by Ursula Bloom
Mr. Lester had nursed a grudge against the well-born wife who had never missed the chance to annoy him by innuendoes as to his lack of gentlemanliness. He had hit back from the other side of Jordan, and he had hit hard. Everything of which he died possessed was left to his son; he made no mention of nor provision for his widow.
Aubrey swelled with indignation as he heard the solicitor fumbling through this preposterous will, but his mother stayed very calm; just for a moment a disturbed pink had flushed her cheek, then she pulled herself together, and sat erect as though the will had conveyed the news that she had expected to hear and she was satisfied with it. Finishing reading, the discomfited solicitor took a deep sip of sherry, glancing apprehensively at her. He loathed his duty today. He remembered all too well how he had argued with the deceased, and how the deceased had blustered, saying, ‘I could never get on with that bitch in life, and I’ve dam’ well got level now. Please God that weak-kneed son of mine never gives her a farthing.’
Maud knew that the eyes of the room were on her; she turned to Aubrey and smiled. ‘You’re a lucky young man,’ she said. ‘Few get a settled income at the beginning of their careers, and I think your father did the right thing.’
The guests took their cues from her, though they were agog with interest. When they had gone, the solicitor, last of all, lingered on the step trying to say something sympathetic, his brow moist, and his lips dry. He was a kindly man, and he felt that the will had been most unjust.
‘I did try to dissuade him, Mrs. Lester.’
‘I’m quite sure you did.’
‘I told him how unfair it was, and that I could not possibly support him in it, but nothing would change him. He was very obstinate.’
‘Surely,’ she suggested, ‘a man may make his own will? It was his money to do as he wished with, and I am completely satisfied that my son should be so fortunate.’
‘You’re ‒ you’re very brave,’ said the solicitor, who felt that he could have stood it better had she wept. Then the door shut, and mother and son were alone in the large drawing-room, which now looked astonishingly empty. She went over to the hearth, and stood there leaning against the mantelshelf, looking down into the fire. Aubrey did not know what to do.
‘So the house is yours, dear, everything is yours as he wished it to be, and I’m the unwanted lodger. Well, I shan’t stay here to worry you very long. I suppose the only thing for me to do is to take a post with a salary attached. If I’m worth that much to anybody; I can’t imagine that I shall be.’
‘Of course you’ll stay here, Mother. This is your home and you mustn’t think of leaving it.’
But apparently she wasn’t listening. For the first time there seemed to be something that was almost human about Maud Lester as she stood there staring at the flames. ‘I shall advertise for a post as a housekeeper, or perhaps I could be a governess. I have under a pound a week of my own, and of course I realize that lots of women have had to live on less, so I’m not complaining, but ‒ well ‒ after being used to more, it may be rather difficult at first. Your father thought it fair or he wouldn’t have done it, and I have to abide by his will.’
Although Aubrey had never cared for her and had always been a little ashamed that he should feel about her as he did, he felt terribly sorry for her, and the thought of her leaving her home distressed him beyond measure. He was a sympathetic creature. ‘But you can’t go away, Mother. You have a right here, and here you must stay.’
‘You don’t really want me, Aubrey?’ It was a direct question, and the cruel part was that he didn’t want her, and personally hoped that she would go away. He wanted her to go, so that he could be free from the restrictions that had always hindered him. But how could he say so? Not without wounding her intolerably in a way that would be particularly unfair to a woman of her age, just widowed. Sympathy wrestled with common sense, and won.
‘Of course I want you.’
‘Thornhill owes its being to me. I made it what it is,’ she said, looking proudly round the room. The crochet edges to the cloths, the well-chosen furniture, the ornate curtains, everything that bore her fingerprints. ‘Good sons have always run in our family,’ she said with some measure of gratitude. ‘You remember your cousin Gerald? He supported his mother, too.’ Aubrey felt that he would scream if this scene was dragged out any more. He said, ‘You’ll stay here as long as you wish; always, if you want it.’
‘But supposing you married, Aubrey?’ She was now determined to thrash the matter out to the bitter end.
‘The house is big enough for all of us,’ and he knew that he was giving her the very answers that she was putting into his mouth. Not obviously, there was never anything too obvious about Maud Lester, but so that he could not deny her.
‘If you really want me, dear boy, then of course it is decided. I don’t know where I should have gone, because life is hard on older women whose span is running out. Perhaps I shan’t be a burden to you for very long? I hope not.’
‘Don’t be silly, Mother, we’ll be darned happy. I suggest that you make the morning-room into your sitting-room; you’ve always liked that best, then I can have friends in when I want them and not worry you, and you can entertain your cronies there.’
At the back of his mind he was thinking of having Kay Benson in. She was gay and young, and she made him feel surprisingly strong. But he saw that his mother had taken it the wrong way.
‘Are you suggesting that I should take my meals in my own room?’
‘It would be more private for you.’
‘But why should I want privacy from my own son?’
‘I didn’t mean it that way, Mother.’
‘If we can’t go on exactly as we always have done, I shall be miserable at the very thought of staying on. It has got to be the same or not at all.’
‘Very well, Mother. Anything you like. Whatever you wish, but let’s take it as final.’
He couldn’t fight her.
Later, he promised himself, when she had recovered from the shock of that outrageous will, then he could pull himself together and lay down the law with her. Later on he could get it properly fixed, settle her in her own suite of rooms, and then live his own life his own way, but for the moment both of them were shocked by the will, and it wasn’t fair to argue with her. Tomorrow was a far better time to choose.
Yet in his heart he knew perfectly well that in such decisions there is no tomorrow.
Eight
In the first week of April, Alice bore her son.
It was that loveliest week of the year when the windflowers tremble in the woods, and the primroses are in blossom, whilst bluebells thicken on mossy stems. The first cuckoo had come to the village.
The child was born at noon, and from the moment that Alice looked into his small red face she knew that he would carry for ever the hallmark of his paternity. He was not shaped as a ploughman’s son, he had a finely moulded head and a look of the Lesters already about him, but neither she nor the old witch of a mother-in-law said anything.
Later that afternoon the old woman climbed the crooked stairs again, and this time brought a visitor.
‘It’s Mrs. Benson to see you, Allie,’ she said, bobbing to Kay, and offering her the one cane chair, with the frayed cane sticking out of it like broken straw.
Kay came in. ‘I’ve come to see how you are, Alice, even though you are not living in the parish now, but I thought you’d like to see me. I brought some chicken broth too, it’ll do you good.’
‘It’s kind of you ma’am.’
‘Not feeling too ill?’
‘Oh no, ma’am.’
‘And I may see your baby, mayn’t I?’
Alice pushed back the shawl and disclosed the small and very ancient face beside her. ‘Seven pounds, ma’am,’ she said shyly.
‘What a big boy, and like you!’ Even as she said it, Kay realized what a mistake it was, for the boy was strikingly like Aubrey; he even had the same hands. ‘What are you goin
g to call him?’
‘I don’t know.’
It would be a dreadful thing if this girl called the child Aubrey, and quite possible. That had been the fear which had spurred Kay on her mission with the chicken broth. She had felt it almost certain that Alice would think about calling him this, and instantly the whole village would rise and the scandal would run through the place. Brightly she began to chatter. ‘We must think of a really nice name. What sort of names do you like? John, Henry, Edward, or something more fancy?’
‘More fancy,’ said Alice, and instantly Kay’s heart fell.
‘What about your father’s name? That would please him.’
‘Yes, but it’s Caleb,’ said Alice, ‘and I’ve never liked that. I thought of calling him Aubrey.’
Never a flicker passed Kay’s face. She said, ‘I don’t think that would be very wise, Alice. It could only give rise to talk, and neither Mrs. Lester nor Mr. Aubrey would be very pleased about it. Call the next one Aubrey, but call this boy George for one name, and then choose something nice to call him by.’
‘Very well, ma’am, I’ll call him George, but then what’ll we have for the other?’ and then, ‘You’ve got a nice name.’
‘It’s short for Catharine.’
Alice said, ‘Isn’t Kay a boy’s name too? It’s pretty. I think I’d like that. I suppose you wouldn’t be a godmother, ma’am?’
‘If you call him after me, yes, of course,’ said Kay, only to thankful that a major catastrophe had been averted.
She knew, of course, that Edward was going to be very angry with her over this. All along he had warned her to keep out of it, and to treat the girl as a pariah; now it would be hard trying to explain to him that she intended to be a godmother.
She walked back to Fincham across the fields, taking the short cut through the woods, following the trodden path with last year’s dead sedges on either side, and the anemones under the spruces like fallen snowflakes. She could hear voices, for the children came here to gather primroses, and turning a corner she saw a young man and a girl sitting side by side on a fallen tree. He had hold of her hand. She knew at once that it was Aubrey with Frances Cousens, and was for the moment completely horrified.
Frances was such a dull girl; so cut to pattern. She could not believe that Aubrey would be foolish as to enlist himself into an affair with her. It must be loneliness that spurred him on; that awful mother of his, his shyness, and the wretched upbringing he had had which had set up the facade before himself. She would have gone back, but she trod on a dry stick, and instantly both of them looked round and saw her.
‘So you’re primrosing too, Mrs. Benson?’ said Frances.
‘No, I was district-visiting. I had to go over to Hayworth to see a sick girl and took the short cut back. This weather tires the feet.’ Hayworth? A sick girl? She saw Aubrey connecting the two, for recently he had been on edge about the episode. It seemed to have come closer.
‘Who was it?’ he asked.
‘George Herrick’s wife.’
‘Oh, that girl!’ said Frances quickly. ‘That was a wretched business, and so young too. I don’t know what’s coming to modern girls behaving the way they do.’
‘She is calling her little boy after me, I’m terribly flattered,’ said Kay.
‘Calling him after you? I should have thought that quite insulting,’ said Frances. ‘She oughtn’t to have had that baby at all.’
‘Only it is a baby, and can’t help it. He may want someone to keep an affectionate eye on him, and be glad of a godma,’ said Kay and then walked on. She didn’t like Frances. She liked even less to think that she was sitting in the springtime woods with Aubrey, and the annoying part was that Kay was probably jealous of her.
Edward had waited tea, and was in one of his moods, for he was punctilious and liked to have all his meals to time. He had spent a laborious afternoon writing out tomorrow’s sermon, and when he finished the job he liked to have his tea straight away. He was waiting beside the tea table, ostentatiously.
‘Oh Edward, I’m so sorry to be late. It was the weather, quite hot, and my feet started aching, and then I dragged back. I went over to see little Mrs. Herrick, her baby came this morning, you know, so I thought I’d pop along.’ She could not possibly explain that she had gone there with the idea of stopping Alice from christening the boy Aubrey.
‘But she isn’t in our parish now, and after all I don’t call her a desirable young woman. She was never very bright, one of those dull girls to whom that was bound to happen, I suppose.’
‘I know, but she has had a baby.’
‘I realize that, only the village condemns that sort of thing, and they are eager to talk and imagine that we are encouraging it. You know what they are.’
‘Yes, I know. Some bread and butter?’
‘Thank you. By the by, Mrs. Matthews at the Home Farm had a daughter after lunch. Her third child.’
‘Oh, did she?’ Kay did not care for Mrs. Matthews, who was one of the over-worthy women, always first at the church decorations, and the mothers’ meetings, and officious with it.
‘I think you ought to go there after tea, otherwise, supposing she discovers about Mrs. Herrick, she will be offended; in a small parish one can’t be careful enough.’
‘Oh Edward, I’m so tired.’
‘I daresay, but what will they say? You could go on your bicycle.’
‘Yes, I could.’
‘I very much wish you would, you know.’
‘All right, Edward.’
She drank down the tea, wondering why people ever thought that it was so refreshing. The depression that had settled upon her lasted. She wished that she had not seen Aubrey and Frances sitting there in that wood. It was a mistake. Undoubtedly his mother would think Frances the right girl for him, and she wasn’t the right girl. Kay hated to see him making mistakes. ‘Out of the midwood’s twilight,’ she thought, and got up, brushing the crumbs from her skirt.
Oh, how her feet ached! Yet before the evening was through she would have to visit the Matthews baby to keep Edward quiet.
To Aubrey the wood had grown chilly.
It had at first been pleasant sitting here talking to Frances, they had much in common, and more so since his father’s death, when his mother had become increasingly masterful. Now Mrs. Lester wanted her own way in everything. He knew, of course, that he ought to have crossed swords with her at the beginning, but having missed the moment because he was sorry for her, he could not re-capture it.
Before Kay had mentioned where she had been, he had sensed something in the air. A son. It was curious how much the knowledge stirred him, even though it was quite wrong, and no one would understand how he felt about it. There came to him the feeling of immortality which rises in a spring wood, born to die with autumn, yet is reborn the following April. So it stays immortal through the sequence of summers. His son would have sons of his own, and those sons would have other sons, so that Aubrey himself could not die entirely, whilst something of him went forward in their lives.
Of course he had been a fool over Alice. Now he could not imagine what had come over him. As he walked home with Frances, he went gauche again, his mind being so divided. They hesitated before the little stile that led to the rickyard, and she said, ‘Mrs. Benson worried you. Why did you let it happen?’
‘She didn’t worry me really.’
‘I thought she worried you a lot. I’m afraid, Aubrey, that villages never keep secrets awfully well. Perhaps I oughtn’t to say this, but I do understand. Perhaps more than most, because you and I have both lived in prison, and one of us at any rate escaped for a moment.’
There was a long pause. He did not know what to say, then he spoke again. ‘It’s been pretty awful.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘I don’t know how it happened. That sounds trite, you know, but it’s true. I just don’t know.’
‘I suppose these things just do happen and no one knows why.’
&n
bsp; ‘I don’t know what to do now.’
‘You can’t do anything. You have got to pretend that it never happened and go on day by day.’
‘That isn’t easy either.’
‘Of course it isn’t. Nothing that is brave is ever easy.’ She put out her hand and touched his lightly as it lay on the top of the stile. ‘You’re a dear, Aubrey. I’ve always cared for you. There, is that a very shocking confession to make?’
‘No, it’s a lovely one.’
He knew that he wanted to kiss her.
At this time Mr. Clement’s office in Mainwaring was presenting Aubrey with its own difficulties. He loved the work and had the deepest respect for Mr. Clements, a man with a naughty-ninety personality, but he was being irritated by the fellow clerks in the outer office. They were a set of gay young men who thought nothing of Aubrey.
The doctor’s son, who had failed badly for medicine at the first hurdle; Percy Biggins, who hadn’t two ideas to shuffle together in his head; they were both ne’er-do-well young men who had come here at their fathers’ instigation. Their fathers were exasperated with them, and sick of paying fees and getting them settled in life, only to find what unsettling young men they were.
In the outer office they discussed girls, more girls; beer, more beer; and pubs, more pubs! They thought that Aubrey was a ‘sawny’, for he had unfortunately been discovered one lunch-hour eating sandwiches with his feet up on a desk and reading Ben Jonson.
True happiness
Consists not in the multitude of friends,
But in the worth and choice
was the line he had actually reached, and found it surprisingly apt. In they burst and went into hoots of laughter. The idea of anyone reading Ben Jonson when he could read a Gertie Wentworth-James or an Elinor Glyn shattered them. Aubrey had lost prestige.
The result of all this was that he was turned into a butt for their elementary wit, and being Aubrey, he was helpless at parrying it. He didn’t know what to do with them.
