Ignoring her, Father Ailwyn looked straight and soberly at me.
‘I think’, he said, ‘I ought to speak to Margaret by herself’
She gave me a baffled glance as I went out. I was more than baffled, as I sat alone in the study. I had no premonition at all about what he had come to tell her.
It was not long, not more than a quarter of an hour, before Margaret opened the study door.
‘You’d better come back now,’ she said. She was looking flushed and strained, her eyes so wide open that the lids seemed retracted.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘It’s about Maurice.’
‘Is he ill?’ My thoughts had flashed – not because I had ever imagined it of him, but because of a groove of experience – to suicide.
‘Nothing like that.’
I was standing by her, and had put my arm round her. She went on: ‘No. He’s going to get married.’
‘Oh well–’ I was beginning to laugh it off, when she broke in: ‘To someone who is handicapped.’
‘What does that mean?’
She shook her head, and moved like someone impelled to hear a verdict, towards the drawing-room.
Rising as she entered, Godfrey Ailwyn was clumsy as ever on his feet, but more comfortable, and more authoritative, now that he had done his duty. From their first remark I gathered that he had delivered a letter from Maurice; I wasn’t given this to read until later, but it was full of love for Margaret and explained that, though he knew this would cause difficulties and disappointments for her, he proposed to marry someone whom he ‘might be some good to’. The wedding and all the arrangements would have to be ‘very simple and private’ because she wasn’t ‘used to these things and mustn’t be frightened or given too much to cope with’. Godfrey Ailwyn knew all the circumstances and would be able to discuss what should be done.
With Godfrey resettled in his chair, I picked up most of this, and another piece of information, which was that the girl was the sister of a patient in the hospital where Maurice worked.
Margaret was looking at me. There was a question which had to be asked.
‘Is she mentally affected?’ I said.
‘No.’
‘You’re not keeping anything from us?’
‘Lewis,’ he replied, ‘you needn’t have said that.’
He was both stern and wounded, and I apologised.
‘Well then, what is wrong with her?’
I didn’t know how much Margaret had discovered. I had better make certain.
‘She has a limp. It looks like the kind of limp that polio leaves them with, but I believe she’s always had it.’
‘Is it very bad?’
‘One is aware of it. Perhaps it’s more distressing to others than to herself. I think, taken alone, no, it is not very bad.’
‘Taken alone? You mean there’s something else?’
‘She is also partially deaf,’ said Godfrey. ‘I think that is congenital too, and she has never had normal hearing. Of course, that made her backward as a child. But mentally she has caught up. I mustn’t give you the impression that she is brilliant. There is nothing wrong with her there, though. What is more serious is that being deaf kept her out of things. She is very uncertain of herself, I doubt if she has ever made friends. And that is why Maurice has changed everything for her.’
‘Is that what he means’, said Margaret, voice tight, ‘when he says she’s handicapped?’
‘That is what he means.’
‘And that is all he means?’ I pressed him.
‘That is all he means.’
‘You’re certain? You do know her?’
‘I know her. She is staying at the Vicarage now.’
‘Then I can see her?’ Margaret broke out.
‘I’m afraid not, Margaret,’ said Godfrey in a gentle tone, but with cumbrous strength.
‘Why not?’
‘Maurice thinks we must make everything easy for her. And he knows more about the unlucky, and how to help them, than any of the rest of us will ever know.’
‘But I must see her. This is his whole future.’
‘Margaret, your son is trying to lead a good life. I don’t believe you could alter that, but I beg you to listen to me, you mustn’t let him see that it brings you pain.’
Godfrey was speaking to her as though I was not present. After all, Maurice was not my son. Maybe that was why Godfrey, giving the impression of bumbling incivility, first insisted on telling the news to her alone. He was her son, not mine. And Godfrey – one had to remember – did not approve of divorce.
‘I wish’, said Margaret, her eyes bright with tears held back, ‘that he was leading a life like everyone else.’
‘If I were you,’ Godfrey replied, ‘I should wish the same. But I don’t think it would be right, do you?’
‘I can’t be sure. For his sake, I can’t be sure.’
My own feeling might have been different from hers, certainly was different from Godfrey’s. But this wasn’t a time to speculate. Godfrey was continuing to tell us more about her. She was, he thought, a ‘nice person’ (which, at that moment, seemed one of the flatter descriptions). She was twenty-three, the same age as Maurice. It was not until that point that I learned her name. That may have been true of Margaret also, for Maurice had not mentioned it in his letter. It was, Godfrey said in passing, Diana Dobson. He believed that in her family she was called Di.
‘You must remember,’ Godfrey told Margaret, ‘she comes from the very poor. Her mother is a cleaner in a factory. The father left them long ago. They are as poor and simple as they come. I’m afraid that’s another difficulty for you–’
Margaret flared up.
‘Do you think that would make the slightest difference to me?’
She was angry, seizing a chance to be angry. Godfrey gazed at her with a sad, doughy smile. He said: ‘Without meaning to let it, and feeling bad in the sight of God, I have to confess that it always makes a difference to me.’
He must have been speaking of his visiting round in the parish. Maurice once told me that, when he went as companion, he usually enjoyed it, but Godfrey almost never.
Margaret’s expression changed. All of a sudden she was open and naive, as few people saw her. She said, as though it was the natural reply: ‘I am sorry, Godfrey. I know you’re a good man.’
‘No.’ Heavily he shook his head. ‘I wish I could be. It’s your son who is a good man.’
He added: ‘I’d often hoped that he’d become a priest. It would be the right place for him. But now there’s this marriage instead–’
I was thinking, Godfrey strongly disapproved of divorce: the only thing he disapproved of more strongly was marriage. At least for himself and his friends. No, that was unfair. But it was the kind of unfairness – or slyness or malice if you like – that showed that I was becoming fonder of him.
He and Margaret got down to business. Maurice had given instructions which weren’t to be departed from. There were to be no press announcements of the engagement: and none of the wedding, except for a single notice in the Manchester evening paper, for the sake of Diana’s relatives. No announcements. He would write himself to his friends. (Why all this?) However his friends might behave in other situations, here he could have trusted them: Charles and all the rest would have set out to welcome her. That was part of their creed. They would be far kinder than, in the past, my circle would have been. Yet Maurice was being excessively cautious, like Charles but unlike himself, or anything that he had written to his mother or told to Godfrey: acting – it was hard to believe – as though he were ashamed of it.