Cold Pastoral (27 page)

She went into the hall and sat by the telephone.

It seemed days later. She was praying to a wild tumult of wind when the telephone shattered her ear. She shook like a disturbed animal and dragged at the receiver.

Philip spoke as if he had prepared a lesson. He might be reporting to an unknown family.

“The operation was entirely successful, very quick with as little surgical shock as possible. I'm sorry to say she nearly failed on the table. We thought we would have to discontinue, but we stimulated and she rallied, so we went on. Now it's a question of vitality, fight, which…”

His voice cracked, giving the first oust to the doctor.

“Yes, Philip,” she said, subduing any solicitude. “Have you had any dinner?”

“I'm going to get a bite now and, Mary—”

“Yes, Philip?”

“I'm staying at the hospital all night. Dave is going home. Go to bed like sensible people and I promise to call you if—if…”

“You want us to go to bed as if nothing had happened?” she asked with incredulity in her voice.

His voice sounded impatient, but she knew if she saw him it would be because he was showing strain.

“What good will it do to sit up? Every possible thing is provided for. Go to bed like a good girl.”

“All right,” she agreed obediently. “Philip—”

“Yes, Mary dear. Don't think me unsympathetic, but one must be ordinary in case of—”

“Yes, yes,”she agreed. “Philip,”she ventured nervously, “has she asked for Holy Communion?”

For a moment there was silence like a wall of blackness.

“Will you hang on, Mary—I'll—”

After a long wait she heard a rattle of the receiver and his voice again.

“I spoke to the nurses who prepared her. They said before they touched her she received Communion and seemed very content. Does that satisfy you?”

“Yes,”she whispered. “Thank you, Philip. Good night. Try and get a little sleep.”

“Good night. Thank you for not making a fuss.”

Surprisingly she slept, lulled by the wind and the driving snow. In the morning she struggled back to a world that held a weight. Not until her brain had assured her of her body did she remember the dread of the house. There had been no call in the night. The mater had survived the first test! One leap took her to the window.

“Dear God!” she said like a prayer. “What a day!What a day to die!”

A thickness of sky pressed down on the earth. Because the trees were bare she could see other houses. Dormers wore cowls, round windows were hooded and icicles hung short, long, thick and thin. Dementia spun in the ground drift, whirling like the madness of ghosts. From the distant sea a fog-horn bleated above the wind.

It was the first day she had ever wakened in the Place without the mater. She shivered, glad to turn inwards to the warmth of hot water.

At breakfast they talked with muted voices, strung for the first call from Philip. Felice seemed to give Lady Fitz Henry anxious but second thought. Her concern was for David and her job of holding him up. He was very quiet with his ready words reduced to automatic courtesies. Behind his glasses his eyes looked swollen and red.

“That fog-horn,” shuddered Felice, giving way to some gloom. “It takes me back to the war and Mournful Mary announcing an air-raid; I can see myself flying to a dug-out. Mary, did you sleep? You look very white.”

“I'm always white, Felice.”

“Different white,” she said decidedly.

“Valley lilies, whiter still than Leda's love,” quoted David as if part of his mind went on by itself.

Mary Immaculate thought of Tim! He would have to be thinking of her in that hour.

“God!”

They all leaped at the sound of the telephone, but Mary got there first.

“Yes,” she said with a pounding heart.

Philip's words came like conversational doom.

“Mary, I must tell you she's sinking. The comeback is definitely not there. It's a matter of a few hours…”

The blood was leaving her head, running out through scuppers in her feet. She had never fainted in her life and this was no time for innovation.

“Yes, we will come,” she whispered steadily, bending her head almost to the floor with the mouthpiece under her lips.

“Yes, you must all come. Call a taxi at once.”

It was one of those incredible days leaving a carbon copy on the mind. The storm tried to hold them with vindictive delays. The distance from the taxi to the hospital door seemed the core of a cold maelstrom. Fur pointed to tails in a few seconds. They stood round in outdoor clothes with the misery of wet cats. Finding a waiting-room, they waited for Philip, seeing the trundle past of stretchers and carts with prone bodies going to unknown miseries. Then Philip came with a drawn black-and-white look, escorting them without a word. There was a long, shocked halt by a narrow bed with no greeting from its suffering occupant. Then they were evicted for some treatment. Cruelty lay in the stimulation holding her back from death. Why torture her? was the unspoken question in every unprofessional mind. They went to and fro while grapnel-hooks went into time. Once there was inclusive recognition from the mater's eyes and the sound of her voice.

“My son, must this go on?”

They knew what she meant; the salines and sips. Philip was suspended in torture between his role of doctor and son. Glad enough to leave her in peace, he had to fight to the last for the preservation of life. It was a supreme courtesy when she seemed to divine it.

“Let them continue,” she said, closing her eyes.

They left again, biting their lips. Back once more they knew they would wait until the end. Twilight had come to the endless day, and a cessation in the storm, but unrest had come inside to Lady Fitz Henry. She stirred and wandered whispering the incoherencies of departing minds. Once she told Mary Immaculate to shut the door as she went and to stand up straight. The girl won control on her knees, her lips moving in a silent entreaty for peace at the last. Philip stood like a rock and the nurse made a motionless outline at one side of the bed. David sat with his head down and Felice beside him. It seemed the only room in the whole institution. No other sounds were heard but the mutter of the woman who had always kept her thoughts to herself. Deep relief breathed in the room when the voice became mute and the body slacked in a straight line. Mary Immaculate rose from her knees. Nobody stopped her when she leaned over the still face. Death was not frightening her, concerned as she was in following it as far as she could. Putting her hand on the brow, she nearly jerked it away. This, she thought, must be the death-dews. The shock over, she let her fingers make a contact with incipient death. Some communion was established. After a long time, the girl heard the ghost of a whisper.

“Mary.”

“I'm here, Mater dear, smoothing your hair.”

What was said the others could not hear. Their eyes saw some agreement from the fair head while their ears heard the soothing corroboration of her voice. “Yes, Mater, whatever you say.”

For a fleeting second Lady Fitz Henry unclosed dull eyes and the others crept close to her bed.

“My sons,” she whispered. Then, as if she had overlooked something, she struggled towards, “Felice—”

Dropping back, two of them cried, but too softly to intrude on her passing. Philip stood unchanged, a tower of a man, while the girl let her hand continue towards its cold tryst. They did not know whether it was seconds or minutes, when they heard a small snort and saw the sag of a jaw. In a split second the girl's hand held it up.

“Philip!” she cried in agony.

With equal quickness his hand replaced her own, speaking over his mother's dead face.

“Go home, Mary, all of you.”

“No, Philip, we'll wait for you.”

What had they done? When all arrangements were completed Philip had to give his mother to other hands. There was nothing left but to return and receive her. They shivered with depressed vitality and gained the warmth of the hall. There stood Hannah like a figure of woe.

“How is she?” she asked in a grating voice.

Philip ran his hand over his forehead.

“I thought you'd rather hear from us than on the telephone. She died an hour ago.”

There was a fateful silence as they all leaned against things, too exhausted for further battering. Every word of Hannah's was a flay to their nerves.

“Do you mean to say, Mr. Philip and Mr. David, that you let my mistress go to her Maker without the help of my hands? Her whom I've served for fifty years. Have you done that to me?”

They had! Philip did not seem to have any imagination left to realize his great fault.

“She was unconscious, Hannah, and you never go out in the winter. Death is impersonal, you know.”

“Mr. David, did you think of me?”

“No,” he said, reduced to automatic honesty. “It was all so sudden—”

“
She
was there,” said Hannah, pointing to Felice, “and
she
was there,” she accused, making a projectile of a finger at Mary Immaculate.

“Of course,” said Philip sharply. “Hannah, please don't make a scene. We're very tired. I'm sorry you feel wronged, but you must admit there was little time for thought. A mere day and a half's illness and then this….”

“Mr. Philip is right, Hannah. It's a time to help and not to blame. We're all sorry for you, but she had no room for any of us at the last. It would have been a worry—”

“I was never—”

“And,” interrupted Felice firmly, “there's work to be done. She'll be returning in a couple of hours and the room must be prepared. Shall I ask the maids and let you go to bed?”

“Let me do it, Felice,” whispered, Mary Immaculate, clutching at activity.

“
You will not
,” said Hannah in harsh refusal. “I'll do the work in this house. Then I'll know I was at least her servant.”

Turning from them, she shuffied towards the drawing-room doors. The dazzle of the great chandelier hurt their eyes. Before they had the energy to move, Hannah was pushing back furniture against the walls. She worked as if she knew funeral preparations.

“Come,” said Felice, slipping her hand in David's arm. “We'll be sensible and sit by the fire and talk about her naturally. She's only been half here since…”

“Yes,” muttered Philip. “Felice, do you think we did all we could?”

“What human hands could, Philip,” she said in a quick, comforting voice.

Felice must have shaped up to death before, thought the girl. She seemed so adequate with all her nerves beaten down. For herself, she was in awe to the fact of death; that strange dropping of the screen on replying lips and eyes. Now that the ugliness was over, it seemed a majestic enchantment. It was her first intimate experience of it, something she had to travel on with. A bit of herself was going to the other side. It puzzled her that she had no inclination to tears. David's facile acceptance of emotions let him weep, also Felice. Philip was full of control and black shadows, though he looked as if the tears were running down inside the taut line of his jaw.

“Let's go,” said Felice, urging them out of immobility.

They moved down the hall with a united front, dropping their things as they went. In the mater's sitting-room, the fire was bright and the curtains drawn.

“I'm sorry about Hannah,” said Philip exhaustedly. “It was one of the things we didn't do….”

Generous, he was using the plural. He had done it all and was searching his mind for deficiencies of service. Mary Immaculate could not bear it. Privately she thought Hannah had never been any more to the mater than a capable servant of long standing.

“Philip,” she said, “it was not one of the things that would have helped. Hannah would have cried and sniffed, and that would have been disturbing….”

“Yes,” said David irrelevantly, “she only saved a pillow from the fire.”

A bit of himself had come back to his voice. He was talking, rather than criticising Hannah, although he continued appraisingly:

“Age hasn't sweetened her. I believe she minded our poverty more than Mater. What will we do with her now? She'll be one-winged without her. I fancy she's gone sour. Felice dear,” he said to his wife, “let's all have a drink. We're becalmed in great heaviness.”

It was his way of playing up.

“Of course, darling. I'll fetch it myself. The maids are busy. Can't Mary have a drink, Philip?”

“Yes, if she wants it.”

“I don't,” she said. “I don't need what I've never had.”

David reached for her hand.

“Darling,” he said very sincerely, “you were so sustaining, rubbing her dear head and holding up her chin. Wasn't she, Phil?”

“Yes,” he said briefly.

“But, David,” she asked in wonder, “what difference can death make between two people who love each other. I somehow can't see—perhaps I'm foolish—I'm new…”

“Can't see what, Mary,” they both asked together.

“I can't see the separation. Don't they live on in you—us— because it's we who will carry them round.”

David blew his nose very loudly, struggling to control ready tears. Philip got up to open the door for Felice. As he rose he bent over the girl, kissing her hair.

“Mary, would it be intruding to ask what Mater said to you? Was it for you or for all of us?”

She looked up very steadily. “It was for me, Philip.”

Later, the scrunch of snow and the loaded tramp of feet was hard to bear, carrying in its sounds the very sight of the mater's return. It was Hannah who had her moment then, and, in reparation, the family stood back, letting her feel authority.

When the house had settled back to its own creaks and moans they went in a body to look. The light was very strong, and the iceberg mantelpiece, with its reflecting mirror, invited them for a long walk. Mary Immaculate dropped on her knees and prayed. When she rose she looked with personal eyes. The whiteness and cold majesty nearly threw up a barrier, but the tough quality of her mind put death in its proper proportion. Quite naturally she stooped down and looked in the mater's face. How the nose lived on in its chiselled perfection. As if to reassure the mater of their presence she drew her hand lightly down the cold cheek. Its ice startled her, but there was no recoil in her hand.