Edward, standing at the top of the bench and looking round his girls, tried to imagine what their holidays had been like. He had somehow expected there to be a subtle difference in their looks or behaviour, but there they all were, perched dutifully round the bench as if they had never left it, giving no clue of what they had been up to. It had always fascinated him, the idea of them turning up here day after day, no matter what had happened the night before. Of the private lives of any of them except Wendy, he knew scarcely anything. He only knew that from six at night until seven-thirty in the morning each was an individual, at whose activities he could only guess, but from seven-thirty until six, each turned herself into a cog, subjugating her hopes and troubles and passions to the machine that drove them while they drove it.
He often stood watching them from the end of the bench and tried to imagine what they were like at home. He fancied all sorts of things about them. He supposed he was what you would call a fanciful man—always had been, from a boy. He was very fond of his girls, even quite fond of Ivy, who disliked him undisguisedly. His responsibility for them made them somehow his. They were his collection, brought together from every possible environment to converge within the limits of his supervision. His Fancy, he sometimes called them to himself. They were his Fancy, as important to him in their way as his rabbits.
His eye travelled round the bench. Grace, treating her valves with maternal solicitude. Kitty, next to her, back at work at last and looking, if anything, younger than before she had the baby. She was normally plump and her figure had still not yet returned to normal. The skin of her face was healthy and tight almost to bursting point. She was bursting out of her overall, too, as Edward saw when she raised her arms to hold a flame trap to the light. Len had been home on week-end leave for the last part of her holiday. He was very proud of his son and would play with him shyly for as long as Mrs. Ferguson allowed. She did not believe in picking babies up too much. “Let him lay” was a remark which sprang automatically to her lips whenever anyone approach at lunchtiman alonged the cot.
She had looked after the baby entirely so that Kitty and Len could be out together all day, and had taken him into her own room at night. Kitty thought it was wonderful to be able to combine being married with living at home. Since the baby’s birth, she had relied more and more on her mother. She couldn’t think what she would have done without her encyclopaedic store of infant knowledge. There was so much to a baby ; no wonder the mothers at the factory were always asking each other how they managed. Well, they should live at home, like she did. It really worked very well and Len seemed quite happy. He had eaten enormously of her mother’s cooking ; Kitty on her own could never have fed him like that when he came on leave. Chips and Welsh Rarebit were her only dishes which always succeeded. She would have to learn a lot from her mother before the end of the War.
Edward saw her smile to herself as she remembered how Len had tucked into the steak pudding they had had Sunday night. His leave had really been a great success.
Len had gone back to Wiltshire and Air Force cooking wondering if he were really married. He had a son and a wife, certainly ; their photographs were waiting for him above his bunk when he got back to the hut, but although they were inscribed “Your loving wife, Kitty”, and “Your little son, Victor”, he had an uncomfortable feeling that they were not his at all.
Next to Kitty was Sheila, a little browner, Edward thought, but you could never tell with the make-up girls used. Where had she been? He imagined her going away with her young man ; she was not the sort to spend the holiday quietly at home with her parents.
Then Madeleine, wearing outside her overall the mauve cardigan that signified autumn—who knew what she had been through? Edward always wanted to say something to her, to show that he understood and sympathised. He had prepared countless little speeches, but never got them said.
Next to her, where Paddy used to sit, was Rachel, husky-voiced and full-bosomed, handling gear-wheels fastidiously for fear of breaking her scarlet nails, ready to tremble her ripe lower lip and flood her eyes with tears at the first hint of criticism. Edward allowed his mind to linger on the possibilities of her holiday. You dirty old man, he told himself, and passed across to Freda. Now what on earth did a girl like that do in her spare time? Perhaps she had helped with the harvest. He could imagine her driving a tractor in a man’s shirt and breeches, like those pictures of Landgirls you saw in the papers. Freda, who had spent most of her week in lecture halls or the Tatler Cinema, or arguing with her friend who had recently taken up Federal Union, banged away at a crooked bracket, glad on the whole to be back at work.
Dinah. Ah, Dinah—you couldn’t even guess what was happening to her life because she always looked happy. Perhaps she always was happy, but that did not give Edward much scope for his fancies. Reenie, next to her—would that girl never learn how to use a pair of pliers? She must have some sort of an existence ; even tadpoles did after all, but for the life of him he could not think what it was.
If he once started to think about Ivy, he could go on for ever. There was no telling what a girl like that might not get up to. He would not be surprised to hear she had committed murder one night and turned up next morning just the same. She always looked shifty ; he didn’t trust her a yard. The men in the factory had a name for girls like Ivy.
Wendy was back at last. She had only said at lunchtiman along“good morning” to him so far and asked politely after his holiday, but although she had not yet mentioned her father, Edward was going to ask after him in a moment. It would not be tactless, because Wendy could not be back to work unless he were better. It was nice to have her sitting there again, sorting the rockers into a pattern on the bench and polishing up the camshaft as diligently as Edna with her brasses. Although she never brought out a comb and mirror as the other girls did, her hair always looked smooth and neat, tucked behind her clean little ears into the slide on the nape of her neck and lying all in one piece on her back, like a pony’s tail. Everyone had clean overalls today, but Wendy’s was always clean and crisp, even on a Saturday. He noticed for the first time today how she had altered it with buttons and tucks and pleats until it was no longer just an industrial covering but something that fitted becomingly her tiny figure. Clever little thing, he thought admiringly. It was a shame to see her small-boned hands, which were so deft at all the feminine things, getting bruised and stained by the uncongenial metal. His own fingers itched to help hers when he saw them working so conscientiously but so inexpertly. She had never really mastered her job ; it was no sort of work for a girl like Wendy.
“For the Lord’s sake, Ted,” said Jack Daniels, the other charge hand, coming up behind him. “Are you deaf or drunk or what? I’ve been yelling at you for the last five minutes, and Charlie’s been whistling on his fingers, but all you do is stand there with your mouth open and your belly stuck out.”
“Sorry, Jack,” said Edward. “I was thinking. About that new salvage scheme, you know. What d’you want?”
“Thinking my foot. D’you realise you’ve passed an engine through, a crash job, without having any of the stuff checked for distortion? The A.I.D. have just found a vane ring that’s buckled like an old bicycle wheel and there’s hell to pay.”
Edward clapped a hand to his forehead. “Oh my God, that was the one we did last thing before the holiday. I was going to have it done when we came back and it went clean out of my head.”
“You’ve properly boxed it this time, old man. Better go over there and think up an excuse. And look here, snap out of it, for Christ’s sake. We’ve got enough trouble to catch up on the target without you piddling around like somebody’s grandmother.”
Edward went sulkily over to where the diabolic Mr. Rutherford was calling people to come and see how the vane ring oscillated when he spun it. It made him furious to fall down on the job, because secretly he thought he was rather a good charge hand.
Wendy’s father was dead. She had found him already bruised
with blue when she went in to wash him one morning. She had never seen a dead person and was surprised to find that she was not afraid at all. She felt sad for him, dying all alone, but not shocked. Indeed, he was far less repugnant to her than he had been when be was alive. As she had the bowl of water with her, she washed his face and hands and combed back his thick white hair, buttoned the neck of his pyjamas, turned the pillow and straightened the sheets before going down to tell her mother.
They had both cried for him gently, and neither of them in the days that followed had ever said by word or look how nice it was to be alone. It was difficult at first to realise that they were alone. His presence had dominated the house too long to desert it all at once, and Mrs. Holt wandered about in a lost way, unable to indulge her own inclinati shrugged his shouldersI s.ons now that she at last had the chance. They were both so used to regulating their meal-times according to his stomach that they were now incapable of regulating them according to their own, so they kept to his time-table. Mrs. Holt went on cooking from habit the food that he had liked, and the first time they had their bacon fried instead of boiled it seemed quite disloyal.
They still talked quietly and shut doors softly and did not bang the lid of the dustbin. Once, when some boys shouted in the street, Wendy caught herself looking upward quickly, listening for the thump of the stick, with which since his stroke had robbed him of speech, he hadsapproval.
But although his spirit kept its eye on them for a long time, loth to leave them to their own devices, it gradually withdrew and they began imperceptibly to realise and enjoy their freedom. A great weight had been lifted from the little house. It even looked different from the outside, Wendy thought, less cowering into the earth. She cleaned the windows and whitened the step, and hoping her mother would not mind, took down the thick lace curtains which had kept out the light and his fear of people looking in from the street. He had never allowed flowers into the house, saying that they were unhealthy, but after a time she began to bring back little bunches and arrange them in jam jars, since they had never had any vases.
“Oh, how pretty,” her mother had exclaimed, seeing pansies and wallflowers on the table, and then looked guilty for a moment before she remembered that she need not.
Wendy asked Edward where she could buy a window-box and he made her one himself and went with her to the market to buy geranium plants. One Sunday when Connie and Dorothy had taken the baby over to Schoolbred Buildings for the afternoon, Wendy and Mrs. Holt went to see his rabbits. They were in ecstasies over them and Wendy displayed a real aptitude, Edward thought, for the fundamental points of breeding, which he explained as they went round. They listened to him enthralled for as long as he chose to hold forth, and it ended by Edward giving Wendy a young doe in kindle and walking home with them carrying a hutch, while Wendy cradled the doe in her arms like a mother with her first baby. They had no garden, but Edward saw the doe comfortably installed in the lean-to coal-shed before going home to Connie and Dorothy, who had seen an accident on the way home, and finding that he did not want to hear the details, hardly spoke a word to him all evening. He was only too pleased, as he wanted to start an article to which the afternoon had inspired him : “YOUR FIRST DOE. Starting a Stud from Scratch.”
Wendy had never had a pet of her own. After her father’s death, his little dog, Lassie, after waiting to see who was going to give her her food, had attached herself to Wendy, but she was not her pet. Wendy had never liked the pop-eyed little toy with its spindling legs and sycophantic rat’s tail. She did not melt towards her with pride and adoration as she did every time she looked at her beloved doe.
It was quite different coming home these days. Even the street looked less shabby as she turned into it, hurrying to get home as she never had before. Then the house, with its green window boxes and a jar of pinks between the blue curtains in the sitting-room window, then opening the door and calling cheerfully to her mother, who had lost the power of calling out long ago, but would hurry into the hall and talk to her there instead of first drawing her into the kitchen and shutting the door ; finally hurrying to the coal-shed, with her heart in her mouth in case the babies had already arrived. Edward had said that a first litter was often early. Any day now she might come home and find the hay moving, as he had dem; text-align: justify; } . blyhescribed. Life was wonderful.
It stopped being wonderful when Mr. Holt’s sister came up from Newton Abbot to say she was going to turn them out of the house. It was her house, but they had lived in it for thirty years without an inkling of this possibility. But their lease was up at the end of this year, and now that her brother was dead, Mrs. Colquhoun did not see why she should renew it for his relict and daughter, whom she had never thought good enough for him. Indeed, it was an excellent opportunity of getting her own back on them after all these years, for she had always maintained that if her brother was queer, it was they who had driven him so.
She was very business-like with them. She came in a black coat and skirt and a fox fur, drank a cup of tea and ate the last of the biscuits, and told them that they had three months in which to find somewhere else to live.
She might as well have said three years. It was not so much finding somewhere, although that would be hard enough, but finding somewhere with a rent as small as they had always paid for this house. They had been hard up when Mr. Holt was alive, but at his death his pension from his old firm had ceased. They now had only Wendy’s earnings at Canning Kyles, which fluctuated according to output, and Mrs. Holt’s Old Age Pension. The mere expense of moving was unthinkable, and even if they found a cheap flat, there would be the furniture to store. They would never manage.
Mrs. Holt began to deny herself her mid-morning cup of tea and other things which she loved, saving pennies pathetically in a red tin pillar box on the mantelpiece. When Wendy began to suspect that she sometimes went without her lunch, she pretended that there was no need to worry. They would manage splendidly ; she was on the track of a dear little house out Collis Common way, well within their means. She even emptied the tin pillar box as a gesture and took her mother to the cinema on what was inside. She was not on the track of a house, Collis Common or any other way, but she had nearly three more months to search, so her mother could be spared for at least that long the dragging worry which now accompanied Wendy everywhere, and even clouded the joy of her doe’s long-awaited litter. And if she went without her lunch, that was quite a different thing. She had never been a big eater.
She did not tell Edward that anything was wrong and he did not suspect anything. She was always quiet and thin, and when she became a little quieter and a little thinner it was not very noticeable. In any case, he had a worry of his own. It was not financial : he was better off at the moment than he had ever been. Not only had a year as charge-hand brought him a rise, but his rabbits, which he now felt entitled to advertise as “The Ledward Strain” were fetching increasingly good prices both for sale and at stud.
“Making quite a name for yourself in the Fancy, you are,” Allan Colley had remarked at a show where a vast grandson of Freda’s had caused quite a sensation, and Edward had realised, to his surprise, that this might be so. His ascension in the rabbit world had been so gradual that he had not noticed when he ceased to be a novice and became proficient, when he ceased to be merely proficient and became an expert.
Although Edward did not think of himself in the same breath as Allan Colley, Cheviot Freemantle was an established feature of Backyard Breeding, as popular in his way as Giganta. People would have written to the editor if his articles had ceased to appear. They liked his practicality and the way his information, however instructive, was always flavoured with homely humour. Husbands bored their wives reading the at lunchtiman alongfunny bits out of Cheviot Freemantle to them after supper. The fee for the articles was not staggering, but it was a nice regular little cheque.
It was not money that was on Edward’s mind, it was the Collis Park Rabbit Club. Although outwardly pr
ospering, it was as far, even farther than ever from being the informal, congenial fellowship of his plans. Dissatisfaction was creeping insidiously among its members. Edward was getting stilted letters, resignations were more frequent than applications for membership, people like Mr. Marchmont not only cherished sick thoughts, but gave voice to them, and Edward began to notice mutterings in corners at shows and Club meetings. Mr. Bell was unperturbed. He was planning to throw the Club open soon to professionals and was not concerned with the antics of the small fry. If they wanted to resign, let ’em. He was after bigger game. Dick Bennett, too, refused to see anything wrong, and at first Edward tried not to let it worry him either, but after the Grand Summer Show on Collis Common in September, he knew that he was justified in worrying.
He had reported the Show in Backyard Breeding as “an all round success with old man Sol for once not failing us, and a gratifyingly high standard obtaining in both Fur and Fancy classes. Spectators and exhibitors alike went home with the satisfaction of a day spent under the optimum conditions of weather and good fellowship,” forbearing to mention the all too noticeable discontent among the members at the number of prizes carried off by outside exhibitors.
Mr. Marchmont had tackled Edward inside the little Secretary’s tent where he sat checking the list of results after the judging was over.
“Look here, Ledward,” Mr. Marchmont had said, planting himself in the entrance so that the stuffy little tent rapidly became suffocating, “it’s not good enough. That’s all I have to say : it’s not good enough.”
“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand,” said Edward, who understood only too well. “Is anything wrong?”
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