The Blind Years, page 10
The stout door crashed as he banged it behind him. Following a few moments of rigid stillness, Bridget’s shoulders slumped and her head drooped onto her chest.
Perhaps she would wake up in a moment and realise she had just experienced a dreadful nightmare. Never since she had first known Laurence had she quarrelled with him; he had at times been angry with her and there had been a coldness separating them, as on the other evening at the pool, but there had never been angry words, or any semblance of a lovers’ quarrel, for the simple reason that the Bridget she had been wouldn’t have dreamed of going against Laurence in any way. She had covered the hurt, bred of the hidden knowledge of Mrs Crofton’s place in Laurence’s life, with his denial of it. He had denied it simply by saying there was no-one but her now. But looking back, she asked herself how she could have been so childish, so stupid, so gullible as to believe him. The answer was, simply, because she wanted to believe him.
And in this, their first quarrel and their last, she had said she could kill him, and he had said that he would like to strangle her. It didn’t seem possible. It must really be a nightmare. She closed her eyes and was on the point of turning her face into the wing of the chair when Laurence’s rage-filled voice came to her from the landing, crying, ‘You mind your own damn business and you’ll have enough to do. You’re the one to talk. I don’t pick mine from the gutter. As for Joyce, you’re green, aren’t you? You wanted her yourself but were too frightened of her man to go ahead…Oh, you can’t tell me anything.’
‘Doctor! Doctor!’ It was MacKay’s voice, stern, steadying. Following this there was silence.
Bridget rose slowly to her feet, her eyes on the door. John must have heard them quarrelling and said something to Laurence. It didn’t need much to set them at each other’s throats. Of a sudden she was attacked by a wave of fear. Fear of Laurence, but not for what he might do to her, but what he might do to John. She couldn’t explain the feeling, she only knew she was thankful now that John was leaving today. As for herself, she wouldn’t be long after him. Neither Grandma nor anyone else could keep her here now. She paused in her thinking; what did they hope to accomplish by bringing Grandma here? Surely they knew that she was against the lot of them. But perhaps they didn’t know. Perhaps that arrogant old lady was the best actor of them all.
Five
Hester Gether was a tall woman. Her frame was ramrod straight and she looked modernly slim. At seventy-nine there was little flesh left under the sagging skin, yet so virile was she still that she could have easily passed, and often did, for a woman in her middle sixties. She was a warm-hearted and astute woman, whose main interest and concern in life was her granddaughter, Bridget. From the moment she arrived at Balderstone twenty-four hours before, she realised that a change had come over the child. She had always thought of her as a child, a trusting, sweet child. That was why she had been so against this marriage, for Laurence, she knew, was not the man to have patience with a child-wife. With some men the task of turning her into a woman would have been a privilege and delight, but she knew Laurence too well to give him the credit for any delicacy. In her own mind she termed Laurence a hog, albeit a charming hog; but she knew it was the charm alone that Bridget had seen, and had been beguiled by.
But now that danger was over, finished. Bridget would never marry Laurence. That being so, her mind should be at rest regarding her, but it wasn’t. It was concerned with the fact that she would never be able to think of her as a child any more, for there was no childishness about Bridget now; she had been sprung overnight, as it were, into womanhood. And what had caused this? The business with that young Bruce Dickenson…?
Sarah was positive that the worst had happened there, and judging by Ryder’s graphic description, it might well have, for although Bridget maintained firmly, even aggressively, that nothing whatever had happened her changed attitude aroused grave doubts in Hester Gether’s mind. Yet, on the other hand, the change wrought in her could have been caused by the knowledge of Laurence’s outrageous perfidy. Yes indeed, yes.
The old lady was sitting at the study window and looking across the sunless garden down towards the rowan walk. Shelving the matters that were foremost in her mind she said, ‘There’s hardly a berry left on the rowans; the birds have been having a feast. It’s always puzzled me why they don’t pick them up from the ground. The ground can be smothered with berries but they take flying darts at a branch that is too slender to hold them and don’t stop until they’ve stripped it; yet by standing on their feet they could have had their fill. It has always intrigued me.’
Bridget was sitting and looking into the coal fire which Hester Gether always insisted on no matter how warm the day, and when she made no answer, her grandmother went on, ‘Winter will soon be upon us again. Oh, I have always hated northern winters.’
‘How soon can we go. Grandma?’ Hester did not turn her head but her eyes roamed the wide stretch of sky as she answered, ‘John says tomorrow or the next day…He is not so much thinking of you now as of me. I am past doing return trips non-stop. I’ll see how I feel tomorrow. I’ll make it as soon as I can, for then he will accompany us back, at least as far as London. It was more than good of him to put off his departure because of me. But then John was always considerate.’ She brought her eyes from the sky and looked down at her hands and sat silently musing as if her thoughts were on the man she had been talking about.
‘Has the notice gone into the papers, Grandma?’
‘Yes. Yes, it has.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Child, I’ve told you it has.’
‘What did it say?’
Hester turned her gaze from Bridget’s enquiring eyes; then she sighed deeply before answering, ‘Sarah insisted that it say the wedding was postponed because of your illness. Now don’t worry, don’t worry.’ She put her hand out reassuringly towards Bridget. ‘They know as well as we do there’ll be no wedding, but I had to let her have her own way in this, for it softened the blow somewhat. Your Aunt Sarah was always one for prestige; she cannot bear to think of the county reaction. Because it was to be quite an affair, wasn’t it? I’m very sorry for you, my dear, you know that.’ She leant forward and patted Bridget’s cheek as she smiled sadly. ‘But I’m sorry for Sarah too; I’ve never been much in sympathy with her but she’s going through a pretty bad time at present.’
‘It’s the money she’s worried about, not the wedding.’ Bridget’s voice was harsh.
‘Yes, in a way you’re right there, I think.’
‘Well, she can have it—’ She was making this generous statement in the same harsh tone when her words were cut off by her grandmother exclaiming, ‘What! Oh no, she can’t. Not if I still have anything to do with it. And since you’re not married I still have a say in your affairs. This new factory is a shot in the dark, and a bad shot, to my way of thinking: there’s too much competition in that line already. Your money isn’t inexhaustible, my dear, and what you have would be swallowed up in the first effort to get the place going.’
‘Well, what odds? The money doesn’t matter to me.’
‘No, it doesn’t because you have it. Most young people with money talk like you do because they haven’t had the experience of being without money. Don’t you undervalue money, Bridget, or you’ll make the biggest mistake of your life.’
‘You don’t take that attitude with John.’ Bridget looked sharply at her grandmother. ‘When you knew he was spending his last on other people you said he was casting his bread upon the waters.’
‘Yes, I did, because John was helping individuals, people in need; and besides, he’s a man with a profession and can make more, whereas if you had to earn your living you’d be hard put to it…Oh, I know all about your painting, but artists are ten a penny in the labour market, so you take care; and what is more, take an interest in your money, for you’ll need it, you’ll see. But if you let Vance get his hands on it, it’ll be goodbye, for he’s up to his neck in debt on the old factory, and if he couldn’t make a go of that, what chance will he have with a new one? All this talk of wider horizons and competing abroad is wishful thinking. I would be the first one to say advance, go ahead, and take a share in the new venture if he had made a go of the old one, but Vance, up till two years ago, thought of nothing but himself and his pleasures and how lavishly he could entertain. And he didn’t stop until the debts were up to his neck and nearly drowning him. Since which time he has tried to swim, but when he found it impossible, you, my dear, were to act as a lifebuoy. But in my opinion, he was too far sunk for any lifebuoy to be of much assistance…And, by the way, that, my dear, is what I wanted to tell you when you came to me six months ago, but you seemed’—she paused—‘you seemed so set on the marriage, so mad about Laurence, that I thought you would have your own way in any case, no matter what happened, so I kept quiet. At least, I did to you, but not to Laurence. They all knew what I thought, but if, my dear, I had said to you, “It’s your money they’re after,” what would have been your reaction?’
Bridget’s head was bowed low now, and she replied, ‘I don’t know. I only know that although I feel bitter inside and boiled up about…about everything, I still don’t want to see them bankrupt; everything would go.’
The old lady leant forward and took Bridget’s hand between her thin bony ones, and straightening out the nervous plucking fingers, she stroked them soothingly as she said, ‘That’s not your worry, my dear. And it’s ten to one that even if you had married and they had used your money, even then it would only be a matter of time. At least, that’s how I feel. I felt so strongly about this, Bridget, that I made a new will. What I have is shared between you and Yvonne, as you know, but what is coming to you I put into trust and you will receive it as an allowance. I wanted to make sure that you had something.’
‘Oh, Grandma…Grandma.’ Bridget rose and put her arm around the old lady’s shoulder and, bringing her head to rest on her breast, she whispered brokenly, ‘What would I do without you? There’s no-one in this wide world that cares a hoot about me, but you.’
‘Tut. Tut. Nonsense. John thinks the world of you.’
‘Sometimes.’
‘What do you mean, sometimes?’
‘Oh, he’s been like a bear with a sore skull since he got better. I’ve never known him so bad-tempered.’
‘John, bad-tempered with you…? You must have dreamt it, child.’
‘I didn’t dream it. Yesterday he was prepared to leave me here on my own, knowing how I felt after Laurence and I had that frightful row, and he would have gone if you hadn’t insisted on his staying.’
‘Me, insist?’ The old lady bridled now. ‘I did nothing of the kind: it was his own idea. I never said a word…’
‘You don’t have to, Grandma.’ Bridget smiled weakly. ‘And all right, you didn’t insist.’
‘All I said was, I wanted to talk to him, and about something important, and it is important…It’s about a new practice. I’ve got the very place for him. I’m all for helping suffering humanity, but you can do it without living in the deep slums. This self-sacrificing attitude is a form of conceit with him. I’ve told him before now that what he’s got to do is to get a practice out of that place. So I have been looking into it; I have a number of friends, you know, in that line.’
The faint smile spread slightly. ‘Yes, I know, Grandma, and John knows too.’ Then, the smile disappearing, she added, ‘But Aunt Sarah isn’t pleased at him staying on. She almost said so to his face last night.’
‘Well—’ The old lady’s eyebrows moved up into two thin points. ‘I don’t suppose his visit is very welcome at this time.’
‘Why not?’
‘Oh well, there are reasons.’
‘But what reasons could there be, Grandma? She used to like John staying here.’
‘Well, we won’t go into it at the present moment; perhaps some time later, eh?’ She leant forward and patted Bridget’s hand and was about to say something further when the door opened and Sarah Overmeer, her face white and set, entered the room. She stood for a moment looking at the old lady before she said stiffly, ‘There is someone wishing to speak to you on the phone.’ She deliberately did not look at Bridget.
‘Me? Who is it?’ Hester turned her head to look at her stepdaughter as she spoke. ‘Can’t Frances deal with it?’
‘Frances is out in the grounds at the moment: she wanted a breath of air.’ Sarah spoke as if the old lady was in the habit of restricting her maid-companion’s activities even to the extent of depriving her of fresh air.
‘Well, I hope she gets plenty of it.’ With this caustic remark Hester cast a quick, quizzical glance at Bridget, then rising slowly from the chair, she left the room and followed her stepdaughter into the hall, leaving the door open behind her.
Bridget watched the straight back of Sarah Overmeer as she crossed the hall, and in spite of everything she knew about her, in spite of the limits that her aunt would have gone to to make her own life secure, she could not help but be concerned for her. She saw her as a victim of a long and unhappy marriage and the mother of a son who was but the replica of his father. But whereas she might feel sorry for her, her feeling of hatred towards Laurence had if anything deepened in intensity, and to such an extent that she was beginning to hate herself for her uncompromising attitude. The memory of their last meeting was still vividly with her. She could still hear her own high-pitched voice spitting out her anger. It was a disconcerting revelation to know that she could be so strong in her passion, so vehement in her dislike as to want to kill the man she had, up to a few days ago, loved, worshipped even.
‘You must not have him here.’ The high, angry voice of Sarah Overmeer broke in upon Bridget’s thoughts.
‘If you won’t allow him into your house, my dear Sarah, then all there is left to me is to stay somewhere else in the village and he can come to me there.’
‘What if Vance or Laurence comes in? There’ll be murder done.’
‘Don’t make me laugh, Sarah. Vance’s courage is all in his tongue and it’s not very convincing at that. As for Laurence, it is Bruce Dickenson that he would like to murder, not his father, and it is his father who has asked to come and speak to me…and Bridget…And by the way, Sarah, the man says he sent a letter by hand to Bridget yesterday. Do you know anything about it?’
A silence followed this query, and it was her grandmother’s voice that Bridget heard again, saying quietly, ‘You are not a really clever woman, Sarah, you never were. Ruthless, but not clever. I could almost say I hate people who interfere with private mail.’
‘Without that reason, you have always hated me.’
‘That is not true, Sarah, and you know it. You resented me from the moment I married your father. You made it plain that this could never be my home and I never considered it my home, but hate you or bear you any ill will, never. This house, I could say, has been your downfall, although you consider it evidence of your prestige. If you had thought more of Vance instead of this ugly stone box, your life would have been happier and you might even have prevented the present financial chaos…But we’re getting down to personalities. To get back to the subject that matters most at the moment, Mr Dickenson will be here just as quickly as it takes his car to cover the distance. If Vance or Laurence should come in while he is in the house, you can tell them that I overrode your orders.’
When Hester Gether entered the room she paused for a moment after closing the door behind her, and as she walked forward she looked hard at Bridget and stated, ‘You heard all that?’
‘Yes, Grandma.’
‘Well, then’—the tone was crisp—‘there’s no need to go into it all again.’
‘But…but what does Mr Dickenson want?’
‘I don’t really know, except perhaps to apologise for his son’s behaviour.’
‘There’s no need.’ Bridget bit on her thumbnail. ‘Why keep it up?’
‘That’s beside the point, child. Henry Dickenson wants to do the right thing. He’s an upright man, as was his father and grandfather. In fact, I would go as far as to say that they had more true breeding in them than anyone who was born in this house. I don’t know much about the young Bruce, but you say yourself he always acted very well towards you; until that one instance, and then you say he was drunk. If at one time you ran wild in the woods with him and you came to no harm…’ The old lady held up her hand in a warning gesture. ‘Oh, I know all about it, I’ve been given the full story, and if that is so, the man has some good in him. And you would have gone on being aware of nothing but good had he not been to a wedding, as you yourself told me, and drank too much. Now the position is this: Mr Dickenson wishes to speak to you. He is greatly troubled, I understand. I also understand that he sent you a note yesterday and phoned a number of times. It was Mrs Dickenson who asked to speak to me just now, and I doubt, had Sarah recognised her voice, the message would have ever reached me. Immediately she heard me speak she put her husband on the phone. It’s coming to something, isn’t it, when people have to sink to subterfuge to speak to me. And now I suppose I’ll have to go and find Frances and get her to await his arrival, in case Sarah instructs Ryder to send the man packing.’
