South Riding (27 page)

An hour later, when Nat Brimsley came in for his tea, Mr. Holly was still sitting there discoursing. He went soon, but only after making himself most affable to the scowling lad.

“Why did you have yon good-for-nothing in here, Ma?” asked Nat, who had a sense of a smallholder’s dignity. “What were you thinking of?”

Mrs. Brimsley, with a sharp intaking of breath and glow of excitement, was thinking that she had not boxed a man’s ears since she was courting.

T
HE
H
IGH
S
CHOOL
term ended on the Wednesday before Easter. On Good Friday Miss Sigglesthwaite attended the Three Hours’ Service, listened, during the afternoon, to Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion broadcast from York Minster, then went to tea with Miss Burton in her office at the school.

After tea she wandered out along the cliffs south of Kiplington, wondering what she really ought to do.

I ought to resign. She’s quite right. She’s a good girl.

Agnes Sigglesthwaite had been trained in justice and charity. She recognised the quality of her new head mistress. The school was a different place since she had been there.

She’s intelligent—modern, enterprising; the children like her; she stands up to the governors, yet they don’t quarrel with her. She’s clever enough to give way about the things that don’t matter; but she stands firm as a rock for those that do.

She’s quite right that the staff should be sacrificed to the girls. “I’m thinking about the girls, Miss Sigglesthwaite.” She meant that. There was no malice in her. She said that she respected my mind. She told Miss Jameson that the school was lucky to have such a distinguished scientist on its staff. But that sigh when she said, “I’m thinking of the examination results.” That told everything.

It’s true. It’s true. I shall never get IV Upper through their Lower Certificate. They’re devils. They’re devils. They go out of their way to humiliate me. Callous. Cruel. Jill Jackson, Lydia Holly, Gladys Hubbard, Jean Marsh, Beryl Gryson . . . big strong girls. Miss Masters and Miss Burton thought a lot of Lydia Holly; but Miss Sigglesthwaite feared her. Those slum-girls. They knew too much. Their minds had been corrupted.

Oh, they were cruel to her. They left their home-work unprepared; they wrote flippant and even improper remarks in their nature notebooks. They answered out of turn. They threw notes at one another. Gladys Hubbard came into class one day with her ringlets screwed up on top of her head and her blouse poking out behind. It was too obvious—too cruel.

How did other women manage their hair and blouses? My hair’s thin because of worry. Father used to say, “Agnes mayn’t be a striking beauty, but she always looks intelligent and a lady.” I’d buy a frock coat. They keep tidy better than blouses. But Edie must have her new teeth and there’s the bill for the boiler.

“I’m thinking of the discipline,” Miss Burton had said. Miss Sigglesthwaite walked without sense of direction, beyond the houses, across the flat, worn field-path.

It’s true. I know I can’t keep order. I’ve lost confidence. I can’t trust myself to keep my temper. It’s being always so tired. Those dreadful nights, when you can’t sleep, waiting for dawn; and then the dawn comes and you dread it, because in an hour you must get up, in two hours you must face that dreadful staff-room. The young mistresses. It’s so easy to be unafraid when you’re strong and pretty. Girls get crushes on Belinda Masters. She pretends it’s a nuisance, yet it gives her power. Power. Confidence. That’s what I’m needing.

Oh, if only Father hadn’t died quite so early.

He believed in me. Even Christ needed some one to believe in Him. Thou art Peter. On this rock will I build my church. Father was proud of me. On the Sunday after the news of my finals came through he preached from the text, “The works of the Lord are great, sought out of them that have pleasure therein.” Sought out. That searching was what we meant by science. He meant me to be a great scientist—like Madame Curie. And I can’t even keep order in a class of tradesmen’s adolescent daughters.

That’s a Smew Margellus Albellus. Pretty thing. Hasn’t got a pretty voice, though. Kaak! Kaak! I wonder if he minds. Perhaps his wife thinks it’s lovely when she hears him coming home. Kaak! Kaak! There, children. That’s your father. Who talked of nightingales?

I’m probably the only woman in the South Riding who would know for certain it was Margellus Albellus. I owe that to Father too. He loved birds. If botany’s going to be your subject, he said, why not make birds your hobby? Be broad-minded. And I did. I hardly ever make a mistake either, except when I thought the female Cirl Bunting was a yellow-hammer. And that’s pardonable when they’re so rare here.

They laugh at my bird-lore. “Girls! Girls! The little chiff-chaff’s come back again!” Dolores Jameson did that. She’s behind it all. The staff-room’s hell. It’s Gethsemane. Oh, Father, Father—why can’t you comfort me? If I could get away—never see them again—never see myself again. “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me.”

It wasn’t Father’s fault that he died so much in debt. The Church of England pays its clergymen so badly, and he never pretended to be a business man. It wasn’t his fault. He never meant to leave me to keep Mother and Edie; it wasn’t his fault that Mother got rheumatoid arthritis.

To begin every year with that financial load on one’s shoulders. Never to dare to rest. Never to dare to be ill. Never, for a moment, to dare to dream of the sort of work one would really have liked to do. Professor Gelder wanted me to go on doing research—“seeking out”—but there’s no money in it.

Mother and Edie were always suggesting that I should get a job in the south of England, since the north was too cold for Mother. I’ve tried hard enough. Over and over, I’ve copied out those qualifications. But no one even sends for me to be interviewed. I’m too old—too old.

If I leave Kiplington, I shall never find anywhere else—and then what shall we do for Mother?

Mechanically she climbed a stile and crossed a bridge over a sluggish stream winding down to the sea. She remembered the morning’s lesson.

“He went forth with His disciples over the brook Cedron, where was a garden.”

You could understand Him trying to seek consolation in a garden; but when one is really troubled, scenery isn’t much help. It’s beautiful here, I suppose. It’s a beautiful evening.

She stood stilly staring at the indented line of the low red broken cliff, the pale sea sliding out, drawing arcs of deeper fawn on the sloping sand.

Behind a group of buildings, the sun was setting. She saw the outlines of tiled roof and chimney softened by a touch of the light as though cut out of velvet. The loose straws from the old threshed stack stuck this way and that, like silver needles, dazzling and brilliant, alive with light. Around and before her stretched the open country, melting into the quiet grey of distance where trees like smoke-wraiths blurred the horizon. Behind her the quiet sea swung softly, without breaking, against the sand.

From one of the cottages an old man pottered out into his garden. It was Grandpa Sellars. He was going to shut up his hens for the night, moving cautiously, each gesture prolonged, as though, towards its end, life retarded like a slow-motion film. She heard him calling, speaking to the hens as though they were his children, coaxing, scolding, making the most of every little humour or awkwardness in their behaviour. She felt sure that he was a very kind, patient, gentle-hearted old man.

If Father had lived, he would be very old now, guarding the fragile flame of life, perhaps, with just such careful piety.

Mother is very old too, she thought; but she guards nothing. She cannot even walk in the garden talking to her hens.

If she closed her eyes, Agnes Sigglesthwaite could see the bedroom at Tunbridge Wells where Edie sat, watching their mother, the speechless, motionless twisted husk of a woman who hardly raised a bulge under the bright blue eiderdown. The gas fire hissed. Edie snipped a thread. The five-thirty bus went rattling down the hill. Time stood still.

I can’t! cried Agnes Sigglesthwaite. I can’t go back and face them. I can’t say I’ve lost my job. And I can’t—oh, I can’t— stay at Kiplington.

Oh God, oh Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, canst Thou not also take away my burden? Not sin, not sin, oh Lord, but time and life and weariness.

Here, on this cliff now, in the mellow sunset, to step backwards, so easily, into the peace of death.

They would say the cliff had crumbled.

They would say that I was gathering grasses.

So easy, so kind; oh, why should it not be done?

Suddenly at the end of the field a gate was opened, and Miss Sigglesthwaite saw all the little lambs of God come leaping over the hill. They danced on spindly legs, they twirled, they bleated. Tail up, nose down, they sprang and waltzed and circled. Behind them trotted the woolly ewes, their mothers, calling, panting, stumbling across the field, their breath like smoke on the cold clear evening air.

The ears of the lambs were rosy as apple blossom where one saw them against the light. Their long tails waggled in ecstasy as they hurled themselves upon their mother’s dugs. They were lovely and innocent. They were gay and unfrightened. The slanting sun behind the ewes transformed their long wool to haloes of light.

Like doom on her heart chimed that morning’s service— “Oh Lamb of God, who is it that betrayeth Thee?”

Not sin, but time.

Time, that betrays the little leaping lambs, rosy-eared, smutty-nosed, long-tailed, button-eyed, turning them into feeble, slow, blindly bleating sheep.

Time which betrayed the eager questing girl, Agnes, her father’s darling, who sought out the works of the Lord, and found them great, and took fierce pleasure therein. Time transformed her into the dreary eldritch creature, seeking suicide on a Yorkshire cliff because she could no longer keep order in the classroom.

Oh, time betrays. Time is the great enemy, cried Agnes Sigglesthwaite. Time crowns us with thorns, exposes us to mockery, crucifies our bodies, defeats our laborious endeavours. The old prey upon the young—Mother upon me, and I upon the children. It is true that I only have them? “I’m thinking of the children,” said Miss Burton. For their sake I’d be better away; I’d be better dead. Must the young, the free, the hopeful always be sacrificed to the old, the bound, the helpless? Is this the final treachery of time, that the old become a burden upon the young? We ought to step aside, to let the young go free. But how can I do it?

She moved away, a few faltering steps from the edge of the cliff.

“He died to save us all,” she muttered, and thought with sorrowful envy of the Christ from whom love had demanded only the easier sacrifice of death.

He died; but I must live; I must go on living; I must go on working; I must go on laying my burden of fear and inefficiency upon the young.

Father forgive them . . .

But she could not forgive herself; for she knew now quite well what she did.

And in that realisation came a kind of bitter triumph. She knew what she did. She knew what she must do.

She turned and walked with shambling graceless haste towards Kiplington station. She bought a monthly return ticket to Tunbridge Wells. She asked her landlady to bring her box up from the cellar. She would pack immediately. She would take her books with her. She had classes to prepare for the coming term. Miss Burton had not actually dismissed her. She would stay and fight for her rights and her position. She would fight for Mother and Edie.

The young must look after themselves. Their turn was coming. Soon they too would prey upon their betters. Time would betray them also.

With a new energy of defiance she ordered early breakfast, she made arrangements to catch the 9.10 train.

Oh Agnus Dei! Oh Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. Oh Lamb of God: that (takest away the sins of the world: grant us thy peace.

H
ALF AN HOUR
before midnight on Easter Saturday Sarah drove back to Kiplington from Kingsport, when she had attended the Philharmonic Society’s performance of
The Messiah.

She had gone at Terry Bryan’s invitation, and after the concert had returned with him and two musician friends to the Station Hotel where they had sat by an enormous fire, drinking coffee and cherry brandy, smoking and talking.

Sarah smiled now as she drove, for she was happy. Her sense still rang with the superb tumult and affirmation of the music, her nerves were stimulated by its frivolous aftermath. This was one of the occasions when she felt that nothing was impossible.

She had not met Terry for three years—not since the time when she had broken her engagement with Ben, and to distract her mind from personal unhappiness, he had carried her off for a week-end to Paris—a week-end of indiscreet but completely platonic comradeship, in which they had visited restaurants, listened to operas, and bumped about queasily and excitedly in cross-channel aeroplanes together. Terry had teased her then and he teased her now, telling her that she was absurd to be a school-marm. But she cried: “You don’t know how I love it. I tell you, I’m happy.”