Mrs. Kershaw sat down genteelly and crimped her skirt over her knees. Today, now that it was cold again, she wore a cotton dress. She was that kind of woman, Archery thought, who would wear her winter clothes on and on cautiously until she was sure a heatwave was fully established. Then, just as the hot weather was ending and the storm about to break, then at last the carefully laundered thin dress would be brought out.
The pearls had been restrung. She put her hand up to them and drew it away quickly, curbing temptation. Their eyes met and she gave a tiny nervous giggle, perhaps aware that he had noticed her tiny vice. He gave a small inner sigh, for all her emotion had gone and her face showed only the natural bewilderment of a hostess who does not know the purpose of a call and is too discreet to question the caller.
He must—he must—awaken something from behind that pale lined brow. All his carefully prepared openings died. In a moment she would begin on the weather or the desirability of white weddings. But she did not quite do that. He had forgotten the other stock remark that is so handy a conversation starter between strangers.
"And how did you enjoy your holiday?" said Irene Kershaw.
Very well. That would do as well as anything.
"Forby is your native village, I believe," he said. "I went to see a grave while I was there."
She touched the pearls with the flat of her hand. "A grave?" For an instant her voice was as raw as when she had talked of a broken heart, then all passionless Purley again as she added, "Oh, yes, Mrs. Primero is buried there, isn't she?"
"It wasn't her grave I saw." Softly he quoted, " 'Go, shepherd to your rest...' Tell me, why did you keep all the works he left behind him?"
That there would be reaction and that that reaction might be anger he had expected. He was prepared for a flouncing hauteur or even that damning, dulling response so dear to the heart of the Mrs. Kershaws of this world: "We needn't discuss that." He had not thought she would be frightened and at the same time stricken with a kind of awe. She cowered a little in the armchair—if cowering is compatible with perfect stillness—and her eyes wide and glistening now, had the utter immobility of the dead.
Her fear had the effect of frightening him. It was as communicable as a yawn. Suppose she were to have a fit of hysterics? He went on very gently: "Why did you keep them hidden away in the dark? They might have been published, they might have been acted. He could have had posthumous fame."
She made no answer at all, but now he knew what to do, the answer came to him like a gift of God. He only had to go on talking, gently, mesmerically. The words tumbled out, platitudes and cliches, praise of work he had never seen and had no reason to suppose he would admire, assurances and unfounded promises he might never be able to honour. All the time, like a hypnotist, he kept his eyes on her, nodding when she nodded, breaking into a wide fatuous smile when for the first time a tiny vague one trembled on her lips.
"May I see them?" he dared. "Will you show me the works of John Grace?"
He held his breath while with torturing slowness she mounted a stool and reached for the top of the bookcase. They were in a box, a large cardboard grocer's box that had apparently once contained a gross of tinned peaches. She handled it with a peculiar reverence, her care all concentrated on it, so that she let the magazines which had been stacked on it cascade to the floor.
There must have been a dozen of them but only one cover picture splashed at Archery like acid on the eyes. He blinked away from the beautiful photographed face, the pale hair under a hat of June roses. He had waited for Mrs. Kershaw to speak now and her words pulled him out of shock and misery.
"I suppose Tess told you," she whispered. "It was supposed to be our secret." She lifted the lid of the box so that he was able to read the writing on the topmost sheet of manuscript. "The Fold. A Prayer in Dramatic Form by John Grace." "If you'd told me before I would have shown them to you. Tess said I should show them to anyone who would be interested and would understand."
Again their eyes met and Irene Kershaw's tremulous stare was caught and steadied in his strong one. He knew his face was mobile and expressive of his thoughts. She must have read them for she said, thrusting the box towards him, "Here, have them. You can have them." He drew away his hands and his body, horrified and ashamed. At once he had realised what she was doing, that she was trying to pay him off with her most precious material possession. "Only don't ask me." She gave a little thin cry. "Don't ask me about him!"
Impulsively, because he could not bear those eyes, he covered his own with his hands. "I've no right to be your inquisitor," he murmured.
"Yes, yes ... It's all right." Her fingers touching his shoulder were firm with a new strength. "But don't ask me about him. Mr. Kershaw said you wanted to know about Painter—Bert Painter, my husband. I'll tell you everything I can remember, anything you want to know."
Her inquisitor and her tormentor ... Better a swift knife thrust than this interminable twisting on the rock. He clenched his hands till the only pain he could feel came from the wound where the glass had gone in and he faced her across the yellowing sheets of verse.
"I don't want to know about Painter any more," he said. "I'm not interested in him. I'm interested in Tess's father..." The moan she gave and the feel of those fingers scrabbling at his arm could not stop him now. "And I've known since last night," he whispered, "that Painter couldn't have been her father."
18
...As ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed.
She lay on the floor and wept. To Archery, standing by helpless, it was some measure of her total breakdown that she had come so far wide of her conventional limits as to lie there prone and shake with sobs. Archery had never in his life reached such a nadir of despair. He pitied with an anxiety that had something of panic in it this woman who cried as if the power to weep had long fallen into disuse, as if she were experimenting with some new and shattering exercise.
He did not know how long this abandonment to grief had lasted or would last. This room with all its apparatus for living what some call a "full life" contained no clock and he had removed his watch to make room for the wrist anchorage of the bandage. Just as he was beginning to feel that she would never stop, she made a curious humping movement so that she rested like a flogged overburdened beast.
"Mrs. Kershaw..." he said. "Mrs. Kershaw, forgive me."
She got up slowly, her breast still heaving. The cotton dress was creased into a faded rag. She said something but he could not hear her at all and he realised what had happened. She had utterly exhausted her voice.
"Can I get you a glass of water, some brandy?"
Her head shook as if it were not part of her body but a separate thing quivering on a pivot. Her voice came in a hoarse croak. "I don't drink." Then he knew that nothing could fully pierce the layers of respectability. She fell into the chair from which his questions had prised her and let her arms hang limply over its sides. When he came back from the kitchen and gave her the glass of water she had recovered sufficiently to sip it and to rub with the old refinement at the corners of her lips. He was afraid to speak.
"Does she have to know?" The words had a hollow sound to them but the roughness had gone. "My Tessie, does she have to know?"