Sleep in Peace (15 page)

His children shared this view. Gwen would turn out of her way down a street to avoid meeting Mrs. Hinchliffe in town, and if
the encounter could not be avoided, she gave the older woman a bow so cold and haughty that it was almost more insulting than no recognition at all. Naturally Mrs. Hinchliffe's bow soon became equally insulting. Fortunately opportunities for such meetings were minimised by the fact that the Armisteads and the Hinchliffes made almost all their purchases at different shops, the Armisteads frequenting the most expensive, the Hinchliffes those of tradesmen who attended Cromwell Street Chapel.

Certain business communications between Mr. Armistead and his tenant proved at first indispensable, but the two men eased these for themselves by the plan of sending messages to each other by their sons. Whereas Ludo loathed these visits across the archway with all his heart, and rarely did his errand to his father's satisfaction, Edward enjoyed them, and usually returned, not only with his mission triumphantly accomplished, but bearing some interesting titbit of manufacturing news. But on the other hand, whereas Mr. Hinchliffe had a kindly feeling towards Ludo, regarding him as old Spencer Thwaite's grandson and professing to find certain of Spencer's traits in the lad, Mr. Armistead detested Edward cordially. Indeed they had a nickname for Edward in Blackshaw House; they called him:
The Supercilious Young Man
.

Mr. Armistead had advertised for his old workpeople, and most of those in the relevant departments returned to him. The shuttles began to fly again in the Blackshaw looms, and by working early and late, continually wheedling the bank and cajoling merchants, Mr. Armistead managed to satisfy his spinner (with the aid of Mr. Hinchliffe's punctually paid rent) and make his way. He and Ludo went to the mill before breakfast every morning nowadays, except on Saturdays, when Ludo went alone. As for Mr. Hinchliffe, he soon prospered; the Hudley manufacturers were glad to be able to send the fine cloths they had begun to manufacture to dye and finish nearer home than Annotsfield. Among his customers
was not, however, Alfred Armistead, who preferred the inconvenience of a lengthier transport to dealing with a “cad”. Presently there was no further need for business negotiations between the firms, and the Armistead-Hinchliffe connection was entirely severed.

“As if we hadn't enough to bother about to-day, without this!” said Gwen.

“This” was Laura's womanhood, which had come on her suddenly just as the sisters were dressing to go to Ashworth to see Grandmamma Armistead, who had sent word that she was ill. As a result they were later in leaving the house than they had intended, and had to hurry down the streets to the station.

Gwen was carrying an old sealskin coat which Grandmamma had asked them to bring to her. “Though it's too far gone to be any use,” grumbled Gwen. The brocade lining was old and torn but a rich gold in colour. Rain began to fall; Gwen clicked her tongue and turned the coat inside out to protect the fur. A passing workman shouted cheerfully:

“It's plain to see which side you're on, missy!”

Gwen, colouring angrily, rapidly reversed the coat.

“Why? What did he mean?” wondered Laura.

“Don't you know
anything
, Laura?” snapped Gwen. “It's Election Day, and yellow is the Liberal colour.”

“Oh, I see,” said Laura.

“Blue is the Conservative colour. The Liberals are winning, Papa says,” Gwen instructed her. “It's terrible. We shall all be ruined.”

Ashworth was a dismal place, Laura thought; all brick! (Hudley was built, and therefore to Laura it seemed proper for all
towns to be built, of solid West Riding stone.) Gwen had been to Ashworth before, but Laura never. As the sisters walked up the dingy little brick-built street, Laura suddenly found herself in such sharp collision with Gwen that she stumbled and almost fell. Turning in surprise, for her sister was neat and precise in walking as in all other activities, she found that Gwen was edging her towards one of the white-stoned doorsteps which lined the pavement.

“Here we are,” she said.

“What,
here?”
exclaimed Laura.

Gwen nodded, and her look of embarrassment showed that she knew Laura's opinion of the house as a residence for their aunt, and shared it. “Aunt Mary's a widow,” she said hastily, plying the vertical letter box knocker, “and not very well-off, you know.”

As they waited, the whole street suddenly shook, there was a sound of subterranean thunder, and from a round brick erection, apparently a short though Gargantuan chimney, there poured out thick nauseous yellow smoke. Laura looked at Gwen in alarm.

“It's only a train passing through the tunnel,” explained Gwen impatiently. “That's a smoke vent.”

The door was now opened to them by Grandmamma herself. Laura was shocked by her appearance. Not that she looked ill; but she was wearing a black stuff dress with a limp tucker, and a black cotton apron noticeably stained; her thick fingers were not very clean, and her head, only sparsely covered by her strands of white hair, lacked a cap. She threw her hands up in surprise when she saw Laura and Gwen, and exclaimed: “Eh! It's the childer!” in an accent of pleasure. Almost at once, however, her face darkened, and she fumbled uneasily with the jet buttons at her breast; it was clear that she disliked being thus found in her working clothes.

“I was just clearing up. You should have sent me word you were coming,” she said severely to Gwen.

Gwen embarked on a voluble explanation of how she had discovered
just this morning that to-day was the only possible day for their visit. It was quite untrue, so that Laura sickened to listen to it—but then, she reflected drearily, it seemed probable that Grandmamma herself had lied about her illness, since she did not now so much as mention it, her real motive being the desire to receive her sealskin cape. Laura sighed, and felt a passionate distaste for both of them.

“Sit you down,” commanded Grandmamma briefly, pressing the sisters into chairs by the hearth. She swung together two doors of grained yellow wood which concealed a stone sink, and without any further word left the room. Her slow, heavy steps could be heard above their heads; she was almost certainly changing her dress.

Gwen rocked herself moodily; Laura looked about her in dismay. The hearth was a kitchen hearth, with ovens like the kitchen ovens at home, and a pair of white china poodles with crinkly manes faced each other across patterned tiles within the tall steel fender. The window was curtained with very coarse, very yellow lace, tied back with green ribbon; on a small table placed symmetrically in front of it stood an aspidistra, a frill of green crinkled paper tied round its pot with a ribbon sash. The chairs and settee were of slippery black horsehair, with knitted woollen antimacassars of striped red and green. Everything was, mercifully, clean and orderly, but it was more like a working man's house, say the Byrams', reflected Laura uncomfortably, than the house of the mother of Papa.

Grandmamma now returned. She had put on her second best black silk dress, her silk apron, her gold chain, her white shawl, and her best lace cap with the pink ribbon. In her hand Mrs. Armistead carried her best bonnet, the one with the black satin strings and the ostrich feather. A spasm of irritation passed over Gwen's face when she saw it, for she feared Mrs. Armistead was about to ask her to re-trim the bonnet. The renovation of Grandmamma's caps and bonnets was a difficult task, and one which, on
account of Mrs. Armistead's criticism when she did not like the result (and she very rarely liked the result), Gwen particularly disliked, though she performed it dutifully and well. Sure enough Grandmamma began:

“The feather wants cleaning. I thought you'd take it back and get it done up for me.”

“I should have thought Auntie Mary would have done your bonnets for you now,” threw out Gwen with some asperity.

“She's no hand at it. There she is now,” said Grandmamma, as sounds were heard from the rear of the house—evidently they all used the back door here, thought Laura.

In a moment a middle-aged woman came diffidently into the room. It was easy in a way to see that she was Papa's sister, for she had his slight figure and dark curly hair, and Ludo's velvet eyes, but her roughened hands, her bowed shoulders, the air of a lifetime of work which hung about her personality, contrasted painfully with Papa's dapper elegance. She wore a perfectly terrible black beaded bodice, such as Laura had never seen on any acquaintance of hers, but the cloth of her navy skirt was good— it had probably come from Blackshaw Mills, guessed Laura. Auntie Mary smiled at the sisters with great sweetness, and kissed Laura tenderly, observing in a quiet, light tone that she had not seen the child since she was christened. Laura blushed at this undoubted fact, and blushed again because she was glad of it.

“You'll have a cup of tea,” said Auntie Mary mildly.

To Laura's relief the tea, when it came, was served very much as at Blackshaw House, on thick but good blue and white china. The butter too was sound. But when they were about to leave for their train, a visit to the lavatory revealed that it stood outside, at the bottom of the yard. Laura's cheeks burned as she crossed the tiny square of flags; it seemed to her as long as a station platform. A last argument between Gwen and Grandmamma about the best bonnet, which resulted, as Laura had known it would, in Gwen's transport of the bonnet to Blackshaw House in a white cardboard
box, delayed the sisters unduly, so that they had to hurry to the station through the now heavy rain. Laura, forcing herself to walk quickly, felt unutterably, poignantly wretched. The world was not in any respect what it had seemed yesterday. Disgusting and shameful things happened inside one's body, one was never sure when Papa was going to be ruined again, and one's relations were not ladies as one had thought, but people who lived in a dingy little brick house over a tunnel with an outside lavatory and a kitchen range in the dining-room; people who told lies.

That evening when with heavy head and painful body Laura turned to her home-lessons, she found to her amazement that her writing had changed. Her pen refused to form her customary large, round, upright script, but instead described thin forward-sloping letters. The nib spluttered over these unfamiliar shapes; Laura begged a new nib, very fine and glossy, from Ludo's store, and wrote her composition in the new style, very painstakingly. Alas! A couple of days later, when the exercise was returned, it bore the severe red-ink comment:
Copy this out again in proper writing
. Laura tried hard to obey, but her script shook between the two styles uncertainly, and for a time she never knew, when she put pen to paper, in which script she was about to write. Panic sometimes descended on her when she raised her head and saw the messy page she had perpetrated, for her mistresses, perplexed by their neatest pupil's lapse from grace, were apt to scold. If school was to fail her too, thought Laura! It was a prospect she simply could not face; heartsick, she strained earnestly to make up in other ways for heir seeming wilfulness, and partially succeeded. But the doubt, the suspense was always there.

It was lucky, thought Laura, that just now, when outward things were so unhappy, she had found a new consolation. It began one morning a day or two after the 1906 Election. She awoke in the middle of an exciting dream, in which the sea was rolling up too high on dreary sands, rising relentlessly, while Laura and other vague figures fled from it, scrambling about amid the iron
pillars of a huge dimly seen erection like a pier. Suddenly the waves turned into the curled petals of chrysanthemums, and broke in bronze and gold and crimson on the drab twilit shore. Laura awoke remembering the dream; rejecting its last phase as too fantastic, she allowed her mind to play idly with the rest, and continued its story to a point where a girl, like Laura but not Laura, showed courage and resource in saving the others' lives from the advancing tide. For this she received high commendation from a vague masculine figure in a school cap—Laura could not imagine where he had come from; he was not at all like Ludo. For several days in odd moments of leisure, Laura continued or repeated this story, making the vague figures clearer every time. Other dreams she treated in the same way. In Laura's dreams she was nearly always escaping from something—a lion, perhaps, a kingly tyrant, savages with spears; they made good bases for the superstructures of heroism which Laura raised upon them. So did the events of history, and incidents one read in books. Soon these stories, “dreams” as she called them as distinct from “real dreams”, formed the most important part of Laura's life. As she paced the streets of Hudley at Gwen's side—looking, said Gwen, half dazed and as though she couldn't say boo to a goose—Laura's eyes were filled, not with the smoke-blackened houses, bleak hills and mill chimneys of reality (and no “dream” ever had its scene in Hudley), but with prancing white palfreys nobly caparisoned in red and gold, ancient castles, banners waving in the sunshine, knights in armour riding huge black chargers through leafy woods. The riders of palfreys and chargers went through the most extraordinary and wonderful adventures, of which the main theme was always that the rejected and despised, the girls who were not Laura but very like Laura, were really the finest and best, and presently became, in the words of the psalm, “the headstone of the corner”, so that they were admired and loved by all. If Laura were alone for a second, she flew at once to her imaginary world; her walks to school were brilliant, if rather exhausting, adventure
serials. At night, as soon as Gwen had turned off the gas, Laura lay still and happy, her heart thudding, her throat dry with excitement, conducting her personages through the next instalment of their thrilling tale. Oh, it was a richly coloured, lovely,
satisfying
world! Nothing mattered so much now—not sordid money matters, or the odd doubts one had about Papa, or Gwen's scolding, or Ludo's remoteness, or the horrible physical mess of life, or even her uncertain handwriting—nothing really mattered, for Laura had her dreams.