Cold Pastoral (28 page)

“Dear,
dear
Mater,” she whispered, with an intensified wish to penetrate her silence.

David collapsed on a chair, giving way to unaffected tears. Felice stood over him, silently stroking his hair.

Philip stood with his nose as chiselled as his mother's. He looked as if he might join her if restoration did not come. Health seemed to be cracking in the tight strain of his face. Stepping to his side, the girl slipped her arm through his.

“Philip, you're very tired. You've been up all night. Listen, Philip, I know what she was like as a mother, but she's remembering what you were like as a son. It's natural to cry….”

His face was in her hair, and his body shook with grief and exhaustion. She guided him to the settee she had sat on when he told her the mater had a weak heart. Kneeling on it with one leg, she knew the experience of holding a man's body in her arms while he cried. When he started he did it rather terrifyingly, with long gasps coming from the depths. They were not David's facile tears, but hard tears of repression.

With her eyes on Lady Fitz Henry's dead face, the girl's mind stirred in shocked reflection. Where was she in all this? The mater had used her last few breaths to tell her to do as Philip said. That meant the end of Tim, and to say so was to betray like Judas. What had she started in the garden? Hocus-pocus, childish enchantment. Tim was as bound up in her as he was in his music, and to do without both would be to whirl him to some dark pit of futility. Philip was in her arms, crying exhausted tears and giving her a feeling of his taut, long body. Felice had her arms round David, and the expression on her face said that she was grieved but happy. At that moment David had all her motherhood. Felice was suggesting that they all go to bed with hot drinks. David stood up as if in obedience to direction, looking red-eyed at his mother's face. Felice slipped her arm in his, and they had a moment of still contemplation. Now, thought the girl, Felice will take him to bed and put her arms round him and help him to go to sleep. Tonight she could help Philip like that, smooth his head and let him drop into sleep, empty of thought. But the mater was dead, and she had lost direction. When she got lost again, there would be no calm black-and-white woman to come and see her, reducing the foolishness in her. Bereavement became intensified, running down her body in long dread. Instantly Philip forgot himself.

“Mary, you're cold and you haven't cried, yourself.” He looked up in her face with his black hair tumbled on his forehead. “You shouldn't ask me to do what you don't do yourself.”

A light hand tidied his hair.

“I would cry if I could, Philip, right out loud at the top of my voice.”

“You sound exhausted, my dear. Let's all say good night and go to bed. If Mater were here she'd insist on—”

“Common sense,” supplied the girl. “She thought that was the most important of all.”

Felice seemed to collect them in a solid little bunch.

“Tomorrow the house won't be our own. Let's make this our last look.”

In dead silence they looked down at the calm face as white as the satin around it. Then Philip drew up a panel.

“I hope the snow stops,” he said in a relaxed voice.

“God, such a winter funeral!” said David rebelliously.

“But it's so fresh and clean,” said Mary Immaculate. “The sun will get in the grave before her.”

Her hand in Philip's arm, she knew he would sleep like someone felled.

They left the lights full on and closed the doors.

So different from the girl's childish memory of death. Then people sat up all night in the room with the body. Always they ate, and a wake was one of the occasions of the Cove. The smell of oranges round the mater? Appalled at the different ways of living, she shivered to bed, where she stared wide-eyed into darkness.

“DESTINY WILL FIND A WAY.”

D
avid and Felice were receiving condolence calls while Mary helped Philip list letters, wreaths and cables.

Already Philip looked better. His face had dropped the mask of strain and the smudges round his eyes. His health was resilient. A man of controlled appetites, it was never abused. Not for him the large drink when he was exhausted. David could stay himself that way, but it was a point of honour with Philip never to attend a case smelling of spirits.

In the midst of her occupation the girl became conscious of his long brooding over a letter. Continuing apparently absorbed, she saw nothing in front of her.

“Mary, read that,” he said, passing the letter. “That last bit…”

She was mute with surprise that Philip should be portentous over the written word. She read: “Applaud us when we run, console us when we fall, cheer us when we recover, but let us press on—in God's name, let us press on.”

She was used to direct speech from Philip. What was he trying to say? Above all, his eyes were searching the effect of the significant sentence.

“I can't imagine not pressing on,”she ventured tentatively.

The ease of mutual work was over. She could merely suspend her pencil and wait.

“Mater was the right person for you,”he said as if delighted with the survey of his eyes.

Chop and change, she thought. But she was sure if he stared deep enough he would see Tim sitting in the middle of her forehead. She could trust her face only so long, and Philip was regarding her with a long, rolling boil of eyes that would not break.

She stirred, sitting up. “Yes, Mater was wonderful, everything—”

“I expect she knew you best,” he said in some bafflement. “I wonder if you're what I think you are?”

“I believe you'd like me better if I was like that,” she said vaguely.

“I couldn't like you better, Mary.”

The reply was indirect. Were both her men finding flaws in her? She was somehow unsatisfying to them both. Since Tim's going she had reluctantly blazed a trail towards self-analysis. Hitherto the preoccupation in herself had gone into an intense cram of living, and, when the day was spent, she had pulled the pillow low under her neck and dropped to extinction. Now she knew Philip had stopped being a son. It was as if he had prayed and fasted long enough. The Place was his with his mother's income. In addition, he was solidly established and might become formidable in his security. Impossible to imagine him a prey to indecision. Having put his nose to the grindstone, he was in sight of his deserts. He was no happy Jack, she thought. But Tim had worked, too, knowing the joyless grind of application without ambition. Had he not tried to make her face up to an adult life? She had the sensation of running by the river bank, away from the question in his heavy-lidded eyes. Where could she run now, from Philip? Between the leather chairs, the library table and round and round in a circle? Was she part of Philip's inheritance? Was she different from other girls, with some changeling qualities? Many of her contemporaries seemed sure of love, past thought and action that did not include some boy. They appeared to live with little incidents they intensified in their imaginations. They would pine and roll their eyes and long for a sight of the boy. Then, if they saw him unexpectedly, they would blush to the roots of their hair and run away. Such conduct confounded her. If she were in that ecstatic state she would be delighted to see the boy, and enjoy him without blushes and palpitations. What were men and women to each other to make them act in that demented way? Would all the joys of every day be lessened if she married Philip or Tim? A vivid picture of the mater commending her to Philip made her jitter with responsibility. Cold as it was in the new-fallen snow, she wanted to go out and walk away doubts in the evening air. But Philip was talking. More chop and change! There were housekeeping plans, Hannah in temporary charge, with Felice keeping the accounts.

“It will be lovely to have them for the winter,” she said, grabbing at a safe conversational straw.

“You won't go back to college until after Christmas, Mary?”

“No.”

“Do you want to go then?” he asked, inviting denial.

“Yes,” she said faintly but firmly. If she gave way an inch the water would be over her head. For the first time in her life she felt utterly inadequate. She was slipping, and there were no footholds. Fortunately he did not notice, sitting with the light making a black shine on his hair.

“Mary,”he said, putting the tips of his fingers together.

A diagnosis, she thought to herself, “Yes?” she questioned faintly, laying her pencil on a table.

Then he noticed her strangeness effecting the stifling of his words.

“My dear, what is it? You look different. Is there anything wrong? That is beyond dear Mater.”

Supposing she said yes, wildly. Would he console her? He would not, she thought definitely. In the emotional softness from his mother's death he might not be angry, but he would insist on a line of conduct that shut Tim out forever. He would have to press on without her. What a betrayal that would be, reducing her to a stark Judas outline. She was the bolster for his mining, the liberation for his mind, and the note left behind from his frustrated music. Facility of speech was gone, but some answer was needed in view of Philip's vigilant eyes. How brown they were, and what black lashes he had! How differently she was seeing him since his mother's death. He was a good-looking man with his winged, high-tempered nose. At this moment the nostrils were calm, so she was safe from his emotions.

“There's nothing, Philip. It's just—just…”

“Of course,” he said soothingly. “It's been a great strain for you. You shaped up magnificently, Mary. That last scene touched me beyond words.”

Instead of being grateful she was irritated. Smooth nerves were being sandpapered. Her own dilemma made her want to blast him out of his security.

“But, Philip,” she said quite crossly. “I loved her. There's nothing wonderful—”

“It was wonderful to me, Mary.”

She had been irritable, and he did not mind. Instead he got up and sat on the arm of her chair, holding her shoulders, with his chin on the top of her head. Because she had grown up with his touch she leaned against him, remembering the sanctuary he had been before.

“My dear, do you know that Mater has left you nearly all her personal possessions? All her jewellery except a few pieces for Felice.”

“What, Philip?” she gasped, leaning back to search his face.

“Yes, my dear. It shows how she felt about you. Some of her things are very good, but the settings are old-fashioned. Some day we'll have them reset.”

We, we, we! Her conflict flew into her eyes, making a naked display to Philip.

“My dear Mary,” he said firmly. “I feel sure you're upset in some way. Tell me, what is it?”

To conceal her face she rested against his chest.

“I'm just confused, Philip. This and that and so many rings for my fingers,” she said childishly. It was sufficient to make him laugh.

“You feel all right, then?”

“Have I ever been ill?”

“Not since you drowned yourself. Your health is a delight to a doctor. When I see you I often think disease is an offence against living.”

Did he love her because she could exist without mixtures that must be shaken three times a day?

“My dear,” he said, cupping one cheek. She could feel hunger in his hands, not knowing how she identified it. Had she not been jolted out of childhood the day Tim went away? No matter how much she pursued her heedless youth, it receded before a widening horizon. Yet she did not know how to contain her new attributes of growth. This time she did the wrong thing by closing her eyes, permitting Philip to kiss her with lips having no relation to the kisses of the past. Very honestly she admitted there was nothing in her disliking the kiss.

“My dear,” he said softly, “I don't want you to feel bereft because Mater is gone. Let me try to make up for her loss. I love you, Mary. I always have, since you appeared as a frozen little waif, and I always will.”

“I love you too, Philip,”she said helplessly.

Did she not speak the vital truth? Did she not love him? Were not the associations of everyday, things that brought good returns? Loyalty, gratitude and remembrance of the mater's bequest did not have to be summoned consciously to her mind. But there was September last? Then Tim had been sighing against her hair, demanding a million kisses? The way of her present life was apart from her wild-stepping youth. Tin-whistle side? She wished Tim had not expressed it in those terms. It reduced them to an Endymion world that could not find habitation in rooms. Was she a bad girl, liking many people and loving none? Again Philip was talking over her head, suggesting future plans. There would be England, London with David and Felice, then across the continent and a long stay in Vienna. She would like to go by herself, untrammelled by responsibility, gypsy-wild and free to look. The thought of a companionless flight made her jump to her feet.

“Let's go upstairs, Philip. I think the people have gone. I heard the door shut.”

Again he was patient. “As you say, my dear. Felice will attend to those letters.”

The absence of admonition and direction said he was raising her from the status of a child. It was more intensified when he took her arm, complaining she was too thin.

“You must take a tonic,” he suggested gently.

“I will not,”she said with definite decision. The fact that he only smiled in return made the refusal significant. He had become the suppliant instead of the mentor.

Even though the mater was dead, and she had the weight of a problem, she found she could speed upstairs. Was she not Josephine's daughter, leaving everything to the will of God? Philip was ten steps below, Tim was at university in Canada. Fate would decide.

There were so many letters, one more was not noticed.