“BUT, MAVIS, HOWEVER did it happen? Oh, if only I’d been there …!”
Where—when—had she heard these words before, and recently? Crouching over the silent figure outstretched on the floor by the telephone, Claudia naturally did not follow the futile little flicker of memory to its source. Any moment now the doctor would be here, and then they would know….
“Stop crying, Mavis!” she ordered sharply, getting to her feet. “We don’t even know yet that she is dead … and even if she is … it’s hypocritical of you to carry on like that, Mavis, you know it is! You always got on badly with her—and so did I! Look at me, I’m not crying! I have always resolved, Mavis, always, that when the time came I wouldn’t insult the true facts, the true, actual memories, with a display of hypocritical grief and sentimentality! I resolved that even in the first moment of shock, I would remember everything, exactly as it really was … all the quarrels … the annoyances …” Claudia’s head was held high, her tone calm and incisive, and she managed, somehow, to enunciate every one of the proud, premeditated words before her voice choked with tears.
*
Through the sweet summer dawn stepped Helen, lightly, light-headed almost, with exhaustion and with a pulsing, sleepless joy. So much had she survived this night, so much experienced! Only two fields away now lay her dear home, and neither weariness nor the tangling, dew-soaked grass could slow her eager steps, so uplifted did she feel by triumph, by the sheer joy of having survived, unaided, the ordeals of the night. What a night to have come through! What a tale to be able to tell …!
Helen felt justly proud of her success in making her way home alone. When the police car promised by Granny had failed to come and pick her up in that deserted station yard, she had not panicked; she had realised that its non-appearance could be due to any one of a dozen reasons—muddles, misunderstandings, and delays of all sorts could have intervened between Granny’s intention and the actual arrival of a car. So after waiting quietly for an hour or so in the station yard, she had finally, and with due consideration, climbed over the fence into the station itself so as to wait more safely and comfortably on one of the seats on the platform. And when the booking office at last opened, and she learned that there would be a workmen’s train just before five, she had dealt calmly and competently with the discovery that she had not enough money for the fare. She had explained her situation with dignity to the clerk, and had filled in all the right forms and declarations that made it all right to travel without a ticket and to pay later on.
And so now here she was, all obstacles surmounted, and nearly home. How pleased they would be to see her! How wonderful a thing it was to survive, to come through, by relying on oneself alone! Helen felt the power of survival like a new and glorious gift that she had never known she possessed; an inner, indestructible core of triumph and of joy.
And now to find Granny, to tell her everything.
*
“Oh, but she’s dead, you poor dear! Your grandma—Mrs Newman—she’s dead!”
Helen stared into Mavis’ silly, tear-stained face, and did not speak. Joy still pulsed inside her, undiminished: it could not stop so suddenly.
Besides, Mavis was wrong; Mavis was such an idiot, she always got everything wrong. Granny couldn’t be dead. Not Granny. Not now, in the morning, with the first shafts of the sun already striking gold and glorious across the buttercups, and with the chickens just beginning to stir, making their little, soft, questioning noises as they waited trustfully for their morning mash. Still buoyed up by that new-found inner core of power and happiness, Helen pushed confidently past Mavis, and ran into the darkened house.