A Disturbing Influence Read online

  I telephoned Dr Nye and asked his advice. He said he would come round at once. When he arrived I explained the exact circumstances of her apparent attack. Isobel was calmer now, but the greyness had given way to an unhealthily high colour. Nye did various obvious things, found her temperature was very high, and then asked me to leave the room with him. Isobel watched us go, and I knew she was afraid. So was I.

  ‘I have no idea what it is,’ said Nye. ‘But I think it would be better to get her into a hospital.’

  ‘I’d rather not do that,’ I said. ‘You know I can’t afford a private room, and Isobel would never be happy in a public ward.’

  ‘I know all that. But you’ve got to face it, Raymond. Isobel is an extremely sick woman. It may even be affecting her mind if she’s really behaving in this strange way. God knows what’s wrong with her, but it’s something serious. I’ll tell you what I can do. I can arrange a small room with only one or two other women in it for her. Just for a few days. Tell her she must go in for observation. I don’t think she should be here, alone half the time.’

  ‘Do you think she’s going mad?’

  ‘No, no. It’s simply a fever. Her temperature is a hundred and four, you know. That’s dangerously high. I’ll send an ambulance.’

  ‘I’ll go and tell her.’

  ‘And by the way,’ said Nye, picking up his bag, ‘you needn’t worry about Lindy Badham. I fitted her with a device some months ago.’

  For a moment I didn’t see what he meant. Then I said: ‘But she’s not married.’

  ‘My dear Raymond,’ said Nye, ‘it is not my duty as a doctor to inquire into the legal status of all the girls who come to me asking for obvious necessities.’

  ‘I think you should have told me.’

  ‘I have already broken the code of my profession in telling you now. The ambulance will be round in about half an hour, I hope.’

  He saw himself out, and I went and told Isobel that she was to go into hospital for observation. She looked at me out of her fever and said with great calmness: ‘I’m going to die. I know I’m going to die. That girl has killed me.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Isobel,’ I said, trying to sound cheerful. ‘It’s simply for observation. Nye says your temperature is extremely high.’

  ‘Very well,’ she said, smiling slightly. ‘But I know I am going to die.’

  She directed me to pack a small bag for her. Since her illness had begun we had used separate bedrooms and she had to tell me which drawers everything was in. From time to time she asked me to show her some garment she didn’t want to take with her, but which she wanted to see. ‘I am going to die,’ she repeated again and again, always with that slight smile. ‘That girl has killed me.’

  ‘Listen, Isobel. You simply have a high temperature. You are not going to die.’

  ‘Oh yes, I am. We all are. Everyone dies in the end.’

  I became seriously worried that her mind might indeed be affected. I felt very relieved when the ambulance came. I went with her to the hospital and saw her into bed. Nye put her under sedation immediately.

  ‘She’s not going to die, whatever she may think,’ said Nye. ‘Not yet, anyway, unless I’m very much mistaken. I’ve always thought that she probably has milk fever or one of those things. But I must tell you, Raymond, that I don’t think that’s all she’s got.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘The tests may still be negative, but it looks to me like a clear case of cancer. I haven’t told you before, because it’s not certain.’

  ‘I have suspected it myself.’

  ‘Her present condition isn’t caused by cancer, of course. But if she has it it won’t make things any better.’

  ‘Yes.’ I had a momentary vision of my beloved wife as a body falling apart with various diseases. I shuddered.

  ‘Has Isobel ever had malaria? Anything like that?’

  ‘No, never. Her sister and nephew have both had it.’

  ‘It can’t be that, then. I don’t know.’

  Next day was Sunday, and for the first time in my life I did not write a new sermon but repeated an old one. Miss Spurgeon looked suspicious but said nothing. At the hospital the nurses told me that Isobel kept talking about someone called Lindy. Nye suggested that I dismiss the girl, if that was what I was going to do, and tell Isobel I’d done so in one of her moments of calm.

  I wasn’t at all sure that I was doing the right thing when I summoned Lindy to my study next morning. But events had made me their puppet, I felt, and I had no choice but to dismiss her.

  ‘It has come to my notice, Lindy, that you have been behaving—badly—with Mr Johnson. I’m afraid I cannot possibly continue to employ you.’

  She looked at me quite blankly.

  ‘You know very well what I mean, Lindy. Fornication is a very serious sin.’

  She smiled feebly and blushed. ‘But I haven’t, sir.’

  ‘That is a lie, Lindy. Don’t make things still worse by telling me lies. I happen to know that you and Johnson are guilty of fornication. In his case adultery, too. It is a very serious matter.’

  She blinked at me, but did not look in the least put out. If anything she looked smug.

  ‘Do you realize what I am saying, Lindy? Your conduct is absolutely disgraceful. Here are a month’s wages. And I may as well warn you now that I am going to tell your mother.’

  Lindy began to sniffle. But she took the envelope and fingered it. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

  ‘It’s not enough to be sorry, Lindy. You don’t seem to be in the least repentant. Don’t you know that you have committed a grave sin?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The sniffles continued, but they were not, I thought, very convincing.

  ‘And, besides that, I cannot tell you how disappointed both Mrs Henderson and I feel. We have done a great deal for you, Lindy, and you have let us down very badly.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, really I am.’

  ‘I don’t believe you’re in the least sorry. Will you promise me that this will never happen again?’

  She stopped sniffling and looked up at me. ‘I don’t know, sir. He’s so kind.’

  ‘Really, Lindy, this is too much. Have you no sense of decency? Mr Johnson is a married man. Have you thought of the misery you are causing his wife?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  I gave up. She simply wasn’t listening to me. Or, rather, she was listening to my words, but paying no attention at all to my meaning. I had a moment of depression, wondering how many of my parishioners ever understood a word of my sermons, not because they were difficult sermons but because, if Lindy was any guide, they chose to ignore them.

  ‘I shall not require your services any longer in the choir, Lindy. I can’t tell you how disgusted I am by your apparently total lack of moral sense. You, who have been such a useful person in the community, who have done so much for the church, and for me, too. I am very disappointed indeed.’

  Lindy did not say anything at all. She wiped away her perfunctory tears and went home. She had seemed, I thought, basically indifferent to everything I had said. I dare say I wasn’t very impressive that morning, as a matter of fact. But I had more important things on my mind.

  That afternoon, however, I went as I had promised to see Lindy’s mother.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, opening the door.

  ‘I wonder if I might have a few words with you, Mrs Badham.’

  ‘Come in, then, sir.’

  I followed behind the bottom Isobel had thought so unpinchable into a dark parlour, full of old furniture and the smell of disuse. There were lace curtains at the windows.

  ‘It’s about Lindy, I dare say,’ said Mrs Badham, crossing her massive arms.

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Well?’ She looked formidable indeed.

  ‘I have been obliged to discharge Lindy, Mrs Badham. You may not know that she and Mr Johnson, your lodger, are carrying on an affair together.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Mrs Badham.
/>   I was taken aback. ‘You know? And you’ve done nothing about it?’

  ‘What should I have done, sir, may I ask?’

  ‘You should have stopped it, Mrs Badham. I am very shocked to hear you speak so calmly about it.’

  ‘Well, sir, I don’t see that I should have stopped it.’

  ‘But Mrs Badham, Lindy is your daughter. What kind of a reputation do you think this will get her? Do you want her to be known as a—as a prostitute?’

  ‘Don’t you say that, now,’ said Mrs Badham. ‘Lindy’s a good girl, and I won’t have anyone using words like that about her. I don’t care who it is.’

  ‘How can you call her good when you know what she’s been doing? It’s a disgrace.’

  ‘Now you listen to me, Vicar.’ Mrs Badham spoke with her usual authority. She emphasized her points by wagging her whole forearm at me. ‘What chance to lead a decent life do you think Lindy has? She’s terrible-looking. None of the boys here would ever look at her, would they? What I say is, this is her one chance, and she’s right to take it.’

  ‘But, Mrs Badham, it’s immoral.’

  ‘Oh, immoral,’ she said with a sweeping gesture. ‘I dare say it is. But there’s a lot worse things going on in the world than Lindy and Bill going to bed together.’

  ‘That may be true in a sense, Mrs Badham, but it’s not the point. Lindy’s behaviour is a disgrace, and you seem to be condoning it. As her mother you should know better.’

  ‘D’you think I want Lindy getting a bad name?’ she said. ‘Of course I don’t. I wouldn’t let her carry on with anyone, you know. Bill’s a good man.’

  ‘But he’s married.’

  ‘So much the better. No one would ever want to marry Lindy, now, would they? There’s no point in giving her false hopes.’

  ‘But what of Mr Johnson’s wife?’

  ‘There’s no reason she should know about it, is there?’

  It was a warning as well as a hint. I continued to argue for several minutes, but Mrs Badham was immovable. She was sure she was right, she was not interested in what the world might think, she was scornful that God could disapprove of her. I went away deeply disturbed. There seemed to be no sense of morality in her at all. Isobel had called her ‘morally huge’ but to me she seemed immorally a giantess. Yet, as I thought about it, it seemed to me that in a sense she was unanswerable. If one were to live in a non-Christian morality her position was certainly tenable, and she obviously did live in such a morality. I felt that I was a great failure if so loyal and dutiful a girl as Lindy remained a pagan at heart. The Christian values were no more than a superficial veneer on the life of Cartersfield.

  Isobel’s fever remained high for several days, and for some time she was on the danger list, though she raved about other things after I had told her that I had sacked Lindy and seen her mother. Altogether it was an awful summer. Whenever I saw Lindy or Mrs Badham or Johnson I felt obliged to cross the road. To my intense irritation Johnson would sometimes touch his cap as he passed. I employed a new girl to look after the house, but she was most unsatisfactory.

  Suddenly, in October, our months of prayer were answered. The nights were chilly, but we had a succession of perfectly lovely days, hazy but warm, and England suddenly seemed unbearably beautiful again, as it so often does after one has given up all hope. The by-pass was finished. Johnson went home to the north, or to another job and another Lindy—I did not inquire which, though I suspect the latter. Isobel came home again, and got so much better that she could laugh about herself raving that she was going to die. But she was going to die. It was cancer without any doubt now, and though it was kept from her I think she knew it herself. I would find her standing abstractedly in the middle of a room, lost in thought, or going round the house touching various objects, and I could easily guess what she was thinking.

  One day she brought me tea in my study and said: ‘Guess who I met in the street.’

  ‘Evangeline?’

  ‘No. Lindy Badham. I was thinking that perhaps it would be right to take her back now that that man has gone.’

  ‘But, Isobel, you objected so strongly.’

  ‘I know I did, dear, and I was right in a way. But one shouldn’t remain unforgiving. Does she have any kind of job at the moment?’

  ‘I really don’t know.’

  ‘She needs one. She’s going to have a baby.’

  ‘No!’ I was really shocked.

  ‘She’ll need the money while she can get it, dear.’

  So we took Lindy back again, though she showed as little emotion at being taken back into the fold as she had at being dismissed from it. But I drew the line at taking her back into the choir. It seemed to me that it was hardly setting an example to have a girl pregnant with an illegitimate child working in a vicar’s house, and really carrying charitableness too far. But I wished to give Isobel what I could in her last months, and I made the sacrifice of principle without a whisper from my conscience, though with several heated words from Miss Spurgeon. It gave me not a little pleasure to irritate that old maid.

  One day I asked Lindy why she had been so careless.

  ‘Careless?’ she said.

  ‘In having a child.’

  ‘I wanted to have one,’ she said, looking as ugly and blank as ever. There didn’t seem to be anything at all for me to say.

  After Christmas Isobel hardly ever left her bed. In February Lindy’s child was born. It was the usual healthy bawling creature that Cartersfield girls produce, a boy, and called William Johnson. It was with some difficulty that I persuaded Lindy not to call him simply Bill. Against a good many principles I christened him in March. Isobel urged it. She even became rather fond of the baby, making Lindy bring it with her in the mornings, for she was soon back at work with us. It was one of Isobel’s last wishes. She died shortly after Easter.

  The end, so long expected, came as a release for her, as people say, but it was a great blow to me. Isobel had stood with me for over twenty years, and I grieved for her for many months. My personal loss was combined with a great sense of failure, a failure of which the presence of Lindy’s baby in my own house was symbolic. For some time I confined myself to routine work and reading, a pleasure I had denied myself for many years. I lived mostly in my study. One of my few solaces, curiously, was hearing the gurgles and screams of William Johnson. I was, after all, only one in a succession of vicars, and no doubt many of my predecessors had gone through similar periods of despondency and known exactly the same sense of failure when they heard the cries of newly born bastards. Indeed, my scanty researches into the past seem to show that at least one early vicar of Cartersfield had some illegitimate children of his own.

  Sometimes Mrs Badham would come to collect Lindy after lunch, and I would hear her authoritative voice trying to coo over the baby. Then all three would parade proudly down the High Street, William in an old pram, Lindy pushing, Mrs Badham like a policewoman beside them. It was a spectacle which gave me much pleasure, though of course I could not approve it conscientiously. But my conscience tended to be quiet.

  Miss Spurgeon enjoyed a couple of Sundays’ protesting absence from church after William Johnson’s christening, but after a few months she was gossiping with as much malice and inaccuracy as ever, though with a new gleam in her eye that meant, unmistakably, ‘I told you so’. However, I gave her as little credence as before, and our brushes continued to sharpen both our spirits.

  It is autumn as I write, and I feel particularly strongly tonight that I was right that day, which now seems a long time ago, when I felt that my duty was to the things that are traditional to Cartersfield and to the English spirit. There is, after all, no telling what William Johnson may not grow up to be.

  2. The Schoolmaster

  OURS is a small town. That’s how it is, that’s how it’s always been, and that’s how it always will be, unless it gets smaller, and dwindles away altogether. But I can’t see why anything should ever change here much—oh, a bit up n
ow, a bit down now, but pretty well the same in the long run. Come to that, I can’t think why anyone comes here at all, unless it’s the complete lack of anything interesting to do or see; that could, I suppose, to certain minds have a sort of charm. It does to mine, as a matter of fact. One can be absolutely certain at any given hour of day or night what is happening in the house opposite, the house next door, the houses all over the town. Because this little place of ours is having one of its downs at the moment, it’s got lost, pushed aside by the great new road that whizzes its traffic a mile away beyond Chapman’s Wood. You see, Cartersfield began as a stop for coaches whenever it was that coaches began to trundle regularly along the roads of England. You know the sort of thing—a pub, a place to change horses, to drop mail—all that stuff. And then the coaches didn’t come any more and cars started coming instead—few at first, of course, not that I can remember, but obviously it’s only since the war that things have got quite out of control and there have been more cars than roads to put them on. And the jolly old government decided a few years ago, about thirty years too late, as a matter of fact, that we were living in the age of the automobile now, the dog-cart was dead, and there were many, many towns, like ours, which were a positive menace to navigation. By Jove, said one civil servant to another, look here, old boy, do you see that Cartersfield’s High Street is only three feet wide, and that High Street of theirs carries the main road from Slough to Reading? (Or rather, being a civil servant, and having, one likes to think, a wider view, from London to the west.) I say, old man, said the other civil servant, that’s a bit thin, what? And they both guffawed a bit, and then one of them said, I say, don’t you think we ought to say something to someone about this, old boy? I mean, now we have all this money to build new roads, wouldn’t it be a really jolly good thing to pull old Cartersfield High Street right off the map? And the other one said he thought that might be a little too strong, so they built us a by-pass instead, and our High Street is still only three feet wide (I exaggerate, of course), and the cars whizz through what used to be the north-east corner of Chapman’s Wood. Which leaves us, as you might say, out of the mainstream of life. Which is where I am quite happy to be, thank you, and personally I couldn’t be more pleased that the garages have all moved out to the by-pass, and we can walk across our charming little High Street with its pretty red-brick eighteenth-century houses and its faintly absurd Victorian street-lamps (which people are always preserving with petitions) without more than a sixty-forty chance of being knocked down by one of those madmen in goggles driving export models to the docks (speed limit 30 m.p.h.) at seventy-five through the middle of the place where our stomachs used to be.