It was Tim who saw her to the car; surprised, Ron watched his son thrust himself between them rather like a dog bristling with annoyance because it has been forgotten. He took the hint and sat down again with his newspaper, while Tim followed Mary outside.
"I wish you didn't have to go back, Mary," he said, staring down at her with a look in his eyes she had never seen there before, and could not identify.
She smiled, patting his arm. "I have to go, Tim, I really do. But that means I have to rely on you to look after your Pop, because he doesn't know his way round the house or grounds, whereas you do. Be good to him, won't you?"
He nodded. His hands, slack by his sides, moved and clenched in on themselves. "I'll look after him, Mary, I promise I'll look after him."
He stood watching the track until the car had gone into the trees, then turned and went back into the house.
Twenty
Mary's week was quite as hard as she had expected. Of the several meetings the Board of Constable Steel & Mining held during the year, this was the most important one. Three representatives of the parent firm in the United States flew in from New York to attend it. There were the usual secretarial problems related to unsatisfactory hotels, unavailable foods, bored wives, lagging schedules, and the like; when Friday night came Mary's sigh of relief was as heartfelt as Archie Johnson's. They sat in his office on the top floor of Constable Tower with their feet up, staring dazedly out at the spinning panorama of lights spreading away in all directions to the star-struck horizon.
"Christ on a bicycle, Mary, am I glad that's over and done with!" Archie exclaimed, pushing away his empty plate. "That was a jolly good idea of yours to have a Chinese meal sent up, it really was."
"I thought you might like it." She wiggled her toes luxuriously. "My feet feel like size fourteens, and I've been dying to take my shoes off all day. I thought Mrs. Hiram P. Schwartz would never find her passport in time for the plane, and I had ghastly visions of having to put up with her for the weekend."
Archie grinned. His impeccable secretary's shoes were lying higgledy-piggledy on the far side of the room, and she had almost disappeared into the maw of an enormous chair, her stockinged feet propped up on an ottoman.
"You know, Mary, you ought to have adopted a mentally retarded kid years ago. Sacred blue-arsed flies, what a difference it's made in you! I've never been able to do without you, but I confess it's a great deal more fun to work with you these days. I never thought I'd live to see the day when I'd have to admit I actually enjoyed your company, you nasty old twit, but I do, I really do! To think that all through the years it's been there inside you the whole time, and you never let it out once. That, my dear, is a bloody shame."
She sighed, half smiling. "Perhaps. But you know, Archie, nothing ever happens out of its due time. Had I met Tim years ago I would never have become interested in him. Some of us take half our lives to awaken."
He lit a cigar and puffed at it contentedly. "We've been so busy I haven't had a chance to ask you exactly what happened last Friday. His mother died?"
"Yes. It was dreadful." She shivered. "I took Tim and his father Ron up to my cottage last Sunday, and left them there. I'm going up to join them tonight. I do hope they're all right, but I suppose if they'd had any problems I would have heard from them. Tim hasn't realized yet what's happened, I think. Oh, he know his mother's dead and he knows what that means, but the concrete reality of her going hadn't begun to work on him, he hadn't begun to miss her before I left. Ron says he'll get over it very quickly, and I hope he does. I feel very sorry for Ron. His daughter made quite a scene when I went out to pick up Tim on Friday."
"Oh?"
"Yes." Mary got up and went to the bar. "Would you like a brandy or something?"
"After Chinese food? No, thanks. I'll have a cup of tea, please." He watched her move around behind the bar to the little stove and sink. "What sort of a scene?"
Her head was bent over the kettle. "It's a little embarrassing to talk about it. An ugly scene, let's leave it at that. She-oh, it doesn't matter!" The cups rattled.
"She what? Come on, now, Mary, spit it out!"
The eyes looking at him were bright with defiance and wounded pride. "She implied that Tim "was my lover."
"Great sausages of shit!" He threw back his head and laughed. "Way off base, way off base! I would have told her that if she'd asked me." He heaved himself out of his chair and came to lean on the bar. "Don't let it upset you, Mary. What a wart the girl must be!"
"No, she isn't a wart. She married a wart, that's all, and he's doing his best to wartify her. I don't honestly think that what she said was anything more than a parroting of what her husband had been whispering in her ear. She's very fond of Tim, and intesely protective." Her head went down below the level of the bar top, and the next words were muffled. "You see, they all thought I was much older than I really am, so when I appeared to collect Tim they all got rather a shock."
"How did they get that impression?"
"Tim told them I had wh;te hair, and because I had white hair Tim assumed I was old, really old. So he told them I was very old."
"But hadn't you ever met them before the mother died? It isn't like you to sneak around back alleys, Mary! Why didn't you correct their misapprehension?"
She flushed painfully. "I honestly don't know, why I didn't ever introduce myself personally to Tim's parents. If I did have any fears that they'd stop the friendship if they found out my true age, I assure you those fears were quite unconscious. I knew Tim was perfectly safe with me. I enjoyed hearing about Tim's family from him, and I think I was sort of postponing meeting them because they wouldn't be at all like the people Tim talked of."
He reached over the counter and patted her shoulder. "Well, not to worry. Go on, you were saying Tim's sister is very fond of him?"
"Yes. Tim was as fond of her as she was of him until she got married, when he rather grew away from her a little. He seemed to feel she had deserted him, though I tried to reason with him. From all he said about her, I had gathered she was a sane, sensible, warm-hearted sort of girl. Very brilliant. Isn't that strange?"
"I don't know. Is it? What did you do?"
Down went the head again. "I was devastated. I think I cried. Fancy me crying!" She looked up, trying to smile. "Boggles the imagination, doesn't it?" Then she sighed, her face pensive and sorrowful. "But I've done my share of crying lately, Archie, I've done my share of crying."
"It does rather boggle the imagination, but I believe you. Still, we should all cry occasionally. I've even cried myself," he admitted grandly.
She laughed, relaxing. "You are, in your own language, a bot, Archie."
He watched her pour the tea, something akin to pity in his eyes. It must have been a terrible blow to her pride, he thought, to have this rare, treasured thing reduced to such an elemental level. For to her the very thought of a physical component debased it; she had a monkish outlook on life, and was it any wonder? Such a strange, sequestered, isolated life she had led! We are what we are, he thought, and we can be no more than what circumstances have made us.
"Ta, dear," he said, taking his tea. Sitting in his chair once more staring out the window, he spoke again. "I'd like to meet Tim some time if I may, Mary."
There was a long silence behind him, then her voice came, very quietly. "One of these days." She made it sound very far away.
Twenty-one
It was after midnight when Mary parked the Bentley outside the cottage. The lights were still on in the living room, and Tim came bounding out to open the car door. He was trembling with joy at the sight of her, and almost lifted her off the ground in a suffocating hug. It was the first time his emotions at seeing her had overridden the training of years, and it told her more than anything else could have done how miserable he had been all week, how much he must have missed his mother.
"Oh, Mary, I'm so glad to see you!"
She disengaged herself. "My goodness, Tim, you don't know you
r own strength! I thought you'd be in bed by now."
"Not before you came. I had to stay up until you came. Oh, Mary, I'm so glad to see you! I like you, I like you!"
"And I like you, and I'm very glad to see you, too. Where's your Pop?"
"Inside. I wouldn't let him come out, I wanted to see you first all by myself." He danced along beside her, but she sensed that somehow a little of his delight was quenched, that she had failed him. If only she knew how! "I don't like it herewithout you, Mary," he went on, "I only like it when you're here too."
He calmed down by the time they entered the house, and Mary went to greet Ron, her hand outstretched.
"How are you?" she asked gently.
"I'm all right, Mary. It's good so see youse."
"It's good to be here."
"Did youse eat yet?"
"Yes, I did, but I'm going to make a cup of tea all the same. Would you like some?"
"Ta, I would."
Mary turned back to Tim, who was standing some distance away from them. He was wearing his lost look. How have I failed him? she asked herself again. What have I done to make him look like that, what did I neglect to do?
"What's the matter, Tim?" she asked, going to him.
He shook his head. "Nothing."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, it's nothing."
"I'm afraid it's bedtime, my friend."
He nodded desolately. "I know." At the door he looked back, a mute appeal in his eyes. "Will you come and tuck me up, please?"
"I wouldn't miss it for the world, so hurry, hurry! I'll be in to see you in five minutes."
When he had gone she looked at Ron. "How has it been?"
"Good and bad. He cried a lot for his mother. It's not easy, because he don't cry the way he used to, all outward. These days he just sits there with the tears rolling down his face, and you can't tempt him out of them by waving something good under his nose."
"Come in the kitchen with me. It must have been very hard for you, and I'm terribly sorry I couldn't manage to be here to take some of the load off your shoulders." She filled the kettle, then looked at her watch anxiously. "I must go and say good-night to Tim. I'll be back soon."
Tim was already in bed, looking toward the door fixedly. She came over to him, fussed with the covers until they were wedged tightly underneath his chin, and tucked them firmly around him. Then she bent and kissed his forehead. He struggled with the blankets until he got his arms free and put them about her neck, pulling her down so that she was forced to sit on the edge of the bed.
"Oh, Mary, I wish you'd been here," he said, the words muffled against the side of her face.
"I wish I'd been here, too. But it's all right now, Tim, I'm here now, and you know I'll always be here with you as much as I can. I like being here with you better than anything else in the whole world. You missed your Mum, didn't you?"
The arms about her neck tightened. "Yes. Oh, Mary, it's awful hard to remember that she isn't ever coming back! I forget and then I remember again, and I want her to come back real bad and I know she can't come back, and it's all muddled up. But I wish she could come back, I do so much wish she could come back!"
"I know, I know. . . . But it will be easier in a little while, dear heart. You won't always feel it so badly, it will fade. She'll get further and further away from you and you'll grow used to it, it won't hurt so much any more."
"But I get a pain when I cry, Mary! It hurts an awful lot, and it won't go away!"
"Yes, I know. I get it too. It's as if they'd cut a whole big chunk out of your chest, isn't it?"
"That's right, that's exactly what it's like!" He passed his hands clumsily right across her back. "Oh, Mary, I'm so glad you're here! You always know what everything is like, you can tell me and then I feel better. It was awful without you!"
The muscles of the leg wedged against the side of the bed went into agonizing spasm, and Mary withdrew her head from his clasp. "I'm here now, Tim, and I'll be here all weekend. Then we'll all go back to Sydney together, I won't leave you here alone. Now I want you to roll over on your side and go to sleep for me, because we have a lot to do in the garden tomorrow."
He turned obediently. "Night-night, Mary. I like you, I like you better than anyone except Pop now."
Ron had made the tea, and sliced up a block of seed cake. They sat in the kitchen, one on either side of the table facing each other. Though she had not met Ron until after Esme died, Mary knew instinctively that he had aged and shrunk in upon himself during this last week. The hand holding the cup to his mouth trembled, and all the life was leached out of his face. There was a hint of transparency about him, a spiritual attenuation that had crept into his flesh. She put out a hand and placed it over his.
"How hard it must have been for you, concealing your own grief and yet having to watch Tim's. Oh, Ron, I wish there was something I could do! Why do people have to die?"
He shook his head. "I dunno. That's the hardest question in the world, ain't it? I've never found an answer that satisfied me. Cruel of God to give us loved ones, make us in His image so that we can love them, then take them away. He oughta thought out a better way of doing it, don't you reckon? I know we're none of us angels and we must seem sort of like worms to Him, but most of us do our best, most of us aren't all that bad. Why should we have to suffer like this? It's hard, Mary, it's awful, awful hard."
The hand under hers went up to shield his eyes, and he wept. Mary sat there helplessly, her heart aching for him. If only there was something she could do! How terrible it was, to have to sit and watch another's grief and be so utterly powerless to lighten it. He wept for a long time, in spasms that seemed to eat away at his very soul, so deep and alone they were. When he could weep no more he dried his eyes and blew his nose.
"Could you drink another cup of tea?" Mary asked.
For a ghostly moment it was Tim's smile that hovered on his lips. "Ta, I could." He sighed. "I never thought it would be like this, Mary. Maybe it's that I'm old, I dunno. I never thought her going would leave such a great big empty space. Even Tim don't seem to matter quite so much any more, only her, only losing her. It ain't the same without the old girl there bitching and snarling about me staying too late at the Seaside, guzzling beer, as she used to put it. We had a real good life together, Es and me. That's the trouble, you grow toward each other as the years go on, until you're sort of like a pair of old boots, warm and comfortable. Then all of a sudden it's gone! I feel like half of me was gone too, sort of like a bloke feels he loses an arm or a leg, youse know what I mean. He still thinks it's there, and he gets a terrible shock when he goes after an itch and finds there's nothing left to scratch. I keep thinking of things I oughta tell her, or have to stop meself saying out loud that she'd enjoy this joke, we'll have a good laugh about it. It's so hard, Mary, and I dunno that it's even worth trying."
"Yes, I think I understand," Mary said slowly. "A spiritual amputee ..."
He put his cup down. "Mary, if anything should happen to me, will you look after Tim?"
She didn't expostulate with him, she didn't attempt to tell him he was being morbid or silly, she just nodded and said, "Yes, of course I will. Don't worry about Tim."
Twenty-two
In the long, sad winter which followed his mother's death, Tim changed. It was like seeing an animal mourn; he wandered from place to place looking for something that wasn't there, his eyes lighting restlessly on some inanimate object and then flicking away disappointed and bewildered, as if he always expected the impossible to occur, and was beyond understanding why it did not. Even Harry Markham and his crew could get nowhere with him, Ron told Mary despairingly; he went to work every day without fail, but the thoughtlessly malicious practical jokes of other days fell on stony ground: he endured the crew's tormenting brand of humor as patiently as he endured everything else. It was as if he had withdrawn from the real world, Mary thought, gone into a sphere that was his alone, and forever barred against intruders.
She and Ron had endless, unavailing conferences about him, sitting long into the rainy nights with the wind howling in the trees around the cottage, while Tim took himself off somewhere on his own or went to bed. Since Esme's death Mary had insisted Ron come to the cottage every weekend, for it was more than her heart could bear to drive off with Tim on Friday nights and leave the old man sitting beside his empty fireplace all alone.
There was a dull, dragging weight of sadness on them. For Mary it could not be the same, having to share her hours with Tim; for Ron nothing mattered very much except the barrenness of his days; for Tim, no one knew. It was Mary's first close contact with grief, and she had never imagined anything like it. The most frustrating part of it was her helplessness, her inability to put things right; nothing she could say or do made a particle of difference. She had to bear with the long silences, the furtive creeping away to indulge in bouts of fruitless tears, the pain.
She had come to care for Ron, too, because he was Tim's father, because he was so alone, because he never complained, and as time went on he occupied her thoughts more and more. With the coldest season drawing toward its close she noticed an increasing fragility about him; sometimes when they were sitting in the weak but warming sun together and he held his hand to the light, she fancied that the veined, blotchy extremity let the light shine straight through it until she could see the silhouette of his bones. He trembled so, and his once firm footsteps would hesitate when there was no obstacle in their path. No matter how she tried to feed him, he lost weight steadily. He was dissolving in front of her very eyes.
The trouble pulled at her like an invisible force; she seemed to spend her days walking a featureless plain without landmark or direction, and only working with Archie Johnson had any reality. At Constable Steel & Mining she could be herself, lift her mind from Ron and Tim and plunge it into something concrete. It was the only steadying influence in her life. She had come to dread Fridays and welcome Mondays; Ron and Tim had become a nightmarish incubus chained about her neck, for she did not know what to do to avert the disasters she sensed were coming.