Another world, p.12
Another World, page 12
And he called back from the bottom of the stairs, ‘What is it, sister?’
‘I think I’ll go to bed.’
‘Now?’
‘Now.’
‘Wait a minute, I’m coming.’
She was still seated before the mirror when he came in.
‘What is the matter?’
He stood just inside the door, and she said, ‘Come here, Mervyn,’ and he came. He sat down beside her, wanted to, but did not take her hand.
‘You hate me,’ she said.
‘Hate you?’
‘Because I am decent, and you are not.’
‘I don’t hate you, I don’t hate anyone. Fancy saying such a thing to me, Margiad.’
‘I listened to people this morning and I didn’t even understand their language,’ she said.
A rash moment, rash words, and he could no longer help himself.
‘Perhaps they did not understand yours,’ he said.
‘You are brazen.’
‘You’re becoming impossible, Margiad.’
‘These past weeks I’ve asked myself how on earth you can sit in your study and write the things that you do. The flowers of flesh grow in your skull, Mervyn.’
‘We’re all flesh. It’s a prison.’
‘Come and look at yourself in this mirror, you stupid man, look slowly and carefully. Spell your age.’
‘Leave me alone.’
‘You are left alone.’
‘I’ll meet her one day. You see.’
‘You are mad.’
‘I’m what I am,’ and he closed his eyes for a moment. ‘You appear to have seen a number of people on my behalf.’
There was no reply.
Suddenly he felt her hand warm on his own.
‘Will you promise me, brother, to give it all up? Forget it.’
She moved away, and then he heard her at the window, fiddling with the catch. ‘You don’t even know you’re ill, Mervyn.’
‘For God’s sake leave me alone,’ he cried.
‘You were once an upright man,’ she said.
He sat on the stool, twiddled his fingers.
‘Sordid,’ she shouted, ‘Sordid. Even the place she stays at is sordid. Not even a carpet on the stairs. There are other places. Quite obviously she hasn’t any money, and that Mr Blair pays her starvation wages. God alone knows what she did at Dinbych.’
He got up, went to the window. ‘Dinbych? I thought she came from Melin.’
‘Dinbych,’ Margiad replied. ‘She answered Mr Blair’s advert in a paper there. And what was her father doing at Tenby? To fall over a cliff there?’
‘You’re a real crusader,’ he said, ‘I can even see the lifebelt in your hands, Margiad.’
‘Go away,’ she said.
He stood beside her, and when she looked at him she enjoyed the moment of his helplessness. ‘You are even beginning to look like a fool, Mervyn. Now leave me alone.’
‘You wouldn’t go, Margiad, you wouldn’t just go.’
‘I said leave me alone.’
She heard the door close, the creak on the stairs. And then she began to pack. She took two suitcases from the wardrobe and laid them on the bed. Then she went to the chest of drawers and began to sort out her belongings. From time to time she took a dress to the light, and carefully studied it, then folded and put it away. She felt intensely sad, and once stood over the half filled case, staring at the contents, the moment made real when she looked at the open wardrobe, the pulled out drawers.
‘He can make an exhibition of himself if he wishes, but I’ll not stay here,’ and she thought of her last visit to Penuel, heard the tittering of the woman behind her, heard her brother called a silly old man. She thought of him now, back in his study, dreaming his mad dream about a woman that lived in the clouds. Shameful. Awful. ‘Perhaps he’ll deliver her another letter, and she’ll toss it into the basket,’ and that night Jones would read it aloud as he lay with the English bitch, and they would laugh, and she could hear them laughing. She finished her packing, and pushed the cases under the bed, after which she sat in the chair, and cried quietly to herself. Once, they had been happy, had lived for each other; once they held high their heads and were respected, and now … and she wiped her eyes. She would go to her sister. She would not return to the house. She went and lay on the bed, suddenly stiffened there, appalled by her own decision.
‘We are simple people, and there is a way for us,’ she thought.
The silence of the house was so intense that when her brother began to pace his study, the steps came up loud and clear to her.
‘After all these years,’ and she saw him, a good man, falling to pieces.
The pacing continued, and it did not stop, and the words followed behind him, out of his sister’s mouth, and they would not let him alone.
‘One fine morning you’ll lose your chapel.’
‘You are ill.’
‘You’ll feel the root go.’
‘You annoy me by your silliness. Wake up. Your years are crags, and they will never be velvet. Grow up, Mervyn.’
He stopped dead in his tracks, and thought, ‘Perhaps I am ill. What’ll I do?’
He returned to his desk, covered his head with his hands. After a while he sat up, looked out at the surrounding darkness, got up and closed the windows, switched out the light, and sat still in the darkened room. The world diminished, and then he heard the footsteps in his head, as Miss Vaughan walked on, sublimely indifferent to one that thought her lonely. He remembered the first evening he had seen her, and saw her now, small, and quiet, and still, seeming so separate from others that sang when he sang, and she listened, and he watched her listen, and suddenly look his way, and he was lost in a moment, the words confusing on his tongue, until quite suddenly he murmured before an astonished congregation, ‘My God,’ then, after a pause, found his peace again, and then began his sermon. But Miss Vaughan was no longer there. She had vanished.
‘I’m in love with her,’ and she was in the room, filling, drenching it.
‘I know I could make her happy.’
And suddenly Miss Vaughan was pushed rudely from his sight, and his sister was there, barring the way.
‘Gone,’ he said, and dropped his hands to the desk, thought of his sister’s life, his own. ‘If she answered one single letter, if .…’
He left the study and returned to the sitting-room, he put coal to the fire, he sat down, lit his pipe, and lay back. The door opened and Margiad came in, went straight to her chair and sat down. For an awful moment he thought she would renew her frantic knitting, instead of which she sat quietly and looked to the fire. He looked at his watch.
‘Supper, Margiad,’ he said, and immediately she left the room.
If only he could find a way in, by one single word. He listened to the kitchen noises, the tap tap of her restless feet, the shattering sound of a falling pan, and he called loudly, ‘Can I help?’ There was no answer. She came in and laid the table. ‘Can I do anything?’
‘Nothing,’ she said, ‘nothing.’
‘Very well,’ dragged from the tongue, pained, irritable, he wanted to shout in her face, ‘Let there be an end to it.’
She came in, they both sat down, she served him, he began to eat.
‘Margiad! Please.’
‘Not again,’ she replied, and went on with her supper.
‘I wish,’ he began, ‘I wish that…’ but she wasn’t listening.
‘I know how you are feeling,’ she said.
‘Your good intentions have wings, sister.’
‘I worry about you because you are my brother, Mervyn, and I hide my head in the town more often than I do not.’
‘The lifebelt shines in your eyes,’ he replied, and gave a curious little laugh.
‘She has no friends, and wants no friends, she likes what she is, what she does. She loves herself, Mervyn. Miss Vaughan is her own business.’
‘She seems to be yours,’ he shouted in her face.
‘You don’t even see what is happening,’ she said.
‘For God’s sake.’
‘You know there would be a living for you at Hengoed. Can’t you think about it, can’t you make up your mind, Mervyn?’
He got up and returned to the fire, relit his pipe.
She got up, began clearing the table, and said casually, ‘He laughed then.’
‘Who laughed?’
‘Mr Blair.’
‘Mr Blair?’
‘He knows all about your following that woman about. I told him straight out how worried I was about you, and he laughed again.’
‘Laughed again?’
She was suddenly so close to him that he drew back as the words came from between her teeth. ‘I only said that I thought you would be left with an empty chapel. It was horrible, the way he smiled at me and said that the Archbishop of Canterbury had once voted for private buggery in the House of Lords, but it did not follow that the church had fallen. “Nor will your brother’s chapel empty,” he said.’
‘Margiad!’
‘Buggery,’ she shouted in his face. ‘That’s the world, Mervyn, the world.’
He followed her to the door. ‘You are upset,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry, Margiad, I’m …’
‘Leave me alone,’ she said, and banged the door in his face.
He leaned heavily against the closed door; he thought to himself. ‘Perhaps she is right. Perhaps I am going mad.’ And he went upstairs, knocked on her door, and receiving no answer opened it.
‘Margiad! Please speak to me.’
She had gone to bed. ‘Margiad!’
Her finger went to the light switch. ‘Don’t speak to me.’
‘I must,’ and he went and stood over her. ‘I cannot help myself.’
‘Go away.’
But he stood there, speechless, aware only of a feeling of emptiness all about him, and suddenly she turned her face to the wall.
‘Please,’ he said, ‘please.’
‘Go away.’
‘Listen.…’
‘I have,’ she said.
‘Try to understand my feelings,’ he said.
‘I have done my best. Soon I will not be able to leave this house.’
‘I mean no harm to anybody, Margiad’ he said.
She turned over, stared at him. ‘You throw your duty into the gutter,’ and then he sat down on the edge of the bed.
‘Nothing is simple, Margiad, nothing.’
‘People are talking about you.’
‘I don’t hear them.’
‘You’re stupid, blind,’ she said.
She felt his hand on her shoulder, she shrugged it away.
‘The first time I saw her in the chapel,’ he began, and she sat up, suddenly smiled in his face, and said, ‘I expect she’ll marry the Colonel.’
The expression on his face shocked her, and he got up, made as if to speak, and didn’t, then stuttered it slowly out, ‘Colonel? What Colonel, what .…’ stumbled across the room and collapsed in the chair. He went quite limp.
‘Mervyn!’
His head drooped lower still, ‘Oh no, not that, not that.’
In a moment she was stood over him, but he did not see her, and she never realised the blow she had struck.
‘I’m sorry, brother, I am, I am,’ leaning over him, clutching him, ‘Mervyn, Mervyn.’
‘I can’t believe it, I can’t,’ and she could not close her ear to that sudden break in his voice.
She threw her arms round him, held him tight, ‘Mervyn, Mervyn.’
‘Colonel, Colonel - - - what Colonel, what Colonel?’
She hated this, she hated the sight of him there, mumbling the words, trembling visibly, and suddenly shouted in his face, ‘You are not the only one that is lonely.’
And to break the following silence repeated it in an even louder, angrier voice. ‘You are not.’
He caught her hands, suddenly realised she was there, close.
‘What Colonel, Margiad?’
‘I did not ask her.’
Defeated, angry, humiliated, he said, ‘Who?’
‘Her.’
‘Is that the truth, sister?’
‘I do not lie to you.’
Margiad seemed no longer there, even her voice seemed distant.
‘There was only one Colonel ever in these parts, and he used to live at a place called Y Briach. But he’s been dead for years.’
‘I said you’re not the only one that is lonely,’ and screamed it in his face.
‘Is this true?’
Her own casualness surprised her. ‘I understand they have lunch together once a week.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I thought you wouldn’t,’ she replied. ‘You understand so little.’
‘But .…’
The words were knives. ‘But what?’
‘Nothing,’ he said, his voice fading, ‘Nothing.’
‘You had better go,’ she said, ‘I want to go to bed.’
He sat up, half rose, and exclaimed in a loud voice, ‘I can’t believe it, I can’t.’
‘Then don’t,’ and left him sitting there and went back to bed.
‘I shall put out the light,’ she said. ‘You had better go.’
‘It’s impossible, imposs .…’
‘You should ask your friend, Jones who works at that horrible hotel.’
‘He is not my friend.’
‘You’ve been seen talking to him on occasion, right outside the place. Perhaps you were only enquiring the time of day.’
He got up, walked slowly to the door. ‘This has been the most terrible day,’ he said.
‘She won’t always be there, Mervyn.’
‘We seem hardly like brother and sister,’ he said.
‘Perhaps we are not.’
He immediately closed the door, returned to the bed, removed her hand from the switch, and sat down. ‘Margiad?’
‘Well?’
‘Why are we tormenting each other like this?’
‘If that hotel lasts another three months, only Mrs Gandell and that lickspittle of hers will be surprised.’
He knelt down, he tried to take the hand that she withdrew.
‘You wouldn’t really go, Margiad, leave me, now? You wouldn’t.’
‘Don’t make an exhibition of yourself,’ she said.
Again his hand was reaching for her own, and again she pulled it back.
‘Believe me, Margiad, I am genuinely in love with Miss Vaughan. Believe that.’
She flung it back at him. ‘And the world knows. We are both being laughed at. You are mad, Mervyn, you are.’
‘How bitter you are.’
‘You think of nobody but yourself, you’re selfish, selfish. I have feelings, too, Mervyn.’
He threw himself across the bed. ‘I wish I was dead.’
‘That is being too simple.’
His very inertness, the dead silence, disgusted her, and she said again, ‘I have feelings, too, Mervyn. Me. Your sister that has lived a lifetime with you.’
He felt her hand at his shoulder, and all too surprisingly her fingers in his hair, and he knew he had never been so close to her as this.
‘Let’s leave this place, Mervyn, let’s go back where we were happy and peaceful. I’ve come to hate this place, and everything in it,’ and she went on stroking his hair. ‘Please,’ she said, ‘please.’
‘You ask too much.’
‘Nobody calls here now,’ Margiad said. ‘But I hardly think you’d notice that.’
The words sprang to his lips, but he never spoke them.
‘Nobody writes,’ Margiad said.
‘She is too good,’ he thought, ‘too good.’
‘The mornings are so empty,’ she said. ‘It was so different once. People that depended on you, waited, and you always came. They used to come to this very house, and you talked to them in your study, and you helped them, and they looked up to you. There are some things that are nice to remember. And only yesterday I had positively to beg you to call on old Miss Pugh. They are good, simple people, Mervyn, and they do not understand. Now you just sit in your study, hour after hour, day after day.’ She gave a faint sigh, and continued. ‘It’s worse at night. I lie here thinking about it. The house has no warmth, no meaning any more. Sat in the dark when you should be in your bed. There are times, Mervyn, when you don’t even appear to realise that I am here, me, your sister. Oh God! I wish I could help you.’
He drew back, sat up, then abruptly got to his feet.
‘I understand all that you are saying to me, Margiad, but I have no answer for you.’
‘If you haven’t an answer perhaps you have a question?’
‘Leave me alone,’ he said.
As he turned away she got out of bed and followed him to the door. ‘Look at me,’ and he looked at her.
‘Well?’
‘If your father were alive today, I should be sorry for him. Go away and hug your silly dream. One day I shall laugh at you myself,’ and she pushed him out of the room, and leaned all her weight against the door as she closed it, and the room was full of the fallen words. ‘I’ve been his crutch for a lifetime,’ she thought, and got back into bed and switched out the light. She heard him close downstairs windows, heard the bolt shot back on the front door, heard him come upstairs, his bedroom door close. There was nothing more that she could do, nothing more that she wanted to do, and he would get her answer tomorrow. Had he gone to bed? Was he standing at the window, staring out? Was he even thinking of going out again? Was he sat in his chair thinking of her, someone that he had never spoken to? She closed her eyes, she was glad the day had come to an end. ‘Twenty years ago, ten - - - but now - - - -’
She thought of their brother, if only he were here, but he was oceans away. ‘Something has come to an end,’ she said. She got out of bed, knelt down, and prayed for Mervyn, and even the sound of a heavy thud in his room did not disturb her.
‘I will go tomorrow,’ she thought, ‘yes, I will go tomorrow,’ she said and got back into bed. Lying there, she was suddenly aware of a stillness, the very silence of the house, the calm sea after the wreck of the day. She buried her head under the sheet, she could not think of tomorrow. It seemed already torn in two.
