‘She wouldn’t hurt a fly. She believes our baby’s—something special. What harm does that do anyone else?’
‘You never know,’ said the greengrocer, supporting the missis, though in fact he was fond of Mrs. Vaughan—as indeed everyone had been in easier days. ‘They do turn queer, sometimes. Why not just take her to the doctor and ask him, or take her to the hospital?’
‘She won’t go to any hospital, she won’t go to any doctor.’
‘They can be forced,’ said the wife. ‘Strait jackets and that. They come and fetch them in a padded van.’ But anyway, she repeated, if something were not done and soon, she herself would ring up the police and let them deal with it. ‘She’s keeping custom from the shop. It can’t go on.’
He promised hastily and later convened a little meeting of the malcontents. ‘Well, I’ve done what you said. I went to the hospital and they sent me to some special doctor and I told him all about it. They’re going to send her to a place where she won’t be too suspicious and they’ll have her under observation there, that’s what they call it, and then there’ll be psychiatrists and that, and she can have treatment. He says it’s probably only a temporary thing, she can be cured all right.’
‘Well, there you are! You and Marilyn can be finding somewhere else in the meantime and when she gets back and you’re not there, she’ll just settle down again.’
‘We’ll go anyway even if we don’t find anywhere. We couldn’t let it start all over again.’
‘These things aren’t as quick as all that. You’ll have time to look around.’
‘It’s not very nice,’ he said, ‘us there in her room and her in the bin.’
‘If you ever get her there. How’ll you persuade her to go?’
‘I’ve thought of that,’ he said. ‘Our last landlady—’
‘Oh, yes, that Mrs. Mace she’s always talking about. Mrs. Mace would understand, she keeps saying, Mrs. Mace knew all about it… You tell her she’s going to see Mrs. Mace.’
‘That’s what I thought. Mrs. Mace is out in the country now and so’s this place, fifteen, twenty miles. I can drive her there in the car. She’ll go if she thinks Mrs. Mace is there. I think it’ll work.’
And it worked. Mrs. Vaughan was prepared to leave even the precious Baby for a while, if she could go and talk to Mrs. Mace. So many puzzling things that Mrs. Mace might be able to help her with. That about the Second Coming, for example, and then no Kings had arrived, not even a shepherd carrying a woolly lamb; and what about Herod killing off all them boy babies? Of course these were modern days, what would they have done with a live lamb, anyway?—and people didn’t go around killing babies any more. But you’d think there’d be something to take the place of these events, something—well, sybollick or whatever the word was and it might be important to recognise them. Mrs. Mace would understand, would at least be sympathetic and talk it all over; she had known them since before the baby even started, had been brushed by the very wings of Gabriel, bringing the message: Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee… She could hardly wait to gather up her few shabby clothes and pack them into the cardboard box that must do for a suitcase. ‘You’ll look after things, Marilyn, love, just the couple of days? I’d like to have some good long talks with Mrs. Mace. You do think she’ll let me stay?’
‘It’s a big place; like, sort of, a hotel,’ said Jo. ‘But lovely, all them trees and flowers. And lots of nice people,’ he added, cautiously.
‘I thought it was a cottage? It’s only Mrs. Mace I want to see. I can be with her?’
‘Oh, yes, of course. We’ve written and told her,’ fibbed Jo, ‘how good you’ve been to us.’
‘Me—good!’ she said. ‘When you think what you’ve done for me. Me being chosen! But still, there!—the last time it was only a pub-keeper, wasn’t it?’ The thought struck her that perhaps in fact it had been Meant that they should park outside the Dog that night, only a few doors down; that only through an error had they come to her. ‘Well, never mind, even if I wasn’t worthy to be chosen, fact remains it was me that got you; and reckernised you. First minute I saw you! I’ll never forget it.’ So beautiful, so quiet and undemanding, standing out there in the drizzle of the evening rain, Mary and Joseph and the promise of the Holy Child. And as they had been then, so they had remained: quiet, considerate, gentle; reserved, unemotional as she was emotional and out-giving; almost colourless, almost impersonal—a little apart from other human beings, from ordinary people like herself; and yet living with herself, close together in that little place with her for their only friend—the Mother and the Guardian of the Son of God; and the Word made flesh. She knelt and kissed the tiny hand. ‘I’ll come back to You, my little Lord. I’ll always love You and serve You, You know that. It’s only just that I want to know everything about You, I want to get things right, I want to ask Mrs. Mace.’ And all unaware of eyes watching from behind window curtains, balefully or pityingly or only with relief, she climbed into the battered little old car with Jo and drove away.