Keede nodded.
‘Then Uncle John says something to me about seein’ Ma an’the rest of ’em in a few days, an’ had I any messages for ’em? Gawd knows what made me do it, but I told ’im to tell Auntie Armine I never expected to see anything like her up in our part of the world. And while I told him I laughed. That’s the last time I ’ave laughed. “Oh – you’ve seen ’er, ’ave you?” says he, quite natural-like. Then I told ’im about the sandbags an’ rags in the dark, playin’ the trick. “Very likely,” says he, brushin’ the mud off his puttees. By this time, we’d got to the corner where the old barricade into French End was – before they bombed it down, sir. He turns right an’ climbs across it. “No,thanks,” says I. “I’ve been there once this evenin’.” But he wasn’t attendin’ to me. He felt behind the rubbish an’ bones just inside the barricade, an’ when he straightened up, he had a full brazier in each hand.
‘“Come on, Clem,” he says, an’ he very rarely give me me own name. “You aren’t afraid, are you?” he says. “It’s just as short, an’ if Jerry starts up again he won’t waste stuff here. He knows it’s abandoned.”“Who’s afraid now?” I says. “Me for one,” says he. “I don’t want my leaf spoiled at the last minute.”Then ’e wheels round an’ speaks that bit you said come out o’the Burial Service.’
For some reason Keede repeated it in full, slowly: ‘If, after the manner of men, I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me if the dead rise not?’
‘That’s it,’ said Strangwick. ‘So we went down French End together – everything froze up an’ quiet, except for their creakin’s. I remember thinkin’– his eyes began to flicker.
‘Don’t think. Tell what happened,’ Keede ordered.
‘Oh! Beg y’ pardon! He went on with his braziers, hummin’his hymn, down Butcher’s Row. Just before we got to the old dressin’-station he stops and sets ’em down an’ says: “Where did you say she was, Clem? Me eyes ain’t as good as they used to be.”
‘“In ’er bed at ’ome,” I says. “Come on down. It’s perishin’cold, an’I’m not due for leaf.”
‘“Well, I am,”’e says. “I am …” An’then – give you me word I didn’t recognise the voice – he stretches out ’is neck a bit, in a way ’e ’ad, an’ he says: “Why Bella!”’e says. “Oh, Bella!”’e says. “Thank Gawd!”’e says. Just like that! An’ then I saw – I tell you I saw – Auntie Armine herself standin’ by the old dressin’-station door where first I’d thought I’d seen her. He was lookin’ at ’er an’ she was lookin’ at him. I saw it, an’ me soul turned over inside me because – because it knocked out everything I’d believed in. I ’ad nothin’ to lay ‘old of, d’ye see? An’’e was lookin’ at ’er as though he could ’ave et ’er, an’ she was lookin’ at ’im the same way, out of ’er eyes. Then he says: “Why, Bella,”’e says, “this must be only the second time we’ve been alone together in all these years.” An’ I saw ’er halfhold out her arms to ’im in that perishin’ cold. An’ she nearer fifty than forty an’ me own Aunt! You can shop me for a lunatic tomorrow, but I saw it – I saw ’er answerin’ to his spoken word! … Then ’e made a snatch to unsling ’is rifle. Then ’e cuts ’is hand away saying: “No! Don’t tempt me, Bella. We’ve all Eternity ahead of us. An hour or two won’t make any odds.” Then he picks up the braziers an’ goes on to the dug-out door. He’d finished with me. He pours petrol on ’em, an’ lights it with a match, an’ carries ’em inside, flarin’. All that time Auntie Armine stood with ’er arms out – an’ a look in ’er face! I didn’t know such things was or could be! Then he comes out an’ says: “Come in, my dear”; an’ she stoops an’goes into the dug-out with that look on her face – that look on her face! An’ then ’e shuts the door from inside an’ starts wedgin’ it up. So ’elp me Gawd, I saw an’’eard all these things with my own eyes an’ ears!’
He repeated his oath several times. After a long pause Keede asked him if he recalled what happened next.
‘It was a bit of a mix-up, for me, from then on. I must have carried on – they told me I did, but – but I was – I felt a – a long way inside of meself, like – if you’ve ever had that feelin’. I wasn’t rightly on the spot at all. They woke me up sometime next morning, because ’e ’adn’t showed up at the train; an’some one had seen him with me. I wasn’t ’alf cross-examined by all an’ sundry till dinner-time.
‘Then, I think, I volunteered for Dearlove, who ’ad a sore toe, for a front-line message. I had to keep movin’, you see, because I hadn’t anything to hold on to. Whilst up there, Grant informed me how he’d found Uncle John with the door wedged an’ sandbags stuffed in the cracks. I hadn’t waited for that. The knockin, when e’ wedged up was enough for me. Like Dad’s coffin.’
‘No one told me thedoor had been wedged.’ Keede spoke severely.
‘No need to black a dead man’s name, sir.’
‘What made Grant go to Butcher’s Row?’
‘Because he’d noticed Uncle John had been pinchin’ charcoal for a week past an’ layin’ it up behind the old barricadethere. So when the ’unt began, he went that way straight as a string, an’ when he saw the door shut, he knew. He told me he picked the sandbags out of the cracks an’ shoved ’is hand through and shifted the wedges before any one come along. It looked all right. You said yourself, sir, the door must ’ave blown to.’
‘Grant knew what Godsoe meant, then?’ Keede snapped.
‘Grant knew Godsoe was for it; an’ nothin’ early could ’elp or ’inder. He told me so.’
‘And then what did you do?’
‘I expect I must ’ave kept on carryin’ on, till Headquarters give me that wire from Ma – about Auntie Armine dyin’.’
‘When had your Aunt died?’
‘On the mornin’ of the twenty-first. The mornin’ of the 21st! That tore it, d’ye see? As long as I could think, I had kep’tellin’ myself it was like those things you lectured about at Arras when we was billeted in the cellars – the Angels of Mons, and so on. But that wire tore it.’
‘Oh! Hallucinations! I remember. And that wire tore it?’ said Keede.
‘Yes! You see’ – he half lifted himself off the sofa – ‘there wasn’t a single gor-dam thing left abidin’ for me to take hold of, here or hereafter. If the dead do rise – and I saw ’em – why – why anything can ’appen. Don’t you understand?’
He was on his feet now, gesticulating stiffly.
‘For I saw ’er,’ he repeated. ‘I saw ’im an’’er – she dead since mornin’ time, an’ he killin’’imself before my livin’ eyes so’s to carry on with ’er for all Eternity – an’ she ’oldin’ out ’er arms for it! I want to know where I’m at!Look ’ere, you two – why stand we in jeopardy every hour?’
‘God knows,’ said Keede to himself.
‘Hadn’t we better ring for some one?’ I suggested. ‘He’ll go off the handle in a second.’
‘No, he won’t. It’s the last kick-up before it takes hold. I know how the stuff works. Hul-lo!’
Strangwick, his hands behind his back and his eyes set, gave tongue in the strained, cracked voice of a boy reciting. ‘Not twice in the world shall the Gods do thus,’ he cried again and again.
‘And I’m damned if it’s goin’ to be even once for me!’ he went on with sudden insane fury. ‘I don’t care whether we ’ave been pricin’ things in the windows … Let ’er sue if she likes! She don’t know what reel things mean, I do – I’ve ’ad occasion to notice ’em … No, I tell you! I’ll ’ave ’em when I want ’em, an’ be done with ’em; but not till I see that look on a face … that look … I’m not takin’ any. The reel thing’s life an’ death. It begins at death, d’ye see. She can’t understand … Oh, go on an’ push off to Hell, you an’ your lawyers. I’m fed up with it – fed up!’
He stopped as abruptly as he had started, and the drawn face broke back to its natural irresolute lines. Keede, holding both his hands, led him back to the sofa, where he drop
ped like a wet towel, took out some flamboyant robe from a press, and drew it neatly over him.
‘Ye-es. That’s the real thing at last,’ said Keede. ‘Now he’s got it off his mind he’ll sleep. By the way, who introduced him?’
‘Shall I go and find out?’ I suggested.
‘Yes; and you might ask him to come here. There’s no need for us to stand to all night.’
So I went to the Banquet which was in full swing, and was seized by an elderly, precise Brother from a South London Lodge who followed me, concerned and apologetic. Keede soon put him at his ease.
‘The boy’s had trouble,’ our visitor explained. ‘I’m most mortified he should have performed his bad turn here. I thought he’d put it be’ind him.’
‘I expect talking about old days with me brought it all back,’said Keede. ‘It does sometimes.’
‘Maybe! Maybe! But over and above that, Clem’s had postwar trouble, too.’
‘Can’t he get a job? He oughtn’t to let that weigh on him, at his time of life,’ said Keede cheerily.
‘’Tisn’t that – he’s provided for – but’ – he coughed confidentially behind his dry hand – ‘as a matter of fact. Worshipful Sir, he’s – he’s implicated for the present in a little breach of promise action.’
‘Ah! That’s a different thing,’ said Keede.
‘Yes. That’s his reel trouble. No reason given, you understand. The young lady in every way suitable, an’ she’d make him a good little wife too, if I’m any judge. But he says she ain’t his ideel or something. ‘No getting at what’s in young people’s minds these days, is there?’
‘I’m afraid there isn’t,’ said Keede. ‘But he’s all right now. He’ll sleep. You sit by him, and when he wakes, take him home quietly … Oh, we’re used to men getting a little upset here. You’ve nothing to thank us for. Brother – Brother—’
‘Armine,’ said the old gentleman. ‘He’s my nephew by marriage.’
‘That’s all that’s wanted!’ said Keede.
Brother Armine looked a little puzzled. Keede hastened to explain. ‘As I was saying, all he wants now is to be kept quiet till he wakes.’
THE WISH HOUSE
The new Church Visitor had just left after a twenty minutes’call. During that time, Mrs Ashcroft had used such English as an elderly, experienced, and pensioned cook should, who had seen life in London. She was the readier, therefore, to slip back into easy, ancient Sussex (‘t’s softening to ‘d’s as one warmed) when the ’bus brought Mrs Fettley from thirty miles away for a visit, that pleasant March Saturday. The two had been friends since childhood; but, of late, destiny had separated their meetings by long intervals.
Much was to be said, and many ends, loose since last time, to be ravelled up on both sides, before Mrs Fettley, with her bag of quilt-patches, took the couch beneath the window commanding the garden, and the football-ground in the valley below.
‘Most folk got out at Bush Tye for the match there,’ she explained, ‘so there weren’t no one for me to cushion agin, the last five mile. An’ she do just-about bounce ye.’
‘You’ve took no hurt,’ said her hostess. ‘You don’t brittle by agein’, Liz.’
Mrs Fettley chuckled and made to match a couple of patches to her liking. ‘No, or I’d ha’ broke twenty year back. You can’t ever mind when I was so’s to be called round, can ye?’
Mrs Ashcroft shook her head slowly – she never hurried – and went on stitching a sack-cloth lining into a list-bound rush tool-basket. Mrs Fettley laid out more patches in the Spring light through the geraniums on the window-sill, and they were silent awhile.
‘What like’s this new Visitor o’ yourn?’ Mrs Fettley inquired,withanodtowardsthedoor.Beingveryshort-sighted, she had, on her entrance, almost bumped into the lady.
Mrs Ashcroft suspended the big packing-needle judicially on high, ere she stabbed home. ‘Settin’ aside she don’t bring much news with her yet, I dunno as I’ve anythin’ special agin her.’
‘Ourn, at Keyneslade,’ said Mrs Fettley, ‘she’s full o’ words an’ pity, but she don’t stay for answers. Ye can get on with your thoughts while she clacks.’
‘This ’un don’t clack. She’s aimin’ to be one o’ those High Church nuns, like.’
‘Ourn’s married, but, by what they say, she’ve made no great gains of it…’ Mrs Fettley threw up her sharp chin. ‘Lord! How they dam’ cherubim do shake the very bones o’ the place!’
The tile-sided cottage trembled at the passage of two specially chartered forty-seat charabancs on their way to the Bush Tye match; a regular Saturday ‘shopping’’bus, for the county’s capital, fumed behind them; while, from one of the crowded inns, a fourth car backed out to join the procession, and held up the stream of through pleasure-traffic.
‘You’re as free-tongued as ever, Liz,’ Mrs Ashcroft observed.
‘Only when I’m with you. Otherwhiles, I’m Granny – three times over. I lay that basket’s for one o’ your gran’chiller – ain’t it?’
‘ ’Tis for Arthur – my Jane’s eldest.’
‘But he ain’t workin’ nowhere, is he?’
‘No. ’Tis a picnic-basket.’
‘You’re let off light. My Willie, he’s allus at me for money for them aireated wash-poles folk puts up in their gardens to draw the music from Lunnon, like. An’ I give it ’im – pore fool me!’
‘An’ he forgets to give you the promise-kiss after, don’t he?’Mrs Ashcroft’s heavy smile seemed to strike inwards.
‘He do. ’No odds ’twixt boys now an’ forty year back. ’Take all an’ give naught – an’ we to put up with it! Pore fool we! Three shillin’ at a time Willie’ll ask me for!’
‘They don’t make nothin’ o’ money these days,’ Mrs Ashcroft said.
‘An’ on’y last week,’ the other went on, ‘me daughter, she ordered a quarter pound suet at the butchers’s; an’ she sent it back to ’im to be chopped. She said she couldn’t bother with choppin’ it.’
‘I lay he charged her, then.’
‘I lay he did. She told me there was a whisk-drive that afternoon at the Institute, an’ she couldn’t bother to do the choppin’.’
‘Tck!’
Mrs Ashcroft put the last firm touches to the basket-lining. She had scarcely finished when her sixteen-year-old grandson, a maiden of the moment in attendance, hurried up the garden-path shouting to know if the thing were ready, snatched it, and made off without acknowledgment. Mrs Fettley peered at him closely.
‘They’re goin’ picnickin’ somewheres,’ Mrs Ashcroft explained.
‘Ah,’ said the other, with narrowed eyes. ‘I lay he won’t show much mercy to any he comes across, either. Now ’oo the dooce do he remind me of, all a sudden?’
‘They must look arter theirselves – ’same as we did,’ Mrs Ashcroft began to set out the tea.
‘No denyin’ you could. Gracie,’ said Mrs Fettley.
‘What’s in your head now?’
‘Dunno … But it come over me, sudden-like – about dat woman from Rye – I’ve slipped the name – Barnsley, wadn’t it?’
‘Batten – Polly Batten, you’re thinkin’ of.’
‘That’s it – Polly Batten. That day she had it in for you with a hay-fork – ’time we was all hayin’ at Smalldene – for stealin’her man.’
‘But you heered me tell her she had my leave to keep him?’Mrs Ashcroft’s voice and smile were smoother than ever.
‘I did – an’ we was all looking that she’d prod the fork spang through your breastes when you said it.’
‘No-oo. She’d never go beyond bounds – Polly. She shruck too much for reel doin’s.’
‘Allus seems to me,’Mrs Fettley said after a pause, ‘that a man ’twixt two fightin’ women is the foolishest thing on earth. Like a dog bein’ called two ways.’
‘Mebbe. But what set ye off on those times, Liz?’
‘That boy’s fashion o’ carryin’ his head an’ arms. I haven’t right
ly looked at him since he’s growed. Your Jane never showed it, but – him!Why, ’tis Jim Batten and his tricks come to life again! … Eh?’
‘Mebbe. There’s some that would ha’ made it out so – bein’barren-like, themselves.’
‘Oho! Ah well! Dearie, dearie me, now! … An’Jim Batten’s been dead this—’
‘Seven and twenty year,’ Mrs Ashcroft answered briefly. ‘Won’t ye draw up, Liz?’
Mrs Fettley drew up to buttered toast, currant bread, stewed tea, bitter as leather, some home-preserved pears, and a cold boiled pig’s tail to help down the muffins. She paid all the proper compliments.
‘Yes. I dunno as I’ve ever owed me belly much,’ said Mrs Ashcroft thoughtfully. ‘We only go through this world once.’
‘But don’t it lay heavy on ye, sometimes?’ her guest suggested.
‘Nurse says I’m a sight liker to die o’ me indigestion than me leg.’ For Mrs Ashcroft had a long-standing ulcer on her shin, which needed regular care from the Village Nurse, who boasted (or others did, for her) that she had dressed it one hundred and three times already during her term of office.
‘An’ you that was so able, too! It’s all come on ye before your full time, like. I’ve watched ye goin’.’ Mrs Fettley spoke with real affection.
‘Somethin’s bound to find ye sometime. I’ve me ’eart left me still,’ Mrs Ashcroft returned.
‘You was always big-hearted enough for three. That’s somethin’ to look back on at the day’s eend.’
‘I reckon you’ve your back-lookin’s, too,’ was Mrs Ashcroft’s answer.
The Mark of the Beast and Other Fantastical Tales Page 75