There was a policeman standing by the Opera House. He flashed his lamp at her as she came across and tried the door of the waiting Sunbeam.
“Are you looking for someone?” he said.
“I am looking for my father,” said Celia. “He is not very well, and this is his car. I’m afraid something may have happened to him.”
“Are you Miss Delaney?” said the policeman.
“Yes,” said Celia, and she was suddenly afraid.
“I was warned to wait here for you, miss,” said the policeman, his manner quiet and kind. “The Inspector thought one of the family might be along. I’m afraid your father has been taken ill. Loss of memory, they think. They’ve taken him in an ambulance to the Charing Cross Hospital.”
“Thank you,” said Celia, “thank you. I understand.”
She was calm and steady now, and the feeling of panic had gone from her. Pappy had been found. Pappy was no longer wandering in the streets, lost and lonely, with the dead. He was safe. He was in the Charing Cross Hospital.
“I’ll take you round there in the car, miss,” said the policeman. “He left the key. He must have been only gone from the car a few minutes when he fell down.”
“He fell down?” said Celia.
“Yes, miss. The stage-door-keeper at the Opera House was standing just across there, by the open door, and saw him fall. He went to him at once. He recognized Mr. Delaney. Then he called for me, and I got the Inspector, and we phoned through for the ambulance. Loss of memory, that’s what they think it is. But they’ll tell you at the Hospital.”
“I have a taxi waiting around the corner by the Adelphi,” said Celia. “I’d better pay him off before we go to the Hospital.”
“That’s all right, miss,” said the policeman. “It’s all on the way.”
For the second time in the day she was struck by the kindness of people. Even the taxi driver, who at first had seemed sullen and unfriendly, was sympathetic when she handed him his fare.
“I’m sorry if you’ve had bad news,” he said. “Would you like me to come and wait outside the Hospital?”
“No,” said Celia, “it’s quite all right. Thank you so much. Good night.”
As she went into the Hospital it was as though the afternoon repeated itself in a strange fashion. Once again she had to go to a room marked “Enquiries,” and once again the woman there behind the desk wore pince-nez. But this time she was dressed as a nurse. And she did not smile. She listened, and nodded, and spoke into a telephone.
“That’s all right,” she said; “they’re expecting you.” And she rang a bell, and Celia followed another nurse into a lift.
There were many floors, and many corridors, and many nurses, and somewhere in this great building, Celia thought, Pappy lies waiting for me, and he will be alone, and he won’t understand. He will think that I have done the thing that I have promised never to do. That I have gone away, and left him, and that he does not belong anywhere, anymore.
They came at last, not to a public ward as she had feared, but to a private room. Pappy was lying on the bed with his eyes closed.
“He is dead, of course,” she thought. “He has been dead for quite a long time. He must have died as soon as he stepped out of the car, and looked across at the stage-door of Covent Garden.”
There was a doctor in the room, and a sister, and another nurse. The doctor wore a white coat. He carried a stethoscope round his neck.
“You are Miss Delaney?” he said. And he looked surprised, a little puzzled. Celia realized then that they must have been expecting Maria. They did not know about her. They had not thought there would be another daughter. “Yes,” she said, “I’m the youngest. I live at home with my father.”
“I’m afraid you must be prepared for a shock,” said the doctor.
“Yes,” said Celia. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“No,” said the doctor, “but he’s had a very severe stroke. He’s very ill indeed.”
They went and stood together by the bed. They had wrapped Pappy in one of the hospital nightshirts, and it was somehow shocking and rather terrible to see Pappy dressed in this way, not in his own pajamas, not in his own bed. His breathing was heavy and queer.
“If he must die,” said Celia, “I would want him to die at home. He has always been afraid of hospitals. He would not want it to happen here.”
They looked at her strangely, the doctor and the nurse, and she wondered if they thought her very rude, very churlish, in saying this; because they were taking a lot of trouble to help Pappy, they had put him here in this bed, and were looking after him.
“I appreciate that,” said the doctor. “We are all a little bit afraid of hospitals. But your father isn’t necessarily going to die, Miss Delaney. His heart is steady. And so is his pulse. He has a magnificent constitution. The point is, that with a case like this it is virtually impossible to forecast what may happen. He might go on like this, with very little change, for weeks, for months.”
“Will he be in pain?” said Celia. “That’s the only thing that matters. Will he be in pain?”
“No,” said the doctor, “no, there should be no pain. But he will be quite helpless. You understand that. He would have to be nursed, day and night, professionally. You have facilities for that at home?”
“Yes,” said Celia, “yes, of course.”
She said this to reassure the doctor, and in a clear, detached, far-sighted fashion she thought how she could turn Maria’s old room into a room for the nurse, and the nurse and she could share the business of looking after Pappy together. The servants would be distressed, because of the extra work, they might even threaten to leave, but then something would have to be arranged. Truda might come perhaps for a few weeks, she might even persuade André to come back again for a little while, and, anyway, that new young housemaid was very willing.
Her mind went running on into the future, and she thought how it might be possible when the warmer weather came to drag Pappy’s bed into the old drawing room on the first floor that they never used. New curtains would be needed, but they would not be difficult to find, and it would be more cheerful in that room, and quieter too.
The doctor was handing her something in a glass.
“What do you want me to do?” she said. “What’s this?”
“Drink it down,” he said quietly. “You’ve had a very great shock, you know.” She swallowed down the stuff in the glass, and it did not make her feel better at all. It was bitter, and queer, and her legs were suddenly very weak and stumbly, like cotton wool, and she was tired.
“I would like to ring up my sister,” she said.
“Of course,” said the doctor, and he led the way out into the corridor and she was aware of the terrible, clean, impersonal smell of hospitals, a smell that belonged to no one, that was part of the building, and the unshaded lights, and the bare, scrubbed walls and floors, and had nothing to do with the nurse who walked beside her, or the doctor swinging his stethoscope, or Pappy unconscious in the room where she had left him, or the other sick people lying dumbly in their beds.
The doctor took her to a little room and switched on a light.
“You can telephone from here,” he said. “You know the number?”
“Yes,” she said, “yes, thank you.”
He went out, and stood waiting in the passage. And she called the number of Maria’s house at Richmond. But it was not Maria who answered. It was Gladys, the parlormaid.
“Mrs. Wyndham isn’t back yet,” she said. “She went out this afternoon taking baby with her, and we haven’t seen anything of her since she went, just after two.”
The voice was surprised, a little aggrieved. The voice suggested that the least Mrs. Wyndham might have done was to warn her staff that she expected to be out so long. Celia pressed her hands against her eyes.
“All right,” she said, “it does not matter. I’ll ring Mrs. Wyndham later.”
She put back the receiver and lifted it again.
She asked for the number of Niall’s room at the theater. She went on ringing. And surely, she thought with sudden hopelessness and a new kind of dead despair, they can’t both be out and away, now at this minute in my life, when I need both of them so much? Surely one of them will come, surely one of them will help me? Because I don’t want to go home alone. I don’t want to be in the house alone, without Pappy.
The telephone went on ringing. “I’m sorry,” the operator said, “there is no reply.”
His voice was chill and distant, he was a number at a switchboard, he was not one of the people who were kind.
Celia turned out the light of the little telephone room, and fumbled for the handle of the door. She could not find it. Her hands moved over the hard, smooth surface of the door. In sudden panic she began to beat against it.
19
“Who wants a bath before supper?” asked Maria.
“Meaning you do,” said Niall, “and if anyone else says ‘Yes,’ there won’t be enough hot water.”
“That,” said Maria, “was what I intended to convey.”
We all three wandered into the hall. Celia switched off the lights in the drawing room. She left one lamp burning by the fireplace.
“Celia has spinster habits,” said Niall, “turning off lights, switching off fires. Knowing what to do with once-cooked food.”
“It has nothing to do with being a spinster,” said Celia. “It’s just the way I’m trained. Not even wartime measures. You forget I had an invalid to look after for three years.”
“I had not forgotten,” answered Niall. “I prefer not to think about it, that’s all.”
“You had those nurses to help you,” Maria said. “They always seemed very nice. It could not have been so very terrible.” She led the way upstairs.
“Who said it was terrible?” asked Celia. “I never did.”
The various rooms led onto the single corridor. At the far end was a door to the nursery wing.
“Pappy would never have cared for it down here,” said Maria. “Too much noise. I kept coming back from the theater to have babies. The noise was bad enough for me.”
“It depends on the sort of noise you mean,” said Niall, “bombs or babies. Personally, give me bombs every time.”
“I agree,” said Maria. “I was thinking of the babies.” She opened the door of her room, and turned on the light. “Anyway,” she said, “it was right for Pappy to die in London. He belonged to London, more than to any other city. And it was right that he died when he did. Before the world turned drab.”
“Who says it’s drab?” asked Niall.
“I do,” said Maria. “No brightness anymore, no life, no fun.” She opened her wardrobe door, and stared pensively inside.
“It’s our age group,” said Celia, “that’s really the matter. I don’t mind reaching mid-thirty, because it does not affect me much, one way or the other, but perhaps for you and Niall…”
“Nor me,” said Niall. “A person can sit staring at a piece of water with a vacant mind at eighty-five. Or sit on a bench and sleep. I’ve never wanted to do anything else.”
Through the door to the children’s wing came shouts of laughter.
“They’re being vulgar,” said Maria.
“That means Polly is downstairs,” said Niall.
“Perhaps I ought to go along and see?” said Celia.
Maria shrugged her shoulders. “I’m going to have my bath,” she called. “If I am late, tell Charles the reason why.” She shut the door.
Niall smiled at Celia. “Well?” he said. “It’s been a funny day.”
“We haven’t achieved anything, have we?” said Celia. “We’ve come to no conclusions. Perhaps it does not really help, delving into the past. Anyway, I feel the same now as I did then. Even if we are older. Even if the world has turned drab.”
“You look the same, too,” said Niall, “but perhaps you would, to me. That little gray streak has been in your hair for several years.”
“Don’t be late for supper,” said Celia. “It would be rather awful if I had to face Charles alone.”
“I won’t be late,” said Niall.
He went along to the spare room, whistling under his breath.
“We were very young, we were very merry,
We had ridden back and forth all night upon a ferry…”
Niall never knew why he remembered things. Why snatches of verse, and odd rhymes, and half-finished sentences spoken long ago by forgotten friends, should come to him like this at any moment of the day or night. As now, for instance, changing for supper in the spare room at Farthings. He threw off the tweed jacket and hung it on the bedpost. He kicked his heavy shoes into the corner and reached for the pair of American sneakers, then pulled a clean shirt out of his suitcase, and a spotted scarf. He had been too idle to pack a tie. Whenever he came to Farthings for the weekend he never bothered to unpack. It was so much simpler to leave his clothes—and he never brought many—folded in the suitcase, instead of tucked away in chests of drawers and wardrobes. This was one of the many things he had learned from Freada. “Carry what you can upon your back,” she used to say. “It all saves time and temper. Have no real possessions. Stake no claim. This is our home, for three, for two nights only. This studio, this lodging house, this unfamiliar room in a hotel.”
There had been many of them. Dingy ones, with no “eau courante,” no “salle de bain,” no “petit déjeuner,” and there, for a brief space, they had belonged. Then better ones, where the femme de chambre asked if she could “préparer le bain,” and it was always ten francs extra; but the water was steaming hot, and the towel very small, and there would be a bed with a monstrous pouffe affair balanced upon the top, embroidered with lace. Once they went a bust and took a suite in a palatial kind of palace in Auvergne, because Freada said she had to take a cure. Why, in the name of Jesus, did Freada have to take a cure?
She got up at eight in the morning and went off to drink the waters or have the waters poured upon her, Niall never really knew which; but he used to lie in bed until she returned in the middle of the day, and he read every one of the works of Maupassant, the book in one hand and a bar of chocolate in the other.
In the afternoon he used to make her climb a mountain. Poor Freada, her ankles always hurt, she hated walking. And he made up frightful scandals about the people staying in the hotel, telling her at meals. She used to kick him under the table and whisper, “Will you please be quiet? We shall be thrown out of here.” She pretended to look dignified, but spoiled the dignity by kicking her shoes off under the table, and never finding them again without a scuffle. Then there was that melancholy hotel at Fontainebleau where old maiden ladies stretched themselves upon chaises longues, and Niall had played the piano all day long until they had complained to “le patron.” It was the lady in the chaise longue furthest from the room where the piano stood who made the great complaint. The patron was so apologetic. “You see how it is, monsieur,” he said, with a charming smile, “but this lady who complains, she has strange notions of morality. To her, all dance music is immoral.”
“I agree with her,” said Niall. “It is immoral.”
“But the point is this, monsieur,” explained the patron, “the reason why madame complains of you, is not because of the immorality in itself; but because, so she tells me, you make immorality delicious.”
“We were very young, we were very merry,
We had ridden back and forth all night upon a ferry.”
Well, what was it, for God’s sake? Was it a verse in Punch? And why now, in the spare room at Farthings? Perhaps it was a fragment snatched from the queer hotch-potch of memories that had flooded in upon him all the day. The wet winter’s day, spent in Maria’s drawing room. Charles’s drawing room. It was not Maria’s house, nor Maria’s room. Farthings belonged to Charles. It had his stamp upon it. The dining room, with the regimental prints. The staircase, with the family portraits spared from Coldhammer. Even the drawing room, wh
ich by courtesy was allowed to be a woman’s room, had a sagging seat in the best armchair, which was Charles’s chair alone.
What did Charles think about, sitting there alone, every evening? Did he read those books upon the shelves? Did he gaze at that picture over the mantelpiece, the watercolor memento of that far-off Scottish honeymoon where he had thought to capture and to hold his elusive Mary Rose? There was a pipe by the side of Charles’s chair, and a tobacco jar, and a pile of magazines upon the narrow stool—Country Life, the Sporting and Dramatic, the Field, and old back numbers of the Farmers’ Weekly. What did he do with his life? What was his day? The estate office in the morning, the routine visit to Coldhammer which still stood empty, bleak and shuttered, never yet handed back from the Agricultural Committee that had seized upon it for the war. A drive into the market town, a meeting, or several meetings. Drainage schemes, Conservatives, Old Comrades, the church tower. Tea with the children, if he was home in time; Polly presiding with the teapot, and the weekly letter to Caroline at school.
Then what? Dinner in solitude. The empty sofa. No Maria to lie upon the sofa. But if she remembered, if she was doing nothing else, there would be that long-distance call from London when she got back to the flat from the theater. “Well? What sort of a day?” “So-so, rather busy.” His replies mainly “Yes” and “No,” while Maria chatted on, spinning out her minutes to ease her conscience. Niall knew. Niall had been too often in the room. Not Charles’s room. Maria’s…
Well, it was not his business. It had continued in this way for years, with the intervention of the war. Would it not continue to eternity? Or did there come a breaking-point?
Niall put on his other jacket, and tied his spotted scarf.
The breaking-point… A man, or a woman either, could take so much, could endure so much, up to a certain testing-time, and then… What was the answer? Perhaps there was no answer. Certainly, there was nothing he could do. Or was there?