Blindness

by Henry Green

  Joined on to the Vicarage behind there had been a small house with a farmyard and a few buildings. It was the lower farm of Mr. Walker’s. Henry had lived in the house, Henry who was her first love. They had kissed underneath the big thistle in the orchard hedge, only he had been rather dirty. She had seen him driving a cart two weeks ago, only he had looked the other way. Didn’t like to own her now. Before he had always lifted his cap with a knowing smile. Or had he been sorry for her? How funny that first kiss was. She had only been fourteen. All wet. But he remembered. Mrs. Baxter, his mother, with her nice face and her chickens. Mrs. Baxter used to come in sometimes to help Mother with the housework. She always used to say, “God is good to us, Mr. Entwhistle,” when Father was about. And Father used to look serious and say, “Yes, Mrs. Baxter. He is indeed.” He was, then. She used to call her “Miss.”

  Then the Wesleyan, “the heretic,” had started a rival Sunday school. He gave a treat once a year and Father never did, so all the children went to him and left Father. He had been angry: “Bribery and corruption; I won’t bribe the children to come to God.” Then they could not afford to give tea at the Mothers’ Meetings, and Mother had lost her temper with Mrs. Walker, who had insinuated that they were lazy. But the real reason why no one came any more must have been the gossip about Father which began about then. But they had become indifferent; they hadn’t cared.

  Mrs. Haye had called and had stayed to tea. She, Joan, was allowed butter with her bread and jam. That was only on great occasions. After that the Mothers’ Union started. Mrs. Haye must have stamped on the gossip, for all the women began coming again, every month. Mrs. Haye attended herself the first time. Mother put some cut flowers in a pot just by her. It was a special occasion, so Father’s objection to cutting flowers was forgotten. “Do you want the best rose tree to be the rubbish heap?” Later, there was a woman who tried to teach them how to make baskets, but she forgot how to make them herself in the middle, and nobody minded, they had gone on whispering just the same. They were great times, those.

  A fat drop of rain plunked on to the window-sill. Rain. Then another, and another. The air became full of messages, a branch just underneath moved uneasily. There was a rumble miles away that trundled along the sky till it roared by overhead and burst in the distance. Thunder. Rain fell quicker. A broad flame of lightning—waiting, waiting for the crash. Ah. The storm was some way off. The rain walked up the scales of sound, swishing like a scythe swishes. Quick light from another flash lit up the yard, and a bird was flying as if pursued, across the snouted pump. Darkness. The thunder. Nearer.

  The air was cool, unloaded. Joan drew back from the window, for she was being splashed by the spray as the drops smashed. The rain fell faster, faster. A terrific sheet of light and all the sky seemed to be tumbling down, moving celestial furniture. Father’s bass came up singing confidently, “There is a green land far away.” Daylight, the sky fought. Darkness and rain. Sheet lightning never hurt anything, but how wonderful to be as afraid as this. Father was rising on the tide of knowledge, “I know, I know,” he cried, and heaven saluted it with her trumpets. He sang a line of the “Red Flag,” but switched off. Swish, swish, said the rain, settling down to steadiness. Father was singing something and taking all the parts. The chickens in the hut made plaintive noises, the cock was being so tiresome. “What a bore the old man is,” they were saying, “but we are so frightened of him.” How wonderful, terror. Joan quaked on the box. Swish, said the rain.

  Joan draws her blouse round her and hunches her shoulders. How much fresher it is now. The storm thunders away behind, it has passed over. Mumbles come from below. Laughter. All of her listens. His voice, “Ring out, wild bells.” Always the church bells that he could not escape. Hunted by bells. Crash—the empty bottle. Then he is singing again. Mother had used to play. He is coming upstairs, toiling up, and Joan shivers. Into his room. Silence. Quietly he goes to bed and is asleep. The light in him had gone out. He had forgotten.

  She feels cheated. He had been so mad underneath. Why hadn’t he battered at the door? What a shame. All that trembling for nothing. He had forgotten her. She shuts the window and, lighting a candle, undresses and lets down her hair. She gets into bed. Sleep.

  Eyes closed.

  Sleep. Now she would go to sleep.

  Turns over.

  Sleep.

  The lawn. The roses.

  It can’t have been sheet lightning because there was thunder. Then it had been dangerous.

  A stands for ant. B stands for bee. C stands for cat. Sitting on Mother’s knee tracing the tummy of a, her hand guiding. Later on Mother tried to teach her other things. It used to be a great game to get as many “I don’t know myself, dear’s,” out of her as possible in the morning.

  There was the Vicarage pew every Sunday, Mrs. Haye to the left, crazy Kate just behind, then the churchwarden, sniffling, sniffling, and two or three almshouse people. Father always preached out of the green book on the second shelf in the old study, though sometimes he talked about politics. Mrs. Haye would stir violently when she disagreed, which would make Father stutter and Mother angry. Sometimes, though not very often, her son John would come too, he who was blind now. She used to watch him all through the service when he was there. He was so aloof, and there was nothing, no one else to look at. Nothing happened, no one did anything except the organist when she forgot. The service would go slowly on. Weston, the head gardener at Barwood, the only person in the choir, would sing as if he did not care. Father’s voice toiled through the service. Mrs. Haye argued the responses. The organist was paid to come, Weston only came that Mrs. Haye might see that he came. Outside, through the little plain glass window at the side of their pew, the top of an apple tree waved. In summer there were apples on it which she used to pick in her imagination, and any time a bird might fly across, free. The service would go on and finish quite suddenly with a hymn, and then the run home with the blue hills in the distance, with the glimpse, just before the second gate, of the tower of the Abbey church, the greeting of Mrs. Green who was always at her door at the beginning of the last field—no, the last but one, there was the orchard; dinner. It had all gone. Why, since she loved it so? The summers were so wonderful, the winter nights so comfortable. Gone. Today had ended wrong and had started wrong. Forget in sleep.

  The bed was too hot, the sheets clung, one leg was hot against the other. Her hair laid hot fingers about her face. She pulled aside the bedclothes and lay on top of them on her back, a white smudge in the dark. Outside tepid rain poured. This was cooler.

  There was the clock that used to strike bedtime, half-past six. Had she heard the one stroke? Had she forgotten? But no.

  “Bedtime, Joan.”

  “No, I don’t want to.”

  “Now be a good girl.”

  To gain time—“Where’s Daddy?”

  “Now, Joan, you know your Daddy works all the evenings. Now go to bed, dearie. I’ll come up and see you.”

  Starting in on the gin more likely. Oh, everything was very proper then. Where had he put the empties, though? Of course he can’t have been bad as far back as that, it was only much later. Just before the Mothers’ Meeting she had found Mrs. Baxter sniffing round Father’s room. She herself had smelt the smell too. She had called Mother, who had not noticed anything, of course. After that Father had said that he would dust the room himself, as he could not have his papers being fidgeted with.

  “Fidget, fidget, that’s all a woman is when cleaning. Tidying up means hiding. There is an order in my disorder. Yesterday I spent half an hour looking for the church accounts which I found eventually, tidied away into the private correspondence. I can’t bear it. You do understand, don’t you, Mrs. Baxter? Of course I am not blaming you in the least, but . . .”

  “Very well, Mr. Entwhistle. I understand, sir.” Sniff!

  Something like that, but it was the sniff. It was the first sign of a mystery that had been so exciting till she had known.

&n
bsp; His private correspondence. That can’t have been anything. Only letters to Mrs. Haye—oh, yes, and to the Bishop. He had scored off the Bishop one day. A great thing. Butter with her bread and jam that day.

  But times had been hard. Really they were better off here. The food had dwindled, she had felt hungry a good deal.

  “A wage less than a labourer.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “What’s that? Well, isn’t it?”

  “It wouldn’t be.”

  “Well then, approximately. And then there are your clothes to buy and the child’s.”

  “And your personal expenses. What you waste.”

  “What? I suppose I can’t spend a penny on myself?”

  “Run along, Joan, and play.”

  “Yes, Mummy.”

  Then Uncle Jim, whose death they had waited for so long, died in France. Of fever or something. He had no child and had left all his money to “the poor fellow he’s a parson.” Lord, that joke. Father had seen it in the Evangelical Supplement and had used it for ever when he talked. However, things had become a bit easier then, and probably the spirit merchant had begun to give tick again.

  Only one villager had been killed.

  “And I said to them, I put it to them point-blank, ‘I won’t sign the minutes when no member of the Parochial Council comes to church,’ I said.”

  What was there to get for tomorrow? Milk, more sardines, and some more candles. Perhaps that book Mrs. Donner had in her window for thruppence. She could put the thruppence down to the bread. The title was so thrilling, The Red Love of White Hope, Scioux, Matt.

  She had not read many books in the old days. There was the Water Babies, and one or two others, but she had forgotten. And Robinson Crusoe. After that she hadn’t read at all. She didn’t really know what she had done. She had sat on the wall a good deal, asking why and how the world was here, and watching people go by. Silly to trouble about why the world was—it was, that was all. On Saturdays in summer dusty motor cars would clatter by on the way to the riverside pub. Birmingham people they were. There were other people sometimes. And four times a day the milk lorry came by with him driving it. Fascinating he was, he looked so wicked.

  Was Scioux the name of a town, or did it mean that White Hope was a Red Indian? Mrs. Donner might let her have a look inside. If it was only a town she would not buy it, but with a Red Indian it should be meaty. Then, again, she used to go up to watch the village blacksmith shoe the horses or repair a plough, and he would let her work the handle of the bellows and make the sparks spray out. The corners of his forge had been wonderful, all sorts of odds and ends of rusty iron, and always the chance, as he said, of finding something very valuable among them. Little innocent. But above all there was the blacksmith himself. He was very stupid but the strongest man that ever lived. It was wonderful, his strength. She had tried to lift the big hammer one day, and she had let it drop on her big toe, it was so heavy. Wouldn’t be able to lift it now, even. He had had to carry her back to the Vicarage. Mother had been very angry. But then the days were gone when she kissed to make it well. Poor right big toe.

  Occasionally they had gone into Norbury. There used to be the old horse bus along the main road to take you in, and then you were in the middle of the hum and bustle of it, hundreds of people hurrying along in town clothes. Norbury was wonderful with its three thousand inhabitants. And there was Green the draper’s, Mother fingering the stuffs for her new dress—would it wash, would it wear? it did not look to her like very good quality. And the boot shop, Dapp’s, with the smell of leather and hundreds and hundreds of shoes hung about, and the shop assistant’s hair—like a cascade of glue, Father said once outside, but it wasn’t, it smelt lovely—and his way of tying the shoe on, that little finger. Fool. He would be married now, and she, whoever she was, would have someone to wait for in the evenings, to kiss or to have rows with, and wear his ring. She would have his children, and they would watch them together. And the farmers, fat and thin, in their pony carts, getting down at the Naiad’s Calf to have a drink. Father had hated the farmers; “they are making a lot of money,” was what he said. And as evening came on they went sometimes to tea at the Deanery, and she would doze by the fire, sitting very correctly in her chair, hearing the boom of the Dean’s voice to Father, and Mother’s shrill complaint to the Dean’s wife, dozing after the huge tea that she had eaten when they weren’t looking. They would have a fit if she went there now.

  She hadn’t been in Norbury for ages. There was Mrs. Donner who sold everything. She was a one, that woman. Three and six for a bit of stuff which she wouldn’t like to put on a horse’s back to keep the cold off!

  It had been hard work following Mother about. She had hurried so from shop to shop. She must have been hungry for town life again. Those that are town-bred hate the country. They used always to eat lunch in the Cathedral Tea Rooms. Mrs. Oliver, big and fat, who looked after the customers, always came up and said, “Ah, Mr. Entwhistle, so you’ve come to see us townsfolk again, sir.” Mother would bring out the sandwiches. After they had eaten Mother and she would go off to the shops again, while Father went back to the Library. Mother used to call Mrs. Oliver “a designing woman”—sour grapes. And the chemist, mysterious behind his spectacles, in his shop made of shelves and bottles, and cunningly-piled cardboard boxes. The jolting ride home in the dark, with the walk at the end.

  Then there was Nancy. All the last years at the Vicarage had been Nancy. What had become of her now? Married with children, most likely, but not to the baker’s son she had been so gone on. Nancy, with her fairest hair and skinny legs, she was not nearly as good-looking as her. Her snub nose, and the small watery pink eyes.

  They had met in a lane, had smiled, and had made friends. That is, they had never really made friends, she had been far too stupid. But Nancy used to giggle at her jokes, and she liked that. Dolly had been forgotten then.

  They talked a great deal about men, with long silences, and Nancy’s giggle and “Oh you’s.” They walked arm in arm, or more often with their arms round each other’s waists, their heads bent, whispering. Lord, what fools they must have looked. Of course Mother was only too glad that she was out of the way, Father too.

  They used to walk most in the lane, just outside the house here. She had been in love, oh, how passionate, with Jim who never spoke, and who worked for Mr. Curry. He had been worse than George. But he used sometimes to come home by the lane in the evening, and they would pass him arm in arm. She would give him the sidelong look she had practised in the mirror, but he never did more than touch his cap. She had dropped her handkerchief once, as Nancy had told her they did in the world. They had talked and giggled for days before she had plucked up courage to do it. But of course he did nothing.

  Nancy wore a ring round her neck on a bit of cotton. She said at first that Alfred had given it her, but that time under the honeysuckle when she had shown Nancy her birthmark on her leg, she had confessed that she had only got it out of a cracker at Christmas. Nancy used to think her awfully daring.

  Then their walks when evening was coming on, when they wandered down the sunken lane. Thick sunlight and thicker shade, when they twined closer together, and walked slower, and were silent. There was the heavy smell of honeysuckle, sweet, which a little fresh air coming down between the banks would begin to blow away. The birds flew quietly from side to side, there were flowers whose names she did not know, and long tufts of grass full of dew. The flowers made dots of colour in the shade, the ground they walked on buried the sound of their feet . . . Soon they would come to the gate, and they would sit clinging to each other and balancing, watching the horses scrunch up the grass and the cows lie chewing, idly content. The sky was always different, and the end of a hot day was sleepy. The flies buzzed round, the midges bit. On a piece of fresh manure there would be hundreds of brown flies, and a bee would hurry by. She used to watch the trees most often. There were so many of them, one behind the other, hiding, showing, hudd
led, alone. Far away a car would blow a horn, or a train would whistle, but it used to feel as if there was everything between them and it. Birds up in the sky that was paling would fly silently with a purpose. They were going to bed, and soon she would go back, have supper, and go to bed. Partridges talked to each other anxiously, as they gathered together, against the dangers of the night. The horses looked round calmly. A dog barked miles away.

  Then, as it was getting dark, they would part to go home. Nancy up to the village, and she herself across the fields to the Vicarage. The cows would not rise, and the horses would give her barely a glance. Only a rabbit perhaps would sit up, drum the ground, and flee to his burrow. And he would not bother to go down it, for as soon as she had passed he would be back again nibbling. In spring there would be lambs, absurd and delicious on their long weak legs.

  She would climb a warm gate and feel the wet of the dew soaking through her stockings. In front was the Vicarage, all the windows open, waiting, and her glass of milk and biscuits. She would climb the last gate and cross the dusty road, lift the latch of the door in the wall, and the roses, the white ones and the red ones, would greet her. Father might be sitting in the deck-chair on the lawn, smoking his pipe, the blue smoke going lazily up to the other blue of the sky. Mother might be sewing just inside the French window. The milk was cool.

  And then she would go up the stairs into her room, the little white bed, the texts round the walls, the open window letting in the dim light and the roses. And she would go to sleep and—was she going to cry?