He opened his eyes. He was rested. But he said, ‘What about you, Ruth? What about you?’
She shook her head, and after a moment, left him. And stood on the landing opposite the door of the room she dared not enter.
It was almost four o’clock. She slept a little, restlessly, and took on Jo’s dream, so that she flinched back from the faces of the trees and the way they threatened her, and then, she saw that they wore the expressions of all those people who had been up here since yesterday, Potter and Alice, David Colt, the curate, and others, too, the ones she had still to see, Dora and Arthur Bryce, and all the people of the village. It seemed to last for hours, but when she woke again, it was only just after five. She sat, letting the nightmare wash over her and recede gradually, until her head was rinsed clean and clear of all things, memories, faces, fears. She watched the hands of the clock move from five to half past, to six, and then seven, when Jo came quietly into the room.
Now it was Thursday. Only another day and another night, only this small amount of precious time, like a globule of water hanging from a tap, but ready to fall, to burst open.
In the kitchen, Jo filled the range and put the kettle on to boil. The sounds comforted her.
*
It was just after five o’clock. She rinsed her hands and face at the tap in the kitchen, and the water was icy, burning her skin.
In that time between the fading of moonlight and the rising of dawn, everything about her seemed curiously insubstantial, and she herself felt weightless, as though she were in a dream. But the long grass at the side of the path brushed against her legs like damp feathers. The world was real enough.
The path led out into the lane, which sloped for a mile, between the beeches. All the night animals had retreated into nests and burrows, and as she came up to the field gate, the first birds were making individual, exploratory calls.
The sky paled a little and now she saw the mist, like soft grey bundles of wool left about at the bottom of the meadow, and on the margin of the wood. The grass smelled sappy and fresh as she trod it down, and the mist gave off its own peculiar, raw smell as she passed through it.
Inside the wood, the ground sloped sharply downhill, and was a mulch of wet leaves and moss and soil, she had to hold on to branches and roots, to steady herself. But every moment, it was growing lighter, now she could see the grey outline of trees, a few yards ahead. She felt nothing, was not afraid, she only concentrated upon getting there.
Lower down there was more mist, trailing about her like tattered chiffon scarves. The beeches gave way to oak and elm, with low bushes and briars. A weasel streaked across the path ahead of her, red eyes gleaming like berries. Then, another slope down to the last clearing. It was very still here. Everything was gradually taking on its own colour again, as the first light filtered through, the various shades of grey separated themselves from one another, and the brown of soil and dead leaf, the silvery fringed lichen and mould-green moss.
Helm Bottom.
At first, she saw nothing to indicate that this was the place. And then, behind her, the pile of cut-down undergrowth and pruned branches, laid together.
The tree itself was a few feet away, the roots had been half torn-out of the ground like teeth from a gum, leaving a ragged hole. When she went close to it, she could see that the wood was rotten, a honeycomb of dead, dry cells running through its core. But the outer branches looked healthy, there were buds forming. It had been nobody’s fault, no one could have known.
Very slowly, she crouched down and put her hands on the tree bark. It was faintly spongy with moss. So this was it. This. Though she had no way of telling which part of it had fallen on to him, the ground was trampled and churned up, where all the men had been, he might have lain anywhere.
She understood that it had been utterly right for Ben to die here, in the wood. Because it was his place, he had known it since childhood, he was a forester. She was grateful. She would not have wanted him sick, in bed for months in some strange hospital. Everything was well.
A thin dart of sunlight came between two branches and caught on a cobweb laid out on the hawthorn, the tiny water-beads were iridescent. She was stiff and cold, kneeling there, she could feel the damp soaking through her clothing, but she did not go, she laid her face against the fallen tree, and it gave her some sort of courage, some sort of hope. She half-slept, and pictures shuffled like cards before her eyes, she heard the bird-song and then it was confused with snatches of human speech, so that she thought they had all come for her, were surrounding her, in the wood.
When she opened her eyes again, she knew something more. That this was a good place, because Ben had died here and he had been good. ‘Whenever she came here, it could only give her peace, she could not be assailed by any fear, nothing could harm her here. For if a bad death haunted a place with evil, why should not a good death imprint its own goodness?
It was a long time before she got up, and tried to bring back some warmth to her cramped limbs.
The mist had folded back and back upon itself like a long pillow at the bottom of Low Field. She found mushrooms, more than a dozen of them, with their delicate pink-brown grilles and tops of white suede, she put some in her pockets and carried the rest between cupped hands back up the hill and across the common, to where she found Jo waiting, full of alarm, by the gate. She called out, to reassure him, and the donkey heard her, too, and brayed.
‘Ruth…’
‘It’s all right.’
‘Mushrooms!’
‘I found them in Low Field.’
He glanced at her quickly.
‘I went there. To Helm Bottom. I had to go.’
‘Yes.’
‘I had to go by myself.’
‘Is it all right?’
‘Yes.’
Yes, for now, she had something to hold on to, some kind of reassurance which would take her through this day. It was only the end of it she dreaded, and dared not look beyond, for the worst would come to her, she knew, when, for everyone else, it was all over.
3
AS SHE TURNED into Foss Lane and saw the house, she had again the sensation of being outside her own body, of watching her own actions with interest but without emotion. There were people round the doorway, but they moved back, murmuring a little and then falling silent, as they saw her. She was wearing the brown skirt and coat, and no hat, because she did not possess a hat, and it had not occurred to her to buy one specially. That would have changed her, she would not be the person Ben knew.
At the open door, she paused, and her heart began to beat violently, she gripped her hands together.
There they were. All of them, in black, and the women in hats, the men formal and unfamiliar in suits, with arm-bands. And as she entered the tiny front room, they, too, fell silent. Nobody came to her.
Dora Bryce was in a chair beside the fire, a handkerchief to her face. The room was hot. Ruth felt that she would choke, she wanted to run away from these ashen, sepulchral faces, What had any of this to do with her, or with Ben? She remembered what Jo had told her, about people in the early church who wore white at a funeral for rejoicing.
‘Ruth …’
Arthur Bryce took her arm, and then let it go, awkwardly. His neck looked red and swollen under the stiff white collar.
Perhaps he did not dislike her, perhaps, if it had not been for the women, he might have been her friend, But he went along with them, Dora and Alice, did what they did.
Who were all the others? They looked curiously alike; they must be aunts and uncles and cousins of the Bryces. None of them was related to her. They either glanced at her and away quickly, or else stared with set faces. She thought, you’ve heard about me, and what you have heard you believe, there isn’t anything they will not have told you.
Where was Jo? If Jo would come … She had never felt so lonely, so set apart from other people, in her life, and she had only her own courage and pride to rely on.
‘You’ll wa
nt to come up.’
Arthur Bryce was standing in the doorway, at the foot of the stairs and for a moment she did not understand. When she did, she stepped back, the room tilted and her ears rang.
‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘No.’
Dora Bryce lifted her head.
‘You’re not going to pay your respects? You don’t even want to say goodbye to him?’
‘There’s nothing to be afraid of. I’ll come with you, girl.’
Arthur Bryce fingered his collar. ‘He looks …’
‘No!’
She saw the expression on Alice’s face, remembered what she had said that night. ‘You’ve not even feeling enough to cry.’ But she could not go upstairs, the sight of his body, lying in a coffin, which would soon be sealed up forever, would be more than she could bear. And it would mean nothing, now. She looked around the room. So they had all been up? Yes. She imagined the file of dark mourners mounting the stairs and peering down into the coffin. At Ben. Ben. How could they? How could so many people have touched him and looked at him, unasked, since the moment of his death, when she herself had not?
But it was better. She thought, they don’t have Ben. When I last saw him, he was alive, walking up the path, at the beginning of an ordinary day, and we were happy, and that is what I want to remember, there is no strange, dead image to lie like a mask over that.
Dora Bryce was speaking, but her head was bent, the words were muffled and distorted with tears.
‘There’s a bed made up for you. For tonight.’
‘No, I’ll go back home.’
‘Up there? You want to be alone up there tonight?’
Oh God, Oh God, it was all going to begin again, she wanted to scream at them, leave me alone, leave me alone!
‘It’d be only right for you to stay with us this once. Today of all days.’
Why?
‘Isn’t it the least you can do?’ Alice said, her voice ringing out clear and impersonal across the room.
Why? Why should it matter to any of them that she should stay here, under this roof, tonight? Why should it be unkind or disrespectful of her to go back to her own home?
Nothing more was said, because there were footsteps, the men in black overcoats were coming through the doorway and passing by her, on their way upstairs. Ruth thought, I could go, I could still go up, this is the last chance. She saw that Arthur Bryce was looking at her, expecting it.
She turned away. Saw the one car outside in the lane, and the clutch of onlookers, waiting, to stare and to follow behind the family, through the village and up to the church.
Someone had closed the inner door, but she could still hear it, from upstairs, the dull thud-thud of the hammer.
*
The car moved off very slowly, with two of the undertaker’s men walking in front, and behind it, the column of mourners like black ants, and as they turned out of Foss Lane, the sun came out from behind full-bellied rain clouds. Ruth felt calm, and withdrawn from it all. She walked alone, needing no one. Jo was a pace behind her, watching, anxious. The wood of the coffin was pale as honey. It seemed to have nothing to do with Ben, because Ben was here, was all around her, was walking next to her, and occasionally, he touched her arm for comfort. She wanted to say, ‘You went away and now you have come back. Where did you go? Why? Why?’ She wondered if she was going out of her mind.
They were waiting at the lych-gate of the flint-faced church, the rector and the curate, like magpies in black and white, and suddenly, she remembered the day she and Ben had been married, remembered walking up here, early in the morning, dressed in plain, cream wool, without a hat or gloves or flowers. It had been a brief wedding, with only half a dozen people there, and afterwards, they had gone straight to the cottage, there had been no party. That was what they both wanted, and they did not care what conclusions the village might draw from the sudden, private ceremony: and Dora Bryce had had no choice but to agree, though she blamed Ruth for it all, for turning Ben against her.
The bell was tolling, and unconsciously, they began to walk in time with it, and everything in the world seemed to be slowing down, her own breathing and the beats of her heart, as well as the steps of the priests and the bearers, and soon, they would stop, it would all stop.
For a moment, it did, time ceased, as the men who had set the coffin down stepped back, and everyone found a place, and the two priests waited for the tolling bell to cease. The church was full. The bell ceased. The church seethed with silence.
Ruth was alone, beside Jo, in a pew in front of everyone else, so that she could only hear the noises of sobbing, the coughs and the shuffling feet, she did not have to look at their faces. Jo sat like a stone.
The priest was speaking, Ruth heard the words very clearly, very distinctly, and yet could find no meaning in them, they were in some foreign tongue. All her senses had become more acute, everything seemed hard-edged and perfectly defined in shape, her ears picked out the sound of every separate person’s breathing.
Then, it burst upon her, as overwhelmingly as on the way home from Thefton market. There seemed to be a light within everything, the stones of the church walls and the dark wood of the pulpit, the white and yellow flowers on the coffin, the stained glass windows, the brass rail, everything shone and was caught up together in some great beauty, and all things were part of a whole. The pattern had fallen into place again, and the meaning of all things was ringing in her head, she could tell them, she could tell them, and then, at last, she heard words which she understood.
‘Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband: and I heard a great voice from the throne saying, “Behold the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them and they shall be his people and God himself will be with them. And he will wipe every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.”
This it was that set her apart from them, as she stood at the front of the church with her dark red hair loose over her shoulders, this revelation that she shared with Ben. Who was here, here. She felt faint, not with grief but with joy, because love was stronger than death.
*
The wind blew into their faces and stirred the funeral flowers and the heads of the poplars behind the church, and the clouds were fast-moving, heavy with rain to come.
When the clods of soil fell lightly on to the pale coffin lid, she thought that if she were to kneel down now, and prise it open, the box would be empty. She could not imagine how they believed, as they did, all black as crows, around the grave, that Ben was dead. She saw that they were watching her and thinking that she had still not accepted the truth, or else that it was her pride which kept her from crying. But how could she cry? Why should there be any reason for it? Their faces were all lifeless, carded and blotched with weeping, she wanted to shout out to them, ‘You are the dead people. You!’ For they seemed not to belong to any life she knew about, there was no link between them and the vibrant, dancing colours of the flowers and grasses and the holy breath of the wind, and the blood coursing through her own body.
Someone was touching her. Jo. People were moving away. It was finished. She looked at the rust-dark soil, piled up neatly on either side of the open grave.
‘Ruth …’
Jo had been crying, his eyes were dark as bruises. She took his hand and felt the trembling in it, and they came a long way behind the others, away from the churchyard.
People hovered, perhaps waiting to speak to her, tell her what they themselves felt, but seeing her face, they dropped back or turned aside and remained silent.
Dora Bryce was walking unsteadily, clinging to her husband’s arm, and to Alice on the other side, and so it was around her that people gathered, for they knew what to do with a woman who wept or
fainted, who behaved in the way that seemed right, because customary.
Again, they were all crowded into the front room. Ruth watched them as they began to relax, in their unfamiliar clothes, and were easier, talking to one another, now that the coffin had gone from the house. She saw their hands reach out for sandwiches and small cakes, their fingers stirring spoons round and round, in the best china cups. Jo sat beside her, not speaking, and after a while, they stopped pressing her to eat or drink, they ignored her, out of embarrassment or mistrust. The afternoon trailed on and none of them went home and their voices rose and fell and buzzed about like insects trapped in her ears. The tiredness came back, deadening her limbs, she had not the will or energy to try, again, to return home. Her eyelids felt swollen and sore. She could not move, she might never move again.
*
The room was empty. They were all of them gone. The table was a mess of empty plates and doilies and spoons. The silence brought her back to herself.
She let Alice take her up the stairs and into the bedroom they had made ready for her. It was very clean and cold, very small, there were no ornaments or pictures, and the sheets were bound tight as bandages over the bed.
Knowing that she would not sleep, she did not bother to disturb them, nor to undress, except for her shoes and stockings They were forcing her to take part in some curious ritual of their own and she had no strength left in her to battle with them. But what good she could be doing, what duty she fulfilled by spending this one, enforced night in the house of her dead husband’s family, she could not fathom. Did not try. Her brain ached with tiredness and with the emotions that had overtaken her, one after another and so completely, in the course of the past four days.
Nobody came to her, and she did not want any false gestures of friendship. But, lying on the high, narrow bed, and hearing the movements all about the house, she wanted someone, anyone, some touch or word.
For the beginning of the night, she listened to the keening of Dora Bryce, it came to her as clearly as if there were no walls to the house. It was a terrible noise, she was ashamed of the woman for making it, and ashamed of herself, because she could not. It rose and fell, in a mad, distracting rhythm of its own, and then, in the aftermath, a muffled sobbing, and the rumble of Arthur Bryce’s voice. There were footsteps up and down the staircase. Alice was there with her mother, and she too was crying. Ruth’s body was rigid. The night was the length of all the nights she had ever lived through. Outside, the wind made a thin, high sound of its own, as it passed by the house.