Cover Her Face Page 2

  By the time they had returned to Martingale she had pulled herself together again and the black pall had lifted. She was restored to her normal condition of confidence and assurance. She went early to bed and, in the conviction of her present mood; she could almost believe that he might come to her. She told herself that it would be impossible in his father's house, an act of folly on his part, an intolerable abuse of hospitality on hers.

  But she waited in the darkness. After a while she heard footsteps on the stairs - his footsteps and Deborah's. Brother and sister were laughing softly together.

  They did not even pause as they passed her door.

  Upstairs in the low white-painted bedroom which had been his since childhood Stephen stretched himself on his bed.

  "I'm tired," he said.

  "Me too." Deborah yawned and sat down on the bed beside him. "It was rather a grim dinner-party. I wish Mummy wouldn't do it."

  "They're all such hypocrites."

  "They can't help it. They were brought up that way. Besides, I don't think that Eppy and Mr. Hinks have much wrong with them."

  "I suppose I made rather a fool of myself," said Stephen.

  "Well, you were rather vehement.

  Rather like Sir Galahad plunging to the defense of the wronged maiden, except that she was probably more sinning than sinned against."

  "You don't like her, do you?" asked Stephen.

  "My sweet, I haven't thought about it.

  She just works here. I know that sounds very reactionary to your enlightened notions but it isn't meant to be. It's just that I'm not interested in her one way or the other, nor she, I imagine, in me."

  "I'm sorry for her." There was a trace of truculence in Stephen's voice.

  "That was pretty obvious at dinner," said Deborah dryly.

  "It was their blasted complacency that got me down. And that Liddell woman.

  It's ridiculous to put a spinster in charge of a Home like St. Mary's."

  "I don't see why. She may be a little limited but she's kind and conscientious.

  Besides, I should have thought St. Mary's already suffered from a surfeit of sexual experience."

  "Oh, for heaven's sake don't be facetious, Deborah!"

  "Well, what do you expect me to be?

  We only see each other once a fortnight.

  It's a bit hard to be faced with one of Mummy's duty dinner-parties and have to watch Catherine and Miss Liddell sniggering together because they thought you'd lost your head over a pretty maid.

  That's the kind of vulgarity Liddell would particularly relish. The whole conversation will be over the village by tomorrow."

  "If they thought that they must be mad.

  I've hardly seen the girl. I don't think I've spoken to her yet. The idea is ridiculous!"

  "That's what I meant. For heaven's sake, darling, keep your crusading instincts under control while you're at home. I should have thought that you could have sublimated your social conscience at the hospital without bringing it home. It's uncomfortable to live with, especially for those of us who haven't got one."

  "I'm a bit on edge today," said Stephen.

  "I'm not sure I know what to do."

  It was typical of Deborah to know at once what he meant.

  "She is rather dreary, isn't she?

  Why don't you close the whole affair gracefully: I'm assuming that there is an affair to close."

  "You know damn well that there is -or was. But how?"

  "I've never found it particularly difficult.

  The art lies in making the other person believe that he has done the chucking.

  After a few weeks I practically believe it myself."

  "And if they won't play?"

  " Then have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love.' "

  Stephen would have liked to have asked when and if Felix Hearne would be persuaded that he had done the chucking.

  He reflected that in this, as in other matters, Deborah had a ruthlessness that he lacked.

  "I suppose I'm a coward about these things," he said. "I never find it easy to shake people off, even party bores."

  "No," replied his sister. "That's your trouble. Too weak and too susceptible.

  You ought to get married. Mummy would like it really. Someone with money if you can find her. Not stinking, of course, just beautifully rich."

  "No doubt. But who?"

  "Who indeed."

  Suddenly Deborah seemed to lose interest in the subject. She swung herself up from the bed and went to lean against the window-ledge. Stephen watched her profile, so like his own yet so mysteriously different, outlined against the blackness of the night. The veins and arteries of the dying day were stretched across the horizon. From the garden below he could smell the whole rich infinitely sweet distillation of an English spring night.

  Lying there in the cool darkness he shut his eyes and gave himself up to the peace of Martingale. At moments like this he understood perfectly why his mother and Deborah schemed and planned to preserve his inheritance. He was the-first Maxie to study medicine. He had done what he wanted and the family had accepted it. He might have chosen something even less lucrative although it was difficult to imagine what. In time, if he survived the grind, the hazards, the rat race of competition, he might become a consultant.

  He might even become sufficiently successful to support Martingale himself. In the meantime they would struggle on as best they could, making little housekeeping economies that would never intrude on his own comfort, cutting down the donations to charity, doing more of the gardening to save old Purvis’s three shillings an hour, employing untrained girls to help Martha. None of it would inconvenience him very much, and it was all to ensure that he, Stephen Maxie, succeeded his father as Simon Maxie had succeeded his. If only he could have enjoyed Martingale for its beauty and its peace without being chained to it by this band of responsibility and guilt!

  There was the sound of slow careful footsteps on the stairs and then a knock on the door. It was Martha with the nightly hot drinks. Back in his childhood old Nannie had decided that a hot milk drink last thing at night would help to banish the terrifying and inexplicable nightmares from which, for a brief period, he and Deborah had suffered. The nightmares had yielded in time to the more tangible fears of adolescence, but the hot drinks had become a family habit. Martha, like her sister before her, was convinced that they were the only effective talisman against the real or imagined dangers of the night. Now she set down her small tray cautiously. There was the blue Wedgwood mug that Deborah used and the old George V coronation mug that Grandfather Maxie had bought for Stephen. "I've brought your Ovaltine too, Miss Deborah," Martha said. (‹I thought I should find you here." She spoke in a low voice as if they shared a conspiracy. Stephen wondered whether she guessed that they had been discussing Catherine. This was rather like the old comfortable Nannie bringing in the night drinks and ready to stay and talk. But yet not really the same. The devotion of Martha was more voluble, more self-conscious and less acceptable. It was a counterfeit of an emotion that had been as simple and necessary to him as the air he breathed. Remembering this he thought also that Martha needed her occasional sop.

  "That was a lovely dinner, Martha," he said.

  Deborah had turned from the window and was wrapping her thin, red-nailed hands around the steaming mug.

  "It's a pity the conversation wasn't worthy of the food. We had a lecture from Miss Liddell on the social consequences of illegitimacy. What do you think of Sally, Martha?"

  Stephen knew that it was an unwise question. It was unlike Deborah to ask it.

  "She seems quiet enough," Martha conceded, "but, of course, it is early days yet. Miss Liddell spoke very highly of her."

  "According to Miss Liddell," said Deborah, "Sally is a model of all the virtues except one, and even that was a slip on the part of nature who couldn't recognize a high-school girl in the dark."

  Stephen was shocked by the sudden bitterness in his sister
's voice. ‹(I don't know that all this education is a good thing for a maid, Miss Deborah."

  Martha managed to convey that she had managed perfectly well without it. (‹I only hope that she knows how lucky she is.

  Madam has even lent her our cot, the one you both slept in."

  "Well, we aren't in it now." Stephen tried to keep the irritation out of his voice. Surely there had been enough talk about Sally Jupp! But Martha was not to be cautioned. It was as if she personally and not merely the family cradle had been desecrated. "We've always looked after that cot, Dr. Stephen. It was to be kept for the grandchildren."

  "Damn!" said Deborah. She wiped the spilt drink from her fingers and replaced the mug on the tray. "You shouldn't count your grandchildren before they're hatched. You can count me as a nonstarter and Stephen isn't even engaged -nor thinking of it. He'll probably eventually settle for a buxom and efficient nurse who'll prefer to buy a new hygienic cot of her own from Oxford Street. Thank you for the drink, Martha dear." Despite the smile, it was a dismissal.

  The last "good nights" were said and the same careful footsteps descended the stairs. When they had died away Stephen said, "Poor old Martha. We do rather take her for granted and this maid-of-all-work job is getting too much for her. I suppose we ought to be thinking of pensioning her off."

  "On what?" Deborah stood again at the window.

  "At least there's some help for her now," Stephen temporized.

  "Provided Sally isn't more trouble than she is worth. Miss Liddell made out that the baby is extraordinarily good. But any baby's considered that who doesn't bawl for two nights out of three. And then there's the washing. Sally can hardly be much help to Martha if she has to spend half the morning rinsing out nappies."

  "Presumably other mothers wash nappies," said Stephen, "and still find time for other work. I like this girl and I think she can be a help to Martha if only she's given a fair chance."

  "At least she had a very vigorous champion in you, Stephen. It's a pity you'll almost certainly be safely away at hospital when the trouble starts."

  "What trouble, for God's sake? What's the matter with you all? Why on earth should you assume that the girl's going to make trouble?"

  Deborah walked over to the door.

  "Because", she said, "She’s making trouble already, isn't she? Good night."

  Chapter Two

  Despite this inauspicious beginning Sally Jupp's first weeks at Martingale were a success. Whether she herself shared this view was not known. No one asked for her opinion. She had been pronounced by the whole village to be a very lucky girl.

  If, as so often happens with the recipients of favors, she was less grateful than she ought to be, she managed to conceal her feelings behind a front of meekness, respectfulness and willingness to learn, which most people were happy enough to take at its face value. It did not deceive Martha Bultitaft and it is probable that it would not have deceived the Maxies if they had bothered to think about it. But they were too preoccupied with their individual concerns and too relieved at the sudden lightening of the domestic load to meet trouble halfway.

  Martha had to admit that the baby was at first very little trouble. She put this down to Miss Liddel’s excellent training since it was beyond her comprehension that bad girls could be good mothers.

  James was a placid child who, for his first two months at Martingale, was content to be fed at his accustomed times without advertising his hunger too loudly and who slept between his feeds in milky contentment. This could not last indefinitely. With the advent of what Sally called 'mixed feeding' Martha added several substantial grievances to her list. It seemed that the kitchen was never to be free of Sally and her demands. Jimmy was fast entering that stage of childhood in which meals become less a pleasant necessity than an opportunity for the exercise of power. Carefully pillowed in his high chair he would arch his sturdy back in an orgasm of resistance, bubbling milk and cereal through his pursed lips in ecstatic rejection before suddenly capitulating into charming and submissive innocence. Sally screamed with laughter at him, caught him to her in a whirl of endearments, loved and fondled him in contemptuous disregard of Martha's muttered disapproval. Sitting there with his tight curled mop of hair, his high beaked little nose almost hidden between plump cheeks as red and hard as apples, he seemed to dominate Martha's kitchen like a throned and imperious miniature Caesar. Sally was beginning to spend more time with her child and Martha would often see her during the mornings, her bright head bent over the pram where the sudden emergence of a chubby leg or arm showed that Jimmy's long periods of sleep were a thing of the past. No doubt his demands would increase. So far Sally had managed to keep up with the work allotted to her and to reconcile the demands of her son with those of Martha.

  If the strain was beginning to show, only Stephen on his fortnightly visits home noticed it with any compunction. Mrs.

  Maxie inquired of Sally at intervals whether she was finding the work too much and was glad to be satisfied with the reply she received. Deborah did not notice, or if she did, said nothing. It was, in any case, difficult to know whether Sally was overtired. Her naturally pale face under its shock of hair and her slim brittle-looking arms gave her an air of fragility which Martha, for one, thought highly deceiving. "Tough as a nut and cunning as a wagon-load of monkeys" was Martha's opinion.

  Spring ripened slowly into summer. The beech trees burst their spearheads of bright green and spread a chequered pattern of shade over the drive. The vicar celebrated Easter to his own joy and with no more than the usual recriminations and unpleasantness among his flock over the church decorations. Miss Pollack, at St. Mary's Refuge, endured a spell of sleeplessness for which Dr. Epps prescribed special tablets, and two of the Home's inmates settled for marriage with the unprepossessing but apparently repentant fathers of their babies. Miss Liddell admitted two more peccant mothers in their place. Sam Bocock advertised his stables in Chadfleet New Town and was surprised at the number of youths and girls who, in new, ill-fitting jodhpurs and bright yellow gloves, were prepared to pay 7s. 6d. an hour to amble through the village under his tutelage.

  Simon Maxie lay in his narrow bed and was neither better nor worse. The evenings lengthened and the roses came. The garden at Martingale was heavy with their scent. As Deborah cut them for the house she had a feeling that the garden and Martingale, itself, were waiting for something. The house was always at its most beautiful in summer, but this year she sensed an atmosphere of expectancy, almost of foreboding, which was alien to its usual cool serenity. Carrying the roses into the house, Deborah shook herself out of this fancy with the wry reflection that the most ominous event now hanging over Martingale was the annual church fete.

  When the words "waiting for a death" came suddenly into her mind she told herself firmly that her father was no worse, might even be considered a little better, and that the house could not possibly know. She recognized that her love for Martingale was not entirely rational. Sometimes she tried to discipline that love by talking of the time when we have to sell as if the very sound of the words could act both as a warning and a talisman.

  St. Cedd's church fete had taken place in the grounds of Martingale every July since the days of Stephen's great-grandfather.

  It was organized by the fete committee, which consisted of the vicar, Mrs. Maxie, Dr. Epps and Miss Liddell.

  Their administrative duties were never arduous since the fete, like the church it helped to support, continued virtually unchanging from year to year, a symbol of immutability in the midst of chaos. But the committee took their responsibilities seriously and met frequently at Martingale during June and early July to drink tea in the garden and to pass resolutions which they passed the year before in identical words and in the same agreeable surroundings. The only member of the committee who occasionally felt genuinely uneasy about the fete was the vicar. In his gentle way he preferred to see the best in everyone and to impute worthy motives wherever possible. He included himself in this d
ispensation, having discovered early in his ministry that charity is a policy as well as a virtue. But once a year Mr. Hinks faced certain unpalatable facts about his church. He worried about its exclusiveness, its negative impact on the seething fringe of Chadfleet New Town, the suspicion that it was more of a social than a spiritual force in the village life.

  Once he had suggested that the fete should close as well as open with a prayer and a hymn, but the only committee member to support this startling innovation was Mrs. Maxie, whose chief quarrel with the fete was that it never seemed to end.

  This year Mrs. Maxie felt that she was going to be glad of Sally's willing help.

  There were plenty of workers for the actual fete, even if some of them were out to extract the maximum of personal enjoyment with the minimum of work, but the responsibilities did not end with the successful organization of the day. Most of the committee would expect to be asked to dinner at Martingale and Catherine Bowers had written to say that the Saturday of the fete was one of her off-duty days and would it be too much of an imposition if she invited herself for what she described as one of your perfect week-ends away from the noise and grime of this dreadful city". This letter was not the first of its kind.

  Catherine was always so much more anxious to see the children than the children were to see Catherine. In some circumstances that would be just as well.

  It would be an unsuitable match for Stephen in every way, much as poor Katie would like to see her only child eligibly married off. She herself had married, as they said, beneath her. Christian Bowers had been an artist with more talent than money and no pretensions to anything except genius. Mrs. Maxie had met him once and had disliked him but, unlike his wife, she did believe him to be an artist.

  She had bought one of his early canvases for Martingale, a reclining nude which now hung in her bedroom and gave her a satisfied joy which no amount of intermittent hospitality to his daughter could adequately repay. To Mrs. Maxie it was an object-lesson in the folly of an unwise marriage. But because the pleasure it gave her was still fresh and real, and because she had once been at school with Katie Bowers and placed some importance on the obligations of old and sentimental associations, she felt that Catherine should be welcome at Martingale as her own guest, if not as her children's.