“My address, madam, will be the Hotel Splendide—at Aix. I am going into partnership with Monsieur François. Yes, the ‘Splendide’ belongs to Monsieur François. I am to manage the hotel.”
She had glared at him.
“You—manage an hotel! Well—really!”
“Yes, really. After all—it may be less difficult—than driving madam’s car.”
JACK AND ANDREW
They had served together in the war, and been wounded within three yards of each other, and they resided in the same post-war street of the same post-war suburb. Foster lived with his people; Snaith was in rooms. Neither of them had married, Foster because he was always falling in and out of love, Snaith because he took himself and life and women so seriously that he appraised and handled the romance until the glamour had gone.
They caught the same train to town, and went to dances together and played tennis and golf, and were—to a point—inseparable. Snaith, dark, intense, and prone to reticence, found the smooth and cheerful casualness of Foster rather pleasant. And Foster admired “Old Andrew. A bit solemn and serious, you know, but utterly white.”
Snaith was in a shipping office and hating it. Foster had a billet in one of the London stores, and he accepted his job so cheerfully and regarded it so obviously as a makeshift that when economy became the order of the day Foster was one of the first to be axed. He treated the catastrophe as a joke. He was not depressed by the glum faces of his parents, or chafed by his sister Rachel’s candour.
“It doesn’t seem to worry you, Jack.”
“Not a bit. I’m a gentleman at large.”
“A sponge at large.”
“A what?”
“I said—a sponge.”
“Oh, cat’s claws! Fact is—I’ve got a scheme in view.”
“Oh! Lounge lizardry—or something?”
“No. Old Andrew’s joining up with me. He’s fed to the teeth with Bluett & Bolsover. We’ve got some capital between us.”
“Capital?”
“Well—I’ve still got the three hundred Aunt Mary left me. Old Andrew can put down a thousand. We’re going to grow fruit and breed chickens in Sussex. No end of a life. No damned trains to catch. No ‘Heads’ getting swollen and sniffy.”
His sister blew down her cigarette holder, and frowned at the fire.
“Well, if Andrew’s in it—I won’t say it’s damned silly. Neither of you know a pullet from a cockerel.”
“What a little blighter you are. We’re both going as students for three months to a chap down at Horsham. Old Andrew’s as keen as mustard. Says he’s choking in this crowd community.”
She glanced slantwise and with half-closed eyes at her brother.
“Oh, yes, Andrew’s all right. He’s got a head.”
“Thanks, Rachel. Mine’s not exactly a pumpkin.”
They served their apprenticeship with the man at Horsham, and during the week-ends they explored Sussex in a dilapidated two-seater. The perfect place was not easy to find, for Snaith, who was risking more capital in the enterprise, utterly refused to consider anything in the way of an inflamed wart—otherwise a bungalow. He called them sore spots in Sussex. His idea was an old farm half-way up the Forest Ridge, a place that could be regarded as a bargain and mortgaged if needs be.
They found their farm one March day. It was sufficiently wild even for Snaith. It reposed on the shoulder of the ridge, a little red house guarded by a group of wind-blown pines. The outbuildings were not too bad, the slope of the ground south-west and dryish, grass and patched with furze. The Weald was a blue green carpet stretching to the silver grey distance of the Downs. A rather muddy lane led to the high-road.
“Absolutely O.K., old man.”
“Absolutely. Plenty of storage room. The barn roof wants a little attention.”
“Have to pump our own water. Still, never mind. No damned water rate.”
They called the place “Journey’s End.” Jack, who had come to fancy himself considerably as a carpenter, made and painted a board and fastened it on the gate at the end of the lane.
They moved in in April with a collection of very odd furniture, two second-hand fowl-houses, two brooders, two Sussex arks, and a number of young birds, Leghorns and Rhodes. They proposed to spend the spring and summer in putting “Journey’s End” into order and preparing it to function as a farm. They planned to erect wire and build their own fowl-houses. Next winter they would plant fruit trees in a field that was sheltered by a wood belonging to the farm.
Those spring and summer months were like a holiday to both these men. They had no morning train to catch, no dull office routine to bore them. Life was comparatively easy, with no fires to light or lamps to look to, for they rose early and went to bed at dusk. Certainly, their meals were rough and ready, and the washing up and bed-making somewhat scrappy. Jack fancied himself as a cook. He fancied himself at most things, and to begin with life on a farm was rather a joke.
They turned the barn into a food-store and a carpenter’s shop. A little ingenuity promised to convert the stable into an incubator-house. They erected wire pens. They explored the south coast for future markets. Someone gave Snaith an introduction to the manager of a biggish hotel, and the manager was ready to enter into a contract with them for birds and eggs, provided they would promise a regular supply.
Cheerfully they promised it.
Jack lived largely among shavings and sawdust. He was the designer and creator of the firm’s houses. Certainly the construction of fowl-houses was new to him, but he had one to copy, and if he scamped some of the work and introduced improvisations of his own, destiny had not yet come home to roost.
“Saving three quid or so—on every house, old lad.”
Snaith smiled upon him. During those first few months he accepted Jack as the ideal partner.
Their young stock was growing up, and in September they purchased fifty pullets from a breeder who advertised a special laying strain. As yet food had to be purchased, and the meal and corn-bins emptied themselves, and rats became attentive, and no money was coming in, but that was all part of the game.
“When we get going, old lad, we’ll show ’em something.”
They supposed that they would get going in October.
Meanwhile, the purchase and planting of fruit trees had to be postponed since most of their capital had been involved, and the grocer and the milkman insisted upon being paid. They could command some garden produce of their own, greens and a potato crop that had been rushed in. Jack fancied himself at chip potatoes and sausages, and if he served up a greasy mess Snaith’s stomach held out till October. He was a dyspeptic subject, but you could not quarrel with a volunteer cook.
Suddenly, the scene seemed to change. Autumn descended upon them, an autumn that was more like winter. Sussex gales arrived, and mud, and early darkness, and dim damp dawns. The golden edge of the adventure seemed to tarnish. It became necessary to light a fire in that brute of a fire-place in the sitting-room, a sulky, smoky cavern.
Snaith took this on. After all, Foster prepared breakfast.
It blew, it rained, and one day it snowed. Even the birds seemed to mope on the hill-side. Their owners expected them to lay.
“The Rhodes are reddening up, Andie.”
“It’s about time. I think they ought to have more shelter. A few hurdles.”
“Where are we to get ’em?”
“There are a lot of faggots lying in the wood. We might hump some up.”
They did, but the faggots were three years old and when Jack and Andrew tried to improvise hedges, the bands broke and the brittle stuff fell to bits.
“Damn the bloody things.”
Their tempers were not quite so serene as they had been.
The arrangement was that they should take turns at the feeding, week by week, and that the partner who was not feeding should clean houses and do odd jobs. It happened to be Snaith’s turn to clean houses. Now, Snaith was a tall fellow, and Foster no more
than five feet six, and Foster appeared to have designed his houses for a little chap to work in. Snaith was always bumping his head, or finding his hat rubbing against a perch, and to begin with he blamed himself. “How damned silly of me.” But as the adventure lost its glamour, and the world became muddied, and Foster’s filthy Irish stew and soapy potatoes and greasy bacon began to lie heavy on Snaith’s soul, he ceased to blame himself. He found himself blaming Foster for the smallness of the houses and for the absurd places in which he had fixed perches, and for nesting boxes whose roofs became polluted and had to be scraped.
“Damn Foster. Couldn’t the fool have given a chap more head-room?”
Scraping the excreta of fowls into a bucket did not appear to be the right sort of job for a man of intelligence. Moreover, the houses were odoriferous, and indigestion was making Snaith squeamish. He remarked during lunch on the smallness of the houses, and as usual Foster had produced Irish stew.
“A bit smelly? They want limewashing, old lad.”
Jack was showing signs of becoming a noisy feeder. He devoured the sloppy mess as though he enjoyed it. He had a rosy face and a stomach that was never discouraged.
Andrew was curt with him.
“Well, you’d better do it.”
“Me? It’s your work, my dear.”
“Well, you made the damned houses.”
“What’s wrong with the houses?”
“Packing-cases on legs. No room to move. Why didn’t you turn out an efficient, practical job? Having to crawl, and twist yourself into knots.”
Jack’s colour seemed to freshen. Really, old Andrew was growing very peevish.
“Well, they weren’t designed for a camel.”
Andrew pushed his plate away.
“Pass the cheese. I can’t manage this——”
Almost he had referred to Jack’s stew as “muck” but he refrained. He realized that life was becoming a matter of much reticence. He was always refraining with regard to Jack, and to Jack’s casual cocksureness, his untidy habits, his cooking, his facetiousness, his eternal cigarettes, even his personal appearance. Why didn’t the fellow brush his hair properly and get it cut? As for Jack, he had secret things to say about Andrew. Really, old Andie was becoming the limit, regular fussy and nagging old woman.
So, the rift between them widened until Jack thought Andrew “funny,” and Andrew thought Jack a fool.
They were too much together, and the house was becoming a regular piggery, a place that would have justified the plain housewife’s dictum that “Men are dirty beasts.” The incipient squalor did not worry Jack. After all, it was nothing like the war. But Snaith, more squeamish both in stomach and soul, began to fret and to rebel in secret. A squatter’s life—minus feminine hands—was a loathsome business. Washing your own socks! His sense of humour was so much in abeyance that he did not allow that woman might have something to say on the assumption that all domestic functioning is female.
Moreover, those infernal pullets were refusing to lay.
“That chap’s done the dirty on us, old man.”
“He guaranteed them to be March birds.”
“Let’s write him a stinker.”
“No good. He’ll say it’s our fault.”
And no doubt it was.
That was not all. Snaith began to discover in his partner symptoms of slackness. Jack was not a good getter-up, especially on bleak black mornings when bed was pleasant and the atmosphere of that old farm-house raw and icy. It was full of draughts, and Snaith was always leaving doors open. Though lean and long he appeared less sensitive to cold than Foster. Yet, Jack’s lying in bed would not have been so serious a matter had he continued to carry out his share of the feeding efficiently. They were serving hot mash to the birds, and Andrew discovered that Jack was producing a sloppy mess instead of a nice, crumbling porridge. Also, when inspecting some of the dry-mash hoppers he found that Jack had forgotten to fill them.
He spoke upon the subject.
“No wonder the birds aren’t laying. There was no feed in the hoppers of Nos. 1 and 6.”
“I filled ’em yesterday, old dear.”
“Don’t talk rot. You can’t have done. And you’re making the wet mash too sloppy.”
“Oh, all right, all right, old Brass Hat. Official tour of inspection, what!”
Andrew was icy.
“May I point out that I have supplied more than three-quarters of the capital for this show.”
“So—you expect me to do three-quarters of the work?”
“Don’t be silly. You’re not thorough. You’re slapdash——”
“Shut up.”
“It’s a fact.”
“Oh, shut up. Supposing you do the cooking for a change.”
“Well—I couldn’t be worse at it.”
“My God—you’re just like a nagging old woman.”
The rift widened into sulky silences, and monosyllabic aloofness, and perhaps because of the incipient gloom Jack began to seek distractions. He wasn’t a celibate creature. He was always crashing off in the two-seater on Saturday or Sunday afternoons, dressed up and with somewhere to go. Girls? Obviously. Jack was marvellously popular with the women. He danced well, and could be so gaillard and irresponsible.
Snaith gloomed and stayed at home to work and read D. H. Lawrence or Virginia Woolf. He could be that sort of man. No one had taught him to laugh.
The crisis gathered.
Andrew sallied forth on one dark December morning. It was his week’s tour of feeding. He carried with him the bucket of hot mash, and since a bitter north-easter was blowing he decided to feed the birds inside the houses. As was usual he banged his head and banged it badly in one of Jack’s preposterous doorways. He swore.
“Curse you.”
His maledictions included the birds, creatures who mopped up food, and only a quarter of whom were laying.
Returning with the empty bucket to the farm he found the fire unlit and no breakfast in prospect. He had cooked up the mash on an oil stove. He was cold, and for once he was hungry, and that blighter—Jack——. He floundered up the narrow stairs, and shoved his partner’s door open. Ah—of course, Foster was still snoozing in bed.
Snaith went in, and with one fierce grab, stripped the clothes from the happy sluggard.
“Get up, you lazy swine.”
The epithet might have been forgiven, but if there was one thing that spoilt Jack’s temper it was being disturbed abruptly and dragged from sweet repose. He sat up. He glared. His hair was a mop.
“What the devil——?”
“Get up. It’s half-past eight.”
“Well, what of it?”
“You lazy devil.”
“Here, damn you, get out of my room.”
Jack whisked out of bed, and seizing a large sponge from the washhand stand threw it at Andrew. It caught him full in the face. It was a cold and slimy sponge, suggestive of inefficient rinsings and too much soap. Contact with it roused in Snaith a chilly and profound disgust.
He picked up the sponge and tossed it into Jack’s bed.
“Why don’t you wash properly. That thing’s filthy.”
“Get out of my room, damn you.”
Snaith went, but dourly so and at his leisure. He was not going to be browbeaten by this cocky young slacker. He retired below and prepared his own breakfast, but there was just enough tea in the pot for one. Foster could get his own grub, damn him!
There followed two sullen, sulky days. Christmas was in the air, but the spirit of it did not penetrate to “Journey’s End.” Snaith was on his dignity, Foster suffering from a sense of wrong. He had begun to think that the City was not such a bad place, and that though an office might be a little overcharged with managerial guff it was less poisonous than living in a lone farm-house with a moody introvert like Snaith. Jack did not use the word “Introvert.” He had never heard of the term. He referred to Andrew in secret and in the vulgar tongue as a sneering, liverish swine. Andrew
needed regular doses of Kruschen. Andrew ought to be taken in hand by an amorous negress. Andrew needed a new stomachic outfit.
The life in this Sussex mud-patch had reduced them to the crude naturalism of the war, without any of the war’s compensating comradeship. The place was a piggery. Neither of them could be held guiltless of a casual and coarsened attitude to life. For Mother Earth is not by nature kind to her children. She may appear merciless to those who have not been born and bred in her lap. She may offer them—not beauty—but mud, monotony, and boiled potatoes.
No. Jack was preparing to assert that trying to make a living on the land was a disgusting illusion. It might be all very well for some rich chap to farm as a hobby, but farming for profit, and with a partner like old Aguecheek! Yes, there were limits.
He had arranged to spend Christmas Day at the Imperial Hotel, Brighton. A girl he knew was staying there with her people. Dinner and dance! Fizz, crackers, a jazz band! Ye gods—that was the stuff!
He issued an ultimatum to Andrew.
“I’m blowing off on Christmas Day. You can have Boxing Day.”
“Thanks. I’m going to stick to the job.”
“You would do.”
“Charmed—I’m sure. Somebody paying for you?”
“Oh, shut up.”
Then there arrived a letter for Jack. It came from his sister Rachel, and it told him that she was proposing to visit them on Christmas Day. The pater had promised her the car. She might help to cook their dinner for them. And if they could improvise a bed she would stay the night.
Jack was annoyed.
“Cook our dinner! She’s cooked my goose.”
“Take her to Brighton with you.”
“Gooseberry! No thanks. Well—I don’t see why you shouldn’t entertain her.”
“What about the proprieties?”
“My god, you’re not as bad as all that, are you? Good lord! What about that night at Amiens when you——”
“May I suggest that your sister and a French——”
“Rot! Just women——. Of course—in a damned suburb you have to pretend——”
“I’m not pretending. Your sister——”
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