Riders in the Chariot (7 page)

At last Miss Hare cleared her throat, and that, too, sounded dusty--she was really quite exhausted. She said, "I think I shall take you to your room now."

As the stair wound upward, by slow convolutions, through the well of light, its loveliness tortured the throat of the owner.

"I would sit here sometimes," she said, "and listen to the music, and watch the dancers. Oh, it was splendid down there."

As the stair wound upward, past the closed doors, passages tunnelled off, into distance and a squeaking of mice.

"Of course, a great many of these rooms," she said, and waved, practical again, "have not been opened for years. There was no reason why they should have been. Not after the death of my mother. She died at the beginning of the war. The second, yes, it was the Second War. It was Father who went during the first. And Mother, I found her sitting in her chair. But this is not the time to tell family history. And on the stairs."

"I am a mother," said Mrs Jolley, "and am always glad to hear of anybody in like circumstances."

Her ring chinked on the wrought iron. Despite shortness of breath, she did, and would act firmly. Her corset could not assure enough as she followed up the stairs. She would act as befitted a mother and a lady; it was only to be hoped the two duties would not clash.

"Here," said Miss Hare, "is the room I have prepared. I have made the bed. Although people have different ideas on the making of a bed. There," she said.

Would the door open?

Mrs Jolley wished it would not, and that they might be left, instead, looking at each other on the landing, however unsatisfactory that solution might be.

But the door did open, easily, even, one would have said, eagerly.

"Well," said Mrs Jolley, "we shall see."

And smiled.

She had a blue eye that would see just so far and no farther, which was perhaps why she could recover while still professing shock. Miss Hare hoped that her housekeeper's face was kind, but suspected that the dimple had not bewitched more than the one man.

Mrs Jolley did not know where to begin, and would stand kneading her bare arms, as if they might not have got their final shape. In that spring weather her milky arms were dapple-blue against the silk jumper--she had knitted it herself--oyster-toned, but sagging now.

Mrs Jolley was a lady, as she never tired of pointing out. She would repeat the articles of her faith for anybody her instinct caught doubting. She would not touch an onion, she insisted; not for love. But was partial to a fluffy sponge, or butter sandwich, with nonpareils. A lady could never go wrong with pastel shades. Or Iceland poppies. Or chenille. She liked a good yarn, though, with another lady, at the bus stop, or over the fence. She liked a drive in a family car, to nowhere in particular, but looking out, in a nice hat, at faces on a lower level. Then the mechanism with which her superior station had fitted her would cause her head to move ever so slightly, to convey her disbelief.

She preferred to believe, however, and so Mrs Jolley would go to the pictures. To sit at the pictures sucking a lolly--not a hard one--after dropping the paper, along with memories and intentions, under the seat, was to indulge in sheerest velvet. It was a pity, though, about the hard lollies; the smell of a hot, moist caramel almost drove her nuts. But she would sit, and the strangest situations would pass muster as life. That lean young fellow, in crow's-feet and leather pants, might just have reached down, and put his hand--it made her lolly stick; and Ava and Lana, despite proportions and circumstances, could have been a couple of her own girls. Best of all was a picture about a mother. She knew by heart the injustices to expect, not to mention the retribution, so that, at the end, the Wurlitzer rising from its well only completed her apotheosis. When she smelled the
vox humana
_'s rose and violet breath, and felt the little hammers striking on her womb, then she was, indeed, fulfilled, and could forget her hubby, who had died in the lounge at ten p. m., as she was handing him his second cup of tea. Grave as that injustice was, she had survived, and, it appeared, might have experienced enough of life and dreams to parry any further blows.

Miss Hare was afraid she might be afraid of her housekeeper. She said, "I hope you will get used to things."

"I miss the trams," Mrs Jolley replied.

The clang of them was in her voice, and in her eye, the melancholy plume of violet sparks.

"Oh dear," said Miss Hare, "I cannot say I was ever attached to a tram."

"I miss Saturday evening," Mrs Jolley said. "Dropping in at Merle's, or Dot's, or Elma's. Elma is the youngest--married a stoker, not that he is not a gentleman, because none of my girls would never ever have entertained the idea of anything else but a gentleman."

"I am surprised you could bear to leave them," said Miss Hare, almost not loud enough.

"Ah," said Mrs Jolley, and took the mop, "that is life, if you know what I mean."

Then she screwed the mop in the bucket, and took it out, and looked at the head.

"Or death, "she said.

Miss Hare was terrified.

"As if it was my fault," said Mrs Jolley. "Sitting in his own chair."

"A chair makes it seem more natural," Miss Hare ventured to suggest.

Remembering her mother, who had died in similar circumstances, thus she comforted herself.

"I can just imagine you and your mum," Mrs Jolley said, and laughed. "Living here amongst the furniture. Like a couple of mice."

"Oh, there was Peg, too, and William Hadkin."

"Peg who?"

"I can't remember her name. If we ever knew it. She always seemed old. And had always been here. When the maids left--after the troubles overtook us--Peg stayed, and became a friend. And died, too. But after Mother. I was quite alone then."

"And who was the gentleman you was speaking of?"

"William was a coachman. He was very deaf."

Miss Hare paused.

"He was what they call
rather simple
_. Which means that what one knows is of a different kind. Actually, William knew an awful lot. And was not so deaf. I did not like him."

"And this Mr Hadkin, did he die too?"

"No. He simply went away."

"Strike a light!" said Mrs Jolley. "No wonder! What did all you people live on?"

"Things," said Miss Hare, and yawned. "Bread, for instance. Bread is lovely. I love to tear the ends off, and eat it just like that. Going along. And give it to the birds. It is so convenient. But, of course, we had the little allowance from my cousin, Eustace Cleugh, of which I wrote you. Certainly it was not very much, and that was discontinued in the war. Oh, I forgot. There was the goat. I had a goat, and would milk her. Yes, I missed her."

"What happened to the goat?"

"Please don't ask me!" cried Miss Hare. "I don't know!"

"All
right
_!" said Mrs Jolley, whose turn it was to be afraid.

In that house.

But Miss Hare was sad rather than afraid. She could not answer questions. Questions were screws that spiralled down into the brain. She looked at the bucket of grey water, from which the woman's mop was spreading ineffectual puddles. The woman whose three daughters' husbands had built with bricks, boxes in which to live. So childish. For the brick boxes of the daughters' husbands would tumble like the games of children. Only memories were indestructible.

So Miss Hare snorted--she was bored, besides, with Mrs Jolley--and went off into the passages of Xanadu.

But memories also tormented. They flapped like old rags of curtains, the priceless ones with gold thread, and moths flew out, always grey, or night-coloured, scattering their suffocating down.

"We must wrap up our furs, Mary," Mrs Hare had said, "very carefully, now that summer is here, in sheets of the
Heiald
_. And put them in strong canvas bags, with draw-necks. I shall feel uneasy otherwise."

Mrs Hare had remained mostly happy, right to the end, in the ritual of a past life.

And Peg would run, on her sticks of legs, and say from between her naked gums, which her mistress permitted, because, well, of everything, "Yes, m'mm. No one likes to have moths on their mind. But leave it to me. No, miss, I will see to it."

And the servant would show the canvas bags, their necks well and truly drawn. Yes, those geese were dead, the daughter saw, and stuffed with the balls of paper Peg had put, to simulate. But the mother was pacified.

Mrs Hare, gentle in her youth, distinguished in maturity, had become a horse of polished ivory in her old age. She would sit quite still for half an hour, then suddenly toss her head, at a thought, or fly. It was her long, refined face that gave the impression, and long, ivory teeth, which she loved to exercise on the fingers of cinnamon toast brought to her by Peg. Afterwards she would continue to sit, while her elderly, refined stomach rumbled with tea and toast, and the waning light worked still further, with uncanny Chinese skill, at the polished portrait of an ivory horse.

Sometimes she would walk through what remained of the gardens, leaning on her stumpy daughter's arm, but she did not notice very much. She preferred to remember social triumphs and the Borromean Isles.

Once she asked the daughter, "Where is the grotto, Mary? The grotto that your father had them build out of shells. Or was it lumps of rock crystal?"

The daughter grunted, for, after all, nothing more was expected of her.

Once Mrs Hare started to complain.

"I used to hope my daughter would become an ambassador's wife. She would have long, beautiful legs, and carry a fan, and manage other people's conversation. In the end there is nothing one has managed. Not even of one's own.

"Still," she continued more cheerfully, "you would not have been walking with me in the garden, in those circumstances, and I might have fallen over on my own, and broken something."

Again the daughter grunted, because what else could she have done?

Then the mother began to hit the grass.

"Horrid, horrid tufts!" she cried, beating the tussocks of paspalum with her stick, so that the tassels of the grass trembled.

"Don't!" begged the daughter. "Please!"

Such impotent caprice was, at least, quickly diverted.

"But do not think I am not devoted to you, Mary," insisted the mother. "I can truly, honestly say I do love everybody now. Even your father."

For Mrs Hare, whose passions had always been watery, it was perhaps easier.

"Even one's disappointments seem, at the end, to have a kind of meaning," she said towards sunset.

And would have squeezed her daughter's arm if she had had the strength.

Instead, they went inside, the disappointing daughter, and the mother who was, in the end, supported by her disappointments.

Months later, looking at the figure of the dead woman seated so naturally in her chair, the daughter cried because she could not mourn in an approved manner. With passion, perhaps, but that the mother would hardly have appreciated or understood. So she mourned life, instead, such as she herself suspected it of being, from sudden rages of the sky, and brown gentleness of young ferns.

It was fortunate that Peg had been there, because it was Peg who knew what to do. She sent William to Sarsaparilla, and the postmistress telephoned, and some men arrived to take the body. It was a day of rain, and the hall had smelt of wet raincoat quite a while afterwards.

Those were the last dealings Mary Hare had with her mother.

For Peg had said, "Don't you bother to go to the funeral, Miss Mary, if you feel it will upset you. Who will hold you if you take a turn? We'll sit here together, you and me, and eat a piece of bread and dripping in front of the stove. And let the parson look after things; that's what he is there for."

Peg, although an elderly woman, had preserved some link with childhood, which allowed her to recognize the forms of reality through the rough sheath of appearance. She remained an admirable companion. Mary loved Peg. She would sit and rub her own wrinkles, and watch her maid's tranquil face: that of an elder sister in steel-rimmed spectacles, a sister who knew approximately the plan of an outside world, but who had not forgotten all the games.

Because she was of that district, Peg used to go about a lot. She would ride her bicycle at the hills, and it was surprising how she got to the top. Such a frail thing. Not much more than the sawing sound of her own washed-out, starched dress. Peg laundered and cleaned to perfection, but cooked badly. She liked to make jam, and render down beeswax, and usually smelled of one or the other. She would suddenly appear from under beds, holding a pad of waxy cloth, when a person least expected. In her steel-rimmed spectacles. In a dress that had once been pale blue, now almost white.

"Read to me, Peg," her mistress Mary Hare would command.

"Read yourself!" Peg advised, and laughed. "What shall I read, ever?"

"I can see it better if you read it out. Do, Peg!" begged Mary Hare. "Let us read Anthony Hordern's catalogue."

"Dear, you are a caution!" Peg had to laugh.

She was rather pale around the eyes.

Peg liked best to read the Bible, but not aloud, as her mistress did not care for it. The maid was always busy with the Gospels. She found the Epistles too dry, and did not go much on the Revelations--in fact, she showed no inclination to discuss that end of her battered book.

"You ought to be having a study of this," Peg used to say, glancing up from her Bible.

She had always worn an exposed look on account of her pale eyelids, but her innocence had protected her.

"Oh dear, no!" protested her mistress, almost in fear. "I know that that is nothing for me."

"It is for everybody," Peg would insist earnestly.

"Not quite. It is not for me."

"But you won't try it. How have you ever found out?"

"I will find out what I am to find out, in my own way, and in my own time. I am different," maintained Mary Hare.

"Yes," sighed Peg. "Different and the same."

She could not marvel at it enough.

Although the two women were in many ways not unlike, Peg was without that arrogance which snared her mistress frequently. Mary Hare loved Peg, but she loved her own arrogance. It was her great pride, and if nobody else recognized her jewel, then, she would still deck herself. That way she achieved distinction, perhaps even beauty, she was vain enough to hope.