South Riding (23 page)

“It stands to reason,” George Brimsley explained heavily, “if they make road there, they won’t make it here. Now we need a better road to Yarrold. We’d like railway an’ all.”

“Hear, hear.”

“But if they spend north, they won’t spend south. Why should they? Stands to reason.”

“We know that there’s jealousy. We know what they call us, but what we say is . . .”

“Who
wants
more motor roads to Kiplington, anyway?”

The smallholders drew towards him, warming to their grievance. The women collected round Mrs. Beddows. She did not wait for Carne to finish. She never had any use for forms or ceremonies. In a few minutes there were two meetings—a masculine one to plead for the transference of the new road from north to south of the railway line, so that it could benefit Cold Harbour Colony, and a feminine one to consider the establishment of a district nurse.

The two discussions formed a blended symphony of rural experience—strophe and antistrophe, arguing, reaffirming— transport from farm to market, transport from death to life.

Men.
—Mind you, apples ain’t worth the packing. What the missus don’t make into pies, we give to pigs.

Women.
—Nay, now, Mrs. Beddows, I said: If Jack’s got quinseys he’ll get better, and if he’s got diphtheria, like he’ll die. But if he goes into fever hospital, there’s no telling what’ll happen, so I’ll just keep him at home.

Men.
—They used to pay 4s. an acre for binding sheaves, but now reapers does it all so we get no tack-work even if we tried to go out and earn a bit. . . .

Women.
—Mrs. Beachall’s a nice little woman and has obliged for many of the ladies round here, for all Doctor says she’s dirty and uncertified; but I was three days and three night in trouble with our Percy and if the devil hisself could have helped me, I’d have took him.

Men.
—So his fowls never got no prizes; no more would the Angel Gabriel himself if he’d been moulting.

Women.
—We thought the air out here would do Lucy good, so we brought her straight home and she never went to no “after-care.” Maybe if there’d been a nurse to tell her she was going wrong way we’d not have lost her.

Men.
—It’s the going on year after year with no prospect for the lads that vexes me. What you grow, you eat, and what you can’t grow, you do without.

Women.
—But what should we have to pay her, Mrs. Beddows? Dad and me’s putting weekly into the Christmas club and boot fund, and burial, and if we had to put down 6d. or so for a nurse as well, we’d have to drop one of ’em, and burial would go. And I know what that means. We’ve been owing ever since we lost our Benny, because we’d no insurance and to pay money down. You may say it’s like sacrificing the living to the dead, but what I say is—you never need get ill, but you’re
bound
to die some day. . . .

Men.
—Government put us here. Government should help us. If we could get out stuff straight to Kingsport market we might sometimes make a little profit. . . .

Mrs. Beddows sat back and let the talk ripple round her. She could watch Carne’s face under the swinging lamp, and learn by heart the concerned kindliness of his expression. To see him listening, nodding, frowning, answering, so good, so patient, so serious in his desire for understanding, was to be confident of his ripeness for giving comfort, because only by giving could he receive it.

They ought to have made him alderman, she thought. He must never give up his public work. It’s his salvation.

She did not care much whether the road ran from east to west or from north to south, but she cared urgently that Carne should have a case worth fighting for. The championship of the colonists would involve him in a quarrel with Snaith, but, since the chestnut mare was killed, that enmity seemed past mending anyhow. She was too old to hope for romantic reconciliation. Well then, let Carne fight; warfare would distract him.

One day, of course, his hurts would heal; he would be able to stand outside his grief and look all round it, take its full measure and accept it as Bill Heyer accepted his crippled body, as she had accepted her disappointing marriage.

He’s too sore now, she thought. His wounds were still open and agonising. She could remember well when she had been in the same case. For she had gone to Jim Beddows in love with his brisk efficient geniality, expecting him to prove a gallant lover and stalwart companion. She had found him a man of straw, mean, ungenerous, jealous, hugging his little grievances and grudges, rejoicing when other men could lose a fortune, but lacking the enterprise himself to make one. Emma’s first two babies had died at seven weeks, and in both cases she was sure they could have been saved if her husband’s economics had not included the prohibition of medical advice. For years she had thought her hatred and unhappiness irremediable.

But one comes through, she reflected. One comes through it all. She had learned to manage Jim; she had her living children; she had built up a new life on other people’s needs. The regret, the anguish, the humiliation faded as one grew older.

If only she could persuade Carne that this was so indeed, that his loneliness would fade; that his pain was mortal, but that the love and tenderness which he had expended upon his wife and daughter, the kindness which he showed to his neighbours, were bread cast on the waters and would return to enrich his later years.

Only he must be brave; he must endure; he must learn that even remorse can be used as a weapon to conquer wisdom. It was the man of sorrows acquainted with grief whom the world needed.

The business was over; the meeting had drifted into desultory discussion of the storm.

“I’ve seen nothing to turn my stomach like them sheep since I was at Passchendale,” said Heyer. “You coming to have a cup of tea with me now, alderman? And you, Mr. Carne?”

Alderman and councillor went off together with him, to his clean lamplit cottage.

No dwelling-place in the colony was neater. The coarse white tablecloth shone like damask; the red tiled floor was spotless; hyacinths in pots lent their faint melting sweetness to the smell of tobacco, harness and scrubbed linoleum. Tom Sawdon, no longer the chauffeur but the innkeeper, ratepayer, and neighbour, came in to add his word to that of the colonists. Mrs. Beddows smiled happily and helped herself to a third slice of saucer cheese cake.

“I shall have indigestion to-night and blame you, Bill.”

“Mrs. Brimsley’s cook,” he defended himself.

“Why do you never come and patronise the Nag’s Head, Mrs. Beddows?” asked Sawdon. “I’d get Lily to make you pastry West Riding way.”

“I’m afraid of your big dog.”

“The Alsatian? That’s my wife’s. Gentle as a kitten.”

“Not in sheep-folds. You’ll have to watch out, Sawdon,” Carne warned him. “Folks round here don’t like Alsatians about lambing time.”

But he spoke casually. There was no threat in his warning.

The whole evening was splendid—an unqualified success. It was not until they were shut away again together in the car that Mrs. Beddows remembered something.

“Look here—Have you called yet on Miss Burton?”

“No.”

His convivial humour was suddenly clouded over by the old sullen darkness. “No. But I’ve met her,” he added.

“Well?”

No answer.

“You didn’t like her?”

Oh, he could be difficult. He must have driven Muriel crazy sometimes. That was, of course, just what he thought he had done. Poor boy. Poor boy.

“I didn’t think much about her at all.”

“You did. I’m sure you did. Or you wouldn’t sound so cross.”

“Did I?”

“Oh, it’s all right. But you can’t come the strong silent man over me, you know. I’m too old. And I know you too well.”

He paused at that, then confessed ungraciously, “Midge thinks she’s the world’s wonder.”

“And you’re jealous,” concluded Mrs. Beddows. She pressed on. “Aren’t you?”

“Oh, she’s harmless. I suppose.”

“Well. I think you’re both wrong myself,” said Mrs. Beddows.

A
LDERMAN
A
NTHONY
S
NAITH
entered his beautiful bathroom to wash his hands.

He never set eyes on that bathroom without pleasure. Through his mind floated the memory of a shallow enamel basin half full of cooling grey suds, a dank flannel, a cracked slab of red carbolic soap, and a moist threadbare towel dropped on to the worn brown oilcloth. There had been no bathroom in his aunt’s house at Kingsport; he had been a fastidious and self-conscious little boy.

Now he could make a delightful entertainment even of washing his hands before afternoon tea.

He removed his coat and hung it on a special padded hanger. He slid the links through the cuffs of his delicate lavender grey poplin shirt and rolled up his sleeves, baring his slender blue-veined forearms. He turned a hot tap and a cold tap and watched the rising steam bedew his stainless fittings. The water was artificially softened. It gushed out into the pale green porcelain basin. The soap was of a deeper green, with a faint herbal fragrance.

The towel was bordered with green, and hung, warm and smothering-soft, on the shining water pipes.

Alderman Snaith regarded his fine toothbrushes, his loofahs, shaving tackle, disinfectants and mouth washes. Everything was in order—neat, expensive, the thoughtfully designed equipment of a man of sensitive taste.

Washed, brushed, provided with a clean linen handkerchief, he went along the corridor to the library, where, before a leaping cheerful fire, the tea-table waited, silver kettle bubbling and shining teapot already warmed, caddy of Earl Grey mixture, a covered hot-plate of buttered anchovy toast, an angel cake like a sugar snowdrift.

He surveyed the table critically, but his inquiring eye found no imperfection, no finger mark on the silver, no crease in the cloth. He sat down with satisfaction to make the tea, to nibble the toast and cut the powdery cake, from time to time pausing to stroke with affectionate foot the immsense tom-cat that lay trustfully on its back along the hearthrug.

The cats were the only incongruous occupants of that precise impersonal room. Critics said that it was impossible to imagine anybody actually working and living there. No trace of ink stained the virgin whiteness of the blotting paper on the desk, where clips, pins, elastic bands, covers and files were put to their proper uses. The books lining the walls were arranged according to height as well as subject—not a page dog-eared, not a corner loose, not a title upside down. The papers and magazines on the table behind the door lay drilled like guardsmen, as though challenging idlers to disturb their intimidating order.

Yet the
Times
and
Economist
were closely studied; the books were read; letters were answered; even meals were eaten in the library, and once a cat, mother of the present tabby tom and his six brethren, had given birth to kittens in front of that very fire.

The incident had been a complete surprise to Snaith. He was unfamiliar with scenes of birth and death, his imagination shrinking with horror from their crudities. But when he realised what was happening on his hearthrug, before he had time to interfere with nature and the whims of his elderly and decorous lady-cat, Selena, he was surprised and charmed by the neatness and economy of the business. Stooping down from his armchair he watched the kittens exploding like silent cannon balls, one after the other, five in all, from their mother’s interior; he watched her lick them clean and repair all visible disorder caused by that cataclysm of creation, then settle herself into so lovely a limber half-moon to suckle her children, that his heart melted with gratitude and affection. This, then, was nature—this amusing, tidy and rather charming process. This was maternity—the busy motion of the tawny-shaded blunt-nosed tabby’s tongue over the wet seal-skin jackets of her progeny. Snaith drew a handkerchief across his forehead. He was exhausted. Within that brief period of time a thousand half-formed images had been destroyed, a hundred nightmares broken. A serenity of liberation began to dissolve the horror surrounding all thoughts of mating and procreation haunting him since that one hideous initiation, when, a little pink and white boy, brought up by a maiden aunt, too soft and pretty and innocent for safety in Kingsport streets, he had fallen into the hands of evil men and fled from them too late, a psychological cripple for life.

Selena was dead; but before she died she blessed her grateful owner with three more successive families. Remnants of these, undisposed of to farmers, orphanages and mental homes (the institutions of the South Riding were supplied free with guaranteed mousers by Alderman Snaith), lay about the library. A smaller and finer brother of the massive tom on the hearthrug lay stretched along the back of an arm-chair; his sister gazed soulfully at the alderman with enormous amber eyes in the intervals of performing an extensive and voluptuous toilet on the coal scuttle.

One of the few disagreements that Snaith had had with his housekeeper arose over his treatment of the toms when they reached years of indiscretion. “You let me take ’em away and have ’em seen to. You can’t let ’em multiply for ever, let alone the smell, and we can make up to ’em other ways.” At first he refused; but after three necessary drownings, he let her have her way with the younger generation, treating his gelded toms with specially tender indulgence.