by John Burke
‘If it weren’t for Charlotte, of course, there wouldn’t be any question. You and your father could live here. We could all be together.’
He had not asked what would happen, then, to his grandfather. He had asked very few questions. He had listened; or, rather, had left himself open to what she said, grasping the pieces and fitting them together only later, only now. At first it had all been unreal and had meant nothing. It was only during the night that he came to accept it. Now he wondered what she had meant and what she expected his grandfather to do. But that was not a serious problem. If the other details were sorted out, if Charlotte were (somehow, he did not ask how) not there, then nothing else would present any difficulty.
In any case, his grandfather was old. He would not last much longer.
Gil quivered as though a shock had run up from the earth through his fingers and arms. The rim of the dyke ahead of him blurred suddenly. He fell back, pressed himself to the ground again, and cried. There was no one to see or hear. He cried, and the tears trickled slowly over the hand he had put to his eyes and dropped into the grass.
It was the first time he had allowed himself to think of his grandfather being old enough to be near death. Now he would never be entirely free from the thought again.
It wasn’t Doctor Swanton’s fault; and yet it would not have become so real to him if she had not spoken in that way. Only a few days ago — only yesterday morning, even — he had been free, and the world around Brookchurch had been wide and brilliant. Now it had all closed in on him.
He wiped the tears away, ashamed of his weakness.
Weakness . . . The word had new echoes.
He looked down at the ground. Among the flattened grasses was a crumpled yellow iris. Not so long ago Charlotte had asked him the name of that flower. They had laughed a lot and talked themselves hoarse that day. It wouldn’t happen again like that.
Gil stopped trembling. He stood up and brushed the shreds of grass from his shirt and trousers. His mouth was set.
The village looked close at hand, but was actually two miles away. A van flickered between the houses. He could see the Swanton house, looking as neat and square as it had always looked. But it was all wrong. As long as Charlotte was there — he couldn’t explain this, but knew that it was what Doctor Swanton had meant, and somehow he agreed with her — as long as Charlotte went on living in that house, it would not be right. At the beginning he had felt she didn’t belong. Now he was sure of it.
He wondered if he could ask Doctor Swanton to show him a picture of his father. There must be some in the house somewhere.
He felt that he could not ask yet.
As he walked back towards Brookchurch, he hardened. There was nothing he wanted to say to anyone. Without consciously willing it, he began to develop a protective covering. He was walking stiffly, instinctively keeping his face set and unrevealing. Nobody could take him by surprise. He was not going to be taken unawares again — not by anything.
Charlotte was coming along the street from the direction of the shops. She saw him, and waved.
He stopped.
Even at a distance she was too real. She wasn’t something you could pretend wasn’t there. He saw her arm fall, guessed her surprise that he had not waved back. She kept moving towards the house and kept watching him.
She was his mother. She and his mother were one and the same. The picture of his mother that stood on the cluttered mantelpiece in his grandfather’s house became Charlotte. ‘Both the same,’ Doctor Swanton had said quietly, making him feel that this was an injection which was going to hurt, but he must be brave and in the end he would get better. ‘. . . always had a weakness for that sort of woman.’ Gil’s mother, that sort of woman, had left him. Charlotte, for all her easy affection, for all the warmth of her laughter and the confiding touch of her hand on his arm, would leave him when she was ready. She wouldn’t want to go on living down here. She would take his father away. She was that sort of woman.
Charlotte had reached the house and was waiting at the gate for him. He stayed where he was. She could not be wiped out. There she stood, and there she would be standing if he moved towards the house and went in. He could not blot her out by refusing to think of her; he could not even refuse to think of her.
He turned and blindly studied the bus time-table on the wall nearby. When at last he forced himself to look back at the house, Charlotte had disappeared.
He went slowly along the street.
Somewhere in the house there must be a picture of his father that he could find without having to ask Doctor Swanton for it.
Chapter Two
Laura said: ‘I really can’t imagine why you’ve come, Mother.’
‘I’m sure you’re a very good doctor, my dear’ — which was the nearest Mrs. Swanton would ever come to admitting that she was sometimes very far from sure of that fact — ‘but you may overlook those little things . . .’
‘What little things?’
‘Oh,’ said Mrs. Swanton, ‘things. Things that only a woman would notice.’
‘And what am I supposed to be, pray?’
Mrs. Swanton did not reply. It was no use arguing with Laura. Anyway, that last remark was best left alone. In a way she had scored off Laura: by leaving the question to answer itself, she had got in a good one at Laura.
Poor girl, she thought with a sudden rush of affection. Poor girl; if only she had been a proper girl instead of aping her father — bless him — for all these years.
The car hummed down the last unexpectedly straight stretch of road into Tapton Harbour. They passed the small church, which seemed to have sunk even deeper into the shingle than when Mrs. Swanton had last seen it. But then, that had been nearly twenty years ago. It didn’t bear thinking of. Twenty years since she had last been down to Tapton! It made her feel old, and rather feeble: she had become one of those marsh women they always used to laugh at, sitting tight in their houses or, at most, going down the street to the shops, shrivelling slowly up over the years, never venturing out into the wider spaces, never even visiting old friends a few miles away.
She remembered how, in the early days, Reginald had often brought her down here in the car. Sometimes she had walked across the fields alone, or with Peter and Laura when they were small. She could do the same today: she was not yet old; but somehow she had never considered it. She had allowed herself to sink into a sort of retirement — one might almost have called it a retreat — on Reginald’s death, and had been thankful for Laura’s need of her. She had worked for Laura, and it had kept her going. The house was the same, the routine the same as it had always been; and Laura needed to be waited on and pandered to as much as Reginald had done, though the job was less rewarding and Laura lacked her father’s grave, courteous manner and that slow smile which had always made everything worth while.
‘Wake up,’ said Laura. ‘If you’re determined to come in, that is.’
They had stopped outside the end house in the row that Mrs. Swanton knew as Pits Lane. In her memory there had never been an actual road, and in some way it reassured her to find that even now there was still only a broad, lumpy shingle path before the houses. At the end of the row the shingle dribbled away into a track which went on through the spiky marram grass towards the green-flecked pools below the sea wall.
Things here had not changed too much.
The past was even more vivid and immediate when Gilbert held the door open and the two women went into Mr. Drysdale’s cottage. Though perhaps vivid was not the right word: the interior was faded, the wallpaper was a dark jungle of sombre flowers, the cloth on the table was of heavy green chenille, and the window curtains seemed to shut out the light even when they were drawn back.
Mrs. Swanton recognised so many things here. There was Lucy’s clock on the mantelpiece, still keeping good time; and that picture of cows knee-deep in a stream — cows, stream and background alike all speckled with brown — had hung in Lucy’s home when she was a girl.
‘
Well, fancy you comin’ all this way,’ said Mr. Drysdale. ‘Gilbert, make us a pot of tea like a good lad.’
‘Show me where everything is, and I’ll do it,’ said Mrs. Swanton, her smile claiming Gil as an old friend who did not have to stand on ceremony with her.
But his answering smile was gravely formal, and he went out at once into the little kitchen, closing the door behind him.
‘Well, how’s the leg?’ asked Laura. In her bag was a letter from the consultant, but she automatically invited the invalid to say his piece.
Mr. Drysdale shifted in his chair, his leg stiffly out in front of him. ‘All right, I reck’n.’ The reply was grudging, as though he was not prepared to commit himself too definitely in case he should wish to retract later. ‘Stiff, though,’ he added threateningly.
‘Let me have a look.’
‘More proddin’ and quizzin’,’ said Mr. Drysdale. He glanced at Mrs. Swanton. Her presence made him less respectful towards Laura than he was ordinarily: even less was she Doctor Swanton today, even more was she just Bella Swanton’s daughter.
‘Hm,’ said Laura. ‘Full of phlebitis. Only to be expected.’
‘You told me as everythin’ ’ud be all right once I’d got that operation over with —’
‘It won’t do you any harm to take things easy.’
‘Never did have time to take things easy.’ His stare in Mrs. Swanton’s direction became a scowl.
She said placatingly: ‘Gilbert will be able to give you a lot of help. He’s grown up to be a very nice boy. You must be proud of him.’
‘If I am, I reck’n I’m the only one who’s got any right to be.’
There was an uncomfortable pause. Mrs. Swanton broke it by saying: ‘Mind you let us know if you need anything. I expect I could run down once a week just to . . . well, tidy up and so on.’
Mr. Drysdale looked appalled. The two women were harassing him beyond endurance. ‘No call to do that,’ he said gruffly.
‘Gilbert can always drop in on his way home from school if you’ve got a message for us —’
‘He’ll be doing that anyway,’ said Laura.
Mr. Drysdale stared from one to the other. He said: ‘You’re not countin’ on keepin’ Gil on, are you? Not now?’
‘Of course not,’ said Mrs. Swanton with a quick frown at Laura. ‘He must come home to look after you.’
‘But he can still call in on us on his way home,’ said Laura flatly, ‘and do the odd jobs.’
‘Really, Laura, I’m sure it would be better if —’
‘The money will come in useful,’ said Laura to Mr. Drysdale.
He wriggled into his chair, pushing himself back as though to get a good support for himself before he spoke.
‘The lad looks as though he . . . he’s glad to be back home. Don’t think he fancies carryin’ on.’
Mrs. Swanton bridled. The implications of that remark seemed singularly ungracious to her. ‘Obviously Gil enjoyed himself while he was with us, but we wouldn’t dream of leaving you on your own — we wouldn’t want him to waste his time on odd jobs when you’re likely to need him so much.’
Laura said deliberately: ‘When Gilbert looks for a job in the summer, he’ll probably want a reference from us.’
‘It’d do some good,’ Mr. Drysdale agreed. ‘I’d be much obliged —’
‘It’s going to be difficult to give him a reference if he packs up at the first excuse. If he’s bored with the small jobs he does for us, isn’t he going to be bored elsewhere?’
Mrs. Swanton could not believe her ears. She could not make out what had got into Laura. ‘Laura, whatever are you talking about?’
‘I think he ought to stay with us for a while, after we’ve looked after him as we have done. I think it’s the least he can do.’
‘If he don’t want to carry on, he don’t have to.’ The decisiveness of Mr. Drysdale’s tone showed how uncertain he was about the whole affair.
He seemed, during his weeks in hospital, to have shrunk. He did not look ill, but it was as though that brief imprisonment, away from his usual surroundings, had frightened him and given rise to a lot of doubts where there had never before been any doubts. He looked from Laura to her mother as though they were stronger than he and might do something against his wishes, outflanking him and giving him no chance to resist.
Mrs. Swanton clucked her tongue. ‘Really, what are we getting so cross about?’
The door was pushed open by Gil’s foot. He came in with a tray on which were three cups of tea and a sugar bowl. They were all at once silent, watching as he set the tray down. Then he turned to the sideboard and took out a biscuit tin.
‘Bring a cup in for yourself, Gil,’ said his grandfather.
Gil looked at him — but not at the others — and smiled. ‘I think I’d better finish chopping up those boxes.’
He was quiet and very final. He turned and went out, and the door closed quietly behind him.
Mr. Drysdale said: ‘What you been doin’ to him while I been away?’
‘Doing to him?’ Mrs. Swanton was again indignant.
‘He’s . . . shut himself off. He’s growed up.’
Laura stood with her back to the empty grate, sipping tea in large gulps in her usual way. One would have thought there had just been an emergency call and this might be her last cup of tea for some hours. Yet at the same time, thought her mother, she looked firmly established here — firmly dug in, with no intention of leaving until everything was settled to her satisfaction.
‘I certainly think Gilbert should carry on with us for a while,’ said Laura. ‘He might not feel ready for another job yet. If, as you say, he has matured since he’s been with us, that’s all to the good. I’m glad to hear it.’
‘I’m not so sure —’
‘Oh, nonsense, Laura,’ said Mrs. Swanton. ‘Of course he can’t stay with us. There’s no future in it for a boy like him.’
Laura did not trouble to answer. She finished her tea and set the cup and saucer down with a rattle.
Mrs. Swanton covertly studied her. She knew that expression on Laura’s face. Laura looked like that when a case puzzled her but did not entirely defeat her: when she knew deep down what was wrong, but could not get the details in focus. It had happened so often. She would come in, fretful, after a visit, and look ahead of her in just that glazed, intimidating way. Some time later — it might be five minutes or five hours — she would nod abruptly and say ‘Of course . . . I knew it all along.’ And invariably she would be right. At such times Mrs. Swanton was awed by her daughter. She knew that such results were produced by the analytical workings of the trained mind, by wheels turning even when Laura herself was unconscious of them; but even so there was something uncanny about it all.
Why should she look like that now? She was diagnosing a situation, feeling her way . . . and in due course — how long would it take? — she would nod and say ‘Yes, that’s it, there we are.’
Now, abruptly, she said: ‘I shall be very upset if you stop Gilbert coming in to help each evening, Mr. Drysdale.’
‘Well, it’s not a matter of me stoppin’ him. I mean . . . well . . .’
Mrs. Swanton wagged her head, bewildered. She was convinced that Laura did not yet understand her own reasons for insisting that Gilbert should continue to come. There was something disturbing about that dogged insistence, as though she hoped by persevering to reach the right diagnosis.
Diagnosis, treatment of what? Mrs. Swanton had never understood Laura and never would; but she felt that, for some reason, she was right to be uneasy.
Gilbert came back into the room. It was true that he was different. A sort of veil had fallen over his face. He was more deliberate in his speech, giving the impression that he checked each word before it was uttered. His eyes were unyouthfully cold and calculating as he looked from his grandfather to Laura and then to Mrs. Swanton.
Mr. Drysdale said: ‘Just in time. Been talkin’ about you.’
&nb
sp; ‘Oh.’
‘Now, then’ — Mr. Drysdale was bluff and loud, insistent on a clear reply and no nonsense — ‘how d’you feel about goin’ on workin’ for the doctor? Want to keep on a bit, eh?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Gilbert steadily.
Laura leaned forward. Gil turned towards her. For a moment his eyes challenged hers, then he flushed and looked down.
She said: ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Gil. I thought you liked being with us.’
‘I liked it all right.’ His shrug was a boy’s shrug of embarrassment, and his mouth was sullen in a boyish way. Mrs. Swanton felt immediately sorry for him.
Not so Mr. Drysdale. Mr. Drysdale blew down his nose, and his voice became hard and inexplicably womanish. A proper old granny, thought Mrs. Swanton involuntarily.
‘This is a fine thing, I must say. You youngsters today, you get fed up with a job in no time. We couldn’t afford to be so choosey when I was a lad, I can tell you. How do you think you’ll hold down a man’s job if you can’t abide this little one?’
‘It’s not that.’
‘What is it, then? What sort of reference do you think Doctor Swanton is going to write you if you leave just like that?’
Gilbert glanced at the window. The shingle cast back the sunlight, hard and exuberant. His lips parted, and he looked as though he wanted to appeal to someone to intervene.
Laura said again: ‘I thought you liked being with us.’
‘I did.’ He looked straight at her. ‘But you know, you know what it is. I don’t want to come back.’
Laura was silent. Mr. Drysdale groaned, and shifted in his chair. He looked puzzled — puzzled with all of them and with himself, wondering whose side he was on and what had happened to start this.
Suddenly Gilbert put one hand on his shoulder. His voice was thick and uncertain.
‘I want to stay here,’ he said.
Tears smarted inexplicably in Mrs. Swanton’s eyes. It was as though the boy were afraid of something — of losing his grandfather, of not being here if anything happened to him . . . of something secret and personal that had nothing to do with chopping wood and emptying buckets of ash and getting a job.
