‘No; Mrs Davis leant out of the window for a minute. She was putting him to bed.’
Dorothy went crimson. She opened her mouth, raised her hands, and twisted the pearls round her neck.
All day, waiting for Matt’s return, she grew more and more furious. She kept all three children near her, alternately scolding them and running down their father, her sharp, high voice blurred and hoarsened by the cold. She made the new housemaid (who was afraid of her) light fires all over the house so that she might wander from room to room. She shut all the windows, smoked endlessly, and refused to let the children go out in the drizzle. Stupid with aching foreheads and pale cheeks, very bewildered, they followed her about, carrying their books and games and her bright-coloured embroidery. It was a procession headed by the little talking woman in a fantastic geranium-red dress. The glow in her face did not diminish; she burned, and her fingers were so transparently white that they seemed to sparkle. She had a very bad cold.
Towards six o’clock her throat became so sore that she could only speak in a lifeless undertone and infrequently, which was a relief to everybody. Phoebe tried to make her go to bed; however, Dorothy was always obstinate with her. Rosamund, who was always very kind to sick people, ready to do anything for them, managed to get her upstairs. She sat on the edge of her bed, shivering and hanging her head.
Rosamund ran down to fill a hot-water bottle; encountering Philip, she took her first opportunity that day to beat him for chalking in one of her picture books. Philip rushed to his mother. The two of them sat on the bed together in a bundle, crying and gripping each other round the neck. Dorothy, presented with the hot-water bottle, threw it at Rosamund. It burst. In walked Matt. He was not quite drunk.
‘Well…’ said he, sleepily. He leaned against the wardrobe, unshaven and hollow-jawed.
Dorothy pushed her head forwards with a curious snakish movement.
‘Philip, my darling son, ring the bell for mother.’
The boy jangled the bell and fell back on her breast, covering his eyes with his fists. After a moment the submissive new housemaid appeared, out of breath from running upstairs.
‘Ask Miss Phoebe to come here.’
Phoebe came.
‘Now you’re all here,’ said Dorothy excitedly. She strained her voice so that for the moment it was thick and strong.
‘Philip, sweetheart, sit up and look at daddy. Rosamund… Phoebe, look at your father. He’s drunk. He can’t stand up. Isn’t it horrible. Isn’t it disgusting?’
‘Yes, it’s disgusting…’ Matt admitted in a faint, faraway tone. He seemed as if he would have added a long speech to these few feeble words, but Dorothy interrupted.
‘You beast! you make a beast of yourself, d’you hear? Ah, how shall I live… how can I bear it? Think of it, the terrible humiliation of a drunken husband!’
She pointed at Matt, speaking through red, rough lips: ‘That always near me, that owning me…’
‘He doesn’t own you. Nobody owns anybody,’ shouted Rosamund, waving the hot-water bottle.
‘That’s daddy,’ said Philip positively.
‘Yes, that’s daddy,’ said Dorothy, with bitter imitation.
‘Father, why don’t you go away?’ Phoebe urged, touching his arm.
‘Mind your own business, Phoebe!’ cried Rosamund.
Phoebe’s eyes opened wide in bright, angry surprise. Then, commanding her temper, she left the room and Dorothy called after her: ‘Come back,’ she shouted, springing from the bed: ‘you shall share my miseries. I won’t be left to bear everything alone. You shameful, disgusting man,’ she continued, addressing her husband while she shook his inert shoulders, ‘where have you been all day?’
He did not answer, but gazed at the carpet sodden and melancholy.
Phoebe did not return; they heard the piano – a succession of loud ringing chords.
‘Ah, you can all get away but me! Tied up for all my life, and what do I get out of it?’ Dorothy lamented. She gathered Philip into her arms and kissed him wildly under the ear. He stared at Matt, subtly, laughing.
‘Daddy, I hate you,’ said Rosamund.
‘What, you too!’ he burst out, ‘and I thought we got on well together. Damn you, you little beast; get out!’
He took her in a really cruel grip, overwhelmed by the abrupt rage that sometimes put fear into Dorothy. Rosamund screamed with temper and pain until all their ears rang. He gave her a couple of savage slaps and put her outside the door.
‘Now I’m master of the situation,’ he thought.
He was very muddled.
‘Philip, come here.’
‘Philip will stay with me,’ said Dorothy.
‘Philip, come here,’ repeated his father emphatically, ‘let him go!’
Dorothy clutched the boy, but she wished the row had not gone so far. She remembered Matt violent….
‘Are you going to hurt him, Matt?’
‘Let him go.’
She released him. He sat down on the floor.
‘Come here,’ said Matt.
Philip went to him inscrutably.
Matt folded him in his arms, and stood holding him against his shoulder. He bent his head, swaying as though he were rocking the child to sleep.
‘I want to get down.’
‘No; stay here.’
They rocked together; there was deep silence in the room.
* * *
The cook interrupted the story of Gladys’ abortive courting.
‘We all have our troubles,’ she declared, her fists on the table. She wished with all her heart the new girl wouldn’t remove her glass eye at meals, smothering its blue stare in a handkerchief which remained beside her until they carried the pudding plates into the scullery. Mary, in the loft, kept her misery to herself. She had received a letter from Miss Tressan; it was cool but anxious, and it contained five pounds. She returned the money that same day without acknowledgment or message. To be offered the sort of sympathy that any unlucky servant might excite, from a woman who had for some years almost yielded obedience, put an exquisite edge on her resentment.
* * *
Dorothy did not speak to Matt for nearly a week, most of which she spent in bed. It was not so much sulkiness as a deliberate attempt to find out how well silence would serve her purpose. Lying soothed in her room which reeked of ‘Dernier soupir’ in a successful attempt to smother the inevitable feverish odours, she was possessed by the strange idea that the man striding insolently about the yard and digging in the garden exercised a bad influence over the whole household. A trifle light-headed, one evening she called Phoebe to find out if milk were consumed absolutely as the udders emitted it. Phoebe answered, no; it was strained, and was obliged, before Dorothy would settle down, to give a full account of the proceedings in the dairy after Easter had carried in the milk.
Lying still, Dorothy thought: ‘Apart from anything else, his impudence is unbearable. He must go.’
She was really ill; the face that she watched in her hand glass bore a pale rose-coloured eruption on the chin. Her doctor said it was caused by nerves.
‘You must be quiet and not worry.’
He looked at her with his head on one side, and, charmed by his voice, she wished she were married to him instead of Matt.
He sniffed the ‘Dernier Soupir’ contemptuously.
‘Poof, what a fug!
The ointment he gave her to put on the rash and the spots themselves lent her a feverish look.
Matt brought her books and flowers.
‘Thank you,’ she said flatly.
One day he bent over her and whispered: ‘Do you want me to give you a smacking?’ and she could not help smiling; it was an old tender reproof which they had used towards each other before they were married. She remembered the first occasion in a Cardiff street when she had cried ‘Yes!’ and he had flicked the back of her hand and suddenly tears came into her eyes, to think that husbands really did strike their wives and lovers and al
so their sweethearts. When it was growing dark she wrapped herself up and went to the window. How it rained! The lane was like a cart track with slimy ruts; the monkey tree shut out the mildewy last light.
She lay down again, cold and depressed. She heard Matt walk past her door.
‘Matt!’
‘Yes?’ he answered, entering.
‘Are you going out?’
‘I was. What else is there to do?’
‘Nothing… don’t go.’
He stayed with her, relieved that her reserve was over, yet terribly depressed and jaded. He wanted to tell her that she was wrong to put a distance between them; very seriously wrong. That coldness did not draw him to her, but each time she let him feel it drove him farther from her, deeper, deeper, into a vague mental state where nothing held any significance.
‘My blind island,’ he called it to himself.
But he did not love her and he held his tongue. She took advantage of the moment.
‘Matt, I want you to send Easter away.’
‘Yes, I believe you’re right. He must go.’
‘Are you sorry?’
‘In a way. I shan’t sack him until the baby’s born.’
‘Is he a good groom?’
‘Oh, not too bad.’
They did not discuss Easter farther on this occasion. Dorothy congratulated herself on gaining her point. In reality, Davis had gained it for her.
Matt hereafter often watched Easter, regretting he must part with him, yet aware of the uneasy malevolence which seemed to animate the man. Also he could not fail to observe his entire lack of respect.
‘But why should anyone respect me?’ he asked himself.
He fell into a sombre calm, and his thoughts were all sad: ‘How is it people are happy in this world, or even at their ease?’
IV
One morning Mary opened the door to let the spring air blow into the kitchen while she was cooking, and as she did so she saw that a sapling which grew in the heart of the wood pile was showing leaf. She began reckoning up the time she had been at The Gallustree, wife to the groom, living in two rooms above an old brewing house.
‘It is not for ever,’ she said, ‘I’ll kill myself rather than go on always.’
As the days grew longer, Easter went out later each evening; he was waiting for the dusk to conceal his meetings with a woman. They used to wander about the fields after dark. She was a limp, shuffling person, whose nature was hardy and indifferent. She had a creased, yellow face, her black hair hung over her forehead as far as her wide-open shining eyes, which moved so swiftly that they appeared to flash. A dirty merry little woman, she walked with one hand thrust into the neck of her dress against her warm skin, and the other in the band of her apron. She was a charwoman.
She was always laughing and made him laugh too. She told him about the foul-mouthed old farmer who rented Matt’s home farm, and his great, shouting, stingy wife and daughter who had a fine name for charity off their own acres. How Mrs Williams never let her have butter with her meals, gave her old mouldy cheese ends, and flew into a passion when she ate a cold potato; and how they abused each other, almost coming to blows, and Miss Margery went away to hunt for a husband. They were fond of entertaining; she had to wash up after the spreads, and sometimes she would be washing up by herself at midnight, afraid of the gloomy old kitchen where the mice ran over the range and played on the shelves. They gave a huge tennis party. The table was loaded – a whole salmon, meat pies, cakes, jellies, fruit piled up almost to the ceiling; cream stuck about like snow. While they were playing she nipped in and stole a banana. Then she heard their elephant footsteps, so she hid round the back of the house. They followed.
‘Very angry they was, oh, they was vexed! They was going to take it from me, but the old man come up and he says, stamping his foot, “Let her ’ave it. I tell you she’s to ’ave it, and if I ’ear any more talk she shall sit in my place to table. Now you knows!”’
‘Don’t you hate ’em?’ Easter asked.
‘Oh, ay,’ she said, laughing. She made everything funny by the tone of her light-flowing voice, and she seemed to feel no lasting resentment. Taking her hand, all warm, from her bosom, she laid it on Easter’s face, inviting him with her eyes.
She wore untidy shapeless blouses, a dark skirt that dipped at the back, cracked boots, and a soiled cotton or sacking apron. In her bundled, draggled hair she stuck a sham tortoiseshell comb, twinkling with coloured paste. She was furtive, yet joyous, looking like a woman who worked in the fields.
While he was in her company he would imagine himself in his youth, which had been passed among just such careless, fatalistic folk; often just after leaving her it would come back on him so strongly that the present seemed a dream.
She made him think of one woman in particular whom he had loved after his fashion. The first…. On a cloudy night in the beginning of May he left her behind the haystack where they had embraced, and made his way home through the fields. The river, full of dark water, ran bank high; everything was growing. What a fine thing it was to feel warm and well and to be able to look forward to the summer!
Easter, turning his face up to the sky to see if it would rain, observed a dim familiar constellation tilting in the southern sky. He stood still and watched it until the clouds hid it and it began softly to rain. He lit a cigarette and walked on, remembering…
He was lying on a shawl on the grass beside a rough stony road which went straight uphill and stopped dead at the top as though it had been shorn off at the horizon. Within a foot of his head a colt was grazing. It moved forward; he lay between its forelegs and then, without touching him, it walked right over him. He did not stir. Its belly was silky, almost white. This was the first thing he could remember; not very clearly, for he was hardly able to walk.
Then again it was summer dusk. He was naked, sitting on the bald ground; round him were a number of low shelters built of withies and tarred sacks. There were several fires on the ground and a crowd of people. He smelt the smoke and sat staring at a stream which ran between the camp and a cottage garden full of heavy pink flowers which clustered along the stem. He did not know what they were. In the garden a big brown and black dog lay beside a barrel; it kept getting up and turning round, and each time its long bright chain rattled against the barrel. Suddenly he heard a rustle, scarcely louder than a breath, in the long grass by the stream, and poking his head forward, he saw three beautiful water-rats run down the bank into the water and swim away out of sight – they were gone in a minute, those fascinating creatures, while he longed with all his heart for one more glimpse of them…. Now it was noon, blazing hot on a huge swerving field. He was kneeling on the edge of a shady spinney, pulling at the deep moss with both hands. The field was pink, but countless green lines ran across it converging in the distance; between these lines men and women were bending and hoeing. Among them was his mother, very far away, down in a hollow.
That year he was four. In the middle of November when the sugar-beet harvest was over, and she knew there would be no more work for her in the fields until spring, his mother moved into a town where they shared a room with the Fitzgeralds.
Easter’s mother was small and sinewy. She wore a drab shawl over her head. Her face was rather manly.
Mrs Fitzgerald, a handsome, wild girl with yellowish-brown eyes, a tanned skin and a haughty manner, spent most of her time making pegs or going round the streets with a barrel organ. She always wore a voluminous plaid frock, quantities of jewellery, and, indoors or out, a black befeathered hat was perched on her plaited hair. She was odd: she hardly ever spoke, but sang and whistled and made a great deal of wooden noise by rattling her heels on the board floor while she spliced pegs and made mats and brooms.
Mr Fitzgerald was thin and stooping: his head hung forward, and his hands appeared to weigh his thin arms down close to his flanks. He seemed to be frail, but in reality he was very powerful. He was always in the street or sitting on the doorstep. He w
as eighteen; his wife sixteen.
Easter often helped Mrs Fitzgerald make the pegs. In return she would hang her necklaces round his neck and give him a ride now and then on their donkey which they kept in a shed up an alley. He also accompanied them into the town on Saturday nights, standing by his friend at the side of the road while she ground out the tunes.
He loved her, and when, in April, they went back to camp without her, he was almost stunned by grief.
However, he continually saw her in the fields, pea-picking, harvesting, and getting up the potatoes….
One day he saw her go into the shelter of a group of trees which stood back from a bushy hedge. She stooped her back in order to pass through a hole as smoothly as a supple weasel at play. Easter ran after her. She was standing with her back towards him, stark naked and flawless, holding her hat in her hand. When she heard him, she turned very slowly, lifting her chin as if she expected to see someone very much taller than herself.
Easter fled, puzzled by adult nakedness which had never been revealed to him before because the half-bred, hedge gypsies amongst whom he lived scarcely ever removed their clothes.
In the autumn his mother left the camp for good with what she had saved since Easter’s birth. She took a two-roomed cottage near the summit of Riggs’ Pitch, three miles south of Chepsford on the Salus road, at a low rent. Nobody else would live in it as, besides being very small, it was round and dismally overgrown, having been a toll house. It was a district of sharp hills, thick woods, and narrow lanes. In the garden was a well of drinking water which never dried in the driest summer, and quantities of old, half-wild roses, yellow and white. Easter’s mother did away with the rats. She took in washing and went out charring.
When Easter was five years old he went to school at Petersthorn. There were three teachers at the school: an ignorant, insipid infants’ mistress who was not capable of teaching the children to read; a blustering, raw young woman who had just taken her certificate, and was attempting to find her feet and keep discipline in the middle standards; and an indolent, neurasthenic, headmaster, whose one idea was to conceal his illness and incompetence from the school managers and the County Council inspectors.
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