Miss Clare Remembers and Emily Davis Page 22

  It was the stricken look on her parents' faces which finally brought home to her the awful truth. Even then she could not cry, but went about her affairs, numbed with grief, in a dreadful strange calm which frightened those about her.

  It was at this time of her life that Dolly felt the full strength of Emily's support. Her sympathy took a practical turn. She brought her a bunch of violets to smell, or a bottle of homemade wine to tempt her listless appetite. She persuaded Dolly to accompany her on quiet walks where the gentle sounds of trees and birds could act as a balm to her friend's torn spirits.

  Emily said little about Arnold's death, unlike so many neighbours, meaning well, who poured sympathy into Dolly's ears but only succeeded in torturing the girl and distressing themselves. The fear that Edgar too might die, was constantly with Emily, but she gave no sign of it to Dolly. Outwardly, she remained cheerful and loving, and Dolly, looking back later, realised just how bravely and generously Emily gave all her strength to comfort her. There was an unselfishness and nobility about Emily, at this time, far beyond her years.

  A more cruel blow was in store for Emily. One spring day, when the high clouds scudded across the blue sky above the downs, and the lambs skipped foolishly below, an urgent message came from Edgar who was fighting in France. It said simply: 'For God's sake send me a gas mask.'

  The two bewildered girls had done their best with cotton wool and tape to design some poor defence against this unknown method of warfare. Together they had taken the precious parcel to Caxley, cycling through the balmy evening air filled with the music of the blackbirds' song, so that it should go by the quickest possible post from the main office in Caxley High Street.

  They heard that Edgar received it, but the gas attacks continued relentlessly. Some weeks later, Edgar returned from France, a victim of gas, and was sent to a hospital, not far from Bournemouth, for long months of recovery.

  Emily took the blow well. She was now headmistress of the tiny school at Springbourne, for the headmaster had enlisted as soon as war broke out. Despite the hard work which this involved, Emily made the long journey to see Edgar every week-end, staying overnight in cheap lodgings near the hospital gates.

  Edgar was a wraith of his former self. His eyes looked huge in his pale wasted face, and the terrible coughing attacks, which tore his damaged lungs, tore just as cruelly at Emily's heartstrings.

  But Edgar's welcome and his joy in her presence were worth every minute of the long journey. She stayed with him until the last train each Sunday, and it was often past midnight when she reached home to fall exhausted into bed.

  Throughout the dismal winter Emily continued to make her journeys, and now it was Dolly's turn to be comforter. Once or twice she accompanied Emily, but she could not afford to make the trip very often. Emily herself had foregone a new winter coat and boots to pay the fare each weekend, and Dolly had insisted on giving her money as a Christmas present, so that she could visit Edgar as often as possible.

  Gradually, Edgar improved. They made their marriage plans anew. Now they would have a summer wedding.

  Edgar was moved to a convalescent home not far from the hospital. It was an easier journey for Emily, with one less change by railway.

  She was as blithe as a summer bird as the days grew longer. She and Dolly set about preparing the cottage which had been waiting empty for so long.

  The two girls spent the long light evenings distempering the walls and scrubbing out cupboards and floors. There were wide serene views from the cottage windows, looking down over the sloping downs dotted with the sheep of Edgar's farm. They would perch on the wooden window seat or on upturned buckets in the porch, and revel in the last rays of the sun as they rested from their labours. Sometimes, they took a simple meal of cheese and biscuits and would sit outside, their hair lifted by the soft breeze, gazing at the view which would soon be Emily's daily one.

  These busy, but tranquil, hours did much to restore Dolly's spirits, and her own sense of loss was lessened by Emily's bubbling happiness. It was plain that Edgar would never be fit for active service again. As soon as he was released from the convalescent home he would return to the farm to work as best he could. His future, it seemed, held no more war-like excursions, and Dolly rejoiced for her friend.

  Doubly bitter was it then when the blow fell. One evening of golden sunlight, only a few weeks before the appointed wedding day, Dolly arrived at the cottage to find Emily sitting with a letter on her lap, and tears rolling down her cheeks.

  She handed the letter to Dolly without a word. It was a short note from Edgar stating baldly that he had fallen in love with one of the nurses and that they planned to marry as soon as possible.

  'I don't deserve you anyway' the letter ended. How true that was! thought Dolly, putting her arms round Emily's shaking frame.

  They sat thus for hours it seemed, while the sun grew lower and the sheep's distant cries came to them through the open windows.

  At last, Emily rose and left the house, followed by Dolly. She locked the front door and put the key and the letter together into her belt.

  'Emily?' questioned Dolly, searching her friend's resolute face for an answer.

  'He's made his choice,' said Emily, taking a deep breath. I'll abide by it.'

  'But won't you try and see him?' asked Dolly.

  'Never!' said Emily. 'It's her house now. I can't bear to look at it ever again.'

  From that day Emily Davis had done her best never to look upon the little cottage where she had dreamed of happiness. It was Dolly and Mrs Davis who had removed Emily's curtains and the few pieces of furniture which were already put into the downstairs rooms.

  It was they who disposed of them, for Emily would have nothing to do with this bitter clearing-up. The wounds were too fresh and raw to bear this added salt rubbed into them. For a time, she spoke to no one about the tragedy, but gradually she brought herself to say a little to Dolly, and as the months and years passed, Emily faced life without Edgar with a courage which was typical.

  Only Dolly guessed how deeply Emily was wounded by this affair. Edgar married his nurse one July day of thunderstorms and torrential rain. Maybe it was augury, thought Dolly, for the years that followed were stormy ones indeed for Edgar. He had married a virago, it turned out, and despite three bonny children there was little happiness in the cottage on the downs, and later in the farmhouse which they took over at his father's death.

  There was no doubt in Dolly's mind that Emily's tragedy was far more difficult to bear than her own. Edgar lived in the same small community, his marriage under constant scrutiny by his neighbours. Emily was forced, throughout her long life, to keep a still tongue and a calm face when informed of Edgar's doings.

  Her love for him never wavered. It was the kind of love, Dolly often thought, which one read of in old ballads, where the woman was called upon to endure all manner of humiliations and tests before her lord would acknowledge her. But in ballads, this faithful love was rewarded. Emily's was not.

  The fact that Edgar's marriage was a miserable one added to her unhappiness. Her spirit was too fine to find consolation in the 'I-told-you-so' attitude of many of her neighbours. It was no comfort to Emily to know that Edgar had chosen wrongly, but only an added tragedy.

  She did her best to avoid meeting him, sometimes going some distance afield to miss him at work on the farm. Never, if she could help it, would she pass the cottage. But, one day, some eight or nine years after his marriage, she met him face to face unexpectedly, and they spoke a few words. She told Dolly about this encounter many years later.

  She was walking up a rough cart track which led to the top of the downs. Spindleberries grew at the edge of a little copse on the chalky lower slopes, and she was on her way to collect some for a nature study lesson next day. Suddenly, there was a crackling of twigs from the copse, and Edgar emerged, holding a gun. He drew in his breath sharply.

  'I'm sorry, Emily. Hope I didn't scare you. I'm after jays.'

&n
bsp; Emily, speechless, shook her head.

  He leant his gun against the green-rimed trunk of an elder tree and came towards her. She looked steadily into his face, and what she saw there made her start to run.

  He caught her arm, and looked sadly and longingly into her eyes.

  'Oh, Emily,' he said, 'what a mess I've made of it!'

  'Edgar, please,' protested Emily. 'This will do no good.' She struggled to get away but he held her arm firmly.

  'Hear me for one minute.'

  Emily stood still. She was more stirred than she could believe. That steadfast love, which had never wavered, was now mingled with pity for the unhappy man before her.

  'I made the mistake of my life when I chose Eileen. Life's hell. I'm not complaining—I brought it on myself. But when the gossips tell you tit-bits about our cat-and-dog life, Em, you can multiply it by a hundred.'

  'So bad?' whispered Emily, shaken.

  'So bad,' repeated Edgar. He released her arm and turned away.

  'I'm sorry—truly sorry,' said Emily. 'You deserve happiness after all you went through in the war. But, Edgar, try not to speak to me again.'

  Her lips quivered, and the elder tree, and the gun, and the man were blurred by the tears which filled her eyes.

  He turned towards her, and Emily saw that tears too were on his cheek.

  'Please,' cried Emily, 'because—can't you see? I just can't bear it!'

  And, weeping, she stumbled back the way which she had come, leaving him there, forlorn.

  Poor Emily, thought Dolly Clare. And poor Edgar, now an old, old man. How would he face the news of Emily's death? Did he still remember the girl whom he had once loved, so many years ago?

  5. Edgar Hears the News

  EDGAR Bennett sat in the September sunlight and I surveyed his gnarled old hands ruefully. The dratted joints were more swollen than ever! Fat lot of good that doctor's muck had done him!

  He had once been proud of those hands, now mottled with the brown stains of old age. They had held a plough steady all day long, wielded a scythe, harnessed scores of horses, and used a cricket bat, with such skill, that at least one century from Edgar Bennett, each season, was celebrated at Beech Green in the old days.

  Now they were fit for nothing but pulling on his clothes each morning, and then with pain, or peeling the confounded potatoes that Eileen put before him every day.

  'No need to sit idle,' she said sharply to him. 'Just because you can't get about as you used to, it don't follow that you're helpless.'

  He looked at them now, swimming about in a bowl of muddy water on the bench beside him. He sat in an old wooden armchair which had been his father's, close by the back door of the farm house.

  It was a sheltered spot, and whenever the weather was fine, Edgar struggled out there with the aid of his stick and looked across the fields which he had sown and tended until ill-health had forced him to retire, two or three years ago.

  His son John ran the farm now, and lived in the main part of the farm house. Edgar and Eileen had the old kitchen and two other rooms downstairs for their quarters, and the old dairy had been turned into a bathroom.

  One way and another, thought Edgar, listening to the distant combine churring round the farm's largest field, they were pretty lucky. No stairs to worry about, for one thing, but no one knew how much he missed the glorious view of the downs from the window of the main bedroom. It had never failed to hearten him—in good weather or bad.

  The fruit trees in the garden obscured the vista, and now Edgar's horizon was bounded by the hawthorn hedge which enclosed the farm garden. It was all pretty enough, he supposed, looking with lack-lustre eye at the dahlias and early Michaelmas daisies which John's wife Annie tended so zealously; but it was not a patch on the rolling downs, undulating as far as the eye could see, filling a man with wonder and awe.

  He sighed, and fished in the bowl of water for the first potato. His right hand held an ancient steel knife with a horn handle. It had been new when he and Eileen married at the end of the First World War. Now, the blade was broken short, and it had come down to kitchen work. Edgar found it comfortable to manage with his twisted fingers.

  He peeled carefully, getting the parings as thin as possible. Eileen was a stickler for wasting nothing. Even the eyes must be gouged out with the least possible waste. It was a ticklish job, thought Edgar, bending over his task in the sunlight.

  And one which Eileen had always hated, he remembered. When she had given up her nursing to marry him she made it clear that cooking was a penance to her. Housework she enjoyed. Her training as a nurse made her standards of cleanliness uncommonly high—too dratted uncomfortably high, Edgar said—and the farm house gleamed from every surface capable of being polished. The place reeked of cleaning materials. If it wasn't bees-wax on the furniture, it was methylated spirits from the rag which cleaned the windows, or the breath-catching pungency of the bleaching liquid which Eileen liked to use for the sink and drains.

  Now that the house was mainly in Annie's hands, it smelt less like an institution and more like a home, thought Edgar. The smell of baking pervaded the house. Vases of roses or narcissi, or wallflowers—or whatever fragrant blooms were in season in the garden—gave out their own sweetness. It did not please Eileen.

  'Everlasting petals all over the place,' she grumbled to Edgar. 'Messy things, flowers. Spoil the polish.'

  'I like 'em,' said Edgar mildly. 'And in any case, Annie's entitled to do what she likes in her own home. Some young women would have turned us out. In-laws don't make the best house-mates, you know.'

  Eileen snorted. There was small chance of getting Edgar to take her side, as well she knew. From the very first days of marriage she had discovered that, despite his gentle ways and apparent submissiveness, there was an obstinate streak in Edgar's character. She, who loved to rule, found that there were some occasions when her husband stood fast. Her temper was fiery, her voice shrill. Neither improved with age, but Edgar had grown used to these outbursts, treating them with a stubborn silence which drove Eileen to even greater fury.

  Luckily, the three children had inherited their father's nature. In some ways, it made matters even worse for Eileen, for there was no one to answer her with equal fire. Her sharp tongue met little verbal resistance. John, the eldest, went so far as to laugh at his mother's tantrums as he grew to manhood, and his easy attitude did much to help his wife Annie to be philosophical about the old people's presence in the house.

  'I'd put up with anything for the old man,' John said. 'He bears the brunt of it, poor old chap. Don't hurt us to have 'em here, if we act sensible, and I'm not seeing my mum and dad turned out of their home at their age.'

  The two younger boys, equally mild-mannered, worked in Caxley and were both married. Sometimes they came out on a Sunday afternoon to see the old people, but they did not visit very often, and as neither enjoyed letter-writing, Eileen and Edgar heard little of them, despite their presence within five miles of the farm.

  'All the same, children,' Eileen said tartly. 'Ungrateful lot. You brings 'em up and gets no thanks for it.'

  'Didn't ask to come, did 'em?' replied Edgar. You be thankful they ain't turned out jail-birds or worse. We've got three fine boys, all doing well. What more d'you want?'

  Looking back, turning the wet potato in his swollen fingers, Edgar wondered how many days of his marriage had passed without some outburst from Eileen. God, she was a nagger, if ever there was one! What madness had made him take her on in the first place?

  A shadow fell across his armchair, and he looked up to see Tom More, the postman. He held out a letter.

  'Shouldn't bother to open it,' he remarked. 'Looks like a bill.'

  'You been through 'em all?' asked Edgar jocularly. 'Any good news?'

  'No,' said Tom, settling on the bench near the bowl of potatoes. 'Got a bit of bad, though.'

  'Oh? What's up?'

  'Poor old Emily Davis.'

  Edgar drew in his breath sharpl
y. Tom More was too young to know what Emily meant to him, but he bent over the knife in his hand so that his face was hidden.

  'She's gone,' continued Tom. 'Saw Dolly Clare half an hour back. She said they took their evening toddle up the field, had some supper and Emily was as right as rain at bed-time.

  'Next morning she found her dead in bed.'

  I'm sorry,' said Edgar huskily. 'Very sorry. She was at school with me.'

  There was a pause. From a distance the hum of the combine continued. Close at hand, one of the farm cats came round the corner of the house, mewing plaintively.

  'How's Dolly Clare taken it? She got anyone there with her?'

  'Seems all right. Looks a bit pale-like. I heard she was asked to go up Annetts' place, but she said "No".'

  'Home's best at times like that,' agreed Edgar. His voice was shaky, and Tom More noticed that his hands shook too. These old people never liked to hear of their generation dying. Brought it too near home, no doubt. Maybe he shouldn't have told the old boy.

  He shifted uneasily, and gave a gusty sigh.

  'Ah well, must be getting along. You're looking very fit, Edgar. See us all out, you will. 'Morning, now.'

  He ambled off towards the gate, hoping that he had made amends with his last remarks. Must be rotten, getting old, thought Tom, turning for a final wave at the gate.

  Edgar was still bent over his task. But the shaky hands were not working, and Edgar's gaze was not upon the potato he now held, but upon a vision of Emily Davis, a life-time ago, as he remembered her.

  The first time that Emily had come to Edgar's notice was on the occasion of her confession at school assembly. Edgar had been standing in the back row, among the oldest boys at Beech Green school, due to leave in a few months for the waiting world of hard work.