Starlight (29 page)

Mrs Corbett, after a struggle with maternal feeling, told Frobisher to drive to New End Hospital rather than to the nearest vet’s.

‘So wonderfully brave of you –
really
the bravest thing I’ve ever seen – I’m afraid you must be in shocking pain …’

‘Oh, it was nothing, really. We always had dogs at home … I’m used to them …’

‘We’ll go straight to the Casualty Department … just like Emergency-Ward Ten, isn’t it? I am afraid you must be in great pain.’

‘I do begin to feel it now, yes.’

‘Here we are,’ as the car slid to a stop. ‘I’ll come in with you …’

‘Oh please don’t trouble …’

‘But of course I will … and Frobisher will help you to get out. No, boys, no more walkies, bad little boys to fight that great big Alsatie, but brave little boys too … come along …’ to Mrs Lysaght.

It was early evening when they at last got away, Mrs Lysaght walking stiffly on her disinfected and bandaged legs and Mrs Corbett worried about the bite in sulky Cee’s neck.

She insisted that Helen – it had been Mrs Lysaght’s suggestion that Christian names should be used between them – must come back with her for a drink, ‘Unless you’re dying to get back to your own nest at once,’ she added.

‘Oh no, I should love it … a drink is just what I need.’

Sitting back in one of Mrs Corbett’s great brocade-covered chairs, with a strong pink gin in her hand, Mrs Lysaght felt that the expenditure of energy in pain and fright had been worth it. The luxury here was of just the old-fashioned, comfortable kind that she liked; and there were even glimpses of
servants
; all very old, of course, and in a kind of shirt-andjacket-white-apron-overall contemporary uniform (you could not expect
caps
, of course), but there must be three or four of them, and she was also introduced to a dark girl who was Mrs Corbett’s companion, and to a middle-aged man who was her son.

Her enjoyment was only spoilt by the thought that the incident would all too soon be ended.

But Mrs Corbett’s heart, never hard or ungrateful, had been touched, and she also recalled that, lately, she had been thinking about the desirability of making new friends: Dorry and Madge and Cis, thought Mrs Corbett, get me down sometimes. I’ll ask her to tea, she decided.

‘Now Arnold will drive you home, of course –’ she announced, when Mrs Lysaght, getting up carefully and testing her throbbing legs, at last said that she must go.

‘Oh that’s terribly sweet of you but I’m sure Mr Corbett won’t want to turn out again.’

‘Oh he’d love to, wouldn’t you?’ to Arnold.

He said that it would be an honour.

‘As if we’d let you go home by taxi! And Frobisher will be there punctually to-morrow to take you to Emergency–Ward Ten.’

Mrs Lysaght settled herself with a sigh of satisfaction; it was pleasant to ride in a car with a personable, prosperous man.

Arnold really detested elderly women, and the sweeter they were the more he hated them. They thrust at him the fact that young women were sweet in a different way; and that in seven more years he would be fifty, and compelled to spend even more money and skill on attaching them to himself.

‘How strange life is,’ began the specimen at his side, in a musing tone, ‘really weird … isn’t it, Mr Corbett? Don’t
you
find life weird?’

‘Oh … I don’t know.’ He half-smiled at her, running the car too fast up the hilly road, ‘Is it? Sure you’re quite comfortable? That thing not too tight?’ That thing was the safety belt.

‘It’s
perfect
, thank you … for instance, in the last week, after really months of just nothing happening at all, I’ve been in a dog-fight, and talked to a medium.’

‘Yes … well? …’ he said vaguely. He could feel his sorrow waxing, and, as he glanced out of the window he knew why; some trees on the other side of the road, with their leaves blanched to colourless sprays in the chemical light, brought Peggy to his mind; Peggy, walking beneath them with the dogs.

‘I have a dear friend – a parson; I call him my
guru
, you know, like the Hindus have, a spiritual guide, philosopher and friend – and of course he’s very against my having anything to do with this Mrs Pearson – the medium.’

‘Pearson?’ He was edging the car into the beginning of the High Street and did not glance at her, but she caught the note of interest.

‘That’s her name – and such a pretty, unusual address for the dreadful part she lives in – Lily Cottage, Rose Walk. Isn’t it charming? – and in the heart of a slum. All bomb-ruins.’

‘My mother’s companion is a Miss Pearson,’ Arnold explained; some reason must be given for his obviously awakened interest.

‘Oh yes, of course – I remember now – I’m so bad at names. (
I
always look at people’s faces.) Rather a nice-looking girl, I thought. But not warm. I do like
warmth
in a face,’ enlarged Mrs Lysaght, who in fact did not mind what was in a face so long as it promised some form of entertainment ‘Has she been with you long?’

‘About four months … she’s very good with the dogs. My mother’s had some trouble getting the right girl; foreigners don’t understand them, she says.’

‘Well, I agree with her. It takes an English person to understand a dog … I wonder if they’re related? But how absurd I’m being … it’s a common name.’ Arnold murmured something in answer.

So her mother told fortunes. He wondered in what the ‘invalidism’ consisted? It might be mental; it might be drugs. We’ll cultivate Mrs Lysaght, anyway, he thought, she can probably tell us more … and if Peggy doesn’t want my mother to know about all this, that might come in useful too.

Poor kid
. The words floated up, unexpected and pure, from somewhere, and he put them angrily aside.

Some weeks later, in the lengthening twilight, Mr Geddes was locking the door of the vestry. It was after a service ill-attended but for the church’s faithful ladies, and the Vicar had remained in the vestry after it to attend to one or two small tasks.

The side door of the vestry opened on to a narrow slip of turf, set with old elder bushes, that faced the Vicarage, and led into its garden; there was one of those false impressions of rural solitude here that linger in London, and Mr Geddes was always reminded, on crossing the turf, of more congenial days in another parish.

He tried the door, slipped the key into the pocket of his cassock and turned away, then started violently.

A dark, silent figure stood beside him in the dusk. ‘What do you want?’ Mr Geddes demanded loudly, with thoughts of that evening’s collection darting through his mind.

‘I came to … You remember me … Pearson. Thomas Pearson …’ the man answered in a low tone.

‘Is your wife worse?’ Mr Geddes asked instantly.

‘No. Not this evening, but … I came –’ he hesitated, then went on, ‘I came to talk about it.’ The words were spoken so quietly that Mr Geddes hardly caught them.

He hesitated.

But then he realized that the creature’s usual aura of menace was lacking. What came forth from Thomas Pearson into this clouded, lingering spring dusk was only sadness. Mr Geddes turned back to the vestry, drawing out the key from his pocket.

‘We’ll talk in here …’ he said, unlocking and pushing open the small heavy door, and switching the lights on again. Pearson followed him in, and, uninvited, sat down in the chair that faced the larger one, used by successive Vicars, drawn up to the wide old table.

Mr Geddes settled himself, leant back, felt in a drawer for cigarettes, and held out the packet. His companion silently shook his head.

‘Then I will …’ said the Vicar, ‘if you don’t object.’ Thomas Pearson neither moved nor spoke while he lit the cigarette, drew in smoke, and dropped the blackened match carefully into the wastepaper basket under the table.

The visitor sat in a huddled posture, with both small, dark-skinned hands resting, with a curious suggestion of helplessness, open-palmed and upwards on his knees. He was looking down, and seemed lost in dejected reflection. Mr Geddes allowed him to remain thus; he thought that he should be given time to collect his thoughts.

In a little while, Pearson slowly raised his head and stared at him, with miserable eyes. His lips moved once or twice, and at last he said in a low tone:

‘I am – I am – in despair. Have you ever been like that?’

‘Oh yes.’ Mr Geddes nodded, ‘I’ve been in despair. Most people have, at some time in their lives.’

‘So I came,’ Pearson went on slowly, as if he had not spoken, ‘I came because I am in despair, and because – to ask you something.’ He paused.

‘Yes?’

‘It is a question for a priest. I thought you would know about such things. I thought – if I go to a doctor or a psychiatrist they’ll treat me as if I were a sick man. But I’m not sick, I’m well and strong –’ He uttered a loud sigh, uncontrolled as a child’s, settling himself wearily in his chair. ‘Yes, a question for a priest …’

Then he was silent again. Mr Geddes neither moved nor spoke. Traffic rushed unceasingly past in the main road and the old clock high on the vestry wall sent out its message against the distant roar, like the voice of eternity behind the voice of the temporal world.

‘You will think me a fool. Unprogressive.’

Mr Geddes gently moved his head. ‘No.’

‘But when these questions … when … I come to you to ask this one question, there is no such thing as unprogressive, or being a fool. Such things aren’t important.’

‘No.’

‘But perhaps you don’t know the answer. Why should you? Priests are men. Perhaps you don’t know any more than I do.’

‘If it’s a question about God, priests are trained to answer that kind of question, you see.’

‘Oh, I know that. They were told, as young men, and as old men they tell other young men, and these young men grow old, and so it goes – but are their answers true?’

‘Yes,’ Mr Geddes said, looking steadily at him. He himself had never doubted; that, at least, he could give to the wracked creature.

‘Yes, they are true,’ he said again, and was silent, neither amplifying nor qualifying the statement. The clock spoke its message and the traffic rushed past.

‘I wish I knew –’ said Thomas Pearson, grinding his hands together, ‘if only I knew. Then I could – I wouldn’t be in so much despair.’

‘Tell me.’

Instinct told Mr Geddes, imperiously, to say very little, but that with absolute conviction.

Pearson made a sniffing, choking noise and to his dismay began to weep; loudly, almost wailingly, so that the lofty little room echoed.

‘Steady!’ Mr Geddes said sharply, ‘someone will hear you – you’ll frighten my mother,’ (who was likely, in that event, he knew, to walk straight in to investigate).

‘I can’t.’ Pearson’s hands were clasped above his head now, and his face uplifted, in the immemorial pose of Oriental grief. Tears were running down.

‘Pull yourself together,’ said Mr Geddes, looking on in momentary helplessness, ‘be a man.’

‘It’s because I’m a man …’ Pearson sobbed.

Mr Geddes was silenced. Born to sorrow as the sparks fly upwards, he thought. But, accustomed to the shamed mutters and averted face of English mourners, he could not help feeling this noisy grief to be theatrical, and it irritated, as well as embarrassed, him.

‘What’s the matter, exactly?’ he asked, ‘is your wife worse?’

A nod. ‘Not to-night. But she’s been very bad. That night you … hit me, I got home and she was … she was …’ grief choked him. ‘
You
made her ill,
you
made her bad,’ he said fiercely at last, wiping his eyes with a large gaudy handkerchief, and glaring above it.

‘You mean she had an attack immediately I’d gone?’

Pearson nodded again.

‘She seemed perfectly well when I left – better than when I came, I thought.’ Mr Geddes hesitated, and Pearson put in roughly, ‘That thing was in her.’

For a moment Mr Geddes did not take in the meaning of what had been said. Confused thoughts of some weapon or growth, came to him.

Then, in one wave, that seemed to swell downwards and break over him, he felt for the second time the force of every hint and rumour that had loomed about her ever since he had first heard of Mrs Pearson.

The atmosphere of the familiar, homely vestry changed; chilled; shut itself off from the world of the rushing traffic beyond its door; and was ominous. The man’s extraordinary words had locked it into terror. Mr Geddes stared at him.

‘What do you mean?’ he demanded; then, as Pearson continued to rock and mutter, with his eyes half-shut, he broke out, ‘Oh, for the love of God, man, pull yourself together … we’ll never get anywhere like this.’

Pearson leant forward across the table, sniffing, drawing in short exhausted breaths, staring out of drowned eyes. ‘This thing comes into her. Something that isn’t Nora. It drives her out. It was there when I got home, I tell you. The light was out, and it was there.’

‘Well, she was delirious, I suppose – though how … these attacks must come on very suddenly? I do wish you’d be sensible people, and see a doctor.’