Shabby Summer

by Warwick Deeping

  “That’s it. Machinery plays tricks on you, like a woman, if you don’t flatter it with attention. By the way, Mary is here.”

  “Mary?”

  “Yes, taking a country breather. Stay and have supper. I’m knocking off in a minute.”

  Ghent was looking out upon the broad fields lying lovely and spacious in the evening sunlight.

  “That explains it.”

  “Explains what?”

  “It must have been Mary I saw in the amphitheatre. It always pulls me, that old place. Is she dark?”

  “Yes, not like me. And here she is.”

  Mary Lynwood came striding across the yard with her quick, swinging walk, and a vigour that was self-evident. Hair, throat, shoulders, her firm young breasts, were flawless. Her smile was almost her brother’s smile, save that it lacked John’s profound and inherent sensitiveness. She was a purposeful and successful young woman, was Mary, a junior partner in a London secretarial agency, but though second in command she ran the show.

  Her brother threw the wad of cotton-waste aside, and smiled at them both.

  “I hear you two have met.”

  “Not exactly,” said Peter, with his eyes on the girl’s face.

  “He ran away,” said Mary.

  She was so full of life and vigour that it spilled over into mischief. Also, she was ready with her tongue, and her eyes, which were more the eyes of a child than of a woman, were rather merciless in their candour. She would see if your tie was out of order and tell you so; she was like a Black Eyed Susan, and no violet or wood anemone.

  “This is Peter,” said her brother. “He keeps a nursery, but not for babes.”

  Her dark eyes were teasing.

  “Good evening, Peter. Supper’s ready, Jack.”

  “Peter’s joining us. Can you manage?”

  She could, and said so with an abruptness that left Ghent wondering whether she was pleased or not. She was quicker in her reactions than her brother, but not so deep.

  The parlour at Chesters was panelled with old oak, and it could be a somewhat gloomy room, save on an evening such as this when the sun was shining in, for the window faced west. Its furniture betrayed the improvisations of a man without too much money.

  Mary had gone off to collect more plates and cutlery and an additional glass, and Lynwood, taking a tobacco tin from the mantelshelf, filled the pipe he would smoke when supper was over.

  “Mary’s here to help me out. Things are a bit tight.”

  Ghent nodded. He understood. John had had two indifferent years, and this dry spring was adding to his problems. With rain-starved meadows he was having to feed hay and cake to his stock. Also, like Ghent himself, the bulk of his money came in once a year, and all through the other months he had to pay wages, and meet the other outgoings of the farm. Yes, things were a bit difficult.

  Ghent asked a question.

  “I thought Mary was working?”

  “So she is,” and Lynwood smiled, “mothering my overdraft for a month. She volunteered. Wanted a change too. She’s——”

  The passage from kitchen to parlour was floored with flagstones, and they heard her sharp footsteps, and became silent. Peter was sitting on the hard black sofa, and facing the door, and when John’s sister entered with the tray, his eyes met hers. She smiled at him.

  “I’m afraid it’s all cold.”

  He made some banal reply about the coldness of the meal not mattering, while thinking that her firm, full face had a chilliness of its own. Yes, rather like a cold April day with elusive sunlight coming and going. He watched her lay his place at the table, and even the movements of her hands suggested a harsh, capable confidence.

  They sat down. The joint was a cold leg of mutton, and it had served on several occasions. Lynwood carved. And suddenly a cloud covered the setting sun, and the room grew dark.

  Mary gave a toss of her vigorous hair.

  “You ought to have all that old wood painted.”

  She looked across at Peter as though challenging him to agree with her.

  “Too damned dark.”

  Ghent was watching the brother’s big hands at work. They were as capable as his sister’s, but differently so.

  “I think John likes it.”

  “He would. I’d like to take him into my new office.”

  Her brother smiled his slow, deliberate smile.

  “Easier carving, Mary, what? I’m rather fond of the old wood. It’s warm and deep in winter, when the fire’s alight.”

  She was cutting bread. She passed Ghent a slice on the blade of the knife.

  “Give me light, and plenty of it.”

  She looked at Peter, and her strong white teeth showed.

  “Know anything about wireless?”

  “Not much, I’m afraid.”

  “Jack’s old set’s not functioning, and I like the nine o’clock news.”

  Ghent laughed gently.

  “Like my car.”

  “You’ve got a car?”

  “I have and I haven’t. It’s in a nursing-home at Loddon being doctored.”

  “Oh, Loddon, yes. I have to shop there. Farley’s hopeless. The ham tastes of boots, and I suppose the boots smell of cheese. Do you shop in Loddon?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “I might cadge a lift on occasions.”

  Lynwood passed Peter his plate, and a whimsical look. It said: “There’s nothing concealed about Mary. If she wants a thing, she’ll ask for it. But she’d do the same for you, my lad.” And Peter accepted the plate. He was not quite sure whether he wanted to drive Mary Lynwood into Loddon.

  * * *

  There was still a little light in the sky when Ghent took the road home, and as he turned out of the Chesters’ gate he saw the Roman amphitheatre and its crown of thorns very black against the fading afterglow. Yes, its Crown of Thorns!

  The hedges had turned black when he came to the gate of Folly Farm and heard the thunder of the weir. He heard other sounds, voices, the shuffling of feet. Four dim figures were moving towards the gate.

  Said a voice: “One of them beerless jobs, brother, what! Gosh, I’ve got a thirst.”

  “You’ll go to bed with it, Bill. Pub’s shut.”

  “And I’ve sweated a pint carrying furniture up those bloody stairs.”

  “Another van load tomorrer, my lad.”

  Someone spat with a suggestion of grieved disgust.

  “Nice little bit o’ goods, but that sort o’ lady don’t think. You can be as polite as yer please, but she won’t see yer tongue ’anging out.”

  “Ladies don’t, brother. They’re brought up refined.”

  Ghent walked on and over the bridge and the voices of the furniture-men were lost in the moist music of the weir. So, his vis-à-vis across the river was to be a woman. He thought no more about it at the moment, and coming to the lane, heard Bunter give tongue. The dog knew his footsteps, and would lie by the garden gate, listening and watching, to get on his legs and utter half a dozen sharp barks when the god of his world returned.

  Bunter had his forepaws against the slats of the gate. The whole of him seemed to be wagging.

  “Hallo, old man.”

  Peter picked him up, and the dog licked his face. He felt very tender towards this warm, furry thing, and consciously so, for, somehow, dog’s love, wonderful though it might be, was not sufficient.

  IV

  At Marplot the alleys running at right angles from the Green Way ended on the river, and each alley had a vista of its own, a fragment of the landscape hanging like a backcloth behind a stage. One alley, pillared with young cypresses, gave you a glimpse of Farley church and its towering elms; another had as its terminal the green bank and willows of Folly Island. Yet another alley, running west from Marplot cottage between ranks of blue-coated piceas and cedars, commanded Folly Farm and its garden, and the thatched boat-house with its faded blue doors. The men had been hoeing between the rows of trees, and Ghent, who had been working with them a
nd had stayed behind to examine one or two trees that were looking sick, noticed that the doors of the boat-house were open, and that the nose of a punt caught the sunlight above the blackness of the water.

  His new neighbour! The voices of the furniture-men had announced her as a woman, but Ghent’s curiosity had not been piqued. A place such as Folly Farm would postulate maturity, someone who was middle-aged and mildly interested in a garden, and who kept dogs, and would comfortably fill the hammock that could be slung under the two lime trees near the boat-house. Folly Farm did not promise romance. Its garden was completely the riverside garden, a stretch of grass, rambler roses climbing up larch poles and along looped ropes, four formal beds that would be spread in summer with floral carpets, a flight of steps going down to the river, and flanking them two very white pots on cement pedestals, and predestined to contain pink ivy-leaved geraniums.

  Peter Ghent stood leaning on his hoe, idly gazing across the river. Folly Farm was neither Temple Manor nor Temple Towers, but the property of a Mr. Lightfoot who lived in Farley village. The late tenant, a Mr. Tate, had been a florid and noisy person with a superabundant wife. Yes, superabundant, not surplus was the word. He had owned a small motor-boat that had chugged up and down the river. He had filled the valley with music and back-chat from a super-wireless set which had been carried out into the garden. Mr. Tate had loved the music of dance bands, and especially the cacophony of the crooner. Fat voices had sung of love, and the willows had shivered in the wind, and sometimes Bunter had run down to the river bank and barked in protest. Peter had agreed very much with the dog. Fat men who sat in their shirt-sleeves and sunned globular tummies while the voice of the crooner was heard in the valley, were not figures to be dreamed of on life’s mystic frieze.

  Ghent was remembering that he had other work to do when the woman appeared in the garden across the river. His two hands were folded over the end of the hoe-handle, and his chin was resting on them. He saw a figure in a wheat-coloured frock come floating out of the pseudo-Tudor porch. Actually, it seemed to float. It had honey-coloured hair. It drifted down across the grass towards the water, and stood poised there. The face looked very small and delicate in the distance, and Ghent, gazing at it, remembered that he must be equally visible to the woman over the water, and becoming a little self-conscious in his scrutiny, let his hands slide down the handle of the hoe, and turned his face towards Folly Island.

  Yes, one should not stare even at the unexpectedness of a new neighbour. And then as he was about to turn away, he heard a voice, and looking across the water, saw an arm raised. She was signalling to him!

  “Please, will you wait a moment.”

  Shouldering his hoe he walked down to the river bank, to see her slim, aery figure making for the boat-house. He heard the rattle of a chain, and saw the nose of the punt come gliding out. She was using the pole and handling it with grace and skill. Yet, she had given him the impression of distress. What was the trouble? Had some undesirable visitor, a tramp appeared at the back door? But then, surely, she could not be alone in the house?

  As the punt glided across she became more real to him. In the distance she had looked a mere girl, but now he saw her as woman. She had an exquisite small head set on a perfect neck, and her honey-coloured hair was gathered in a little knot. She was beautifully slim with a sensitive slightness that suggested both insect and flower. Yes, a yellow dragon-fly. Her face, or rather, the quality of its expression, puzzled him. Her eyes were blue, and made him think of the eyes of some rather timid animal, like a hare, slightly prominent and oblique as though life and its possible menaces were not straight before her, but might come stealing up from behind. They were quick, sensitive, frightened eyes. But why fear?

  He found himself wondering what she would say to him.

  She stood poised, the pole trailing in the water, as the punt neared the bank.

  “I’m so sorry to trouble you, but could you lend me some matches?”

  Matches! Her voice sounded a little breathless. But what an anti-climax when he had expected her to appeal to him to intervene in some adequate crisis such as that created by an impudent beggar or a lost dog!

  “Of course.”

  But almost before he had answered her she seemed eager to explain away the seeming triviality of the thing.

  “It must sound so silly. I only moved in two days ago. I had ordered in a supply of stores, and they forgot the matches. I found I had only one box.”

  She looked at him anxiously, and smiled. She had a pretty, whimsical mouth, but her smile had the effect of making her eyes look more frightened. There were certain things she could not tell him.

  Ghent smiled back at her.

  “That’s all right. If you’ll wait a moment.”

  He had left his jacket lying on a grass path, but when he went to feel in the pockets he found that there were no matches there. He had disappeared from her view, for the river bank rose seven feet above the water level. She saw his head reappear.

  “Sorry, I shall have to go to the house. It won’t take me half a minute.”

  She had brought the punt to the bank, and was holding it there with the pole pressed against the gunwale. Her figure seemed to droop and lose height, though her slimness made her look taller than she was. The lower part of her was motionless, but her head kept turning towards the house across the river and the red arches of the Weir Bridge. Almost, this movement was birdlike and anxious, as though something menaced her. Her forehead, which should have been serene, showed lines of strain.

  She saw Ghent’s head reappear. He was smiling, but there was reflective seriousness behind the smile.

  “I’ve brought you two boxes.”

  “Thanks so much. I’ll return them, when——”

  “Oh, there’s no need.”

  She was looking up at him, and suddenly she appeared to realize that he was no mere labourer, but the little lord of this domain. How silly of her! But she had been so absorbed in her own affairs, the little, exasperating happenings, like rain and wind, when you have given hours to the planning of a particular festa.

  “Are you Mr. Ghent?”

  “Yes.”

  He climbed down the bank, and held out the matches to her. She did not tell him her name. With her right hand holding the punt-pole, she reached out with her left hand for the boxes of matches. She had small, delicate hands, and as her fingers closed over the boxes he saw that her finger-nails were faintly tinted.

  “Thank you so much. I’ll let you have two back.”

  He was smiling, but his young man’s eyes were observing her with particular intentness, and she appeared conscious of the scrutiny and troubled by it. She did not look at him again, but dropping the match boxes on to a cushion, swung the pole over and pushed off, and Ghent, reclimbing the bank, picked up his hoe and stood to watch her pole the punt back to the boat-house. It disappeared into the shadows under the thatch. He heard the rattle of the chain, and saw her reappear and go running across the lawn towards the house. She did not turn her head in his direction, and he found himself wondering why her eyes were frightened and why she seemed in such a hurry to get back to the house.

  * * *

  Folly Farm might have been modernized as neo-Jacobethan, but it possessed neither company gas nor electric light. Water it had, and a petrol-gas plant of its own, but the wretched affair appeared to be out of action.

  Perhaps He would be able to persuade it to function.

  He—was expected at half-past four.

  She always thought of him now as He, just as she had come to think of herself as the woman who brought bad luck.

  She had rushed upstairs to slip a flowered overall over her frock. She felt flustered, frightened. She had fallen asleep in a deck-chair after lunch, and going into the house at three o’clock, had found an envelope on the oak chest in the hall. The scrawl within had announced the fact that her newly-engaged married couple had walked out on her, secretly and without warning. The note ha
d accused her of having deceived them as to the conveniences of the place. Its amenities and domestic details had been misrepresented. She was alone in the house confronted with problems to which her sensitive and sophisticated self was a stranger. And—He—was on the horizon, a man who hated improvisations and any activity that did not include hitting or shooting something. He was so superfine and exacting in his demands upon the material subtleties of life. He expected so much, his cocktail iced, a five-course dinner, and a woman whose face, frock and hands suggested Molyneux and Bond Street. And after all, he paid for it, charm, cushions, perfume.

  Then—no matches! The defaulting couple had taken the only box of matches. But now that that nice lad across the river had supplied her, she confronted the choice of the kitchen grate and an oil-stove which she had bought for use in the punt. Paraffin? Yes. She hunted for it, to find the can left most inconsiderately in the larder between a bowl of eggs and a Fortnum & Mason pie. Well, really! And she had had such good references with those two defaulters. Would eggs and pie taste of paraffin? She proceeded to fill the stove, and in doing so spilt the oil over the kitchen table and her fingers. Tea in the garden. If she could accomplish tea she would have gained some respite, and time to consider the disaster that could be christened dinner. She was no cook. She would have to give him a cold meal. Or perhaps he would take the car out and they would dine at the Crossed Keys in Loddon? She decided that the crisis should be treated with irony and laughter.

  She got the stove alight, put the kettle on, collected tea things on a tray, and proceeded to cut bread and butter. He liked it very thin and buttery. And she remembered the paraffin on her fingers. She put her right hand to her pretty, blunt nose, and with an air of almost childish insouciance sniffed it. Oh, bother! She ran to the sink and washed, but the smell lingered. Flustered, and with a glance at the kitchen clock, she dashed upstairs to her bedroom and seizing a scent-bottle from the dressing-table, sprinkled her hands and her frock. It was the perfume He approved of. And being upstairs she sat down at her table and attended to her face. Were there shadows under the eyes? There were. He hated any sort of shadow. Everything in life had to be debonair and chic and provocative. Downstairs in the kitchen the kettle had a label of vapour attached to its spout, and its lid was chattering. She removed it, turned down the stove, and clutching the tray, carried it out into the garden, and placed it on a rustic table under the limes. She collected two chairs. Back in the kitchen she completed the cutting of fresh bread and butter, and filling a dish with pâtisserie, carried the food out into the garden. She sat down, feeling breathless; she patted her hair and gave her frock little tweaks. It was twenty minutes to five, and He was late.