Latter End Read online

  “The old Worcester. Minnie and I don’t take it either, and Jimmy has given it up, so it’s only Lois and Antony, and Lois takes Turkish.”

  “How like Lois! Well, Antony won’t drink Turkish. And he likes milk.”

  “Manny’s got it all ready. Lois just has a cup. She has a drop of vanilla in it. And put the little bottle of cognac on the tray.”

  Julia made a face.

  “What muck!”

  The others were out on the terrace. Beyond a grey retaining wall the level turf took the shadow of the cedar which was Jimmy’s pride. It had cones on it this year, like flocks of little owls roosting on the great spreading branches. On the other side of the lawn a wide herbaceous border displayed a glowing pattern of every lovely tint, enriched by the evening sun. One of those perfect windless evenings when a sky without a cloud has lost the heat which veiled its delicate blue.

  They came in reluctantly, first one, and then another. Antony ’s mood of contentment deepened. His momentary anger had passed. He felt at peace with all the world.

  It was when Minnie Mercer was going out of the room with the coffee tray that Lois got up and went out too. She hurried past Minnie in the hall, actually brushing against the tray and bringing down Antony ’s cup with a clatter.

  Minnie went on to the pantry, where she washed up the cups and put them away. Polly Pell was busy with the dinner things, wiping the glasses very slowly and carefully as Mrs. Maniple had taught her-a thin child of seventeen with a sensitive look. Minnie talked to her for a minute or two about a married sister whose first baby had just been christened, thought the name they had chosen very pretty, and then turned to go back to the drawing-room. She had to pass the downstairs cloakroom-but she did not pass it. Such a distressing choking sound met her ear that after a moment of alarmed hesitation she tried the door, found it unlatched, and went in. Lois Latter, grasping and retching, was bent forward over the lavatory basin.

  Shocked and distressed beyond measure, Minnie did all the kind offices that were possible, and when the spasm had passed, tidied up in her quiet, methodical way. Lois sat where Minnie had guided her, on the small hard chair which was all that the place could offer. She was as white as her dress, her features sharp, the fine skin drenched with sweat, but as Minnie turned round from the basin, she drew a long breath and said,

  “I’m all right now.”

  “Shall I help you upstairs?”

  Lois took another of those breaths, moved a little, and said,

  “No, I don’t need help. I’m all right now. Just wait a minute.”

  “Can I get you anything?”

  “A little water-” She took two or three sips, and straightened up. “I’m all right-that’s going to stay. I can’t think what came over me.” Her brows drew together in a frown. “It must have been the mushrooms. Mrs. Maniple must have been careless. The fact is, she’s getting past her work. I’ll have to speak to Jimmy.”

  Minnie Mercer knew better than to make any comment, but she couldn’t help looking grieved, and it needed no more than that. Lois let her temper go.

  “Of course you’ll stand up for her! Even if she poisons me! But it mightn’t have been me, you know-it might have been Jimmy! You wouldn’t be quite so calm about it then, or quite so sorry for Mrs. Maniple!”

  “Mrs. Latter-” Minnie’s gentle protest got no farther than that.

  Lois got up, steadying herself by the chair.

  “I really don’t feel fit to have an argument. I’m going up to my room… No, I shan’t need you. You’d better go back to the drawing-room. And you’re not to say a word to anyone-do you hear? Not one single word. If I don’t come down in ten minutes, you can come up. But it’s over-I’m sure about that. Only I can’t go back looking like this.”

  It was really no more than ten minutes before she opened the drawing-room door and came in, her white dress trailing, a faint clear colour in her cheeks. To Jimmy and to Ellie Street she looked just as she had looked at dinner. Even to Minnie there was very little trace of what had passed. Julia thought, “Damn it all-she’s lovely!”

  Antony gave her a hard scrutinizing look as she went past him. If that was her own colour, he’d eat his hat. But in the dining-room it had been her own-he was quite positive on that score. He allowed himself to wonder-

  CHAPTER 6

  Julia put out the light, waited for the darkness round her to clear, and went surefooted through it to the window. She drew the curtains back across the bay and stood there looking out. The three windows were open, casements wide and the night air coming in like a soft enchanting tide. The room looked to the side of the house. There was a clear sky, but no moon yet. Beyond a small formal garden there were the black mysterious shapes of trees. There was no wind. Nothing moved under that clear sky.

  She came to the bed beside Ellie’s and got in, humping the pillows at her back, because this was what they had both been waiting for-Ellie to talk and she to listen. As she settled down, Ellie’s hand came out and clutched hers.

  “Oh, Julia-” It was a sigh of utter relief. And then without any warning Ellie began to cry.

  All day long, and for many days, the tears had lain cold and heavy at her heart, and at night she had kept them frozen there because she did not dare to let them fall. It would be like letting go, and she didn’t dare to let go, because she mightn’t be able to take hold again. Only now that Julia was here it was different. She could cry, and Julia would stop her when she had cried enough.

  Julia let her cry, not touching her except that she left her hand in Ellie’s-not speaking, but just being there. All their life Julia had been there. That meant security for Ellie. It was always Julia who led and Ellie who followed, Julia who dragged her into scrapes and then miraculously got her out of them again. Somehow deeply, despairingly, Ellie clung to the idea that Julia could get her out of this, which wasn’t a scrape but the threatening of everything she cared for. Even as the tears ran down and soaked her pillow, she began to feel warm waves of comfort coming from Julia.

  Presently Julia’s voice came to her, warm too, and deep.

  “Ellie, you’ve cried enough.”

  “I expect-I have-”

  “Then stop! Have you got a handkerchief?”

  Ellie said, “Yes,” on a sob. She let go of Julia, felt under her pillow, and blew her nose.

  “Now don’t cry any more. You’d better tell me what it’s all about.”

  There was another sob, and a big one.

  “It’s Ronnie!”

  “He might be dead, and he isn’t,” said Julia. “Suppose you think about that and stop crying.”

  “I know-it’s wicked of me, isn’t it?”

  “Idiotic!” said Julia.

  Ellie began to feel better. There is something extraordinarily reassuring about being told that your fears are idiotic. She felt for Julia’s hand again, and found it comforting and strong.

  “I expect I am. But Matron says he’ll never get better where he is, and I’m so frightened Lois won’t have him here.”

  “She won’t if you’re frightened. The more you’re frightened of people like Lois, the more they trample.”

  Ellie caught her breath.

  “I know. But I can’t help it-I am frightened.”

  “It’s fatal,” said Julia.

  Ellie clung to her hand.

  “It’s no good saying things like that. I can’t help it-it’s the way I’m made. She’s a trampler, and I’m a doormat, and she’ll go on wiping her feet on me until I end up like Minnie, only not half so good.”

  “She will if you let her,” said Julia.

  “I can’t stop her. But I’m going to speak to Jimmy tomorrow-not that it will do any good-”

  “I don’t know-it might. I could speak to him, too, and- perhaps Antony. Between us we might get him to the point of remembering that it’s his house, and that if he wants to have Ronnie here it’s his business.”

  Ellie said in an extinguished voice,


  “You don’t know Lois-she’d get round him somehow- she always does.”

  “Well, I think we’ll have a go at it.”

  She felt rather than knew that Ellie was trembling.

  “It won’t be any good-she gets her own way. You know old Mrs. Marsh-”

  “What has she got to do with it?”

  “I’m telling you. When her son came home from India she just didn’t know how to be happy enough, and he was quite good to her in his stupid fat way.”

  “Oh, he wasn’t as bad as that-I rather liked Joe Marsh.”

  Ellie pulled at her hand.

  “He’s got fatter and stupider. And he’s married an odious girl from Crampton-as hard as nails-she really is. Lois has her up here to sew. Honestly, she’s a most frightful girl. You should hear Manny on the subject.”

  “I probably shall.”

  “Well, this horrible Gladys had made up her mind from the beginning that she was going to get rid of Mrs. Marsh, and she’s done it. With her stiff leg, she can’t take a regular job, but she did things like minding babies while the mothers went to the cinema, and she liked doing it. And it was her cottage, where she’d lived ever since she married Joe’s father, and that beast of a girl just pushed her out of it and got her taken away to the institute.”

  There was a little pause before Julia said,

  “What has that got to do with Lois?”

  The answer came in a breathless hurry.

  “Lois put it into her head, and backed her up. Manny’s raging. The Marshes are some sort of cousins-”

  “Does Jimmy know?”

  “I don’t know-not how it was done anyhow. He thinks she’s had to go to the infirmary because of her leg.”

  Julia said in a surprised voice,

  “Why didn’t you tell him?”

  “It wouldn’t do any good. It’s the sort of thing that’s happening all the time, only Jimmy can’t see it. Lois puts it her way, and he can’t see anything else. She wants old Hodson’s cottage for some friends of hers, and you’ll see she’ll get it.”

  “Jimmy wouldn’t do that.”

  “She’ll make him. You don’t know Lois like I do. She’ll persuade him that it’s much better for old Hodson to go and live with his widowed daughter-in-law in London, where he’ll hate every minute of it and go right down the drain. But of course that doesn’t matter to Lois-she’ll get her way, and her friends will get their week-end cottage.”

  There was a silence. There were a great many things which Julia could have said. She thought perhaps she had better not say them. Soothing down was what Ellie wanted, not raking up. She held her tongue because she couldn’t think of anything soothing to say.

  After a moment Ellie burst out again.

  “It will be just the same about Ronnie-you see if it isn’t! Jimmy will say yes to me, and to you, and to Antony, and then Lois will get hold of him and he’ll say no, because she’ll make him believe that it’s much better for Ronnie to be in a hospital or a convalescent home, just as it’s much better for Mrs. Marsh to be in the institute, and for poor old Hodson to be in London with a daughter-in-law who doesn’t want him. I wouldn’t mind so much if she was honest about it. She isn’t. She’s got to pretend that it’s what’s best for everyone, instead of saying bang out that it’s just what she wants.”

  Julia said in her deep voice,

  “Stop shaking, Ellie. And stop working yourself into a state over Lois. It doesn’t do any good, and it wears you out. She’s poison all right-I always knew she was. But she’s here, and she’s Jimmy’s wife. Something can be done about Ronnie. That’s why I’m here. Now the first thing that suggests itself is a job where they would let you have him with you.”

  Ellie caught her breath.

  “It isn’t any good. I’ve tried. I put in an advertisement, with a box number. There were only two answers, and they were both from slave drivers. All the work of a house- cooking and everything. I couldn’t have done it and looked after Ronnie too.”

  “What did you say in the advertisement?”

  “I tried to make it stand out-there were such a lot of people wanting things. So I put, ‘I want a domestic job where I can have my husband with me. He has lost a leg.’ ”

  “And you only got two answers?”

  “That’s all.”

  Julia lay frowning in the half-light. The moon had risen. She could see the footrail of her bed and of Ellie’s bed. She could see the black mass of the old-fashioned wardrobe against the wall beyond. The three bright windows showed the illumined sky. She said slowly,

  “Ellie-”

  “Yes?”

  “If Ronnie could go to a really nice convalescent home, mightn’t it be better for him than having rows with Lois, here?”

  She felt Ellie’s hand jerk and pull away.

  “I shouldn’t see him-”

  “But if it made him well? He would be able to take up his job, and you would be together all the time.”

  Ellie said in a muffled voice,

  “I didn’t think you’d be against me too.”

  “I’m not.”

  It was like Julia not to make protestations.

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Then hadn’t you better explain?”

  Ellie’s hand crept back, catching at hers.

  “We’re not getting a chance. We had a month together, and after that two week-ends, and since then he’s been in hospital. It isn’t giving us a chance. I go over there, and I’m tired before I start. I haven’t got any go or any colour, and half the time I can’t think of anything to say. I can’t be amusing, or gay, or any of the things he needs.” She burst into tears all over again. “Oh, Julia, he’s got such a pretty nurse!”

  Out of the choking sounds that followed, a battered sentence emerged.

  “Sometimes-I feel-as if I could-kill Lois.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Julia got Jimmy Latter alone after breakfast next morning. He was smoking a pipe on the terrace, and she dragged him into the study and shut the door. Lois had altered the drawing-room almost beyond recognition-new covers, new curtains, new carpets, new ornaments, and all the furniture moved around and changed. But she hadn’t started on the study yet. There were the old shabby rugs on the floor, the old brown curtains at the windows, the old shabby books on the shelves. Of course no one ever studied here or ever had, but it was Jimmy’s room, and it had been his father’s before him, and Julia felt a lot better when she had got him there and the door was shut. She would have locked it if she could, but the key had been lost a long time ago, nobody knew how or when.

  She sat on the arm of one of the big chairs and said, “Jimmy, I want to talk to you about Ronnie.” Antony had always told her she hadn’t any tact, and when she flung back, “But what’s the good of beating about the bush? If I’m going to say a thing I say it,” he usually laughed and said, “You’re telling me!”

  Well, she had said what she had come to say, and Jimmy was frowning, his pipe in his hand and the smoke going up between them. Even before he spoke she knew that Lois had got in first.

  “You know, Julia, it won’t do-having him here, I mean. It simply won’t do. Of course it’s natural Ellie should want it, and I’d be pleased enough to have him, poor chap-you know that. But, as Lois says, Ellie would kill herself looking after him. You’ve only to look at her to see she’s not fit for it. Why, the poor chap’s a cripple-she couldn’t possibly manage. I tell you I’m very worried about her as it is. Here she is, at home, with every comfort, and Lois to look after her, and she looks like a ghost-no colour, no spirits. And you want her to take on a heavy nursing job like that. I won’t hear of it!” Julia’s cheeks flew two red flags. She had very seldom been so angry. She had just sense enough to know that if she wanted to play Ellie’s game she mustn’t let her temper go. If it had been a game of her own, she would have thrown the cards on the table with a will and counted it well lost for the pleasure of saying what she thought about Lois. But
it was Ellie’s game.

  Her cheeks flamed and her eyes smouldered, but she controlled her tongue. Jimmy, looking at her a little uneasily, was struck by her likeness to Marcia. And he had not only been very fond of Marcia, but he had respected her judgment. This, and the likeness, began insensibly to colour his thoughts. Julia’s silence gave them time. When she spoke at last, her voice was pitched quite low.

  “Jimmy-do you remember what staff you had here before the war?”

  He said, “That’s a long time ago. Everything’s different now.”

  “I know. But all the same, do you remember? There was Mrs. Maniple, with a kitchenmaid under her, and the between-maid after twelve o’clock, and Mrs. Huggins to scrub the floors. That’s on the kitchen side. For the rest of the house there was a butler, house-parlour maid, housemaid, the between-maid till twelve o’clock, and Mrs. Huggins any time there was extra work-people staying, or spring-cleaning- all that kind of thing.”

  He took an angry pull at his pipe.

  “What’s the good of talking like that? Everyone’s had to cut down.”

  “I know they have. But just think for a minute, Jimmy, and you’ll see why Ellie looks tired. She and Minnie are doing what it used to take a man and three maids to do.”

  “You’re leaving Lois out.”

  Julia looked at him.

  “Yes-I’m leaving Lois out.”

  He turned away, went off to the writing-table, and stood there with his back to her, picking up first one thing and then another from a crowded pen-tray-picking them up and dropping them again with flustered, jerky fingers. When he turned round his face was red. He said angrily,

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Julia’s right hand lay clenched in her lap. She drove the nails into her palm. She mustn’t let Jimmy see that she was angry too. She couldn’t manage him that way. Mummie never got angry with him or with anyone. That was why everyone listened to her. If only things didn’t boil inside you until you felt you didn’t care-

  She’d got to care about Ellie. She managed such a temperate, reasonable voice that it surprised her.