Читать книгу Imagined Corners - Willa Muir - Страница 9

At about the same time, in the same town of Calderwick, and only round the corner from the manse, young Mrs John Shand was buttoning her gloves and tilting her head to study, in the long mirror, the hang of her new coat. It had a perfect line, she decided; most women, of course, wouldn’t have the shoulders for it. Whatever Hector’s wife had on, bride or no bride, she would be put in the shade by such elegance.

Mabel Shand smiled to her own reflection, an approving smile. Her teeth were strong, white and even; her skin was naturally fresh and finely textured. She bent her knee slightly and admired the fall of her garments; most women’s thighs were too short, but she had a long and graceful curve from the hip to the knee. She felt that she was marked out for superiority, unlike the majority of the Calderwick women, botched and clumsy creatures who should be thankful for anything they could get.

Her gloves were buttoned. While she was still at school she had read in a magazine that no lady ever left the buttoning of her gloves to be done on the stairs or in the hall or, horror of horrors, outside the front door. Mabel had never forgotten that, and in her marriage she had her reward. From a farm in the village of Invercalder she had, two years ago, hooked the biggest fish in the town of Calderwick, John Shand, the head of an old-established firm of grain merchants and flour millers.

Sarah Murray, too, had been born in Invercalder, where her father was the village schoolmaster, and like Mabel had been promoted to Calderwick, so that, geographically at least, their worlds were the same. But either because the grey stone schoolhouse stood bleakly on a hill at the west end of the village and the farm lay snug in a hollow at the east end, or because a schoolmaster’s time-table is ruled by will while a farmer’s is governed by capricious seasons, life in the schoolhouse was hard, angular and rigid, whereas in the farm it was kindly and easy-going. Mabel accordingly was left to form herself, but Sarah was rigorously formed by her father, and the process had been so thorough that she had no inkling of it. From the kindling of the first fire in the morning to the blotting out of the last light before going to bed she found the whole justification of life in the fulfilment of daily routine. That routine Mabel Shand ignored, in so far as a Calderwick woman could ignore it. In the same way she ignored the orderly activities of the municipality; it gave her no thrill of satisfaction to know that her bread was regularly delivered and her dustbins emptied daily. Sarah, if she had pictured a web of the world, might have regarded herself as one of many flies caught in it by God, her sole consolation being the presence of the other flies and the impartial symmetry of the web, but Mabel lived at the heart of her own spider’s web, and every thread from the outside world led directly to herself.

Mrs John Shand came down the steps of number seven Balfour Terrace just as Sarah Murray rounded the corner. She might as well walk up with Sarah, she thought. Poor old thing, what a frump!

Sarah paused and looked round. ‘Are you going up my way, Mabel, to the High Street?’

‘Yes; to the new house, you know. Hector and his wife are coming home this morning.’

‘Oh, I’d forgotten they were coming to-day. They’ve been up Deeside, haven’t they? I’ve never seen Mrs Hector; what’s she like?’

Mabel nearly shrugged her shoulders.

‘You’ll see her in church on Sunday, I suppose. She’s considered clever.’

You won’t like that, thought Sarah, but checked the thought immediately. Even though she had known Mabel from childhood she tried to be charitable towards the wife of her brother’s leading elder.

Mabel’s face twinkled for a moment as she recalled the first occasion on which she had seen the present Mrs Hector Shand. Hector had whirled her up to the University to meet the girl, and Elizabeth had turned up for tea in a cheap, striped cotton frock and sand-shoes. Sand-shoes!

‘That’s a nice coat, Mabel.’ Sarah was trying to atone for her uncharitable thoughts. ‘New, isn’t it?’

‘First time on to-day. Latest fashion, my dear. John likes it immensely.’

‘No doubt.’

In spite of herself Sarah’s tone was blighting. It was long since she had had a new coat, and what with one thing and another, Ned’s gas and coal and keep, it would be a long time before she got one.

She always dries up when I mention John, said Mabel to herself. And John would never have looked at her in any case.

‘How’s Ned?’ she asked.

‘Not any better, I’m afraid.’ Sarah’s voice lost its edge. ‘Mabel, I simply don’t know what to do. What can we do?’

Mabel felt a vague discomfort.

‘Ned’s always very nice to me whenever I see him.’ It sounded almost like self-defence.

‘That’s just it,’ burst out Sarah. ‘He’s nice to everybody except to me and William. It doesn’t matter what we do. Yesterday it was a newspaper he said I’d deliberately hidden from him because there was a job in it he meant to apply for. He said I was always interfering with his happiness. It’s so unjust, Mabel; it’s so unreasonable: the more I think of it the more desperate I feel. I’ve tried everything; I’ve coaxed him and scolded him and ignored him, and he just gets worse and worse. I told William this morning that if—’

She stopped herself. When Ned came again to his senses it would never do for Mabel to be in a position to tell him that Sarah had even thought of sending him away.

‘You’ve known Ned all his life,’ she went on. ‘Was he ever like this when he was going to school?’

‘He was always shy.’ Mabel’s discomfort was increasing. ‘It wasn’t easy to know what he was thinking.’

‘But you used to bicycle in to school with him every day, Mabel. Surely you would have noticed if there was anything? I’ve racked my brains and racked my brains and I can’t think of an explanation. He was so brilliant at school and at the University, and he was always as quiet as a mouse when he came home. Even when he had that breakdown in his finals he wasn’t like this.’

Mable’s uneasiness was now tinged with excitement. It seemed natural to her that she should be the centre of the world to others as well as to herself, and she had always suspected that what had unsettled Ned in the beginning was her marriage to John Shand. It wasn’t her fault, was it? She had flirted a little with the boy, but then she had flirted with so many boys. A kiss or two meant nothing when one was sixteen. It wasn’t her fault. But it must have left an impression on Ned. She could wager that no other girl had ever kissed him. Half rueful and half pleased she glanced sideways at Sarah. Of course Sarah wouldn’t understand.

‘He’ll get over it,’ she announced confidently. Then on a sudden impulse she added: ‘I’ll help him to get over it if you like. Let him come out to golf with me this afternoon.’

Sarah’s excessive surprise and gratitude might have betrayed her to a less indifferent observer.

‘Oh, that’s nothing,’ said Mabel. ‘Tell him to come round for me at two o’clock.’

Sarah hesitated.

‘It’s so good of you that I don’t like to suggest – but do you think you could possibly come round for him? It’s so difficult to get him to do anything.’

Mabel raised her eyebrows. However, the occasion was an extraordinary one.

‘Very well,’ she said.

Even though her relief was tempered by self-reproach Sarah turned down the High Street with a lighter heart after parting from Mabel. She felt confusedly that William’s Christian charity towards all the world was on a higher level than her own suspicious judgments, but she found it difficult to believe in Divine grace without concrete instances. This morning, however, she had had a lesson. Let that be a lesson to you, she told herself sharply, emerging from her depression into the imperative mood which she mistook for God.

That was a common mistake in and around Calderwick, and Sarah’s father, who had passed it on to her, was not its originator. Even her brother William could not eliminate the imperative mood from his speculations, although his use of it was quite opposed to Sarah’s. ‘God’s in His heaven, therefore all must be well with the world,’ was his version, while Sarah’s, as she made her way towards Mary Watson’s shop, could have been expressed as: ‘All’s well with the world – or nearly so – therefore God must be in His heaven.’

Mary Watson’s shop was another stronghold of the imperative mood. Miss Watson felt it her duty to see that all was well with the world around her, in case God should be jeopardized in His heaven by aberrant humanity. Her father had been an elder in St James’s United Free Church, and although she had inherited his business as a draper she had not been allowed to inherit his eldership, which was perhaps the reason why her moral vigilance, unremitting in general, was especially relentless towards the minister and elders of that church. It was the boast of the town that Mary Watson had driven three ministers away from St James’s in as many years. Even William Murray’s mildness had not disarmed the doughty woman; she dubbed him ‘Milk-and-water Willie,’ and told him to his face that he would never win grown folk from their sins.

Usually, on entering Mary’s shop in the High Street, Sarah felt that she had interrupted a tirade against her brother. The over-loud tones of a customer saying hastily, ‘Aweel, I’ll just take these, Miss Watson,’ never failed to make her bristle. On this occasion, however, she found the shop empty, and, still remembering her lesson, even smiled pleasantly in Mary’s face, saying: ‘Lovely weather for September, isn’t it?’

‘No’ sae bad,’ admitted Mary, ‘But a’thing’s very dry.’

Things were not drier than her tone. Her attitude said plainly: ‘I don’t take it as a favour that you come into my shop: it’s only your duty to support a member of your own congregation.’

As the bales of material were unrolled with a thump and measured off on a yardstick Mary’s tongue was as active as her hands.

‘I suppose you’ve heard that the Town Council has granted a licence to the braw new Golf Club? That’s a fine state o’ things, Miss Murray. There’s mair pubs than kirks in the town already. I hope the minister is to do something about it? The Town Council should be weel rappit ower the knuckles.’

Sarah was well aware that Mary regarded the minister as incapable of rapping anyone over the knuckles. His failure to rap the Town Council would only become another grievance.

‘You should stand for the Town Council and do it yourself, Miss Watson.’ This was a hastily improvised defence, but its effect was unexpected. Mary bridled.

‘Me, Miss Murray! What would put that into your head now?’

‘I’m sure the minister would agree with me.’

‘Aweel, I’m no’ saying. If you and he think it’s my duty—’

Mary’s face was impassive again.

‘Of course it’s your duty.’

‘Ay, now, I never thought o’ that.’

Mary slowly folded up the stuff and made it into a neat parcel.

‘I’ll see what my sister says till’t.’

Then, as if conscious of weakness, she added in her sharpest voice:

‘And you might tell the minister that he hasna darkened our door for mair than twa months. My sister’s a poor bedridden woman, and even if he wasna the minister it wad only be decent of him to give her a look-in in the by-going.’