Our Time Is Gone (71 page)

Something was buzzing in the Captain's head. He felt like a child on his first visit to the Zoo. Was the woman just being spiteful. Was she actually letting the place go to the devil? Was
that
why John Downey worried so?

‘I don't want to be interfering, Miss Fetch. But all this sounds just a little sad to me. Will Mr. Downey return here, d'you suppose?'

‘I hardly think so,' she replied. ‘The Strand in London is so full of women. That's another weakness of his. Would you like some more beer?' she asked.

‘No, thanks,' he said. ‘I think I'll have a look round outside,' and he got up.

Miss Fetch got up too. ‘Nobody wrote to me to say you would be coming,' she said.

‘As I thought,' reflected the Captain. ‘She's a bit suspicious!' But he wasn't uncomfortable. After all, when you came to think of it, the advantages were many, and even though Ram's Gate was going to rot it could always be set right again. And it was marvellous. All this place crying out for somebody to save it. Why shouldn't he save it? Own it? That was the height of ambition.

Miss Fetch said: ‘Excuse me a moment,' and went out, shutting the door behind her.

She had gone out to think. Whenever Miss Fetch left a room she was always careful to close the door behind her, and always to stand stock-still outside that door like a person who feels that one word more or one word less would have meant all the difference before leaving the room. To see her pass in and out of rooms, silently closing doors, and then standing motionless outside them for no reason at all was to suppose that she was a woman who stood perpetually between the twin thresholds of dread and expectation. So she stood outside this one—thinking, telling herself that
this
was the very person who had gone off with the daughter, telling herself that he wasn't up to much, and supposing in the most wilful way that some Downey—obviously John—had sent this man over in order to see how the land lay, in fact to hold her hand, to stop the rot. Which was precisely what she didn't want to do. Her father had worked for this family and so had she—and there was something more than satisfaction that could come out of rot. Rotten lives, rotten homes! But
she
hadn't made them so. She had just worked, serving them, and they were, to put it briefly, a lot of idle wasters. Well—they didn't get service for nothing. She supposed it was two years since they had paid her—still, the worst things got the better for her.

Let it go to the devil! She would get her reward in cash and kind. And this ‘gentleman ‘was thinking of taking it over. Well! Well! She would simply show him out, shut the door on him—keep him out. There was plenty of land outside on which to roam, and if she knew him correctly he was a person with ambitions. She might, however, be wrong. No matter! She would get him out of it, and if he wanted to he could rot in the grounds himself, though of course he might fall in the river and get drowned. They sometimes did.

‘It's either John or her.' She thought of‘her ‘as being Sheila. ‘But they don't know what I know—nor the hold I have on Mr. Downey. My father used to say to me—“they are rotters,” and they are! Let the people in it rot, and the place be burnt! I'll be a happy woman walking through the ashes. I stay here looking after a silly snivelling whining creature, purely out of kindness.' She opened the door and went in again.

‘I'll show you outside,' she said. ‘I think it would take you some hours to go round,' she said. ‘But you'll find your way about.'

She was already moving from the kitchen. He followed her. They went down a long corridor, came to a big black door. She removed chains, pulled back a shrieking protesting lock, and then, by a herculean effort, pulled the door open.

Captain Fury was suddenly covered with spiders, dead moths, dead flies, a snail, dead leaves.

‘You get that sort of thing here,' she said.

He stood down on the step. Weeds sprouted riotously between the flags.

‘You take the path to the right. That takes you through the kitchen garden, when you pass through the orchard you come to a little lane. There's a spinney beyond. It begins there, so to speak.'

So to speak! For the first time Captain Fury seemed to be seeing Miss Winifred Fetch in the whole. She was
all
there, and the strong light beat down on her head. As he spoke he studied her. ‘A housekeeper.' Yes. There was something about her that reminded him of a priest's housekeeper. He put his thumbs into his pockets, rested a foot on the top step. There was something conscious in this mutual sizing up, this survey in the sun.

Captain Fury saw a woman whom he supposed at first glance to be sixty, but she was only forty-two. He saw the high forehead, smooth as a child's, the long nose and the small thin mouth looking like a pencilled line beneath it. Her neck was almost hidden from view by the satin collar attached to the blouse, and this somewhat exaggerated her meagreness of flesh, as did the black serge skirt that covered the hips like a skin. She was flat chested, and her arms seemed unduly long for a woman of her height. The sleeves of the blouse ballooned out at the elbows, narrowed at the wrists. For some seconds he studied the white bone brooch. It seemed to him like the head of a saint. The thin white hands had a curious dead look about them. They now hung listlessly by her sides, in striking contrast to her face, which mirrored a perpetual curiosity, a certain vitality that gave people, at least the few whom Miss Fetch saw, the feeling that behind that face, behind those eyes, something was everlastingly strangling itself. Miss Fetch was far from being a sociable woman. She retained a curious, if odd independence of mind and spirit, and her body served no other function than to shield and guard them.

Captain Fury now realized that Miss Fetch would never—
could
never get married, or
love
anybody. She seemed as though she had always been forty-two, always dressed in black, always a housekeeper at Ram's Gate. Her abundant black hair was fast greying at the temples. When she smiled only the lower part of her jaw moved and this
dropped
rather than moved, with an almost puppet-like jerk. Miss Fetch had only one kind of smile. She loved nobody, and God was no exception.

‘Good afternoon,' she said, and there was something deadly, something so final about this utterance, that like an automaton Captain Fury's foot moved from the step, his mouth opened and he replied: ‘Good afternoon,' just like a person who has been trying to insure your house against fire for the best part of an hour and has failed to do so. He didn't even say ‘Thank you,' and there was no need, for the big door slammed in his face, and Miss Fetch returned to her post of duty—seeing that the rot went on. The sound of this shut door re-echoed like an explosion throughout the house.

Meanwhile Desmond Fury picked his way gingerly down the little path.

The heat was enormous, it beat in the air. It had weight, depth, it could be touched by the hand. It was riotous heat, riotous like the weeds, the wild roses, the nettles, the cowslips, the daisies.

‘God! The heat out here!' he said. ‘What a place! Going to the devil. That must be why she flew. And what a woman that Miss Fetch is!'

At the end of the path he sat down on a pile of broken masonry and looked back at the house frontage. And then he saw the face looking down from the window. It made him give the slightest shudder, though he was quite unaware of it. It wasn't odd, or funny, or sad, or surprising—it was dreadful. It was a dead face looking down. So
that
was her mother. Sheila's mother! An invalid. Probably a little mad. Her husband had cleared off.

‘H'm! It's the queerest blasted place I've ever seen! Queer! Queer isn't in it, here! The poor old devil.'

He wondered if she could see him. Then fearing she might, he got up and went on. Grass had the feel of velvet under his feet. To his right a hedge towered to the sky, its mood was rampant. All nature was rampant here, flowers, weeds, shrubs, trees, they all upthrust, spread, hung, hovered—they smothered! When he reached the end of the path he passed under two lilacs and came out on to what had formerly been a lawn. It was a mass of dancing daisies. He walked to the end of it. Farther ahead he could see the spinney.

‘Spinney,' he said. ‘Spinney,' speaking the word like one who is trying out a new language. And then he smiled. He undid his tunic, loosened his belt, bundled his tie into his pocket, took off his hat, and wiped his forehead. A whole prison of heat, held in by those huge trees, those sprawling bushes; and the smell of gorse was strong in his nostrils. He turned round to take another look at the front of the house, but to look at it without seeing the face—was impossible. And for some reason or other the sight of it made him feel afraid, out of touch, suddenly lost in the midst of this dense heat. All nature rioted, pressed him in. He could
feel
it, he, Captain Fury. Nature didn't give a damn who he was. He was in the middle act, and he didn't belong there. The deep green grass looked like a sea, and in the distance he saw whole fields of it. Miles of it.

He hurried through the spinney. The smells that rose to his nostrils evoked only horror. He hated these smells. ‘Rot!' he said. ‘All bloody well rotting away! And nobody does anything about it. And that Miss Fetch
wants
it to rot. Christ! What a world! So she has lived here, amongst the rot.'

When he came out of the spinney he felt more lonely, more isolated. He knew then that he didn't belong here. He was in the middle of a desert of grass. He ploughed through it until he reached a fence. Climbing over it, it collapsed under his weight. More rottenness.

‘Blast it!' he said, as he sat down upon a pile of nettles. What the devil was he doing here? Wandering round such a god-forsaken place. ‘My God! I don't blame anybody running away from this!' as he dragged himself to his feet and ploughed on. He was sweating again. He had come too far, he had not gone far enough. He should never have come. He
wanted
to come. This place was huge, a whole world. He had seen the trees, where were the parks, rivers, lakes? Thousands of acres? Where? Not in the midst of these ‘stinking rotten ‘fields? Grass—grass everywhere!

The world was full of it. His eyes, ears, and nose were full of it. Wild roses smiled at him, their thorns tore at his clothing. Wild gooseberries winked. He picked some, and nettles with them. He was angry. He hated the place. What a darned fool he had been ever to come. And he strode on again, knee deep in luxuriant grass, greener and more dense than any he had ever seen. Were his eyes deceiving him? The farther he went the more lost he was getting. He was in the wilderness. All this had a sly look, all this riotous indifferent world was laughing at him. Suddenly he began to run, not to any particular place, in no certain direction. Just an aimless run, a determined effort to cover ground, to make distance, to leave all this behind. The seas and valleys of green. He ploughed through thistles, tore against thorn branches, put his foot in a rabbit hole and came down.

He became quite frenzied, a sort of human bull careering about, stung by the heat, by ‘those bloody nettles,' affected by the loneliness, the enormity of this wildness, this desolation, this smiling riotous nature, and above him a sky, a rich blue, and a sun like a ball, sending down rays, layers, and great shafts of heat, making the gorse seeds split and crack, quickening all the things of earth. Bees buzzed, flies clung to him, a field mouse darted out of the way. He stopped panting.

‘Where the hell does all this end? Is this the bloody estate? Where the hell's the river?'
Was
there a river? He would like to jump into it to get cool, to hide his eyes from this wilderness of green. He climbed a banking and this too gave way and he brought down a hundredweight of rich earth upon himself; it went down his neck, into his ears. He had disturbed the rabbits. A half-dozen scattered, a wasp buzzed madly round his head. He stood erect, red faced, hot, disgruntled, angry with himself, with Miss Fetch, with his wife, with all this silence, this mad, riotous growing going on all about him.

‘Out of here!' he said, and started to run again. To where? Another field? And what was beyond that?

Another field. There was a fence. When he came to it, he negotiated it more carefully and landed safely on the other side. He felt he had passed through flames. He even congratulated himself. Wonderful! He had managed it.

‘But where in hell's name does all this end? Grass—grass—grass!' He felt it was now beginning to grow upon him. He could feel it in his mouth, just as though some hand were pushing it down his throat.

Finally he dropped flat in the grass, exclaimed: ‘Phew!' stretched himself out, looked up at the sky. The sun seemed to wink at him. Then he looked at it through his fingers. It hardly seemed possible that the same sun could be shining in Gelton, or in London. Such a fiery sun! Suddenly ants were running over his tunic. He leaped into the air as though he had been struck. ‘Hell!' he said, ‘Hell!' And as he ran, every insect in the country seemed to follow him. Ahead there was the horizon, and even that was green.

‘By God,' he said aloud. ‘I could do with a drink all right! What a bloody lark if, say, she suddenly stood up out of this grass and saw me. Legging it like a mad ass over her estate! Estate!' Estates were hells. He stamped on, more bewildered, hotter than ever. He had been stung, scratched and tickled. He had torn his brand-new riding breeches. He had fallen down three times. What a fool he was! And all this—all
this
simply smiled, went on growing, laughed at him. Who was he? Captain Fury. Let him lie down on the earth for only a day and they would simply swamp him, pile over him, grow over him, into him, out of him. These trees and shrubs and bushes. These hedges and flowers, this enormous sea of green, that pushed through the earth under the burden of the sun. And suddenly almost before he realized it he was standing on the banks of a stream.