The Scent of Water (9 page)

“Mrs. Hepplewhite, I’m so sorry, but I am engaged tonight,” said Mary.

Mrs. Hepplewhite dived cheerfully into her bag, produced a tiny diary covered in scarlet leather and flicked over its pages. “Tomorrow evening I’ve a meeting. I’m on so many committees. One likes to do what one can. Tuesday we dine out ourselves. Not Wednesday. My husband won’t be home until late on Wednesday and he’s dying to meet you. He saw you. Did I tell you? You didn’t see him. Oh dear, we go away for a long weekend. Tuesday week?”

“Thank you,” said Mary. “Tuesday week.”

Mrs. Hepplewhite noted the date in the little diary with a small golden pencil. “Archer, that’s our chauffeur, shall fetch you at seven-thirty. And now, my dear, I must tear myself away. We’ve weekend guests. It’s been delightful to meet you and I hope we shall see a great deal of each other. Who are you getting to do up this house for you? You must have Roundham at Westwater. We always have them ourselves. Ring them tomorrow. Tell them I recommended them. What did you say? Baker at Thornton? But, my dear, they’ll ruin the place. Cancel the order. Let me ring Roundham for you myself. I’ll do it tomorrow. Oh? Oh yes, I see. Never mind.”

They had got as far as the hall and for a moment she was crestfallen as a child, but then like a child she was happy again with a new idea. “Your hair, my dear. There’s quite a good place at Westwater, when you haven’t time to go up to town. A Belgian, a very charming man. I’ll tell him about you. No, don’t thank me. What are we here for but to help each other? Have you a dog?” They were under the wistaria and Mary speechlessly shook her head. “Oh, but you must have a dog. They’re such companions in the country. I don’t know what I’d do without my Tania, she comes everywhere with me, to meetings and church and so on. She does not mind how long she waits in the car if she has something of mine to lay her little face against, my gloves or scarf or something. It’s so touching. You must have a poodle from Tania’s kennels. They breed a wonderful strain there. I’ll give you the address. Tania’s here, outside in the car. Such a poppet.”

Mrs. Hepplewhite’s conversation, when she was in movement, dragged one in her wake with a species of suction. Mary did not want to go out to the blue Bentley and look at Tania but she had to. Tania, very white and very small, sat on her cushion and looked at Mary very intently for some while out of black, bright, unblinking eyes. Mary’s gaze fell first, not so much because she was intimidated as because she was suddenly very tired; and Mrs. Hepplewhite, she realized, was writing out an address for her on a page torn from her diary.

“Not a poodle, Mrs. Hepplewhite. She’s a darling but I’ve set my heart on an ordinary cottage tabby cat. For the mice. The house is full of them.”

“Mice?” cried Mrs. Hepplewhite. “We’d a plague of them at the manor when we moved in. I got some splendid mouse stuff. Now what is it called?” She pressed her hand for a moment over her tired eyes. “Now what
was
it called? How stupid of me.”

“Tell me on Tuesday week,” said Mary. “I mustn’t keep you now. Good-bye till then.” She moved back waving and smiling, for if Mrs. Hepplewhite were to remember the name of the mouse stuff there would be no escape, mounted her steps backward with great skill, waved and smiled again and pushed the green door shut. She leaned against it, exhausted. It makes it worse, she thought, it makes it much worse, that Mrs. Hepplewhite is a darling.

Mary had not lied when she had said she was engaged that evening, for she had pledged herself to spend it with Cousin Mary. The shabby old diaries that she had seen in the top drawer of the escritoire could only be hers. She had an early supper, lit a wood fire in the basket grate for the sake of company and loveliness and sat down beside it with the diaries piled on a chair beside her.

But she was in no hurry to open them and she sat with her hands in her lap, and gradually she became aware of miracle. Through the west window beside her the sunset shone into the room, through the flowers of the blossoming apple tree that grew close to the window. Their moving shadows lay upon the carpet, and their scent, and the twin scent of burning apple wood, faintly filled the room. The flames gave their light and through the vine leaves came the cool blue of the garden where the birds were singing. Time not so much passed as was lost, and with it her sense of possessing herself, yet she felt no sense of loss, for in the center of perfection there is nothing wanting. Circle upon circle of unknown, invisible and terrible beauty stretched from her into infinity and yet it was all here in what now held her and filled her. She was in a state of happy shame. She guessed that many restless men had been driven to the ends of the earth to find this—what should she call it?—this golden heart, yet it was hers in this miracle of light. Why should she among millions of women, some of whom toiled in great cities or rotted in refugee camps, be given this? She knew her worldliness and lovelessness. Why she? It was one of the unanswerable questions and there was nothing she could do about it except be thankful. Time returned and then it was as though a hand relaxed its strong and gentle hold. She could not have moved before, but she could now, and she got up and lit the lamp, for in the west the gold, like her own state, was now rather the remembrance than the fact of glory. She turned from it to the diaries.

They were not diaries in the technical sense, for there were no printed headings with a particular day and date. They were blank-paged notebooks in which Cousin Mary had sometimes put the date of what she wrote and sometimes not. But she had numbered the books themselves in chronological order. The first entry began abruptly under the heading
June 14th 1897
. The handwriting was clear and beautiful.

It has happened and I am home again. There’s a sense of awe when the impossible thing that you refused has happened, and it’s over, and you don’t know whether you went on refusing and it happened just the same, or whether somehow you accepted. But anyhow it’s over. But I am not as happy as I thought I’d be because when something you have dreaded comes to an end there’s a sense of anticlimax, like dust in the mouth. All the crashing ruin, the falling and tumbling, are over, but the dust is horrible. They say it won’t happen to me again but I expect they only say it to comfort me. But I must think it won’t. I must be like the people who plant gardens and build houses all over again where the earthquake has been. At the back of their minds they know there may be another ’quake but with the front of their minds they plant gardens. I wish I had a house and garden of my own, in the country and quiet. Though it’s the suburbs here it’s never really quiet and all the people coming in and out make me so confused and sleepless and tired. I’d like to live in the deep country with my dear Jenny Kennedy, just the two of us; not with Father and Mother and their anxious looks, wondering what next. Jenny doesn’t wonder what next, she just loves me and takes what comes. I can’t marry with this thing hanging over me, and I’ll never be able to do much because when I get tired the desperation comes. They’ve never understood that. They’ve always thought I was lazy. I’m not, only when I am tired it comes. It wouldn’t have happened as it did if Mother hadn’t made me go to Paris with her. It was the noise and the heat. All those people chattering, the traffic, and the dreadful sin of the city pressing in on me. Father could give me a little house in the country if he wanted to. I’ve begged for it but he won’t listen. And Mother says it’s impossible, Father couldn’t afford it. But I’ve that bit of money my godmother left me and he wouldn’t have to add a great deal to it. If I were like Virginia and got married he’d give me a dowry and trousseau, as he did her. When God is cruel to you everyone else is cruel too. When He turns His back He turns the whole world with Him.

The diary broke off abruptly and began again a few days later.

I oughtn’t to have said that about God. I don’t know enough about Him. I don’t even know if He exists. Only if He doesn’t exist why did I refuse? When you say, I won’t, you refuse somebody and when you say, Yes, I will, you say it to somebody. I remember now that I did accept, that night when I woke up in the hospital room and there was the night light burning, and the night nurse moving in and out, and I realized that I was sane again. I was so thankful that I said, Yes, I’ll do it. You might say that wasn’t a real acceptance because what I’d refused had already happened to me. But yet it was. You can go on refusing even after it’s happened to you, like the child who screams and kicks the door after it’s been shut up in the dark room. Or you can sit quietly down in the dark and watch for the return of light.

Now it’s out. I have said I was sane again and that means that I was not sane before. I have written it down. For I’m to be honest in this diary. That’s why I’m writing it. I’m writing this to help myself by speaking out exactly what’s in my mind. I can’t talk to people because this illness isn’t like other illnesses; all that’s worst in it you have to keep buried so as not to distress people, for one must not spread fear. And anyhow they wouldn’t understand. I remember Mother didn’t when I was a child, and screamed after I was in bed at night, and when she came and I said I was lying on stones, and the black walls were moving in, she said I was a silly child and gave me a biscuit. I threw the biscuit on the floor, for I had wanted her to put her arms around me and tell me she knew about the stones and the moving walls. Only of course she didn’t know.

When did I begin to realize that other people don’t wake up every morning in unexplainable misery, don’t, as soon as they are ill or exhausted, become sleepless and desperate? People mean different things by desperation. I mean the terror of impending disorder. For disorder of mind or body is evil’s chance. At least, I think so. It seems to me to be integration that keeps evil out. I don’t know when it was, I only know I struggled to keep my difference hidden just so as not to be different. There is a sense of safety in being like other people.

I scarcely remember how it happened, after we came back from Paris, for it’s all a blur, but I do remember the insomnia and trying to get out of the window to escape from the evil. The time at the Home I only remember as a confused nightmare. But it’s odd, I do remember one thing very clearly. I remember who among the nurses was kind to me and who was not. It would be awful to have to go back there and I’m going to ask Father once more if I may live in the country with Jenny. Mother will be furious because Jenny’s her maid, and a good maid, but I know that if Jenny has to choose between me and Mother she’ll choose me.

The next entry was some weeks later.

Father refused. It wouldn’t be good for me to mope alone in the country. What I need is cheerfulness about me. Plenty of distraction. I tried to explain that what I need is just not to be tired, but I couldn’t get the words out and suddenly I began to cry, and he kissed me lovingly and told me to go with Mother and buy myself a new hat.

That was a month ago and it’s been a miserable month until yesterday, when Mother thought it was her duty to ask the queer old man to tea. He’s staying at the vicarage taking the services while the Vicar is having a holiday. The Vicar apologized about him. The man who should have come got ill and there was no one to be found but this old man. The Vicar has cut his holiday down from three weeks to a fortnight, and only one Sunday, because of being so apologetic about the old man. He’s very old and eccentric, and he doesn’t shave very well though one can see that he’s tried. At tea he was by turns very shy and very fierce and he mumbled sometimes and dropped cake on the carpet. There were other people there and Mother was annoyed, and after tea she asked me to take him out in the garden and show him the sweet peas. He was like a child about the sweet peas, he enjoyed them so much, their color and lightness and scent. He said he’d never had a garden and when I asked him where he lived I found it was in lodgings down in East London, and for years he’d been a curate at a church in the slums. He wasn’t at all sorry for himself but I was sorry for him because he loved flowers and had no garden, and suddenly I burst out and told him how I longed to go and live in the country. He looked at our beautiful garden as though he wondered how anyone could want anything better, and then he looked at me very keenly out of his bright blue eyes and said, “Why?” The question came out so sharply and suddenly that I answered with the truth. I told him everything. It was the queerest thing that ever happened to me because I take such infinite trouble always to cover it all up. I hide it like a crime. And yet here I was laying it all out in front of him. I was like a criminal emptying his pockets. I took out everything. He was silent for a long time, rubbing his chin, and then he said, “You’re afraid of it?”

It seemed such a silly question and I spoke sharply I think when I said, “Of course I am, I’m terrified.”

“Why?” he asked. “If you lose your reason you lose it into the hands of God.”

I said, “Why does God let us suffer like this?” and he answered, “My dear young lady, how should I know? Job didn’t know, but he repented in dust and ashes.”

He wasn’t helping me at all and I said crossly, “I haven’t done anything frightfully wrong. Nothing that calls for dust and ashes.”

He said quietly, “No?”

I said, “It makes one hate God.”

He said, “Where you’ve put Him?”

“Where have I put Him?”

“On the gallows.”

And then suddenly he caught sight of a tortoiseshell butterfly drifting down the path and he gave an exclamation of incredulous joy and ran after it. When I caught up with him he was standing in front of the buddleia tree, which was covered with butterflies as it nearly always is, and he was speechless with wonder, his face absorbed as a child’s when the candles have been lit on the Christmas tree. It was almost as though the butterflies shone on him and lit his face. Or else it was the other way around. For a moment there seemed light everywhere, though it was a gray day. It was queer and I didn’t want to move; until there was a sound of voices and we saw Mother and her guests coming out into the garden. The old man looked around at me and the light had been wiped off his face; it was puckered and distressed, like a sad monkey’s, and he said to me in a hoarse whisper, “My dear, I think I should be going,” and I realized that he was terrified of Mother and her guests. He must have been terrified all through the tea party, when he mumbled and dropped crumbs on the carpet.