Cold Pastoral (12 page)

Josephine had written characteristically.

Dear Sir,

It's not unexpected what you plan to do. I never thought to get her back.
It will be like thinking of her passed on to Heaven. It would be a poor life
for such as her in the Cove. I saw that from her birth, and perhaps
this has come in answer to prayers. I've wondered if the sea gave her a
bit of wildness, and it's not wildness that's boldness—in the manner of
speaking. I mind what you say about taking her right over, and me and
her Pop having no claim once the papers are signed. I can't say it's not
hard, as she was the light of my life; but I wouldn't stand in her way. Her
father says I can do as I like, as she was always my child and he'll have
nothing to say. I'll sign the papers if you send them along. The Priest
will instruct me where to put my name. For that, sir, I must speak about
the religion. I know you are good people, but for one I can't see what
happiness there is outside the Catholic faith. I would have her remain a
Catholic and observe the rules of her Church. I'm sorry you don't have the
jewel of faith yourself, but there's such a thing as invincible ignorance, and
to them that haven't seen the light, God will be good. My child has. If she
can remain a Catholic, I will give her up. If she can't, please send her
back to the Cove. I don't hold the world above her hope of Heaven. If, sir,
the unlikely happens that I ever come to town, can I visit her once?

Respectfully yours,
     
JOSEPHINE KEILLY

Lady Fitz Henry had frowned a little. On reflection she made an announcement.

“The woman is sincere, Philip. Mary can go to Mass. Any bias will be mitigated by other associations. It's necessary to dilute a great deal of her training. Her mind is a medley of folk-lore and religion, and she compares everything to the elements and the Saints in Heaven.”

In her rootless acceptance of her adoption Philip found grounds for concern.

“Mater, is it human to shed her past like that. She doesn't even mind leaving her mother.”

His mother was easy and reassuring. “Natural enough, I think. It's merely sentimental to cling to the places where there's little harmony. I'm sure she made her own world. I understand her because she's so like David. He could always pass on to something else. If Mary ever belongs, it will be a development. There's one thing I see in her—”

“What?” he asked quickly as his mother paused.

Lady Fitz Henry went on like a woman trying to say something significant in an impersonal way.

“She will always have a life of her own. At present she lives in a world she can inhabit at any moment. A strict routine may eradicate that. But early years count, and she's very self-contained. To the possessive type that may be unsatisfactory. Again like David. Can you imagine him breaking his heart because one special thing went wrong?”

Philip frowned, speaking shortly. “No, he'd translate Catullus or something. His affections are not fixed.”

“Quite wrong, my son,” said his mother coolly. “His affections are very fixed but they can always expand. He and Felice have never had an estrangement, and I must admit before the war I thought Felice was the last girl I could anticipate. Marriage—”

“Like politics, makes strange bedfellows,” he said lightly.

“The oddest people marry,” said his mother impressively, as if he must receive the information seriously.

Philip looked as if he was ready to agree. Then he frowned again.

“Will Mary be like that?” he asked vaguely.

“Perhaps not, if we make her one of ourselves, but it's wise to take people as they are, Philip, and not as one wishes them to be.”

Philip went, conscious of a warning. On his way to a surgery in another part of the town he reflected. There was no fault in the child except in the things dividing her from himself. He worked with greater zest since she came. She had been an extremely co-operative patient, docile in his hands and Spartan in endurance of pain. Now she was where he could give her closer direction. She could be moulded! He turned his attention to his profession, convinced that he knew Mary better than his mother.

It was his wish to show her the rooms behind closed doors, and she stayed honourably outside until he could give her his leisure.

The drawing-room was fascinating in its chill formality and ornate fixtures, but it held the air of untenanted places. Heat was maintained to preserve the furniture, and Hannah kept it swept and dusted. In spite of its care it smelt of desolation. A tall white marble mantelpiece dominated it like an iceberg wall. Combined with the icicle chandelier Mary Immaculate had the feeling of a dead winter day. It was necessary to feel something from a room, and this did not give back the voices of the other parts of the house. Tables with gallery tops, cabinets holding glass and Chelsea figures, chairs with faded damask did not inspire her sense of touch.

“Philip,” she asked, standing in the extreme centre of the room, “did you use it much, even when you were rich?”

“I didn't or any of my brothers. It was principally for entertaining. When the time came for me to come home we were too poor for parties. My mother was never a halfway woman, and if she couldn't give dinners with the right wines she didn't give any. After father's death she stopped forever, and I can't induce her to ask anyone in. She doesn't seem to want it. That's one of the reasons why I'm so glad to have you with us, Mary. I like to think of her with a fresh interest. You do try and please her a great deal. Mary…”

He paused and seated himself in a slender Hepplewhite chair in which he looked long and thin.

“Mary,” he said, as if he were talking to a contemporary, “have you noticed how frail Mater's hands are?”

“Yes, I have, Philip,” she said, sitting down on the extreme edge of a settee. “And her nails are not as pretty as the rest of her.”

“Symptoms,” he said with a little shrug. “Mater has a weak heart.”

“Oh!” she said in illumination. “Is that why she gets dizzy when she stoops in the garden?”

“The very reason,” he said with worried brown eyes. “I didn't know it was so noticeable. It's a point of honour with her not to fuss. You can save her a great deal by running up and down stairs. Don't pretend, you know, but make it unobtrusive and kind.”

“Indeed I will,” she said happily. “I love to wait on her and walk past the stairs and the gallery.” Then as she digested the mater's weakness she frowned at her son.

“You're a doctor, why don't you do something?”

He gave a slight shrug accepting inadequacy.

“Worn-out organs can't be repaired, my dear. They can only be nurtured. Mater's grief was too repressed, and the strain took a toll of her heart. What are you frowning about? There's no special worry.”

“I'm not worrying,” she said reprovingly. “I'm trying to remember. They were always doing things with herbs and roots. There was crackerberry leaves for indigestion and coltsfoot for consumption, but hearts—what did Mrs. Whelan boil up for hearts? There was a man in the Cove as blue as a whort—”

Philip smiled with contented tolerance. “Would it be foxglove?” he asked helpfully.

“Philip, you know!”she said, springing towards him. “Can't we find some foxgloves?”

Rising, he put his hands on her shoulders.

“We have lots of it, Mary,” he said gently; “in bottles, called digitalis. If Mater gets really ill she'll have every remedy known to man, but hearts are uncertain things.”

His tone was natural but the child felt her mater slipping away. She had seemed so solid and permanent. It was like a heresy to think of death touching her. She had seen it often. It was public in the Cove. Shrouded windows and open doors, people rocking and moaning, and men carrying a long box up the slopes of the ravine. The child shivered. Chary and economical in her touch of others, she pressed her head against Philip's coat. Tall for her age, she came up to his breast.

“Philip,” she said in distress; “don't let her die. Where would I be without her now?”

“With me,” he said possessively. “You're my child.”

In David's room she deserted him for places he did not want her to go.

On the second flat he threw open a door.

“David,” he said, as if that were sufficient explanation.

“Oh!” she said entranced. “This looks like a lot of things.”

“It is,” he said dryly. “The result of many hobbies. When he comes out without Felice he stays here and drops back. When she comes they have a cottage about twelve miles from town.”

“Don't you like her?” she asked acutely. “The house is so big it could hold as many wives as Bluebeard's.”

“Yes, we like her, but she likes to flow over with cats and dogs and birds with broken wings. Then the cats eat the birds and the dogs fight with the cats and there's confusion, which the mater hates.”

“Sure, they sound cracked,” she said sunnily.

Stepping to a wall with faded paper she examined a picture. “Isn't that the Place falling down?”

“Yes, though I wonder you recognise it.”

“I just can,” she admitted.

Philip explained. “David's painting came after his music. He thought distortion looked easy, so he drew the Place falling down.”

She wanted to ask what it all meant, but there was no time. David's room had zest. A small upright piano bore a stack of music, pictures hung on the walls in wild array, bits of sculpture stood peering from bits of china, books listed on a shelf and common glass jars held whitish-looking objects floating in liquid. Squealing suddenly, she backed away.

“I don't like those dead things.”

“Neither did we,” he admitted. “That was the invertebrate period when he was overcome with the iridescence on the back of an earthworm.”

The child giggled and went back to the bottles.

“It's a snail, Philip.”

“That's what I thought,” he said gravely. “He said it was Helix Hortensis.”

“Daft,”she said, going back to the pictures. “He must have improved when he painted those.”

Philip removed some clutter from a chair and sat down.

“I must tell him that, Mary,” he said chuckling. “Those happen to be prints by Cézanne, El Greco and Picasso—his models for distortion. Don't ask me who they are. You'll learn in time. Mater will tell you.”

“What will he be doing this year, Philip?”

“Don't ask a doctor, my child. We're going salmon-fishing in July, and he'll wade into the pool and dream without casting.”

“Will I be there, Philip? My father casts the longest line in the Cove. I can cast, myself, only I don't like it much.”

“No, you won't be there,” he said, joining her at the mantelpiece. “You must look after Mater. Later, Felice is coming out and they'll open the cottage. You'll love them both.”

“Sure I will,” she said confidently, poking round the clutter on the mantelpiece. Suddenly her hands clasped and lifted a group of slender bronze figures.

“Oh!” she said in delight. “I know just how they feel.”

Three nude girls were running off a stand. Elongated, eager and elfish, they bent forward in an attitude of flight. Hand in hand they suggested intensified youth speeding full tilt into life. In touching the bronze her hands held the same long look. Replacing it on the mantelpiece, her hands stayed on it with a sensuousness of touch.

“What a pity they can't get on,” she whispered. “They're held like the trees in the silver thaw. Can't bend—”

“What do you mean, held?”

Philip's voice suggested frost.

“You know, taken as they went at the very tip-top.”

“I know nothing of the sort,” he said firmly.

An opening had arrived for which he had waited.

“Mary, I want to speak to you about this fantasy life of yours.”

She went quite still, retaining a hold on a bronze leg.

“Yes,” she said politely, giving him a quick look. His nostrils were moving just a little. Always a portent of seriousness with him, she knew she had to listen. With her body restored to radiant health she had become a traitor to his idea about her adventure.

“The life you led in your own world became full of fantasy because you had nothing to absorb your overflow of energy. It was natural to emphasise the legends of folklore—”

“What is folk-lore?” she asked politely.

“Don't be evasive, Mary. You know what I mean. The belief in fairies—”

“Oh, the Little People,” she said as if acclaiming friends she had been unable to identify.

“Yes, the Little People,” he said patiently. “Those things are picturesque if they don't distort daily life.”

“Like David's painting?” she asked blandly.

He frowned at her acuteness.

“Perhaps, like David's pictures, Mary; but his are the results of well-rounded taste and not wild undisciplined impulses that…”

He paused but she said nothing, and he found himself watching her pale head, the curve of her cheek and long brown eyelashes.

“That what, Philip?” she prompted.

“It's hard to say, Mary. I couldn't formulate your delirium in hospital, but it was a strange blend of fantastic beliefs. You were lost in the woods, Mary. You're convinced of that, surely?”

His tone demanded the answer, spoken to the three nude girls held in bronze.

“When I was in hospital I was sure I was just lost and suffering for my foolishness. If anybody had asked me then if a fairy had tried to run up on my feet—”

“They didn't,” he said sharply.

“No, of course not,” she agreed without rancour.