The Pandervils (17 page)

There was something so wintry and desolate about Mr Noom's attempt at mirth that Egg could not forbear asking: ‘Is it a special pain you're talking of, Mr Noom?'

‘No, no, no, no, no!' murmured Mr Noom, the five words coming so quickly as to give almost the effect of stammering. ‘Nothing special. Leastways nothing of much account. And yet … well yes, my boy, I'll say
rather
special. Not
special, but
rather
special.' His manner became richly mysterious. ‘I'll shew you where it is.' He looked this way and that. The shop was empty but for themselves. The door into the street and the door into the private part of the house, both were shut. ‘I'll shew you,' repeated Mr Noom. He laid a hand on the young man's arm. ‘Step out here.' And when they stood facing each other in the middle of the shop, Mr Noom, with one last frightened look round, pointed furtively at his stomach. ‘It's there,' said Mr Noom. ‘No. I'm telling you a lie.' He moved his finger an inch to the left. ‘It's
there?

‘Just a pain?' said Egg, not knowing how to be sympathetic.

‘Just a pain,' agreed Mr Noom, brightening a little. ‘You might almost say an aching pain.'

‘Is it very bad?'

‘Sometimes,' said Mr Noom, ‘it's worse than other times. Sharpish. Rather nasty. Other times it's dullish and nagging.' Mr Noom smiled. ‘Oh, I mustn't complain. It might be a tidy bit worse, there's no doubt.'

‘Does it go on always?'

Mr Noom cocked his head on one side and contemplated this question with a judicial air. ‘I wouldn't say
always,'
he pronounced cautiously.

‘Don't you think,' ventured Egg, ‘ that you ought to have a doctor?' He was conscious that the proposal was an eccentric one, for in his world, and in the Noom's, no one thought of calling in a doctor while the patient could still walk about and
pursue his calling. ‘Couldn't you,' he added, anticipating a particular objection, ‘couldn't you slip round and see Doctor Renwick?'

‘Yes,' admitted Mr Noom. ‘That might be managed. But it'd have to be mighty quick work,' he added, with something like a wink, ‘for it would never do to let——'

‘Of course not,' agreed Egg.

Mr Noom nodded appreciatively. ‘Quite so. You're an understanding lad, young Pandervil! … Ah, good evening, Mrs Curtis! And what may I have the pleasure …?'

The pleasure was a protracted one. When it was over, and the gratified customer gone, Mr Noom glanced intimately at Egg and asked: ‘Now tell me this, my boy. You're one as keeps his eyes open. Did you ever know of a case like this before? It's just here the pain is.' He patted his stomach. ‘Just here. A kind of aching pain that comes and goes. But mostly comes,' he added, with a smile. ‘Did you ever meet a case like that before?' Egg shook his head sadly. ‘Ah, you haven't!' Mr Noom's face fell. His rosy polished cheeks, his magnified blue eyes, were those of a crestfallen and rather frightened child. ‘I thought perhaps you might have,' he said limply. The forced gaiety had vanished from his voice. He looked weary and fragile. But he rallied the next moment. ‘Because if you had,' he said, eagerly explanatory, ‘if you'd met a case of that kind and they'd got better, indigestion or something, well then, you see … ' He paused, glancing self-consciously
at the ground. Then meeting Egg's eyes again, he nodded. ‘Well, well, well, well, well!' he volleyed, with brisk cheerfulness.

In the interval Egg had been turning over in his mind a plan. ‘Don't you think, Mr Noom, p'raps a bit of a change ud do you good?'

‘A change?'

‘What I mean to say is,' said Egg, ‘a holiday. Go away somewhere.'

‘Leave the shop?' Mr Noom was amused and incredulous. ‘What's to become of us then? Can't leave me bread and butter, can I now? And Mrs Noom don't like trains, what's more.'

‘Oh, I meant alone,' explained Egg. ‘I'm sure we could manage the shop, sir, between us. Just for a week or two. Do you good, it would.'

Mr Noom tried to keep calm in face of this astonishing proposal. ‘Me go away for a holiday without Mrs Noom. Is that what you're saying?'

Egg admitted that it was. ‘Only a few days,' he said. ‘Do you good.'

‘Well,' replied the old man, ‘it's an idea.' His smile radiated benevolent irony. ‘Takes a young man to have an idea like that. And there's only one thing against it.'

‘What's that?'

‘Mrs Noom'd never hear of it. You don't realize, young man, what a bond marriage is. And very right it should be. Do you know I haven't slept a night away from my wife since the day of our nuptials, as you might say, thirty years ago? And a fine thing it would be at my time of life to
go off on a holiday away from that good woman!'

But for all his protestations he was not, it seemed, inflexibly opposed to the plan. He referred to it next day in a style that was only half jocular. And Egg set his wits working to discover how the great release might be contrived. He would enlist Carrie's help. He would even, if need arose, creep into Mrs Noom's good graces again in order to prepare her for persuasion. For Egg, turning gladly away from his sick dreams, found within himself a wellspring of unsuspected energy and mother-wit. He had decided to give his brother-in-law, the Reverend Ernest Twigg, an opportunity for Good Works. Sarah—no great distance away, for had she not once visited him?— must invite Mr Noom to stay at their pleasant little vicarage at West Barnet (‘And they all adore Ernest, you know!'). Mrs Noom must be tricked into giving her consent. And at West Barnet Mr Noom must consult a doctor about that little pain of his, that kind of aching pain that came and went and sometimes was worse than other times. So Egg and Carrie hatched the conspiracy, with Mr Noom, knowing something but not everything of what was afoot, growing daily more boyishly excited, more hopeful, more afraid of success.

When Ernest and Sarah, with Mr Noom between them, had gone off in a cabriolet—for such was their zeal that they came in person to fetch their
guest, and such their magnificence that they rode from and to the station in a cabriolet—Egg and Carrie exchanged a secret glance of jubilation. Their work of many weeks was at last crowned. What a work it had been! And how nerve-racking the fear that at the last minute Mrs Noom might change her mind and declare that she would not be left! Already there had been scenes of the bitterest recrimination. They began with her dramatic accusation, apropos of nothing and in the middle of supper:

‘And so you want to leave me, Richard Noom!'

‘My dear! How can you say such a thing?'

Mrs Noom uttered a scornful laugh. ‘Huh! It's only what I expected. After thirty years of toil and moil I'm not as young as I was, and you want to be off. I s'pose that girl's behind it, isn't she? … Oh, you may shake your head, but I'm not the born fool you think me. When do you want to go, Daddy dear?'

Mr Noom, muttering into his plate, was understood to say that he had no intention of going, that nothing would persuade him to go. He was perhaps, he admitted, a bit run down, and there had been talk of a little change. ‘But if you'd rather I stayed at home, my dear … '

‘I leave it to your conscience,' said Mrs Noom.

But in the end it was she who had insisted on the visit to West Barnet, and he, with an almost bitter passion, had opposed it. Perhaps this very opposition had decided her in favour of the scheme; or perhaps it was with the intention of providing herself
with a new grievance that she had finally forced him to accept the invitation. ‘So thoughtful of Mrs Reverend Twigg, Richard. And I'm sure it'll put you to rights, seeing as you're so sadly. Plump as butter, to my way of thinking, but that doesn't always signify, does it, Daddy dear!' And now, despite all his protests, Mr Noom had been packed off; and his wife, with wan smiles and an occasional long quivering sigh, from time to time came into the shop, where Egg and Carrie were both serving, and swept the scene with a mournful glance.

Supper that evening was a silent meal. The two juniors exchanged a chaffing word or two, but were careful to conceal the gaiety that bubbled within them. Mrs Noom resisted all their attempts to draw her into the conversation. But when supper was over she spoke:

‘A nice pair you are to be sure! Leaving me alone on a night like this!'

‘Alone? What d'you mean, Ma?' Carrie was by many degrees less deferential than her father.

‘Ask yourself what I mean, miss. Thirty years of happy married life and never a parting before. And do you and the young smarty here try to make it up to me with a little bit of kindness? Not you. Sit and snigger among yourselves, that's more your style.'

‘Well I never
did!'
cried Carrie, grimacing her indignant astonishment. ‘Haven't we bin talking to you all supper-time! And could we get a word out of you?
That
we couldn't.'

There followed another silence, a silence more profound than that which had preceded the storm. Presently Egg, thinking to ease the situation, began whistling
The Bells of Kilgenny;
whereupon Mrs Noom, sighing deeply, rose and left the room. Half an hour later she returned, thrust her head accusingly round the edge of the door, and said sharply: ‘Carrie, I can't bear it any longer. Alone in the house with that young hooligan! You must write and tell your poor father to come home at once.'

So for a while Egg was ‘that young hooligan', looked at askance, if looked at at all, and never addressed directly except to be commanded. Even Carrie was intimidated into pretending disapproval of him in her mother's presence, though in private she was at pains to shew him, by numerous little impulsive attentions, that her friendliness was in no danger of abating. And this contrast between her public and her private manner was another little secret between them; so that on the whole Egg enjoyed being ‘that young hooligan' more than he enjoyed his subsequent reinstatement in Mrs Noom's favour. Several days must elapse before Mr Noom could return. Carrie delayed writing the letter of recall as long as she dared; and the post office could be relied upon not to despatch and deliver it in indecent haste. And there was time enough, in the interval, for Mrs Noom to forgive the young man for an offence he had never committed, an offence which indeed had never been defined by the accuser. After the
first twenty-four hours of hostility the burden of her complaint mysteriously changed. Hooligan he might be and doubtless was; but the real ugly truth about him now appeared to be that he was a nasty young snob who thought himself too good to be serving in a grocer's shop, and not to be wondered at neither with his sister a parson's wife and I don't know what all. Not to be wondered at, as Mrs Noom freely admitted, but a person had her rights to common civility;
and
respect, what was more, being old enough to be his mother; and though she named no names, nothing being further from her thoughts, she had heard of folks, and perhaps a person might be allowed to say it in their own house, she
had
heard of folks which their heads were swollen too big for their boots. Moreover, the argument triumphantly concluded, if some folks wasn't grocers some other folks might find themselves in difficulties. ‘Don't sneer and snigger at me, young man!' cried Mrs Noom to her embarrassed victim. ‘Carrie, perhaps you'd have the kindness to ask your high-class friend, Mr Pandervil, not to make game of your mother at the supper-table.' Suppertime, the only meal at which all the members of the household met without fear of interruption by the shop-bell, was the hour dedicated to Mrs Noom's exhibitions.

But on the morning of the day when Mr Noom's premature return from West Barnet was expected, Egg suddenly found himself restored in Mrs Noom's affections. Without warning and without cause she became her old gracious self to him. The
change began at breakfast and became more and more marked as the day wore on, until, by the time (late in the afternoon) when Mr Noom appeared, honey itself was not so sweet as Mrs Noom. But her sweetness was not for her husband. Mr Noom, passing through the shop with a hurried greeting to Egg, approached with every sign of eagerness the glass-panelled door leading from shop to parlour. But when he stretched out his hand towards the door-knob, the door was flung suddenly open and Mrs Noom stood there within two feet of him. Her eyes were wide and shining, shining with appreciation, perhaps, of the scene she had planned. ‘Welcome home, Richard!' she cried. ‘I ask no questions, mind you, where you've bin and who you've bin with. I've learnt my lesson and I ask no questions. Welcome home!' She seized him by the arms and drew him into the inner room. The door was then closed, and Egg heard no more.

He heard no more to the purpose until late that same night when the voice of Carrie, urgent and frightened at the keyhole, dragged him out of bed. ‘Egg! Please get up at once!'

‘What's the matter?'

‘It's Ma. She's in a terrible taking.'

Egg opened the door and peered round it into Carrie's small excited face. ‘Ill, is she?' Carrie gasped out a ‘Yes.' ‘Right-O!' he said. ‘Won't be a jiffy.'

She waited outside the half-open door while he scrambled into some clothes. He could feel her waiting. And when he came out of the room she
greeted him with moist clutching hands. ‘She's dying, Egg. Isn't it
awful!'
Her young body shuddered, and tears were in her voice. ‘She's dying, and she wants you to read the Bible to her.' She pattered down the passage.

‘Dying? How d'you know?' he whispered, following her.

And why
me
to read the Bible to her? he asked himself, pausing outside the conjugal bedroom. Neither question received an answer. ‘Have you been for the doctor?' asked Egg.

Carrie was so close to him in the darkness that he could feel her warm breath on his bare throat. ‘I'm going at once,' she said, ‘though Ma said not to. Here, take this and go in, do!”