South Riding (64 page)

But the telephone rang, and when she lifted the receiver she heard her friend Joe Astell calling to her in his hoarse and breathless voice.

It brought some comfort to her. The knowledge of his sympathy and support had meant much to her during the past difficult weeks. She knew that he liked and respected her, and his appreciation helped her to retain a modicum of her own self-respect.

“Hallo! Oh, it’s you, Joe.”

“I rang up to wish you luck. This is the great morning of your inspection, isn’t it?”

“Oh, how nice of you. Yes—in about half an hour she’s coming.”

“Well. You’ll be all right. The school’s all right. You’re doing a grand piece of work. I just rang up to tell you so in case you might forget.”

How kind of him. How kind of him. Her heart was warmed and reassured by his goodness. People were kind. People were nice.

For no reason that she could imagine, she found herself fumbling for her handkerchief. The intrusive tears that now so often pricked her eyeballs were at their inconvenient game again. The slightest thing nowadays, and she wanted to cry. Ridiculous.

She was blowing her nose when Miss Masters knocked and came in.

“Oh, I just wanted to ask you. That new anthology—
The English Galaxy.
Do you think one can let the lower Fifth just have a free run in it? If Miss Teasdale asks me what they’re reading shall I show her that?”

“I should think so. Is this it?”

She took the volume and idly opened it. She read the first poem on the first page.

“O western wind, when wilt thou blow
That the small rain down can rain?
Christ, that my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again!”

A pain more physical than mental wrenched her. She wanted to howl aloud in her wild wretchedness. She bowed herself low over the desk and muttered.

“Yes. I remember the book. It’s good, I think,” and held her breath till the young English mistress closed the door.

Then she sprang up and began to pace her room. Oh, God! she thought, what fool was it who said that work heals longing? Had she not drowned and choked and stifled herself with work? Not a detail escaped her; not an opportunity had she neglected. She had hurled herself upon Kiplingtpn High School with energy sufficient to have saved Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. She had bullied governors, lobbied education officers, flattered parents, scolded and charmed and petted her staff and pupils.

But at a word, a name, the phrase of a waltz, a silly line of doggerel, she was up and tramping as she tramped now across her office, her hands pressing her aching breasts, her veins empoisoned, the Nessus shirt of humiliation scorching her.

Christ, that my love were in my arms!

She could not escape him.

All through the Christmas holidays she had waited at her sister’s home for him to write. At first she had tortured herself because he was ill; he might be dying, and she could get no news of him. Then Astell wrote to tell her of his own most recent campaigns on behalf of the housing scheme, and his successes, and mentioned Carne as a defeated enemy. He was alive, then; but sent no word to her. Had he been shocked? Had he been embarrassed? Had he been sickened by her crude pursuit?

Night after night she agonised, in forced inaction, living through their brief hours in each other’s company, picturing herself as he might see her—the images growing more cruel every hour. A schoolmistress of forty, ugly, clumsy, vulgar, not a lady, with big, reddish hands and a head too large for her small body—a blacksmith’s daughter and he was a snob. An elementary schoolgirl, aggressive, sharp of tongue. She compared herself with the portrait of Muriel Sedgmire, lacerating herself with his wife’s beauty.

She no longer criticised him. He might be obstructive, stubborn, stupid; his values might be anti-social, his vision narrow. But he was hers, hers, hers; and she could not touch him. She had seen him completely disarmed, helpless, unconscious, racked by pain, beyond all control or knowledge, and she loved him the more for it.

It was herself whom now she criticised, her age, her manner, the flaws of her mind and body. Well she knew the shape of her sister’s bedroom. Had she not lain there, extravagantly burning the electric light till four and five in the morning, because she could not bear to lie in darkness, watching the image of the man she loved forming and melting against the night?

She remembered every detail of their growing friendship—the first encounter at the governor’s meeting, the quarrel in the snow on Maythorpe cliff, the night at Minton Riggs when the calf was born, the anxious evenings and dawns when Midge was ill. Again she held back the curtain for him and they watched the sun rising out of the sea—all the world a melting dazzle of pale primrose and silver. Again she sat in front of his fire talking about the future of Midge, when Mrs. Beddows came and found them together. Fate had compelled them to share birth and death and sickness; conspiring to force them into a rare intimacy.

Oh, why did I spoil that? Why did I spoil that? Why couldn’t I leave well alone? I could have helped him. I could have been his friend. I could have comforted him. She saw herself growing old beside him, in honourable and enduring intimacy, relying upon him, as she relied upon Joe Astell, whom she could ring up for counsel at any hour, to whom she could tell almost anything.

But she had destroyed all that, and he avoided her. Terrible things had happened. He was ill; she knew that. She had made intensive inquiries about
angina pectoris.
She knew now the measure of his physical danger.

He was ruined. Every one said that Maythorpe could not last till harvest.

Then he had lost his seat on the council. She had heard about that. He had been wild, they said, with jealousy and malice. (She did not believe that, but she knew him to be obstinate and reckless.) He had spread rumours that Snaith and Huggins dealt in corrupt practices. Snaith had served a writ for libel against him, for a speech that he had made in his election campaign. Snaith was claiming three thousand pounds in damages. He could never pay it. He would fight, and then he would be ruined.

Oh fool, fool, fool, she cried to the ghost inhabiting her heart, can’t you see they’ll destroy you? Oh my dear, my love, why must you be so stubborn?

But the ghost was unresponsive; the man eluded her. She had never seen him since that night in the hotel. Midge was now boarding with the Beddows, so he no longer drove in his cart to fetch her. He had not come to the last governors’ meeting. His name was on every casual lip, because of his spectacular prelude to failure; but Sarah could not even speak to him.

I have lost him, her heart cried. It is all my own fault. Oh, why, why, why?

She could find no comfort, for she had thrown away the one chance she had ever had of being his friend.

If only he were not menaced by death she could bear it better; but the thought that any hour might be his last tormented her. He will die, he will die, and I shall never see him.

Twenty times she wrote notes to him; twenty times she tore them up again.

If he would speak to me. If I could have him alone, only for five minutes. If I could see him, tell him just what I feel for him—that I am his friend, that I don’t care what he thinks of me, that I don’t even care if he dislikes me, so long as he knows that I stand by him, that I am here always, loving him, trusting him, caring for him.

Christ, that my love were in my arms!

The parlourmaid tapped at the door and entered. Sarah stood still, expecting Emily Teasdale.

“Mr. Carne to see you. Mr. Carne of Maythorpe.”

She heard his heavy tread along the passage. She dropped into her chair. Her knees were water.

“Let him come in,” she said.

He came in.

Drums banged in her head. The walls of her room contracted, swelled, contracted. Disks of blackness floated before her eyes. I’m going to faint, she thought. That would be a judgment on me. She knew that he was standing in front of her desk waiting for her to speak. With an effort that seemed to tear her heart from her body, she raised her head and faced him.

“Good-morning,” she said. She could hear her voice, dry and small. “You’re quite a stranger. Won’t you sit down?”

With astonishment she thought: But he isn’t ill! I’ve never seen him look better. There was more grey in his hair, but his eyes were bright, his usually dead white skin bronzed a little by exposure to wind and rain, the lines round his mouth relaxed. She had been torturing herself because he was dying and he wasn’t ill at all. He had defrauded her. She remembered her wakeful nights, her suspense, her misery, and was suddenly very angry.

He sat down and smiled at her—not intimately, but with a kind of liberation, as though he too were unexpectedly relieved of something.

“Good-morning,” he said formally. “I couldn’t come to the last governors’ meeting.”

“So I understood.”

“But I’ve just got the minutes and I see that you’ve managed to persuade the other governors to promise you fresh buildings if the new housing estate goes through.”

“I shall need them.”

“It’s perfectly ridiculous.”

“Don’t you realise that I shall probably double my numbers?”

“Who’s going to pay for them?”

“The rate-payers and the Board of Education.”

“The rate-payers. Because the rates have gone up I suppose you think you can get anything?”

“Not at all. I only ask for what is reasonable. I feel I may be more likely to get it now.”

“Since the elections?”

“Yes. The new county council seems quite sensible.”

“Because people like me aren’t there any longer?”

“Perhaps.”

Her anger was fed by the flame which had consumed her since December. Lips tightly compressed, eyes bright, she faced him, small and furious, in arms against everything that he stood for. She could not believe that last time she had seen him he had tossed moaning upon her bed; she could not believe that she had lain weeping for him every night since then. She saw his solid body, his dark brown tweed suit, his bowler hat (who can feel romantic about a man who wears a bowler hat? she asked herself), the obstinate lines of his big handsome face. She thought, what a fool he is! She thought, he’s just like Mussolini.

“I suppose you think that because I’ve been got rid of from the council I’m going to retire from all public work? You’re wrong.”

“I hadn’t thought very much about it,” she lied.

“You’re very thick just now with Snaith and Astell. Perhaps you don’t know that they have been organising one of the worst pieces of corruption that has been practised in the South Riding Council since it started?”

“I’ve heard that you’ve been saying so, but it isn’t proved yet.”

“Naturally you stick up for your friends.”

“Naturally.”

“You’re hoping that I shall resign from the Board of Governors and leave you a free hand.”

“I hadn’t thought about it.”

“Then I’m telling you.” He leant across the desk. He too was furious now. His eyes were blazing. Their faces almost touched in their burning rage. “I shall do nothing of the kind. I intend to stay as long as I can. I shall denounce your fine friends and do my utmost to keep down your mad extravagance.”

“I warn you. You’re making a fool of yourself. You think you can stop progress and reason. You can’t, any more than you can make the moon stand still.”

“Why should you think that your ways are progressive?”

“I know what I’m doing.”

“Do you?”

She read into that question all his contempt for her self-betrayal. She had flung herself at his head and now he mocked her.

She sprang up, so that even from her few inches she could look down on him.

“I can’t understand why you let me have your daughter at my school if that’s what you think of me,” she cried, answering, not what he had said, but what her heart said. “But let me tell you it’s no privilege for us to keep her. She is without exception the most tiresome, hysterical, unwholesome, worst-mannered child I’ve ever had to deal with, and I shall be delighted if you take her away.”

Then he got up too, and his control deserted him.

“You are asking me to remove my daughter?”

“I shall be delighted.”

As he grew hot, she grew cold.

They faced each other.

“You may think that as a governor you confer an inestimable privilege on the school by leaving her here. I assure you that really we can do quite well without her. And without her father upon the board.”

“The matter hardly rests in your choice.”

He looked so comical, blazing down at her, his great jaw outthrust, his bowler hat in his hand, that she broke into a bubble of laughter.

“Really, I do love your notion of governoratorial behaviour. You come bounding in here like a bucolic Mussolini and expect me to sit down meekly under your denunciations. And there’s a lady bird crawling up your collar. If you had the slightest notion how funny you looked!”

“Damn and blast you, woman!”

She thought that he was going to strike her and smiled up at him, receptive, mocking, inviting him to lay his hands on her, when she heard the parlourmaid’s shrill and childish voice announce “Miss Teasdale, ma’am, to see you.”