by Jem Poster
‘Forgive me. I should have given you time to settle in, but I couldn’t rest until I’d spoken with you about Jefford. I’ll leave you in peace now.’
I must have dozed off within minutes of his departure; certainly I was soundly asleep when Mrs Haskell knocked and entered. I started forward and stared into the gathering dusk, panicky and bewildered, momentarily unable to recognize her or to remember where I was.
‘It’s only me, Mr Stannard. I’m sorry to disturb you, but I thought this might be urgent.’
She held out a small, creased envelope. No postage-stamp; just my name on the front. In the grey half-light I could barely make out the handwriting, but I knew at once whose it was.
‘It can’t have been lying there more than a moment or two,’ she said. ‘I’d have seen it when I went through the hall to the kitchen.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Haskell.’ I leaned forward and took the letter from her outstretched hand. ‘Would you mind lighting the lamp before you go?’
‘Word gets round so fast in this village. You’ve not been back three hours and already—’
‘The lamp, Mrs Haskell.’
She did as I had asked – though not, it seemed to me, with the best of grace – and left the room. I waited until I heard the click of the kitchen door-latch; then I opened the letter and began to read.
Dearest,
I wanted to see you when you were ill but would you have wanted to see me then? Would it have been right for me to come to the door? Would I have been allowed in? I asked myself those questions many times but I did not know the answers so did not come. And then when you went away I thought you had gone for good but the rector said no, only to recover your health which I hope you have done. And shall we meet now that you have come back? Mr Banks says you have been very ill and I know you should not walk out in this weather. But if you come to my house we could talk. It is quiet here and my mother will be away so we shall not be disturbed. At two o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Follow the footpath – our footpath I call it now – for half a mile in the opposite direction to the Hall, there is only one house there. And I shall be waiting. Ever your loving
Ann
The letter gave off a delicate fragrance, so faint as to be scarcely discernible, so potent in its associations as to set my whole body quaking. Terror, of course, the terror of that unforgettable intimation on the bleak hillside as we moved inexorably towards one another in the failing light; but something besides, I thought, holding the folded paper to my face, breathing its subtle exhalations as one of the blessed might breathe the airs of paradise; something besides.
20
Not, it should be emphasized, that my decision to take up Ann’s invitation was based on any but the most rational considerations. It had become increasingly clear to me during my convalescence that our liaison could not possibly be perpetuated; what was less clear was whether it had been satisfactorily terminated. It was, you might say, a question of honour. I needed to meet the girl face to face and explain to her, firmly and without equivocation, how matters stood, and a few moments in the privacy of her home would, I felt, afford me the best possible opportunity for such an interview. If other considerations presented themselves – as, in the natural course of my deliberations, they might conceivably have done – I knew better than to give them house-room.
The interior of the church seemed even colder and danker than I had remembered, Harris’s company even less appealing. I spent much of the morning avoiding both, out in the churchyard, notebook in hand; and I was in such haste to get away that afternoon that I found myself at Ann’s house a good ten minutes before the appointed time.
What had I expected? Certainly not this – the broken wicket, the untended garden, the scatter of cinders forming a path to the door. Or the house itself, evidently neglected for many years, its walls partially obscured by ivy, its window-frames split and rotting, their lower edges black with moss. As I raised my hand to the iron knocker I saw that it hung askew, loosely attached by a single nail. I remember thinking in that instant that there was still time to turn and leave; and then the door swung open.
I had expected this to be a difficult moment and had spent some time mentally preparing myself for it, polishing phrases at once cool and courteous, anticipating with a mixture of anxiety and pleasure the light reciprocal pressure of hand on hand as we greeted one another in the doorway. What I had not been prepared for was the possibility that the door might be opened by anyone but Ann herself.
Face to face with Enid Rosewell, I was obliged to recognize the deceptiveness of my earlier impression of her. She was statuesque, certainly, only an inch or so below my own height, and her eyes looked into mine with the directness and assurance one usually associates with women of breeding; but the skin of her face was coarser than I had remembered and her complexion, rather more highly coloured than her daughter’s, had an appearance of ingrained dirtiness. Her dark hair was threaded with grey and gathered loosely at the nape with a grubby ribbon of blue satin which, even as she welcomed me, she reached up to adjust.
The shock I experienced at finding her there must have been apparent. I stood stupidly on the doorstep, glancing from her face to the shadows behind her, looking for some explanation for her presence, uncertain how far I should explain my own.
‘I thought Ann …’
‘Ann’s here and waiting for you.’
She stood aside to let me enter. I hesitated. ‘I feel I’m intruding,’ I said. ‘Perhaps some other day would suit you better.’
‘But we’re expecting you. Isn’t that so, Ann?’
There was no reply, but I became aware of movement in the room behind her, away to the right of the doorway, just out of sight. I heard the rustle of stiff fabric, the dull chime of china against some hard surface.
‘Annie! Come here, girl, and greet your visitor.’
The woman took a couple of paces backward, beckoning me after her with a gesture rather more intimate than the circumstances warranted. I might have resisted, but her gaze was fixed on me, unwavering, inexplicably authoritative, and I stepped over the threshold and into the warm fug of the room.
Ann was standing in front of the window, half supporting herself on the sill. She looked pale and ill. Her eyes were dull, rimmed with red, and I noticed a large purplish bruise on her left cheekbone, spreading back almost to the ear beneath the tumbled mass of her hair. She smiled weakly as I stepped towards her, but said nothing.
‘Take the gentleman’s coat, Ann. Whatever are you thinking of?’
‘It’s all right, Mrs Rosewell. I shan’t be staying.’
‘Not staying? But I thought … You’ll take a cup of tea with us, at least?’
It was becoming clear to me that the matter required delicate handling. I took off my gloves and allowed her to help me off with my coat.
‘Thank you, Mrs Rosewell. Just for a few moments, if I may.’
As she turned to hang the coat on the back of the door, I glanced at Ann. I think I wanted a clue, a signal of some kind; but her haunted eyes gave back nothing I could make sense of.
The table was set with pink sprigged china and a good fire blazed in the grate, but the room was otherwise cheerless. The furnishings were rudimentary and in remarkably poor condition – one leaf of the table propped with a rough batten and one of the four chairs clearly unusable. To the left of the fireplace stood a low dresser, perhaps originally possessed of a certain rustic charm but now coated with a dull green paint; to the right, a rickety bookcase packed with cheap novels. The whitewashed walls were heavily discoloured with mildew and bare apart from a single picture: in a plain ebony frame, a crude oil-portrait of a thin-faced young man sitting stiffly in front of an open window which, in turn, framed a distant view of the sea.
Mrs Rosewell motioned me to sit down.
‘I’m sorry we have to receive you in the kitchen, Mr Stannard. We’ve had to make over the parlour to my mother. After her fall we brought the bed down and’ – sh
e lowered her voice – ‘I doubt we shall be carrying it upstairs again while she’s in this world.’
There was an awkward silence. She moved over to the hearth and inspected the kettle while Ann busied herself unnecessarily with the teacups on the table. I nodded towards the portrait.
‘Is that a relative?’
‘My husband, rest his soul. Lost at sea.’
I was suddenly and forcefully struck by how little I knew of Ann’s world.
‘I’m sorry. I hadn’t realized—’
‘Almost ten years ago. For the first few years I used to think he might turn up on the doorstep at any moment – perhaps as I was rinsing the clothes, or in the evening as I got the children ready for bed. You read of such things. You know how they tell it: the man flinging down his bag and throwing back the door, his wife and children rushing to his arms. Tears of joy, tales of past hardships, a new start for everyone. All that and I don’t know what else.’
She tugged a dirty handkerchief from her sleeve and blew her nose loudly. I naturally hoped that this might signal a change of subject, but she resumed almost immediately.
‘And, of course, his body was never found. What do you do with a man’s belongings when you don’t know for certain whether he’s dead or living? I’ll tell you: you do nothing. His Sunday suit hangs in the wardrobe upstairs as neat as the day he put it there. And so many bits and pieces. A pair of dice, a muffler, his leather tobacco-pouch. The thing that makes me cry, even now, is a little pot on the sill, half full of macassar. I should have thrown it out long ago; but at first you don’t do so because you think he might come back, and then you don’t because you know he’s never coming back and these scraps are all you have of him, all you’ll ever—’
She was interrupted by a series of sharp knocks. She turned abruptly to the closed door behind her and called out in a harsher tone.
‘All right, Mother, I’m coming.’
She gave me an apologetic smile. ‘Will you excuse me, Mr Stannard, while I attend to my mother? She needs a great deal of attention at the moment. It’s her thigh: the bone won’t knit. And then there’s her heart—’
The knocking began again, louder and more urgent. She turned away with an awkward gesture of helplessness or resignation, and pushed open the door.
I could see nothing at first but the flicker of firelight on the walls; then she crossed to the far side of the room and drew back the curtain. In a bed to the right of the window an old woman leaned forward from a disorderly heap of pillows, brandishing a stout stick. Her thin face, framed by a nimbus of unruly white hair, worked convulsively as though with pain or rage.
‘I’ve been knocking,’ she said, raising the stick aggressively.
‘I know that, Mother. I came at once.’
The old woman glared at her.
‘For hours.’
‘No, Mother, you’ve been asleep. Perhaps you’ve been dreaming again.’
‘Perhaps I have.’ She lowered her arm and lay back wearily among the pillows.
‘I heard a man’s voice,’ she said. ‘Have we got visitors?’
Mrs Rosewell glanced in my direction. ‘It’s Mr Stannard,’ she said. ‘A friend of Ann’s.’
‘A suitor? Let me see him.’ She struggled to raise herself again.
‘Lie back, Mother. You can see him another day.’
‘Another day I may be dead. Is that him?’
She was peering short-sightedly through the open door, her eyes narrowed, her head swaying from side to side. I sat in silence for a moment, rigid against the back of my chair, and then, judging acknowledgement of her curiosity to be less embarrassing than this absurd attempt at self-effacement, I rose to my feet and approached the doorway.
‘This is Mr Stannard, Mother.’
‘Let him stand where I can see him clearly.’
She beckoned me into the room and I entered, acutely aware of her control of the situation and determined to take matters back into my own hands. I stepped over to the bed and stood squarely in front of her.
‘I understand from Mrs Rosewell that you’ve had an accident. Permit me to express the hope that you will soon be fully restored to health.’
She stared up into my face. I heard the coals shift and settle in the grate behind me.
‘He’s not from these parts, is he?’
‘No, Mother. He’s come to work on the church.’
‘He speaks nicely. Annie could do worse.’
This was outrageous. I leaned over her, rigid with suppressed anger.
‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘you would be good enough to address yourself to me directly. And please refrain from making assumptions about the purpose of my visit and my intentions towards your granddaughter.’
The old woman’s lips twisted in an enigmatic grimace, and suddenly, without apparent reason, she began to laugh, her head thrown back on the pillows, her gapped mouth wide open, her fingers clutching the coverlet; a series of strained, mirthless yelps ending in a spasm of coughing. Her daughter reached out and placed an arm across her heaving shoulders, pulling her forward into an upright position. The coughing subsided.
‘I think Mr Stannard should leave you to rest now, Mother.’
‘He’s only just come in.’
‘He came to see Ann, not you.’
She let her mother back down on to the pillows and motioned me away with a brusque flapping movement of her hand. I stormed out of the room and would have retrieved my coat and left the house without ceremony had Ann not gripped my arm as I emerged and, with an astonishing display of familiarity, pulled me away from the doorway and into the corner of the kitchen, pressing her mouth close against my cheek.
‘You mustn’t mind them,’ she whispered.
‘I do mind them. I mind them very much indeed. And I mind your presumption in inviting me, under false pretences and for reasons I now recognize only too clearly, into a household which appears to take a certain perverse pleasure in embarrassing and humiliating its guests. Your mother—’
‘Please keep your voice down. Listen. You must believe me when I tell you’ – she swallowed hard – ‘when I give you my word that I thought Mother would be out of the house. It’s years since she last missed market-day.’
‘And what about your grandmother?’
‘There would have been no reason for her to see you. I might have had to tend to her once or twice, but she spends half the day asleep. We could have talked in the quiet and warm. I wanted that. I wanted to be at ease with you.’
‘How much does your mother know?’
Her fingers tightened on my sleeve and she glanced uneasily towards the parlour door.
‘Nothing.’
‘That’s not possible. She was expecting me.’
‘I mean, she doesn’t know that we’re …’ She paused, pressing the palm of her left hand against her inflamed cheek. Her eyes reddened and watered.
‘I told her you were coming to pay your respects,’ she said at last. ‘I had no alternative.’
‘To pay my respects? You must have known perfectly well what she’d take that to mean.’
She stiffened and drew her body away from mine, but without lowering her gaze or relaxing her grip on my sleeve.
‘It means no more and no less than you want it to mean.’
She seemed to consider her own words carefully for a moment, and then resumed with sudden fervour.
‘Promise me you won’t turn against me after this. Promise you’ll still care for me.’
‘What happened to your face?’
‘Promise me. I want you to promise.’
Mrs Rosewell’s return was felicitously timed. Ann broke away, moved over to the table and stood staring fixedly out into the garden. Her mother made straight for the hearth and lifted the kettle from the hob.
‘A lot of steam,’ she said briskly, ‘but no tea. Ann, you might have seen to it while you were waiting. She’s a dreamer, Mr Stannard, a good girl but a dreamer. Even as a child – but
sit down, sit down. Make yourself comfortable again.’
‘I’m afraid I shall have to leave, Mrs Rosewell. So much work to do, and the time I’ve allowed myself—’
‘But not just yet, surely? The tea will be ready in a few minutes.’
She touched the back of the chair, lightly but firmly. It seemed unreasonable not to comply.
‘Yes, even as a child she’d be lost in her daydreams for hours on end. Staring at clouds or gazing into the brook, making up tales about herself – oh, she was a saint, a fairy princess – you remember, Ann? – or a great lady robbed of her birthright and waiting to have her house and lands restored to her. John – my husband – would tease her: too good for us, eh, Annie? And do you know, Mr Stannard, sometimes I really felt it was so – I mean, I felt she didn’t belong with us – she was that fine in her manners and her bearing, and her mind always straying off somewhere else. And I said when she was still quite small – you’ll remember this, Ann, I said it in your hearing then and I’ve said it often enough since – this girl will rise in the world. And so she will, believe me. She’s had offers – look how she’s blushing, but I don’t mind who knows it, Ann, and neither should you – offers of marriage from gentlemen who – but I don’t need to tell you all this, Mr Stannard, I’m sure you can see –’
‘Indeed I can,’ I interrupted, anxious to stem the torrent, but aware at the same time of the dangers of saying too much. She simply ignored me.
‘– can see what draws them to her. I’m not saying beauty’s everything, but when a pretty face and a good heart are found together – no, I will say it, Ann – when a gentleman finds the two of them together in a young lady, you can understand why he should want to – not that she’s ever accepted such an offer, of course, but she might have done, and on more than one occasion.’
She drew in a deep breath. Ann had lowered her head and was pulling her hair self-consciously across her bruised cheek.
‘Look at her now. Here’s a girl as fine-looking as any in the county. Sweet-tempered and biddable. Educated too. These’ – she waved a chapped red hand towards the bookcase – ‘are all hers, and she’s read every one. But she’s not spoilt herself with learning, Mr Stannard, she’s not what you’d call bookish. Balance in everything is my philosophy, and she’d tell you the same if you were to ask her. Balance. Men like that in a wife. Oh yes, John used to say, though she was only a slip of a girl at the time, she’ll be a rare find for any gentleman with the wit to recognize a good thing when he sees it.’
