‘Mr Pearson, these small sins … we can’t really …’ Mr Geddes had opened the vestry’s thick little ogive door, and was standing beside it.
‘But Nora is always talking about it. It worries her,’ Pearson insisted. He seemed unwilling to go out into the restless night.
‘Yes … well, of course, any meddling with this kind of thing, unless it’s with the purest possible motives, is terribly dangerous. And people can deceive themselves. I’ve always thought and said so. Even when the motives are pure. I’m a hundred per cent with the more conservative members of the Church about that. It’s dreadfully, frighteningly dangerous. Does she – blame herself, then, do you think, for the present situation?’
But Pearson seemed to have gone back into his usual taciturn, faintly menacing self. He shrugged.
‘Nora is very gentle,’ he muttered, pulling his hat over his eyes, and made a vague gesture and turned away. The uneasy night, broken with the screech of brakes and throb of engines and the roar of pleasure-seeking traffic on its way into London, received him.
Mr Geddes stood for a moment among the dim elder bushes, looking up at the spire outlined against the stars; then went slowly into the house.
28
He was sitting with Gerald Corliss, taking half an hour from the crowded business of the following day to explain to him the situation at Mrs Pearson’s, and what they must try to do, when the telephone rang.
He snatched off the receiver and told Mrs Lysaght that he was busy.
‘Oh you’re always busy, Robert, surely you can spare five minutes for an old friend. I’ve got so much to tell you … life’s been really hectic lately …’
‘Helen, I’m … I’m very busy … I’ll …’
‘Oh. Oh, I see. Well, call me back, then. I’ll be in all afternoon.’
Of course you will; what else have you to do? And I wish people wouldn’t Americanize the language, I’m too old to put up with it, Mr Geddes thought, gathering his scattered thoughts.
Gerald’s own thoughts had come back, on being summoned from his room where he was presumably working on next Sunday evening’s sermon, from Peru and England, in the 1860s.
He had found, on one of the more remote shelves of the London Library, the biography of a Miss Eliza Dewer of Santa Rosita in Peru, daughter of an English merchant living there. Miss Dewer had lived a life of unusual piety, combined with devoted work among the Peruvian Indians, but this had not lessened her sense of her sinfulness and general worthlessness. Dying at forty-one, she had found her biographer in one Agnes Pettey and the latter revealed, in a footnote half-way through the small volume, that she had devoted her life to persuading Authority to include her friend among the English Saints.
Gerald had been playing with the idea of writing a joint biography of this forgotten pair, in the style of Lytton Strachey; with hardly any adjectives, and occasional tiny, dry etchings of the Peruvian and Victorian English scenes. What fun it would be.
It was this dream that had been broken into by an impatient summons from Mr Geddes.
‘So,’ the Vicar concluded, ‘that’s the plan. We pray, and we get one or two others to pray, and we visit regularly.’
He paused, studying his curate’s long face, where the heavily-lidded eyes seemed half-asleep. What female ecstatic was holding his attention now? ‘Well?’ he said.
‘I suppose …’ Gerald began hesitatingly, ‘he can’t be persuaded to consult someone professional?’
‘We are professionals,’ Mr Geddes snapped.
‘Yes, of course, but I meant … it’s difficult to express … professional in the contemporary … I meant, more likely to suggest authority and competence to unbelievers. Yes,’ (relieved) ‘that’s what I meant.’
‘No he can’t. He was absolutely definite. He mistrusts them. He isn’t educated, he has no self-control, and I should think, apart from the low cunning that’s made him his money, he’s stupid. And so much feeling! Quite embarrassing.’
‘Well, it is rather a …’ Gerald murmured.
‘Yes, yes, quite. But you can take it from me that doctors and psychiatrists are out. It’s up to the Church, and the Church must act through me and you. You’d better go along there this afternoon.’
Gerald looked down, to hide an instant’s panic.
‘Whatever it is – secondary personality, mental trouble, evil spirit – our way is perfectly clear,’ Mr Geddes added, getting up from his chair, ‘and we must follow it. About three, I told Pearson. I said I might ask you to go; it’ll be a fresh face for her.’
‘Very well,’ said Gerald.
‘You’ll like her,’ Mr Geddes added, ‘she’s a nice woman. Apart from all this extraordinary business, a sweet woman. Easy to talk to. Just chat, any ordinary gossip will do, the more ordinary the better.’
And now, I suppose, Mr Geddes thought, as his curate strode off with cassock and silky forelock floating, I’d better ring up poor Helen. Checking an exasperated sigh, he lifted the receiver.
Mrs Lysaght told him all about the dog-fight, and exactly where the bites were on her legs, and knew that he would be pleased to hear she had made a new friend.
He would be pleased for her sake but also for his own; oh yes, he needn’t deny it, she had been rather possessive lately and once or twice he had let her know it. Of course, a woman friend wasn’t like a man friend, but she was better than nothing.
‘Now Helen – don’t – really, there’s nothing to cry about …’
‘I’m not exactly crying. I’m only weak, it’s the reaction from all this excitement. And I thought I’d lost you.’
‘Now – now, you mustn’t talk nonsense,’ said Mr Geddes, alarmed.
‘I’ll try not to be silly – it’s just that it’s so nice to hear your voice again … I never realized that someone enormously wealthy could be a simple person – she showed me her collection of souvenirs – she’s kept all the programmes of the flying displays at Hendon for years back – one of them’s for 1913 – and the Victory Aerial Derby in 1919 – after the First World War, you know, and she spends a lot of her time sitting in a window overlooking what used to be Hendon fields. Just brooding, I suppose you’d call it.’
‘Helen, I really must go, I have so much to do this morning.’
‘You always have. But I won’t be naughty. Give my love to your mother. See you soon, I hope. Bye-bye.’
Mr Geddes replaced the receiver. The mention of his mother reminded him that even she had been giving her moiety of trouble lately; small indeed, compared with that offered by everyone else, but there, and irritating.
He had briefly outlined to her the situation in Lily Cottage, trusting in her good sense and propriety not to make a wonder out of it. But she ignored the plight of the Pearsons, and the secondary one of those old people depending upon the Pearsons for their home, and seemed to be interested only in that German teenager.
‘My dear Mum, I really don’t know,’ had been his mildly annoyed retort to her ‘And what about that child?’ when Gerald returned from his visit. ‘Did you see her, Gerald?’
‘It must have been she who opened the door … yes, I did.’
‘What did she say?’ put in Mrs Geddes (the three were in the kitchen, washing up). ‘No, Robert, don’t snort, I have my reasons for asking.’
‘Oh …’ Gerald paused, with the tea-towel drooping dispiritedly, and began to dredge in his memory, where Eliza Dewer and Agnes Pettey were fighting a losing battle with Nora Pearson.
‘Was she polite?’ Mrs Geddes went on.
‘Oh very. I remember now, she said, “Good-evening. How can I ‘halp’ you,”’ he said, with a smile at the sudden recollection of a face like a fat young pear.
‘Good,’ said Mrs Geddes oracularly, almost snatching the tea-towel from him, ‘I’ll finish those.’
‘Why “good”?’ he asked curiously. Mr Geddes had fled to his study, in irritation at the number of human beings there are in this world.
‘Oh – well – because eve
rybody else in that place is middle-aged or old. They’ve had their chance. But she’s at the precise age when the right chance and a bit of the right influence can set a life into the right pattern.’ Mrs Geddes ranged plates along the dresser with a series of gentle clashes. ‘I’m going to see she gets it.’ She nodded at him, in dismissal.
But in spite of Mr Geddes’s tiredness, and his difficulty in believing with his reason in the existence of Mrs Pearson’s invader, to say nothing of the practical difficulty of fitting the visits into the crowded programme of parish work, there began to be, after a while, a growing comfort.
He had enlisted the help of three people of devout life who attended the church, and their prayers were going out in an unbroken flow. He could trust Gerald Corliss to pray with every resource he possessed; he might fail in friendliness to some simple soul, but Mr Geddes had never doubted his spiritual dedication; and, when the daily visits and the silent concentration had been going on without pause for nearly two weeks, Pearson, coming noiselessly upon him late one afternoon as he was descending the stairs at Lily Cottage after his visit, said grudgingly, ‘It’s better.’
‘Thank God,’ Mr Geddes said, and waited.
‘That thing hasn’t come now for nearly three days. Before, it was coming several times a day.’
‘I’m more thankful than I can say, Mr Pearson.’
‘I suppose you think you’re working what you’d call a miracle?’ Pearson said jeeringly.
‘Oh no. Don’t let’s exaggerate. Just thank God.’
‘“Thank God”! It’s my right, isn’t it? to have her safe, in her own body, not sharing her with a devil? God is only giving me my rights.’
It should have sounded impressive. It sounded pathetic; Mr Geddes looked at the dark face, made to mirror the delights of voluptuous tenderness, in a kind of testy despair.
‘Thank you,’ said Pearson suddenly in a low tone, and turned away.
Arnold Corbett had delayed for some time in speaking to Peggy about her supposedly disreputable mother.
It was so pleasurable, to feel that he had this secret power over her! He played with the thought, watching her as she sat with them at meals or in the evenings; and, naturally, grew to believe the power stronger than it was in fact.
He began, too, to feel that if he was to get any benefit from his knowledge, he must speak soon. She had changed, since the spring weeks came in; he could feel restlessness breathing from her dark body and sometimes see it glittering in her eyes and throbbing in her quiet, harsh voice. He was certain that she meant to leave them.
It was true that the whole of Peggy’s inner life was changing. The beauty of those weeks of spring, with the awakening of the sap in the leaves and the strong, ever-increasing light, had seemed to awaken some positive force within herself; something that protested against the negativity of pride and pain; and the glimpse of his wife, on Easter Sunday at Sedgemere, had worked with the pressures exerted by the blossoming year to overthrow the barriers of pride that she had set up.
She had begun to ask herself why she should suffer as she did, shutting herself away from the delight that was offered?
It was only because he would not promise to cut himself off, completely, from Janey and his children. She had told him that if she could not have this, have him utterly and finally for herself, she would have nothing. His every thought and feeling must belong to her alone.
But suddenly her pride was crumbling, and, what mattered more to Peggy, her belief in it. She was beginning to suspect that she had behaved like a fool. She felt herself – poor Peggy – to be years older than the furiously angry girl who had parted from Fred Rattray a year ago, after laying down that immovable condition. Inwardly, more and more often as the summer advanced, she would burn and tremble at the knowledge that complete happiness, utter rapture, were awaiting her, without doubt, as the result of a telephone call. She would give his number – charged and laden with its weight of meaning – and then – she would hear his voice.
Peggy would get up from her chair, here, and walk restlessly across the room and lean out of the open window and stare fiercely into the dusk. Nothing stood between her and this happiness, this perfect happiness, but her own pride.
With these thoughts and sensations, it was not surprising that she replied as she did to a suggestion made one morning by Mrs Corbett that she should accompany herself and the four dogs to stay at the home of a friend in Ireland, during the following month.
‘Oh I don’t know, Mrs Corbett – I can’t possibly say now – I don’t know yet what my plans are,’ and she hurried out of the room.
‘Well!’ Mrs Corbett stared after her. ‘That wasn’t very polite, was it, boys?’ Then her expression became depressed. ‘Going to leave, I suppose … just as we were all so comfortable.’ She sighed.
Arnold was coming up the stairs towards his own room. Peggy gave him barely a smile, and was hurrying past.
He paused in front of her: he looked excited and triumphant, as if a flood of words was banked up behind his face.
‘Don’t be in such a hurry. I’ve been wanting to speak to you. Come on, come in here a minute.’ He held open the door of the room known as his ‘den’. ‘Come on,’ he repeated excitedly, then, as she did not move and looked at him coldly, ‘it’s all right – I only want a word with you.’
She shrugged, and went into the room, and he followed.
‘Look here,’ he began at once, as he shut the door on them, ‘does my mother know about your mother being a medium?’
‘How did you know?’ she exclaimed, too taken by surprise to conceal dismay.
‘Mrs Lysaght let it out: I drove her home, that first evening … she wants a “sitting”, or whatever it’s called … Does she know, Peggy? My mother, I mean.’
For a minute, she said nothing, only stared, expressionlessly now, at his red triumphant face. Her eyes looked unusually beautiful, he thought; dark as some animal’s suddenly alarmed, with the star deep in them.
‘I didn’t see any reason why she should,’ she said at last. ‘It isn’t a crime.’
‘No, but it’s all a bit funny, isn’t it? and she lives in a funny kind of neighbourhood, too. My mother hates anything she calls “creepy”.’
She shrugged again. ‘Mrs Lysaght may have told her by now, if she’s after a sitting (I don’t think she’ll get one, my mother gave it all up some years ago). What’s all this about, anyway? You doing a little blackmail – or hoping to? If you are, you can stop hoping. I don’t care a damn whether she knows or not – she met my mother and my father too, when we were staying at Hove – she knows my mother’s an invalid –’
‘An invalid! Why not admit she’s mental?’ He laughed unpleasantly.
‘Because she isn’t. She is psychic. But she hasn’t used what she calls her gifts for years. I’ve just said so. Here, can we break this up now? – I want to take the dogs out.’
‘Oh all right. If you could manage to be a bit nicer to me I’d drop the whole thing. Can’t you, Peggy?’
‘No – I – can – not. Leave me alone – I’m sick of it here – I’ll get out, I think – I’ve been meaning to.’
She went towards the door, and he stood aside, unwilling to touch her, because the detestation of him, and the contempt that came from her, made him profoundly sad. Sadness held him in a kind of paralysis.
‘I’ll go to my mother at once, now,’ he said dejectedly as she went past him, ‘and we’ll see … it is all pretty shady, you must admit …’
‘Oh go to hell.’ She ran downstairs, and in a minute he heard her talking to the dogs in the hall as she buckled them on to their leads. He thought that her voice sounded different; there was hysteria in it, under the cheerful words.
29
He lunched in London, and did not see her again. Late in the afternoon he returned to MacLeod House to find his mother sitting in her favourite place overlooking Hendon in its valley. With her was Mrs Lysaght, also enjoying a martini among
the house plants. Arnold came into the room to overhear his mother complaining about the ingratitude of the servants, which, she was saying, had been worse than usual lately. Mrs Lysaght was agreeing and sympathizing though in fact she was so satisfied with her new Crimplene suit that she could not feel anything was very unpleasant: the skirt, thought Mrs Lysaght, hangs like a dream.
‘What I cannot get over is your Miss Pearson’s mother and my medium being the same person … I do wish you would change your mind about coming for a sitting … it would be such fun!’ she attempted, feeling the lament gone on long enough.
‘Oh I couldn’t, dear … I hate anything creepy,’ Mrs Corbett said absently, ‘and just now I’m too worried about all this to enjoy anything. Doris and Frobisher have never got on well, as I told you, but downright quarrelling … I cannot stand it. And Peggy’s been so funny to-day.’
‘Where is she this evening?’ said Mrs Lysaght.
‘It’s her free evening; she can go out any time, of course, but Tuesday is a fixture. I wish,’ plaintively, to Arnold, who was sitting in silence with his hands hanging between his knees and an empty glass beside him, ‘you hadn’t gone for her like that this morning. I’m sure you’ve upset her. I can’t imagine what you were thinking about.’
‘I didn’t “go for” her. I simply thought you ought to know her mother was mental and lived in a slum, and I told her so.’
‘Well of course it isn’t nice, dear, and as I said just now, I do hate anything creepy, or anything shady either … I always thought her people were comfortably off – she only gets five guineas a week here – nothing nowadays, with secretaries getting twelve and fourteen – but she’s always seemed satisfied – why her mother has to live in what you call a slum I don’t know. But I don’t care; Peggy suits me, and it really isn’t my business. I do wish you’d left well alone.’
Arnold shrugged, and Mrs Lysaght said that she thought Peggy had the look of a medium’s daughter; you could tell; she had thought then something was queer there the first time she saw her.