The Sibyl in Her Grave (23 page)
Read The Sibyl in Her Grave Online
Authors: Sarah Caudwell
“Oh yes,” she said. “Quite sure, he said it several times. He was conscious, you see, by the time I left him, and able to talk a little, though he couldn’t manage much more than a whisper. And one of the things he kept saying was, ‘Please, Reg, don’t let Daphne come here.’ So of course I said I wouldn’t. But I didn’t want to tell Daphne about it tonight, when she’s already in such a state.”
I asked what else he had said.
“He kept saying,” said Reg, “that he wished he could see Derek again.”
She resumed her game of patience and I went rather anxiously to bed.
In the morning, however, she was in a much more cheerful mood, having already telephoned the hospital to find out how Maurice was: they had told her that he had spent a comfortable night and was as well as could be expected. Quite what this
means I am never entirely sure—after all, there are circumstances in which one might be expected to be very ill indeed—but my aunt seemed sufficiently reassured to hum “Good King Wenceslas” while making the toast.
By nine o’clock Daphne was again on the doorstep, in what I now regard as her customary state of agitation: there were things at the Vicarage of which Maurice would have urgent need; only she knew what they were and where to find them; she had no way of getting in; she didn’t know what to do. When my aunt admitted to having Maurice’s keys, nothing would satisfy her but an immediate expedition.
Preparations for lunch were accordingly suspended while we all went across to the Vicarage to look for Maurice’s favourite dressing gown and Maurice’s favourite slippers. Not to speak of his favourite soap, his favourite toothpaste, his favourite cough mixture and his favourite paper handkerchiefs. It was essential, you understand, that each item taken should be the favourite in its category. Thus, instead of being content with the pair of blue slippers beside his bed, we were obliged to spend half an hour searching for a pair of green slippers which she believed him to be more deeply attached to and which turned out to be at the very back of the bathroom cupboard. Similarly with most of the other items, none of which seemed actually to be where Daphne had thought it was.
By the time we had found everything she considered immediately indispensable to his well-being and packed it safely in the boot of Reg’s
car, the arrangements for lunch were a little behind schedule.
Griselda, in the meantime, had ridden over to the hospital on her bicycle, laden with books and bottles of burgundy, and also, after stopping on the way to give Christmas greetings to Mrs. Tyrrell, with large quantities of gingerbread and homemade chocolate cake. She had found him, however, in no condition to enjoy either food or conversation—still attached to the tube and not allowed to eat anything.
Of lunch I shall say nothing, though it would have been in other circumstances a meal to be remembered in song and legend. Not only Maurice’s illness, however, but the presence of Daphne, unkempt and red-eyed, still wearing her moth-eaten cardigan, silent and palpably resentful, detracted from the gaiety of the proceedings.
It was only when lunch was over and all the guests had left that my aunt told Daphne that Maurice did not want to see her.
It had of course been foreseeable that she would be upset. What I had not foreseen—though perhaps my aunt had—was that she would still insist, if possible with even greater vehemence, on being taken to the hospital.
Reg said that she would not take her. Daphne, in tears and rage, said that she must, she had promised. Reg denied having promised; Daphne continued to assert that she had.
“Daphne,” said my aunt eventually, “there is no point in arguing. Maurice is my friend and he is ill and he does not want to see you—if I had given
you such a promise, I should not dream of keeping it. Julia will give you some tea.”
After which she walked briskly out to her car and drove away, leaving Daphne, although all too briefly, lost for words.
For half an hour or so I remained the vicarious object of furious and tearful reproaches, all on the theme that Daphne had never thought my aunt the kind of person who would break her promise. I made tea, however, as it seemed to me I had been instructed to do, and after she had drunk some of it she became slightly calmer and asked me to lend her the money for a taxi. I told her, untruthfully and with a degree of moral cowardice I am ashamed to admit to, that I had run out of money. She said she did not believe me. Becoming slightly braver, I said that even if I had the money I would not lend it to her. She said that I was a horrible person and she hated me and would never speak to me again. After this, I am afraid to my enormous relief, she marched out of the house.
Since it is Christmas Day, there are of course no trains or buses and I doubt whether anyone else will lend her the money for a taxi. It seems reasonable to hope, therefore, that she will not find any means of reaching the hospital today; what happens tomorrow is another question.
Christmas evening
I am no longer despondent. Perhaps it is not, after all, so unfestive a Christmas as I thought. Last night, it seems, after I had gone to bed, my aunt sat up finishing her game of patience and
considering whether she should try to get in touch with Derek Arkwright. Though she didn’t have the name or address of his friend in London, she still had in her address book the telephone number which Maurice had given her last summer, for the place where he and Derek were staying in the south of France. She had no idea whether anyone would be there who knew where Derek was, or indeed knew him at all, at any rate by the same name that she did; but she decided, having brought her patience to a successful conclusion, that at least the attempt should be made.
She rang this morning, before I was even awake. To her astonishment it was Derek himself who answered; to her even greater astonishment he said he would come at once.
“He wasn’t sure what flight he could get on Christmas Day, but he said he hoped he could be in Worthing by five and he would go straight to the hospital. I didn’t dare tell Maurice when I saw him this afternoon, in case he didn’t come after all. Poor Maurice, he was looking so fragile, I almost didn’t believe he’d get better. I just sat by his bed and did some sewing and wished that Derek would come. And then he did. And Maurice said, ‘Oh, Derek, I’m so sorry,’ and Derek said ‘So I should think, silly old thing,’ and kissed him. So then I thought I’d come home.”
And almost straightaway, it seems, Maurice began to get better. When my aunt rang the hospital a few minutes ago, they said he was well enough to be taken off the plastic tube and be given some proper food. Derek’s staying there overnight, of course.
We have been having a glass of champagne to celebrate and are feeling quite festive, after all.
26th December
I hardly know now whether to send this—poor Maurice died early this morning.
Julia
AT THIS JUNCTURE
, dear reader, you have, if I may say so, the advantage of me. You cannot have imagined me, I hope, so careless of the proper duty of an historian as to burden you with documents irrelevant to the subject of my narrative: you have therefore assumed, during your perusal of this exchange of letters, that there was some significant connection between the events related in them; you have drawn inferences which seem to you too obvious to be overlooked. Having had no grounds, however, for relying on the same premise, I would ask you not to judge me too severely for my slowness in arriving at the same conclusions.
Moreover, I first read these letters merely by way of diversion, while waiting in the Corkscrew for my friends on a cold evening in early February; I had no reason to subject them to the searching gaze of Scholarship, as evidence of something sinister and perhaps still dangerous. It is right to say, however, that even if I had studied them with the utmost care and at once reached all those conclusions which could correctly have
been drawn, I would still not have known enough to prevent another death.
Julia arrived pink nosed and shivering, having dressed with incurable optimism in expectation of spring, and purchased a bottle of burgundy as a precaution against pneumonia.
“I’m sorry to see,” I said, “that your Christmas holiday came to such an unhappy end. Did you stay long in Sussex after Maurice’s death?”
“About three days, which I shall look back on as entirely occupied with making tea for Daphne. Poor Daphne, she was terribly upset, of course. Well, as a matter of fact we were all rather upset, but Daphne seemed to have made her mind up to be more upset than anyone else. You see, she had the idea that it was all her fault that Maurice had died.”
“Why should she think that?”
“Because of the Book. The Book, as you may remember, is kept in the drawing room at the Rectory. Daphne left Maurice on his own there while she went into the kitchen to make him a hot drink, and she thinks that he couldn’t resist the chance to have a look at it. And that’s why he died—no one must look at the Book except the Custodian and if they do something terrible will happen to them. So it was her fault for leaving him alone with it. We all did our best to reason with her, but reasoning with Daphne tends to be unproductive.”
“And did you ever meet the interesting Derek Arkwright?”
“No,” said Julia. “No, as a matter of fact I didn’t. After Maurice died, he went straight back to London. He went down to Parsons Haver for the funeral, but that was after I’d left. I’d have stayed, of course, if I’d thought Reg wanted me to, but I had the distinct impression that she
rather wanted some time to herself. I gather the funeral passed off without any major embarrassments.” Julia paused and drew deeply on her Gauloise.
I refrained from asking what the minor embarrassments had been.
“And now I’ve just had this peculiar letter from Daphne—I don’t quite know what to do about it.”
The letter was written in large, childish handwriting on a rather grubby sheet of paper evidently torn from an exercise book.
Dear Julia,
It’s horrible having to ask one’s friends to do things for one but I don’t know what else to do. I’ve got a legal problem and I don’t know who else to ask and it’s very urgent. Can you tell me please what happens if someone’s quite old and very ill and someone makes them make a will that isn’t right and not what they really want?
I’m sorry to trouble you when I know you’re very busy and I can’t pay you anything, but I know you’re the sort of person who really cares about justice and doesn’t only do things for money.
Please don’t tell Reg that I have asked you about this as she doesn’t want me to do anything about it and I don’t want to upset her.
Gratefully remembering all your help and kindness in my time of terrible sadness,
Daphne