Джеймс Хилтон - Morning Journey

She went on: “He had asthma sometimes. He took pills for it with opium in them, and the doctor told him never to take more than two at a time, no matter how bad the attack was. They were in a little bottle that he carried in his vest pocket. Today, when I looked, it was empty. He must have taken at least a dozen.”

“But how can you possibly know that? Didn’t the doctor ask about the pills?”

“No. It wasn’t the same doctor that gave him the prescription—that one left the district, and this is a new man who hadn’t seen him before.”

“So what DID he say?”

“He thought it was a heart attack. I told him he had been warned by the other doctor about his heart.”

“Had he?”

The strain touched her lips now, making them veer and tremble. “I told the doctor he had.”

Paul didn’t speak for a moment; he was pondering. Presently he said: “I’m still puzzled—I can’t see that you’ve any reason to draw the conclusion you do. When and where did you last see the bottle with pills in it?”

“On his bedside table. It was nearly full. I was taking him a cup of tea before breakfast. A few days ago—perhaps a week.”

“Then how can you be certain about what happened this morning? Any time during the past week he could have—”

“But he wouldn’t, unless he had an attack, and he hadn’t had one since —oh, months.”

“How do you know THAT?”

“He’d have told me, or else I’d have noticed. He always coughed so much and it left him weak afterwards. It’s not something you can hide from people in the same house.”

“That may be, but I still say there’s no proof that he took all those pills this morning.”

“I think he MUST have.”

“But WHY? Surely you don’t WANT to think so? And if the doctor was satisfied—he was, wasn’t he?”

“Yes—after I talked to him. He wrote out a certificate, but I don’t think he would have if he’d seen the empty bottle.”

He said sharply: “What did you do with the bottle?”

“That’s why I’m glad we didn’t go to Glendalough. I broke it into little pieces and buried them in the garden.”

“You DID? Let’s hope you were lucky and nobody saw you… And don’t you ever tell anyone else about all this.”

“Oh, I won’t. But there’s something I haven’t told even you—yet.” She went over to the roll-top desk and opened it. “This was the Irish grammar he worked from, and the pencil and exercise-book he used. They were on the chair by the side of the bath, and there was a note clipped to the book, written on a torn page. Here it is. Nobody else has seen it.”

She took it out of the pocket of her skirt and unfolded it. Paul read the carefully pencilled script:

“DEAR CAREY—I know now it was a mistake ever to come to Ireland but I did it to please your mother and I pretended to be happy here, but I’m not, and actually I never have been. It’s a terrible thing when all at once you realize you’re learning a language that bores you and going to a church you don’t really believe in. I turned Catholic too, you know, to please her. They don’t like me at the office, they don’t like my English accent, they have a nickname for me—they call me Fitzpomp. It’s odd how all sorts of things can go on and on for years and you can stand them, and then suddenly you feel you can’t stand a single one of them for another minute. Well, why should you? There’s a line in some Latin writer—Seneca, I think—that says: ‘We cannot complain of life, for it keeps no one against his will’. So I don’t complain, and this letter, though it may tell you more about me than you have ever suspected, is really no more than a… “

The letter ended at that, and had no signature; it was as if the writer had been seized with illness in mid-sentence.

Paul was wondering why she had not shown him the letter at the beginning; it would have saved so much argument. The detached part of his mind caused him to pick up the exercise-book and compare the writing in it with the note; they were the same, there was no doubt of that. He saw her watching him make the test, but he could not guess what she was thinking.

He said at length: “How old were you when your mother married again?”

“Twelve.”

“And your real father… you remember him?”

“I was ten when he died… We lived in Kildare near the Curragh. He used to hunt with the cavalrymen—oh, you should have seen him on a horse. We had a farm, but it never paid… such wonderful times, though—and every Christmas he took me to the Theatre Royal to see the pantomime. That’s when I first decided I wanted to be an actress.”

“You didn’t have such good times with your stepfather?”

“No… but he was all right—we got along quite well.”

He handed the letter back. “You were lucky to find this too, before anyone else did. Are you going to keep it?”

“You think… you think I’d better not?” She hesitated a moment, then struck a match and held the paper to it. When the flame was down to the last corner she crumpled the charred pieces into an ash-tray.

He said: “Perhaps that’s wise.”

“You don’t blame me, do you?”

“BLAME you? Blame YOU? What on earth for? Did you ever guess he was so unhappy?”

“I never guessed anything he said in the letter. That’s what makes it all such a shock. How could he not love Ireland, the poor little man?… though dear knows it’s had its troubles. And I never heard that they called him Fitzpomp at the office. FITZPOMP…” She spoke the word as if sampling it. “He seemed so keen on learning the Gaelic—he didn’t have to do that if he didn’t want to—he’d been looking forward to taking an examination—it must have been on his mind at the end because he was saying over the words—I HEARD him… and the last thing— almost the last thing he did was so normal—so tidy… just as he always was… so tidy…”

“What was that?”

“He screwed on the top of the empty bottle and put it back in his vest pocket. That’s where I found it.”

Her voice had a note that made him exclaim: “Carey, you must pull yourself together—isn’t there anyone else here in the house to help you?”

“I’m all right. My aunt and uncle came over from Sandymount— they’ll stay till—oh, till afterwards. And there’s Mrs. Kennedy too. I’m all right now—really I am. I’m glad I told somebody the truth and I’m glad it was you. I expect I told you because you’re a stranger and leaving so soon. And I’m glad you made me destroy the letter.”

“I didn’t make you, but—”

“I know, I know, and you were right. Ah God, he wasn’t a bad man. He was kind to my mother—she bossed him a lot—it’s true he did everything to please her. He was lonely after she died, but he seemed to manage. He took up all sorts of things—hobbies—studies —memory-training—those things in correspondence lessons to help with the Gaelic. Every evening he’d put in a couple of hours. And the machine over there—he bought that—it’s supposed to develop muscles… I got so used to him, I don’t know yet how much I shall miss him. I’m watching myself, in a sort of way, to find out. It’s like when you’re on the stage—you don’t exactly FEEL, you FEEL yourself FEEL. I suppose that’s the trouble with me now—I’m really ACTING—I can’t stop it—I’ve been doing it all day, more or less—I had to with the doctor—and then with all the others since… Are you shocked? Is there something wrong with me to be like that?”

He wasn’t shocked, of course; he had already diagnosed that she was acting; the problem, to him, was in the fact that he himself was not directing. If their conversation since he entered the house had really been stage dialogue, he would have known exactly what the ‘playing attitude’ should be, but because it was all happening in life he was uncertain how to behave. He knew that his compassion was one of the warmest excitements he had ever felt, but he could find no words for it. Fortunately she had now given him the kind of cue he could pick up. He said, taking her arm a little roughly: “There’s nothing wrong with you at all. Don’t you know how natural it is for any artist to come to terms with an emotion through the medium of his own art? It’s the great thing that compensates him—whatever he suffers, he has that outlet that nobody else has—he can use up what he feels, he can DO something with it, create something out of it, so that even pain, in a sort of way, seems worth while. If, for instance, he’s a writer, he can make personal sorrow work for him in a book—a musician can put it into his music—a painter can see it on canvas. And all that never surprises anyone. But with the actor, the art is ACTING—so that whenever something happens to you that matters enough, that’s just what you do. Most people wouldn’t understand it, because they think of acting as a kind of pretence or sham—anyhow, they don’t often notice it in a good actor, because it’s his art not to seem to be acting at all. But he is, and he knows he is, and—as you say—he can’t stop it. It’s really the highest form of sincerity—and since you liked your stepfather, it’s a tribute to him that you should be doing it… as you are now… SO WELL.”