To the Dark Tower

by Francis King

  For a long time she would brood in this manner on a remote, and perhaps non-existent, past. Then the hens would have to be fed or the goats would have to be milked, and with a gesture that said, "And now look what I’ve come to", she would stride out, her lean arms clasped under her breast.

  They were waiting for the bus that was to take them to a cinema, and the shops, and tea at the "Copper Kettle". Shirley stood out on the road while Doris, who had a stone in her shoe, had retreated behind a tree to remove it. Perhaps her sense of decorum was too much developed; perhaps she was ashamed of her feet, which were large and had bunions from squeezing them into narrow fittings.

  The bus was late, as it always was on Saturday. "Is it coming?" Doris asked, dusting her foot with the palm of her hand. "Oh, do stop it if it is. Ask them to wait"

  "No sign yet."

  A mile away the bus had stopped while the driver got off his seat and collected fares. But they were not to know that.

  At the brow of the hill before them something moved, there was a distant rumble. "Oh, look!" Shirley exclaimed, expecting the familiar green and red to appear.

  Now it so happened that at the moment she said, "Oh, look!" a man was passing on a bicycle. Doris being screened by her tree he imagined that he was being addressed. "Yes?" he said, braking sharply. "Yes?"

  Shirley shook her head. "Nothing," she murmured. "Nothing. Just that." A lorry drove past them.

  He went on; but half-way down the hill he got off his bicycle and began to wheel it back. "I’m sure you said something," he protested. "I could have sworn——" He grinned at her, a man of about forty-five, swarthy, with light-blue eyes and an open-necked shirt.

  At that moment Doris appeared, hopping, with her bare foot raised in the air. "My friend was talking to me," she cut in. "Please go away. You know it was not to you she was speaking."

  The man coloured, mounted his bicycle, and rode off, his alpaca coat flapping behind him.

  "Oh, Doris!" Shirley protested.

  "That’s the way to deal with them," Doris said, in high spirits. "Upon my soul! Thought he was going to get off with you!"

  But: "Oh, Doris!" Shirley protested again.

  Shirley took the goats out to pasture. They were aristocratic, blue-lipped creatures; white Saanens, whose muzzles tapered delicately into a point. As they moved forward their udders swung from side to side between bow-legs. Their bellies were distended with clover hay, giving them an appearance of pregnancy. Shirley had two of them with her, and, not being used to their management, her progress was slow. When she pulled they decided to stop, their teeth wrenching at nettles, thistles, and elder. But as soon as she stood still they dragged her sideways, across the road, to some more succulent pasture. She cursed them silently.

  They were Mrs. Humber’s pets, to whom fresh white bread was given and apples and dough-cakes. They must not be hurried or bullied or in any way crossed. She talked to them as one would to an infant. When one of them butted, she said: "Oh, darling, that wasn’t at all nice. No, really..." But if the person who had been butted attempted to punish the animal, she protested: "Oh, don’t do that. You’ll hurt her. Oh, please don’t."

  The turquoise eyes seemed to glint at Shirley maliciously; the horns arched back; delicate white hooves stepped between horse-dung. Shirley pulled breathlessly. "Oh, come on!" she pleaded aloud. "Oh, do come on!" Her hands were red with tugging at the heavy chains. Then: "Oh, very well." She gave in, she abdicated. They could move when they wished to. She stood by them as they gobbled cow-parsley. As though the Day of Judgment were upon them, she thought; not a moment lost. One of them choked, coughed, and broke wind. Shirley tried to pull them on, away from the aroma. But it could not be done. In their own time...

  Moonily, she looked about her. In one of the fields that Mrs. Humber let out they had already cut the oats and were now carting them away. The horse stamped dust upwards into the still air. Two men were working, not very expertly, stripped to the waist. Could it be ...? She screwed up her eyes, staring. Could it? But, before she could decide, with one accord both goats jerked forward: the chains were tugged from her hands; they were loose and away. With the sagacity of their species they made immediately for an uncut field of corn on their right and began to plough through it, tugging at random at the heavy ears. "Come back!" Shirley shouted. "Come back! Betty! Phyllis! Come back!" She ran after them. But the animals veered away, with lowered horns and cries of rage or triumph. She was trampling the corn and they were trampling it. "Oh, dear," she said aloud. "Oh dear, oh dear."

  "Don’t worry. I’ll catch them."

  She shot round to find herself facing the man she had encountered when waiting for the bus. She had been right. It was he who was working with the cart in the other field. He again grinned, impressing her with that strange contrast of dark hair and light-blue eyes. He was badly sunburned, his shoulders peeling and white with calamine lotion. The hair on his chest gleamed with sweat.

  Then began a lengthy pursuit, a series of ambushes, stealthy tracking. Shirley helped as best she could. But the sight of Mrs. Humber’s corn filled her with fatalistic pessimism. Another hour—and what would have become of it? Would it all be trampled to nothing?

  A yell of triumph, a boyish "Hoorah!" greeted her. The animals were trapped against a wall of brambles. With lowered heads they charged, but neatly he caught one and then the other by the horns. Though in actual practice an easy enough task, this final piece of bravado filled Shirley with admiration. She clapped her hands. "Oh, splendid!" she cried. "Oh, splendid!"

  He brought the animals back to her. "They haven’t done much damage. But goodness—what a chase! I’m not used to all that exercise." Down his face poured sweat.

  She took the animals from him. "Thank you. Thank you so much. It really was most good of you."

  "I’m afraid I didn’t have a chance of introducing myself before. My name’s Petrel—Claude Petrel." He spoke with the unnatural bluffness of so many schoolmasters. One can almost hear them saying: "Now come on, boys! This is fun. Wake up, all of you." His voice had the same ring, as though a coin were being thrown down defiantly.

  "I’m Shirley Forsdike."

  "Yes, Miss Forsdike. We’ve met once before, I think." Was he being malicious? The light-blue eyes turned innocently on her. "I am afraid—rather a faux pas on my part... I thought ..."

  "My friend was very rude."

  "She was protecting your honour."

  She moved on a little with the goats to a clump of nettles. As she did so she scrutinised him, wondering who he was and where he had come from. He was certainly not a farmer, she decided. His corduroys were too sleek; his hands, though dirty at the nails, too well kept.

  "I’m staying here on holiday," she said.

  "So am I—with my brood."

  "Your brood?"

  "My children. I have five of them. Quite a handful. I’m sure you must have seen them—or heard them—already. "We’re at Ash Farm... Do you like children?"

  "Very much."

  "Then you must come and see mine. I think they’re perfect."

  "I should love to."

  "Good." He scratched his chest with a dry, scraping sound. "Where do you live?"

  "Opposite. With Mrs. Humber. Just over there."

  "May I ring you up?"

  "We have no telephone. Mrs. Humber hates them."

  "No telephone!" He seemed shocked, as though at some indecency.

  "Oh, never mind. I’ll send one of the children round with a note."

  "Thank you."

  He returned to the cart and began once more to toss up the sheaves. From a gap in the hedge where she could not be seen she watched him for a long time, her eyes aching in the glare. The white animals cropped grass around her with sudden tugs. He worked with extraordinary zest—frenzy it seemed—tossing one sheaf after another; but there was no co-ordination. Then he stopped and wiped the swe
at off his forehead. His body gleamed.

  Outside the village store five children took it in turns to ride on a bicycle. The bicycle was too big: they had to stand up, the bar between their legs. Shirley passed them with a bag of apples she had just bought, and then turned back. The dark complexion and the light-blue eyes—she could not mistake the features.

  "Hullo," she said.

  "Hullo." With the absorption of children they took little notice of her. They were squabbling over whose turn it was to ride the bicycle. Their voices were shrill and clear; the arms with which they snatched at it, sinewy.

  "What are your names?" she asked.

  Visibly they drew into an arrogant little phalanx. "We’re all Petrels," one of them said.

  "I’m Miss Forsdike."

  The eldest boy stared at her and then came forward. "I think I’ve got a note for you."

  "For me? Oh, thank you."

  "Do you want to see it? It’s days old. Father gave it to me, and I forgot."

  Shirley bridled. "Certainly I should like to see it."

  The boy began to fumble in his trousers pockets, producing string, sweet-papers, nuts, and eventually a soiled scrap of paper.

  It was an invitation to tea—four days ago.

  Ash Farm had been taken over by a young man from Cambridge and ‘renovated’. This meant that the old fireplaces had been bricked in and tiles replaced them; a flush-closet was now used instead of the shed behind the kitchen; and the walls were distempered a hygienic white. Similar changes were perceptible on the farm itself—tractors instead of horses, laundered smocks for milking, a battery for the hens.

  The young man whose money had made all this possible answered Shirley’s knock. Perpetually, there was a dewdrop on the end of his pointed nose; a lock of hair hung limply on his forehead: he wore tweeds baggy at the knees, with a slit up the back.

  "Yes?" he asked.

  "Is Mr. Petrel in?"

  "Claude! I say—Claude!"

  Mr. Petrel appeared, pen in hand. "Ah, Miss Forsdike! And how are the lascivae capellae. Your goats," he translated hurriedly. "Very Theocritean animals." Now that he was no longer stripped and ostensibly dressed as a labourer, but wore instead a white drill suit and a spotted bow-tie, he relapsed into the pomposity that was natural to him.

  As so often happens when one has prepared a speech before-hand, word for word, Shirley took no notice of the question but rushed ahead: "You must think it awfully rude of me—the invitation, I mean. You see, it’s only just been given to me. Your son forgot—"

  "Invitation? ... Oh, that!" Was it a pose, this bland dismissal? She could not tell. "I gathered that you must be too busy—or otherwise engaged. Reggy is very forgetful. I shall have to speak to him."

  "But I should have liked to come."

  "Well—come now."

  "Now?"

  "The tea is just made."

  After half-hearted protestations he took her into a room where the young man was seated reading a book with a yellow Gollancz jacket. On a card-table were some small, round cakes, plain sponge, sprinkled with ‘hundreds-and-thousands’, and six fingers of toast. The young man rose, pushing back the lock of hair.

  "My cousin—Alex Penny. Miss Forsdike."

  "Yerce," said the young man. "Pleased to meet you. Yerce." Their hands touched.

  "Miss Forsdike keeps goats, Alex. Extraordinarily classical, really. The Greek Anthology. The Eclogues. That line, ‘Sed faciles Nymphae...’ You know the one." He chuckled richly to himself. But the young man was holding out a plate. "Some toast?" Apparently he took no notice of these erudite ramblings.

  "You know, Miss Forsdike, I have a feeling that you’re a school-mistress."

  She blushed with chagrin. "Is it as obvious as all that?"

  "Oh, no. You mustn’t take it as an insult. After all, I am myself—a compatriot—a colleague in misfortune, as they say..."

  "You teach?" she queried.

  He inclined his head. "You may call it that. Though whether I actually teach anybody anything... I lecture once a week to a class of a dozen or so men and women."

  The young man cut in: "Claude is a professor. Some more toast?" His boredom made Shirley think, "How rude he is!" He had already handed her a cup of tea in which he had forgotten to put any milk. Being not entirely at her ease she did not mention the omission.

  "Ah, yes," Mr. Petrel continued. "I’m a professor. The horrible truth is out. Which means that Miss Forsdike will now expect me to be absentminded and pedantic. ‘Don dull, don brutish...’ How cruel that poem is! Do you know, when I first read it, I thought: ‘No, I can’t go on. I simply can’t go on. I shall have to throw the whole thing up. Let me become a porter—or a dock-hand...’ "Suddenly he broke off: Alex was about to take a third finger of toast. "I think that last piece is mine, isn’t it? ...I think so." Alex withdrew.

  All through tea he talked. Sometimes his conversation became merely a jumble of quotations; few of his sentences were ever completed; he had private jokes with himself, in Greek or Latin or Italian, at which he chuckled deeply. Alex lay supine in an armchair, his eyes on the ceiling, a pipe in his mouth. Sometimes he said "Yerce, yerce", or began "The point is...". But the point was somehow lost in the heterodox forest of his cousin’s learning.

  Shirley was listening intently, her mouth slightly open, as children’s are before a peep-show. On occasions she nodded her head. For a moment she was an audience; and audiences made Claud voluble. But then he wearied. No man can stand his own success; he was tired of impressing her. He abdicated in favour of Cousin Alex, contenting himself with facetious interjections—"That’s it! The dignity of labour!" when Alex said, "We must increase the birthrate", and at the mention of land taxes, "God for Harry, England, and St. George!"

  This last annoyed Alex particularly. A fanatical Georgist, he snapped: "Oh, shut up, Claude!" Georgism was his faith, as Social Credit, Buchmanism, the Pyramids is the faith of others. If only sufficient people accepted the taxation of land values, then, with this one foundation, everything would fall into place, the house of cards would cease to totter. This was the rock...

  Later the children came in with a governess to say good-night. "Oh, must we go to bed?" they protested. "It’s still light." Dutifully they kissed Claude’s forehead and went grumblingly upstairs. Later, they could be heard laughing, screaming, and racing down the corridors. Claude rose: "That governess... She lets them get out of hand. With my wife away... Do please excuse me."

  Shirley remained below with Alex, who talked of his plans for the farm. "Of course, it doesn’t pay yet. But it will. It’s been mismanaged for years and years, you know..." He had studied agriculture at Cambridge.

  For the half-hour that Claude was away, the din of voices, the thud of feet worked impetuously towards a crescendo. The walls shook; there was a crash of something falling over, followed by howls of laughter. At intervals Alex raised his eyebrows and said, "Really! Those children!"

  Eventually Claude returned, re-tying his bow-tie and patting the dust off his suit. His face was blotchy with perspiration: he was out of breath. Chuckling, he exclaimed: "My word, what a tussle! What a rag! Whew! It makes me hot."

  Shirley got up to go.

  The lamps were lit, Mrs. Humber got out the old card-table whose baize was worn from green to grey, and they played cut-throat through the long evening. From next door came the clatter of china as the half-wit girl washed up. Round the glass funnel of the lamp beside them moths fluttered with a tick-tick of wings: there were smells of paraffin in the air, the atmosphere was dry and hot. In hands with bulging veins, whose cracks were grimed and rough, Mrs. Humber spread her cards. With two fingers she twisted her lower lip. Doris concentrated glumly. Shirley yawned through her nose, so that the nostrils dilated in tell-tale fashion.

  Mrs. Humber said: "I meant to ask you where you went for your walk this afternoon. You were out a long time."
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  "I had an invitation to tea."

  "To tea?" She looked up hungrily, almost with resentment. "But who with?"

  "Some people at Ash Farm."

  Doris cut in: "Oh, Shirley! That was the awful man who—"

  "He isn’t awful." She blushed, and in her confusion threw away a trump. "He’s very nice, really. It was all a mistake—"

  "How could you? I know a pick-up—"

  "Be quiet, Doris!" Mrs. Humber clicked her cards together. "Why will you talk in this vulgar way? ... Go on, dear."

  "Well—he caught the goats for me one day when they got loose—and—and he invited me to tea. That’s all." It seemed a very lame story.

  "Well, what’s wrong in that?" Mrs. Humber asked querulously, as though Shirley were not properly excited. "Very nice, too... Who are the people?"

  Shirley explained, saying at intervals: "They’re awfully kind... He’s a dear, really... The children are quite sweet..."

  "Are they here for long?" Mrs. Humber asked.

  "Oh, no. Just for the holidays. Mrs. Petrel is away in Germany with her mother."

  "Oh, I see. I was going to say that if they were permanents I’d go and call on them." She liked to keep up this fiction of ‘calling’, though in fact it was a practice which she had dropped years ago simply because her calls were never returned.

  "I’d like you to meet them!"

  "Yes," said Mrs. Humber. "Yes, do bring them over. He’s a professor, you say? And his cousin was at Cambridge? Perhaps tea on Sunday..." Her hand trembled with excitement.

  Doris looked at her sardonically from beside the lamp.

  Shirley was sketching the old windmill. Everyone who could sketch in those parts had, at some time or other, sketched the old windmill. It was ‘picturesque’. People also went for picnics there: their cars filled the country lane, and their waste-paper littered the fields. But to-day, perhaps because there was a certain autumnal sharpness in the air, the place was deserted except for the small group of children who surrounded her easel. Whenever one sketched the mill these children, or other children like them, miraculously appeared to suck fingers behind one’s back with noisy absorption.