Marnie (32 page)

I went home, and bubbles of pain and grief and sheer hurt kept rising and bursting in my heart. And Mrs Leonard who’d been sent for from the village came up and fussed, and then Mrs
Rutland rang up. Mrs Rutland behaved exactly the way all the mothers must have done in all the wars England has ever fought, when they hear their son has been wounded and want to comfort an anxious
daughter-in-law, even though they are really much more anxious themselves. She did it just right, and you couldn’t fault her. And you couldn’t fault me either. After all, how could I
possibly be to blame? My horse too, she said, as an afterthought. It really was an appalling piece of misfortune. And I thought of those men, how brutal and cruel they’d been to a fox and how
gentle and kind they were over a horse.

That night I wondered where I could hang myself. But Mrs Leonard stayed with me all night and never gave me a chance.

Next morning the reaction set in. I was black and blue all down one side and could hardly move my shoulder or my hip. And I slept. I slept as if I’d been short of sleep for a year. The
doctor came once but I’ll swear he gave me nothing. Maybe it was the shock.

Sometimes I’d wake out of a black cloud of sleep, and there’d be pain waiting for me somewhere like a sort of illness just round the corner of my mind. But it wasn’t the pains
of my wrenched shoulder and bruised back; it went much, much deeper than that. It was like the part of your heart that beat, the part of your brain that reasoned, as if there was something wrong at
the hinge. I’d wake sometimes and feel this awful hurt and look at the clock and see it was five past three, and then I’d sink off gratefully into a long deep sleep. Then after it
I’d wake with a start and see it was only ten past three, and the hinge would still be creaking and I’d look down a long dark corridor of empty echoing horror to the end of my life.

I drank something every now and then when Mrs Leonard brought it, and just about dusk I looked up and saw Mrs Rutland was there and I said like asking the time: ‘How’s Mark?’
And she said: ‘He’s holding his own.’

I ought to have asked more but I drifted off again and had an insane jumble of dreams about Mother and Forio and how Mother said he had to be shot because it wasn’t respectable to keep a
horse in Cuthbert Avenue. Then I was suddenly in court and seemed to be both judge and prisoner in one, defending and condemning myself. Dr Roman was there testifying that I was unfit to plead.
Once or twice during the day I tried to get out of bed, but each time the pain in my body woke me up, and I lay back panting and staring.

Outside the window were two trees – just skeletons, no leaves; all through the bright afternoon they nodded and leered at me. Then I saw the river again where we fell, and the water was a
snake crawling slimy over the sheets of the bed. It wasn’t till the Friday about noon, pretty well forty-eight hours after the accident, that I woke up with my mind really clear, absolutely
clear, just like a glass that’s been emptied and polished, and knew there was an appointment I’d missed today. The
Flandre
had sailed without me.

From then on a few things began to move normally. I couldn’t sleep then for the pain in my shoulder and back, and I couldn’t even close my eyes because of Forio. The minute I closed
my eyes I saw him again. Perhaps it isn’t any good describing everything as it happened, the way my thoughts went; but some time later there was Mrs Rutland in the room again, and I said
again: ‘How’s Mark?’

‘About the same. He isn’t conscious yet.’

‘What do they say?’

‘They say we can only wait.’ She came into the room; her hair was untidy. ‘And you?’

‘Oh, yes. I’m better now.’

‘Can you eat a little lunch?’

‘No. No thanks. I’m better without.’

That evening Mark came round and Mrs Rutland got back from the hospital more hopeful. The doctors said he wasn’t out of danger yet, but they thought it was going to be all right.

‘The first thing he said was, where were you, Marnie, and it seemed to help him a lot when I told him you weren’t badly hurt.’

The next day I got up while Mrs Rutland was out, and managed to dress and hobble round the house. My back and hip were like somebody’d painted thunderclouds on them, but a lot of the pain
was going. The pain in my body, that is. Mrs Leonard found me out in the stable and tried to get me back to bed, but I wasn’t going. I stayed in the stable all morning, just sitting there,
until Mrs Rutland came back, and then I limped in and had lunch with her. Mrs Rutland said she’d promised to drive me in to see Mark as soon as I was well. I said I’d go the following
day. I couldn’t very well say anything else. Before dinner that evening I had to go into his bedroom for something, and his keys were there in the corner of the top drawer of his
dressing-table . . .

At dinner Mrs Rutland said: ‘These flowers are from the gardener, Richards. He brought them for you and he seemed specially anxious to make it clear that they were out of his own
garden.’

Two daffodils, some wallflowers, a few violets.

‘And a blind man came yesterday with a bunch of grapes. He said they were with love. Do you know a blind man?’

‘Yes.’

We ate nothing much for a long while. Any other time I’d have felt screwed up inside at the thought of having a meal alone with her, but now there wasn’t room for any of that. What
had happened sat square in my middle like a stone ju-ju; you just didn’t see round.

After a time she said: ‘This reminds me of a meal I once had with Estelle. D’you mind my talking of Estelle?’

‘No . . .’

‘Mark was away, in Wales on business for the firm. Mark’s father had been dead about eighteen months. I’d just sold our house, the family house, and most of the furniture, and
was moving to the flat in London. And suddenly I got this terrible conviction that I couldn’t go on. I suddenly felt as if I’d wrenched up my last roots; and
that
, on top of
George’s death and my other son being lost in the war, was more than I could bear. I couldn’t live in London, I couldn’t go on living
anywhere
. All I wanted was some warm
and comfortable place to die. I asked myself to dinner with Estelle because I had to have company at any price, and some sort of sympathy and understanding if I could get it.’

It was too dark in the room; I wished I’d switched on the table lamps. That curtain ring needed fixing; Mrs Leonard never remembered. Mrs Rutland’s fingers were small and pointed,
not at all like Mark’s; she moved them along the edge of the table.

‘Did Estelle give it you?’

‘I never asked for it in so many words. When I got here I realized there are some pits of the soul that have to be climbed out of by oneself or not at all. This was one of them. You
can’t ask for understanding at twenty-five of the awful loneliness that can strike you thirty years later.’

She went on talking, and I watched and listened, thinking perhaps Estelle never had that loneliness, yet she must have had when she knew she was going to die.

‘It isn’t a question of age,’ I said.

‘What?’ She’d gone on to something else.

‘It isn’t just a question of age. Weren’t you ever lonely as a child?’

She thought. ‘Yes. But it’s different then, isn’t it? When you’re young you have something to feed on, an inner iron ration that keeps your strength up. When you’re
older, when your life is past, that’s used up, there’s only the hollow place where the nourishment has been.’

I didn’t think to ask her why tonight reminded her of that time. She changed the subject right away, as if afraid I’d think her morbid.

Presently I said: ‘Does Mark ever talk about me?’

‘You mean, do we discuss you? No, I don’t think so.’

‘Hasn’t he ever said we don’t get on well?’

‘No . . . Don’t you?’

‘Not very.’

She turned her wine glass round but didn’t look at me.

I said: ‘It’s chiefly my fault.’

‘That sounds half-way to a reconciliation.’

‘Oh, it isn’t just a quarrel. I’m afraid it goes far deeper than that.’

Mrs Leonard came in. When she had gone Mrs Rutland said: ‘I hope you’ll be able to make this up with him, Marnie, whether you feel it is your fault or his. I think it would bring him
down altogether if he had another failure.’

‘Failure?’

‘Well, yes, in a sense. Isn’t death at twenty-six a failure? It’s contrary to nature anyway. It’s a failure of life and vitality, and I think Mark looked on it to some
extent as a failure of love . . .’

Her eyes were on me, and I didn’t like it now; it was just coming through; they’d a liquid look, but shallow, like holding back at the last.

‘Perhaps it’s natural for me to think him an unusual man, being his mother. But I try to keep my understanding this side of idolatry; and I do see that he’s a man who all his
life will be bent on taking risks – risks with the usual things perhaps, but most of all with people. He’s tremendously self-willed but also tremendously vulnerable. Estelle’s
death hit him hard. To fall in love again so soon . . . It doesn’t often happen.’

I said uncomfortably: ‘Did Mark tell you he was – what he was doing about the printing works?’

She still turned her wine glass. ‘About accepting the Glastonbury offer? Yes. I persuaded him to take it.’

‘You did? Why? Didn’t the name matter?’

‘The name matters very little if you put it alongside the other things. Mark will never get on with the Holbrooks; he hasn’t the flexibility of his father. It’s much better for
everybody that they should separate now.’

‘The Holbrooks won’t like it.’

‘Not the way it’s turned out, no. But only because of that. Mark didn’t want to do it; he said he felt responsible for the staff. But that’s what he’s been
negotiating about, writing in some safeguards. As far as we can tell, no one will suffer.’

No one will suffer. I thought, it’s a sort of epitaph. No one will suffer except me, and Forio, and Mark, and my mother, and, at the next stage, his.

On the Tuesday Mrs Rutland drove me down to the hospital. I tell you, I didn’t want to go. I’d nothing to say to Mark. Except the things that couldn’t be said. Such as,
I’m sorry. And, I’m going soon. Goodbye.

He was in a room to himself – private patient I suppose – with a long window, and the sun was falling on a corner of the bed. Thank God she let me go in alone. I was surprised his
head wasn’t even bandaged, but that frail look that had foxed me when I first met him, it was more so than ever, he looked a stone lighter.

I didn’t know
what
sort of way I should be greeted, but he smiled and said: ‘Hullo, Marnie.’

‘Hullo, Mark.’ I tried not to limp on the way to the chair by the bed, and then just as I was going to sit down I remembered the nurse still standing by the door so I bent and kissed
him.

‘How’re you feeling?’ He got it out first.

‘Me? Oh, I’m all right.
Stiff
. But you?’

‘A headache and this arm, that’s all. I want to come home.’

‘Will they let you?’

‘Not for a few days. I’m awfully sorry about Forio . . .’

‘I’m sorry about it all.’

‘But I know how much he meant to you.’

‘It’s my own fault anyway.’

‘Or mine. I shouldn’t have chased you.’

There was a pause. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘thanks for dragging me out of the mud.’

‘Who told you?’

‘I was just that much conscious. I remember you wiping the mud out of my eyes and ears.’

‘I can hardly remember what I did myself.’

‘I seem to remember it pretty well.’

That’s all. We hadn’t any more to say. The nurse hadn’t shaved him well and his skin would be dark in another hour or so.

He said: ‘Have you let Roman know about the accident?’

‘No.’

‘Ring him, will you? Otherwise he may think you’re deliberately dropping off again.’

I said: ‘What happens to a horse when it’s shot, Mark? Do they – bury it, or what?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I couldn’t bear to think of anything else, of it being sold . . .’

‘I don’t think there’s much likelihood.’

There were some flowers and grapes by the bed, and some magazines and two or three books. I suppose I should have remembered to bring him something.

He said: ‘It’s early days yet, of course, but . . . there are other horses. We can go round in the spring, pick up a good one.’

‘I don’t think I’d want one.’

‘We’ll see.’ He patted my hand.

I must say it was awfully queer. Sometimes since I married him he’d looked at me as if he hated me. Because I was friendly with Terry or because I drew away sometimes when he touched me he
could fairly go white and angry. But after this, after I’d led him a wild chase over impossible country and landed him with something near a fractured skull, well, he didn’t seem to
hold that against me at all.

Mrs Rutland went home on the Wednesday. I went to see Mark each day, and they said he could come home on the following Monday.

On the Wednesday night just as I was going to bed Terry rang. He said he was sorry about the accident and he hoped Mark was going on all right and that he’d inquired a couple of times
about me through the Newton-Smiths and it was all too bad, wasn’t it?

I said yes, it was.

He talked for a minute or two and then said: ‘I suppose you know the take-over of Rutland’s is going through?’

‘I – haven’t had time to think of it.’

‘No, I suppose not. Or me.’

‘Or you. I’m sorry.’

‘Well, I suppose it’s no good gnawing over an old
bone
. We’ve got to live as we’ve got to live. When’s Mark coming home?’

‘Monday, I think.’

‘Come out with me Friday?’

‘Oh, Terry, I couldn’t.’

‘Feel ill?’

‘Just miserable.’

‘All the more reason to get away for a bit.’

‘No, thanks, I can’t. I couldn’t.’ By Friday I should be gone away.

‘Tell you what,’ he said, ‘I’ll ring you again tomorrow when I get back from the works, see if you’ll change your mind.’

‘All right.’ I wouldn’t be here tomorrow evening either.