The Hours Before Dawn Page 8

  Her tongue must have been doing its work well all this time, for when Louise turned her attention to him, Mark seemed quite cheerful again; the hurt look was gone.

  ‘Who are you going to get to baby-sit?’ he was asking, tilting his chair back and running his fingers through the crisp, red-gold curls, of which Margery had so ineptly inherited the redness without either the curls or the golden lights.

  ‘Oh – well – that’s the trouble,’ said Louise unhappily. ‘It’ll have to be one of the Short List, I’m afraid, as we’re starting so early.’

  At this, Mark looked doubtful, too. The Short List was very short indeed, consisting as it did of people who were willing not merely to sit, in the literal sense, but to supervise the going to bed and settling down which was involved if the parents left much before seven.

  ‘Listen – why shouldn’t we ask Vera – Miss Brandon?’ Mark sounded eager and confident. ‘I’m sure she’d do it.’

  Louise wondered why she hesitated before answering. It was a good idea – of course it was. It couldn’t put Miss Brandon out very much since she was living in the house; and since the children were still slightly in awe of her, they would probably behave well. She would be suitable in every way. Why then should Louise feel so uneasy – yes, so frightened – at the very idea? Mark was watching her face, puzzled.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘You’re looking quite scared. Don’t you like the idea?’

  Since Louise had been asking herself the very same questions, she found it almost a relief to be forced now to find some reasonable answer.

  ‘It’s just that it seems a bit awkward,’ she explained uncertainly. ‘I mean, whether to ask her to do it as a favour or – or pay her, like a professional baby-sitter, I mean. That is, with her living in the house with us like this. It makes it awkward, don’t you see?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said Mark cheerfully. ‘You’re always looking for such complicated difficulties, Louise, just as if there weren’t enough simple ones in the world. Well, never mind. Get someone else. Who is there?’

  ‘I could try Mrs Hooper,’ said Louise, not very hopefully. Mrs Hooper’s skill in asking favours for herself was second only to her skill in evading the favours asked of her; and her talents were never more in evidence than in a telephone conversation with Louise.

  ‘You’ll never get her,’ predicted Mark with gloomy confidence. ‘It’ll end up with you promising to go round and look after her brats tonight. I’ve heard you telephoning that woman before! Look, why not get What’s-her-name? The fat girl with the trail of magenta knitting?’

  ‘Edna Larkins, you mean? But she doesn’t go to her shorthand classes any more,’ said Louise elliptically. ‘I mean, she only ever did come so that she could study without her aunt having the wireless on all the time.’

  ‘I never saw her studying,’ said Mark obstinately. ‘She was always pawing mounds of wool about, like a dispirited kitten. Or do you mean she’s stopped wearing home-made twin-sets, too?’ he added, a little more hopefully.

  ‘No – I mean I don’t know. I could try her. Now I come to think of it, Miss Larkins did say something about Edna’s starting German classes this spring. I’ll go round and ask her about it as soon I’ve finished Michael….’

  Miss Larkins was full of sympathy, as always, and very much regretted that her niece wouldn’t be able to go out tonight as she was going to wash her hair. Of course, Miss Larkins herself would have been only too delighted to help out if only she hadn’t been going to wash her hair, too; and if only her rheumatism hadn’t been playing her up lately, and if she hadn’t been having too many late nights recently, and if she hadn’t felt it was wrong to leave Edna by herself too much, a young girl was such a responsibility….

  Louise was touched. It had not occurred to her that Edna could be regarded by anyone as a responsibility – not now that the shorthand classes had rendered her capable of keeping herself in knitting wool and suet pudding. But apparently her aunt could see through Edna’s doughy exterior to all sorts of hidden complexities; and if only Louise had had nothing to do between now and supper-time, she could have heard about them all. As it was, she had to back down the road making those understanding noises which become so inadequate at a range of more than two yards; and she finally fled into her own house hoping that she hadn’t hurt Miss Larkins’ feelings. Or shut the door loud enough to rouse Mrs Philips? Or taken so long over the whole business that Mrs Hooper would have gone out before she could phone her?

  For Mrs Hooper was the only remaining hope. Not a very bright one, to be sure, but after all, she had her sister staying with her this week, and hadn’t she always said that when this sister was staying with her she was free as air, and could go out all the time? The sister who worshipped Tony and Christine, and loved to be left with them, all day and every day.

  Except, apparently, today. Particularly this evening it would be difficult. Yes, the sister was here, and, yes, she still adored being with Tony and Christine, but, just this evening … At this crucial point in the explanation, Mrs Hooper gave one of those headlong twists to the conversation which are always so effective on the telephone, where your victim cannot register protest by look or gesture:

  ‘My dear!’ she cried exuberantly. ‘What about your mother-in-law? You don’t mean to tell me she won’t help you out?’ – and without waiting for a reply, she went on, with indignant sympathy: ‘Old people make me sick, they really do! They’ll never do a hand’s turn to help. They simply batten on the young ones … interfering … possessive … working out their own frustrations….’ So indignant had she become on Louise’s behalf that Louise had to move the receiver a few inches away from her ear to let the technical terms shrill against her eardrums less painfully. As she listened to the stereotyped diatribe against mothers-in-law – this overworked blend of old music-hall jokes and half-digested modern psychology – Louise found herself wondering how much longer this legend would survive in the face of the real life mothers-in-law that one actually meets nowadays. Energetic, preoccupied women, often smart and attractive, never with a minute to spare. All of them as robustly determined not to interfere, intervene or assist as three generations of cruel jokes could make them….

  ‘It’s not like that at all. It’s just that she’s always busy—’ began Louise; but before her defence of her mother-in-law could be developed further, she realised that Mrs Hooper was no longer listening – that is, if the degree of attention Mrs Hooper accorded to other people’s remarks ever could be described as listening. Pressing her ear close to the telephone, Louise could hear a muffled conversation going on between Mrs Hooper and someone else in the room; and when Mrs Hooper spoke again down the telephone she sounded surprisingly meek and unsure of herself:

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said to Louise, uneasily. ‘My sister says – that is – I can come this evening, as early as you like.’

  This was so unexpected that Louise could hardly find a reply.

  ‘It’s terribly nice of you. Could you possibly manage half past six?’ she got out at last; and when Mrs Hooper agreed without argument she was so surprised and relieved that it did not occur to her to wonder what lay behind such uncharacteristic obligingness.

  Something at least of what lay behind it became clear when Mrs Hooper turned up that evening only ten minutes late, and accompanied by Tony, looking both bored and belligerent in a torn jersey and broken-toed gym shoes. His features were sharp and inquisitive, like a rather grubby sparrow, and he met Louise’s glance of ill-concealed dismay with one of emotion even less disguised.

  ‘I thought he might as well walk over with me,’ explained Mrs Hooper hastily. ‘It’s such a nice evening. And, although my sister is so very fond of the children …’

  ‘She meant that her sister has refused to stay in the house another night unless Tony is kept out of her way for a bit!’ giggled Louise, as she and Mark hurried to the bus-stop, suddenly carefree in the evening light. ‘That must be w
hy she agreed to come to us this evening, so she could bring Tony with her. She daren’t risk him annoying her sister so much that she leaves before the Sunbather’s Week-end. Else she’ll have to take the children to it with her.’

  ‘I should have thought she’d want to take them,’ said Mark; ‘surely sunbathing is Natural, and Progressive, and all the things she approves of for them?’

  ‘Oh yes – it is,’ agreed Louise. ‘But she’d have to look after them, you see. She likes her children to be progressive in all the ways that don’t involve actually having them with her – look, shouldn’t we wait for a 196? The trolley-bus only goes as far as the station.’

  But the one who doesn’t mind a half-mile walk is always in a stronger moral position than the one who does; and so Louise stepped meekly on to the trolley-bus behind her husband, wishing that her only pair of high-heeled sandals were smart enough to justify the discomfort they were causing. There is no proverb to comfort the woman who suffers and yet fails to be beautiful.

  Mark had said that the film was one which Louise would enjoy; and before the end of it she knew that he was right. Not that she had managed to keep her eyes open for more than the first quarter of an hour – to sit on a comfortable seat in a darkened room with nobody asking her any questions was more than she had ever hoped to withstand. And yet, as she dozed guiltily in this unwonted peace and comfort, something of the film seemed to get through to her. Perhaps the mind, half sleeping, becomes receptive in some way to impressions that in full consciousness would be beyond its reach. Perhaps the emotions of the people sitting near were strong enough to act directly on such a mind – all these hundreds of people, each experiencing the same skilfully-engendered emotion at the same skilfully gauged moment – did it add up to an emotion multiplied in power by hundreds? That would be powerful indeed – a terrifying power – no wonder if a sleeping mind should absorb it, just as a sleeping body can become tanned by the rays of the sun without ever being conscious of their warmth. No wonder that Louise, in her half-sleep, should be able to follow without conscious thought the story of the film. Should feel the mystery – the mounting tension – the impending tragedy – the tense, terrifying climax….

  But where was the happy ending? Louise blinked, started up in her seat. But it was all right. There were the hero and heroine, alive and well, and just limbering up for that final kiss which one has learned to accept as a shorthand note for a chapter explaining that after that everything was all right for everybody. But why had the mass-telepathy broken off at just that point? Why were the deeper layers of Louise’s mind still pulsating in the midst of the unresolved climax? Why had the feelings of relief in all those hundreds of minds failed to break through?

  Or had the telepathy, if such it was, come to her not from hundreds of minds, but from one mind? A mind fixed not on the film, but on Louise; a mind that followed her day and night, waking or sleeping; a mind that never rested, that could contemplate no happy ending; a mind that could look forward as far as the climax of fear and hatred, but could look no further …?

  ‘Louise! My dear! Fancy meeting you here! Do let’s go somewhere for some coffee, and have a real good talk.’

  Louise had scarcely noticed that the film was over and that she and Mark were already making their way up the crowded gangway. For a moment she stared stupidly into the pleasant, eager face with the frame of fuzzy honey-coloured hair that hadn’t changed since the days of the Upper Fourth…. Then: ‘Beatrice!’ she exclaimed, ‘how nice. Why, yes, we’d love to. Where – is Humphrey with you?’

  ‘Oh yes. That is, I’ve lost him for the moment – Oh, here he is.’ Beatrice turned as they reached the foyer, and a stooping, intellectual figure with greying hair extricated itself from the crowd and hurried towards them.

  ‘Ha!’ exclaimed Humphrey triumphantly as he caught up with his wife. ‘I thought you’d be on the watch for me. She watches me like a spider,’ he added happily, addressing himself to Louise. ‘She knows there was a nice little blonde just behind, and she won’t take her eyes off me!’

  Unfortunately for the success of this remark, Humphrey’s wife had already taken her eyes off him to the extent of disappearing among the crowds that were surging out on to the rainy pavement; and by the time they found her again (which took some time, since both husband and wife held the theory that the best way to find someone lost in a crowd was to stand stock still and wait for them to find you) the little blonde was lost beyond recall. Louise felt sorry for Humphrey. Not because he had lost the little blonde – about that, she felt sure, he cared nothing whatever – but because he had lost the opportunity of keeping her in the conversation. Humphrey’s real interests, she felt fairly sure, were restricted to his car, his work at the University and the installing of gimcrack improvements in his ugly but comfortable home in Acton; but in company he always felt it a social duty to display an unselective and non-stop interest in the opposite sex. He wouldn’t be seen out without it, just as another type of man won’t be seen out without a rolled umbrella.

  ‘And how is the lovely Louise?’ he enquired, with painstaking archness, as the party settled themselves on stools in the crowded milkbar. ‘Lovelier than ever, eh? I’ll be getting myself into trouble, won’t I?’ he added hopefully, glancing at Beatrice. ‘Shouldn’t say that sort of thing with the wife listening—’

  But unhappily the wife wasn’t listening. She was hunting about in her handbag for a letter from an old school friend; and soon she was reading Louise extracts about someone called Muriel.

  Muriel? Muriel? Am I supposed to have heard of her? And why is it so surprising that she should be living in Bristol …?

  At this point Beatrice seemed to sense that her hearer was not quite appreciating the story; for she abruptly laid down the letter.

  ‘But of course!’ she exclaimed. ‘How silly of me! It’s such ages since I’ve seen you, I was quite forgetting: I don’t suppose you’ve even heard that Muriel was divorced?’

  Nor that she was married, either, reflected Louise resignedly. Nor born, for that matter. She sipped her coffee uneasily; but before she was forced to admit her utter ignorance of all concerning the erratic Muriel, Beatrice fortunately began to follow up her second thread:

  ‘Yes, it must be months since I’ve seen you,’ she was saying. ‘You weren’t at the Fergussons’ Christmas party, I know. And we get about so little now that we’ve given up the car…. And then you know what it is with a house to run. All the washing, and the cleaning….’

  ‘But Mrs Groves does all that, surely, Bee?’ interrupted Humphrey in tactless bewilderment. He could never remember that his wife, while enjoying the leisure afforded by a full-time daily help, wished also to enjoy a picture of herself as a heroic, overworked housewife struggling to make ends meet. She frowned at her obtuse partner, and Louise hastened to change the subject.

  ‘It’s not so long since I saw you,’ she said. ‘Don’t you remember, you came to see me in hospital when Michael was born? You and Humphrey both came, and brought me some marvellous peaches—’

  At the sound of his own name Humphrey, drooping over the coffee that he feared would keep him awake tonight, brightened up again:

  ‘Shall I ever forget!’ he exclaimed, groaning in mock dismay. ‘A maternity hospital! And all the nurses staring at me, wondering which baby I was the father of! They looked terribly suspicious!’

  Louise could not help smiling as she thought of the busy, preoccupied nurses bustling past poor Humphrey without a glance; and she changed the subject quickly, even at the risk of being landed with Muriel again:

  ‘How’s Eva?’ she asked. And Rhoda. And Alison. And the Heathcote twins. It was agreed that it was dreadful the way one lost touch with old friends; it was agreed, too, that the reason was that one was Too Busy. It struck Louise that most of the imperfections of life nowadays are attributed to being Too Busy, just as they were once attributed to the Will of God….

  ‘Which reminds me,’ said Beatrice s
uddenly – and it took Louise a moment to realise that Beatrice was not referring to the Will of God, but to some independent train of thought of her own: ‘That reminds me – Did that woman ever get in touch with you?’

  ‘What woman?’ Louise was guarded. ‘Do you mean the Old Girls?’ she added suspiciously. Even when you hadn’t belonged for years and years, the Old Girls always managed to track you down when it came to Appeals. New Wings; Enlarged Libraries; Another Hard Tennis Court; they loomed menacingly for a moment before Louise’s eyes.

  ‘No no. Nothing like that.’ Beatrice was reassuring. ‘No, it’s a woman who – Humphrey, you remember, don’t you? What was her name? That woman you met at an Educational Discussion Group, or something?’