Homecomings (11 page)

5 December: Bit better. Perhaps I can go on. It’s easier, when I know I needn’t.

Nothing more than that – but for the first time I knew how fixed her delusion was. I knew also that she had contemplated suicide for weeks past, had had it in her mind when I tried to hearten her.

Perhaps even when she first said she was handing in her resignation, that was a hint, as much as eight months ago. Had she intended me to understand her? But she was not certain, she had done no more than hint, even to herself. Had she been certain two nights before, when I told her again she must go on? Had she been certain next morning at breakfast, the last time I saw her alive, when she was making fun of me?

I heard Mrs Wilson’s step downstairs. I did not look at Sheila’s writing any more: it was not to think, it was because of the claustrophobic pressure upon me in the house, that I went out of the front door and walked along the Embankment in a night as calm as the last night, as calm as when, quite untroubled, I had walked up St James’s Street with Gilbert Cooke. The sky was dark, so was the river, so were the houses.

WHEN I got back to the house there was a sliver of light between the black-out curtains of the drawing-room; as soon as I stood inside the hall I heard a woman’s voice, Mrs Knight’s, raised, sustained, unrelenting. The instant I entered the room, she stopped: there was a silence: she had been talking about me.

Mr Knight was sitting in an armchair by the fire, and she had drawn up the sofa so as to be beside him. Her eyes fixed on mine and did not budge, but his gazed into the fire. It was he who spoke.

‘Excuse me if I don’t get up, Lewis,’ he said, still without looking at me, and the polite whisper fell ominously into the silent room. Still politely, he said that they had caught an earlier train and I could not have expected them at this time. His eyes had stayed hidden, but his expression was pouched and sad. He said: ‘Your housekeeper has shown us–’

‘Yes.’

The intimations of pain and sorrow, so weak all day, quite left me. I felt nothing but guilt, and irrational fear.

‘She left no word for anyone?’

‘No.’

‘Not for you
or
us?’

I shook my head.

‘I don’t understand that. I don’t understand
that
.’

I wondered if he believed me, if he suspected that I had destroyed a note. Certainly Mrs Knight, suddenly set loose, suspected it.

‘Where were you last night?’

I replied that I was dining out – the jolly carefree evening came back to me.

‘Why did you leave her? Hadn’t you any consideration for her?’

I could not answer.

Why hadn’t I looked after her? Mrs Knight asked, angry and denouncing. All through our marriage, why had I left her to herself? Why hadn’t I carried out what I promised? Why hadn’t I taken the trouble to realize that she wanted looking after? Couldn’t I have given her even a modicum of care?

‘Oh no, he’s done that,’ whispered Mr Knight, with his eyes closed.

‘You’ve left her
alone in this empty house
,’ Mrs Knight went on.

‘He’s done as much as anyone could have.’ Mr Knight spoke up, a little louder, defending me. She looked baffled, even frustrated, and began another attack.

‘
Please
, my dearest,’ he ordered her in a loud voice, and she gave way. Then with the gentleness he always showed to her, he said, as though explaining: ‘It is his affliction as well as ours.’

Out of the corner of his eye he glanced at me, and murmured: ‘The last time I saw her’ – he meant the visit eighteen months before – ‘I couldn’t help thinking she was in a bad state. I believe I mentioned it, didn’t I, Lewis, or did I just think it to myself? The last time I saw her. I wish that I had been wrong.’

And yet, the fact that he had been perceptive, more perceptive than I or anyone else had been, gave him a vestigial comfort; even that night his vanity glowed for an instant.

‘She shouldn’t have done it,’ cried Mrs Knight, in anger but with the only tears I had seen in her eyes.

‘I have no comfort to give you, dearest,’ he said. ‘Or you either.’ Once more he was gazing into the fire, the corner of his eyes sidling towards me. In my hearing he had not once spoken of the consolations of his religion. The room was quiet, all we heard was the ticking of the clock. Somehow we had passed into a patch of those doldrums which often lurk in the path, not only of a quarrel, but of any scene of violent feeling.

Breaking the quiet, Mrs Knight asked whether there would have to be an inquest. I said yes. When? I told her that it was already arranged, for the following afternoon. Mr Knight half-raised his lids with a speculative expression, looked as though he had something to say but had thought better of it. Then he mentioned casually: ‘Tomorrow afternoon? Not that I want anyone to give it a thought except my doctor, but it will presumably be a considerable strain on me.’

‘You’ve stood it well so far,’ said Mrs Knight.

‘If Ross [his doctor] were here, he would tell us it was dangerous,’ Mr Knight continued. ‘I’m morally certain he would forbid it. But he won’t have to know until he has to patch me up afterwards.’

In a new kind of numbness I exclaimed: ‘Never mind, don’t take any risks. I can get through it by myself.’

Mrs Knight cried: ‘No, we can’t think of leaving you.’

Mr Knight muttered: ‘I wouldn’t willingly think of leaving you, it would throw all of it on to your shoulders–’

Mrs Knight broke in: ‘We can’t do it.’

Mr Knight went on: ‘One doesn’t like to think of it, but Lewis, in case, in the remote case, that my wretched heart was getting beyond its degree of tolerance tomorrow afternoon, are you sure that you could if need be manage by yourself?’

So Mr Knight, whose empathy was such that he knew more than most men both what my life with Sheila had been and what my condition was that night, was only anxious to escape and leave me to it: while Mrs Knight, who blamed me for her daughter’s unhappiness and death, felt in her fibres that they ought to stand by me in the end, give their physical presence if they could give nothing else. She felt it so primally that for once she gave up thinking of her husband’s health.

There were those, among whom I had sometimes been one, who believed that, if she had not pampered his hypochondria, he would have forgotten his ailments half the time and lived something near a normal life. We were wrong. She had a rough, simple nature, full of animal force: but, despite her aggressiveness, she had always been, and was now as much as ever, under his domination. It was he who felt his own pulse, who gave the cry of alarm, and she who in duty and reverence echoed it. Even that night he could not subdue it, and for a few moments she was impatient with him.

In the end, of course, he got his way. She soon realized that the inquest would tax his heart more than she could allow; she became convinced that it was he who out of duty insisted on attending, and she who was obliged to stop him; she would have to forbid his doing anything so quixotic, even if I was prostrate without them.

As it was, I said that I would settle it alone, and they arranged to return home next morning. I did not mention Charles March’s offer to give a false certificate, so that we could have avoided the inquest. I wondered how Mr Knight would have reconciled his conscience, in order to be able to accept that offer.

In his labyrinthine fashion, Mr Knight asked how much publicity we had to be prepared for. I shrugged it off.

‘No,’ said Mr Knight, ‘it will hurt you as much and more than us, isn’t that true?’

It was, but I did not wish to admit it, I did not like the times that day when the thought of it drove out others.

Perhaps the war-news would be a blessing to us, Mr Knight was considering. I said I would do my best with my Press acquaintances. The Knights could go home next morning: I would do what could be done.

Relieved, half-resentful, half-protective, Mr Knight began inquiring where I would sleep tomorrow night, whether I could take a holiday and get some rest. I did not want, I could not bear, to talk of myself, so I made an excuse and left them alone.

At dinner none of us spoke much, and soon afterwards, it must have been as early as nine o’clock, Mrs Knight announced that she was tired and would go straight to bed. Of all women, she was the least well designed for subterfuges: she proclaimed her piece of acting like a blunt, embarrassed, unhappy schoolgirl. But I had no attention to spare for her; Mr Knight was determined to speak to me in intimacy, and I was on guard.

We sat in the drawing-room, one each side of the fireplace, Mr Knight smoking a pipe of the herb-tobacco which out of valetudinarian caution he had taken to years before. The smell invaded me and I felt a tension nearly intolerable, as though this moment of sense, the smell of herb tobacco, was not to be endured, as though I could not wait to hear a word. But when he did speak, beginning with one of his circuitous wind-ups, he astonished me: the subject he wanted to get clear before they left next day was no more intimate than the lease of the house.

When I married Sheila, I had had no capital, and Mr Knight had lent us the money to buy a fourteen years’ lease, which had been in Sheila’s name. This lease still had six years to run, and Mr Knight was concerned about the most business-like course of action. Presumably, after all that had happened, and regardless of the fact that the house was too large for a man alone, I should not wish to go on living there? If it were his place to advise me, he would advise against. In that case, we ought to take steps about disposing of the lease. Since the loan had been for Sheila’s sake as well as mine, he would consider it wiped off, but perhaps I would think it not unreasonable, as he did himself, particularly as Sheila’s own money would come to me under her will, that any proceeds we now derived from the lease should go to him?

Above all, said Mr Knight, there was a need for speed. It might be possible to sell a house before the war developed: looking a few months ahead, none of us could guess the future, and any property in London might be a drug on the market. I had always found him one of the most puzzling and ungraspable of men, but never more so than now, when he took that opportunity to show his practical acumen. I promised to put the house in the agents’ hands within a few days.

‘I’m sorry to lay this on your shoulders too,’ he said, ‘but your shoulders are broad – in some ways–’

His voice trailed away, as though in the qualification he might be either envying me or pitying me. I was staring into the fire, not looking at him, but I felt his glance upon me. In a quiet tone he said: ‘She always took her own way.’

I did not speak.

‘She suffered too much.’

I cried out: ‘Could any man have made her happy?’

‘Who can say?’ replied Mr Knight.

He was trying to comfort me, but I was bitter because that one cry had escaped against my will.

‘May she find peace,’ he said. For once his heavy lids were raised, he was looking directly at me with sad and acute eyes.

‘Let me say something to you,’ he remarked, his words coming out more quickly than usual, ‘because I suspect you are one of those who take it on themselves to carry burdens. Perhaps one is oneself, perhaps one realizes the danger of those who won’t let themselves forget.’

For an instance his tone was soft, indulgent with self-regard. Then he spoke sharply: ‘I beg you, don’t let this burden cripple you.’

I neither would nor could confide. I met his glance as though I did not understand.

‘I mean the burden of my daughter’s death. Don’t let it lie upon you always.’

I muttered. He made another effort: ‘If I may speak as a man thirty years older, there is this to remember – time heals most wounds, except the passing of time. But only if you can drop the burdens of the past, only if you make yourself believe that you have a life to live.’

I was gazing, without recognition, into the fire; the smell of herb tobacco wafted across. Mr Knight had fallen silent. I reckoned that he would leave me alone now.

I said something about letting the house. Mr Knight’s interest in money did not revive; he had tried for once to be direct, an ordeal for so oblique a man, and had got nowhere.

For minutes, ticked off by the clock, again the only sound in the room, we stayed there; when I looked at him his face was sagging with misery. At last he said, after neither of us had spoken for a long while, that we might as well go to bed. As we went out to the foot of the stairs, he whispered: ‘If one doesn’t take them slowly, they are a strain on one’s heart.’

I made him rest his hand on my shoulder, and cautiously, with trepidation, he got himself from tread to tread. On the landing he averted his eyes from the door of the room in which her body lay.

Again he whispered: ‘Good night. Let us try to sleep.’

IT was three nights later when, blank to all feeling, I went into the bedroom and switched on the light. Blankly, I pulled off the cover from my own bed; then I glanced across at hers, smooth, apple-green under the light, undisturbed since it was made four days before. All of a sudden, sorrow, loss, tore at me like a spasm of the body. I went to the bed and drew my hands along the cover, tears that I could not shed pressing behind my eyes, convulsed in the ravening of grief. At last it had seized me. The bed was smooth under the light. I knelt beside it, and wave after wave of a passion of the senses possessed me, made me grip the stuff and twist it, scratch it, anything to break the surface, shining quietly under the light.

Once, in an exhausted respite, I had a curious relief. The week to come, some friends had invited us to dinner. If she had been alive, she would have been anxious about going, she would have wanted me to make excuses and lie her out of the evening, as I had done so many times.

Then the grief flooded through me again. In the derangement of my senses, there was no time to come: all time was here, in this moment, now, beside this bed.