South of the Lights

by Angela Huth

  She stood in the hall listening to the crackle of the fire behind her, smelling the smoke of apple boughs. Her problem this morning was whether or not to buy a Christmas tree. Every other year they had had one which reached the ceiling, frosted with firefly lights and glinting with glass balls. This year, she told herself, to decorate a tree would be absurd, a further mockery. And yet she was tempted. With only a few weeks to go, she might as well keep up the old standards, if only for her own benefit. But her thoughts were interrupted by the sight of an old woman walking up the drive, head swathed in a long scarf to protect her from strands of melting fog. Augusta opened the front door. The dank air slapped against her, at once causing the now familiar neuralgic pain to start up in her jaw.

  It was Lily Beal. She had speckled skin and a distinct beard. She lived by herself in an old cottage by the post office, and was the village expert at laying out the dead. This was a task she willingly undertook in return for a cup of mournful tea. Until her eyes had become too bad she had earned her living making lace. Last winter her coal store had been raided and she had nearly died of hypothermia.

  The warmth of the hall made Miss Beal shiver with relief. She clutched at her arms with bony hands. Augusta drew two chairs up to the fire. Miss Beal seemed nervous.

  ‘Terrible out,’ she said. ‘Fog gets into your lungs. They say Harry Andrews has only got a few more days. So I expect they’ll be calling me up in the middle of the night. They always seem to die at night, men. Women, now, are more considerate.’ She gave a little sniff, and unwrapped her scarf. The face was still heart-shaped, the dim eyes set wide apart. Augusta saw that once she must have been pretty. ‘Ah, yes,’ she went on, ‘I knew Harry Andrews as a young man. Fine young man, he was, then, too. You’d never have supposed . . . to look at him now. Well, that’s how it goes, Mrs Browne. One day there’s your man all strong. The next you’re laying him out.’ She gazed into the flames, apparently seeing the dying Mr Andrews as she had known him all those years ago. ‘Anyhow, what I’ve come for, not to waste your time, is a request on behalf of the Darby and Joan Club.’ She paused, took courage. ‘Seeing as your husband is away, we were wondering if you might be so kind as to represent him at our Chrismas party this year?’

  ‘I don’t go out much, these days,’ said Augusta. A mass of irrelevant thoughts came to mind: what if her face hurt as it did now? How could she bear to come back to the house, late, by herself?

  ‘It would just be of an evening,’ went on Miss Beal. ‘We’re laying on an entertainment, and everybody would be most obliged if you could come.’

  Augusta smiled. It was impossible to refuse. Lily Beal stood up, triumphant. She promised Augusta it would be a good evening, and returned to the front to depart efficiently now that her mission was over.

  ‘I see the swans are still with you,’ she said, looking towards the pond. ‘They’ve nested there every year since I was a child. We used to sneak into the garden and climb the willow tree to watch them. Those were the days I liked.’

  When she had gone Augusta felt a small surge of energy. The Darby and Joan Club’s Christmas party was a single date to look forward to in the decreasing days. Determined to take her chance, to make use of the energy while it lasted, she went to her study. She would begin the job she had been putting off for days: sorting out, throwing away, putting into boxes, dividing. That would be the worst part – the division of things.

  She sat at her desk and opened the first drawer. It was filled with old letters from Hugh. She began to re-read them, knowing her own foolishness. But in moments of despair, when the essence of the past is distorted by present doubts, evidence of the truth brings some comfort. The irony of such evidence may mean renewed regret: but just to be reminded is an indulgence few can resist. Augusta, that November morning, gave way to temptation, and was able to postpone for another day the ordeal of packing up.

  It was both cold and stuffy in the chicken house. Brenda sat on an upturned box smoking a Woodbine. She listened to the banging on the roof – Wilberforce was mending the leak at last. The noise disturbed the chickens. They shuffled from claw to claw, irritated: the noise of their clucking increased. For the last week, in fact, they had seemed generally unhappy. Perhaps it was the cold: they liked neither the intense heat of summer, nor this dankness of November. Spring and autumn was their best time. Well, it was hers, too, thought Brenda. Next spring would be a good one. Settled in the new house by then, maybe her own chickens at the bottom of the garden. Maybe pregnant. Of late, surprising herself, she hadn’t half fancied having a baby. But doubtless the mood would wear off.

  Brenda stood up, stamped to warm her feet, moved off down the rows of chickens. Some of them worried her. Some of them seemed really under the weather, and no one to care a damn about them except her. She couldn’t tell what exactly it was to worry about. But she was aware of a general feeling of discontent, hostility. When she came into the shed, early mornings, they no longer set up their cluck of welcome. It was as if they’d ceased to care, as if they were exhausted by all the eggs they had laid and waited, apathetic about their fate, to die. Clarissa, for instance – Clarissa who laid the biggest eggs of all. She hardly laid at all now, and when she did the eggs were mean specimens, not much larger than a bantam’s eggs. She no longer squawked boastfully as she laid, either, but kept her silence, ashamed, as she watched her tiny product slip through the grille for Brenda to collect. Roberta, most jealous bird in the shed, no longer considered it worth pecking at Clarissa: but still the patch of raw skin on her neck remained, implumed, a raw and shining pink. Brenda had a nasty feeling Clarissa would be next to die. She doubted if she could last the winter. She pushed her finger through the wire and stroked the bird’s head. In the old days, Clarissa would have been proud of such a privilege, reacted with a murmurous purr. Now, she merely half-opened her pithy eyelids for a moment, dim acknowledgement of Brenda’s concern, and let them fall again.

  Marilyn, sex queen of all the birds, was brooding too. Spring was far off, and perhaps she knew it would bring no rewards of the kind she desired. She sat in her coop mourning her frustrated past, a streak of blonde feathers curling down one side of her head. Brenda had a plan for Marilyn: when her own chickens were established at the bottom of her garden, she would ask Wilberforce to sell her. Brenda would turn her into a free-range bird, give her a chance to strut the earth with puffed-up breast, and cast her coquettish eye towards the cockerel . . . But even as she reflected, Brenda knew that the plan was no more than a dream. After so long in her battery, Marilyn would be in no condition to withstand the rigours of an ordinary chicken run. She would be cast out by the other birds, the last of her sexuality demolished by their scorn. She would choke upon a cabbage stalk and die. It would be kindest to leave her where she was, an old flirt with no one to flirt for, rather than to know the bitterness of disillusion.

  Brenda moved on to Floribunda, most faithfully affectionate of all the birds. Floribunda had acted with great dignity when Brenda had not made her queen. She had understood you could not have a queen of the shed with a paralysed leg. Quietly, she had clucked about the matter to herself, but otherwise gave every appearance of welcoming Brenda’s decision. Each time Brenda passed her coop, Floribunda stirred herself on her good leg and murmured appreciation. Flattered, Brenda paid Floribunda more attention than the other birds in return. In fact, since the death of Elizabeth, Floribunda had become her favourite. She tried to fight against her feelings because she knew that for Floribunda, too, the days were numbered, and she did not look forward to all the distress of another bird’s death. As for Daisy, next door to Floribunda, she hadn’t turned out to be a very prepossessing queen. She was a dull bird, reliable in the matter of eggs, but with little charm. Responsibilities of her position had taken their toll, it seemed, too: her comb, once brightest in the shed, now drooped, an undistinguished red, symbolising a slipping crown.

  ‘Poor old Queen Daisy,’ whispered Brenda, ‘you weren’t really cu
t out for the job, were you?’

  Lack of spirits in the chicken shed this morning had affected Brenda. She relied on her birds for understanding all her moods, and when they did not give it she felt at a loss. The dank air was particularly depressing, the stench of bird muck sour, and Wilberforce’s perpetual banging jangled Brenda’s nerves. She would have liked to have left the shed for the office, but a feeling of protection towards the hens kept her where she was. Should Wilberforce’s confounded banging cause too much alarm, she wished to be there to comfort. Cold fingers shaking, she lit another Woodbine.

  The door suddenly opened. Wilberforce stood there, massive, wisps of fog clinging to his hair and legs. He came in, swinging a hammer, pulled the door shut behind him.

  ‘That’s done,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ said Brenda.

  ‘Thought I told you not to smoke in the sheds.’

  ‘So you did.’

  Brenda saw him loom towards her, unshaven face dark in the poor light. He snatched the cigarette from her mouth, threw it on the ground, crushed it with his foot. Brenda did not move.

  ‘Bloody cheek,’ he said, ‘you deserve the sack. Anyone else, I’d tell them to go within the hour.’

  ‘Sack me if you like,’ said Brenda. Wilberforce looked at her in silence, eyes sneering all over her, prying through the thick wool of her jersey.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  Brenda shrugged.

  ‘It’s up to you,’ she said, ‘I don’t care one way or the other.’

  Wilberforce leant up against the coops, blocking Clarissa’s view. She gave a cluck of protest.

  ‘That’s what’s the matter with women. They don’t care a damn, one way or another. Treat you like dirt. They’re all the same.’

  Brenda smiled slightly.

  ‘You having trouble?’ she asked.

  ‘You could put it that way. City women lead you a merry dance, judging by my experience.’

  ‘Bad luck,’ said Brenda.

  ‘You don’t sound very sorry.’

  ‘I’m not, very. I daresay you give them as good as you get.’

  ‘Unfeeling bitch, you are. I’d like to get my hands on you, one day. Teach you a thing or two.’

  Brenda looked at him with defiance. She opened and shut her eyes very slowly.

  ‘You’ll never succeed there,’ she said.

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ said Wilberforce. He ran his hammer backwards and forwards across the wire of Clarissa’s coop. She moved nervously. ‘How’s it you got such bloody long eyelashes?’

  When it came to compliments, Brenda knew herself to be weak. She felt a shimmer of reluctant pleasure. To disguise it, she tried to look scornful.

  ‘Don’t do that, if you don’t mind. You’ll frighten Clarissa.’

  Wilberforce laughed.

  ‘That her name, is it? Pretty name for an ugly old bird, I’d say. What, you spend all your time thinking up names for the chickens, do you?’ He bent down, peering into Clarissa’s coop. ‘Doesn’t look to me as if she’s much longer for this world, anyhow.’

  ‘She’s past her prime,’ said Brenda. Wilberforce’s callousness suddenly alarmed her.

  ‘Better put my hands round her neck, perhaps. Replace her with a new one.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Wilberforce straightened up again, moved nearer to Brenda. He looked her in the eye, mocking. ‘Got to be business-like, you know, in chicken farming, haven’t we?’

  ‘Clarissa’s all right,’ Brenda shouted, ‘I’ll let you know when she needs to be . . .’

  Wilberforce held up his hand. He ground his fingers into his palm, twisted his wrist, in imitation of strangling an imaginary bird. The hand was huge and cruel as Uncle Jim’s. It all came back in a flash, then, that loathesome day, the killing of Hen. Brenda screamed. Then the hand was upon her, its weight over her mouth, smelling of tar.

  ‘Shut up, you bitch.’ Wilberforce was shouting, too. The hens began an outraged cackling. Brenda struggled. She felt herself pushed against the coops. Wilberforce’s hand slid away from her mouth, gripped her shoulder. His other hand caged her breast. His lips were on hers, tongue deep in her mouth. She could taste onions, and salt.

  Brenda had no idea how long it was before she felt her body slacken. Opening her eyes, she saw Wilberforce’s eyes were shut. She saw a great chunk of greasy hair had fallen over his forehead. She saw a net of cobwebs across the grey skylight. The officious chatter of the birds filled her ears, familiar music. One of Wilberforce’s hands had left her breast, was sliding down her stomach, causing a spiral of vile desire for this man who repulsed her, leaving her weak.

  Suddenly Wilberforce pushed her away. She almost lost her balance, grabbed at the wire of Clarissa’s coop to stop herself falling. Perhaps Wilberforce had been aware of her reaction, and to spurn her now was his punishment for her rejections in the past.

  He stood looking down at her, licking his lips, smiling, horrible.

  ‘I’m giving you the sack,’ he said. ‘Do you want it?’

  Brenda was panting. She tried to control herself. Anger, fear, frustration, tears – they all fought within her.

  ‘Who would mind the birds?’ she asked, eventually. She had intended her voice to be strong, but it came out feebly.

  ‘No trouble in getting someone,’ said Wilberforce, ‘don’t you worry.’

  ‘You shit,’ said Brenda.

  ‘There’s a word for you, too,’ said Wilberforce. He banged at Clarissa’s coop with a clenched fist. ‘You won’t go, then?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. I haven’t had a rise in eighteen months . . .’

  ‘I could give you another couple of pounds a week, daresay. That’d be fair enough.’ The voice, for Wilberforce, was gentle.

  ‘I could tell Evans about all this,’ Brenda replied, ‘and he’d knock the living daylights out of you.’

  ‘I could tell him a thing or two as well. The way you carried on.’

  ‘He wouldn’t believe you.’

  ‘Daresay he wouldn’t. But it’d liven up his mind with a few suspicions, make him think twice about making you Mrs Evans, perhaps. Well, are you going or staying?’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ said Brenda. She knew she ought to go, right now, run from the shed, through the farmyard, and never speak to the bastard Wilberforce again. But then he would wring Clarissa’s neck before she was due to die. He wouldn’t care a bugger about any of the hens, just treat them as egg-laying machines. No, she couldn’t leave them, not just yet. ‘I’ll let you know this afternoon,’ she said.

  ‘No word by two o’clock, then, and I’ll assume you’re staying.’

  ‘Assume what you like,’ said Brenda, ‘but for Christ’s sake fuck off out of here now . . . before I spit.’

  Wilberforce smiled again.

  ‘That’s not the prettiest language I ever heard from the mouth of a beautiful girl,’ he said, and left the shed.

  When he had gone Brenda allowed herself to cry for a while. They were tears of anger. It was ridiculous that anyone despicable as Wilberforce could so affect her, but he was a cruel man and his cruelty frightened her. She shivered: revulsion. It occurred to her that the feeling she most dreaded, and she had suffered it many times in her life, was animal desire for a man who repelled her. Such perversity was beyond her understanding. On the occasions it happened it left her full of confusion, self-hatred and shame. That night at the Air Base it had been just the same . . . But she had no desire to start recalling all the occasions. She would leave the shed, walk to the house and see how it was getting on. Maybe she could concentrate on nice domestic things, like what colour they should paint the kitchen. Such problems would at least take her mind off Wilberforce, and the fate of his wretched hens.

  That same morning Lark suffered such bad indigestion she had to leave the office. At home she took a clutch of pills and lay down for a while, but the pain was relentless. She decided that movement would be better. Walki
ng, she was forced to bend almost double. But the concentration required to move at all, she felt, might alleviate the agony. She wrapped a long mohair scarf round her neck and went out.

  On the bus to the village, perhaps dulled by the mass of pills or dislodged by the movement of the vehicle, the pain began to subside. The relief brought transitory happiness. Lark felt herself smiling at the fog out of the windows, at the occasional lighted window, and the bear shapes of the people on the pavements. She was a little amazed to find herself on this journey. There had been no conscious thought of going to Evans’s and Brenda’s house, but now she found herself making her way there the idea of wandering through the empty rooms, imagining them as she would make them, was exciting.

  She arrived at the estate – walking in more upright fashion now the pain had almost gone – as the church clock struck eleven-thirty. Builders, fuzzy shaped in the fog, were working on several other half-finished houses: in the dank air chipping noises of hammer on stone sounded like tuneless bells. There was no one in the Evans house. Lark walked through the front entrance which still lacked a door. She saw at once there had been much progress since her last visit. The floors had been laid with concrete. The windows were in, the smooth plaster walls almost dry.

  Lark went to the kitchen. There, the sink unit had been fixed under the window. She leant against it, feeling the hard ridge dig into the skin of her ribs where, much deeper, a different kind of pain had so lately seared her guts. She looked through the small square window, half-veiled with condensation. The garden was a narrow stretch of bald earth. At the end was the indefinite shape of a tree. Brenda would get to know this view so well she would no longer notice it. For years and years she would stand here, hands among the plates in soapy water seeing the tree in a haze of young green, or autumn gold, or with its bare winter arms: while behind her she would listen to the sound of Evans eating at the Formica table, and to the chatter of her children. Lark sighed. She knew it was not her fate ever to be part of so desirable a scene. This did not make for bitterness, but for a resigned sadness. For it was impossible not to think that if it had been her Evans had loved, instead of merely wanting to crush in a fit of lust, she would have made him so much more suitable a wife. She would have seen to his daily needs in a way that would never interest Brenda. Even now, Brenda couldn’t fry a decent egg, let alone iron a shirt. It was unlikely she would ever master Queen of Puddings, Evans’s favourite, and yet Brenda was the one he had chosen to stand at his kitchen window for all the years to come . . .