“I'm sorry, Brian. Sorry.” Her hands stroked his hair. “Don't take it like that, Brian. You'll make yourself ill.” She sat on the arm of the chair and rocked his head on her breast, as though he had been indeed the baby he now seemed to be.
He looked up: ashamed of his exhibition, but obscurely comforted, and ready to clutch at hope. He put an arm round her unresisting shoulders and pleaded for her love. And while he did so some part of him stood aside, a detached but
contemptuous spectator. If she refuses me now, after I've humbled myself, I shan't be able to go on living.
She disengaged herself from his embrace and moved away. “No, no,” she said. “It's useless to talk of that now, Brian. Can't you see, it's not the time for it.”
“Then you don't love me after all? Is that it?” He knew that his persistence was stupid, that his weakness was alienating her affections still further from him. But he couldn't leave the thing alone: some demon in his brain drove him on to encompass his own destruction. “You love Roderick? Is that it?”
The compassion went out of her eyes. “Of course I love Roderick,” she said coldly. “Roderick is my husband.”
Then damn and blast Roderick, said Brian in his heart.
“And even if I didn't love him,” remarked Daphne, reaching for her gloves, “it would be my duty to save him from that little foreign tart.”
HAVING told Ernie to shut the shop-door, and having watched to see that he did it properly (for he did not trust this son of his), Mr James Bayfield counted the day's takings, locked up the cash, and sauntered into the parlour. He was tired after the day's work, but he owed it to his dignity to saunter, and saunter he did: it was a gesture, unconscious or only half-conscious, of independence, a way of reminding himself that his soul was his own, and that being in his middle fifties, and having to sell tobacco, stationery, newspapers, gum, string, twopenny novelettes, chocolates, boiled sweets, nougat, liquorice all-sorts, bachelor-buttons, and the rest of it, were facts that did not dismay him, and don't you make any mistake about that. The parlour was a small overcrowded room, full of heavy furniture upholstered in red plush. It was inadequately lit by a window that looked out upon a narrow asphalted side-passage shut in by the high blind wall of the next house. Mr Bayfield and his neighbours worked hard and late to keep the owner of this rabbit-warren in comfort and comparative idleness; if they had been organized in squads
and driven to work with whips they could hardly have done more for him; but Mr Bayfield for one was so far from thinking of himself as a slave that any attempt to set him free would have seemed to him a dangerous innovation. Mr Bayfield's fireside chair was placed with its back to this window, so that Mr Bayfield could read in comfort, for he was known as a great reader; and the rest of the family managed as best they could and saw no injustice in the arrangement, making the most of the dim light that filtered through the frosted pane set in the door intervening between themselves and the shop. Despite its deficiencies Mr Bayfield entered the parlour with an air of satisfaction and even of self-satisfaction. Trade had been brisk today; besides his regular customers, many strangers had dropped in for a packet of ten, or an ounce of this or that; there had been quite a run on the evening papers; and the Tottenham murder had provided him with a great deal of very agreeable conversation. To say that he was looking forward to his evening would be an overstatement, for he gave the matter no conscious thought; but the fact that he was now for a few hours a free man, and the fact that he would use his freedom in a manner prescribed by his daily routine, this double fact, a paradox but not a contradiction, undoubtedly gave colour and quality to this moment of release, and imparted good temper to the voice in which he remarked on the absence of his wife. “Hullo, where's Mother?” The room was empty; the words fell on no ears but his own. But he did not mind that, for the sound of his own voice was always a pleasure to him, and he was in the habit of offering himself, a willing and appreciative audience, a kind of running commentary on the moving picture of life. Customers often caught him at it, and were seldom tempted to laugh, for it was somehow all part of his character, and Mr Bayfield's opinion of that had proved infectious to all but a negligible few. The table was covered with a soiled white cloth which had grown old in the service of the Bayfields, and crocks had been set out for the evening meal. Four places had been laid. “What's this mean?” asked Mr Bayfield. “Who's coming?” In his heart he hoped it might be Dolly, who was turning out such a credit to him. “Time she came to see her old Dad,” he said. But observing that the preparations were incompleteâfor
where was the bread, where were the teacups, the jam, the pot of pickles?âa spasm of indignation moved in him and he went over to the inner door, opened it quickly, and called “Mother! You coming, Mother?” A distant cry reassured him, but he could not refrain from retorting: “Shop's been shut these
ten
minutes.” He went to his accustomed chair and sat down, remarking, again aloud, that it was a good job he was a patient man. His patience, however, was not overstrained; for within three minutes Mrs Bayfield came into the room, bearing on a tray all the articles whose absence had caused him disquiet.
“I was out in the garden,” said Mrs Bayfield, flattering with this designation the small square patch of ground whose diagonal accommodated two posts and a nine-foot length of clothes-line. “It's my belief there's a shower coming.” The pocket of her apron still bulged with clothes-pegs, for she knew Jim didn't like being kept waiting for his food, and so had not spared a moment in which to rid herself of them. “I've got a pair of nice kippers for you tonight,” she said.
“Ah!” returned Mr Bayfield.
“And
I can do with 'em.” He grunted a little as he took off his boots. “Where are my slippers, Glad?”
“Where they always are,” said Mrs Bayfield. But she left the table, nevertheless, to get them for him from under his own chair. Scenting his impatience she had been prepared to propitiate him, and equally prepared, if need arose, to answer sharpness with sharpness; but the hint of sharpness that had inadvertently slipped out was due not to irritation but to a momentary surprise that was almost confusion. After being Mother for a quarter of a century or more, it always made her âfeel funny' to be reminded that she had received another name, Gladys, in holy baptism. It made her in fact feel girlish, you and me together, quite like old times; and since to feel girlish at her age was foolish, and perhaps not quite proper, the effect of it all was disturbing and confusing, so that you didn't hardly know where you were.
“Ah!” said Mr Bayfield, receiving his slippers, and slowly, with the effect of much dignity, putting his feet into them. He nodded at the table. “Who's coming?”
Mrs Bayfield was an unremarkable woman, the sort of
woman you could meet three times and fail to recognize at the fourth meeting. Nor would she have taken offence at this failure. She had never made the mistake of regarding herself as of much importance. Mr Bayfield, she thought, had importance enough for two; and there wasn't really room for any more of it in the house when he was at home. She was content to have it so. She did not share her husband's view of himself, but she did not resent his having it, and during her thirty years of marriage had learned unconsciously to allow for it in all her calculations. If this was wisdom in her it was an instinctive wisdom, which she was not aware of possessing. Indeed she was unaware of much that went on, within her and without. She neither enjoyed her married life nor disliked it: she took it for granted, and it had never for one moment occurred to her that things could be different. She was of medium height and stocky figure, with black wispy hair and a rather square face. Spectacles combined with her thin sharp nose to give her a slightly owlish appearance, but the suggestion was not strong enough to make her memorable. In earlier years Mr Bayfield had sometimes caught himself feeling weary of seeing her about the place, and wishing for a change, but temptation had never synchronized with opportunity, so instead of being unfaithful he had been querulous and sarcastic. But all that was over and forgotten, and nowadays, at his age, change was the last thing he wanted. It was not, precisely, that the two liked each other better: it was rather that they had learned how to avoid occasions for conflict, had elaborated a technique for living in the same house and sharing the same bed without often noticing that the other was there. Mrs Bayfield regarded her husband as something inevitable and unalterable, like the weather. And Mr Bayfield had got used to his wife just as he had got used to his corns.
“Who's coming?” echoed Mrs Bayfield. “Who but our Dolly?” she asked rhetorically.
Mr Bayfield sat up in his chair, and his eyes protruded with something that threatened to be indignation. “Indeed? First I've heard of it. Why wasn't I told?”
“Because you were in the doubleyou when the card arrived,” answered Mrs Bayfield. “And because I didn't think to tell you when you came back to serve.”
“What card?” demanded Mr Bayfield.
“Dolly's card, to be sure. Postcard it was. Such a pretty picture of the little girls with their hockey-bats. Hopes to be along about nine o'clock, she says, and stay the night. And she says not to wait supper.”
“Very kind of her,” said Mr Bayfield, with heavy irony. “Nine o'clock indeed! What a time to come! Serve her right if we was all in bed.”
“Go to bed if you want to, dear. Feeling tired?”
“It'd teach her a lesson,” continued Mr Bayfield, who had not heard the remark. “I should be sorry if any daughter of mine was to turn into one of these
modern
girls we read about. After I've pinched and saved to give her a good education like I have.”
Mrs Bayfield handed him his tea, and just as he liked it, a dark brown brew, with three lumps of sugar to take the edge off. She had no remark to offer about Dolly's education, was unmoved by his complacency and undismayed by his forebodings. Dolly, a clever and industrious child, had made quite a habit of winning scholarships; and now, at twenty-three, she was teaching in a secondary school with every apparent success, thus compensating her parents for the loss of Agnes, their eldest, who had married beneath her, and not a moment too soon. Mr Bayfield felt it his duty to find fault with his children to their faces, and think well of them, if he could, only behind their backs; in no other way could a family be controlled. And he failed to see any significance in the fact that Dolly, the least scolded, had turned out a Credit, while her sister Agnes had been a Disgrace, and her young brother Ernie, though conscientiously cuffed from time to time, was already in process of becoming a Worry.
“And where's Ernie got to?” asked Mr Bayfield. “Doesn't milord want any supper tonight? You're too soft with that boy, Mother.”
“A pair of nice kippers these are,” said Mrs Bayfield, putting the plate in front of him. “Eat them while they're hot. It'll do you good, I'm sure. ⦠Ah, that'll be Ernie, I expect.”
Making too much noise, as he always did, Ernie flung himself into the room. He was nineteen and beginning to feel
his age: a slim, strong, pasty-faced youth, with a curve in the lips that suggested cunning, and a boldness of eye that suggested insolence. The movements of his limbs were coltish, awkward, vigorous, provoking in his father a reluctant admiration and a resentful envy. The stream of life in this young man was too copious: it made Mr Bayfield's seem the merest trickle.
“And what's been keeping you, my boy?” asked Mr Bayfield. “Punctuality, they say, is the politeness of princes.” Fortified by a mouthful or two of kipper, he was growing more genial.
“Had to go down the road,” said Ernie. He did not explain the nature of the compulsion, but his manner betrayed his consciousness of what his father suspected: that there was a girl in the case. And why the hell shouldn't there be? said Ernie to himself. “Looks to me as though that fellow'll swing. What d'you think, Dad? Say, Mum, give us a cup of tea.”
“D'you mean the Tottenham business?” Mr Bayfield swallowed hastily, and took a gulp of tea.
“You sit down, Ernie,” said Mrs Bayfield, “and then you shall have your cup of tea. You oughta been here before, as well you know.”
“Oh, don't go on at the boy, Mother.” Mr Bayfield cleared his throat, and the noise somehow suggested a royal proclamation. “I had a bit of an argument with one of the customers about that case. I passed the remark, same as you, Ernie, that things looked pretty black against the prisoner. Shouldn't care to be in his shoes, I said. Customer says, I'm afraid you're right, Mr Bayfield, he says. And as for shoes, he says, I shouldn't like to be in the jury's shoes either. That's right, I says, time's money nowadays, and once you get on a case like that there's no knowing how long they'll keep you at it. I didn't mean that, says the customer. What I meant was I shouldn't like the job of condemning a fellow-creature to the gallows. Do
you
believe in hanging 'em, Mr Bayfield? he says.”
“A nice subject for the supper-table, I must say,” remarked Mrs Bayfield, in a tone of banter.
“You can't deny a murder trial makes good reading, Mum,” said Ernie, teasing her.
“Would you like to be at one?” asked his mother.
“Depends where I was sitting,” said Ernie. “Not in the dock I wouldn't.” He laughed, relishing his smartness.
“So I said, What else can you do with 'em?” Mr Bayfield continued his narration. “A murderer's a murderer after all.”
Mrs Bayfield gave a shudder of distaste. “I should think so indeed. Hanging's too good for some of them. They ought to be done to as they did.”
“I'm not sure you're not right, Mother,” said Mr Bayfield approvingly.