Patricia Wentworth - Latter End

If she had been going to be angry, it passed. She laughed instead. It was his old game of fishing for a rise. Just at the moment she didn’t even want to.

He struck a match and lighted her cigarette. Their lips were very near. With sickening suddenness Julia’s heart turned over. “Oh, God, it’s all going to begin again! How damnable to be a woman!”

She drew back, her face gone hard, all the muscles tightened, the brow heavy, the bones of the chin defined. Before he could speak she had repeated her question.

“What did Lois tell you?”

He drew at his cigarette.

“I gathered from her, and from Jimmy, that I should find a regular family party at Latter End. Ellie and Minnie are there, aren’t they?”

“Oh, yes!”

“And what do you mean by that, and by having to go down?”

She blew out a little cloud of smoke.

“Did Lois tell you how she was running the house?”

“She gave me to understand that it was the perfect communist state, each for all and all for each.”

“Do you see Lois being communal?”

“Frankly, no. But she was quite lyrical over the beauty of the arrangement.”

Julia looked at him with frowning intensity.

“Did she tell you who did the work?”

“I gathered that Mrs. Maniple was still in the kitchen, but practically singlehanded.”

“There’s a girl from the village, one of the Pells-quite a nice child. Even Lois couldn’t expect Manny to scrub all those stone floors.”

“She did say Manny was getting past her work.”

“She cooks like a angel, but Lois will out her as soon as she can find anyone else. Manny hates her, and she knows it. Of course she’s pretty old. She remembers Jimmy being christened.”

“Well, he’s only-what is it-fifty-one?”

“She was kitchenmaid-that would make her about seventy. At the moment Jimmy is digging his toes in, but it’s not much good with Lois. Well, that’s the kitchen. Did she tell you who did all the rest of the work?”

“She indicated that that was where the communist state came in.”

Julia leaned forward with her eyes blazing.

“Mrs. Huggins comes up from the village once a week and the garden boy fills the coal scuttles, and every other blessed bit of work in the house is done by Minnie and Ellie! Lois does damn-all!”

Antony murmured, “Each for all, and all for each-”

“Each and all for Lois,” said Julia roundly. “You’ve just been having lunch with her. Did her hands look as if she ever did any housework? Ellie used to have pretty hands-”

“Well, why do they stand it? Why don’t they go off and get themselves decent jobs?”

Julia drew fiercely at her cigarette.

“What sort of job could Minnie Mercer get? She’s never been trained for anything, and she’s nearly fifty. She’s always lived in Rayle, and ever since Dr. Mercer died she’s been at Latter End. She’s a pet and an angel, but it’s no good pretending she’s got a backbone, because she hasn’t. She’s anybody’s doormat. And as long as it was Jimmy and Mummie it didn’t matter, because they loved her, and she was perfectly happy being their doormat. It’s not so much fun when it’s Lois.”

Her voice went down into its own depths and was lost, but her eyes went on speaking. They said furiously, “Go on! Take up the cudgels and defend her! Say how delightful it would be to be Lois’ doormat! Say how much you enjoyed it yourself two years ago!”

Antony said nothing. He allowed a slightly sarcastic smile to curve his lips and waited for the silence to suggest to Julia that she was making a fool of herself. When a betraying colour ran up into her cheeks he said,

“All right, I grant you Minnie-she wouldn’t transplant. But Ellie could get herself a job, couldn’t she?”

“She won’t-because of Ronnie. I suppose they oughtn’t to have married on nothing, but they were awfully in love and everyone round them was doing it, so they did it too. He was training for estate management under old Colonel Fortescue’s agent, and the job more or less promised to him when Mr. Bunker retired. Well, now that Ronnie has lost a leg it isn’t so easy. Colonel Fortescue has been awfully decent-he’ll hold the job for any reasonable time. I believe he’s doing the work himself, but it’s too much for him. Old Bunker died just before the total surrender, and the bother is, Ronnie’s not up to it-he still has a lot of pain, and they can’t get him fitted with an artificial leg. Well, he’s in hospital at Crampton, and Ellie can get over to see him two or three times a week. That’s what keeps her at Rayle, but what with doing twice as much as she ought to do in the house and those long bicycle rides, it’s getting her down. She has just gone away to a shadow.”

The antagonism between them had died. She was talking and he was listening as if they were still part of one family, one household, with no Lois to disturb its peace or wrench its ties apart. He said,

“I see. And Ellie isn’t much of a go-getter-she never was.”

“We can’t all be go-getters-and I thought men didn’t like them anyway.”

“They don’t, unless it’s very carefully concealed.”

Her eyes laughed scornfully back at him.

“That’s it! I seem to remember your telling me I’d never get a husband if I didn’t get a nice velvet glove to cover my iron hand. Well, I haven’t got a husband.”

Antony smiled disarmingly.

“And you don’t want one. You see, I know all the answers. You hate, loathe and despise my unfortunate sex, and you wouldn’t dream of marrying one of them. But, my child, take it from me that the most ferocious man-eating female of the pack rather likes to feel that she could have had one of the despicable creatures if she had wanted to. It would, for instance, be a solace to your old age to remember how many of us you had refused. I suppose you would refuse us?”

“What do you think?”

“Well, I don’t know, and I’d rather like to. Just as a matter of academic interest of course. Suppose I were to say, ‘Darling, I love you passionately,’ what would be your reaction?”

Julia was as honest as she was brave. Her courage stood up well to the stab, but her honesty took rather a bad fall. She was pleased and amazed to hear herself laugh and say,

“When you do love me passionately you’ll find out.”

He said in rather an odd voice,

“The question is adjourned. Perhaps we’d better get back to Ellie. Street must have something?”

Julia felt as if she had been running hard. She took a long breath.

“They’ve got about three hundred pounds between them, and they’re hanging on to it like mad to furnish their house if he gets Colonel Fortescue’s job. There’s a house, but nothing in it.”

“How soon is Street likely to be fit?”

“They don’t know. That’s really why I’m going down. Look here, you won’t say anything, will you, but Ellie thinks they’d let Ronnie out of hospital if she had anywhere to take him. She says Matron told her so last time she went over. You see, he’s rather got stuck. They think if he was at home with her, it would give him a lift. The question is, can it be managed?”

“Jimmy-”

“It isn’t Jimmy, and you know it. It’s Lois. Jimmy would say yes like a shot, but if Lois says no, it’s no. You think I can’t be fair about her, but I’m being as fair as I can. From Ellie’s point of view and mine, Jimmy is our brother, and Latter End has always been our home. From Jimmy’s point of view Ellie and I are his sisters, he is very fond of us, and Latter End is still our home. But from Lois’ point of view we don’t count-we’re not any relation at all. The way she looks at it, Jimmy’s stepmother went off and married a man called Vane who got killed in a car smash, after which she came back to Latter End, had twins, and imposed on Jimmy’s good nature by staying on and bringing them up there. Lois thinks Jimmy was lamentably weak over the whole business. At least when Mummie died he could have pushed us out to earn our living, instead of which he just went on pretending that we were his sisters, and that he liked having us there. You see, I’m being perfectly fair.”