Life and Death of Harriett Frean (7 page)

"My dear, your nurse had nothing else to do. Your wife has to clean and mend for you, and cook your dinner and mow the lawn and nail the carpets down." While she said it she looked at Robin as if she adored him.

All through tea time he talked about his health and about the sanitary dustbin they hadn't got. Something had happened to him. It wasn't like him to be wrapped up in himself and to talk about dustbins. He spoke to his wife as if she had been his valet. He didn't see that she was perspiring, worn out by her struggle with the carpet.

"Just go and fetch me another cushion, Beatrice."

She rose with tired patience.

"You might let her have her tea in peace," Miss Walker said, but she was gone before they could stop her.

When Harriett left she went with her to the garden gate, panting as she walked. Harriett noticed pale, blurred lines on the edges of her lips. She thought: She isn't a bit strong. She praised the garden.

Mrs. Lethbridge smiled. "Robin loves it.... But you should have seen it at five o'clock this morning."

"Five o'clock?"

"Yes. I always get up at five to make Robin a cup of tea."

Harriett's last evening. She was dining at Sidcote. On her way there she had overtaken Robin's wife wheeling Robin in a bath chair. Beatrice had panted and perspired and had made mute signs to Harriett not to take any notice. She had had to go and lie down till Robin sent for her to find his cigarette case. Now she was in the kitchen cooking Robin's part of the dinner while he lay down in his study. Harriett talked to Miss Walker in the garden.

"It's been very kind of you to have us so much."

"Oh, but we've loved having you. It's so good for Beatie. Gives her a rest from Robin.... I don't mean that she wants a rest. But, you see, she's not well. She looks a big, strong, bouncing thing, but she isn't. Her heart's weak. She oughtn't to be doing what she does."

"Doesn't Robin see it?"

"He doesn't see anything. He never knows when she's tired or got a headache. She'll drop dead before he'll see it. He's utterly selfish, Miss Frean. Wrapt up in himself and his horrid little ailments. Whatever happens to Beatie he must have his sweetbread, and his soup at eleven and his tea at five in the morning..

"... I suppose you think I might help more?"

"Well----" Harriett did think it.

"Well, I just won't. I won't encourage Robin. He ought to get her a proper servant and a man for the garden and the bath chair. I wish you'd give him a hint. Tell him she isn't strong. I can't. She'd snap my head off. Would you mind?"

Harriett didn't mind. She didn't mind what she said. She wouldn't be saying it to Robin, but to the contemptible thing that had taken Robin's place. She still saw Robin as a young man, with young, shining eyes, who came rushing to give himself up at once, to make himself known. She had no affection for this selfish invalid, this weak, peevish bully.

Poor Beatrice. She was sorry for Beatrice. She resented his behavior to Beatrice. She told herself she wouldn't be Beatrice, she wouldn't be Robin's wife for the world. Her pity for Beatrice gave her a secret pleasure and satisfaction.

After dinner she sat out in the garden talking to Robin's wife, while Cissy Walker played draughts with Robin in his study, giving Beatrice a rest from him. They talked about Robin.

"You knew him when he was young, didn't you? What was he like?"

She didn't want to tell her. She wanted to keep the young, shining Robin to herself. She also wanted to show that she had known him, that she had known a Robin that Beatrice would never know. Therefore she told her.

"My poor Robin." Beatrice gazed wistfully, trying to see this Robin that Priscilla had taken from her, that Harriett had known. Then she turned her back.

"It doesn't matter. I've married the man I wanted." She let herself go. "Cissy says I've spoiled him. That isn't true. It was his first wife who spoiled him. She made a nervous wreck of him."

"He was devoted to her."

"Yes. And he's paying for his devotion now. She wore him out.... Cissy says he's selfish. If he is, it's because he's used up all his unselfishness. He was living on his moral capital.... I feel as if I couldn't do too much for him after what he did. Cissy doesn't know how awful his life was with Priscilla. She was the most exacting----"

"She was my friend."

"Wasn't Robin your friend, too?"

"Yes. But poor Prissie, she was paralyzed."

"It wasn't paralysis."

"What was it then?"

"Pure hysteria. Robin wasn't in love with her, and she knew it. She developed that illness so that she might have a hold on him, get his attention fastened on her somehow. I don't say she could help it. She couldn't. But that's what it was."

"Well, she died of it."

"No. She died of pneumonia after influenza. I'm not blaming Prissie. She was pitiable. But he ought never to have married her."

"I don't think you ought to say that."

"You know what he was," said Robin's wife. "And look at him now."

But Harriett's mind refused, obstinately, to connect the two Robins and
Priscilla.

She remembered that she had to speak to Robin. They went together into his study. Cissy sent her a look, a signal, and rose; she stood by the doorway.

"Beatie, you might come here a minute."

Harriett was alone with Robin.

"Well, Harriett, we haven't been able to do much for you. In my beastly
state----"

"You'll get better."

"Never. I'm done for, Harriett. I don't complain."

"You've got a devoted wife, Robin."

"Yes. Poor girl, she does what she can."

"She does too much."

"My dear woman, she wouldn't be happy if she didn't."

"It isn't good for her. Does it never strike you that she's not strong?"

"Not strong? She's--she's almost indecently robust. What wouldn't I give to have her strength!"

She looked at him, at the lean figure sunk in the armchair, at the dragged, infirm face, the blurred, owlish eyes, the expression of abject self-pity, of self-absorption. That was Robin.

The awful thing was that she couldn't love him, couldn't go on being faithful. This injured her self-esteem.

Her old servant, Hannah, had gone, and her new servant, Maggie, had had a
baby.

After the first shock and three months' loss of Maggie, it occurred to Harriett that the beautiful thing would be to take Maggie back and let her have the baby with her, since she couldn't leave it.

The baby lay in his cradle in the kitchen, black-eyed and rosy, doubling up his fat, naked knees, smiling his crooked smile, and saying things to himself. Harriett had to see him every time she came into the kitchen. Sometimes she heard him cry, an intolerable cry, tearing the nerves and heart. And sometimes she saw Maggie unbutton her black gown in a hurry and put out her white, rose-pointed breast to still his cry.

Harriett couldn't bear it. She could not bear it.

She decided that Maggie must go. Maggie was not doing her work properly. Harriett found flue under the bed.

"I'm sure," Maggie said, "I'm doing no worse than I did, ma'am, and you usedn't to complain."

"No worse isn't good enough, Maggie. I think you might have tried to please me. It isn't every one who would have taken you in the circumstances."

"If you think that, ma'am, it's very cruel and unkind of you to send me
away."

"You've only yourself to thank. There's no more to be said."

"No, ma'am. I understand why I'm leaving. It's because of Baby. You don't want to 'ave 'im, and I think you might have said so before."

That day month Maggie packed her brown-painted wooden box and the cradle and the perambulator. The greengrocer took them away on a handcart. Through the drawing-room window Harriett saw Maggie going away, carrying the baby, pink and round in his white-knitted cap, his fat hips bulging over her arm under his white shawl. The gate fell to behind them. The click struck at Harriett's heart.

Three months later Maggie turned up again in a black hat and gown for best, red-eyed and humble.

"I came to see, ma'am, whether you'd take me back, as I 'aven't got Baby
now."

"You haven't got him?"

"'E died, ma'am, last month. I'd put him with a woman in the country. She was highly recommended to me. Very highly recommended she was, and I paid her six shillings a week. But I think she must 'ave done something she shouldn't."

"Oh, Maggie, you don't mean she was cruel to him?"

"No, ma'am. She was very fond of him. Everybody was fond of Baby. But whether it was the food she gave him or what, 'e was that wasted you wouldn't have known him. You remember what he was like when he was here."

"I remember."

She remembered. She remembered. Fat and round in his white shawl and knitted cap when Maggie carried him down the garden path.

"I should think she'd a done something, shouldn't you, ma'am?"

She thought: No. No. It was I who did it when I sent him away.

"I don't know, Maggie. I'm afraid it's been very terrible for you."

"Yes, ma'am.... I wondered whether you'd give me another trial, ma'am."

"Are you quite sure you want to come to me, Maggie?"

"Yes'm.... I'm sure you'd a kept him if you could have borne to see him
about."

"You know, Maggie, that was
not
the reason why you left. If I take you back you must try not to be careless and forgetful."

"I shan't 'ave nothing to make me. Before, it was first Baby's father and
then 'im."

She could see that Maggie didn't hold her responsible. After all, why should she? If Maggie had made bad arrangements for her baby, Maggie was responsible.

She went round to Lizzie and Sarah to see what they thought. Sarah thought: Well--it was rather a difficult question, and Harriett resented her hesitation.

"Not at all. It rested with Maggie to go or stay. If she was incompetent I wasn't bound to keep her just because she'd had a baby. At that rate I should have been completely in her power."

Lizzie said she thought Maggie's baby would have died in any case, and they both hoped that Harriett wasn't going to be morbid about it.

Harriett felt sustained. She wasn't going to be morbid. All the same, the episode left her with a feeling of insecurity.

The young girl, Robin's niece, had come again, bright-eyed, eager, and hungry, grateful for Sunday supper.

Harriett was getting used to these appearances, spread over three years, since Robin's wife had asked her to be kind to Mona Floyd. Mona had come this time to tell her of her engagement to Geoffrey Carter. The news shocked Harriett intensely.

"But, my dear, you told me he was going to marry your little friend, Amy-- Amy Lambert. What does Amy say to it?"

"What
can
she say? I know it's a bit rough on her----"

"You know, and yet you'll take your happiness at the poor child's
expense."

"We've got to. We can't do anything else."

"Oh, my dear----" If she could stop it.... An inspiration came. "I knew a girl once who might have done what you're doing, only she wouldn't. She gave the man up rather than hurt her friend. She
couldn't do anything else
."

"How much was he in love with her?"

"I don't know
how much
. He was never in love with any other woman."

"Then she was a fool. A silly fool. Didn't she think of
him?
"

"Didn't she think!"

"No. She didn't. She thought of herself. Of her own moral beauty. She was
a selfish fool."

"She asked the best and wisest man she knew, and he told her she couldn't do anything else."

"The best and wisest man--oh, Lord!"

"That was my own father, Mona, Hilton Frean."

"Then it was you. You and Uncle Robin and Aunt Prissie."

Harriett's face smiled its straight, thin-lipped smile, the worn, grooved chin arrogantly lifted.

"How could you?"

"I could because I was brought up not to think of myself before other
people."

"Then it wasn't even your own idea. You sacrificed him to somebody else's.
You made three people miserable just for that. Four, if you count Aunt
Beatie."

"There was Prissie. I did it for her."

"What did you do for her? You insulted Aunt Prissie."

"Insulted her? My dear Mona!"

"It was an insult, handing her over to a man who couldn't love her even with his body. Aunt Prissie was the miserablest of the lot. Do you suppose he didn't take it out of her?"

"He never let her know."

"Oh, didn't he! She knew all right. That's how she got her illness. And it's how he got his. And he'll kill Aunt Beatie. He's taking it out of
her
now. Look at the awful suffering. And you can go on sentimentalizing about it."

The young girl rose, flinging her scarf over her shoulders with a violent
gesture.

"There's no common sense in it."

"No
common
sense, perhaps."

"It's a jolly sight better than sentiment when it comes to marrying."

They kissed. Mona turned at the doorway.

"I say--did he go on caring for you?"

"Sometimes I think he did. Sometimes I think he hated me."

"Of course he hated you, after what you'd let him in for." She paused. "You don't
mind
my telling you the truth, do you?"

... Harriett sat a long time, her hands folded on her lap, her eyes staring into the room, trying to see the truth. She saw the girl, Robin's niece, in her young indignation, her tender brilliance suddenly hard, suddenly cruel, flashing out the truth. Was it true that she had sacrificed Robin and Priscilla and Beatrice to her parents' idea of moral beauty? Was it true that this idea had been all wrong? That she might have married Robin and been happy and been right?

"I don't care. If it was to be done again to-morrow I'd do it."

But the beauty of that unique act no longer appeared to her as it once was, uplifting, consoling, incorruptible.

The years passed. They went with an incredible rapidity, and Harriett was
now fifty.