‘We must hope on,’ quavered Aunt Hester, furtively dabbing her eyes with a little sodden ball of handkerchief.
Sheila, alone in her faith, succumbed to the fear that tried to hide itself in anger. ‘It’s too bad,’ she said. ‘It’s a beastly shame ... to give up hope. Think how well she looks! She’s been making plans for the summer holidays.’
At that Aunt Hester turned away her head, hunched up her back, and frankly sobbed, leaning against the back of a chair. All her prim dignity had vanished, and for the first time Sheila saw in her aunt an old frail woman. The shock of that discovery passing, she stared for a moment in sullen misery at the queer-shaped convulsive figure; then turned abruptly away and went, dry-eyed, into their bedroom.
In bed she thought she could hear her sister’s voice in delirium, although she knew that there were two walls and a passage between them: it muttered interminably until she had to bite her lips together to prevent herself from screaming. Aunt Hester soon came into the room, undressed herself by moonlight, and tumbled on to her knees. She remained kneeling, with her face and arms lying limply across her bed, for what seemed hours; and Sheila stared stupidly at the ceiling and strained her ears at every trivial sound. For a moment she closed her eyes....
And when she opened them again, birds were chattering outside her window and pale dawnlight, like a ghost, was in the room. ‘Like a ghost,’ Sheila said, and shuddered. Aunt Hester was not there; her bed had not been slept in.
Sheila got quickly out of bed, a dry sob of fear breaking from her, and ran barefooted into the green corridor. She stood quite motionless for a while, one hand resting on the door handle, and listened; tiptoed a few steps up the passage, her eyes fixed dreadfully on the room that held Helena; and drew back again. Time became a throbbing agony. Her thought dizzied itself by ceaselessly revolving round the glazed white door that had brass figures, 17, screwed upon its middle panel, but her eyes steadily stared. ‘Seventeen,’ said some chattering thing in her brain: ‘that’s her age. Is that why they put 17, or is it a coincidence?’ But she was not to be distracted by silly questions. The door began to open.
Slowly the glazed white door that had stared back at her for so long, mutely reiterating ‘17,’ began to open, as though it had come to life. ‘A big white waistcoat,’ said Sheila’s chattering brain. Like a silly flat face it moved aside to make room for something that with funereal step passed out: a bent figure in black tight-fitting bodice and white lace cap. Aunt Hester’s right hand drew the door to behind her, and with an abrupt resolute gesture she flung up her head and stood, regally tall, a black figure of doom framed in the white doorway. In a silence like death itself the eyes of these two stricken creatures met.
That meeting of eyes was an icy blast in the green twilit corridor. It froze the running water of Sheila’s thought and made her catch her breath. Gradually, while they looked at each other, Aunt Hester crumpled and shrank again to the meagre dimensions of a bent old woman; she stumbled forward to meet her niece with feebly gesticulating arms. The next morning she had answered the mute question of Sheila’s eyes and was enfolding her rigid passive body.
The single word she saw forming on her aunt’s lips released the locked flow of Sheila’s thought. Her mind became once more almost insanely active. One dry gasp escaped her, and no other sound. The springs of pity were barren in her: this sobbing woman was a stranger. Helena was dead. She turned away from her aunt and went slowly back into the bedroom. Helena was dead. ‘Very well,’ said Sheila’s mind, and she, ignoring that, suddenly thought that if God were to appear to her at that moment she would strike him with her hand. And that would have been how silly! He would only laugh. Helena was dead. She stared, dry-eyed, out of the window and saw the sun newly risen in his glory. The leaves of the acacia were a luminous green; a thrush in its branches poured out bubbling melody. All the universe was alive with a stabbing futile beauty. Helena was dead.
No tears came to release the pent grief. Why was that? ‘Like the woman in the poem,’ muttered that mental chatterbox and began iterating ‘Home they brought her warrior dead. Home they brought her warrior dead.’ It was in a little red book. ‘Rose a nurse of ninety years.’ Was it ninety or eighty? And Rose was a girl’s name, but it wasn’t the nurse’s name. Rose a nurse. A nurse rose. Rise, rose, risen. And on the third day he rose again from the dead. Who was it did that? The little red book had an odd name on its cover.... And suddenly Helena came before her, alive, alive, and happy as she had always been. What nonsense. Helena was dead.... Like a city besieged Sheila fought against the cruel memories that invaded her.