Busman’s Honeymoon (44 page)

  That sentence did not seem to be ending properly. Harriet began again. ‘I shall go upstairs, but I don’t see how one could possibly sleep. I shall sit by the fire in my room.’

  ‘Very good, my lady.’

  Their eyes met with perfect understanding.

  The car was brought round to the door.

  ‘All right, Bunter. That will do.’

  ‘Your lordship does not require my services?’

  ‘Obviously not. You can’t leave her ladyship alone in the house.’

  ‘Her ladyship has been good enough to give me permission to go.’

  ‘Oh!’

  A pause during which Harriet, standing in the porch, had time to think: Suppose he asks me whether I imagine he needs a keeper!

  Then Bunter’s voice, with exactly the right note of dignified injury: ‘I had anticipated that your lordship would wish me to accompany you as usual.’

  ‘I see. Very well. Hop in.’

  The old house was Harriet’s companion in her vigil. It waited with her, its evil spirit cast out, itself swept and garnished, ready for the visit of devil or angel. It was past two o’clock when she heard the car return.

  There were steps on the gravel, the opening and shutting of the door, a brief murmur of voices—then silence. Then, unheralded by so much as a shuffle on the stair, came Bunter’s soft tap at the little door.

  ‘Well, Bunter?’

  ‘Everything has been done that could be done, my lady.’ They spoke in hushed tones, as though the doomed man lay already dead. ‘It was some considerable time before he would consent to see his lordship. At length the governor persuaded him, and his lordship was able to deliver the message and acquaint him with the arrangements made for the young woman’s future. I understand that he seemed to take very little interest in the matter; they told me there that he continued to be a sullen and intractable prisoner. His lordship came away very much distressed. It is his custom under such circumstances to ask the condemned man’s forgiveness. From his demeanour, I do not think he had it.’

  ‘Did you come straight back?’

  ‘No, my lady. On leaving the prison at midnight, his lordship drove away in a westerly direction, very fast, for about fifty miles. That is not unusual; I have frequently known him drive all night. Then he stopped the car suddenly at a cross-roads, waited for a few minutes as though he were endeavouring to make up his mind, turned round and came straight back here, driving even faster. He was shivering very much when we came in, but refused to eat or drink anything. He said he could not sleep, so I made up a good fire in the sitting-room. I left him seated on the settle. I came up by the back way, my lady, because I think he might not wish to feel that you were in any anxiety about him.’

  ‘Quite right, Bunter—I’m glad you did that. Where are you going to be?’

  ‘I shall remain in the kitchen, my lady, within call. His lordship is not likely to require me, but if he should do so, he will find me at hand, making myself a little supper.’

  ‘That’s an excellent plan. I expect his lordship will prefer to be left to himself, but if he should ask for me—not on any account unless or until he does—will you tell him—’

  ‘Yes, my lady?’

  ‘Tell him there is still a light in my room, and that you think I am very much concerned about Crutchley.’

  ‘Very good, my lady. Would your ladyship like me to bring you a cup of tea?’

  ‘Oh. Bunter, thank you. Yes, I should.’

  When the tea came, she drank it thirstily, and then sat listening. Everything was silent, except the church clock chiming out the quarters; but when she went into the next room she could hear faintly the beat of restless feet on the floor below.

  She went back and waited. She could think only one thing, and that over and over again. I must not go to him; he must come to me. If he does not want me, I have failed altogether, and that failure will be with us all our lives. But the decision must be his and not mine. I have got to accept it. I have got to be patient. Whatever happens, I must not go to him.

  It was four by the church clock when she heard the sound she had been waiting for: the door at the bottom of the stair creaked. For a few moments nothing followed, and she thought he had changed his mind. She held her breath till she heard his footsteps mount slowly and reluctantly and enter the next room. She feared they might stop there, but this time he came straight on and pushed open the door which she had left ajar.

  ‘Harriet ...’

  ‘Come in, dear.’

  He came over and stood close beside her, mute and shivering. She put her hand out to him and he took it eagerly, laying his other hand in a fumbling gesture on her shoulder.

  ‘You’re cold, Peter. Come nearer the fire.’

  ‘It’s not cold,’ he said, half-angrily, ‘it’s my rotten nerves. I can’t help it. I suppose I’ve never been really right since the War. I hate-behaving like this, I tried to stick it out by myself.’

  ‘But why should you?’

  ‘It’s this damned waiting about till they’ve finished....’

  ‘I know. I couldn’t sleep either.’

  He stood holding out his hands mechanically to the fire till he could control the chattering of his teeth.

  ‘It’s damnable for you too. I’m sorry. I’d forgotten. That sounds idiotic. But I’ve always been alone.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’m like that, too. I like to crawl away and hide in a corner.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, with a transitory gleam of himself, ‘you’re my corner and I’ve come to hide.’

  ‘Yes, my dearest.’

  (
And the trumpets sounded for her on the other side
.)

  ‘It’s not as bad as it might be. The worst times are when they haven’t admitted it, and one goes over the evidence and wonders if one wasn’t wrong, after all.... And sometimes they’re so damned decent ...’

  ‘What was Crutchley like?’

  ‘He doesn’t seem to care for anybody or regret anything, except that he didn’t pull it off. He hates old Noakes just as much as the day he killed him. He wasn’t interested in Polly—only said she was a fool and a bitch, and I was a bigger fool to waste time and money on her. And Aggie Twitterton could go and rot with the whole pack of us, and the sooner the better.’

  ‘Peter, how horrible!’

  ‘If there
is
a God or a judgement—what next? What have we done?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I don’t suppose anything we could do would prejudice the defence.’

  ‘I suppose not. I wish we knew more about it.’

  Five o’clock. He got up and looked out into the darkness, which as yet showed no sign of day’s coming.

  ‘Three hours more.... They give them something to make them sleep.... It’s a merciful death compared with most natural ones.... It’s only the waiting and knowing beforehand.... And the ugliness.... Old Johnson was right; the procession to Tyburn was kinder.... “The hangman with his gardener’s gloves comes through the padded door.”... I got permission to see a hanging once.... I thought I’d better know ... but it hasn’t cured me of meddling.’

  ‘If you hadn’t meddled, it might have been Joe Sellon or Aggie Twitterton.’

  ‘I know that. I keep telling myself that.’

  ‘If you hadn’t meddled six years ago, it would almost certainly have been me.’

  That stopped him in his caged pacing to and fro.

  ‘If you had had to live through that night, Harriet, knowing what was coming to you, I would have lived it through in the same knowledge. Death would have been nothing, though you were little to me then compared with what you are now.... What the devil am I doing, to remind you of that horror?’

  ‘If it hadn’t been for that, we shouldn’t be here—we should never have seen one another. If Philip hadn’t been murdered, we shouldn’t be here. If I’d never lived with Philip, I shouldn’t be married to you. Everything wrong and wretched—and out of it all I’ve somehow got
you.
What can one make of that?’

  ‘Nothing. There seems to be no sense in it at all.’

  He flung the problem away from him and began his restless walk again.

  Presently he said:

  ‘My gracious silence—who called his wife that?’

  ‘Coriolanus.’

  ‘Another tormented devil.... I’m grateful, Harriet—No, that’s not right; you’re not being kind, you’re being yourself. Aren’t you horribly tired?’

  ‘Not the least bit.’

  She found it difficult to think of Crutchley, baring his teeth at death like a trapped rat. She could see his agony only at second-hand through the mind that it dominated. And through that mind’s distress and her own there broke uncontrollably the assurance that was like the distant note of a trumpet.

  ‘They hate executions, you know. It upsets the other prisoners. They bang on the doors and make nuisances of themselves. Everybody’s nervous.... Caged like beasts, separately.... That’s the hell of it ... we’re all in separate cells.... I can’t get out, said the starling.... If one could only get out for one moment, or go to sleep, or stop thinking.... Oh, damn that cursed clock! ... Harriet, for God’s sake, hold on to me ... get me out of this ... break down the door....’

  ‘Hush, dearest. I’m here. We’ll see it out together.’

  Through the eastern side of the casement, the sky grew pale with the forerunners of the dawn. ‘Don’t let me go.’

  The light grew stronger as they waited.

  Quite suddenly, he said, ‘Oh, damn!’ and began to cry in an awkward, unpractised way at first, and then more easily. So she held him, crouched at her knees, against her breast, huddling his head in her arms that he might not hear eight o’clock strike.

  Now, as in Tullia’s tomb one lamp burnt clear

  Unchanged for fifteen hundred year,

  May these love-lamps we here enshrine,

  In warmth, light, lasting, equal the divine.

  Fire ever doth aspire,

  And makes all like itself, turns all to fire,

  But ends in ashes; which these cannot do,

  For none of these is fuel, but fire too.

  This is joy’s bonfire, then, where love’s strong arts

  Make of so noble individual parts

  One fire of four inflaming eyes, and of two loving hearts.

  JOHN DONNE:
Eclogue for the Marriage of Earl of Somerset.

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09/11/2009