Mary Olivier: a Life Part 17

And Mamma would tell her a story, always the same story, going on and on, about the family of ten children who lived in the farm by the forest.

There were seven boys and three girls. The six youngest boys worked on the farm with their father--yes, he was a _very_ nice father--and the eldest boy worked in the garden with his mother, and the three girls worked in the house. They could cook and make b.u.t.ter and cheese, and bake bread; and even the youngest little girl could knit and sew.

"Had they any children?"

"No, they were too busy to think about having children. They were all very, very happy together, just as they were."

The story was like the hem, there was never any end to it, for Mamma was always finding something else for the three girls to do. She smiled as she told it, as if she saw something that pleased her.

Mary felt that she could go on sewing at the hem and p.r.i.c.king her finger for ever if Mamma would only keep that look on her face.

VIII

I.

"I can't, Jenny, I can't. I know there's a funeral coming."

Mary stood on the flagstone inside the arch of the open gate. She looked up and down the road and drew back again into the garden. Jenny, tired and patient, waited outside.

"I've told you, Miss Mary, there isn't any funeral."

"If there isn't there will be. There! I can see it."

"You see Mr. Parish's high 'at a driving in his wagonette."

It _was_ Mr. Parish's high hat. When he put the black top on his wagonette it looked like a hea.r.s.e.

They started up Ley Street towards Mr. Spall's cottage.

Jenny said, "I thought you was going to be such a good girl when Master Roddy went to school. But I declare if you're not twice as tiresome."

Roddy had gone to Chelmsted after midsummer. She had to go for walks on the roads with Jenny now at the risk of meeting funerals.

This week they had been every day to Ilford to call at Mr. Spall's cottage or at Benny's, the draper's shop in the High Street.

Jenny didn't believe that a big girl, nine next birthday, could really be afraid of funerals. She thought you were only trying to be tiresome. She said you could stop thinking about funerals well enough when you wanted.

You did forget sometimes when nice things happened; when you went to see Mrs. Farmer's baby undressed, and when Isabel Batty came to tea. Isabel was almost a baby. It felt nice to lift her and curl up her stiff, barley-sugar hair and sponge her weak, pink silk hands. And there were things that you could do. You could pretend that you were not Mary Olivier but somebody else, that you were grown-up and that the baby and Isabel belonged to you and were there when they were not there. But all the time you knew there would be a funeral on the road somewhere, and that some day you would see it.

When they got into the High Street the funeral was coming along the Barking Road. She saw, before Jenny could see anything at all, the mutes, sitting high, and their black, bunched-up weepers. She turned and ran out of the High Street and back over the railway bridge. Jenny called after her, "Come back!" and a man on the bridge shouted "Hi, Missy! Stop!" as she ran down Ley Street. Her legs shook and gave way under her. Once she fell. She ran, staggering, but she ran. People came out of their cottages to look at her. She thought they had come out to look at the funeral.

After that she refused to go outside the front door or to look through the front windows for fear she should see a funeral.

They couldn't take her and carry her out; so they let her go for walks in the back garden. When Papa came home she was sent up to the schoolroom to play with the doll's house. You could see the road through the high bars of the window at the end of the pa.s.sage, so that even when Catty lit the gas the top floor was queer and horrible.

Sometimes doubts came with her terror. She thought: "n.o.body loves me except Mark. And Mark isn't here." Mark's image haunted her. She shut her eyes and it slid forward on to the darkness, the strong body, the brave, straight up and down face, the steady, light brown eyes, s.h.i.+ning; the firm, sweet mouth; the sparrow-brown hair with feathery golden tips. She could hear Mark's voice calling to her: "Minx! Minky!"

And there was something that Mamma said. It was unkind to be afraid of the poor dead people. Mamma said, "Would you run away from Isabel if you saw her lying in her little coffin?"

II.

Jenny's new dress had come.

It was made of grey silk trimmed with black lace, and it lay spread out on the bed in the spare room. Mamma and Aunt Bella stood and looked at it, and shook their heads as if they thought that Jenny had no business to wear a silk dress.

Aunt Bella said, "She's a silly woman to go and leave a good home. At her age."

And Mamma said, "I'd rather see her in her coffin. It would be less undignified. She meant to do it at Easter; she was only waiting till Roddy went to school. She's waiting now till after the Christmas holidays."

Jenny was going to do something dreadful.

She was going to be married. The grey silk dress was her wedding-dress.

She was going to marry Mr. Spall. Even Catty thought it was rather dreadful.

But Jenny was happy because she was going to wear the grey silk dress and live in Mr. Spall's cottage and talk to him about Jesus. Only one half of her face drooped sleepily; the other half had waked up, and looked excited; there was a flush on it as bright as paint.

III.

Mary's bed stood in a corner of the night nursery, and beside it was the high yellow linen cupboard. When the doors were opened there was a faint india-rubbery smell from the mackintosh sheet that had been put away on the top shelf.

One night she was wakened by Catty coming into the room and opening the cupboard doors. Catty climbed on a chair and took something from the top shelf. She didn't answer when Mary asked what she was doing, but hurried away, leaving the door on the latch. Her feet made quick thuds along the pa.s.sage. A door opened and shut, and there was a sound of Papa going downstairs. Somebody came up softly and pulled the door to, and Mary went to sleep again.

When she woke the room was full of the grey light that frightened her.

But she was not frightened. She woke sitting up on her pillow, staring into the grey light, and saying to herself, "Jenny is dead."

But she was not afraid of Jenny. The stillness in her heart spread into the grey light of the room. She lay back waiting for seven o'clock when Catty would come and call her.

At seven o'clock Mamma came. She wore the dress she had worn last night, and she was crying.

Mary said, "You haven't got to say it. I know Jenny is dead."

The blinds were drawn in all the windows when she and Mark went into the front garden to look for snowdrops in the border by the kitchen area. She knew that Jenny's dead body lay on the sofa under the kitchen window behind the blind and the white painted iron bars. She hoped that she would not have to see it; but she was not afraid of Jenny's dead body. It was sacred and holy.

She wondered why Mamma sent her to Uncle Edward and Aunt Bella. From the top-storey windows of Chadwell Grange you could look beyond Aldborough Hatch towards Wanstead Flats and the City of London Cemetery. They were going to bury Jenny there. She stood looking out, quiet, not crying. She only cried at night when she thought of Jenny, sitting in the low nursery chair, tired and patient, drawing back from her violent caresses, and of the grey silk dress laid out on the bed in the spare room.

She was not even afraid of the City of London Cemetery when Mark took her to see Jenny's grave. Jenny's grave was sacred and holy.

IX

I.