‘Edward,’ she said, by simple association of ideas, ‘has ordered a new morning suit. I just hope he will be well enough for the fittings.’
‘I expect he’ll manage it. What have you ordered, mother?’
‘Oh – don’t worry about that. I suppose you’ll look very smart.’
‘I doubt it. Polly won’t let anybody outdo her. So she’s wearing encrustations of pearls and floating panels of lace and chiffon and yards of embroidered net in her veil, and the poor bridesmaids have to make do with skimpy little frocks in sweet-pea shades of taffeta. Mine is lilac and hideous. I shall give it to a jumble-sale afterwards.’
Dorothy was horrified.
‘Claire – everybody who is anybody in Faxby will be able to recognize those dresses. Everybody will be at the wedding. And if one of them turns up at a church bazaar then they’ll know. And if each dress is a different colour they’ll know it’s yours, too. What an insult to Mrs Swanfield and to Mrs Timms.’
Edward, clearly, would be very upset about that.
She left that same afternoon for Scarborough where MacAllister’s sister had a boarding-house, a small, unpretentious establishment in the old town with no particular view of anything but a row of houses like itself, and into which she was ‘squeezed’ good-humouredly, the month being August, simply as a favour to MacAllister. Her room was small and clean, a slope-ceilinged attic painted a pretty rose pink with the kind of narrow, decidedly single bed she had not slept in since her schooldays. The food was simple, ample, appearing regularly and piping hot. Her landlady was pleasant, incurious, had her own life to lead and wanted nothing from Claire but payment in full at the end of ten days. And by then Benedict, and presumably Nola, would have left for three weeks in Italy. Time – her ally now she hoped – would have passed; enough of it to enable her to follow him calmly down the aisle when he gave Polly in marriage to Roger Timms; enough of it to wish him well, with all her heart, if it turned out that he had found a way to live on easier terms with Nola.
She took long walks on the cliffs above a grey, northern sea shrouded more often than not in mist like a finely-beaded curtain, escaping the August crowds and setting her mind in order, coming to a halt only when she realized, with love and pain and a certain amount of wry amusement, that everything she did and said, her attitudes and postures, the way she smiled or held her head, her manner of walking, were being played out, each and every one, before an imaginary audience that was Benedict. And she was glad therefore, on the seventh of her ten days, to see Euan Ash, his kit-bag on his shoulder, standing at her lodging-house gate.
‘Thought I’d have another crack at getting to Edinburgh,’ he said. ‘I’ve left you my canvases and most of my stuff like last time. If I get there I should be back in Faxby in a few days. If not, I’ll let you know.’
He left his bag with MacAllister’s sister who had a fondness for soldiers, and they walked out onto the cliffs as high and far as they could go, moving at their leisure through grey air above grey water until the town disappeared and they were enclosed in a cloudscape of mist, patterned by the swooping and crying of the gulls.
‘Look –’ he said, and for an hour or more he showed her, as he had once promised, the enchantment of a puddle,’ the patterns made by rainwater in soft earth, the textures and colours, the rich variety of pebbles, a leaf like a star of pure amber floating beside a tiny white feather tipped with black and streaked, so minutely one had to think to see it, with gold.
They looked at tree roots, tangled and thirsty in the salty air; stirred through a windfall of broken branches to release the crushed face of a small blue flower; stood quietly, hand in hand, to observe the comings and goings of a mouse, a frog, a ladybird. They came down from the cliff and looked at the sand, a universe of seaweed and shells, each one with its own face he told her, each bird with its own voice, the sky and sea, which she had thought simply and starkly grey, revealed by his artist’s eye as muted layers and shadings of a dozen colours.
‘Don’t you see the pink and the primrose?’
‘No.’
‘Look – and think. You’ll see.’
She saw.
They walked back towards the town along the beach, wet and no longer very clean, streaks of damp sand on her skirt from kneeling down to acquaint herself with the mayor and corporation of a rock pool, her shoes never to be the same again, her nails grubby from scratching under rocks for the pleasure of holding a probably indignant shellfish in her hand. Saddened and contented both together. At peace with his companionship yet knowing that when he turned the next corner or the brow of the next hill she might never see him again.
‘Are you staying a day or two, Euan?’
‘No. I just wanted to tell you I was off. I can get to Carlisle tonight. And from there it’s a straight run.’
‘Euan!’ She stopped in her tracks so that he walked a step or two ahead of her. ‘Don’t just try to go this time. Get there. Resolve it.’
She could not bear to think of him for what could be his lifetime hesitating at that hospital door, his life’s energy absorbed by the need and the fear of going in. Or skulking for ever – and how long could that be? – through northern winters, eternally ‘on his way’, eternally impeded, eternally caught in the nightmare of running without moving, of tunnels leading to blank walls.
‘Euan! Please.’
And, to the consternation of several plump young matrons surrounded by infants and sandcastles and small dogs, he turned, came back to her, put his hands on her shoulders and drew her towards him, watching her come to him, his face intent, engrossed, looking at her in depth, in total, in keen, clear-sighted pleasure as he had looked at the pebbles and the grasses. And she let him take her and hold her as if they had been standing not on a beach but a battlefield, a welcome and farewell both together.
‘You have to go, Euan, and get it settled. Otherwise I think you’ll die of it.’
‘Yes. Kiss me goodbye.’
The plump mothers, to whom sex happened quickly if regularly in the dark, gathered up their children and their yapping little terriers and herded them away, looking back over scandalized shoulders at this odd couple, the tall, young man in the shabby trenchcoat – a gentleman of course, one could always tell – and the brazen hussy – they knew the type at once – with her short hair and her indecently exposed legs, so busy plying her sinful trade that she had not even noticed them.
‘All right,’ he said, having claimed his kiss and several more for good measure, ‘that’s me sorted out. What about you?’
‘Something will turn up.’
‘I don’t doubt it. But listen, Claire, could you – well, not promise, of course, I wouldn’t go so far as to ask that – could you just hold on a bit? Not make any decisions – of a fairly permanent nature, I mean – until you see me again?’
‘And if I don’t see you?’
‘Lord – don’t worry about that. I may be asking you to wait for ever but with a chap like me one can count for ever in months, you know – not years. I just have this uneasy feeling that I might get back to Faxby one day, all eager and bright-eyed and fighting fit, and find you gone.’
‘I’d leave an address, Euan. Plenty of people would know.’
‘I dare say. But it wouldn’t be much good to me, would it, if you’d just walked down the aisle with some worthy chap – or done something final with your brother-in-law?’
‘I suppose not.’
He smiled, failing for the first time since she had known him, to produce quite the degree of dazzling waywardness he had intended.
‘All I can say just now, Claire, is that I would like to see you again.’
‘That’s a lovely thing to say, Euan.’
They had a good Yorkshire high tea with MacAllister’s jubilantly Irish sister – cold ham and tongue with mustard pickles and salad, pork pies with brown sauce, currant teacakes, malt bread thickly buttered, custard tarts, several pots of strong tea; Euan, who put down an enormo
us meal to settle his nerves rather than fill his appetite, affording great satisfaction to black-eyed Teresa MacAllister who liked nothing better than to see men eat.
He got his bag.
‘I’ll be off then.’
He knew better than to ask her to come with him to the station. There had been too many trains, too many desperate last embraces for both of them. He would not put her through that again.
‘I’ll be seeing you – I expect.’
‘I expect so.’
She smiled, very calm, very steady, nothing on the surface to betray the sudden re-emergence of an old superstitious dread which had filled her, flooded her, every time she had said goodbye to Paul. ‘If I keep on smiling he won’t get killed.’ It had become a jingle, repeated over and over in her head as she had watched all those trains pull hideously away, tapping it out with her heels as she had made her way alone through those identical, heart-rending station yards. She had kept on smiling. He had died.
‘Goodbye, Euan.’
She let him get to the gate and then, snatching her coat, ran after him. ‘I’ll just walk with you to the station.’
‘Thanks, Claire.’
He held her hand through the compartment window, very tight, his fingers cold, his body so taut that she could feel the uneasy, overstrung vibration of his nerves, the beginnings of revulsion and panic, of pity too deep to be endured: and the inevitable, ineradicable hate.
‘I think I’m up to it,’ he said. ‘It helped – telling you.’
He had not asked her to go with him. But she had only to get into the train, now, as she was, and she thought he would be glad. Why not? A reckless, ridiculous step perhaps, but her spirit was poised to take it. The open road, perhaps, without hearth or anchor, but a part of her nature responded to that. Euan – if he managed to come to terms with the destruction of his faith and love – could offer her freedom. What could she offer him?
‘See it through,’ she told him.
‘I’ll try. You’re right, of course. If I don’t, then it’s bound to finish me off.’
The whistle sounded, its screech unnerving her, throwing them fiercely together.
‘Wait for me, Claire.’
‘Yes I’ll wait.’
Time had reeled backwards, two years of it, three years, and one promised anything when those whistles blew. He smiled, still clutching her hand.
‘I told you, Claire – it’s always Passchendaele.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ she said. Had she spoken aloud? Had he heard? It made no difference. The train was already pulling away. ‘If I keep on smiling then he won’t get killed – he won’t die of wounds – he won’t be paralysed and blind – he won’t be crippled and castrated, neither in his body nor in his soul.’
Her smile was fixed and set when she turned the corner to the boarding house and saw MacAllister’s sister standing at the gate, shading her eyes, looking for someone.
‘Mrs Swanfield – oh Mrs Swanfield –’ The hand began to wave in evident agitation, a square of orange paper clutched within it. Claire came nearer, her smile deepening, becoming as blank and brilliant as Euan’s.
‘God love you, Mrs Swanfield, you’d been gone no more than five minutes when they brought you this.’
She held out the telegram as gingerly as one might handle dead vermin and for a moment Claire went on smiling, as incapable of taking it as Euan had been incapable of turning off the gas.
There had been too many telegrams.
‘Bad news, I reckon,’ said Teresa MacAllister, stating a fact, not asking a question, since she had lost two brothers, numerous cousins, in France and knew what telegrams were for.
Yes. Bad news. Not Euan, at least she could be sure of that. Not yet. Nor Kit either. Somehow she knew that. But Benedict was travelling in Italy. If there had been an accident, if he had been taken ill – and remembering that drawn, hollow look she knew it was possible – would it occur to anyone to let her know? Yes. Toby would think of it. Then it must be Benedict. How could she get to him? Colour left her so rapidly that Teresa MacAllister put out a hand expecting her to fall in a faint, and then, as she snatched the envelope and tore it open, her pallor changed, beneath the Irish woman’s kindly, incredulous eyes, from chalk to rose; her expression of horror changing too, to what could have been – although Miss MacAllister was ready to give her the benefit of the doubt – a kind of wondering, excited delight.
‘It’s Edward,’ she said, ‘my mother’s husband. He died this morning.’
And crumbling the dreaded orange envelope in her hand she went on down the street, walking with a decided bounce in her step, towards the sands.
She was free. It was the only thought in her mind. Absolutely free. And through the sheer, lark-soaring delight it aroused in her she was unable to feel anything else. No pang of guilt came near her. How could she bring herself to grieve, in any case, for an old man dead in his bed of natural causes when she had seen others blown to pieces at nineteen, burned and blinded at twenty-three? Nor did she hate him. She was simply overflowing with gratitude, burgeoning with gladness, that he was gone. She had never, for a moment, expected it. She had thought him indestructible, that his whine might grow thinner perhaps, but that Edward himself would continue to cast his shadow through her life, to hold her back, keep her down, manipulate her through Dorothy, for ever. Now she could go back to Faxby and lead her life as she pleased. Now she could go to High Meadows when and if she chose, with no fear of what Edward might do to her mother should she decide not to go at all. Now – for the first time in her life – it no longer mattered what the Swanfields had to say. She was free. She was her own woman. Had she even been consciously aware of how much he had oppressed her until now when the crushing burden of him had been lifted? But she was very light now, floating in blue air without it, possessed by an impossible, probably – she supposed – an indecent joy which carried her buoyantly along the sands to the post office where, having composed herself sufficiently to request a black border without offending the clerk she sent an answering telegram, solemnly worded and correct, promising to return on the next train.
The funeral was not conspicuously well-attended, Edward having had few relations, no personal friends, and, in view of his long retirement, only one or two colleagues and clients who remembered him well enough, or kindly enough, to make the journey to Upper Heaton. The neighbourhood, of course, did what it could, curtains remaining drawn as a sign of respect for the whole afternoon, a gesture which, the weather having turned unseasonably cold and rather more than usually wet, most people considered to be adequate. Miriam sent a lavish wreath of lilies and white roses, and her excuses. She was not quite well herself and funerals depressed her in any case. Poor, dear Mr Lyall would not have wished her to court pneumonia trudging behind his coffin, she felt very sure of that. Benedict was still in Italy. No one expected Polly to stand at a graveside. And so the Swanfields were represented by well-meaning Eunice and easily set-aside Toby, the very ones Edward himself had least regarded.
‘I think Miriam might have made the effort,’ said Claire because she knew Dorothy thought so and would not say it.
‘Oh no – not at all.’ Dorothy had not yet convinced herself that Edward could no longer hear, and was visibly intimidated by the presence of a pair of Lyall cousins who much resembled him. ‘Her flowers are very fine.’
‘Just a quick’phone call to a florist, mother. Not much recompense for all of Edward’s frantic devotion.’
The Lyall cousins, one male, one female, exchanged pained looks. Dorothy flushed and bit her lip, knowing that in their eyes she had remained no more and no less than the young governess Cousin Edward had so surprisingly taken it into his head to marry.
‘I am pleased to see,’ said the female Lyall, ‘that you have kept the silver in good condition.’
‘Tell me,’ said the male, ‘should there not be two of these Cloisonne¥/ vases? The value diminishes considerably unless they are kept in pairs
.’
‘Certainly there were two,’ his sister answered him, both of them turning to Dorothy with the air of those who feel entitled to an explanation.
‘Oh –’ she said, badly flustered. ‘I don’t remember. Could one have got broken, do you think?’
‘Hardly – since they are made of metal. Someone could have dinted it, of course. Did someone do that?’
‘Does it matter?’ said Claire coldly, rudely. ‘And even if it did, I rather think my mother has more important things on her mind just now than Chinese vases.’
‘Indeed,’ snapped two pairs of thin Lyall lips, two pairs of small, black eyes, wintry with disapproval, looking Claire up and down.
‘Indeed,’ she said.
‘Oh dear,’ said Dorothy, flushing scarlet as the Lyalls proceeded outdoors to assess the condition of the garden. ‘I think you have offended them.’
‘I certainly hope so. They were talking to you like a housekeeper, mother, and not a particularly good one either. Why on earth do you put up with it?’
‘Oh – don’t make a fuss, Claire, please. They are Lyalls, after all – Edward’s family.’
‘And you were Edward’s wife. This is your house now and if they start bothering you again about vases or silver spoons or anything then just tell them to leave.’
‘Claire! I can’t do that.’ For a moment Dorothy looked terrified.
‘Mother –?’
And when there was no reply, ‘Mother – what is going on?’
‘Nothing. What should be? And what a vulgar expression. It’s just that – well, this is a family house. The Lyalls have always lived here – and –’
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