The Hireling (3 page)

Presently she said:

‘What a comfortable car this is. I was told you had a very nice car. What make is it?’

She obviously knows nothing about cars, thought Leadbitter, she’ll be asking if they have pups every season. But he told her.

‘Oh yes, we had one of that kind once, and a very good car it was. It’s laid up in the country now. I don’t go there much, they think it’s better for me to stay in London. My husband was very fond of motoring.’

Was? Had Lady Franklin’s husband been a lord or a sir, Leadbitter wondered idly. Perhaps he had shed her or she him: at any rate they were no longer together.

‘It’s a very nice occupation for those who can afford it,’ he said. ‘You go places, you see things.’

‘Yes. It takes your mind off, doesn’t it? Do you enjoy driving, yourself?’

‘Well, it’s my job, my lady. I don’t think much about it.’

‘I was told you were a very good driver, and you are. It’s like poetry, the way you start and stop without a jolt, the poetry of motion.’

In spite of himself Leadbitter was pleased by this, but he answered non-committally, almost brushing the compliment aside:

‘I try to drive same as I would an ambulance - so that if there was a tumbler filled with water in the boot it wouldn’t spill. It’s all a question of getting used to it. Lady drivers …’ he stopped.

‘Yes?’ said Lady Franklin.

‘Well, they don’t get used to it in quite the same way.’

‘I never learned to drive,’ said Lady Franklin. ‘My husband tried to teach me, but I should never have been any good at it. He was a very good driver himself - almost as good as you are. We used to take our chauffeur about with us as a passenger - rather a bore for him, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh, I expect he got used to it, my lady.’

Lady Franklin smiled sadly.

‘You seem to think that one can get used to anything, but can one? It’s now two years since my husband died, but I haven’t got used to it. It’s still the same as it was on the first day. You see I wasn’t with him - not with him when he died.’

I expect he got used to it, Leadbitter thought, but he didn’t let his tongue slip up this time, and said as feelingly as he could:

‘That was bad luck, my lady.’

‘Yes, wasn’t it? At least, I keep telling myself it was bad luck, but it wasn’t really. You see I’d been to a party. I needn’t have gone. Do you mind me telling you all this?’

‘Of course not,’ said Leadbitter. What else could he say?

‘The doctor said it was quite safe to go,’ Lady Franklin went on. ‘My husband was fifteen years older than I was; we’d only been married a few years. He suffered from his heart: he’d had two or three attacks.’

‘Nasty thing, a dicky heart,’ said Leadbitter.

‘Yes, but between-times he seemed quite well, and he seemed specially well that day.’

She bit her lip and couldn’t go on.

‘Would you like me to turn on the wireless?’ Leadbitter asked.

‘No, I don’t think so, thank you. Not just now, perhaps a little later. I’ve listened to the wireless such a lot! You see after he died, I had a breakdown.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that, my lady. Nasty thing, a breakdown,’

‘Oh well. You see I couldn’t help thinking about it, thinking if only I’d been there, instead of at that stupid cocktail party. I couldn’t bear the thought of him dying alone. He hated being alone at any time. If I could just have been with him, to hold his hand and say, well something … anything. If he’d had just a short illness, some kind of preparation, for both of us, if there had been some last word between us, or only just a look -‘

Here she herself gave Leadbitter a look so full of unhappiness that he felt quite uncomfortable, though irritation that she should talk to him so intimately was still his dominant feeling. He didn’t want her confidence, but he said with all the sympathy he could muster:

‘Most unfortunate for you both, my lady,’

‘Yes, wasn’t it? Not for him, perhaps - everybody tells me, not for him. It was a blessed way to die, they say, you could not have wanted him to suffer. And of course I couldn’t. But the suddenness, the shock! Has anyone you were fond of ever died suddenly?’

As a soldier Leadbitter had seen so many instances of sudden death that he had quite lost count of them. Neither to the idea nor to the fact could he respond emotionally. But he made the imaginative effort of remembering what he had felt like the first time. The young, raw Leadbitter had been sick, yes, physically sick. Wondering at this lost self, which seemed to have no connexion with the man he had become, he said:

‘It can give you a nasty turn, I do know that.’

The moment he had said this Lady Franklin looked happier.

‘Yes, indeed,’ she said, ‘a nasty turn - how right you are. But for myself I don’t think I should mind - do you think you would? - sudden death, I mean.’

‘Not particularly, no, not particularly. Any time really -perhaps not just now.’

Lady Franklin smiled.

‘No, not just now. Perhaps we should always find ourselves saying, “not just now”. And someone might be sorry about us - about you, I’m sure they would.’

Leadbitter said nothing.

‘But it isn’t only that,’ continued Lady Franklin. ‘I could have got over that - the shock and so on. But you see it broke off something, in the way a tune is sometimes broken off. It was the tune of our lives, I suppose. We were singing it and listening to it at the same time: I’m sure you will understand that. But the meaning hadn’t revealed itself - it couldn’t, unless we each told the other what we thought it meant. He had told me something. He knew how ill he was but I didn’t: he had asked the doctor not to tell me. It must have made it worse for him, not being able to tell me. I knew he had to be careful, of course: but I saw years of happiness ahead. I minded many other things at the time: but what I still mind most is the curtain coming down so suddenly, leaving it all unfinished and meaningless. If there had just been a closing phrase, however painful - well, I could have borne it better. A word could have been enough, the one word “darling” recognizing what we had been to each other, summing it all up! If only I could have suffered in his presence, instead of when he was gone! We had done everything together, but we never suffered together - except during his attacks, and he had always got better! I never met him on the plane of our deepest feelings, not in the shadow of eternity. Or have I put it too dramatically?’

‘Not at all, my lady,’ Leadbitter answered. Truth to tell, he had not taken in all that Lady Franklin had been saying. He had withdrawn his attention and listened with half an ear, as he sometimes listened to the wireless. But the wireless made more sense: if only she would let him turn it on!

Her last words lingered in his mind. The shadow of eternity! Rich people, who could afford to cultivate their emotions, talked like that. To him the shadow of eternity, in her context, meant the disposal, according to the regulations, of an inconvenient body which, from one moment to another, had ceased to be of interest to anyone - as his would be, if a few more of these lady-drivers drove the way they did.

But now Lady Franklin was leading off again.

‘I still don’t know what I should have said to him,’ she said. ‘I ought to, oughtn’t I? I’ve had two years to think about it in! And I want to say it as much as ever I did. I know the shape and the colour of the words, and I know what I should have felt like, if I’d said them: it’s something I shall never feel now. If I could believe that he could hear, I could find them and say them now, I think. I don’t believe the dead can hear, do you?’

‘I expect it’s better for them not to, in many cases,’ Leadbitter said.

Lady Franklin laughed and said: ‘No doubt you’re right.’ Then her face saddened again. ‘But speaking seriously,’ she said, ‘and I hope you don’t mind - it’s that undelivered message that torments me. He didn’t know what I felt for him. He died without knowing! He couldn’t have known, for I was very gay in those days. I can’t remember what I was like, I seem to be a different person now, but I know I didn’t comment upon life, I lived. And I was younger, much younger than he was. You see I was half-persuaded into the marriage - I was very young, and they all thought it would be a good match for me. I didn’t really want to at the time; I was half frightened of the money.’ (Odd thing to be frightened of, thought Leadbitter. I bet she counted every penny of it.) ‘If someone said, as I’m sure they have, that I married him for his money, it wouldn’t be true; but if they said, as I’m sure they have, that I married him without being in love with him, it would be true in a way; but I did come to love him afterwards. Not perhaps as you love someone who isn’t ill and hasn’t to be taken care of - but I did love him, and people tell me I was a good wife to him, and that he must have known what I felt for him. But I don’t think he did. He only knew _ if he knew anything at the last, while he was dying - that I had gone to a cocktail party. I went to many cocktail parties - he didn’t care about them. Is there anything in life that matters - really matters - except that somebody you love should know you love them?’

Lady Franklin seemed to expect an answer. Leadbitter, whom nobody loved and who assuredly loved nobody, was at a loss.

‘If it’s a question of telling people what you think of them,’ he said, and began to feel on firmer ground, ‘if it’s a question of telling people what you think of them,’ he repeated grimly, ‘I admit there’s some satisfaction in that.’

Lady Franklin smiled.

‘Oh yes, there is. But as you know, that wasn’t what I meant. I think, wouldn’t you agree? that one’s hostility to people can be taken for granted’ (Leadbitter violently disagreed but didn’t say so), ‘but not one’s love. In spite of Blake’ - she saw that Blake’s name didn’t register, and with a little flutter of her hands dismissed him - ‘Blake thought the opposite - I think that love should always be told. I didn’t tell mine.’

Would he have believed her if she had? thought Leadbitter. Would he have been taken in by all this guff? But you couldn’t say that to a customer.

‘Actions speak louder than words, they say, my lady,’ he remarked.

Lady Franklin shook her head.

‘Sometimes they do, generally they do, but not always. If I wanted to say what a beautiful driver you are, the best I have ever known, how could I say it by an action? I could only tell you.’

Leadbitter saw the force of this, and rather unwillingly swallowed the compliment.

‘If there’s ever anything you want to tell anyone,’ said Lady Franklin, earnestly, but more to herself than to him, ‘tell them. Don’t wait till it’s too late or it may spoil your life, as it has mine.’

Her underlip came forward, trembling, and a look of sadness, shroudedness, inaccessibility to outside impressions, closed her face like a shutter.

Leadbitter could think of nothing that he wanted to tell anyone, certainly nothing that they would want to hear. Tell them off, yes; in that sense of telling, there were a few things he could have said to Lady Franklin herself. Such as: ‘If you changed places with a working woman, my lady, you wouldn’t be trying to send messages to a dead husband, you’d be nagging a live one.’ His mind still muddled by sleepiness, he forgot that a working woman might also be a widow. And: ‘He may be thanking his stars he’s out of reach of your tongue.’

These imagined retorts gave him some satisfaction: but all he said was, ‘Would you like the wireless on now, my lady?’

‘I don’t think so, thank you,’ said Lady Franklin, ‘we’re nearly there. Let’s have it on the way back.’ Afraid that she had sounded snubbing, she added, ‘I’ll tell you why I’m going to Canterbury.’ All at once she felt she had been talking down to the driver, as if she was older than he was, though really she was a good deal younger, both in years and in experience. It’s the difference in our social positions, she thought, that makes me use this artificial tone - that, and the effort to be more articulate than I am normally, or have grown to be. It’s so long since I talked to anyone that my tongue can’t find its way about. How difficult all communication is!

‘I’m going to Canterbury,’ she repeated more chattily, ‘because my husband was fond of all old buildings and especially cathedrals. People used to say he should have been a monk, and I knew what they meant and it made me angry. He didn’t have to have a profession but he would have been an architect if his health hadn’t broken down. He had to give up so many things! One by one his interests were taken from him, his active interests, I mean, even travelling, which had been his great delight. We did a tour of the French cathedrals once, or some of them and saw most of the English cathedrals several times. He explained to me about them and wanted me to share his interest, but I couldn’t quite.’

‘I don’t suppose many young ladies could,’ said Leadbitter. ‘They go more on dancing and night-clubs, and cocktail parties,’ he added unguardedly.

‘I’m afraid I did,’ said Lady Franklin reddening, ‘And in a sort of way I was jealous of his outside interests. I wanted to share them with him and yet I didn’t want to. I felt I had to keep my end up with his family, for one thing, which was so much more important in the social world than mine was. I didn’t want to be crushed by them, if you see what I mean. I was a little … well… on the defensive.’

‘In my experience,’ said Leadbitter, ‘a family is no more use than a sick headache. I never had much truck with mine,’

‘I had to,’ Lady Franklin said. ‘It wasn’t that they weren’t kind to me, they were, they almost stifled me with kindness. But they were so anxious I should be one of themselves. They had their own pattern of life and expected me to fit in. They had a special way of talking - a sort of family language - that I never could quite catch. And they saw things from their own point of view, and as if there couldn’t be two opinions. I was a little defiant, I know, even with Philip, because I could hear their voices in his. So I stood up to him sometimes. He was very gentle with me - but they all were -and never tried to force his interests on me. I wish he had. I wanted to share them, I really wanted to, but there was always this little demon of defiance that made me feel that if I did, completely, I should somehow be giving in,’