In the meantime, Mona had opened the study door and found Stanley Gunther sitting in front of the fire, pale and dejected. Although a large fire was blazing and he was wearing his overcoat, he looked cold, and was hunched uncomfortably in the chair, his long legs stuck out in front of him.
“Don’t get up,” she said hurriedly, and sat down on a low stool before the fire. “I’m sorry. There’s nothing else one can say, is there? But you know how sorry I am that this should have happened.”
Stanley Gunther stared at her as if he could not take in what she was saying. His lips were blue, and suddenly he moved his hands convulsively only to link his fingers together again, the knuckles white and strained.
“They’ve told you,” he said hoarsely. “They’ve told you.”
“Yes, I’m desperately sorry for you.”
The ensuing silence was embarrassing and yet Mona could find no adequate expressions of comfort or consolation. She stared into the fire, wondering why the doctor should have given her such a difficult task.
“She’d have hated to be crippled,” Stanley Gunther said suddenly “hated it – and that is what it would have meant if she had not…”
His voice faltered, but Mona understood without words what he could not bring himself to say.
“It is much better the way it is,” she said gently. “After all, a long illness, perhaps years of being in pain, would have been terrible for her. She was so active.”
Stanley Gunther drew up his legs and leant forward in his chair, his head buried in his hands.
“I shall never forgive myself, never.”
“But why? You couldn’t help it.”
“It was my fault she was going so fast. You see we had been having an argument.”
“I wouldn’t blame yourself for that.”
“But I do,” he insisted. “I ought to have agreed with Mavis, let her have her own way, instead, well, I was obstinate, and she was angry with me.”
Mona got up and moved across the room.
‘I can see why Arthur’s worried,’ she thought. ‘He’s working himself up into a passion of remorse, the worst thing possible after years of repression. He certainly looks like a man who might have a nervous breakdown.’
She picked up a box of cigarettes.
“Let’s both have a cigarette,” she suggested, “you’ll find it soothing.”
Stanley Gunther shook his head.
“Please,” Mona pleaded. “It’s easier to talk if we’re both smoking.”
The Vicar hesitated, then took one.
“I oughtn’t to be sitting here talking,” he said weakly. “There are a lot of things to see to, things to be arranged.”
For a moment his lower lip trembled, and Mona was afraid he might burst into tears. He regained control of himself, although it was an unsteady hand that lit a match and held it out to her.
“You can leave everything to Arthur and Michael,” Mona said. “Don’t worry about anything. As soon as you feel strong enough, we will take you home.”
“I’m afraid I’m rather shaken by what has happened.”
“Of course you are. You were telling me what you and your wife were arguing about last night...”
Deliberately she reverted to the cause of his self-reproach, knowing it would be better for him to unburden his soul now, rather than continue to suppress his feelings. The expression on his face was tense, but as he answered, she felt some of the unnatural reserve and inhibitions of years slipping away.
“It was about my brother,” he said slowly. “We heard yesterday that he had been taken prisoner in Libya.”
“How awful! I am sorry.”
“I haven’t seen him for some time, as it happens. Mavis and he didn’t ‘see eye to eye’, but I felt it was my duty to go and visit his wife. She lives at Plymouth, and they are very poor. My brother was in the regular army, but he didn’t seem to get on very well.”
His low, hesitating voice lapsed into silence.
“And Mrs. Gunther didn’t want you to go?” Mona prompted.
“She never did care for John or for his wife. She thought the journey would be a needless expense. I expect she was right, but in that moment I thought differently, and that was what killed her.”
His face contorted again in an expression of pain.
Mona flicked out her ash, then quietly and deliberately said,
“Does it matter what killed her? Perhaps her time had come? I don’t know whether you are a fatalist, I think I am, but whatever the reason that made Mrs. Gunther drive too fast, the fact remains that it is too late now to regret it.”
“But you don’t understand,” Stanley Gunther said wildly. “It haunts me. I shall never be able to forget it, never be able to erase the memory of those last moments when we both spoke unkindly to one another. Poor Mavis, she was hurt and she told me, she…”
Mona had a mental picture of Mavis Gunther reaching out from beyond the grave to hold her husband, to enslave him after death as she had done when she was alive. She shuddered at the thought – it held something evil – something that was echoed in her own life by Char, who was making her mortgage the Future, from the Past.
And then, like a healing hand on a fevered brow, like the strains of immortal music creeping slowly into the senses, came the memory of that moment of wonder and joy at dawn. That moment when she had understood the wonder of the Universe, seen the unfolding pattern of progression, of life flowing onwards, forwards, outwards…
