The Elderbrook Brothers (23 page)

Matthew, asking no questions, eased his father on to the ground.

‘Better get you to bed, Dad, eh?'

‘Time enough for that. Do as you're told, boy. I'll be right enough here for a spell.'

Waste of time arguing. Matthew knew better than to do that. Leaving Joe where he lay, he approached the bull and led him back to his prison. Surprised though he may have been by this change of escort, the bull raised no objection, gave no further trouble.

In a few minutes Matthew was back with Joe, who still lay on his back in the grass, unmoving.

‘What happened, Dad? Where does it hurt?'

‘He's a good beast, look. Starcross'll have a good calf, mark my words.'

‘Did he set about you?'

‘Bit too friendly, that's his only fault.' The ghost of a grin flitted over the leathery face. ‘Squeezed me up against the wall, the rascal!'

‘Better not talk,' Matthew advised. ‘We'll get you into the house.'

‘Not a puff left in me, look,' Joe remarked. ‘Broken my bellows or I'm a Dutchman.'

JOK lay on his back for six weeks, and for the greater part of that time he was trussed up like a turkey, as he grumblingly said. He was not a good patient: nobody had supposed he would be. For a while he was too weak and dim to take much interest in what was going on. His life at a low ebb, he wanted, at first, nothing but rest, nothing but to be left alone; and even his mental grip became feeble, so that he began mixing up past and present, dream and reality, in a way that made his visitors purse up their lips, or shake their heads, or, as Matthew did, grin unhappily and go out of the room. At his first waking, after being got to bed, he seemed irritated to find only Nancy at his bedside. ‘Where's your mother?' he said. Nancy could only stare and stammer and look away. But she saw his expression change, its question clouded over with recovered knowledge. ‘Don't you remember, Dad? …' Nancy began. ‘All right, girl. Don't tell me,' said Joe, in a sharp whisper; and lapsed into a silence she did not dare to break.

In command of the situation, except during the doctor's visits, was Nurse Nunn, whose chief virtue in Nancy's eyes was that she was not the one who had looked after Mother three years ago. Or was it four? Time slipped by so quickly, and life was so aimless, that Nancy, still loverless, could seldom look further back than yesterday or further ahead than tomorrow. Nurse Nunn was a skinny young woman: which was a pity, for Joe had always preferred 'em plump. For the first day of her regime it was an open question whether he would not leap from his bed and throw her out of the window, destroying himself in the process. But he was no longer his
own master: pain was his master. Patience was a lesson he had never learnt, except the professional patience of the farmer; but weakness such as he suffered now was something that couldn't be argued with or browbeaten, and gradually his anger at finding himself helpless gave place to a puzzled surprise that was already a half-acquiescence. He quarrelled, all that evening, in hoarse whispers, with anyone who came near him.

‘Who's that dolled-up biddy, pray?'

‘Hush, Dad. Nurse is going to look after you and make you well,' said Nancy pleadingly.

‘Make me fiddlesticks. Tell her to be off.'

‘Lie quiet now. You know what doctor said.'

‘Never thought much of doctors. Paid by the undertakers, doctors are. As for
her
…!' He gave an ill-advised jerk of the head. ‘Nothing but skin on her bones, poor thing.'

Nancy, in burning embarrassment, glanced from one to the other: from her father sullenly meditating insults, to the prim, impassive nurse who, unless she was deaf, must be hearing every word that passed, and was making matters worse by pretending she couldn't. A very correct and severely professional personage she seemed: Nancy despaired of her.

Joe was speaking again, and his voice gathered volume.

‘What can
she
do for me that my own flesh and blood can't? Tell me that, girl.'

Nancy said, bridling: ‘I can't be everywhere at once, Father. With the house and the dairy, and only a girl to help me …'

‘Ha, so I play second fiddle to the cattle, do I? There's a pretty state of things.'

Catching the nurse's eye, Nancy thought it best to make no answer. She could see that Joe had grumbled himself into a better humour, and she would not risk the indignity of being asked by Madam Smartypants, with her white starched cap and intimidating cuffs, to bring the conversation to an end.

‘Good night then, Father. Have a nice sleep.'

The door closed on Nancy. The nurse rose from her chair, measured out a potion, and came, glass in hand, to the bedside.

‘Now, Mr Elderbrook, I want you to drink this.' She leaned over him and put a hand under his shoulders to prop his head up. ‘Come along.'

He opened his eyes and glared. ‘Didn't I tell you to pack?'

‘It'll help you to sleep,' she said.

She was serious and unperturbed. If she had smiled he would have called her a grinning gaby. But she did not smile; she did not frown; she was disconcertingly neutral.

She put the glass to his lips. He held them tight shut.

He expected a battle now. Tired though he was, he looked forward to it. But after a pause the hand was withdrawn from his head, he was laid neatly back on the pillow, and a long silence began. This silence, since he could not sleep, left him with nothing to distract him from his body, and from his drifting, dreaming, vaguely discomfortable thoughts. These half-sleeps, ending with a painful jerk into consciousness, were much worse than no sleep at all. When next he opened his eyes he found himself lying in darkness, except for the wavering, wandering, feeble glow of a shaded candle, where the nurse sat. So you're still there, are you? No sound came from his moving lips. It was in his mind to ask her what the devil she was doing in his bedroom, and tell her, once again, to clear out; but only because that was the line of talk he had started on, for his heart was no longer in it. At a distance he could endow the stranger with the kind of qualities he looked for in a woman, with something you could get hold of, with fire and gaiety: for an instant, from mere habit, he pursued a curvilinear fantasy. But there was no profit in that: the sap had gone out of him. And the words that at last came out of his mouth were not at all what he had planned.

‘Where's my medicine?' In a moment she was standing at the bedside. ‘Suppose I can die for all you care, Mrs Frosty-face?'

‘No, you mustn't die,' she said: imperturbably, stating a mere fact. ‘That would be very naughty.'

‘Eh?'

Was the wench laughing at him? He could not discern her expression, and the cool voice told him nothing. She gave him the medicine, which he swallowed without resistance.

‘Good night, Mr Elderbrook. And never mind about my face,' she said blandly. ‘Maybe you'll like it better after a good sleep.'

‘And maybe I won't.' He was appeased now, and relaxed, happy to have had the last word.

Between the nurse and Nancy there was never much more than politeness: a mutual suspicion kept them at arm's length. But Joe, as the days went by, learned to value her, especially as a butt for his rudeness. She took it very well, but in a way that could hardly have been foreseen. She did not indulgently smile at it; she did not rebuke it; she did not pointedly ignore it. She listened as if to the rain falling, or the wind whining, or a dog barking in the distance. Sometimes she offered a small factual comment, but always without rancour, without humour (so it seemed to him), and almost without interest. In her imperturbability she seemed to him inhuman; yet that she could hardly be, since he found her, in her odd way, likable. She uttered no ironies, and the irony implicit in her precise and beautifully impersonal demeanour was too subtle for Joe's perception, though he enjoyed, with a kind of exasperation, some of its effects. It was her unvarying seriousness that puzzled him most: she was like a well-mannered child endowed with unnatural wisdom, one to whom coarseness of speech was so foreign that it could never affect her. This imperviousness, till in time he tired of the game, provoked him to do his worst. He harped, with tedious iteration, on the theme of her thinness.

‘Strip you, and there'd be nothing left. Lean as a lath, hey?'

‘I'm glad you're feeling so much better, Mr Elderbrook.' ‘Who said I was, miss?'

‘I think perhaps doctor will let you be out of bed for half an hour tomorrow. That will be nice, won't it?'

‘What's it they call you? Nunn, is it?'

‘Yes, Mr Elderbrook. Nurse Nunn.'

‘Huh! If you're a nun you ought to make a match with my son Felix. He's a monk, if you please.'

‘Is he? How interesting!'

‘He's a skinny ‘un too. You'd be like a pair of bean-sticks in bed together.'

She did not rise to that bait. She never did rise, drat her. And Joe, as so often nowadays, suddenly felt tired and sick, all the stuffing knocked out of him. He was tired of his nurse and tired of himself, of his aching body and his empty miserable mind. And when he thought of that young fool Felix, kneeling in a cold cloister when he might have been an ordained clergyman with a snug parish church of his own, and tilling another man's land instead of helping his old father (if that was the work he fancied), to weariness was added a burning, impotent, astonished and heart-breaking fury. How in thunder, Joe asked himself, did I come to get me a boy like that?

FELIX was not in fact a monk; but he wore a monkish habit, and for some while now he had been living as a lay brother in the Minsterbourne community, earning his bread by labour in the Priory fields, receiving instruction in theological mysteries, and seeking by bodily austerities and religious exercises to make of his young, unruly spirit a good pedestrian pack-horse. From an outside point of view it was a moot question whether he was a theological student being trained for ordination or a farm-labourer working for his bare keep; and the doubt was sharpened by his own resolute unwillingness to make long-term plans or promises. No pressure towards decision was brought to bear on him by his religious superiors: zeal in a probationer was rather taken for granted than commended, and the general atmosphere of the place discouraged a too facile enthusiasm; but in the world at large, and especially in the family circle, sensible
practical people wanted to know where it was all leading to, and whether or not there was a career in it. If there was, well and good, if these cloistered years were to be crowned by ordination and the gift of a good country living, nothing in its way could be nicer; but it was precisely on this point that Felix maintained a stubborn, evasive silence, being too shy to quote Father Hemner's assurance, that God in his own time would reveal his will in that matter. Joe was incensed; Nancy, shaken out of self-absorption, was inclined to be tearful, sharing Guy's view that their poor brother was going queer; and even Matthew, who seldom expressed an opinion on any affairs not his own, pulled a long face and agreed that it was all a great pity.

Dan Williams, being himself a clergyman, took the more practical course of going to see Hemner. He disapproved of anything that looked like interference, but he was fond of Felix and found, to his own surprise, that he could not rest till he had satisfied himself that the boy was not making an irreparable mistake. The two men had a long, friendly, unrevealing talk. Brother clergymen though they were, they were living in different worlds. Hemner at once perceived this, but Dan did not. Assured at least of Hemner's honesty and good faith, Dan did not realize that his courteous entertainer, whether saint or no saint, was a born diplomat, an artist in the handling of men. When Dan remarked that an impressionable young man, suffering perhaps from some emotional shock, was not always the best judge of his impulses, Hemner cordially agreed, saying that religious vocation in particular was a matter for long and careful testing, testing and training, like that of any athlete. He smoothly added, however, that personal troubles, griefs, disillusionment, were often, were they not, instruments of the divine purpose in deflecting a man astray into his appointed course. ‘If goodness lead him not—you remember?—

‘If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to My breast'

said Father Hemner. But he did not pursue that theme, and
the rest of their talk was of a genially academic kind, such as they might have enjoyed together any time during these last twenty years, had they happened to sit next each other at a college Feast. In the relief of finding that the queer fellow was a gentleman, his conversation agreeably free from the small change of religious piety, Dan Williams quite forgot his misgivings on Felix's behalf. Indeed he very nearly forgot Felix altogether, until, on the journey home, he began wondering what account of the interview he should give to his wife.

Hemner, though far from being a typical Anglican priest, was true to the older tradition of that communion in deprecating lushness. The austerity he preached and practised was verbal as well as physical. His ardent spirit was yoked with a mind finely tempered for the peculiar work he demanded of it: the exposition, without emotional excess, of a faith centring in an intense devotion to something he called the Person of Christ. This sense of a living relationship with an unseen Person was a novelty to Felix only in part: it was his lifelong habit of occasional self-communing raised to a higher power. Ever since his first solitariness, in the dormitory bed at St Swithins, a child forlorn among strangers, he had had the habit of confiding his secret troubles and preoccupations to someone, to no one in particular, to a projection of his fancy which from being a mere substitute for the lost Guy became in time a sympathetic invisible companion, an idealized second self. To adapt that practice to the exigencies of a faith which interpreted all things in terms of Jesus Christ demanded no conscious ingenuity and brought rewards of its own. Felix was frequently surprised by what he was told, and sometimes startled by the thoughts that arose in himself; but being so deeply under the spell of Hemner's personal impersonal quality, an irradiation as from a light beyond the world, he was attracted rather than dismayed by his hero's blend of what seemed like simplemindedness with extreme dialectical subtlety. Certain specific doctrines, treated as simple matters of fact, seemed out of scale with the philosophical background to which Hemner somehow contrived to
relate them; but Felix, having accepted the main assumptions upon which the dazzling superstructure was based, and without asking himself whether and in what sense he ‘believed' them, found for a while endless fascination in mastering the details.