Coral Glynn

by Peter Cameron

  “Yes,” said the Major. “Good night.”

  Coral turned and passed from the library into the hallway. He followed her, but stopped when she began to climb the stairs. After a few steps she turned back towards him. “Good night,” she said.

  “Good night,” he said again.

  She continued up the stairs. She was aware of him watching her, she could feel his gaze warm upon her back, but she did not pause or turn.

  * * *

  What will I do? she thought as she lay in bed in her mean little room in the attic. Where can I go now? She had thought that this job would last for some time: Mrs Hart was dying but nowhere near death, or so she had thought. She had always managed to move from one job to the next without an interregnum. Would they expect her to leave tomorrow? She would be paid, she knew, for the entire month, but she did not think she could stay in the house that long, eating their food; surely the hateful Mrs Prence would make that impossible.

  She remembered her aunt, whom she had not seen for years. Forever, really, except for the strange gift of the gold necklace. Should she seek her out? It was her father, after all, who had hated her. Perhaps her aunt would welcome her. She knew a girl in London, from school, whom she had stayed with once a while ago for a few weeks between situations, but she had not really liked the girl and she knew that the girl did not like her: one evening as they sat together in the flat the girl had asked her to breathe more quietly. She had left the next day and been out of touch with her ever since, except for writing her a note, thanking her for the hospitality and apologizing for breathing loudly. It would be awkward, impossible, to go back there now.

  She would telephone the agency tomorrow. Perhaps there was another job waiting, someone who needed her and would welcome her. Someone who wasn’t terribly ill or dying. Someone convalescing from an operation or injury, perhaps, who only needed to be kept quietly in bed. Who had a warm house. How nice that would be!

  It was raining again; she could hear it thrumming on the roof. The ceiling sloped above her bed and she reached up in the dark and touched it. It felt cold, and damp. She lowered her hand and hid it beneath the bedclothes and then slipped it inside her nightgown, pressing it to her warm skin. It moved down her belly and slid into the crevice between her legs, and she kept it there, pushed hard against herself, as if it were containing something, or staunching a wound, until it was finally warm.

  * * *

  In the morning Coral went down to the kitchen and made her own breakfast. She exchanged neither words nor looks with Mrs Prence, who sat at the table and watched her as if she were a curiosity. Coral stood looking out the window, drinking her tea. The rain had stopped, but it was still overcast, and the wind continued. The bell rang and Mrs Prence glanced up at the board. She roused herself and sighed, then trudged wearily up the stairs. After a moment she returned. She sat back at the table, faced away from Coral, and said, “He wants a word with you. In the library.”

  Coral went to the sink and rinsed the cup and saucer, dried them, and returned them to the cabinet, then went upstairs. When she emerged into the front hall, Major Hart was standing there, apparently waiting for her.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  He said good morning and then: “I wonder if I could speak with you for a moment, in the library.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  She followed him into the library. He had repositioned the chairs so that they faced one another, not the fireplace. And moved them closer together, it appeared. The two little glasses that had held their brandy now stood empty on the table beside them. No—there was a little left in the one that had been hers. She sat in the chair and he appraised her for a moment before he sat in the other. The proximity and arrangement of the chairs was obviously meant to foster an intimacy; Coral tried to shift back a bit in her chair but could not. So she folded her hands in her lap and waited for him to speak. He had bowed his head so she could not see his face and for a moment she thought he had fallen asleep, but then he raised his face to her. He was a handsome man, she realised, as if she were seeing him for the first time. His face looked different this morning: he had done something different, although she could not tell what. It was as if his features, always a bit unfocused, had been fine-tuned to a more appealing clarity; his face was more emphatically his face, and she wondered if the death of his mother had liberated him in some essential way.

  “What will you do?” he asked her.

  It seemed a strange question to her, because she had no idea what she would do: she had nowhere to go, no one to help her, just the world spreading out around the house in a bleak, inhospitable way. And it was her question, too, the question she could not answer. “Well,” she said, “I’ll look for a new position.”

  “Ah,” he said, “of course.”

  “If I could stay for a few days, just while I arrange somewhere else to go—”

  “Of course, of course,” he said, almost brusquely. “It’s about that that I wanted to speak with you.”

  “Oh,” said.

  “Yes,” he said. He did not seem able to look at her; he studied the glasses on the table, at the golden sheen at the bottom of the one that had been hers. He spoke hurriedly: “I just wanted to let you know that if you wanted to stay here—perhaps stay on here indefinitely—that would be fine.”

  She was not at all sure what he meant. “To nurse you?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “Not that. I am able to care for myself now. No.”

  “Well, if it’s not to nurse you, what would I do?” And then she suddenly understood that he wanted her to work alongside Mrs Prence as a maid. And she thought, I will have to do it, at least for a time, as there is nothing else for me to do. And then she remembered the florist’s shop in the town, the nice young man, and she wondered if perhaps she could get work there, and then she wondered what had become of the flowers she had brought home with her—she had left them downstairs on the table last night, but they were gone this morning, which meant that Mrs Prence had taken them, destroyed them—and then she realised Major Hart was speaking to her and she had not been listening, so she said, “Excuse me?”

  “I said—perhaps it’s absurd, no doubt it is—but I wondered … I only wondered if perhaps you would like to stay on here,” he said. “As my wife,” he quickly added. He had bowed his head again but he glanced up at her and then quickly ducked his head once more.

  “Oh—” she said. “I’m sorry. I thought—”

  “I don’t mean to embarrass you. If it’s absurd, just please tell me so. I only thought that since we are both alone, it might … you might … well, forgive me if I’ve offended you.”

  “No,” she said. “No. Please don’t think that. You haven’t, not at all.”

  “I know I’m no good for anything,” he said. “With my leg, and my condition, I’m no good for anything, certainly no good as a husband.”

  “No—” she said.

  “I only thought that maybe—well, you don’t have to answer me now, of course. No need to answer me at all. I’m sorry to put you in this ridiculous position. It’s wrong of me, I know, but I thought you might leave. And so I steeled myself to speak with you before you made other plans, but of course if you’d prefer we can never mention it again.”

  “No,” she said. “I’m just—just surprised. I didn’t imagine…”

  “What?” he asked.

  “I didn’t think that you—that you thought of me, or had feelings…”

  “Of course I have feelings for you. Very warm and tender feelings. I thought I had made it quite clear last night, but that only shows how stupid I am about all of this.”

  “Yes,” said Coral. “I mean, thank you. But we hardly know one another. And it is nice to feel warm and tender towards someone, but is it … a basis for marriage?”

  He leant back in his chair and sighed, and covered his eyes with his hand for a moment, but quickly took it away. “Of course, you deserve more than that,”
he said. “You deserve … love. I suppose everyone does. Or perhaps not. But you do—”

  “And you!” She did not want to say the word—it seemed too preposterous—so she said, “You deserve it, too.”

  “No, I don’t. And I’m not asking for love, or even wanting it. I just want not to go all bitter and dead inside like my mother. And living here, alone, I know that I would. I can feel it already, something inside me, someone inside me, moving from room to room, shutting all the doors, shuttering the windows.”

  Coral was stunned by this poetic speech and could not respond.

  After a moment he said, “I know this all sounds rash, and thoughtless. But I assure you it isn’t. I mean, as far as I am concerned: I have thought about this. In some way, I realise now, ever since you arrived here, that night we first spoke in this room … but last night I thought hard about it, and it all became clear to me, what I had to do to save myself and perhaps—”

  “And perhaps me?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “I would not presume to think that. Or think it is in my power to do so. But I realised I could save myself, and I had to try, I must try, I must speak with you right away, before you made any plans. Before you went away. I know I shall have a better life with you than alone. I know that with all my heart, or what is left of it.”

  “But how?” she asked. “How do you know that? How can you know that when you don’t know me? Or is it just anyone you want to marry? Will any girl do?”

  “No,” he said. “You must think very little of me if you think that. Do you think that?”

  “I don’t know!” said Coral. “I don’t know what to say, I don’t really understand what’s happening.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I did not mean to upset you. It was selfish of me to ask you this question, because it could not help but upset you. Of course it upset you.”

  “No,” she said. “You mustn’t be sorry. I’m not upset, I’m just muddled, all muddled, and I don’t know what to think.”

  “Don’t think now. Don’t say anything more. I only ask you take a little time—or as much time as you want—to think about this later, and if it becomes unmuddled in some way, if what I am asking you, offering you—” He stopped and raised both his hands, indicating the room they sat in, and the house, the garden, the world outside of it. “Consider all of that. I know we don’t know one another well. But I know you are a good person. And so am I—I assure you that I am. I don’t mean that I’m good in any particular way, I don’t fool myself about that, but I am not deceitful. I am kind. I’m decent. I would never hurt—knowingly hurt—you, in any way. I can assure you of that.”

  “But what about me?” Coral asked. “I am less sure of myself.”

  “Of course you are good,” said Major Hart. “I have ears and eyes. I have watched you these last weeks, watched you tend my mother, watched you live alongside Mrs Prence. I have felt your calm and good—yes, good—presence throughout the house. You may not know it, but I do.”

  Coral did not reply.

  Major Hart reached out his hand and laid it gently atop hers, so that his palm covered the back of her hand, but he exerted no pressure on it. It felt to her as light as a glove. “Say nothing now. All I ask is that you think about it, consider it. Will you do that?”

  “Yes,” she said. She withdrew her hand from beneath his and stood. “I will give you my answer this evening.”

  * * *

  Coral went down to the kitchen, where her coat had been left the night before. It was still damp but she shook it and put it on, and her gloves, and tied the peony scarf about her head. Mrs Prence silently watched her, trying to discern from her actions what had transpired with Major Hart, but Coral gave nothing away. She went out the door without even looking at Mrs Prence, and walked down the sopping lawn, circumvented the pool at the bottom, which was swollen with the previous night’s rain, pushed open the stuck gate, and walked towards the river. She crossed the footbridge and followed the pathway into the wood.

  She tried not to think, because she did not know what to think. She hoped her answer might come to her in some way other than thinking, some surer, intuitive way, for she knew she could not decide whether or not to marry Major Hart by thinking. Major Hart! She realised she had told him she would answer him by evening because she knew she could not bear to wonder about it any longer than that.

  She passed the huge copse of holly and paused for a moment, listening to the same mysterious sawing sound she had heard before. And then she heard another sound, almost human, a high-pitched wail, a shriek. It was some trapped animal, she thought, writhing in pain, and then she heard it again, the unmistakable cry of agony.

  She moved aside some branches with her gloved hands and pushed herself into the thicket of bushes, and found a sort of path that led inwards. She had to bend over and hunker low to the ground to fit beneath some of the branches. The holly was thick and grabbed at her, scratching the sleeves of her coat. She heard the sound again, closer, and pushed forwards into a low-ceilinged clearing in the centre of the copse. She saw the little girl first: her hands raised above her head, the wrists tied tightly together and bound to a tree limb about a foot above her head. Her small feet just barely touched the ground, and she swung there in the queer gloom like a piece of meat hung to be dried.

  And then she heard breathing and moved further into the clearing and saw the boy, who was standing a short distance from the girl, his fists full of pinecones. Many cones were scattered about the hanging girl, and her cheeks were scraped pink and raw in places, and smeared with tears. In the moment it took her to comprehend—or observe, because she did not comprehend—the scene they were all three silent, warily regarding one another as if they had all just appeared there independently of one another.

  After a moment Coral said, “What are you doing? What are you doing to her?”

  The girl answered. “We’re playing, miss,” she said.

  “Playing?” Coral asked.

  “We’re only playing,” said the boy.

  “It’s a game, miss,” said the girl.

  “But he’s hurting you!” Coral said. “That isn’t playing. And you shouldn’t have your hands bound up like that—it will stop the circulation.”

  Apparently she spoke in a foreign language. “We’re playing, miss,” the girl said again.

  “Well, you mustn’t play like this,” said Coral. “Untie her,” she said to the boy, but he only stood and looked at her as if she would disappear as quickly and mysteriously as she had appeared. She turned back to the girl. “Do you want to play this game?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said the girl.

  “It’s Prisoner,” said the boy. “We take turns.”

  “I don’t think it is a good game for you to play,” said Coral. “Why don’t you play another game?”

  Neither of the children answered her. There was something polite about the way they regarded her, patiently, tolerating her interruption. “I don’t think it’s a good game at all,” she weakly amended.

  “We like it,” said the girl.

  “Well, you must be untied, in any case. Untie her hands,” she said to the boy.

  He looked at her.

  “You must untie her hands,” she said again, “and give me the rope.”

  “It’s my rope,” he said.

  “Well, then you must promise me you won’t tie her up again.”

  The boy continued to look at her blankly, as if he had not heard or understood her.

  “Fine, then,” Coral said. “I shall untie her myself.” She went near to the girl and tried to uncoil the rope that held her hands against the branch above her head, but it was tied very tight and she could not unloosen its knot.

  “It’s all right,” said the girl. “We’re only playing.”

  “You aren’t playing,” said Coral. “He’s hurting you. Look, you have welts round your wrists.”

  “They go away,” said the girl. “We make a mush with moss and
things. It takes the red away. It’s part of the game.”

  Coral could not think of what else to say or do. The children seemed curiously removed from her, as if they were a slightly different species. “Well, don’t play too long,” she said, in a tone that she tried to make final, convincing. Then she turned and moved back into the tunnel, crawled forwards a bit, and then stopped and listened. She heard nothing, only the chafing of the leaves.

  * * *

  When Coral returned to the house from her walk, the undertaker had arrived with his son, come for the body of Mrs Hart. Coral watched them carry the coffin down the stairs, out through the front door, and slide it carefully into the big black car. The radio was playing in the library, but the door was closed. She went upstairs to strip the bed in the sickroom, but first she opened the windows, which the old lady had never allowed: she had insisted on keeping the doors and windows shut, as if a sealed chamber could prevent death from entering, or life from leaving her.

  PART TWO

  Mrs Prence had accepted the news of Coral Glynn’s engagement to Major Hart with surprising, almost suspicious equanimity. They had told her the day after they had agreed to be married, and she had wished them both many happy years and disappeared down into her kitchen, but emerged a few hours later and asked if she could have a word with the Major, privately. Both the Major and Coral welcomed this interruption, for they had been sitting in the drawing room—a large cold room on the north side of the house where the furniture was arranged with the apparent goal of setting every piece as far apart from any other as was possible; where one had the sense that every object had been carefully placed decades ago and never again moved—attempting to converse with the light and cheerful tone of the newly affianced, but it did not come naturally to them, and they had been observing a strained and inexorably lengthening silence when Mrs Prence appeared with her request.

  So Major Hart was pleased to stand up and say, “Of course you may, Mary,” and led her into the library, leaving Coral sitting alone on the edge of her chair, perfectly still.