CHAPTER IIIPICTUREPOSTCARDISMINthe green lane between Barwood and Huntly there was a stile in the tall hedge. Behind were laurels, and brambles, and box trees, and yews, all growing wild. At the end of a mossy path from the stile lay the house, built in yellow brick with mauve patterns, across a lawn of rank grass. It had been raised in 1840 by a Welshman, the date was over the door. But this was hardly visible, it was early morning and a heavy white mist smudged the outline. Birds were beginning to chatter, dawn was not far. There were no curtains to the house, and no blinds but one, torn, hanging askew across a dark window swinging loosely open on the ground floor. A few panes of glass were broken, and brown paper was stuck over the holes. There was a porch at the near end with most of the tiles off; they had been used to patch the roof, which was a dark blue-grey. At the far end was what had once been a hot-house, its glass broken.The garden was dishevelled, no attempt had been made to clean it for many years, and the only sign of labour was the cabbages that Father, in a burstof energy, had planted in a former flower-bed. There was one huge beech tree most beautifully tidy, and the only respectable member of the garden. The others merely went round the edge, keeping the chaotic growth from the neat meadows. The whole garden gave the effect of being unhappy because it had too much freedom. It was sad. And the house was sadder still with its wistful mauve patterns, looking so deserted and forlorn although it was lived in. Nobody loved it, and, though by nature so very feminine, it had to remain neuter and wretched. No one cared two farthings, and it felt that deeply. No one minded. The birds were chirruping heartlessly. From over the river the church struck a silver five.At the back was a yard, in the middle a hen coop made out of an old army hut. A cock was crowing within, had been doing so for some time. There is a stable, with a rickety door off its lower hinge hanging ajar. A rat plays inside. There are holes in the red roof of the outhouse, gaping at the pink sky. Broken flagstones lie about, and weeds have grown through the cracks. The back door has lost its paint. The four windows stare vacantly with emptiness behind their leaded panes. The mist hangs sluggishly about, and the air is chill as the cock crows in his raucous tenor.Then the sun lights up the top of the beech tree into golden fire, and there is a movement in the paleness. It begins to go, while the sky fades backinto every-day life. The fire creeps down the beech till the tops of the overgrown laurels are alight, the mist has drawn off to the river just below there. Everything brightens and stretches out of sleep, the sky is blue almost. A butterfly aimlessly flutters over the cabbages, the flycatcher swoops down and she is swallowed; he was on guard already. A pigeon drives by, a bright streak of silver painted on him by the sun. The birds chirp in earnest as the sun climbs higher and begins to make shadows, while anywhere that a drop of dew catches the light he breaks into a gem. A gossamer web will dart suddenly across something, like a rainbow thread.The chickens begin to make a great noise, scolding and crooning in their wooden prison, sounding very greedy. They want to be let out, for a late worm, who has come up to see the new day, may yet be left by the gobbling blackbirds and thrushes. The last mists are drawing out, a breeze is stirring, and the morning is crystal. The dew has made a spangled dress for everyone, and the weeds and straggling bushes are all under a canopy of brilliant drops of light.A starling sits upon the chimney pot preening himself. A crow flies over the garden, glancing to right and left. The three yews are renewing their green in the sun, the laurels are shiny and clean. A rabbit hops out, looks round, and begins to nibble at the fresh grass, his last meal before he goes to bed.The air is new.All are one community, but it will not be for long. When the sun sucks up the dew and the moistness of the gossamer, everyone will be for himself again. Each bird will sing his own song, and not the song of the garden. “Me, me, me,” he will say, “I am the best.” And the nettles will whisper to each other, “You are me, you are me,” laurels, yews, box trees and brambles too. Even the beech tree who has won to his great height and who has no rival in fifteen miles, he, too, will be straining, straining higher to the sun. It is all the sun, who has not climbed high enough yet.The back door opened and she came out, pausing a moment before shutting the door behind her. She was tall and dressed in red slippers, a dirty blue serge skirt, and a thin, stale mauve bodice. She was so graceful! Her skin was unhealthy-looking, dark and puffed, her mouth small, the lips red. Her hair, black and in disorder, tangled down to her eyebrows. Across one cheek a red scar curved. Her eyes, a dark brown and very large, had a light that burned.She felt alive, and she could see that the yard was dead—yes, she was like that this morning.She stepped out into the yard, slammed the door behind her, and swept through the weeds that sprinkled her with dew. One big bramble twined so amorously round her skirt that her legs could not tear themselves free, and she had to bend to tearhim off superbly. All over at the contact of her hands he trembled, and trembled there for some time. She went to the pump which stood near the outhouse, and the rat fled down his hole. She worked the pump handle till it chugged up water for her which she splashed over her face, wetting her dress as well. She went to the hen coop, opened the door, and stood waiting. The cock walked sedately out the first and she hurried him up with her carpet slipper, laughing to see him flustered. Her voice was deep, and, of course, had a coarse note in it. And then she went back into the house, all wet, banging the back door behind her.Snores, deep and thick, came down from an open window above into the yard.The cock was angry and he watched his hens for a moment with a sense of humiliation, one claw stopped in mid-air. He did not know but he felt out of sorts. Not in actual ill-health but liverish. All the same, if there was anyone to look at him they would see a fine sheen to his feathers to-day. He cried out to attract attention, and Natacha, who was by his side, said duteously that his ruff was stupefying in its beauty, rivaling the sun with its brightness. After it was all over, leaving Natacha squawking, he fluttered up on to the top of the coop. He was feeling ambitious, in revolt, the world was all wrong somehow, too soft, not enough dust for a dust-bath. There was not even a dung-heap in this wretched yard. Everything was too soft—thesun, and the dew, and the gentle weeds. He wanted heat, heat. Between intervals of killing things on himself he stretched out his neck and told this to the world, and that he was king of this castle.Joan upstairs is putting on her stockings. What a lot of holes there are in them, but no matter. Sunday to-day. How will Father take the church bells? Last Sunday he had not minded very much. It is going to be beautifully hot, and Father will hate that too, poor old thing. George hated the heat, only she loved it. The wonderful sun!How red her hands are getting, and rough. That was the house-work, while nice, young, rich ladies kept theirs folded with gloves on, and they had coloured umbrellas to keep the sun off. To be frightened of the sun! Nice young ladies had never done a day’s work in their lives. Why should she work and they be idle? Oh, if she were like one of them! She would have light blue undies. Wouldn’t she look a dream in the glass! And stays? No, no stays. But perhaps, they must fortify you so.But what was the good of dreaming?—dreaming never did anyone any good. There was George, he might be working in the meadow to-morrow, and then she would lean over the stile—climb over the stile?—and talk to him and get a few shy answers back, perhaps. George was wonderful, George was so exciting. With his fair hair, with his honey-coloured eyes, with his brick-red face so passionate, with his strength, with his smell. The one thatdrove the milk factory’s lorry and that was always smoking a cigarette on his upper lip and that had that look in his eyes like a snake looking for his prey, she could not understand how she had seen anything in him. But George, with his honey-coloured ones, slow, but with it at the back of them, and with his shortness, and with his force, oh, it would, it must be something this time after such years of waiting. To find out all about it. “Yes, George, go on, go on.”What nice toes she had, except that the nails were rather dirty. But what was the good of keeping clean now? They weren’t in the Vicarage any more, and there was no one to tell her how dirty or how pretty they were, except Father when he was drunk, but that, of course, did not count. George would say all that. She would teach him, if he didn’t know.She moves to a looking-glass and wrestles with her hair. In the glass was the brown-papered wall behind, the paper hanging in strips, showing the yellow plaster beneath. Those holes in the roof. And there was the rash that broke out in the top right-hand corner of the glass where the paint had come off the back. She was so miserable. The only chair has no back, and the front leg is rickety, so that you have to lean over to the right when you sit down. The bare boards of the floor are not clean, the bed-clothes are frowsy, the pillow greasy. Everything is going to go wrong to-day. It is closein here. She goes across the room and flings the window open. By the window there was a small table, on it a looking-glass. She never used this one because you had to sit down to it, and that was tiresome. Draped round the oval frame and tied in wide, drooping bows to the two uprights was a broad white ribbon. Tied to the handles of the two drawers beneath were white bows also. On the low table were hair-brushes, a comb with three teeth out, a saucer full of pins and hairpins and safety pins and a medicine bottle, empty, with a bow round the neck made out of what had been left of the white ribbon. Violets, in a little bunch, lay by the bottle, dead.She goes through the door into the next room, which is his. He is lying noisily asleep, with the bed-clothes half off his chest, and his red beard is spread greasily over the lead-white of his skin. One arm hangs down to the floor, the other, trying to follow it, is flung across his chest. His face has a nose, flat, hair red and skin blotchy. There is the usual homely smell of gin. The window was wide open to let out the snores.And this was Father, Daddy, Daddums. Oh, he was pretty in bed. She couldn’t remember him very well as he was at the Vicarage such ages ago, without his beard. It had been wonderful then: they had had a servant, which you could order about. And Mrs. Haye, she used to terrify her, now she did not care two snaps of the finger although shehad run away from her when she had seen her coming down the lane the other day; and Mrs. Haye had called him Mr. Entwhistle, the ordinary people, Passon, and Colonel Waterpower, whom they had met occasionally, had called him Padre. Silly all those people were with their silly ways, but they were so well dressed and the ladies too, those stuffs, so . . . And it was his fault that they were like this. You could see what people thought by their faces as they passed, they always went a little quicker when they caught sight of you coming. And they might still have been in the Vicarage.Poor Father, perhaps it was not all his fault. And after all she was the only person left now to look after him. And the life wasn’t too bad, he left her alone except when he was drunk and wanted someone to talk to. And he told her the most wonderful things. He was really a wonderful man, a genius. All it was, was that he was misunderstood. He saw visions and things. And really, in the end, it was all Mother’s fault for being such a fool, though of course Father had been fond of gin before that. Mother, when she lay dying, with Father and her at the bedside, instead of whispering something she ought to have, had cried out quite loud“John”as if she was calling, right in front of the doctor and the village nurse and that. Then she was dead, and they were her last words. John was still the postman. She had been a fool, and Father had drunk much more gin ever afterwards. AfterMother died Father had been unfrocked, that was soon after the beginning of the war, partly for the gin, and partly for the talk about Mother. Mr. Davies died in time, and with most of the money that Uncle Jim had left them when he was killed they had bought this house here, only two miles away. It would have been nicer to go somewhere new, but as Father said, “he was not going to run away from those that had hounded him from the parish.”What was she doing standing still? She had to wake him and then get breakfast and then clear up. “Here, wake up. Wake up,” and she picks up the clothes, flung anyhow on the floor, and smooths them, putting them at the foot of the bed. Roses on wallpaper, roses hung down in strips from the damp wall pointing. “Get up, get up.” He was shamming, that he might give her more work to do. Yes, that was it. “Do you hear? Get up.” She lifts his white shoulders and shakes him till the blue watery eyes open. She lets him flop back on to the pillow, the red finger-marks on his skin fading away again.His eyes open painfully. He scratches, gazing vacantly at the ceiling.“Another day?”“Yes.”“Oh.”“I’ll go and get you some water, if you’ll get up.”“Well, go and get it then.”She goes to the pump, and he drags himself out of bed. He is short and thick-set, with bulging flesh. He has been sleeping in an old pair of flannel trousers. He sits on a box by the window. He looks out beyond the garden, over the meadow and the quiet river, to where the trees cover a hill on the other side. Their green dresses are blurred by the delicate blue mist that swims softly round them, the deep shade yawns the sleep away. In the meadows some cows lie in the open, it is not hot enough yet to drive them under the hedges. Below, a hen chuckles with satisfaction. How quiet it all was, nothing wrong in the best of all possible worlds. They thought that, all the rest of them, they did not care. And he was forgotten. Nature insulted him. What right had the country to look like this, basking in the sunshine while he lived in the middle of it? He with his great thoughts, his great sufferings. Why didn’t the State support him, instead of letting him live in squalor? He deserved as much of the money from the bloated capitalist as anyone else. It was their class that had brought him to this, they had never paid him enough, for one thing. It was their fault. Where was the water?To-day was going to go badly, it was going to be terribly hot. Sunday too, so that the church bells would ring and then he would remember Barwood church, the little altar, the roses—his roses—growing outside. He felt so ill to-day, not at all strong.He would weep when the bells rang, weep because so many things were over, the Colonel calling him Padre, the deference of the churchwarden. How great his tears would be. All that was so far and yet so close. Every day he thought it over. But there was no need to regret it, he was working out his salvation here, if he had stayed on in that Vicarage he would have been dead alive. He was so vital here, and then somehow the grasp of it would leave him.He was ill to-day all the same, he felt it inside, something seriously the matter. Was it the cancer? There, turning over and over. Yes, there it was. Here; no, there; no, no, there. Yes. Cancer, that he had been awaiting so long.“Here’s the water.”He winced. The noise the girl made. Was he not ill?“I am ill.”“Again?”“It’s the cancer at last.”There was a certain satisfaction now that it had come.“Again. The doctor will cost you a bottle just for telling you it’s imagination. I know them and you.”“Go away, go away.”She was essentially small in character, like that mistaken woman her mother. Oh, he couldn’t any more. Cancer coming on top of it all. What a finetragedy his was. And it would cut short his great work, before even it had been begun.She opened the door downstairs and went into the kitchen. He was much the same to-day, a little stronger perhaps, but that would go till he stoked up in the evening. Poor, weak creature.Through a small window in a small bay looking out on to the garden the sunlight comes in and washes the dirt off the worn, red tiles. There is a sour smell of old food, and underneath the two windows on the right lie some empty sardine tins which have missed the gaps in the glass when thrown away. She goes to the cupboard, which is on the left. On it is an almanack from the ironmonger in Norbury, ten years old, with a picture in the middle of a destroyer cutting rigid water shavings in the sea, with smoke hurrying frozenly out of its funnels, and with a torpedo caught into eternity while leaping playfully at its side, out of the water and into the air. She jerks the cupboard open. Inside are plates, knives and forks, cups, and a teapot, all in some way chipped or broken. There are tinned foods of every kind, most of all sardines, and three loaves. At the bottom are two pails and a mangy scrubbing-brush and some empty gin bottles. On the top shelf some unopened bottles and a few cakes of soap are jumbled up with vaguely folded sheets and towels. She takes out a sardine tin and a loaf of bread and pitches them with two knives on to the table in the middle ofthe room. A chunk of butter on half a plate she puts down, as well as two cups without handles, and the milk-holding teapot. He has an injured spout, poor thing.She goes over to the bay window and flings it open. She rolls up the torn blind. Father liked going round at night occasionally, “shutting up” as if he lived in a castle, but as he could never see straight enough by then to find the window latches it was not much good, but he always pulled down the blind. The range was disused and rusty, it had not been lighted since April. Before it was a tub of greasy water in which she did the washing up. The sun did not get far into the room. The paper here also was beginning to peel from the walls. An early bluebottle buzzed somewhere.There was a movement in the sunlight, a scamper, and Minnie was arching his back against her leg, while his tail waved carefully at the end. Minnie, so fresh, so clean, the darling. Cat’s eyes looked up at her, yellow and black. “Minnie, have you killed anything?” In a rush he was out of the window—how like darling Minnie—his tail a pennant. Then he is back, the clever darling, and in his mouth a dead robin redbreast. How he understood. “Oh, Minnie, the little sweet. Look at his crimson waistcoat and his crimson blood. Why, he is still warm. Shall we give him to Father for his breakfast. What a clever Minnie,” and Minnie purrs half attention. He paddles a paw in a speck of blood. She bendsdown, taking him in her arms. “Oh, Minnie, what a clever Minnie.” But with a light jump he was out of her arms and was going to the window, and then was out of it. Joan follows, looks out, and Minnie is standing there, quite still, detached. Then he was off, slipping by everything, while the dew caught at his coat. How lovely cats were, she adored her Minnie.A slow step came down the stairs, with a careful pause at the hole on the ninth step from the ground, and he comes in shakily. His face is baggy and fallen in, his black clothes have stains. He is wearing a dirty drainpipe collar, for it is the Sabbath, while round it a khaki shirt flaunts, without the black dicky. He stands in the doorway, his beard waggling.“Sardines? Again? I tell you I can’t eat them.”“We ought to be glad to eat what is given to us.”“Don’t throw up quotations like that at me just to annoy me. Do you hear? Given, who said it was given? I paid for it, didn’t I? You hate me, and everyone hates me.”But that was as it should be, he ought to take a pride in the hatred of the world. It was ever so with the great. But sardines, he paid for them. There had been a time when he had thanked God for sardines, because he had always hated them so that he saw in them his cross. But what was the good? He paid for them, and ate them because it was better than eating dry bread. After all he hadpaid for them, and if he had not paid he would not have got them, so where did thanks come in? He ought only to thank that oil-well in Southern Texas where Hoyner the cinema-man came from. There had been a time when he had thanked God for oil-wells, wars and apples, while these were nothing but unfortunate mistakes, he having lost half his money in Mexican oil, and apples being bad for his digestion. Why did he keep that money in oil?—it would go like the other half had. But it was so awkward changing. It was all so difficult. But then if no one ate fish the industry would die and with it the fishermen. No, thank God, he could see nothing divine in anything now, whereas in the old days he had eaten even a sardine with considerable emotion. Yet how could one be sure? His reason, how it tortured him, how it pursued round and round, coldly, in his brain. He had a fine intellect, too. Edward had told him that thirty years ago at Oxford. And it had been growing, growing ever since in his hermit existence, even Joan did not deny it. . . . He was even more of a genius because he was recognised in his home, a very rare thing surely. And his reward would come, it must come. Yes, he would start work this very morning. But he felt so ill, weak.“I feel so ill this morning, child. I have such a headache. And I am so weak”—physically only, of course; no, not mentally.“Have a drop of gin in your milk. That will make it all right.”“Yes, I think you are right”—but no more than one, really.He was always like that before the morning one. Poor Father.That is better, more comfortable. But still there may be something wrong with him. He swallows another gin-and-milk.“It’s the cancer, Joan, that’s what I am so terrified about. I can feel it glowing hot. We can’t afford an operation or morphia. I shall die.”It would be nice to die; but no, it wouldn’t be, and that was very unreasonable. But no, it wasn’t, there was his book.He was so clever that he had always been bottom at school—all great men had been bottom at school. Then he had lost his way in the world. No, that wasn’t true, he had found it—this, this gin was his triumph. It was the only thing that did his health any good, and one had to be in good spirits if he was to think out the book, the great book that was to link everything into a circle and that would bring him recognition at last, perhaps even a letter from the Bishop. It would justify his taking something now and again as he did. But one doubted, there were days when one could not see it at all. How ill he felt. Some deep-seated disorder. How dreadful a disease, cancer. Why could not the doctorsdo something about it? Oh, for a pulpit to say it from.Terrible, terrible.“Father, where did you put the tin-opener for these sardines?”“I don’t know. My pain. Never had it.”“But it must be somewhere. It isn’t in the cupboard here.”“Can’t you open it with a fork? It’s all laziness. Why bother me? Oh, here it is in my pocket. How funny.”“You are drinking all the gin. No, look here, you mustn’t have any more. There will be none for this evening at this rate.”“But I’m not going to drink any more, I tell you. Leave me alone.”“Oh, yes. Here, give me that bottle.”“I shan’t; I want it, I tell you. My health.”“Give it me.”You could be firm with him in the morning. She locks up the bottle in the cupboard, slips the key inside her dress, and begins to open the sardines. He is almost in tears, “insulted, by a girl, my daughter. When it was for the good of my health, as I was ill.” But he wasn’t such a fool, oh no. He had a dozen beneath the floor of the study. He had wanted to drink more lately, and the girl always regulated his bottle a day carefully.“Damn, I’ve cut myself with the tin-opener.”There is a gash in her thumb, and she bleeds intothe oil which floats over the sardines. Serve her right, now she would get blood-poisoning, her hand would swell and go purple, and it would hurt. They would die in agony together. Think of the headlines in the evening papers, the world would hear of him at last: “AMAZING DISCOVERY IN LONELY COTTAGE,” then lower down, “UNFROCKED GENIUS AND HIS BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER FOUND DEAD.” Beautiful. Was she? Yes, of course she was, as good as anyone’s daughter anyway, except for the scar. The scar, it was like a bad dream, he had a hazy memory of her taunting him, of his throwing the bottle and missing, and of throwing one of the broken bits, and of catching her with it on the cheek. It was horrible. Still it was what a genius would have done. He was so weak this morning. What was he thinking about? Yes, suicide, and the headlines in the papers. But in any case it would be over in three days. What was the use of it all? And what was he eating, blood-stained sardine? He did feel sick. Cancer.She had bound up her finger in a handkerchief, and was eating sardines on slabs of bread-and-butter, heads and tails, while he unconsciously cut these off. She eats with quick hunger, her chin is greasy with the oil coming from the corners of her mouth. She says thickly:“I love sardines, and the oil is the best thing about them.”No answer.Poor Father, he was in for a bad day, for it was going to be very hot, and he must have had a bad night, he was a little worse than usual. And he did hate sardines so, but there was nothing else to eat, except the kipper in tomato sauce, and they were going to have a tin of that for lunch. Father was really not very well, perhaps this talk of cancer wasn’t all nonsense. But it must only be the drink. He was such a nasty sight, with his finicky tastes and his jumpy ways. Think if George were there across the table, eating with a strong appetite, with his strong, dirty nails, the skin half grown over them, instead of Father’s white ones, the last thing about himself that he spent any trouble over. They were one of his ways of passing the time, while she slaved. There would be something behind his honey-coloured eyes, a strong hard light, instead of blue wandering, weak ones. His face would be brick-red with the sun, his flesh inside the open shirt collar—there would be no starch about him—would be gold with a blue vein here and there; he would be so strong, it would be wonderful to be so frightened of him. Gold. While that weak creature over there, why even his beard was bedraggled and had lost its colour. Yet there were times when his body filled out and his voice grew, and when his beard flamed. Her fingers crept to the scar on her cheek, it had been wonderful that night. You felt a slave, a beaten slave.But it was the scar that frightened George. Hiseyes would stray to the scar and look at it distrustfully; at first he had looked at her dress with horror, but she had not made that mistake again. Still he never spoke, which was so annoying, but lately there had been more confidence and shrewdness in his eyes. But the others did use to say something, all except Jim, he had been worse than George. Of course, no one ever saw her with him, it would scare him if the village began to talk. But it was very exciting. It was incredible to think how the days had passed without him.There were now two bluebottles busy round the head of a sardine about three days old. The head lay there, jagged at the neck where Father had pulled off the body, a dull glaze over the silver scales, the eyes were metallic. There was blue on the two bluebottles who never seemed content, they buzzed up and down again so. Minnie had come in by the little bay window, and the bluebottles seethed with anger at being disturbed by someone besides themselves.She rises sideways without stirring her chair, whispering hoarsely:“Minnie, Minnie, come here.”But he slips by her hands. The key slipped down her leg to tinkle on the floor.“That cat. Ah you, go away, go away,” and he gets up, his chair screeching along the red tiles. He throws his knife feebly, it misses Minnie and makes a clatter. He is out of the window in a flash,and Father sits down again. She puts the key under the bread.“I do hate cats, they frighten me so. There is something so dreadful about a cat, the way she seems to be looking at nothing. They don’t see flesh and blood, they see an abstract of everything. It’s horrible, horrible. Joan, you might keep her away from me, you know how I hate her. I can’t bear any cat. And in my condition. I think you might, yes, I do think you might.”“All right, but I don’t see what you mean. Minnie is such a darling, I don’t know why you hate her.”“Of course you don’t know cats as they really are. He is a devil, that cat.”Poor Father.Outside, on the right, a hen stalks reflectively, her head just over the weeds. Her eye is fixed, its stare is irritating, and the way she has of tilting her head to look for food is particularly precious. She goes forward slowly, often dipping out of sight to peck at something. All that can be seen of her is a dusty-brown colour, dull beside the fresh green round her, encouraged by the sun into a show of newness. He watches her one visible eye with irritation.“A chicken, at six in the morning, and loose in the garden. That shouldn’t be. A pen. I will build a pen for them some time. I will start to-day, but then there is no rabbit wire, and we can’t affordwire.” Yet hens in one’s garden. Degrading. Yet why not? They had to live, it was only fair to them that he should let them get food even if they were in his way, because they gave him food, and he did not deserve it. All the same, he did. And they were God’s creatures, even if they did come out of an egg, and even more because they did so. But was that true? No. Yes. He couldn’t see at all to-day. Scientists understood the egg, all except the life that entered it—and that was God; there, there you are. But anegg.He didn’t know. There was something. He did not know. No, not in an egg.He gets up and moves towards the door by the cupboard.“You’ll never build that pen, and you know it. Here, what are you going to the Gin Room for?”“Don’t use that tone to me. Can’t your Father go where he likes? Can’t he retire to his study for a little peace? You seem to have no—no feeling for your Father.”And he was gone. That meant he had some gin in there, but you couldn’t help it, there was nothing to be done, and he was better when he had drunk a little, he was more of a Man. And what was the use of worrying? and anyway it pulled him together. Blast this finger, why had she been such a fool as to jab it open? It hurt too, though not very much, still it would have been nice to have had someone to be sorry about it and to help her tieit up. If George had been here she would have been able to make such a lot of it. Those bluebottles, there were three of them round that sardine now, and three more over there, all in the sun. That was the one sensible thing about them; how she loved the sun. She put the key into the table drawer.*****The clock in the village church across the fields struck twelve in a thin copper tenor that came flatly through the simmering heat. No bird sang, no breath of air stirred, nothing moved under the sun who was drawing the life out of everything except Joan. She got up slowly, damp with sweat, from the window-sill where she had been stewing in the white light. The wood of it was unbearably hot, and what few traces of paint that were left, blistered. She fanned herself with the old straw hat she had been wearing, and tried to make up her mind to go out and find the eggs for dinner. She loved the sun, he took hold of you and drew you out of yourself so that you couldn’t think, you just gave yourself up. She loved being with him all round her till she couldn’t bear it any more. You forgot everything except him, yet you could not look up at him, he was so bright. He was so strong that you had to guard your head lest he should get in there as well. He was cruel, like George. And he was stronger than George, but then George was a Man.The air, heavy with the wet heat, hung lifelesssave when her straw hat churned it lazily into dull movement. Three bluebottles, fanning themselves angrily with their wings at the windows, by their buzzing kept the room alive. She was lost in a sea of nothingness, and all the room too. From inside Father’s room came low moans at intervals, the heat had invaded and had conquered Father. Oh, it is hot, she is pouring with sweat all over, and her hands feel big and clumsy and heavy with blood, there is nowhere to put them. How cool the iron range is, its fireplace gazing emptily up the chimney at the clean blue of the sky. Her hand on the oven door leaves a moist mark which vanishes slowly.She must look for eggs, though how the poor hens can lay in this weather she didn’t know. Think of having feathers, dusty feathers on you for clothes on a day like this. And laying eggs. Minnie would be hot too, in an impersonal sort of way. But the poor hens. Why they would die of it, poor darlings, and the old cock, the old Turk in his harem, what would happen to him, how would he keep his dignity? She would have to go and look, besides she was sticky all over, and it would be cooler moving about.She leaves the kitchen and goes round to the back under the arch in the brick wall that went to the outhouse, and up which a tortured pear tree sprawled, dead, and so into the yard. The stench is violent, and with the sun beating down she driftsacross to the pump, limp as if she has forgotten how alive she had thought she was. She works the handle of the pump slowly till the water gushes reluctantly out. Then she splashes it over her face as it falls into the stone trough, and she plunges in her heavy hands—how nice water was, so cool, so slim, and she would like to be slim, like you saw in fashion plates in the papers, ladies intimately wrapped in long coats that clung to their slimness, they drank tea and she milk; Father said the water was unsafe, although it was so clear and pure and cool. It was hot.The cock was lost in immobility in the shade of the stable, and she had forgotten about him.She went round the side of the house, past the window of Father’s room till at the corner she came to the conservatory, the winter garden, inside which the crazy hen sometimes laid. She was crazy because she would cry aloud for hours on end and Joan never knew why, though perhaps it was for a chick that a fox had carried off once. The broken glass about caught the sun and seemed to be alight, and inside it was a furnace. Standing quite still in a corner was the hen, but no egg. She was black, and quite, quite still.In front the beech tree kept a cave of dark light, behind and on each side the tangled bushes did the same, each kept his own, and the giant uneven hedge. They were all trying to sleep through it. She ploughs through the grass and looks vaguelyhere and there, into the usual nests and the most likely places. Under an old laurel tree with leaves like oilcloth, into an arching tuft of grass. A bramble lies in wait, but she brushes him aside. Two or three flies come after her, busy doing nothing. She passes by clouds of dancing grey gnats in the shade.Still no eggs.Nothing of course under the yew, so old that he empoisoned and frightened young things. Drops of sweat fell down. Here was the box tree who kept such a deep shade. There were two eggs. She turns, and crossing a path of sunlight, enters the shade of the beech and sits down, her back against his trunk. If he were George.She thinks of nothing.Then she finds that the house is ugly, the yellow and mauve answer back so coldly to the sun. And it was so small and tumble-down. The life was so full, so bitter. If she could change it. There would be the long drive through the great big park with the high wall round it and the great big entrance gates, made of hundreds of crowns in polished copper. After that you would come suddenly through a wood of tall poplars upon a house that was the most beautiful in the world, made of a lot of grey stone. Standing on the steps to greet her as she steps out of her luxurious car would be the many footmen dressed in scarlet, and all young and good-looking. Inside would be the huge staircase,and the great big rooms furnished richly. On a sofa, smoking a cigar, would be the husband, so beautiful. He would have lovely red lips and great big black eyes. Like a sort of fairy story. It would be just like that.But there was the other dream. A small house with a cross somewhere to show it was a vicarage, and a young clergyman, her husband, and lots and lots of children. She would be in the middle, so happy, her big dark eyes shining like stars, and they would be stretching out chubby fingers to her. But what was the good of dreaming?—dreaming never did anyone any good.It was nicer to live as you were, and George might be somewhere near. There were the eggs to do.She wriggles round and looks out, through the gap with the little gate, over the river sunk in her banks and invisible, to the trees on the hills that were soaked in blue, with sunshades of bright sun green on top. A pigeon moves, winking grey, through them; no sound breaks the quiet. It is a sleepy blue, and how the ground was bubbling, air bubbles rising that you could see. She would have to go and boil the eggs, and bubbles would come then. The oil lamp would make such a heavy smell. She liked them raw, but Father would have them boiled. It had to be done. Father was a great baby, and he had to be fed.She gets up and moves slowly into the house without bothering to put on her straw hat again.From the cupboard underneath the stairs she takes out the lamp with a saucepan fixed above it and carries it into the kitchen. She fills the saucepan by dipping it into the washing-up water, and puts the two eggs in, then lights the lamp from the box on the shelf over the range. Bubbles very soon appear mysteriously from nowhere in the water, and these grow more and more, till the eggs move uneasily at the number of them. Eggs, why do chickens come out of eggs? It was like a conjuring trick, darling little yellow wooly, fluffy things who were always hurrying into trouble! But she knew just how the hen felt with them, it would be wonderful. How long had they been in? Oh dear, the heat and the smell! Poor eggs, it was rather hard on them. This must be about right, and she turns the flame off. Now for the bread and the kippers in tomato sauce and plates and spoons and cups and—the milk, she had forgotten the milk. And she could not go to Mrs. Donner’s, it was too hot. Father would have to drink gin, he wouldn’t mind, but she would, she hated it. She went to the door of his room and beat upon it with the palm of her hand, leaving damp marks wherever she touched it. “Father, dinner is ready.” His voice answered, “All right.” It was weary, but with a stronger note.He shambles into the room dejectedly.“Oh, it is hot, it is hot.”“Yes. Father, here’s an egg.”“Thank you. Oh, dear.”They begin to eat, he carefully, and she roughly. He takes up his cup to drink.“Milk.”“There isn’t any left.”“No milk? Why is there no milk? We always drink milk at lunch, don’t we? And Mrs. Donner always has milk, doesn’t she? Why is there no milk?”“You know we can’t afford it.”“I don’t suppose we can, but can’t I have a little luxury occasionally, with my bad health?”“I don’t know.”“You don’t know, and what’s more, you don’t care, you don’t mind that you make your poor old Father uncomfortable. Where would you have been without me? . . . Don’t smile, shut that smile or I’ll knock it inside out.” He is streaming with sweat, it falls in blobs on to the table. She just didn’t care, didn’t care. He’d make her care soon enough. But what was it all for?“Any gin left for me?”“Don’t taunt me, don’t taunt me, don’t taunt me . . . don’t . . .” and his voice rises, and his face crinkles into funny lines. She was taunting him, taunting him. Just when he felt so ill, too. He did feel ill. And these rows were so thin. Ill.He gets up and goes to the door of his room, dragging his feet.“Where are you going? More gin?”“Yes, more gin. Why shouldn’t I? Just one more.”“But aren’t you going to finish your egg?—and then there’s the nice kipper and tomato sauce.”“I tell you I can’t eat, I’m ill,” and he pulls to the door of his room.Silly old Father, he was ridiculous, and yet it must be horrid to be as unhappy as all that. Anyway, it would mean all the more for her. She finishes his egg and then opens and begins to eat the fish. She does not eat prettily. He is having no lunch. Is he really ill? No, it was the gin. Still, it was her job to look after him, if she didn’t who would? And if he was ill and died she would feel just like the hen who trod to death a chick—yes, just like that. For he was hers, he was an awful child, and he had to be looked after, and he had to be petted when he cried. He had to be told how wonderful he was, and if you told him he was a genius he would at once cheer up and begin talking about birds and trees, and the sky and the stars. There was something queer about stars, they were mysterious, like Minnie’s eyes, only nice and small; and she liked nice small things, when she saw them. They were cool too. There were heaps of things she did like, but then she didn’t have the time, she was so busy. What was a genius exactly? How hot it was, and she wanted a drink.*****Everything was old and sleepy. The sun, who was getting very red, played at painting long shadowsin the grass. The air was tired and dust had risen from nowhere to dry up the trees. Sometimes a gentle little breath of wind would come up moving everything softly, and a bird would sing to it perhaps. All was quiet. Gnats jigged. From over the river the clock struck a mellow golden eight. The sun began throwing splashes of gold on to the trees, even the house caught some and was proud to be under the same spell.The air began to get rid of the heaviness, and so became fresher as the dew soaked the grass. A blackbird thought aloud of bed, and was followed by another and then another. The sun was flooding the sky in waves of colour while he grew redder and redder in the west, the trees were a red gold too where he caught them. The sky was enjoying herself after the boredom of being blue all day. She was putting on and rejecting yellow for gold, gold for red, then red for deeper reds, while the blue that lay overhead was green.A cloud of starlings flew by to roost with a quick rush of wings, and sleepy rooks cawed. Far away a man whistled on his way home.Joan came from the porch as the light failed and moved peacefully to the gate. She went through and crossed the meadow, the heavy grass dragging at her feet. Some cows ate busily nearby and hardly bothered to look up. Then the river flowing mysteriously along with the sky mirrored in the varnished surface. Trailing willows made lightsmiles at the sides where the water was liquid ebony. An oily rise showed a fish having an evening meal. He was killing black flies. Joan sat on the bank.Opposite, between sky and water, a fisherman is bent motionless over his float. He never moves except to jerk violently at times. Then, a short unseen struggle, a bending rod, and another fish to die. Joan thinks he must be a clever fisherman to catch so many fish, but it is silly to trouble about him while there is George to think of. Why, he has caught another, it is a big one too, it is taking quite a time to land. The reel screams suddenly like someone in pain, he must be a big fish. The little bent figure gets up and begins to dance excitedly about. A plunge with the landing-net, a tiny tenor laugh of pleasure, and then peace again as he leans over the net, doing things.George, what if George were here now? He would say nothing but would merely sit, his great idle form. And then . . . yes.The blackbirds had stopped. Blue shadows had given way to black. The little man was taking down his rod, and soon had gone off into the dusk on a bicycle, dying fish in his creel. There was the moon, reserved and pale but almost full. How funny to go up the sky, then down again. Aah. She was sleepy, yawning like that. And it was getting cold sitting out here. The river was ebony, and away in the west was a bar of dying purple across thesky. The trees had vast, unformed bulks. The moon shed a sickly light round her on a few clouds that had come up all at once. It was cold. She jumped up and began to walk back to the house. But she would not go to bed yet.Yes there was the light in his room, a candle flame, still. She closed the door carefully behind her and crept upstairs in the dark. The hole on the third step and the creaking board on the ninth, she passed both without making a noise. Then through his room into hers and she was safe. She jammed her door with the chest of drawers, a heavy thing which she moved easily, it had the four castors intact for some reason. Funny how some of the furniture kept up appearances. Old days almost. Below it was quiet. She sat on a box in the window, and the cool night air breathed gently in, softly, like a thief.Barwood . . . no, why think of that place? Everything had been so cultured there and so nice, and now it had all been beaten out of her, so that it hurt to go back into it. If there hadn’t been any milk left for lunch you had sent for it and it came, you didn’t have to pay for it on the nail as you did now. And she had been so clean and pretty, it was filthy here, but that had gone, and there was only the memory of it to go back to. Not that they hadn’t always let her run wild, though. But things had changed since then, Mother wouldn’t know her again if she could see her now. . . . BarwoodVicarage had been one of those houses that have white under the roof. An old wall went round. Little trees grew out of the wall, and their roots made cracks in it. One thick arm of ivy worked its way through just before the gate and made a bulge in the top. There was an old lawn and a gardener who looked much older, but then he can’t have been. It was a deep green, and he mowed it lovingly twice a week with a scythe, he was so proud of his mowing, and it used to be such fun going up to him and saying how well he did it, to watch new wrinkles come out with his smile. His face always looked as if there could be no more wrinkles, and yet there were new ones. Swallows used to build under the roof and then used to show off, they flew so fast and so close. For hours she had watched them rush in a swoop to the door of the nest. They never missed.The only party at Barwood, the huge lawn and the immense house, the footman in livery, the people, it was another world. There had been ladies on the lawn dressed in marvellous stuffs with brightly-coloured hats—like birds they were. They shook hands very nicely and kindly, then they rushed away to play before the men. Mother had sat talking to Mrs. Haye, with her on the other side, and Mother had laid a restraining hand on her all the time as she half bent over Mrs. Haye. The unhappiness of that afternoon. Who were these people who lived such beautifully easy lives, andwhat right had they to make you so uncomfortable? The men were such willing idols. A little boy, Hugh, his name had been, had sat next her for a time, sent by his mother. He was at school then. He had asked her if she had been to the Pringles’ dance, and she had blushed—silly little fool—when she had said no. Then he had said something was “awfully ripping,” how at ease he had seemed, and then his glancing blue eyes had fixed and he had gone off and soon was laughing happily with an orange hat. Yes, he had left her for that thing, but you couldn’t blame him. How cool they all were, even when hot after tennis; Mother’s hand had been hot, lying in the lap of her new muslin which Mother had made for her. It might have been yesterday. That hand had seemed to be between her and the rest. Tennis was a pretty game to watch, and the men had laughed so nicely at it, with their open collars. One had had a stud-mark on his skin where the stud had pressed. Then there had been cool drinks on a sideboard—everything was new. Sometimes one of the ladies would say something to her with a quarter of her attention, the rest of her watching the men, and she herself had been too shy to answer. . . . She had had a little ear under a kiss-curl, that lady. Mother still talked to Mrs. Haye. People would sometimes look at the three of them seated on the bench, and then they would look away again and laugh. Oh, she hated them, it was their sort that had brought them tothis. Sitting on the bench there she had begun to long for the tiny lawn and the poor old broken dolly. A dream, those beautifully-dressed people who had been so cool, and whom mother had been so frightened at. Then they had gone, and she had had to say good-bye to Mrs. Haye—“What a fine upstandin’ girl, Mrs. Entwhistle”—and they had begun to walk the mile home. What a little fool she must have made of herself that afternoon. Mother had been so funny, she remembered her so well saying eagerly, “Did you see the green dress that girl with the auburn hair was wearing? And the white one of the girl with the thick ankles?” That had been the first time they had talked dresses as if it was not Mother who bought hers without asking her opinion. That night she had dreamed of a wonderful party with Hugh and his blue eyes and fat cheeks, when he had been terribly nice to her, and when they had had the sideboard to themselves. But behind it all lay the memory of the preparation, her hair being brushed endlessly, her longing to be off and her longing to stay behind, the interminable delays and the too short walk. “Behave nicely, and for heaven’s sake don’t bite your nails.”And the dolly. Thomas, the old gardener, used to say, “Bean’t she a beauty!” as he leant on his spade as Dolly was shown to him every day. He never said more than that, it was enough. Then there had been the time when she had dropped her, and one arm had come off, just as any grown-up’smight. Fool, fool. She had cried for ages, and had given up all interest in her for a time because she had cried so much. But she went back to her, and Father glued on the arm so that it came off again; still they made it up and between them settled that she should have only one arm.Then there had been Father’s roses. They bordered the path from the drawing-room French window to the door in the wall. Just over it climbing roses scrambled up and hung down in clusters. And little rose trees stood out on each side of the path, and red and white roses peeped out from the green leaves that hid the thorns. Father was so proud of them, ever since she could remember he used to talk about them at tea. He planted more and more, till the vegetable garden was invaded and in the end was a jungle of roses. His duties had to wait while they were being sprayed, or pruned, or manured. Thomas, of course, was never allowed to touch, it was his grief, he longed to help look after them. She remembered him saying wistfully, “Them be lovely roses, Miss Joan.” Roses, roses, all the way. Ro—o—ses.There had been another side to the roses. She could remember the quarrels Mother used to have with him over them as if it was yesterday. The manure—best fish manure—cost money, and she would tell Father, in that funny high voice of hers that she used when she was angry, that one or the other would have to go, and then the rest wasalways whispered, sometimes less, sometimes more, but it must have been the gin or the roses. Father had not minded, nor had Mother after a time. John, the postman, must have begun about then. It was a pretty uniform. So it had gone on.Mrs. Haye complained that Father never visited until they were dead. Of course he had visited. And the Parochial Church Council had asked for more services, though, of course, no one ever came to church, only Mrs. Haye, and she merely as an example to the village. The almshouse people came, but only because they were so nearly dead. The almshouses were built in dark blue brick, always in half-mourning, among the tombstones. Father had told her about these complaints over the rose trees. He had talked a great deal to her then. Poor Father. So he had planted roses to climb up the church, and they had given him a new interest there till Mrs. Haye had made him pull them down. He had been running away.There had been a queer light at the back of Mother’s eyes about then—how she understood that light now! At the same time Mother had stopped taking any notice and would only smile tiredly at the things that had made her angry before. She took to painting her lips, and sometimes she would put one of the roses in her hair. Father never said anything about it toher, only, lying in bed with the owls hooting, she used to hear quarrels going on, quite often. Bed meant owls then, there werenone here. He spent more and more time on the roses about the house. And in the summer he would dream himself away among them, sitting there by the hour while she played on the lawn, putting Dolly to bed in rose petals. Would it do if she painted her lips for George? No, it would frighten him. To-morrow was Monday, he might be about. They had been all right, too, when they had blossomed, great bunches of them, red and white, all over the place. Just like those beautiful picture postcards Mrs. Donner had in the window sometimes. They had been lovely, those days.Joined on the Vicarage behind there had been a small house with a farmyard and a few buildings. It was the lower farm of Mr. Walker’s. Henry had lived in the house, Henry who was her first love. They had kissed underneath the big thistle in the orchard hedge, only he had been rather dirty. She had seen him driving a cart two weeks ago, only he had looked the other way. Didn’t like to own her now. Before he had always lifted his cap with a knowing smile. Or had he been sorry for her? How funny that first kiss was. She had only been fourteen. All wet. But he remembered. Mrs. Baxter, his mother, with her nice face and her chickens. Mrs. Baxter used to come in sometimes to help Mother with the housework. She always used to say, “God is good to us, Mr. Entwhistle,” when Father was about. And Father used to lookserious and say, “Yes, Mrs. Baxter. He is indeed.” He was, then. She used to call her “Miss.”Then the Wesleyan, “the heretic,” had started a rival Sunday school. He gave a treat once a year and Father never did, so all the children went to him and left Father. He had been angry: “Bribery and corruption; I won’t bribe the children to come to God.” Then they could not afford to give tea at the Mothers’ Meetings, and Mother had lost her temper with Mrs. Walker, who had insinuated that they were lazy. But the real reason why no one came any more must have been the gossip about Father which began about then. But they had become indifferent; they hadn’t cared.Mrs. Haye had called and had stayed to tea. She, Joan, was allowed butter with her bread and jam. That was only on great occasions. After that the Mothers’ Union started. Mrs. Haye must have stamped on the gossip, for all the women began coming again, every month. Mrs. Haye attended herself the first time. Mother put some cut flowers in a pot just by her. It was a special occasion, so Father’s objection to cutting flowers was forgotten. “Do you want the best rose tree to be the rubbish heap?” Later, there was a woman who tried to teach them how to make baskets, but she forgot how to make them herself in the middle, and nobody minded, they had gone on whispering just the same. They were great times, those.A fat drop of rain plunked on to the window-sill. Rain. Then another, and another. The air became full of messages, a branch just underneath moved uneasily. There was a rumble miles away that trundled along the sky till it roared by overhead and burst in the distance. Thunder. Rain fell quicker. A broad flame of lightning—waiting, waiting for the crash. Ah. The storm was some way off. The rain walked up the scales of sound, swishing like a scythe swishes. Quick light from another flash lit up the yard, and a bird was flying as if pursued, across the snouted pump. Darkness. The thunder. Nearer.The air was cool, unloaded. Joan drew back from the window, for she was being splashed by the spray as the drops smashed. The rain fell faster, faster. A terrific sheet of light and all the sky seemed to be tumbling down, moving celestial furniture. Father’s bass came up singing confidently, “There is a green land far away.” Daylight, the sky fought. Darkness and rain. Sheet lightning never hurt anything, but how wonderful to be as afraid as this. Father was rising on the tide of knowledge. “I know, I know,” he cried, and heaven saluted it with her trumpets. He sang a line of the “Red Flag,” but switched off. Swish, swish, said the rain, settling down to steadiness. Father was singing something and taking all the parts. The chickens in the hut made plaintive noises, the cock was being so tiresome. “What a bore the old man is,” theywere saying, “but we are so frightened of him.” How wonderful, terror. Joan quaked on the box. Swish, said the rain.Joan draws her blouse round her and hunches her shoulders. How much fresher it is now. The storm thunders away behind, it has passed over. Mumbles come from below. Laughter. All of her listens. His voice, “Ring out, wild bells.” Always the church bells that he could not escape. Hunted by bells. Crash—the empty bottle. Then he is singing again. Mother had used to play. He is coming upstairs, toiling up, and Joan shivers. Into his room. Silence. Quietly he goes to bed and is asleep. The light in him had gone out. He had forgotten.She feels cheated. He had been so mad underneath. Why hadn’t he battered at the door? What a shame. All that trembling for nothing. He had forgotten her. She shuts the window, and lighting a candle undresses and lets down her hair. She gets into bed. Sleep.Eyes closed.Sleep. Now she would go to sleep.Turns over.Sleep.The lawn. The roses.It can’t have been sheet lightning because there was thunder. Then it had been dangerous.A stands for ant. B stands for bee. C stands for cat. Sitting on Mother’s knee tracing the tummyof a, her hand guiding. Later on Mother tried to teach her other things. It used to be a great game to get as many “I don’t know myself, dear’s,” out of her as possible in the morning.There was the Vicarage pew every Sunday, Mrs. Haye to the left, crazy Kate just behind, then the churchwarden, sniffling, sniffling, and two or three almshouse people. Father always preached out of the green book on the second shelf in the old study, though sometimes he talked about politics. Mrs. Haye would stir violently when she disagreed, which would make Father stutter and Mother angry. Sometimes, though not very often, her son John would come too, he who was blind now. She used to watch him all through the service when he was there. He was so aloof, and there was nothing, no one else to look at. Nothing happened, no one did anything except the organist when she forgot. The service would go slowly on. Weston, the head gardener at Barwood, the only person in the choir, would sing as if he did not care. Father’s voice toiled through the service. Mrs. Haye argued the responses. The organist was paid to come, Weston only came that Mrs. Haye might see that he came. Outside, through the little plain glass window at the side of their pew, the top of an apple tree waved. In summer there were apples on it which she used to pick in her imagination, and any time a bird might fly across, free. The service would go on and finish quite suddenly with a hymn, and then the runhome with the blue hills in the distance, with the glimpse, just before the second gate, of the tower of the Abbey church, the greeting of Mrs. Green who was always at her door at the beginning of the last field—no, the last but one, there was the orchard; dinner. It had all gone. Why, since she loved it so? The summers were so wonderful, the winter nights so comfortable. Gone. To-day had ended wrong and had started wrong. Forget in sleep.The bed was too hot, the sheets clung, one leg was hot against the other. Her hair laid hot fingers about her face. She pulled aside the bed-clothes and lay on top of them on her back, a white smudge in the dark. Outside tepid rain poured. This was cooler.There was the clock that used to strike bed-time, half-past six. Had she heard the one stroke? Had she forgotten? But no.“Bed-time, Joan.”“No, I don’t want to.”“Now be a good girl.”To gain time—“Where’s Daddy?”“Now, Joan, you know your Daddy works all the evenings. Now go to bed, dearie. I’ll come up and see you.”Starting in on the gin more likely. Oh, everything was very proper then. Where had he put the empties, though? Of course he can’t have been bad as far back as that, it was only much later. Just before the Mothers’ Meeting she had foundMrs. Baxter sniffling round Father’s room. She herself had smelt the smell too. She had called Mother, who had not noticed anything, of course. After that Father had said that he would dust the room himself, as he could not have his papers being fidgeted with.“Fidget, fidget, that’s all a woman is when cleaning. Tidying up means hiding. There is an order in my disorder. Yesterday I spent half an hour looking for the church accounts which I found eventually, tidied away into the private correspondence. I can’t bear it. You do understand, don’t you, Mrs. Baxter? Of course I am not blaming you in the least, but . . .”“Very well, Mr. Entwhistle. I understand, sir.” Sniff!Something like that, but it was the sniff. It was the first sign of a mystery that had been so exciting till she had known.His private correspondence. That can’t have been anything. Only letters to Mrs. Haye—oh, yes, and to the Bishop. He had scored off the Bishop one day. A great thing. Butter with her bread and jam that day.But times had been hard. Really they were better off there. The food had dwindled, she had felt hungry a good deal.“A wage less than a labourer.”“Oh, yes.”“What’s that? Well, isn’t it?”“It wouldn’t be.”“Well then, approximately. And then there are your clothes to buy and the child’s.”“And your personal expenses. What you waste.”“What? I suppose I can’t spend a penny on myself?”“Run along, Joan, and play.”“Yes, Mummy.”Then Uncle Jim, whose death they had waited for so long, died in France. Of fever or something. He had no child and had left all his money to “the poor fellow he’s a parson.” Lord, that joke. Father had seen it in theEvangelical Supplementand had used it for ever when he talked. However, things had become a bit easier then, and probably the spirit merchant had begun to give tick again.Only one villager had been killed.“And I said to them, I put it to them point-blank, ‘I won’t sign the minutes when no member of the Parochial Council comes to church,’ I said.”What was there to get for to-morrow? Milk, more sardines, and some more candles. Perhaps that book Mrs. Donner had in her window for thruppence. She could put the thruppence down to the bread. The title was so thrilling,The Red Love of White Hope, Scioux, Matt.She had not read many books in the old days. There was theWater Babies, and one or two others, but she had forgotten. AndRobinson Crusoe.After that she hadn’t read at all. She didn’t really know what she had done. She had sat on the wall agood deal, asking why and how the world was here, and watching people go by. Silly to trouble about why the world was—it was, that was all. On Saturdays in summer dusty motor cars would clatter by on the way to the riverside pub. Birmingham people they were. There were other people sometimes. And four times a day the milk lorry came by with him driving it. Fascinating he was, he looked so wicked.Was Scioux the name of a town, or did it mean that White Hope was a Red Indian? Mrs. Donner might let her have a look inside. If it was only a town she would not buy it, but with a Red Indian it should be meaty. Then, again, she used to go up to watch the village blacksmith shoe the horses or repair a plough, and he would let her work the handle of the bellows and make the sparks spray out. The corners of his forge had been wonderful, all sorts of odds and ends of rusty iron, and always the chance, as he said, of finding something very valuable among them. Little innocent. But above all there was the blacksmith himself. He was very stupid but the strongest man that ever lived. It was wonderful, his strength. She had tried to lift the big hammer one day, and she had let it drop on her big toe, it was so heavy. Wouldn’t be able to lift it now, even. He had had to carry her back to the Vicarage. Mother had been very angry. But then the days were gone when she kissed to make it well. Poor right big toe.Occasionally they had gone into Norbury. There used to be the old horse bus along the main road to take you in, and then you were in the middle of the hum and bustle of it, hundreds of people hurrying along in town clothes. Norbury was wonderful with its three thousand inhabitants. And there was Green the draper’s, Mother fingering the stuffs for her new dress—would it wash, would it wear? it did not look to her like very good quality. And the boot shop, Dapp’s, with the smell of leather and hundreds and hundreds of shoes hung about, and the shop assistant’s hair—like a cascade of glue, Father said once outside, but it wasn’t, it smelt lovely—and his way of trying the shoe on, that little finger. Fool. He would be married now, and she, whoever she was, would have someone to wait for in the evenings, to kiss or to have rows with, and wear his ring. She would have his children and they would watch them together. And the farmers, fat and thin, in their pony carts, getting down at the Naiad’s Calf to have a drink. Father had hated the farmers; “they are making a lot of money,” was what he said. And as evening came on they went sometimes to tea at the Deanery, and she would doze by the fire, sitting very correctly in her chair, hearing the boom of the Dean’s voice to Father, and Mother’s shrill complaint to the Dean’s wife, dozing after the huge tea that she had eaten when they weren’t looking. They would have a fit if she went there now.She hadn’t been in Norbury for ages. There was Mrs. Donner who sold everything. She was a one, that woman. Three and six for a bit of stuff which she wouldn’t like to put on a horse’s back to keep the cold off!It had been hard work following Mother about. She had hurried so from shop to shop. She must have been hungry for town life again. Those that are town-bred hate the country. They used always to eat lunch in the Cathedral Tea Rooms. Mrs. Oliver, big and fat, who looked after the customers, always came up and said, “Ah, Mr. Entwhistle, so you’ve come to see us townsfolk again, sir.” Mother would bring out the sandwiches. After they had eaten Mother and she would go off to the shops again, while Father went back to the Library. Mother used to call Mrs. Oliver “a designing woman”—sour grapes. And the chemist, mysterious behind his spectacles, in his shop made of shelves and bottles, and cunningly-piled cardboard boxes. The jolting ride home in the dark, with the walk at the end.Then there was Nancy. All the last years at the Vicarage had been Nancy. What had become of her now? Married with children, most likely, but not to the baker’s son she had been so gone on. Nancy with her fairest hair and skinny legs, she was not nearly as good-looking as her. Her snub nose, and the small watery pink eyes.They had met in a lane, had smiled, and had made friends. That is, they had never really made friends, she had been far too stupid. But Nancy used to giggle at her jokes, and she liked that. Dolly had been forgotten then.They talked a great deal about men, with long silences, and Nancy’s giggle and “Oh you’s.” They walked arm in arm, or more often with their arms round each other’s waists, their heads bent, whispering. Lord, what fools they must have looked. Of course Mother was only too glad that she was out of the way, Father too.They used to walk most in the lane, just outside the house here. She had been in love, oh, how passionate, with Jim who never spoke, and who worked for Mr. Curry. He had been worse than George. But he used sometimes to come home by the lane in the evening, and they would pass him arm in arm. She would give him the sidelong look she had practised in the mirror, but he never did more than touch his cap. She had dropped her handkerchief once, as Nancy had told her they did in the world. They had talked and giggled for days before she had plucked up courage to do it. But of course he did nothing.Nancy wore a ring round her neck on a bit of cotton. She said at first that Alfred had given it her, but that time under the honeysuckle when she had shown Nancy her birthmark on her leg, shehad confessed that she had only got it out of a cracker at Christmas. Nancy used to think her awfully daring.Then their walks when evening was coming on, when they wandered down the sunken lane. Thick sunlight and thicker shade, when they twined closer together, and walked slower, and were silent. There was the heavy smell of honeysuckle, sweet, which a little fresh air coming down between the banks would begin to blow away. The birds flew quietly from side to side, there were flowers whose names she did not know, and long tufts of grass full of dew. The flowers made dots of colour in the shade, the ground they walked on buried the sound of their feet. . . . Soon they would come to the gate, and they would sit clinging to each other and balancing, watching the horses scrunch up the grass and the cows lie chewing, idly content. The sky was always different, and the end of a hot day was sleepy. The flies buzzed round, the midges bit. On a piece of fresh manure there would be hundreds of brown flies, and a bee would hurry by. She used to watch the trees most often. There were so many of them, one behind the other, hiding, showing, huddled, alone. Far away a car would blow a horn, or a train would whistle, but it used to feel as if there was everything between them and it. Birds up in the sky that was paling would fly silently with a purpose. They were going to bed, and soon she would go back, have supper, and go to bed. Partridgestalked to each other anxiously, as they gathered together, against the dangers of the night. The horses looked round calmly. A dog barked miles away.Then, as it was getting dark, they would part to go home. Nancy up to the village, and she herself across the fields to the Vicarage. The cows would not rise, and the horses would give her barely a glance. Only a rabbit perhaps would sit up, drum the ground, and flee to his burrow. And he would not bother to go down it, for as soon as she had passed he would be back again nibbling. In spring there would be lambs, absurd and delicious on their long weak legs.She would climb a warm gate and feel the wet of the dew soaking through her stockings. In front was the Vicarage, all the windows open, waiting, and her glass of milk and biscuits. She would climb the last gate and cross the dusty road, lift the latch of the door in the wall, and the roses, the white ones and the red ones, would greet her. Father might be sitting in the deck-chair on the lawn, smoking his pipe, the blue smoke going lazily up to the other blue of the sky. Mother might be sewing just inside the French window. The milk was cool.And then she would go up the stairs into her room, the little white bed, the texts round the walls, the open window letting in the dim light and the roses. And she would go to sleep and—was she going to cry?All gone, the lawn, the roses, the quiet, the protection, her little room, the glass of milk, Jack, the horses, the cows, the walks, for they were not the same, Nancy, those evenings. Fool. The peace, the untroubledness, the old wall, the . . . All . . .She went to sleep.END OF PART II“——COLLEGE, OXFORD.“My dear B. G.“I saw you last night in the club, but you cut me dead. Come to lunch Friday to be forgiven. I wanted to talk about poor John. I am so sorry about it. Poor dear, amusing John. I must write to him, though what there is to say I don’t know. Really, these letters of condolence are very difficult.“But why did you cut me like that? I saw David Plimmer the other night and he spoke of you with enthusiasm. Don’t forget about lunch Friday, if you cut that I shall know the worst.“Yrs.———“Seymour.”
INthe green lane between Barwood and Huntly there was a stile in the tall hedge. Behind were laurels, and brambles, and box trees, and yews, all growing wild. At the end of a mossy path from the stile lay the house, built in yellow brick with mauve patterns, across a lawn of rank grass. It had been raised in 1840 by a Welshman, the date was over the door. But this was hardly visible, it was early morning and a heavy white mist smudged the outline. Birds were beginning to chatter, dawn was not far. There were no curtains to the house, and no blinds but one, torn, hanging askew across a dark window swinging loosely open on the ground floor. A few panes of glass were broken, and brown paper was stuck over the holes. There was a porch at the near end with most of the tiles off; they had been used to patch the roof, which was a dark blue-grey. At the far end was what had once been a hot-house, its glass broken.
The garden was dishevelled, no attempt had been made to clean it for many years, and the only sign of labour was the cabbages that Father, in a burstof energy, had planted in a former flower-bed. There was one huge beech tree most beautifully tidy, and the only respectable member of the garden. The others merely went round the edge, keeping the chaotic growth from the neat meadows. The whole garden gave the effect of being unhappy because it had too much freedom. It was sad. And the house was sadder still with its wistful mauve patterns, looking so deserted and forlorn although it was lived in. Nobody loved it, and, though by nature so very feminine, it had to remain neuter and wretched. No one cared two farthings, and it felt that deeply. No one minded. The birds were chirruping heartlessly. From over the river the church struck a silver five.
At the back was a yard, in the middle a hen coop made out of an old army hut. A cock was crowing within, had been doing so for some time. There is a stable, with a rickety door off its lower hinge hanging ajar. A rat plays inside. There are holes in the red roof of the outhouse, gaping at the pink sky. Broken flagstones lie about, and weeds have grown through the cracks. The back door has lost its paint. The four windows stare vacantly with emptiness behind their leaded panes. The mist hangs sluggishly about, and the air is chill as the cock crows in his raucous tenor.
Then the sun lights up the top of the beech tree into golden fire, and there is a movement in the paleness. It begins to go, while the sky fades backinto every-day life. The fire creeps down the beech till the tops of the overgrown laurels are alight, the mist has drawn off to the river just below there. Everything brightens and stretches out of sleep, the sky is blue almost. A butterfly aimlessly flutters over the cabbages, the flycatcher swoops down and she is swallowed; he was on guard already. A pigeon drives by, a bright streak of silver painted on him by the sun. The birds chirp in earnest as the sun climbs higher and begins to make shadows, while anywhere that a drop of dew catches the light he breaks into a gem. A gossamer web will dart suddenly across something, like a rainbow thread.
The chickens begin to make a great noise, scolding and crooning in their wooden prison, sounding very greedy. They want to be let out, for a late worm, who has come up to see the new day, may yet be left by the gobbling blackbirds and thrushes. The last mists are drawing out, a breeze is stirring, and the morning is crystal. The dew has made a spangled dress for everyone, and the weeds and straggling bushes are all under a canopy of brilliant drops of light.
A starling sits upon the chimney pot preening himself. A crow flies over the garden, glancing to right and left. The three yews are renewing their green in the sun, the laurels are shiny and clean. A rabbit hops out, looks round, and begins to nibble at the fresh grass, his last meal before he goes to bed.
The air is new.
All are one community, but it will not be for long. When the sun sucks up the dew and the moistness of the gossamer, everyone will be for himself again. Each bird will sing his own song, and not the song of the garden. “Me, me, me,” he will say, “I am the best.” And the nettles will whisper to each other, “You are me, you are me,” laurels, yews, box trees and brambles too. Even the beech tree who has won to his great height and who has no rival in fifteen miles, he, too, will be straining, straining higher to the sun. It is all the sun, who has not climbed high enough yet.
The back door opened and she came out, pausing a moment before shutting the door behind her. She was tall and dressed in red slippers, a dirty blue serge skirt, and a thin, stale mauve bodice. She was so graceful! Her skin was unhealthy-looking, dark and puffed, her mouth small, the lips red. Her hair, black and in disorder, tangled down to her eyebrows. Across one cheek a red scar curved. Her eyes, a dark brown and very large, had a light that burned.
She felt alive, and she could see that the yard was dead—yes, she was like that this morning.
She stepped out into the yard, slammed the door behind her, and swept through the weeds that sprinkled her with dew. One big bramble twined so amorously round her skirt that her legs could not tear themselves free, and she had to bend to tearhim off superbly. All over at the contact of her hands he trembled, and trembled there for some time. She went to the pump which stood near the outhouse, and the rat fled down his hole. She worked the pump handle till it chugged up water for her which she splashed over her face, wetting her dress as well. She went to the hen coop, opened the door, and stood waiting. The cock walked sedately out the first and she hurried him up with her carpet slipper, laughing to see him flustered. Her voice was deep, and, of course, had a coarse note in it. And then she went back into the house, all wet, banging the back door behind her.
Snores, deep and thick, came down from an open window above into the yard.
The cock was angry and he watched his hens for a moment with a sense of humiliation, one claw stopped in mid-air. He did not know but he felt out of sorts. Not in actual ill-health but liverish. All the same, if there was anyone to look at him they would see a fine sheen to his feathers to-day. He cried out to attract attention, and Natacha, who was by his side, said duteously that his ruff was stupefying in its beauty, rivaling the sun with its brightness. After it was all over, leaving Natacha squawking, he fluttered up on to the top of the coop. He was feeling ambitious, in revolt, the world was all wrong somehow, too soft, not enough dust for a dust-bath. There was not even a dung-heap in this wretched yard. Everything was too soft—thesun, and the dew, and the gentle weeds. He wanted heat, heat. Between intervals of killing things on himself he stretched out his neck and told this to the world, and that he was king of this castle.
Joan upstairs is putting on her stockings. What a lot of holes there are in them, but no matter. Sunday to-day. How will Father take the church bells? Last Sunday he had not minded very much. It is going to be beautifully hot, and Father will hate that too, poor old thing. George hated the heat, only she loved it. The wonderful sun!
How red her hands are getting, and rough. That was the house-work, while nice, young, rich ladies kept theirs folded with gloves on, and they had coloured umbrellas to keep the sun off. To be frightened of the sun! Nice young ladies had never done a day’s work in their lives. Why should she work and they be idle? Oh, if she were like one of them! She would have light blue undies. Wouldn’t she look a dream in the glass! And stays? No, no stays. But perhaps, they must fortify you so.
But what was the good of dreaming?—dreaming never did anyone any good. There was George, he might be working in the meadow to-morrow, and then she would lean over the stile—climb over the stile?—and talk to him and get a few shy answers back, perhaps. George was wonderful, George was so exciting. With his fair hair, with his honey-coloured eyes, with his brick-red face so passionate, with his strength, with his smell. The one thatdrove the milk factory’s lorry and that was always smoking a cigarette on his upper lip and that had that look in his eyes like a snake looking for his prey, she could not understand how she had seen anything in him. But George, with his honey-coloured ones, slow, but with it at the back of them, and with his shortness, and with his force, oh, it would, it must be something this time after such years of waiting. To find out all about it. “Yes, George, go on, go on.”
What nice toes she had, except that the nails were rather dirty. But what was the good of keeping clean now? They weren’t in the Vicarage any more, and there was no one to tell her how dirty or how pretty they were, except Father when he was drunk, but that, of course, did not count. George would say all that. She would teach him, if he didn’t know.
She moves to a looking-glass and wrestles with her hair. In the glass was the brown-papered wall behind, the paper hanging in strips, showing the yellow plaster beneath. Those holes in the roof. And there was the rash that broke out in the top right-hand corner of the glass where the paint had come off the back. She was so miserable. The only chair has no back, and the front leg is rickety, so that you have to lean over to the right when you sit down. The bare boards of the floor are not clean, the bed-clothes are frowsy, the pillow greasy. Everything is going to go wrong to-day. It is closein here. She goes across the room and flings the window open. By the window there was a small table, on it a looking-glass. She never used this one because you had to sit down to it, and that was tiresome. Draped round the oval frame and tied in wide, drooping bows to the two uprights was a broad white ribbon. Tied to the handles of the two drawers beneath were white bows also. On the low table were hair-brushes, a comb with three teeth out, a saucer full of pins and hairpins and safety pins and a medicine bottle, empty, with a bow round the neck made out of what had been left of the white ribbon. Violets, in a little bunch, lay by the bottle, dead.
She goes through the door into the next room, which is his. He is lying noisily asleep, with the bed-clothes half off his chest, and his red beard is spread greasily over the lead-white of his skin. One arm hangs down to the floor, the other, trying to follow it, is flung across his chest. His face has a nose, flat, hair red and skin blotchy. There is the usual homely smell of gin. The window was wide open to let out the snores.
And this was Father, Daddy, Daddums. Oh, he was pretty in bed. She couldn’t remember him very well as he was at the Vicarage such ages ago, without his beard. It had been wonderful then: they had had a servant, which you could order about. And Mrs. Haye, she used to terrify her, now she did not care two snaps of the finger although shehad run away from her when she had seen her coming down the lane the other day; and Mrs. Haye had called him Mr. Entwhistle, the ordinary people, Passon, and Colonel Waterpower, whom they had met occasionally, had called him Padre. Silly all those people were with their silly ways, but they were so well dressed and the ladies too, those stuffs, so . . . And it was his fault that they were like this. You could see what people thought by their faces as they passed, they always went a little quicker when they caught sight of you coming. And they might still have been in the Vicarage.
Poor Father, perhaps it was not all his fault. And after all she was the only person left now to look after him. And the life wasn’t too bad, he left her alone except when he was drunk and wanted someone to talk to. And he told her the most wonderful things. He was really a wonderful man, a genius. All it was, was that he was misunderstood. He saw visions and things. And really, in the end, it was all Mother’s fault for being such a fool, though of course Father had been fond of gin before that. Mother, when she lay dying, with Father and her at the bedside, instead of whispering something she ought to have, had cried out quite loud“John”as if she was calling, right in front of the doctor and the village nurse and that. Then she was dead, and they were her last words. John was still the postman. She had been a fool, and Father had drunk much more gin ever afterwards. AfterMother died Father had been unfrocked, that was soon after the beginning of the war, partly for the gin, and partly for the talk about Mother. Mr. Davies died in time, and with most of the money that Uncle Jim had left them when he was killed they had bought this house here, only two miles away. It would have been nicer to go somewhere new, but as Father said, “he was not going to run away from those that had hounded him from the parish.”
What was she doing standing still? She had to wake him and then get breakfast and then clear up. “Here, wake up. Wake up,” and she picks up the clothes, flung anyhow on the floor, and smooths them, putting them at the foot of the bed. Roses on wallpaper, roses hung down in strips from the damp wall pointing. “Get up, get up.” He was shamming, that he might give her more work to do. Yes, that was it. “Do you hear? Get up.” She lifts his white shoulders and shakes him till the blue watery eyes open. She lets him flop back on to the pillow, the red finger-marks on his skin fading away again.
His eyes open painfully. He scratches, gazing vacantly at the ceiling.
“Another day?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
“I’ll go and get you some water, if you’ll get up.”
“Well, go and get it then.”
She goes to the pump, and he drags himself out of bed. He is short and thick-set, with bulging flesh. He has been sleeping in an old pair of flannel trousers. He sits on a box by the window. He looks out beyond the garden, over the meadow and the quiet river, to where the trees cover a hill on the other side. Their green dresses are blurred by the delicate blue mist that swims softly round them, the deep shade yawns the sleep away. In the meadows some cows lie in the open, it is not hot enough yet to drive them under the hedges. Below, a hen chuckles with satisfaction. How quiet it all was, nothing wrong in the best of all possible worlds. They thought that, all the rest of them, they did not care. And he was forgotten. Nature insulted him. What right had the country to look like this, basking in the sunshine while he lived in the middle of it? He with his great thoughts, his great sufferings. Why didn’t the State support him, instead of letting him live in squalor? He deserved as much of the money from the bloated capitalist as anyone else. It was their class that had brought him to this, they had never paid him enough, for one thing. It was their fault. Where was the water?
To-day was going to go badly, it was going to be terribly hot. Sunday too, so that the church bells would ring and then he would remember Barwood church, the little altar, the roses—his roses—growing outside. He felt so ill to-day, not at all strong.He would weep when the bells rang, weep because so many things were over, the Colonel calling him Padre, the deference of the churchwarden. How great his tears would be. All that was so far and yet so close. Every day he thought it over. But there was no need to regret it, he was working out his salvation here, if he had stayed on in that Vicarage he would have been dead alive. He was so vital here, and then somehow the grasp of it would leave him.
He was ill to-day all the same, he felt it inside, something seriously the matter. Was it the cancer? There, turning over and over. Yes, there it was. Here; no, there; no, no, there. Yes. Cancer, that he had been awaiting so long.
“Here’s the water.”
He winced. The noise the girl made. Was he not ill?
“I am ill.”
“Again?”
“It’s the cancer at last.”
There was a certain satisfaction now that it had come.
“Again. The doctor will cost you a bottle just for telling you it’s imagination. I know them and you.”
“Go away, go away.”
She was essentially small in character, like that mistaken woman her mother. Oh, he couldn’t any more. Cancer coming on top of it all. What a finetragedy his was. And it would cut short his great work, before even it had been begun.
She opened the door downstairs and went into the kitchen. He was much the same to-day, a little stronger perhaps, but that would go till he stoked up in the evening. Poor, weak creature.
Through a small window in a small bay looking out on to the garden the sunlight comes in and washes the dirt off the worn, red tiles. There is a sour smell of old food, and underneath the two windows on the right lie some empty sardine tins which have missed the gaps in the glass when thrown away. She goes to the cupboard, which is on the left. On it is an almanack from the ironmonger in Norbury, ten years old, with a picture in the middle of a destroyer cutting rigid water shavings in the sea, with smoke hurrying frozenly out of its funnels, and with a torpedo caught into eternity while leaping playfully at its side, out of the water and into the air. She jerks the cupboard open. Inside are plates, knives and forks, cups, and a teapot, all in some way chipped or broken. There are tinned foods of every kind, most of all sardines, and three loaves. At the bottom are two pails and a mangy scrubbing-brush and some empty gin bottles. On the top shelf some unopened bottles and a few cakes of soap are jumbled up with vaguely folded sheets and towels. She takes out a sardine tin and a loaf of bread and pitches them with two knives on to the table in the middle ofthe room. A chunk of butter on half a plate she puts down, as well as two cups without handles, and the milk-holding teapot. He has an injured spout, poor thing.
She goes over to the bay window and flings it open. She rolls up the torn blind. Father liked going round at night occasionally, “shutting up” as if he lived in a castle, but as he could never see straight enough by then to find the window latches it was not much good, but he always pulled down the blind. The range was disused and rusty, it had not been lighted since April. Before it was a tub of greasy water in which she did the washing up. The sun did not get far into the room. The paper here also was beginning to peel from the walls. An early bluebottle buzzed somewhere.
There was a movement in the sunlight, a scamper, and Minnie was arching his back against her leg, while his tail waved carefully at the end. Minnie, so fresh, so clean, the darling. Cat’s eyes looked up at her, yellow and black. “Minnie, have you killed anything?” In a rush he was out of the window—how like darling Minnie—his tail a pennant. Then he is back, the clever darling, and in his mouth a dead robin redbreast. How he understood. “Oh, Minnie, the little sweet. Look at his crimson waistcoat and his crimson blood. Why, he is still warm. Shall we give him to Father for his breakfast. What a clever Minnie,” and Minnie purrs half attention. He paddles a paw in a speck of blood. She bendsdown, taking him in her arms. “Oh, Minnie, what a clever Minnie.” But with a light jump he was out of her arms and was going to the window, and then was out of it. Joan follows, looks out, and Minnie is standing there, quite still, detached. Then he was off, slipping by everything, while the dew caught at his coat. How lovely cats were, she adored her Minnie.
A slow step came down the stairs, with a careful pause at the hole on the ninth step from the ground, and he comes in shakily. His face is baggy and fallen in, his black clothes have stains. He is wearing a dirty drainpipe collar, for it is the Sabbath, while round it a khaki shirt flaunts, without the black dicky. He stands in the doorway, his beard waggling.
“Sardines? Again? I tell you I can’t eat them.”
“We ought to be glad to eat what is given to us.”
“Don’t throw up quotations like that at me just to annoy me. Do you hear? Given, who said it was given? I paid for it, didn’t I? You hate me, and everyone hates me.”
But that was as it should be, he ought to take a pride in the hatred of the world. It was ever so with the great. But sardines, he paid for them. There had been a time when he had thanked God for sardines, because he had always hated them so that he saw in them his cross. But what was the good? He paid for them, and ate them because it was better than eating dry bread. After all he hadpaid for them, and if he had not paid he would not have got them, so where did thanks come in? He ought only to thank that oil-well in Southern Texas where Hoyner the cinema-man came from. There had been a time when he had thanked God for oil-wells, wars and apples, while these were nothing but unfortunate mistakes, he having lost half his money in Mexican oil, and apples being bad for his digestion. Why did he keep that money in oil?—it would go like the other half had. But it was so awkward changing. It was all so difficult. But then if no one ate fish the industry would die and with it the fishermen. No, thank God, he could see nothing divine in anything now, whereas in the old days he had eaten even a sardine with considerable emotion. Yet how could one be sure? His reason, how it tortured him, how it pursued round and round, coldly, in his brain. He had a fine intellect, too. Edward had told him that thirty years ago at Oxford. And it had been growing, growing ever since in his hermit existence, even Joan did not deny it. . . . He was even more of a genius because he was recognised in his home, a very rare thing surely. And his reward would come, it must come. Yes, he would start work this very morning. But he felt so ill, weak.
“I feel so ill this morning, child. I have such a headache. And I am so weak”—physically only, of course; no, not mentally.
“Have a drop of gin in your milk. That will make it all right.”
“Yes, I think you are right”—but no more than one, really.
He was always like that before the morning one. Poor Father.
That is better, more comfortable. But still there may be something wrong with him. He swallows another gin-and-milk.
“It’s the cancer, Joan, that’s what I am so terrified about. I can feel it glowing hot. We can’t afford an operation or morphia. I shall die.”
It would be nice to die; but no, it wouldn’t be, and that was very unreasonable. But no, it wasn’t, there was his book.
He was so clever that he had always been bottom at school—all great men had been bottom at school. Then he had lost his way in the world. No, that wasn’t true, he had found it—this, this gin was his triumph. It was the only thing that did his health any good, and one had to be in good spirits if he was to think out the book, the great book that was to link everything into a circle and that would bring him recognition at last, perhaps even a letter from the Bishop. It would justify his taking something now and again as he did. But one doubted, there were days when one could not see it at all. How ill he felt. Some deep-seated disorder. How dreadful a disease, cancer. Why could not the doctorsdo something about it? Oh, for a pulpit to say it from.
Terrible, terrible.
“Father, where did you put the tin-opener for these sardines?”
“I don’t know. My pain. Never had it.”
“But it must be somewhere. It isn’t in the cupboard here.”
“Can’t you open it with a fork? It’s all laziness. Why bother me? Oh, here it is in my pocket. How funny.”
“You are drinking all the gin. No, look here, you mustn’t have any more. There will be none for this evening at this rate.”
“But I’m not going to drink any more, I tell you. Leave me alone.”
“Oh, yes. Here, give me that bottle.”
“I shan’t; I want it, I tell you. My health.”
“Give it me.”
You could be firm with him in the morning. She locks up the bottle in the cupboard, slips the key inside her dress, and begins to open the sardines. He is almost in tears, “insulted, by a girl, my daughter. When it was for the good of my health, as I was ill.” But he wasn’t such a fool, oh no. He had a dozen beneath the floor of the study. He had wanted to drink more lately, and the girl always regulated his bottle a day carefully.
“Damn, I’ve cut myself with the tin-opener.”
There is a gash in her thumb, and she bleeds intothe oil which floats over the sardines. Serve her right, now she would get blood-poisoning, her hand would swell and go purple, and it would hurt. They would die in agony together. Think of the headlines in the evening papers, the world would hear of him at last: “AMAZING DISCOVERY IN LONELY COTTAGE,” then lower down, “UNFROCKED GENIUS AND HIS BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER FOUND DEAD.” Beautiful. Was she? Yes, of course she was, as good as anyone’s daughter anyway, except for the scar. The scar, it was like a bad dream, he had a hazy memory of her taunting him, of his throwing the bottle and missing, and of throwing one of the broken bits, and of catching her with it on the cheek. It was horrible. Still it was what a genius would have done. He was so weak this morning. What was he thinking about? Yes, suicide, and the headlines in the papers. But in any case it would be over in three days. What was the use of it all? And what was he eating, blood-stained sardine? He did feel sick. Cancer.
She had bound up her finger in a handkerchief, and was eating sardines on slabs of bread-and-butter, heads and tails, while he unconsciously cut these off. She eats with quick hunger, her chin is greasy with the oil coming from the corners of her mouth. She says thickly:
“I love sardines, and the oil is the best thing about them.”
No answer.
Poor Father, he was in for a bad day, for it was going to be very hot, and he must have had a bad night, he was a little worse than usual. And he did hate sardines so, but there was nothing else to eat, except the kipper in tomato sauce, and they were going to have a tin of that for lunch. Father was really not very well, perhaps this talk of cancer wasn’t all nonsense. But it must only be the drink. He was such a nasty sight, with his finicky tastes and his jumpy ways. Think if George were there across the table, eating with a strong appetite, with his strong, dirty nails, the skin half grown over them, instead of Father’s white ones, the last thing about himself that he spent any trouble over. They were one of his ways of passing the time, while she slaved. There would be something behind his honey-coloured eyes, a strong hard light, instead of blue wandering, weak ones. His face would be brick-red with the sun, his flesh inside the open shirt collar—there would be no starch about him—would be gold with a blue vein here and there; he would be so strong, it would be wonderful to be so frightened of him. Gold. While that weak creature over there, why even his beard was bedraggled and had lost its colour. Yet there were times when his body filled out and his voice grew, and when his beard flamed. Her fingers crept to the scar on her cheek, it had been wonderful that night. You felt a slave, a beaten slave.
But it was the scar that frightened George. Hiseyes would stray to the scar and look at it distrustfully; at first he had looked at her dress with horror, but she had not made that mistake again. Still he never spoke, which was so annoying, but lately there had been more confidence and shrewdness in his eyes. But the others did use to say something, all except Jim, he had been worse than George. Of course, no one ever saw her with him, it would scare him if the village began to talk. But it was very exciting. It was incredible to think how the days had passed without him.
There were now two bluebottles busy round the head of a sardine about three days old. The head lay there, jagged at the neck where Father had pulled off the body, a dull glaze over the silver scales, the eyes were metallic. There was blue on the two bluebottles who never seemed content, they buzzed up and down again so. Minnie had come in by the little bay window, and the bluebottles seethed with anger at being disturbed by someone besides themselves.
She rises sideways without stirring her chair, whispering hoarsely:
“Minnie, Minnie, come here.”
But he slips by her hands. The key slipped down her leg to tinkle on the floor.
“That cat. Ah you, go away, go away,” and he gets up, his chair screeching along the red tiles. He throws his knife feebly, it misses Minnie and makes a clatter. He is out of the window in a flash,and Father sits down again. She puts the key under the bread.
“I do hate cats, they frighten me so. There is something so dreadful about a cat, the way she seems to be looking at nothing. They don’t see flesh and blood, they see an abstract of everything. It’s horrible, horrible. Joan, you might keep her away from me, you know how I hate her. I can’t bear any cat. And in my condition. I think you might, yes, I do think you might.”
“All right, but I don’t see what you mean. Minnie is such a darling, I don’t know why you hate her.”
“Of course you don’t know cats as they really are. He is a devil, that cat.”
Poor Father.
Outside, on the right, a hen stalks reflectively, her head just over the weeds. Her eye is fixed, its stare is irritating, and the way she has of tilting her head to look for food is particularly precious. She goes forward slowly, often dipping out of sight to peck at something. All that can be seen of her is a dusty-brown colour, dull beside the fresh green round her, encouraged by the sun into a show of newness. He watches her one visible eye with irritation.
“A chicken, at six in the morning, and loose in the garden. That shouldn’t be. A pen. I will build a pen for them some time. I will start to-day, but then there is no rabbit wire, and we can’t affordwire.” Yet hens in one’s garden. Degrading. Yet why not? They had to live, it was only fair to them that he should let them get food even if they were in his way, because they gave him food, and he did not deserve it. All the same, he did. And they were God’s creatures, even if they did come out of an egg, and even more because they did so. But was that true? No. Yes. He couldn’t see at all to-day. Scientists understood the egg, all except the life that entered it—and that was God; there, there you are. But anegg.He didn’t know. There was something. He did not know. No, not in an egg.
He gets up and moves towards the door by the cupboard.
“You’ll never build that pen, and you know it. Here, what are you going to the Gin Room for?”
“Don’t use that tone to me. Can’t your Father go where he likes? Can’t he retire to his study for a little peace? You seem to have no—no feeling for your Father.”
And he was gone. That meant he had some gin in there, but you couldn’t help it, there was nothing to be done, and he was better when he had drunk a little, he was more of a Man. And what was the use of worrying? and anyway it pulled him together. Blast this finger, why had she been such a fool as to jab it open? It hurt too, though not very much, still it would have been nice to have had someone to be sorry about it and to help her tieit up. If George had been here she would have been able to make such a lot of it. Those bluebottles, there were three of them round that sardine now, and three more over there, all in the sun. That was the one sensible thing about them; how she loved the sun. She put the key into the table drawer.
*****
The clock in the village church across the fields struck twelve in a thin copper tenor that came flatly through the simmering heat. No bird sang, no breath of air stirred, nothing moved under the sun who was drawing the life out of everything except Joan. She got up slowly, damp with sweat, from the window-sill where she had been stewing in the white light. The wood of it was unbearably hot, and what few traces of paint that were left, blistered. She fanned herself with the old straw hat she had been wearing, and tried to make up her mind to go out and find the eggs for dinner. She loved the sun, he took hold of you and drew you out of yourself so that you couldn’t think, you just gave yourself up. She loved being with him all round her till she couldn’t bear it any more. You forgot everything except him, yet you could not look up at him, he was so bright. He was so strong that you had to guard your head lest he should get in there as well. He was cruel, like George. And he was stronger than George, but then George was a Man.
The air, heavy with the wet heat, hung lifelesssave when her straw hat churned it lazily into dull movement. Three bluebottles, fanning themselves angrily with their wings at the windows, by their buzzing kept the room alive. She was lost in a sea of nothingness, and all the room too. From inside Father’s room came low moans at intervals, the heat had invaded and had conquered Father. Oh, it is hot, she is pouring with sweat all over, and her hands feel big and clumsy and heavy with blood, there is nowhere to put them. How cool the iron range is, its fireplace gazing emptily up the chimney at the clean blue of the sky. Her hand on the oven door leaves a moist mark which vanishes slowly.
She must look for eggs, though how the poor hens can lay in this weather she didn’t know. Think of having feathers, dusty feathers on you for clothes on a day like this. And laying eggs. Minnie would be hot too, in an impersonal sort of way. But the poor hens. Why they would die of it, poor darlings, and the old cock, the old Turk in his harem, what would happen to him, how would he keep his dignity? She would have to go and look, besides she was sticky all over, and it would be cooler moving about.
She leaves the kitchen and goes round to the back under the arch in the brick wall that went to the outhouse, and up which a tortured pear tree sprawled, dead, and so into the yard. The stench is violent, and with the sun beating down she driftsacross to the pump, limp as if she has forgotten how alive she had thought she was. She works the handle of the pump slowly till the water gushes reluctantly out. Then she splashes it over her face as it falls into the stone trough, and she plunges in her heavy hands—how nice water was, so cool, so slim, and she would like to be slim, like you saw in fashion plates in the papers, ladies intimately wrapped in long coats that clung to their slimness, they drank tea and she milk; Father said the water was unsafe, although it was so clear and pure and cool. It was hot.
The cock was lost in immobility in the shade of the stable, and she had forgotten about him.
She went round the side of the house, past the window of Father’s room till at the corner she came to the conservatory, the winter garden, inside which the crazy hen sometimes laid. She was crazy because she would cry aloud for hours on end and Joan never knew why, though perhaps it was for a chick that a fox had carried off once. The broken glass about caught the sun and seemed to be alight, and inside it was a furnace. Standing quite still in a corner was the hen, but no egg. She was black, and quite, quite still.
In front the beech tree kept a cave of dark light, behind and on each side the tangled bushes did the same, each kept his own, and the giant uneven hedge. They were all trying to sleep through it. She ploughs through the grass and looks vaguelyhere and there, into the usual nests and the most likely places. Under an old laurel tree with leaves like oilcloth, into an arching tuft of grass. A bramble lies in wait, but she brushes him aside. Two or three flies come after her, busy doing nothing. She passes by clouds of dancing grey gnats in the shade.
Still no eggs.
Nothing of course under the yew, so old that he empoisoned and frightened young things. Drops of sweat fell down. Here was the box tree who kept such a deep shade. There were two eggs. She turns, and crossing a path of sunlight, enters the shade of the beech and sits down, her back against his trunk. If he were George.
She thinks of nothing.
Then she finds that the house is ugly, the yellow and mauve answer back so coldly to the sun. And it was so small and tumble-down. The life was so full, so bitter. If she could change it. There would be the long drive through the great big park with the high wall round it and the great big entrance gates, made of hundreds of crowns in polished copper. After that you would come suddenly through a wood of tall poplars upon a house that was the most beautiful in the world, made of a lot of grey stone. Standing on the steps to greet her as she steps out of her luxurious car would be the many footmen dressed in scarlet, and all young and good-looking. Inside would be the huge staircase,and the great big rooms furnished richly. On a sofa, smoking a cigar, would be the husband, so beautiful. He would have lovely red lips and great big black eyes. Like a sort of fairy story. It would be just like that.
But there was the other dream. A small house with a cross somewhere to show it was a vicarage, and a young clergyman, her husband, and lots and lots of children. She would be in the middle, so happy, her big dark eyes shining like stars, and they would be stretching out chubby fingers to her. But what was the good of dreaming?—dreaming never did anyone any good.
It was nicer to live as you were, and George might be somewhere near. There were the eggs to do.
She wriggles round and looks out, through the gap with the little gate, over the river sunk in her banks and invisible, to the trees on the hills that were soaked in blue, with sunshades of bright sun green on top. A pigeon moves, winking grey, through them; no sound breaks the quiet. It is a sleepy blue, and how the ground was bubbling, air bubbles rising that you could see. She would have to go and boil the eggs, and bubbles would come then. The oil lamp would make such a heavy smell. She liked them raw, but Father would have them boiled. It had to be done. Father was a great baby, and he had to be fed.
She gets up and moves slowly into the house without bothering to put on her straw hat again.From the cupboard underneath the stairs she takes out the lamp with a saucepan fixed above it and carries it into the kitchen. She fills the saucepan by dipping it into the washing-up water, and puts the two eggs in, then lights the lamp from the box on the shelf over the range. Bubbles very soon appear mysteriously from nowhere in the water, and these grow more and more, till the eggs move uneasily at the number of them. Eggs, why do chickens come out of eggs? It was like a conjuring trick, darling little yellow wooly, fluffy things who were always hurrying into trouble! But she knew just how the hen felt with them, it would be wonderful. How long had they been in? Oh dear, the heat and the smell! Poor eggs, it was rather hard on them. This must be about right, and she turns the flame off. Now for the bread and the kippers in tomato sauce and plates and spoons and cups and—the milk, she had forgotten the milk. And she could not go to Mrs. Donner’s, it was too hot. Father would have to drink gin, he wouldn’t mind, but she would, she hated it. She went to the door of his room and beat upon it with the palm of her hand, leaving damp marks wherever she touched it. “Father, dinner is ready.” His voice answered, “All right.” It was weary, but with a stronger note.
He shambles into the room dejectedly.
“Oh, it is hot, it is hot.”
“Yes. Father, here’s an egg.”
“Thank you. Oh, dear.”
They begin to eat, he carefully, and she roughly. He takes up his cup to drink.
“Milk.”
“There isn’t any left.”
“No milk? Why is there no milk? We always drink milk at lunch, don’t we? And Mrs. Donner always has milk, doesn’t she? Why is there no milk?”
“You know we can’t afford it.”
“I don’t suppose we can, but can’t I have a little luxury occasionally, with my bad health?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know, and what’s more, you don’t care, you don’t mind that you make your poor old Father uncomfortable. Where would you have been without me? . . . Don’t smile, shut that smile or I’ll knock it inside out.” He is streaming with sweat, it falls in blobs on to the table. She just didn’t care, didn’t care. He’d make her care soon enough. But what was it all for?
“Any gin left for me?”
“Don’t taunt me, don’t taunt me, don’t taunt me . . . don’t . . .” and his voice rises, and his face crinkles into funny lines. She was taunting him, taunting him. Just when he felt so ill, too. He did feel ill. And these rows were so thin. Ill.
He gets up and goes to the door of his room, dragging his feet.
“Where are you going? More gin?”
“Yes, more gin. Why shouldn’t I? Just one more.”
“But aren’t you going to finish your egg?—and then there’s the nice kipper and tomato sauce.”
“I tell you I can’t eat, I’m ill,” and he pulls to the door of his room.
Silly old Father, he was ridiculous, and yet it must be horrid to be as unhappy as all that. Anyway, it would mean all the more for her. She finishes his egg and then opens and begins to eat the fish. She does not eat prettily. He is having no lunch. Is he really ill? No, it was the gin. Still, it was her job to look after him, if she didn’t who would? And if he was ill and died she would feel just like the hen who trod to death a chick—yes, just like that. For he was hers, he was an awful child, and he had to be looked after, and he had to be petted when he cried. He had to be told how wonderful he was, and if you told him he was a genius he would at once cheer up and begin talking about birds and trees, and the sky and the stars. There was something queer about stars, they were mysterious, like Minnie’s eyes, only nice and small; and she liked nice small things, when she saw them. They were cool too. There were heaps of things she did like, but then she didn’t have the time, she was so busy. What was a genius exactly? How hot it was, and she wanted a drink.
*****
Everything was old and sleepy. The sun, who was getting very red, played at painting long shadowsin the grass. The air was tired and dust had risen from nowhere to dry up the trees. Sometimes a gentle little breath of wind would come up moving everything softly, and a bird would sing to it perhaps. All was quiet. Gnats jigged. From over the river the clock struck a mellow golden eight. The sun began throwing splashes of gold on to the trees, even the house caught some and was proud to be under the same spell.
The air began to get rid of the heaviness, and so became fresher as the dew soaked the grass. A blackbird thought aloud of bed, and was followed by another and then another. The sun was flooding the sky in waves of colour while he grew redder and redder in the west, the trees were a red gold too where he caught them. The sky was enjoying herself after the boredom of being blue all day. She was putting on and rejecting yellow for gold, gold for red, then red for deeper reds, while the blue that lay overhead was green.
A cloud of starlings flew by to roost with a quick rush of wings, and sleepy rooks cawed. Far away a man whistled on his way home.
Joan came from the porch as the light failed and moved peacefully to the gate. She went through and crossed the meadow, the heavy grass dragging at her feet. Some cows ate busily nearby and hardly bothered to look up. Then the river flowing mysteriously along with the sky mirrored in the varnished surface. Trailing willows made lightsmiles at the sides where the water was liquid ebony. An oily rise showed a fish having an evening meal. He was killing black flies. Joan sat on the bank.
Opposite, between sky and water, a fisherman is bent motionless over his float. He never moves except to jerk violently at times. Then, a short unseen struggle, a bending rod, and another fish to die. Joan thinks he must be a clever fisherman to catch so many fish, but it is silly to trouble about him while there is George to think of. Why, he has caught another, it is a big one too, it is taking quite a time to land. The reel screams suddenly like someone in pain, he must be a big fish. The little bent figure gets up and begins to dance excitedly about. A plunge with the landing-net, a tiny tenor laugh of pleasure, and then peace again as he leans over the net, doing things.
George, what if George were here now? He would say nothing but would merely sit, his great idle form. And then . . . yes.
The blackbirds had stopped. Blue shadows had given way to black. The little man was taking down his rod, and soon had gone off into the dusk on a bicycle, dying fish in his creel. There was the moon, reserved and pale but almost full. How funny to go up the sky, then down again. Aah. She was sleepy, yawning like that. And it was getting cold sitting out here. The river was ebony, and away in the west was a bar of dying purple across thesky. The trees had vast, unformed bulks. The moon shed a sickly light round her on a few clouds that had come up all at once. It was cold. She jumped up and began to walk back to the house. But she would not go to bed yet.
Yes there was the light in his room, a candle flame, still. She closed the door carefully behind her and crept upstairs in the dark. The hole on the third step and the creaking board on the ninth, she passed both without making a noise. Then through his room into hers and she was safe. She jammed her door with the chest of drawers, a heavy thing which she moved easily, it had the four castors intact for some reason. Funny how some of the furniture kept up appearances. Old days almost. Below it was quiet. She sat on a box in the window, and the cool night air breathed gently in, softly, like a thief.
Barwood . . . no, why think of that place? Everything had been so cultured there and so nice, and now it had all been beaten out of her, so that it hurt to go back into it. If there hadn’t been any milk left for lunch you had sent for it and it came, you didn’t have to pay for it on the nail as you did now. And she had been so clean and pretty, it was filthy here, but that had gone, and there was only the memory of it to go back to. Not that they hadn’t always let her run wild, though. But things had changed since then, Mother wouldn’t know her again if she could see her now. . . . BarwoodVicarage had been one of those houses that have white under the roof. An old wall went round. Little trees grew out of the wall, and their roots made cracks in it. One thick arm of ivy worked its way through just before the gate and made a bulge in the top. There was an old lawn and a gardener who looked much older, but then he can’t have been. It was a deep green, and he mowed it lovingly twice a week with a scythe, he was so proud of his mowing, and it used to be such fun going up to him and saying how well he did it, to watch new wrinkles come out with his smile. His face always looked as if there could be no more wrinkles, and yet there were new ones. Swallows used to build under the roof and then used to show off, they flew so fast and so close. For hours she had watched them rush in a swoop to the door of the nest. They never missed.
The only party at Barwood, the huge lawn and the immense house, the footman in livery, the people, it was another world. There had been ladies on the lawn dressed in marvellous stuffs with brightly-coloured hats—like birds they were. They shook hands very nicely and kindly, then they rushed away to play before the men. Mother had sat talking to Mrs. Haye, with her on the other side, and Mother had laid a restraining hand on her all the time as she half bent over Mrs. Haye. The unhappiness of that afternoon. Who were these people who lived such beautifully easy lives, andwhat right had they to make you so uncomfortable? The men were such willing idols. A little boy, Hugh, his name had been, had sat next her for a time, sent by his mother. He was at school then. He had asked her if she had been to the Pringles’ dance, and she had blushed—silly little fool—when she had said no. Then he had said something was “awfully ripping,” how at ease he had seemed, and then his glancing blue eyes had fixed and he had gone off and soon was laughing happily with an orange hat. Yes, he had left her for that thing, but you couldn’t blame him. How cool they all were, even when hot after tennis; Mother’s hand had been hot, lying in the lap of her new muslin which Mother had made for her. It might have been yesterday. That hand had seemed to be between her and the rest. Tennis was a pretty game to watch, and the men had laughed so nicely at it, with their open collars. One had had a stud-mark on his skin where the stud had pressed. Then there had been cool drinks on a sideboard—everything was new. Sometimes one of the ladies would say something to her with a quarter of her attention, the rest of her watching the men, and she herself had been too shy to answer. . . . She had had a little ear under a kiss-curl, that lady. Mother still talked to Mrs. Haye. People would sometimes look at the three of them seated on the bench, and then they would look away again and laugh. Oh, she hated them, it was their sort that had brought them tothis. Sitting on the bench there she had begun to long for the tiny lawn and the poor old broken dolly. A dream, those beautifully-dressed people who had been so cool, and whom mother had been so frightened at. Then they had gone, and she had had to say good-bye to Mrs. Haye—“What a fine upstandin’ girl, Mrs. Entwhistle”—and they had begun to walk the mile home. What a little fool she must have made of herself that afternoon. Mother had been so funny, she remembered her so well saying eagerly, “Did you see the green dress that girl with the auburn hair was wearing? And the white one of the girl with the thick ankles?” That had been the first time they had talked dresses as if it was not Mother who bought hers without asking her opinion. That night she had dreamed of a wonderful party with Hugh and his blue eyes and fat cheeks, when he had been terribly nice to her, and when they had had the sideboard to themselves. But behind it all lay the memory of the preparation, her hair being brushed endlessly, her longing to be off and her longing to stay behind, the interminable delays and the too short walk. “Behave nicely, and for heaven’s sake don’t bite your nails.”
And the dolly. Thomas, the old gardener, used to say, “Bean’t she a beauty!” as he leant on his spade as Dolly was shown to him every day. He never said more than that, it was enough. Then there had been the time when she had dropped her, and one arm had come off, just as any grown-up’smight. Fool, fool. She had cried for ages, and had given up all interest in her for a time because she had cried so much. But she went back to her, and Father glued on the arm so that it came off again; still they made it up and between them settled that she should have only one arm.
Then there had been Father’s roses. They bordered the path from the drawing-room French window to the door in the wall. Just over it climbing roses scrambled up and hung down in clusters. And little rose trees stood out on each side of the path, and red and white roses peeped out from the green leaves that hid the thorns. Father was so proud of them, ever since she could remember he used to talk about them at tea. He planted more and more, till the vegetable garden was invaded and in the end was a jungle of roses. His duties had to wait while they were being sprayed, or pruned, or manured. Thomas, of course, was never allowed to touch, it was his grief, he longed to help look after them. She remembered him saying wistfully, “Them be lovely roses, Miss Joan.” Roses, roses, all the way. Ro—o—ses.
There had been another side to the roses. She could remember the quarrels Mother used to have with him over them as if it was yesterday. The manure—best fish manure—cost money, and she would tell Father, in that funny high voice of hers that she used when she was angry, that one or the other would have to go, and then the rest wasalways whispered, sometimes less, sometimes more, but it must have been the gin or the roses. Father had not minded, nor had Mother after a time. John, the postman, must have begun about then. It was a pretty uniform. So it had gone on.
Mrs. Haye complained that Father never visited until they were dead. Of course he had visited. And the Parochial Church Council had asked for more services, though, of course, no one ever came to church, only Mrs. Haye, and she merely as an example to the village. The almshouse people came, but only because they were so nearly dead. The almshouses were built in dark blue brick, always in half-mourning, among the tombstones. Father had told her about these complaints over the rose trees. He had talked a great deal to her then. Poor Father. So he had planted roses to climb up the church, and they had given him a new interest there till Mrs. Haye had made him pull them down. He had been running away.
There had been a queer light at the back of Mother’s eyes about then—how she understood that light now! At the same time Mother had stopped taking any notice and would only smile tiredly at the things that had made her angry before. She took to painting her lips, and sometimes she would put one of the roses in her hair. Father never said anything about it toher, only, lying in bed with the owls hooting, she used to hear quarrels going on, quite often. Bed meant owls then, there werenone here. He spent more and more time on the roses about the house. And in the summer he would dream himself away among them, sitting there by the hour while she played on the lawn, putting Dolly to bed in rose petals. Would it do if she painted her lips for George? No, it would frighten him. To-morrow was Monday, he might be about. They had been all right, too, when they had blossomed, great bunches of them, red and white, all over the place. Just like those beautiful picture postcards Mrs. Donner had in the window sometimes. They had been lovely, those days.
Joined on the Vicarage behind there had been a small house with a farmyard and a few buildings. It was the lower farm of Mr. Walker’s. Henry had lived in the house, Henry who was her first love. They had kissed underneath the big thistle in the orchard hedge, only he had been rather dirty. She had seen him driving a cart two weeks ago, only he had looked the other way. Didn’t like to own her now. Before he had always lifted his cap with a knowing smile. Or had he been sorry for her? How funny that first kiss was. She had only been fourteen. All wet. But he remembered. Mrs. Baxter, his mother, with her nice face and her chickens. Mrs. Baxter used to come in sometimes to help Mother with the housework. She always used to say, “God is good to us, Mr. Entwhistle,” when Father was about. And Father used to lookserious and say, “Yes, Mrs. Baxter. He is indeed.” He was, then. She used to call her “Miss.”
Then the Wesleyan, “the heretic,” had started a rival Sunday school. He gave a treat once a year and Father never did, so all the children went to him and left Father. He had been angry: “Bribery and corruption; I won’t bribe the children to come to God.” Then they could not afford to give tea at the Mothers’ Meetings, and Mother had lost her temper with Mrs. Walker, who had insinuated that they were lazy. But the real reason why no one came any more must have been the gossip about Father which began about then. But they had become indifferent; they hadn’t cared.
Mrs. Haye had called and had stayed to tea. She, Joan, was allowed butter with her bread and jam. That was only on great occasions. After that the Mothers’ Union started. Mrs. Haye must have stamped on the gossip, for all the women began coming again, every month. Mrs. Haye attended herself the first time. Mother put some cut flowers in a pot just by her. It was a special occasion, so Father’s objection to cutting flowers was forgotten. “Do you want the best rose tree to be the rubbish heap?” Later, there was a woman who tried to teach them how to make baskets, but she forgot how to make them herself in the middle, and nobody minded, they had gone on whispering just the same. They were great times, those.
A fat drop of rain plunked on to the window-sill. Rain. Then another, and another. The air became full of messages, a branch just underneath moved uneasily. There was a rumble miles away that trundled along the sky till it roared by overhead and burst in the distance. Thunder. Rain fell quicker. A broad flame of lightning—waiting, waiting for the crash. Ah. The storm was some way off. The rain walked up the scales of sound, swishing like a scythe swishes. Quick light from another flash lit up the yard, and a bird was flying as if pursued, across the snouted pump. Darkness. The thunder. Nearer.
The air was cool, unloaded. Joan drew back from the window, for she was being splashed by the spray as the drops smashed. The rain fell faster, faster. A terrific sheet of light and all the sky seemed to be tumbling down, moving celestial furniture. Father’s bass came up singing confidently, “There is a green land far away.” Daylight, the sky fought. Darkness and rain. Sheet lightning never hurt anything, but how wonderful to be as afraid as this. Father was rising on the tide of knowledge. “I know, I know,” he cried, and heaven saluted it with her trumpets. He sang a line of the “Red Flag,” but switched off. Swish, swish, said the rain, settling down to steadiness. Father was singing something and taking all the parts. The chickens in the hut made plaintive noises, the cock was being so tiresome. “What a bore the old man is,” theywere saying, “but we are so frightened of him.” How wonderful, terror. Joan quaked on the box. Swish, said the rain.
Joan draws her blouse round her and hunches her shoulders. How much fresher it is now. The storm thunders away behind, it has passed over. Mumbles come from below. Laughter. All of her listens. His voice, “Ring out, wild bells.” Always the church bells that he could not escape. Hunted by bells. Crash—the empty bottle. Then he is singing again. Mother had used to play. He is coming upstairs, toiling up, and Joan shivers. Into his room. Silence. Quietly he goes to bed and is asleep. The light in him had gone out. He had forgotten.
She feels cheated. He had been so mad underneath. Why hadn’t he battered at the door? What a shame. All that trembling for nothing. He had forgotten her. She shuts the window, and lighting a candle undresses and lets down her hair. She gets into bed. Sleep.
Eyes closed.
Sleep. Now she would go to sleep.
Turns over.
Sleep.
The lawn. The roses.
It can’t have been sheet lightning because there was thunder. Then it had been dangerous.
A stands for ant. B stands for bee. C stands for cat. Sitting on Mother’s knee tracing the tummyof a, her hand guiding. Later on Mother tried to teach her other things. It used to be a great game to get as many “I don’t know myself, dear’s,” out of her as possible in the morning.
There was the Vicarage pew every Sunday, Mrs. Haye to the left, crazy Kate just behind, then the churchwarden, sniffling, sniffling, and two or three almshouse people. Father always preached out of the green book on the second shelf in the old study, though sometimes he talked about politics. Mrs. Haye would stir violently when she disagreed, which would make Father stutter and Mother angry. Sometimes, though not very often, her son John would come too, he who was blind now. She used to watch him all through the service when he was there. He was so aloof, and there was nothing, no one else to look at. Nothing happened, no one did anything except the organist when she forgot. The service would go slowly on. Weston, the head gardener at Barwood, the only person in the choir, would sing as if he did not care. Father’s voice toiled through the service. Mrs. Haye argued the responses. The organist was paid to come, Weston only came that Mrs. Haye might see that he came. Outside, through the little plain glass window at the side of their pew, the top of an apple tree waved. In summer there were apples on it which she used to pick in her imagination, and any time a bird might fly across, free. The service would go on and finish quite suddenly with a hymn, and then the runhome with the blue hills in the distance, with the glimpse, just before the second gate, of the tower of the Abbey church, the greeting of Mrs. Green who was always at her door at the beginning of the last field—no, the last but one, there was the orchard; dinner. It had all gone. Why, since she loved it so? The summers were so wonderful, the winter nights so comfortable. Gone. To-day had ended wrong and had started wrong. Forget in sleep.
The bed was too hot, the sheets clung, one leg was hot against the other. Her hair laid hot fingers about her face. She pulled aside the bed-clothes and lay on top of them on her back, a white smudge in the dark. Outside tepid rain poured. This was cooler.
There was the clock that used to strike bed-time, half-past six. Had she heard the one stroke? Had she forgotten? But no.
“Bed-time, Joan.”
“No, I don’t want to.”
“Now be a good girl.”
To gain time—“Where’s Daddy?”
“Now, Joan, you know your Daddy works all the evenings. Now go to bed, dearie. I’ll come up and see you.”
Starting in on the gin more likely. Oh, everything was very proper then. Where had he put the empties, though? Of course he can’t have been bad as far back as that, it was only much later. Just before the Mothers’ Meeting she had foundMrs. Baxter sniffling round Father’s room. She herself had smelt the smell too. She had called Mother, who had not noticed anything, of course. After that Father had said that he would dust the room himself, as he could not have his papers being fidgeted with.
“Fidget, fidget, that’s all a woman is when cleaning. Tidying up means hiding. There is an order in my disorder. Yesterday I spent half an hour looking for the church accounts which I found eventually, tidied away into the private correspondence. I can’t bear it. You do understand, don’t you, Mrs. Baxter? Of course I am not blaming you in the least, but . . .”
“Very well, Mr. Entwhistle. I understand, sir.” Sniff!
Something like that, but it was the sniff. It was the first sign of a mystery that had been so exciting till she had known.
His private correspondence. That can’t have been anything. Only letters to Mrs. Haye—oh, yes, and to the Bishop. He had scored off the Bishop one day. A great thing. Butter with her bread and jam that day.
But times had been hard. Really they were better off there. The food had dwindled, she had felt hungry a good deal.
“A wage less than a labourer.”
“Oh, yes.”
“What’s that? Well, isn’t it?”
“It wouldn’t be.”
“Well then, approximately. And then there are your clothes to buy and the child’s.”
“And your personal expenses. What you waste.”
“What? I suppose I can’t spend a penny on myself?”
“Run along, Joan, and play.”
“Yes, Mummy.”
Then Uncle Jim, whose death they had waited for so long, died in France. Of fever or something. He had no child and had left all his money to “the poor fellow he’s a parson.” Lord, that joke. Father had seen it in theEvangelical Supplementand had used it for ever when he talked. However, things had become a bit easier then, and probably the spirit merchant had begun to give tick again.
Only one villager had been killed.
“And I said to them, I put it to them point-blank, ‘I won’t sign the minutes when no member of the Parochial Council comes to church,’ I said.”
What was there to get for to-morrow? Milk, more sardines, and some more candles. Perhaps that book Mrs. Donner had in her window for thruppence. She could put the thruppence down to the bread. The title was so thrilling,The Red Love of White Hope, Scioux, Matt.
She had not read many books in the old days. There was theWater Babies, and one or two others, but she had forgotten. AndRobinson Crusoe.After that she hadn’t read at all. She didn’t really know what she had done. She had sat on the wall agood deal, asking why and how the world was here, and watching people go by. Silly to trouble about why the world was—it was, that was all. On Saturdays in summer dusty motor cars would clatter by on the way to the riverside pub. Birmingham people they were. There were other people sometimes. And four times a day the milk lorry came by with him driving it. Fascinating he was, he looked so wicked.
Was Scioux the name of a town, or did it mean that White Hope was a Red Indian? Mrs. Donner might let her have a look inside. If it was only a town she would not buy it, but with a Red Indian it should be meaty. Then, again, she used to go up to watch the village blacksmith shoe the horses or repair a plough, and he would let her work the handle of the bellows and make the sparks spray out. The corners of his forge had been wonderful, all sorts of odds and ends of rusty iron, and always the chance, as he said, of finding something very valuable among them. Little innocent. But above all there was the blacksmith himself. He was very stupid but the strongest man that ever lived. It was wonderful, his strength. She had tried to lift the big hammer one day, and she had let it drop on her big toe, it was so heavy. Wouldn’t be able to lift it now, even. He had had to carry her back to the Vicarage. Mother had been very angry. But then the days were gone when she kissed to make it well. Poor right big toe.
Occasionally they had gone into Norbury. There used to be the old horse bus along the main road to take you in, and then you were in the middle of the hum and bustle of it, hundreds of people hurrying along in town clothes. Norbury was wonderful with its three thousand inhabitants. And there was Green the draper’s, Mother fingering the stuffs for her new dress—would it wash, would it wear? it did not look to her like very good quality. And the boot shop, Dapp’s, with the smell of leather and hundreds and hundreds of shoes hung about, and the shop assistant’s hair—like a cascade of glue, Father said once outside, but it wasn’t, it smelt lovely—and his way of trying the shoe on, that little finger. Fool. He would be married now, and she, whoever she was, would have someone to wait for in the evenings, to kiss or to have rows with, and wear his ring. She would have his children and they would watch them together. And the farmers, fat and thin, in their pony carts, getting down at the Naiad’s Calf to have a drink. Father had hated the farmers; “they are making a lot of money,” was what he said. And as evening came on they went sometimes to tea at the Deanery, and she would doze by the fire, sitting very correctly in her chair, hearing the boom of the Dean’s voice to Father, and Mother’s shrill complaint to the Dean’s wife, dozing after the huge tea that she had eaten when they weren’t looking. They would have a fit if she went there now.
She hadn’t been in Norbury for ages. There was Mrs. Donner who sold everything. She was a one, that woman. Three and six for a bit of stuff which she wouldn’t like to put on a horse’s back to keep the cold off!
It had been hard work following Mother about. She had hurried so from shop to shop. She must have been hungry for town life again. Those that are town-bred hate the country. They used always to eat lunch in the Cathedral Tea Rooms. Mrs. Oliver, big and fat, who looked after the customers, always came up and said, “Ah, Mr. Entwhistle, so you’ve come to see us townsfolk again, sir.” Mother would bring out the sandwiches. After they had eaten Mother and she would go off to the shops again, while Father went back to the Library. Mother used to call Mrs. Oliver “a designing woman”—sour grapes. And the chemist, mysterious behind his spectacles, in his shop made of shelves and bottles, and cunningly-piled cardboard boxes. The jolting ride home in the dark, with the walk at the end.
Then there was Nancy. All the last years at the Vicarage had been Nancy. What had become of her now? Married with children, most likely, but not to the baker’s son she had been so gone on. Nancy with her fairest hair and skinny legs, she was not nearly as good-looking as her. Her snub nose, and the small watery pink eyes.
They had met in a lane, had smiled, and had made friends. That is, they had never really made friends, she had been far too stupid. But Nancy used to giggle at her jokes, and she liked that. Dolly had been forgotten then.
They talked a great deal about men, with long silences, and Nancy’s giggle and “Oh you’s.” They walked arm in arm, or more often with their arms round each other’s waists, their heads bent, whispering. Lord, what fools they must have looked. Of course Mother was only too glad that she was out of the way, Father too.
They used to walk most in the lane, just outside the house here. She had been in love, oh, how passionate, with Jim who never spoke, and who worked for Mr. Curry. He had been worse than George. But he used sometimes to come home by the lane in the evening, and they would pass him arm in arm. She would give him the sidelong look she had practised in the mirror, but he never did more than touch his cap. She had dropped her handkerchief once, as Nancy had told her they did in the world. They had talked and giggled for days before she had plucked up courage to do it. But of course he did nothing.
Nancy wore a ring round her neck on a bit of cotton. She said at first that Alfred had given it her, but that time under the honeysuckle when she had shown Nancy her birthmark on her leg, shehad confessed that she had only got it out of a cracker at Christmas. Nancy used to think her awfully daring.
Then their walks when evening was coming on, when they wandered down the sunken lane. Thick sunlight and thicker shade, when they twined closer together, and walked slower, and were silent. There was the heavy smell of honeysuckle, sweet, which a little fresh air coming down between the banks would begin to blow away. The birds flew quietly from side to side, there were flowers whose names she did not know, and long tufts of grass full of dew. The flowers made dots of colour in the shade, the ground they walked on buried the sound of their feet. . . . Soon they would come to the gate, and they would sit clinging to each other and balancing, watching the horses scrunch up the grass and the cows lie chewing, idly content. The sky was always different, and the end of a hot day was sleepy. The flies buzzed round, the midges bit. On a piece of fresh manure there would be hundreds of brown flies, and a bee would hurry by. She used to watch the trees most often. There were so many of them, one behind the other, hiding, showing, huddled, alone. Far away a car would blow a horn, or a train would whistle, but it used to feel as if there was everything between them and it. Birds up in the sky that was paling would fly silently with a purpose. They were going to bed, and soon she would go back, have supper, and go to bed. Partridgestalked to each other anxiously, as they gathered together, against the dangers of the night. The horses looked round calmly. A dog barked miles away.
Then, as it was getting dark, they would part to go home. Nancy up to the village, and she herself across the fields to the Vicarage. The cows would not rise, and the horses would give her barely a glance. Only a rabbit perhaps would sit up, drum the ground, and flee to his burrow. And he would not bother to go down it, for as soon as she had passed he would be back again nibbling. In spring there would be lambs, absurd and delicious on their long weak legs.
She would climb a warm gate and feel the wet of the dew soaking through her stockings. In front was the Vicarage, all the windows open, waiting, and her glass of milk and biscuits. She would climb the last gate and cross the dusty road, lift the latch of the door in the wall, and the roses, the white ones and the red ones, would greet her. Father might be sitting in the deck-chair on the lawn, smoking his pipe, the blue smoke going lazily up to the other blue of the sky. Mother might be sewing just inside the French window. The milk was cool.
And then she would go up the stairs into her room, the little white bed, the texts round the walls, the open window letting in the dim light and the roses. And she would go to sleep and—was she going to cry?
All gone, the lawn, the roses, the quiet, the protection, her little room, the glass of milk, Jack, the horses, the cows, the walks, for they were not the same, Nancy, those evenings. Fool. The peace, the untroubledness, the old wall, the . . . All . . .
She went to sleep.
END OF PART II
“——COLLEGE, OXFORD.
“My dear B. G.
“I saw you last night in the club, but you cut me dead. Come to lunch Friday to be forgiven. I wanted to talk about poor John. I am so sorry about it. Poor dear, amusing John. I must write to him, though what there is to say I don’t know. Really, these letters of condolence are very difficult.
“But why did you cut me like that? I saw David Plimmer the other night and he spoke of you with enthusiasm. Don’t forget about lunch Friday, if you cut that I shall know the worst.
“Yrs.———
“Seymour.”