And he had not understood when she had cried out in pain because his words were but an echo of those spoken by another man.
Six
Mrs. Gunther, arranging the knitted scarves and khaki socks on the table by the sitting room window, glanced through the thick Nottingham lace curtains from time to time, anxious not to miss anything that was happening in the village street.
She noted Wade, the gardener from The Towers, slipping in by the side door of the Crown and Anchor, she saw little Tommy Newall fighting with another choirboy as they came out of school and made a note to speak to them about it the following Sunday. At the same time she was measuring the scarves, checking them to see they were the right official length. One was two inches short and something like a smile of satisfaction curved her thin lips.
That was Mrs. Abbot’s effort, a quiet, rather nervous little woman who lived by herself at the end of the village. She’d have to speak to her about it tomorrow afternoon when they met at the Priory. Mrs. Gunther rehearsed to herself what she would say.
“I’m afraid you have not been quite accurate, Mrs. Abbot, in the measurement of your scarf. However busy we are, we must try to do our best for the brave boys who are fighting for us. If they were slipshod in their methods, goodness knows where we’d all be!”
She knew that Mrs. Abbot would be flustered by her words and upset because she had made a mistake. Her sight wasn’t as good as it had been, but that was no excuse, Mrs. Gunther told herself. It seemed to her that she must spend her time correcting the faults of others and keeping them up to the mark.
‘No one realises,’ she thought. ‘What a life of sacrifice mine is.’
There was Stanley, for instance, a man who was always prepared to let things slide. It was terrible to think what the parish would be like if she weren’t continually at his elbow, jogging his memory and insisting on him doing his duty.
And then the maid they had now – Winnie. A more feckless, lackadaisical girl she had never had to handle – and inclined to be impertinent, too.
‘Soon she’ll have to go,’ she said to herself. ‘They always get impertinent sooner or later.’
She tied the scarves together with string and, looking through the window again, saw Mrs. Howlett, the doctor’s wife, come down the street on her bicycle. Every line in Mrs. Gunther’s thin face seemed to tighten, her lips pursed themselves together, her eyes narrowed. Dorothy Howlett – how she hated her!
And to think that she, that colourless, insignificant little person, had dared to set herself up as head of the W.V.S. in Little Cobble. The impertinence of it! The daring and, what was more, the stupidity!
Mrs. Gunther almost laughed out loud as she thought with satisfaction how easily she had been able to prevent large numbers of people joining the W.V.S. Many of those who had allowed themselves to be persuaded by Dorothy Howlett because of their affection or gratitude for her husband, were now shamefacedly asking if they might join the knitting party as well.
Mrs. Gunther made it too uncomfortable for them in many ways, and the village found that while Mrs. Howlett was good-natured, Mrs. Gunther was not. It was better to keep in with the more dangerous of the two ladies, they felt – helpless pawns between two mighty queens.
Mrs. Howlett disappeared out of sight on her bicycle and Mavis Gunther was just turning from the window when, at the end of the village, she saw her husband approaching the gate of the church with someone by his side. She leant forward eagerly, peering through her spectacles, her nose almost touching the window-pane in her curiosity. Yes, it was – Mona Carsdale!
She had heard they were expecting her back and there she was, as large as life and as bold as brass, laughing up at Stanley as if she had seen him only the day before yesterday. A nice thing to be away from one’s home for over four years – but doubtless there were many good reasons for such a lengthy exile. Mavis Gunther made a mental note to find out those reasons if she could.
Her husband was opening the gate into the churchyard. She supposed Mona was going to look at the tablet that had been erected to that reprobate young man she had married so hastily. It was very queer that she had not come over from Paris for the unveiling. Mrs. Vale had made excuses for her daughter, but then she always did, and very plausible excuses they were, too. Some people might be stupid enough to believe such stories, Mrs. Gunther thought, but she was not one of them.
One had only to look at Mona Carsdale to realise that there were things in her life that could not bear too close a scrutiny. Besides, hadn’t there been that scandal when she was only eighteen? Mrs. Gunther had not forgotten about that, and she made it her business to see that few other people in the neighbourhood did, either. Disgraceful! Going about with dope fiends and taking it herself, she shouldn’t wonder. Not that Mona ever looked as if she doped, but still one never could tell, and if it wasn’t dope that was because she found other vices that were more interesting, no doubt.
Now they were entering the church porch. Mavis Gunther leant forward so far that she rapped her nose sharply against the edge of the window. She gave an exclamation of annoyance, then scowled angrily as she realised that the baker’s boy coming up to the side door had seen her. She didn’t like young Johnny Weekes anyway, always whistling noisily about the place and giving her what she suspected was a cheeky answer on more than one occasion.
Well, she’d remember to speak to Holford next time she went into the shop. She’d suggest that Johnny wasn’t as conscientious on his rounds as he might be and that there were several other boys in the village who would be more satisfactory.
Mrs. Gunther piled the khaki garments into the old suitcase in which she habitually kept them, then turned towards the door. She had not dusted the drawing room yet, and she had the notes for her Sunday School class to prepare. She wondered how long her husband and Lady Carsdale would be in the church and hoped Stanley was having the sense to ask her some questions about her plans for the future. It would be nice to know before anyone else what she intended to do and how long she was staying at home.
*
In the church Mona stood looking at the white marble slab let into the grey wall beside the entrance to the Vale vault. It was a very simple tablet in memory of Ned, saying briefly that he had lost his life accidentally at the age of twenty-two. She remembered how shocked his mother and hers had been when she had refused to allow the letters ‘R.I.P.’ to be included on the memorial.
Now she felt that perhaps her insistence on their omission had been unnecessary. What did it matter what anyone put, either on a grave or a memorial stone? But at the time, when Ned’s eager, handsome youth had been so vivid in her mind, she had protested against what had seemed to her a ridiculous and hypocritical convention.
“It’s absurd!” she had said. “Ned wanted to live. He certainly didn’t wish either to rest or be at peace. He loved life – to him it was always an exciting, joyous adventure.”
“If Ned still wants anything in another world, it will be neither inactivity nor peace. He will be living in it and living dangerously.”
She had gained her point despite protests and sweeping aside all religious texts, had substituted two words, ‘Another Adventure’.
Now she wondered why she had felt so strongly about it. After seven years it was hard to recreate Ned with any clearness in her mind. He was like laughter – a flashing, transitory emotion, delightful but without anything static or fundamental behind it. He had flashed into her life and out of it again. Now the memory of those ten months of restless excitement had become blurred, almost obliterated.
She realised that Stanley Gunther was waiting for her approval.
“It’s very nice,” she said gently, “I like it very much.”
“I am so glad,” he said. “I was afraid you might be disappointed.”
“No, it is just what I wanted,” Mona said, “simple and unpretentious. Memorials should always be like that, don’t you think?”
“I like your inscription,” he said. “At first it surprised me. I suppose the truth of the words took a little time to sink into my mind, but now I often find myself thinking of them and looking on death as an escape into a wider and more intense existence.”
Mona didn’t show the surprise she felt that a man, whose whole mission in life was to teach the evidence of the Resurrection, should speak in such a way. Instead, she stopped thinking of herself and thought of Stanley Gunther.
‘Poor man! Death will be an escape for him,’ she thought. ‘An escape from that wicked little monster of a wife who, like a black spider, spins her evil webs from the security of the Vicarage.”
Mona looked up at his lined, careworn face, at his broad shoulders, which were bowed as if he perpetually carried a load upon them.
“Perhaps we can never quite escape,” she said softly. “If we go on, we also take ourselves on with us. But surely, the nearer we get to God the more intensified everything becomes? Life, not changed, not toned down to rest, sleep and peace, but undiluted, vivid, pulsating, ecstatic – both glorious and radiant when it is released from the thraldom of a body through which it has filtered sluggishly.”
Mona had no idea why she said this. It was as if the words came through her mind and not from it, and only as she said them did she realise their significance.
A flashing stream pouring through this body, continuous, passing on unbroken and undivided, finally leaping like a flame towards its origin, towards the Creator who had given it birth.
