The Catherine Wheel

CHAPTER 14

Everyone began to go to bed. The downstairs rooms were left to darkness and silence except for the glimmer of a wall-lamp in the small square hall. Old houses settle slowly to their rest. Floors upon which many generations have walked, furniture which has been a very long time in use, walls which have borne the stress and weight of old beams for centuries, have a way of lapsing into silence by degrees. There are small rustling sounds, creakings, movements-a whispering at the keyhole of a door, a stirring amongst spent ashes of a fire, a sighing in the chimney-and all in the darkness which has been there night after night for perhaps three hundred years. Thoughts, feelings, actions which have left their impress come to the surface. The life of today no longer dominates these empty rooms. The past comes stealing back.

Upstairs Miss Silver braided her hair and pinned it up neatly for the night. She had spent a very instructive evening. She folded her crimson dressing-gown, made in the last year of the war from utility cloth but most warm and comfortable and ornamented with the handmade crochet lace which was practically indestructible and had already served two previous gowns. Her slippers were new, a present from her nephew’s wife Dorothy, who had brought them home from the East. So very kind, and just the right shade of red. They had black pompoms on the toes, and of course these would not wear so well as the slippers but could be replaced. She arranged them neatly side by side before getting into bed, after which she put on a warm blue shawl with an openwork border over her long-sleeved woollen nightdress, and read a chapter from the Bible before blowing out the candle and composing herself to sleep.

Mildred Taverner also wore a long-sleeved nightgown of a woolly nature. She had embroidered a spidery bunch of flowers on either side of the front opening, which she had trimmed with little ruches of lace. She lay in the dark and wished that she had drunk less champagne. The bed really was not steady at all, and she felt far from well. She tried to remember what she had said to Jacob Taverner.

In the big double bed over the way Freddy Thorpe-Ennington could just hear his wife’s voice going on and on. He wasn’t asleep, because he could hear Marian talking, and he wasn’t awake, because he wouldn’t have been able to answer her even if he had wanted to. He didn’t want to. He wanted her to stop talking and put out the light, which hurt his eyes. He wasn’t drunk-he had walked upstairs, hadn’t he? All he wanted was to go to sleep. Why couldn’t Marian let him alone and put out the light? He wished she would stop talking, because every now and then he couldn’t help hearing what she said. She said things like, “Freddy, my sweet, you know you really shouldn’t drink so much,” and, “You’ll feel rotten tomorrow-you know you will.” He didn’t want to hear what anyone said. He wanted to go to sleep.

Marian Thorpe-Ennington finished creaming her face and put on the chin-strap which she wore at night though it was really dreadfully uncomfortable, tied a cap over her hair to preserve the waves, and slipped her hands into soft wash-leather gloves. When she had done all this she took off the cape which she had been wearing to protect her nightgown. It was worth protecting-white triple ninon smocked at the shoulders and at the waist in a delicate apple-green. She put on the matching apple-green coatee and took a casual look at herself in the glass. The chin-strap rather spoilt the effect, but anyhow you had to cream your face, and it wasn’t as if there was anyone to see you. Freddy, poor sweet, never knew how you looked or what you had on.

This happened to be true, because having once made up his mind that she was the most beautiful woman in the world, he remained in that simple belief, and nothing she did or omitted to do had the slightest effect upon it.

Marian Thorpe-Ennington gave a fleeting sigh of regret to the days when her complexion owed its astounding brilliance to her own youth and to the soft water and softer airs of Rathlea and when she didn’t have to bother about a double chin. Then she got into bed, kissed the back of Freddy’s head, and blew out the candle.

On the other side of the landing Geoffrey Taverner was reading in bed. He wore neat grey pyjamas, and a grey dressing-gown edged with a black and white cord. He had only two pillows and he had been at some pains to arrange them comfortably. He wore pale horn-rimmed glasses. He was reading a thriller with the intriguing title of Three Corpses and a Coffin.

In the room next to Miss Silver Florence Duke hadn’t undressed. She sat on the edge of the bed with her hands folded in her lap. There was a lighted candle on the chest of drawers which served for a dressing-table. The flame moved in the draught from the window. It made the candle gutter. The flame, the guttering wax, and the candle itself were reflected in the tilted glass. There were two wavering tongues of fire, two little caves running with melted wax, two candles thickened with what old wives’ tales call winding-sheets. Florence Duke stared past them at the wall.

Jane felt the air come in cold and salt from the sea. It hadn’t taken her five minutes to undress. Now she was here in the dark with the wind blowing in, a wind from a long way off. She lay in the dark and watched the oblong of the window form upon the darkness until it hung there like a picture in a frame. The frame was there, but the picture was all a soft blur of grey, without form and void. That was in the Bible, in Genesis. Her thoughts began to drift. Under the drifting thoughts she was warm and happy. Jeremy had kissed her as if he loved her-very much. Cousins oughtn’t to marry-perhaps it wouldn’t matter if they did-perhaps-

She came awake with a start. There was a soft knocking on her door, and then the door opening, the wind rushing through, and Eily’s voice saying,

“Miss Heron-please-”

Jane sat up. The door shut, the wind stopped rushing. She said,

“What is it? Look here, shut the window, and I’ll light a candle.”

The window closed, and at once the room felt still. The curtains came together, and by the candle-light Jane saw Eily in her blue dress. She had some things gathered up in her arm, a nightgown, a dressing-gown. She stood half way between the window and the bed, catching her breath, her eyes fixed on Jane’s face, her own as white as milk.

Jane said, “What is it?” again.

Eily came up close.

“Miss Heron-if you’d let me stop here-I’d sit in the chair and not make a sound.”

“What is it?”

Eily said in a shaken voice,

“There’s no key in my door.”

“Do you mean there isn’t one ever, or there isn’t one now?”

The shaken voice sank low.

“It’s gone. Aunt Annie told me to lock my door. She didn’t need to say so-I’ve always locked it-since that Luke’s been here. But tonight there’s no key-it’s gone.”

“You must tell your aunt.”

“I can’t-they’re in the one room together, she and Uncle. If you’ll let me stay-”

“Of course you can stay. Get your things off and get into bed! It’s big enough for half a dozen.”

Eily caught her breath.

“I didn’t mean that-or to trouble you-only to stay in the room. He said to ask you.”

Jane took her up quickly.

“He? Who?”

“It was John, Miss Heron-John Higgins.”

“When?”

“Miss Heron, you’ll not tell? There’s no harm, but you’ll not tell? There’s once in a while he’ll come out here and go by whistling to let me know he’s there. It’s a hymn tune he whistles-Greenland’s Icy Mountains-and I’ll look out of my window, and he’ll say, ‘Are you all right, Eily?’ and I’ll say, ‘Yes.’ But tonight-oh dear, he was in a way!”

“Why?”

Eily shrank.

“You know what happened up here tonight with that Luke. I went down and I told my Aunt Annie. Mrs. Bridling that comes in to help when we’re busy, she’d finished up and gone home, and I was putting away the silver. I didn’t know there was anyone there. But Mrs. Bridling came back. She’d left her scarf, and she came back for it, and she heard what I said when I thought it was just Aunt Annie and me, the two of us alone.”

“How do you know?”

Eily sat down on the edge of the bed. It was just as if she couldn’t hold herself up any more. There seemed to be the weight of the world on her. She went on telling Jane about Mrs. Bridling.

“She went right back to Cliff and saw to Mr. Bridling-he’s in his bed and can’t get out of it. Then she began to think about what she’d heard me tell Aunt Annie, and when she’d thought about it for a bit she went along next door and told John Higgins, and John came out here right away. I’ve never seen him in such a taking.”

“I don’t wonder. Eily, why don’t you marry him like he wants you to? He does, doesn’t he?”

Eily looked at her, a long mournful look.

“And have his blood on me the way Luke said?” She shook her head. “I’d rather jump off the cliff-I told him so tonight.”

“And what did he say to that?”

Eily’s voice went lower still.

“He said I’d lose my soul and go to hell, and he said he’d come after me-there or anywhere. And he said, ‘God forgive me, but it’s true.’ I’ve never seen him like it before. What’s the matter with men, Miss Heron, to get worked up about a girl the way they do? There’s Al, and Luke, and even John-what gets into them at all?”

Jane bit her lip. She wanted to laugh, and she wanted to cry. She remembered Jeremy kissing her that hard way.

Eily went on in her pretty grieving voice.

“He wanted me to come out by the side door. He said he’d take me out to Mrs. Bridling and we could be married in three days. And I said I couldn’t leave Aunt Annie. You’d never think he’d carry on the way he did. I just said no, and no, and no, and at the last of it he said would I give my solemn promise I’d go along to your room and ask you to let me stay, and he’d come out in the morning and talk to Uncle, so I said I would-” Her voice trailed away.