The trumpet in the dust

by Constance Holme

“I can’t say as I ever found my Tibbie much trouble!” Mrs. Clapham’s tone was again defiant. “What, she could see to her buttons and tapes nigh as soon as she could walk, and, as for her needle, she took to it like a duck on a pond!”

“Ay, well, you see, mine was a lad....” Emma’s glance left her neighbour’s face and rose to the mantelpiece, where Poor Stephen, in khaki, looked from a silver frame. Mrs. Clapham’s glance followed suit, and it seemed to her that the sad eyes shifted as the mother’s gaze came up.... She had winced again at Emma’s last words, and begun her usual rubbing of knees. In common with many women during the Great War, she had felt ashamed of not owning a son to add to the general loss. Stephen and Tibbie had done their best to make her feel that Stephen was really hers, but there was no getting past the fact that he was really Emma’s. Certainly, here in the gloomy room, where the silver frame was the only thing that was polished and shone, there was no disguising the knowledge that he was really Emma’s....

The latter, as if subconsciously aware of this recrudescence of war-time shame, suddenly left the table and moved across to the hearth. Reaching up for the photograph, she looked at it for a moment, and then handed it to the visitor. Stephen’s mother-in-law took it reverently, if reluctantly, feeling the silver setting smooth and cool against her hand.

“You’ll happen not have seen Stephen’s last likeness,” Emma remarked smugly, deliberately ignoring the fact that in all probability Mrs. Clapham had one of her own. “It was took after he got his commission, as you’ll see, and there’s none could look more of a gentleman, I’m sure. His lordship come to see me after Stephen was killed, and he was rarely taken with yon picture. ‘He’s the very spit and image of you, Mrs. Catterall,’ says he, sitting there, wi’ t’ likeness in his hand, same as it might be you. ‘The spit and image,’ he says, ‘and right proud you must be to think as your face is one as the whole British nation takes its hat off to, to-day!’ (T’ likeness was in t’ Daily Sketch, you’ll think on, and a deal more papers besides). ‘The only son of his mother, and her a widow!’ his lordship says soft-like, and looking that grieved and kind.... Then I showed him photo as Stephen’s wife sent of Stephen’s children, and I give you my word he very near started to cry! ‘Stephen’ll never die as long as them children are alive,’ says he. ‘What, the little lad’s that like him it might be Stephen himself come back again from the dead!’”

Mrs. Clapham said nothing while the smooth voice held blandly on, full of that strange something that always hinted but never spoke. With the shining frame in her worn hands she sat staring at the shadowed young face that she remembered so well. Her duplicate copy at home had never risen to a frame, but when she took it out of its drawer in the sunny kitchen it always seemed to her to smile. Here, however, imprisoned a second time in the House of Pain, there was no vestige of laughter on Poor Stephen’s lips. They were haunted eyes that looked at her out of the costly frame, and that day by day watched Emma stealing about the room. There was courage in the set of the figure and the line of the shut mouth, but there was neither exhilaration nor even hope. Over the whole printed presentment which was all that the War had left, was the unmistakable stamp of his unforgettable past.

“I thought happen you mightn’t have seen it.... You’ve not been near me for so long....” Emma’s voice was still flowing smoothly from hint to hint, gently conveying reproach for a wrong to a bereaved mother (‘and her a widow’) which even a real live lordship had been too human to commit. “There’s a deal of others besides ... some on ’em when he was a Tommy ... ay, and after he got his stripe ... ay, and here’s one wi’ his platoon.” The Army terms came easily from her lips, as they had come from so many mothers’ lips during the War, and the woman who had had no son from whom to learn them felt a second twinge of shame. “Here’s t’ card they sent for putting in winder to say as your son had joined up; and this here’s what t’ Mothers’ Union presented to them as had lost their lads.... Ay, and here’s Libby’s and Stevie’s photos, as took his lordship so aback. I reckon there’s no mistaking they’re Stephen Catterall’s barns.”

The little roundabout figure passed from spot to spot, handing the precious objects to Mrs. Clapham, who received them silently, setting them on her knee, and thinking, as many were thinking, now that the War was done, how small were these relics of those terrible years. Also she thought of what Emma did not know, that it was only after a fight with herself that Tibbie had sent the pictures at all. As for the offering from the Mothers’ Union, she knew very well what the Vicar’s wife, who was its head, had had to say about that! She could have laughed, even now, recalling Mrs. Wrench’s disgust when faced with Emma’s name on that royal list.

Not that she really felt like laughing in the least, for every minute that passed left her more troubled and ill at ease. There was something so calculated about the whole conversation, the setting forth of the relics, the deliberate exclusion of herself. Emma’s methods made her feel self-conscious and yet stultified at the same time, leaving her as they did no loophole for self-defence. From Emma’s egotistical speech you would never have guessed that Mrs. Clapham had anything to do with either Stephen or Stephen’s children; not even, indeed, with Stephen’s widow. In the case of the children the exclusion was made even more pointed by the continual dwelling upon that unhappy likeness. It was perfectly true that in those sad little photographs which Emma handled so gloatingly there wasn’t a trace of Tibbie or Tibbie’s mother. All the love or the hatred in the world couldn’t deny the stock from which they sprang. Undoubtedly they were Emma’s grandchildren more than they were Mrs. Clapham’s, and as the latter looked at them she was seized by doubt and almost dislike. The spasm passed in a moment, however, leaving her penitent and ashamed. She remembered their plaintive but sweet voices, their shy but endearing ways; tricks of speech which, young as they were, already showed their minds as far removed from Emma’s as the Poles. It came to her, too, that it was a terrible thing to carry a likeness to somebody you hated and feared, so that, no matter what you did, or how far you happened to go, that somebody was always waiting for you whenever you looked in a glass....

“Ay, children make a deal o’ difference in a house,” Emma reverted to the original discussion. “Stephen’s wife won’t have that much time for anything else. Not that she’ll mind the trouble, likely, any more than me. I was always one for liking a child about the place.”

Mrs. Clapham’s flesh positively crept at the audacious, smooth-spoken words. The colour sprang to her bent face. Once again she seemed to see the pale-faced boy on the stair, and repelled the vision with actual fright. More and more she was beginning to wonder what was the purpose behind all this....