The Hours Before Dawn (5 page)

The conversation seemed in this last minute to have petered out. Miss Brandon leaned closer to the fire, though her usually pale face already looked scarlet with the heat. Before the
silence had had time to become painful, the slam of the front door and a cheery shout announced that Mark had returned from work; and had returned in high good humour, too, in spite of everything. He swung into the room, his coppery curls
glistening
with raindrops, and had given both Louise and the baby a resounding kiss before he noticed the visitor by the fire.

‘Why – hullo – good evening,’ he said, glancing at Louise enquiringly.

‘I asked Miss Brandon to come in and warm herself, and meet some more of the family,’ said Louise hastily, trying to remember what, if anything, she and Mark had decided about ‘keeping themselves to themselves’ or otherwise. Was he going to be annoyed that she had so readily invited this new tenant into the family sitting-room? Was he going to—?

‘M
UM-MEE
! I
CAN’T FIND MY OTHER GARTER, THEY WERE ON
MY GREY ONES, AND THE ONES IN THE DRAWER YOU SAID LOOK IN
ARE
M
ARGERY’S
, AND THE OTHER
—’

By this time Louise had reached the upstairs landing, and was able to stem the flow of this ear-splitting narrative.

‘Hush, dear, hush! Why can’t you come downstairs and tell me instead of standing there yelling like that? Look – aren’t those yours? Under the chair?’

By the time Harriet and her garters were re-united, and Michael was settled in his cot, it was time to turn the potatoes down and put the fish in the oven. Louise was surprised, when she returned to the sitting-room, to find that Miss Brandon was still there, and deep in conversation with Mark, who was looking both pleased and interested.

‘I should have thought the Medea was a bit advanced for your fifth-form girls,’ he was saying. ‘The theme of it, I mean. – Her feelings about Jason. I should have thought the point would be rather lost on teenagers who’ve seen nothing of life.’

‘It isn’t life I’m supposed to be teaching them,’ retorted Miss
Brandon. ‘It’s Greek. And as far as language goes, the Medea is a great deal simpler than many plays with possibly more suitable themes. Particularly the choruses—’

‘Yes, yes!’ interposed Mark eagerly. ‘I agree entirely. But surely the theme is important too? How can those girls understand the play if they don’t understand the complexity of Medea’s character? They don’t know anything about the feelings of a real grown woman.’

‘Hardly anyone nowadays does know anything about the feelings of a real grown woman,’ said Miss Brandon quietly. ‘Most women simply feel what novels and magazines tell them they feel. And as for most men – why, if they ever came across a real grown woman, you wouldn’t see their heels for the dust! She’d be too strong for them, you see. True femininity isn’t weak at all; it’s the strongest, fiercest thing on earth. Euripides sees that clearly enough. What he
doesn’t
see – what he gets quite upside down – is the mainspring – the motive – of that strength and fierceness.’

‘But, good Lord, I should have thought that’s just exactly what he
does
see!’ exclaimed Mark, obviously enjoying himself. ‘It’s a wonderful piece of character-drawing! What stronger motive could she have? What worse injury can a man possibly do to a woman than to desert her, with two little children, after she had given up everything for him? Her home – her reputation – years of her life – and has even done murder for him?’

‘I don’t agree,’ insisted Miss Brandon quietly and obstinately. ‘Men
can
do women a worse injury than that. And they do. Often feeling themselves very virtuous in the process. However,’ she continued, with a sudden change of tone, ‘there are some very fine speeches in the Medea. Particularly where her jealousy and hatred are laid bare. Her hatred …’ As she repeated the word, Miss Brandon’s glance fell, somehow, on Louise. Only for a moment; a second later she was looking once
again into Mark’s eager face as he defended his best-known classical author:

‘A splendid piece of writing,’ he was saying. ‘Even you can’t deny that. You remember the speech after Aegeus has gone out—?’ He broke off: ‘Look, have you got a copy of it handy? Let’s thrash this thing out properly, while we’re about it.’

‘I’ve got eighteen copies of it, to be exact,’ said Miss Brandon with a little smile. ‘I’ve to distribute them in class tomorrow. Would you care to come up—?’

‘Oh – jolly good! Rather!’ and a moment later Louise watched the two of them going up the stairs together, still arguing enthusiastically.

When Mark came down to supper, after having to be called three times, he was still bubbling over with eagerness.

‘Damned interesting woman, that,’ he announced, as he drew up his chair. ‘Did you know she’d written a book on Homeric civilisation? Apparently it was very well reviewed. I told her she was wasted, teaching those lumps of
grammar-school
girls, but, as she says, there’s very little else you can do with a classics degree. Unless you get a University lectureship, of course. Apparently she came very near that a few months ago, but it fell through. Still, she’ll get other chances –
Margery!
Louise,
can’t
you get that child to look what she’s doing occasionally?’

‘Margery! Oh dear—! Well, you’d better get the cloth, dear, and wipe it up. But Mark, isn’t it rather puzzling? I mean, if she’s written books and all that sort of thing, why should she be
pigging
it in our attic? – No, Margery, not the
floor
cloth – the one hanging by the sink – I mean, you’d think she must be quite well off.’

‘Don’t you believe it! A scholarly work like that doesn’t bring in anything. Anyone’ll tell you. But there’s an odd thing, Louise – all the while I was talking to her, I had the feeling that
I’d met her before somewhere, but I couldn’t for the life of me think where. As if she’d looked very different before – or in very different surroundings – something like that—’

‘Perhaps you met her when you were up at Cambridge,’ suggested Louise. ‘Naturally she’d have looked very different then.’

‘Maybe,’ said Mark thoughtfully. ‘I must ask her some time what year she was up.’

‘If you want her to go on contradicting you about Euripides, I wouldn’t ask anything so tactless,’ said Louise, smiling. ‘She was probably up years before your time, and she won’t thank you for forcing her to admit it! – Margery! – For goodness sake don’t flap it all over the food like that! – Here, I’d better do it. – But I still think it’s funny – her taking a room like that, I mean. Harriet, that’s far too much butter! No no – it’s no use putting it back now it’s all jammy—’ And for the time being the subject of Vera Brandon had to be shelved.

I
t was Saturday, the first Saturday in April, and it seemed to Louise that with one dizzying lurch of the thermometer summer had struck. The radiance of the afternoon sun seemed to be soaking gloriously into her tired limbs just as if, she reflected ruefully, her tired limbs really
were
out in the
sunshine
like everyone else’s, instead of grovelling about in this tool-cupboard in search of Mark’s canvas shoes. But then, she remembered, as a tin half full of dried-up paint fell viciously on her elbow, the first sudden sunshine of the year was always like that once you had become a housewife. It drove you not
outdoors
, but in. Fishing in long-shut drawers for the children’s summer frocks. Ironing them. Restoring missing buttons. Rootling about in dark cupboards for the garden cushions; for the deckchairs; for the ropes of the swing. And now Mark’s shoes, for which she could only search half-heartedly because of a growing conviction that they must have been left behind at Westcliff last summer – a mishap which would undoubtedly prove to have been all her, Louise’s, fault. By the time all this grubbing about was finished, the sunshine would probably be over, and she would have missed it all. And yet, somehow,
mysteriously
, she wouldn’t have missed it at all; not while Harriet’s voice sounded out there, piercing as a blackbird’s through the
sun-warmed air; not while the sturdy thudding of the two pairs of sandalled feet sounded so purposefully on the stone path and then on the linoleum. In and out…. In and out. Into the kitchen…. Into the garden…. Back into the kitchen again…. What
were
they doing?

Oh, the Tent, of course. Louise felt suddenly very tired when she thought about the Tent – that fearsome erection of kitchen chairs, table, clothes horse, ironing board … all of which would have to be brought in again at nightfall, by Louise…. And they’d want the ground-sheet too, of course … it was probably somewhere in here….

At this point in her meditations, Louise was interrupted by Mark’s voice – already edged with that grim patience which a week-end so often calls forth in fathers.

‘I say, Louise!’ he yelled from somewhere upstairs. ‘Can’t you make those kids keep the back door shut? There’s a howling draught up here – my papers are blowing all over the place.’

‘Harriet – Margery!’ yelled Louise obediently. ‘Shut the door!’

A vigorous slam was followed barely five seconds later by a renewed bursting open of the offending door, and a fresh hurtling of breathless small bodies along the passage.

‘Shut the door!’ called Louise, this time mechanically. Another slam. Another scurrying of feet. Again the door was open. Again Mark yelled down in protest. ‘Shut the
door!
’ called Louise; and again: ‘
Shut
the
door!
’

Well, here was the ground-sheet, anyway – this stiff, sticky, unyielding block of obstinacy. She yanked it out, accompanied by a clatter of miscellaneous metalware, and dragged it into the garden.

‘Here you are, children—’ she was beginning, when a voice from over the fence interrupted her – a precise, over-ladylike voice, trembling with something more than ladylike emotion:

‘Mrs Henderson,’ it said, ‘I don’t want to seem to complain. I can put up with a lot, anyone will tell you that. But that blessed door of yours’ (the ladylike diction began to slip as
justifiable
indignation came into its own). ‘That blessed door has been going slam, slam, slam the whole blessed afternoon till I can’t put up with it any more. It’s more than anybody’s nerves can stand, Mrs Henderson, and I don’t mind telling you. It’s just about driving me crazy….

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Philips,’ said Louise helplessly. ‘I’ll see it doesn’t happen again.’ She turned back towards the house. ‘Don’t shut the door!’ she nearly called; and then, remembering Mark still within, she substituted, ‘Shut the door
quietly!
’ Even as she spoke, she was overwhelmed by the futility of such a command. As if the children
could
shut doors quietly! Better, perhaps, to prop it open a few inches….

‘
Louise!
’ came Mark’s voice for the third time, as the draught whistled through the house all over again. ‘
Can
’
t
you get those damn kids to—’

For a moment Louise stood quite still. What would they all do, she wondered, if she were to lie down on the floor, then and there, and have hysterics? If she screamed, and sobbed and
gibbered
, and yelled out: ‘I can’t – I
can’t
do any more about any of you! I
CAN
’
T
.’ Would Mark rush downstairs, all concern and tenderness? Would Mrs Philips wipe that expression of
watchful
disapproval off her face and hurry round with offers of neighbourly assistance? Would the children stand round, awed and bewildered, shocked at last into silence …?

‘Mummy!’

For one mad second, Louise wondered if it had happened; if she had in fact fallen into hysterics. For Margery’s eyes were round, and a little awed; her voice rather prim and unnatural: ‘Mummy,’ she repeated. ‘There’s a lady out in the front, and she says do you know baby’s crying? She says he was crying when
she started out to do her shopping, and he was still crying when she came back, and so she said she thought she’d better enquire if he was being looked after, and she said—’

Louise knew that this recital would continue without
intermission
for as long as she cared to stand there listening to it. Hastily pulling herself together, she managed to say brightly: ‘All right – thank you, darling. I’ll go and see to it. Oh – and Margery. I
wish
you and Harriet would try to shut the back door quietly. You heard Mrs Philips complaining, didn’t you? Or, better still, don’t keep on coming indoors. Can’t you stay in the garden and play with the things you’ve taken out already? What do you keep coming in
for
?
’

‘What?’ said Margery, bringing her gaze back from the vacancy she had been so comfortably contemplating since her mother began speaking. ‘What, Mummy?’

But Michael’s yells from the front garden had now reached a pitch that could leave no doubt as to which was the most urgent task. Louise hurried through the house, leaving Margery, Mrs Philips and the back door to unravel their destiny as best they could.

It was nearly teatime before Louise remembered that her mother-in-law was expected that evening.

‘I wish I’d thought of it this morning,’ she said, as she set a plate of bread-and-jam on the rickety garden table. ‘Then I could have asked Miss Brandon about it before she went out. We can’t very well barge into her room and take the books without asking her.’

‘Why not? Does she lock her door?’ asked Mark obtusely, heaving himself up in his deckchair. ‘I say – it’s getting damn cold. D’you think it’s such a good idea having tea out here after all?’

‘Well—’ Louise looked across the lilacs to the sinking sun. Half an hour ago it had been so brilliant, tea indoors had
seemed out of the question. Now the sun hung red and dimmed, surrounded by a thickening mist that augured rain for tomorrow. And thank goodness, too! thought Louise. I couldn’t have stood another day of Mrs Philips and the back door….

Aloud she said: ‘I think we might as well have it here now it’s ready. And with Michael just settled on his rug, too – he’ll only scream if we go in. Children! Tea! – Listen, Mark, about your mother coming this afternoon—’

‘Is Granny coming?’ interrupted Harriet, shrill and inquisitive through her bread-and-jam.

‘Yes, dear, she’s coming after tea, and so—’

‘Who is?’ enquired Margery, waking up as usual in time to hear the tail-end of every conversation.

‘Granny, dear,’ repeated Louise patiently. ‘So do you think, Mark—?’

But it was no use. It never was any use trying to discuss anything at mealtimes. And it isn’t as if I’ve deliberately
tried
to bring them up on progressive lines, thought Louise dismally, as she scooped an imaginary beetle out of Harriet’s milk. I haven’t had any theories about letting them express
themselves
– why do they behave so exactly as if I had? Is it something in the air of the present century? And was there something different in the air of previous centuries –
something
which children breathed in – and lo and behold found themselves quiet and docile and in awe of their elders? Or is it that the disciplining of children is a lost art, like the making of frumenty, or the medieval staining of glass? In that case, then the only difference between progressive parents and others is that the progressive ones are making the best of a bad job by parading the universal incompetence as a special virtue of their own….

‘
Granny!
’

With a screech like a parakeet Harriet was across the lawn and clinging to her grandmother with arms sticky to the elbow. Children are just like cats, thought Louise. They have an
unerring
instinct for the person who most wants to avoid them, and they cling and clamber on that person with relentless and unsnubbable devotion. If only Mark’s mother had been the kind of grandmother who revels in just the sort of affection with which Harriet was now belabouring her! Only, of course, if she had been, Harriet wouldn’t be doing it….

Mrs Henderson senior meanwhile had picked Harriet off her skirt as if she was a burr, and was continuing on her way across the lawn, her smart black suit, her sheer nylons and her flawless nail-varnish putting Louise and her crumpled overall utterly to shame.

‘Oh – hullo, Mother – come and have some tea,’ said Louise, getting herself clumsily out of her deckchair. ‘Do sit down.’

‘No – no, thank you, dear, I can only stay a moment. I’ve got to go straight on to that wretched cocktail party. Besides, you know, now my children are grown up I like to make the most of never having to have meals in the garden at all, ever. My
present
flat hasn’t even
got
a garden,’ she added, with undisguised satisfaction. ‘But finish your own tea, dear, and then perhaps we can collect those books of mine and be done with it. Half of them want getting rid of, really, but I don’t know when I’ll get a minute to go through them.’ She glanced at her watch; and Louise, hastily gulping down the last of her tea, led the way into the house.

‘There’s just one thing,’ she said, as they mounted the top flight of stairs – ‘it’s a bit awkward – Miss Brandon’s been out since this morning, she won’t be back till quite late, and I
forgot
to tell her you were coming. Mightn’t she think it’s rather a cheek if we just walk into her room while she’s out…?’

‘If she’s out she can’t think anything, can she?’ said Mrs Henderson practically. ‘And if by any chance she comes in while we’re at it— Oh, don’t you worry, dear! I’ve been caught red-handed at worse than this in my time!’ She laughed merrily, pushed the door open with a flourish, and stepped briskly into the room.

But a second later even her assurance faltered. She stopped dead, and Louise, following on behind, nearly tripped over the enviable high heels. For there by the window sat Miss Brandon, quite motionless, staring out into the garden.

‘Oh – I’m so sorry! I really do apologise. I understood you were out.’

It was Mrs Henderson senior who spoke. Louise herself was too much taken aback to say a word. Miss Brandon had
said
she was going to be out all day – had, in fact, sought out Louise in the kitchen especially to tell her so. And quite unnecessarily, too – she had her own key, and her comings and goings were no business of Louise’s. When had she come back then? How long had she been sitting up here, silent, and apparently unoccupied? For there were no books or papers laid out, no sewing – nothing to suggest that she had spent the afternoon either working or amusing herself. Of course, it might be that she had only just come in, while they were all out in the garden and wouldn’t have noticed; but something in that hunched, motionless pose seemed to preclude this possibility. It was not the pose of a woman who is simply resting for a few minutes between one activity and the next…. Louise felt suddenly ill at ease. There was something unnerving in the thought that this woman had been sitting there motionless, perhaps for hours, simply staring out into the garden – a silent witness of Louise’s ignominious encounter with Mrs Philips; of the untidy, ill-managed picnic tea; of all the ineffective, half-hearted tussles with the
children
which had mingled with the golden afternoon. And above
all, why, if she had planned to spend the afternoon thus, had Miss Brandon announced so positively that she would be out …?

Louise checked herself. This was absurd! She was allowing herself to become the very caricature of an inquisitive
landlady
! Miss Brandon surely had a perfect right to change her plans without coining and announcing it to Louise; had a right, too, to spend Saturday afternoon doing nothing in her own room if she wished. Even had a right to amuse herself by watching the goings-on in the gardens within her view. Goodness knows Mrs Morgan next door spent enough time doing just that; no doubt she too had been enjoying her
ringside
view of the row with Mrs Philips, and was even now watching hopefully for the second round – which could not be long delayed, reflected Louise gloomily, unless someone quickly stopped Harriet dragging that watering-can across the flagstones by a piece of string. Perhaps Mark would stop her. Or perhaps Mrs Philips had set off already for her evening stroll. Or perhaps …

‘Louise, dear,’ Mrs Henderson was saying crisply, ‘don’t stand there dreaming – really, I sometimes think you’re worse than Margery! – Miss Brandon is asking you, haven’t you got some kind of a box we could borrow? A packing-case? Grocery box? Anything to put the books in—?’

‘Well—’ began Louise doubtfully, her mind hastily but without much hope ransacking the untidier recesses of her home. ‘There might be. But our grocer always sends such big floppy boxes, and then the children get hold of them to be dog-kennels or something—’