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00:00:00,080 --> 00:00:06,639
The interval by Vincent O'Sullivan. Missus
Wilton passed through a little alley leading from

2
00:00:06,639 --> 00:00:10,080
one of the gates which were around
Regent's Park, and came out on the

3
00:00:10,119 --> 00:00:14,960
wide and quiet street. She walked
along, slowly, peering anxiously from side

4
00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:20,000
to side so as not to overlook
the number. She pulled her furs closer

5
00:00:20,039 --> 00:00:25,160
around her. After her years in
India, this London damp seemed very harsh.

6
00:00:25,199 --> 00:00:28,679
Still. It was not a fog
to day. A dense haze,

7
00:00:29,000 --> 00:00:33,759
gray and tinged ruddy lay between the
houses, sometimes blowing with a little wet

8
00:00:33,840 --> 00:00:39,079
kiss against the face. Missus Wilton's
hair and eyelashes and her furs were powdered

9
00:00:39,079 --> 00:00:42,399
with tiny drops, but there was
nothing in the weather to blur the sight.

10
00:00:43,039 --> 00:00:46,200
She could see the faces of people
some distance off, and read the

11
00:00:46,240 --> 00:00:50,960
signs on the shops. Before the
door of a dealer in antiques and second

12
00:00:51,000 --> 00:00:54,880
hand furniture, she paused and looked
through the shabby, uncleaned window at an

13
00:00:54,960 --> 00:00:59,399
unassorted heap of things, many of
them of great value. She read the

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00:00:59,399 --> 00:01:03,359
Polish nameh fastened on the pane in
white letters. Yes, this is the

15
00:01:03,399 --> 00:01:07,239
place. She opened the door which
met her entrance with an ill tempered jangle

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00:01:07,959 --> 00:01:11,799
from somewhere in the black depths of
the shop. The dealer came forward.

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00:01:11,599 --> 00:01:15,200
He had a clammy white face with
a sparse black beard, and wore a

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00:01:15,239 --> 00:01:19,359
skull cap and spectacles. Missus Wilton
spoke to him in a low voice.

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00:01:21,840 --> 00:01:25,680
A look of complicity, of cunning, perhaps of irony, passed through the

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00:01:25,680 --> 00:01:30,480
dealer's cynical and sad eyes, but
he bowed gravely and respectfully. Yes,

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00:01:30,599 --> 00:01:33,840
she is here, madam. Whether
she will see you or not, I

22
00:01:33,879 --> 00:01:37,680
do not know. She is not
always well. She has her moods,

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00:01:37,719 --> 00:01:42,000
and then we have to be so
careful. The police not that they would

24
00:01:42,040 --> 00:01:45,599
touch a lady like you, But
the poor alien has not much chance these

25
00:01:45,680 --> 00:01:49,879
days. Missus Wilton followed him to
the back of the shop, where there

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was a winding staircase. She knocked
over a few things in her passage and

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00:01:53,840 --> 00:01:56,879
stooped to pick them up, but
the dealer kept muttering, It does not

28
00:01:57,040 --> 00:02:00,760
matter, surely, it does not
matter. He lit her canned. You

29
00:02:00,840 --> 00:02:04,319
must go up these stairs. They
are very dark. Be careful. When

30
00:02:04,319 --> 00:02:07,319
you come to a door, open
it and go straight in. He stood

31
00:02:07,360 --> 00:02:10,080
at the foot of the stairs holding
the light high above his head, and

32
00:02:10,159 --> 00:02:15,159
she ascended. The room was not
very large, and it seemed very ordinary.

33
00:02:15,759 --> 00:02:21,039
There were some flimsy, uncomfortable chairs
in gilt and red. Two large

34
00:02:21,080 --> 00:02:23,800
palms were in corners. Under a
glass cover. On the table was a

35
00:02:23,879 --> 00:02:29,319
view of Rome. The room had
not a business like look, thought Missus

36
00:02:29,360 --> 00:02:32,400
Wilton. There was no suggestion of
the office or waiting room where people came

37
00:02:32,439 --> 00:02:36,680
and went all day. Yet you
would not say that it was a private

38
00:02:36,759 --> 00:02:40,520
room which was lived in. There
were no books or papers about. Every

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00:02:40,599 --> 00:02:44,759
chair was in the place it had
been placed when the room was last swept.

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00:02:45,439 --> 00:02:49,639
There was no fire, and it
was very cold. To the right

41
00:02:49,680 --> 00:02:53,479
of the window was a door covered
with a plush curtain. Missus Wilton sat

42
00:02:53,520 --> 00:02:57,599
down near the table and watched this
door. She thought it must be through

43
00:02:57,639 --> 00:03:01,599
it that the soothsayer would come forth. She laid her hands listlessly, one

44
00:03:01,639 --> 00:03:06,039
on top of the other on the
table. This must be the tentsee,

45
00:03:06,080 --> 00:03:08,719
as she had consulted since Hugh had
been killed, she thought them over.

46
00:03:09,520 --> 00:03:13,759
No, this must be the eleventh. She had forgotten that frightening man in

47
00:03:13,800 --> 00:03:16,159
Paris who'd said he'd been a priest. Yet, of them all it was

48
00:03:16,199 --> 00:03:21,360
only he who had told her anything
definite. But even he could do no

49
00:03:21,439 --> 00:03:25,000
more than tell the past. He
told of her marriage, He even had

50
00:03:25,000 --> 00:03:30,080
the duration of it right, twenty
one months. He told too, of

51
00:03:30,120 --> 00:03:32,240
their time in India. At least
he knew that her husband had been a

52
00:03:32,280 --> 00:03:37,879
soldier, and said he had been
on service in the colonies on the whole,

53
00:03:37,919 --> 00:03:40,759
though he had been as unsatisfactory as
the others, none of them had

54
00:03:40,800 --> 00:03:45,599
given her the consolation she sought.
She did not want to be told of

55
00:03:45,599 --> 00:03:49,400
the past. If Hugh was gone
forever, then with him had gone all

56
00:03:49,479 --> 00:03:53,520
her love of living, her courage, all her better self. She wanted

57
00:03:53,520 --> 00:03:58,439
to be lifted out of the despair, the dazed, aimless, drifting from

58
00:03:58,560 --> 00:04:01,360
day to day, long at night
for the morning and the morning for the

59
00:04:01,400 --> 00:04:05,800
fall of night, which had been
her life since his death. If somebody

60
00:04:05,800 --> 00:04:10,240
could assure her that it was not
all over, that he was somewhere,

61
00:04:10,479 --> 00:04:14,719
not too far away, unchanged from
what he had been, here, with

62
00:04:14,719 --> 00:04:19,079
his crisp hair and rather slow smile
and lean brown face, that he saw

63
00:04:19,079 --> 00:04:25,199
her sometimes, that he had not
forgotten her, Oh, Hugh Darling.

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00:04:27,000 --> 00:04:30,720
When she looked up again, the
woman was sitting there before her. Missus

65
00:04:30,720 --> 00:04:34,079
Wilton had not heard her come in. With her experience wide enough now of

66
00:04:34,160 --> 00:04:39,040
seers and fortune tellers of all kinds, she saw at once that this woman

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00:04:39,120 --> 00:04:43,639
was different from the others. She
was used to the quickerpraising look, the

68
00:04:43,720 --> 00:04:48,120
attempts, sometimes clumsy, but often
cleverly disguised to collect some fragments of information

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00:04:48,560 --> 00:04:54,160
whereupon to erect a plausible vision.
But this woman looked as if she took

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00:04:54,160 --> 00:04:59,399
it out of herself. Not that
her appearance suggested intercourse with the spiritual world

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00:04:59,480 --> 00:05:02,680
more than the other had done.
It suggested that, in fact considerably less.

72
00:05:03,720 --> 00:05:08,480
Some of the others were frail,
yearning, evaporated creatures, and the

73
00:05:08,560 --> 00:05:12,560
ex priest in Paris had something terrible
and condemned in his look. He might

74
00:05:12,600 --> 00:05:15,800
well sup with the devil that man, and probably did in some way or

75
00:05:15,839 --> 00:05:19,839
another. But this was a little, fat, weary faced woman about fifty,

76
00:05:20,360 --> 00:05:24,079
who only did not look like a
cook, because she looked more like

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00:05:24,120 --> 00:05:29,959
a sempstress. Her black dress was
all covered with white threads. Missus Wilton

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00:05:30,000 --> 00:05:32,879
looked at her with some embarrassment.
It seemed more reasonable to be asking a

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00:05:32,920 --> 00:05:38,879
woman like this about altering a gown
than about intercourse with the dead that seemed

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00:05:38,879 --> 00:05:44,399
even absurd in such a very commonplace
presence. The woman seemed timid and oppressed.

81
00:05:44,680 --> 00:05:47,759
She breathed heavily and kept rubbing her
dingy hands, which looked moist one

82
00:05:47,800 --> 00:05:51,560
over the other. She was always
wetting her lips and coughed with a little

83
00:05:51,639 --> 00:05:58,360
dry cough. But in her these
signs of nervous exhaustion suggested overwork in a

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00:05:58,439 --> 00:06:03,279
close atmosphere. Bending too close over
the sewing machine, her uninteresting hair,

85
00:06:03,519 --> 00:06:08,240
like a rat's pelt, was eked
out with a false edition of another color.

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00:06:09,079 --> 00:06:13,879
Some threads had got into her hair
too. Her harried, uneasy look

87
00:06:13,920 --> 00:06:16,920
caused missus Wilton to ask compassionately,
are you much worried by the police,

88
00:06:17,639 --> 00:06:21,360
Oh police, why don't they leave
us alone? You never know who comes

89
00:06:21,360 --> 00:06:25,639
to see you. Why don't they
leave me alone? I'm a good woman.

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00:06:25,879 --> 00:06:30,480
I only think what I do is
no harm to anyone, She continued

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00:06:30,560 --> 00:06:34,560
in an uneven, querulous voice,
always rubbing her hands together nervously. She

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00:06:34,639 --> 00:06:39,279
seemed to the visitor to be talking
at random, just gabbling like children do

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00:06:39,399 --> 00:06:45,040
sometimes before they fall asleep. I
wanted to explain, hesitated, missus Wilton

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00:06:45,680 --> 00:06:47,519
but the woman, with her head
pressed close against the back of the chair,

95
00:06:47,920 --> 00:06:51,759
was staring beyond her at the wall. Her face had lost whatever little

96
00:06:51,759 --> 00:06:57,480
expression it had. It was blank
and stupid. When she spoke, it

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00:06:57,519 --> 00:07:01,319
was very slowly, and her voice
was guttural. Can't you see him?

98
00:07:01,920 --> 00:07:06,199
It seems strange to me that you
can't see him. He is so near

99
00:07:06,240 --> 00:07:11,920
you. He is passing his arm
round your shoulders. This was a frequent

100
00:07:11,959 --> 00:07:15,759
gesture of Hugh's, and indeed,
at that moment she felt that somebody was

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00:07:15,959 --> 00:07:20,360
very near her, bending over her. She was enveloped in tenderness. Only

102
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a very thin veil, she felt
prevented her from seeing. But the woman

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00:07:25,839 --> 00:07:30,160
saw. She was describing Hugh minutely, even the little things like the burn

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on his right hand. Is he
happy? Oh? Ask him? Does

105
00:07:35,040 --> 00:07:40,439
he love me? The result was
so far beyond anything she had hoped for

106
00:07:40,519 --> 00:07:44,279
that she was stunned. She could
only stammer the first thing that came into

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her head. Does he love me? He loves you? He won't answer,

108
00:07:48,360 --> 00:07:51,319
but he loves you. He wants
me to make you see him.

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00:07:51,959 --> 00:07:57,839
He is disappointed, I think because
I can't. But I can't unless you

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do it yourself. After a while, she said, I think you will

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00:08:03,079 --> 00:08:07,160
see him again. You think of
nothing else. He is very close to

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00:08:07,279 --> 00:08:11,240
us now. Then she collapsed and
fell into a heavy sleep, and lay

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there motionless, hardly breathing. Missus
Wilton put some notes on the table and

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stole out on tiptoe. She seemed
to remember that downstairs, in the dark

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shop, the dealer with the waxen
face detained her to show some old silver

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00:08:26,519 --> 00:08:30,720
and jewelry and such like, But
she did not come to herself. She

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00:08:30,800 --> 00:08:35,559
had no precise recollection of anything till
she found herself entering a church near Portland

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Place. It was an unlikely act
in her normal moments. Why did she

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00:08:41,000 --> 00:08:46,360
go in there? She acted like
one walking in her sleep. The church

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00:08:46,440 --> 00:08:50,440
was old and dim, with high
black pews. There was nobody there.

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00:08:50,320 --> 00:08:54,399
Missus Wilton sat down in one of
the pews and bent forward with her face

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00:08:54,440 --> 00:08:58,480
in her hands. After a few
minutes she saw that a soldier had come

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00:08:58,480 --> 00:09:01,720
in noiselessly and placed himself about half
a dozen rows ahead of her. He

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00:09:01,799 --> 00:09:05,840
never turned round, but presently she
was struck by something familiar in the figure.

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00:09:07,840 --> 00:09:11,039
First, she thought vaguely that the
soldier looked like her hue then when

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00:09:11,039 --> 00:09:16,360
he put up his hand, she
saw who it was. She hurried out

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00:09:16,399 --> 00:09:20,000
of the pew and ran towards him. Oh, Hugh, Hugh, have

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00:09:20,080 --> 00:09:24,080
you come back. He looked round
with a smile. He had not been

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00:09:24,159 --> 00:09:28,960
killed. It was all a mistake. He was going to speak. Footsteps

130
00:09:28,960 --> 00:09:33,559
sounded hollow in the empty church.
She turned and glanced down the dim aisle.

131
00:09:33,720 --> 00:09:37,399
There was an old sexton or verger, who approached. I thought I

132
00:09:37,440 --> 00:09:41,720
heard you call, he said,
I was speaking to my husband. But

133
00:09:41,879 --> 00:09:46,360
Hugh was nowhere to be seen.
He was here a moment ago. She

134
00:09:46,480 --> 00:09:52,159
looked about in anguish. He must
have gone to the door. There's nobody

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00:09:52,240 --> 00:09:56,200
here, said the old man gently, only you and me. Ladies are

136
00:09:56,240 --> 00:10:00,000
often taken funny since the war.
There was one in here yesterday afternoon.

137
00:10:00,080 --> 00:10:01,799
Said she was married in this church, and her husband had promised to meet

138
00:10:01,840 --> 00:10:07,559
her here. Perhaps you were married
here, No, said missus Wilton,

139
00:10:07,600 --> 00:10:13,720
desolately. I was married in India. It might have been two or three

140
00:10:13,799 --> 00:10:16,879
days after that when she went into
a small Italian restaurant in the Bayswater district.

141
00:10:18,759 --> 00:10:22,639
She often went out for her meals. Now she developed an exhausting cough,

142
00:10:22,039 --> 00:10:24,799
and she found that it somehow became
less troublesome when she was in a

143
00:10:24,799 --> 00:10:30,559
public place looking at strange faces.
In her flat there were all the things

144
00:10:30,639 --> 00:10:33,679
that Hugh had used. The trunks
and bags still had his name on them,

145
00:10:33,720 --> 00:10:37,559
with the labels of places where they'd
been together. They were like stabs.

146
00:10:39,879 --> 00:10:43,279
In the restaurant, people came and
went, many soldiers too, among

147
00:10:43,320 --> 00:10:46,759
them, just glancing at her in
her corner. This day, as it

148
00:10:46,840 --> 00:10:50,639
chanced, she was rather late and
there was nobody there. She was very

149
00:10:50,679 --> 00:10:54,480
tired. She nibbled at the food
they brought her. She could almost have

150
00:10:54,519 --> 00:11:01,840
cried from tiredness and loneliness and the
ache in her heart. Then suddenly he

151
00:11:01,919 --> 00:11:05,879
was before her, sitting there opposite
at the table. It was as it

152
00:11:07,000 --> 00:11:09,200
was in the days of their engagement, when they used sometimes to lunch at

153
00:11:09,240 --> 00:11:15,320
restaurants. He was not in uniform. He smiled at her and urged her

154
00:11:15,360 --> 00:11:20,000
to eat, just as he used
to in those days. I met her

155
00:11:20,000 --> 00:11:22,559
that afternoon as she was crossing Kensington
Gardens. She told me about it.

156
00:11:24,600 --> 00:11:28,559
I have been with Hugh. She
seemed most happy. Did he say anything,

157
00:11:31,039 --> 00:11:35,159
No, Yes, I think he
did, but I could not quite

158
00:11:35,240 --> 00:11:41,159
hear. My head was so very
tired the next time. I did not

159
00:11:41,279 --> 00:11:45,080
see her for some time after that. She found, I think that by

160
00:11:45,080 --> 00:11:48,200
going to places where she had once
seen him, the old church, the

161
00:11:48,240 --> 00:11:52,600
little restaurant, she was more certain
to see him again. She never saw

162
00:11:52,679 --> 00:11:54,840
him at home, but in the
street or the park, he would often

163
00:11:54,840 --> 00:12:00,240
walk along beside her. Once he
saved her from being run over. She

164
00:12:00,279 --> 00:12:03,840
said she actually felt his hand grabbing
her arms suddenly, when the car was

165
00:12:03,879 --> 00:12:07,840
nearly upon her. She had given
me the address of the clairvoyant. And

166
00:12:07,919 --> 00:12:11,240
it is through that strange woman that
I know, or seemed to know,

167
00:12:11,519 --> 00:12:18,159
what followed. Missus Wilton was not
exactly ill last winter, not so ill

168
00:12:18,240 --> 00:12:22,360
at least as to keep to her
bedroom. But she was very thin,

169
00:12:22,200 --> 00:12:28,120
and her great handsome eyes always seemed
to be staring at some point beyond searching.

170
00:12:28,399 --> 00:12:31,279
There was a look in them that
seamen's eyes sometimes have when they are

171
00:12:31,360 --> 00:12:35,919
drawing on a coast of which they
are not very certain. She lived almost

172
00:12:35,919 --> 00:12:41,000
in solitude. She hardly ever saw
anybody, except when they sought her out.

173
00:12:41,639 --> 00:12:45,399
To those who were anxious about her, she laughed and said she was

174
00:12:45,519 --> 00:12:50,440
very well. One sunny morning,
she was lying awake, waiting for the

175
00:12:50,480 --> 00:12:54,840
maid to bring her tea. The
shy London sunlight peeped through the blinds.

176
00:12:54,559 --> 00:12:58,480
The room had a fresh and happy
look. When she heard the door open,

177
00:12:58,559 --> 00:13:03,200
she thought that the maid had come
in. Then she saw that Hugh

178
00:13:03,360 --> 00:13:05,960
was standing at the foot of the
bed. He was in uniform this time,

179
00:13:07,440 --> 00:13:11,000
and looked as he had looked the
day he went away. Oh,

180
00:13:11,120 --> 00:13:15,919
Hugh, speak to me, Will
you not say just one word? He

181
00:13:16,039 --> 00:13:18,879
smiled and threw back his head,
just as he used to in the old

182
00:13:18,919 --> 00:13:20,360
days at her mother's house. When
he wanted to call her out of the

183
00:13:20,440 --> 00:13:26,399
room without attracting the attention of the
others. He moved towards the door,

184
00:13:26,840 --> 00:13:30,759
still signing to her to follow him. He picked up her slippers on his

185
00:13:30,799 --> 00:13:33,639
way and held them out to her
as if he wanted her to put them

186
00:13:33,679 --> 00:13:39,279
on. She slipped out of bed
hastily. It is strange that when they

187
00:13:39,279 --> 00:13:43,679
came to look through her things after
her death, the slippers could never be

188
00:13:43,759 --> 00:13:48,320
found. End of the interval