that they climbed the front steps and walked in through the open front door very close together, and the first Davida was aware of their presence was when she turned and saw them there, Daniel with his arm protectively around Hannah now, for he had realized as she crossed the threshold what had happened.

  They were standing at the foot of the stairs, Davida and Emmanuel and Sudan, with Ezra and Alfred and Albert behind them.

  ‘Oh, God, she’s dead,’ Daniel said blankly.

  Hannah tightened her shoulders, and took a deep breath. It had to be so; that was why she had not been able to see Mary’s face when she thought of her. It had to be so, because someone somewhere wanted to punish her. Guilt and anger and shock meshed together to fill her with a sense of panic. She turned her face towards Daniel, and he put his other hand to cradle her head against him.

  ‘Daniel?’ Davida said, and took a step forward. ’Daniel? What is that … what are you doing here with that creature? Get her out of here at once, you hear me? At once.’ 'Mother, be quiet,’ Daniel said, and his voice was harder than Hannah could ever remember hearing. ‘Uncle Emmanuel, I'm sorry, so sorry. When …'

  ‘About an hour ago,’ Susan said, and sniffed. Her eyes were red and her skin looked pouched with the tears she had shed. ‘She was conscious, oh God, she was conscious. I though people were always in a coma when they died, but I swear she knew what was happening and …’

  ‘Be quiet, Susan,’ Albert said sharply. ‘It’s enough. I know you feel bad, but it’s enough. Daniel, I don’t know what you think you're playing at, but will you please - ‘

  ‘Get that creature out of here?’ Davida shrieked it, and though Albert put out his hand to stop her she couldn’t be controlled. She had gone a patchy red, and the words came out of her in a flood of fury. Everything she had said on the night of the ball she said again, only now she said it even more violently; Hannah was a whore, a street creature, a filthy object which polluted everything and everyone with which it came on contact and if he didn’t get her out of this house at once and throw her back in the muck from which he’d fetched her, then she, his mother, would personally see to it that …

  ‘What, mother?’ Daniel said, not moving, still holding Hannah’s head against his chest. ‘You'll do what, mother? Because I'm not going to do anything of the sort. She’s going to be your daughter-in-law, and the sooner you stop that shrieking the sooner you'll get used to the idea.’

  Hannah tried to move her head, tried to look up, but he was still holding her close. After a moment she stopped trying and remained very still. None of this was happening, of course. None of it. It was all one of her dreams, gone crazy.

  ‘Not funny, Daniel.’ It was Alfred’s voice, heavy and tired. �
��This is no time to make such stupid jokes. Your Uncle Emanuel …’

  ‘I'm sorry, Uncle, but you must see it isn’t my fault. Aunty Mary asked for Hannah, so I went to fetch her. To have her treated so by Mama - you must see couldn’t help it.’

  ‘You do as you choose,’ Emmanuel said testily. "Everyone can help everything. You chose to interfere in matters that don’t concern you, so naturally your mother is angry. I'm angry. You had no right to bring that girl here.’

  ‘I had every right!’ Daniel said strongly. ‘Aunt Mary asked me.’

  ‘A dying woman, half out of her mind! What do you mean she asked? What did she know?’ Emmanuel said. ‘I put that girl out, and out she stays.’

  ‘Then I stay out too,’ Daniel said. ‘I told you.’

  Emmanuel shrugged. ‘I'm not interested, Daniel. If you want to have family arguments, go home and have them there. Leave me in peace to bury my wife.’

  ‘Until that creature goes he doesn’t come home, Davida said. Now her voice was very controlled. ‘Understand me, Daniel? Whatever maggot it is you’ve taken into your head, you can get it out. You’ve gone mad, just for a moment you must have gone mad.’ Her voice softened, began to wheedle a little. ‘You were fond of your aunt, I know, and distress for her … well, we can understand. And forgive. Now, Albert, get one of the footmen to send that wretched girl on her way and take us both home. Daniel needs some rest.’

  ‘Mother, I told you!’ Daniel said, his voice all sweet reason. ‘You might as well get used to it. I told you! And I mean it.’