She made playmates of the creatures of the farmyard, talking to them, telling them the stories she had from her mother, counselling them and correcting them. Brangwen found her at the gate leading to the paddock and to the duckpond. She was peering through the bars and shouting to the stately white geese, that stood in a curving line:
‘You’re not to call at people when they want to come. You must not do it.’
The heavy, balanced birds looked at the fierce little face and the fleece of keen hair thrust between the bars, and they raised their heads and swayed off, producing the long, can-canking, protesting noise of geese, rocking their ship-like, beautiful white bodies in a line beyond the gate.
‘You’re naughty, you’re naughty,’ cried Anna, tears of dismay and vexation in her eyes. And she stamped her slipper.
‘Why, what are they doing?’ said Brangwen.
‘They won’t let me come in,’ she said, turning her flashed little face to him.
‘Yi, they will. You can go in if you want to,’ and he pushed open the gate for her.
She stood irresolute, looking at the group of bluey-white geese standing monumental under the grey, cold day.
‘Go on,’ he said.
She marched valiantly a few steps in. Her little body started convulsively at the sudden, derisive Can-cank-ank of the geese. A blankness spread over her. The geese trailed away with uplifted heads under the low grey sky.
‘They don’t know you,’ said Brangwen. ‘You should tell ’em what your name is.’
‘They’re naughty to shout at me,’ she flashed.
‘They think you don’t live here,’ he said.
Later he found her at the gate calling shrilly and imperiously:
‘My name is Anna, Anna Lensky, and I live here, because Mr Brangwen’s my father now. He is, yes he is. And I live here.’
This pleased Brangwen very much. And gradually, without knowing it herself, she clung to him, in her lost, childish, desolate moments, when it was good to creep up to something big and warm, and bury her little self in his big, unlimited being. Instinctively he was careful of her, careful to recognise her and to give himself to her disposal.
She was difficult of her affections. For Tilly, she had a childish, essential contempt, almost dislike, because the poor woman was such a servant. The child would not let the serving-woman attend to her, do intimate things for her, not for a long time. She treated her as one of an inferior race. Brangwen did not like it.
‘Why aren’t you fond of Tilly?’ he asked.
‘Because—because—because she looks at me with her eyes bent.’
Then gradually she accepted Tilly as belonging to the household, never as a person.
For the first weeks, the black eyes of the child were forever on the watch. Brangwen, good-humoured but impatient, spoiled by Tilly, was an easy blusterer. If for a few minutes he upset the household with his noisy impatience, he found at the end the child glowering at him with intense black eyes, and she was sure to dart forward her little head, like a serpent, with her biting:
‘Go away.’
‘I’m not going away,’ he shouted, irritated at last. ‘Go yourself—hustle*—stir thysen*—hop.’ And he pointed to the door. The child backed away from him, pale with fear. Then she gathered up courage, seeing him become patient.
‘We don’t live with you,’ she said, thrusting forward her little head at him. ‘You—you’re—you’re a bomakle.’
‘A what?’ he shouted.
Her voice wavered—but it came.
‘A bomakle.’
‘Ay, an’ you’re a comakle.’
She meditated. Then she hissed forwards her head.
‘I’m not.’
‘Not what?’
‘A comakle.’
‘No more am I a bomakle.’
He was really cross.
Other times she would say:
‘My mother doesn’t live here.’
‘Oh ay?’
‘I want her to go away.’
‘Then want’s your portion,’ he replied laconically.
So they drew nearer together. He would take her with him when he went out in the trap. The horse ready at the gate, he came noisily into the house, which seemed quiet and peaceful till he appeared to set everything awake.
‘Now then, Topsy,* pop into thy bonnet.’
The child drew herself up, resenting the indignity of the address.
‘I can’t fasten my bonnet myself,’ she said haughtily.
‘Not man enough yet,’ he said, tying the ribbons under her chin with clumsy fingers.
She held up her face to him. Her little bright-red lips moved as he fumbled under her chin.
‘You talk—nonsents,’ she said, re-echoing one of his phrases.
‘ That face shouts for th’ pump,’ he said, and taking out a big red handkerchief, that smelled of strong tobacco, began wiping round her mouth.
‘Is Kitty waiting for me?’ she asked.
‘Ay,’ he said. ‘Let’s finish wiping your face—it’ll pass wi’ a cat-lick.’
She submitted prettily. Then, when he let her go, she began to skip, with a curious flicking up of one leg behind her.
‘Now my young buck-rabbit,’ he said. ‘Slippy!’
She came and was shaken into her coat, and the two set off. She sat very close beside him in the gig, tucked tightly, feeling his big body sway against her, very splendid. She loved the rocking of the gig, when his big, live body swayed upon her, against her. She laughed, a poignant little shrill laugh, and her black eyes glowed.
She was curiously hard, and then passionately tenderhearted. Her mother was ill, the child stole about on tip-toe in the bedroom for hours, being nurse, and doing the thing thoughtfully and diligently. Another day, her mother was unhappy. Anna would stand with legs apart, glowering, balancing on the sides of her slippers. She laughed when the goslings wriggled in Tilly’s hand, as the pellets of food were rammed down their throats with a skewer, she laughed nervously. She was hard and imperious with the animals, squandering no love, running about amongst them like a cruel mistress.
Summer came, and hay-harvest, Anna was a brown elfish mite dancing about. Tilly always marvelled over her, more than she loved her.
But always in the child was some anxious connection with the mother. So long as Mrs Brangwen was all right, the little girl played about and took very little notice of her. But corn-harvest went by, the autumn drew on, and the mother, the later months of her pregnancy beginning, was strange and detached, Brangwen began to knit his brows, the old, unhealthy uneasiness, the unskinned susceptibility came on the child again. If she went to the fields with her father, then, instead of playing about carelessly, it was:
‘I want to go home.’
‘Home, why tha’s nobbut* this minute come.’
‘I want to go home.’
‘What for? What ails thee?’
‘I want my mother.’
‘Thy mother! Thy mother none wants thee.’
‘I want to go home.’
There would be tears in a moment.
‘Can ter find t’road, then?’
And he watched her scudding, silent and intent, along the hedge-bottom, at a steady, anxious pace, till she turned and was gone through the gate-way. Then he saw her two fields off, still pressing forward, small and urgent. His face was clouded as he turned to plough up the stubble.
The year drew on, in the hedges the berries shone red and twinkling above bare twigs, robins were seen, great droves of birds dashed like spray from the fallow, rooks appeared, black and flapping down to earth, the ground was cold as he pulled the turnips, the roads were churned deep in mud. Then the turnips were pitted* and work was slack.
Inside the house it was dark, and quiet. The child flitted uneasily round, and now and again came her plaintive, startled cry:
‘Mother!’
Mrs Brangwen was heavy and unresponsive, tired, lapsed back. Brangwen went on working out of door
s.
At evening, when he came in to milk, the child would run behind him. Then, in the cosy cow-sheds, with the doors shut and the air looking warm by the light of the hanging lantern, above the branching horns of the cows, she would stand watching his hands squeezing rhythmically the teats of the placid beast, watch the froth and the leaping squirt of milk, watch his hand sometimes rubbing slowly, understandingly, upon a hanging udder. So they kept each other company, but at a distance, rarely speaking.
The darkest days of the year came on, the child was fretful, sighing as if some oppression were on her, running hither and thither without relief. And Brangwen went about at his work, heavy, his heart heavy as the sodden earth.
The winter nights fell early, the lamp was lighted before teatime, the shutters were closed, they were all shut into the room with the tension and stress. Mrs Brangwen went early to bed, Anna playing on the floor beside her. Brangwen sat in the emptiness of the downstairs room, smoking, scarcely conscious even of his own misery. And very often he went out to escape it.
Christmas passed, the wet, drenched, cold days of January recurred monotonously, with now and then a brilliance of blue flashing in, when Brangwen went out into a morning like crystal, when every sound rang again, and the birds were many and sudden and brusque in the hedges. Then an elation came over him in spite of everything, whether his wife were strange or sad, or whether he craved for her to be with him, it did not matter, the air rang with clear noises, the sky was like crystal, like a bell, and the earth was hard. Then he worked and was happy, his eyes shining, his cheeks flushed. And the zest of life was strong in him.
The birds pecked busily round him, the horses were fresh and ready, the bare branches of the trees flung themselves up like a man yawning, taut with energy, the twigs radiated off into the clear light. He was alive and full of zest for it all. And if his wife were heavy, separated from him, extinguished, then, let her be, let him remain himself. Things would be as they would be. Meanwhile he heard the ringing crow of a cockerel in the distance, he saw the pale shell of the moon effaced on a blue sky.
So he shouted to the horses, and was happy. If, driving into Ilkeston, a fresh young woman were going in to do her shopping, he hailed her, and reined in his horse, and picked her up. Then he was glad to have her near him, his eyes shone, his voice, laughing, teasing in a warm fashion, made the poise of her head more beautiful, her blood ran quicker. They were both stimulated, the morning was fine.
What did it matter that, at the bottom of his heart, was care and pain? It was at the bottom, let it stop at the bottom. His wife, her suffering, her coming pain—well, it must be so. She suffered, but he was out of doors, full in life, and it would be ridiculous, indecent, to pull a long face and to insist on being miserable. He was happy, this morning, driving to town, with the hoofs of the horse spanking the hard earth. Well, he was happy, if half the world were weeping at the funeral of the other half. And it was a jolly girl sitting beside him. And Woman was immortal, whatever happened, whoever turned towards death. Let the misery come when it could not be resisted.
The evening arrived later very beautiful, with a rosy flush hovering above the sunset, and passing away into violet and lavender, with turquoise green north and south in the sky, and in the east, a great, yellow moon hanging heavy and radiant. It was magnificent to walk between the sunset and the moon, on a road where little holly trees thrust black into the rose and lavender, and starlings flickered in droves across the light. But what was the end of the journey? The pain came right enough, later on, when his heart and his feet were heavy, his brain dead, his life stopped.
One afternoon, the pains began, Mrs Brangwen was put to bed, the midwife came. Night fell, the shutters were closed, Brangwen came in to tea, to the loaf and the pewter teapot, the child, silent and quivering, playing with glass beads, the house, empty, it seemed, or exposed to the winter night, as if it had no walls.
Sometimes there sounded, long and remote in the house, vibrating through everything, the moaning cry of a woman in labour. Brangwen, sitting downstairs, was divided. His lower, deeper self was with her, bound to her, suffering. But the big shell of his body remembered the sound of owls that used to fly round the farmstead when he was a boy. He was back in his youth, a boy, haunted by the sound of the owls, waking up his brother to speak to him. And his mind drifted away to the birds, their solemn, dignified faces, their flight so soft and broad-winged. And then to the birds his brother had shot, fluffy, dust-coloured, dead heaps of softness with faces absurdly asleep. It was a queer thing, a dead owl.
He lifted his cup to his lips, he watched the child with the beads. But his mind was occupied with owls, and the atmosphere of his boyhood, with his brothers and sisters. Elsewhere, fundamental, he was with his wife in labour, the child was being brought forth out of their one flesh.* He and she, one flesh, out of which life must be put forth. The rent was not in his body, but it was of his body. On her the blows fell, but the quiver ran through to him, to his last fibre. She must be torn asunder for life to come forth, yet still they were one flesh, and still, from further back, the life came out of him to her, and still he was the unbroken that has the broken rock* in its arms, their flesh was one rock from which the life gushed, out of her who was smitten and rent, from him who quivered and yielded.
He went upstairs to her. As he came to the bedside she spoke to him in Polish.
‘Is it very bad?’ he asked.
She looked at him, and oh, the weariness to her, of the effort to understand another language, the weariness of hearing him, attending to him, making out who he was, as he stood there fair-bearded and alien, looking at her. She knew something of him, of his eyes. But she could not grasp him. She closed her eyes.
He turned away, white to the gills.
‘It’s not so very bad,’ said the midwife.
He knew he was a strain on his wife. He went down-stairs.
The child glanced up at him, frightened.
‘I want my mother,’ she quavered.
‘Ay, but she’s badly,’ he said mildly, unheeding.
She looked at him with lost, frightened eyes.
‘Has she got a headache?’
‘No—she’s going to have a baby.’
The child looked round. He was unaware of her. She was alone again in terror.
‘I want my mother,’ came the cry of panic.
‘Let Tilly undress you,’ he said. ‘You’re tired.’
There was another silence. Again came the cry of labour.
‘I want my mother,’ rang automatically from the wincing, panic-stricken child, that felt cut off and lost in a horror of desolation.
Tilly came forward, her heart wrung.
‘Come an’ let me undress her then, pet-lamb,’ she crooned. ‘You s’ll have your mother in th’ mornin’, don’t you fret, my duckie; never mind, angel.’
But Anna stood upon the sofa, her back to the wall.
‘I want my mother,’ she cried, her little face quivering, and the great tears of childish, utter anguish falling.
‘She’s poorly, my lamb, she’s poorly to-night, but she’ll be better by mornin’. Oh don’t cry, don’t cry, love, she doesn’t want you to cry, precious little heart, no, she doesn’t.’
Tilly took gently hold of the child’s skirts. Anna snatched back her dress, and cried, in a little hysteria:
‘No, you’re not to undress me—I want my mother,’—and her child’s face was running with grief and tears, her body shaken.
‘Oh, but let Tilly undress you. Let Tilly undress you, who loves you, don’t be wilful to-night. Mother’s poorly, she doesn’t want you to cry.’
The child sobbed distractedly, she could not hear.
‘I want my mother,’ she wept.
‘When you’re undressed, you s’ll go up to see your mother—when you’re undressed, pet, when you’ve let Tilly undress you, when you’re a little jewel in your nightie, love. Oh don’t you cry, don’t you—’
Bran
gwen sat stiff in his chair. He felt his brain going tighter. He crossed over the room, aware only of the maddening sobbing.
‘Don’t make a noise,’ he said.
And a new fear shook the child from the sound of his voice. She cried mechanically, her eyes looking watchful through her tears, in terror, alert to what might happen.
‘I want—my—mother,’ quavered the sobbing, blind voice.
A shiver of irritation went over the man’s limbs. It was the utter, persistent unreason, the maddening blindness of the voice and the crying.
‘You must come and be undressed,’ he said, in a quiet voice that was thin with anger.
And he reached his hand and grasped her. He felt her body catch in a convulsive sob. But he too was blind, and intent, irritated into mechanical action. He began to unfasten her little apron. She would have shrunk from him, but could not. So her small body remained in his grasp, while he fumbled at the little buttons and tapes, unthinking, intent, unaware of anything but the irritation of her. Her body was held taut and resistant, he pushed off the little dress and the petticoats, revealing the white arms. She kept stiff, overpowered, violated, he went on with his task. And all the while she sobbed, choking:
‘I want my mother.’
He was unheedingly silent, his face stiff. The child was now incapable of understanding, she had become a little, mechanical thing of fixed will. She wept, her body convulsed, her voice repeating the same cry.
‘Eh dear o’ me!’ cried Tilly, becoming distracted herself. Brangwen, slow, clumsy, blind, intent, got off all the little garments, and stood the child naked in its shift upon the sofa.
‘Where’s her nightie?’ he asked.
Tilly brought it, and he put it on her. Anna did not move her limbs to his desire. He had to push them into place. She stood, with fixed, blind will, resistant, a small, convulsed, unchangeable thing weeping ever and repeating the same phrase. He lifted one foot after the other, pulled off slippers and socks. She was ready.
The Rainbow Page 11