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by Henry Green

  “Can’t rush things. I’ll have to look about me,” Charley promised, intending to do no such thing.

  “I can set my mind at rest on that, then,” Mrs Grant announced. “But I won’t breathe a word if you’d rather I didn’t.”

  “And how have you been keeping, mother?”

  “There, that’s like the old days once more, your calling me mother again,” she said. “Dear, dear, it does bring it all back. You two children sitting in here as bold as brass, just like you were grown up, seeming to dare father and me to come in and disturb you. Many’s the laugh he and I had over it, bless him. But Rose was so wilful, wasn’t she? Of course, it’s true she was an only child. No one could say a thing to her, could they?”

  He no longer wanted to hear about Rose. To change the subject he tried to bring things back to health.

  “You’re looking very fit,” he said.

  She misunderstood his drift.

  “You don’t like talking about her, do you?” she gently asked. “Yes, it does come hard at first. You know for a long time after that happened I couldn’t bear it, I had to put the whole thing behind me or lose my reason. Then the doctors gave father some wrong counsel, and he used to keep on to make me remember. Oh, things weren’t easy for me, I’m sure.”

  “I came down, d’you recollect?” he said, to get her off Rose.

  “I don’t know whether I do or I don’t,” she replied, and he was horrified to find a sudden look of sly cunning begin to spread over her placid face.

  “When’s the cat expecting her kittens?” he hastily enquired, proud that he’d thought of it.

  She would not meet his eyes. She began looking sideways. Then he was shocked to see that she was covering her mouth with a hand.

  “Asking me a lot of questions,” she mumbled.

  At that moment Nance came back. She took all this in, at a glance. “He only wanted his bed made more comfortable,” she announced, in a cheerful tone of voice. “Now he’s dozed off into such a nice sleep. And mother, I really do believe you should lie down for a moment, if you’re to sit up with him later.”

  “Yes dear,” the older woman agreed. She went out on Nancy’s arm, without saying goodbye to Charley.

  “Don’t you go,” Nancy said over her shoulder, in what he took to be a menacing voice, “I’ll have something to say to you, later.”

  He sat on, feeling guilty.

  When she came back she asked, “Now what have you been saying to her?” but, from the tone she used, she did not seem to be put out. Indeed she appeared to take everything about this house in her stride, and, at the same time, to pump life into it.

  “Me? Nothing,” he said.

  “You’ve been on about your Rose, I’ll be bound,” she told him, and seemed disinterested. “That’s always liable to bring back one of mother’s turns. And Rose can still do the same with you, you know she can.”

  “She can’t,” he protested.

  “Tell that to the Japs,” she replied.

  “Which is an Arthur Middlewitch expression,” he said, with resentment.

  “And why not?” she asked.

  “Only that Mrs Grant says, now, you want to find him a job.”

  “Don’t let’s argue,” she answered, still quite calm and friendly. “Art’s all right. He’s no more than another lame dog the wrong side of a stile. No, I wasn’t questioning your turning the conversation onto the daughter. It was people’s hearts I blamed, which lead them to do hurt to themselves. I know. I’ve had some.”

  “You mean your husband?” he brought out, daring, and as though he had made a wicked discovery. There was a pause. He was careful not to look at her.

  “Well, what did your Rose mean to you?” she began, rather wild. “Was she a part of you? Did you wake with her in the morning? Did you know what was in her mind when she was a thousand miles overseas. Oh Phil,” she said, and could not go on.

  He felt an absolute criminal.

  “Now what’s this?” he weakly protested.

  “I’m sorry,” she replied, pulling herself together. “It wasn’t your fault. I started it,” she said. “Tell you what, let’s get out of here for a few minutes. Everyone’s been on edge in this house, lately.”

  “What about your work?”

  “I’m off on Saturday nights, didn’t you know?”

  “But can she manage? I mean, will it be all right?”

  “Yes, you needn’t fuss,” she said. “The moment mother hears that bell he has, she’s round his bed, day or night. There’s not much she lets me do, really. It’s everything for her, his being like he is.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Oh well, if you don’t want to come. I was only thinking I couldn’t stand this another moment, if I didn’t get a breath of air.”

  “If you say it’s O.K.,” he said. It seemed heartless that Mrs Grant should be left alone with the sick man, just when she had been taken up to rest. But he humbly realized he knew very little. And this is just what she proceeded to tell him.

  “Don’t look at me with that expression on your face,” she said, very friendly. “You can’t understand about her, never will I expect. Now, don’t go and forget we’re off for a stroll in less than five minutes. It would be like you,” she called back to him, as she went to put on her shoes.

  “Where shall we go?” she asked, when they got outside.

  “Wherever you like,” he offered.

  “I don’t know this part,” she pointed out. “Lord, aren’t there any Lovers’ Lanes round here, or anything?”

  He laughed. “I wouldn’t know,” he said.

  “Oh yes you would, dear. Take me where you used to take her, then.”

  He laughed again. “You’d have to dye your hair,” he said.

  She wasn’t going to have that.

  “Here, who d’you take me for?” she demanded. “It’s disgusting, that is.”

  “I’m sure I didn’t.…”

  “Oh yes you did, or you wouldn’t have said. Now where? Left or right?”

  “This way,” he answered, and she put her arm through his as they set off.

  “You aren’t leading me to one of those kid’s places, six trees and a bit of railing, where they lie up of an evening?”

  He risked a lot. “Wait and see,” he told her. It was all right, because she laughed.

  Rain had been pouring down all summer, with the result that this October was the hottest in years. It was a red sunset for them, but, even so, too cold to sit out. There was no wind, everything was quite still. They walked at a smart pace, in silence, and in five minutes were leaving the cheaper estate, on which Mr Grant had bought his own residence, for a road which ran through wide gardens with expensive houses, one or two of which were blitzed.

  Autumn was the season, most roses were dead. Petals that had dropped some months back and rotted, traces of a summer now gone, were covered by the brown leaves which even in this still air rocked down to lie deep on the ground as they walked, so that their feet rustled. Where a flying bomb had dropped recently, the drift of leaves was still green underfoot, the trees bare as deep winter. Then, just as they were passing this spot, the syrens set up a broken wailing.

  “Come on,” he said, turning off the road into the garden of a house in ruins.

  “Why, surely you never took her here?” she asked, for the place could only have been blitzed a few days.

  He laughed.

  “Or are you nervous?” she wanted to know.

  “Not of them,” he answered.

  “Why not?” she demanded, as they skirted what was still standing, against the untouched chimney a lone staircase which descended from nothing to the leaf-covered drive, the steps blotched with a dust of plaster, and all of it turned a great red by the setting sun, her face as red as his own. “Why not?” she repeated.

  “Don’t know,” he answered, hurrying her along.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, and seemed content. He knew no more tha
n she. But when they got round the red garage, which was intact, and a privet hedge, which, in this light, and because it was shaded, burned a dark glowing violet, they found what had been the rose garden, enclosed with a low brick wall, and then they had before them, the outlines edged in red, stunted, seemingly withered, rose trees which had survived the blast as though it had never happened, and, for a screen at the back, a single line of dwarf cypresses, five feet high with brown trailing leafless briars looped from one to the other, from one black green foliage to its twin as green and black, briars that had borne gay rose, after rose, after wild rose, to sway under summer rain, to spatter the held drops, to touch a forehead, perhaps to wet the brown eyes of someone idly searching these cypresses for an abandoned nest whence fledglings, for they go before the coming of a rose, had long been gone, long ago now had flown.

  Both instinctively looked back to find whether they were being followed, but all they saw was the red mound of light rubble, with the staircase and chimney lit a rosier red, and, as they turned again to themselves in the garden, the briars wreathed from one black cypress to another were aflame, as alive as live filaments in an electric light bulb, against this night’s quick agony of the sun.

  Then, before he knew what she was about, she had put her arms round his neck, and kissed him.

  “There,” she said into an ear. “That’s for coming down.”

  But he put his hands behind her head, pressed her kissing mouth harder on his own. The night, on its way fast, was chill, and now he had again that undreamed of sharp warmth moving and living on his own, her breath an attar of roses on his deep sun-red cheek, her hair an animal over his eyes and alive, for he could see each rose glowing separate strand, then her dark body thrusting heavy at him, and her blood dark eel fingers that fumbled at his neck.

  She cruelly spoiled it. She took her sweet lips off his.

  “Was it like that?” she asked, as though nothing had happened.

  He made to grab her up to him once more. But she twisted away.

  “Was it?” she repeated. He did not realize that she was aiming at Rose.

  Then, in the position she held, half in, half out of his arms, and so close that the one eye in his line of vision was in the outer corner of its socket to watch him, he saw it catch the dying sunset light around, and glow, as if she had opened the eye hole to a furnace.

  He made another clutch at her, but she broke away completely. He was left, so that his arms hung at his sides, and he could not speak, paralysed, for an instant, as Mr Grant.

  “I’m sorry, dear,” she said, annoyed with herself. He did not move, or speak.

  “It’s too cold to sit. We’d best go back,” she said.

  So they walked home in silence. In the dark she took his arm once more, pressed close. But he said and did nothing at all. He couldn’t even feel.

  When they got home in the dark, Nance found she had left her key behind. They were obliged to ring the bell. They heard pattering footsteps. Then Mrs Grant flung the door open.

  “Oh so it’s you,” she said, in an accusing voice. A lock of grey hair lay unexpectedly over her forehead. “He’s had a bad turn,” she went on, almost wailing suddenly, “he’s ever so ill, my darling is, come quick,” this to Nancy, for she chose to ignore Charles. “Where could you have got to? I don’t know how you could.”

  As the two women hurried upstairs, Miss Whitmore called out to Summers, “Wait there. Don’t go,” she said.

  He was still absolutely dazed by the scene he had had with this girl, and it was not until Charley got into the living room, and was faced by a chair overturned, that he knew there was disaster in the wind, because the whole house had always been completely neat.

  So that, on top of everything else, he began to dread what was due.

  Then just as he was putting the chair to rights, a car drove up.

  It was the doctor.

  As Charley opened the door the doctor said, “What’s this?”

  “Don’t know quite,” he replied, ashamed.

  “How’s that?” the man asked, obviously despising him, as, in his turn, he hurriedly climbed out of sight into an upstairs deathly silence. Charley re-entered the living room, sat down, put his hands on his face.

  The worst part was he could hear nothing, nothing at all. The eyelids burned over his eyes, and were as red as that sunset. Now that he could begin to think, he wondered if this whole affair wasn’t another Dot Pitter. Then he saw he was useless on account of his being so slow. That time, in the office, when he put his face against hers because she was crying, had led to his call on Nance, which had caused him to take Dot down to Jim Phillips, which, in its turn, had pushed him on here to Nance. “Oh Rose, Rose,” he cried out in himself, not noticing that he did this without having real regret, “Oh, why did you?” He began to cry, in his self pity seeing himself again with his hands, like a monkey’s, hung up on the barbed wire which had confined him within the camp.

  He felt a touch on his shoulder. It was Nance. She’d come back so quietly he hadn’t heard. He sprang away, went to stand by the blackout.

  “You shouldn’t distress yourself,” she gently said. “It’s all my fault.”

  His mind came back to her kissing him. He thought she was referring to this. He said not a word.

  “It was me decided we should go off out,” she went on, thus disclosing that she missed the point. “You warned me, and I didn’t listen,” she added.

  She could not think how she was to tell him what Mrs Grant wanted. Because, while the doctor was starting his examination, the old lady had requested her to get Charley to stay over, to have a man in the house. And, after the manner he took her innocent kiss, Nance feared that Charley might accept this invitation as being from herself, for a certain purpose. Then she thought she saw this was the one way she could make him spend the night.

  “I want to ask you something,” she said, shyly, a bit of a martyr. He did not reply, or turn round.

  “Don’t go back to London this night,” she asked, in a wheedling sort of voice. “You’ll hardly catch the last train now,” she explained. “You lie up on the sofa in this room. Maybe it won’t be too bad,” she said, to go as far as she dared.

  She saw his back stiffen, as she imagined in refusal.

  “Be a sport, Charley dear,” she pleaded. “You don’t have to be at work tomorrow.”

  He thought this must be it. He could not believe she’d ask this if she didn’t mean to visit him later.

  “Oh all right,” he answered, and blew his nose.

  “Why, that’s sweet of you,” she said, with a great feeling she was laying up trouble for herself, and how the one point was, that it would be in a good cause. “I’ve got to go back to them,” she excused herself. “And when we’re a bit quieter, I’ll see if I can’t knock you together a bite of supper. Now don’t forget, you’re to stay on, you know. Don’t you go wandering.”

  When he turned about to thank Nance, to discover he did not dare hope what in the expression on her face, he found she was gone. So he sat down again. He could not tell quite what to make of it. But he knew what he wished.

  Then he found the cat at his feet. It glared so directly into his eyes that he had to look away. The moment he did this, it jumped on his lap, lay heavy, and began to purr carrying its cargo of kittens. He stroked the animal, much, if only he had known, as the girl had kissed him an hour or so ago, though without the jealousy she had felt.

  He noticed his fingers were brushing hairs off the cat’s back, and raised the hand to sniff his nails. Then he wanted a good wash, but didn’t like to move because of the creature on his knees. Oh, he felt, she could never have kissed me if it wasn’t to lead somewhere, human beings don’t play games like that with one another, Dot hadn’t been up to anything even, it was only he’d been too slow, as Nancy said. Then what had he rushed away for, just now, he asked himself, when she twisted out of his arms? And, because she’d asked him to stay over, he had no idea at a
ll, he could not imagine.

  But what a night to choose. Wasn’t it just like his luck the old man should have another bad turn, exactly when his own affairs promised better? Then, with surprising intuition, he supposed that one crisis in this life inevitably brings on another, that she wouldn’t have kissed him if Mr Grant had not been having a relapse (even if they neither of them knew), nor, and here he fell unwittingly on the truth, would she have asked him if it hadn’t been for the now doubly serious illness. All the same, so to speak in spite of himself, he began to have hopes.

  Yet, even if she wanted, he felt, there was nothing she could do about it. Mrs Grant would come and go all the time, they’d never be able to avoid the old lady. But then Nance would not have invited him without she had some plan. And she’d find a way. Trust a woman, he concluded, as he heard the doctor come downstairs.

  “Very sad,” the doctor announced.

  “It is,” Charley agreed, at which he recollected himself.

  “You don’t mean he’s …” he asked, and could not finish. After his war experiences he had a sort of holy regard for death in bed, whereas dying out of doors meant damn all to him.

  “It may be any time,” the doctor said. “Tell me, you aren’t a relative?”

  “I’m not,” Charley replied. He could not think what was coming.

  “You’re staying here, though?”

  “You bet I am.”

  “See they get all the rest possible, both of them, will you? Good night,” the doctor ended.

  Good night? Rest? Charley felt, that rather put the lid on it. Then he remembered the old man was passing on between his sheets, and felt ashamed.

  He decided he must absolutely do something. So he went into the kitchen, found some dirty dishes, and got on with those.

  Upstairs, in the sickroom, where Mr Grant lay still as an alligator, and Mrs Grant waited on a chair, up by his pillow, to hear him breathe, Nancy whispered,

  “He’s to stay mother. I’ll make a nice bed for him, on the sofa.” When Mrs Grant did not reply, Nance got out a pair of blankets which, if she had only known, were those used by Rose before marriage, and went down to the living room.