South Riding (35 page)

I never knew it would be like this, thought Lily. When she came to the Nag’s Head, it had all seemed so simple. She had only to hold out, to conceal her secret, till Tom got his business well on its feet. Even if he did notice that she wasn’t too well, it wouldn’t matter. He would put it all down to her age. He had often told her that middle-aged women always felt under the weather.

I never knew pain could do this to you, thought Lily. For she had changed. It was true, she hardly knew herself. There had been hours when she had hated Tom; she wanted to hit his lean, red, friendly, handsome face; she had wanted to scream out at him her secret, telling him that she had let herself be crucified upon his simple vanity, that if she had stayed in Leeds she could have been spared this agony. It maddened her that he should be so blind, so childish, so complacent of his masculine strength and patience. He thought that he was being so very good to her.

Oh, and he was, he was. Lily’s heart rebuked her. She thought of how he rolled out of bed each morning, a well-drilled soldier, the moment his alarm clock jarred the early silence. He pulled on his trousers and went downstairs to light the fire. Always he brought a cup of tea up to her. His service with the colonel had made him handy. He could fill hot-water bottles, lay trays ever so nicely, wait on her with intelligent attention. He relieved her of all the hard work of the inn. He scrubbed floors, shifted cases, lighted fires, black-leaded grates, washed glasses. He got in Chrissie Beachall every morning. He attended to the garage and the bar and all the customers; she could sit for hours in the arm-chair by the fire. No husband could possibly have been more good to her. He even bought her the dog to keep her company.

How could she blame him because he did not realise? She blamed herself. Oh, no, then, she blamed no one. She crouched over herself in the jolting bus, and stared out at the flat unfriendly landscape.

How could Tom know that even on her good days their life at the Nag’s Head put too much upon her? She knew by heart the burden of that house—two steps up from the kitchen to the tap-room, six along the passage, three across the scullery, twenty from the back door to the garage. Then upstairs to the bedroom were seven steps, a turn in the wall, and then another five. “They’ll never get my coffin down them,” thought Lily, dragging herself round the turning by the banister rail.

Oh, how could Tom know that on her bad days every demand on her drove her to voiceless fury? Then the pain uncurbed itself and seized her, and she crouched, sick and dumb in her fireside chair, clutching to herself the blistering hot rubber bottle which, while it brought no relief, was a sort of counter-irritant. Then the door-bell tinkled, and a party of hikers wanted some bars of chocolate, a thirsty cyclist wanted some ginger beer, and if Tom was not there she must pull herself together, she must hobble out to the bar, and she must serve them.

So she dreaded Tom’s absences, and he guessed it because he loved her, and bought her a dog that she should not be lonely.

A dog. And Lily had never liked dogs. She, perhaps, had never said so, because it was not her way to express displeasure. But their animal smell disturbed her queasy stomach; their bounding energy rasped her taut nerves; they upset vases, trampled on cushions, printed footmarks on carpets, lifted their legs against the scullery table, disturbed the niceties of domestic order. She couldn’t do with dogs.

Never would she forget Rex’s arrival. Tom brought him back one night from Kingsport. It had been a bad day, and Lily had not known how to endure the evening. Up and down from the kitchen to the bar she had stumbled, drawing corks, measuring whiskies, counting change. A busy night, for once, a profitable night. The smoke blinded her, the smell of ale had sickened her. In the scullery she had wept moaning and protesting, alone for a moment with her pain, counting the seconds till Tom could come and lift the burden of petty obligation from her.

Then he had come—creeping through the kitchen door with his bright eyes and roguish little-boy air, his tongue curling round his red lips as it always did in moments of excitement, pleased as punch with himself, secret, eager. “I’ve got something for you, Lil. A surprise. A surprise!”

As though anything could surprise her save the end of pain.

Then, held back for a moment and now released, Rex sprang forward, a silvery-brown bounding lithe Alsatian puppy. He nearly knocked Lily over. He sprang from the door to the sofa, from the sofa to the hearthrug, then round and round the table, swinging his great tail, leaping, slavering, wild, restless, beautiful, ebullient dog.

From that moment he claimed Lily’s attention. He would scratch at doors, demanding liberation. He would fling himself into the air, race along roads, leap over hedges, whirl himself round and round in circles, wallow in ditches. Then back he would come, dripping and panting, fawning round Lily, pleading for affection.

She did not want him. She had wanted nothing, only the freedom to retire to that dim no-man’s-land where she and her pain lived now in isolation. Nothing else could touch her. Once she had had a lover; she thought of Tom’s eager, buoyant, dominating ways. Come on, let’s take a chance, Lil. Oh, Lil, I love you. Oh, Lil, the softness of your hair and the way it curls in the back of your neck. I can’t get it out of my mind.

She had a husband, and he was very good to her. No other woman she knew had such a husband. She had her girls, sweet they had been as children. Fat roguish Addie, tumbling across the floor. Maimie holding on to her knees with both short arms, crying, Oh, lovely Mummy. I love you.
Dear
Mummie. And now Addie had her own babies and Maimie would soon become a mummie herself.

Lily did not want to be bothered with babies. She had only one companion, the insistent comrade of her waking hours, the uninvited bridegroom of her bed. She could invest her pain with a personality. On waking every morning she lay waiting to see what sort of mood it would be in to-day. If she felt only the slight nausea and exhaustion which were her alternatives to vivid, exacting pain, she would lie still and tranquil, humbly blessing the hour. She wanted, then and always, nothing except to be left alone.

The bus stopped near the flour mill. The inspector came to look at the tickets. Lily produced hers and held it between her gloved fingers. Tom had given her a pound to spend in Kingsport. “Buy a new hat; go to the pictures. Have a good tea. Sorry I can’t come with you.” He was kind, oh, he was kind because he was sorry for her, because they had taken Rex to the vet’s to be put to sleep.

What would he have said if he could know the truth, that she had betrayed Rex, that she had deliberately set him on to chase those sheep? Oh, God, have pity on me. Forgive me, she prayed, horrified by this change that had overtaken her. How could she have known that pain would change her into a different person?

She had done her best for a time, taking Rex on his lead down to the village, though he almost pulled her to pieces with his energy. If she let him go, he frisked and gambolled round her, flapping his huge tail through the Maythorpe shops, panting and slavering, showing his white teeth in a wide free grin until the children screamed and ran away. Neighbours said, cautious, yet knowing a fine thing when they saw one, “You’ve got a grand dog now, Mrs. Sawdon. You’ll have to take care he don’t go after sheep.” And she said, “Yes, he’s a beauty,” knowing that he was a beauty, a superb irrational dynamo of fur and bone and muscle. She took care of him and gave him liver and biscuit, but she led him out into the fields where the young lambs played, and when no one was looking she set him on to them—Go on, Rex. Catch ’em. Chase ’em. The silly sheep. The silly graceful dog, signing his own death warrant.

So Dickson went to the Nag’s Head to complain, and Heyer was sympathetic and spoke to Carne, and Rex was put on probation for a fortnight, and beaten, and followed Lily about with puzzled meekness that did not suit her at all. She could not do with him.

His habits gave the men something to talk about. Alsatians and sheep-chasing, cures for sheep-chasing, cases of inveterate sheep-chasing, were discussed with passionate enthusiasm in the bar-room.

Rarely was the conversation interrupted, though Lily entered once to hear Tom saying, “What’s this about young Brimsley wanting to court Peg Pudsey?”

“It’s time enough,” said Heyer. “He wants his mother out and the girl in, but I say he’s a fool. Mrs. Brimsley’s a rare cook. I wouldn’t change her myself for a daughter of that, soaking fool, Pudsey.”

“There’s more in marriage than good cooking,” said Tom with a wink at Lily, a loyal wink, because, during recent months, there had been little more in his, and latterly not much cooking.

But talk could not postpone the crisis. Rex one day killed a sheep. The Cold Harbour Colonists were friendly tolerant men, and all liked Lily, but this was something serious.

The dog must be put down or sold out of the district.

It was then that Lily had known just what she wanted.

“I won’t have him sold into a town. It isn’t fair.”

She was sitting idle beside the fire, the tea unprepared, when Tom came in to her. In spite of the bright May afternoon, she was shivering.

“What shall I do then? We can’t keep him.”

“Best have him put down, mercifully. It’s kindest. Once they get after sheep, it’s a disease. Like drink. You can’t stop.” Her pain was so bad that her voice sounded harsh and desperate.

“I’m sorry, Lil.” Tom was troubled and puzzled. “If I’d thought, I’d never have bought the dog.”

“Thought? You never think. Thought’s the last thing you’d be guilty of,” she snapped so unexpectedly that Tom grieved all the more, assured that Lil had loved the dog even more than he had guessed.

Rex uncurled himself from his basket and strode across the room, his beautiful dignified gait appropriate to the sombre moment. He dropped his pointed muzzle on to Lily’s knee. Then some spring of control broke in her, because she could not bear to behave so badly, and she rose and flung the dog aside, and snapped at Tom, “I’ve cooked nothing for tea. You’ll have to eat boiled bacon.”

But when he replied patiently, “Oh, that’s all right. Don’t you worry. I’ll fry myself a rasher and a couple of eggs. Would you like one?” she could bear it no longer. She fled upstairs to the bedroom and cried and cried and cried, because she was dying a changed and hateful creature, because she no longer had any patience left for any one, for Tom’s brave optimistic plans, for the dog’s vitality, for Chrissie Beachall’s complaints about her varicose veins; for the woes and joys of the visitors to the inn. They were nothing to her. She was withdrawn from them into a world of sharper pain and ultimate estrangement. She was no use—to herself, to them, to Tom.

But to-day, when they had taken Rex to the vet’s, it was Lily who had been brave and competent. Tom had driven them both there in the Sunbeam, but he had to get back to look after the inn, and she had decided to go on by bus to Kingsport.

He had been upset to see the dog led off. Poor Tom. She knew that he had bought Rex really for his own satisfaction. But he would find comfort. Even as he climbed into the car and started the engine and swung the Sunbeam round back into the line of traffic, she knew that already his own expert competence as a driver was consoling him. He took comfort too from his wife’s trim figure, standing on the curb in a grey spring costume, a lilac scarf at her throat. He would take comfort that night in the sympathy of Hicks and Heyer. Oh, he was building up his life soundly and quietly. She soon could leave him. Let once the Nag’s Head get well started and he would not need her any more. He might even marry again.

To her surprise she found a sharp pang of resentment stab her at the thought of his remarriage.

Not that it mattered. How much do the dead care?

But then, suppose she didn’t die!

The bus stopped again. She had reached her destination. She climbed cautiously down and made, not for the shops, but for a grey forbidding street where flat-faced houses displayed small brass plates upon the railings outside their front doors.

This was Willoughby Place, the Harley Street of Kingsport, and Lily had arranged an appointment here with Dr. Stretton, the specialist to whom the Leeds doctors had given her an introduction so many months ago, telling her to call upon him at once.

She was going now, though she had not meant to go. She had deceived Tom and stolen this day at Kingsport because the time had come when she needed reassurance. She could bear no longer this invasion by a stranger who curdled her sweetness, turned her charity to morose vindictiveness, and even led her to tempt to its death a harmless dog. What she feared now was that this might not be cancer, but some malignant spiritual change. She must know. She must confess her terror.

She saw the brass plate, climbed the clean steps and rang the bell. A maid showed her into the bare, dark polished waiting-room. She told herself: Rex will be dead by this time. She had outlived that grace, that strength, that ebullient vitality. The expedition to the vet at Fleetmire had given her an excuse to visit Kingsport. Her life and the dog’s death were bound together.

Her pain was quiet. She could observe the bare mahogany table, the fern in the copper pot, the limp lace curtains, the obscure oil paintings on the wall. Not a homely room. She could make better than that of it. She’d always been one for making a home.

A lean nervous-looking clergyman came in, chewing at his false teeth. She wondered if he had cancer, and hoped he hadn’t, not from any good will, but from a sort of proprietary pride. She wanted her fate to be unique. If it must be terrible, let it not at least be commonplace.