The interval by Vincent O'Sullivan. Missus Wilton passed through a little alley leading from
one of the gates which were around Regent's Park, and came out on the
wide and quiet street. She walked along, slowly, peering anxiously from side
to side so as not to overlook the number. She pulled her furs closer
around her. After her years in India, this London damp seemed very harsh.
Still. It was not a fog to day. A dense haze,
gray and tinged ruddy lay between the houses, sometimes blowing with a little wet
kiss against the face. Missus Wilton's hair and eyelashes and her furs were powdered
with tiny drops, but there was nothing in the weather to blur the sight.
She could see the faces of people some distance off, and read the
signs on the shops. Before the door of a dealer in antiques and second
hand furniture, she paused and looked through the shabby, uncleaned window at an
unassorted heap of things, many of them of great value. She read the
Polish nameh fastened on the pane in white letters. Yes, this is the
place. She opened the door which met her entrance with an ill tempered jangle
from somewhere in the black depths of the shop. The dealer came forward.
He had a clammy white face with a sparse black beard, and wore a
skull cap and spectacles. Missus Wilton spoke to him in a low voice.
A look of complicity, of cunning, perhaps of irony, passed through the
dealer's cynical and sad eyes, but he bowed gravely and respectfully. Yes,
she is here, madam. Whether she will see you or not, I
do not know. She is not always well. She has her moods,
and then we have to be so careful. The police not that they would
touch a lady like you, But the poor alien has not much chance these
days. Missus Wilton followed him to the back of the shop, where there
was a winding staircase. She knocked over a few things in her passage and
stooped to pick them up, but the dealer kept muttering, It does not
matter, surely, it does not matter. He lit her canned. You
must go up these stairs. They are very dark. Be careful. When
you come to a door, open it and go straight in. He stood
at the foot of the stairs holding the light high above his head, and
she ascended. The room was not very large, and it seemed very ordinary.
There were some flimsy, uncomfortable chairs in gilt and red. Two large
palms were in corners. Under a glass cover. On the table was a
view of Rome. The room had not a business like look, thought Missus
Wilton. There was no suggestion of the office or waiting room where people came
and went all day. Yet you would not say that it was a private
room which was lived in. There were no books or papers about. Every
chair was in the place it had been placed when the room was last swept.
There was no fire, and it was very cold. To the right
of the window was a door covered with a plush curtain. Missus Wilton sat
down near the table and watched this door. She thought it must be through
it that the soothsayer would come forth. She laid her hands listlessly, one
on top of the other on the table. This must be the tentsee,
as she had consulted since Hugh had been killed, she thought them over.
No, this must be the eleventh. She had forgotten that frightening man in
Paris who'd said he'd been a priest. Yet, of them all it was
only he who had told her anything definite. But even he could do no
more than tell the past. He told of her marriage, He even had
the duration of it right, twenty one months. He told too, of
their time in India. At least he knew that her husband had been a
soldier, and said he had been on service in the colonies on the whole,
though he had been as unsatisfactory as the others, none of them had
given her the consolation she sought. She did not want to be told of
the past. If Hugh was gone forever, then with him had gone all
her love of living, her courage, all her better self. She wanted
to be lifted out of the despair, the dazed, aimless, drifting from
day to day, long at night for the morning and the morning for the
fall of night, which had been her life since his death. If somebody
could assure her that it was not all over, that he was somewhere,
not too far away, unchanged from what he had been, here, with
his crisp hair and rather slow smile and lean brown face, that he saw
her sometimes, that he had not forgotten her, Oh, Hugh Darling.
When she looked up again, the woman was sitting there before her. Missus
Wilton had not heard her come in. With her experience wide enough now of
seers and fortune tellers of all kinds, she saw at once that this woman
was different from the others. She was used to the quickerpraising look, the
attempts, sometimes clumsy, but often cleverly disguised to collect some fragments of information
whereupon to erect a plausible vision. But this woman looked as if she took
it out of herself. Not that her appearance suggested intercourse with the spiritual world
more than the other had done. It suggested that, in fact considerably less.
Some of the others were frail, yearning, evaporated creatures, and the
ex priest in Paris had something terrible and condemned in his look. He might
well sup with the devil that man, and probably did in some way or
another. But this was a little, fat, weary faced woman about fifty,
who only did not look like a cook, because she looked more like
a sempstress. Her black dress was all covered with white threads. Missus Wilton
looked at her with some embarrassment. It seemed more reasonable to be asking a
woman like this about altering a gown than about intercourse with the dead that seemed
even absurd in such a very commonplace presence. The woman seemed timid and oppressed.
She breathed heavily and kept rubbing her dingy hands, which looked moist one
over the other. She was always wetting her lips and coughed with a little
dry cough. But in her these signs of nervous exhaustion suggested overwork in a
close atmosphere. Bending too close over the sewing machine, her uninteresting hair,
like a rat's pelt, was eked out with a false edition of another color.
Some threads had got into her hair too. Her harried, uneasy look
caused missus Wilton to ask compassionately, are you much worried by the police,
Oh police, why don't they leave us alone? You never know who comes
to see you. Why don't they leave me alone? I'm a good woman.
I only think what I do is no harm to anyone, She continued
in an uneven, querulous voice, always rubbing her hands together nervously. She
seemed to the visitor to be talking at random, just gabbling like children do
sometimes before they fall asleep. I wanted to explain, hesitated, missus Wilton
but the woman, with her head pressed close against the back of the chair,
was staring beyond her at the wall. Her face had lost whatever little
expression it had. It was blank and stupid. When she spoke, it
was very slowly, and her voice was guttural. Can't you see him?
It seems strange to me that you can't see him. He is so near
you. He is passing his arm round your shoulders. This was a frequent
gesture of Hugh's, and indeed, at that moment she felt that somebody was
very near her, bending over her. She was enveloped in tenderness. Only
a very thin veil, she felt prevented her from seeing. But the woman
saw. She was describing Hugh minutely, even the little things like the burn
on his right hand. Is he happy? Oh? Ask him? Does
he love me? The result was so far beyond anything she had hoped for
that she was stunned. She could only stammer the first thing that came into
her head. Does he love me? He loves you? He won't answer,
but he loves you. He wants me to make you see him.
He is disappointed, I think because I can't. But I can't unless you
do it yourself. After a while, she said, I think you will
see him again. You think of nothing else. He is very close to
us now. Then she collapsed and fell into a heavy sleep, and lay
there motionless, hardly breathing. Missus Wilton put some notes on the table and
stole out on tiptoe. She seemed to remember that downstairs, in the dark
shop, the dealer with the waxen face detained her to show some old silver
and jewelry and such like, But she did not come to herself. She
had no precise recollection of anything till she found herself entering a church near Portland
Place. It was an unlikely act in her normal moments. Why did she
go in there? She acted like one walking in her sleep. The church
was old and dim, with high black pews. There was nobody there.
Missus Wilton sat down in one of the pews and bent forward with her face
in her hands. After a few minutes she saw that a soldier had come
in noiselessly and placed himself about half a dozen rows ahead of her. He
never turned round, but presently she was struck by something familiar in the figure.
First, she thought vaguely that the soldier looked like her hue then when
he put up his hand, she saw who it was. She hurried out
of the pew and ran towards him. Oh, Hugh, Hugh, have
you come back. He looked round with a smile. He had not been
killed. It was all a mistake. He was going to speak. Footsteps
sounded hollow in the empty church. She turned and glanced down the dim aisle.
There was an old sexton or verger, who approached. I thought I
heard you call, he said, I was speaking to my husband. But
Hugh was nowhere to be seen. He was here a moment ago. She
looked about in anguish. He must have gone to the door. There's nobody
here, said the old man gently, only you and me. Ladies are
often taken funny since the war. There was one in here yesterday afternoon.
Said she was married in this church, and her husband had promised to meet
her here. Perhaps you were married here, No, said missus Wilton,
desolately. I was married in India. It might have been two or three
days after that when she went into a small Italian restaurant in the Bayswater district.
She often went out for her meals. Now she developed an exhausting cough,
and she found that it somehow became less troublesome when she was in a
public place looking at strange faces. In her flat there were all the things
that Hugh had used. The trunks and bags still had his name on them,
with the labels of places where they'd been together. They were like stabs.
In the restaurant, people came and went, many soldiers too, among
them, just glancing at her in her corner. This day, as it
chanced, she was rather late and there was nobody there. She was very
tired. She nibbled at the food they brought her. She could almost have
cried from tiredness and loneliness and the ache in her heart. Then suddenly he
was before her, sitting there opposite at the table. It was as it
was in the days of their engagement, when they used sometimes to lunch at
restaurants. He was not in uniform. He smiled at her and urged her
to eat, just as he used to in those days. I met her
that afternoon as she was crossing Kensington Gardens. She told me about it.
I have been with Hugh. She seemed most happy. Did he say anything,
No, Yes, I think he did, but I could not quite
hear. My head was so very tired the next time. I did not
see her for some time after that. She found, I think that by
going to places where she had once seen him, the old church, the
little restaurant, she was more certain to see him again. She never saw
him at home, but in the street or the park, he would often
walk along beside her. Once he saved her from being run over. She
said she actually felt his hand grabbing her arms suddenly, when the car was
nearly upon her. She had given me the address of the clairvoyant. And
it is through that strange woman that I know, or seemed to know,
what followed. Missus Wilton was not exactly ill last winter, not so ill
at least as to keep to her bedroom. But she was very thin,
and her great handsome eyes always seemed to be staring at some point beyond searching.
There was a look in them that seamen's eyes sometimes have when they are
drawing on a coast of which they are not very certain. She lived almost
in solitude. She hardly ever saw anybody, except when they sought her out.
To those who were anxious about her, she laughed and said she was
very well. One sunny morning, she was lying awake, waiting for the
maid to bring her tea. The shy London sunlight peeped through the blinds.
The room had a fresh and happy look. When she heard the door open,
she thought that the maid had come in. Then she saw that Hugh
was standing at the foot of the bed. He was in uniform this time,
and looked as he had looked the day he went away. Oh,
Hugh, speak to me, Will you not say just one word? He
smiled and threw back his head, just as he used to in the old
days at her mother's house. When he wanted to call her out of the
room without attracting the attention of the others. He moved towards the door,
still signing to her to follow him. He picked up her slippers on his
way and held them out to her as if he wanted her to put them
on. She slipped out of bed hastily. It is strange that when they
came to look through her things after her death, the slippers could never be
found. End of the interval