Speaker 1: 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 name 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 chanced 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 a candle. 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 row. 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 tensy, 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 had 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,
longing 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 quicker, praising 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 over work 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 addition 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 any one,
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 Hughes, 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 arm 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