The Year of the Virgins Page 21

  Taking the broad hint, the nurse smiled and left the room; and Joe, now standing close to the bed, looked down on Don but found it most difficult to speak for the moment. It was Don who seemed the more composed, and he said quietly, ‘Well, you got it over?’

  ‘Yes, yes, it’s over.’

  ‘So now we’ll see. But…but somehow it doesn’t matter; I’m not afraid of her any more. I haven’t been for the last few days. I think it was after I took Holy Communion I seemed to get quiet inside. It was like Extreme Unction. He hasn’t brought that up yet.’ He smiled wanly. ‘Father Ramshaw, I mean. He’s sort of putting it off until the last minute. I’ve always thought Extreme Unction must be like signing your name to a death warrant. Oh, Joe.’ He slowly lifted his hand and caught Joe’s wrist. ‘Don’t look like that, man. Don’t you think it’s as well I can talk about it? You know, it’s like people who are afraid to mention the name of anyone who’s just died. I always think that’s silly; it’s like shutting them out. I don’t want to be shut out, Joe. I don’t want you to talk about me when I’m gone, behind my back.’ He gave a small laugh.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Don!’ Joe pulled his hand away from the weak grasp. ‘You know what? You break my heart at times.’

  ‘Oh, Joe, I’m sorry. Look at me. Come on now. I’ll tell you something. You know what the doctor said this morning? He said my heart’s steadier than it’s been in weeks. Now why is that? And I said to him, I’m going to get better; I’m sick of paying your bills. Come on, Joe. Joe, please.’

  Joe did not turn round, but muttered, ‘I’ll…I’ll be back in a minute.’ And with that he went into the sitting room, and he was about to ring the bell that could be heard in the dining room and the kitchen and which would summon someone back here, when he heard Don’s door open and Stephen’s voice say, ‘Oh, I thought Joe was here. He said we could play billiards.’

  ‘Come and sit beside me for a while.’ Don’s voice came as if from a far distance. ‘Joe’ll be back in a minute; he’s gone on an errand for me.’

  Joe slipped out through the conservatory, along the corridor, and so to his own apartment. And there he sat down and drooped his head into his hands. He couldn’t stand much more of this; the turmoil inside him was tearing him apart. Again he wished he was miles away. At one time he had loved this house for itself, now he hated it. He, too, was certain that although her body might be in the grave her spirit was still here.

  After a moment or so he rose to his feet and stood looking out of the window onto the garden. The sun was shining brightly. The weekend winter had gone; it was even warm. That unfailing announcer of spring, the bed of crocus just below the window, was pushing through, and a border of daffodils, their buds now showing but still pointing straight up, on the other side of the path. The garden was beginning to smile. He drew in a long breath.

  But down to earth again: in an hour’s time he would be going from one to the other in the hospital. And yet, did he need to? They all knew she had been buried today.

  Annette had had to be told of her father-in-law’s and Maggie’s sojourn quite near her. When he told her what had happened to them she had become fearful, saying, ‘She’ll come here and try to get the baby.’ And so, to calm her he had been obliged to tell her that her mother-in-law was already dead.

  It had also lain with him to break this news to Daniel, and that had come about only yesterday. The doctor had advised against it, and when he had received this advice he had wanted to say, ‘He won’t be shocked. He’ll be glad to hear it.’

  His father had spoken to him for the first time two days ago: ‘She did it at last, Joe,’ he had said.

  What Maggie had said was, ‘I think I would have done the same in her place.’

  Well, Joe told himself as he gazed down on the spring flowers, it would be over once Don was gone.

  But what then?

  Well, he’d just wait and see. But did he want to wait and see? There was a change taking place inside him: it was as if he too had been battered, and into insensibility, for it came to him that once Don died he would be free, and being free he knew what he would do.

  Eleven

  Inside the hospital they separated, Flo and Harvey visiting Annette while Joe made straight for Daniel’s room.

  Daniel was sitting up in bed. It was as if he was waiting for him.

  ‘Well, Joe?’ he said.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Relieved, in a way. I’m all right inside apparently, so the X-rays say. And they’ve stitched me up here and there…she was always methodical. What happened this morning?’

  ‘What could happen, Dad? We buried her.’

  ‘Well, don’t look at me like that, expecting me to say I’m sorry or I feel any guilt, or poor soul, or what have you. What I’ve been feeling over the past few days is deep bitterness and regret for the wasted years in having to put up with her. Forgive and forget, they say. Let them try it after living with someone like her for half your lifetime.’

  ‘She’s dead, Dad. And the past is dead with her. You’ve got to look at it like that.’

  Daniel made no reply to this, only cast a sidelong glance at Joe before he did say, ‘How’s Don?’

  ‘About the same. But I think Annette should try to come home as soon as possible. I’ll see the doctor before I leave.’

  ‘Maggie will be home tomorrow. She was in just a little while ago…I’m going to marry her, Joe.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Of course, I understand that you’ll marry her.’

  ‘But we won’t go on living there. That’s one thing sure. She doesn’t want it and I certainly don’t.’

  ‘I can understand that an’ all. What about Stephen? Where does he go?’

  ‘He’ll come with us. He’s my responsibility, after all.’

  Joe felt the urge to speak his thoughts by saying, I’m glad you see it that way; you’ve practically made him mine over the years.

  What was the matter with him? He was tired. He must be careful of his tongue. Yet the next moment he was saying, ‘Have you worked out what’s going to happen to Annette and the baby?’

  ‘Why are you using that tone to me, Joe? That doesn’t need any working out. Once she’s…left alone’—he paused—‘she’ll go to the home that was intended for them. That only leaves you. What do you intend to do? Would you like to stay there? I mean, I can pass the place over.’

  ‘Thank you very much. Stay in that house! Me? Alone?’

  ‘Well, you’ve always said you liked the place, loved it even. Apart from…her who wanted it in the first place, you considered it the best house in the town, not only from your architectural point of view, but because of the house itself.’

  ‘Things change. People change. I don’t want the house. As soon as you’re on your feet I’m off.’

  ‘Off? Where?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter much where.’ He moved a step from the bed; then turned and said, ‘Perhaps I’ll try to find my own people…me ain folk, you know.’

  He was going out of the door when Daniel called to him, ‘Joe! Joe!’ But he took no notice. He found he was sweating. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his face, the while chastising himself: Daniel was still in a bad way and he had gone for him like that. Well, Daniel’s body might have been knocked about but his mind was just the same. And at this moment he was seeing him as a man who had gone his own way all his life. Perhaps he had bowed to duty once or twice by staying with his wife, but for the rest he had lived on the side, whereas he himself had never tasted that kind of life. He had wanted one girl, one woman, from when he had first held her hand and taken her across a road. And he would have had her, he felt sure of that, if the man behind that door who had acted as father to him, and whom he had thought of lovingly for years, had not had the urge to get back on his wife in some way. And so he had made plans. And his son unsuspectingly had carried them out.

  Well, here he was, twenty-six years old, and he could have been the virgin that his ado
ptive mother had desired in her own son, for, as yet, he hadn’t known a woman. Not that he hadn’t wanted to. My God! Yes, he had wanted to. Then why hadn’t he? Hadn’t he told himself that once Don and Annette were married that would be that? And then if he never married he would certainly taste the fruits of it. But what had happened? Well, the result of what had happened was all about him. And now he was waiting for his brother’s dying.

  No, he wasn’t.

  Once again his thoughts were spurring him forward and along the corridor and into the new ward to which Maggie had been moved.

  She was sitting in the chair by the side of the window when he entered, and she turned to him, her face and voice eager as she said, ‘Oh, hello, Joe. I am pleased to see you. I’m coming home tomorrow.’

  ‘So I understand.’

  He sat down opposite her and, after a moment while she looked at him, she said, ‘I called it home, but, you know, I’m afraid to enter that door. I want to be away from there as soon as ever I can. Do you understand that, Joe?’

  ‘Yes, Maggie, I understand that.’

  She pressed her head back, looking hard at him for a moment; then she said, ‘You understand most things, Joe. Somehow you’ve been forced to understand. I’ve sometimes thought that it was a good thing for the family when you came into it but a bad thing for yourself.’

  ‘That’s life, Maggie. And isn’t that the most trite remark in the English language? Yet, like many another, it’s true. I had no say in it, had I, whatever power that ordained my life, and I often think there’s more than one on that committee up there and that some are blind and others cynical.’

  ‘Don’t be bitter, Joe. That’s not like you. What’s the matter?’

  ‘Aw, Maggie.’ He waved his hand at her and then laughed. ‘Fancy you saying that; what’s the matter?’

  ‘Well, I mean’—she bridled a little—‘I know what’s happened only too well. Dear God! I know what’s happened. But as long as I’ve known you you haven’t had an acid tongue.’

  ‘That’s because I swallowed my thoughts before they slipped out of my mouth.’

  Sadly now she shook her head; then she asked, ‘Has…has something happened that I don’t yet know about?’

  ‘No, Maggie, I think you know about everything, except that Dad has suggested that I take on the house when he leaves. I think that stopped me swallowing my thoughts.’

  ‘Oh. Oh.’ She nodded now before saying, ‘That was a damn silly thing to say.’

  ‘Well, I suppose, as he says, I’d always appeared to like the house when everybody else was trying to get away from it. But under the circumstances, me there…and who else? Eh? Who else? Oh, I’m sorry.’ He took her hand, saying, ‘Don’t look so troubled.’

  ‘Did you have words with him?’

  ‘No, no; no words. Well, not really. Anyway, I’m glad you’re coming back tomorrow, for however long or short.’

  ‘I’ll have to stay until Don goes.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ He rose to his feet and sighed now. ‘We’ll all have to stay until Don goes. Poor Don. We’re praying that he won’t die, yet all of us are waiting for him to go.’

  ‘You are upset, aren’t you, Joe?’

  ‘Perhaps. Anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow, Maggie. Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye, Joe. Joe.’ He turned as he was opening the door for she was saying, ‘If I hadn’t been in love with your father I would certainly have fallen for you and said so, no matter what the age gap.’

  He jerked his chin up and laughed as he said, ‘Thanks, Maggie. That’s nice to know. And I’d have been honoured to have you.’

  When he reached the Maternity Ward and Annette’s room, Flo greeted him with, ‘It’s about time you came and talked some sense into this one here; she’s for discharging herself against the doctor’s wishes.’

  ‘Oh?’ He stood by Harvey now and looked at Annette, and he said, ‘Well, by the look of her she seems fit enough to me. Do you feel fit, Mrs Coulson?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Coulson, I feel fit. And the baby’s fit. We want to come home.’

  ‘Well, I think we’d better see the doctor, hadn’t we, and leave the decision to him?’

  ‘May a man of the law speak?’ They looked at Harvey now, who was smiling widely, and it was Flo who answered, ‘It wouldn’t be any use trying to stop you, would it, sir?’

  ‘Well, as I see it, I think the person in question should be regarded as her own doctor. Put the said person in a wheelchair, transfer her to an automobile, carry her and the said child into the house and put them straight into bed. What could be simpler?’

  Annette smiled at Harvey and said, ‘That sounds sensible. Well, what do you say, Joe?’

  ‘I still say we should leave it in the doctor’s hands. Anyway, I’ll go and have a word with someone in charge and I’ll be back.’

  After he had left the room Harvey and Flo exchanged glances and looked at Annette, and she said, ‘I’ve never known Joe to be in a temper. But…but what do you think? He’s in a temper, isn’t he?’

  ‘He’s in something.’ Flo pursed her lips and turned to Harvey, saying, ‘Don’t you think so too?’

  ‘Well, if you want to know what I think, ladies, I think that everybody, I mean everybody, puts on Joe. As far as I can gather, he’s been a dustbin for everybody’s woes, the sorter out of troubles. Oh, Joe’ll do this and Joe’ll do that. And something must have happened that’s made Joe think that he’s tired of being a dustbin. Perhaps I’m wrong; it might be something else. I don’t know. But in my short acquaintance with him, this present Joe is not the Joe that I had come to know.’

  Getting up from where she was sitting on the side of the bed, Flo said, ‘I wish I wasn’t going, that we weren’t going.’ She looked across at her husband, and he said, ‘Well, we made a decision.’

  ‘Oh…oh, yes, yes, I know, and I’m looking forward to it, and although I said I wish I wasn’t going, it’s because I just want to see Annette settled.’ She put her hand out and stroked Annette’s hair back from her forehead, adding, ‘But once you’re in your own home you can start a new life.’ Her voice trailed off; then jerking herself away from the bed, she said, ‘Oh my God! The things I say.’

  ‘Flo, I’m not upset. Things like that don’t upset me. I faced up to it a long time ago. Don will soon go. That’s why I want to get back. And you must go too and be happy in your new life. And who couldn’t help but be happy with this big handsome fellow here.’ She put out her hand and Harvey gripped it. ‘Write to me every week, won’t you? And perhaps in a little while I…I could come out for a holiday with young Flo.’

  They were both standing over her, silent now, until her arms came up and went round their necks and Flo’s tears mingled with hers and, brokenly, they said their goodbyes. And the last words Harvey spoke before leaving her were, ‘I’ll always be grateful to you, Annette, for being prepared to give your son—had he been a son—my name. You’ll never know how much that means to me.’

  Left alone, Annette gulped over the lump in her throat, telling herself she mustn’t give way, for if she got upset it would stop her going home. And yet, in another way, she was dreading going back to that house, even though it still held Don. But she wouldn’t be able to leave until he left it too. And Joe. What was the matter with Joe? She had never seen him as he had appeared a short while ago; distant. He wasn’t the Joe she could rely on, the Joe that was always there. What if he too wanted to leave? Everything was changing. It was natural, she supposed, yet she had thought that Joe was the kind of person who would never change: he was there, stable, someone you could rely on. But he had his own life to lead. She recalled that only a few weeks ago she had seen him in the town talking to Mary Carter. She was a very smart girl, about his own age. She was a Protestant, though. But then she couldn’t see religion standing in Joe’s way if he really wanted her. Then there was Irene Shilton. She had trailed him for years, and she was a Catholic. She was very pretty, younger than him. Strangely, she had n
ever liked her.

  The door opened and the nurse entered carrying the baby, and when the child was laid in her arms and the nurse said, ‘She’s putting on weight every day. Isn’t she lovely?’ she looked up at her and said, ‘I’d like to see Sister as soon as possible, please. I…’

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘No, no, nurse; nothing’s wrong. And you’ve been so kind, but I want to go home. My husband, you know, is very ill. I want him to see the baby.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. I’ll tell Sister.’

  Twelve

  It was eight o’clock the following morning. Flo and Harvey were ready for leaving: they had said their goodbyes to Don and the staff, and now they were standing outside by the car, with Joe and Harvey shaking hands.

  ‘You’ll come and see us, Joe? You promised. And you will?’

  ‘I will. I will. Don’t worry about that.’ Then he laughed as he added, ‘For two pins I’d pack my bags and come along with you now except that, at this time, two’s company.’

  Flo didn’t laugh; but now, putting her arms around Joe’s neck, she kissed him and, looking into his face, she said softly, ‘Everything comes to him who waits, Joe.’ And she jerked her head back to where Harvey was standing, the car door in his hand. ‘Look what happened to me.’ Again she kissed him, and he returned her kiss.

  He watched the car moving down the drive, Flo’s arm out of the window and, for a moment, Harvey’s hand out of the other. And then they were gone and he doubted if he’d ever see them again.

  Slowly he went back into the house. Everything comes to him who waits.

  Waits for what?

  When he entered Don’s room the nurse had just finished washing her patient and was stroking a thick quiff of hair back from his brow as she piped, ‘Who’s a pretty boy then?’