Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead

by Barbara Comyns

  “How is he?” he asked in a husky whisper.

  “Well it’s difficult to say,” the young doctor answered. “He’s quieter now; but he’s very exhausted and had a form of epileptiform convulsions about an hour ago. If he gets through this night, I think the worst will be over. Anyway, Doctor Hatt is coming along soon and will stay most of the night with him. The nurse is having a bit of a rest—and, by the way, I hope you don’t mind, but we had to give your mother a little something to quieten her; she had got in rather a state!”

  “Oh, no, of course not. I only wish you would do it more often.”

  Ebin stood in the doorway looking at Dennis’s pinched little face and thought: “Perhaps this is the last time I shall see him alive. If only he gets better, I’ll take him for a holiday, somewhere where there are lots of boats and books; the poor little chap likes reading.” He stood there by the door gently swaying on his toes for a few minutes and suddenly said: “Goodnight. Call me if I’m wanted,” and went up his dark attic stairs. He was grateful for the darkness; for there were tears in his eyes.

  The next visitor to Dennis’s room was Emma. She started to creep away when she saw the doctor sitting so still by her brother’s bed; but he noticed her drawn white face and tired, burning eyes and asked her to remain, talking to her in a soothing manner. He wondered if she had eaten that day and suggested to her that he was rather hungry and would be really grateful for a sandwich and coffee or even a boiled egg, “And perhaps you would be kind enough to eat with me because I’ve a real horror of eating alone.”

  “Alright, if you like,” Emma agreed rather ungraciously as she trailed off to the kitchen; but when she returned sometime later to tell him that a meal was waiting in the morning-room she seemed much brighter, and he saw that she had washed her tear-spoiled face and combed her hair. The nurse was now in charge of Dennis; so they left the room together, Emma gravely leading the way.

  On the morning-room table two tall candles burnt, shaded by red silk shades which made their food faintly pink. The young doctor gazed at Emma in wonder as he encouraged her to eat, and, when their meal was finished, he asked her questions about the life she led. He was astonished to learn that she had only left the village on two occasions since she had come to it as a young child. Once was to visit a dentist in Birmingham, “It was years ago, when I was about ten, but I remember it all so clearly. My grandmother took me and we went part of the way by carriage; but we also went in a train. I’d seen them of course, but had only been in one once before when I was very young, and it was wonderful. Everything was wonderful that day except that the dentist gassed me and I was sick after; but that didn’t last long. We had lunch in the most enormous hotel, where you could hear the trains as much as you wanted and there were waiters and palm-trees wherever you looked. And the shops! The windows were terrific, and I seem to remember them being filled with great Chinese vases as big as my grandmother and shining silks and jewels like sparkling falling water with the sun on it, only it was the light from electricity. There were some shops that sold nothing but new books with bright paper covers. I never knew new books had paper covers before. Oh, and there were shops that only sold flowers, and one that made sweets in the window, just masses of sticky stuff whirling round on two pieces of metal, and it never fell down. But the streets! They were so smooth and dark when you could see the road—which wasn’t easy because they were simply covered in traffic; no one even looked at cars, and there were so many handsome cabs, and huge drays often drawn by four horses, and the noise was sort of savage.” She suddenly paused for breath and then went on rather primly, “Of course it was frightfully dark and dirty. I suppose you have been there often.”

  “No, I’ve never been to Birmingham, but it sounds a very fine place.”

  “Where do you live then, not London?”

  “Yes, I live in London, in Kensington; but tell me about the other time you left the village.”

  “Well, it’s nothing much,” she said flatly.

  “Please tell me; I’d like to hear about it so much,” he said almost pleadingly.

  “It was only a cattle show at Leamington that my father took me to once. We just went in a carriage with the lawyer and his wife.” And then her face lit up again; “But you can’t believe how big some of the animals were, like giants; and some of the bulls’ horns, they were quite good enough to mount and hang in someone’s hall. There were horses too, and there was a show for them and jumping, and the people who rode them were so beautiful—the men as well as the women. And the machinery is so fascinating when it’s all new and hasn’t been left in fields for months on end. And there were bees making honey in a glass hive you could see right into. Have you ever seen a glass hive? ‘Observation’ I believe they are called.” Emma’s brow suddenly puckered and she said reproachfully, “Hadn’t you better go back to Dennis, now?”

  Philip smiled as he replied, “Yes, I’d like to see him before I go. I have to visit the hospital as soon as Doctor Hatt takes over here.”

  They walked up the stairs together without speaking, and as they entered Dennis’s room he whimpered like a small puppy. Philip bent over him and gently lifted one eyelid and examined his eye. While he was taking his pulse Doctor Hatt arrived and apologised to Emma for letting himself into the house from the garden “to save disturbing anyone,” he added. “And you should be in bed Emma. I assure you, if Dennis becomes worse, I will have you called immediately.”

  So Emma, who had not slept for two nights, went to her room slightly reassured, and, only partly undressing, she fell on her hard white bed and was almost immediately asleep. It was early morning when she awoke to hear voices on the landing and softly running feet. Outside the birds were all singing and twittering wildly as if there had been a great silence which had suddenly ended. Her door opened slightly, and the nurse’s face appeared. When she saw Emma was awake she came into the room and said:

  “Oh, my dear, your brother has just died. He suddenly became much worse and there was no time to call you.”

  - CHAPTER XVI -

  IT WAS a small funeral, and Ebin and Old Ives were the only mourners from Willoweed House. Ives had not expected Dennis to die and had not planned a wreath for him; but eventually he had made one of many marguerites very close together, and as he stood by the grave he worried in case it was too feminine for a boy.

  “But you couldn’t call him a boyish boy,” he muttered to himself; and the vicar stopped reading the burial service and frowned. The two doctors stood together under one umbrella, and the rain poured down and the grave was gradually filling with water round the little coffin. Ebin noticed a dead shrew mouse by his feet and carefully manoeuvred it with his shoe until it fell in the grave. “It will keep him company,” he thought. The vicar again stopped the service, glowered at the small object lying among the watery wreaths, and then ended the service with a prayer.

  In the morning-room at Willoweed House the bereaved grandmother discussed her will with the lame Lawyer Williams. Sometimes she shouted at him in a threatening manner and then almost immediately she would whine that she was only a miserable old woman with no one to help her. This assumed pathetic whine was a recent affectation of hers and was very embarrassing and trying to those who came in contact with her.

  “I can’t last for ever,” she almost shrieked. “What will become of my money when I die? And my good land all let out so advantageously. I can’t leave it to that fool Ebin, he’ll most likely sell it and fritter the money away in London.” She paused and then went on more quietly, “Perhaps he isn’t such a fool after all. I can’t say why, but he has been different lately, and seems to have got money from somewhere. But I don’t want to leave him mine except perhaps a little annuity or something like that. He’s just like his father—the same idiotic face and lazy ways. I’ve never liked either of them and frankly I was glad when my husband died and everything became mine after only putting up with him for three years. Ha! You are shocked, you old hypocri
te.”

  The lawyer laughed nervously. His laugh was a sort of bleat out of one side of his mouth, and he tucked his face into his neck in the most extraordinary one-sided manner when he gave it—which was about once in every four minutes if he was with a difficult client.

  After much shouting and wailing on Grandmother Willoweed’s part and bleating from Lawyer Williams it was arranged that a new will should be drawn up leaving Ebin, Emma and Hattie an equal interest in her property until Emma had a son, who would inherit the entire property at the age of twenty-one, less three thousand pounds, which was to be divided between the previous beneficiaries.

  “Of course this is entirely between ourselves, Williams. I can’t have Emma rushing off to get married and leaving me a lonely old woman dependent on servants. I can’t last much longer, but even if I do she will still be young in another ten or fifteen years.”

  As Williams was preparing to leave Ebin returned.

  “I’m home, Mother, and completely drenched,” he said dejectedly. “Oh, good afternoon, Williams. I didn’t see you.”

  His round blue eyes darted to the papers the lawyer was stuffing in his brief case; but he could make nothing of them. As he climbed the stairs he pondered on the significance of Williams’s visit and guessed that his mother must be making considerable changes to her will now Dennis had died. For years he had worried over his mother’s will and wondered how much she was worth and how she would divide it. What had rankled most of all was the injustice of his father leaving his entire fortune to his wife and making no provision for his son at all. But now he suddenly realized he didn’t care what she did with her money. It no longer interested him, and as far as he was concerned she could leave it to a home for starving horses. He almost hoped she would, for he had always liked horses. He suddenly felt light-hearted, as if a great weight had been lifted from him, and as he discarded his wet black clothes he threw them round his room, and when he saw his trousers hanging pathetic and limp from the piano he suddenly started to laugh.

  Emma had been lying on her bed with her head covered by a pillow to drown the sound of the tolling funeral bell. When it ceased she suddenly remembered Hattie, probably alone and bitterly unhappy somewhere, and she left her bed and went to search for her. She passed the morning-room and heard her grandmother’s voice and the lawyer’s bleating laugh, and guessed Hattie couldn’t be there. She opened the drawing-room door and mustiness came out. There was Hattie sitting on a yellow rug in front of the window, bent over an exercise book. She turned her dark, tear-stained face to Emma, who thought she looked like a pansy that had been too much rained upon.

  “I’ve been writing a poem,” she said, “but there are only two lines and I don’t think they rhyme.” And she read out loud—

  “Two people were swimming in the sea

  One was alive and the other dead. See.”

  Emma assured her it was a beautiful poem except that it was trifle short; and, as they stood by the window, the sun suddenly shone for the first time that day and the garden became brilliant and glistened.

  “Look how enormous the hollyhocks have grown,” cried Emma, “I’ve never known them so tall before.”

  “And look at the sunflowers,” laughed Hattie, “They really are like suns this year.”

  They opened the French windows and ran down to the river, and their home-dyed black dresses looked kind of greenish in the bright light. They stood on the landing-stage looking down into the water, which had become so clear that fish could be seen darting below the surface.

  Days passed and the village slowly returned to normal and the last cases of ergot poisoning recovered. Cricket matches were again played in the field by the river with the little white pavilion perched on the side. The choirboys had their annual outing with the brass band playing on the vicarage lawn; and the first field of corn was cut, with the usual slaughter of rabbits on the last evening. Plums were gathered in the orchards, and in small gardens enormous marrows were fattening for the coming Harvest Festival. But things were not normal for the Willoweeds—far from it. There had been a dreadful afternoon when Norah had given in her notice to Grandmother Willoweed.

  “You see, I’m going to be married to Mr. Fig,” she explained with pride.

  “I don’t see, and I don’t like people saying ‘you see’ to me, and in any case I expect you have made a mistake. I shouldn’t think anyone would want to marry a big lumping girl like you. I suppose you’re in the family way, all you village girls are the same.”

  Norah flushed right down to the large mole shaped like Australia.

  “I am not in the family way, madam, and I must say you have no call to say such things about me.”

  Then she remembered Eunice’s shame and it seemed as if it was her own and tears came to her eyes.

  “Ha! You are becoming quite brave now you are leaving; but if you think I shall keep your lazy sister on when you’ve gone you are very much mistaken.”

  “Oh, no ma’am, my sister is leaving too. She is going to work for the old ladies at Roary Court. They need help badly since Miss Nesta has been so ill.”

  “Good God! What a scheming pair you are. I shan’t give her a reference!”

  The old woman’s voice rose and echoed round the red walls of the morning room.

  “That is quite alright, madam. Miss Nesta said she had known Eunice so long it was unnecessary.”

  Grandmother Willoweed struggled to her feet and she shouted from shaking jaws.

  “So you are all in league against me! I won’t have it! I won’t have it, you ungrateful wretch!”

  She suddenly seized a chair and started beating the horrified Norah with it.

  “Bloody scum! Bloody scum!” she yelled as she rained blows on the girl who had fallen to the ground and was cowering in a corner.

  Emma heard the terrible noises that were going on from the garden, and she ran to the morning-room, calling to her father on her way. For a moment she stood at the open French window so disgusted and filled with terror she could not bring herself to go to Norah’s assistance. But she overcame her feelings and rushed at her grandmother and tried to wrest the chair from her iron grip. To her immense relief her father seemed to appear from nowhere and suddenly slapped his mother’s face. She cried out in indignation, dropped the chair and then sank to the floor in hysterics. Emma helped the battered Norah to her feet and led her to the door; and when it was opened, a startled Eunice was found shivering in the doorway. She led her weeping sister down the long stone passage leading to the kitchen. The spluttering and screaming old woman on the floor gradually recovered and demanded burnt feathers, and Emma rushed to the hen-pen and quickly returned with a handful, which were burnt under her grandmother’s pinched red nose. The smell was frightful, partly because the feathers were far from clean; but she seemed to enjoy them, although she was suffering from an attack of hiccups. Her son brought her a glass of water; but she threw it across the room and muttered reproachfully, “You struck me; you struck your own mother!”

  She would not accept her son’s assistance up the stairs and Emma had to support her to her room, and when at last she was in her bed she asked for marigolds to be burnt in the fire grate.

  “Burnt marigolds used to be used with great success in cases of miscarriage; but I feel they would do me good,” she whined. So Emma went to the garden and returned with a great bunch of orange flowers, which were damp and refused to burn.

  “Yes, they are used for mourning in Spain. The coffins are all strewn with them,” the old woman said sleepily.

  - CHAPTER XVII -

  WITH THEIR wicker baskets under their arms Norah and Eunice ran away from Willoweed House. Eunice went to Roary Court, where she was petted and fussed over by the two old ladies and quite soon had taken the place in their hearts that had once been occupied by their dead goat. Norah returned to her father’s cottage and prepared for her wedding, and to earn a little money worked in the dairy that belonged to the farm where her fath
er worked. In the evening she would meet Fig on the bridge and they would walk through the fields to his cottage and work there until it was dark. They scrubbed and polished and painted and papered the walls, and were completely happy in their quiet and gentle ways.

  At Willoweed House there was absolute confusion. The grandmother kept to her bed and Emma had to struggle with the great range, which was appallingly vicious and refused to stay alight. There was no hot water and usually only an oil stove to cook on, and that was not much use because no one knew how to cook. Hard-boiled eggs and burnt bacon appeared on the table three times in one day, and Ives kept arriving at the kitchen door with baskets of vegetables and fruit which no one knew how to cook. Potatoes turned into an extraordinary watery white soup when Emma boiled them, and the runner beans became dark yellow and tasted of nothing. Hattie tried to help and did succeed in making a kind of burnt toffee that set like iron. She boiled some coffee for over an hour, waiting for the grounds to disappear; but they didn’t and it just became all cloudy and her grandmother said, “That’s a bitter brew, child. Are you trying to poison me?”

  The stone kitchen floor became black and greasy and, when Emma washed it, it refused to dry and stayed in muddy patches which trod all over the rest of the house. Ives tried to help and said he would make something called a skip-and-jump pudding. It turned out to be a rather dirty spotted dick, which never became completely cooked, and even his ducks looked unhappy after an evening meal of skip-and-jump.

  Ebin Willoweed kept away from the kitchen and told Emma running the house would be an invaluable experience for her. He complained bitterly about the food, but said little about the lack of hot water because he felt rather guilty about the range, although determined to have nothing to do with it. He thought: “If I once start that sort of thing, who knows where it might end? My hands will be ruined, and they will expect me to take up the old lady’s breakfast and God knows what.”