— 2 —
But when Margaret, too, had said good night, after bringing her a very carefully edited telephone message from Hilary which did not deceive her in the least, her room no longer gave her a sense of safety. That happy time had passed, as in the rhythm of things she had known it would, and the birth-pangs were on her again. Her fire had not quite gone out, and Margaret had lit a nightlight for her, but that seemed to make no difference to the darkness and the cold. They came from the mystery of things, and the consolations that fear devises, light and warmth, and painted images of the mystery that translate its awfulness into terms of merely human comfort and love, were no protection at all against it. It was one of those nights when she feared death, feared it so much that the sweat came out on her forehead and her hands and feet were cold. She had never been so afraid, so wrung.
But, then, not for years had death been so near; not near to her, though soon it would be near, but to a son of hers who would die tonight. She knew that her son would die. It would be George, for Hilary and George were the only sons left to her, and Hilary was well. It must be George. No one knew what mothers suffered when their sons died. No one knew. It was having the child going out into the darkness without you, and you not knowing what would happen to him there. It was the wrong way round. One should be there oneself with arms held out to welcome the child and make the first strangeness bearable. Arms? One wouldn’t have arms. She tried to remember Maurice, and the enfolding of his spirit that she felt so often, but she couldn’t remember very well because since George’s danger, Maurice had not been with her. Or she hadn’t felt him with her. Perhaps she was too desperately welded to George and his suffering body to be able to be aware of a bodiless son. Perhaps the presence of Maurice had been mere illusion. Wishful thinking. The creations of one’s fancy could have more reality than flesh and blood if one willed it so. Perhaps the mystery was no mystery, but just darkness and nothing else. Perhaps she would never see any of her sons again.
“The consolations of religion.” She had a number of the material ones here in this room, and she looked round at them desperately, but they gave her no help. There was a picture of Christ healing the sick, but the face of the Christ, kindly and sentimental, had nothing whatever to do with the darkness and the cold. And the sick, though they had crutches and a nice clean bandage here and there, looked remarkably healthy. Not one of them looked as George must be looking at this moment. Even her crucifix did not help her. The figure was so tidy and the face so composed and peaceful. Maurice had looked neither tidy nor peaceful during the hours before he died. Such consolations were nothing but a mockery. But she was a religious woman, wasn’t she? She could remember two conversations she had had with Sebastian Weber when she had held forth in such a manner that she might have been all the pretty angels in her pictures rolled into one. And he had borne with her. He had even loved her. She clung for a moment or two to the thought of him. He had more true religion than she and so had Hilary. They were her sons (yes, Sebastian, too, a son of her spirit though not of her body), and so much younger than she, yet they knew so much more.
What would Hilary think she should do now? Couldn’t she pray for her son who must die? She had learned to pray in the war, but she had been younger and stronger then, and had not been so paralysed by fear that her confused thoughts could frame no words. She had scarcely known, in those days, what it was to be afraid, and she had been able to do things then, and offer them, and now she could not. Her fear changed imperceptibly and became fear for herself. What if she should live on and on, as some old people did, losing the power of thought and speech as well as action and becoming a sort of nothingness? A moth flew into the nightlight, and it flickered and went out. Such a little thing, but it seemed to put the final touch to her misery. She began to cry, a thing she had not done for years, and she seemed to go on crying and being afraid of being nothingness for hours and hours.
“Well, what of it? Would it matter?”
She did not know if she had fallen asleep or if she hadn’t. She thought at first that Hilary was with her and speaking to her, but the room was so dark, with the nightlight out and the fire fallen almost to ash, that she could not see. And then she thought that she was Hilary, years ago, after he had lost a leg and been gassed in France, lying in bed in a state of deadly fear, not of death but of life. A young man facing the possibility of blindness and a crippled body, uselessness and dependence, throughout a lifetime, and so paralysed by fear and weakness that he could not even pray; might never pray again if he lost his reason and became just nothingness under the pressure of it all. And prayer, for him, was life.
“What of it? Would it matter?”
It was not Hilary speaking to her, but to himself. She was not one with him now, she had gradually become separate again, as she had become separate when his body had been taken from hers after his birth, but in dream or in reality her soul had been within his for a while, as his body had once been within hers, and she had shared his experience. This morning in the garden he had not said much about his fear, he had been too intent upon trying to tell her about what he called “the agonizing effort of substitution.” She had not understood very well. She understood better now. Of course it was agonising, for at its highest level it meant complete acceptance not only of such small ups and downs as she had hitherto accepted, playing at acceptance as though it were a sort of game, but of a thing that seemed unbearable, for you could not substitute what you had not taken entirely to you.
Waking or sleeping, she did not know which, she passed into a wider place that held not Hilary only, but all her sons. The two who had died in the first war, Maurice and Roger, were here and her son Stephen, whom she had seemed to know less well than the others, and who had died not long after the second war, broken by the deaths of his two sons in Norway and Greece. And George was here, too, her son whom she believed to be dying at this moment. And David, and Stephen’s two sons. And, worst of all, Ben and Tommy and Jerry, and little Robin become a man. They were all here, and time did not exist because it was for every one of them the hour of his dereliction. She was the mother of them all, and had she not given them life they would not have suffered in the wars. Their agony, far worse than her own fear, was not to be borne. It was intolerable that even the mercy of time should be stripped away, so that pain that had ended was here in the room with her, and pain that had not yet begun. If it had been possible for her prayer to reach both backwards and forwards in the time that had vanished, and hold and comfort each of her sons in his dereliction, she would have accepted her own, even the whole misery of nothingness that extreme old age can bring, with final and entire willingness. What of it? she would have said, and taken it entirely to her.
“And I do,” she said aloud. Waking or sleeping she heard herself speak, meant what she said and willed it. It was as though she were lifting up a great weight from the ground, struggling as she had never struggled before and never would again. “I do. It is my prayer.” With a flash of knowledge she knew what she had not known before—that prayer has nothing to do with time. Her prayer at this moment was lifted as high above time as was the body of her sons upon the cross upon the wall.
For though her fire was no more than a faint glow of rosy ash, she could dimly see her crucifix, and it was no longer the comfortless wood-and-plaster image that had nothing to do with the mystery, but was the mystery itself. It was the body of her sons that hung there. She could not see very clearly, but she knew that, and recognized the fact with no shock or horror, but a profound and grave satisfaction. For the salvation of the world. And she was the mother of such sons. It was a matter of immense yet humble pride to her, as it must be to Mary, whose prayer also was lifted above time, and as it would be to Nadine, when she had become truly a mother. Nadine? Was it possible that she had once thought she hated Nadine? What nonsense! She might as well hate herself. All mothers were one mother in the motherhood of Mary.
&nb
sp; The figure glowed, and she wished she could see the face. If she could see the face, whose would it be? She did not try to see, for she felt herself unworthy, but just as she shut her eyes that she might not see, she knew it was Sebastian’s. Immense peace flowed to her from the knowledge. She did not ask how or why, for such peace did not live with questions. The clock downstairs began to strike and she began drowsily to count the strokes. It must be six in the morning by this time, she thought, for the hours of her misery had been many. But it was only twelve. She was too drowsy and peaceful to be astonished. She merely turned her head on her pillow and went to sleep.
— 3 —
She was awakened by Hilary bringing her breakfast tray, and being by now restored to normality by the deepest and most healing sleep she ever remembered, she was immediately intensely annoyed.
“What are you doing, Hilary?” she demanded. “Margaret should bring my tray. I will not be seen even by my own sons in déshabille. Put it down on the chest of drawers. Draw the curtains. Go away without looking at me and return in ten minutes.”
Hilary did exactly as he was told. Lucilla had everything for the beautifying of herself put ready to her hand, and when he returned in ten minutes she was her most charming self. She had also remembered a little of last night and she was ashamed. She had accepted the full humiliation of old age and death, and her loss of temper was unforgivable. What she would be looking like by the time Hilary had finished looking at her she did not know. That was part of it. He would probably not notice, but David would. She asked for his forgiveness.
“What for?” asked Hilary.
“I was feeling a little irritable, dear.”
“You can’t feel more irritable than I do,” said Hilary. “I had scarcely crawled into bed last night before it was time to get up again and say Mass. And as for those sermons, I still have not got them by heart.”
“Have you had breakfast, dear?” asked Lucilla.
“No, I haven’t,” said Hilary. “I had to come and tell you the news.”
Lucilla had now remembered all of last night, and she gathered her courage to hear the news she knew already. “George,” she said.
“Pulling round remarkably well,” said Hilary. “I rang up before I came over. No one thought he would, but he has. Not out of the wood yet, of course, but there’s every hope . . . Are you all right, Mother?”
“Quite all right,” said Lucilla. “I only want a cup of tea. What was the good of putting the tray over there on the chest of drawers? Bring it here and pour yourself a cup, too. I see Margaret’s put one for you. Where’s Margaret?”
“Feeding those pestiferous children,” said Hilary. “Robin has tantrums and Meg is starting a cold. Mother, are you quite sure you’re all right? You wouldn’t like your sal volatile or your eau-de-Cologne or whatever it is you take?”
“Quite all right, dear,” said Lucilla. “It was just the shock.”
“What shock?”
“My dear old George pulling round. In the night I knew he was dying. At least, I knew one of you would die last night, and who could it be but George?”
Hilary looked at her, and his irritation vanished. His face took on what Lucilla called his professional look, composed and concentrated.
“You drink your tea, Mother,” he said quietly. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
He went downstairs, and Lucilla heard the sharp click of the telephone receiver being lifted in the hall, but she could not hear his conversation. He was back in a few minutes, saying cheerfully, “No anxiety about Sally. No baby yet, but no need to worry.”
“Sebastian?” asked Lucilla. “If it is he, I am not too selfish to be glad.”
“Yes,” said Hilary. “He and David sat up late talking, so it would have been in the early hours of the morning. He did not call anyone: so he gave no trouble to anyone. That would have pleased him. He could not have taken his departure more courteously.”
“There’s one thing to be said for being ninety-one,” said Lucilla. “No good-byes can be for long. You’ll feel this, Hilary. Have a cup of tea at once.”
Hilary smiled as he obeyed. Nevertheless, the tea was what he wanted. Heat, he thought, there’s nothing like it. All the best symbols have to do with light and fire and warmth.
“So will David,” continued Lucilla. “So will we all. What was it about that man, Hilary?”
“What is it about anyone?” asked Hilary. “Nothing in them that you can describe. Just their special quality. What they will be coming to you like the air of another country, and coming more and more freshly as the soul approximates to her true worth.”
“So few do in this world,” said Lucilla. “For most of us the journey is still before us when we die. Hilary, I was very terrified last night.”
“One is sometimes,” said Hilary. “But I’m sorry. I don’t like you to be terrified.”
“I had the most peculiar night,” said Lucilla. “Terrible at first, and I couldn’t pray, but I tried to do as you told me, and after that, round about midnight, everything was all right and I went to sleep. Do you think it was all a dream, or was it real?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Hilary.
“Hilary!” ejaculated Lucilla in annoyance.
“Well, you haven’t given me much information as to how everything was all right,” said Hilary.
“But I can’t, Hilary. It’s impossible to describe what happened.”
“I expect it is,” said Hilary quietly.
“But visions are real, aren’t they?” asked Lucilla pathetically. “One doesn’t just make them up?”
“I don’t know a thing about visions,” said Hilary. “I never have them.”
“But you ought to, Hilary,” said Lucilla. “You’re such a good man.”
“I doubt it,” said Hilary. “Anyway, I don’t have visions. My approach is sacramental, not mystical. I’ve no imagination.”
“But did I imagine my vision?” asked Lucilla.
Women, thought Hilary, for he was abominably tired. He had not, like Lucilla, slept since midnight. But he tried to pull himself together. “I’ve no idea, Mother,” he said gently. “But does it matter? What matters is that you prayed, really prayed, perhaps more selflessly than you have done before, were comforted and slept.”
“But if only I could know that my heavenly comfort was heavenly comfort, and not just imagination,” said Lucilla despairingly. “Hilary, if only I could know!”
“Why couldn’t it be both?” asked Hilary. “If God has given you imagination, isn’t it very probable that He will speak to you through it? If you are starving, Mother, you give thanks for a good meal, and don’t enquire if it came from the attic or the basement. If your storeroom is in the attic it came from both.”
“I see,” said Lucilla. “And I was starving.”
“So am I,” said Hilary.
“Darling!” cried Lucilla. “And there’s nothing on this tray but my scrap of toast. There are biscuits in the cupboard behind you. How peculiar human beings are! Our friend is dead, and we go on talking and eating as though it hadn’t happened.”
“There was a rightness in his death that makes it seem entirely natural,” said Hilary. “And so we go on being entirely natural. The death of the young rends us, for it is not natural. At least, we don’t feel it so. I think George’s death would have rent us, for he did not seem ready, and his children need him. But Sebastian had finished. The last of the chaff had gone. That courteous departure was fitting and right.”
“And it’s fitting that a soul should go from Damerosehay and a soul should come to it on the same day,” said Lucilla. “But, all the same, I wish he had seen Christopher.”
CHAPTER
20
— 1 —
Well, that’s safely over,” said Dr. Barnes, imbibing David’s sherry and stretching out his long and we
ary legs in profound relief. “What’s the time now? Seven o’clock. As usual, it was a long hard labor, but she weathered it better than usual. A fine baby. You can go up when you like.”
“Thank you very much,” said David with difficulty, for even his lips seemed stiff with exhaustion, and a glass of sherry on top of no sleep had made him slightly light-headed.
“What for?” snapped Dr. Barnes, irritable now as well as weary. “Only doing my work.”
“The Eliots have kept you at it pretty ceaselessly these last thirty-six hours,” said David. “If you’d had Sally in hospital, only a corridor would have separated her from old George—I mean—who do I mean?”
“I know who you mean,” said Dr. Barnes. “You’re entirely fuddled. Why didn’t you go to bed last night? No point in staying up.”
“There was Sally,” said David. “And Weber.”
Dr. Barnes drew in his legs, opened his half-closed eyes and was suddenly as alert as he had been before he had sunk into his comfortable chair. “Weber?” he asked. “What about him?”
“We talked late,” said David.
“What insanity!” said Dr. Barnes. “Was he exhausted afterwards?”
“Yes,” said David.
“Did Mrs. Wilkes, or Nurse What’s-her-name, or you yourself, help him to bed?”
“No,” said David.
“Or go in during the night to see how he was?”
“No.”
“If you had done either of those things,” said Dr. Barnes, “it is possible that he would not have died.” His tone was dryly professional and yet challenging as he lit one of his host’s cigarettes, fanned away the smoke and looked at him. The challenge revived David, and he met the look steadily. There was contempt in the doctor’s eyes.
“Did you ever read Lear?” David asked quietly.
“At school, I suppose,” said Dr. Barnes. “What’s that got to do with it?”