The Hireling (4 page)

‘And so you would have been, my lady,’ Leadbitter said warmly. In his mind’s eye he saw the embattled Franklins, a hostile force, lining a distant hill. ‘People like that, they always take advantage. They wouldn’t have let you call your soul your own,’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Lady Franklin, wretchedly. ‘I know that I can’t call it my own now….. They fussed about him too much, I thought. How wrong I was - and when he died, well, they couldn’t quite forgive me. Do you wonder? I don’t see a great deal of them now, by mutual arrangement,’

That’s something to be thankful for, my lady,’ said Leadbitter, noting that Lady Franklin had very few allies.

‘Yes I suppose it is. But I sometimes wish that I had someone nearer to me than solicitors and trustees, and that the silence round me wasn’t so respectful - though I’m to blame for that. I was an only child. My father died soon after I was married, and my mother … my mother …’

Leadbitter had all the working man’s delicacy about prying into other people’s affairs. Nosyness. … But he ventured to prompt Lady Franklin.

‘Yes, my lady?’

‘I never see her now,’

Again the veiled look, the out-thrust lip, the air of inner withdrawal. Lady Franklin jerked herself out of it and said:

‘So that was how I had the idea of this - this pilgrimage to Canterbury - not as a penance, oh no, but feeling that he would have liked it, and that in thought, at any rate, I could share with him what I didn’t share ~ not fully - while he was alive.’

From afar the ash-grey towers dominated the city, within they were lost to view. Leadbitter missed the narrow turning that led to the Cathedral; he drove on through the town and had to come back. The mistake annoyed him, and just as he was about to park the car another trivial incident annoyed him too. A middle-aged man posted himself in their path and beckoned Leadbitter on. ‘You’ll get out easier afterwards if you come forward a bit now,’ he said, his face beaming with good will. Leadbitter said nothing nor did he advance. Lady Franklin saw the smile fade from the man’s face and a look of nervous embarrassment succeed it. Glancing at Leadbitter she saw what had scared the stranger. That steady stare would have intimidated many people.

She said pacifically:

‘I think he only meant to be helpful,’

‘Let’s hope so, my lady,’ Leadbitter replied. ‘But some people are rather officious,’

The smile with which he had said this reminded Lady Franklin of the rhyme about the lady and the tiger. For a moment she felt physically uneasy, a sensation she hadn’t had for years: it had been everybody’s business to keep her safe. As he was holding the door open for her to get out, she said:

‘Would you like to look at the Cathedral?’

‘No thank you, my lady,’ he answered promptly. ‘I’ve seen it before,’

‘Very well,’ she said, glancing at her little jewelled wrist-watch. ‘I’ll be back at half past one.’

What an odd man she thought, moving towards the ornate porch, upholstered with a double tier of statues. Not very responsive, was he? A curious choice for my experiment. But I think I feel better for talking to him. Poor fellow, he couldn’t get away from me: how bored he must have been. Otherness, otherness, that’s what the man told me. A friend is no good, find somebody unlike yourself: a waiter, a porter, a taxi-driver. Button-hole him, victimize him, be an Ancient Mariner; pour your story into his ear, don’t let him get away. Make him listen to every word, and see how he takes it. If he thinks you are a fool, so much the better. If he calls you a fool, better still. This man, whose name I’ve forgotten, couldn’t have called me a fool; it would have been more than bis place was worth. I’m not sure he wouldn’t have liked to, though. Rather a shame to torment him: I’ve never been a deliberate bore before.

But that’s only half of it. Going back I must ask him his story. Establish his identity as a person, absolutely apart from me. Functioning quite independently of me. What an insult! thought Lady Franklin, humorously. He actually dares to have a life of his own! He is no part of my dream, any more than I am part of his. Get it into your head, my dear, that he’s a separate entity and that none of your woes, or joys (if I had any), could ever make him bat an eyelid.

I must remember to ask him his name. Or would that hurt his feelings? Oh dear, I ought to know it. How good-looking he is: with a twist of rope round his neck he would be the Dying Gladiator. I had to ask him to come with me into the Cathedral, it was part of the cure: but I’m glad he didn’t. What would Philip have thought? Yet I musn’t be alone: never be alone, the man said, if you can help it. Marry! Marry! If only he knew how little I wanted to - how much happier I am with my unhappiness - alone, alone in this beautiful place, with a few sightseers like myself, whom I need never speak to, whom it would be wrong to speak to, irreverent, irreligious, disturbing the peace of this vast building. She looked appreciatively at the triple tier of arches springing with incredible lightness towards the intricate crisscross of the vaulted roof. ‘Here if anywhere my true contentment lies. Here I could say … I could say… what I didn’t say before he died,’

She sat down in a chair, one of the many lashed together, and tried to say it: ‘Philip, Philip, I have always loved you!’ How little the words meant of all she meant them to mean; they were self-bound, they reached no further than her pleading whisper carried. Tears started to her eyes. But the charm, which might have been effectual could she have believed in it, failed to work.

Left to himself, Leadbitter turned on the wireless. A woman’s voice . The civilian world was a dull place, a tired three-piece orchestra, waiting for the word ‘fun’. Moodily he got out, locked the car and went to buy himself a coffee. On the way he passed a pub, and after a few moments’ hesitation pushed the door open. Few working men drink spirits in the middle of the day and Leadbitter was no exception, he couldn’t afford to and besides he didn’t want to smell of alcohol: he had his customers, and the police, to think of. But he felt very tired and the job with Lady Franklin would bring in several pounds, so he decided to take the risk. He chose whisky, a drink he didn’t often indulge in, for it made him feel ‘antagonistic’, as he put it. One double Scotch sufficed to set the hostility working in him, and looking round he spied a small fat man whose inoffensive expression irritated him. He stared at him until the man showed signs first of uneasiness, then of confusion, and at last, looking every way except at his tormentor, ignominiously scuttled out. But Leadbitter’s demon remained unappeased. Arguing the toss with himself whether he should have another whisky, he approached the bar and said to the barman, who was a big, heavily built, pasty-faced fellow, with a slight foreign accent:

‘Are you an American?’

‘No,’ said the barman.

‘Well, what are you then?’

‘If you want to know, I’m Dutch,’

‘I thought you were an American,’ said Leadbitter evenly. His voice made it sound like an insult, almost a threat: and a faint stir of interest went through the drinkers, the pleasurable anticipation of a quarrel, and they turned their heads, awaiting the barman’s answer.

‘It’s written Dutch on my passport,’ he said expressionlessly.

‘Well, they should know,’ said Leadbitter, inferring that such knowledge didn’t matter much, either way.

The barman raised his eyes but didn’t answer and Leadbitter, dropping the subject as if any interest it might have had was now exhausted, decided not to have another drink. For a moment, while his will clashed with the barman’s, he had felt that life was worth living: it had been brought to the fine point of conflict that his nature craved.

Returning to his car he sat down behind the wheel. Sleepiness pressed upon him, his head nodded; but he didn’t mean to be caught napping a second time, and he forced himself to glance, every minute or two, at the dark hole of the Cathedral porch. She’ll be late, he thought, women always are. But the hand of his wrist-watch hadn’t reached the half-hour when he saw her coming out into the sunlight, swaying a little as she walked. ‘There must be a bar in that Cathedral,’ he said to himself, and sprang out to open the door for her.

She took a moment to collect herself and then said: ‘Oh lunch, of course. You must be starving. Let’s go to the White Horse, I’m told that’s the best. And get yourself a good lunch, won’t you?’

Leadbitter, who often didn’t get enough lunch to fill a hollow tooth, as he expressed it, promised her he would.

At last they were leaving Canterbury.

Pressed forward, Lady Franklin’s underlip had the effect of pouting: it trembled a little, and somehow spoilt the contour of her face, making her look discontented. What right had she to be discontented? Leadbitter, who had seen tears on the faces of a good many women and had sometimes caused them, noted that there was a tear-mark on her cheek. She had made up her face without due care and attention because she had no one to make it up for, except him, and he didn’t count.

She sat without speaking. First she talks my head off, thought Leadbitter resentfully, and then she hasn’t a word to say to me. Well, two can play at that game. If she doesn’t like it she knows what to do: so why worry? And he wrapped himself in a silence that stiffened his profile and could be felt through the car: a silence so loud and so insistent that it awoke Lady Franklin from her painful reverie. Glancing at Leadbitter guiltily she said: ‘Wouldn’t you like to have the wireless on now?’ An imp of perversity entered into Leadbitter and he said with perfect politeness: ‘By all means, my lady, but I rather thought -‘ and his hand, stretched out to the switch, stopped short of turning it. The irresponsive absorption of the wireless in its own concerns was no help to Lady Franklin, inextricably absorbed in hers. Feeling too much about one thing often means feeling too little about another. Outside the tender area of its activity a neurosis sometimes breeds a certain callousness: an inflamed conscience is not sensitive all over. ‘What matter if he is bored?’ Lady Franklin thought, ‘I’m paying him.’ But her thoughts were bolder than her words. She couldn’t tell him that she was talking to him, at somebody’s suggestion, to cure herself of an obsession; but one must apologize to people for boring them. Aloud she said:

If you don’t mind me talking -‘

‘Oh no, my lady,’

‘Well, then,’

But what should she talk about? She could not tell him her story again: even at the confessional, she supposed, you did not confess the same sin twice, however heavy its burden of guilt and grief. Even the patience of a priest must have its limits. Suddenly she remembered what her friend had said: Make other people tell you their stories. They will, fast enough. Make them seem real to themselves, and then they’ll seem real to you. Don’t forget - what you need is, the sense of other people’s reality. You mustn’t go on living in your dream.

He’s like the moon, she thought inconsequently. I only see one side of his face. And is there any life on it? Like the moon, with its shadows. The moon in its first quarter. … And yet not a moon face: anything but. Sensitive to looks she registered, without feeling it, the blend of strength and delicacy in Leadbitter’s. For the first time she found herself wondering about him.

‘Are you married?’ she asked diffidently.

What did she want him to say? Yes or no? It was anybody’s guess. And Leadbitter tried to feel in his broad palm, curved upon the wheel, the size of the tip that might reward each answer. Women didn’t tip much anyhow, but it might make the difference between a half-crown and a florin. Most women would rather think he wasn’t married, but not, he suspected, Lady Franklin, who was dotty about marriage. Lying, he spoke more quickly than when he told the truth, and his reply came pat: but he hadn’t been able to rid his voice of the moment’s uncertainty as he said:

‘Yes, I’m married,’

‘You don’t sound very sure,’ said Lady Franklin with a smile.

Blast her, she was sharper than he thought. How like a woman, to ask a question she had no right to ask, and then not believe him! Oddly enough he was touchier about having his word doubted when he told a lie than when he spoke the truth.

‘Yes, well and truly married,’ he said dryly, ‘and three children too,’

‘But you said not long ago you didn’t mind the thought of dying!’ Lady Franklin exclaimed.

‘Well, Madam,’ he answered reasonably, ‘I’m not the first married man with three children to say that,’ The ‘Madam’ was a slip but he didn’t regret it: she was a madam, and no mistake.

I’m not married, thought Lady Franklin, inconsequently. Not now, I used to be. But how absurd, of course she was married, and so was the driver, though he didn’t seem to like it. She glanced at him. She saw the shadows of fatigue beneath the natural healthiness of his complexion, the pallor on his cheekbones, the hollows in his cheeks, and the smudges under his gun-metal eyes; and she remembered how irresistibly sleep had overtaken him.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, ‘I’m so sorry! What is she like, your wife?’

Again Leadbitter hesitated, but this time he knew that it was safe to hesitate: she couldn’t expect him to have a description of his wife on the tip of his tongue.

‘My wife she is dying, hurray

My wife she is dying, hurray

My wife she is dying

I laugh till I’m crying, I wish I was single again.’

Supposing he said that? But of course he couldn’t; he had spoken out of turn even by suggesting that marriage wasn’t what it was cracked up to be. He tried to think of the kind of wife that Lady Franklin would like him to have, and to endow her with an appearance and characteristics. Appearance - Lady Franklin would want to know what she looked like: women always wanted to know that. But no image came into his mind; all women suddenly seemed faceless, he couldn’t even recall the face of the one he had last lived with, it was as blank as the photograph frame from which he had banished her image. All that he could see when he evoked it was his list of engagements. Why did women always want to mess one about with their feelings? He stole a look at Lady Franklin and suddenly had an idea. He liked it all the better for being mischievous.