Latter End

CHAPTER 6

Julia put out the light, waited for the darkness round her to clear, and went surefooted through it to the window. She drew the curtains back across the bay and stood there looking out. The three windows were open, casements wide and the night air coming in like a soft enchanting tide. The room looked to the side of the house. There was a clear sky, but no moon yet. Beyond a small formal garden there were the black mysterious shapes of trees. There was no wind. Nothing moved under that clear sky.

She came to the bed beside Ellie’s and got in, humping the pillows at her back, because this was what they had both been waiting for-Ellie to talk and she to listen. As she settled down, Ellie’s hand came out and clutched hers.

“Oh, Julia-” It was a sigh of utter relief. And then without any warning Ellie began to cry.

All day long, and for many days, the tears had lain cold and heavy at her heart, and at night she had kept them frozen there because she did not dare to let them fall. It would be like letting go, and she didn’t dare to let go, because she mightn’t be able to take hold again. Only now that Julia was here it was different. She could cry, and Julia would stop her when she had cried enough.

Julia let her cry, not touching her except that she left her hand in Ellie’s-not speaking, but just being there. All their life Julia had been there. That meant security for Ellie. It was always Julia who led and Ellie who followed, Julia who dragged her into scrapes and then miraculously got her out of them again. Somehow deeply, despairingly, Ellie clung to the idea that Julia could get her out of this, which wasn’t a scrape but the threatening of everything she cared for. Even as the tears ran down and soaked her pillow, she began to feel warm waves of comfort coming from Julia.

Presently Julia’s voice came to her, warm too, and deep.

“Ellie, you’ve cried enough.”

“I expect-I have-”

“Then stop! Have you got a handkerchief?”

Ellie said, “Yes,” on a sob. She let go of Julia, felt under her pillow, and blew her nose.

“Now don’t cry any more. You’d better tell me what it’s all about.”

There was another sob, and a big one.

“It’s Ronnie!”

“He might be dead, and he isn’t,” said Julia. “Suppose you think about that and stop crying.”

“I know-it’s wicked of me, isn’t it?”

“Idiotic!” said Julia.

Ellie began to feel better. There is something extraordinarily reassuring about being told that your fears are idiotic. She felt for Julia’s hand again, and found it comforting and strong.

“I expect I am. But Matron says he’ll never get better where he is, and I’m so frightened Lois won’t have him here.”

“She won’t if you’re frightened. The more you’re frightened of people like Lois, the more they trample.”

Ellie caught her breath.

“I know. But I can’t help it-I am frightened.”

“It’s fatal,” said Julia.

Ellie clung to her hand.

“It’s no good saying things like that. I can’t help it-it’s the way I’m made. She’s a trampler, and I’m a doormat, and she’ll go on wiping her feet on me until I end up like Minnie, only not half so good.”

“She will if you let her,” said Julia.

“I can’t stop her. But I’m going to speak to Jimmy tomorrow-not that it will do any good-”

“I don’t know-it might. I could speak to him, too, and- perhaps Antony. Between us we might get him to the point of remembering that it’s his house, and that if he wants to have Ronnie here it’s his business.”

Ellie said in an extinguished voice,

“You don’t know Lois-she’d get round him somehow- she always does.”

“Well, I think we’ll have a go at it.”

She felt rather than knew that Ellie was trembling.

“It won’t be any good-she gets her own way. You know old Mrs. Marsh-”

“What has she got to do with it?”

“I’m telling you. When her son came home from India she just didn’t know how to be happy enough, and he was quite good to her in his stupid fat way.”

“Oh, he wasn’t as bad as that-I rather liked Joe Marsh.”

Ellie pulled at her hand.

“He’s got fatter and stupider. And he’s married an odious girl from Crampton-as hard as nails-she really is. Lois has her up here to sew. Honestly, she’s a most frightful girl. You should hear Manny on the subject.”

“I probably shall.”

“Well, this horrible Gladys had made up her mind from the beginning that she was going to get rid of Mrs. Marsh, and she’s done it. With her stiff leg, she can’t take a regular job, but she did things like minding babies while the mothers went to the cinema, and she liked doing it. And it was her cottage, where she’d lived ever since she married Joe’s father, and that beast of a girl just pushed her out of it and got her taken away to the institute.”

There was a little pause before Julia said,

“What has that got to do with Lois?”

The answer came in a breathless hurry.

“Lois put it into her head, and backed her up. Manny’s raging. The Marshes are some sort of cousins-”

“Does Jimmy know?”

“I don’t know-not how it was done anyhow. He thinks she’s had to go to the infirmary because of her leg.”

Julia said in a surprised voice,

“Why didn’t you tell him?”

“It wouldn’t do any good. It’s the sort of thing that’s happening all the time, only Jimmy can’t see it. Lois puts it her way, and he can’t see anything else. She wants old Hodson’s cottage for some friends of hers, and you’ll see she’ll get it.”

“Jimmy wouldn’t do that.”

“She’ll make him. You don’t know Lois like I do. She’ll persuade him that it’s much better for old Hodson to go and live with his widowed daughter-in-law in London, where he’ll hate every minute of it and go right down the drain. But of course that doesn’t matter to Lois-she’ll get her way, and her friends will get their week-end cottage.”

There was a silence. There were a great many things which Julia could have said. She thought perhaps she had better not say them. Soothing down was what Ellie wanted, not raking up. She held her tongue because she couldn’t think of anything soothing to say.

After a moment Ellie burst out again.

“It will be just the same about Ronnie-you see if it isn’t! Jimmy will say yes to me, and to you, and to Antony, and then Lois will get hold of him and he’ll say no, because she’ll make him believe that it’s much better for Ronnie to be in a hospital or a convalescent home, just as it’s much better for Mrs. Marsh to be in the institute, and for poor old Hodson to be in London with a daughter-in-law who doesn’t want him. I wouldn’t mind so much if she was honest about it. She isn’t. She’s got to pretend that it’s what’s best for everyone, instead of saying bang out that it’s just what she wants.”

Julia said in her deep voice,

“Stop shaking, Ellie. And stop working yourself into a state over Lois. It doesn’t do any good, and it wears you out. She’s poison all right-I always knew she was. But she’s here, and she’s Jimmy’s wife. Something can be done about Ronnie. That’s why I’m here. Now the first thing that suggests itself is a job where they would let you have him with you.”

Ellie caught her breath.

“It isn’t any good. I’ve tried. I put in an advertisement, with a box number. There were only two answers, and they were both from slave drivers. All the work of a house- cooking and everything. I couldn’t have done it and looked after Ronnie too.”

“What did you say in the advertisement?”

“I tried to make it stand out-there were such a lot of people wanting things. So I put, ‘I want a domestic job where I can have my husband with me. He has lost a leg.’ ”

“And you only got two answers?”

“That’s all.”

Julia lay frowning in the half-light. The moon had risen. She could see the footrail of her bed and of Ellie’s bed. She could see the black mass of the old-fashioned wardrobe against the wall beyond. The three bright windows showed the illumined sky. She said slowly,

“Ellie-”

“Yes?”

“If Ronnie could go to a really nice convalescent home, mightn’t it be better for him than having rows with Lois, here?”

She felt Ellie’s hand jerk and pull away.

“I shouldn’t see him-”

“But if it made him well? He would be able to take up his job, and you would be together all the time.”

Ellie said in a muffled voice,

“I didn’t think you’d be against me too.”

“I’m not.”

It was like Julia not to make protestations.

“You don’t understand.”

“Then hadn’t you better explain?”

Ellie’s hand crept back, catching at hers.

“We’re not getting a chance. We had a month together, and after that two week-ends, and since then he’s been in hospital. It isn’t giving us a chance. I go over there, and I’m tired before I start. I haven’t got any go or any colour, and half the time I can’t think of anything to say. I can’t be amusing, or gay, or any of the things he needs.” She burst into tears all over again. “Oh, Julia, he’s got such a pretty nurse!”

Out of the choking sounds that followed, a battered sentence emerged.

“Sometimes-I feel-as if I could-kill Lois.”