Totally unmanned, I wiped my forehead.
“But I thought she was in service,” I said, “in Aberdeen.”
My mother smiled again.
“Oh, no,” she replied. “She’s running an hotel near Bordighera.”
Then, as the room rocked, I clutched at the arms of my chair.
“I’m feeling unwell,” I said. “I’m going to be sick.”
“Yes, I was afraid,” said my mother, “that you might be. You oughtn’t to have eaten quite so much dinner.”
Thus with a heartlessness only the more incredible in view of the atmosphere with which she had been surrounded, my mother withdrew from her son’s life, needless to say never to re-enter it; and we were consequently obliged to procure a professional cook at a not inconsiderable monthly wage.
Apart from this, however, after a satisfactory wedding service, adequately conducted by the Reverend Simeon Whey, the earlier years of my matrimonial life may be passed over without particular comment. Subject to my agreement with Ezekiel, who was now deteriorating almost every day, I had obtained, as I have said, a house at Stoke Newington, within easy distance of St. Gregory’s Church. Here, like my father, I soon made myself a sidesman, and within three or four months of joining the congregation, I had become the means of distributing the parish magazine in Longfellow Crescent and Byron Square. From that it was but a step to auditing the accounts of the Band of Hope and the Additional Blanket Fund, and in a very few years I was perhaps the most prominent figure in the parochial life of St. Gregory’s. Nor must it be supposed that I had entirely severed myself from all my previous regenerative interests. From the Anti-Dramatic and Saltatory Union it was true that I had deemed it better to resign, and indeed this body, lacking the support of Ezekiel, concluded its activities shortly afterwards. But I still retained my membership of the Non-Smokers’ League, and for some years have been its deputy chairman, while I had had myself transferred, on moving to Stoke Newington, to the Dalston Division of the S.P.S.D.T.
Perhaps the happiest day, however, of this period of my life, and the one that finally led me to my present abode, was the October Saturday on which I heard from Simeon Whey that he had obtained the living of St. Potamus, Hornsey. As this was only achieved after long years of practically ceaseless struggle, he wept in my arms, I remember, for nearly an hour, my wife and her sisters adding contributory tears.