The Lord Have Mercy, page 9
She was asleep: her spectacles on her nose and the Life of Lady Hamilton, fallen from her grasp, lying open on the coverlet beside the little bag of sweets. Gently he removed the spectacles and folded them into their case, then tucked the coverlet more comfortably about the sleeping woman’s shoulders and closed the door quietly behind him.
Dr. Mansbridge’s evening round took a considerable time, there were so many patients to be visited in outlying hamlets and a second visit back to the nursing-home where there was a woman in labour. The child was delivered safely soon after eight-thirty, and by then the doctor was weary and would have been glad to go home. But he was not allowed to escape the little ceremony with the matron. She nabbed him just as he finished cleaning himself and swept him off to her sitting-room for a nice chat. As usual there was a tray of sandwiches and tea unobtrusively waiting for him. That was matron’s little plot, a small gratification of her secret weakness, for she nourished a soft, an almost mushy, spot for him in her starched bosom. She could see as well as anybody else that his wife did not look after him properly, it was shameful, but at least she could see to it that he had something to eat when he came under her roof. She poured him a third cup of mahogany tea: he had eaten the sandwiches without noticing.
It was soon after nine when he left the nursing-home. The sky had cleared after the rain and the evening was warm and sunny. Birds wheeled in droves across the clear gold sky, crying as they flew. The rhythmic beat and high voices calling came from the tennis courts beyond the river and the agreeable sounds of children shouting at play rose on the air. In the leaf-shadowed lanes girls in bright summer frocks loitered, exchanging pert cries with the youths shooting heroically among them on their bicycles. It was an evening that called for enjoyment. Dr. Mansbridge hesitated with a hand on the door of his car. The thought of returning home filled him with a weary distaste. His lungs seemed full of stale air, his mind of stale thoughts. He got into the car and with sudden decision let in the clutch.
*
The placid beauty of the evening, the glorious light slanting low across the village, did nothing to calm Catherine or assuage her anguish of mind. The golden hills shimmered to her tear-filled eyes. She was stifled by a queer blend of excitement and dread. All day an unbearable restlessness had grown upon her, the walls seemed to press in on her like her suffocating thoughts. Her fingers plucked at the honeysuckle round her bedroom window and tore the fragrant blossoms to shreds. She longed to run somewhere, to tell someone. But there was nowhere to run, and the secret must be borne in silence – forever. “God” she prayed, biting her knuckles, “Oh, God, help me!” And then she saw the doctor’s car, and watched it drive out of the village along the dusty white lane for a quarter of a mile and draw to a halt. The doctor got out and disappeared among the trees. He was alone. God, she thought, had heard her cry. He was offering her a chance, before it was too late...
Mrs. Verney rose from her knees in the front garden and pulled off her leather gloves to light a fresh cigarette, and as she did so she saw Catherine come out of the gate opposite and hurry down the lane in the opposite direction from the village. That was the way people went for country walks, and surely Catherine wouldn’t be doing that. You’d have thought from her haste that she was going to an assignation. A strange girl, mused Mrs. Verney, dropping on to her knees again.
Some way beyond the village was a small beech copse, a thing of beauty at this time of year with the light filtering down through layer after layer of brilliant green leaves on to its innumerable narrow mossy rides. A pleasant place to walk, and Dr. Mansbridge had not been there for years until this evening.
Good-natured though he was, he had had such a day of it that he was faintly irritated to run into anyone he knew and have his pleasant solitude disturbed.
He greeted her politely because it was too late to pretend he had not seen her.
“I had no idea this was a haunt of yours” he said pleasantly. “Lovely evening, isn’t it?” He raised his hat and would have walked on but she suddenly broke from her rigid pose and plunged forward, catching at his sleeve like a drowning person. Yes, in that greenish underwater light with her white staring face, she did look as if she was drowning.
“Doctor, I must speak to you!” she gulped out the words.
“Why, certainly Miss Duncton. Nothing wrong, I hope?” But he really felt he could bear no more just then of human problems and pains. For once he determined to keep it at bay – whatever it was – if he could.
She stumbled along at his side. The ride was so narrow there was scarcely room for two to walk abreast and she wondered that he did not hear the thudding of her heart.
“Are you playing truant too?” he said. “I suppose I ought really to be at home cutting the grass, but it seemed too fine an evening to waste. It does us all good to break away sometimes.” At this a raucous laugh echoed through the trees. “There’s the green woodpecker,” he smiled.
With an enormous effort she broke in:
“Dr. Mansbridge, there’s something I must tell you... I can’t go on like this...” Her chest heaved with the sobs she strove to stifle.
Here it came, after all, he thought.
“Steady, now,” he said gently, “take it easy.”
To her shame the tears burst from her helplessly at his kind tone.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed, “I’m sorry.”
“Come, now,” he said, “you’re spoiling a pleasant evening. Dry your eyes and forget your troubles. They’re never as important as they seem to us at the time. When things become difficult, we tend to lose our sense of proportion.”
“You don’t understand,” she said hoarsely.
“I understand enough to know you’re not happy. Don’t try to explain, it only makes it more painful for you, believe me. It won’t always be like this, you know. One day you’ll be free,” he said with brisk confidence, lifting away the leafy branches that barred the path.
“Free?” she tasted the word incredulously. “Do you dream of freedom too?”
“I’m afraid I’m too prosaic for such romantic fancies” he laughed.
“You said once that you longed to be free” she reminded him.
“I did” he said, puzzled.
He couldn’t have forgotten, she thought; he couldn’t She turned back to the problem of herself.
She said on a note of ludicrous despair:
“I’m twenty-seven.”
“One foot in the grave” he said, laughing.
There was something rather moving, rather beautiful in the way her eyes, still a-brim with tears, flashed at him.
“Do you think it’s funny to see one’s life wasting away, year after year, in futile sacrifice? Haven’t I the right to happiness, like anyone else?”
“Of course.”
She flushed.
“I know it’s wicked of me, but when I think that Father may live another twenty years, I hate him. What use will my life be to me then? It will all have been for nothing.”
Dr. Mansbridge said, “You know, I have always found it a remarkably good plan not to look too far ahead. We can none of us know what the future will bring – which may be just as well” he added. “To look ahead for twenty years only makes the present seem more intolerable. In difficult situations it is better to live a day at a time. Indeed, sometimes it is the only way to get through a bad patch” he sighed.
“I think it is only when one is unhappy in the present that one does look into the future,” Catherine said in a low voice. “It is a sort of escape into a prospect of happiness.”
“Oh, things are never so bad that they mightn’t be worse” Dr. Mansbridge declared cheerfully. “You should take up some hobby, you know. You’d be surprised what a difference it would make to your outlook to have some outside interest.”
The sun drifting down the sky cast shafts of ruddy light through the interstices of the leaves. The wood was full of liquid trills and calls as the birds scattered to their nests.
Catherine uttered a cry and clapped a hand to her face. She had let go a branch too soon and it had swung back and caught her in the eye. She stood there, stunned with the shock of the pain.
“What’s the matter?” said Dr. Mansbridge, turning back. “Let me see.”
She removed her hand for a moment and then hurriedly clapped it back. He pulled away her fingers and saw a red mark like a lash on her cheek. She blinked up at him, her eye watering furiously in the light. She looked away, screwing up her face.
“Keep still,” he commanded, holding her chin steady with one hand and gently prying the lids apart with the other while he peered at the pupil. His face was so close that she could see the tender liquid tea-colour of his eyes. He was close... It made her dizzy...
With an abruptness that took them both by surprise, she twisted round and pressed her mouth passionately into the palm of his hand.
As though the kiss had burned it, he snatched his hand away.
They stared at one another. She put a clenched fist against her mouth with a faint moan.
“I didn’t mean...” she said. “I don’t know what happened... I couldn’t help myself... I lost my head... It was dreadful... I don’t know what you must think of me... You’ve been so kind, and this evening suddenly I felt –”
He tried to pass it off with awkward good humour, but the girl said with the fierceness of desperation:
“I’m so terribly in love with you!”
He stared incredulously.
“My dear young lady!” he protested.
She said hoarsely, “I’ve been in love with you for years. I thought you had guessed.”
“No.”
“I couldn’t stand it any longer. I tried...” she put her face into her hands. “I suppose you’re horrified. I suppose it was dreadful of me to tell you.”
“I’m not in the least horrified. But I am sorry. Though it’s a thing that happens to most of us at one time or another in our lives.”
She took away her hands and shot him a quick glance, pathetic in its flinching eagerness.
“You’re really not angry? I was so afraid you’d be – disgusted,” she whispered, her voice falling almost inaudibly on the last word.
“Now, why should it disgust me? You wouldn’t expect me to evince disgust if you came to me and said you were starving. You’ve been starved emotionally, and in this way you try to compensate for your hunger. There’s absolutely no need to feel ashamed of anything so natural. At your age, falling in love, as they call it, is a normal physiological occurrence. It’s Nature’s way of continuing the race, so She implants in you this instinct to find a mate and bear children.” He smiled at her. “Unfortunately, Dame Nature isn’t very discriminating. She’s so eager to get to work on us that it makes her clumsy, with the result that we don’t always fall in love with a suitable person, and then for a time, I’m afraid, we suffer. But it passes, you know,” he said. “You’ll fall in love again. You may fall in love many times before you find the person you want to marry.”
“Oh, no! No! You don’t understand. It’s not like that a bit. I shall never love anyone else,” she cried passionately.
He could not help smiling.
“You think I’m being stupid and insensitive, I know. When we are in love we always think it is going to last forever. Because the emotion is so intense we imagine it must be eternal. But the real tragedy of love, believe me, is that it doesn’t last,” he said with a wry smile.
Catherine’s eyes went quickly over his face. He no longer loved his wife: he was telling her so. She had always been certain of it in her deepest heart, but that he should confide it to her just now sent a ray of joy quivering through her and the unbearable tension of guilt relaxed.
“I wager,” he was saying cheerfully, “that a year from now you’ll wonder how you could ever have fancied yourself in love with such a dull old fogey as me.”
She shook her head. He didn’t understand, but it no longer mattered.
“Look!” he said and pointed to the yellow moon riding above the tree tops.
“Oh, my goodness!” she exclaimed, frightened as a truant child to realize how late it must be. “I must go back at once. Father will be furious, he doesn’t know I’m out. I left him listening to Strindberg on the Third Programme.” She sighed, “I wish they did his plays more often, there’s so little he really enjoys.”
For some reason Dr. Mansbridge seemed to find this amusing, but she did not mind him laughing at her.
“What funny creatures we humans are! It doesn’t do to take ourselves too seriously.”
As they came out of the copse the hills were already black against the darkening sky.
“I must go,” she said again and held out her hand shyly.
“I’ll run you back in the car.”
He dropped her at the top of her lane and drove home, his shameful platitudes still ringing in his ears. Once he took his hand off the wheel and turned it palm upwards, as though he could yet feel the kiss scalding it. A man of my age! he thought.
When he entered his house, the maid was standing in the hall in her outdoor clothes. She looked frightened.
He said sharply, “What’s the matter, Norah?”
“Oh, sir!” she burst out in a catlike wail. At the same moment a voice cut in from above: “Mansbridge! My dear fellow, where have you been?” Dr. Horace ran downstairs with a grave face. “We’ve been trying everywhere to get hold of you for the last two hours.”
“What’s the matter?” Dr. Mansbridge said, not moving.
“I’m afraid this will come as a great shock to you. Mrs. Mansbridge is dead.”
The maid’s loud sobs confused him, he could not think with all that racket going on.
“For goodness sake, be quiet, Norah,” he said sharply. “What happened, Horace?” he said, turning to the doctor.
“Believe me, we did all we could. But we were too late to save her.”
Oh, damn the old fool! Why couldn’t he utter a plain statement of fact? Dr. Mansbridge steadied himself with a hand on the banisters and looked up the tall staircase as if it was the face of a mountain he had to climb.
“I shouldn’t go up just yet,” said old Dr. Horace with a restraining hand on his arm, “the police are there.”
The questions seemed to go on for hours.
“When did you last see your wife?...You noticed nothing unusual about her, she did not seem in any way unlike herself?...You say she was lying down asleep when you left the house. Was that because she was unwell?...Well, did she normally lie down in the afternoon?...But weren’t you surprised?...Was she in the habit of taking drugs?...Had she access to any narcotics?...Doubtless it has slipped your mind, but I should tell you that a box of sodium amylobarbitone capsules was found in your bathroom cupboard.”
“Oh, those,” Dr. Mansbridge said, passing a hand across his brow. “I’d forgotten. They were some I put up for myself earlier in the year. I was sleeping badly. My wife never took anything like that. I doubt if she knew they were there.”
“Can you remember how many were left in the box?”
“I’m afraid not.” He tried to think. “I wouldn’t have taken more than two or three myself.”
“And how many would you have made up altogether?”
He said vaguely, “A dozen perhaps.”
“There are three left.”
“It might have been only half a dozen,” he said, rubbing his forehead.
“We needn’t pursue that at present. It can, no doubt, be verified later if necessary,” said the superintendent. “Now, the maid said you had told her she could take the afternoon off. Is that correct?”
“Why, yes. She told me that my wife had already arranged it with her, and there was no reason why she should not go.”
“It did not seem to you necessary for anyone to remain in the house with your wife?”
“Not in the least. She wasn’t ill. Besides, I was here myself for the greater part of the afternoon.”
“At what time did you leave?”
“About five. I came up before I left to see if she wanted anything, but she was asleep. I didn’t disturb her, she looked very comfortable,” he broke off, and after a moment added, “She’d been reading her book and eating the fudge I’d brought her. How could I have supposed anything was wrong? I can’t believe it was. Whatever happened must have happened later.”
“Fudge, did you say, sir?” interrupted the superintendent. “What we found on the bed was a bag of peppermint creams.”
Chapter Six
Like An Ugly Little Story by De Maupassant
Despite the loathing and contempt in which she was generally held, there were a few to whom Mrs. Mansbridge’s sudden death brought secret feelings of horror, grief, remorse and guilt, but the one person who was really frightened by it, the flesh walking on the back of her neck whenever she thought of it, was the maid, Norah.
Not for a thousand pounds, she maintained, would she remain alone with the doctor in the old stone house; she would be dead scared.
“Well, it was upsetting for you, I grant” agreed her mother. “But there’s no call to get fanciful and chuck up a good job. What have you got to be scared about?”
“I’ve no wish to be murdered in my bed,” the girl muttered sullenly.
“Whatever are you talking about, you great silly? This is what comes of going to the pictures so much, it gives you ideas.”
“People don’t die sudden like that for nothing.”
“Well, if you’ll take my advice you won’t go around calling that poor man a murderer, or you’ll find yourself in real trouble, my girl.”
“I know what I know.”
“Then keep your mouth shut and you’ll come to no harm.”
“How can I?” the girl wailed. “I’ve got to give evidence. I’m a witness, and if they ask me, I’ll have to speak the truth, won’t I?”
“Oh, how you go on! Just because they had a few words.”
“You didn’t see what I saw. Never shall I forget the way he looked when they told him she was dead. It gives me a cold grue to think about it,” she said with a shudder.
