The Winds Of Heaven Page 4

  Louise's tragedy was still recent enough for her daughters to feel magnanimous. "She can't live alone/' they agreed, and who was Louise to say that that was what she wanted? She could not live alone without financial help from her daughters, and to ask for that would be a bigger imposition than the one she was now forced to make on them.

  Miriam had only offered to drive Louise to church on that one occasion. This was not because she disapproved of her mother being a Catholic. She did not care what people were as long as they did not make a fuss about it. It was simply that she had not thought of offering again, and Louise would not dream of asking.

  Miriam was always very busy on Sundays, when Mrs. Match did not come. She was often entertaining, or going out to parties, leaving the children with Louise, who could not control the two younger ones, but at least felt that she was being some use to Miriam.

  Monk's Ditchling was too near London to be full of retired people, who could see each other on any day of the week. Most of the residents worked in London all week, and so went the pace fiercely at week ends. In many ways, the village life was more sophisticated than the life to which town dwellers had grown accustomed since the war. At Monk's Ditchling there was sitting in bars on a Sunday morning, and going home, rather cross, to a late lunch. There was dining out, with 'black tie' written on the invitation, and men going into corners with

  other men's wives after dinner. There were horseshows in the summer, with precocious children dealing roughly with expensive ponies, and cocktails and cold chicken in the boot of nearly every car. There was a local dramatic society, which the London talent had completely taken over from the Women's Institute, who had run it during the war, and who were now forced to retreat into the unassailable spheres of weaving and tomato bottling. There were even fancy-dress parties, for which guests paid large sums of money to hire a better costume than anyone else. It all had a curiously old-fashioned flavor, like a slice from a novel of the 'thirties.

  Louise's Sunday started by getting up too early. She found that as she grew older, she began to need less sleep. She always woke early. This did not matter at Anne's, where Frank was up and about at cockcrow, and would brew her strong tea in the untidy kitchen. Eva usually slept late, but when Louise stayed in her flat in London, she could get up and do some housework, before Eva could tell her not to bother.

  Week-day mornings at Miriam's were chaos, with getting Ellen and Judy off to school and Arthur to the train. Louise stayed out of the way in her room until she heard the car go down the drive. On Sundays, Miriam and Arthur stayed late in bed. The children got up when they liked, and disappeared until they sensed that it was breakfast-time. Louise never knew when it would be breakfast-time on Sundays, She did not like to go down too soon and bother Miriam. She did not like to go down too late and find everyone sitting at the table, and Miriam getting up with a barely perceptible sigh to fetch her mother's egg.

  Louise stayed in her room, making her bed and tidying up, and going to the door from time to time to see if she could hear sounds of life, or smell bacon frying. She thought about the years when Miriam was a child, and it was Louise who prepared breakfast, and served it out, and gently criticized table manners. How odd it was, the way their roles in life had become

  reversed, the mother's and the daughter's. For what a short time, it seemed, had Louise been able to look after Miriam, Now it was the other way round. Miriam was responsible for her mother. Louise was the child, and, absurd though she knew it to be, as anxious to be in Miriam's good graces as if her daughter had been an exacting parent.

  "Granny." Ellen stood in the doorway in a shrunken skirt, her dun-colored hair untidily caught back with a vast hair grip. "I think it would be about right if you came down now/' The child knew how Louise felt about Sunday breakfast-time, and many other things. She was much closer to Louise than her daughters had been at any age.

  At breakfast Arthur announced that he was going to inspect the ponies and their equipment, which put Simon and Judy into a spasm of nervous delight, for Arthur had manufactured for himself the reputation of being a connoisseur of horsey matters, although he actually knew little more about them than his children did. The gardener, who had once looked after an undertakers plumed black horses, was in charge of the ponies and the children's riding, but Arthur would come along from time to time and give a lot of noisy orders, and push the ponies about with the flat of his hand, and put the jumps too high, and stick the children straight back on the saddle when they fell off,

  It was this violent treatment that had sickened Ellen with riding. Once she had had a pony of her own, as Simon and Judy did. If she had been allowed to ride it quietly, getting off whenever she liked to give it sugar, she might have stayed the course. She had been fairly happy with her ambling first pony, but much too soon her father changed it for a more temperamental animal of whom Ellen was terrified. She used to go to the stable when no one was looking and try to bribe it with food to like her and behave kindly, but it ungratefully continued to carry her off at speed in the wrong direction, or unload her onto the hardest piece of ground.

  The gardener knew that Ellen would never ride well, and did

  not expect her to do more than sit still and keep quiet; but when Arthur came into the paddock, with a little switch, he would command Ellen to canter and jump and perform feats of which she was incapable and mortally afraid.

  Finally she fell off on her head and was concussed. Arthur, disgusted, sold the pony and said that she could ride no more. It was too dangerous, he said, and a waste of money besides.

  Lying in bed in the darkened room, Ellen knew that she had disgraced herself; but the day that the pony was sold was the happiest day of her life.

  Simon and Judy were good riders, as far as the gardener's rough-and-ready tuition and their father's sudden bursts of intemperate coaching could make them. They trotted efficiently off to pony club rallies, and appeared at local shows, very self-possessed in crisply-cut jackets and jockey caps worn well down on the head. Most of the local children had ponies, for Monk's Ditchling had diligently embraced horses along with the other high-class country pursuits. They seldom won anything at shows, for the professionals came in impressive horseboxes from hundreds of miles away to scoop up the money; but they rode jauntily about, giving imperious commands to their tweeded mothers on the ground.

  Ellen had always been an awkward, lonely child, hating to have other children asked to tea, invariably chosen last in games where sides were picked. The fact that she was one of the few children who did not ride made her life at Monk's Ditch-ling lonelier than ever. The other children went about in gangs, whether they were on foot or on ponies. Ellen was often seen about by herself, walking without purpose, as if she had amnesia.

  Simon and Judy, always busy about the stables, or with the constructive toys their parents bought for them, had little use for Ellen. She was delighted when her grandmother came to stay, and she had someone to go about with who did not try to make her do things for which she was not inclined.

  Together, she and Louise would potter up to the post office

  and buy small amounts of stamps, and have milk shakes on the way home at the Tudor Snack Bar. They would stroll down the lanes, peering into the hedgerows, and try to identify wild flowers and trees from the book which Louise had bought to give herself something to do at Miriam's.

  This Sunday morning Louise and Ellen went to the wood to see if the bluebells were out. They passed by the stables, where Arthur was putting Simon and Judy through questions on the points of the horse, which they did not know he had looked up in a book before coming out.

  The ponies were standing in the yard. Louise gave them a wide berth. She admired them, but she never went near them. Ellen was afraid of them, but they were still animals, with warm breaths, and she could not help being drawn towards them. She went up to Judy's pony, which was the smallest, and diffidently stroked its nose. The pony threw up its head, and she backed away.

 
; 'Tor God's sake!" Arthur shouted. "How many times have I told you, never touch a horse like that"? Get right up to it, and put your hand on its neck/' Ellen backed farther away.

  "Come on now, let's see you do it right/' He grabbed Ellen and pulled her forward. She jerked up her arm. The pony rolled the white of its eye, and jumped sideways, pulling the halter rope from Judy's hand.

  "Oh, my God!" Arthur cried, "Go and get him, Simon, before

  he " Simon ran and caught the pony skilfully, and Arthur

  said with bitter patience: "You'd better clear off, Ellen. And another time, go round the other way, if you can't behave sensibly/'

  Louise wanted to put her arm round Ellen as they walked away, but she was afraid that it might look as if she were siding with the child against Arthur. She tried not to interfere with discipline, although she often crept up with sweets to a child that had been sent in disgrace to its room.

  At lunch Arthur was still rather cross. He had spent a happy enough morning with his two younger children, who had been

  bright and pleasantly appreciative, but the sight of Ellen, walking through the hall with a drooping bunch of bluebells, aroused him again.

  "I've told you a thousand times not to pick them/' he grumbled. "They don't last. Why can't you leave them where they are? It's so trippery."

  Ellen did not say that she knew it was no good picking bluebells, but that her grandmother had wanted to take home a bunch. Ellen and Louise never betrayed each other. She went into the kitchen without answering and listened to an almost word for word repetition of Arthur's rebuke from Miriam, who was making gravy deftly, without lumps.

  When the children had left the lunch-table, Arthur and Miriam drifted into an argument about some trifling household matter. Louise had to sit by and watch the argument quicken to a quarrel.

  "Nothing in this house gets done unless I do it myself," Arthur scowled. "I have to see to every damned thing."

  He sounded so like Dudley for a moment that Louise longed to interrupt and stand up for Miriam, but she kept silent, and looked at her coffee cup. She hated it when they quarrelled. If she interfered or took sides even the one she championed would make it clear that it was none of her business. If she sat quiet, and let the caustic storm flicker about her, she felt foolishly stiff and disapproving, although she was longing to cry out: "Don't, don't! Please be nice to each other!"

  Since she could not say it, she rose and left the table. She went up to her room and spent the afternoon reading Gordon Disher's book. Ellen was out with one of her few friends, so no one came to call Louise down to tea. Perhaps they were not going to have tea. They did not always have it.

  At five-thirty, Louise heard a car stop in the drive. Someone got out, with cheerful hails. Louise went to her window, which was at the front of the house, and stood behind the curtains to see who it was.

  It was Sidney and Alice Cobb, in their Jaguar. Alice was in

  furs and stilted heels, which made the legs between look thinner and less serviceable than ever. Sidney was wearing a pork-pie hat with flies in the band, and a jacket with two slits at the back and shiny new leather at the cuffs and elbows.

  Louise presumed that they had come for cocktails. She did not know whether she should go downstairs, and if so, when. Since she was accepting the hospitality of the house, she could not use it as a hotel She must take her part. She felt, however, that her part was usually so small, and what she could offer in the way of conversation so inadequate, that Miriam's friends must sometimes think: What a bore to have to have your mother living with you.

  She changed her dress, and was putting on the unevenly matched pearl necklace, which had belonged to her mother and was the only jewelry she had not sold, when Miriam called up the stairs: "What are you doing, Mother? Aren't you coming down?"

  Louise went to the doorway. "I thought perhaps Fd wait until your friends left/'

  "Even if you don't like them," said Miriam, deliberately misunderstanding, although the impulse that had sent her to call her mother had been a compassionate one, "you can at least come down and have a drink. Alice and Sidney are going to stay to supper, and play Canasta/'

  The children Were cheated of their Sunday supper in the dining room. They were sent into the kitchen to eat. Louise felt sorry for them, but they did not seem to care. They were cooking eggs and chips. Louise wished that she could have been pushed in there with them.

  The Cobbs were exhaustingly gay. They were always gay, even without cocktails. It was their stock-in-trade to be 'good fun.' They dared not let it lapse. Louise sat quietly through the meal, while jokes and allusions that she did not always understand were bandied about the table. Arthur and Miriam seemed to enjoy the Cobbs. Louise could never see why, but supposed that it must be some deficiency in herself that prevented her

  from appreciating Alice and Sidney's strenuous conviviality.

  After supper, when the cards were brought out, Louise sat in a corner and listened to the humorous bickering and incomprehensible references to the play. Bored, she presently got up, waited for a second to see whether anyone would notice and ask where she was going, and then went into the kitchen to wash the dishes, which Miriam had piled neatly.

  Miriam came out to get glasses. "What on earth are you doing, Mother?"

  "Just a little washing up. There seems so much/'

  "Oh, leave it." The sight of her mother dabbing gently with a dish rnop annoyed Miriam, who was already tired of both the Cobbs and Canasta. "Mrs. Match will do it in the morning. You know she always does,"

  "I thought I might get it started. She always has so much to do on a Monday. All the washing " Louise said vaguely.

  "Oh, Mother, you're living in the past. People don't do great big washes on Monday any more. And you know the laundry calls on Thursdays."

  "Well." Louise scraped a plate doggedly. "I just thought I could help her a little anyway."

  "She doesn't like it, Mother," Miriam stated, going to the door.

  "Doesn't like it? How can she not like someone doing the dishes for her?"

  "If you must know"—Miriam turned, and frowned at what she was going to say—"she says you put everything away in the wrong place, and she has to sort it all out."

  "Oh, I see." Louise put down the mop while Miriam went out, and stared out of the uncurtained window, where a privet bush was moving stiffly in the night wind. So she was useless. She could not even do menial jobs in return for her keep. Setting her small, square mouth, she began angrily to pile the dishes into the sink. She was determined now to do the whole lot, if it took her all night.

  An ache of self-pity pushed against the backs of her eyes. It

  wasn't her fault—she moved her lips to her thoughts—if she had to live like this. It wasn't her fault that her husband had left her to live the last kind of life she would have chosen, although one of her daughters, in an exasperated moment, had hinted that it was partly her fault for spoiling Dudley, and giving in to him, and letting him go his own disastrous way.

  She broke a cup. Miriam heard it, and got up with a sigh from the card table.

  "Mother— please!"

  Hurrying to put the broken china into the bin, Louise jumped, and turned around.

  "I told you not to bother/* Miriam snapped. "I wish

  you " She shut her mouth, to stop herself, Louise thought,

  from saying: Whose house is this, anyway?

  Miriam stepped forward, and suddenly kissed her mother. "Go to bed, there's a dear. Fm sorry I was cross/'

  'Tm sorry I was stubborn." Louise rested her head against her tall daughter's shoulder, and they stood for a moment in an unfamiliar embrace.

  If it could only always be like this, Louise thought, warming to the rare offer of affection. If we could only always be close and understanding, because we are a family. She kissed Miriam gratefully, but she knew that by tomorrow they would be miles apart again.

  Louise went to bed, and kept herself awake, with straining eyes,
to finish The Girl in the Bloodstained Bikini. It was thrilling and shocking, with passionate embraces and savage blows on nearly every page, Louise did not understand how kindly Mr. Disher, who had seemed as restful as his beds, could have written it. Escapism, she told herself, satisfied with the word. Before she fell asleep, she composed the letter that she would write to him, to tell him how much she admired his work.

  It was Louise's birthday. Miriam had decided that it was time for a family gathering, and had persuaded Anne to come from Bedfordshire, and Eva from London.

  Eva telephoned in the morning. Louise answered. When she had offered her birthday wishes, Eva said: "I wanted to ask Miriam something."

  "Shall I get her for you?"

  "Please. Or—no. Wait a minute, Mother. Ill tell you, and you can give her a message. Look, I was coming down on the train with Arthur, but now Fm not. Don't get excited. I'm coming all right. Someone offered to drive me down, and I thought perhaps Miriam wouldn't mind if he came to dinner."

  "I'm sure she wouldn't. Is it someone I know?"

  "No, but he's nice. He's on the stage—you've probably heard of him." She mentioned a name, which Louise did not recognize.

  "I shall enjoy meeting him/' Louise said carefully, stifling the curiosity which always frightened Eva off like a young deer. She had been wishing for so long that Eva would stop drifting about with those queer, talented young men from the B,B.C., and settle down with a solid man.

  "Shall I go and ask Miriam if it's all right?"

  "Don't bother. I'm sure it will be," Eva said briskly, not wanting to give Miriam the chance to object.

  Anne would have to stay the night because it was too far to drive back to her draughty, vegetable-surrounded home. She came without Frank, who could not leave the goats and chickens. Fond though he was of Louise, he was glad of an excuse not to have to go to Pleasantways. Arthur treated him well, and Miriam was always very gracious—but too gracious, as if she were a marchioness at the servants' Christmas treat.