by Ursula Bloom
Wally came into the garden to see Mary; the same old garden, and the honeysuckle still sweet in it. She remembered with a faint anguish the way she had always felt about the honeysuckle. Wally seemed to have grown smaller and rounder; he was wearing rather a vulgar suit and showing too much watch-chain, also his hat did not suit him. She noticed these things in a mature and calculating way as in opposition to the swift, warm love of youth. Wally spoke with an accent; he was really quite a common little man. Either she had been too young to recognise it or the intervening years with different people had weaned her from him. Wally came across the lawn holding out a small fat hand.
‘Hello, Mary,’ he said. ‘This is a bad business. My word, marriage has improved you.’
She ignored the compliment. ‘Mamma is getting over it,’ she said, ‘and poor Mr. Jones is at last at peace. One ought not to fret for him; he hadn’t a very happy life.’
‘And the old lady-dog, she led him a proper dance.’ Wally sat down in the summer-house just as he had done years ago, but a different Wally, or a different Mary ‒ which? ‘Those shares turned out all right,’ he went on, ‘and I re-invested, and now I’m worth a tidy sum. I shall never want. Not me! I’m going to buy a little two-seater. I’ve been lucky in everything but love.’ He glanced at her with meaning. ‘You’re happy?’ he asked.
‘Very,’ she said. One could not let George down before Wally.
‘We ought to have waited. We could have made a match of it after all. We ought to have waited a bit. How does George treat you?’
‘Splendidly,’ she lied.
‘There was some talk about his leaving that Sussex place in a bit of a hurry; something about a girl. Of course I know what gas-bags some folks are, but I thought I’d ask you. You know, if George didn’t treat you fair and square, I’d want to butt in. One of the Miss Hendersons was staying down there and she said the scandal was shocking. I thought you’d like to tell an old friend.’
‘We left there because we got preferment.’
‘Oh!’ He was obviously disappointed. ‘And you’ve got a nipper, too?’
‘Yes ‒ Muriel.’
‘Well, my dear, you know I’m always here. If ever you feel you want a pal, I’ll be ready enough. I still feel that way about you.’
She said: ‘You’re very kind, but …’ and she tried not to smile. Security with Wally, or danger with George! And suppose she chose the security; it would mean sacrificing Muriel, it would mean a divorce and the steady decline downhill. For she would sink to Wally’s level, and it would be tragic.
They went indoors, and Wally and Johnny slapped each other’s backs, and called each other ‘old sport’ and ‘old top’, and alluded to Mamma as … but it was all rather sordid, and she hated to think that they could allude to Mamma like that. Johnny tried to ‘touch’ Wally for a bit, but Wally wasn’t being touched. He had a good memory for the other little loans which Johnny had never repaid. Afterwards, long into the sweet summery night, she and Johnny talked, while Mamma lay on the sofa and snored, waking every now and then with a violent start and saying: ‘Oh dear, if I could but sleep; I can’t get a wink.’
It seemed that Isabel was extravagant; they had five children now, since little Felicity had died. Johnny did not regret Felicity, his quiver was overfull, and he found life one long and tight pull for it. Isabel, he said, had a lover. The lover lodged with them, and, as they looked to his weekly rental to pay Johnny’s bill for stimulants, it was unthinkable that they could boot him out.
‘Not but what I ache to do it,’ said Johnny. ‘I could catch him such a beauty, and he’d bounce on every step, and with luck I’d catch him again at the gate.’
When Mary got to bed she cried, just softly so that no one should hear. She had grown away from all this; had it always been the same, or had something happened? Anyway, there was no help here. No help at all. And she cried in the poor helpless ‘little girl’ way, and finally she fell asleep. And she dreamt, but the dream was a blur: Mamma was snoring, and Mr. Jones rattling, and Wally, very round and middle-class, talking in his common way, while George picked innumerable pinks and kissed Mrs. Knight. Then the little hands came down for her again, reaching down into the shuddering waters of her engulfing despair; they were taking her tenderly, dragging her up triumphantly into the light.
It was day.
XI
Mr. Jones’s funeral was a dreary affair. Mamma hanging on to Johnny’s arm and wearing long weeds and much crape in faithful imitation of Queen Victoria. Mamma who had cried and screamed until her nose was like a petunia, and who had soundly rated poor Mr. Jones into his coffin. Johnny in a black suit paid for by Mamma, his face bloated and bulging, and thoroughly amazed by the fuss that Mamma was making. Mary behind them, and Wally, and Harriet and the cook, all snivelling, and a host of others. Mamma had not paid for Mary’s mourning; she had given her an old black gauze scarf of her own, that was all.
The cemetery was burned up in the fierce afternoon sunshine and the ground seemed to be chalk and dust, and soon into it Mr. Jones would be laid. Mary was ashamed that she should be wondering if poor Papa had met poor Mr. Jones (for of course he would be ‘poor’ now) in Paradise, and if they were congratulating themselves. They gathered round the open maw of the grave, the coffin was lowered. Mamma flung down a single white rose and burst into loud and agonised sobbing, turning to Johnny. As they walked away from the grave she clung closer, and Johnny let his arm give way. Mary was convinced that Johnny purposely allowed it to happen. Mamma very nearly fell down, but managed to save herself in time, and hurled a fury of vituperation at Johnny. All the way home in the hired cab she abused him. He had let her fall on purpose, he did not care a hang for his dear Mamma! Nobody cared for her, save poor Mr. Jones. Nobody understood her, save poor Mr. Jones, and now where was poor Mr. Jones?
‘Ah,’ said Johnny, untouched by all this, ‘that’s a moot point.’
‘You’re a wicked, cruel boy, tormenting me so. I’m sure you don’t care for me, never did care for me, and after all I have done for you, and planned for you, and schemed for you. I wonder you aren’t ashamed of yourself; you ought to be ashamed of yourself, only you’ve no shame in you. Oh, I have been unlucky in my children.’ Which was hard, considering that Mary had done nothing at all. They jogged home, and just before they got to the house Mamma burst into tears again, so that the neighbours should see her crying, and she gave them every opportunity to see. They had tea in the dining-room and Wally stayed. Mamma, still recalling Queen Victoria, had chosen an enormous photograph of poor Mr. Jones and had it placed near her.
‘You ought to have your portrait painted with it,’ said the heartless Johnny, ‘that and an aspidistra.’
‘H’sh, Johnny!’ ‒ from Mary. ‘Do leave your poor mother alone.’
But it was a wretched tea. Afterwards she looked up the trains in a Bradshaw and Wally tried to help, but all Bradshaws are puzzling, and Wally knew as little as she did. They propped the book up against the dining-room table and stood side by side looking at it, with the red cheeks of June roses pressed against the wide windows. Surreptitiously his hand met hers on the chenille cloth.
‘Mary,’ he said, ‘there’s something different about you. You make me feel, oh, I dunno, as if there was a gap between us.’
‘I’m sorry, Wally.’
‘You never did care for me, not much, I’m sure, and ‒ my word, I’ve cared for you.’
‘I am very fond of you, Wally.’
‘Yes, but you don’t love me.’
‘I’m married to George.’
‘George be damned! He always was a beast; there was that affair with Johnny’s wife.’
Until this moment she had forgotten that scandal! She steadied herself and said with a gasp: ‘What affair?’
‘Of course you pretended not to know, but it was right. Johnny knew. Isabel has always been a wrong ’un. George has always been a wrong ’un.’
‘Wally, you forget we’re marr
ied.’
‘I’m sorry, but it makes me sick. I don’t believe you’re happy.’
‘Well, I am happy,’ she said in defiance. She was George’s wife and she must stick up for him. She went to the door, clasping the great cold knob in a hand that trembled. ‘I’m going to ask Johnny about that; I want to get at the truth.’
‘Oh no, no, don’t be a fool!’ Wally entreated. But she opened the door, and through the gap she saw Johnny sprawling on the sofa in the opposite room, and Mamma standing over him.
‘How dare you!’ Mamma was shaking with fury. ‘How dare you! You’re incorrigible. The last bottle of your poor Papa’s very best! If you dare to say a word I’ll scream till I burst. I’ll scream till the police come in and arrest you for murder. I won’t have it. I’ve been a doormat too long. How dare you; I say, how dare you!’
And Johnny in his brave old style, just blinking up at her and replying: ‘Damn it all! Surely old Jones’s funeral is an occasion for poor Papa’s best port?’
Then Mamma screamed.
XII
Sitting in the fields with Muriel. Sitting in the long seeding grasses soon to fall to the grinning scythes. High-stemmed buttercups, deeply russet spires of sorrel, big white daisies. They sat in the shadow of the hedge, making chains of the big daisies, listening to the far-off purr of cars speeding along the main road, watching the swallows curve and dip. The cuckoo, deliriously sweet, the seeding ‘Tinker-Tailor’ grasses whereon one told a fortune; pussy-tail grasses with which one tickled; and now and then a soft wind flexing the hayfield, and forming undulating waves like the lazy swell of a great sea.
‘We are in a ship,’ said Mary, ‘and this is our sea …’
‘Lovely sea, lovely sea ‒ Murie loves the sea.’ She stood up with her short little frock sticking out round dimpled knees. She blew kisses to it. ‘Lovely sea ‒ lovely sea ‒ but Murie loves Mummy best.’
And she turned and locked her tiny hands, greened by grass, round Mary’s neck. Precious hours, darling hours; nothing else mattered but this. Nothing at all.
Or they were going to bed in the room which looked out towards the forge, with the trail of pink and saffron across the west where the sun was sinking, cresting the old grey barn with vermilion. Murie in her prim nightdress kneeling like a delicious little Puritan at her mother’s knee.
‘Mummy, is there a God?’’
‘Of course, darling, of course. What made you think there could not be?’
‘I thought perhaps He was a joke.’
‘Oh no, darling.’
‘What’s He like, Mummy, what’s He like?’
She had to admit that she did not know.
‘Has He whiskers, Mummy, or is He just plain?’’
She didn’t even know that. God, Who made us, on Whom our all depends, and we do not know if He has whiskers or is just plain.
‘He lives in Heaven really and truly?’
‘Really and truly, Muriel.’
‘You’ve been there?’
‘Oh no, darling.’
‘Then how do you know?’
Of course she didn’t know, not really.
Or they were in church, and Muriel fidgeting dreadfully with her books, and George looking over his stall across at their pew, and scowling. George hated people to fidget. He did not understand how little she was, and how the service did not interest her in the very least. Mary took a white toy bear to church in her umbrella. George would have been horrified had he known of the presence of the bear. It was hidden in the hassocks, which, piled together, made a nice little cage for it. It was only allowed out during the litany, when George, being disposed of in the body of the church, could not see it. Mary played with the bear too; there were all manner of entrancing games which one could play with it, and the best part of all was that George did not know. Then they left the bear for a whole week in his nice hassock cage, and the mice got at him and ate one of his ears off. They found it out during the litany the next Sunday.
‘Never mind,’ Mary whispered, seeing an under-lip which trembled ominously. ‘We’ll bring something else down here to play with.’
Muriel had a brain-wave. Grandma Carew had just sent her a new gift. ‘We’ll bring the new gramophone,’ she suggested cheerfully.
Mary wasn’t so sure about that.
But oh, the exquisite joy of these days! Nothing else mattered very much. The clinging of little arms, the warmth of little lips. Why worry about George, while these two had each other? George could never matter really. Muriel telling her mother’s fortune on the Tinker-Tailor grass, searching for birds’ eggs by the river, among meadow-sweet with its creamy froth and pink loosestrife. Muriel with her dolls, a mother-wise little person; Muriel with a drum, beating a tattoo.
Soldiers marching …
‘Look, Mummy, look! Listen to their feet, Mummy.’ Listening to their feet. Soldiers marching. Sailors marching. Which? She didn’t know.
PART IV: JASMINE
I
War broke out.
The three preceding years had been strenuous for Mary. Although George had apparently remained faithful, she had been haunted by the terror of a crash to come. She had decided that she must do something and lay aside a nest-egg for the catastrophe. For six months she wavered as to what she could do. Through a Church paper she attempted to sell the lace that she made, but the remuneration was a mere pittance and her eyes suffered. After a while her constant headaches warned her that this means was futile. She sent large baskets of flowers to the market in the town, but the largest basket only fetched a shilling or so, and the carriage left but a few pence profit. She was at her wits’ end. Nowadays girls were equipped with far more efficiency to face the world. Her education had been veneered by a certain Victorianism which had hall-marked it with a smug gentility which eradicated any knowledge that could be a financial asset. She gave up the idea of flowers and lace, and concentrated upon blouse-making. This was distinctly more profitable. She advertised under a box number, as a clergyman’s wife who recommended a certain young person, and was in point of fact both the clergyman’s wife and the certain young person. There was no need to tell George anything about it, and he did not suspect. She did not work too arduously, and her charges were of necessity cheaper than other people’s, therefore she defied competition. She reckoned that she could save at the most eight pounds a year; it was a very modest sum, but it would be something, and she felt convinced that ahead lay a menace, where money would be needed. And supposing that it were never needed, it would buy Muriel a trousseau, the loveliest in the world. For of course Muriel would marry. Mary hated to think that they must be parted, but it would happen. Muriel would make a brilliant match; she would be radiantly happy.
Mary coveted Muriel’s eternal happiness with a deep and hungry covetousness, for Muriel was all that mattered.
Then the war came, suddenly, with a sinister headline in the paper one morning, a grimmer one next, and on the third ‒ war. George, grown a little fatter and certainly flabbier, unfurled the paper over his breakfast table and said pompously:
‘I do believe there’s going to be a war.’
Muriel said: ‘A real war, or a funny one, like they have at Olympia?’
‘A real war,’ said George, ‘and I shall join up. I have always longed to serve my country. I ought to have been a soldier, never a clergyman. A soldier’s is a man’s job.’
That was what he had said about sailors long, long ago, on an afternoon when they had walked back from tea in the Jasmine.
Mary sighed heavily and said: ‘When shall you join up?’
But of course he did nothing of the kind. The war did not affect them very much, save that nobody wanted blouses any more, and therefore the magnificent sum of eleven pounds nine shillings and eightpence resting in the Post Office Savings Bank came to a standstill. ‘But the interest is accumulating,’ she told herself; though the interest on eleven pounds nine shillings and eightpence was not an inspiring amount. One b
y one the men in the village disappeared. There was no longer the echo of wheels as the Wests drove out of the prohibited area to another parish church. Mr. West had joined, and his wife had relaxed her weekly attempts at religious devotion. Only the older men remained, and the savings book stood still.
Mary, struggling to make the food go round, and to teach Muriel desultory lessons, found life a strain.
‘Muriel ought to have a proper governess,’ she told George one day. ‘I am terribly rusty.’
‘I haven’t the money. This is a poor living; everybody knows it is scandalous how badly parsons are paid. I can’t do the impossible; besides, the child’ll be all right, she’ll marry.’
‘It is our duty to educate her.’
‘Nobody educated me.’ George invariably harped on that point. ‘I just picked up all I learnt, and I think I did very well. I consider it was wonderful the way I got on and took my degree, though, of course, nobody ever thinks anything I do clever. Nobody helped me at all.’
But in the spring of nineteen-sixteen a governess had to be obtained. At Easter time Mary became aware that she was not herself. She was badly out of sorts, and an uneasy suspicion crossed her mind. The doctor verified it. When he had gone, she stood by the dining-room window, looking out upon the curve of the drive and the rockery opposite, with the Lent lilies nodding mildly. It seemed a little strange, with Muriel growing up, that there would be another. She did not want it. She hated herself for disliking the idea, but a second child was an additional fetter. George came in from the parish; he was tired with cycling, for he had been to the field barn, which was far away and difficult of access. He went to the fire to warm his hands, and said casually:
‘Well, has Simpkins been?’
