To the Dark Tower (12 page)

But he was lying. That evening he had spent in a small restaurant in Greek Street with a girl he had met in the tube. Later, he had gone to her flat. There had been other evenings, in other restaurants, in other flats, for months and months, long, long before Lucy’s illness.

When a habitually truthful person lies, without shame, without scruple, then the person to whom the lie is told must stand condemned.

But Lucy was, in a sense, already condemned. And he continued to lie to her.

Tiggs had been Lucy’s ally in the days before the war; he continued to be her ally till the end. He had grown immensely stout, he had eczema, he soiled the chairs, he suffered, poor dear, from empyrema. (So Lucy said, who was never at a loss for a medical term.) All day he sat with her, on the same couch, in her bed, curled up against her body, his dry nose resting against her breast: and all day she fed him off her plate, on grapes, on chocolates that friends had brought: and all day she talked to him. "Doesn’t Tiggsie want to go out and chase rabbits?" (Tiggsie had never caught a rabbit in his life.) "Doesn’t Tiggsie-Wiggsie want to play in the garden? Does Tiggsie love his mummy so very, very much? Does he? Won’t Tiggsie leave his little Lucy?"

To Hugh this seemed like a criticism of his own visits to London, his games of golf, his walks with the children. And soon Lucy had another ally—Miss Thompson, her new companion, who spoke ever so ‘nicely’, and cut out pictures from the
Tatler
, and powdered her face a dead white. She was about thirty-five, with a chin which suddenly collapsed into landslides of goose-flesh. And unlike Tiggsie she had a voice.

Mutely, maternally, she adored Lucy: and perhaps from jealousy hated Hugh and the children. When they came in from a walk together and were met by her in the hall their enquiries after Lucy were always answered: "She’s as well as can be expected—poor dear!" Then there was a shake of the shoulders, a toss of the head. "She’s such a plucky person—no complaints, no grumbling. Goodness knows, she’s got enough to worry her." Saying this, Miss Thompson would leave them, creaking upstairs in patent-leather shoes over which bulged fatty ankles.

When Hugh went to see Lucy in her room, Miss Thompson, ‘Tommie’, was always there, listening under the pretence of filling hot-water bottles or emptying bed-pans. Her face was set in a cynical smile so that he found it impossible to be tender or even affectionate because this woman seemed to see all his actions as a pretence.

She always said "Sh!" when she passed the children, whether they were making a noise or not. She complained that the servants stole groceries, cheeked her, spied on her. And when, finally, Lucy had to have two nurses she insisted on staying in the room with them, all day, all night, sleeping in a chair by the bedside, because she refused to believe that they would care for her poor darling as she had. In the end, because the nurses complained so much, she had to be ordered to leave and go to her own room.

Goodness knows what she insinuated to Lucy. Goodness knows how she troubled those last few months of consciousness. She brooded over the house, an obese Fury, against whose corseted waist clanked a bunch of keys.

When the end came and nothing more could be done, when all that could be cut away had been cut away, when the body had been purged and stimulated, injected and drugged, then the doctors shrugged their shoulders, took their hats from the hall, and gave up. But first they told Hugh.

He decided to leave Lucy in ignorance of her doom: she was convalescing after her last operation, still in great pain. But whether Miss Thompson told her, or whether she had the supposed clairvoyance of those who are going to die, she knew as soon as he entered the room.

"It’s the end, isn’t it?"

"My dear, what do you mean? Dr. Swan is most hopeful—"

"Oh, Hugh, don’t lie to me!" She laughed as she lay back among pillows, Tiggsie nestling against her. "It
is
the end, isn’t it?"

There was no use in prolonging the deception. " Yes," he said with a queer, abrupt gesture of anguish. "Yes. They can do nothing more now." Then kneeling beside her bed betook one of her hands, ringless now, because the fingers had grown too thin, and bent over it. "Oh, Lucy! Lucy dearest! My poor Lucy!"

She watched him for a while, in surprise, in amusement, while with the hand that he was not holding she stroked Tiggsie. Then suddenly she pulled away: "Oh, stop it, Hugh! What’s the use? I’m so sick of it all. I’m sick of pity, and medicines, and the smell of formalin. I’m going to get up."

"But my dear Lucy—! You can’t—"

"Oh yes I can. If I’m going to die, I’m not going to sit in bed and wait for it. At the moment I feel perfectly well—perfectly well. I’m going out into the garden."

And after much argument she had her way. She put on a flowered silk dress and a large yellow straw hat and went out on Miss Thompson’s arm. She looked old, and she was rouged like a harlot. When the children came up to her she smiled distantly: and when, not having been told, they said: "We’re so glad you’re feeling better now," she only inclined her head with strange condescension.

For two days she moved about the garden, cutting the heads off roses, reclining in a deck-chair, trailing over wet lawns in a rustling frock. Already she seemed to have become a ghost, a legend.

Then on the third day at lunch, even while she was sipping beef-extract and breaking toast in weak fingers, she suddenly groaned, clutched her side, tipped forwards, bruising her forehead and splashing water out of the vase.

They carried her upstairs.

But even that wasn’t the end. There were another three weeks.

Of that last period, lulled in bandages and morphia and febrifuges, Hugh remembered only one incident. He had gone up to the sick-room to see Lucy, on tip-toe, wrinkling his nose at the smell of disinfectant. But she was asleep, her hands carefully placed outside the blankets, like a child’s. He noticed for the first time the decalcification of the nails.

A new nurse sat beside her, reading a book, a buxom girl with undisciplined hair under the starched cap, an unpowdered face, large feet. She smiled at him as he came in, blushing a little: and because he could not talk to Lucy and wished to be friendly he asked her: "What are you reading?"

"
The Conquest of Mexico
."

He looked surprised. "Where did you get hold of that?"

"You brought it up for Lady Weigh. I hope you don’t mind, sir. I had nothing else—"

"Oh no, of course not." He waved a hand in dismissal. "Do you like it?"

"Oh yes. Oh yes. It’s a wonderful book." She was too inarticulate to say more. But he could see it had impressed her.

"Would you like to go to South America?"

"Oh, yes. I should. I should." Again the struggle to fit her emotions to words. "If only I could save up enough money—fifty pounds even... I’ve always wanted to travel."

"Yes. It’s a great thing," he said, sinking down on the end of the bed. "And Mexico’s a great place. I hope you get there."

"You’ve travelled a lot, haven’t you, sir?"

"Yes, I suppose I have."

"I read that book of yours. I did so like it."

At that moment Lucy turned over, groaned, cried out. The nurse hurriedly took a china basin and held it under her chin. Then, tears rolling down her cheeks, Lucy began to vomit a greyish-green fluid...

All that remained of that devoured body, the shell, the husk, was burnt at Golders’ Green. "My poor girlie," sobbed Lady Korrance, who had come up from Henley-on-Thames in a Daimler and was staying at Bailey’s Hotel. " Still—it was a beautiful sight. A beautiful sight. I wish she could have seen it herself." A widow now, she wore mourning from Bradley’s.

Afterwards, a will was found, made two or three days before the end. Half of Lucy’s little fortune was left to the R.S.P.C.A.; Tiggsie and the other half was left to Miss Thompson. But the nurse was to have fifty pounds—‘for a ticket to South America’.

"So kind," said Mrs. Meakins of this last legacy.

He was handed the ashes. But before that final symbolical action, before Lucy became three lines in the newspaper and a handful of photographs, some decisive change had already occurred in Hugh. Looking back, he saw the beginning of it in two incidents which had happened within a week of each other: out of these two incidents had come a transmutation, they had been decisive.

The first incident was when his car broke down, in London, just by Shepherd’s Market. He had been in the Club when a telephone message had come through: Lucy had had a relapse; she might die in the night. It was very cold and bright that evening, there was frost in the air. His hands were trembling as he drove, his mouth dry. He felt many things. Relief, that this should at last be the end, not only for poor tormented Lucy but for himself and the children. Exasperation, that he should have to leave a glass of whisky and a circle of friends to drive for two hours through darkness and cold. Fear, that the sight of her death might suddenly unnerve him. But no grief. He was an entirely honest person; and he could not grieve for her.

The Lucy he grieved for had died long ago, an Edwardian beauty, high-stepping, in green silk, whose parasol had swung in diminished arcs as she ran away from him. He could not grieve for this twisted woman who whimpered and retched in sleep, clutched at him with claw-like hands, asked questions. She was only pitiable, like an animal which cannot get well.

He cursed when the car broke down, tried to mend it himself, failed, and eventually wandered down an alley in search of a garage. His teeth chattered, the cold seemed to make a heavy aching lump in his chest. Over and over again he clapped gloved hands together, distended his cheeks, stamped. Far away a church clock sprinkled the hours on the crisp air—two o’clock. And Lucy was probably dead. Voices cajoled him from doorways, someone brushed against him and giggled, a dog barked; and for no reason he found himself thinking of that distant night in Paris, with the "
Viens, petit garçon! Viens, viens
!" He smiled.

"Could you please tell me where I can find a garage?"

The policeman peered at him, tall, stupid, a droplet glistening on the end of a long nose. Then he gave some directions. But the premises were locked, there was no one there. The mews seemed deserted. But no. Above, in the room above, uncurtained, a fire threw roseate handfuls of light and warmth. Numbed fingers felt for the bell, pressed it. Click of a light, footsteps. Someone humming "The Man who broke the Bank at Monte Carlo".

"Yes? Who is it? Is it you, Mr. Warrington?" The voice was soft, sleepy, with a trace of a West Country accent. One hand touched her coiled hair, the other drew her wrap together against the cold. She seemed very tall, possibly because she spoke from a step above him, and she brought with her smells of cigarette, spirits, perfume.

"Is the garage open? My car’s broken down. It’s rather urgent."

She stared at him for a moment, without speaking, her eyes gleaming as though with tears in the moonlight. But she was smiling, her teeth white, large, gleaming like her eyes, and her black hair gleamed in great coils, and her arms gleamed. "He’s gone," she said laconically. "There’s no night service. He doesn’t live here. He’s nothing to do with me."

"Oh—I see. I’m sorry." He hesitated for a moment, swaying before her, undecided, at a loss what to do. His teeth began chattering again. "Then perhaps—"

"Why don’t you come up?" she put in, slowly, distinctly, as though she were speaking to a foreigner. "You seem cold. Why not?" Again he smelled those female smells—Coty, ‘
Soir de Paris
’; again the arms gleamed, visionary, lulling. The cold struck up at him from the pavement.

"Thank you," he said. "Just for a moment. This frost ..."

"Just for a moment," she echoed, leading the way up un-carpeted stairs in a pair of feathered mules. One hand hitched up the long wrap so that she shouldn’t slip; and he saw bare legs, downed with hair, and ankles grey and soiled. She spoke over her shoulder: "I was expecting someone else, an American. He should have been here three hours ago. But as he hasn’t come ..." She laughed, a deep-throated laugh, and shrugged her shoulders.

The room was lit only by an immense fire piled with logs; but this gave light enough for him to see stockings, a rubber corset, a dress thrown over one chair, copies of
Esquire
, the
New Yorker, Bystander
lying in another; a crucifix over an unmade bed; some tea-cups in the hearth, with cigarette ends, corks, a handkerchief; and on a table, a cactus, spiky, stiff, painted white.

"Well?" she said, turning to him. She was about thirty-five, with a scar on her throat, not beautiful but voluptuous.

"Well?" he responded.

"Do you want to undress?"

Slowly he slipped off his overcoat, his scarf, his dinner-jacket. She watched him all the time, her eyes bright, enormous as though with belladonna. He said nothing, perhaps felt nothing. Lucy was certainly forgotten, the car, the children. The fire was hot; a dry wind came off it, like a sirocco, making his skin tingle, his eyelids prick. He sighed, deeply, for no reason that he could think of.

Then she, too, undressed, slipping off her wrap, and crouched in a chair, waiting. The fire pelted her body with red blooms; her body glowed as though the fire were lambent beneath its flesh. She rubbed one foot against the other, crossed her hands over her lap, a gesture of modesty.

He touched her, first her breasts, then her thighs, then her belly. She put out a hand and touched him. The fire threw up great ruby chunks of light.

When she saw him down the stairs and out at the door they were clinking milk-pails in the near-by street and it was already morning. Rain fell, horizontally, into her face. She shivered, heavy with sleep, yawned, rubbed the back of one hand against her cheek. "Tom’ll be there now," she said, pointing to the garage doors where a mechanic showed a greasy rump from under a Morris.

"Thank you." He, too, was sleepy, tousled.

Then, suddenly, she put both her arms round his neck. "Come again," she whispered. "Come again, my dear."

"Yes," he said, "I will. I will."