Mrs Hogg gathered her fur cape around her huge breasts, and speaking without a movement of her upper lip in a way that fascinated Louisa by its oddity, she said, ‘You’re an evil woman. A criminal evil old, a wicked old’, and talking like that, she made off. Louisa climbed to her attic, from where she could see the railway station set in a dip of the land, and, through her father’s old spyglass, Mrs Hogg eventually appeared like a shady yellow wasp on the platform.
When Louisa came downstairs, she said to her charwoman, ‘That visitor I had just now.’
‘Yes, Mrs Jepp?’
‘She wanted to come and look after me as I’m getting so old.’
‘Coo.’
Louisa opened a drawer in the kitchen dresser, took out a folded white cloth, placed it carefully at the window end of the table. She brought out her air-mail writing paper and her fountain pen and wrote a note of six lines. Next she folded the letter and laid it on the dresser while she replaced the white cloth in the drawer. She put away her fountain pen, then the writing paper, took up the note and went out into her garden. There she sat in the November mildness, uttering repeatedly and softly ‘Coo, Coo-oo!’ Soon a pigeon flashed out from its high loft and descended to the seat beside her. She folded the thin paper into a tiny pellet, fixed it into the band on the silver bird’s leg, stroked its bill with her brown fingers, and let it go. Off it flew, in the direction of Ladle Sands.
It is possible for a man matured in religion by half a century of punctilious observance, having advanced himself in devotion the slow and exquisite way, trustfully ascending his winding stair, and, to make assurance doubly sure, supplementing his meditations by deep-breathing exercises twice daily, to go into a flat spin when faced with some trouble which does not come within a familiar category. Should this occur, it causes dismay in others. To anyone accustomed to respect the wisdom and control of a contemplative creature, the evidence of his failure to cope with a normal emergency is distressing. Only the spiritual extremists rejoice — the Devil on account of his crude triumph, and the very holy souls because they discern in such behaviour a testimony to the truth that human nature is apt to fail in spite of regular prayer and deep breathing.
But fortunately that situation rarely happens. The common instinct knows how to gauge the limits of a man’s sanctity, and anyone who has earned a reputation for piety by prayer, deep breathing and one or two acceptable good works has gained this much for his trouble, that few people bring him any extraordinary problem.
That is why hardly anyone asked Sir Edwin Manders for a peculiar favour or said weird things to him.
He had coped, it was true, with the shock of the car accident; Laurence and Caroline were seen into safe hands. He floated over Helena’s anxiety on the strength of his stout character. He might have managed to do something suave and comforting about Helena’s other worry — her mother’s suspected criminal activities. He might have turned this upset of his social tranquillity to some personal and spiritual advantage, but then he might not. Helena instinctively did not try him with this problem. She did not know what Louisa was up to, but she understood that the difficulty was not one which the Manders’ cheque book could solve. Helena would not have liked to see her husband in a state of bewilderment. He went to Mass every morning, confession once a week, entertained Cardinals. He would sit, contemplating deeply, for a full hour in a silence so still you could hear a moth breathe. And Helena thought, ‘No, simply no’ when she tried to envisage the same Edwin grappling also with the knowledge that his mother-in-law ran a gang, kept diamonds in the bread — stolen diamonds possibly. Helena took her troubles to his brother Ernest who sailed through life wherever the fairest wind should waft him, and for whom she had always prayed so hard.
‘I feel I ought not to worry Edwin about this. He has a certain sanctity. You understand, don’t you, Ernest?’
‘Yes, of course, dear Helena, but I’m the last person, as you know, to cope with Louisa’s great gangsters. If I could invite them to lunch at my club —’
‘I’m sure you could if they are my mother’s associates,’ Helena said.
A week later, Helena went to the flat at Queen’s Gate where Caroline had lodged. It was the job of packing up the girl’s possessions. Caroline’s fracture would keep her in hospital for another month at least. The housekeeper, a thin ill-looking man, who, on Helena’s delicate inquiries, proved not to be ill but merely a retired lightweight boxer, let her in. Nice man, she thought, telling herself that she had a way with people: Laurence and Caroline had said he was frightful.
Helena was expecting Ernest to join her. She sat for a moment on Caroline’s divan; then, it was so restful, she decided to put her feet up and recline among the piled-up cushions until he should arrive. The room had been tidied up, but it was clear that Laurence and Caroline had made a sort of home of the place. The realization did not really shock Helena, it quickly startled her, it was soon over. Years ago she had come to a reckoning with the business between Laurence and Caroline and when they had parted, even while she piously rejoiced, she had felt romantically sad, wished they could be married without their incomprehensible delay. But still it was a little startling to see the evidence of what she already knew, that Laurence had been sharing the flat with Caroline, innocently but without the externals of innocence. The housekeeper had asked her, ‘How are Mr and Mrs Manders? What a shame, so newly married.’ Helena had kept herself collected, revealed nothing. That sort of remark — and this place with Laurence’s tie over the back of the chair — caused the little startles, soon over.
‘I was resting. I’m so tired running backwards and forwards to the country,’ she told Ernest when he was shown up by that nice little man.
For the first few days after the accident, till Caroline was out of her long bruised sleep, Helena had stayed intermittently at a local hotel and at Ladylees with her mother. She had been watchful, had said nothing to upset the old lady. Once in the night she had turned it over in her mind to have it out with Louisa — Mother, I’m driven mad with anxiety over this accident, I can’t be doing with worry on your account as well. Laurence told me … his idea … your gang … diamonds in the bread … tell me, is it true or not? What’s your game … what’s your source of income …?
But supposing there was nothing in it. Seventy-eight, the old woman. Helena considered and considered between her sleeps. Suppose she has a stroke! She had refrained often from speaking her mind to Louisa in case she caused the old lady a stroke, it was an old fear of Helena’s.
So she said nothing to upset her, had been more than ever alert when, on returning to the cottage one evening after her hospital visiting, Louisa told her, ‘Your Mrs Hogg has been here.’
Then Helena could not conceal her anxiety.
‘But I sent her away,’ said Louisa, ‘and I don’t think I shall see her again.’
‘Oh, Mother, what did she want?’
‘To be my companion, dear. I am able to get about very nicely.’
‘Nothing worrying you, Mother? Oh, I wish you would let us help you!’
