The Winds Of Heaven

by Monica Dickens

  "Now, Anny," Frank said, putting the toast back on the plate. "You haven't got to be like thatThey're your people too, now, you know."

  "Don't rub it in." Anne sat down heavily. She was wearing a faded cotton wrapper, with the front of her hair in pins and her face still unpowdered, although Frank had been up and working for two hours,

  "They only come to get eggs/' she grumbled. "If you didn't keep chickens, they wouldn't come near us. Hah! What a loss that would be."

  Louise wondered how Frank could bear her to talk like this. He looked hurt, so she ventured to say: "You mustn't mind what Anne says, Frank. At these times, one is more nervy, especially in the mornings,"

  "What's that got to do with it? I didn't want to see Frank's people before I got this way. Stop dragging in my condition, Mother. You're like some old midwife."

  "I know what it is," Louise said soothingly. "I've been through it, don't forget. I know it makes you jumpy."

  "You can't know." Anne was determined to make a grievance of her pregnancy for the whole of its span."You can't possibly have felt like this, or you wouldn't have gone on having us. You don't know how ghastly I feel."

  "Indeed, I do." Embarked on the absorbing topic, Louise forgot that Frank was there, and fidgeting. "I was sick every morning with Eva for three solid months."

  "Well, I was sick last week," Anne retaliated. She had stuck her finger down her throat to make Frank feel sorry for her. "I'm sick all the time."

  "Looks like rain." Frank cleared his throat. "Maybe I won't need to water today." The female talk passed over his head, ignoring him.

  'When I was carrying Frank's brother," Mrs. Nixon said comfortably, settling back in her chair, "I hardly got a wink of sleep for the way he'd kick."

  "There they go." Frank's father raised his eyes to heaven. "They're all the same. Give them a baby on the way and they'll talk it to death long before anyone sets eyes on it."

  Frank grinned. "Let's go out for a bit, Dad, till lunch is ready." He pretended to be exasperated by the feminine conversation, but actually he liked to think of the three women in the house talking in that conceited, martyred way about the

  thing that women were made for, and the centre of them his Anne, who had never before been reduced to talking like a woman.

  Frank's father was a wiry little man, with a spiked moustache, which he had copied from the sergeants as soon as lie got out of the Army. His mother was a slow, suspicious vonrin with sad, round eyes, who had grown too big for her husband. When they sat in a bus together, she spread half way over his side of the seat. She was a woman of few ideas, and those she had were rooted in her as deeply as dandelions. You could argue at her for hours on end, and she would listen to you with bovine eyes and then say: "You have your way of thinking, and I have mine/'

  One of her convictions had always been that Frank would marry a healthy, willing girl, whom she visualized permanently in a print apron, with her hair tied back and a smell of baking about her. When he married Anne his father had done his best to see it through Frank's eyes, as a step up for him, but his mother thought it was a step down from the kind of woman the Nixons had always married.

  Anne felt her resentment and made no effort to disarm it. To her, a mother-in-law, whoever she was, must always be more of a liability than an acquisition. She often wondered at Frank's friendliness toward Louise, who was, after all, his mother-in-law, and therefore a burden.

  She would not lift a finger for Franks parents. If they chose to come, they must take cold ham, if there was any; if not, Frank must cook them bacon and eggs. This Sunday, Louise had cooked the lunch, and tried to make up for Anne s deficiencies as a hostess by waiting on Frank's parents over-zeal-ously, so that they felt quite uncomfortable, and Mrs. Nixon began to wonder whether Anne s mother was trying to take over her home from her, or what.

  "If you could spare us a few eggs, Frank " Mrs. Nixon

  said after lunch, with that false humility that food rationing imposed on its victims, even toward their relations.

  "Frank has to send them all to the packing station/' Anne said. "It's the law/'

  "They won't miss a few." Frank pushed back his chair, anxious to get his parents out of doors where Anne would not follow to make things difficult. "Let's go out and see what there is, shall we? Mum and Dad, I want you to see the pigs, too. There'll be several more of them before you can turn round. Daisy won't be long now. Come and see her. She's splendid."

  "Yes," Anne said, "you must see Daisy before you go," although the Nixons had no intention of going before they had been given tea.

  Anne stayed in the house while everyone else went out. She did not want to look at Daisy, so hugely and happily gravid. It made her feel that she was only one of the farm animals herself, fulfilling her functions to everyone's satisfaction. If only they would not talk about it so much it would be more bearable. Her mother could not keep off the subject, even when snubbed, and Anne supposed that her interest would increase morbidly as time went on and extend suffocatingly to the infant itself.

  While Frank and his parents admired the mammoth sow and scratched its harsh back with a stick, Louise stood in the background with her hands over her hair and wondered what Daisy thought about it all, if anything. Did a pig feel afraid, as she had each time and forgotten immediately afterwards what it was she had feared? Frank would be up all night, excited as a boy, when Daisy had her litter. Louise would get out of bed at intervals to put the kettle on in case Frank came in, and Anne would snore through the whole night's drama, and complain in the morning that she had not been able to sleep for all the walking about. Louise had been through farrowing time at Stone Farm, and knew the routine.

  Frank's parents left after tea, taking three dozen eggs and a

  basket of vegetables. There had been no serious arguments, and

  Frank was beginning to hope that the mellowing process he

  looked forward to in Anne was already beginning to take effect.

  "That's that, then," Frank said, as the little box of a car

  drove off with the front seat full of Mrs. Nixon and the back seat full of eggs and vegetables. "A nice family day." He rumpled Anne's hair, patted Louise on the arm to thank her for the cooking she had done, and went whistling off to run the chopping machine for his evening feeds.

  Ten minutes later, he came back ashen-faced, staring at the mangled fingers in the blood-filled cradle of his other hand.

  After Frank had been taken to hospital in the doctor's car, Anne went all to pieces. She sat on the floor with one of the dogs, and cried into its neck, while Louise went out alone to shut up the chickens. Fortunately the goats were already in the shed. Louise knew that she would never have been able to get them in. She had seen even Frank being dragged this way and that by the rope of an insanely prancing young Billy.

  When Louise got back to the house, Anne's tears had dried to gasping sniffs. She had poured herself out a glass of gin.

  "Oh, Anne, you know Frank doesn't like you to drink now," Louise said. "Fll make you a cup of tea instead/'

  "I need a drink/' Anne swallowed half the gin neat, and shuddered. "Better. Have one, Mother?"

  "I think I will. I must say I feel a bit shaky, too. What a dreadful thing to happen. Ill never forget seeing Frank come in at that door "

  "Don't talk about it," Anne said tersely. "I can't bear it."

  Louise was surprised that Anne was so upset. She never showed Frank any affection when he was there; but she must really care about him more than anyone guessed.

  "You shall go to bed early, dear," Louise said tenderly, "and I'll give you some aspirin, so that you can get a good sleep and not worry about Frank."

  "I'm not worrying about him," Anne said. "Silly fool, doing a thing like that when he's used the cutter hundreds of times. He'll be all right in a couple of days. The doctor said he would. But that hand! It looked so horrible when he came in. I'd given anything not to have seen it. It's made me feel as if I were

/>   turned inside out. He never should have brought it in like that. He might at least have covered it."

  "How can you be so selfish, Anne?" Louise asked wonder-ingly.

  "Fm not. But Frank knows what it does to me to see blood. He might have thought . . . But just coming in and standing there with that stuck expression on his face, and the blood all thick like oil—ugh! Let's have another drink and play the phonograph and think about something else/'

  Anne had three drinks and having recovered from her nausea demanded supper and went to bed quite cheerfully, with the dogs on Frank's side of the bed. Her mother had seen her more concerned when one of the dogs had a splinter in its paw.

  She fetched a cloth and wiped up some blood that she had missed on the tiled floor. Kneeling, she shook her head and said: "Oh, dear," out loud, as she did sometimes when she was alone.

  Louise rose early, to be dressed and downstairs by the time Harry came at eight o'clock, so that she could tell him what to do.

  Frank had been fretting as he was carried off in the car, his hand a swollen lump of bandages, and Louise had reassured him: "Now, you're not to worry. We'll take care of everything. Harry will be here tomorrow, and we'll see to everything."

  Upset as she was about Frank, she felt a pleasurable sense of responsibility. She was in charge now. She would hold the fort for Frank.

  By half-past eight, Harry had not appeared. Louise put on a pair of Anne's old shoes and went out to start feeding the animals. They were making an impatient clamor, and the sow was rubbing herself against the gate of the sty so forcefully that Louise was afraid she might break out.

  She mixed the chickens' food, and staggered through the dew with buckets that were too heavy for her, fearing that the

  food was wrong and that the chickens were grumbling at her as if she were an incompetent waitress who had got her orders mixed.

  The two nanny goats were weaving about among their dirty bedding. Louise remembered that Frank always milked them before breakfast. What now? She looked at her small hands and then at the bleating goats, of whom she was afraid. She never went into their shed unless Frank was with her.

  If Harry did not come, she would have to get someone from the village to help. She went back to the house and called up the stairs to Anne. The bed creaked, and Anne answered something half awake and unintelligible, Louise longed for a cup of coffee, but the goats could not wait. Which would be quicker —to run up to the village herself, or to get Anne out of bed to drive the car there?

  The bed did not creak any more. Anne had gone back to sleep. It was beginning to rain. Louise would have to walk to the village and get Dick Bennett or someone to come and help. If the men were all at work, she would find some woman who could do it. There must be someone in the village who knew how to milk a goat.

  She tied her scarf over her head, and was going out of the back door, when she saw Harry amble into the yard, looking more bent than ever, as if somebody had pushed him over and he could not straighten up.

  Louise ran to him, her heart full of gratitude to the derelict old man, because he had come to help her, and everything would be all right now. She did not know whether to chide him for being late; but when she came close to him, she realized that chiding would be pointless, for Harry was not sober. He was not drunk, but Louise knew him well enough to see that he had not breakfasted off tea.

  Louise told him what had happened, and asked him if he could manage the work.

  "Why not?" he answered, aggrieved. "Young Frank ain't the only one who knows how to care for a few fowl, and such."

  "Please milk the goats first/* Louise said, trying to order instead of beg, because she wanted Harry to understand that she was in charge. "It's long past their time."

  "All right, all right, 5 ' Harry grumbled. "One thing at a time, gal. One thing at a time. I got to light me pipe first." He sat down on a bale of straw and went through a fumbling ritual of cramming his pipe with dark, straggly tobacco, and striking several matches before the smoke belched out, while the goats trampled and bleated, and a small, pointed beard was lodged plaintively over the edge of the half door.

  Harry grumbled to himself and munched his jaws all morning, and Louise did not expect to see him return after lunch. He came back, however, with beer on his breath, and worked slower and slower as the shadows lengthened, with frequent maddening pauses to consider such details as a loose pin on a barrow wheel, which were unimportant when there were so many other things to attend to.

  Louise had not realized how slow he was when Frank was there doing most of the work. By the end of the afternoon there were still dozens of things to be done, and the lock on the feed-house door was not mended yet, although Harry had been on his way to do it every time Louise passed him.

  Anne had stayed in the house all day, reading Gordon Disher's Kisses and Corpses, which Louise had lent her. Louise asked her if she would come out and help, but Anne said: 'Why should I? It's no concern of mine, and I don't see why you're running round in small circles about it, either. Harry's there, isn't he? It's not my worry."

  "But it's Frank's living/' Louise protested. "And you are married to him, after all."

  "That's his worry." Anne went back to the book. "This is tripe, Mother/' she said without looking up. "Do you really know the man who wrote it? One never imagines anyone actually sitting down and writing this kind of bilge."

  "I think it's very good. It takes a lot of skill. I'm sure I

  wouldn't have any idea how to go about it, and I don't suppose you would, either."

  "I wouldn't try" Anne said, "I haven't sunk quite that low yet."

  Louise went out and swished angrily with a stick at the nettles outside the kitchen door as she went by them. Harry was shambling about in the goat shed with his head lowered, looking like one of the inmates. "Please hurry," Louise urged, "or we'll never get done before it's time for you to go, and we don't want Frank to come back and find things all gone to pieces, do we?"

  She hoped to appeal to whatever pride in his work was buried in the desiccated coils of his brain; but he stopped what he was doing, as he always did when addressed, and said: "It's all very well for him. He lays in bed there at the hospital and leaves me to do all the work. Don't nag me, gal." He moved slower and slower, like a clock running down. At five-thirty to the second, he pulled his watch out of his sagging waistcoat, leaned the hay fork against the water barrel, and made a bee-line for the gate, without a word to Louise.

  Louise had worked with desperate incompetence all day in a drizzle of rain, and after supper she was exhausted. It was a proud exhaustion, however. Frank would surely be pleased with her. Although she had made many mistakes, and it was a pity there were quite so many eggs in that basket she had dropped, she had not let Frank down. IF she could only keep it up until he came back, she would have accomplished something really useful for once in her life.

  She telephoned to the hospital, surprised that Anne had not yet done so.

  "They say he's fine," she told her daughter. "The woman I talked to was very nice and helpful. Not a bit like someone in a London hospital. She said that the hand's been stitched, but he'll probably be out in a few days."

  "He'd better be," Anne said, "or hell find his mother-in-law in the hospital with him. You've really pooped yourself, Mother/'

  "I have, haven't I?" said Louise with pleasure.

  "Good of you," Anne said shortly. Louise was glad of her unwonted praise, although it would have been more help if Anne had stirred herself to do some of the work.

  Anne yawned. "I'm tired," she said, although she had done nothing all day. "Let's go to bed."

  Even the hard iron bed in Anne's uncomfortable spare room seemed like paradise to Louise. Dragging herself up the stairs toward it, she stopped, remembering that she had not locked the chicken houses. Frank was always most particular about that, for there had been chicken thieves in the neighborhood. How dreadful if he were to come back from hospital and find his precious pou
ltry gone, through Louise's negligence!

  She put on Frank's jacket, which was hanging behind the kitchen door, and went out with a flashlight. The rain had drifted away, blown before a rising wind, and the moon was scudding in and out of the clouds like a racing yacht. As Louise picked her way along the path to the yard, she heard the restless tossing of the trees, like tired people looking forward to a sleepless night.

  She did not like to be out on her own after dark, especially in the country where there were more unexplained noises than in town. There was a strange noise in the pigsties, but it was probably only poor Daisy trying to settle her overburdened bulk. On her way back from the chicken houses, walking in the middle of the yard in case marauders should be lurking in the shadow of the sheds, Louise heard the noise again. One of the pigs was grunting and bumping about against the walls.

  She stopped dead. Not that, she thought, transfixed in a wave of moonlight, with the flashlight held before her like a bludgeon. Not that, please, her tired mind begged. That would be too much.

  She began to walk on, but hesitated and turned back. She

  listened over the gate of the run outside Daisy s little house, and knew that something was wrong. Picking her way over the wallowed mud, she crossed the run, bent to open the low door, and shone her light into the sty. There was no doubt about it. Daisy was in labor.

  "You would be!" Louise said wildly, and ran back to the house to tell Anne. Anne would be no help, but Louise had to tell someone. She could not bear this crisis on her own.

  "So what?" Anne said, slumped against the pillows with a melting bar of chocolate staining the sheets. "Pigs have babies every day. Let her get on with it."

  "But there's something you have to do for them, and I don't know what it is."

  "If I were a pig/' Anne said indolently, "all I'd want anyone to do would be to leave me alone to get on with the revolting business by myself."

  "No, no." Louise wrung her hands. "You have to help them in some way. You know Frank always stays up with the pigs when they have babies."