Myra Carrol Read online

  “You can’t escape things by running away. We’ve always agreed that.”

  Myra’s face lit up.

  “I’m not a bit sure. It’s so absolutely lovely here, and I never want to be anywhere else, but I won’t always be here and things won’t always be like this, but I know that. I’m not afraid of that. I think everybody has got their own things that they have to mind. I don’t see minding everybody else’s is sense.”

  “Will you feel like that when you’ve got things to mind about?”

  “Yes! Yes! Yes! That’s what I’ve thought. When I mind I want nobody to know about it. I thought that when I was looking at Cathleen, all swollen and miserable. All she did by telling me was to get feeling worse and spoiling the picnic for me. Barbara, who was even noisier and ruder than usual, was much better. I’m going to be like that.”

  Connie gave the angel and the shade of her headmistress the faintest shrug of her shoulders. “Well, you can’t say she hasn’t reasoned the thing out.” She smiled at Myra.

  “All right. We’ll drop the party.”

  Miriam’s bungalow was Myra’s second home. At first, when George was training and got fairly regular leave, she found taking second place difficult. She did not need telling that it was natural, but Miriam had been her willing slave for so long that to know she took second place was a pretty big mouthful to swallow. Not that Miriam said much about George, no more than she had in their courting days, but when he came on leave all her time was his and that was that. When he was not on leave Miriam carried on pretty much as she had before her marriage. She was not there to call Myra in the morning, but she was there doing the room after breakfast. On George’s leaves Myra had to struggle with her bed herself, for Bertha was past even Myra’s cajolements.

  “No, Miss Myra, I know you’ve twisted Miriam round your little finger, and it’s not that I wouldn’t do anything for you, but a young lady shouldn’t be helpless, especially in times like these.”

  When George went to France and Miriam was on her own once more, Myra, though she fought against the feeling, could not help being glad. She would have minded had Miriam seemed upset, but Miriam took his departure with apparent calm, merely saying:

  “He had to go same as others; it’s only right.”

  It was a Saturday afternoon in the spring, just after her fourteenth birthday, that Myra noticed the change in Miriam. One of the first investments George had made was chickens. Miriam had a sitting of eggs and that week they had hatched out. She was standing against the sun feeding the chicks. She turned laughing to Myra.

  “See that little one. He’s got more sauce than all the others put together.”

  Myra stared at her.

  “Miriam, you are getting fat.” Miriam turned her head away but not before Myra had seen crimson flooding her cheeks. Through Myra’s mind shot half-known facts. Girls in the village, cattle, a bitch and her puppies, but not Miriam, not George and Miriam. For a moment everything went black, then there were spots of light flicking before her eyes. She said in a hushed, shocked voice. “You aren’t going to have a baby, are you?”

  Miriam knelt amongst her chicks, her voice hummed with happiness.

  “Yes. I wanted to tell you, Miss Myra, but Miss Fogetty said no, she wasn’t sure you’d understand like. I’ve wrote and told George and he said, when you tell Miss Myra ask her if she will stand as godmother. George will make out it’s going to be a boy.”

  Myra was still adjusting herself. Miriam going to have a baby! It was incredible.

  “When is it coming?”

  “Not for nearly three months yet.”

  It was another Saturday six weeks later when the telegram came. Miriam was cooking and took it through the kitchen window. Myra was planting seeds in the garden, singing contentedly at the smell of the earth, the sun on her neck, and the satisfaction that came from knowing she was doing well; she did not really like gardening but she was working hard for Miriam. Miriam screamed. Myra rubbed the earth off her hands and dashed to the window. She saw the telegram on the table and Miriam in a corner beating on the wall with her fists. She asked twice what had happened but got no answer; thoroughly scared she tore home and a few minutes after she reached the house Connie and cook were hurrying to the bungalow.

  Connie told Myra the baby was dead.

  “Miriam will like to see you to-morrow, dear. I don’t think I should talk about the baby. Just make her feel how glad we’ll be to have her back.”

  Myra shivered as if a goose had walked over her grave.

  “Don’t you think she’d rather be alone?”

  “No. She’s asked for you. You’d like to help, wouldn’t you?”

  Myra, carrying some flowers, went to the bungalow. As she walked she prayed, “Oh, God, don’t let her cry about the baby being dead, or about George.”

  Cook was staying in the bungalow; she used the hollow voice she thought decent in a house of mourning. Myra, scared, raised her own until it was almost a shout. Miriam was looking comfortingly as usual except that she was in bed, a place in which Myra had never seen her. Myra gripped the brass rail at the bed-foot.

  “I’ve brought you some flowers.” She fumbled for something to say. “That caterpillar that ate such a lot burst in the night.”

  Miriam had planned her own speech.

  “You don’t want to be scared, Miss Myra dear. I won’t say anything about what’s happened. I’ll just settle things up here, get rid of the furniture and that and then I’ll come back to you. Things will be like they were before.”

  She spoke like a typewriter, each word clicked out, Myra’s affection for her swamped her dread of suffering. She flung her arms round her.

  “Don’t sound like that. I love you. Honestly, as much as George did.”

  “Don’t upset yourself, Miss Myra dear. That’s all finished.”

  Myra was crying.

  “You sound so queer. I’m sorry about the baby, too.”

  Miriam shook her head.

  “Him. George would have liked it him being a boy.”

  Myra was shuddering with tears and fright.

  “But it can’t be just George being killed that’s made you so queer. All the time you and George were walking out and everything you never seemed to care so awfully.”

  “It’s different after you’re married. You wouldn’t understand, Miss Myra dear.”

  Miriam came back to the house. She seemed almost her old self. The bungalow was empty for a time and then the district nurse moved into it. Uncle John made Myra make the arrangements with the nurse herself. He wrote to her about it. “You go down to the bungalow and go over it with her.” Myra brought the letter to Connie.

  “You go, Foggy. I don’t want to.”

  Connie had also received a letter. “Make Myra go to the bungalow. It’s her property and it’s no good her feeling it’s ghost ridden.”

  “You go, dear.” Myra’s eyes darkened with fright. “Go along, goose, you won’t mind after the first time.”

  Myra called Fortesque. It was the end of September. The hedges were full of berries, the late flowers dry and dusty, there were festoons of traveller’s joy on the roadside. Myra saw these things just as she saw how low the river was, but they were only seen by her eyes, her mind was on the bungalow kitchen and Miriam standing in a corner beating the walls with her fists. On the bedroom with its brass-headed double bed, of which George and Miriam had been so proud. On Miriam lying in it saying, like a mechanised toy and yet with a roaring wind of sorrow at the back of her voice: “It’s different after you’re married. You wouldn’t understand, Miss Myra dear.”

  The visit to the bungalow was only hurtful in imagination. Myra and the district nurse were old friends. Nurse’s bicycle was propped against the wall, her shining red face nodded from the window.

  “It’s a nice little place I must s
ay, dear. It’s a pity to bring Fortesque in for Miriam has left it as clean as a new pin, poor dear. I’ve just been measuring the windows; my red rep will fit nicely if I add a border. What would you fancy for a border?” Discussing a border of velvet they were in the kitchen. “The willow pattern my mother gave me is going to look nice here. The dresser will get all the light. Just take one end of the measure, will you, dear, and let’s see how we go for space.” Myra, moving with the tape measure, was in the corner, unconscious that her back was touching the very spot beaten by Miriam’s fists. The nurse snapped the measure back into its case. She opened the bedroom door. “Pleasant room, isn’t it?” Bare of furniture it had no relation to Miriam. The nurse paced out the floor space. “I’m going to have a nice lino here. I always fancy a lino in a bedroom. It’s healthier than a carpet, though I’ve nothing against a little rug by the bed. Fancy, the last time I was here was for Miriam. I was sorry we lost that boy of hers, but all that could be done was done, and it’s all for the best, she’s better back with you, poor dear, she wouldn’t want to bring a boy up on her own. There, let me write these measurements down, I’ve such a head for forgetting. What I’d like is a little white fur rug. Not right away, of course, with the expense of getting in I can’t have everything at once, but a white fur is something I’ve always wanted; looks rich, don’t you think?” She put her notes away in her pocket. “There, I was forgetting, dear, you’ve come to talk business, haven’t you? Proper little landlord, aren’t you?”

  From the time of George’s death Connie felt Myra moving away from her. She was growing up and many of her thoughts were her own. Myra had less spare time. The boy who came in George’s place joined up and no one could be found to replace him. The gardener was old and could not manage alone. Myra had to help in the garden. Coal deliveries became scarce and Myra had, with Connie, to work a double saw if the house was to have logs. Connie had more or less mastered the art of driving a car, but she was not sufficiently proficient to be happy driving alone. The sight of a flock of sheep or, worse still, marching soldiers and she was apt to stall her engine, and she needed Myra to say “Don’t be silly, Foggy. Start it again, it will be all right,” or “Don’t be silly, Foggy, if it doesn’t start they’ll have to go round us.” But such spare hours as she had Myra gave more fervently than ever to riding or walking about her home. She had been shocked by Cathleen’s unhappiness, she had been thoroughly frightened by Miriam’s grief and her home became, as it were, a walled city against which she could imagine sorrow outside splashing, but not coming in. She knew she was living a fairy tale, that you cannot shut tragedy out, but she also knew that she could still be wildly happy in her own world. Up and down the paths in the woods, along the river bank she twisted and wrenched at her thoughts. If you let yourself love anything or anybody in the way Miriam loved George you laid yourself open to be dreadfully hurt. Before Miriam married George she was almost invulnerable to real hurt, there was nothing to get at.

  Would it be possible never to care too much and then you would be safe?

  Letters came from America. First from one sun spot and then another. Then, in the summer of 1917, there arrived one of Uncle John’s telegrams announcing that he was coming to stay. He was rather tireder and more bent than usual, but his voice was not dead, there was warmth behind it.

  “Myra dear, your parents are on their way home.”

  He told Connie the facts.

  “My brother-in-law is ill. He’s been ailing for some time. He’s taken a sick man’s fancy to come home.”

  Connie looked at him in a stricken way that touched him.

  “For good?”

  “Yes, but for the time being anyway it won’t affect you. My sister, as you know, is wrapped up in her husband, I think she’ll leave the management of Myra to you as she’s always done.”

  Connie managed a smile and said no more, but she knew the days of Myra being her own were over, indeed the atmosphere of the house changed from the second the news arrived. Owing to war difficulties a great deal of making do and letting things pass had gone on. Cook was the first to show the change. There was no more “if you please, Miss Fogetty.”

  “I’ll have to go into town to-morrow. The frying-pan isn’t fit to use, and there’s a lot of other things I’ll be needing now we’re to serve proper meals again.”

  Bertha followed.

  “I suppose something is being done about getting some maids. I’ve been managing when there wasn’t any parlour work, but now we’ll need a parlourmaid again. I’ll have to go back to my own work. Miriam won’t be able to manage with the best bedroom open, for that Marcelle is as good as a sick headache for all the help she gives.”

  During the war years cheerful conferences had been held between cook, Bertha and Connie. “Don’t you think we ought to send that carpet away now, for if it gets worse it’ll be past doing anything about?” “Of course you can’t get a plumber easily, but if the taps are allowed to go on leaking the way they do, it will only mean more work in the end.” Each of them had enjoyed themselves. Saving money was not important, and spending, even if the money is not your own or for your personal benefit, brings its own thrill. It was the only time any of them would have the running of a fairly big house, each of them had been careful and conscientious, but it had been pleasant to have power while it lasted. The confidential talks over shop counters. “You ought to lay in a supply of these tea cloths.” “I’m telling you in confidence I’ve got the seven pound size coming in, I know you like to buy in quantity.” “Oh, Miss Fogetty, I was hoping to see you. I’ve a nice piece of that cloth in I was speaking about. It would make up very well for a riding coat for Miss Myra, if you’ve time I’d like to show it to you.” Harmless, well-used power, enjoyed unconsciously, but bitterly missed from the moment Uncle John said that Myra’s parents were coming home.

  Uncle John had seen no reason to cloud Myra’s supposed pleasure in her parents’ home-coming by telling her that her father was ill. He knew that, because they had always been so centred in each other, Myra’s normal life, with which she was entirely satisfied, was carried on without her parents. That her parents had not that place in her heart that he thought they ought to have. But because this state of things reflected on his much-loved sister he refused to accept it. He, so honest and clear-thinking about everything else, had to put on an act about this. Myra was too excited for words. Myra was marking the days off on a calendar, not that anyone knew the exact day, but just crossing out days on a calendar made it seem nearer. Myra went every day to the flower garden to plan vases for her mother’s dressing-table. Myra quite sympathised and gave a charming performance in the role he had invented for her. She was far too fond of her uncle, and much too anxious to be his loved niece to spoil his picture of her. As a matter of fact, when she was with him she got so carried away that she had no idea she was playing a part.

  Connie, for all her supposed clear thinking, had never got over feeling that all children love their fathers and mothers. That she did not care for her own was a fact which entirely escaped her. On the other hand, she knew that Myra’s spirits had never been more than mildly damped by her parents’ departures, and that no stretch of imagination could say she had fretted for them since the war started. She was, therefore, a pleased audience with Uncle John of Myra’s delightful performance. If doubt raised its head in her sub-consciousness at this sudden display, she pushed the head down and laid over it, as it were, an eiderdown made of pleasure at a child’s natural love of its parents. In spite of this lapse into foolishness, Connie refused to accept Uncle John’s idea that Myra should not be told her father was ill. Uncle John said:

  “There’s no need to spoil the home-coming for her. She’ll find out soon enough, poor child.”

  Connie did some mental gymnastics in which somehow she clung to the idea that Myra was wildly excited at the home-coming, and yet admitted the excitement would not be sufficient to o
verlay her horror of illness and suffering.

  “No, I must tell her. She’s sensitive to suffering. She must be prepared or she’ll seem unsympathetic.”

  “If you tell her it will only spoil things for her. She’s so wonderfully happy.”

  “No, I must tell her. Not yet, nearer the time. She’ll adjust herself all right. She’s a brave child but she’ll have to adjust.”

  Myra was, as usual, perfectly natural with Miriam.

  “Of course it will be lovely seeing them again, but, you know, in lots of ways it’s nicer when they are away. All that fuss about meals, and such a lot of dressing up.”

  “It’s time you had them back, Miss Myra dear. Aunty was saying only last night that changing for dinner and all that won’t hurt you. Think of all your pretty frocks and you never wear them.”

  Myra was looking out of the window. The morning was misty, the river, the road, the trees below had the dimness of a dream.

  “It’s time I worry about. When Daddy and Mummy are here they want me to do things with them, and I never seem to have enough time as it is.”

  Miriam knew what Myra meant. She stopped her bed’ making and came to the window.

  “You’ll still have plenty time. ’Tisn’t as though time was something that can be taken away. Less time One day and you’ll have to make it up with more time the next.”

  Myra gave her body a shake as if to move from grasping hands.

  “You can’t have too much time for things you are fond of. They can go, anything can go, and so the time you have now has to last you all your life.”

  Miriam went back to her bed-making. Her expression was the epitome of patient, uncomplaining suffering.

  Connie told Myra about her father over the schoolroom table. There was silence after she had finished, it was as if the words were a stone dropped into a deep well and both she and Myra’ waiting for the splash. Myra, when at last she spoke, sounded angry. “How ill?” “Very ill.”