Death of a Literary Widow

by Robert Barnard

  ‘What’s up, Rosie?’ asked Hilary, watching their spaniel and labrador rolling over the twilit green turf. ‘It’s not like you to be so chilly. What’s up? “The Awakened Conscience” by Holman Hunt stuff, is that it? I never liked that picture. Have the Methodies been getting at you?’

  ‘The Methodists never made much headway with the Machin family,’ said Rose, still keeping her distance and not looking him in the eye. ‘Perhaps it would have been better if they had.’

  ‘There, I knew it. Thoughts of hell flames are blighting your young life. Anticipations of being skewered on a fork and toasted for indulgence in the sins of the flesh. Or is it just that your old man’s found us out?’

  ‘Not him. I’d have to play him home movies of us in bed before he’d twig.’

  ‘I’ve never met your old man. I don’t somehow think we’d have much in common.’

  ‘You wouldn’t. No reason why I should jump from the frying-pan into the frying-pan, is there?’

  ‘There you see–fire and burning at the back of your mind again. What gives, Rosie?’

  Rose Clough whistled the dogs to order. They stopped rollicking for a couple of seconds and looked impertinently in their direction. Then they went at it with redoubled glee. Rose walked on thoughtfully for a bit, then she turned to Hilary and said: ‘You went to see your mother last week, didn’t you?’

  ‘That’s right. Had a fine old time. This Machin revival’s putting new life into her. I think I’ll paint her one of these days: “The Triumphant Widow”; “Confidence Justified”–something like that. She’s like a cat that’s found a way to milk cows.’

  ‘I was round at Mother’s that night.’

  ‘That’s right. Mother said so: “That Rose is round again tonight.” Sniff.’

  ‘Did she say anything more about me?’

  ‘Well, if you want to know, she said: “Of course, she’s quite presentable, but I always think there’s just the tiniest bit of the tart there.”’

  ‘Old bitch.’

  ‘True. But an interesting old bitch.’

  ‘And what did you say in reply?’

  ‘I think I said “That’s how I like them”–and got a filthy look for my pains.’

  ‘She didn’t say anything else?’

  ‘No. What is all this, then, Rose? Why the hell should you worry what my mother says about you, for God’s sake. It’s no skin off your nose, is it? I’ve never noticed you or your mum pay that much attention to old Vi’s opinions up to now.’

  ‘Do you think she knows about us?’

  ‘I’m damned sure she doesn’t. Nobody knows about us. Yet.’

  ‘What do you think she’d say?’

  ‘Something snooty, I’d bet. Come off it, Rosie, spill the beans. What is this all about?’

  ‘Something Mum said. . . . We were listening to you both downstairs, and we heard you laugh . . . like you do . . . and Mum said: “There’s a lot of Walter in Hilary.”’

  There was a moment’s silence while Hilary Seymour-Strachey digested this. Then he burst out into his great chortling laugh. ‘The old devil! I knew your mum was a wag. What was she doing? Warning you off me?’

  ‘I don’t know what she was doing.’

  ‘She’d probably heard rumours, and didn’t like you fraternizing with the enemy camp.’

  ‘You just said that nobody suspected.’

  ‘OK, then you gave the game away yourself. I love you like–’ he was going to say ‘like a sister’, but he suddenly changed his mind–‘I love you to distraction, Rosie, but I can read your mind like a book, and I expect your mum can too. She’s a sharp old bird. You talked about me, old Hilda saw the love-light gleaming, and she warned you off. In a thoroughly sneaky, underhand way, I may say, but there it is. I bet that’s how it was.’

  ‘My Mum’s not sneaky–’

  ‘Don’t you believe it. People get like that when they get older. Look at my mother. She used to be–well–blatant is the only word for it. But she’s got sneakier and sneakier as she’s got more and more respectable. Don’t let your mother’s down-to-earth Lancashire Lassie airs fool you. She switches them on and off like the electric light.’

  ‘You hardly know Mum.’

  ‘Well enough. Come off it, Rosie. Don’t let it worry you. It’s just the oldies trying to put a spoke in our wheel. I don’t even think old Vi knew your dad before I was born.’

  ‘Yes, she did. You were born in nineteen-forty. They all knew each other well before the war–all four of them.’

  ‘Well, I do know Gerald didn’t disappear out of our lives until ‘forty-three, because Des told me so. The whole thing split apart when he went to Grimsby.’

  ‘That doesn’t prove anything,’ said Rose. ‘Especially if your mother was as you say.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Blatant.’

  They walked on in silence for a time, and then Hilary said: ‘I still think your mum’s playing a dirty game, or she’s imagining things. I expect everything that went on then’s churning round in her mind because of this new wave of interest in those awful books.’

  ‘Didn’t you like them?’

  ‘I only read the first one. I thought it was pretty synthetic. But the point is: all the old grudges churn round in her mind, and she looks at me and fancies all sorts of things. But the fact is, she can’t possibly know.’

  ‘True,’ admitted Rose. Then she nastily added: ‘Perhaps even Viola doesn’t.’

  ‘I never made her out to be the Lady of the Camellias,’ protested Hilary. As they neared houses, and the beginnings of Oswaldston with its twilit grime, he said: ‘Anyway, even if it were true, would it worry you, Rosie?’

  Rose laughed and looked more happy. ‘No, I dare say it wouldn’t, after a time,’ she said.

  But they soon separated, and took different ways home.

  CHAPTER VII

  HIGH WORDS

  ON FRIDAY, 4 May Viola Machin spent most of the day answering correspondence. In the last week it had positively snowed letters and business. The Factory Whistle had been republished a few days before, and beside her Viola kept the pile of six copies sent her by the publishers, with its Lowry-ish cover of tall chimneys and matchstick men. The Sunday newspaper articles had come out the week before last, and were still bringing in letters. Some of these were begging letters from old mill-workers in financial distress, and these Viola consigned to the waste-paper basket, whether or not the writers claimed nebulous acquaintanceship with her late husband. Others wrote about what Walter Machin’s books had meant to them at the time of their publication, and to these Viola wrote faintly magisterial replies of thanks and interest which usually also contained subtle plugs for the two books which were as yet unpublished. Other people wrote with personal memories of the author, and these were divided up: some were handed over to Mr Kronweiser, as keeper of the Machin Archive; some were retained by Viola; and some went the way of the begging letters. All received replies, of varying degrees of warmth.

  The letter which concluded the day for Viola Machin was not one of the ones that pleased her most. It read:

  I was one of Walter Machin’s classmates at Burnley Road Primary School, and I was very interested to read the interesting article in the Sentinel and look at the interesting pictures. I am the little boy to the left of the picture of his class half hidden by the boy next to me how funny to think of Walter being an author as he was always in trouble at school and none of the teachers could make him learn doesn’t it make you think. But he was always having fun so I suppose its the imagination that counts isn’t it. Hoping this finds you as it leaves me we are none of us getting any younger Yours Sincerely Fred Bottomley.

  To this Viola wrote a reply expressing lukewarm interest. With difficulty she repressed comments on the writer’s own linguistic proficiency, and how in her view it disabled him from judging Walter’s scholastic achievements; with difficulty, too, she refrained from rebutting the idea that she was not getting any y
ounger, for that was precisely what she felt she was getting, these days; and she ended with best wishes for the future, mentally hoping it would not be for him a long one. Then she consigned the letter to the waste-paper basket.

  Her labours done–and though they involved both effort and expense she enjoyed them very much–she sat for a little at her desk, thoughtful and handsome. She was wearing the dark green woollen dress that showed off her still remarkable contours. Then she got up, rather stiffly, and busied herself making tea and thin bread and butter, an invariable meal, but always a treat. After it she felt soothed of any irritation she may have felt with the last letter, wiped her mouth with satisfaction, and picked up the Oswaldston Gazette.

  It was the issue with the interview with Hilda Machin in. If she had thought of it, she would have looked before: she had registered the reporter and photographer going up to the flat above, and had said to herself that they didn’t, very obviously, have the class of the young men from the London Sundays. But for some time after she had sat wondering, with a slight undertow of apprehension, what sort of things Hilda would be saying. Because, really, you never knew with Hilda. Now, pursing her lips, she settled down to read.

  Her first impressions were very favourable. Even the photograph, she had to admit, was a good one: Hilda would never look attractive, Viola thought to herself, but at least she looked dignified, which was all to the good. Don’t want people to think Walter went for the tartish type. The interview opened with reminiscences of their meeting and courtship. Suitably bowdlerized, said Viola to herself with a grim smile: if she knew Walter, there was a good deal of slap and tickle involved which didn’t get into the account. Very sensible of Hilda: nothing is more ridiculous than an old-age pensioner gabbling on about his or her risqué past.

  The article went on with an account of Walter and Hilda’s early married life, against a background of dole and depression. What kind of a person was Walter Machin then, the interviewer asked?

  ‘Well, he was a charmer,’ said Hilda. ‘A bobby-dazzler. Ask anyone who knew him. Everyone felt more alive when he was around: there’d be so much fun and games and nonsense–and there was always a bit for everyone, do you know what I mean? He was like a drop of the hard stuff, just when you needed it most.’

  Viola relaxed into a mellow mood. Hilda had clearly done her stuff very well. She looked again at the picture: really, Hilda was quite a pretty woman in her way, if your tastes inclined you to that sort of good looks. She read on to the story of holidays at Blackpool and Filey, a trip to London, and the gradually expanding horizons which writing brought to Walter. What had made him take up writing in the first place? the interviewer asked.

  ‘Having something to say, I suppose,’ said Hilda. ‘Unlike some, who think that up afterwards. Anybody who lived through that time in Oswaldston will have a lot of memories of it–some of them bitter, some of them funny. Well, Walter had been through the same things, but he wanted to put them down on paper. I suppose he just felt people ought to know what things were like–people down South, you know. So he wrote them down.’

  Quite good, Hilda, thought Viola. Though you do make it sound like running up a cotton frock. Still, she couldn’t deny that Hilda had behaved. That warning had had its effect–what a good idea it had been. She must remember to give Greg Hocking a copy of The Factory Whistle, suitably inscribed. Viola was beaming benevolently as she read on into the last column. The reporter, treading delicately, had asked if it was a great sorrow to her when she and Walter separated.

  ‘A great sorrow? Ee, I’m not cut out to be a tragedy queen,’ said Hilda. That was the tone to take, thought Viola. ‘There wasn’t owt to be done about it was there? Marriages get broken up every day.’

  The writer concluded by–But suddenly Viola pulled herself up in her reading, and went back. Had her concentrated reading of those letters all afternoon made her unduly pernickety? ‘Marriages get broken up every day.’ No. There it was. Not ‘Marriages break up.’ ‘Marriages get broken up.’ A scarlet flush showed angrily through Viola’s powdered cheek. The bitch, she thought. The low-down bitch. She had to get her say in, didn’t she? Pretending to be so butter-wouldn’t-melt, and then to slide this in–the sharp kick on the ankle in passing. Did she think I wouldn’t notice? thought Viola, beginning to breathe heavily. She must think I’m senile if she thought that. So all Oswaldston will read that, and they’ll read between the lines and they’ll start calling me the marriage-breaker, will they? And Hilda will be the poor little wifey at home who had her husband snatched from her. The sneaky little tart. The two-timing bitch. The jumped-up mill-girl. I’ll show her. I’ll get even with her.

  Puffing, Viola struggled to her feet. Clutching her stick as if it were an offensive weapon, she made for the door. Her colour had got still more livid and threatening, and through the fat, purple cheeks her eyes were bulging and blazing. Those stairs. She hated those stairs. But it was worth it, to give Hilda Machin a piece of her mind. It suddenly struck Viola, in the midst of her rage, that she hadn’t had a good row for months. Nothing like making up for lost time, she thought to herself with relish.

  • • •

  ‘All right,’ said Hilda Machin, her voice rising. ‘I can’t remember whether I did say it or not, but what if I did? It’s the truth, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is decidedly not the truth,’ boomed Viola. Under the dark green wool, her breasts were heaving like pistons. She saw that Hilda’s hands were on her hips, and she knew from experience that this was a danger signal, but she went on, unintimidated. ‘Your marriage broke down. You couldn’t hold him, and I don’t wonder, because you had nothing a man like Walter would want. Then he married me.’

  ‘Oh really? Well, how come he was still married to me when he was demobbed in ‘forty-six?’

  ‘He had no intention whatever of going back to you. We had it all arranged.’

  ‘You had it all arranged. He had no choice, poor bugger. There was you, waiting at the gates, welcome written all over your tits and panting for him. He was weak as ditch-water, and he went along.’

  Viola’s voice began to boom, like an English contralto slaughtering Handel. ‘He told me a fortnight before he came out that he’d be coming to me.’

  ‘Oh really? By letter? I’d love to see that example of his Collected Works!’

  ‘By phone, of course.’

  ‘Naturally. But no doubt you went along just in case. While we sat round at home in little old Oswaldston, waiting for Daddy to come back. And all we got was a lousy phone call three weeks later. Made while you had one of his arms in a half-Nelson behind his back, I’d guess, or a gun in his ribs. “I’m not coming back, Hilda, gulp, gulp.” My God, I thought my Walter had a bit more gumption. I knew then you’d done for him all right.’

  ‘Done for him? I’d have made him, if he’d lived. He was too good for you, Hilda Machin, and that’s what you hadn’t got the brains to understand. You were nothing to him by then, nothing. He needed a real woman, not a shrew from the gutter.’

  ‘And is that what he got?’ While Viola tended to boom under stress, Hilda’s voice became higher and more satirical. ‘Go on with you. Walter was like a squeezed-out rag after he married you. He wasn’t even good at his job. Ask anybody round here. They’d hardly believe it was the same man.’

  ‘What does that prove? Plenty of men couldn’t settle back into the old ruts after the war. I’d have thought less of Walter if he could. He was too good for this place. I was mad to let him bring me here. He could have done anything–anything.’

  ‘What had you in mind? Not the writing, was it? Would you have made him into the working-class Christopher Fry? Don’t make me laugh. He went back to the mill because he knew he belonged there. It was the only place he could go. But you’d got hold of him, and you’d squeezed him till the pips rattled, and you’d done for him as a man. Like you did Gerald–’

  ‘LEAVE GERALD OUT OF THIS!’

  ‘–until he got away. Slipped out
from under your sweaty embrace. Lucky old Gerald. I always did admire him, in a way. He did it just in time, He’s still alive, I hear.’

  ‘Still alive, and wanting to marry me again–as if I’d give him the chance!’

  ‘Go on, he never is? Well, I’ve heard of old lags wanting to die in jail, so I suppose it figures. Why don’t you take up the offer? It would be very fitting: you could both live off the royalties, and go out with a bang.’

  ‘I have no intention of “going out” yet awhile, Hilda Machin. I’ll live to see you underground, I can tell you that. I must say I’m seeing a new side to you today, and I ought to have suspected it before. Walter always did say you were underhand.’

  ‘Did he now? Well, you should have heard what he said about you, first time we met. I remember him. We were in a shabby little hole in Paddington, and when we came back from the pub that night he went walking up and down that hotel room, sticking his chest out and saying, “I’m the sex queen of Bloomsbury. Come and get me while I’m still hot!” Ee, I can see him now. He always was a wonderful mimic, was our Walter.’

  ‘Oh yes? And did he tell you we made love the next night? Ah–that got you. He didn’t, I can see. You were looking after Rose. We sent Gerald out to the local to get a bottle of Scotch. We knew he’d have a quick one while he was there. We arranged it all just by looking at each other.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Hilda quietly. ‘He did have talking eyes.’

  ‘So I don’t think he found me quite so ridiculous as you make out,’ concluded Viola, with an angry smirk of triumph.

  ‘Oh, he didn’t mind them ridiculous,’ said Hilda, perking up again. ‘Big or small, fat or thin, sensible or silly, it didn’t worry Walter. If he hopped into bed with you that night, he was only doing what he’d done with a hundred and one others.’