Her Victory (46 page)

‘How is it?'

‘It just is.'

‘Why?' Clara looked into her face, smelt her rouge and perfume. ‘You don't believe what you're saying. Nothing is ever too late.'

Emma said: ‘It is, though. Too late. Too late for me to believe in anything any more. Everything's changed. I don't know when it began, or how it happened. There's nothing left in my mind. It's all empty. Unless I'm enjoying myself I'm frightened. Just a dreadful emptiness. At times, too often, I feel there's nothing there at all. Nothing – nothing. You can't imagine. I didn't want to tell you, but now I have.'

She has mother's spirit, but father's sickness, and she knows she's got it, whatever it is or was, Clara thought.

‘But I must go, or I'll be late.'

And she went out.

Clara felt the despair of the one who always stays behind, and could only soothe her pain by imagining that Emma blamed her for not having suggested the same plan for a holiday weeks ago, when it might have been possible.

She lay much of the night waiting to hear the front door open and shut, and fell into thick dreams towards dawn knowing that Emma hadn't come home. She was away sometimes for days, so Clara didn't worry. Yet she was troubled, knowing that Emma was always unhappy when they were absent from each other for very long. The same unease afflicted Clara, which nothing but a curtain of common-sense attitudes on her part could disperse. No matter how unjust, or unfeeling, there was no other way if fate were to be given the free hand that was, finally, impossible to stand up against.

17

There was a certain quality about the air at the demise of spring and the onset of summer, a rich green on the burgeoning vegetation that the year could not possibly show again, a week or two of heavy rain shining on slates and wooden huts in gardens, exposing rails and balustrades that needed paint, and gutters that wanted clearing of dead leaves. Paint crumbled, and the body of iron broke through.

The air was warm, yet the wind could turn chilly, and it was hard to say whether a topcoat or only a mackintosh was necessary on going out. The seemingly quiet streets were in fact full of traffic, the noise subdued because unable to rise in the heavy atmosphere.

In the parks there was a haunting overweight from vivid grass and the branches of laden trees. The sky was in constant alteration, with rarely a pattern of recognizable cloud, and when the sun shone the heat could be fierce if only because of its rarity, but when covered again by banks of cloud the watery air seemed cold.

The fluctuating pressure and temperature put Clara into a state of nervousness that she could hardly control. Such weather made the afternoons long. To fall into a chaos of screaming seemed possible, except that an iron barrier separated her from it. Thomas cried from the nursery, and he stopped when Audrey picked him up. But he cried again. Nothing could soothe him. She had never known him to be such a prolonged nuisance. The day was bad enough without the disturbance of a fractious baby to worsen her headache. She closed the door to her room. He hadn't grizzled so much since Emma had had him circumcised.

She couldn't be bothered to wind the gramophone, tried to read another chapter from
Vanity Fair
, then sat down to begin a letter to her old school friend Lucy Middleton. For the dread she felt, there was little to say. Life was dull, she might write, after her mother's death. The less to be said, the better for all concerned. She had heard no gossip worth putting in, so why waste the postage to New Zealand simply to say that everything was the same as before? It wasn't, but there was no point in telling anybody. She lifted the pen out of the ink and wiped its nib on the corner of the blotting paper. She felt too unsettled. A rattle at the window told her it was raining again.

She didn't know what sort of a bird it was, just a small common feathery thing that settled on a bush and shook itself. The way its wings fluttered and head turned quickly from side to side made her laugh. Such antics! The feathers were quite beautiful. It had crowned itself king (or maybe even queen) of the bush, so what more had it to wish for? Was it a flapper in the sparrow world with a bijou nest under the eaves? It flew away. A policeman and another man were at the gate. They talked, then came towards the door. The window was open an inch or two, and she heard the crumble of their boots on gravel. Unable to move, she watched one of them pull the bell.

The sound made her muscles leap. She cried out, but didn't care to get up. Perhaps Audrey would. Don't let it happen, whatever it is. Unhappen it, she said. How stupid! When the jangling stopped, she went with straight back and springing steps to ask the visitors in.

Someone had come to see her. The smile must be bright. She never forgot the shape of her lips that went into that particular smile, nor the lurch of her steps. The day had no ending in her life, but she'd hardly noticed its beginning. Ensuing days became part of grief – which creates its own lunar space, she wrote, so that when the sky is clear you can hardly see into it. And neither will you till your own life ends. Perhaps such heartbreak even precedes and waits for your soul as it comes out of life. Her writing deteriorated, the script impossible to decipher.

The idiot smile persisted as she hammered the dead wood of the study door to wake her father. He suffered deep irritation at being pulled from the centre of his daily nap, and with a weepish expression waited, in slippers and dressing-gown, for an explanation.

She was alone, the onus of everything only on her. ‘They've come with news of Emma. She's been found dead.'

She couldn't shape the words properly, but took him by the cold hand and pulled him along, making sure he didn't fall down the stairs. How lucky to be old. She sniffed angrily, trying to calm herself. By a few words the world had changed. Wood on the banister was rougher. A glimpse of conservatory plants through an open door seemed to threaten her. She let go of her father's arm to shut out the draught, and muttered that she must pull herself together. The tonic of her usual words did no good. Those she had just heard moved into her brain for ever.

The old gentleman didn't seem able to accept the fact that his daughter had been found dead in a Paddington hotel. To tell anything else would have been to suppose just a little too much, and they weren't the sort of people who would do so, no matter what your position in the world. She wondered if they didn't enjoy their reticence. It had been imposed upon them, but they certainly made the best of it. It wasn't their job to do otherwise. Perhaps it was indeed an accident, but they were trying to find out. They stated that much, that they didn't know what it
seemed
, only what they
saw
. Nothing but scientific conclusions were allowable. They weren't competent on those lines, the detective sergeant said, to offer any more information.

There were no tears on Percy's cheeks. She brushed the skin under her eyes and it was also dry. Mustn't break down in front of them.

‘Is it quite certain?' Percy's lips mimicked hers.

The chiming clock released the acid in her by each number. She poured whisky, but none for herself. She didn't drink, she said. Percy's glass fell. She picked it up and set it on the mantelshelf where he couldn't reach it. The bureaucratic finalizing of death would give her much to do. There would be an inquest, and the burial. She hoped it was an accident, and one of the men looked at her. No, no, a thousand times no, I'd rather die than say yes. She fought the words of the common song out of her mind. She used to sing them with Emma when they were children – to annoy their mother. Thinking it permissible, she sat down. If her father slumped she could leap across and catch him. Her calm questions finally made them solicitous. All arrangements would be made. Ten minutes had gone by since the clock had chimed.

She was afraid to look in the mirror in case Emma smiled back. To see even her own reflection would break the strength that being entirely alone gave her. It was a risk she would not take. She could issue orders, and do things, but not with the thought that someone was looking on. Being alone was strength, the more alone the better, for it was easier then to be herself, and if you were as totally yourself as it was possible to be, then you were in control. Nothing could break you down.

But sharp physical pains pierced her, and she fought back the temptation to roar out her soul as she powdered her face and put on her coat and then her hat without looking in the mirror. When she walked to the Green to get a motor cab, in order to go and identify the body, anyone passing on the street would have known that she was not her normal self. Her normal self was tall, blue-eyed, with fair but slightly reddish hair, a proud woman easy to remember and describe. She had been brought up to be, and had always assumed that she was, well-composed and unwilling to feel that any catastrophe could hurt her, though she reflected that it must only have meant those blows directed at someone else. If anything harder than the present blow were to strike she would hope to be conscious only long enough to thank God for it and then die.

18

She recorded the fact that in the midst of death she was in desolation, but rejoiced at the inquest's conclusion that her sister's demise was accidental. Emma seemed to have turned on the gas heater and absent-mindedly forgotten to apply a light. There was a willingness to believe such an assumption after the family general practitioner said that, having known her for twenty years, he considered her a normal outgoing person, of whom it was inconceivable to think that the misfortune could have been anything other than an accident. The exoneration helped them to feel that Emma's carelessness was only another manifestation of her feckless nature. If she had died at home, however much more upsetting it would have been, they might not have been tormented by the suggestion that she had betrayed them after cutting herself off so entirely from help. She did not want to be part of them any more, a feeling that, after the first paralysing weeks, diminished Clara's gnawing pain.

From one stance she changed to another, would sit hours by the fire – even in the summer it was cold that year – while her mind went through endless conversations with Emma as to what had gone wrong. Talking aloud, she would walk between the door and the window:

‘But she committed suicide, you fool, whatever the coroner decided. Her man friend went back to the Sudan and she couldn't stand the thought of being alone. Perhaps she was pregnant, and this time didn't want to be. She was alone because we didn't mean enough to her. She cared nothing for my support, nor father's, in the final mood she got into. She'd been in that state ever since I can remember, till her condition became so bad she could do little except find a way out, which must have come easily, whether or not it was an accident. Thank God she didn't do it at home and take Thomas with her, though it might have been a blessing in disguise if she had.'

But she wept at the thought of all that had not been done to stop Emma dying, though when she wondered what she might have done it was apparent that nothing would have been possible, because the time and place of a person's death was decided the moment they were born – and with such words she cleared her mind of futile speculation.

Clutching the door handle in order to go out, she could not turn it, and had only the strength to get back to a chair. It was impossible to know whether she stayed a minute or an hour. The days were long, and darkness came late. Then she sprang from her inanition and went out of the room, believing that if she had stayed a moment longer she would have been paralysed for life.

She walked along the hall, and entered her father's study without knocking. He sat in an armchair, and put the newspaper to his knees on hearing the door knob rattle. She sat on a stool at his feet. ‘I've come to talk to you.'

‘I used to read quickly,' he complained, ‘but I have difficulty fixing my eyes nowadays.' He took off his wire spectacles and rubbed his forehead. ‘I can't sleep, either.' His skin was lined and deadly white, nose thin and bones prominent. Nor did he eat much except porridge, orange juice, or mashed potatoes. Nothing but nursery food. ‘What do you need to talk about?'

She had forgotten, but wanted to be near him because there was no one else. Since Emma's death she felt a need to be with him, but was afraid of seeming a nuisance. ‘It'll soon be time for dinner. I thought you might like to come down with me.'

‘I'll eat in my room,' he said sharply.

‘I got some Dover sole from the fishmonger this morning, and cook has made one of her marvellous soups.' She wanted to talk, if only to get a response from a voice not her own. She missed Emma's. There was no speech, nothing but vague noises of Audrey and cook laughing together, or of the baby that never seemed to stop grizzling.

‘I won't come down.'

‘I'm not going to eat alone any more in this house,' she said.

‘Oh, aren't you?' He stood up, and took off his dressing-gown. ‘Where's my collar and tie?'

They were hanging on a chairback. She gave them to him. ‘Shall I help you?'

His hands trembled. He snatched the tie. ‘Get my jacket.'

She found it in his bedroom, and when she came back he had already fastened on his collar and tie.

‘We still have a lot to talk about,' she said.

‘Have we?'

‘I can't make every decision myself.'

His small blue eyes, from seeing nothing, glittered acutely. ‘You don't have to. I make them, in this house. Where's my tie? I've been looking all over, and can't find it.'

It was not the time to play jokes. ‘You've put it on already.'

He sat down, and placed a hand to his throat to make sure she was telling the truth. ‘Did you say there was Dover sole?'

‘And soup. And batter pudding.' She held out her hand. ‘Come on, father, it's nearly time.'