by Susan Hill
He put his head down on to the table and was still, too tired and despairing even to weep, now.
‘And you, Ruth? What will you do, for the rest of your life?’
‘I don’t think about the rest of my life now. I used to – I would be with Ben. Now I don’t know.’
‘Why don’t you go away?’
‘Where should I go to?’
‘How can you bear it, staying there in that house, going into those woods, remembering?’
‘Going away wouldn’t make me forget.’
‘The Bryces …’
‘I don’t see them. Except Jo. The Bryces are strangers.’
‘Everyone is a stranger.’
‘But you still have your wife. And another child.’
‘I want Isobel. The only thing I want, I don’t have.’
‘No.’
‘What will happen to me?’
She thought, what will happen to any of us? But she was still afraid of him, as she was of his distracted wife, she felt threatened by them, for her own world was still so frail, it was as much as she could do to cling to that and hold it together.
‘I should go home tomorrow.’
‘Yes. Of course.’
But seeing the expression on his face, she was more than ever ashamed.
‘Isn’t there someone else who could be here? To look after you – to help your wife. Is there no one at all?’
He passed a hand over his forehead.
‘My sister … or … I don’t know. Yes. Someone. I’ll think of someone.’
I ought to stay, she thought, I have no reason for running away, I ought to help them. Oh, but she could not, she could not.
‘Will you eat something now?’
‘No.’ He stood up. ‘No.’ And went out of the kitchen. She heard the door of his study close and the key turn in the lock.
Upstairs, Miriam Ratheman and the baby were both asleep still. Ruth drew the curtains and went out.
She left the house very early the following morning. She could go into the cottage and close the door, and then she would be alone, and responsible for no one but herself, she would be free to hold on to herself, and weep again for Ben, and remember.
‘And you, Ruth? What will you do for the rest of your life?’ Well, perhaps she would only do this.
Up on the common, the air was very cold, and smelled of the first frost; the world was slipping down towards winter, to bare branches and high winds beating down the bracken, and the late mornings and long nights of dark.
14
SHE STOOD AT the window, looking out to where the hawthorn and holly bushes were hung about with clots of berries, orange as fire, red as blood. She took a deep breath, held it within herself, let it go softly, she thought, I am myself. And saw someone passing the hedge, walking very slowly, a woman, her head, with her hair covered by a blue scarf, just visible over the tangled mesh of twigs. Who would be coming here? Ruth remembered the curate’s wife, and felt a rush of anxiety and guilt, realising clearly now that she had been very wrong, for the woman was ill, it was surely more than grief for her dead child which caused her to behave as she did, to talk wild nonsense and stare in terror ahead of her, to lie sleeping in exhaustion for hour after hour, and dread the sound of her own baby’s crying. And she had been asking, as well as she could, for some sort of help from Ruth, a way out of the trap, she wanted someone to come and heal her storming mind and sick body, and Ruth had done nothing, Ratheman did nothing, he was withdrawn into his own grief, and helplessness, preoccupied with his own doubts. What would they do now, alone together in that house, husband and wife and yet as far apart as people in different worlds? Who was there to go to them and take up the baby, bathe and talk to it, make it laugh?
She said, it is not my fault, their troubles are not mine. I did what I could. She closed her eyes.
And, opening them, she saw the young woman coming down the front path, her face swollen and pale as a mistletoe berry, and one hand held up in an odd, defensive position over her breast. But it was not Ratheman’s wife, it was Alice Bryce. Alice, who had always frightened Ruth, and repelled her, who had been scornful and distant, unsmiling. Well, she did not smile now. But she was changed, there was a vacant expression on her face, as though she had just suffered a shock, or some accident. She did not see Ruth watching her from the window. And it was a long time before she knocked, not loudly, upon the door.
Alice Bryce. Why had she come here, to break open the bubble of solitude and quietness Ruth had just settled into, to bring the smell of the past and old quarrels and resentments, to remind her that Ben had belonged to others, long before she herself had known him? She had nothing to say to Alice. So perhaps she would simply not go to the door, she would run upstairs and wait until the girl went away. Apart from Jo, the family had made no attempt to see her, nor did she want them, as far as they were concerned, she was as dead to them as Ben was dead, they need not concern themselves with one another. ‘Strangers,’ she had said to Ratheman.
The knocking had ceased, but Alice did not go away. Well, the day had been soured now. She would open the door.
Ben’s sister was sitting on the step, with her back to Ruth. A wind had risen, and blew in gusts over the common, shifting the tops of the trees and tossing down dead leaves. Alice turned her head. Did not get up.
She said, ‘There wasn’t anything else I could do. I was going to wait until you came back. Do you think I wanted to come here, if there’d been anywhere else?’
She looked ill, but there was all the old hostility in what she said and in the tone of her voice, the way she held herself. Yet Ruth thought that, now, she was using it as a defence.
‘I’ve been at the curate’s house. Their daughter died.’
‘Jo said.’
‘Someone had to help them.’
‘Someone usually does. In the end.’
Alice stood up and faced Ruth, looked into her face for a long time, without speaking again, so that Ruth felt as she had always done with her, and with Dora Bryce, too, uneasy and inferior, but also angry, determined not to let them break her down. They did not like her, they did not try to hide it. She wondered if one kind word had ever passed between any of them.
But something else had changed. Alice, who had been her mother’s hope and pride, the one who was allowed to sit about, who was waiting for the chance Dora Bryce had never had, Alice, on whom so much time and praise and money, though never love, had been lavished, Alice was not only tired or ill, she was untidy, and even dirty, her hair, under the cotton scarf, was dull, and the collar of her dress creased. Down her left cheek were faint, strawberry-coloured smears, as though she had been scratched or struck. So she was vulnerable, then, after all, she was not exceptional, or very beautiful or rare.
They went on looking at one another, and the wind blew, banging the gate hard. Ruth stepped back and opened the door wider, for her sister-in-law to come in.
*
The voices sought him and found him out, he could not escape from them, even though he was shut away here in his own room at the top of the house, they rang through the walls and floorboards, the shouting and the anger were more than he could bear; his mother’s voice was shrill and repetitive, as the mynah bird he had once heard, as it sat on a man’s shoulder at Thefton market. Then she wailed, as she had done through all those days and nights after Ben’s death, and Alice would interrupt her, the short, scornful words chopping down like knives; and below it all, the dull, patient rumble of his father, trying to keep the peace between them. Though Jo could not remember when there had ever been any real peace in this house. There was only, sometimes, an uneasy quiet which lay about the rooms, like a sea waiting to rise up again into storm.
He lay on his bed, listening, and the voices were like instruments in some terrible orchestra, all at odds with one another, all clashing. When Ben was here, it had been better, Ben had been able to quieten them, not so much by what he said, but just by his presence
among them, because he himself was quiet.
Jo forced his fingers hard into his ears, until the narrow, bony tunnels were sore, he tried to read his book again, one of the diaries he had found in his great-grandfather’s trunk, tried to make pictures and hear sounds in his own head which would drown everything else.
‘September 9 We have had calm now for the past seven days, as though this were our reward, after the rigours and afflictions we endured in the terrible gales of last month. The crew have borne up well and I thank God we have water enough, and no more cases of the dysentery, which took such a toll of the men.
September 11 We are at anchor in the small creek at the far westerly point of this group of islands, and have before us a sight of the most amazing and refreshing beauty. A rich green of vegetation, fresh and more vivid than anything to be seen even in the most verdant counties of England. The water is clear and glows in the colours of jade, or aquamarine, in accordance with the changes of light. Today we venture ashore. I am reassured by the memory of a conversation I had with Captain Colefax at Portsmouth, who said we might expect a good welcome here, and no hostility, although a very considerable interest and curiosity in our appearance and doings.
September 25 Hallard, the second mate, died during the early hours of this morning, of an abdominal perforation, accompanied by high fever, for which there could be found no relief or remedy. He lay unconscious for some six hours, but at the last was able to hear some comfortable words read to him from the Prayer Book and the New Testament, and died a good death. He was buried at sea, and saluted by the whole ship’s company, and there was much sadness, for he was a favourite with many, and I feel his death as a personal loss to me.
We shall approach the Java straits this day week. God give us a continuance of this fair weather.’
He had read through the first book, and was almost at the end of this, and there were more volumes, bound in bottle-green leather and fastened with clasps; he would read of storms and tropical forests and curious buildings, of birds trailing plumage the colour of jewels and bright enamels, of shoals of porpoise following in the wake of the ship and the night sky crammed with stars, he would read every night, as long as his eyes would stay open, and then lie awake, until the pictures in his head dissolved into dreams, he would travel a thousand miles in minutes and never tire, and listen to the sounds of the sea, of eerie winds and strange voices.
And wake in the morning, uncertain of where he was, and all through the days, there would be hopes singing in him, and fears and uncertainty, too, the sense of guilt and secret betrayal. For he did not know, there was no one, no one who could tell him what he might do, whether he was right to wish himself away, on a ship at sea, whether he would even be truly happy. He did not know. He opened the diaries and read, and closed them, and went out, to walk across the ploughed autumn fields, up on to the ridge. And still, downstairs, in this house, the voices, the anger and the cruel desperate words, the crying. He did not understand any of it, or why there could not be quietness and peace.
Ruth, he thought, and at once felt better. Ruth would know, perhaps she was home again, and if he could be with her, in the cottage, none of it would be important any longer, the voices would not pursue him there.
He sat up suddenly and looked out of the window, he said, if I could live there with Ruth, I should not want to go away, to be in any other country, or even in another house. Well then, why should he not go to her? Who would care? But he was doubtful about how he could bring himself to ask her, and whether she would want him, for he might remind her too much of Ben; and he knew, in truth, that she liked best to be alone. He could get only so close to her, and no nearer.
He lay down again, and in the end slept, and the echo of their voices rose up and fought with one another, so that his dreams were full of tears and disquiet. He was not awake to hear, at last, that the house had settled back for the night into a tense, mutinous silence.
15
“WHERE ELSE COULD I go? ‘What could I do?’
But it was not a challenge now, Alice did not speak in defiance and pride; it was a cry for help. There had been so many, during the past weeks, she heard the echo of all their voices, their desperate questions, including her own.
‘What could I do?’
Alice leaned her head back against the chair, but her body was still tense, she was afraid.
They had been sitting there for hours like this, talking, or in silence, looking at one another, looking away again. Ruth had not known what to say, not because she was shocked, or even still angry that Alice had come here with her troubles. She had only tried to be gentle, and not to pry, to listen, because she knew none of the answers.
But now, she did ask the one question.
‘Why should you not marry him?’
‘Marry?’
‘Rob Foley. It is his child. He ought to marry you. It’s only right.’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
Alice had scarcely done more than mention the name of the farrier, almost as though it was not relevant, or important to her.
Ruth did not know how long she had been seeing him, what was between them.
‘He won’t marry me. Not that it matters. Why should it?’
‘But if you care for him – if he cares for you, and the baby.’
‘He doesn’t.’
‘He said that?’
‘He said, “What’s it to me, girl? Others have come here with the same tale. Likely as not, others will come.” I knew. I hadn’t expected anything more.’
‘But that is wicked.’
‘No. The truth. At least he tells the truth. He never said he cared for me. He didn’t pretend.’
‘He made love to you.’
‘Oh, Ruth! You don’t know anything, do you?’
‘Perhaps not. I know what’s right, between two people.’
‘You had Ben.’
‘Yes.’
‘No one else. Ever?’
‘He was the only person I ever wanted.’
‘Do you think I don’t know that? And that it was the same for him?’
Her voice rose, it was full of envy again, and the old dislike.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Why should you be? Ben is dead. You know about that. I know about other things.’
‘But what about you? Do you love him?’
Alice was silent for a while, running her forefinger along the edge of the chair. Ruth had lit a fire, the first of the winter, she had carried in the ash logs which Ben had felled and brought home, the week before he died, she had laid them carefully in the grate, the way he had taught her. But setting light to them had startled and pained her, she had felt some kind of guilt, as the first blue flames had begun to lick and coil like snakes’ tongues around the logs. For she was burning and destroying one more piece of the past, the old life. And it would vanish into smoke and never come again.
But they sat beside the grate, and the fire warmed them both, and gave them something to look at, when they could not talk, and the smell of the woodsmoke was full of memories.
Alice said, ‘I think that I have never loved anyone in my life. Except Ben. Except my brother.’
Ruth felt a shock go through her. But after it, a curious sense of warmth, of understanding and relief. This was why Alice had never liked her, then, had resented her, tried to put her down. This. Love for Ben. And Ruth had taken him away.
But love for Ben was a bond between them, too, the first there had ever been. And he had had to die before it could reveal itself and be accepted by them.
Now, Alice was expecting a child, by a man she cared nothing for; why had she ever gone with him at all? If there had been no love or even liking, what else could there have been?
‘Don’t you know what it’s like, living in that house? Can’t you imagine? How I have hated it, hated them for years. There was only ever Ben to make it feel like a home, a place you could be happy in. Be yourself. Then he was dead and
there was nothing. Only my mother, wailing and weeping, and my father – and what use is he to anyone?’
‘Jo…’
‘Jo? He’s a child.’
No, Ruth thought, oh no, for Jo understood more than any of them. But she did not say it.
‘And all these years, I’ve had to sit and listen to her. What she was planning for me, what I was going to be, the chances I was going to have. She’s never wanted me to live my life, she wanted me to live hers for her, be the person she chose. She’s never known what I am really like. Or any of us. She only cares about herself. She calls me “Proud”. Well, what about her? What is running through her all the time but pride? I had to do something, get out, go somewhere. Did it matter where? So long as I was showing her I could find a way of my own.’
‘Yes.’
For Ruth saw well enough how things had been, why Alice had gone off, out of frustration and spite, to Rob Foley the farrier, though she did not care twopence for him. He was everything Dora Bryce despised, a man she would not think good enough to give so much as a good-day to any daughter of hers.
So Alice was having a child, and she had been told never to go back to that house in Foss Lane; she might do what she pleased, have her baby or lose it, make her own way as best she might, find friends, a home or a husband, or not. Dora Bryce did not care.
‘She went on shouting and screaming. “Get out of here, get out.” She wouldn’t listen to what he said – he’d have let me stay. He wants a quiet life. “Anything for a quiet life.” He’s not ashamed of me. But she said, “Get out of this house.” And I was glad enough to go, it’s not a place I care to stay in for the rest of my life, is it?’
