i 69ef9ff463a71164 (12 page)

Grace sat looking at them as they earnestly made their arrangements for their part in the coming war. It was early in September, 1938. War was in the air. Any minute now it seemed that England would be at war:

they had

already been issued with gas-masks, and there was talk of digging holes in the ground and sleeping in them. The thought of war did not frighten her except when her mind settled on children. Grown-ups could fend for themselves, but children, especially the little children, like those in the Infants in the village school. She did not question that her concern for the children was because her mind was thinking of nothing else these days. Children, children . a child.

What if she had a child and it was killed by a bomb. She shuddered from head to foot, then became strangely still as a voice said from within her, "I'd chance it."

She looked at Donald again. His face was serious now, beautiful and serious. No wonder Kate Shawcross could not take her eyes from him.

She was being talked about in the village for running after the vicar, but that did not seem to trouble her, she seemed oblivious of everything in life but this man.

The feeling of annoyance, scorn, and even jealousy that Grace had felt at different times over the past two years towards this woman had vanished as if they had never been. Now she had for her another feeling. It was pity. For Miss Shawcross was in love with a shell .

a shell filled with God. There was no room for a woman inside that shell, except as a mother or a doll. Donald was a man with a doll.

She herself was the doll, sometimes to be kissed, fondled . and forever frustrated.

This time last year she had come to look upon God as her rival for Donald. This feeling had gone on for some months and had been a terrifying experience. One could not pit oneself against God and yet she had attempted to do just that. Thankfully it was brought to a sudden end one day when Donald took her on a visit to a friend of his in Harrogate. This man was also a parson. He was a good man, it showed in his face, and he had seven children . men could be men of God and still men.

She had been married to Donald seven hundred and eighty-four nights.

This way of thinking worried her. She didn't think she had been married just over two years, she counted the time in nights. And each night now seemed to bring fresh terror to her, for she would lie awake seeing one more new aspect of the man by her side. She had faced the fact many months ago that Donald was a man who should never have married. One fear-filled night she had almost turned on him and shaken him out of his sleep to cry at him, "You have committed a sin, you who are always preaching against sin; you have committed the worst sin against human nature. Do you hear me?" She had got up that night and crept from the room and went, of all places, into the storeroom because there she could open the door and look out into the night without fear of anyone seeing her. Although each night she dissected him and looked at his lack and weaknesses, she was still in love with him. She knew that he had a vindictive streak in him, submerged but nevertheless there. She knew that he had a cunning knack of getting his own way.

She knew also that he used the pulpit to strike, and not only in the defence of God. No-one could answer you back when you were in the pulpit. Yet she felt that in part he was a good man, never ceasing to go out of his way to help someone. Perhaps it was more correct to say, he got others to do that. Anyway, she supposed organisation was part of his job.

"And where are you going to put this big brawny piece?" Donald put out his large white hand and touched Grace's face.

Miss Shawcross turned her eyes from the vicar and, looking at Grace, said, "Oh, I haven't put you down anywhere because of you not feeling too well."

"But we can't have this, she's got to do her bit." Donald was looking tenderly towards Grace, patting her hand the while.

"We'll have to put her on the diplomatic staff, eh?"

Miss Shawcross laughed at this and Grace said, "Can I fill your cups?"

Fifteen minutes later Donald left the house with Miss Shawcross. He was going to visit the Tooles, as Mrs. Toole was in bed with phlebitis.

Long after they had gone Grace sat in the drawing- room, staring out through the french windows into the garden. She knew she had reached a point where some thing must be done. She could not go on like this any longer, she must speak to Donald, come out into the open. Aunt Aggie had said to her only last week, "Isn't it time you started a family?"

And she had made no answer to this. A few months previously she would have come up with some excuse such as, "Oh, there's plenty of time for that." And then there was Dr. Cooper saying, "You know you can't live on tonics. Nature is a tonic and you've got to use her." He had paused before he added, "You understand what I'm saying?" She had nodded.

Yes, she had understood perfectly what he was saying and tonight she was not going to be baulked. It wasn't that she hadn't tried to bring the matter into the open a number of times, but whenever Donald felt that the subject was broaching he kissed, patted and teased and put the situation on ground from which it was impossible to say, "I want a baby'. But tonight she would close her ears to his prattle. She turned her head slightly to the side on this thought. It made her sad to realise that she could think along these lines, terming Donald's beautifully modulated words as prattle.

At seven o'clock Donald had not returned and she went out into the garden in search of Ben. Ben had no set hours, and Grace found that when in the old man's company she forgot herself and her worries.

Perhaps it was because that in character he was closest to the men amongst whom she had been brought up, those on the Tyne. From Ben she saw reflected traces of her father and Uncle Ralph, and old Jack Cummings.

She found Ben clipping the top of a lonicera hedge. Without any formal greeting he addressed her immediately, saying, "He said take two feet off this." He never gave Donald any other title but 'he'. "If I was to take two feet off un you would see the top of the tool-shed from the front drive.

"Twouldn't do, an' I told him." He turned his small bright eyes on her.

"See what I mean, ma'am?"

"Yes, Ben. Yes, I do." Then she asked enquiringly, "The vicar said he wanted two feet off?"

"Aye, this afternoon just gone, he came out here and said it should be taken down altogether. Too dark green he said it was ... did you ever hear the like, too dark green? Why, I never did. And I pointed out to him that it's the darkness of this here hedge that acts as a background for the lavender and such." He pointed to the side, and Grace, looking towards the bushes, said, "Yes, yes, I see."

"Miss Tuppin' planted this hedge, ma'am, because it was quick growin'.

"We don't want to see the roof of that black shed from the drive, do we, Ben?" she said. And I said, "No, ma'am, we don't want that."

"Lonicera is the thing," she said, "it's quick," and there she put it.

"

Ben was talking easily about his late mistress these days and Grace knew it brought some solace to him to be able to do so. She also felt that she was the only one to whom he talked in this way and she gave him the opportunity whenever she could.

"Ma'am."

"Yes, Ben?"

"Only yesterday I came across a recipe of me mother's, it was for reviving an appetite. It's a mixture of herbs and I brought it along for you." Ben did not look at Grace as he spoke but went on cutting slowly and expertly at the hedge.

"I remember me mother sayin' it would make a man eat like a horse."

He stopped now and, laying down the shears, drew from his pocket a square of yellowed paper. Opening it slowly, he handed it to Grace.

In the swift glance she gave the paper she made out the words dandelion and rosemary. Then she looked at him and said softly, "Thank you, Ben, it's very kind of you."

"Well, what I say is' Ben was at the hedge again 'these newfangled medicines ... well, you might as well drink dish-wattar. The old recipes are lost or forgotten an' so people die." His voice sank on the last words and Grace knew he was thinking of his beloved mistress, and she wanted to say, "But you kept her alive for nine years, Ben ..

you and the garden," but all she said was, "Thank you, Ben'; then added, " I'll have it made up, I promise you. "

He did not turn towards her, not even to nod, and she walked slowly away reading the prescription that was to make her eat like a horse.

Oh, Ben, dear Ben, it wasn't herbs that she needed to put on flesh.

She stopped and looked around the garden, then looked towards the back of the house. She should be as happy as a princess in a fairy tale; in this atmosphere she should be relaxed and at ease, her body should be afloat and in harmony, whereas it was a mass of jangling nerves, and only needed a sharp word to set the tear ducts quivering. With a sudden spurt she ran towards the house, through the hall, and up the stairs into her room, and, throwing herself face down on the bed, she cried into her hands. Why had this to happen to her? She wasn't bad, she wasn't wicked, she only wanted . she only wanted . wanted .

wanted. Her brain was yelling the word, 'wanted . wanted . wanted. "

Then as her fists clutched up handfuls of the eiderdown, it added on a voiceless scream, " To be loved . to be loved. "

Donald did not get back until just on dusk. From her bedroom window she watched him coming up the drive. When he did not come in the front door but skirted the house, she knew without bothering to ascertain that he had gone to look at the hedge to see if Ben had carried out his orders. Tomorrow there would be words and a battle of wills between them. There had been words before when Ben had usually emerged the victor, and doubtless he would do so again, and in her heart she was with him. Not because he was right in this case as he had been in most of the others, but because it hurt her somehow to see him ordered about in what was, spiritually at least, his garden, and, moreover, he was an old man. It was odd, she thought, at this moment, that Donald never brought his Christian attitude to bear with Ben, and he should have done so, if only to try to get him to attend the services.

She reached the hall just as Donald entered it. She did not fly to him now as she had once done and fling her arms about his neck. She saw immediately that he was annoyed, very likely with Ben, but when they got into the drawing-room it was not of Ben he spoke but of the Tooles.

Mrs. Toole wasn't well at all and she was worried about Adelaide.

Apparently things weren't going as they should with Adelaide. It was all to do with that Maclntyre fellow. They had been like second parents to that boy. Mr. Toole had gone so far as to indicate to him

that he would be welcome as a son-in-law, but the fool had done nothing about it. It was hurting both Mr. and Mrs. Toole, not to say anything about Adelaide.

She went and stood in front of him, and, catching hold of his hands, brought his attention to her.

"Donald ... Donald, I ... Here she stopped and her heart gave a number of thumping beats before she finished, " I would like to talk to you.

"

Did she see a shadow come over his eyes, or was it that he was still feeling annoyed with Ben? It was his way when annoyed about one thing to talk about something entirely different . this was another trait that she had reluctantly been forced to recognise.

He released one of his hands from hers and, putting it to his brow, said, "Yes, yes, of course," then added, 'you don't have to ask like that . like . like a parishioner. If you can't talk to me, who can you talk to? " He followed this in the very next breath by saying, "

Is there any coffee on hand? My head is thumping it's the heat, I think. "

Slowly she released his hand and without a word turned from him and went into the kitchen. Taking the percolator from the stove she placed it on the tray that was standing ready and carried it back into the drawing-room, and there she poured him out a cup of coffee before sitting down.

The coffee finished, he lay back in the chair, stretched out his legs, and sighed. Then with eyes closed he said, "Now, my dear, what is it you want to say?"

Her body felt cold and rigid. Could one look at a man sitting in a chair with his eyes closed and his legs stretched out and say, "I want a baby ... come up to bed and love me, I want a baby," or words to that effect?

Her silence brought his eyes open but he did not move.

"Is it important?"

"Yes."

He closed his eyes again and remained motionless, and she continued to look at him. His body seemed to have spread over the chair; she did not see it as a beautiful body any more. It was soft and flabby, even fat in parts. It was only when he was standing stiffly upright or striding along, his tails flying, that he gave the impression of an athlete. But she knew his body was no athlete's. She looked at his black-clothed legs and the thought came to her that she had never seen them without a covering of some sort, and only twice had her hands felt their bare flesh. Were all marriages like this? No, no she gave this answer emphatically to herself all marriages could not be like this, or else the madhouses would be more full than they were now. This thought lifted her swiftly to her feet, and the movement brought his eyes open again and he stretched himself and said, "Oh, I wish I hadn't anything more to do tonight. Well, my dear, come along, what is this important business you want to discuss?"

"I'll talk about it upstairs. Will you be long?"

"Only about half an hour." He rose and came towards her. And now he put his arm about her shoulder and said, "You go on up, I won't be long."

Did the look on his face say he understood? Did it promise something?

She stared intently at him for a moment before lowering her eyes. Then slowly disengaging herself from him, she picked up the tray and went out of the room. In spite of the balcony window being wide open the bedroom was hot and the air heavy. Her undressing was slow, for her mind was not on it.