The Season

by Charlotte Bingham

  Herbert kissed Jane’s all too cold forehead, and fairly fell out of their drawing room, stumbling over his own feet in his hurry to get out of the house and into the air outside. Somehow, when they were outside and active, he could pretend that Jane was really healthy, that she was going to live as long as anyone else, that she was going to make her three score years and ten, with him, and they were going to be Darby and Joan, and all that kind of thing. He could make himself believe it when he was back in the good old outside, facing the horizon and enjoying fresh air. Inside, well, inside was different. Inside meant that he just looked at Jane, his beloved, and saw the wretched disease making her ever frailer, ever more vulnerable, taking her nearer and nearer to that point where he would no longer hear the beloved voice, see the sweet smile, or enjoy the quiet calm of her company.

  ‘Here we go!’ The chauffeur started up their motor and, with a wave to the motor car behind, they set off at a splendid speed.

  Jane shut her eyes, despite the protection of her motoring veil. They must be going at ten or twelve miles an hour already! It did not seem possible! She laughed out loud at the speed, and staring into Herbert’s eyes as he sat beside her she imagined they were eighteen or twenty again, he taking her on one of the ‘turns’ at the local fun fair, and both of them laughing, for no good reason, and for every reason too: for the joy of living, for the happiness of the moment, in the knowledge that they were still in love and as much twin souls as ever.

  ‘Faster, faster,’ Herbert urged their chauffeur, all the while glancing behind at the other car following and waving to the driver in a commanding way to imitate their speed. ‘We could reach twenty miles an hour without blowing anything, couldn’t we?’ he shouted over the sound of the summer breeze which now seemed, to Jane anyway, to be as loud as a gale. ‘Come on, man, faster than the wind. We could make a record here, if we but tried!’

  So enthusiastic was he, so immersed in the marvel of the moment, the open road, the motor cars both increasing their speed, the chauffeurs doing as he bid, that Herbert took his eyes off Jane. It was only natural, after all. Seconds before she had been holding on to her hat and laughing, better than he had seen her look for weeks, what with the excitement of the day, and the joy of being outside. But then, as the needle of the speedometer climbed steadily higher, passing fifteen, edging up and up, and the motor car lurched forward with the effort of attaining the speed being asked of it, changing gear and pulling up the hill in front, Jane’s head fell back. Still smiling, what with the joy of motoring and of being beside Herbert, she felt a sudden crushing pain. As she did so she put a gloved hand up to her breast, her eyes suddenly seeing the countryside fading, lurching, tilting, until at last it fragmented into tiny pieces and was gone from her vision, and there was only darkness before a wonderful light came towards her, slowly at first, but at last enveloping her for ever.

  Aunt Tattie had pretended that she had to go inside to fetch a shawl which everyone realised she had no need of considering the temperature in London that early afternoon must have been at least in the upper seventies. But nevertheless she went inside, and did not come back for many minutes, pretending to call for her griffon bruxelloise – her funny little dog, by name of Pecksniff, a quite new arrival at the London house, and already a great favourite with both the servants and herself.

  ‘Portia, I am so sorry that I have been such an inconvenience to yourself and Aunt Tattie,’ Richard blurted out, suddenly breaking the silence of the London afternoon that had followed the old lady’s disappearance inside. ‘I cannot thank you both enough for what you have done for me, and why you have done it I cannot think. But done it you have, between the two of you. In your gentle but firm hands I have become whole again.’

  ‘We did it because we have always had a great affection for you, Richard, you know that.’ Portia smiled, and tried to pin yet another straying piece of hair back into place, while at the same time wishing that Richard did not appear now to be as youthful and as handsome to her as he had ever done when they were young.

  ‘Affection! That is a strong word coming from you, Portia!’

  He was teasing her of course, because they both knew that Portia was, for her sex, in fact extraordinarily reticent, at least as far as her emotions were concerned.

  ‘Do you miss Lord Childhays? You must miss him so much.’

  ‘Oh, I do,’ Portia agreed, feeling guilty because, if the truth were known, it had been a week or so now since she had got up and spent the day thinking of him, wondering what he would have done in this circumstance or that. ‘I do. But you know how it is, Richard. We have to live, and while I have often wanted not to live, since he was taken, I am still here, and that has to be faced. I am still here.’

  Richard put out his hand suddenly and placed it over Portia’s. Bespectacled and watching keenly from a first floor window inside the house, Aunt Tattie, Pecksniff in her arms, noted this and decided not to return to the garden for at least another ten minutes.

  ‘I for one am very glad that you are still here, Portia, and I am only sorry that I did not meet you when …’

  Portia was thinking back to when they were young. ‘Oh, don’t worry. I didn’t mind, really. In fact I quite understood.’

  ‘I knew you would. You have always been my soulmate. I knew that when we were sailing. I knew that I would never have to explain anything to you.’

  ‘People come into one’s life … and there is not a good moment, sometimes.’

  ‘Exactly so – and besides, I would not have wished anyone to know that is – you know.’

  This was vague enough, and masculine enough, to make Portia quite content to think that he also was referring back to when they were young. She remembered that day so well, and how stupid she had felt clambering all over the Wards’ garden, going to meet Richard, only to find, or rather to see, him with Miss Cecil.

  ‘Aunt Tattie has been understanding itself, really she has. She seems to know how one feels without one’s saying anything and almost before one has finished thinking something. And she is so practical.’

  ‘We all love Aunt Tattie – Phyllis is devoted to her, despite her conversion to Rome!’ Portia smiled.

  ‘Phyllis?’

  ‘Yes – my daughter, Phyllis.’

  ‘Oh, of course. I haven’t met her yet, have I?’

  ‘No. Not yet. She is a good girl, now, and about to become engaged, I am happy to say. But she has been quite a handful, I am unhappy to tell you. Very much her father’s daughter. But now – well, now, at last, she has fallen in love and we have high hopes something will come of it, so all’s well that ends well.’

  ‘I shall look forward to meeting her.’

  ‘Oh, and by the way, Richard – I know all about Evie coming to read to you, and I do not mind, really. It was quite understandable.’

  ‘Evie?’ Richard frowned. He vaguely remembered someone coming in and reading to him in the past weeks, but he had felt terrible, crucified by an appalling thirst, and plagued with nightmares of a kind that even now were dreadful to remember. So bad had that time been that he would not have known, frankly, if it was the devil come to read to him. He only remembered that being read to always had the same effect on him, it made him fall asleep.

  ‘I thought of you often, during these last terrible weeks. And do you know something, Portia?’

  Portia turned to look at him.

  ‘Sometimes I even thought it was you reading to me. So much were you in my mind, so clearly did I see you in my mind’s eye, that I really thought you were in the room with me.’

  Portia paused. A thought occurred to her, and a memory of Evie and Evans, and Phyllis, their limbs twitching with guilt. Of a sudden the picture of them all came swimming towards her, but then, being a kind-hearted and above all a practical woman, she turned away from both the thought and the memory, and after a short pause she said, quietly, ‘And I have thought of you too, Richard, of how much you must have been suffering. But I also th
ought that you were best left in charge of your own ship. You know how it is, just like at sea, one man only at the helm.’

  ‘And you were right, Portia. I was best left. I had to fight the demons on my own. I had to see them down, and finally, I hope, put them to flight for ever.’

  At that moment Aunt Tattie, judging that she had left the two childhood friends together long enough, now re-appeared bringing with her Pecksniff, who proved, as do all small puppies, to be a welcome diversion, running about the garden and disappearing under bushes, finding himself suddenly, to his surprise, only to disappear again, before discovering something even more alarming attached to his body, something which had to be pounced upon, told off and barked at – namely, his tail.

  ‘I do so love a new puppy,’ Aunt Tattie murmured, trying not to notice that, in fact, she was the only person watching Pecksniff, and that the two other persons present in the sunlit garden had eyes only for each other. She knew this because, as people do who want only to stare into each other’s souls, they were both staring at her in a superhuman effort not to give themselves away. ‘Yes,’ Aunt Tattie continued, her eyes still on Pecksniff, ‘a new puppy is just so riveting, I always think. Have you noticed, they always seem so dreadfully surprised to find that they have tails!’

  But no-one replied, as she knew they would not, for they were being what Aunt Tattie sometimes called noisily silent.

  Of course Herbert knew, as soon as she slumped forward clutching at the front of her dress, that his Jane had been taken from him. And in a way he was glad that he had taken her out, even if he should be blamed for so doing, later, by others, because the last memory he had of Jane was of her laughing, and enjoying herself, and in truth he had known, day by wretched day, how frail she had become, and that in fact she had no real hope of enjoying the rest of the summer.

  And so he had helped to lay her out. Nothing but the best would do for his darling, her favourite blue silk, her pearls around her neck and in her ears. He would have everything as he knew she had wanted it.

  She had also, it transpired, written a last letter to him, to be found once she had been gathered to the next world.

  My dearest of dears, my dearest of all loves, my Herbert,

  I know, and have known for some time now, that I am not long for this world, and in knowing this, and that you have been at such pains to keep it from me, my love for you has if anything grown not to the size of this world, but in truth to the size of the next.

  How you have borne your sorrow around me so bravely, my dearest love, I shall never know, but bear it you have, and with so much kindness, with such unselfishness, even down to your giving up wine for my sake!

  I never thought I could love you more, my darling Herbert, than I did on my wedding day, or when our little daughter was born, or on any of those happy, happy days that we have enjoyed together, but now in my unhappiness at leaving you I have found that I have loved you more than I could have thought possible.

  We will meet again soon, my dearest of loves, in at least as happy a place as we have enjoyed in this world, and when you close your beloved eyes for the last time in this world may my spirit be the first to welcome you in the next.

  Your Jane.

  And now Herbert was left within his own world once more, but without his Jane. He had money, he had property, he had a daughter, he had friends and a small circle of business acquaintances, but he had no Jane, so, as he realised in the weeks following her funeral, in reality, he had nothing.

  It was as if the whole world was just a vast empty space. It was as if he had been left in the icy wastes, or on the savannah, or the tundra, or the prairie, with nothing but a feeling of endless un-inhabited space. Walk and walk as he might, in whichever direction, there was just more of the same.

  And walk he did, every afternoon, unable to bear looking at the motor cars he had once been so proud to drive. He set off towards the countryside outside the old city of York, towards the moors to which he and Jane had gone so often to picnic and enjoy themselves. Once reached, and no matter what the weather, he would walk on determinedly, not returning to the house until only the hall boy was left up to greet him, and a lonely supper on a tray awaiting him before the unlit library fire. It was hopeless to think that the loneliness would ever go away, so hopeless that not even the birth of a grandchild did anything to lift his spirits more than temporarily.

  The truth was that he had no interest in life now that Jane was gone, and before many weeks were out, as happens with loneliness, he started to look as he felt, haggard and uninterested. His eyes, once large and life-loving, seemed to have sunk into his head, his hair thinned, and his clothes hung off him as his appetite for food disappeared as quickly as his appetite for life.

  For some hearts one touch alone can awaken and not break their thrilling strings.

  He had no idea where he had found that quotation from many years before, but he saw to it now that it was put on what was to be his and Jane’s shared grave.

  As is natural for they who mourn, on Sundays he would not leave the graveside of his beloved Jane but sat beside its freshly dug earth and talked to the one he could no longer see, reminding her of all the happy times, all their shared memories, shaking his head in amazement sometimes, frequently laughing, and occasionally allowing the tears to roll down his now sunken cheeks as he pitied himself for the loss of his so-great love.

  * * *

  ‘It cannot go on, sir, really it cannot. You will do yourself an injury, really you will.’

  It seemed to Herbert at that moment, although he was standing in his own library, in his own house in York, that he was awaking to a voice still nagging him as if he had awoken from some dream of loneliness to a reality of irritation.

  To his disappointment, as was always true of his state nowadays, he found that he was still on this earth. Worse, he was being lectured by his son-in-law, a worthy enough and kind young man, and one who worked diligently enough for his father-in-law, but not someone who could understand the old and their problems, not a person who could appreciate how, with death, the life can go out of the bereaved, taking with it all that ever mattered, that made life worth living. That was not something which his worthy son-in-law could appreciate, however upright and honest he was, however well intentioned and sincere.

  ‘I beg your pardon. I am sorry, I was miles away.’

  Herbert’s son-in-law returned to the subject. After all, it was his duty. He had promised Louisa to do all that he could to persuade her father to start looking after himself. And, indeed, he could quite see why Louisa was so upset about her father now that he stood in the same room with him, only a few feet away from what now seemed to him to be a crumbling rock.

  His father-in-law, in just a few weeks, had started to look dreadful. Even his clothes, once so proudly kept and worn with flair and dash, would now be considered a disgrace to a much less prosperous man than Herbert Forrester, Esquire, the owner of not just one prosperous mill, but several, not to mention property in York and London, and shares in railways, and who knew what.

  ‘You are suffering something terrible, Mr Forrester,’ stated Herbert’s reverential son-in-law, ‘and we thought, leastways our Louisa did, that a good big change, a complete change of scene like, might do you more good than you think. You know travel is meant to be so beneficial at these times? It is thought to be a good cure for sorrow, or so Louisa said, and goodness she has suffered in the past, has our Louisa, she has known suffering all right.’

  Herbert looked dully at this young man who had married his daughter, and thought to himself, What the hell does he know about suffering, or pain? He married the boss’s daughter and now he’s feathered his own nest all right, has our Louisa’s young man. No, he’ll never starve, he won’t, thanks to the sweat of his father-in-law.

  But then, after the poor young man had gone, a mite crestfallen as he always seemed to be after being in his father-in-law’s company, Herbert began to think about what Louisa had
sent her husband to tell him, her counsel by proxy, as it were.

  Maybe our Louisa was right to remind him that travel was the traditional cure for a broken heart. Certainly it might be a good idea to leave York. Certainly that might be a good idea. He could shut up the house, and leave it, and go on to London, where he could think again as to just how or where he should travel. He did not want to return to fashionable London, that had too many bad memories for him, but as an investment, some time ago, he had bought several town houses in more remote spots, far from Mayfair and Piccadilly, and well away from the stamping grounds of the rich and grand. Two were in an elegant terrace of houses in Kensington, which was still some way away from the fashionable world. Kensington, formerly a village, was now reaching out towards London proper and providing discreet and genteel housing for literary folk and artistic types, as well as, at the less prosperous end, for retired governesses and suchlike.

  The two houses Herbert had bought were in a state of some disrepair, needing modernising in a way that was now quite acceptable even for less fashionable folk. He could put in electricity and the telephone, and he could put in proper bathrooms – he had seen quite a few of the newer type of bathroom when staying with a business acquaintance the previous year – all marble, and made in splendid modern shapes. One of the bathrooms actually had its bath sunk into the floor, and another faced out towards the view so that the owner could see across his land to his horses and sheep at grass. Well, whatever he would decide on in the way of taste, there was no doubt that Herbert could do the two houses up. That would take up a bit of his time, and then he could sell one and keep the other to await his return from his travels.

  Anyway, it would take him away from York, and that after all was the first consideration. And then bullying and chivvying the builders, arguing the toss with some jumped-up young architect, that too would take his mind off his sorrow. And perhaps too, in genteel Kensington, so very different from York, he would start to see the world less as an eternal loneliness, start to be able to consider to where he should take himself off – perhaps the South Sea islands, or America, the Wild West, that sort of thing. What with the journeying and the sailing, it would do for a few months, that kind of scheme. Something would happen, he felt, if he could only get himself going. All in all, and it was a sobering, even an ageing, thought, Louisa had been right, he must start himself moving again, and soon.