Turf or Stone (22 page)

The following Friday Mary was dressing herself in the room where Matt had last visited her. She stooped and kissed Shannon as he sat on the floor trying to button his shoes. He was shouting.

‘Be quiet. I’ll take you downstairs in a minute, and you can play all the morning in the kitchen. You’ll be a good boy, won’t you?’ When she had put on her hat and coat she looked anxiously in the mirror, and the eyes on the reflected face probed deeper than vanity. She had a look of stony-cold resolution.

She carried Shannon downstairs to the kitchen, where the cook was reading the paper to Gladys as she washed up. Clouds of sour-smelling steam rolled out of the scullery, water slopped, crockery rattled as if carelessly handled. The reading stopped as the cook flung away the paper, holding out her arms to Shannon.

‘Here he is, the little rascal,’ she said, taking him from Mary and immediately beginning to play with his reddish curls.

‘Thank you ever so much,’ said Mary hurriedly.

‘That’s nothing… I’m used to children. You needn’t to hurry, you’ve plenty of time. Good luck,’ said the cook, waving Shannon’s arm up and down.

Gladys also wished Mary well, but she was a little in awe of her and did not express her feelings by anything more than a wide smile, while she stood wiping a steaming plate. Mary hesitated a moment in the doorway, looked at her watch, and walked rapidly away. At the station she was greeted by a thin sharp-faced young woman with patchily red cheeks, who came out of the waiting room. She was dressed in the uniform of a parish nurse. She clasped Mary’s hand.

‘I thought you were going to miss it.’

They had not long to wait. When the train arrived they got into an empty carriage and sat all the way to Salus without saying a word.

On the same train were Matt and Phoebe, in separate compartments. Matt was travelling from Chepsford, where he had spent the night, Phoebe jumped into the train just as it was beginning to move. She was alone; other and newer projects for amusement prevented Dorothy from accompanying her to the police court. It was the one stroke of luck that had been dealt to her.

She did not know the way. Having inquired she was directed to the police station. It seemed very quiet – there were no sightseers treading the neat yellow gravel entrance. Hearing voices, she knocked on an unofficial-looking green
door, which was opened by a woman in a coloured pinafore, who continued to turn a mangle with her right hand while she held the door knob with her left. She directed Phoebe to the police court, which was in quite a different quarter of the town. Afraid that she would be late, Phoebe ran all the way.

The building resembled a chapel outside. The walls were of grey stone, the door yellow and varnished. A line of cars was drawn up by the kerb.

‘Is this the police court?’ she asked an errand boy.

‘Yes, miss.’

She waited until her panting had subsided, then pushed open the door. It led into a narrow lobby, which was penetrated by a sequence of orderly voices. She dare not enter until an old man, whose hideously scarred features and huge diseased nose made her flinch, pushed his way phlegmatically through the inner door, as if he had paid for a ticket to witness this entertainment. Confused and self-conscious she followed him to find herself confronted by a bare-headed policeman who looked at her inquiringly.

‘I want to watch,’ she whispered.

‘Come in.’

She moved forward. The place was crowded so that for the first few moments she could make out no more than the backs of the standing people. She received a vague impression of grey shoulders, craned necks, and a line of policemen, who all looked strange through being without helmets. It was a foggy morning and the lights were on.

She could hear balanced voices, but she could not see the speakers. When she had recovered from the solitary plunge among so many strangers, she made her way very
quietly towards a window from whence she was able to see clear across the court. It was a long room; the roof was supported by slender beams, the windows were pointed, each containing a circle of rose-coloured glass. In front of the magistrates’ circular desk were two green baize-covered tables spread with papers; at one sat the magistrates’ clerk, and his clerk who was taking notes, at the other a newspaper reporter, a lawyer, and the chief constable. Two thin ranks of bare-headed policemen stood against the wall. The dock and witness box were on the right and left of the magistrates’ desk. A woman was stepping into the witness box. The first distinct words Phoebe heard were the oath: ‘I swear by Almighty God to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.’

They were followed by the sound of a kiss.

The next moment she saw Matt’s head on the opposite side. He was pale, his eyes were cast down. Phoebe locked her cold hands together. She smelled a warm odour and remembered that there were breweries in the street behind the police court.

Six magistrates were on the bench this morning, including one intent woman who sat with folded arms drawing a grey glove through her fingers. The chairman spoke authoritatively, fixing his eyes on the shiny pewter inkpot at his side, or raising them in a sudden fierce arrogant stare. These were men as lords of creation, quiet and proud, altogether different from themselves, as they usually appeared. A woman could not but respect and detest them. The young constable who had spoken to her stepped softly to her side, bent forward and whispered:
‘Why don’t you go and sit down, miss? There’s an empty chair.’

He pointed. She softly went and sat down between two women just in front of the red cord which divided the court. The crowd was now behind her and she came into the magistrates’ full view. She could not help thinking that they stared at her inquisitively. At the same time Matt perceived her. He started, and drew farther back, dreading her melancholy eyes. He was like a man in a vacuum. Phoebe was in torment.

The magistrates retired. She looked across the empty desk. Above the chairman’s seat the royal arms hung suspended on a dark shield; below them there was a greenish patch on the grey wall which looked like mildew. She thought it resembled a ship.

Behind her a hum broke out such as one hears when passing under a council school windows. It blotted out the monotonous rasping of a saw. The air was growing close.

The constables were standing against the wall with their hands behind them, and the magistrates’ clerk had risen and was talking earnestly. The man who was standing in the dock moved his feet, as though he were impatient, and sighed deeply. He mumbled something, and gripped the railing. When the magistrates re-entered, the court rose in sharply cut silence and the chairman delivered the verdict, while his arrogant eyes travelled scornfully over the assembly. This man, who was well known to Phoebe, was the impersonation of public code, and therefore her greatest dread. He possessed a loud voice and a bullying manner, which were perfectly in keeping with his appearance: a narrow skull, a bony face, curved nose,
small mouth, flat aristocratic ears…. She thanked God Dorothy was not present. On his left sat the lady in grey, and a burly man of sallow complexion, whose enormous black eyebrows spanned his waxen forehead; on his right a stout small man with crinkly hair and a curled moustache who was playing with a pencil, a white-haired sickly man who sat holding his chin in his hands, and, lastly, an
olive-skinned
man who wore gold-rimmed spectacles.

Afterwards they would talk…

‘A queer case today. You know, Kilminster.’ And so on. Disgraceful.

Not two yards from her a reporter to the
Chepsford Times
sat taking notes in shorthand.

‘Easter Probert!’

Phoebe started so convulsively that the woman sitting next to her drew away. She stared spitefully, jerked her chin, and opening her expensive bag, took out a lace handkerchief and buried her red nose in it.

Easter clove the crowd from the very back of the court. He was dressed in a seedy blue coat and waistcoat, a filthy white flannel shirt with the band wrenched off, and rusty canvas trousers. He wore neither collar nor tie, but a black and white spotted handkerchief, tied round his neck in an untidy knot under the ear. His broad leather belt, loose and low on his hips, was secured by a silver buckle of intricate pattern. He carried his head low, almost hanging, and yet his wide-open eyes looked up. He was smiling defiantly, and to Phoebe he seemed incarnate malice.

She prayed.

‘Easter Probert, you are charged with persistent cruelty to your wife. Are you guilty or not?’

‘Guilty,’ he replied without a shade of change upon his face.

Phoebe’s lips were moving. He bent his enigmatical gaze upon her head.

The chairman called: ‘Is Mrs Probert there?’ and tapped his pointed fingers.

Mary, dressed entirely in black, her face set, took her place in the witness box. She repeated the oath after the constable, and Phoebe noticed something significant which seemed to escape the attention of all present.

‘I swear by Almighty God,’ the constable intoned.

‘I swear by Almighty God…’

‘That the evidence I shall give,’

‘That the evidence I shall give…’

‘Shall be the truth,’

‘Shall be the truth…’

‘The whole truth,’

‘The whole truth…’

‘And nothing but the truth,’

‘So help me God,’ she concluded rapidly without repeating the last phrase as it left the constable’s lips. In the silence Phoebe heard her kiss. She moved her head slightly, took a pace forward and looked intently at the magistrates. Easter gazed at her obliquely across the reporter’s head. Phoebe could no longer bear to watch – she had no hope.

‘Just tell the magistrates what you have to say,’ said the magistrates’ clerk, loudly and encouragingly.

She began inaudibly.

‘Speak up, magistrates can’t hear.’

She cleared her throat and began once more in a firmer voice.

The crowd gaped at the elegant woman in her long coat, who with her hands joined, was speaking deliberately, and then at her husband, that ragged man in the dock, whose teeth were bared as though he would bite. That was no husband for a lady. Listen!

‘I beg that you will allow me to say a few words before I tell you the circumstances which have brought me here to plead for a separation from my husband
at any cost
.’

There was an infinitesimal pause before she continued: ‘I know that I’m not an innocent supplicant – in my own mind I am convinced that in much I am as guilty as he…’

‘If you are guilty you should be in the dock yourself,’ observed the chairman with a grim smile, casting his eyes around to see what effect his humour had on his listeners. There was laughter, and the olive-skinned magistrate scowled: he found it difficult to concentrate.

‘Silence.’

‘If I could attain my object I would stand there gladly,’ Mary cried passionately. She resumed more quietly: ‘I have to reveal matters which will implicate me deeply. Even if I wished I doubt if I could rouse much sympathy for myself in anyone present. But please remember that there is one other than my husband and myself to be considered – in fact, the only one, my child. I bitterly resent the brutal treatment that has been inflicted on me since my marriage,’ she went on, her eyes flashing into rage in spite of herself, and looking no supplicant indeed, but a fierce resentful woman.

The magistrate with the thick eyebrows leant towards the chairman. He nodded sideways and requested that she would come to the point.

‘It is the point, the very heart of it, the only reason why I am here to throw mud in my own face!’ she retorted energetically.

‘That may be so, but at least, there’s no point in losing your temper and answering rudely,’ said the chairman sharply. Mary flushed, took out her handkerchief, and wiped her lips.

‘I am sorry.’

‘Go on.’

‘But as I am on oath, so I swear that I am pleading for my son, not for myself. Just to get him away… that’s all, if you will remember when you hear…’

She swallowed. Her face tilted back so that the exposed throat, curved outwards against her high collar, had turned livid.

‘Speak up.’

‘I was married two years ago last February and my child was born at the end of the following June.’

‘Did you marry your husband because you were expecting this child?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Is he the father of this child?’

‘Yes. He is.’

‘Go on.’

‘Excuse me if I go into details but I wish my husband’s attitude to me to be clear from the very beginning. On the morning of our wedding he arrived at the church without a ring, and he boasted to me afterwards that he wouldn’t dream of buying one. We were married with one which he always wore himself – it is on his hand now.’

The magistrates glanced carelessly at Easter’s dirty
hands. He did not move a muscle.

‘Directly after we were married he took the ring away again. He pinched my arm and when I shrank away he told me to go home by myself. He pushed me down on the road. After that he took a bus into Salus and left me.’

‘And how long had you been married?’ inquired the chairman.

‘About half an hour.’

The chairman again glanced around.

‘He made an early beginning.’

There was more tittering. Mary resumed.

‘Between our wedding day and the birth of our child, he ill-treated me on several occasions and habitually used filthy language to me. Often he was just malicious and incredibly spiteful; sometimes he was utterly brutal, especially towards a woman in my condition. Once I went for a walk with him; he said he wished to take a thorn out of his hand and told me to walk on slowly. I offered to do it for him and he refused. When I was about twenty yards in front of him he started to throw stones at me, picking them from a heap of flints by the road. Several struck me, and one cut open the side of my hand. He used to come in very late at night and wake me by pulling my hair, and then he would play an old gramophone until it nearly drove me mad. I was almost off my head… there was no peace, always blows and curses.’