A Little Treachery

37

Leaning over the bed, with the young woman beside her, Catherine looked down upon the small, stiff, melancholy face on the pillow. She looked at it with confused, pained emotion. It had shocked her, and of course was obviously shocking in itself. The sun shone muted through the tinted curtains, and there the little boy lay, as if in a half coma. In that screened light, which had a faint lilac tinge, he did not look pale, his skin seemed oddly darkened, its summer-long sunburn not yet faded. Urged by Olive, she spoke his name, though without conviction. Yet when she had spoken, the long eyes, with the whites gleaming secretively under the half-shut lids, moved a little, and the lips moved.

‘What did he say? “Mummy”?’ Olive whispered, deceiving herself.

‘I thought it was “Emmy”.’

Olive lifted her hands and screwed them together, and turned on her companion a pale face and imploring eyes. But the young woman, Catherine saw, was not about to reproach her – no, she had not that to fear.

Catherine had been brought there by an unexpected summons. ‘Could you possibly come to see me?’ Olive had written. ‘I can’t leave the children. Simon is unwell. I should be so glad to have a talk with you.’ The letter, though very brief, had not sounded hostile. But it had offered no explanation, and a wish to prevent a meeting between Catherine and her husband might have been read into it. Catherine had delayed answering, feeling unable to make such an effort. But then, with another, more urgent note, frankly appealing, Olive had sent the car to fetch her from Ockentree to this large, new house in the Hog’s Back country, which Hungerford had designed and built for himself.

Now Catherine stood by the bed with a bewildered and almost outraged feeling, staring down at a strange, piteous little caricature of the melancholic stupor. And the fantastic idea of contagion intruded, of a pestilent influence attached to bricks and timbers; the impossible idea that the sickness was the same, of the same germ.

‘Really like that? Not speaking – not moving –?’

She was conscious of nothing but a kind of offence in this heartless mimicking of anguish, conscious of indignation at this little ape of a suffering so deadly that no child could ever be capable of feeling it.

‘Well, he’s only a child – he’ll get over it, of course.’ Could her voice really sound as weary and careless as it did to her own ears? ‘It’s hysterical, I suppose. A hysterical illness which will soon give way to proper treatment. And your doctor – what does he say?’

Olive touched her arm and led her into the next room.

‘Oh, what can have happened? It was as soon as ever he got home! Oh, it’s so horribly queer, isn’t it?’ she said, and could be seen to be one of those to whom queerness is terrible and repulsive.

Catherine hesitated. ‘Well, he’s a rather unusual, subtle little character – so I feel. And, well, precocious . . .’

‘A little savage!’ Olive vehemently whispered, coming close. ‘Yes, really that,’ and her face was suddenly convulsed with frightened repugnance.

‘Why – children are, I’ve always understood.’

‘No, literally. Wild, wild – haven’t you noticed? What’s the good of being sentimental and pretending about black people? Look at that prognathous face – it is primitive – nearer to the ape’s than our own! What’s the good of pretending?’ she cried despairingly. ‘He should be sent away – not come near my child!’

And then, nearly weeping, she stammered without explaining anything clearly for a little longer, as if afraid to give a name to any of the trouble; but at last this latter part of the picture took form.

Simon had come back full of ‘the little house’, full of talk of Emmy. And it was a pity, Olive added, that Catherine’s young friend had kept sending him cards; but she herself had not realized the effect of these at first and so had let him have them. There had been no address, so they could not ask that no more might be sent. ‘Besides, I thought, “He’ll soon forget her, children don’t remember people long once they’re parted from them.” Martin was still away.’

‘She just meant to amuse him – it was done in fun, I’m sure. She’s a lively girl.’

‘Oh, I expect so,’ Olive admitted persuadably, as if desiring to conciliate her. ‘Oh, of course. And they were just funny cards – most of them. I did think some of them a little vulgar – but a child wouldn’t see that, after all. Still, it got on my nerves a bit, that and his everlasting talk of her, and I admit I got angry and told him, “Don’t keep talking of the little house, don’t be so naughty!” It seemed to me at last that he was doing it simply to annoy me, because he saw it was a bit painful for me to have everything compared – you know – everything compared – Yes, but he seemed quite well. But after a few days of this excited chatter he suddenly became very quiet and dreamy. I thought he was tired and put him to bed, and kept him there next day. He lay all that day oddly quiet, sleeping a lot. Still, there didn’t seem to be anything wrong, physically, and I thought perhaps you had simply been letting him sit up a little too late. . . . When he was out of bed again, he seemed to have become completely wrapped up in himself. More and more, after that, we had to keep telling him to listen when we spoke to him. Then Martin came home.

‘He came home very tired, still anxious about his work. Simon was up then – Martin wouldn’t believe that anything was wrong, but he hadn’t time to watch the child and examine him properly, as I had. At last I went in when Martin was working and told him to look out of the window – for I couldn’t bear it all by myself any more! Simon was standing down there, down by the sundial, with one arm on the top, leaning against it, his forehead on his arm. A good way off, as you see. His back was turned to us. Martin looked and smiled. “Well? Simon playing in the garden.” I didn’t answer, so he asked, rather irritably, “Why is he wearing those rubber boots? They’re not good for him.” The garden was dry as a bone. I said it was a game – he wanted to wear them all the time. He had got into the way of it at Ockentree. “Well, what precisely is the matter? What is he supposed to be doing? What are we looking at – so solemnly?” Oh, but Martin’s like that – he will not see what he doesn’t want to see. No, not until he has to. . . . I told him what was wrong – that Simon was back at the little house. The garden there is very damp, isn’t it? Full of pools. So you bought him those boots. I told Martin. He still argued – but I saw, because he couldn’t bear to do otherwise. “Yes, a fascinating garden for a little boy, no doubt. It’s natural that he should have woven it into his make-believe.” I said it was not natural – not natural at all! “You surely aren’t upset like this because Simon chooses to put on waders on a dry day? Obviously he’s playing some game which requires it. As for that garden – why, yes, what little boy doesn’t love messing about with water? It has become, for the time being, part of his play-world.” Oh, he argued hard! But all that while, Simon had been standing still, quite still, in that dreadful, sick attitude. And I could feel that, like myself, every moment Martin was praying and praying to see him move – begin to jump about, you know, strut and gesture, as children do, playing.

‘He began not to answer us at all. He grew worse. Now he seems not to hear or see. And tomorrow we have a specialist coming, an alienist, for our own doctor can’t find anything to account for it. . . . Oh, but children don’t go out of their minds, do they! Surely they don’t, I’ve never heard of it. . . . But you don’t think, do you, that anything could have happened while he was with you to account for it in any way? Anything whatever? No! I think, myself, that he was quite well when he came home – he looked very healthy. Martin has blamed me so for sending him away – but that’s what I tell him.’

Catherine realized that, far from being reproached or suspected, she was being supplicated. The young woman herself was facing accusation and hoped for an ally in her, a witness in her defence. Olive wanted to hear Simon’s summer justified. She was not concerned to find out the truth, but only to have it demonstrated that she had done nothing wrong in sending the child to Ockentree. She hoped to hear Catherine deny absolutely that there could have been any harmful influence at the cottage. She hoped thus to clear herself.

‘He was very well all the time he was with us, as far as I could judge, only the heat seemed to affect his appetite a little now and again.’ When Catherine had said this, the young woman gave her a grateful look. Catherine was about to try explaining. ‘But he’s an emotional little creature –’ when there was the sound of a car at the front of the house, and Olive, flushing and darting to a window, cried, ‘Oh, dear, he’s early! It’s Martin.’ But there was a suggestion that, after all, she was glad of this, since the witness had proved friendly.