by John Burke
Chapter Ten
‘I don’t see why,’ said Mr. Drysdale shortly. ‘I jes’ don’t see why, that’s all.’
He was a bulbous-featured man with a large nose. His skin was hard and wrinkled, like that of a gypsy or a sailor. He had worked for years in the open, chopping wood, making hurdles, splitting firewood, always slicing and hacking efficiently at something. When he spoke he used words as he would have used an axe: he smacked them down decisively, sure of his aim, as though there could never be any argument about anything he might choose to say. Gilbert was used to this, and did not make the mistake of supposing that such remarks were actually to be taken as final.
‘She’s managed all these years,’ he went on, although Gilbert had not yet responded to his first protest. ‘Why does she want to have you over there now?’
‘She says Mrs. Swanton’s getting past it.’
‘Rubbish. Reck’n Bella’s as sound as I am. Sounder, maybe. Same age. Her and your grandma went to school together. And if your grandma was alive today, she’d be hale and hearty enough. Of course, Bella always did have it easy . . .’ He snorted, then said: ‘Well, what’s it to be? I suppose there’ll be no peace if you don’t go.’
‘I wouldn’t mind,’ said Gilbert.
‘You may as well go. Though she won’t have you for long, mind, with you at work soon after you break up in the summer.’
So it was settled. Gilbert began to call in at the doctor’s house every evening on his way home. He emptied the bins in the consulting-room, filled the stove, and replenished the anthracite supply. He loaded wrapped and sealed medicines into his saddle-bag, and delivered them to the general store near the bus-stop, or called with them at some of the houses on his way home across the marsh.
His manner remained non-committal, but he was in fact enjoying himself. It meant a lot to him to be able to walk possessively into the consulting-room whether there was anyone there or not, where before he had been allowed in only when it was his turn as a patient. He liked the smell of the place and he liked the cool, damp silence of the waiting-room when there was nobody there.
Also he liked routine. His grandfather claimed to be an exact, tidy man, and other people believed the claim. They admired the way he looked after Gilbert. He certainly did his best; but he was not really at ease indoors. He tried very hard. But Doctor Swanton, Gilbert found, had everything just the way she wanted it without having to try. Or so it seemed.
Gil found himself working to a time-table, and enjoyed it. He enjoyed, too, the way Mrs. Swanton fussed over him, always pressing him to have another slice of cake at tea, and watching him anxiously as he worked.
‘Don’t try to lift too much, Gil,’ she would say as he carried a bin out. ‘Really we could do with a man . . . but with Mrs. Emery coming in to do the cleaning, really there’s so little . . .’ And when he was chopping sticks she would peer into the shed and cluck: ‘Do mind your fingers. I’m always so afraid . . .’
He liked Mrs. Swanton, and often wondered about her. He could not imagine her as a girl at school with his grandmother. He remembered his grandmother only dimly, as someone old and gnarled like his grandfather — and Mrs. Swanton just didn’t fit in with somebody like that.
Doctor Swanton, too, was all right. In a different way, of course. She was a bit severe, but when she wanted a job doing she said so straight out, and you understood right away what she was after. She was what made the house go: he thought of this house as going, always in motion, like a bus that had to carry people from one place to another, with a proper schedule. It was all organised so that surgery should start at six o’clock. By then he had left; but he was governed by the approach of surgery time, and it took on an imposing, almost religious quality for him. His own home was full of his grandfather’s memories and a smell of the past. His own home had slowed down and nearly stopped ages ago.
There was only one thing in the doctor’s house that was not quite right; one thing that didn’t match up.
That was Mrs. Swanton — the other Mrs. Swanton, the one they called Charlotte. She didn’t belong at all. You never knew where she would be. Her day was not mapped out for her as it was for the others. Sometimes she would be walking down the road as Gil cycled up, sometimes leaning from a window. Often he did not see her at all. Indoors, she might pop up anywhere, at any time, but she never seemed to be doing anything special.
Any time they passed she looked at him so queerly. He couldn’t make it out. She was queer, all right.
In the middle of his second week, his grandfather asked him how he was getting on. He fired off the question, just as he had fired it off once before, on Gil’s first day there, as though waiting to pounce on whatever he said.
Gil shrugged. ‘All right,’ he said. He would not have dreamed of telling his grandfather how much he liked the place: he knew, without thinking it out in any detail, how he would have snorted and made some remark about ‘getting high and mighty if we don’t watch out, I can see’ . . . and how, ridiculously, he would have been hurt by praise of someone else’s house.
‘What’s Bella like these days?’
‘She’s all right,’ he said.
Mr. Drysdale sighed. ‘That all you can say?’ He tried again: ‘The doctor’s kept pretty busy, so I’m told.’
‘In and out all the time,’ Gil agreed. Then he added: ‘The other one’s a bit funny.’
‘Which other one?’
‘The one they call Charlotte.’
‘They got a girl workin’ for ’em too?’
‘No. Her proper name’s Mrs. Swanton too. At least, that’s what the doctor said when she introduced me. I haven’t spoken to her much since.’
‘Mrs. Swanton? Now who could that be?’ The old man had been sawing slices off a sandwich loaf. He stopped and pointed the knife at a point beyond Gil’s shoulder. ‘Swanton’s a common enough name in these parts, Lord knows, but I never heard tell of them bein’ related to any of the others.’ The knife became fixed and accusing. ‘There’s never been only but the one boy. And you don’t mean to tell me . . .’ He took a deep breath. ‘Well, I never. If I’d knowed that,’ he said angrily; ‘if I’d knowed that, before you went there . . .’
‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing. Least said soonest mended.’
He could pack such condemnation into a banal remark. His voice gave Gil a queer feeling. There was something odd about the one they called Charlotte, no doubt about it.
The next time the two of them met, he was raking out the boiler. He had his head up through the trap door in the floor of the passage, and there she was, coming into the kitchen from the garden. She wasn’t carrying an armful of washing, or a bucket, looking busy — not even any flowers or anything: she was just on the wander, like she always was.
He drew the bucket of ash up and put it outside, away from the flap, and then climbed out into the passage.
‘All right, miss, won’t be a minute.’
She blinked as she came in. He let the flap down and moved the bucket out of her way.
‘Thank you,’ she said, her lips hardly moving.
‘Dangerous, this thing,’ said Gil. ‘Coming in out of the light, you could easy go straight down in.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, it is.’ Then her face seemed, even in that uncertain light, to flush. She went past, and he heard her going upstairs.
He picked up the bucket. For a moment he stood on the spot she had walked over. She had left a sweet, fading scent behind her. Doctor Swanton didn’t use scent like that. And, of course, Doctor Swanton didn’t wear clothes like hers.
He thought, for the first time, how pretty Mrs. Swanton — Charlotte — was.
Chapter Eleven
Charlotte had waited a long time before speaking. She could not, simply would not ask Laura any questions. That would have been too much: that would have been doing what Laura wanted.
They hardly exchanged a word nowadays save on professional matters. For Charlotte
had gone on acting as receptionist. Stubbornly, because Laura had so clearly expected that she would want to give it up, Charlotte had carried on with the job. She had not asked Laura whether she wished her to do so or not: she had simply appeared to take it for granted. It was up to Laura to tell her to stop. Almost it was as though she had thrown down the challenge to Laura.
Laura would not speak.
All the while, Charlotte was hugging her terrible curiosity to herself. She endured it for as long as she could, and then blurted out to Mrs. Swanton:
‘That boy, Gilbert, who comes here — who’s his mother?’
‘Nobody you’d know,’ said Mrs. Swanton unhappily.
‘Not yet, anyway.’
‘What makes you ask?’
‘Because it’s so obvious,’ said Charlotte, ‘who his father is.’
‘I don’t understand, dear.’ Mrs. Swanton was making a gallant effort.
Charlotte said: ‘You needn’t bother to cover it up. Laura’s already admitted it.’
‘Oh, she hasn’t! Oh, how could she . . .’
‘I knew right away.’
Mrs. Swanton shuffled fussily towards the kitchen table and subsided into a chair. She stared at a cabbage that had just been delivered, peeled off one of the outer leaves, and then shook her head.
‘What a shame. But’ — she summoned a hopeful smile — ‘it’s all over now. There’s nothing to worry about.’
There was something remarkably soothing and convincing in the way she said it. There was, Charlotte had to accept, nothing to worry about. Not that she had really been worrying: it was just that she had seemed, when she first saw that boy’s face, to be robbed of breath, and the breath was only now coming back.
She said: ‘I’d like to . . . to hear about it, though. To know. Where the girl is, and —’
‘Oh, goodness knows where she’s got to by this time.’
‘She didn’t . . . doesn’t look after him, then? She isn’t in the district?’
‘Not that young woman. It wasn’t gay enough round these parts for her. She ran off when Gilbert was only little. Ran off with an American during the war.’
‘To America?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. No, I don’t think she’d get that far. I expect she got tired, or he got tired, before very long. There wasn’t much to her.’
There wasn’t much to her . . .
Charlotte faltered. ‘But Peter —’
‘He was only a boy. She must have put ideas into his head. We never discovered how it all started’ — Mrs. Swanton was hastening to get this over and done with, talking with hurried emphasis as though to convince herself as well as Charlotte — ‘but you may be sure it was that girl.’
‘She was pretty?’
‘You might say she was pretty. Very forward. A real little hussy. Yes,’ said Mrs. Swanton firmly and judicially, ‘she was pretty.’
There were so many questions that clamoured for an answer. Most of them would never be answered, for they were too intimate or too searching or there was nobody here capable of being truthful about them.
She ventured: ‘Peter didn’t want to marry her?’
‘He most certainly did not.’ Mrs. Swanton became almost indignant. ‘There were plenty of them who’d have liked to catch him, but he was far too wily. It would have taken a smart girl to catch Peter.’
It was hard to tell whether she spoke affectionately or disapprovingly of her son. All deep emotion seemed to have been abandoned years ago beneath that pleasant, unvarying surface chatter. Only minor worries disturbed that surface — the sort of mild perturbation that flickered over her plump features now, as she realised what she had said.
‘Oh, what a thing to say! I didn’t mean . . .’
Charlotte laughed with her, evenly and politely. ‘I’m sure you didn’t.’
‘And there’s really nothing you need concern yourself with,’ Mrs. Swanton went on, coming up with determination for the last sprint. ‘What’s done is done. You needn’t hold it against the boy. It wasn’t his fault.’
‘Does Gil know about it?’ asked Charlotte.
‘Heavens, no. He’s been told his father was killed in an accident, and his mother went off to hospital and died when he was little.’
‘I’d have thought the girl — the mother — would have made some sort of fuss.’
‘It was made worth her while not to,’ said Mrs. Swanton, resenting this prolongation of a distasteful topic.
‘Who made it worth her while?’
‘We did. That is, Laura did. That is, Reginald — my husband — did at first, so that Peter’s career shouldn’t be ruined. And when he passed on, Laura went on giving money regularly to make sure the child didn’t suffer. Old Drysdale gets it — it’s pretty well all that keeps the two of them going nowadays.’
‘But Peter — Peter could have —’
‘Laura would never have him worried,’ said Mrs. Swanton. ‘You know what she is.’
Yes, thought Charlotte. And then: No. Did she know what Laura was?
‘It was all over years ago,’ said Mrs. Swanton beseechingly. ‘It’s over, and that’s that. You don’t even have to think about it.’
‘No,’ said Charlotte.
She didn’t even have to think about it. No point in bearing grudges against some young girl who had seduced, or been seduced by, Peter. The Peter of those days had, in any case, been left behind. To Charlotte he was a complete stranger: her Peter was a different person, with no ties to claim him from the past. She had never made any querulous claims on him, never demanded information or excuses.
Or, at any rate, not often.
This youthful silliness must be accepted and then not thought about any more.
It was a pity that Gilbert’s face should be there to remind her so clearly — to remind her of Peter, and Peter’s folly, and how much Peter owed to Laura.
The thought of the bond between Peter and Laura was the most frightening thought of all. She felt menaced by it.
‘Well, that’s cleared the air,’ said Mrs. Swanton unexpectedly. She got up, and came and kissed Charlotte. ‘Hasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Charlotte. ‘Oh, yes.’
Chapter Twelve
The wind was against him this afternoon. Tomorrow there would probably be rain, and he might have to come to school by bus. He put his head down, and pedalled grimly. The grasses by the roadside bent over in the direction from which he had come.
A hundred yards outside Brookchurch he was so puffed that he had to stop and lean against the wall of the small bridge. Even the sheltered water below was twitched from time to time by feathery ripples.
A path following the bank of this ditch led to a farmhouse a short distance away. Gil watched a woman coming along the path with a basket. It was not until she came closer that he really looked intently at her and saw that it was Charlotte.
The wind whipped her skirt and her hair sideways. He saw that she was laughing into the wind, not seeing him; just laughing at the wind. He knew how she felt. You only had to part your lips slightly and you could hear and feel the air rushing in, singing between your teeth.
It was not until she reached the road that she saw him. She faltered, then came on, and nodded to him.
‘Hello, miss . . . er, Mrs. Swanton,’ he said.
‘Hello . . .’ She hesitated, but did not use his name. ‘On your way to do the chores?’
‘That’s it,’ he said.
She looked along the road to the house. He could have pushed himself away from the wall with his left foot and cycled away — she was half expecting him to — but he did not. He got off his bike and stood on the far side of it from her. They began to walk along together.
She said: ‘I’ve just been for some eggs from the farm.’
‘Duckett’s,’ he said.
The wind whipped the name from his mouth and twisted it. She said: ‘No, I’m not fond of duck eggs myself.’
‘No.’ He laughed more
loudly than was really necessary. ‘No, I mean Duckett’s is the name of the farm.’
‘Of course it is.’ She laughed again into the wind; they were both smiling. Then she said: ‘Do you like school?’
It was the obvious ordinary silly question that so many folk asked, and was usually worth no more than a grunt of vague assent or an awkward laugh. But today Gil found himself answering seriously:
‘It’s all right. I mean, I like some of the masters. Miss Holyoake isn’t so good.’
‘You don’t like women teachers?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ He was careful, afraid that any remark about women teachers might seem to include women in general and therefore herself. ‘They’re all right, I suppose.’
‘Of course, you’ve got girls in your school as well.’
‘Yes,’ he grunted.
Hair blew into her eyes. She pushed it back, and there was something lovely about the way she moved. He looked at her and looked quickly away.
She asked: ‘Have you got a girl friend there?’
That was something she oughtn’t to have asked. It was the one silly, awful question you didn’t forgive. Of course there was Johnson, you had to admit there were blokes like Johnson — and Wright, W.E., messed about with girls in the Lower Sixth. There was a lot of talk about those two and those two girls during the lunch hour out on Denge’s field. But what you would talk about with other members of the Fifth wasn’t a thing you wanted to gas about outside. Inside, it was a joke; outside, it just made you go red.
‘I oughtn’t to have asked that,’ said Charlotte. ‘I’m sorry.’
In a way — he stole a surreptitious glance at her — she was like one of the girls at school. Like the only one Gil was at all interested in, and interested in her only because she was sensible. But even so, it was hard to imagine that girl Marion ever growing to look like this. Marion looked nice and cool and fresh sometimes; but sometimes he had seen her when she and the others came in damp and hot and streaky from P.T. or Games, and then she was awfully blotchy.
