Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead

by Barbara Comyns

  There was a great booming of the gong and his thoughts became disturbed; so he hurriedly finished his stale beer and went downstairs, where he found his family having lunch in the old nursery, which was comparatively dry. It was some years since he had been in the room. It was very dark with fir trees pushing in at the window. It had been his nursery when he was a child, and he was amused to see the wallpaper and furniture still the same, and the bow-fronted chest of drawers, the scrap-book screen, the old red couch with the springs hanging down below, and the tallboy which had got him into trouble because he kept frogs in the top drawer. He looked round the room with great satisfaction, and ate his gammon and green peas with his family around him, and felt content.

  As the day went on the flood began to subside. It left the Willoweeds’ house, and in its place was mud and river weed and a deep smell of dampness. The children set stones in the garden to mark the flood’s retreat. The garden sloped down to the river and by the evening half of it was visible again, the flowers lying wet and heavy on the ground, the grass a verdant green. A few strange dead objects lay about. Old Ives collected them and put them in the stokehole. Dennis sadly watched him pushing in a peacock.

  “Are you sure it’s dead, Old Ives?” he asked.

  “Of course the poor bugger’s dead,” he muttered, and slammed the door on it. The remaining peacock began to screech. There was thunder in the air, and the sky had become yellow and grey.

  “There, I said it would rain, and rain it will,” said the old man. “That peacock don’t half hum. It must be the feathers burning.”

  He opened the stokehole door a chink and a great smoke and stench came out. Dennis said:

  “I think it’s time I went to bed now. Good night, Old Ives, I’m glad your ducks came back.”

  “Don’t go yet, boy! Look at this little puss I found,” and he produced a dead, sodden kitten from his pocket, the ginger fur had come away from its tail and the bone was exposed. Dennis had gone; so the kitten followed the peacock into the stokehole.

  During the night the storm broke. The grandmother woke the children and maids who were sleeping quite peacefully.

  “The house will be struck. Come to the cellars!” she cried, “Come to the cellars!”

  The children were dragged down to the cellars which were completely filled with water, and everyone became very wet. Then they were herded into the large stone kitchen, and sat shivering and crying under the kitchen table.

  “Pull the curtains, you fools!” screamed the grandmother as a flash of blue lightning filled the kitchen. Norah climbed onto the table to reach the window; but a great clap of thunder came, and she made a dash to the broom-cupboard under the stairs.

  Grandmother Willoweed yelled, “Coward! What do you think I pay you for, you insubordinate slut?”

  There was another flash, more yells and cries and a tearing clap of thunder. In the midst of it Ebin Willoweed appeared on the back stairs holding a candle. He saw his mother crouching under the table with the children. Emma remained upstairs. Eunice had joined her sister in the broom cupboard; Hattie was crying lustily; and Dennis sat apart, his teeth chattering.

  “Pull the curtain, you fool!” shouted his mother, so he climbed on the table and did so just as another blinding flash came. A small china cup on the dresser broke into fragments, and he shot under the table to join his family. Now the heavy rain came beating down and the worst of the storm was over.

  “What about some cocoa?” he shouted down his mother’s trumpet.

  “Yes, those lazy bitches must make cocoa,” she said. “We always have cocoa after a thunderstorm. Come girls, out of the cupboard!”

  The maids crept out and lit the smoking paraffin stove and the candles in their brass candlesticks on the mantelpiece, and the occasional flashes were not so visible.

  As he watched Norah working, Ebin noticed that she had a great mole shaped like the map of Australia on her chest. She saw he had ginger-beer bottle tops wired onto his pyjamas instead of buttons.

  “Poor man,” she thought, “we are a lazy lot.”

  During the days that followed they had little time for laziness. The carpets had to be dragged onto the lawns to dry and the mud washed off the floors and furniture; the house had not had such a cleaning for years. Most of the heavy work fell on Emma and the two maids. Grandmother Willoweed went from one worker to another brandishing a wicker carpet-beater, and if anyone was not working to her satisfaction they received a whack with it. The two children were put on to furniture polishing, which they did in a half-hearted fashion. Dennis knelt on a book, which he read when his grandmother was out of sight. Eunice called to her sister:

  “Have you heard that Grumpy Nan who lived in the cottage by the mill was drowned?”

  “Yes, poor woman,” her sister answered, “but she has been dying this long time. They say she had cancer and suffered something awful, the poor thing! You could hear her groans as you passed the cottage. Yes, it’s a merciful release.”

  Crack! The wicker beater came across her back. Subdued, the sisters bent over their work. Emma passed them with one arm outstretched to balance the weight of the bucket she carried. She emptied the dirty water it contained down the great brown sink. A smooth white cat had been sitting on the draining board watching intently the water dripping from the pump. It jumped on to her shoulder and rubbed its face against her neck. She stroked it absent-mindedly; but her hands were wet and the cat leapt to the dark stone floor and looked at her with reproachful yellow eyes.

  Into the scullery her father tripped. Although he was a large man he always walked on his toes, rather leaning forward with his shoulders hunched.

  “He is like a gingerbread man,” his daughter thought, “ginger hair, ginger moustache, ginger tweed suit.”

  He put his breakfast tray on the draining board. He always had breakfast in bed. It was usually taken up to his room by Hattie; the maids seldom went to his room, and his bed was often left unmade for days. When he had deposited the tray, which was decorated with crusts and congealed egg yoke, he put his arms round his daughter, hugged her hard and kissed the back of her neck. She pushed him away impatiently.

  “Oh, alright, I was only being affectionate,” he said crossly, “Where is your grandmother?”

  “Oh, somewhere prowling around. She is in a rage.”

  “Is she indeed? It’s all this cleaning, I suppose; but she can’t expect me to help; my hands are my best feature, and they would be ruined. Anyway I loathe housework, and any man who does it is a fool—or any woman for that matter. What’s that saying about a whistling hen and a working woman? … I don’t know,” and he stretched his arms and gave a large yawn. “I think I’ll go and see Dr. Hatt. There won’t be any cleaning women there because I hear his wife is away ill in a nursing home. Change of life, I expect,” and he gave a titter and wandered out through the back door.

  “Father makes me hate men,” thought Emma as she pumped water into the bucket. A slug tumbled out of the pump and she caught it and put it in a dark damp corner under the sink.

  “Poor creature,” she thought, “if the maids find it, it will be burnt; but, if I put it outside, it will be found by Ives and put in a bucket of salt or fed to the ducks.”

  - CHAPTER II -

  EBIN WILLOWEED walked down the village street with his tripping walk. He unsuccessfully tried to get into conversation with several passers-by, but they were hurrying home to their twelve o’clock dinner. The labourers were carrying forks over their shoulders. Each prong had a large potato stuck on it. In theory this was for safety, but actually they achieved about eight potatoes a day by this ruse. Ebin went a little way over the bridge, which was built of stones from the Alcester Monastery by the Normans. The stones had been worn away in several places by generations of butchers sharpening their knives on them.

  He stood looking down at the river, which had returned to its banks but was flowing very fast and full. In some way the river flowing with such purpose a
nd determination depressed Willoweed. He felt humiliated and a failure in everything he undertook; the thought of all those half-completed, mouse-nibbled manuscripts in his room saddened him even more. He bit his lower lip and gave the bridge a kick, then turned away towards Dr. Hatt’s house. Dr. Hatt was an old family friend, and regarded by the villagers as a miracle man since he had brought Hattie into the world after her mother’s death. She had been named after him.

  Willoweed walked up the steep flight of steps that led to the doctor’s house and rang the highly polished brass bell with the word ‘Visitors’ engraved on it. An elderly servant with a twisted back came to the door and asked him into the cool, flagstoned hall while she hobbled off to find Dr. Hatt. Francis Hatt was a rather melancholy-looking man until he smiled; then his whole face lit up in a delightful way and people talking to him often found themselves saying all manner of wild things to try to bring this smile back to his grave face. This morning he was distressed by his wife’s sudden illness and felt he could hardly bear Ebin Willoweed’s company. Nevertheless he asked his servant to bring some sherry, and decided to give half an hour to his old, but rather trying friend.

  It was over ten years ago that Ebin had returned to his mother’s house bringing with him his beautiful young wife and Emma, then a child of seven. The Daily Courier, which employed him as a gossip writer, had dismissed him because his carelessness had resulted in a libel action which had cost them a considerable amount of money. Jenny Willoweed was expecting a baby at that time, and Dr. Hatt attended her at her very difficult confinement. After Dennis’s birth he warned her that it might kill her to have another child. Eighteen months later she died giving birth to Hattie. She died some minutes before the child was born, but Francis Hatt had saved the child’s life. In the years that followed Ebin Willoweed had turned to the Doctor for friendship and used his house as a place of refuge from his mother. Francis Hatt had been shocked by the deterioration that had occurred in him; but, although he often found him tiresome, he had devoted a lot of his time to him at first in the hope of providing some stimulus and later from pity.

  Ebin Willoweed had hoped to be asked to stay for lunch; but no invitation materialised. He felt discouraged by the doctor’s distracted manner and suddenly took his departure, still feeling depressed in spite of the sherry.

  When he reached home he had a solitary lunch. The family had already eaten theirs. He caught sight of his mother ascending the stairs, still carrying the wicker carpet-beater and half-heartedly bashing a fly with it. She looked over the banisters and shouted, “You’re late, and your hair wants cutting,” then continued her climb to her bedroom for her afternoon sleep.

  As soon as she was enclosed in her peppermint-smelling room a drowsy peacefulness descended on the house. The maids went up the back stairs to the bedroom they shared, and took off the striped print frocks they wore in the morning. Eunice lay on their bed dressed only in a large white chemise, while Norah washed in a cracked china bowl. She held up her hair with one hand, and with the other worked away with a soapy flannel. The large mole on her chest showed above her camisole. When she had finished her toilet she rinsed the bowl and wiped it carefully with a cloth; but Eunice, when it was her turn to wash, left the basin filled with dark, scummy water. As they dressed in their black afternoon frocks they quarrelled over this. Then Norah lent her sister her silver brooch with Amelia, their dead mother’s name, engraved on it, and they were happy again and sat in the window with their arms around each other, looking down on the village street.

  In the garden Old Ives was tying up the flowers that had been damaged by the flood. While he worked he talked to his ducks, who were waddling about hopefully, as it was almost time for the red bucket to be filled with sharps and potato-peelings. Emma dawdled up to him and said:

  “Don’t you think, Ives, we should send a wreath to Grumpy Nan’s funeral? It’s tomorrow, and people seem to be making a great fuss about it.”

  “Of course they are making a fuss, her being drowned and all. It’s a long time since we had a drowning by flood; that’s an important event in this village. And don’t you worry about the wreath neither. I was just telling my ducks as you came along about the pretty wreath I’m going to make this evening. White peonies it will be made of, Miss, and little green grapes. There won’t be another to touch it, will there, my dears?” and he turned to the ducks who agreed with him in chorus.

  “Thank you, Ives,” she said, “no one makes wreaths like you,” and she left him still talking to his white birds.

  “If ever I die,” she thought, “I’d like a wreath of water lilies, only they’d go brown so soon.”

  She came to a swing that hung from a pine tree near the river. Once when she had been swinging on it she had disturbed a bumble-bee from above, and it came buzzing out from the pines and was as large as a lemon; but when she told people about this they wouldn’t believe her and said it must have been a buzzing bird. She sat in the swing now in the hope of seeing this strange insect again. She swung for a few minutes; but no lemon-sized bee appeared. So she sat quite still dreamily gazing at the shining river between the pine trees.

  She had pinned her hair in a large knot at the nape of her neck, and she felt very conscious of her altered appearance.

  “But no one will notice,” she thought.

  She looked down at her little feet in the clumsy shoes made by the village cobbler, and she felt like crying. Even Eunice wore pointed black shoes with high heels on her day out. Twice a year the cobbler, who was also the village bookmaker, came to the house by the river and measured the feet of anyone who needed new shoes; and a week or two later he came again with some clumsy pieces of leather heavily nailed together. It was the same when Emma or Hattie needed new clothes. Lolly Bennet would be summoned from the little house that you had to go down steps to reach the front door. She was the village old maid, and almost a dwarf. It was with great difficulty that she managed the great bales of cloth provided by Grandmother Willoweed, who stood over the poor little thing as she crawled about the floor with her mouth full of pins trying to cut dresses with the aid of paper patterns.

  “You will waste the material if you cut it like that, you little freak. Good God! Don’t you know how to make a gusset? If you let your hands shake like that you will cut the material to ribbons,” and so it went on. The results of Lolly Bennet’s labours were lumpy and bunchy, and dipped at the back and cut across the shoulders. Grandmother Willoweed had not added to her own wardrobe for twenty-five years and she still wore a form of bustle.

  As Emma sat swinging gently she felt overcome with a longing for beautiful clothes and an admirer, or several admirers; overcome with a longing to travel, perhaps even in a private yacht. She imagined a white one gliding through impossibly blue water, and saw herself on deck wearing an evening gown with a train. And then there was the tango. How beautiful it would be to tango to exotic music, and perhaps go to something called a tango tea! Her thoughts were disturbed by the sound of shrill chirping and she remembered she had not fed the small chickens that had been bought to replace the ones that had been drowned….

  She wandered towards the kitchen, and there was Norah sitting in the Windsor armchair, staring into space with unseeing eyes. On her lap was her best black straw hat, which she was absentmindedly stabbing with a hatpin.

  Norah had spent the afternoon in the damp cottage where Fig the gardener lived with his mother. The village people rightly called Mrs. Fig a dirty little body. Her cottage was so filthy it was almost uninhabitable; but recently Norah had devoted her free afternoons to bringing some kind of order to the place. This afternoon, as she scrubbed floors and beat mats, Mrs. Fig had sat huddled over the fire and talked in her soft dreamy voice. Occasionally a stray tear slipped from her protruding, misty blue eyes. Her only garment was a greasy old mackintosh all gathered together with pins; it smelt sour. She was the village layer-out. When Fig returned for his tea, instead of the soggy bread that smelt of paraffin and t
he jar of fish paste with green mould on top which were usually arranged on a newspaper, there was a neatly laid table with a newly-baked cake. All around there was a strong smell of soap and floor polish.

  Fig drew down his long upper lip and scowled. Much as he disliked his mother’s filthy ways, he resented Norah’s interference even more. For some time he had suspected she was cleaning his mother’s cottage; now he knew. He sat down at the table with barely a nod to Norah and morosely ate her cake. She tried to make conversation and talked about the coming Coronation; but he only answered in monosyllables and the meal ended in complete silence.

  When he had finished eating, he pushed his chair back from the table and stood biting his nails for a moment. Then he went into the garden and started thinning carrots. Norah watched him from the window. She thought his long, sallow face the most handsome she had ever seen. “He’s like a Puritan,” she thought. Half-heartedly she listened to his mother’s gently complaining voice; then turned from the window and put on her hat and picked up her white cotton gloves.

  When she had said goodbye to Mrs. Fig she left the cottage. She had to pass Fig as she walked down the narrow cinder path. When she drew near him, she stopped and held up one of the net curtains that covered the currant bushes.

  “How well the currants are coming on, Mr. Fig,” she called gaily; but he only grunted and bent over the carrots. She turned away and sadly opened the gate. As she did so, she noticed two snails crawling over the grey-green wood. She suddenly took them off and hurled them across the road. Their shells cracked on the stones, and she looked over her shoulder at Fig; but he was still bent over the carrots.

  As Norah sat on that Windsor chair sticking pins in her best hat, her mind went over the events of the afternoon, and she wondered why Fig so persistently ignored her. Perhaps if she was as pretty as Eunice things would be different. Maybe she would take some of her savings from the post office and buy a new frock; or she could buy one through her club and pay so much a week. She had just finished paying for the grey corsets she was wearing; so she could afford to buy a dress. She imagined herself walking through the meadows on Fig’s arm. They would pass other couples and everyone would know they were “walking out”; their shoes would be new and shiny and make squeaks as they walked; perhaps they would sit on the river bank when it became dusk … Norah’s sadness departed, and she glanced round the room as if she had only just discovered herself there. When she saw Emma looking at her, she smiled and helped her chop up hard boiled eggs for the chickens. Afterwards they went down the garden together to pick peas for supper, and to dream their dreams in the summer dusk.