The Happy Prisoner (20 page)

He wouldn't sit down. He would wander around the kitchen always between me and the stove when I wanted to get to the oven, poor little man. He couldn't get to the point. He started off by telling me there were three new calves, which I knew although I didn't say so, then he got round to the farm, and from there to saying how much he liked it and how he appreciated knowing us and what a pleasure it always was to come here because we made him feel so at home. At home! Did you see him at lunch? If that's being at home, my goodness, what's he like with strangers? I daren't think about the wedding. I tried to help him out, but each time I thought he was coming to the point, he'd shy off and go back to something safe like the weather, or the state of the hedges, and he warned me a dozen times he'd put rat poison down in the big barn, as if I was in the habit of pecking around in there for something to eat.”

“Why didn't you say: ‘I hear you want to marry my daughter'?”

“I couldn't, dear. He wanted to say it himself. Besides, I suppose he really had only come about the rat poison? Violet's so funny, it might have been her idea of a joke when she told us the day before. He went and fiddled with the curtains, and of course he pulled that one that's always coming down. I let him fix it, although I was itching to do it myself, because I thought it might help him to have something to do with his hands, as he never knows where to put them, and while he was doing it, with his back to me and the curtain draped round one ear, he kind of mumbled: ‘I want to ask you something.' I haven't much of an ear for English brogues, but his accent does seem a bit strong sometimes, doesn't it? That shows you how English I've become; a good American wouldn't even think about it.

I told him to go ahead, and he was just starting to mumble again when I smelled my scones burning and had to rush to the oven, and he came to help me, letting the curtain fall down again, and of course made things worse by setting fire to a tea-cloth. I must say he and Violet are well matched. By the time the excitement had died down he'd lost the courage to finish
what he was going to say. He was too busy apologising for the tea-cloth, anyway, and for the burned scones, which he seemed to think must be his fault too. It was one of my best tea-cloths, although I told him it was only an old rag. No one can say I'm not good to that man.

He couldn't get out of my kitchen fast enough. I guess he was scared to think what he'd nearly done, like a man who works himself up to shoot someone and then runs a mile screaming when the gun doesn't go off. I tried to ask him again what he wanted, but he pretended not to hear. He muttered something about having an appointment and ran for it, and since then he's scared to death every time he sees me in case I should reopen the subject. I suppose they really are engaged? For all I've heard about it from him, it might be just some crazy invention of Violet's.”

“He's given her a ring,” Oliver reminded her.

“Oh yes, of course. Poor Fred, I wonder where on earth he got it. I really ought to talk to him about money, I guess, though he seems to be doing all right with the farm. I will say that for him; he knows his job.”

“If I work in with him later on,” Oliver said, “I'll be able to check up on all that. The place may make quite a bit of money in a few years. Fred's got all sorts of ideas, if only we could get the labour and materials.”

“Yes, well, we'll have to see how you are before you commit yourself, darling,” said Mrs. North in the soothing voice which she always turned onto his suggestions of working. “I don't know that farm work will be very suitable.”

“I've told you a hundred times,” he said exasperatedly, “I'm not going to do manual labour. I'm going to potter. What else do you suggest I should do, anyway? I'm not trained for anything, and if I'm not fit to farm, I'm certainly not fit to prop myself on a wooden leg in the gutter all day, selling matches.”

“Don't be bitter, dear,” said his mother. “Why don't you try and write something? I've often thought since you were wounded that would be a nice career for you, to be an author.”

“All right,” said Oliver, “go and buy me some paper and a pencil with a hard point and I'll lie here and write a nice long novel and the first publisher I send it to will fall on it, baying.”

“You might be a free-lance journalist,” she said, still hopefully.

“I might,” said Oliver, “if I could write.”

“You don't have to worry about earning money, anyway, darling. I've got plenty for both of us, and when I die you'll have even more.” He knew she wanted him to say: “Don't talk
like that. I can't bear it,' but instead he asked: “What if I want to get married? I suppose you support my wife as well?”

“Oh well—no need to think about that just now.” It was plain she never considered the possibility. To her he was out of the running, finished with the things that everyone else did. He must always be kept apart, protected from the world like an idiot child, nurtured in cotton-wool like china too fragile to be used. Later, when he was up and about and able to argue without his head splitting open, he would have it cut with her.

“Anyway,” his mother said brightly, “Fred's gotten himself a cheap wife. Violet doesn't need much to live on; I believe she's a throwback to my pioneer ancestors. She asked me the other day whether Fred had come to talk to me, and I hadn't the heart to tell her how hopeless he'd been, because she really does seem quite fond of him. Oh dear,” she sighed, and the folds of her face sagged sadly. “I only hope she's happy.”

“She's happy all right,” Oliver said. “It's running out of her ears. She was like a two-year-old the day it was fixed up, don't you remember? To please me, she took Jenny out and went over and over the jump in the pouring rain for me to see, and! all the time I was asleep.”

“She's never got rid of the catarrh that settled on her that day,” said Mrs. North.

Evelyn was disgusted with Violet. “It's a good thing Dandy's got me,” she said, “for all the interest
she
takes in him now.” Violet did not even do much work on the farm nowadays. She mooned about with a cigarette or a straw or sometimes both between her lips, giving a lazy hand here and there with one of the hundreds of jobs into which she had once thrown herself so strenuously. She drove with Fred when he went out in the lorry or in the dilapidated little car upholstered with dogs' hairs and corn seeds, sat about waiting for him on walls, drumming her heels, and plodded after him about the farm like some faithful domestic animal that does not need a halter. Sometimes, she came and sat in Oliver's room, but she never stayed long. They never recaptured the isolated intimacy of that afternoon over the dripping toast. Oliver had been of use to her then, but she had progressed now beyond quiet sickrooms and invalid brothers. She had soared into a wider sphere whose shadow eclipsed everything else. Oliver found her very boring, and he gathered that she was as bored with him as with everything else not directly connected with her marriage.

Heather did a lot of rather ostentatious church-going over Easter. On Sunday, Mrs. North and Elizabeth visited Mr. Morris's cold little Gothic tabernacle, where he bleated like a heep in its pen, narrow-faced and docile, from the pulpit. But Heather went to Mass every morning, and to
Tenebrae
on Good Friday and Benediction on Sunday, and left her missal lying prominently on the hall table in between. She told Elizabeth at east three times that she would not be wanting early morning ea, and became righteous when her mother protested mildly at he third request for late breakfast and someone to dress David.

“Send him in to me,” Oliver said. “I'll see he gets dressed,” but when Heather came back from Mass, David was still sitting in the hearthrug wearing a vest and one sock, with the rest of his clothes scattered on and under various bits of furniture. Heather was very cross, then remembered she had been to church and was cross with herself for being cross. Oliver often wondered what she was getting out of her strenuous search after Christianity, and wanted to ask her, but although she liked to parade her religion before the family, she resented discussion of it. He was interested in Roman Catholicism, but he knew nothing about it, and Heather had either forgotten most of what she had learned at the time of her conversion or would not answer his questions because she thought he was mocking her.

John was expected home within the next fortnight. There was naturally a lot of talk about this, and, in the end, allusions to him began to affect Heather in the same way as allusions to the Catholic Church. She would flare and flounce and bang doors and cause her mother to say: “She's all het up. It's a nervy time for her, after all these months of waiting.”

Elizabeth, who had less to do for Oliver now that his stump was healing and his heart strengthening, began to give Heather more help with the children, which she did on modern hospital lines, uncuddlesome, but extremely efficient. Heather, who was full of theories of her own, at first would not let her touch Susan. Now she let her do dull things like pushing her out in the pram, but she would not admit that Elizabeth was good with the children.

“Listen!” she cried triumphantly, when everyone was saying how quickly David had got settled one night when Elizabeth had put him to bed. “There he is crying now. I knew it; it's the minute you turn the light out, and the poor darling must have wondered what had happened to me tonight.”

David was not crying, but soon after she went up to him he was. His wails were still coming down through the ceiling when
she came back to Oliver's room, where they were having drinks before dinner. She held a saucer out before her in a disgusted way. “I
told
you I didn't want him to get into the habit of a nightlight, Ma,” she said.

“I haven't—” began Mrs. North, and Elizabeth broke in calmly: “I put it there; it seems the only sensible thing when he's so nervous of the dark. It can't be good for either him or the baby when he screams like that.”

“I wish you wouldn't interfere with the management of my children,” said Heather pompously. “He's only trying it on. He's got to learn to settle off quietly, and he never will if you spoil him.”

“Now, Heather,” said her mother, “Elizabeth was only being kind. You know I never interfere with your children, but I've always thought he was too sensitive a little boy to be treated so strictly.”

“Oh, go on,” said Heather, “side with her against me. She's always right; don't think I don't know that by now.” Oliver looked uncomfortably at Elizabeth, who, in trying to look as if she did not care, was only succeeding in looking prim. Heather glanced at her too, muttered something and flung herself into an armchair and pretended to read a magazine.

On Bank Holiday night, however, she consented to abandon the children to Elizabeth, because she wanted to go to a dance in Birmingham with Stanford Black. Oliver heard the car come back at two o'clock in the morning, and when, some time afterwards, Heather came into the hall, he called her into his room.

“Disgraceful,” she said. “You ought to be asleep.”

He switched on the light. “Disgraceful yourself,” he said, noticing the state of her lipstick. “You've been kissing Mr. Black.”

Heather giggled. “My last fling. I
have
had a good time, Ollie. We went on to the Malt House after the dance and met heaps of people. I haven't been so gay since I was a girl. Stanford's awfully good fun. I know you don't like him, but everybody else does, and he really is rather sweet.” She giggled again. “What an innocent fling. D'you think John'll believe how faithful I've been to him all this time? If not, what waste of effort.”

“He ought to beat hell out of you if he thought you hadn't,” Oliver said.

“Oh no, not my little Johnny. He'd just forgive me sorrowfully like a father confessor. He'd never beat me. Some women like to be beaten, don't they, Ollie? I wonder why. Is it nice?”

“Go to bed.”

“I couldn't. I feel merry. I'd like to start the evening all ever again.” She stood and thought for a moment, pouting, waying slightly in the long flowered dress that hugged her lump bosom and spread into a stiff skirt, making her waist look smaller than it really was. “I say, do you suppose I ought to go to confession tomorrow and say I let Stanford kiss me? they don't have it on weekdays, though. Still, I could ring the ell, couldn't I—but I never know whether the priest minds coming. He might be having his supper. After all, they've got eat, though one never imagines them doing anything so worldly.”

“Look, Heather,” said Oliver, feeling the depressing effect roduced by someone who has had a drink on someone who has lot, “I don't know much about your religion, but you seem to have got hold of the wrong end of the stick, if you think you can o what you like and then wash it out by confessing it. John ill never stand for you being a Papist if you talk like that. It's too childish. I don't suppose you mean it, though, when ou're sober.”

“I am sober,” she said. “I didn't have much to drink. I'm out of practice, though, with the dreary life I lead. And please on't lecture me about religion, because you don't know anything bout it.” She looked flushed and bright-eyed and very pretty, with her fringe tangled and one ear-ring missing. “Besides, you're smug,” she said, giving his hair a tweak.

“Don't jangle that damn bracelet in my eye.”

She ran it up and down her arm, smiling. “It's a lovely bracelet. I adore it. Look, Stanford gave me another charm or it tonight, a little leering faun; isn't it sweet? He said I hade him feel the way this faun looks, if you see what I mean. “Think I ought to confess
that
tomorrow?” She was trying to oad him.

“Oh, shut up,” he said, “and go away. You're bottled. And don't bother to ask whether your children are all right.”