Easter looked at the carter and then deliberately asked for beer. When Harry brought it he drained half off in one pull without greeting. He smacked his lips, and stretching out his arm, caught hold of the carter, pulling him round. Harry was busy.
‘I’m an old tom cat? What the hell are you? Why didn’t you give me a hand Wednesday with that chap that was setting on the hedge? All you b— seemed afraid of him.’
The carter retorted: ‘Only fools meddle with blokes like that. Give thee a hand? Not likely… her’d give tha one with the chopper.’
Easter picked up the mug: ‘None o’ you aren’t got no guts. Good job somebody can do summat.’
He finished the beer.
‘Good evening to you. I’m going in with the gentleman.’
He turned round and walked towards the parlour. Behind his back the carpenter began to imitate his insolent stride, and the youths, lifting their lips with their fingers, tried to copy his face. Sammy Collins and Mrs Lloyd were both on their feet near the window. They had been talking, but hearing footsteps in the passage, they simultaneously shut their mouths, and Easter entered in a sudden empty silence. Their eyes still spoke, their lips were folded into an artificial tightness. They had broken off in the middle of a dispute about Easter. The timber merchant lifted his beer, carefully arranging his moustache before he drank; the landlady wished Easter good evening, while the bitch took two slow steps forward, snarling.
‘Heel!’ growled her master, regarding Easter under a narrow, ill-natured brow. He would have liked to have said, ‘Set your teeth in him!’
Datty retired and crouched beside the chair.
The room was dull and dim as the two forms by the window obscured the remaining light which dribbled through the many raindrops now fast running down the pane.
Ivy wished to manoeuvre Easter out of the parlour before her husband discovered him. She stepped towards the door, beckoning him furtively, but he advanced and bent a discomposing glance on Collins.
The old man stared haughtily at him with his he-goat eyes. Drinking turned him livid. The stiff red and grizzled hairs of his beard, springing from the pallid, spongy flesh, disgusted Easter, and at the same time recalled to him Mary’s beautiful red hair. He felt a thrill of rage, and he smiled the peculiar and knowing smile that Phoebe watched.
Collins coughed importantly: ‘Well, Probert, so you tackled a lunatic down in Goose’s Hollow… not bad that. Everybody’s heard about it. How does it feel to be famous?’
Easter’s answer to the spiteful patronage was swift, silent, and deadly offensive. He bent forward, threw Collins’ hat off the chair that was his rightful seat as long as he was within The Dog, and sat down where he had no business to be, slapping his knees and glancing sidelong. Datty growled again, and her red-rimmed eyes were fixed on Easter’s hands.
‘Easter, get up; you’re asking for trouble. Don’t take heed of him, Mr Collins – he’s had too much. Easter… Easter…’ Ivy cried, distraught. It seemed wicked he should be troublesome when things were so wrong already.
The merchant swung his terrible face slowly over his shoulder and began a tremendous exhortation. Easter was to learn his place….
Easter laughed and reached out his arm and pulled the old man’s coat at the back.
‘Chaw-bacon,’ he jeered. The merchant was a Gloucester man.
It was not the homely word, nor even the impertinence from an inferior, but the atrocious malice and the evil smile lying like a bad spell on Easter’s mouth, which caused Collins to break into violent curses. He egged on Datty to bite; she leapt at Easter’s knee, but he tossed her back, and Harry, hearing her howl and his wife scream, came rushing into the room: ‘Hey, what’s up? What, you, Easter, at it again? Out you go. Can’t a man choose the company that’s to sit in his own parlour? Why didn’t you call me before, Ivy? What did I tell you?’
He was excited and kept clenching his fists.
‘If you want me to go you must bloody well pull me out,’ and as he spoke, Easter twisted his arms round the arms of the chair.
Harry looked at him, his eyes red with fury and then ran out into the passage.
‘Hey, boys,’ they heard him, ‘who’ll help me chuck Easter Probert into the road?’
‘No, telephone the police,’ shrieked Collins.
‘We don’t want any rough handling,’ Ivy pleaded. Harry returned, his arms akimbo.
‘Now then, will you go, or shall I send for the police?’
‘Can’t any of you laugh?’ Easter sneered. He yelled, half rising from the chair. ‘She’s bitten me!’
Datty had sunk her teeth in his arm.
‘You…!’
Collins snatched her from the floor before Easter had landed a terrific kick, and held her up, twisting and snapping. The place was in an uproar; Harry struggling with Easter, Ivy white and upset, exhorting her husband, Datty clawing to get free and fly at her enemy. The men were standing in the doorway, watching the row.
‘Come on, lend us a hand!’ vociferated Collins, standing well back.
‘Let’s turf ’im out!’
‘All right… ’ang on, ’Arry!’
Between them they hauled Easter into the passage. His boots scraped across the shiny tiles, leaving white nail scratches. From side to side the heaving group swayed and battled, crushing like one great awkward body against the wooden partition. A square youth of immense power finally ejected him, but not before he had dragged a dart from somebody’s grasp and stuck it pretty deeply into the carpenter’s hand.
He was hauled into the road with his own blood running down his arm and the carpenter’s blotching his torn shirt. He limped to the bench and for ten minutes sat under the dripping tree, presenting to the curious eyes in The Dog windows a broad and obstinate back. Then he got up and walked away towards the bridge with his hands in his pockets. Before he was out of sight he suddenly stopped in the middle of the road. The watchers wondered why. It was this: after all, he had had the beer free.
Mrs Lloyd tried to soothe old Collins; she apologised with all the painful humility of those poor souls whose living depends on the good graces of capricious drunkards. The tears were in her eyes, but in heart she felt contempt for the old he-goat who stood in her parlour threatening her with the loss of his custom, and something resembling tenderness towards the bloody, unashamed groom out in the rain who had once or twice put his arm on her shoulders and asked her to drink with him – a small courtesy and grace which the under-bred skinflint merchant never displayed.
Harry was plainly infuriated. It made him feel ill.
‘Mr Collins, I hope to God the time will soon come when that devil will be locked up,’ he said, coming into the room for the iodine to patch up the carpenter.
‘It’s overdue now,’ remarked the merchant, putting on the tweed hat and walking out. He crossed the road, entered his house and began to bully his daughter, who made a hard living for herself by taking in paying guests. She, however, possessed the same home temper, and before long they were screaming at each other. When they heard the guests returning they put on identical welcoming smiles, for to them profit meant even more than winning a battle.
As it grew dark the rain fell faster and the air freshened.
‘Time,’ said Harry.
He looked drawn, ill-humoured, ‘fed up’. But he lingered a moment outside, cribbing with the carter who had witnessed the scene in Goose’s Hollow and the carpenter. They spoke in the dry, thrashed-out way of people who are merely repeating what they have discussed before. It was all about Easter.
‘’E was never no good. Not sociable. A b— to ’is wife, they tell me. Wonder ’ow she likes living in a loft?’
The carpenter smiled: ‘“Shell’s good enough for the chick.”’
Then the carter also smiled.
‘’E got a bit o’ mettle about ’im. I ’oodn’t a touched that silly chap for an ’underd pound meself. Easter goes up to ’un an’ ’andles ’un like a lamb. Could a d
one anything with ’un and there was we others lookin’ like a lot o’ fools.’
‘It’s my belief ’e’s the same, that’s why,’ the carpenter explained. He seemed as if he would stay there all night while his bright eyes roved over everything.
Harry began yawning; from the back premises Ivy called.
‘You’re done,’ the carpenter said, ‘and I must be getting along or else the missus’ll lock me out. Goodnight, ’Arry, goodnight, Price.’
He went.
The carter raised both arms wearily: ‘Been out ’aying all day till past nine, up at four to fetch the ’orses in. Ah, I’m glad it’s night.’
He, too, walked away with bent back and heavily swinging arms. Harry gazed after him indifferently for a second and then went in and shut the door.
* * *
Easter did not recross the bridge. Instead he walked straight on through the village following the road which ran parallel with the river. He was in his worst mood, absolutely yearning to work harm. As soon as he was well beyond the last cottages he stopped under the overhanging trees and, rolling back his sleeve, examined the bite in his arm.
It was an inch above the elbow, no more than a nip, but it had bled freely. He pulled a wet dock leaf from the roadside all dripping with rain, and tied it over the place with a yellow silk handkerchief. Then he looked about for a sheltered spot where he would be able to sit down without getting wet through. It was already night beneath the melancholy trees which dripped on the road; the fields and hedges were saturated and dreary. However, there was no wind and the rain fell straight.
The bank on his left looked gloomy and sinister; the tree trunks stood out against the shadows all green and blotched from the rain. His imagination plagued him with horrors; the trees towered above him. He could not stay there without giving way to vague thoughts which frightened him.
A broken gate on his right led into a field where there was an old haystack with hurdles round it to keep off animals. It was black and dishevelled, tipped on one side; rats, or something else, had eaten away the base so that it resembled a top-heavy timbered house. Easter thought it would afford him shelter. He crawled through the gate which was patched with wire, and established himself where no light from the road could expose him. His wet shirt made him miserable now that he was no longer walking, but he did not intend that to interfere with his object. He sat on stoically until the night was unrelievedly black, a brooding figure expressing vindictive determination in every invisible feature.
Hardly more than forty yards away the river ran; by the reddish colour of the water and the direct, unbroken flow, he had judged that it was rising. He watched it until it grew too dark to discern more than an eddying gleam here and there. His ears were filled with the flotant rush of the current.
Finally he spoke on a lonely note. Yet he did not move for several minutes – his body was more torpid than his brain. When he did, he sprang to his feet energetically. Before long the sound of his feet died away along the lane in the direction of Brelshope.
* * *
Two of the oldest cottages in the district were situated in Goose’s Hollow, a long, patchily cultivated piece of ground intervening between them and the thick holly hedge which had been hacked by the lunatic.
The land lay very low, rising somewhat steeply on either side. It was, in fact, a typical example of what in Herefordshire are known as ‘bottoms’. To one side of the cottages there was a melancholy-looking pond under a curtain of willows and brambles. The water, which seemed to be trying to burst its way out everywhere, here triumphed in a strong spring which never dried up; and the surrounding ground was also perpetually moist so that the inhabitants had contrived numerous narrow channels as a drainage system, bridged here and there by single planks or stone slabs.
Water flowers, rank grasses, rushes and peppermint flourished. There were a few cleared squares where runner beans, cabbages, onions and potatoes were grown, approximately half pertaining to each cottage. They were wrangling, quarrelsome, slapdash folk who were always fighting over the garden. The property was Matt’s; he put up a wooden fence one year, told them off to keep to their own half, and hoped for the best… at least, the fence proved useful for drying clothes.
The cottages themselves turned their backs on each other with a dignified reserve which the occupants lacked. They were brick, timbered, with overhanging thatched roofs under which the small windows peered out suspiciously. Between the back walls there was a space of about three feet which appeared to the tenants to be a marvellous dumping ground for tins and bottles, until Matt roused himself to put a stop to that. They were the sort of people whose activities must be curbed. Four years previously they had marched upon him in a body: four tough men and two attractive women.
‘Well?’
‘Build us sheds; we have nowhere to put our bicycles and our tools.’
‘Our potatoes; our wood and washing.’
Matt put up a large weathertight, lean-to shed to each cottage.
The tenants thanked him, cleared out the dilapidated pigsties and took to rearing swine. On Christmas Day, by way of recompense, each family bestowed on him a nisquill. Matt knew enough about pigs and tenants to laugh.
In one cottage lived a family named Evans: they were strong, black-browed men, three brothers and one wife (it was said) among the lot of them. She had a dark son who resembled them, but the little girl, fair-skinned and sandy-haired, was trained to call her ‘auntie’, and once remarked abstractedly: ‘That aren’t my auntie, that’s my mammie.’
It was probable.
These people Evans were sly as the devil, up to any knavery and full of cunning calculations. Tales of their prowess were common currency, even among those who had been done down by it. It was said that the single, middle-aged lady who owned Emma once publicly complained of there being a great quantity of thistles in her paddock. Thereupon an Evans presented himself, claiming to know of a cure.
‘What is it?’ the lady fires off bang-bang into the Evans’ restless face.
‘Donkey,’ answers the Evans.
‘Well, have you a donkey?’
‘Yes, miss, that I have.’
‘Well, bring it.’
Some weeks later the lady encounters the Evans and remarks that the thistles have in no way abated.
‘Your donkey doesn’t seem to like thistles, Evans.’
‘Oh, miss, give ’un a chance! ’E aren’t ate all the grass yet.’
The other cottage was occupied by a childless married couple by the name of Queary.
Tom Queary resembled a drunken, dissipated Punchinello. His red nose, thin grotesque face, puckered eyes and broken teeth, his long, shambling, ungainly figure, and neckerchief and flannel waistcoat made a figure at once amusing and sinister. He leered as a merry death’s head might… a kind of smouldering ferocity lurked in his glance, and tangible horror in his starting bones and raking cough. The chest beneath that flannel waistcoat was nought but a bent cage for the wildest heart in the parish. And that was wild indeed. His wife Emily was Easter’s field woman.
The Evanses and the Quearys all worked for Matt’s tenant farmer: the men were farm hands, the women house drudges.
* * *
On this same night, Emily Queary was up plucking a fowl in the shed. She sat on a settle which had yielded up its back to the burning the winter before, a hurricane lamp at her side throwing its whitish light in a broken circle over her limp figure, and repeating the same strange cubistic curves more palely among the slender beams which supported the roof.
She wore a white apron over her ordinary muddled dress, and held the fowl on her lap while she carefully stowed the feathers in a sack at her feet. The bits of red and green paste in her hair comb shone like glow-worms, her small hands were the same colour as the dead bird’s stiff feet.
The shed stank – the hot, dusty, feather stink that gets to the throat. On the threshold it was met and vanquished by fresh peppermint exhaling on the wet air.
Rain drops fell softly on the roof. It was past midnight, and Emily worked desultorily, yawning and blinking.
The door behind her opened and Easter inserted his face, a grim face distorted by a grin neither pretty nor pleasant, a ferocious smile below a corrosive brow. He was holding on to the latch inside the door, leaning his chin on his hand while he observed her. However, he was in no mood for continued passive contemplation: ‘Emily!’ he exclaimed abruptly, though in a low voice.
She started and clasped her hands.
‘My Lord, how you frightened me!’
‘Dost know it’s nearly one o’clock?’
‘Yes… more.’
‘You ought to have been in your bed hours ago. Nothing’s wrong now, though; if you miss the saints’ hours you must carry on through the devil’s. Since you’re not asleep, here’s summat for you to look at. See!’
‘What bist?’ She trembled, staring into his drawn face.
‘What bist? Well, it baint in my eyes, young woman. It’s under my arm.’
She saw that he had something under his arm, wrapped in a sack.
‘You’ve been doing summat, Easter, you’ve never been poaching?’
‘Never, Emily.’
‘What is it, then, that you’re ’iding?’
He had a flow of words behind his tongue that seemed to burst from him. It was incomprehensible to her.
‘Tonight’s my night… to take my pleasure. To have at them, to hurt them on their sores… that damned bastard, Kilminster! Emily, Datty won’t go snarling at your heels any more. She’s quieted. It’s an old way to get even with a man through his animals. It’s a gypsy’s way. Look!’
He unrolled the corpse of Datty, old Collins’ beloved bitch. She would not drink from her master’s pint again.
Easter laid her on the settle. Her tongue lolled over her jaw, there was foam on it; her blue-glazed eyes were starting sharply from the sockets.
‘It’s a mean, sneaking, low-down hedge way,’ Emily retorted, shrill enough to burst his eardrums, her eyes shooting light.
‘Shut it! I said so.’
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