by Henry Green
'You don't want to pay no attention,' he told her.
'Is that so? Then what do you need to go talkin' round it for?'
'It's you I'm concerned about,' he said.
Again she took a short look at him. This time it was as if he could not understand the flash of rage on her face. He put an arm through hers. As she turned her head away he said almost hoarse,
'Here, give us a kiss.'
'Lucky we left the door open wasn't it?' she said.
'Just a small one?' he asked.
She got up.
'Have you cleaned your teeth?' she enquired.
'Have I cleaned my what?'
'Oh nothing,' she said. She did not seem so pleasant.
'Why,' he remarked, 'I brush them every morning first thing.'
'Forget it,' she said and wandered over to that group photograph of Mr Jack which she peered into.
'I can't make you out at all,' he complained, getting up to follow her.
'You will,' she replied. 'You will when those Jerries come over and start murdering us or worse in our beds. When the police begin to fight one another like you said they would.'
He stood back making motions with his hands.
'But it's you I was concerned over love,' he said.
'Me?' she took him up. 'What have I got to lose by goin' home? I'll thank you to tell me that. While if I stay on here there's worse than death can come. It'll be too late then. I got my life still to live Mr Raunce. I'm not like many have had the best part of theirs.'
'Just lately I been wonderin' if my life weren't just starting.'
'Well even if you can't tell whether you're comin' or goin' I know the way I'm placed thank you.'
'Look dear I could fall for you in a big way,' he said and he saw her back stiffen as though she had begun to hear with intense attention. She said no word.
'I could,' he went on. 'For the matter of that I have.'
At this moment she flung round on him and his hangdog face was dazzled by the excitement and scorn which seemed to blaze from her. But all she said was,
'You tell that to them all Charley.'
He appeared to rally a trifle and was about to answer when she exclaimed,
'Why Badger you dirty thing whatever have you got then?'
He turned to find the greyhound wagging its tail at him, muddy nosed, and carrying a plucked carcass that stank.
'Get off out from my premises,' he cried at once, galvanized. 'No wait,' he said. 'What've you got there mate?' The dog wagged its tail.
'Why d'you bother?' she asked impatient. 'It's only one of them peacocks.'
'One of the peacocks?' he almost shouted. 'But there'll be murder over this. No,' he added, 'you're having me on.' He made a step towards the dog which started to growl.
'That's right,' she said, 'Mrs Welch buried it away where none should see.'
'You're crazy,' he said.
'I'll have you remember who you're speaking to Charley Raunce,' she broke out at him. 'Mrs Welch thinks nobody's learned but this bird aimed a peck at 'er Albert's little neck so the little chap upped and killed it. Then she buried it in such a way that no one shouldn't know. The children told me. But I wouldn't have that stinking thing lying around in my part no thank you. Badger,' she said, 'you be off you bad dog.'
On which the dog deposited this carcass at Raunce's feet.
'Holy Moses,' he said, 'the old cow.' 'Now then,' Edith interrupted. 'That's all right,' he went on, 'I'm thinkin' of you ducks. See?'
'No I don't.'
'Well she's got it in for you about that waterglass an' now we've something on her. Get me?'
A noise of high shrieks and the clapping of hands announced Miss Evelyn and Miss Moira, tearing along towards them down passages.
'For land's sake the children,' Edith exclaimed. 'Why I declare I forgot all about...'
Meantime Raunce had dashed out into the pantry snapping his fingers at the dog. It picked up the dead peacock and followed. Raunce shut that further door behind them both. For a moment Edith was alone as those children raced towards her the other way. Then they had arrived. She was holding her breasts.
'Mercy,' Miss Evelyn exclaimed with a trace of Cockney accent, 'why Edith you do look thrilled at something.'
Raunce's Albert came out of the door Mr Raunce had closed. He shut it again after him, on the butler and the dog and its find it carried.
'Hello Bert,' Miss Moira said.
'Hullo Miss Moira,' he replied. He just stood looking pale and miserable.
'You coming with us?' Edith asked. 'It's your afternoon off isn't it?'
'Oh yes,' he said, and a smile broke over his wan face.
'I got to get ready,' she announced. 'I'll race you two all the way up to my hide out One three go,' she shouted and they were gone. The boy got out a handkerchief, blew his nose. His weak eyes shone.
As the three of them ran the front way through all the magnificence and the gilt of that Castle Miss Evelyn looked back. She cried,
'Why couldn't Bert race with us?'
'Because he's too old,' Edith called back panting, and steadied herself round a turn of the Grand Staircase by holding the black hand of a life-sized negro boy of cast iron in a great red turban and in gold-painted clothes.
Albert went behind the door to the cellar, unhooked his mackintosh and put on the rubber boots he kept there. It was not long before the others were back ready dressed to meet showers. Edith's head was in a silk scarf Mrs Jack had given her which was red and which had for decoration the words 'I love you I love you' written all over in black longhand with rounded letters.
Albert stayed silent while the rest argued where to go. At last they decided on that walk to the temple. Miss Evelyn had a bag of scraps to feed the peacocks When they went through Raunce's pantry to reach the back door this man and the dog were gone without trace.
But as soon as they were outside rain began to come down so thick that they hesitated. Edith said not unkind,
'That's a silly thing Bert to come without a hat.'
He looked back speechless and plastered his long streaming yellow hair down one cheek with a hand. While those two little girls argued where they should go next to get out of the wet Edith looked at the lad derisively. She added as if in answer to a question,
'Oh it does mine good, the soft water curls my hair.'
Then while he regarded her, and he was yearning in the rain, Miss Evelyn announced they'd decided that they'd go play in the Skull-pier Gallery.
'All right if you want,' Edith replied, 'but not through the old premises or we'll dirty 'em wet as we are,' for this Gallery was built on to the far portion of the Castle beyond the part that was shut up. So they ran along a path round by the back past the dovecote and any number of doors set in the Castle's long high walls pierced with tall Gothic windows. Running they flashed along like in the reflection of a river on a grey day, and smashed through white puddles which spurted.
Squat under this great Gothic pile lay the complete copy of a Greek temple roofed, windowed and with two green bronze doors for entrance. The children dashed through an iron turnstile, which clicked into another darker daylight, into a vast hall lit by rain and dark skylights and which was filled with marble bronze and plaster statuary in rows.
'What shall we play?' the Misses Evelyn and Moira cried. Their sharp voices echoed, echoed. The place was damp. Albert kept his mackintosh on. Edith took off her scarf. She was brilliant, she glowed as she rang her curls like bells without a note.
'Blind man's buff,' she said. 'Oh let's,' the girls cried. It was plain this was what they had expected.
'You won't have no difficulty telling it's me,' Albert brought out as if he held a grievance, 'it's me,' the walls repeated.
'You stay mum or we'd never have invited you. We're not playing for you,' Edith told him.
On this there came a kind of faint mewing from the back. Albert started but stayed where he was while those others went hand in hand to see. Away
in the depths, out from behind a group of robed men kneeling with heads and arms raised to heaven something small minced out into half light. It was a peacock which had come in to get out of the wet. 'You see her off these premises,' Edith told Albert, 'we don't aim to catch her when we're blindfolded. We don't want another death, the sauce,' she explained. But it took Albert some time to get the creature out. He had to make it hop over that turnstile which caused it to squawk spinsterish. 'You'll have Paddy after you,' Edith called to him at the noise.
When he came back he found Miss Moira had been chosen, had had her eyes bound with the sopping 'I love you.' She stumbled about in flat spirals under a half-dressed lady that held a wreath at the end of her two long arms. Stifled with giggling Edith and Evelyn moved quiet on the outside circle while Albert stood numb. So that it was he was caught.
'Mr Raunce's Albert,' Miss Moira announced without hesitation, her short arms round his thighs. 'Kiss me,' she commanded. 'Kiss me,' the walls said back.
He bent down. His bang of yellow hair fell at right angles to his nose. He kissed her wet forhead over the scarf. Her child's skin was electric hot under a film of water.
Then it was his turn. There was only Edith tall enough to tie him and as 'I love you I love you' was knotted over his eyes he quietly drew a great breath perhaps to find out if Edith had left anything on this piece of stuff. He drew and drew again cautious as if he might be after a deep draught of her, of her skin, of herself. He was puffed already when his arms went out to go round and round and round her. But she was not there and for answer he had a storm of giggles which he could not tell one from the other and which went ricochet-ting from stone cold bosoms to damp streaming marble bellies, to and from huge oyster niches in the walls in which boys fought giant boas or idled with a flute, and which volleyed under green skylights empty in the ceiling. He went slow. He could hear feet slither. Then he turned in a flash. He had Edith. He stood awkward one hand on her stomach the other on the small of her back.
'Guess then,' he heard Miss Evelyn tell him out of sudden silence.
'Edith,' he said low.
'Kiss her then,' they shrieked disinterested, 'kiss her,' they shrieked again. In a tumult of these words re-echoed over and over from above from below and from all sides his hands began to grope awkward, not feeling at her body but more as if he wished to find his distance. 'Kiss her.'
'Come on then,' she said brisk. She stepped for the first time into his arms. Blinded as he was by those words knotted wet on his eyes he must have more than witnessed her as his head without direction went nuzzling to where hers came at him in a short contact, and in spite of being so short more brilliant more soft and warm perhaps than his thousand dreams.
'Crikey,' he said and took the scarf off in one piece. He seemed absolutely dazzled although it had become almost too dark to see his face.
'You tie it dear,' she said kneeling down to Miss Moira. 'He's that awkward,' she said in a cold voice.
But there was an interruption. As Edith knelt before the child a door in the wall opened with a grinding shriek of rusty hinge and Raunce entered upon a scene which this noise and perhaps also his presence had instantly turned to more stone.
'I figured this was where you could be found,' he said advancing smooth on Edith. She had raised a hand to her eyes as though to lift the scarf but she let her arm drop and faced him when he spoke, blind as any statue.
'Yes?' she said. 'What is it?'
'Won't you play Mr Raunce?' Miss Evelyn asked.
'Playin' eh?' he remarked to Albert.
'It's Thursday isn't it?' Edith enquired sharp. 'That's his half day off or always was. What's up?'
'Nothin',' he replied, 'only I just wondered how you might be getting along.'
'Is that all?' was her comment. At which Albert spoke for himself.
'We was havin' a game of blind man's buff,' he said.
'So I perceive Albert,' the butler remarked.
'Oh do come on do,' one of the little girls pleaded but Edith chose this moment to take that scarf off her eyes.
'You surely didn't pass through all that old part alone?' she asked.
'And why not?'
'Oh Charley I never could not in a month of Sundays. Not on my own.'
'Is that so?'
'You are pleasant I must say aren't you?' she said.
'Thanking you,' Raunce answered,
'Oh please come on Mr Raunce please,' the child entreated. 'Edith'll give you up her turn.'
'I'm past the age and that's a fact Miss Evelyn,' Raunce said almost nasty. 'For the matter of that I chucked this blind man's buff before I'd lived as many years as my lad here. In my time if we had nothing better to do than lark about on a half day we got on with our work.'
'Here,' Edith said, 'just a minute.' She led him aside. 'What's up Charley?'
'Nothing's up. What makes you ask?'
'You act so strange. Whatever's the matter then?'
'Oh honey,' he suddenly said low and urgent, 'I never seem to see you these days.'
'That's not a reason,' she objected. 'You know I've got to look after them with Miss Swift sick as she is.'
'Yes,' he said. 'There's always something or other in the way each time.'
'How's your neck dear?' she asked as she strolled away. She gradually led him nearer and nearer the door he had come in by.
'Oh it's bad,' he said. 'It hurts so Edith.'
'Well you shouldn't stand about in a damp place like here,' she replied. 'For land's sake I don't know how you managed those passages alone. They give me the creeps. And what's become of Badger with the peacock?'
'I gave that dog the slip. All the brains he's got is in his jaw. Once he's dropped anything 'e's lost that dog is. I put it away where they'll find it in the outside larder.'
She slapped a hand across her mouth. 'You hung it in the outside larder?'
He smiled for the first time. 'That's right,' he said.
'Lord,' she remarked, 'what'll old Mother Welch say when Jane or Mary tells 'er?' She began to giggle.
'Don't call 'er cook she don't like it,' Raunce replied broadly smiling.
'Now look you mustn't stay here Charley with that neck of yours. You get back out of this damp. I'll see if I can't manage to slip down after tea.'
'O K ducks. Give us a kiss.'
'Don't be daft,' she said, 'what in front of all of them?'
'O K. then,' he ended, 'I'll be seeing you.' And he shut that door soft although the hinges shrieked and groaned. Then he came in once more, stared at the mechanism. 'Wants a drop of oil that does,' he remarked, winked and was gone again. As he walked off into grey dust-sheeted twilight he said two or three times to himself, 'How she has come on. You'd never know it was the same girlie,' he repeated.
'At last,' Miss Moira called out back in the Gallery, 'I thought we'd never get rid of him. Kneel Edith,' she said pulling that scarf out of Edith's pocket.
Once Edith was blinded the little girls let out piercing shrieks and dodged as in laughter she moved her arms as though swimming towards them. Their cries reverberated round the Gallery. Miss Evelyn hopped on one leg pressing her snub nose upwards with the palm of a hand When Edith came near, Miss Moira would turn and slip by Edith's blind wrists looking round over a shoulder ready to dodge again after Miss Evelyn had ducked under. But Albert stood like a statue and must have hoped he would be found. As he was. Yet when her fingers knew him which they did at once she murmured 'I don't want you,' and to shrieks from the others of 'You'll never catch us,' this immemorial game went on before witnesses in bronze in marble and plaster, echoed up and down over and over again.
Back in his room Raunce unlocked the drawer in which he kept the red and black notebooks. He verified that they were there. Then he drew pencil and paper towards him, laboriously made out the date and the address then settled down to write to his mother.
'Dear Mother,' he began, 7 hope you are well. I am. There has been nothing fresh here. Mrs Tennant has gone to
England to stay. While she is over she hopes to see Mr Jack who is on leave just at present. Mrs Jack has also gone to be with them. So we are on our own here now and will be for a bit I expect.
'Mother 1 am very worried over this bombing for you. Don't wait until he comes to get your Anderson shelter fixed. Get it done now Mother dear and it will be something off my mind.
'I often wish I was with you dear but you know the way I'm placed. Once I should leave this country then I'm in their power over there. There's the Labour Exchange with the Army waiting. It's hard to know what to do best.
'Mother what would you say to your coming here. Who knows but there might be a change in my situation one of these days. You've often said it was time I settled down. But not a word to anyone dear, there's nothing said yet. But I've my eye on a nice little place in the park what the married butler before Mr Eldon had. Think of it will you Mother. And mind not a word not even to my sister Bell.
'Well I must close now. But I certainly am worried about you with all this bombing. Tell her, that's Bell 1 mean, to be sure and look after you all right. Your loving son Charley.'
Then he inked it in. And he wrote the address with his pencil and then inked that. Finally he slipped in the Money Order. After he had stamped the envelope he laid his head down on his arms and dropped off to sleep at once.
When a few days later as she lay in bed Miss Swift was paid a call by Miss Burch she was able to cut short the thanks having expressed what was necessary on the first of two visits of sympathy Miss Burch had already paid. But on the subject of her symptoms she left nothing out.
'I wonder you don't ask Doctor Connolly to put his rule over you,' Miss Burch remarked at last.
'Poor nanny,' Miss Swift exclaimed. 'That man?' she added as if injured.
'There's not another within reaching distance only the native doctors and we won't speak about them. Now they've taken their petrol away that is.'
'You'd never expect me to see him, Miss Burch, after what we witnessed every one of us with Mr Eldon. Why it was no more than a crime if I'm to put a name to it.'
'Mr Eldon he died of a broken heart Miss Swift. There was a lot he told nobody.'