South Riding (48 page)

The painting of the men’s quarters is certainly overdue, and the children are still too crowded. We visited their playground and are of the opinion that it would be far better for the mental defective juveniles to be accommodated in some other quarters.

All curative work must be handicapped by the present cramped conditions. November, 15th.

(Signed)
A. Snaith
.

Emma Beddows.

P.Tubbs.
”

Minutes of the Visiting Committee of the South Riding Mental Hospital. December 1933.

“T
EMPORARY INSANITY
,” Topper Beachall read slowly, syllable by syllable, from the evening paper. “Tem-por-ary insanity. They all say they’re insane, chaps what shoots themselves. Go on, I say.”

Nobody went on.

Hicks wiped his mouth; Sawdon lit his pipe; Grandpa Sellers spat into the brass shell-case beside the fireplace.

It was an October evening. Harvest was all in. The vase-shaped pikes bulged gracefully in the stack-yards, crowned by pointed thatches. The larger oblong stacks made great blocks like solid buildings. A slight ground-frost rimed the bare fields and stiffened the Michelmas daisies in the cottage gardens. But the Nag’s Head bar-parlour was snug and trim, and the tales of tragedy read by Topper Beachall seemed only to augment that intimate cosiness.

“‘Father of six found hanged in scullery with braces!’ I don’t blame him. I know what it is to be a father. If he’d hanged some of his brats with him, you couldn’t wonder. ‘Actress elopes with first husband.’ Now I should say she was mad. Here’s a lass wed a chap an’ doesn’t like him an’ gets shut on him an’ marries another, an’ then runs off wi’ first again—now that
is
potty, if you like.”

Tom Sawdon jerked the tin cap deftly off another bottle of ale. He refilled his own glass.

“How’s Castle?” he asked Hicks.

“Bad. Can’t speak now. Beats me why they let him go on living. If he was a horse, they’d have put him down long ago.”

“Or a dog,” sighed Sawdon reminiscently.

The door opened and Lily poked her head in.

She had changed. Had these men not watched her daily transformation, they would have found it hard to believe that this bowed fleshless figure, hung about with ill-fitting, tumbled clothes, was the body of pretty Lily Sawdon. Her grey watchful face retained only the ghost of that delicate mobility which had charmed them. Her voice had declined into the whining monotony of complaint.

“There’s a car in the yard, Tom,” she said. “They’ll want petrol.”

“All right. I’ll go.”

Lily withdrew. Tom swung up the flap of the bar counter, and swaggered, none too steadily, from the room.

“Hasn’t our friend,” asked Topper, with a backward jerk of his head, “had a drop too much?”

“They all go same way at Nag’s Head.” Grandpa Sellers pushed back a lump of coal with his heavy boot.

“Nag’s Head’s all right,” said Hicks. “You’d take a drop if you had to live with Mrs. S. Women are all alike. I thought she was quite a niceish bit when we first came down here; but now there’s no pleasing her. Fret, fret, fret. It’s enough to drive any chap to drink.”

“She’s nobbot poorly,” Grandpa suggested charitably. “She’s the living spit of our poor Anne Eliza that died forty years ago of tumour—nicest little woman in South Riding— then went queer as Dick’s hat band. Tumour. All tumour. She sickened fourteen year before God took her, and sent her husband and two children into their graves first—trying to drown their sorrows. Aye. It’s a bad business. They all go same way at Nag’s Head.”

Beyond the door, Lily Sawdon crawled back to her place by the fire.

So this is what it all had come to—Tom drinking himself to death, she a scold, the customers aware of her real trouble. This was the end of all her striving, her self-sacrifice, her martyred silence.

The winter was approaching, yet she seemed little nearer death than when she visited Dr. Stretton. And if she did not die soon, it would be too late for Tom.

The odd thing was that since she had been taking those tablets, life had not actually seemed so wretched. Possibly she had let herself go a bit. Expecting death, she had ventured to relax her life-long discipline of daintiness and good humour. She had retired into a secret world that was not all torment.

Often, for days together, she was hardly conscious of the life of the village or her neighbours. She had withdrawn into the flat-faced stucco-covered inn as into a nunnery. The hundred yards up and down the road outside the door measured her universe. Their shallow borders of turf and thorns and nettles, their rusting hedges, their lightly frosted cobwebs, represented all that she hoped to see again of natural beauty. They were enough.

The days were long, heavy with pain and weariness, but she could live drowsed from acute awareness. People passed her like shadows in a fog. She had no contact with them. If she spoke, she could not remember what she said to them. Nothing, not even pain, was very near her. But towards the evening her senses quickened. Slowly the power of the strong drug waned. She came alive then. These were the dangerous hours, lonely and vulnerable. She was exposed again to pain or ecstasy. These were times when she felt brilliantly receptive; lights grew brighter then, colours more vivid, the gay trivial music danced in her mind.

Then she would sit in her wide western window, watching the sun set over the flat broad fields. It laid bright patterns of gold on her floor and table, it caressed in final salute her chair by the fire. The long procession of the hours culminated in this ceremony. If it failed her, she grew childishly angry. She snapped at her husband, she whined, she even wept.

But after sunset came the long quiet evenings. On her good days she would sit and read or listen to the wireless. It was dangerous to sew or move about much; she might startle to life the sleeping pain. But voices came to her out of the silence, singers and jesters and actors from Broadcasting House. She acquired favourites and enemies. She loved the songs she had known as a girl—“If I built a world for you, dear,” “Melisande in the Wood,” “The Indian Love Lyrics.” She delighted in “Soft Lights and Sweet Music.” She found certain comics funny. Mrs. Waters’ daughters made her laugh, and Lily Morris she found vulgar but a real scream.

At ten o’clock Tom closed the bar and joined her. When she heard the thump of the hobnailed boots on the brick tiled passage she would set the kettle closer upon the glowing coals and put out the pot for their final cup of tea. And with the tea she took three of her tablets, not caring if Tom caught her at it, surrendering to the heavenly comfort of the drug, enjoying even the strong bitter taste of the rough round disk laid upon her tongue before she swallowed.

Then she would let go of her short-lived sensibility and float away again into unawareness, hardly knowing how she crawled up the stairs to bed, glorying in the luxury of oblivion.

But there were still times when she woke before the dawn, clutching herself, gasping with agony. Then she could lie and hear Tom’s heavy breathing and know that the men were right; he was drinking too much now. And sometimes she could hardly resist the temptation to scream out to him, to implore him to help her, to make for her the impossible, the monstrous journey to the washstand, where in a drawer lay those round white tablets, those merciful, beautiful incomparable gifts of Dr. Stretton.

She had not yielded yet. Morning after morning she had crept, livid with pain, to her secret store, her most intolerable nightmare that she should one day find it bare. That fear pursued her far into her dreams. It hunted her down long corridors of sleep. It aroused her early in the mornings, haunted by a panic that was of the body rather than the mind—the panic that even this remedy should fail her, that she would be left at the mercy of her pain, disarmed, defenceless. And that could not be thought of save with horror.

But now she had been made aware of a new, immediate disaster. She had managed her own pain; she had found consolation, but Tom was drinking and it was she who was driving him to ruin.

She had not meant to do it; she had been so proud of herself, so proud because she had never told him. And all the time he had been bearing with her, cheerfully shouldering the whole work of the inn, building up the business, never complaining. He had even done her the supreme service of appearing to enjoy himself. He had polished brasses, tinkered with cars, served drinks, cut bread and butter, done his work and hers as well with generous gusto. And only when her lassitude, her irritability, and her dazed and drugged remoteness had bewildered him, did he seek peace in his own stores of beer and whisky.

Oh, Tom, Tom, Tom.

She had preened herself with secret vanity, as a martyr, a sacrificial priestess of wifely love. Now she was broken by humility.

Oh, my darling, my darling, what have I done to you?

The kitchen was very quiet. From the bar came occasional stampings and shoutings and muffled bursts of laughter. Two farm lads were throwing darts for a bottle of Guinness.

Temporary insanity. She had been insane to think that she could deceive him without loss. I’ve got to tell him. Maybe it’s too late, but I’ve got to tell him. Tell all. Confession.

Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep. Almighty and most merciful love. . . .

The latch clicked. Its metallic sound had often infuriated Lily. She started at it, bracing herself for her ordeal of confession.

She set the kettle carefully; she pulled herself carefully from her chair and started to lay out cups, pot, butter, bread.

I’ll make a bit of toast for him, she thought.

The men were going now. She heard the good-nights; she heard the laughter; she heard, “Now, Topper, behave thysen, lad,” she heard, “Good-night, Grandpa.”

She crouched before the stove, her toast on a fork, her kettle humming in the fire, her table spread. And thus Tom found her.

“Hallo? Toast, eh? Getting hungry, were you?”

He did not reproach her. He did not remind her of the many nights when not even the kettle was boiling ready for him. He sat down opposite to her in his shirt sleeves—for he had been washing up the glasses—and took the cup from her with hands that were almost steady. Seeing his cheerful pleasant face, a little puzzled, she realised more acutely than ever how she had failed him. The half-dozen sentences that she had framed deserted her. She dropped her face into her hands and began to cry.

“Why, Lily! Come, old lady. What is it, eh?”

“Oh, Tom. I’ve done all wrong. I’ve been so foolish.”

“Well, we all have our bad turns. What can’t be cured must be endured, you know.”

But though his words were light and there was raillery in his voice, his eyes were serious. He knew that whatever this was, it was no laughing matter.

“Tom—tell me. Honest—Have I been awful lately?”

He twisted a bit.

“Well—mebbe not quite yourself.”

She nodded.

“I know. I hadn’t realised—I—it sounds silly, but please believe me, I didn’t
know
how awful it must have been for you.”

“That’s all-right.”

“Tom—please—promise you’ll answer truly.”

“Now don’t you go fretting yourself.”

“No. Tom. I mean this. This is important. Please, dear.”

“All right. Go ahead, Lil.”

“Tom, have you guessed what’s wrong with me?”

She was shivering now, and he sat up, aroused to alert attention.

“You really want me to say?”

“Yes.”

“Then—I’m not sure. But I’ve guessed—Oh, Lil, don’t think I’ve blamed you. I made a mistake too. I should never have bought this place. It’s been lonely for you. And you not strong. At your time of life—It’s been my fault from the beginning. That’s why I didn’t say anything. I thought, ‘She’ll get over it . . .’” Then he stopped. On her face was not contrition nor shame, but bewilderment. It was her turn to stare at him.

“Why—I—Tom. I don’t understand. What do you
think
it is?”

“Here, Lil. I told you not to fret whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. Those white tablets—you—feel to need them, don’t you?”

“Yes—but.”

Then suddenly she saw.

At Leeds a Mrs. Pollin, two houses down the road, had taken drugs. Her conduct, her husband’s tragedy, their broken home, had been the byword of the neighbourhood.

“Tom—you didn’t think I was like Mrs. Pollin, did you?”

He did not speak, only put out his hand, and that dumb gesture moved her out of all self-consciousness or reticence, so that she slid out of her seat and knelt there on the hearthrug, her hand in his.

“No. It’s not that, Tom. Darling Tom. It’s not as bad as that.”

With joy she saw that she had for him now not bad but good news.

“You know that day when poor old Rex was put down?”

He nodded.