The Hours Before Dawn (17 page)

L
ouise hastened first to Michael’s room. Yes, he was all right. Edna must have fed him and put him to bed most efficiently, for he was rosily asleep with a well-fed,
well-bathed
air that was unmistakable. Louise was surprised. She had left Edna with only the sketchiest of instructions about giving him a bottle, and none about putting him to bed; and Edna was not a girl who was given to using much
common-sense
or initiative – particularly where common-sense and initiative would involve getting off a sofa and walking upstairs. Edna must be changing – waking up. Well, seventeen was the age for changes. Any day now she might stop knitting. And stop baby-sitting, too, thought Louise ruefully; the two no doubt went together. That was the whole difficulty about
baby-sitting
. The very qualities that made people willing to do it were just those qualities which also made them no good at it.

Outside on the landing she paused. She had expected Mark to call down to her when he heard her come in; to hurry down and ask her where she’d been, what had made her so late. But he must be too much engrossed with Vera Brandon up there. She could hear their voices, faintly. A short laugh. The scrape of a chair. Voices again. The flavour of Miss Brandon’s cooking still lingered faintly on the air, and Louise considered that
Harriet was most decidedly wrong about the kippers, and
probably
about the cheese and bacon too. The smell was a far more subtle one, far more exotic. Mushrooms, perhaps, and little cubes of veal fried in butter, with the faintest dash of garlic….

‘Mummy!’

‘What, darling?’ Resignedly Louise gave up her speculations and turned into the girls’ room. ‘What’s the matter, Harriet?’

‘Mummy, I can’t go to sleep.’ The words were spoken with a smug, trump-that-if-you-can sort of air that was both irritating and endearing. Louise sat down on the bed and waited for more.

‘Mummy, I’m too hot, and I can’t have my blanket off because if I do a big hen might come and peck me while I’m all bare.’

If only Harriet and Socrates could have met, thought Louise wistfully. It would have done them both good, particularly Socrates. He who had argued so many learned philosophers out of their cherished convictions, would
he
have been able to convince Harriet that there wasn’t – there couldn’t be – a hen in the room? Or would he, too, after half an hour’s fruitless struggle on behalf of reason and sanity, have resorted to the non-Socratic method of promising to take her to the fair tomorrow if she was a good girl?

Harriet’s transports of gratitude at this offer made Louise feel quite ashamed – as if she had bought her victory in this idiotic argument with counterfeit coin. Because, of course, she had been going to take them to the fair anyway, some time during the weekend. She always did on Bank Holidays. Indeed, how could she ever hope to do otherwise, when it was only such a short journey to Hampstead Heath; and when the children saved their pocket money with such touching and infuriating fervour for weeks beforehand; and when
all
the other children go, Mummy, every single one, and Milly and Patsy White go three times, on the Friday,
and
the Saturday,
and
the Monday.

Downstairs, the kitchen was silent, and full of crumbs. The remains of the baked bean supper still littered the table, and the corner of a piece of burnt toast jutted out from under the grill. A blob of tomato sauce had joined the streak of jam under Harriet’s chair, and Louise glanced at the clock. Would there be time to give the floor its long-overdue scrubbing tonight? If Michael stayed asleep till half past ten – and if Mark continued absorbed upstairs—?

The ringing of the telephone put an end to these
speculations
; and when she heard Beatrice’s voice she knew at once that the kitchen floor would wait another day. What with Kathleen’s mother having her face lifted; and Muriel’s not being able to hold down a job because of Bristol being so provincial and narrow-minded; and Laura’s going to a
psychoanalyst
at last, in spite of what she’d always said about them – and what her husband had always said about them – and what, come to that, Beatrice herself had always said about them – well, by that time it was after ten, and Beatrice had honestly only got a moment left to tell Louise what she was really ringing up about.

‘Your Vera Brandon,’ she buzzed happily down the wire. ‘I’ve had my spies out, and I can tell you
one
thing about her, anyway. I don’t know if it’s relevant, and of course keep it under your hat, because the girl who told the sister of the woman who knows Humphrey’s friend’s wife said it was in strictest confidence – well, anyway, there’s been a bit of a scandal about her. Last summer. That’s why she couldn’t take up the University job she was supposed to be starting last October. It was bad luck on her, Humphrey says – well, of course, he
would
–
but anyway, it seems she’d actually been taken on for this lectureship or whatever it was – I’m not very up in these things, you know – with Humphrey’s friends talking about them all the time of course I make my mind a
blank. Well, this Something-or-other-Ship – it seems she was turned down at the last moment because of the scandal.’

‘What sort of scandal?’ asked Louise, and was aware of a momentary surprise at the other end of the line. Of course; Humphrey was Beatrice’s informant, and to his painstaking judgment there could be only one sort of scandal.

‘You mean who was the man?’ asked Beatrice, recovering herself. ‘Truly, my dear, I don’t know, and Humphrey doesn’t either, though of course he tries to look as if it was himself, poor darling. But I wouldn’t worry, Louise, really I wouldn’t. I don’t believe she’s Mark’s type a bit. As I was saying to Pamela this afternoon—’

‘I don’t mean that,’ interrupted Louise. ‘I only meant are you sure that the scandal wasn’t something – well – worse—’

She found it hard to be more explicit. Frances Palmer’s talk about notorious criminals and the picture papers had seemed credible at the time – in fact more than credible – alarming. But how would it all sound at second hand? And down the
telephone
? And, above all, what would it sound like retold to Pamela – to Muriel – to Janice? (‘Poor old Louise, she
is
cracking up! Do you know, the last time I rang her up …’)

‘Worse? Oh – I see what you mean.’ Beatrice seemed
suddenly
enlightened. ‘Well, as a matter of fact, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if you’re right. Humphrey didn’t actually
say
so, but after all – well, she could easily be just the sort of fool to get herself into a jam like that. These academic types, they’re absolute
infants
when it comes to coping with real life, aren’t they? Don’t I know it, after living with one for nine years! Still, you must hand it to her, if there
was
anything of the sort, she’s managed to hush it up pretty cleverly—’

Louise was finding it hard to follow the sense of all this. She had heard Miss Brandon’s door upstairs opening, and now she could hear voices on the stairs. Mark’s voice. Vera Brandon’s
low, cynical little laugh. Somehow the conversation with Beatrice must be hustled to a close before the two newcomers came near enough to gather the subject of it.

‘Well – I’m so glad you’re both well,’ she called
unconvincingly
into the mouthpiece, and hung up ruthlessly. She turned and walked towards the stairs just as Mark and Vera Brandon rounded the bend of the landing.

She looked up at the two of them, their faces dim where the light from the hall almost failed to reach. She could just see that Miss Brandon was smiling; and in the half darkness she fancied that the woman’s eyes were bright as she had never seen them before. Shining, dancing, with some secret triumph.

‘Hullo, Louise; had a good time?’ It was Mark who broke the silence. His voice was bright and cheery, and yet somehow uncomfortable. Louise stared up the dim length of the stairs, uncomprehending. Where did Mark think she had been, then? Why wasn’t he asking questions? Why wasn’t he surprised – put out – that she was back so late? Whatever sort of message could Edna have given him? He went on speaking, still with that uneasy cheerfulness:

‘Hadn’t you better go to bed now? Have a rest, I mean – or something? Vera says – that is – I’m afraid I’ve only just realised how much you’ve been – overdoing things lately.’

Was Louise imagining the glance of mocking triumph with which the older woman looked down at her out of the shadows? Now she spoke, as if from a pedestal far above Louise’s head:

‘Yes, indeed, you should go and rest,’ she agreed, in a voice of grave concern which was imperceptibly edged with some other emotion which Louise could not identify. ‘You must have a real, long sleep tonight. Prolonged lack of sleep – it can become – well – dangerous.’ She shot a swift, sidelong glance at her companion, and added inconsequently: ‘We’ve been having another talk about the Medea, your husband and I.
He’s managed to convince me at last that the psychology of it is sound. Haven’t you, Mark?’

She spoke with a curious air of recklessness that seemed quite inappropriate to the subject; and it seemed to Louise that she watched Mark closely for his response. He looked oddly bewildered and uncomfortable.

‘Yes – just about,’ he assented awkwardly; and then, with an evident wish to change the subject: ‘Is one of the kids still awake, Louise? I thought I heard a sort of scuffling up there—?’

‘Yes, it’s Harriet,’ said Louise, relieved to encounter at last something that she could understand in this top-heavy
conversation
down the length of the stairs. ‘She’s been restless all the evening. I told her we’d go to the fair tomorrow, Mark. Is that all right? It’ll save us going on Monday, and it may not be so crowded.’

‘What a hope!’ groaned Mark – and Louise was thankful to note that the artificial brightness had left his voice; he seemed to have thrown it off as a healthy man throws off a fever. ‘What a hope!’ and then, with cautious optimism: ‘
I
don’t have to come, do I?’

‘Well – no,’ said Louise reflectively. ‘Actually, it might be more help if you stayed at home with Michael—’

‘No – well, perhaps I’d better come,’ Mark hastily corrected himself. ‘It’s nice to see the kids enjoying themselves,’ he added virtuously. ‘And we needn’t start till the afternoon, need we?’

There was no doubt about the triumph in Miss Brandon’s eyes now. Was she thinking, with scornful pity, that
she
wasn’t going to spend her Easter holiday dragging three fretful, exhausted children through the crowds and the noise, settling their arguments, consoling them for the prizes they didn’t win, wiping ice cream off their faces …?

Once in the hall, Miss Brandon moved to the front door. She had, she said, to slip out and see a friend for an hour or so, and
might be back rather late…. But, of course, she had her key…. She waved it at them reassuringly; and, avoiding Mark’s eyes, she gave Louise an odd, cold little smile, and disappeared into the darkness.

Mark followed Louise into the kitchen. Together they surveyed the debris which still remained from tea and supper.

‘I’ll give you a hand with the washing-up tomorrow,’ said Mark cheerfully – tomorrow, in Mark’s opinion, was always the best time for washing-up. And then, surveying the cold baked beans, he added, a trifle unnecessarily:

‘She’s a marvellous cook, our Vera. Very simple ingredients, you know – just some oddments of vegetables and a little meat, and she turned out a meal fit for a king. She’s one of those cooks who uses real imagination.’

‘Real butter, you mean, I expect,’ retorted Louise
ungenerously
. ‘You can afford it when you’re only cooking for one or two. But Mark—’ She hesitated. She had been on the point of asking him where he thought she had been this evening – what message Edna had given him? But what would be the point? Since she felt unable to tell him the whole truth, surely it would be better to leave well alone?

‘What did you say?’ But Mark did not pursue the matter, for by now he was peering into the cupboard for something palatable to spread on the piece of crispbread he had fished out of a tin.

I
t wasn’t the noise itself that was so exhausting, Louise decided, as they pushed their way through the crowd towards the Caterpillar. It was the strain of trying to hear what your family were saying to you through it all. Margery into one ear, Harriet into the other, and Mark contributing
incomprehensible
advice from a foot or two behind. And you couldn’t, as you could at home, simply say to them all: ‘Yes, dear,’ ‘Of course, dear,’ and ‘How nice, dear,’ at random, because they couldn’t hear you, either. ‘What, Mummy?’ they would scream; ‘What did you say, Mummy?’

‘I said “How nice, dear,’” Louise would bellow patiently, only to hear in reply: ‘What, Mummy?’ ‘What’s nice, Mummy?’ ‘What did Margery say was nice, Mummy?’ ‘Who said nice?’ ‘You said nice.’ ‘What was – ?’ ‘I didn’t.’ ‘You did—’

Michael’s collapsible canvas push-chair wasn’t a success, either. He was too young for it, of course; but the pram was too big to get on the train, and anyway the idea had been that Mark should carry him most of the time. But now it had turned out so hot, all the coats had to be carried instead of worn; and there was that awful plaster ballet dancer that Harriet had won on the Spot-the-Dots; and the bottle of Tizer still wasn’t
finished. What with one thing and another, you couldn’t expect Mark to carry the baby as well.

Anyway, by the time they had reached the queue for the Caterpillar, Mark had disappeared. His technique of staying a pace or two behind so that the children wouldn’t catch sight of him and scream ‘Daddy’ instead of ‘Mummy’ must have
overreached
itself, and he had lost sight of them altogether. Never mind; he was well out of it. He had just about reached the limits of his endurance, and a few minutes of being lost would make a new man of him.

Now for the ever-recurring problem. Should Louise stay with Michael and the push-chair, and watch with her heart in her mouth while Margery and Harriet whirled round alone on this heaving, dizzying monster; or should she go on the monster with them, and watch with her heart in her mouth to see if Michael was still all right left alone in his push-chair whenever he came giddily, intermittently into sight?

It was Margery who decided the question. No sooner was she settled on her seat in the unnerving vehicle, than she came to the shrill conclusion that she couldn’t – wouldn’t – go on the Caterpillar. But neither could she possibly get
off
the Caterpillar, because she had already paid her sixpence, her very own sixpence that she had saved out of her dentist shilling, and if she lost that sixpence, then she could only go on
two
other things, because there weren’t any threepenny ones, at least only ones for babies, and—’

The Caterpillar was already trembling into motion when Louise silenced this tearful recital by leaping into the seat with Margery and taking her on her lap. Michael would be all right, surely, strapped in his push-chair. She would have a glimpse of him every ten seconds, and anyway the whole ride would take barely two minutes.

Slowly the fantastic vehicle began to revolve. The rails
looked terribly narrow for the width of the cars; but after all, thousands of people had ridden safely on the thing already. In her lap, she could feel Margery’s body tautening with mixed joy and apprehension. From the seat behind Harriet’s voice, so confident and yet so babyish, could just be heard over the blare of the music:

‘Look, Mummy! I can do it without holding! Look, I’m not holding! …’

‘You
must
hold on, Harriet,’ Louise admonished over her shoulder, knowing all the time that her voice was being carried uselessly away into the tumult of the fair. ‘You
must
hold on, it’s going to go faster than this.’

It
was
going faster. Louise tightened her grip on the warm steel bar with one hand, while with her free arm she gripped Margery more tightly. She turned to see if Harriet was holding on, but her head seemed almost to swing from her shoulders at this attempt to face backwards against the mounting speed. She tried to get a glimpse of Michael as the faces whirled past; but always her eyes seemed to come into focus a moment too late, and he was gone.

Faster, faster. Was Harriet holding on? Did this speechless stiffening of Margery’s body mean real terror? And why couldn’t she somehow get a glimpse of Michael…?

Louise remembered how she had always enjoyed these absurd rides – and it was with a little shock of dismay that she realised, not that she no longer enjoyed them, but that she no longer noticed whether she enjoyed them or not. Her soul was no longer in her body as it dipped and whirled; it had divided into three. One part was with Margery, bolstering up her waning courage; another part was with Harriet, radiating authority and will-power sufficient to prevent her doing anything rash; the third part was with Michael, willing him to sit still – assuring him that she would be back in a minute. Not one particle of it
remained in the body of Louise Henderson to register either joy or fear at this rollicking caricature of travel.

And then the canvas hood came heaving over their heads, covering them in, and they surged on in a greenish, flickering twilight. A menacing wail from the loudspeaker joined with the shrieks of the passengers. Noise seemed to obliterate even speed, and Louise could no longer even tell if Margery were screaming.

Daylight again. The canvas hood had withdrawn itself, and the machine was slowing down. The single blur of the crowd resolved itself into separate thousands, and Louise scanned their ranks giddily for Michael’s blue knitted coat and leggings.

But they must have stopped on the other side – there were no landmarks that you could hope to recognise in this
ever-fluctuating
wall of faces and summer dresses. Ignoring Harriet’s fervent shrieks of, ‘Let’s go on it
again,
Mummy!’ (echoed with inexplicably equal fervour by the green and shaking Margery), Louise hurried the two of them round to the other side of the roundabout. Still no Michael. He must be
this
way, Louise told herself. No,
that
way…. She had circled the area completely three times before she allowed herself to realise that he wasn’t there.

But it was all right. Of course it was all right. Mark must have found him – after all, Mark couldn’t have been more than a few yards away really, hopelessly vanished though he had seemed. Mark must have found him – crying, no doubt – and would be wheeling him around to cheer him up until they got off the Caterpillar. In a moment he would come back and find them. The thing to do was to stand still and wait.

But, as often happens with this resolution, the time comes when you begin to wonder how
long
you should stand still and wait. To you, it always seems that the only rational, the only possible thing for your partner to do is to come and look for you
here. He
must
know you are here. You couldn’t be anywhere else.

But Louise had been married long enough to know that this simple reasoning doesn’t work. Although in fact you couldn’t be anywhere but here, your partner always has some obscure
reason
for being positive that you are at some spot hundreds of yards away. Some spot where you never said you would be – never dreamed you would be – couldn’t by any laws of sanity have ever contemplated being. There he will wait for you, growing more bad-tempered and puzzled with every passing moment; and no amount of arguing and explaining afterwards – not hours – not days – not weeks of it – will ever solve the mystery for either of you.

Louise knew all this; and therefore, after a few minutes’ wait, she set off to explore the fair-ground.

Oh, but the crowds! The surging, pushing millions of them! How could one hope to find anybody in such a crush? It was impossible.

Well, impossible for Louise. Some people seemed to be luckier:

‘
Just
the person I’ve been looking for!’ shrieked Mrs Hooper into Louise’s ear. ‘I wonder, my dear, could you possibly help me out? You see, Tony’s so anxious not to miss anything, and I don’t see how I can take Christine all round with us, especially the Big Wheel, and that sort of thing, so I wondered—?’

‘Can’t Tony go round the fair by himself?’ enquired Louise, eyeing Christine without enthusiasm; while Christine, her face smudgy with tiredness, eyed her back.

‘Well – no, not really. I mean—’

Mrs Hooper was flustered, as progressive mothers are apt to be when caught out taking proper care of their children. ‘That is to say,’ she amended, ‘of course he’d be all right but I always feel that one’s own attitude to one’s child’s interests—’

She stopped, feeling, perhaps, that the subject was one she
could not do justice to at the top of her voice. She returned to the essential point: ‘So if you could stay with Christine for just a few minutes? I mean, since you’ve got Michael—’

‘But I
haven’
t
got Michael.’ Louise seized her chance to break in. ‘I can’t find him. Or my husband. You haven’t seen them, have you?’

Mrs Hooper looked blank. Other people’s affairs often had this effect on her. Then she made an effort.

‘They must be somewhere,’ she suggested helpfully. ‘Now, if you stay with Christine, right here by the yellow dolls—’

But Louise had escaped. Past the Lucky Numbers. Past the goggling clowns’ heads with mouths agape to receive ping-pong balls. Past the swings. Past the Big Wheel which rose with strange dignity into the quiet sky. Out, at last, on to the stretches of heath where the picnic parties were more widely scattered, and where the grass showed green between the paper bags. And still there was no sign of Mark and the baby.

How long had they been searching? An hour? Perhaps more. Surely Mark would have given up looking for her by now, and would have taken Michael home. Well, of course he would….

‘Mummy, look! There’s Edna!’

A little incredulous, Louise wheeled round. Such a devotee of the sedentary pleasures of life as Edna would surely not have subjected herself to the exacting physical disciplines of the Bank Holiday fair?

Edna nevertheless it was. Plump and placid in her new pink dress, she sat on a hummock of dusty grass, licking an ice-cream cornet. On her left lay her knitting bag, half open to reveal a bundle of mauve Quick Knit, and on her right sat a
bespectacled
youth who was gazing at her with dumb devotion. Unfortunately the dumbness seemed at the moment to be
getting
across to Edna more effectively than the devotion, for she looked just a trifle bored, and was beginning to steal longing
glances at the knitting bag. Louise longed to call out to her to leave it alone – to stuff it out of sight – to throw it under the wheels of the Bumping Cars. Did the girl not know that it is far more important to hide one’s knitting from a new boyfriend than it is to hide one’s past love affairs?

‘Mummy, can
I
have an ice-cream cornet?’ began Harriet piercingly, and Edna looked up.

‘Hullo, Mrs Henderson,’ she said, a little awkwardly, and with a sideways, doubtful glance at her companion as if he was a piece of luggage that she wasn’t sure if she could carry. ‘This is Al,’ she explained laconically. The youth stumbled shyly to his feet, murmuring some inaudible greeting. Louise responded equally unintelligibly, as seemed most conducive to the comfort of all parties, and turned back to Edna.

‘Have you seen Michael?’ she asked. ‘With my husband? He’s dressed in a blue knitted suit – the baby, I mean – and we’ve somehow missed each other—’

Edna shook her head slowly. ‘Not in a
blue
knitted suit,’ she observed, as if debating in her leisurely way whether Mrs Henderson might not be prepared to accept a baby in a pink knitted suit instead, if it was presented tactfully. ‘Not in a
blue
knitted suit. But I think I saw Mr Henderson,’ she added, more brightly. ‘Down by the station. Where they start the pony rides,’ she elucidated, in a fresh burst of helpfulness.

‘Down by the station? Are you sure? Then they must have gone home,’ exclaimed Louise in relief and then, with a tiny stirring of doubt: ‘But he
did
have the baby with him, didn’t he?’

Edna looked bewildered. ‘He must have done,’ she said, ‘if they were together. Al—’ She turned suddenly to her speechless admirer. ‘Al, that gentleman we passed down by the station. Did he have a baby with him?’

Poor Al, bubbling over with wordless desire to be helpful, looked rather at a loss – as well he might, since they must
have passed several hundreds of gentlemen, with and without babies, down by the station. However, he was not a boy to give in easily:

‘Um!’ he contributed eagerly. ‘I reckon so. Um!’ Further speech seemed to fail him, but this was enough to satisfy Edna.

‘That’s all right, then,’ she said comfortably; and the boy glowed with pride. ‘I hope you didn’t mind, Mrs Henderson,’ she went on. ‘Last night, I mean, when I had to go early? You’d said you’d be back by half past six, you see, and besides, the little girls told me their Daddy would be in any minute. I hope you found everything all right?’

‘Oh yes, splendid,’ Louise assured her. ‘That was quite all right. I didn’t even know you had gone early. And thank you so much for feeding Baby and getting him to bed so nicely.’

But Edna was looking blank again. Was she perhaps
wondering
if anything could be done to induce her monosyllabic admirer to attempt another sentence? Or was she making
calculations
about the decreasing for the armholes of that mauve garment in the bag? Either way, there seemed no point in prolonging the conversation; and Louise was soon hurrying her two charges towards the station.

The journey home, ordinarily accomplished in fifteen
minutes
, took well over an hour today, and it was nearly six when the three straggled wearily up the garden path.

‘Where on earth did you get to?’ Mark greeted them
cheerfully
. ‘I couldn’t find you anywhere. You said you were going to the whelk stall.’

Tired though she was, Louise controlled the impulse to point out that not a word had been said about the whelk stall the whole afternoon; that never, in all these years, had any of them bought, or even suggested buying, any whelks; that it was the one place in the whole fair-ground where neither she nor the children could have any motive for going.