Late Call

by Angus Wilson

  The striking of the tree shocked them into calm. Almost immediately the lightning ceased, the thunder only rumbled away some miles off, even the rain fell less heavily for a while. Crouching down low over the flooded ground, Sylvia talked to the child in reassurance.

  “It’s all over now, dear. We must take you back home. Where do you live?”

  “I’m Amanda Egan and I live at Murrel Farm, Clivett Saint Creeting.”

  To Sylvia’s surprise the child’s voice was American.

  “Where is that, Amanda?”

  “Why, it’s here of course. And I’m usually called Mandy.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all right. You don’t know me. So how could you tell what I’m called? Here, we’d better get out of this before it rains hard again. All the water’s falling off your hat on to your nose.” Amanda was now very talkative.

  “But where do we go?”

  “Why, home, of course. Least, my home, that is.” She pointed into the distance past the smoking tree, over the slope.

  “But you said you lived here.”

  “No, I didn’t. I said this is Murrel Farm. And so it is. My daddy owns all this around here. For miles and miles.” Quite suddenly she was silent and then she began to sob almost noiselessly. Sylvia found her shoe, then took Amanda by the hand.

  “Come on,” she said.

  The incongruous soaking pair set off down the slope into the valley below. Amanda only ceased her sobbing once, and looked up at Sylvia.

  ’’You were scared.”

  “Yes I was, dear.”

  “I thought you were. It must be awful to be so big and to be scared.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A Wonderful Summer

  “OH LORD! Please! You don’t have to be polite. It’s just not furnished at all really. That old four-poster was my idea. But I know it’s just a fake. All the rest is junk. God rest Timbo’s aunt’s soul, but she collected junk like her teeth collected all that terrible green moss. No, the whole place is a mess.”

  There were faces that Sylvia thought she could make and those that she knew she could not; any sustained face of polite disagreement was quite beyond her. She did not even try to make it. In any case Mrs. Egan didn’t seem to need the stimulus of a reply.

  “But how do you make these old beamy houses look right anyway? Do you bring out the beams or do you suppress them? Miss Warner that taught interior decorating in school was always talking about bringing out or suppressing something. But she never said anything about beams. I guess she’d never heard of them. What do you do about beams?”

  The pains in her legs which Sylvia had managed to ignore during her many weeks of walking had intensified cruelly during the night. She did not know how to bear the weight of the little breakfast tray. She said, “My son’s house is very modern.” She could hear her words jerking out from the corner of her half-closed mouth. Mrs. Egan frowned, “Isn’t it awful? I dont understand you at all. We’ve been in this country a year and I still can’t understand half of what people say. God knows, after living in Victoria for a year, British speech ought to be easy. But I guess in Victoria they’re just so British that ...”

  Such a lot of it Sylvia couldn’t really follow. Victoria certainly didn’t mean Victoria Station, but that was about as far as she could interpret. Not that she was able to give proper attention to Mrs. Egan’s words. The excitement of the previous day’s events still exhilarated her; yet the surface of her mind was dulled and apathetic. And then how to explain? She couldn’t in fact. You can’t say to a complete stranger: I had a very slight stroke in your house last night, and, although my speech is returning, it’s still not quite right. She contented herself with a smile and hoped that the resulting pull on the muscles of her face did not mean that she was making too grotesque a grimace.

  If it were so, Mrs. Egan didn’t seem to notice. Instead she sat down on a chair facing Sylvia’s bed as though she had decided that the time had come for a good long chat.

  “I’m keeping Mandy in bed today.”

  Sylvia would have smiled to herself if it hadn’t been too soon after the last smile for her unwilling facial muscles. For except that her hair was worn in a small coil and that there were two deep furrows in her forehead and that she was so tall, Mrs. Egan might have been deputising for her little girl—in the same kind of open-necked white shirt and the same kind of knee-length jeans.

  “Anyway that’s such an awful school: I just make every excuse to keep her at home. She won’t learn anything here, but what she learns there! It’s terrible! And Miss Hurry is so awful! What do you think she made the poor kids learn last week? Some game called ‘Pooh Sticks’. They all had to sit around a smelly pool and hum. One kid nearly got drowned. Honestly I think the primary school would have been better. But when Timbo digs his heels in . . .” Despite everything—exhaustion, stroke, painful legs— Sylvia felt curiously happy lying there with this strange lanky girl —she was no more than a girl—talking at her. As the stream of words flowed on, she became increasingly forgetful of the tray’s weight or the painful jabs in her calves. She only wanted to close her eyes and feel the comfort of Mrs. Egan’s presence rather than to register it. She didn’t want to sleep, just to close her eyes; but with a stranger. . . . And then Amanda came running into the room.

  “I don’t want to stay in my bed, Mummy. I want to get into her bed.”

  Yesterday’s near-boy was dressed in the softest, most feminine ankle length nightgown of cornflower blue muslin. Her mother considered a moment, but she didn’t consult Sylvia.

  “Well, all right, go ahead.”

  “But I can’t with that awful heavy old tray.”

  “That’s rude, Mandy. Mrs. Calvert hasn’t finished her breakfast.”

  “She has too.”

  “Yes, really I have.”

  Mrs. Egan removed the tray.

  “Why are you talking funny?”

  “Now that is rude, Mandy.”

  But none of it seemed to matter to Sylvia as the small girl wriggled in beside her.

  “You’re wearing Mummy’s nightgown.”

  “Oh now, Amanda, for heaven’s sake. She saves your life and you bawl her out because she didn’t bring her nightgown with her.”

  “I do usually bring my own night clothes when I go away to stay.”

  “Well, I should hope so,” Amanda laughed, but she held Sylvia’s hand tightly, “Doesn’t she say funny things, Mummy?”

  “I don’t stay away for the night very often.”

  “Well you will now. You’ll stay here very often. Because you saved my life.”

  Mrs. Egan said very seriously, “Now if you think carefully about that, Mandy, you’ll see it’s a very conceited thing to say.”

  The small girl seemed to consider.

  “Well, everybody else can say it even if I can’t. Anyhow, you don’t have to stay here just ‘cause you saved me. Wasn’t it awful, the crash of thunder? And weren’t we scared? No, you must stay here, you’ve got a very nice face.”

  “Now, Mandy, that’s personal and silly. Oh, I don’t mean ‘silly’. How awful of me! You have got a very nice face. I didn’t notice it at first. I just thought of you as the wonderful person that had saved Mandy’s life. And then I looked at you and thought, ‘she has a good face, too’. Not that someone who saved Mandy’s life would have a bad face. Now we’re beginning to talk about Mandy as though she wasn’t worth saving. Which she is too.”

  Mrs. Egan came over and hugged her daughter passionately; then she kissed Sylvia full on the lips.

  “We just want you here whenever you can come. And stop overnight, of course, if you want to.”

  “That’s very kind of you, but my home is so near. And then I’ve got all the family to think of. . . .”

  “They didn’t seem to be falling all over themselves. . . .”

  Sylvia rushed in to cover Mrs. Egan’s evident embarrassment, “Captain Calvert’s not young any longer,
so he couldn’t come all this way to fetch me. And my son Harold was out. He’s very active with this Goodchild’s Meadow business.”

  “Goodchild’s Meadow! Oh, Lord!”

  “Why? Do you know about it?”

  Mrs. Egan didn’t answer. Instead she said, “I’m sure they wanted to come. They just knew it was better for you to rest up here for the night. And they were right too.”

  “She can’t rest much while you keep talking to her, Mummy.”

  “Oh, Lord! Isn’t it awful? She sounds just like the American child. Don’t you let Timbo catch you talking in that awful I love Lucy way, Mandy.”

  “Well, you’re not like Lucy, Mummy. You’re far too tall. You’re more like that cop that was courting her.”

  “Jesus God! She never used to be like that. It’s the fault of that awful school. It’s so British. She has to act this way in self-defence. Anyway she’s right. I ought to be on the job.”

  “Yah! What job are you on this morning?”

  “Don’t be rude, Mandy. Anyhow right now I’ve got to make a whole raft of sandwiches. They’re spraying. And that makes Timbo really hungry. Do you know they’ve got ten men to do that spraying? Isn’t that the British for you? You’d think it was the whole state of Kansas instead of a few hundred acres or whatever it is. Do your men like French dressing?”

  “Oh, don’t make anything for them, please.”

  “But they asked themselves for around lunch-time.”

  “Oh, they shouldn’t have done. It’s only because Harold’s working that he has to come and fetch me then. But he could have sent a taxi.”

  “What, to fetch his wounded mother from a strange house! That would have looked well. How are those lesions, by the way?”

  “Lesions?”

  “Those cuts on your thigh.”

  “Oh, they’re all right. But you shouldn’t! Cooking for my family after all the trouble I’ve given you.”

  “Look! For the husband and son of the woman who saved Mandy’s life I’d stay up all night baking cookies from now to Thanksgiving.”

  She got up and left them. Mandy squeezed Sylvia’s hand.

  “I guess we can talk now!”

  But in a second her mother’s long solemn face peered round the door.

  “What were you doing out on mat big field anyway?”

  “Oh, I walk a lot. But little Mandy ...?”

  “Oh, Mummy and I go for miles, don’t we?”

  “I guess we have walked a lot in this place, though I never walked as much as a block at home. But I’ve promised Timbo ...” She stopped. “You must rest.”

  Sylvia felt no wish to rest. There were so many things to think about that it was easy enough to dismiss all of them and concentrate solely on this comfortable sense of being made a fuss of. So many things happened in this house that she couldn’t agree with —knee-length jeans, spoilt children, being kissed on the mouth— and she felt happy with all of them; it seemed wisest not to think further.

  “Making sandwiches! That’s all she does. That and salad dressing. There isn’t enough here for her to do.” Mandy sounded grown-up and solemnly critical.

  “A farmer’s wife always has something to do, Mandy.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I was born on a farm. My mother never stopped working. There were always jobs.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, there was the pig swill to mix.”

  “If you mean hogs, we don’t have them.”

  “Then there were the eggs to collect. That meant a regular old hide and seek. And then they had to be washed. . . .”

  “I should hope so. But that’s all done by the graders. Anyway what do you mean hide and seek?”

  “Well, you could never tell where they’d lay. I remember one old brown hen, she’d lay like as not in the nettles one week. And then just when we’d got used to that, she’d lay in the hen-house to fool us.”

  “Were they loose? Do you mean they went round the place as they pleased?”

  “Yes, they’d run all over the farm. . . .”

  “Oh!” Mandy paused in thought. “Well, ours don’t.”

  “Then there was the milking and the separating and filling the churns. And sometimes we’d make cheeses. ...”

  “Cheeses! Oh, well, maybe they do too. I don’t know. The milk’s all taken by the Co-operative.”

  “Then sometimes there’d be ducks’ eggs to collect.”

  “Ducks’ eggs! Why, they’re the most dangerous things to eat. Everyone knows that. They give you amoebic dysentery or something.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. They’re a bit rich, of course. But they make a nice change. And then there’s fruit to bottle and jam to make.”

  “We don’t eat jam. I guess Mummy bottles. Doesn’t that sound funny? But that’s only a few days in the year.”

  “Well, then there’s hoeing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Weeding in between the rows of wheat and that.”

  Again Mandy considered. “I think that’s done by machines. Yes, of course it is. Anyway, Mummy doesn’t go out in the cornfields. What else?”

  “There used to be gleaning. But I suppose these days ...”

  “Gleaning! That’s in the Bible. About Ruth. Did you go gleaning?”

  “Oh yes. On some farms they used to let the village women come in to glean. But we couldn’t afford to lose it. No matter how hot it was, we would all set out. Five of us there were and Mother and Aunt Betty. You had to go ever so slow or you’d miss something. Like grandmother’s steps it was.”

  “What’s that?”

  Sylvia laughed. “Haven’t you ever played grandmother’s steps?”

  “No. My grandmother’s still in Victoria, but she’s going to live in California as soon as Grandpa’s estate is settled. She hates Victoria.”

  “One of you is chosen to stand with her face to a tree. And then the others creep up on her. She has to count five or ten, I forget which, and then she may turn round. And if she catches anyone moving, they have to go back to the beginning. They mustn’t move at all. The fun was the funny positions you had to keep. My brother Ted kept right on one toe for it must have been five minutes. I can see it now, like a ballet dancer. Then he fell in the mud.” Sylvia shook the bed with her laughter.

  Mandy looked at her a little suspiciously. “I wouldn’t have thought that was so funny for him.”

  “Nor it was. Not for any of us, especially me, if you’d known my mother. But mostly we were too busy to get into real trouble. Gooseberry picking. Now that was a job. . . .”

  “Are you still talking? Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Mrs. Calvert, I don’t mean you. I mean Mandy. It’s getting on for a quarter of twelve.”

  “Oh dear! They’ll be here soon. And I’m not dressed, not even up.”

  “Well, what of it? I suppose they can drink Scotch and wait as well as other men. Now, Mandy, let Mrs. Calvert get up and dress.”

  “But Mummy, do you know all the things she did when she was little?”

  “No, dear, you can tell me this evening.”

  “Well, let me tell you some of them now. Please. Only the ones beginning with G. Gleaning, and grandmother’s steps, and gargling with salt and water and goose-feather plucking, and playing gooseberry . . .”

  “Playing gooseberry! I’m sure Mrs. Calvert never did that.”

  “I’m afraid I did once.” To her surprise Shirley Egan waited for her to go on. “It was at Lady Pembroke’s at the hospital when Arthur, that’s Captain Calvert, started courting me. There was another girl worked there—an Irish girl, Annie her name was. A nice girl but a bit backward. She was walking out with a Canadian, he’d been hit in the stomach. He was good looking but he talked rather big. Of course a lot of the Canadians turned out to be bad lots. Well, we were to go out, all four of us, over to Weymouth. Quite an expedition in those days. Then Arthur had one of his bad turns. I didn’t want to go. But we’d booked the excursions and y
ou couldn’t waste two tickets. Of course if Arthur hadn’t been courting, we’d have taken another young chap along. But as it was I had to play gooseberry. And it wasn’t a nice day’s outing at all, I can tell you. Not with what that Canadian was after. He was trading on Annie being a bit simple, of course. He could have killed me for being there. But I stuck out if only to help the poor girl. Once he got so wild, he started shouting at me. Arthur was furious when he heard about it later. I was afraid there might be a fight, which could have meant a court martial of course. Though mind you, they were officers. . . .”

  “Shirl! Shirl!” Mr. Egan’s deep bass, very grand English voice interrupted a reminiscence of Sylvia’s about her honeymoon with Arthur in the New Forest—”Arthur doesn’t believe me to this day, but I know it was the same pony . . .”

  “Shirl! Shirl!” The voice was loud and carried all over the house.

  “Well, come on up, Timbo.”

  Outside the door Mr. Egan said, “It’s twelve thirty, darling. What’s happening about lunch?”

  “Oh, Lord! Well, come on in.”

  “Is that all right, Mrs. Calvert?”

  Sylvia said yes, but her voice was drowned by, “Come on in, Daddy!” “Well, of course it’s all right, Timbo. Do you think I’d tell you to come in if it wasn’t?”

  He came in—more handsome even than Sylvia had remembered from her exhausted pain-fogged vision of the night before—so tall and fair with deep-set blue eyes and a scar on his chin.

  “This is Mrs. Calvert’s bedroom, Shirl.”

  “Oh, Timbo, and you bandaged her thigh last night. I don’t know. The minds of the British!”

  “That was professional, darling.”

  “That wars profesharnal,” Shirley’s imitation made Mandy laugh.

  “Wouldn’t you know right away, Mrs. Calvert, that he’d taught school? Yeh, that’s what he was doing when I met him. Geems mastah at a boy’s public school in Victoriah. Oh, very British. Thank the Lord his aunt died and left him this place. So he could quit. I don’t say I’m crazy about Britain. But Victoria! I used to think Vancouver was bad enough when the engineering company sent Dad up there. But Victoria! Oh, boy! No, I guess if it can’t be home it may as well be Murrel Farm.”