DISAGREEMENTS

Chapter 8 But She Did Exist: Becky, Part II

He hadn't even gotten to the end of the lane before he realized that he wasn't going to go to the Grantham Arms and he was irritated with himself for having said he would. Where had he dredged that up from? Only, he knew the answer to that. It was what his dad used to say after arguments with his mum and then away he'd go. This was part of the world in which he'd grown up, a world in which disgruntled men marched themselves off to the pub of an evening, to distance themselves from the aggravations of work and home and their wives, and to share their grievances with other men in like circumstances. And all of this over a pint of ale.

He didn't even like ale.

And he wouldn't have wanted to commune with the village men in their woes at any time. Or share his own.

And, for that matter, he didn't really want to get away from his wife. They had little enough time together as it was. But his battered ego wouldn't let him make an abrupt about-face. No, he needed a little time to soothe his wounds in the cool evening air and then to consider what it was that made Elsie become someone else whenever her sister was mentioned.

Rejecting the pub atmosphere and the camaraderie of other men, which was the only pattern with which he was familiar for men to work out their domestic problems, he was thrown back on his own devices. Like so much else in this late-in-life marriage, he was obliged to make it up as he went along and hope for the best.

He turned away from the village, as mindful as Elsie was of local gossip. He had lived here all his life, after all. Instead he took to the gravel paths on the grounds of the Abbey and found himself, after some deliberately roundabout circuits, at the folly, where he kicked around a bit as the sun sank lower in the western sky. Resting his gaze on the house where he had spent so much of his life and whose management was his life's work helped to settle him and clear his mind. After a while, two pertinent points emerged from the emotional fog. The first revelation was that this turmoil was not, in fact, about him. Although Elsie had poured scorn on his character when he had asked for an explanation, she was right when she had accused him of making this about himself. Realizing this made it possible for him to put aside his own hurt and to give himself over to musing over the real source of conflict. His second conclusion was not so much a revelation as an affirmation: he loved her. And more, he ought to be showing her that love in the midst of aggravation and at every other opportunity. He had failed to do so this evening, but there was still time to make amends. He did not reach these conclusions rapidly, but having done so he hurried home.

Elsie was still in the sitting room and had, he noticed - prompted by his growling stomach - finished off all the biscuits she'd set out for tea. If he had gone to the pub, he could have had a meal. He put that out of his mind. She was reading one of the papers when he came in, something he seldom saw her do, largely because she had so little free time. He felt a twinge of guilt. This was their half-day off. They ought to have spent it together enjoying each other's company, not wrangling like this.

He came in quietly, but not meekly. He'd done nothing wrong. Neither of them had. It was only that they'd had a disagreement and needed time to cool down.

She glanced up at him. "Did they throw you out?" Neither her face nor her tone gave away her feelings and yet he sensed a latent animosity. Fair enough. Her emotional investment in this argument was far greater than his and he had chosen the moment for their second round over it. This time, though, he would not let his self-absorption get in the way.

"I didn't go to the pub," he said quietly, sitting down on the stool in front of her chair.

His reply drew her attention, perhaps despite herself. He reached out to take one of her hands - she had to let go of the paper to let him do it, and it crumpled into her lap. Her hand was stiff, conveying her displeasure, but he felt it important to be touching, a reassurance of affection that words could not always communicate.

"That was my father talking," he admitted. "He had a lifetime to sort things with my mother. He thought they could afford to quarrel. We don't have that luxury."

She was still guarded. "Are we quarrelling?"

"No," he said, squeezing her hand. "Not anymore, anyway. I'm sorry, Elsie. I obliged you to talk about a something that means a lot to you, and I ought to have been a bit more thick-skinned about it and not gone storming out." He was exaggerating. It hadn't been quite like that. But he was trying to get on her side. He felt the tension in her hand ease a little and he was encouraged by it.

"You were right about me, at least in part," he went on. "I am a perfectionist. I do criticize everything." Their contretemps over domestic arrangements was not that far behind them. "And I am uncomfortable with difference and I don't hide it well. I'm not alone," he added, "but perhaps I am worse than some. Only..." He paused and stared forcefully into her eyes, trying to reveal to her through his soulful gaze the sincerity of what he was saying. "...I don't believe I'm hopeless. I'm a kind man." She knew this about him. At least, he hoped she did. "I've always been good with children," he said, a little lamely He didn't know Becky, could not imagine an equivalent to her, and so had to fall back on the only frame of reference he had for a different kind of person.

"Becky isn't a child," she said quickly, her eyes flashing.

She had spoken sharply, but he was not deterred. So long as they were talking, they were making progress. He proceeded cautiously.

"Tell me," he coaxed her.

"You wouldn't understand."

That might be so. But he heard the weight of the world on her shoulders in the way she spoke those few words.

"But..." It suddenly occurred to him that this conversation was not only not about him, but also not about Becky. This conflict between them was, in the first instance, about them. "But...we love each other, don't we, Elsie? And it's the real thing. And...I trust you. I've trusted you with my hurts." He was thinking now not of the dance hall business, which was rather small beer in comparison, but of Alice, and of Charlie Grigg. "They may not be grand confidences, but I trusted you with them. If I had bigger secrets, I'd tell you of them."

And saying this, he drew her into his arms. They were awkwardly situated - both of them on the edge of their seats - but words could only take them so far. A comforting hug was always more eloquent a statement of uncompromising love than any spoken sentiment. It was also more convincing. As honeyed as his words might be, their emotional understanding owed as much to physical intimacy as to any confidences they had exchanged. He felt her melting into him, relief of different kinds sweeping both of them.

"She's like no one you've ever met," she said thickly, her voice almost a whisper.

"Tell me about her," he said softly.

Neither of them moved from their awkward perch. She needed his strength and reassurance, and he was happy to extend them to her. Then she sighed and they both pulled back a little. He took both her hands in his now and waited silently while she ordered her thoughts.

"Becky isn't a child," she said again, only this time without the rebuke in her voice. She was looking directly into his eyes as she spoke. He met her gaze, determined to be supportive and not to shrink from any uncomfortable truths she might impart.

"But she isn't an adult either," Elsie went on. "She...lives in her own world. Of course, it intersects with ours, but never where you think it will or how you expect it to. There's a logic in it, but she's the only one who knows it. They're..." She hesitated a little and he tightened his grip on her hands, letting her know he was still with her. "...they're all different, people...like Becky. From each other, I mean. Becky's world makes sense only to her."

She was right. He didn't understand. This was all new to him. But knowledge was the foundation for understanding. He waited.

Elsie took a deep breath. She seemed resigned, as if not convinced this was the right thing to do but having decided to do it anyway. "What's she like?" For a moment, Elsie had to think about it. "She can be...gentle, temperamental, oblivious, rude, silly, weeping, angry - up and down, unpredictable, and all in a matter of minutes. And for no reason that either you or I or anyone else could explain."

She was watching him, searching for any signs of an adverse reaction. But he was less concerned with these insights into Becky, and rather more aware of what he was learning about her. All he could think about was how much this must hurt her to make her so guarded with her feelings. Elsie had always been circumspect, holding her cards so close to her chest in all things. They were so different in that way. It was why everyone downstairs had known for so long that he was deeply in love with her and why they had, most of them - including him - been surprised to discover that she loved him in the same way. He'd thought that was just the way she was, taciturn by disposition. But perhaps she had learned such discretion in the school of family life that encompassed an erratic member like Becky. He knew in this moment how much he loved her because he could feel her pain, however mutely communicated. Even though he could not yet appreciate its every dimension, he knew, too, that he wanted to comfort her.

She was staring at him, coolly, almost clinically, as if trying to make up her mind about further revelations.

"I love her," she said abruptly, a blunt statement tinged with defiance, as if daring him to challenge her on it. When he only waited, she continued. "She makes me laugh sometimes," and she relented enough to laugh a little at the thought of this. "And she has Da's eyes." Here the affection for sister and father overlapped. "And she is conscientious, once you can get her to do something. And persistent, in a way I never can be."

"But those things don't count." Her voice was suddenly hard again. "People see her as a...misfit. A...broken or...lesser...being. The official term, in the laws regarding such people is...is...idiot. The idiot law. The idiot asylum. The..." Her voice broke suddenly on this and he, without conscious thought, pulled her into his arms once more. He felt her resistance, perhaps because she could feel the tension in him and mistook it for revulsion. But he wasn't reacting against Becky now, but against the system of which she spoke.*

Her struggle to regain her equilibrium absorbed him. When, he wondered, had she last confided in anyone in such terms? He could well believe that he was the first person outside of her family to hear this. His shoulders squared with the responsibility of this. He could not let her down.

"Still," she said, trying to bluster her way through the unwanted outburst by resorting to the defensive mechanism of sarcasm, "that's a step up from lunatic."**

He knew nothing of this, of official regulation of the...well, what did one call them? the unfortunate? the mentally deficient? the feeble-minded? - yes, that was one he had heard. Idiots? Lunatics? How easily these words were tossed about in commonplace discourse. How brutally insensitive they must sound to someone like Elsie, to whom they had very specific connotations.

She had drawn back from him again, just a little, so that she might continue to talk. "You can't...live a normal life, or even a quiet life, with someone like that in your family. They're always attracting attention, always the wrong kind. People stare, take offense, ridicule, act cruelly."

Her words tore at his heartstrings. He felt a self-righteous anger toward the swine who had ever hurt her in this way. And then was engulfed in a wave of self-recrimination at the more subtle indications of intolerance such as indifference. He believed he would never have stooped to cruelty in the event that he had ever met an "idiot" - what a foul term - but was only too conscious of his own character to know that had he done so he would have turned away, rendering invisible the offensive sight. This, he realized, was why Elsie had shrunk from speaking with him about Becky. She knew him well.

"It's a burden everywhere you go," Elsie said, her tone reflecting a factual not emotional reality. "Church, school, shopping in the village. It's why such people are put away. They make other people uncomfortable. Their families keep them at home, when they can. Or put them away, in asylums or hospitals. Or workhouses."***

The workhouse.

For almost a century, this had been the most dreaded word in the English language. Disease and death were less ominous, for the workhouse encompassed these and every other ordeal of the poor and indigent - abuse of every kind, poverty, tyranny, next-to-starvation, deprivation both physical and emotional, separation of families, humiliation. Humiliation almost above all, and inescapable once you had sunk so low.

He felt a sudden jolt of guilt and a broader wave of understanding in a matter that had long eluded him. Charlie Grigg. Elsie had been so concerned about Charlie Grigg and he couldn't understand why when she'd never met the man and he hadn't given a damn. But the reality of the workhouse was too close to her. For him, the workhouse had no more reality than the Dickens' novels in which he had read about them.

Oh, God, but there was so much more to Elsie than he had ever known, ever imagined.

"We kept Becky at home," Elsie said, passing over her reference to the workhouse more easily than he did. "My mother took care of her. She schooled her as best she could, teaching her how to take care of herself and some simple tasks. Becky could do such things and do them well, but the energy it took to train her was immense. My mother carried that. I left to make my own life, with my mother's blessing, but not without guilt."

Well, they all carried those kinds of burdens, didn't they? But Elsie's was perhaps heavier than some.

"That's weighed on you," he said sympathetically.

She nodded. "And when my mother died, I had to make a decision."

This was familiar territory. She'd said this part last autumn when she'd first told him about Becky.

"I could have taken care of her myself. I might have done it," she said, her eyes boring into his, determined to face his reaction, accept his disapproval, straight on. "But I feared I would fail and it would be the workhouse for both of us."

The damned workhouse again!

"So," she said, her tone lightening a little, reflecting the fact that she was coming to the end of her story, rather than that the tale itself was brightening, "I chose to pursue my own life and career, and to sacrifice the material prosperity I gained from it for that freedom."

This, too, took a toll on her. He hastened to unburden her of this in the only way he could. "It was a fair bargain," he declared, rationalizing.

She shrugged. "Fair to whom?" she asked drily, unwilling to be relieved.

"Do you regret your decision?'

"No. I don't second guess myself. But just because I can live with it, doesn't mean it was the right decision, or the best one."

"It weighs on you."

"As all imperfect choices must." She took another deep breath and then let it out slowly. "There now. You know most of it, if not all."

She looked at him expectantly, waiting for his reaction much like a prisoner in the dock looked to the jury. His response was to take her in his arms once more.

"Thank you," she whispered in his ear.

They sat together in a moment of silence, both waiting for the emotional currents of this conversation to settle around them.

"You've lived with walls," he said at last. "It shows in your reserve." Her revelation had taught him something about his own character as well as hers. The emotional wounds he had suffered in his life had been slighter and susceptible to mending by the smile of a child. He understood more of his own journey now that he had heard her tale. Elsie's experience was more complex and not so easily remedied, if remedy there was to be had. He could perhaps only ever offer understanding and, that most soothing of balms, acceptance.

"It isn't necessary for you to tell me everything you think and feel, love. It is only necessary that you should be able to do so if you want to, without fear of judgment or rejection." He hoped she could see in his eyes how deeply his love for her ran. "Becky is nothing to be ashamed of," he said firmly.

"Isn't she?"

"No."

"That's hard to believe."

"Well, practice, then."

She almost smiled at him. "I can't change over night," she warned him.

"I don't expect anything to change at such a precipitous rate," he said loudly and largely to amuse her. Again a ghost of a smile wafted across her face. "I just hope," he added more earnestly, "that you believe you can trust me."

"It may be possible," she said, her voice noncommittal, but with a warmth in her sparkling eyes. She leaned forward and kissed him, a swift, casual kiss, but one that told him in a minute that things were all right between them again.

There didn't seem to be anything else to say for the moment. She went upstairs to prepare for bed. He lingered in the sitting room. He thought he might get some jam and bread and then make the rounds before going up. But he also just wanted to think for a bit.

In some corner of his mind he heard her moving around upstairs, but her soft tread on the stairs escaped his notice. Not until he saw the shadow at the door did he look up. Elsie had changed and was now enveloped in her old dressing gown. He thought she ought to have a new one, a pretty, bright-coloured one - perhaps cornflower blue to match her eyes, or red to make her feel warm, one that wasn't a dull burgundy and worn in places. But she resisted. Elsie never wanted a thing just for the sake of it. Old or used or "not quite right in the head" were not reasons for her to cast something away. He admired that about her.

He looked up at her with a question forming on his lips, but before he could speak she had crossed the floor and held something out to him.

It was a photograph of two young girls. It was quite an old relic, sepia-toned. They sat together on the three steps just outside a farmhouse door. They were perhaps eight and ten years old. Their skirts fell just below their knees and they both wore knitted sweaters with buttons up the front.

He stared at it for a long minute. He knew that they were two years apart, but it was hard to tell from the way they sat which was the bigger one. Still, he knew Elsie immediately.

"That's you," he said, pointing, and then glanced at her.

She nodded, curling up beside him, pressing closely against his side, with her eyes fixed on the photograph. "How do you know?"

He gave a little chuckle. It was easy. "You've the same smile then as now," he said. "And the set of your shoulders is the same. You never lose that, you know. And just the way you're sitting. I'd know you anywhere," he said confidently, turning his head that he might meet her gaze.

She rewarded him with a warm smile and his eyes fell back to the picture again, studying the other little girl now.

"Becky doesn't look different," he said cautiously, and then shot her an apprehensive look. "I mean...," he spluttered on awkwardly, "she looks just like any other little girl."

But she was in no mood to take offense, not any more, and only nodded at his words. "If you were in a room with her you'd know soon enough," she assured him. "But here," she took the photograph from him and stared at it for a long moment, "she does look normal enough. Still, it took us several minutes to get her to sit down at all and then she kept looking away or refusing to smile. But Da never lost his patience," she added, in a softer voice.

They spoke of their parents only rarely. They seemed part of such a distance past.

"I can see the mischief in your eyes even then," he mused, with a sidelong glance at her. He wanted to make her smile and he succeeded. A thought occurred to him. "Wait a minute." And then he got up and left the room.

He wanted something, knew exactly where it was, and in another bit he was downstairs again and resuming his place beside her.

"What are you doing?" she asked, although she could clearly see for herself. He had brought down a framed photograph and set himself to the task of replacing the existing picture with the one of the two sisters.

"There," he said finally, holding out the now-framed photograph to admire his work. Then he handed it to her. Again the little girls who had been Elsie and Becky Hughes stared up at them, now from a familiar frame.

Elsie reached for the displaced photograph, a portrait of an elegant young woman for whom she had once felt a fleeting pang of jealousy before her good sense had again prevailed.

"I got you this frame for Alice," she protested, waving the picture at him.

He nodded solemnly. "And I appreciated it," he said. "And I even kept it on my desk for a few years, as you had suggested. But I took it down before Christmas."

"I had noticed."

He wasn't surprised. She noticed everything. "I...loved Alice," he admitted, his eyes falling to her portrait, "and it was good to be reminded of that. But," he took a deep breath and turned his ever-expressive gaze on her, "Alice is my past. I have kept her picture, and my memories of her, but...you are so much more to me, Elsie. I only ever had a dream of Alice. I have a life with you. A whole life. And I don't want to waste a minute of it in unnecessary aggravation." He picked up her free hand and kissed it, pressing his lips to each finger and then turning it over to kiss her palm.

When he lifted his head again, she reached out to brush a straggling strand from his eyes and then ran her hand through his hair. It was a sign that things really were right between them. He closed his eyes and revelled in the play of her fingers mussing his hair and then smoothing it over again. She pushed his head down a little and pressed her lips into his now unruly hair. And then she stood up. He sighed as she moved away.

Crossing the room she put the framed photograph on the mantle and then turned to look at him. She seemed, he thought, more at ease than she'd ever been before when Becky had been in the room with them. Then he got up, too, and they went quietly up to bed together. He put the photograph of Alice on top of the wardrobe. Tomorrow he would put it back in the small box of memories from which he had drawn it years earlier. He'd always keep it. It was part of who he had been. And it reminded him of how much he now had.

*AUTHOR'S NOTE: The major pieces of British legislation dealing with people with various forms of mental deficiencies - the "developmentally delayed" in more current parlance - included The Idiots' Act (1886) and The Mental Deficiency Act (1913) which divided those embraced by their terms into categories of idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded, and moral defectives. Institutions established in the mid-nineteenth century and directed, at least initially, at those deemed trainable in some form included the Eastern Counties Idiot Asylum and the Western Counties Idiot Asylum.

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: In the terminology of the day, an "idiot" was someone who was born with a mental deficiency. A "lunatic," on the other hand was afflicted with a mental illness. The former was deemed "deficient" but not "crazy." The Lunacy Laws regulated the care of the latter.

***AUTHOR'S NOTE: The options for those with mental or physical handicaps were limited and ominous. They included, as Elsie says here, home care (which placed a considerable burden on families in the days before there was any level of social acceptance and any level of public support); public hospitals or asylums dedicated to such individuals; private hospitals, asylums, or homes, which were expensive; or the workhouse, that lowest form of public welfare and the nightmare of every person in Britain whose fortunes took a turn for the worse. Though they'd been around for a while, they became more formal and institutionalized under the 1834 New Poor Law as a way to deal with the destitute poor. They soon became dumping grounds for all sorts of society's cast-offs. They were the stuff of nightmares, as Charles Dickens so poignantly illustrated.

I cannot claim any form of authority on this subject, but I have been reading about it so as to make my treatment of this subject as realistic as possible. I may or may not have hit the mark, but I have made an effort.

For this story and for "Sisters" I have consulted:

Anne Borsay. Disability and Social Policy in Britain since 1750 Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005.

David Wright and Anne Digby (eds.) From Idiocy to Mental Deficiency: Historical Perspectives on People with Learning Disabilities. Routledge, 1996.

Steve Humphries and Pamela Gordon. Out of Sight: The Experience of Disability, 1900-1950. Northcote House, 1992.

Pauline Morris. Put Away: A Sociological Study of Institutions for the Mentally Retarded. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969.

Last Note: Again, this chapter is told from Carson's perspective. I'll examine Elsie's views in the story "Sisters."