Hetty Dorval (11 page)

Rain fell pattering on the shining pavements as I left my room to seek out Hetty that evening. Dark branches were silhouetted against the street lights and there was the satisfactory feeling of an easy rain that always brought a sense of
well-being. Familiar London growled gently about me for miles. In Paris, Paula and I, being only strangers and students, had not experienced the impending feeling which we had felt in London and which I now felt again. From London we drew in the significant emanations of time past and time to come with our breath, and they entered our blood, brains and spirit. Sometimes in Piccadilly or in Whitehall I had become aghast at the pre-vision of craters, rubble and death.
For what are you destined, you arrogant man, walking unhurriedly along St. James’s Street? And you, you rolling bus with your load? And you, hurrying waiter? What awaits us all?
But as I walked through the rain in Hyde Park to take my bus to Hetty’s, the skies above London were still empty. Paula’s father was a journalist, whose territory was Middle Europe, and from him Paula and I had caught the feeling of pre-vision with the on-coming months, but more than anywhere in London, which speaks through air and stone, wall and pavement.

I did not hurry on my way nor did I feel anxious lest Hetty should be out. If she were out, then I would stay until she came in. But to telephone to her, and to try to arrange a meeting would have been folly, for she would then, I felt, vanish between empty finger-tips. It was not easy in the dark rainy streets to find the tall house where Hetty had her small apartment; but when I had found it, was admitted, stood in my wet mackintosh at her door and rang the bell, and Mouse opened the door, I thought
This Is It
.

Unquestionably Mrs. Broom did not know me. Seven years ago she had seen me as a superfluous visiting child. Three years ago she no doubt had observed me in her own contemptuous way on board ship. And here I was, a young woman with some confidence who had not, it seemed, crossed her path before. On Mrs. Broom’s side there was also a change.
She had grown thinner, and, under the hall light, age and perhaps fatigue showed in her face, but the iron grey of her hair was the same. The look on Mrs. Broom’s face was still the contained look of a woman who, one might think, consumed herself in unhappiness. She had the look of a woman who defended, and was at all points wary, and closed herself in from all people.

“Mrs. Broom,” I said, “I should like to see Hetty.” Mrs. Broom looked at me as though this were a statement whose implications were to be considered. She had developed the manner of being about to close a door on you to a very high degree since I had seen her in Lytton.

“Who are you and what is your business?” she asked. Her cold eyes examined me.

“I am Frankie Burnaby, and I wish to see Hetty,” I answered, not thinking it at all strange that Mrs. Dorval and Lady Connot should now be, as far as I was concerned, simply Hetty.

There was no greeting from Mrs. Broom. Indeed, if there was a change in her expression it became more defending than before. “Burnaby?” she said, and then “Oh,” and we stood and looked at each other. “And your business?”

“I wish to see Hetty,” I answered again without explanation.
I’m not afraid of you, you formidable woman with your pretence of power and withdrawal. Withdrawal, like Hetty’s, but not beautiful. I have it in me to feel sorry for you, you cold stern woman, now that I see you again and am not afraid of you any more
.

Mrs. Broom said, “I will see,” and almost, but not quite, closed the door, leaving me standing.

I did not push my way in, but all the same I walked in, and followed Mrs. Broom into the small hall. She turned
angrily. “I told you I would see. You may wait outside the door,” she said.

“I will wait here,” I said, smiling at Mrs. Broom, who did not smile at me.

This time Mrs. Broom closed the door through which she went. I was glad, I was quite happy that here, near me, was Hetty, and with Hetty a clearing up of things, or this new Me that waited in the hall was strangely deluded. So little doubt had I that I should see her soon, now, that I had taken off my wet mackintosh and laid it over a chair in the small hall. There was no sign of any other visitor. If Hetty was there, she was probably alone. Good.

Mrs. Broom returned, closing the door. (“Does this woman do nothing but close doors all her life?” I thought – and indeed the closing of doors typified Mrs. Broom.) “Lady Connot is not able to see you this evening. She has an engagement. You will have to come again,” she said. Not I. But the door that Mrs. Broom had shut, now opened, and Hetty stood there. “Mouse, don’t be ridiculous,” she said. (I had heard those words before but this time Hetty’s light voice did not reduce me to a faltering schoolgirl.) “Frankie! Come in. What luck! I have just a few minutes and then I’m being called for. I thought you were still in Paris! How nice of you to come! Sit down,” and she indicated a chair. I do not know whether Mrs. Broom left the room or whether she stood back in the shadow. I think she stood in the shadow, but I forgot her.

“Yes, I was in Paris,” I said.

I looked round the room. We both stood, Hetty in front of a low couch, and I beside a chair. A fire burned in the narrow English grate. On a table stood a lamp which threw light upwards on to the ceiling and downwards on to the table. As Hetty stood, her face was in the dark interval of space
between light and light, and I suppose mine was too. And so we stood looking at each other. Hetty laughed. “Well, Frankie, aren’t you going to sit down? I shall. For a few minutes.” And she sat on the couch, and the soft firelight and lamplight showed me her face, as young and unworn as when I first saw her seven years before on the Lillooet road.

“
What
is it, Frankie?” she asked beguilingly, “you funny child. You appear – I remember before – with the air of one making portentous announcements. Is it your rôle? You have become too serious, Frankie. Wasn’t Paris gay enough? I like your hair. It looks very nice. Very smart. Pull up that fat little chair.”

This sweet clever Hetty had put the room at ease at once, but I was not to be deflected.

“Yes,” I said, “Paris was all right. But as your time is short, Hetty, I’ll come to the point at once.” I was still standing. “Yesterday, in Paris, two letters came, and they were both about you. One was from my little Molly, Molly Trethewey, and one was from Canada. Molly’s letter told me all about the last few weeks and I can see that you and Rick and Molly – and particularly you and Richard – have become great … friends.” I was watching Hetty closely. “The letter from Canada told me about your last year in Shanghai, and about your coming to Canada.” Her expression did not change. “Now, I don’t mind what you’ve done, or where you’ve been, or who you’ve lived with or how you’ve left them, until it touches Richard – and Molly. And I’ve come to ask you. Have you decided to marry Richard Trethewey?”

Hetty looked up at me with gentle bright amusement. “Oh, Frankie, you
are
funny, you know! Darling, you’re so droll and serious! Have you come all the way from Paris to ask me my intentions? You’ve been reading too many stories.
Please.
Please!
Don’t be sentimental, Frankie, or heroic. I shall only think you’re funny!” Hetty was pricking my little balloons, and smiling as she pricked.

“I shan’t be sentimental or heroic, Hetty,” I said, feeling quite good-humoured. This didn’t get under my skin at all. “I simply need to be told whether you intend to marry Richard. And this is why, if you’d like to know. Because,
now
, I truly believe you’re as selfish as a human being can be, and my friends at Cliff House are too good to be made unhappy by you. So there!” I said defiantly.

Hetty leaned forward, her hands clasped over her knees. She seemed to be quite interested and not at all annoyed.

“You think you simply need to know whether I intend to marry Richard?” She laughed. “My dear child, my dear little prig, you don’t simply need that at all. You’re in love with Richard yourself and you’re very jealous.” Under the brilliance of Hetty’s amused gaze perhaps I coloured.

“I don’t know, Hetty.” I thought for a minute. “Perhaps I am in love with Rick. I think I am. But I can tell you this. I’m not jealous of you and I never could be. You can believe that – though, in fact, I don’t care whether you do or not. If you marry Rick without being in love with him, if you marry him because you’re … bored or … lonely or for ‘security’ again (aren’t you secure now?) you’ll let him down and you’ll break Rick’s heart. You will!” I moved over and leaned towards her, with my hands on the table beyond the wide circle of lamplight. “Do you
intend
to marry him?
Do
you?”

Hetty looked at me with her soft, untroubled, unrevealing look but did not answer.

I drew a long breath. “Well, then,” I said, “suppose you intend to marry Rick. Molly will be in your charge.” I pondered this, looking at Hetty, who gave no sign. I had never
taken my eyes off her, and I tried to read her face. I could not read it.

“Hetty, it all rests on this, and you must tell me … do you love him, and will you stick to him if you marry him?”

Hetty did not answer. Her face was as calm and sweetly inexpressive as though she sat alone and a vehement young woman were not standing near her. Vehement, I say. Yet it was a fact that there was not the making of a quarrel at that time in the room, and that neither Hetty nor I appeared angry. We both waited in silence for the other and my own words sounded strangely in my ears. I assumed that Richard was in love with Hetty although she had not told me this, and, of course, neither had he. But it was an easy assumption.

Hetty disregarded my question and did not answer it.

“Frankie,” she said slowly, “you wrote to Richard, didn’t you?”

I nodded. “Yes,” I said, “I took particular pains to tell Richard soon after we met you that I never knew you well, and that’s true too, and I – well, I put him on his guard about you, Hetty. That’s the truth.”

“I know,” she said, without rancour. “Rick only got the letter this week. He was angry, Frankie, because he had got to know me well by then, you see,” she said gently. Yes. I saw.

Hetty then showed what she thought was pity. “That letter won’t help you with Rick, you know, Frankie. He’ll never like you now. Not ever.”

I said rather hotly, “If you think that letter was written in order to help
me
with Richard, then you still don’t know what this conversation is about.” I pulled myself together. I could not afford to get angry.

“Since we’re talking – and
don’t
you hate scenes, don’t let’s have a scene, Frankie, –” she said in her beguiling way. “If
I decide to marry Rick, what do you intend to do with your Shanghai stories?” and she also watched me intently.

I waited a minute, and then I had to hand Hetty an advantage.

“Do you think I shall tell tales on Rick’s wife?” I said. “You can answer that one yourself.” That was the only truthful answer I could find to Hetty’s question.

There was one more thing to be said in this so far inconclusive talk.

“Hetty,” I said,
“if
you marry Rick, and I don’t think you actually will, because you’re a realist where your own comfort’s concerned,” (I had discussed that part with Paula) “and you know that you’d hate to take on responsibilities in a married life with a man like Rick with a little sister like Molly … because Molly’s part of Rick’s life … you’d have to keep it up, and you’d get bored, and you’d hate that – but if you
do
marry him, what will you do about Molly? She’ll be your care, too. You’ll be her sister, but you’ll have to be more like her mother. I know all this so well, Hetty, because I’ve lived with them so much – and Molly’s never had a mother.”

And here Hetty made the mistake of her life. She laughed and said lightly,
“I
never had a mother, either, and I’ve got on very nicely without one!”

It was at that moment that Mrs. Broom moved forward out of the shadows and stood and leaned with her strong rough hands on the table in the circle of the lamplight. The whole room seemed to turn towards her, and we turned towards her, and she took all the power and meaning out of the room into herself. And she began to shake.

Hetty and I stared at this controlled woman who stood shaking by the table, steadying herself with her strong hands flat on the table within the circle of the lamplight. I stood up
straight and saw her hands square and rough and the fingers short and square-tipped pressed down hard upon the table to prevent their shaking as Mrs. Broom was shaking. The lower part of Mrs. Broom’s face was in shadow but on her forehead I saw the veins stand out on the temples and then I saw that the whole face was distorted. I cannot tell you how horrible this was and how frightening, to see this woman of wood and of closed doors opened violently from within with great suddenness and without reason. Hetty put her hands on the couch on each side of her and leaned backwards as though to spring away. She looked in horror at Mrs. Broom who, still leaning forward on the table, struggled to compose herself.

“Mouse, what is it?” breathed Hetty. “What is it?”

I did not put out a hand to help Mrs. Broom because I saw that though she was racked and shaken physically, the thing that had caused this convulsion was not physical – and I did not know what it was.

Mrs. Broom spoke to Hetty, hoarsely and with effort. “Say what you said before!”

“What I said before?” said Hetty, bewildered. “I don’t know what I said before.”

“Then I’ll tell you,” said Mrs. Broom, who was gaining control of herself. “You said, ‘I never had a mother, and I got along very well without one.’ ”

“Well, I
did
get along very well without one – thanks to you of course, Mouse,” added Hetty generously.

Mrs. Broom looked on Hetty and said, “Hester … I am your mother,” and the silence in the room was as though drums had stopped beating.

Hetty went quite white and stared at Mrs. Broom as though she had never seen her before, and perhaps she never had. I saw her breast heave as though she had been running.