by Henry Green
He was ill today all the same, he felt it inside, something seriously the matter. Was it the cancer? There, turning over and over. Yes, there it was. Here; no, there; no, no, there. Yes. Cancer, that he had been awaiting so long.
“Here’s the water.”
He winced. The noise the girl made. Was he not ill?
“I am ill.”
“Again?”
“It’s the cancer at last.”
There was a certain satisfaction now that it had come.
“Again. The doctor will cost you a bottle just for telling you it’s imagination. I know them and you.”
“Go away, go away.”
She was essentially small in character, like that mistaken woman her mother. Oh, he couldn’t any more. Cancer coming on top of it all. What a fine tragedy his was. And it would cut short his great work, before even it had been begun.
She opened the door downstairs and went into the kitchen. He was much the same today, a little stronger perhaps, but that would go till he stoked up in the evening. Poor, weak creature.
Through a small window in a small bay looking out on to the garden the sunlight comes in and washes the dirt off the worn, red tiles. There is a sour smell of old food, and underneath the two windows on the right lie some empty sardine tins which have missed the gaps in the glass when thrown away. She goes to the cupboard, which is on the left. On it is an almanack from the ironmonger in Norbury, ten years old, with a picture in the middle of a destroyer cutting rigid water shavings in the sea, with smoke hurrying frozenly out of its funnels, and with a torpedo caught into eternity while leaping playfully at its side, out of the water and into the air. She jerks the cupboard open. Inside are plates, knives and forks, cups, and a teapot, all in some way chipped or broken. There are tinned foods of every kind, most of all sardines, and three loaves. At the bottom are two pails and a mangy scrubbing-brush and some empty gin bottles. On the top shelf some unopened bottles and a few cakes of soap are jumbled up with vaguely folded sheets and towels. She takes out a sardine tin and a loaf of bread and pitches them with two knives on to the table in the middle of the room. A chunk of butter on half a plate she puts down, as well as two cups without handles, and the milk-holding teapot. He has an injured spout, poor thing.
She goes over to the bay window and flings it open. She rolls up the torn blind. Father liked going round at night occasionally, “shutting up” as if he lived in a castle, but as he could never see straight enough by then to find the window latches it was not much good, but he always pulled down the blind. The range was disused and rusty, it had not been lighted since April. Before it was a tub of greasy water in which she did the washing up. The sun did not get far into the room. The paper here also was beginning to peel from the walls. An early bluebottle buzzed somewhere.
There was a movement in the sunlight, a scamper, and Minnie was arching his back against her leg, while his tail waved carefully at the end. Minnie, so fresh, so clean, the darling. Cat’s eyes looked up at her, yellow and black. “Minnie, have you killed anything?” In a rush he was out of the window—how like darling Minnie—his tail a pennant. Then he is back, the clever darling, and in his mouth a dead robin redbreast. How he understood. “Oh, Minnie, the little sweet. Look at his crimson waistcoat and his crimson blood. Why, he is still warm. Shall we give him to Father for his breakfast? What a clever Minnie,” and Minnie purrs half attention. He paddles a paw in a speck of blood. She bends down, taking him in her arms. “Oh, Minnie, what a clever Minnie.” But with a light jump he was out of her arms and was going to the window, and then was out of it. Joan follows, looks out, and Minnie is standing there, quite still, detached. Then he was off, slipping by everything, while the dew caught at his coat. How lovely cats were; she adored her Minnie.
A slow step came down the stairs, with a careful pause at the hole on the ninth step from the ground, and he comes in shakily. His face is baggy and fallen in, his black clothes have stains. He is wearing a dirty drainpipe collar, for it is the Sabbath, while round it a khaki shirt flaunts, without the black dicky. He stands in the doorway, his beard waggling.
“Sardines? Again? I tell you I can’t eat them.”
“We ought to be glad to eat what is given to us.”
“Don’t throw up quotations like that at me just to annoy me. Do you hear? Given, who said it was given? I paid for it, didn’t I? You hate me, and everyone hates me.”
But that was as it should be, he ought to take a pride in the hatred of the world. It was ever so with the great. But sardines, he paid for them. There had been a time when he had thanked God for sardines, because he had always hated them so that he saw in them his cross. But what was the good? He paid for them, and ate them because it was better than eating dry bread. After all he had paid for them, and if he had not paid he would not have got them, so where did thanks come in? He ought only to thank that oil-well in Southern Texas where Hoyner the cinema-man came from. There had been a time when he had thanked God for oil-wells, wars and apples, while these were nothing but unfortunate mistakes, he having lost half his money in Mexican oil, and apples being bad for his digestion. Why did he keep that money in oil?—it would go like the other half had. But it was so awkward changing. It was all so difficult. But then if no one ate fish the industry would die and with it the fishermen. No, thank God, he could see nothing divine in anything now, whereas in the old days he had eaten even a sardine with considerable emotion. Yet how could one be sure? His reason, how it tortured him, how it pursued round and round, coldly, in his brain. He had a fine intellect, too. Edward had told him that thirty years ago at Oxford. And it had been growing, growing ever since in his hermit existence, even Joan could not deny it . . . He was even more of a genius because he was recognized in his home, a very rare thing surely. And his reward would come, it must come. Yes, he would start work this very morning. But he felt so ill, weak.
“I feel so ill this morning, child. I have such a headache. And I am so weak”—physically only, of course; no, not mentally.
“Have a drop of gin in your milk. That will make it all right.”
“Yes, I think you are right”—but no more than one, really.
He was always like that before the morning one. Poor Father.
That is better, more comfortable. But still there may be something wrong with him. He swallows another gin-and-milk.
“It’s the cancer, Joan, that’s what I am so terrified about. I can feel it glowing hot. We can’t afford an operation or morphia. I shall die.”
It would be nice to die; but no, it wouldn’t be, and that was very unreasonable. But no, it wasn’t, there was his book.
He was so clever that he had always been bottom at school—all great men had been bottom at school. Then he had lost his way in the world. No, that wasn’t true, he had found it—this, this gin was his triumph. It was the only thing that did his health any good, and one had to be in good spirits if he was to think out the book, the great book that was to link everything into a circle and that would bring him recognition at last, perhaps even a letter from the Bishop. It would justify his taking something now and again as he did. But one doubted, there were days when one could not see it at all. How ill he felt. Some deep-seated disorder. How dreadful a disease, cancer. Why could not the doctors do something about it? Oh, for a pulpit to say it from.
Terrible, terrible.
“Father, where did you put the tin-opener for these sardines?”
“I don’t know. My pain. Never had it.”
“But it must be somewhere. It isn’t in the cupboard here.”
“Can’t you open it with a fork? It’s all laziness. Why bother me? Oh, here it is in my pocket. How funny.”
“You are drinking all the gin. No, look here, you mustn’t have any more. There will be none for this evening at this rate.”
“But I’m not going to drink any more, I tell you. Leave me alone.”
“Oh, yes. Here, give me that bottle.”
“I
shan’t; I want it, I tell you. My health.”
“Give it me.”
You could be firm with him in the morning. She locks up the bottle in the cupboard, slips the key inside her dress, and begins to open the sardines. He is almost in tears, “insulted, by a girl, my daughter. When it was for the good of my health, as I was ill.” But he wasn’t such a fool, oh no. He had a dozen beneath the floor of the study. He had wanted to drink more lately, and the girl always regulated his bottle a day carefully.
“Damn, I’ve cut myself with the tin-opener.”
There is a gash in her thumb, and she bleeds into the oil which floats over the sardines. Serve her right, now she would get blood-poisoning, her hand would swell and go purple, and it would hurt. They would die in agony together. Think of the headlines in the evening papers, the world would hear of him at last: “AMAZING DISCOVERY IN LONELY COTTAGE,” then lower down, “UNFROCKED GENIUS AND HIS BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER FOUND DEAD.” Beautiful. Was she? Yes, of course she was, as good as anyone’s daughter anyway, except for the scar. The scar, it was like a bad dream, he had a hazy memory of her taunting him, of his throwing the bottle and missing, and of throwing one of the broken bits, and of catching her with it on the cheek. It was horrible. Still it was what a genius would have done. He was so weak this morning. What was he thinking about? Yes, suicide, and the headlines in the papers. But in any case it would be over in three days. What was the use of it all? And what was he eating, blood-stained sardine? He did feel sick. Cancer.
She had bound up her finger in a handkerchief, and was eating sardines on slabs of bread-and-butter, heads and tails, while he unconsciously cut these off. She eats with quick hunger, her chin is greasy with the oil coming from the corners of her mouth. She says thickly:
“I love sardines, and the oil is the best thing about them.”
No answer.
Poor Father, he was in for a bad day, for it was going to be very hot, and he must have had a bad night, he was a little worse than usual. And he did hate sardines so, but there was nothing else to eat, except the kipper in tomato sauce, and they were going to have a tin of that for lunch. Father was really not very well, perhaps this talk of cancer wasn’t all nonsense. But it must only be the drink. He was such a nasty sight, with his finicky tastes and his jumpy ways. Think if George were there across the table, eating with a strong appetite, with his strong, dirty nails, the skin half grown over them, instead of Father’s white ones, the last thing about himself that he spent any trouble over. They were one of his ways of passing the time, while she slaved. There would be something behind his honey-coloured eyes, a strong hard light, instead of blue wandering, weak ones. His face would be brick-red with the sun, his flesh inside the open shirt collar—there would be no starch about him—would be gold with a blue vein here and there; he would be so strong, it would be wonderful to be so frightened of him. Gold. While that weak creature over there, why even his beard was bedraggled and had lost its colour. Yet there were times when his body filled out and his voice grew, and when his beard flamed. Her fingers crept to the scar on her cheek, it had been wonderful that night. You felt a slave, a beaten slave.
But it was the scar that frightened George. His eyes would stray to the scar and look at it distrustfully; at first he had looked at her dress with horror, but she had not made that mistake again. Still he never spoke, which was so annoying but lately there had been more confidence and shrewdness in his eyes. But the others did use to say something, all except Jim, he had been worse than George. Of course, no one ever saw her with him, it would scare him if the village began to talk. But it was very exciting. It was incredible to think how the days had passed without him.
There were now two bluebottles busy round the head of a sardine about three days old. The head lay there, jagged at the neck where Father had pulled off the body, a dull glaze over the silver scales, the eyes were metallic. There was blue on the two bluebottles who never seemed content, they buzzed up and down again so. Minnie had come in by the little bay window, and the bluebottles seethed with anger at being disturbed by someone besides themselves.
She rises sideways without stirring her chair, whispering hoarsely:
“Minnie, Minnie, come here.”
But he slips by her hands. The key slipped down her leg to tinkle on the floor.
“That cat. Ah you, go away, go away,” and he gets up, his chair screeching along the red tiles. He throws his knife feebly, it misses Minnie and makes a clatter. He is out of the window in a flash, and Father sits down again. She puts the key under the bread.
“I do hate cats, they frighten me so. There is something so dreadful about a cat, the way she seems to be looking at nothing. They don’t see flesh and blood, they see an abstract of everything. It’s horrible, horrible. Joan, you might keep her away from me, you know how I hate her. I can’t bear any cat. And in my condition. I think you might, yes, I do think you might.”
“All right, but I don’t see what you mean. Minnie is such a darling, I don’t know why you hate her.”
“Of course you don’t know cats as they really are. She is a devil, that cat.”
Poor Father.
Outside, on the right, a hen stalks reflectively, her head just over the weeds. Her eye is fixed, its stare is irritating, and the way she has of tilting her head to look for food is particularly precious. She goes forward slowly, often dipping out of sight to peck at something. All that can be seen of her is a dusty-brown colour, dull beside the fresh green round her, encouraged by the sun into a show of newness. He watches her one visible eye with irritation.
“A chicken, at six in the morning, and loose in the garden. That shouldn’t be. A pen. I will build a pen for them some time. I will start today, but then there is no rabbit wire, and we can’t afford wire.” Yet hens in one’s garden. Degrading. Yet why not? They had to live, it was only fair to them that he should let them get food even if they were in his way, because they gave him food, and he did not deserve it. All the same, he did. And they were God’s creatures, even if they did come out of an egg, and even more because they did so. But was that true? No. Yes. He couldn’t see at all today. Scientists understood the egg, all except the life that entered it—and that was God; there, there you are. But an egg. He didn’t know. There was something. He did not know. No, not in an egg.
He gets up and moves towards the door by the cupboard.
“You’ll never build that pen, and you know it. Here, what are you going to the Gin Room for?”
“Don’t use that tone to me. Can’t your Father go where he likes? Can’t he retire to his study for a little peace? You seem to have no—no feeling for your Father.”
And he was gone. That meant he had some gin in there, but you couldn’t help it, there was nothing to be done, and he was better when he had drunk a little, he was more of a Man. And what was the use of worrying? and anyway it pulled him together. Blast this finger, why had she been such a fool as to jab it open? It hurt too, though not very much, still it would have been nice to have had someone to be sorry about it and to help her tie it up. If George had been here she would have been able to make such a lot of it. Those bluebottles, there were three of them round that sardine now, and three more over there, all in the sun. That was the one sensible thing about them; how she loved the sun. She put the key into the table drawer.
*
The clock in the village church across the fields struck twelve in a thin copper tenor that came flatly through the simmering heat. No bird sang, no breath of air stirred, nothing moved under the sun who was drawing the life out of everything except Joan. She got up slowly, damp with sweat, from the window-sill where she had been stewing in the white light. The wood of it was unbearably hot, and what few traces of paint that were left, blistered. She fanned herself with the old straw hat she had been wearing, and tried to make up her mind to go out and find the eggs for dinner. She loved the sun, he took hold of you and drew you out of yourself so that you couldn’t think, you just
gave yourself up. She loved being with him all round her till she couldn’t bear it any more. You forgot everything except him, yet you could not look up at him, he was so bright. He was so strong that you had to guard your head lest he should get in there as well. He was cruel, like George. And he was stronger than George, but then George was a Man.
The air, heavy with the wet heat, hung lifeless save when her straw hat churned it lazily into dull movement. Three bluebottles, fanning themselves angrily with their wings at the windows, by their buzzing kept the room alive. She was lost in a sea of nothingness, and all the room too. From inside Father’s room came low moans at intervals, the heat had invaded and had conquered Father. Oh, it is hot, she is pouring with sweat all over, and her hands feel big and clumsy and heavy with blood, there is nowhere to put them. How cool the iron range is, its fireplace gazing emptily up the chimney at the clean blue of the sky. Her hand on the oven door leaves a moist mark which vanishes slowly.
She must look for eggs, though how the poor hens can lay in this weather she didn’t know. Think of having feathers, dusty feathers on you for clothes on a day like this. And laying eggs. Minnie would be hot too, in an impersonal sort of way. But the poor hens. Why they would die of it, poor darlings, and the old cock, the old Turk in his harem, what would happen to him, how would he keep his dignity? She would have to go and look, besides she was sticky all over, and it would be cooler moving about.
She leaves the kitchen and goes round to the back under the arch in the brick wall that went to the outhouse, and up which a tortured pear tree sprawled, dead, and so into the yard. The stench is violent, and with the sun beating down she drifts across to the pump, limp as if she has forgotten how alive she had thought she was. She works the handle of the pump slowly till the water gushes reluctantly out. Then she splashes it over her face as it falls into the stone trough, and she plunges in her heavy hands—how nice water was, so cool, so slim, and she would like to be slim, like you saw in fashion plates in the papers, ladies intimately wrapped in long coats that clung to their slimness, they drank tea and she milk; Father said the water was unsafe, although it was so clear and pure and cool. It was hot.