Summer at the Haven (12 page)

After an aeon it stopped and she was able to think again.
“What had the woman said – ‘The committee agreed with
me
’.” It was her idea then, well, she should pay for it. If the murder could not be prevented, it could be revenged. Then her breakfast came in and afterwards the sawing began again.

The thought of revenge helped Miss Dawson to endure the horror of the next day, when the devilish petrol saw whined and screeched through the hours until her proud, beautiful tree crashed to the ground. She pondered long on what form this could take, but found nothing that satisfied her. All that time she never left her room.

Miss Blackett said, “Don’t you find the noise disturbing? Why not stay downstairs in the sitting-room till they have finished?”

Miss Dawson did not answer. Miss Blackett found her silence a little disturbing, but Miss Dawson had always been a moody one, and really it was best not to worry too much about any of the old dears, but just to do what one knew to be right for them and, if she didn’t mind the noise and preferred to stay upstairs, let her have her own way. It was certainly interesting to watch the men at work, she would have liked more time to see them herself.

It was on the day after the tree had fallen that Miss Dawson knew what was to be her revenge. Held prisoner by a sort of baleful spell, she had spent hours at the window watching the final stages of destruction. Lord Jim was equally, though very differently, fascinated. He had never experienced a horizontal tree before and much enjoyed stalking along it, sharpening his claws on its trunk, and pouncing on stray small twigs and dismembered branches. Frances Dawson looked down at his lithe golden body, so full of life, desecrating her dying tree, and hated him. Then it flashed upon her that of course her revenge on the warden must be to destroy her cat. It was so obvious and so just a solution that she wondered it had not occurred to her at once. She thought of the dead thrushes and the other
poor little corpses; this would be an act of revenge for them too. She remembered a talk with Mary Perry. She had said the only way to deal with cats was to get rid of them and Mary had said it would be difficult to get rid of Lord Jim, and she had answered, but not seriously, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Well, she was serious enough now, and a way must be found. She believed Mary was a little shocked at her then. She had been wishing that Mary had not been away during this dreadful time, for she alone would have guessed a little of what she was suffering. But now she thought it was just as well. She would certainly be of no help – too soft, and she might have proved a hindrance. “Where there’s a will there’s a way” – but what way?

Poison was the only possible answer, but how on earth was she to get hold of any? The problem occupied her all the rest of the day and by evening she was no nearer a solution, and she felt exhausted and frustrated by the time that the warden came in with her painkillers for the night. As her two regulation pills were shaken out, she stared at the bottle, because she did not want to look at Miss Blackett, and her eye caught the inscription at the base of the label. She did not have to read it, she knew it said: “Keep away from children and animals.” That was it – that was the answer: hoard her pills, mix them with a tempting meal – fish, they always had fish for Friday suppers, that would do. Today was Tuesday, eight pills would surely be more than enough.

Miss Blackett said goodnight and left, and Frances grimly put away her pills. To forego her dose would mean long hours of pain, but she could endure more than that to achieve her end. During the next three days she kept a close watch on Lord Jim’s movements. Like most cats, he was a creature of habit and addicted to a peaceful snooze after his meals. Since Tom’s arrival he liked to take his morning nap on his bed, which smelt pleasantly of its
owner and was safe from disturbance. Frances Dawson noted that he passed her room on his way up to Tom’s attic each morning at about the same time. On Friday evening she asked to have her supper served to her in her own room, a not unusual request with her. It was pilchards, and unluckily for Lord Jim, not in tomato sauce which he would not have touched, but pilchards in their natural state were exceedingly tasty. Frances pounded up her pills with the handle of a knife, mixed them with the pilchards on one of her own saucers and hid it in the bottom of her cupboard. She left a morsel of the fish on her tray.

“Miss Dawson, she has eaten nearly all her supper tonight,” observed Gisela, “that is good, she has not eaten enough these days.”

On that Sunday morning Frances, who had scarcely slept at all, struggled out of bed at the right moment, opened her door and put down the saucer of pilchards upon the threshold. Her fumbling arthritic fingers, shaking with excitement, nearly dropped it and she spilt some of the mixture, which worried her, but there was no time to clear it up. She sat down on the nearest chair and began to talk to herself.

“I’ll have to take my chance of anyone noticing, but it isn’t likely, they’re all either in their rooms or busy downstairs now. If anyone does happen to pass, I’ll say I wanted to give the cat a treat. I don’t care what they think. I wish he’d come. The pills are almost tasteless, I know, and all cats are greedy.”

Here she was wrong, all cats are not greedy any more than all people, but only an abnormal cat refuses fish. Lord Jim was not particularly greedy, but neither was he abnormal. This morning he was punctual as usual and was most agreeably surprised to find a saucer of pilchards on Miss Dawson’s threshold. He cleared it up with relish and even attended to the spilt fragments. Then he went on his way rejoicing. Miss Dawson picked up the saucer and washed it thoroughly.

Miss Blackett missed Lord Jim first at his lunch hour. She was a little worried as his habits were usually so regular. When he did not turn up for his teatime saucer of milk she began to be anxious, but when he was still missing for his chief and most enjoyable meal of the day, the one he took after the residents’ supper was over, she was seriously concerned. She went round asking everyone if they had seen him that day, but only Leila Ford remembered to have done so.

“I saw him early in the morning, Miss Blackett, he was going up to the attics, on his way to that boy’s room I expect – he’s always after him nowadays.” Leila spoke with relish; she saw Miss Blackett’s face harden into a stony mask and she sensed drama in the air.

Miss Blackett turned and marched upstairs; as she passed Miss Dawson’s room the door opened slightly but she went on past it, straight on and up to Tom’s attic. “He must have shut up Lord Jim there,” she told herself angrily, “he would never have kept away from me for so long of his own free will.”

She burst into the room. There was no Lord Jim there and no Tom either. She looked all round, on the bed and on the chair. But at a second glance the bed did not look quite right, there was a slight hump down the centre. Miss Blackett threw back the coverlet and revealed Lord Jim lying underneath. He looked far too shrunk and too still. She stood there motionless looking down at him.

Then Tom, who was coming to bed early as was usual with him, bounded past her with a queer cry and took up Lord Jim’s limp body in his arms. Miss Blackett shrieked out at him:

“He’s dead, you’ve killed him, its some hateful thing you’ve done like idiots do do to animals. He was quite, quite well – you’ve killed him, you wicked, wicked boy!” She rushed at him and struck at his head again and again.

“Stop that,” said Miss Dawson’s voice at the door. She
had heard the cries and had pulled herself up the stairs. “It wasn’t Tom who killed your cat, I did.”

Miss Blackett stared at her. “You!” she gasped. “You!”

“You killed my tree,” said Miss Dawson, “so I killed your cat, a life for a life.”

“But,” said Miss Blackett, “a tree’s not alive, not a
person,
I mean.”

Miss Dawson simply looked at her, smiling a little. All of a sudden the silence between the two women was broken by sobs. Tom, still holding Lord Jim’s lifeless body, had made no sound when Miss Blackett had attacked him, but now he burst out crying. His unrestrained tears, following each other down his cheeks, fell on the cat’s fur which began to stick together as if he had been out in the rain. Miss Blackett snatched him from Tom’s arms and put her face down against his wet coat. Immediately she was a child again, back on the night before her kitten had been taken away. He had jumped in at her bedroom window all wet and had leapt on to her bed and had dried himself by rubbing against her face, and this had tickled her so that she had laughed out loud in the dark. By the next night he had gone. Standing now with Lord Jim, so light and thin in her arms, she felt the darkness of destruction and loss envelop her. But also for the first and perhaps the only time in her life she experienced a moment of revelation. Looking up at Miss Dawson who was still calmly watching her, she suddenly seemed to see herself mirrored in the other woman’s eyes. She and Miss Dawson were both, in some extraordinary way, one. She turned and went out of the room carrying the cat, and Tom followed her.

Miss Dawson dragged herself very slowly back downstairs in their wake. The unusual exertion and excitement had exhausted her and the consummation of her cherished revenge had left her empty. The pain, too, which she had had to endure while saving up her pills for
Lord Jim, had taken its toll. She sat in her chair and stared out at the hateful open sky. After she had stared for a little while, she could not see the sky so clearly; there seemed to be branches stretching across it, and then more and more of them, waving softly as they used to do, and the room became full of bird song. Miss Dawson left her chair and flew through the window and up into the branches of her tree – up and up her bird’s soul flew and at last, beyond all vision.

“I’m sorry, Tom,” said Miss Blackett when they reached her room, “don’t cry any more.” She laid Lord Jim down on his cushion and got a clean handkerchief from a drawer and gave it to Tom – it was a specially large one that she kept for the specially heavy head colds from which she suffered. Then she sat down quickly. She was still trembling.

Tom blew his nose loudly, then his eye fell on Miss Blackett’s teapot on the shelf. “Tea,” he said, “tea for Lady Miss Blackett.” He filled the electric kettle and switched it on and made the tea.

They drank it together without saying anything more, and afterwards Miss Blackett felt a little less shaky. Tom washed up the tea things, shook hands with Miss Blackett and stroked Lord Jim very gently and went off to bed. He woke at his usual early hour and got to work and, when it was time, went into the kitchen to set out the breakfast trays.

Gisela appeared and Tom shook hands with her and began to take the trays round. The ground-floor ones were done and he went upstairs with Miss Dawson’s. Then Gisela heard him drop the tray – there was a crash and a sound of broken china, then she heard him run across the landing, and going to the door, she saw him sliding down the balustrade. He was laughing.

“She’s gone, she’s gone away, Lady Miss Dawson’s gone,” he shouted joyfully. “Come, Gisela, come Lady
Miss Blackett, come and see.”

Miss Blackett came slowly and heavily out of her room and followed Gisela upstairs. Gisela stopped outside Miss Dawson’s room, afraid to go in, but Miss Blackett walked past her and Tom followed, still laughing. The breakfast tray lay on the floor with a broken cup and plate and the milk spilt all over the carpet. Miss Dawson’s body was slumped forward in her chair. Miss Blackett could see at once what had happened.

“What a mess on the floor, they aren’t supoosed to die here, she’s done it just for spite. This is my fault. I should never have left her to come down those stairs alone. I should have seen she was ill, it’s my fault, I shall resign.” All these thoughts shouted at her at once and she did not know what to do with them. But Tom’s laughter, that had to be stopped immediately.

“Be quiet,” she said sharply, “can’t you see the poor old thing is dead? Be quiet at once.”

THERE WAS
much for the warden to do that day – phone calls and interviews with the doctor, the undertaker, the vicar and Miss Dawson's “next of kin” (a cousin in Cornwall) and all the time she felt a heavy weight of oppression and weariness. It made things worse that her emotions were not clearly defined, but all mixed up and muddy. She could not find relief in anger against Miss Dawson, for she was dead, and the liberating moment of vision vouchsafed to her in the attic was already banished from her conscious thought. She had decided by now that Miss Dawson had been too ill to know what she was doing or saying.

She felt guilty at having accused Tom so harshly and violently, yet this did not prevent her still suffering from the jealousy that had occasioned the violence. It hurt that Lord Jim had died on Tom's bed, and that these last weeks he had seemed to prefer his company to her own. Then there was the question of how far she was responsible for Miss Dawson's collapse. She felt she ought to have noticed that she had not been eating properly for some days past and had been more than usually withdrawn; and, knowing how crippled and frail she was, should she not have seen her safely back to her own room? That she had not fallen on the stairs, seeing the state she was in that night, had been almost a miracle. Had she failed in her duty as warden and should she offer to resign? She felt it might be a relief
to do so. These thoughts and emotions chased each other round her tired brain all that day, and underlying everything was the ache for Lord Jim, which she knew would be even worse when everything had settled down again.

She had no time to see to him before the late afternoon; then she found a good strong shoebox and lined it with a silk headscarf, a favourite one, and laid Lord Jim in it and, looking carefully to see that no one was about, she carried the box to the further side of the copse where the old thorn tree grew. Lord Jim had loved to climb that particular tree, it had a comfortable branch along which he liked to stretch out on hot summer days when Mrs Perry's border was too warm for him. Miss Blackett laid down the box while she went to fetch a spade. The ground was hard underneath the tree and she found it difficult to dig a big enough hole but she did not want to ask Fred to help her and certainly not Tom. At last it was finished, but she had been too tired to dig very deep and there was a mound which she tried to hide with moss and leaves. She did not want anyone but herself to know where Lord Jim was. When she got back to her room she felt utterly exhausted, but before she sat down to rest she put away Lord Jim's saucer and cushion where they could not be seen.

That evening everyone but Leila Ford was subdued for, though no one but Mrs Perry had known Miss Dawson at all well, the presence of death in the house made itself felt. The residents of The Haven were too old not to be aware of its inescapable reality, and its dark mystery, seeming now so close and intimate, blotted out their customary and comforting trivialities. Only Leila's rudimentary soul still believed that such a thing could never happen to
her,
and she was pleasantly roused and excited by the unusual drama of the day. Rumours were flying round about Lord Jim.

“Of course that boy is at the bottom of it. I saw the cat, you know, Dorothy, going up to his room yesterday morning. It was the last time he was seen alive. It was I who told
Miss Blackett he was up there. No one else saw him,
and
I heard the row in the evening too. Mrs Thornton was with Miss Norton,
she
heard nothing. Well, what I say is that it only serves Miss Blackett right for employing such a boy here.”

“You shouldn't say such a thing, Leila,” said Dorothy Brown. “Miss Blackett says Lord Jim must have picked up some poison somewhere, probably rat poison, people aren't careful enough, and cats
will
wander.”

“I wonder when Miss Dawson's funeral will be,” said Leila. “I hope soon, I don't like the feeling of a corpse in the house. I hope we'll get somebody a bit livelier in her place. It'll make a change – she kept herself to herself, if anyone did. Funny, the tree and the cat and her all disappearing at once. My bottle's not hot enough, Dorothy; Gisela never does them properly.”

“Give it to me,” said Dorothy, “I'll heat it up for you.”

After a night when she had slept from sheer exhaustion, Miss Blackett felt less inclined to offer her resignation. She decided to consult the vicar who was calling to see her about arrangements for the funeral service, she could not of course say anything about what had happened in Tom's attic, that was impossible, but she would try not to excuse herself in any way.

“I should have noticed that Miss Dawson had not been herself for some days,” she began. “Gisela, our German girl, did say she was eating very little, but I did not take this seriously. Then, the night she died, for some reason she climbed the stairs to the attic floor. I should have prevented this, and certainly I should have seen that once there she should not have been left to come down those stairs alone, for I was aware that she was there. I ought to have seen that she was not fit to be left alone that night. In fact,” she ended, “I feel I have been remiss and that perhaps I should offer to resign.”

“You are being too conscientious, if you don't mind my
saying so, my dear Miss Blackett,” exclaimed the vicar. “Miss Dawson was, I know, very reserved and she certainly did not invite questioning or sympathy. You must not blame yourself for what probably made no difference. After all she did
not
fall on the stairs. Perhaps the lack of appetite might have been a pointer, but it is easy to be wise after the event. I am quite sure the committee would not consider any offer of resignation from you for such a cause, and you must not think of such a thing. Now, about the funeral, don't let that worry you. I understand Miss Dawson left clear instructions that she wished to be cremated, and with no ceremony, but I think a short service at the cremation would be fitting, which I will arrange. Anyone who would care to be present from The Haven will be welcome of course –” he hesitated.

Miss Blackett said that she would like to come and Mrs Perry, if she were back in time, and she would enquire as to anyone else. She was relieved at the vicar's decisive reassurance. She really felt too old to start a new job and knew that she would not now easily obtain another post so good, and she could not afford to be unemployed.

“Goodbye, then,” said the vicar, “and take care of yourself; you have had quite a shock, I can see. I shall send you along a pot of my honey, it is better than any tonic.”

After Miss Blackett had thanked the vicar and seen him out, she felt her nagging sense of guilt partly assuaged, and more free to mourn her cat. Instinctively she found herself walking towards the copse, but when she got there she saw, to her dismay and indignation, that Tom was underneath the old thorn tree busily hammering away at some object on the ground, and that the little mound that covered Lord Jim had been carefully ringed round with roughly matching stones.

“What are you doing, Tom?” she asked.

Tom looked up. “I guessed as you might've laid him here, Lady Miss Blackett,” he said. “The stones look right
pretty, don't they? And I'm making him a cross all proper like, the wood it be from chips off that big old tree as is cut down.”

Miss Blackett felt the usual uncomfortable conflict which Tom always seemed to arouse in her. She could not help being touched, yet she resented him thus trespassing on her private emotions, and as to the cross, that she considered really ought not to be allowed.

“Yes, the stones are nice,” she said, “but not the cross, Tom, the vicar wouldn't like it.”

“Oh, yes, Lady Miss Blackett,” said Tom. “Vicar, he loves 'em, churchyard be full of 'em, and so be church.”

Miss Blackett turned away. She knew that, in spite of anything she could say, the cross would be finished and if she removed it, another would be made to take its place. She supposed that now the little grave would be bound to be discovered and pointed out and talked about, and this she would hate, and yet, at the same time she felt an absurd childish gleam of comfort as if Tom's cross might ensure for Lord Jim a minute corner of heaven.

Mrs Perry managed to return to The Haven in time for Miss Dawson's funeral. She was very troubled and sad about her old friend's death. She alone guessed something of what the felling of the deodar tree must have meant to her. “Perhaps,” she thought, “if I had not been away, I might have helped.” It seemed heartless, too, that she had been enjoying her visit so much and especially her delicious new great-grandchild while this was happening to Frances. She sincerely grieved, too, for Miss Blackett's loss of Lord Jim, and she could not entirely suppress a very unwelcome query as to his death, which she would not put into words, even to herself. It was just there, like a little cloud which would not go away – but no, she simply would not think about it any more, it would have been impossible anyway. But perhaps this made her express her sympathy with the warden more openly and warmly than anybody else had
dared to do in the face of grim discouragement.

“Dear Miss Blackett,” she said, “we had a retriever once who was such a darling, he was a most beloved member of the family. He got run over. I know what it feels like, one misses such a pet at every turn – you must get another cat, it's the only way. We got a puppy directly. Of course it wasn't the same as dear Rab, but it healed and helped. My daughter's tabby has lovely kittens and I'm sure she would gladly give you one.”

Miss Blackett felt her lonely unhappiness melt a little, but she shook her head. She was not going to lay herself open to the perilous arrow of love a third time. “No, thank you, Mrs Perry, I don't mean ever to have another cat, but I appreciate your kindness all the same.”

Mrs Perry missed Frances Dawson very much. She had admired her for her courage and her knowledge, though she was always a little in awe of her. Now she began to cultivate Mrs Nicholson's company; it was Tom's raids on her flower border that first brought them together. He kept Mrs Nicholson's vases regularly supplied with snapdragons, which were now enjoying their second flowering, and when she learned that the only border where they grew belonged to Mrs Perry, she thought an apology was called for. But Mrs Perry just laughed.

“You're welcome,” she said, “and nobody really minds what Tom does, bless him.”

A bit later she wrote to Nell: “I find that our new resident, Mrs Nicholson, plays Scrabble well and we have a game together most evenings. We are about equal. She is a pleasant person, though very religious. She had an uncle who was a bishop, but this doesn't matter for Scrabble. Tom has made a cross for poor Lord Jim's grave and she thinks this is sacrilegious, I fear, but, as you know, I always say I shan't be happy in heaven if dear Rab isn't there, and really, I think that dolphins and seals and whales and poor dear gorillas and some, though not all, dogs and cats, have
much nicer natures and are better behaved than many humans, and I shouldn't wonder if God doesn't think so too, so we'd better look out. But of course I can't say that to a bishop's niece. It is nice to have another grandmother here, poor Mrs Thornton had no grandchildren, you know – though I can tell that Mrs Nicholson's are nothing like so nice or clever as mine. Your loving Gran.”

The evenings were now definitely drawing in, as the residents remarked to each other, and an early frost had blackened the giant dahlias, though Mrs Perry's little ones in their warm bed were still unscathed, when Miss Blackett received a letter from Mrs Bradshaw. It said that her own invaluable “help” possessed a lately widowed and childless sister who was anxious to find work and a home near herself. “She sounds a treasure and I thought of you at once, for I was sorry to hear from the vicar you had had the shock of the sudden death of one of your charges lately, and I am glad to think that more adequate help than the boy, whom you kindly took in as a stopgap, may now be available. She is giving up her home but would like to keep some of her furniture, and I hope it may be possible for her to have a room for herself and that she can make it into a bedsitter. If all goes smoothly, she should be free in two or three weeks' time.”

Miss Blackett immediately determined that nothing should prevent her acquiring this treasure. Mrs Thornton really must now see the necessity of moving down to Mrs Langley or Miss Dawson's room – there was already another applicant but Mrs Thornton could take her choice first, leaving the big attic, so unsuitable for her but just right as a bedsitter for a resident help. As for Tom, she could not pretend that it would not be a relief to get rid of him. He was a good little worker, but his behaviour was so unpredictable, so unreliable that sometimes, she admitted to herself, it thoroughly upset her. It had always been understood that his job was a temporary one, and she was
willing to give him a good reference. She wrote a grateful letter to Mrs Bradshaw and resolved to tackle Mrs Thornton as soon as possible.

Fate played into her hands for once. Mrs Thornton stumbled on the stairs on the way down from her attic one evening and fell. She did not break any bones, but she was badly bruised and shaken. Miss Blackett took the opportunity to press home the advantage of a room accessible by the lift and which would be warmer in the coming winter months. Stairs were apt to be dangerous after a certain age, well, she had proved that already, hadn't she? Then she told her about “the Treasure” who must have a room of her own for a bed-sitting-room. Mrs Thornton lay and listened with an aching head and bones, and the fight went out of her. It would be selfish, too, she thought, to cling to the attic in the circumstances. She agreed to move as soon as she had recoverd from her fall and she chose Mrs Langley's room, perhaps she would feel her gentle, merry spirit lingering there.