“Crabtree” was Mr. Roger Crabtree’s third estate. He had gone into the business of mass-produced houses soon after the War, and he knew all the tricks of the trade. You put out the work on contract, and having cut your figure to the bone the loss would lie with the contracting firms unless they cut their costs and used the cheapest materials, but that was not Mr. Crabtree’s concern. Business is business. If the people who built his houses chose to use poor bricks and slob them over with plaster or roughcast, and put in unseasoned timber that would warp or crack, the sin was theirs. As for the official world he knew how to deal with it. Sometimes he bullied, sometimes he bribed. Bribery had to be conducted with discretion. Bullying could be more open. They wanted a row, did they? Very well, he was a rich man. He would take ’em to court. He would appeal to the Ministry of Health and demand an inquiry. He was not going to be obstructed by a lot of Jacks-in-Office.
As to the fundamentals, Roger Crabtree could not be blamed for his reactions to them. He was topical, big business, a totalitarian in commerce. He had an urban mind. He catered for the urban-minded masses, or thought he did. The country mind was ceasing to matter, with all its feeling for a beauty that was free and individual and lovely. The old craftsmen were dying or dead. The exquisite rightness of a domestic architecture that grew out of the soil had given place to the urban splurge, a nasty niceness that is the product of the factory and the machine. For the urban mind is blind to so many things, and does not know it. Mr. Crabtree was blind and did not know it. The people who came to live in his houses thought them lovely, and so they were to the eyes of those who hardly could distinguish one tree from another. That they were Humbug Houses was just part of the modern tragi-comedy.
Mr. Crabtree and Vowles walked towards that part of the estate where houses were being erected. Erected, so aptly described the procedure, and suggested the scenery in a cinema-studio. The yellow Rolls followed them, and so announced to sundry foremen and their workers the approach of the great man. “Look out, lads, the bloody old beggar’s bullion-box is coming down the road.” The man who had coined that phrase “Bullion Box” might claim a touch of genius. The concrete road ended in a kind of ordered chaos, and a rutted trackway where lorries were unloading bricks. A concrete-mixer, mounds of ballast and of sand, drain-pipes, stacks of tiles, piles of timber left exposed to the weather, decorated what had once been a grass field. Six houses were in various stages of erection. One was being tiled. On two others the bricklayers were working on the upper story, using the cheapest of bricks, whole or in broken oddments. The work was a disgrace, but it would be covered with plaster, and the contractors could argue that the rough surface gave a good key to the plaster. Old Crabtree stumped about, speaking to nobody. He inspected the concrete floats of the last two houses. The material looked more like mud than concrete, but if the official who inspected it had passed the work, well, that was all that was needed. Some of these officials were sympathetic souls.
A foreman approached and saluted the great man.
“Everything all right, sir?”
“Had this stuff passed?”
“Yes, sir. The inspector was down yesterday.”
Mr. Crabtree grunted.
“Well, if he has O.K.’d it, it’s O.K.”
* * *
After a twenty minutes’ inspection Mr. Crabtree re-entered his Rolls, and leaving Vowles to walk back to the office, gave Scattergood his orders.
“Opposition Show. Don’t drive in. Park on the railway bridge. After that, Porters Grange for lunch.”
Scattergood was wise as to the procedure to be followed. The Opposition Show was situated less than half a mile from the Crabtree Estate. The Rolls came to rest on the crown of the railway bridge, a most reprehensible parking-place for a car, and Mr. Crabtree was able to survey Canaan. The Opposition Show was not prospering. Most of the houses were neither sold nor let, and work appeared to be at a standstill. Mr. Crabtree gloated. He was somewhat wise as to how competition should be crushed. You out-advertised and undersold the other fellow until you had put him out of business. Then, perhaps, you bought him up as a bankrupt concern, and found yourself in the happy position of being able to control a monopoly.
Old Crabtree rapped on the glass partition, and Scattergood drove on, knowing that his master had seen all that he wished to see. Temple Towers lay back and cogitated. Yes, free competition was the sap of life, provided you were able to drain the other fellow’s juices. Cunning and cash. And Mr. Crabtree’s thoughts travelled homewards and hovered menacingly over that parcel of ground that he coveted. Yes, that was an idea. If young Ghent wouldn’t sell and get out, the obvious thing to do was to establish an opposition show next door to him, and squelch the young gentleman with some healthy competition.
“Damn it, I’ll do it,” thought Mr. Crabtree. “If he won’t sell, I’ll start a nursery next door. I’ve got the land, and a frontage. Yes, that’s the idea. I’m a man of ideas.”
VI
Ghent’s bedroom window overlooked the river, and being both an early riser and a good sleeper he did not trouble greatly about blind or curtains, nor would anyone in the outer world be likely to show interest in the cut or colour of his pyjamas. But Mrs. Maintenance had a passion for the closing of windows. She said that a shut window kept the moths out, which no doubt was true, and Peter, feeling the room airless, went to the casement to find it closed. He was naked to the waist, and as he opened the casement, and let the fresh breath of the night in, he was moved to stay for a moment, leaning on the sill. He could hear the river tumbling over the weir, and see stars pricking the sky over Farley village, and the dark outlines of Folly Farm. The clock of Farley church struck ten, and Ghent, with his eyes on Folly Farm, remembered that it was no longer an empty house. But the place was dark, as dark as it had been during the last year, which struck him as strange. Had the lady with the frightened eyes and the honey-coloured hair borrowed his matches to no purpose? Or was it a case of love and early to bed?
He was about to turn away when he saw a single point of light blink out in the dark house. It appeared to come from one of the upper rooms. It was in movement, like a candle being carried, and flickeringly in a draught. Suddenly it grew still. It had found a resting place on table or bureau, but no blind was drawn, and the tiny flame was like a pin-prick in a dark surface. A few seconds later he saw a second little flame shining in the window of another room; it moved and became still. So, not only had she been minus matches, but Folly Farm was living on candles. Its home-produced gas installation had always been temperamental.
He stood watching the two lights, and perhaps wondering about them. And who were his new neighbours? My lady with the honey-coloured hair did not look like an Arcadian. Rather an attractive little person, and with her slimness and her hare’s eyes, and her quick, birdlike movements, mysterious and appealing. Yes, he asked for mystery in a woman. Then, one of the candle flames went out, but the other remained alight. Did that mean——? But Ghent found such conjectures leading him into troubled waters. He, too, wanted——
His own candle was burning beside his bed. He left the window, put on his jacket, and slipping into bed, blew out the candle. The uncurtained window was a pale oblong, and in it he seemed to see, not the face of a woman, but old Crabtree’s ominous mug. Damn the old bandit! He turned on his side and willed himself to fall asleep.
* * *
Ghent woke with a stiff back and shoulders and a headache, for though a young man may flout Nature, the lady will have the last word. Peter took two aspirins and no bacon for breakfast, and running out the old Morris set forth for Loddon in quest of a pump and a hose. It was not a romantic quest, and he was not feeling romantic, but he had not driven a hundred yards along the highroad before he saw ahead of him a figure in a flowery frock. For the moment he thought it was Mary Lynwood, and he was in no mood for such strong medicine, but as he overtook the figure he realized that it did not move as Mary moved, and that its hair was the colour of ripe
corn.
Should he stop and offer her a lift? He knew that casual fellows who offered lifts on a country road were regarded as gay gentlemen who preferred blondes, but it seemed churlish not to dare the courtesy, nor was he feeling gay.
She was walking on the path by the left hand hedge, and as the car slowed up beside her, he saw her head turn with a startled quickness.
“Excuse me, can I be of any use?”
She looked troubled.
“Oh, I am only going into Loddon.”
“But Loddon is three miles.”
“I know, but——”
He was wondering why that lazy fellow who owned a superfine car was letting her walk to Loddon. Had he departed early on Mondayish affairs? And should he press this courtesy upon her?
“I’m driving into Loddon. You can get a bus back. There’s a bus from Loddon to Farley.”
She stood hesitant.
“Thank you so much. Yes, it will save me time.”
He leaned over and opened the near door for her. She seemed in too serious a mood to smile at him, and he wondered why. Was marriage so solemn a state? Meanwhile, he had to watch the road with care, for the Loddon road was joined by a number of country lanes out of which cattle and farm-carts and unimaginative rustics on bicycles had a way of emerging without warning. Moreover, his old car’s brakes were not what they had been.
There was silence between them. She sat with her hands in her lap, but once or twice she glanced at him with eyes that seemed to ask what manner of man he was. She had to confess that she had been rather a fool about men in estimating their inward values, but this lad who grew trees seemed to be different. His silence interested her. It was not the silence of an uncouth and clumsy self-consciousness. She felt that he was sad and worried about something; just as she was.
She asked him a sudden question.
“Do you always work on Sundays?”
The question startled him. He glanced at her gravely.
“No, not as a rule. Special circumstances.”
“Such as——?”
“Oh, it’s very dry, you know, been terribly dry ever since January. And if one’s trees die on one——”
She had met his eyes for a moment, and something in them had touched her.
“Yes, it must be rather tragic. One hates things dying.”
“Yes, when you have grown them. Besides——”
“It means—a loss.”
“Very much so.”
He glanced at her hands. They were beautiful hands, slim and long fingered, but they were not the hands of a worker. He was supposing so many things about her, that she was married, that she was well off, that even the clothes she wore came from Paris or London. Yes, she was somewhat exotic, and yet, she suggested innocence. She was not like Mary Lynwood, full of a kind of crass, vigorous splendour. She looked fragile, sensitive, bothered about life. She appealed.
She said: “I hope you will have rain.”
She too was looking at his hands, big and brown, resting on the wheel.
“It’s on the knees of the gods.”
Her eyes widened.
“You don’t believe it isn’t just chance?”
“No, somehow not. Life seems rather too miraculous for such a preposterous, blind, blundering theory.”
And then he smiled.
“God or no God, I’m buying a pump and a hose.”
They were silent again, and each was thinking that it was rather strange that in five minutes they should have met at those cross-roads where the sign-post points nowhere. You just groped intuitively. And for months her gropings had led her into blind country where you saw no sign of that other, mysterious presence. He attracted her. She seemed to divine other strengths in him, the compassionate vision which, as a woman, she craved for.
Her voice came suddenly.
“One does want to believe that there is some sort of meaning——”
Her voice died away. She felt him looking at her in a way that was different.
“Yes, I know. Otherwise, there’s bitterness. One feels that a nasty sort of joke is being played on us.”
“Yes, one does.”
So, they came through the Barham beeches to Loddon bridge, and crossing it he asked her where she would like to be put down. Oh, anywhere in the main street. And where could she catch the Farley bus? Just by the market-hall. When the car stopped, he got out quickly and opened the door for her. They looked into each other’s eyes for a moment.
“Thank you so much.”
He smiled.
Peter bought his pump and his hose at the local ironmonger’s, and putting them in the back-seat, drove home, and on the way he found himself thinking more of the woman who had sat beside him than of the drought. Strange how close they had come to each other in so short a time! But her eyes and her hands and her hair were, what was the word? Rather exquisite! Yes, she was not a Mary Lynwood. Her delicate texture appealed to him as did the shape, colour and perfume of a flower. She was mysterious. Her eyes had a fey look, as though they looked both back and into the future, and were troubled by what they saw.
* * *
Ghent and the men spent the rest of the morning driving an old oak post into the river bed close to the bank, and attaching the pump to it, and Peter, who had taken his turn with the beetle, found that a headache can be more bothersome than heartache.
Said George, who was given to splurging into engaging candour:
“You look a bit yaller, sir.”
Ghent felt it. He grinned at George.
“Not hang-over, my lad. Too many cans of water yesterday, not beer.”
“No such luck,” said Garland. “Fancy azaleas given a bucket of beer. Get up, dance, would they?”
“No, go off bloom, more like,” said Bob.
Ghent could not do justice to Mrs. Maintenance’s dinner. He took two more aspirins, and the afternoon off, retreating to the shade of the Camperdown elm and a deck-chair. It was here that he spent the lazy hours of his Sunday afternoon, and the only difference was that his Sunday had become Monday.
Instead of going to sleep he found himself lazily regarding the garden of Folly Farm across the river, and suddenly his two problem people appeared there as on a stage. They were bound for the hammock under the shade of the limes, the man walked ahead, like the king beast, the woman following, carrying cushions and a rug. The man got into the hammock, and had the cushions arranged for him, and was covered with the rug. The hammock oscillated gently. Ghent saw the woman place a garden table close to the hammock. She returned to the house and reappeared with a glass which she set on the table so that the man could reach it.
Their voices came to him faintly in the summer stillness, but he could not distinguish the words.
“Do try that, Max.”
“I don’t want the damned stuff.”
A meal that should have been romantic had, apparently, given him acute dyspepsia. Her cooking, of course! Or had those confounded people poisoned the pie before leaving? He had been sick in the night, and had eaten no breakfast, and a glass of gin before lunch had not acted as a charm. He was peevish and irritable and talking about ptomaine poisoning. Everything had tasted of paraffin! He had told her to throw that damned pie away, though it was quite a good pie, and she had eaten of it without disaster.
“Feel warmer now?”
“Yes, just a bit.”
She tucked him up, and Ghent was of the opinion that she was spoiling the fellow. Gross egoist.
“Would you like a doctor?”
“No. It wouldn’t be very good policy, would it, when we had decided against social complications?”
She stood observing him, one hand to her cheek. Poor dear, he did look very yellow, and the little baldish patch on the crown of his head which he took such trouble to camouflage showed beneath streaks of thin black hair. And suddenly, she found herself considering him dispassionately, and with a ruthlessness that shocked her when she realized its significance.
She gave the hammock a gentle push, and he snapped at her.
“Don’t do that. Makes me feel more squeamish.”
“Sorry, Max.”
“I’ll try a nap.”
“Yes, darling, do.”
She left him, and taking a chair, sat down at a little distance from him, with her head in the shade and her feet in the sun. If the river suggested anything to her, it symbolized the way life drifted on and past you, inevitably and with a fallacious tranquillity that lured you into hoping that your storms and floods had ceased. But life, like the river, had its change of levels and its weirs, some crisis in its course over which the water tumbled. Life, as she knew it, had been a series of crises, of shipwrecks from which she had escaped, wet and dishevelled and exhausted. She was very tired. Married at twenty she had become a widow at three and twenty, and tragically so. With the little money that had been left her she had opened a hat-shop in Kensington, and facing disaster, had found a sympathetic friend. He had taught her that she should remain the mistress of her shop, provided—— But confronted by that elderly sensualist, she had let both shop and intrigue go. Yes, it had all been very shabby and sordid, and she happened to be fastidious, and if that was adventure she had prayed for, she preferred clean dullness.
Shabby Summer Page 7