The Quick and the Dead (12 page)

She does not wake, and though I am tired of my fantasy, and tired beyond words of lying still, I do not wake her; for it is a point of honour with me, self-imposed, to endure this loneliness until something not of my own contriving shall make an end of it. And now her sleeping, her unawareness of me, is a desolation. I roll gently over, so that I may see her; I raise myself gingerly on my elbow that I may peer down at her face; but the sight of her asleep, so far from comforting my solitude, makes me more sad, engulfs me in melancholy, a melancholy tinged with a mysterious terror. Half-formed in my mind, vaguely sinister, is a thought I dare not so
much as glance at. But my lip quivers, and I crumple my face angrily to prevent the tears forming and falling. I am alone, alone; and the farmyard noises, whether heard or fancied, and the pictures of the bright world that flit through an idle brain, these can distract me no longer from the alarm lurking for me in the fact of my mother's sleeping. She lies inert; her bosom gently rises and falls; she is lovely; she is my mother. But she is absent and secret from me. She is withdrawn to a distant country in which I have no part. The windows are shuttered against me: I cannot look in at them and see her love looking out. I am alone in a bright bare world, with only the crowing cock for companion. But now even the jagged splendour of his
cock-a-doodle-doo
seems alien and menacing. In my fancy he is neither bird nor beast: not a brother, sharing my humanity, as the wren and the mouse do, and the golden chicks that he sires, but a fairy monster, a smart strutting demon. There is no comfort or courage to be had of him: his voice has become subtly derisive.

I recover from the past this sharp moment of solitude. I cannot place it to a year or a day; I cannot remember so much as the season. Yet I fancy that it was on the same day—so
evanescent are the moods of a child—that I willingly, and even wilfully, parted from my mother for a period of perhaps forty-eight hours. The Caundles, Uncle Percy and Aunt Hilda, who lived at Steddiam, a matter of ten or twelve miles from my Uncle Claybrook's farm, insisted that we should pay them a visit and stay a night or two. To drive over for luncheon was not enough: Aunt Hilda's conscience, her itch to do the proper thing in the way of hospitality, could not be placated so easily; and she was prepared, I surmise, to be greatly offended if my mother refused to give her the trouble of looking out clean sheets for the bed and getting to work with the warming pan. So, soon after breakfast, we set out in the trap for Lutterthorpe Station, whence, by an indirect route that involved a change at Seventrees Junction, we could reach Aunt Hilda's house in something less than an hour. My Uncle Claybrook had driven us in, and as I marched up and down the platform, one hand in his and one in my mother's, I suddenly decided that I did not like Aunt Hilda very much, and that I did not at all wish to exchange Uncle Claybrook and his farm for Uncle Caundle and his school for young gentlemen. The train came in. Shrinking, holding my breath, I managed to conceal my terror
of that monster. But when my mother pulled at my hand, saying ‘Come along, darling,' I drew back, hanging my head.

‘Why, what's the matter, Claud?' She bent down to me quickly with the inevitable whispered question.

I shook my head, and, to prevent myself from crying, stared fixedly at my bare knees, my white socks, my boots.

‘Are you sure?' pleaded my mother earnestly. ‘You won't be able to do it in the train, mind. Do tell me, darling. We shall miss the train if you're not quick.'

My Uncle Claybrook had opened the carriage door for us and now awaited my pleasure.

My mother gave me a little shake. ‘What is it? You stupid child!'

‘I don't want to go,' I said at last.

‘Don't want to go and see Aunt Hilda and Uncle Caundle? Nonsense, darling! Of course you want to go. Come along now.'

But I resisted. ‘I want to stay with Uncle Claybrook.'

My seniors exchanged glances.

‘Well, we can't stop here arguing,' remarked my mother coolly. She released my hand and stepped into the train. ‘Good-bye,
my dear,' she said cheerfully. ‘Be a good boy.'

Even these tactics did not move me, and now my Uncle Claybrook intervened and put an end to the matter. He shut the door on my mother. She let down the window and leaned out to us.

‘That's right,' said he, grinning down at me. ‘You stay with me, my ancient friend, and give Mother a holiday.'

She glanced at me, half amused, half nettled. ‘But, Frank, won't he be a bother?'

‘You're off,' said my uncle. ‘Good-bye, Essie. We'll look after him. Well, Claudie, aren't you going to wave good-bye to your mother?'

Relief and the beginning of misery waged war in me. With a blank face I looked up and waved at the retreating train. But my mother was no longer at the window. I could hardly believe it. I had got my way, and I was going back with Uncle Claybrook to the farm. But as the white roads slipped under the wheels of the trap a sense of disaster began working in me. I was ashamed and afraid. A bond was broken, a gulf fixed. I had let my mother go without me. And now, when I wanted nothing so much as to assure her that I wanted her back, she was beyond reach and call. I sat like
an image beside my uncle in the trap, stared at the broad buttocks and twitching tail of the pony, and struggled to maintain the dignity of a five-year-old. But within me was a frightened child, beating with small fists against the doors of silence.

Not till I had put some distance between myself and that burning house did I remember that my mother lay dangerously ill, and even then, so wild was my excitement, the fact at first meant little to me. Pausing to look back at the light in the sky that was the reflection of Mr Fleer's funeral pyre, I could not repress a thought of exultation. And in that moment the idea burst upon me that perhaps, now that Mr Fleer was dead, my mother would get better. Mrs Pring had scuttled off to the nearest neighbour, to spread the alarm in the village, leaving me to my own devices. And I—I wished to have no further part in the affair. The spectacle of that writhing man was bitten deep into my mind; the nightmare horror was still upon me. Nevertheless I did not pretend to myself to regret his fate. He was consumed in his own flame; he was ended; I could hate him no more. And I was content, more than content, that the house should be burned to the ground, now that it harboured no living soul. But indeed I could think of nothing but my own escape; and, if I sobbed a
little as I ran, it was with a grief of the flesh, a purely physiological operation belying the fierce joy of my spirit. A tremendous thing had happened to me, and I was still alive: that was enough.

As I burst into the house, with my story on my lips, I must have presented a startling spectacle to the eyes of Calamy.

‘Mr Fleer's dead,' I announced importantly. ‘And his house is burnt down.'

‘Eh?' said Calamy, lifting dazed eyes to mine.

‘I was there. I saw everything. You can see the blaze in the sky—come and look, Dad!'

Calamy stared at me without speaking for a moment. Then he asked mildly: ‘Where have you been, my boy? You look like a sweep.' But he did not listen to my answer.

‘Oh!' I exclaimed, in sudden fear. ‘Is Mother … is she worse?'

Calamy bowed his head. ‘There's a nurse looking after her for the night. The doctor's not very pleased with the way things are going. There's poison got into the blood.' He raised his eyes and met mine; and it was as if in that moment he became aware of me, for kindness came into his scrutiny. ‘Ah, Claud, you mustn't mind too much. Your mother's not knowing
us just at the moment. She's delirious, as they say. But not in pain. The nurse assures me she's not in any pain. And maybe she'll be herself again in the morning.' After a moment's silence he' added, with an absent smile: ‘I'm sure I hope so.'

We talked jerkily for a few minutes, and then he sent me to bed. I undressed and lay down, and was asleep at once, but woke in the dead hour of the night, and heard my mother's voice, boyishly clear and penetrating, and all but continuous. At first it was almost with a sense of eavesdropping that I listened; but presently wonder took hold of me, and awe. Forgetting the existence of the nurse, I supposed myself to be the only waking soul in that dark house, the only witness of a majestic and terrible event. My mother's life was summing itself up; in the theatre of her dream (I surmised) scenes from that drama were being lived again; and broken fragments of meaning, phrases from the music that life had made of her, went floating past me on the rippling tide of her talk.

Towards morning, when I fell into an uneasy sleep, that clear articulation invaded my dreams. I was walking with noiseless tread down an endless corridor between two high brick walls. Ahead of me was Mr Fleer carrying
a lamp, and I knew that it was my doom to follow where it led, though I could hear, at intervals, my mother's voice laughing, pleading, calling me back.…

I woke to find Calamy standing at my bedside.

‘She's gone, Claud. No pain now.'

The words meant nothing to me. I considered them, and found them stupid. But Calamy spoke again, and my resistance broke. Yet before the grief could gather in my throat, before my eyes went blind, I had time to travel ten years away, and to recall, by a freak of memory and in an anguish of remorse, that moment on Lutterthorpe Station when I stubbornly parted from my mother: the mother that I should now never see again
.

My Uncle Claybrook and his Bertha came for the funeral, and I met them at the station.

‘And how is your poor father?' asked my aunt, so soon as the first greetings were over. She plucked at my arm to give urgency to the question.

‘We'd better get a cab, hadn't we?' I said quickly. And not until we were all three seated in the cab did I attempt to answer her. I dreaded the thought of an emotional scene on the platform, and it may be that I wanted, too, to make the most of my drama. I had suffered intensely and was still suffering; but in adolescence, if at no other time, to be at the centre of tragic events ministers to one's self-importance. I was still a child, when all is said;
I had been so wrought upon by the terrors of the past few days as to be within an ace of hysteria; and now, with some measure of relief at hand, with friends come who were willing and eager to take something of the monstrous burden from my shoulders, it was only this small flicker of vanity, this consciousness of the spotlight playing on my face, that saved me from wild weeping.

My Claybrooks sat in the cab opposite me, and their eyes never left my face.

‘Well!' said my uncle. ‘How is he?'

‘Be quick, child! You're frightening us,' put in my aunt.

To hesitate, now, was no part of my calculations. Rather was I ashamed of having delayed so long, and embarrassed by the tension that that delay had created. Yet hesitate I did. For a moment something like stage-fright held me tongue-tied, while my mind raced this way and that in its cage, seeking an opening; and it was with a weak smile of apology that I at length blurted out my news.

‘He's not really very well. He's rather funny.'

‘Funny?' asked my uncle. ‘I don't understand.'

‘He'll hardly say a word to anyone. Won't eat. Wouldn't see the people, the—undertakers.
I had to do all that.'

‘You poor child!' cried Aunt Bertha. She clutched my hand, and by so doing filled my eyes with tears. I remembered, with a shudder, the professional politeness of the undertaker's man. ‘It's a shame, Frank!' she cried, turning to her husband. ‘And didn't the neighbours come to your help, dearie?'

I hesitated, and glanced at my uncle sheepishly, trying to ask how much this innocent knew of our situation at Broad Green.

‘Surely,' said my aunt, ‘at such a time … '

‘Oh, the neighbours weren't so bad,' I told her. ‘Mr Wiccombe especially. He was quite decent. But, you see, I didn't tell him anything about Father Calamy, except that he wasn't very well.'

‘Why not?' asked my uncle.

I looked at him in surprise. ‘Well … I didn't like to.'

‘Do you mean to tell us,' said my uncle almost angrily, ‘that poor old Bob's gone out of his mind?'

I stared unhappily out of the window at the flowing landscape. ‘I don't know,' I answered, unwilling to commit myself to anything so definite. Yet it happened that that everyday metaphor expressed my thought more aptly than Uncle Claybrook could know. Calamy, as
I saw the matter, had indeed gone away, gone somewhere into hiding. The world was too much with him: he would have no more of it.

It was a comfort to have these staunch friends with me. More—it was salvation. Yet my first sight of them, as they stepped from the train, had been a disappointment from which I was only just beginning to recover. Their telegram this morning (‘We arrive four thirty to-day fondest love Auntie Claybrook') had been like a trumpet to my fearful heart—or, to speak more precisely to the point, it had been like the voice of Chantecleer in that daydream of mine so many years ago, for it set the whole joyous panorama of Lutterthorpe moving before me again. No words can describe the lyrical quality of that moment, the lifting of the heavy pall, the sudden leap of my darkened spirit as from the dead. Almost it was as if Mother herself were coming back—yes, as if Mother, having died and gone to Lutterthorpe in lieu of Heaven, were about to be restored to me by Uncle Claybrook, my kind and powerful genie. And, though I could not for more than an instant yield to so fond a fancy as that, I felt it to be true, in sober fact, that he would bring me at least something of what I had lost: he would bring me a golden ghost for companion, a glad unsullied
memory of love, and make an end of this mortuary nightmare in which my days and nights were spent. (The days had turned warm and—‘The weather's all against you,' murmured the undertaker, with a deprecating smile.) And, even if all else were lacking, my Uncle Claybrook could not fail to fill the house with his genial animal warmth, nor to evoke, by his presence, pictures of field and barn and procreant earth.