'Absence'
On the afternoon of March the twentieth, all sudden like, he don't live here any-more.
It would have been nice to get to say good-bye – you know, a proper good-bye, not like the one I give him. 'See you tonight,' I said, half-distracted. 'Have a lovely day.' But I never do see him after that, and certainly he don't have a lovely day; he's arrested in-stead.
Mrs Barker, his lovely pretty wife, comes home alone and pale as the grave, little pink lips trembling and long hands shaking on the pram she's wheeling (for their daughter, Johanna – just five days past a year old, she is, now). I take Mrs Barker into the shop and sit her down, and make her black coffee while she tells me all about how Mr Barker won't be coming home.
I didn't expect that he should be gone; no-body did. Not even him, I come to think; I ask Mrs Barker what he's been taken for, and she says a robbery last evening. 'Robbery?' I say to her. 'He was in all night.' (We was all having hot whiskies in the parlour.)
'I know,' she says. Being what we are, though, we can't very well do much but stare out at the drizzling rain, and the both of us knows it. I'm sure I can feel me own heart shatter, but she's still and pale and don't cry for him, so neither won't I. I tell her it'll be all right, though I know it won't. She don't say much, excepting small replies, and I wonder whether I'm doing any good at all, but I know it's all he'd want from me, so I keep on.
That week, the house gets all eerie quiet. There aren't any more creaks from the ceiling above. I suppose that with honesty, I never could concentrate on a thing when there was, but I miss them ever so much now he's gone away. I play the harmonium for Albert in the evenings, some-times. He listens; he quite likes music. He claps after and says I've done lovely, and I really am thankful he's near me. Still, I half wish that I'd asked Mr Barker down for a bit of a listen (he likes music, too; I could always hear him humming some-thing or other). I wanted to, all the time, but I didn't never ask nor tell Mr Barker any-thing at all, and now I've got to suppose I never will.
Once every while, I go up with some conjured-up errand to check on Mrs Barker. You see, she makes so little noise that some-times I half wonder if she's still there. Of course, she always is. She sits there, day in and out, with stitchery laying in her lap. When Mr Barker was here, he strung yellow daisies all round his shop, because Mrs Barker liked them. Now he isn't here any-more, she is letting them all die, and being in his shop is very like to break your heart.
Without a word of by-your-leave, the next week's passed us all by. The house, it seems like, gets more gloomy with every day. I hear about the trial, but of course, I was resigned a bit ago that I couldn't very well go; wouldn't be right. The doctor from half up the street comes in for his Sunday supper, like he always does, and so it happens, he was there, and he tells me all about it. He tells me how the room was quiet, and how there was, of course, the Judge and the case and the jury's-men and poor dear Mr Barker, but how there wasn't no witness called up at all.
'Wasn't there?' I ask, trying the best I can to keep me tone even.
'No,' he says. 'You know, Mrs Lovett, it was the queerest sort of affair.'
'Mm, I'm sure,' I mutter to him. I'm trying, I really am, to make meself soft and only half-concerned, but really I'm listening without even half a breath to be took.
'Strange business,' he muses, more to his self than to me, I fancy, but I attend him all the same. 'I mean,' he goes on to say, 'he always seemed a rather agreeable sort.'
'Yes,' I venture, 'a very good man.'
'Mm,' says he, and takes another bite of his pie. 'But you never do know, I suppose.'
I put a hand to me lips and cough once. 'Yes,' I say.
He happens to look up just then, and catches on me eye. 'You're looking pale, Mrs Lovett,' he says to me. 'Are you eating enough?'
'Oh – yes,' I tell him, hasty, though I haven't been. He finishes his supper and pays me sevenpence, and on his way out the door he tells me I should proper take care of meself. I say I surely will, and hope high that some-time soon it might be true.
One day, after Albert's gone to office (but before there's any customers come in), I'm standing alone at the counters, and I do some-thing quite odd. Perhaps it's that I'm faint from feeling tired, and I've got nothing in me; or perhaps it's that being alone at all in dangerous lately; or perhaps it's some-thing else. What-ever the cause, I start up writing a letter out loud.
'Dear Mr Barker,' I begin, quiet while I stir batter in a bowl, and then flush red (half because it's so silly of me, and the other half because I haven't never wrote a letter before). Still, I've begun, haven't I, so I keep on. 'I am writing to tell you that we are all managing, so you needn't worry. I am … ' Here, I have to bend up and catch me breath back, wait for me heart to stop the pounding. Which I do, and go on: 'I am not sure if you've had a letter, and I thought that certainly you'd like to know that we are all as well as can be expected.' The batter's thick enough by now, so I stick me hands in and start up shaping it. 'Mrs Barker asks me to relate to you that she misses you very much.' This isn't true, but I know it might do him some comfort, so I put it in all the same. 'You're much missed, as well, by myself and Mr Lovett (if it's not a trouble to say so, Mr Barker).'
I take out a bit of dough from the bowl and roll it between me palms, cupping me fingertips round it as I do. 'I have enclosed,' I go on to say, rolling away at the dough in me hands, 'a loaf of cinnamon bread I've baked.' I haven't baked a cinnamon loaf, but perhaps I will. 'I remember, of course,' I go on to say, 'how you do like cinnamon, and I shouldn't imagine there is much of it to be found where you are now.' I take the dough-ball I've just made and set it a-side, start up with the next one. 'I do not suppose,' I relate, 'there's much I can do to tell you I am so awfully sorry for what's happened.' I suggest: 'If it will do at all, know that I am – no,' I catch meself just in time. ' – That we are all thinking of you,' I say in-stead.
'I do hope you like the cinnamon loaf, and I earnestly wish that you, too, should be as well as can be expected.' I could talk away all day, I could, to man as isn't there, but I haven't got any-thing sensible left to say. 'Yours – ' I bring one hand up quick to me lips. Once they stop their burning, I lower me hand back down and suck the dough off me bottom lip. 'I mean: Regards,' I catch meself again, 'Mrs Eleanor Lovett.'
No-one has ever called me Eleanor, but it is me name, so says me birth-papers, so that's what I say.
While I beat out the dough, I'm all whirling thoughts. Shall I bake out a cinnamon loaf, and pen it? Shall I post it? No, I quiet me racing heart and decide in the end. No, I cannot write to him; wouldn't be right. I keep this whole thing all in me head, like I always have; it's much safer there than any-where else.
That after-noon, a man from the other side of town comes in looking for him; he's been recommended on Mr Barker's shop. 'Sorry, sir,' is what I have to say, calm and even with a gentle smile, 'he don't live here any-more.'