The Moth, page 7
‘My—’
‘Please don’t try to talk, Mama.’
‘My keys.’
‘Your keys. You want them? All right. All right, I’ll get them.’
She knew that her mother kept the keys to her jewel box in her desk that stood to the side of the window, and it was to the desk she went and pulled open the top drawer and took out the keys. There were four keys on the ring and when she placed them on her mother’s hand, Kate Thorman’s fingers slipped over them to hold the smallest one. Then, as if even the weight of this was too much for her, she dropped it on to the counterpane and after staring unblinking into Agnes’ face for some seconds, she said, ‘The secret drawer . . . bureau . . . a box in the bureau.’
What her mother called the bureau was a davenport. It was one that had been made about fifty years earlier when secret drawers were being placed in all kinds of furniture, but mostly in the davenports. The button that worked the spring was in the upper part of the small right-hand drawer. This usually released the narrow top of the upright, allowing it to rise as if by magic to display a small panelled aperture with two similar drawers on each side.
Agnes knew all about the secret drawer, she had worked it so many times as a child. She couldn’t remember how old she was when she was told she mustn’t touch it again, because the wire controlling the weights was getting frayed. But now, picking up the keys from the counterpane, she went quickly up the room, pressed the button in the drawer and watched, as she had done so many times before, the top of the false back rise in the air to expose its secret compartments. The middle panel itself had its separate secret for it had to be opened by a button underneath the false top. When this was pressed the small door sprung open. It revealed inside a mother-of-pearl box. Having taken it out, she went to lift the lid but found it locked. Of course, this was what her mother wanted the key for. Swiftly now, she opened the box, and there she saw inside, doubled in half, a number of sheets of paper, and these lying on top of an envelope. She quickly took them out; but before going back to the bed she pressed down the top of the davenport into place again.
When she reached the bed she saw that her mother was in a state of agitation and when she placed the letters in her hand, it was the envelope she picked out.
Her fingers quivering, she lifted the flap and turned the envelope upside down, and a ring fell on to the counterpane. As her fingers were groping for it Agnes picked it up and held it out towards her and she watched her mother stare at it for a moment before putting out her hand and closing it around her own and the ring as she muttered, ‘For you. Keep it, always. Very precious to me. But . . . but burn these. Promise, burn these.’
As her last words trailed away, there was a slight tap on the bedroom door before it was immediately opened, and Agnes knew that her father was entering the room. In one swift motion she thrust the letters into the opening between the buttons of her dressing gown, automatically pulling the cord tight around her waist. And when her father reached her side she was in the act of lifting the empty box from the bed.
Her mother now was lying with her eyes closed as if aware of her husband’s presence and wanted to shut it out. As if he sensed something, he looked down at the box and the ring that Agnes was now holding between her finger and thumb and, his voice thick, he said, ‘What’s that?’
‘A ring. Mother wants me to have it.’ His hand came out and took the ring from her and his eyes narrowed to pinpoints. Evidently, he had never seen it before.
‘Where was it? Where did you get it?’
‘In her jewel . . . in her drawer’ – she nodded towards the dressing table – ‘in this box.’ He now picked up the box and turned it over, then handed both the ring and the box back to her, staring hard at her for a moment before looking down on his wife and saying, ‘How is she?’
‘She’s very ill. The doctor says she . . . she must have complete rest.’
‘She’s conscious?’
‘Only just; she keeps coming and going.’
‘She brought this on herself. You know that, don’t you?’
She knew no such thing, so she did not answer him, only looked him straight in the face. And on this he turned about and as he was leaving the room he said, ‘Inform me when the doctor comes again.’
She pressed her hand tightly against her breast and felt the papers crinkle underneath the pressure, then she looked down on her mother, whose breathing now appeared to be very shallow. She was about to put her hand into her dressing gown and retrieve the letters when the door opened once more and Peggy and Ruthie entered.
Ruthie Waters was very like her mother in stature: she had a short thickset body and plain features, but her face was often relieved by a smile, whereas her mother’s seemed set in a kind of placid calmness which belied many facets of her character.
Peggy went to her mistress and bent over her, while Ruthie, looking at Agnes, said, ‘You’re all in. Look, go and have a wash and get dressed. Maggie’s got your breakfast ready: you’ll have it on a tray in the morning room; you’ll be by yourself there and the fire’s doing nicely. Who would think that the sun was almost splitting the trees yesterday, when this morning there was a frost of all things.’
Agnes nodded at Ruthie, then looking at Peggy, she said, ‘If . . . if there’s any change, come straightaway for me, won’t you?’
‘We’ll see to that. Go on. As Ruthie says, go and have a bite, because if you ask me, it’s gona be a long day, and another long night.’
‘What about you?’
‘Seems to me I nodded on and off most of the night. I’m like that once I sit down. But you were wide-eyed at six this morning, so go on.’
As she spoke she looked at the box Agnes was holding but did not remark on it, and Agnes went out still holding it.
Once inside her room, she placed the ring on the tray on her dressing table; then she sat down on the edge of her bed before pulling out the letters from underneath her dressing gown. Holding them away from her, she stared at them. ‘Burn them,’ her mother had said, and that’s what she would do, but not before she had read them, for she felt that in these letters she would find out the truth of Millicent’s birth.
The first she opened and read was the one in the envelope, and both her eyes and mouth widened as she read the first line:
Beloved, beloved, I know we promised that we must not write, but I cannot leave the country and you without one last word. I keep saying to myself, why had it to happen like this? All too late, eight years too late for both of us. What cynic arranged that we should be married the same week and in churches not a mile from each other, yet never look upon each other’s face for seven and half years. But the moment we did we knew that fate had made a mistake in the arrangement of our lives.
It is possible that I will never look upon your face again, beloved, yet it is clear before my eyes in my every waking moment and held between my hands in my dreams. I have never hated the word duty as I have during these past weeks: duty to one’s king and country, duty to one’s parents . . . duty to one’s family. Oh, this last duty, a duty that is binding us both in chains. Perhaps it is well we are not in the silly years of our youth for we might then have thrown everything to the wind without thought for others. But even so, I have been tempted more than once to do just that. Yet I never put you to the test, perhaps because I saw your children and remembered my own.
I’m enclosing this in a letter to your loyal Peggy. I feel I owe her much. She was so understanding and so helpful. There she was, a servant, a woman of the common people, yet nearer to us both than any of our own kin. As long as you have her, my dearest, you’ll not need other friends.
I’m leaving for Southampton now. We sail at six in the morning. Goodbye, my dearest dear. There is one long night stretching before me; when that dawn arrives we will meet again. Of this I am sure.
Ever yours,
Only yours.
Lance.
Agnes dropped the letter on to her lap where it lay among the others and, putting her hands up, she cupped her face and rocked herself gently. Oh, to be loved like that, if only for a short while, if only for a day, an hour even, to have someone say to you the words that man had said to her mother, must have said to her over and over again during the short time they were together. Their love must have been like a flame. Oh, how she wished such a flame would consume her. But the nearest James ever got to a flame was, ‘My dear Agnes’, and very often the ‘My dear’ sounded like a slight recrimination. She opened her eyes and dropped her hands on to her knees and stared towards the door as she thought soberly now, Mama may be dying, but at least she has lived.
Picking up one of the folded sheets from her lap she straightened it out and read:
Dearest dear, I’ve had to destroy the diary, it was too dangerous. But I must talk to you; and I can talk to you in a way that I wouldn’t possibly do were we together. Reginald came to my bed last night. I did not resist him although my body shrank into its core, but his presence there gave me an alibi I’m much in need of this time, for I am with child, Lance, our child. I feel unwell and so alone. Oh my heart, at this moment I wish I could die.
The letter ended abruptly here.
The next one, like the first, bore no date. It began:
Millicent is three years old today. She is beautiful and gay, strangely gay, but so small, she is like a little elf. She has your eyes, so why do I not love her as I should. I purposely didn’t make a fuss of her as a baby in case Reginald observed my attitude was different to that with which I received the other four, because as I confessed to you I never really wanted children. I suppose I am selfish, I just wanted to be loved, and I was never loved until I met you. I cling to the memory of our nights together; yet they are fading, like your face. Why didn’t I insist on having your picture?
I hear little snatches about you through the Morleys. You are making quite a name for yourself, George Morley said. He also told me that your wife had had another child. This seared me to the heart, while at the same time I understood.
This letter, too, ended abruptly. The next one had been written some three years earlier. It began:
You have a daughter, my dearest dear. She is supposed to be a premature baby. Doctor Miller confirmed Peggy’s remarks. I wonder what he knows? He’s kind. The child is to be christened Millicent after Reginald’s aunt. He hopes that this will be remunerative. He never does anything without a purpose. The baby is a fortnight old and I’m up today for the first time.
I am empty in all ways. Hold me beloved, hold me, stretch out your arms to me, I am so alone. And forgive me, forgive me for last night; I prayed that I had never met you, because before, life was bearable, just. But the light you shone into my existence showed me the drab darkness in which I spent my days.
Oh Lance. Lance.
It was some moments before Agnes picked up the last sheet of paper. She noticed that at some time it had been crumpled as if crushed in the hand and straightened out again. And as she read it, the tears rained down her face, and inside of her was a mourning that reflected the agony that had caused her mother to pen the words that began the letter:
You are dead. For three months you have been dead and I have not known. I received no sign. Your face still remained a blur up to last night at dinner at the Weldings, when they talked about it quite casually, saying, it was a pity: such a sad end to a brilliant career. Strange, they said, for a soldier such as he to die of a fever and not under fire. Then for the first time I saw your face clearly again. It rose out of the decimated turkey that was being lifted from the table by the butler, and you seemed to hover above his head as he made towards the sideboard. Then I heard someone say, ‘Oh dear me.’ . . . I must have fainted. Whatever Reginald thought, he said nothing when we arrived home. Perhaps he deems it policy as he is depending almost solely now on the small income left me by Aunt Jess which allows me to run the house, and of course allows him to still maintain his mistress in Newcastle. I am so grateful to her who was my one time dear friend for she has relieved my bed of his presence for some years. But that she continues to make him pay for his pleasure I am well aware for we live impoverished lives compared to our friends.
Why am I writing like this? You are gone and I am numb. At the moment I don’t even feel sorrow. What is wrong with me? Am I becoming as fey as our daughter? Because Millicent is fey, she is unnatural. Seven years old and can neither read nor write. All she wants to do is to roam the grounds running like a hare, leaping like a fawn. Yes, she is like a fawn.
What is really the matter with me? Why do I go on talking like this? My head seems to be swelling, yet there is nothing in it, it is as empty as you must be now. Where did they bury you? Does it matter? I cannot talk to you in the grave. I will not talk to you ever again. You are no more and I am no more.
The letter ended there and Agnes, bowing her head and her shoulders until she was almost double, whimpered now, ‘Oh! Mama. Mama. Oh, my dear Mama!’
When the door opened abruptly her body sprang upwards; then she put her hand to her throat and sighed her relief as she saw Peggy approaching her.
Peggy stood in front of her and, putting out her hand, she gripped her shoulder, saying, ‘You shouldn’t have read them, lass. The past is dead and buried. Look, put a match to them. Here, give them to me.’ And she grabbed up the letters from Agnes’ lap and, taking them to the empty grate, threw them into it. Then putting her hand into her skirt pocket she drew out a box of matches and having set light to the paper she moved it about until there was nothing but a small pile of black ash left. And when she rose from her knees Agnes was also standing and after wiping her face she said, ‘Do you think Father knew?’
‘Yes, he knew.’
‘About her meeting Mr Lance?’
‘Oh yes. But he wasn’t sure about the child, not until the poor dear started to show signs of oddness. And then he linked her up with Mr Lance’s aunt who had been in and out of asylums for years.’
‘Really! She was . . . ?’
‘Oh yes; she was quite barmy at times.’
‘What . . . what about his own children?’
‘Oh, they’re all right, as far as I know. It’s years since I heard of them. They’re about the same age as yourself and the boys.’
Agnes now took off her dressing gown and went to the wash-hand stand and began to wash her face; and after a moment she said, ‘What was he like, this Lance?’
‘Fine. A fine man, a kindly sort. You would never have thought he was a soldier. I couldn’t imagine him sticking a knife in anybody or shooting them down. But there, I suppose he had to. But one thing I do know, if she had married someone like him her life would have been different. There might still have been a Millie, oh yes’ – she nodded her head now – ‘but they would have coped. When you’re fond you cope; without it life’s a burden.’
When you are fond you cope. Peggy was terming the passion, the overwhelming passion that her mother had felt for this man and he for her as fondness. Well, by whatever name you called it, at this moment she knew that she would give years of her life to experience it. For there was a longing in her that was reaching out for something, and the physical need was only a part of it.
The door was opened unceremoniously again and they both turned and looked towards Maggie who, gabbling in her thick Irish brogue, said, ‘Ruthie says, come. She’s in a turn, the missis. It’s the end, I’m thinkin’.’
Grabbing up her dressing gown again, Agnes rushed past both Peggy and Maggie, and when she arrived in her mother’s bedroom it was to see Ruthie Waters aiming to hold her mother upright from the pillows as she gasped for breath.
With one hand pressed now tightly under her breasts Kate Thorman looked into her daughter’s face and, between gasps, she began to speak. Her words seeming to jump out of her mouth, she said, ‘Don’t . . . let . . . him . . . put . . . her . . . away.’
‘No, dear. No, never, never that.’
‘Promise?’
‘I . . . I promise, Oh, I promise.’
Kate Thorman now closed her eyes and, her body going limp, they gently settled her back on her pillows.
Fifteen minutes later with her husband and her youngest son standing on one side of the bed and Agnes and Peggy Waters on the other, Kate Thorman died. She was conscious to the end, but not once did she look in her husband’s direction, nor speak a word to him.
After Peggy had closed her lids and led Agnes away from the bed, Reginald Thorman continued to look down on his wife and his expression was not that of someone in grief, but of someone grieved.
PART TWO
CARRIE
One
It was Easter Monday, nineteen hundred and thirteen, and John Bradley had granted that it should be a holiday. It was a great concession, Robert knew, for in his uncle’s mind holidays meant not just drinking but carousing and fairgrounds and their improper sideshows.
There had been a storm after breakfast when Carrie had been foolish enough to ask if she could go into Newcastle to the show on the Town Moor. He had thought that his uncle was about to have a fit at the suggestion.
In the months he had been here he had seen a great change come over Carrie. In some ways she had become pert. Aye, he’d say pert was the word, for she had marched into this room more than once and him only half-clothed, and there had been a look in her eye that he thought was a little too old for her.
His aunt, he thought, was also aware of the change in her daughter, but it seemed that she trusted him wholly with her. Only two Sundays gone, when Carrie had been plaguing to go out for a walk as far as Lamesley with Gladys Parkin, her mother had said no, for on a Sunday the lanes were lined with lads who had nothing better to do.
