The Happy Prisoner Read online

  John was patiently affectionate with his mother and tried to annoy her as little as possible. His ears were almost at right angles while she was at Hinkley, for he felt the responsibility of her as a great weight. He tried to protect her by laughing indulgently and saying: “Nonsense, Muffet, you don’t mean that,” to cover her more extravagant remarks. He tried to protect the household by keeping her under his eye, which she took great delight in making as difficult as possible.

  She knew that he was tracking her, although she did not know why he did it. “Poor little Johnny thinks I’m going to have a stroke or something,” she told Oliver, talking to him through the window from the lawn where she was hiding while John looked for her in the house. “He always wants to know where I’m going and what I’m going to do and why isn’t Smutty with me? He treats me as if I were in my dotage, and it’s enough to put me there. How did I ever come to have a child who took life so seriously?” Her swallow’s-wing eyebrows drew together in a fleeting frown. “It’s an awful thing for a mother to say, but d’you know, I’m afraid he’s got very little sense of humour. Look how silly he is with Heather. She’d soon stop being difficile if only he’d laugh at her instead of letting her wipe her boots on him as if he were a mat with Welcome written all over it.”

  She did not like Heather, and Heather did not like her. She made no allowances for her mother-in-law’s abnormality and would not be shushed away from making dangerously close allusions to it. She suffered more from Lady Sandys than anyone in the house, because although her kleptomania was unconscious, she instinctively took more from people she did not like, and the things she took were often symptomatic of her conscious feelings. John had learned his rigid Protestantism from her. Her disapproval of Heather’s conversion manifested itself by the repeated removal of her daughter-in-law’s prayer book or rosary. The blessed palm which Heather hung over her bed at Easter was never found again and Heather swore that Miss Smutts, who got to grips with Methodism every week in a kind of Nissen hut at Bornell Heath, had deliberately not looked for it. Once her crucifix disappeared, and even after it was found she muttered for a long time about sacrilege and blasphemy.

  Her shoes were to Muffet like honey to a bee, but only one at a time, so that Heather was always hopping up the stairs to the half-moon table to complete the pair she had left in the scullery for cleaning. Her hand mirror and her brush and comb spent almost more time in the passage than in her bedroom. The doors at Hinkley had bolts on the inside, but no keys, but Heather found one in the tool chest that fitted and took to locking her door whenever she came downstairs, until John, returning late from a wet Sunday-morning walk, came like a dripping spaniel into Oliver’s room, where the family were already at lunch.

  “What’s happened to the door of our room, Heather Bell?” he asked, treading up and down in his stockinged feet to try and get warm. “It’s stuck or something and I can’t get in. I’ll get pneumonia if I don’t change soon.”

  Miss Smutts nodded sagely, as one who, after twenty years, guessed what had happened. “All the latches in this house want seeing to,” said Mrs. North innocently. “They’re the original wooden ones, you know,” she told Lady Sandys proudly, “nearly three hundred years old. Try pulling the door tight shut before you press the latch, John. No, wait, I’ll come with you.” She put down her knife and fork and got up, sure that no one but she could do it, just as no one but she could poke a fire, or open a sticking window, or get the cap off a pickle jar.

  “It’s all right, Ma. Sit down and get on with your lunch,” said Heather impatiently. She took a key out of her cardigan pocket and held it out to John. “Here, I locked it,” she said shortly, and turned her attention quickly away to David. “Eat up,” she said, pushing a spoonful into his mouth without noticing that it was already full.

  “You locked it?” said John. “What on earth for? Oh—” as Heather made a face at him. “Oh yes, yes, yes; oh, I see,” he mumbled, looking chagrined.

  “Well,” said Muffet brightly, “I’ve heard of wives locking their husband out of their bedrooms, but only when they were inside themselves. What’s the game?” She looked round the table for enlightenment, at all the eyes that would not meet hers. David, who had been growing steadily blacker in the face while he bravely tried to deal with his mouthful, fortunately created a diversion by opening his mouth very wide, putting in his whole fist and scooping everything out onto his plate and the table round it.

  “Ma, we really must find his mackintosh mat,” Heather said, as she cleaned up the mess. “He can’t be trusted to eat like a civilised being yet. I can’t think what’s happened to it. I remember washing it and hanging it up— Oh Lord, you don’t suppose—? Oh no, really. That’s just about the end: surely she—” She glanced enquiringly at Miss Smutts, who swung her head in negation like a pensive chimpanzee. John, not liking to leave the room until the atmosphere attributable to his mother had evaporated, still hung about by the door, beads of water running down his nose from the damp little ringlets of hair on his forehead.

  “Did you have a nice walk, darling?” his mother asked him. “You look like a suicide just fished out of the Thames.”

  Mrs. North swivelled round. “John, for gracious sakes go up and change. You’re shivering as if you had the grippe. Will you never learn to look after yourself? I don’t know which is the greater baby, you or your son. If it’s lunch you’re after, you can’t eat it in that condition, so hurry up and change before it spoils. I’ll cut you some off and put it in the oven.” She got up and went to the side table, and Lady Sandys, who could not sit still while anyone else was in action, got up too.

  “Let me take it, Hattie,” she begged. “I always feel so useless in this busy house, and you never let me do anything.”

  “No, dear, it’s all right, thank you. You won’t know how to light the oven.”

  “Indeed I will; I’m not a mental defective.”

  “Now you know it scares you when the gas pops.”

  “Let me take it,” said John, through chattering teeth. “I don’t really think I want any, though.”

  “Of course you do,” said his mother and mother-in-law together, vying for custody of him. “But you know you always say you can never find the matches in the kitchen,” went on Mrs. North. “All right, dear,” to Elizabeth, who was already at her side. “You take it. Just put me on some vegetables then, Muffet, if you want to help. Not spinach. You don’t know your son very well if you think he’ll eat spinach.”

  “Oh, is it spinach?” Lady Sandys giggled. “I’ve been eating it thinking it was cabbage. You ought to look after me better, Smutty,” she said, going back to the table. “You know I don’t like spinach.”

  “You want a keeper, not a companion,” grumbled Miss Smutts, pushing a bit of bread round her plate, and eating it with smacking lips.

  When John had gone away, his shoulders hunched to his ears, Mrs. North sat down, ate a few mouthfuls, got up again and said: “I think I’ll just go up and take his temperature. He did look awfully feverish, Heather, and I don’t want him to be ill for the great day.”

  “Don’t fuss, Ma, he’s all right.”

  “You can’t tell with John; he never says when he feels poorly. I think I’ll just run up—”

  Lady Sandys jumped up again. “Do let me do it,” she cried. “I’m terribly good at taking temperatures. Where’s the thermometer?” The thought of her rootling in the medicine chest was too perilous. “I’ll go up, shall I?” said Elizabeth.

  “Well, after all, you are the nurse,” said Muffet, beaming at her. “Thank you so much, dear; I know you’ll look after him for me. She’s very fond of Johnny,” she told them when Elizabeth had gone. “They get on splendidly because they’re both quiet people. Did you know he was going to take her up the Wrekin to see the sunrise? She’s never been up. Neither have I, of course, and I don’t intend to at my age, though they tell me it’s well worth the climb.”

  “You can take a car nearly all
the way,” put in Oliver.

  Lady Sandys turned round to smile and wave at him to make up for not having spoken to him for some time. “Oh, but too prosaic,” she said. “One ought to scramble up on hands and knees and cry ‘Excelsior!’ at the top, with the world spread out before one.”

  “That old view,” said Heather. “I’m sick of hearing about it. If you tell anyone you live in Shropshire, they say how wonderful the view from the Wrekin must be. I’ve seen it hundreds of times, at sunrise, sunset, midnight—wild horses wouldn’t drag me up there again.”

  “Of course not, dear,” said Muffet gently. “I wasn’t suggesting you should. I said John and Elizabeth were going up.” She pushed out one side of her cheek with her tongue and smiled to herself, pleased at having piqued Heather.

  In the silence that followed the handing round of pudding, Evelyn, who had been pursuing the subject in her mind since it was first mentioned, shook back her hair and asked in to dear voice: “But why did you lock your bedroom door, Aunt Heather?”

  “Get on with your pie, dear,” said Mrs. North.

  “I am. I’m talking with my mouth full. Why did she lock her door?” Oliver saw that Heather, wanting to get her own back on Lady Sandys, was struggling against the temptation of dropping a bombshell. Feeling like the man who brought the good news to Aix just in time, he rushed in with: “I’ll tell you why. She’s got your Aunt Violet’s wedding present in there, only it’s a secret.”

  Violet woke up. “Have you?” she asked. “What is it, Heather? Do tell us.”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Come on, be a sport. I know, anyway.”

  “Why ask then?”

  “Don’t be a cow.”

  “Girls, girls,” said their mother. “What about my rule? No fighting in Oliver’s room.”

  “Don’t be such a schoolmarm, Ma,” said Oliver ungraciously.

  “They’re not fighting, anyway. Oh cripes—” He suddenly remembered that Heather’s wedding present to Violet was a new bicycle, and saw, by Lady Sandys’ puzzled eyebrows, that she knew too.

  Evelyn, who also knew, said with interest: “Well, what a funny place to keep it. There can’t be much room. Where have you put it?”

  “Oh, shut up about it, Evie,” said Heather.

  “No, but where?” pursued Evelyn, who never gave up.

  “Hanging on hooks,” said Heather grimly.

  “Ye gods,” said Violet. “I hope it’s not clothes or anything, Heather. You promised you’d give me something I could use.”

  “It’s a parrot in a cage,” said Heather.

  Violet took this seriously. “How topping!” she shouted. “Just what I’ve always wanted. Where on earth did you get it? I shall teach it all the swear words I know, and get some more from old Halliday. What a yell! Poor old Fred. I wonder if he likes parrots.” Heather could not be bothered to enlighten her, and Violet was still chortling when Elizabeth came back, looking important.

  “I’m afraid you’re right, Mrs. North,” she said. “His temperature’s a hundred point four; pulse to match. Probably only a slight dose of flu, but I’ve told him to get into bed, and I’ll take up a hot bottle and another blanket. He’s shivering as if he were trying to go in for a rigor.” That was the end of lunch. Everyone started getting up and exclaiming, except Miss Smutts, who sat sucking on a hollow tooth and intoning that these things easily turned to something worse. David beat the table with his spoon and shouted for more custard.

  Violet pushed her chair disgustedly away from the table and leaned back as if she were going to tip over. “Well,” she said, “if he’s not all right by my wedding day, Ollie will have to come. It is a swizz. Just one thing after another—everything goes against it.”

  “It will be all right on the day,” droned Smutty, but no one was listening or paid any attention. They were all too busy trying to go up to John and trying to stop each other going up.

  John’s temperature continued to rise, and as an invalid Oliver became a back number. All the next day, he hardly saw a soul, except Lady Sandys, who kept coming in to complain that they would not let her do anything for John. He heard a lot of activity going on overhead, and after dinner they appeared to be playing general post with the furniture in John’s room. It was later than usual when Mrs. North came in to say her last good night to Oliver.

  He told her she looked tired, and she said: “I am a bit. Illness always makes extra to do.”

  “But I thought Elizabeth—”

  “She’s been invaluable, of course, plumb in her element. I dare say it’s quite a good thing for her to have a bit more nursing to do. After all, it is what she’s trained for, and I’ve sometimes wondered lately if she doesn’t feel she’s being wasted doing more of the household chores now that there’s less to do for you. She doesn’t complain, but it would be just too terrible if she suddenly said she wanted to leave.”

  “I don’t know,” Oliver said. “You could get a proper maid. I shouldn’t need another nurse.”

  His mother did not allow him to talk like that. “You’ll have a nurse just as long as Hugo and I say,” she told him sternly, “but I should never get one I had such confidence in as Elizabeth. Although she’s so young, I feel I don’t have to worry when I leave the house. I never felt that with Sandy; she would have lost her head in a crisis.”

  “Crisis!” scoffed Oliver. “What crisis could I have?”

  “Elizabeth’s so level-headed, and she knows her job backwards. She knew just how John’s illness was going to develop, and she knew just what to do for him to make him comfortable.”

  “Then for Heaven’s sake,” said Oliver, “why not let her get on with it, instead of wearing yourself out running round John in small circles?”

  “Oh well, there are all sorts of fiddling little jobs I must do myself. I’ve been moving Heather’s bed into the children’s room tonight. John wanted it. He pretended he thought he’d have a better night if he was on his own, but really it’s because he knew his coughing kept Heather awake last night.”

  “That man’s too good to live,” Oliver said impatiently. “It’s not decent to be unselfish when you’re ill, especially with an embittering thing like flu.”

  “He certainly has got a lovely nature,” mused his mother. “I’ve never seen such a good invalid—except you, of course, darling. And don’t talk about him as if he was prissy; he’s very much a man—except in his unselfishness. I sometimes think Heather doesn’t appreciate what a fine person she’s married.”

  “Too right she doesn’t. His noble nature merely annoys her.”

  “I don’t see why it should. She has a crack at being noble herself, with all that churchgoing, even though it doesn’t seem to have the right effect, poor little Heather.”

  “And that annoys her all the more; to find that she tries so hard and gets up so early so often and bicycles so many miles and still can’t make her peace with the world.”

  “Why did she have to go the whole hog like that? She could still have gone to Mass, without tying herself up to something she may lose interest in, and as I know Heather, she always loses interest in everything she takes up. Remember her stage training? And that flower shop she and Veronica were all set to start? And look how quickly she used to tire of the people she was in love with. She was just as rash then—always getting herself tied up and then having to wriggle out of it. How many times was she engaged—three or four?”

  “Four, I think,” said Oliver, reckoning, “counting that B.B.C. man who was always eating cough lozenges.”

  “Well, she won’t be able to wriggle out of this. It’s considered a terrible thing, you know, to stop being a Catholic, even worse than never being one at all.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “Oh, I just do.”

  “You know a little about everything, don’t you, like all Americans?”

  “Of course,” she said proudly. “That’s what we mean by being cultured.”

&nb
sp; Oliver said unthinkingly, “She’d have to stop being a Catholic if she was divorced.”

  His mother clutched at the front of her apricot silk dressing-gown. “Darling, don’t,” she cried. “Even in fun. They may not get on very well at the moment, but it’s wicked of you to talk like that.”

  “Don’t tick me off. It wasn’t my idea. Heather mentioned it only this morning, as a matter of fact, admittedly in a fit of temper, but it shows it’s entered her head.”

  “I refuse even to think about it,” said his mother grandly, her brain obviously whirling with the subject. “I never heard such crazy nonsense.” She did her last little jobs for Oliver, like shaking up his pillows, and straightening his eiderdown, and giving an extra turn to the cap of the thermos, and putting her hand into the open window space to feel what sort of air was coming in on him. Having gone, she was back again within five minutes, under the pretext of returning a book he had lent her.

  “And of course,” she continued, as if they had never left the subject, “she wouldn’t be influenced by that. She might be just as ready to throw over her Church as she was to enter it. I wish you hadn’t told me she’d said that—no, I don’t; I like to know what people are thinking. But how could she? Those lovely children, and John so devoted to her.… It would ruin her life. And mine too, I reckon.”

  “I thought you were an American,” said Oliver cattily. “You shouldn’t get so worked up about a divorce.”

  “Don’t be cheap, dear. You ought to know better than to make silly sweeping statements about my country. Why, in the old places, like Philadelphia, and Boston, and Virginia, marriage is a lot more sacred than it is in England.”

  “It couldn’t be much less.” The giggling voice from the doorway made them both jump. In the shadows beyond the range of Oliver’s lamp a little white figure glimmered, and came noiselessly towards them, like Elizabeth Bergner playing Lady Macbeth.