§ 7
Mrs. Weston had been out shopping during the evening. In the crowded part of the High Street she had been knocked down by a bicycle. She had fallen upon her face, but had not apparently received much hurt, for after having a cut attended to at the chemist’s, she went home unattended. But at the very door of her house in Kitchener Road, something went “snap” inside her head; she collapsed and fell all in a heap on the doorstep. She was putting the key in the lock when this happened, and the key was found in the lock when neighbours came to her assistance. They carried her in the front room (where the Collard and Collard piano was) and laid her down on the sofa. She uttered vague scraps of conversation for some moments: then she died....
When Catherine went in to look at her she could not help thinking how death had made her look ridiculous. She was lying under the window, and the lamp in the middle of the ceiling threw her features into heavy shadow. There was a piece of sticking-plaster over the cut on her forehead, and her chin was bruised as well. The most prominent of her front teeth had broken off half-way, and as, seemingly, she had died gasping for breath, her mouth was wide open. The massive, almost masculine jaws hung unsymmetrically: there was no beauty or calm in her last attitude. She looked as if she had died fighting. An aperture in the drawn Venetian blinds allowed a slit of pale light from the street lamp outside to cross her face diagonally, making it appear more grotesque than ever. Catherine could scarcely believe it was her mother. She had the old workaday blouse on, because she had gone out shopping in a mackintosh and had thought it would not show underneath. Catherine could not help thinking how ashamed her mother would have been at the thought of being seen in this blouse by all the neighbours, and especially to have had the neighbours crowding in her own drawing-room with all the cheap bamboo furniture and the faded carpet, and the “Present from Margate” on the mantel-piece, and the certificate on the wall certifying that John Weston, aged twelve, had achieved merit in writing an essay on “Alcohol and its Effects on the Human Body.” (This latter would have been removed long since, had it not successfully covered up a hole in the wallpaper.) ... Catherine felt sure that if her mother had known she was going to die, she would have dressed up for the occasion. But it had come upon her unexpectedly. There she was, with her shabby blouse and her ghastly face, and her mackintosh and string-bag on the chair beside her. There was some tea in the bag, and her fall had burst the paper wrapper, for the latter was half-full, and there were tea grains about the floor....
Mr. Weston had been sent for. He came in tired after a tiresome day, plus the usual Monday feeling of discontent. He was in a bad temper.
“Hell!” he muttered, as he bashed his shins against the piano in the gloom. “These blinds ...” he began, and checked himself.
He seemed annoyed that she had done such a dramatic, unexpected thing. He was annoyed that there was no supper ready for him. “You might have got me a cup of tea ready,” he said to Catherine. Then he tried to be conventional. “She was a good woman,” he said, as if it had just occurred to him.
When the strange woman had departed, and Catherine and he were sitting down in the kitchen to a frugal supper, he began the conversation again.
“By the way,” he said, “apparently you didn’t go to school to-day. Mrs. Jopson thought you’d be staying to the evening-class, and sent a message to the school to fetch you. Miss Forsdyke said you hadn’t been present at all to-day.... Is that so?”
“I didn’t go to-day,” admitted Catherine.
“Where did you go?”
“We ... took a day off ... picnicking in the Forest ... it seemed such a fine day....”
“Who’s we?”
“Helen and ... and ... me.”
“Are you in the habit of taking days off like that?”
“Oh no.... It’s the first time we’ve ever done it.”
There was a pause.
“You know,” he went on protestingly, “this sort of thing’s not good enough, Catherine.... You ought to see that this sort of thing can’t go on ... it’s too bad of you ... running off to play truant ... and on the very day that ... that your mother ...”
“How on earth could I——” she began hastily, and then stopped, for she saw that big tears were rolling down both his cheeks.
“Not good enough,” he kept muttering, vaguely reproachful.
Then later on he reopened the question.
“I suppose—er—you and Helen were the only people at the picnic?”
“No—there were two others.”
“Girls, I suppose?”
“No.”
“Not young men, I hope?”
“Yes, one of them was Helen’s brother. The other was a friend of his....”
For a few moments he was very thoughtful. Then he continued:
“I don’t think you ought to have gone with them, Catherine ... at your age, you know.... Besides, you’ve plenty of girl friends—I can’t think what you want with young men and boys.... Girls should stick to girls....”
“But surely, Father——”
“If you want friends, let them be girl friends ... surely you can find plenty of your own sex without——”
Catherine could think of no adequate answer to this argument, so she bade him good-night and went upstairs to bed....