The Spanish Virgin

by V. S. Pritchett

  Mrs. Gough said nothing. She knew she was two years younger than Miss Spencer, and that she was much prettier. Her big eyes were hyacinth sanctuaries of light to all things in pain. Her small breasts were lilies of tenderness. Her hair was yellow. She laughed and asked Miss Spencer if she would have more tea? But Miss Spencer had seen through Mrs. Gough’s artlessness, and Miss Spencer was annoyed. Small humiliations hurt more than any others.

  “It is nine o’clock. / will go and see why Geoffrey and Angela have left the table,” she said sharply.

  Mrs. Gough looked mockingly at Miss Spencer’s shoes as she walked out.

  She went upstairs, paused on the landing by the bathroom, smiled and then walked up the next flight and into the schoolroom.

  “Geoffrey,” she called, “Angela.” There was no answer.

  “Very well,” said Miss Spencer decidedly. She preferred to let anger accumulate in her sinews.

  The two children were listening for her. They were relieved to hear her close the schoolroom door. They listened to the little blows of her heels on the polished floor above their heads.

  “She’s gone,” said Geoffrey.

  “We shall be late,” said Angela.

  In fear of the morning’s row they had left the breakfast table before anyone had come down, and locked themselves into that inviolable refuge, the lavatory. Angela, who was a dark and whispering creature, very self-conscious and with a passion for reproving people, was annoyed with Geoffrey, first for causing the trouble and thus bringing innocence under the shadow of guilt, but also because he would stand on the seat to look out of the window to see if father’s car had been brought round. “Get down, get down,” she said. “You needn’t stand up there. We’ll hear the bang.”

  “I know,” Geoffrey said. He was solemn and proud of his eminence.

  “The bang” was the most joyous sound in the house. It was the noise of father slamming the door as he left. There was no peace in the morning until it had sounded.

  “Get down. It’s coming,” said Angela. “You are only trying to make me miserable.”

  But he would not move.

  “Drainpipes,” he said, pulling her long black curls.

  “Oooh, you beast. I’ll tell. You haven’t washed, you dirty beast.”

  “I have.…”

  “You haven’t …”

  “It wasn’t a thorough.”

  “If you sneak,” began Geoffrey, looking back from the window, showing his teeth and raising his fist in the air. He fell back on an old threat he had used effectively ever since the day Miss Spencer had arrived. “I shall tell about your cat.”

  “There is nothing to tell.”

  “I shall tell of you calling your cat Spencer,” he added.

  “I didn’t. It was you.”

  “You’re a liar; it was you.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “It was.”

  “You know it was you.”

  “You dirty sneak.”

  “Ssh. They’ll hear.”

  “See, you’re afraid.”

  “So are you.”

  “Anyway, it is like her,” and he made a face like Miss Spencer. “Listen,” said Geoffrey to change the subject. They listened, but there was no liberating bang. They looked at each other and broke into giggles, crowned with understanding.

  “Spencer, Spencer, Spencer, meow, meow!” mocked Geoffrey. And even Angela bent her forefingers and thumbs into circles in imitation of Miss Spencer’s glasses and said softly, “Spency, Spency,” and put her tongue out.

  In the schoolroom above them, Miss Spencer stood at the window in the nine o’clock sun, looking more like a cat than ever. Her anger had warmed her. She nodded her head up and down slowly—a habit of hers—lifting her arm up and tidying and patting her hair now and then. It was as if she were cleaning herself. Her pursed mouth was pushed forward under her tilting nose and her firm bosom was vibrant as though she were purring. Once she stretched out her hands and examined her fingers. The nails shone and the white tips glittered like claws. No cat could have been cleaner, sharper, more recondite than Miss Spencer. She smelled of soap, and the touch of her hands was like water coming from a tap.

  She looked at her watch and then went to the door.

  “Geoffrey, Angela. I know where you are,” she called in her sarcastic voice. The longer she waited the more thorough the revenge.

  Angela went pale.

  “Get down, Geffreeee!” she pleaded.

  “If she knows where we are, why the devil does she call? She’s mad,” said Geoffrey. “Pretending to be innocent. Huh!”

  “Swearing again,” said Angela. “I can’t stand you when you swear.”

  “Ssh,” said Geoffrey. The struggle to keep Angela’s mind off awkward subjects. “She’s gone.”

  They heard her go over to the window again. She stood there by the window in the sharpening odours of new paint and the new tuition, straining her mind to the utmost point of awareness and detachment. “Shall I let them believe I have forgotten them,” she said grimly. “Nothing hurts a child more than indifference.” The articulation of Miss Spencer’s thoughts was perfect, though silent. She finished her consonants. She tapped her fingers slowly point by point on the window-pane as the sights of the garden printed themselves in her mind. So, she thought, one ought to stand intensely aware, intensely feeling but intensely unmoved, while life printed itself upon one.

  Suddenly the white rabbit which had caused all the trouble, which had been flung out into the garden where it had never freely roamed before, hopped gladly out of a bush onto the lawn. There it was, floppy, naive, mindless as a fuzz-ball and with eyes like astonished boot buttons. All its life it had preserved the expression of the resigned prisoner, but now, emancipated, it had a wild, ingenuous amazement. Its ears lolled about. It gambolled with ludicrous innocence. It nibbled with delight on the lawn that lay between the gravel paths like a green strip of satin, shot with the yellow of the sun. Miss Spencer looked at the animal with contempt. And as she watched she saw Angela’s big black cat sit upon the wall with its ears cocked.

  He cleaned his paw and looked at the rabbit, which he had never seen free before. Miss Spencer saw his bewilderment, then she saw him jump down from the wall onto the path, stretch himself, pressing his opening claws into the gravel, and sit up once more alert. He was intent, private and warm. The sunlight shone on his black coat which glistened with blue and silver like a sealskin. Under his fur the quick sinews stiffened.

  “I wonder what he’s up to,” Miss Spencer said to herself.

  The beginnings of a most frightfully interesting situation! “He is moving. Ah! He has stopped! What has he seen? A bird? He looks up! Not a bird. What is he chasing? The tip of his tail is bending. It is brushing the gravel. How interesting! Oh, he is crouching.”

  Miss Spencer ran her finger along the top of the window-frame; there was no dust, so she leaned against the window. Ah, he has moved again. He is creeping up the path. No. He has changed his mind. How intent and alive. If only one could be as alive and intent and secret as a cat! Ah, he is trying to hide his bulk against the edge of the lawn. His tail rises and falls. He is peering dubiously, his nose is pushed forward cautiously into the air with small, circling sniffs. Now his mind is made up. He is going forward.”

  Then Miss Spencer saw he was stalking the white rabbit which was now nibbling on the far side of the lawn. The rabbit looked once or twice at the cat, but seemed in its chocolate-cream innocence to be satisfied. One ear and then another blew back. Up went its hind legs, its tail bobbed up like a ticket. It flopped about amiably, naively and even nibbled its way forward to meet the cat.

  The cat was puzzled by this good nature. He held a paw in the air, hesitating. Miss Spencer, breathing in excitement on the window-pane, had to move to another. Ah, curiosity, doubt. The cat now stopped again. The rabbit was looking at him with the dawning solemnity of a white-haired old gentleman, and this senile innocence bewildered the
designing cat. The rabbit had a too steady smile, and his ears were tumbled forward over his nose like the tottering hat of a drunken man. The cat was puzzled, and turned back to the path again.

  A feint, thought Miss Spencer. Then her heart fluttered in wild, unreasonable panic like a pigeon startled out of the top of a tree. Was the cat going to kill the rabbit? Ought she to open the window and hiss the cat away? Whose side was she on? Mrs. Gough’s and the rabbit’s; or Mr. Gough’s and the cat’s? That is what it means, her heart said. She was startled by her avid desire to see what happened and she did nothing. I must be impartial: life must print itself …

  Still she mewed ironically at the rabbit, “Mrs. Gough, I advise you to beware of yourself. You’ve caused enough trouble already this morning.”

  And smiled with tart satisfaction at her wit.

  At that moment the cat rippled out on a long encircling movement, creeping back across the lawn. He was quivering with unliberated storm, electrical. His eyes were emerald like sharp electric sparks. The taut, fascinated Miss Spencer gripped the window ledge with one hand, and rubbed her knuckles against her teeth.

  Then Mr. Gough’s voice rattled out like a machine gun downstairs in the hall:

  “My dear good woman, do you think I’m made of money?” and the front door banged like a cannonade. The house echoed and rumbled with the explosion. A lock clicked and the children came out of the lavatory, Miss Spencer’s arms went out in involuntary fright. “The children,” she exclaimed to calm herself with the thought of duty. But as she turned, heart thumping—stupid heart—to go to the door she saw askance the cat spring at the rabbit and hold it down, struggling hind legs skipping in the air.

  Miss Spencer, torn between the window and the door, chose the door, crying:

  “Good heavens—oh— Good Lord— Oh!”

  The world was alive. The strong trees, the lawns, the paths, the two animals—all the biting pattern of that picture was burned into her as by an etcher’s acid.

  “Geoffrey, Angela,” she cried, “the cat has got your rabbit. Run quickly, quickly. If instead of …”

  She ended by shouting to quench a fire of guilt that was rising inside her.

  On the landing the two children heard her, and went as white as the ceiling. Angela sent up an awful scream. Geoffrey, moaning and shouting in desolation, went stamping downstairs.

  “Mother! Mummy! Mummy!” he shouted. “The rabbit, Mummy! Angela’s devilish cat’s got the rabbit, Mummy!”

  “Oh, my dear!!” cried mother, leaving the cook and running up the stairs. Wild anxiety and compassion shone like a river in her blue eyes. “What is it? What is it?”

  She ran as quickly and as lightly as an angel Geoffrey had once seen in a picture. But now his shouts were rending and hoarse and incoherent. Angela’s wail above was frightful.

  Miss Spencer followed as calmly as she could down the stairs, struggling with the flames of guilt. Well, why must the child scream like that! Why couldn’t the mother stop him! Really! Miss Spencer threw up the bathroom window and looked out.

  Really! Geoffrey was dragging his mother down the garden path, and her silly hair was blowing like a knoll of flowers in the wind. And Geoffrey was screaming out at the top of his voice, as though he were trying to burst his lungs

  “Mummy! Mummy! Spencer’s killed the rabbit. Spencer’s killed the rabbit,” he yelled.

  Miss Spencer drew her head in, listening. What—what was the child crying?

  Fishy

  He had not been near the place for thirteen years. All gone now, the boys. Kelly dead. His son dead. Denny, that waiter fellow dead too, he supposed. The good old days dead. Above all, credit dead, strangled by tightening purse-strings—and tightening heartstrings too, for that matter. That was the worst of all. Ireland had hardened. In the old days now, if you hadn’t the money in your pocket, sure any day would do.…

  Thus Tommy Heffernan stood musing before Kelly’s Fish Dive, staring at the old brick with tears tart as lemon-juice squirting to the corner of his big pained eyes. There was a flight of steps leading down to the Dive. He considered the steps and his feet in relation to them. He considered the moon now riding high out of reach in a tottering sky, like a glass of something neat in a shaky hand; but it was Tommy who was tottering and shaky. He considered the dish of oysters with innocent crescents of lemon on them which stood on the counter at the bottom of the stairs; divine waters were secreted over his old teeth and tickled his tongue till it leapt like a trout in his mouth. He considered finally his empty pockets, and those desiring waters dried in bitterness. Credit dead. Dead as a stone those good old days.

  But as he stood with the tears now smarting on his two purple banks of cheek he heard a voice that made him clutch at the railings with excitement. Denny’s voice! Or a voice like Denny’s speaking to a customer in the Dive! Before Heffernan knew how he had done it he was down those slippery stairs and sitting up at the high counter, faced by a tall, lean grumpy old man of fleshy, pimply baldness and with whisky-angered eyes. Heffernan’s heart thumped like a bartender’s lever. He looked fiercely around him at the little red room, the shells nailed all over the walls, the pictures of hunts and races cut out of old magazines and framed. He looked fiercely to disguise his inward panic.

  “Sure, you don’t know who I am?” challenged Heffernan, taking the offensive.

  “Ah now, I do,” said the man, fixing him and wondering who in earth he was.

  “Och, you do not,” badgered Heffernan.

  “Sure you’re the gentleman—”

  “In the old days, the good old days before the war,” put in the anxious Heffernan.

  “Of course,” lied the startled man, but not taking his eyes off his customer. “I remember you. In the old days, indeed I do. I never forget a face.”

  But it wasn’t Denny. At least this old man with those eyes that screamed at you could scarcely be the old obliging Denny. And no Denny, no credit.

  “And what’s more,” said Heffernan, pushing his bowler hat on the back of his head and deciding to make a fight, “I’ll have me usual. I’ll bet you don’t remember that now!”

  “Och? I remember that as plain …” said the man, anxiously searching Heffernan’s face for a clue. “As plain, I remember it.…”

  “Man, you’re a miracle. You remember me usual. Come on now, then, bring them along.”

  There was clue enough in that plural for the old man. His pimples brightened.

  “A half dozen ’twas, I believe,” he insinuated in triumph. “And, maybe, a bottle of stout.…”

  Heffernan’s round black body expanded on the stool. The man was actually bringing him oysters! Marvellous!

  “A half a dozen and a stout,” said the man, putting them down before Heffernan on the counter. “One-and-ninepence and fivepence for the stout; and be rights I ought to be charging you two shillings.”

  Heffernan winced in the alcoholic mist which hung over him like a cloud over a mountain, but the sight of those oysters gave him confidence. He was succeeding. He made no attempt to pay.

  “They’re small,” said he gruffly.

  “Sure, what’s the good of size without flavour?” retorted the man.

  “Ah, but you want size.”

  “Ay, but without flavour.…”

  “Sure, my father used to tell me of the day sixty-seven years ago, when they used to get oysters in the town of Galway at sixpence a dozen. Shovelled them up with spades, they did,” extemporized Heffernan.

  “That’s right, with spades,” lied the old man, conceding no knowledge.

  “As many as they wanted.”

  “As many as they wanted,” agreed the man, but taking all the credit for the story. “And now, begob,” he continued on the offensive, “I could sell you oysters to-day at two-and-sixpence.…”

  “What d’you mean, you could sell them?”

  “We could,” said the man, pausing dramatically. “But we wouldn’t.”

  “You woul
dn’t?”

  “Sure, they’re Dutch. You wouldn’t eat a Dutch oyster.”

  “Did you ever eat an American oyster?” asked Heffernan, counter attacking

  “I did. There was a nice lady who kept a shop in Galway twenty years ago, a charming creature she was, an’ unmarried too, and she had a shipload of American oysters.”

  “Ah well, then you’ll know what’s wrong with them,” said Heffernan, striking back.

  “I do indeed. Sure, I saw an Irishman spit one out in a bar in New York and said ’twas a disgrace to the Atlantic Ocean,” lied the man.

  “That’s the truth,” agreed the nonplussed Heffernan.

  “And when you open an oyster,” said the man, following up his advantage, “put him flat on his shell because it gives him a lofty appearance.”

  “An’ gobble him off in his own juice,” rejoined Heffernan.

  “Sure, when I think of the old days,” cried the old man, carried away by his success. “The way you’d give the stuff away!”

  “Prawns as large as your hand and as stiff as pokers,” cried Heffernan.

  “Salmon at seven pound a-piece and cooked in a silver salver,” cried the man.

  “Whole damn cargoes of mackerel down at the South Wall, thrown away, used for manure,” cried Heffernan, lying recklessly.

  “Barr’ls of mackerel and all going to America and coming back tinned salmon, and the dearest part was the tin. Sure, the fish that came out of the deep in those days—”

  “In the three countries,” almost shouted Heffernan, neatly topping the crescendo, getting down from his stool, and shaking his waist into position, “in the three damn countries there’s not two men have seen the times we have.”

  “Sure, I never forgot a face,” said the man. “When I saw you coming down those stairs, says I, ‘Sure, here comes one of the boys. It’s what’s-his-name,’ says I.”

  “Heffernan, you remembered it!” said Heffernan.

  “Heffernan, I said, after thirteen years.”

  “Dammit,” said Heffernan, fumbling in his pocket. “That’s strange. Where did I put that other half-crown. Sure—ah, the other pocket. Well, now, did you ever see the like of that. Sure, I can—pay—you all right, but if I do—dammit, I know I had another half-crown—if I do I’ll not be able to get back home to-night.”