i 69ef9ff463a71164 (25 page)

As she dragged herself away from his side she was aware of men in uniform racing up the hill towards them and then, like someone in a daze, she was stumbling round the crater. There at the other side and what had been the beginning of the drive were two men bending over the torn, twisted body of Mr. Maclntyre, and about a dozen yards farther up the drive, lying on his back, his head near the root of a tree, was Donald. She made to run towards him, then stopped, her hand over her mouth again, this time because she knew she was going to vomit. The guilt that was filling her was turning her stomach not the guilt of loving Andrew but the guilt bred of thoughts that had escaped in less time than it had taken for the bomb to explode. She hoped he was dead.

Oh, no! No, no, no.

She must have paused for only a second, for she was bending above the white, blood-drained face as a voice to her side said, "He's breathing.

It doesn't look as if anything's hit him. The blast likely knocked him against the tree." She watched the khaki-clad figure lifting Donald's head, and then the man said, "Yes, it's as I thought. He's bleeding a bit there, but it doesn't look much."

"Oh, ma'am, you all right?"

Grace straightened her back and turned dazed eyes on the wiry figure of Mr. Blenkinsop, and as she did so she took in that the place was now swarming with people and two men were running towards them with a stretcher.

As they came up one of them said, "Coo! It's the vicar, poor--' He did not add the epithet.

She watched them lift Donald on to the stretcher. She did not speak or make any move towards them; and then Mr. Blenkinsop, taking her arm, said, "Come on away out of it, ma'am, up to the house."

The house? No, she must go to Andrew and his mother. Poor Mrs.

Maclntyre! Her poor face. But there were the children. She startled Mr. Blenkinsop by tearing away from him up the drive. But she had not gone far before she pulled herself to a stop. What was she thinking about? The bomb had dropped at the gate, and if the children had been with Donald there would be evidence of them.

As Mr. Blenkinsop came panting up to her side, Peggy Mather appeared at the head of the drive and she called coolly, "Who's got it this time?

That was near enough. The house almost bounced. "

Peggy Mather had never used the prefix 'ma'am'; and although its lack was on occasion decidedly noticeable, Grace had never had the nerve to enforce it. When Donald had pointed out it was her place to do just that, she had said it wasn't worth the bother. Peggy Mather was only temporary . the war over, she Would go. In this moment of shock, fear, and revulsion, she was further startled to hear herself exclaiming in a high voice, "When you speak to me in the future, Peggy, will you kindly address me as ma'am or Mrs. Rouse. Now, where are the children?"

Peggy Mather's features had contracted until they looked like a piece of dried leather. The fact that she was taken aback was evident, and after a moment, during which she glowered at her mistress, she said with telling flatness, "Round the back where you left them ma'am.

The verger, taking hold of Grace's arm once more, said soothingly,

"We'll go and have a look, ma'am," and he led her away towards the back of the house, and as they went he told himself that the poor thing was suffering from shock or she would never have stood up to that one like that. A good job, too, and not afore time. His Mary, God rest her, would never have talked to the young mistress without a ma'am, but that Peggy Mather! He didn't know why Miss Shawcross kept her in her house; if she knew half of her carry-on she wouldn't.

It was with something of wonder that Grace looked down on the three children. They had apparently not moved out of the sand-pit. Stephen looked up at her now and explained, "There was a big bang. Mammy, and Veronica said it was a bomb and wanted to go into the shelter, but I told her it wasn't 'cause Daddy said God wouldn't let any bombs drop today because it was so nice and sunny. And, anyway, I told her if it was a bomb you would have been here, wouldn't you. Mammy?"

She did not answer, only stared down on them, thinking God would not let any bombs drop today.

"What are you making?" Mr. Blenkinsop was now bending his creaking joints over the sand-pit and looking down on Beatrice, but it was Stephen who as usual answered for them all.

"Oh, she's just muddling, she's still trying to build a castle. But I'm building a dugout, and Veronica's building a God-house."

"Huh! Huh!" It was in the nature of a deep chuckle from Mr.

Blenkinsop.

"A God-house, eh?"

"Yes, that's what she calls them. But Daddy says God hasn't got a house, just churches. Veronica's silly.... You are! You are!" He pushed her, but she showed no resentment, only laughed, and went on industriously poking holes in a square of sand. And as Grace now looked down on her the words began to revolve in her mind, A God-house a God-house . a God-house, until they turned themselves into a mad-house . a mad-house . a madhouse.

"Oh, there you are."

Miss Shawcross came hurrying towards them, and as Grace turned from the sand-pit there penetrated the whirling maze of her mind the thought that Kate Shawcross looked distraught. And it also came to her with a strong feeling of impatience that this woman had the power to imbibe the essence of any event, for she looked at this moment as if she had partaken of the actual experience of the bombing.

"They're taking him to hospital ... the vicar?"

"Yes." Grace nodded.

"He ... he was wounded? And ... and you let him go alone?"

Something slipped in Grace's mind, lifting the haze from it, and her voice was cut tingly cool as she said, "He wasn't wounded, he had merely struck his head on a tree-trunk."

"But ... but you ... ?" Miss Shawcross's voice was breaking, 'you let him go alone? " Her words faded on a note of recriminating judgement.

Grace found herself rearing upwards, her head going back and her small breasts thrusting out. This woman . this woman to criticise her, and in front of Mr. Blenkinsop. She had stood enough . she had put up with enough all these years one way and another. Kate Shawcross had usurped her position right from the start yes, right from the start.

How dare she! She would show her that she had reached her limit.

"When you speak to me. Miss Shawcross, will you kindly remember that I'm the vicar's wife."

Twice in less than five minutes she had done what she had never dreamed of doing during the seven years of her

marriage . pointed out her position as the vicar's wife. She saw how ludicrous the situation was. Now, when she had ceased to be the vicar's wife, when Mr. Maclntyre had made it unnecessary for any more posing or lying, she was laying claim to the supposed privilege.

As she walked past Kate Shawcross, whose whole face was twitching, Mr.

Blenkinsop said in a small placating voice, "There, there, we're all upset, very upset. There, don't take on, Kate ... there now, there now."

His voice was soothing, and Grace had the impression that he was patting Miss Shawcross's arm. Patting her arm . she would like to slap her face. Yes, she would . Why hadn't she gone to the hospital with Donald? She was not only repeating Kate Shawcross's question but asking the question of herself now. Why hadn't she gone?

They would have let her. But she'd had to see to the children, hadn't she? Had it been Andrew lying there what would she have done? There was no need to answer that question.

She did not make her way into the house through the kitchen because Peggy Mather was there, but went towards the front door, telling herself that she must sit down, if only for a minute, before going back to the gate. She felt sick and faint . oh, she did feel faint. As the earth came up suddenly to meet her she heard Mr. Blenkinsop's voice crying, "Steady ... I steady ... I' When she came round she was in the drawing-room and a voice was still saying, " Steady . I steady!

" but this time it was David's voice.

"Now drink this up."

She drank some bitter stuff from a glass, then he gently lowered her head on to the couch again.

After a moment of blinking she looked wearily up at him.

"David."

"Don't talk."

"I must. Mr. Maclntyre ... is he ... is he dead?"

"Yes."

Dazedly she watched him look away, rubbing at his chin, and when his eyes came back to her he said, "He's never been down as far as this for years; in fact I've never known him come to the village. He must have come down to the road with his wife to see Andrew off." He paused.

"You know, of course, that Andrew was passing through with a convoy?"

She stared at him, not saying a word. He knew all about her that is, up to now. But she couldn't tell him the dreadful truth that she was responsible for Mr. Maclntyre's death. It was she who had killed him, not the bomb. He never came down to the road, no, and he wouldn't have come today but for her. She saw him lying in a twisted heap. She saw Donald lying against the tree. Had he managed to tell Donald everything before the blast blew them apart? Mr. Maclntyre would have wasted no time, he would have out with it. Yet if they had been standing together wouldn't Donald have received the full force of the blast too? Perhaps they hadn't met. perhaps Donald was just coming towards him down the drive . perhaps, perhaps. The thoughts were trailing around in her mind. She felt sleepy. That stuff in the glass she made an effort to rise, saying, "I must see ... see."

"Go to sleep."

"No, David, I must see...."

"There now, go to sleep. That's it."

As David Cooper stood looking down on her he thought with analytical coolness that it was a pity the position of old Maclntyre and the vicar hadn't been reversed. Then Donald would have been saved a great deal of mental agony, which, when this was over and Andrew Maclntyre was home again, he would certainly be called upon to face. He could not see any evasive action, no matter how

skilfully used and he had come to recognise this vicar as an expert in this field being proof against these two young people and their needs.

As for Grace, the vicar's death would have given her a reprieve, a mental reprieve. When Andrew Maclntyre had given her the child it had saved her from a breakdown, yet now she was heading fast that way again. The cure was in a way turning out to be worse than the disease.

He wondered why old Maclntyre had been down on the road with his wife; he hadn't for a moment believed the reason was the one he had suggested to Grace. If he had gathered anything from his visits to the cottage over the years it was that Douglas Maclntyre hated his son while the mother loved him too much. This latter, no doubt, could in the first place have accounted for the old man's spleen, added to which he was full of the pride and bigotry which self-education engenders in some Scots. No, Mr. and Mrs. Maclntyre had not come down to the road to see their son off. Of this he was certain.

He did not know what the outcome of all this would be, but he hoped he wouldn't be living in the house when the balloon went up. It was very awkward. Although all his sympathy lay with Grace, there were definitely two sides to be taken into account.

"The man's not all there, he can't be. Do you mean to say he hasn't mentioned it in any way?"

Grace shook her head slowly.

"Not a word."

"Not a word?"

"No, Aunt Aggie, not a word."

Grace looked beyond Aggie's broad figure towards the window and the garden, a gaily flowered window-box, and she remarked to herself that there hadn't been a thing out in the box the last time she had sat here. She was finding like Donald, she could be talking of one thing while thinking of another. She should be keeping her mind on what she was telling Aunt Aggie; instead she was thinking of the window-box.

She had not seen Aggie since three days before the bomb dropped, and that was well over a month now. On that fateful day Aggie had taken herself off to Devon to have a week with her late husband's sister, but the week had spread into four, for Aggie had got her nose into some property not selling it this time, but buying it. She had, during her stay there, purchased three houses. One of her purchases she was very enthusiastic about, a dilapidated cottage in a wood near Buckfastleigh.

She had apparently picked it up for a song, and not with the idea of letting when the war was over, as she intended doing with the other two, but of making it a place where Grace and the children could go in the summer for the holidays. Grace's thoughts now hovered about this cottage; it seemed to be the very answer to her

present need. If it could be made habitable she would take the children there and be away from everybody Kate Shawcross and Peggy Mather, all the faces in the village away from Aunt Susie and Uncle Ralph and their 'committee meetings'. Her thoughts touched on everyone but Donald.

But what about Mrs. Maclntyre? The last words Andrew had said to her over the phone were, "Will you see to my mother, Grace?" and she had promised with loving emphasis "Yes, oh yes, I'll see to her, darling.

Don't worry, I'll see to her." Perhaps Mrs. Maclntyre would come with her when she came out of hospital. perhaps. But what if she were really blind? No, no, she mustn't be blind, she couldn't be blind.

They could do such wonderful things now, she couldn't be blind.

Oh no! The protest against Mrs. Maclntyre's blindness became loud in her head. She couldn't be made to carry that weight on her conscience too, Mrs. Maclntyre's blindness.

"But one way or another he could have mentioned it."

"Yes, Aunt Aggie, one way or another he could." She found she was repeating everything Aggie said.

"Is he aiming to push you round the bend?"

"Whether he's aiming or not, he's succeeding."

"Well, be damned, it's up to you, girl, not to let him. If old Maclntyre did tell him, why doesn't he come out into the open with it like a man, and if he doesn't know everything why doesn't he speak of the bombing? He came off pretty lightly, anyway."