‘I’ll do anything you like, Hector. I tell you I’ve been a beast to you, but it’s going to be different…. I’ll give up Emily Scrymgeour. I’ll behave like a perfect lady, except when we’re just together, us two. Us two, Hector…. I’ll back you up all round….’
‘For God’s sake, shut up!’ said Hector. Then seizing her hands he laid his forehead on them and groaned: ‘No, I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean that.’
Elizabeth’s lips trembled, but she made no sound. She could feel Hector’s eyelashes quivering on her fingers, and she pressed her hands closer to his face to stop that fluttering. She bowed her head upon his and, still on her knees, began kissing the back of his neck.
The scent of peat and tobacco smoke from his tweed jacket, the thickness of his black cropped hair, the strength of his neck and shoulders inflamed her senses. After weeks of estrangement they were so near to each other that all this misery seemed to her suddenly an absurd irrelevance. She tried to force her hands from Hector’s grip. Laughing, she struggled with him.
But Hector held on to her wrists as if they were straws and he a drowning man. The softness and warmth of her caresses and of her body drew him towards her almost irresistibly, and yet he resisted with all his force. He had the feeling that if he yielded now he would be bound for life to the fate he had escaped in imagination that afternoon.
Elizabeth, still laughing, sank back on her knees. She did not take Hector’s resistance seriously.
‘Let me go,’ she said.
He tightened his grip.
‘Listen….’
Elizabeth looked up in alarm. His eyes were black and sombre.
‘Let me go,’ she said in a sharper voice. ‘You’re hurting me. Let go!’
Hector set her free at once, and she sat on the rug chafing her wrists.
‘Will you let me go?’ he said, and as if this unequivocal statement had broken a dam his words came rushing out in a whirling flood, tossing at Elizabeth’s feet the sediment of his despair.
‘Damned, mean, narrow little world, Calderwick,’ he finished. ‘I’m done for if I stay in it any longer. I’ve got to clear out. Will you help me? Will you back me up, Elizabeth?’
Elizabeth sat staring at him.
‘Go away?’ she said. ‘Without me?’
She seemed to herself to be shrinking and dwindling to a vanishing point on the hearthrug, her voice was small and forlorn.
The sweat stood on Hector’s forehead.
‘Don’t you see,’ he said, ‘if I go, I don’t know where I might land: I can’t risk taking you —’
‘But I can risk going!’ cried Elizabeth. ‘I’d go with you to the end of the world.’
‘But I mean to work my passage…. I can’t afford to take you.’
He bent forward and took her hands again. ‘Don’t let me down, Elizabeth. Back me up. I’ll find something for both of us…. If I don’t get out —’
He shuddered.
‘You must go,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Of course you must go. Haven’t I always wanted us to go to Canada or somewhere? But why can’t I come too? I’ll work at anything, Hector. I’ll wash dishes. I’ll scrub floors —’
‘A fellow can’t let his wife do that.’
Elizabeth sat still for a moment. Then she began to laugh hysterically.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Hector. ‘Stop it, Elizabeth: stop it, for God’s sake!’
Elizabeth’s laughter wavered into a shrill sound and died away.
‘I am your wife,’ she said. ‘Am I not? I am your wife, Hector. I’ll be a good wife. What do you want me to do?’
‘I want you to wait for me,’ Hector bent and unbent her fingers. ‘I don’t know where I’m going yet. But when I find a place fit for a woman —’
Elizabeth felt the idiotic laughter bubbling up inside her once more. She clenched her teeth on it. Shut up, she said to herself. I’m not me. I’m a wife, a woman, who has to have places that are fit for her.
‘But what am I to do while I’m waiting?’ she said aloud.
‘I thought – I thought that perhaps you could live with Aunt Janet….’
Hector had a momentary fear that Elizabeth would perceive that he was improvising. He was very grateful to her when she looked up quietly and said: ‘I’ll wait for you, Hector, as long as you like. I love you, and I shall always love you. But I won’t be a burden on anybody! I’ll find a teaching job, somewhere. After all, I’m a highly qualified young woman: it would be absurd of me to sponge on Aunt Janet.’
Hector was ashamed.
‘I don’t like doing it,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve two hundred pounds. I’ll leave you a hundred….’
‘Nonsense! You’ll need as much as you can scrape together. Where did you think of? …’
‘Anywhere…. South Africa, Australia, Brazil. Pick up any chances going.’
Hector was surprised to find how reasonable and practical his adventure began to appear when it was looked at steadily. His sense of guilt evaporated.
‘After all,’ said Elizabeth, ‘all this furniture was given us by Aunt Janet, and we can’t fling it back in her face without an explanation. We must have it out with her, and with John too.’
‘John won’t raise any objections if you don’t.’
Hector stared at his wife after saying this. A murky corner of his brain seemed to clear up. She was backing him; she was standing by him; and because she was backing him he wouldn’t have to sneak away like a coward. She was taking all the moral responsibility off his shoulders.
‘By God, Elizabeth,’ he said, ‘you understand me better than anybody!’
It was a sincere tribute to the impersonation of the Noble Wife. A lump rose in Elizabeth’s throat, but she returned his look unwaveringly.
There was one curious consequence of this interchange. Both Hector and Elizabeth felt embarrassed when they kissed each other.
ELEVEN
On the same Friday Ned Murray was sitting over his midday dinner, which, as had become his custom, he devoured alone after his brother and sister had left the room. The manse cat, a large black-and-white creature cherished by Teenie the maid, was sitting on the floor beside him, receiving portions of fish which Ned laid down with his fingers on the carpet.
The meal was usually conducted in silence. Teenie brought in the dishes, set them dumbly on the table, and forced herself to walk back to the kitchen instead of running. On this day, however, when she saw him feeding the cat so kindly she ventured a remark as she set the pudding down.
‘Tam’s in luck to-day.’
Ned looked at her hastily. There was still a remnant of fish on his plate, which he had intended to give to the cat, but he now crammed it into his own mouth, without a second glance at Teenie who was waiting to remove the plate. Thomas, a wise cat, knew that the piece of fish should have been his, and laid a paw on on Ned’s knee with an inquiring mew. Ned flung his knife and fork down with a clatter, pushed the cat away and started to his feet crying: ‘Self, self, self! That’s all you think about, is it?’ Thomas, in amazement, paused for a moment, and then as Ned continued to berate him fled to the kitchen.