The Caxley Chronicles (40 page)

'Come away now,' she cried, 'and go down through our farm yard. You'll be destroyed that way!'

He laughed aloud at the memory.

'What now?' queried Maisie, resting on her oars. Bright drops slid down their length and plopped into the lake. He told her.

'Once when I was out with Philip,' she began animatedly, and then stopped. Edward watched her expression change swiftly from gaiety to sadness. This was the first time that she had mentioned her dead fiance's name. They had not talked of their past at all during these few lovely days.

She looked away across the lake and spoke in a low but steady voice, as though she had made up her mind to speak without restraint.

'Once when I was out with Philip,' she repeated, and continued with the anecdote. But Edward did not hear it. He was too engrossed with his own thoughts. From his own
experience, he guessed that this moment was one of great advance for Maisie's progress towards full recovery from her grief. If Ireland had been able to thaw the ice which held her heart, then that alone would make this holiday unforgettable.

He became conscious that she was silent, and smiling at him.

'You haven't heard a word, have you?' she asked. 'Don't fib. I don't mind. D'you know that something wonderful has just happened to me?'

'Yes,' said Edward gently. 'I can guess.'

'I've never spoken about him. I couldn't. But somehow, here, with nothing but lake and sky, it seems easy. My family mind so much for me, I don't dare to talk of it. I can't face the emotion it brings forth.'

'I've had my share of that,' replied Edward. 'Someone—I think it was Uncle Bertie—told me once that it's the hardest thing in the world to receive pity. The damnable thing is that it takes so many forms—and all of them hell for the victim.'

He found himself telling the girl about his own family's attitude to his broken marriage, and the comfort he had found in his solitary life.

'We've been lucky in having that,' agreed Maisie. 'My Caxley flat has been a haven. I should have gone mad if I had been living at home. There's a lot to be said for a single existence. Wasn't it Katherine Mansfield who said that living alone had its compensations? And that if you found a hair in your honey it was a comfort to know it was your own?'

An oar slipped from its rowlock and the boat rocked.

'Here, let me row for a bit,' said Edward, restored to the present. They crept gingerly past each other exchanging places, and Edward pulled steadily towards the nearest island.

They picnicked on salmon and cucumber sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs, afterwards lying replete in the sun. A moorhen piped from the reeds nearby. The sun was warm upon their closed eyes. A little breeze shivered upon the surface of the lake and ruffled their hair.

'Damn going back,' said Edward lazily. 'I could stay here for ever.'

'Me too,' said Maisie ungrammatically. 'I feel quite different. You've been a great help, letting me talk about Philip. It was a thousand pities we never married, in more ways than one. Somehow one tends to build up a sort of deity from the person one's lost, and I think that is wrong. If we'd had a few years of married ups and downs perhaps I should have been able to bear it more bravely.'

'In some ways,' said Edward, 'you miss them more.' He remembered, with sharp poignancy, the perfume which Angela had used and how terribly it had affected him after their parting.

He propped himself on one elbow and looked down upon his companion. She looked very young and vulnerable, a long grass clamped between her teeth, her eyes shut against the sunlight. She'd had a tough road to travel, just as he had. Fortunately, he was further along that stony track, and knew that, in the end, it grew easier. He tried to tell her this.

'It gets better, you know, as you go on. All that guff about Time, the Great Healer, which irritates one so when one's still raw—Well, it's perfectly true. I've just got out of the let-me-lick-my-wounds-in-solitude state, which you're still in, and all the things which wise old people like Sep told me are coming true. Hope comes back, and purpose, and a desire to do something worthwhile—and, best of all, the perfectly proper
feeling that it is
right
to be happy, and not to feel guilty when cheerfulness breaks in.'

Maisie opened her grey eyes, threw aside the grass and smiled at him.

'Dear Edward,' she said, 'you are an enormous comfort.'

They returned reluctantly to Dublin. Edward was to go back the next day to England. Maisie was going to her aunt's for a little longer.

'When do you go back to Caxley?' asked Edward, through the car window as Michael prepared to drive him to the station.

'Term starts on September the twelfth,' said Maisie. 'A Thursday. I'll probably go back on Tuesday or Wednesday.'

'I shall be down on Friday evening for the weekend,' said Edward with decision. 'Keep it free. Promise?'

'Promise,' nodded Maisie, as the car drove away.

D
URING THE
golden autumn months that followed Edward's visit to Ireland, work at the factory quickened its pace. Edward was as enthusiastic and conscientious as ever, but it did not escape the eyes of his partners that all his weekends were now spent at Caxley.

Elizabeth, in the flat above, watched Edward's car roar away early on Saturday mornings, or sometimes on Friday evenings, when pressure of work allowed. Aunt Mary, it seemed, was right when she predicted that Caxley would pull her attractive nephew homeward. What was she like, Elizabeth wondered, this Caxley girl who had succeeded where she had failed?

Not that she cared very much, she told herself defiantly. There were just as good fish in the sea, and the thought of spending her life in a tin-pot little dump like Caxley appalled her.

If Edward wanted to bury himself alive in a place like that, then she was glad that nothing had come of their affair. It was only, she admitted wistfully, that he was so extraordinarily handsome, and made such a wonderful escort. Meanwhile, it was no good grieving over her losses. Sensibly, she turned her attention to the other young men in her life. They might not have quite the same high standard of good looks and general eligibility as dear, lost Edward, but they were certainly more attainable.

In Caxley, of course, the tongues wagged briskly. The Howards had provided gossip of one sort or another for generations. There was that deliciously spicy affair of Sep's wife Edna's, the Caxley folk reminded each other, when Dan Crockford painted her portrait and the shameless hussy had sat for it
unchaperoned.
True, she was fully dressed, they added, with some disappointment in their tones, but Sep had been very upset about it at the time. It had happened years ago, in the reign of King Edward the Seventh in fact, but was still fresh in the memories of many old stalwarts of the market square.

Sep's rise in fortune was remembered too, and the buying of Bender North's old property, but there were few who grudged Sep his success. He bore himself modestly and his high principles were respected. Besides, he had faced enough trouble in his life with the death of his first-born in the war, and the goings-on of his second son Leslie. It must be hard to banish one's child, as Sep had done. Did he ever regret it, they asked each other? And then this last tragedy of poor Robert's! What a burden Sep had carried to be sure!

But this latest tit-bit was a pleasant one. It was a pity, of course, that Maisie Hunter was not a true-bred Caxley girl, but only a war-time arrival. On the other hand, as one pointed out to her neighbour over the garden hedge, a bit of fresh blood worked wonders in these old inter-married families of Caxley. And say what you like, if Maisie Hunter had chosen to stay all these years in Caxley, it proved that she had good sense and that she was worthy to marry into their own circle. It was to be hoped, though, that the children would take after Edward for looks. Maisie Hunter was
healthy
enough, no doubt, but certainly no oil painting—too skinny by half.

Thus flowed the gossip, but one important point was overlooked by the interested bystanders. It was taken for granted that Maisie Hunter would accept such a fine suitor with alacrity. The truth was that Edward's ardent and straightforward wooing was meeting with severe set-backs. Maisie was beset with doubts and fears which were as surprising to Edward as they were painful to the girl herself.

Was he truly in love with her, or simply ready for domesticity? Was he prompted by pity for her circumstances? The questions beat round and round in her brain, and she could find no answer.

She wondered about her own response. In the solitude of the little flat which had become so dear to her, she weighed the pros and cons of the step before her, in a tumult of confusion. She was now twenty-nine, and Edward was two years older. There was a lot to give up if she married. She was at the peak of a career she enjoyed. The idea of financial dependence was a little daunting, and she would hate to leave Caxley. She was not at all sure that she wanted to embark on the troubled seas of motherhood as soon as she married, and yet it would be best for any children they might have to start a family before she and Edward were much older.

And then, to be a
second
wife was so much more difficult than to be a
first.
Marriage, for Edward, had been such an unhappy episode. Could she make him as happy as he deserved to be? Would he secretly compare her with his first wife? Would he find her equally disappointing and demanding? Wouldn't it be safer if they didn't marry after all, she wondered, in despair?

It had all been so much simpler when she had become
engaged to Philip. They had both been very young. Love, marriage, and children had seemed so simple and straightforward then. Now everything was beset with doubts and complications. Philip's death had shaken her world so deeply, that any decision was difficult to make. Edward's patience with her vacillations made her feel doubly guilty. It was not fair to subject him to such suspense, but she could not commit herself while she was so tormented.

Thus the autumn passed for Maisie in a strange blur of intense happiness and horrid indecision. Edward came to see her each weekend, and often she travelled to London to meet him after school. In his company she was at peace, but as soon as she returned to Caxley the nagging questions began again. The Howards and Norths were dismayed at the delay in Edward's plans. It was quite apparent that he was in love. What on earth could Maisie be thinking of to shilly-shally in this way? Wasn't their Edward good enough for her?

November fogs shrouded the market square. The Cax flowed sluggishly, reflecting sullen skies as grey as pewter. People hurried home to their firesides, looked out hot-water bottles, took to mufflers, complained of rheumatic twinges, and faced the long winter months with resignation. The gloom was pierced on November 14 that year by the news of the birth of a son to the Princess Elizabeth. The church bells rang in the market square, and from village towers and steeples in the countryside around. Their joyous clamour was in Maisie's ears as she pushed a letter to Joan into the pillar box at the corner of the market place.

It had taken her a long time to write, but even longer to
decide if it should be written at all. But it was done, and now relief flooded her. All the things which she had been unable to tell Edward, she had written to his sister, and she begged for advice as unbiased as possible in the circumstances. Maisie respected Joan's good sense. In these last few agitated weeks, she had longed to talk with her, to discuss her doubts with someone of her own sex, age and background.

She awaited the reply from Ireland with as much patience as she could muster. No doubt Joan would take as much time and trouble with her answer as she herself had taken in setting out her problems. As the days passed, she began to wonder if it had been kind to press Joan on the matter. After all, she was an exceptionally busy person, and young Sarah took much of her attention.

At last the letter came. Maisie sped to the door, her breakfast coffee untasted. It lay, a square white envelope with the Irish stamp, alone on the door mat. Trembling, Maisie bent to pick it up. It was thin and light. Obviously, whatever message Joan sent was going to prove terse and to the point. She tore it open. Joan's neat handwriting covered only one side of the paper.

'You darling ass,

All your ifs and buts are on Edward's account, I notice. Let him shoulder his own worries, if he has any, which I doubt—and please say "Yes." Go ahead and just be happy, both of you.

All our love,
Joan'

P.S. Dr Kelly has just confirmed our hopes. Prepare for a christening next April.'

Suddenly, the bleak November morning seemed flooded with warmth and light. This was exactly the right sort of message to receive—straightforward, loving and wise. How terrible, Maisie realised, it would have been to receive a long screed putting points for and against the marriage—merely a prolongation of the dreary debate which had bedevilled her life lately. Joan had summed up the situation at once, had recognised the nervous tension which grew more intense as time passed and had made Maisie's decision impossible. In a few lines she had pointed out something simple and fundamental to which worry had blinded her friend. Edward knew what he was undertaking. Maisie recalled his saying one evening, with a wry smile: 'You might give me credit for some sense. I've thought about it too, you know.'

She folded the letter, put it in her handbag like a talisman, and set off, smiling, for school.

'No long engagements for us,' said Edward firmly next weekend. 'You might change your mind again, and that I couldn't face.'

They had spent the winter afternoon visiting the family to tell them of their engagement and their future plans.

At Rose Lodge it was Grandma North who received the news with the greatest display of excitement.

'At last, a wedding in St Peter's!' she exclaimed, clapping her thin papery old hands together. Edward shook his head.

'Afraid not. For one thing we neither of us want it. And I don't think our vicar would relish a divorced man at his altar.'