Mary Olivier: a Life Part 12

Mamma looked up. She said, "What are you doing standing there?"

She ran to her and hid her face in her lap. She caught Mamma's hands and kissed them. They smelt of sandal wood. They moved over her hair with slight quick strokes that didn't stay, that didn't care.

Mamma said, "There. That'll do. That'll do."

She climbed up on a chair and looked out of the window. She could see Mamma's small beautiful nose bending over the tray of beads, and her bright eyes that slid slantwise to look at her. And under the window she saw the brown twigs of the lilac bush tipped with green.

Her happiness was sharp and still like the white light.

Mamma said, "What did you see when you were out with Jenny to-day?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing? And what are you looking at?"

"Nothing, Mamma."

"Then go upstairs and take your things off. Quick!"

She went very slowly, holding herself with care, lest she should jar her happiness and spill it.

One of the windows of her room was open. She stood a little while looking out.

Beyond the rose-red wall of the garden she saw the flat furrowed field, stripes of grey earth and vivid green. In the middle of the field the five elms in a row, high and slender; four standing close together, one apart. Each held up a small rounded top, fine as a tuft of feathers.

On her left towards Ilford, a very long row of high elms screened off the bare flats from the village. Where it ended she saw Drake's Farm; black timbered barns and sallow haystacks beside a clump of trees. Behind the five elms, on the edge of the earth, a flying line of trees set wide apart, small, thin trees, flying away low down under the sky.

She looked and looked. Her happiness mixed itself up with the queer light and with the flat fields and the tall, bare trees.

She turned from the window and saw the vases that Mamma had given her standing on the chimney-piece. The black birds with red beaks and red legs looked at her. She threw herself on the bed and pressed her face into the pillow and cried "Mamma! Mamma!"

IV.

Pa.s.sion Week. It gave you an awful feeling of something going to happen.

In the long narrow dining-room the sunlight through the three windows made a strange and solemn blue colour in the dark curtains. Mamma sat up at the mahogany table, looking sad and serious, with the Prayer Book open before her at the Litany. When you went in you knew that you would have to read about the Crucifixion. Nothing could save you.

Still you did find out things about G.o.d. In the Epistle it said: "'Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel and thy garments like him that treadeth the wine-fat? I have trodden the wine-press alone, and of the people there was none with me: for I will tread them in my anger, and trample them in my fury, and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment.'"

The Pa.s.sion meant that G.o.d had flown into another temper and that Jesus was crucified to make him good again. Mark said you mustn't say that to Mamma; but he owned that it looked like it. Anyhow it was easier to think of it that way than to think that G.o.d sent Jesus down to be crucified because you were naughty.

There were no verses in the Prayer-Book Bible, only long grey slabs like tombstones. You kept on looking for the last tombstone. When you came to the one with the big black letters, THE KING OF THE JEWS, you knew that it would soon be over.

"'They clothed him with purple, and platted a crown of thorns and put it on his head....'" She read obediently: "'And when the sixth hour was come ... and when the sixth hour was come there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice.... And Jesus cried with a loud voice ... with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost.'"

Mamma was saying that the least you could do was to pay attention. But you couldn't pay attention every time. The first time it was beautiful and terrible; but after many times the beauty went and you were only frightened. When she tried to think about the crown of thorns she thought of the new hat Catty had bought for Easter Sunday and what Mr. Spall did when he ate the parsnips.

Through the barred windows of the bas.e.m.e.nt she could hear Catty singing in the pantry:

"'I am so glad that Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me....'"

Catty was happy when she sang and danced round and round with the dish-cloth. And Jenny and Mr. Spall were happy when they talked about Jesus. But Mamma was not happy. She had had to read the Morning Prayer and the Psalms and the Lessons and the Litany to herself every morning; and by Thursday she was tired and cross.

Pa.s.sion Week gave you an awful feeling.

Good Friday would be the worst. It was the real day that Jesus died.

There would be the sixth hour and the ninth hour. Perhaps there would be a darkness.

But when Good Friday came you found a smoking hot-cross bun on everybody's plate at breakfast, tasting of spice and b.u.t.ter. And you went to Aldborough Hatch for Service. She thought: "If the darkness does come it won't be so bad to bear at Aldborough Hatch." She liked the new white-washed church with the clear windows, where you could stand on the ha.s.sock and look out at the green hill framed in the white arch. That was Chigwell.

"'There is a green hill far a-a-way Without a city wall--'"

The green hill hadn't got any city wall. Epping Forest and Hainault Forest were there. You could think of them, or you could look at Mr.

Propart's nice clean-shaved face while he read about the Crucifixion and preached about G.o.d's mercy and his justice. He did it all in a soothing, inattentive voice; and when he had finished he went quick into the vestry as if he were glad it was all over. And when you met him at the gate he didn't look as if Good Friday mattered very much.

In the afternoon she forgot all about the sixth hour and the ninth hour.

Just as she was going to think about them Mark and Dank put her in the dirty clothes-basket and rolled her down the back stairs to make her happy. They shut themselves up in the pantry till she had stopped laughing, and when Catty opened the door the clock struck and Mark said that was the ninth hour.

It was all over. And nothing had happened. Nothing at all.

Only, when you thought of what had been done to Jesus, it didn't seem right, somehow, to have eaten the hot-cross buns.

V.

Grandmamma and Grandpapa Olivier were buried in the City of London Cemetery. A long time ago, so long that even Mark couldn't remember it, Uncle Victor had brought Grandmamma in a coffin all the way from Liverpool to London in the train.

On Sat.u.r.day afternoon Mamma had to put flowers on the grave for Easter Sunday, because of Uncle Victor and Aunt Lavvy. She took Roddy and Mary with her. They drove in Mr. Parish's wagonette, and called for Aunt Lavvy at Uncle Victor's tall white house at the bottom of Ilford High Street.

Aunt Lavvy was on the steps, waiting for them, holding a big cross of white flowers. You could see Aunt Charlotte's face at the dining-room window looking out over the top of the brown wire blind. She had her hat on, as if she had expected to be taken too. Her eyes were sharp and angry, and Uncle Victor stood behind her with his hand on her shoulder.

Aunt Lavvy gave Mary the flower cross and climbed stiffly into the wagonette. Mary felt grown up and important holding the big cross on her knee. The white flowers gave out a thick, sweet smell.

As they drove away she kept on thinking about Aunt Charlotte, and about Uncle Victor bringing Grandmamma in a coffin in the train. It was very, very brave of him. She was sorry for Aunt Charlotte. Aunt Charlotte had wanted to go to the cemetery and they hadn't let her go. Perhaps she was still looking over the blind, sharp and angry because they wouldn't let her go.

Aunt Lavvy said, "We couldn't take Charlotte. It excited her too much last time." As if she knew what you were thinking.

The wagonette stopped by the railway-crossing at Manor Park, and they got out. Mamma told Mr. Parish to drive round to the Leytonstone side and wait for them there at the big gates. They wanted to walk through the cemetery and see what was to be seen.

Beyond the railway-crossing a muddy lane went along a field of coa.r.s.e gra.s.s under a hedge of thorns and ended at a paling. Roddy whispered excitedly that they were in Wanstead Flats. The hedge shut off the cemetery from the flats; through thin places in the thorn bushes you could see tombstones, very white tombstones against very dark trees.

There was a black wooden door in the hedge for you to go in by. The lane and the thorn bushes and the black door reminded Mary of something she had seen before somewhere. Something frightening.

When they got through the black door there were no tombstones. What showed through the hedge were the tops of high white pillars standing up among trees a long way off. They had come into a dreadful, bare, clay-coloured plain, furrowed into low mounds, as if a plough had gone criss-cross over it.

You saw nothing but mounds. Some of them were made of loose earth; some were patched over with rough sods that gaped in a horrible way. Perhaps if you looked through the cracks you would see down into the grave where the coffin was. The mounds had a fresh, raw look, as if all the people in the City of London had died and been buried hurriedly the night before.

And there were no stones with names, only small, flat sticks at one end of each grave to show where the heads were.

Roddy said, "We've got to go all through this to get to the other side."