‘Well, open it,’ said Nathan.
Edward had been rather hoping he would suggest this, and he knew Ruth had the same idea in mind. If they’d been alone, neither of them would have suggested it out loud, although it would certainly have occurred to them, so eager were they to know what Harvey had settled on Effie in this letter to his solicitors. They would have left the letter and their secret desires unopened. They were still somewhat of the curate and his wife, Ruth and himself.
But Nathan seemed to serve them like a gentleman who takes a high hand in matters of form, or an unselfconscious angel. In a way, that is what he was there for, if he had to be there. He often said things out of his inexperience and cheerful ignorance that they themselves wanted to say but did not dare.
‘Open it?’ said Ruth.
‘Oh, we can’t do that,’ said Edward.
‘You can steam it open,’ suggested Nathan, as if they didn’t know. ‘You only need a kettle.’
‘Really?’ said Ruth.
Nathan proceeded, very know-alclass="underline" ‘It won’t be noticed. You can seal it up again. My mother steamed open my aunt’s letters. Only wanted to know what was in them, that’s all. Then later my aunt would tell a lot of lies about what was in the letters, but my mother knew the truth, of course. That was after my father died, and my mother and my auntie were living together.’
‘I don’t know that we have the right,’ said Ruth.
‘It’s your duty,’ Nathan pronounced. He turned to Edward, appealing: ‘In my mother’s case it wasn’t a duty, although she said it was. But in your case it’s definitely a duty to steam open that letter. It might be dynamite you’ve been carrying.’
Edward said, ‘He should have left it open. It might be really offensive or something. It was ill-mannered of Harvey. I noticed it at the time, in fact.’
‘You should have objected,’ Nathan said. Edward was now delighted that Nathan was there with them that evening.
‘It’s difficult to object,’ Ruth said. ‘But I think we have a right to know what’s in it. At least you do, Edward, since you’re the bearer.’
They steamed open the letter in the kitchen and stood reading it together.
Dear Stewart,
This letter is being brought to you by Edward Jansen, an old friend of mine from university days. I don’t know if you’ve met him. He’s a sort of actor but that is by the way. My wife Effie is his sister-in-law. He came to see me about Effie’s divorce. As you know I’m not contesting it. She wants a settlement. Let her go on wanting, let her sue.
The object of this letter is to tell you that I agree the date of Job is post-exile, that is, about 500 BC, but it could be the middle of the 5th century. It could easily be contemporaneous with the Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus. (The Philoctetes of Sophocles, another Job-style work, is dated I think about 409.)
Yours,
Harvey
‘I won’t deliver it,’ Edward said.
‘Oh, you must,’ said Nathan. ‘You mustn’t let him think you’ve opened it.’
‘There’s something fishy about it,’ Edward said. He was greatly annoyed.
‘Calling you a sort of actor,’ Ruth said, in a soothing voice that made him nearly choleric.
‘It’s Effie’s fault,’ said Ruth. ‘She’s brought out this quality in Harvey.’
‘Well, I’m too busy tomorrow to go in person to Gray’s Inn,’ Edward said.
‘I’ll deliver it,’ said Nathan.
THREE
It was October. Harvey sat at his writing-table, set against the wall of the main room in his little house.
‘Job 37, 5,’ he wrote, ‘God thundereth marvellously with his voice.’
‘I think we’ll have to send to England for some more cretonne fabric,’ said Ruth, looking over his shoulder.
It was at the end of August that Ruth had moved in, bringing with her Effie’s baby, a girl. The baby was now asleep for a merciful moment, upstairs.
Harvey looked up from his work. ‘I try to exude goodwill,’ he said. ‘You positively try to sweat it,’ Ruth said, kindly. And she wondered how it was that she had disliked and resented Harvey for so many years. It still amazed her to find herself here with him. That he was perfectly complacent about the arrangement, even cheerful and happy, did not surprise her so much; everything around him, she knew — all the comings and goings — were really peripheral to his preoccupation with the Book of Job. But her being there, with Effie’s baby, astonished her sometimes to the point of vertigo. This was not at all what she had planned when she decided to turn up at the cottage with Effie’s baby daughter.
Once, after she had settled in, she said to Harvey, ‘I didn’t plan this.’
‘It wasn’t a plan,’ said Harvey, ‘it was a plot.’
‘I suppose it looks like that from the outside,’ Ruth said. To her, what she had wanted was justice. Given Effie’s character, it was not to be expected that she would continue to live with Ernie Howe on his pay in a small house. Ruth had offered to take the baby when Effie decided she wasn’t in love with Ernie any more. Harvey’s money would perhaps not have made much difference to Effie’s decision. At any rate, Ruth had known that, somehow, in the end, she would have to take on Effie’s baby. It rather pleased her.
Effie was trying to sue Harvey for alimony, so far without success.
‘The lawyers are always on the side of the money,’ she said. Harvey continued to ignore her letters.
The baby, named Clara, had been born toward the end of June. Effie went back to her job in advertising for a short while after she had left Ernie Howe. Then she took a job with an international welfare organisation in Rome. Ernie wasn’t at all happy, at first, with Ruth’s plan to take the baby Clara to visit Harvey. They sat in the fl at in Pimlico where Ernie often came, now, for consolation, as much as to see his daughter.
‘He doesn’t sound the sort of man to have any sent-y-ments,’ Ernie said.
Edward wanted very much to give Ernie some elocution lessons to restore his voice to the plain tones of his origins. ‘He hasn’t any sentimentality, but of course he has sentiments,’ said Edward.
‘Especially about his wife’s baby by a, well, a lover.’
‘As to that,’ said Edward, ‘he won’t care who the father is. He just won’t have any sentimental feelings, full stop.’
‘It’s a matter of justice,’ Ruth said.
‘How do you work that out?’ said Nathan.
‘Well, if it hadn’t been for Harvey leaving Effie she would never have had a baby by Ernie,’ Ruth said. ‘Harvey should have given her a child. So Harvey’s responsible for Clara; it’s a question of justice, and with all his riches it would be the best thing if he could take responsibility, pay Effie her alimony. He might even take Effie back.’
‘Effie doesn’t want to go back to Harvey Gotham,’ said Ernie.
‘Harvey won’t take her back,’ Edward said. ‘He believes that Effie boils down to money.
‘Alas, he’s right,’ said Ernie.
‘Why can’t Clara go on living with us?’ said Nathan, who already knew how to prepare the feeds and bath the baby.
‘I’m only taking her for a visit,’ Ruth said. ‘What’s wrong with that? You went to see Harvey, Edward. Now I’ll have a try.’
‘Be sure to bring her back, Ree-uth,’ said Ernie. ‘The legal position —’
‘Do you still want to marry Effie?’ Edward asked him.
‘No, quite frankly, I don’t.’
‘Effie’s so beautiful,’ Nathan said. He got up to replenish the drinks. ‘What a beautiful girl she is!’
‘A matter of justice. A balancing of accounts.’ This was how Ruth put it to Harvey. ‘I’m passionate about justice,’ she said.