Barbara Vine - The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

“I am afraid you’re not well. Come in and sit down.”

Ursula shook her head. If she was to harangue this woman’s daughter, for it must be her daughter, she would do it on her own terms, in anger, in bitterness, not in the meek acceptance of hospitality. But those feelings now took second place to this overpowering faintness. She stumbled into the house, into the little front room, hardly seeing her surroundings, dazed and for a moment almost blind. This weakness, this feeble failure to cope with the house and its occupants, was something she hadn’t anticipated. Or not on this level. Not that fear and shock would bring her to sink into an armchair, to hold her head down in her hands and remain there until gradually the sensation passed.

She felt a light touch on her shoulder and looked up, realizing then that she was being offered a glass of water.

“Thank you. I’m sorry.”

“Sit quietly,” the woman said. “You’ll be better presently. I am Mrs. Eady.”

She was perhaps in her mid-seventies, dressed in a dark sweater and skirt covered by an apron, the kind of sleeveless crossover overall, tied at the waist, that Ursula remembered her own grandmother wearing, not as protection against dirt or food stains but as part of a daily uniform. The skin on her face was red and shiny, but with an unhealthy, inflamed look, and her hands were red, too, large and spread and gnarled. A plain gold ring was on the third finger of her left hand and another encircled the third finger of her right. Her white hair was as brilliant as congealed ice.

Standing there, for she still stood, waiting to take the glass from Ursula’s hand, she appeared to be a tall woman, almost six feet, somewhat bandy-legged, her strong, solid legs planted far apart, as if they had once supported an overweight body. It was gaunt now, the big bones prominent.

She said patiently, “There, that’s better. You’ve some color come back into your face.”

Ursula handed her the glass, thanked her again. She sensed that Mrs. Eady would never ask her why she had come, what she was doing there, would simply accept it. “Mrs. Eady,” she said, “I am Ursula Candless. I am Mrs. Gerald Candless. Gerald Candless is my husband.”

Of course she expected a flicker of something to cross that calm and steady face: the eyes infinitesimally to move, the lips to tighten, or the white head to bow a little. There was nothing. Then Mrs. Eady set the glass down on the table runner, a runner that held along its length a photograph in a silver frame, another in a tortoiseshell frame, a single rose in a green-speckled vase, and sat down in the chair opposite Ursula.

“I think I have really come to see your daughter,” Ursula said. “I don’t know her name. Your daughter, who lives here with you.”

“I have two daughters,” Mrs. Eady said, and she hesitated a little. But she went on, “They don’t live with me. One of my sons lives nearby, but not with me. One of my daughters is married and lives in York and the other”—again the hesitation—“the other is a religious.”

“I’m sorry? A what?”

“A sister. A nun.”

Ursula bit her lip. Those words had the least expected effect of making her want to laugh. They were not the sort of thing people said. But the amusement, if that was what it was, died as quickly as it arose. She said, “Then someone else, some young woman, lives here with you. You have a”—she sought for the appropriate word—“a tenant, a boarder.”

“No.”

“Mrs. Eady, my husband was seen coming here, letting himself in with a key. Oh, I am sorry—it’s embarrassing for me, too; it’s shameful, I know. I am sorry. Perhaps I’m wrong. I hope I’m wrong—”

“I’m not embarrassed.” She said it very quietly and easily, as if she had passed beyond embarrassment, had entered a world where social solecism is a trivial thing. “Would you tell me what you want of me, Mrs.”—she recollected—“Mrs. Candless?”

“I don’t know. I shouldn’t have come.”

“When was your husband seen coming here?”

“It was a few days ago, about a week ago. On a Tuesday morning.”

“And he let himself in with a key?”

Ursula thought afterward that she must have imagined the points of light that for a moment appeared in the other woman’s eyes, for Mrs. Eady said somberly, “I wasn’t here, Mrs. Candless. I was in the hospital. I’ve been very ill.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Ursula said.

“I am very ill now—but we needn’t go into it. While I was away, my son may have come in, but not till the evening, after his work. My neighbor down the street had a key to the house. To feed my cat and water my plants. I believe her husband comes in as often as she does.”

“What does he look like?”

“He’s a tall man, dark-haired, about forty-five. Is that where the mistake has been made?”

Ursula nodded. “I think so. I don’t know.” She looked at the nearer of the photographs, of a thin, very handsome boy in jeans standing by a motorcycle. “Is that him? Is that your son?”

At once, she knew she shouldn’t have asked. She hardly knew why she had asked, for it wasn’t Gerald who had come to this house, and it wasn’t this skinny boy, but the neighbor. If light had come into Mrs. Eady’s face, it was now overshadowed by pain, the lips compressed as if to keep in a cry. It took her a little while to speak.

“That was my son. I had four sons, Mrs. Candless. That was Desmond. He was … killed. My son who lives here is James, and Stephen is a teacher on the other side of London.”

“Killed?” Ursula faltered. She said it because she didn’t know what else to say in the face of this naked acceptance of grief.

Mrs. Eady stood up. “For a long time, I kept his photograph in a drawer, but then … It’s the worst thing in the world to lose a child, an unnatural thing. Yet even that passes.” Ursula’s anxious, almost hungry look must have forced the words from her. She said, “It can’t interest you. It’s not connected with why you came,” and then she added, “Desmond was killed; he was murdered.” She clenched her hands. “Beaten to death, yes.” She added with courteous formality but in a strained voice, “I mustn’t keep you any longer.”

“Oh, no, no, I must go.”

A painful flush had spread across that gaunt face. Mrs. Eady regretted having said so much, and it showed. Now she was making a polite effort. “Once, a long time ago, I knew some people in Ipswich named Candless.”

“I expect they would be his family. He came from there. Good-bye.”

When the house was left behind, she ran. She liked the rhythm of it, the freedom of running, and in Hainault Road, she did an unprecedented thing: She took off her shoes and ran on the warm pavement in her stocking feet. A few people looked at her. She ran on, full of hatred for Dickie Parfitt, who had nearly wrecked her life.

Instead of telling Sam Fleming this story at breakfast the next morning, she talked about her daughters and how she believed that, now Gerald was dead, she might manage to get on better with them. And she recounted the incident of the embraces in the taxi and of Hope holding her hand.

“Why didn’t you take a stand when they were young?” he asked. “How could he make them love him and not you, unless you let him?”

“I tried, but I didn’t try hard enough. And he had that advantage over most fathers—he was always there. Short of physically pulling them away from him, there wasn’t much I could do. If I’d ever been alone with them … but I never was. He married in order to have children; that is the plain truth of it. And when he got them, he was going to extract every ounce of love and pleasure and … well, richness out of it.”