Mary Olivier: A Life · Book IV · Chapter XX · Chapter 20 13

“Didn’t I tell you to wait? You know them all now. You see what they’re like.”

In Roddy’s voice there was a sort of tired, bitter triumph.

She knew them all now: Mrs. Waugh and Miss Frewin, and the Kendals; Mr. Spencer Rollitt, and Miss Louisa Wright who had had a disappointment; and old Mrs. Heron. They were all old.

Oh, and there was Dorsy Heron, Mrs. Heron’s niece. But Dorsy was old too, twenty-seven. She was no good; she couldn’t talk to Roddy; she could only look at him with bright, shy eyes, like a hare.

Roddy and Mary were going up the Garthdale road. At the first turn they saw Mrs. Waugh and her son coming towards them. (She had forgotten Norman Waugh.)

Rodney groaned. “He’s here again. I say, let’s go back.”

“We can’t. They’ve seen us.”

“Everybody sees us,” Roddy said.

He began to walk with a queer, defiant, self-conscious jerk.

Mrs. Waugh came on, buoyantly, as if the hoop of a crinoline still held her up.

“Well, Mary, going for another walk?”

She stopped, in a gracious mood to show off her son. When she looked at Roddy her raised eyebrows said, “Still here, doing nothing?”

“Norman’s going back to work on Monday,” she said.

The son stood aside, uninterested, impatient, staring past them, beating the road with his stick. He was thickset and square. He had the stooping head and heavy eyes of a bull. Black hair and eyebrows grew bushily from his dull-white Frewin skin.

He would be an engineer. Mr. Belk’s brother had taken him into his works at Durlingham. He wasn’t seventeen, yet he knew how to make engines. He had a strong, lumbering body. His heart would go on thump-thumping with regular strokes, like a stupid piston, not like Roddy’s heart, excited, quivering, hurrying, suddenly checking. His eyes drew his mother away. You were glad when they were gone.

“You can see what they think,” Roddy said. “Everybody thinks it.”

“Everybody thinks what?”

“That I’m a cad to be sticking here, doing nothing, living on Mamma’s money.”

“It doesn’t matter. They’ve no business to think.”

“No. But Mamma thinks it. She says I ought to get something to do. She talks about Mark and Dan. She can’t see⁠—” He stopped, biting his lip.

“If I were like Mark⁠—if I could do things. That beast Norman Waugh can do things. He doesn’t live on his mother’s money. She sees that.⁠ ⁠…

“She doesn’t know what’s the matter with me. She thinks it’s only my heart. And it isn’t. It’s me. I’m an idiot. I can’t even do office work like Dan.⁠ ⁠… She thinks I’ll be all right if I go away far enough, where she won’t see me. Mind you, I should be all right if I’d gone into the Navy. She knows if I hadn’t had that beastly rheumatic fever I’d have been in the Navy or the Merchant Service now. It’s all rot not passing you. As if walking about on a ship’s deck was worse for your heart than digging in a garden. It certainly couldn’t be worse than farming in Canada.”

“Farming? In Canada?”

“That’s her idea. It’ll kill me to do what I want. It won’t kill me to do what she wants.”

He brooded.

“Mark did what he wanted. He went away and left her. Brute as I am, I wouldn’t have done that. She doesn’t know that’s why I’m sticking here. I can’t leave her. I’d rather die.”

Roddy too. He had always seemed to go his own way without caring, living his secret life, running, jumping, grinning at you. And he, too, was compelled to adore Mark and yet to cling helplessly, hopelessly, to Mamma. When he said things about her he was struggling against her, trying to free himself. He flung himself off and came back, to cling harder. And he was nineteen.

“After all,” he said, “why shouldn’t I stay? It’s not as if I didn’t dig in the garden and look after Papa. If I went she’d have to get somebody.”

“I thought you wanted to go?” she said.

“So I did. So I do, for some things. But when it comes to the point⁠—”

“When it comes to the point?”

“I funk it.”

“Because of Mamma?”

“Because of me. That idiocy. Supposing I had to do something I couldn’t do?⁠ ⁠… That’s why I shall have to go away somewhere where it won’t matter, where she won’t know anything about it.”

The frightened look was in his eyes again.

In her heart a choking, breathless voice talked of unhappiness, coming, coming. Unhappiness that no beauty could assuage. Her will hardened to shut it out.

When the road turned again they met Mr. James. He walked with queer, jerky steps, his arms bowed out stiffly.

As he passed he edged away from you. His mouth moved as if he were trying not to laugh.

They knew about Mr. James now. His mind hadn’t grown since he was five years old. He could do nothing but walk. Martha, the old servant, dressed and undressed him.

“I shall have to go,” Roddy said. “If I stay here I shall look like Mr. James. I shall walk with my arms bowed out, Catty’ll dress and undress me.”