“Olive! Olive! What are you saying?”
“Drunken fool,” repeated Olive sourly. “Don’t badger me any more, let me alone, leave me as I am. I—I’ll—I dunno—perhaps I’ll marry Feedy.”
“Nonsense,” cried Camilla shrilly. She turned on the light and drew the blinds over the alcove window. “Nonsense,” she cried again over her shoulder. “Nonsense.”
“You let me alone, I ask you,” commanded her friend. “Do as I like.”
“But you can’t—you can’t think—why, don’t be stupid!”
“I might. Why shouldn’t I? He’s a proper man; teach me a lot of things.”
Camilla shuddered. “But you can’t. You can’t, he is going to marry somebody else.”
“What’s that?” sighed Olive. “Who? Oh God, you’re not thinking to marry him yourself, are you? You’re not going—”
“Stuff! He’s going to marry Quincy. He told me so himself. I’d noticed them for some time, and then, once, I came upon them suddenly, and really—! Honest love-making is all very well, but, of course, one has a responsibility to one’s servants. I spoke to him most severely, and he told me.”
“Told you what?”
“That they were engaged to be married, so what—”
“Quincy?”
“Yes, so what can one do?”
“Do? God above!” cried Olive. She touched a bell and Quincy came in answer. “Is this true?”
Quincy looked blankly at Miss Sharples.
“Are you going to marry Mr. Feedy?”
“Yes’m.”
“When are you going to marry Mr. Feedy?” Olive had risen on unsteady legs.
“As soon as we can get a house, ma’am.”
“When will that be?”
The girl smiled. She did not know; there were no houses to be had.
“I won’t have it!” shouted Olive suddenly, swaying. “But no, I won’t, I won’t! You wretched devil! Go away, go off. I won’t have you whoring about with that man, I tell you. Go off, off with you; pack your box!”
The flushing girl turned savagely and went out, slamming the door.
“Oh, I’m drunk,” moaned Olive, falling to the couch again. “I’m sodden. Camilla, what shall I do?”
“Olive, listen! Olive! Now you must come to live with me; you won’t be able to replace her. What’s the good? Shut up the house and let me take care of you.”
“No, stupid wretch I am. Don’t want to burden yourself with a stupid wretch.” With her knuckle Olive brushed a tear from her haggard eyes.
“Nonsense, darling!” cried her friend. “I want you immensely. Just as we once were, when we were so fond of each other. Aren’t you fond of me still, Olive? You’ll come, and we’ll be so happy again. Shall we go abroad?”
Olive fondled her friend’s hand with bemused caresses. “You’re too good, Camilla, and I ought to adore you. I do, I do, and I’m a beast.”
“No, no, listen.”
“Yes, I am. I’m a beast. I tell you I have wicked envious feelings about you, and sneer at you, and despise you in a low secret way. And yet you are, oh, Camilla, yes, you are true and honest and kind, and I know it, I know it.” She broke off and stared tragically at her friend. “Camilla, were you ever in love?”
The question startled Camilla.
“Were you?” repeated Olive. “I’ve never known you to be. Were you ever in love?”
“Oh—sometimes—yes—sometimes.”
Olive stared for a moment with a look of silent contempt, then almost guffawed.
“Bah! Sometimes! Good Lord, Camilla. Oh no, no, you’ve never been in love. Oh no, no.”
“But yes, of course,” Camilla persisted, with a faint giggle.
“Who? Who with?”
“Why, yes, of course, twenty times at least,” admitted the astonishing Camilla.
“But listen, tell me,” cried Olive, sitting up eagerly as her friend sat down beside her on the couch. “Tell me—it’s you and I—tell me. Really in love?”
“Everybody is in love,” said Camilla slowly, “some time or another, and I was very solemnly in love—well—four times. Olive, you mustn’t reproach yourself for—for all this. I’ve been—I’ve been bad, too.”
“Four times! Four times! Perhaps you will understand me, Camilla, now. I’ve been in love all my life. Any man could have had me, but none did, not one.”
“Never mind, dear. I was more foolish than you, that’s all, Olive.”
“Foolish! But how? It never went very far?”
“As far as I could go.”
Olive eyed her friend, the mournful, repentant, drooping Camilla.
“What do you mean? How far?”
Camilla shrugged her shoulders. “As far as love takes you,” she said.
“Yes, but—” pursued Olive, “do you mean—?”
“I could go no further,” Camilla explained quickly.
“But how—what—were you ever really and truly a lover?”
“If you must know—that is what I mean.”
“Four times!”
Camilla nodded.
“But I mean, Camilla, were you really, really, a mistress?”
“Olive, only for a very little while. Oh, my dear,” she declined on Olive’s breast, “you see, you see, I’ve been worse, much worse than you. And it’s all over. And you’ll come back and be good too?”
But her friend’s eagerness would suffer no caresses; Olive was sobered and alert. “But—this, I can’t understand—while we were together—inseparable we were. Who—did I know them? Who were they?”
Camilla, unexpectedly, again fairly giggled. “Well, then, I wonder if you can remember the young man we knew at Venice—?”
“Edgar Salter, was it?” Olive snapped at the name.
“Yes.”
“And the others? Willie Macmaster and Hercules and Count Filippo!” Olive was now fairly raging. Camilla sat with folded hands. “Camilla Hobbs, you’re a fiend,” screamed Olive, “a fiend, a fiend, an impertinent immoral fool. Oh, how I loathe you!”
“Miss Sharples,” said Camilla, rising primly, “I can only say I despise you.”
“A fool!” shrieked Olive, burying her face in the couch; “an extraordinary person with a horrible temper and intolerant as a—yes, you are. Oh, intolerable beast!”
“I can hardly expect you to realize, in your present state,” returned Camilla, walking to the door, “how disgusting you are to me. You are like a dog that barks at every passer.”
“There are people whose minds are as brutal as their words. Will you cease annoying me, Camilla!”
“You imagine”—Camilla wrenched open the door—“You imagine that I’m trying to annoy you. How strange!”
“Oh, you’ve a poisonous tongue and a poisonous manner; I’m dreadfully ashamed of you.”
“Indeed.” Camilla stopped and faced her friend challengingly.
“Yes.” Olive sat up, nodding wrathfully. “I’m ashamed and deceived and disappointed. You’ve a coarse soul. Oh,” she groaned. “I want kindness, friendship, pity, pity, pity, pity, most of all, pity. I cannot bear it.” She flung herself again to the couch and sobbed forlornly.
“Very well, Olive, I will leave you. Good night.”
Olive did not reply and Camilla passed out of the room to the front door and opened that. Then: “Oh,” she said, “how beautiful, Olive!” She came back into Olive’s room and stood with one hand grasping the edge of the door, looking timidly at her friend. “There’s a new moon and a big star and a thin fog over the barley field. Come and see.”
She went out again to the porch and Olive rose and followed her. “See,” cried Camilla, “the barley is goosenecked now, it is ripe for cutting.”
Olive stood staring out long and silently. It was exquisite as an Eden evening, with a sleek young moon curled in the fondling clouds; it floated into her melancholy heart. Sweet light, shadows, the moon, the seat, the long hills, the barley field, they twirled in her hea
rt with disastrous memories of Willie Macmaster, Edgar Salter, Hercules, and Count Filippo. All lost, all gone now, and Quincy Pugh was going to marry the gardener.
“Shall I come with you, Camilla? Yes, I can’t bear it any longer; I’ll come with you now, Camilla, if you’ll have me.”
Camilla’s response was tender and solicitous.
“I’ll tell Quincy,” said Olive. “She and Luke can have this cottage, just as it is. I shan’t want it ever again! They can get married at once.” Camilla was ecstatic. “And then will you tell me, Camilla,” said Olive, taking her friend’s arm, “all about—all about—those men!”
“I will, darling; yes, yes, I will,” cried Camilla. “Oh, come along.”
The Field of Mustard (1926)
Ninepenny Flute
HARRY DUNNING SOLD ME HIS FLUTE FOR NINEPENCE. I didn’t pay him the money all at once because at that time I was working for two horrible blokes and they didn’t do me right. One was a Scotchman, and very Scotch, and the other a Jew, one of these ’ere Jews, and a credit to his race I must say. So I give Harry Dunning a tanner down and promised him the other as soon as I could. And this flute—I mean it was a fife—had a little crack in it near the top, only Harry Dunning said that didn’t injure the tune at all because the crack was above the mouth-hole and the noise had to come out the bottom end. He said he’d get me into his fife and drum band if I bought it, and as it was no good him getting me in the band if I hadn’t got any flute, I said I’d give him all the ninepence as soon as I could. So that’s how I began to get real musical. My ma was very musical and after our dad pegged out she used to sing in the streets along of the Salvation Army. I didn’t care much about that but she wanted me to get musical too, so I bought this fife and practised on The Wild Scottish Bluebells till Harry Dunning took me one night to the instructor’s class in Scrase’s basement, after I’d paid him twopence more off the ninepence.
Mrs. Scrase always used to go out on the practice nights. She was a fat woman and their sitting-room wasn’t very big and when old Scrase got the big drum in there she said it overpowered her. I suppose that’s only woman-like, but all the same I really reckon it was because she didn’t care much about music; in fact, I don’t think she liked it. Well, there was about a dozen of us there besides old Scrase; one of ’em had a kettledrum all polished up like gold and a lot of little screw taps on it to screw the skin up tighter or not. But it cost a fearful lot and it was only such chaps as Hubert Fossdyke could go in for a drum, his father being a master butcher as sold his own meat and cooked sheep’s heads and had a horse and cart. Old Scrase instructed Hubert some way I couldn’t get the gauge of. “Daddy—mummy” he used to keep on saying to him, “daddy—mummy,” and Hubert would make a roll on the kettledrum that blooming near deafened you. Daddy meant tap it one way with one stick and mummy meant tap it some other way—I couldn’t cotton on to it—and it was a treat to hear. I’d much rather have had a kettledrum, they’ve got more dash than these flutes, only they cost such a fearful lot. And it’s Eyes Front for drummers, always, none of your looking to the right or left—Eyes Front! The fifers had little brass gadgets to fit on the flutes and put the music cards in, and old Scrase comes up to me. He was a paperhanger by trade, with a cast in his eye. Not half the size of his missus and he’d got a medal pinned on his lapel for life-saving somebody out of the sea that was drowning, and I made up my mind I’d have a go at learning to swim too, because it’s healthy for you and I like medals. There’s something about medals, especially when you’ve got four or five all in a row. And Scrase says to me:
“Can’t you read music?”
“I ought to,” I says, “I was in a church choir once.”
“Yah, but can you play it? Let’s hear you.”
I had a go at some card he give me, but as a matter of fact I was absolutely bamfoozled, because as a matter of fact I never could make anything of this old notation. So I told him I could really play anything if only I heard it once or twice. I’d a good ear for music.
“Oh!” he says; “how’d you get in the church choir if you couldn’t read music?”
“I got in all right,” I told him.
“Yes, but how?”
“I dunno—I did. But it’s this flute, I can’t do with it yet, not properly.”
“No,” he says, “you can’t.”
“I never played before.”
“No,” he says, “you ain’t.”
All the same, after about an hour, off we all goes out for a route march slap up the High Street playing hallelujah on the Wild Scottish Bluebells, Hubert in front blurring away on his kettledrum (grand it was) and old Scrase bringing up the rear—whump, whump—on the big ’un. Half the time I didn’t know what else we was playing, but I give ’em Bluebells, and we kept in step, everybody on the pavements stopping and staring at us and some bits of kids stepping out behind whistling the tune.
I dunno what it is, but there’s something in a band makes you want to sock anybody that sauces you, and there was a couple of chaps as gave us a nasty bit of lip. They did; but you mustn’t step out of the ranks when you’re playing on the march, not without orders. You’re all together, doing your best, and you get no thanks for it, no thanks at all. There was these two chaps I made a note of—I know ’em—and when I sees ’em again—! I wonder what they’ll have to say then! I shall stipulate for one at a time, of course.
After we had done our route march we finished up outside Scrase’s and he give us the dismiss.
“But step inside a minute, boys, will you?” he said. “Just a minute, I’m not satisfied; there’s something wrong tonight.”
So in we goes. “Shan’t keep you a minute,” he says, and we all tumbled after him down the basement stairs, and there was Mrs. Scrase frying something hot for supper.
“My God!” she says. “Albert, you ain’t going to bring that ruddy drum in here again, are you?”
“No,” he says, “I ain’t going to do that, Min.” And half of us was already in the sitting-room when she says: “What’s all these blooming mohawks want here for?”
It was enough to make poor old Albert set about her, but he only said: “They don’t want anything to eat, Min. There was something not quite all si-garney about ’em tonight, and I’m just a-trying ’em. Now, boys, I want a bar or two of The Wild Scottish Bluebells.”
So we ups and tootles a few.
Poor old Albert shook his blooming head. “Damme, whatever is it? Play it again, right through.”
We does so.
“God!” he says then. “Play it singly.”
So Fashy played it by himself, and Billy Wigg played it, and then it came to my turn and I played it.
“Ar! I thought so!” says Albert. “It’s you, is it!”
And so it was. My flute was a different pitch to theirn; not much, only half a note or so, but it properly upset Albert. He grabbed hold of my flute and unscrewed it.
“It’s cracked!” he said. “Where’d you get this thing?”
I told him I bought it off Harry Dunning. Harry Dunning said it was quite all right when he sold it to me. I said no it wasn’t. “It was cracked,” I said, “and you said that didn’t matter as I could play alto on it.” But Harry Dunning denied that; he denied it. And it surprised me a lot and I didn’t like him any the more. I never did like him much, he was only a plasterer’s boy though he always made out to be apprenticed to a mason, and I never did like the shape of his nose, it looked bad somehow. He denied it.
“Well, it’s no good,” Albert said. “Don’t you come here with that thing any more.”
I tell you, I went red in the face about it, and then, when we got outside again, Harry Dunning asked me for the penny I still owed him on it.
“Not much!” I says. “It’s broke, it’s out of tune, and Albert says it’s no good—you heard him.”
“That flute’s all right,” Harry Dunning says. “Only you can’t play it yet.”
“I could play it,”
I says, “if it was a good ’un.”
He said: “No, you couldn’t do that even. And what do you expect for eight penn’orth?”
“You take it,” I says, “and give me back my eightpence.”
“Gives nothing,” he says. “It cost two and ninepence original—what could you have better than that? Two bob I’m giving you! The flute’s perfect. All you got to do is poke a bit of wood up in the top of the mouthpiece part and that will make the pitch same as all ours.”
Of course I didn’t like him at all, but he was bigger than me. Next day I cut out a round piece of wood and shoved it up in the top of the mouthpiece part. It sounded worse than awful. I must have put up too much. And the worst of it was I couldn’t get it down again, so there I was, dished. But I didn’t give Harry Dunning the penny I owed him. Not me!
I couldn’t afford no more on fifes and drums then, so I didn’t go again, I give it up, but my ma was struck more than ever on me getting musical ideas. She even wanted me to be confirmed, but that was the doings of some old priest called Father Isinglass. She’d gone up very high-church all of a sudden and chucked the Salvation Army for the Roman Catholics because she liked confessing her sins. Well, I don’t, but she did—only she was very forgetful. She wrote out what she was going to tell Father Isinglass on a little bit of paper, just to remind herself at the end of the week, only she would leave this bit of paper knocking about all over the room, and when I used to read it I couldn’t help laughing. Poor old ma! I’m blessed if she didn’t forget to take it with her sometimes!
The Hurly Burly and Other Stories Page 21