South Riding (28 page)

“Yes. That is true,” said the bearded ’cellist gravely. “You can see that.”

“But you could do anything. You could go anywhere, and you choose to bury yourself in a God-forsaken sandpit.”

“Do I look buried? Do I look half-dead? I tell you I’m alive and I’m happy and I love my work. I love being alive. I love turning giggling little creatures into self-respecting women. I love bullying parents and flirting with fat governors,” she added with a hushed and brooding rapture. “You ought to see the plans for my new lavatories.”

They roared with laughter, but they accepted her. They were vital and generous people who could understand that one might grow drunk with triumph at the pleasure of wresting new sinks or cloakrooms from reluctant committees. They themselves had wrestled with boards and subscribers to musical societies.

They toasted her; they teased her. She was a little drunk with flattery and music, so that the cherry brandy seemed a negligible intoxicant. They came out to see her off in her little car, and Terry pressed upon her a box of American cigarettes, advertised as the “Motorist’s Perfect Companion,” which had been given him by an admirer in Chicago.

“You’re the plutocrat; you’re the motorist, Sarah. You need the perfect companion.”

She laughed; she thanked them; she drove away through the silent city, below the towering elevators, the large cliff-like walls of factories, out into the dark clear night and the level country.

As she drove the gaiety of that re-encounter faded and the more profound and solemn memory of the music possessed her mind.

Sarah had been brought up as an Anglican; her shrewd and ambitious mother believed that members of the Church of England had greater social opportunities than nonconformists. But Mrs. Burton remained at heart a Methodist, and her imagination was dominated by a confidence in salvation which Sarah found smugly complacent, a doctrine of atonement which Sarah thought barbaric, and a dream of Heaven which Sarah thought materialistic and uncivilised. So the girl, clever, irreverent, inquiring, grew up with a critical and detached scepticism towards both her mother’s religion, and that into which she herself had been initiated for reasons which she found inadequate. To be washed in the Blood of the Lamb appeared to her a nauseating exercise. Confession and absolution she thought to be an evasion of personal responsibility; redemption she considered to be a task for the individual will. Life was what each man made it.

She had suggested to the senior girls for their holiday reading that Easter, Lady Rhondda’s autobiography
This Was My World
, commending especially to them an old Spanish proverb quoted there: “Take what you want,” said God. “Take it—and pay for it.” To choose, to take, with clear judgment and open eyes; to count the cost and pay it; to regret nothing; to go forward, cutting losses, refusing to complain, accepting complete responsibility for their own decisions—this was the code which she attempted to impress upon the children who came under her influence—the code on which she set herself to act. If only we could train children, she would say, not to fear, not to hate, not to desire those things which are ugly and futile, then indeed we might have some hope for society. Resignation, acceptance of avoidable suffering, timidity and indecision, she found contemptible. The world is what we make it, she would preach; take what you want. Take it—and pay for it. The earth belonged to those who were prepared to pay most for their dominion.

Yet even so fierce an individualist, so sceptical an agnostic, was shaken by the power and beauty of the music to which she had been listening. The words rang in her mind. “He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. . . . Surely, surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed.” Her senses were swayed by the image, but her mind could not accept its implication.

We must do it ourselves, she thought; we are our own redeemers. Accept nothing; be resigned to nothing; refuse to make the best of a bad bargain.

The dark clear night closed round her. She slowed down the car. It is Easter morning, she thought, the day of resurrection.

She stopped, her elbows on the wheel, her chin in her hands. She lit one of Terry’s cigarettes. She sat there alone in the darkness, thinking of death and resurrection and of a world redeemed from fear and cruelty by human effort.

Then she heard something.

At first her senses denied it.

It came again, a low moan of anguish rising to a wailing scream of terror.

No, she told herself; no, it’s an illusion.

The black coppice of Minton Riggs rose to the right of the road, a yard or two behind the car. In its shadow squatted the old brick shed that she had passed many times, a hundred yards back from the road, facing away to the fields. Some one was in there now. A faint light came from the square window which, open towards the road, was veiled with sacking. Somebody was in there, and was in desperate pain.

Sarah heard the wild cry repeated, this time accompanied by a rattle of chains and a dull repeated thud. She sat still, listening, and now she was afraid. The knowledge came to her that she must go and investigate, for if she drove on, she might learn later of an agonising death, a hideous murder, a man gored to death by a bull, a tragedy which she, who had heard, might have prevented. It would be on her conscience for ever.

She climbed out of her car and fumbled in her tool box for her electric torch. She feared bulls and felt small and defenceless. The lights of her little car shone with homely reassurance. To leave them, to push her way through the hedge, to cross the deep wet ditch, to face whatever horror should await her, seemed almost beyond her courage; yet holding her torch, trying to negotiate thorns and mud with the least detriment to her thin patent leather shoes and new spring suit, she went. Even if she were going to her death, she felt acutely aware of the damage done to her pretty and not inexpensive clothes.

The rattling, wailing and plunging sounds grew louder. She thought that she could hear a man’s deep voice. She told herself : “Well, in a minute I shall know what it is, anyhow. Oh, why didn’t I go home earlier? Then I shouldn’t have heard anything and it would not be my responsibility.”

A corner of the little square window was uncovered by the rough sacking across it. By standing on tiptoe and pulling herself up against the wall, Sarah was just tall enough to peer inside. She took a deep breath; she pulled the sacking aside; she looked.

What she saw, in the feeble light of a hanging lantern, was a man in shirt sleeves acting midwife to a plunging, moaning, terrified calving cow. As he turned so that she saw his profile, she recognised Robert Carne of Maythorpe.

Her surprise and relief, as she dropped back to the ground, almost overcame her, so that she leaned weakly against the wall, inclined to giggle at her own vanished fears. But as she recovered her composure, the image of what she had just seen reconstructed itself detail by detail in her observant and retentive mind.

She was the daughter of a midwife and a blacksmith. Years of urban life had prevented her from recognising the sounds that had so much alarmed her, but now both her own experience and inherited instinct told her just what was taking place on the other side of the wall; she knew that it was not as it should be. It happened that coincidence, which is often a result of character, had led her once before into a similar situation. When a young teacher her curiosity, her self-confidence and her mother’s training had led her to offer help to the smallholders with whom she was lodging, when they were in trouble with precisely the same kind of abnormal case of animal obstetrics.

Cows were valuable animals. Birth and death were matters of common interest. Sarah remembered that without assistance on that previous evening, her landlady swore that she would have lost both cow and calf.

Sarah owed a grudge against Carne of Maythorpe. She was wearing her new spring clothes and did not want to spoil them. This was none of her business, and if she drove home no one would know anything about it.

But she could not do it. She peered once more below the sacking; she took a deep breath, then marched round the shed, in at the open door and announced quickly and firmly: “You’re needing help, aren’t you? Let me give you a hand, Mr. Carne.”

He swung round, and his face which had been crimson with effort went grey with shock.

“Good God.”

“I’m sorry if I startled you.” She was pulling off her fur coat. “Last time we met, you startled me.”

“You can’t stay here. It’s no place for a woman.”

“You mean it’s no place for a man. The cow and I are both females. You know, I was brought up with animals.”

“Look here—it’s awfully good of you—but really, if you want to be so kind—if you’d take a message to Maythorpe . . .?”

“There’s not time, is there? You want help now.”

As she spoke another spasm of pain convulsed the cow. It was indeed too late to fetch help.

“Quick. Tell me what to do,” she said.

He surrendered.

“Hold these,” he commanded. “And when I say pull, pull hard.”

She obeyed. On the trampled straw in the lantern light they fought together. She was small, but wiry, and once he had accepted her help he gave his directions clearly, trying to spare her as far as possible, yet twice unable to prevent her being knocked down into the filthy straw.

Once, in a pause, he said: “The vet’s away and my beast-man’s dead drunk. These things always would happen on Saturday night.”

Otherwise they spoke little; their task was too grim and urgent. She recognised that he had great physical strength and an unexpectedly sensitive skill. He knew how to be kind and the tortured animal trusted him.

Sarah found a strange satisfaction in obeying his commands, accepting his domination, working with him in silent cooperation. They were bound together by a shared intention, throwing the whole of their united strength into the business of saving life. When at length their task was accomplished, and the thin, long-legged calf lay on the straw, they stared down at it with the unique satisfaction which comes only to those who have together accomplished a difficult and exacting task. Their task was not quite finished. Carne still feared that the cow might have a haemorrhage. He suggested that Sarah should go now, but she found that by holding her electric torch she still could help him.

At last, filthy, reeking, aching in every muscle, they faced each other across the animals they had saved. Languidly the exhausted Jersey licked her calf. Carne brushed the sweat off his face with a lifted sleeve.

“What now?” asked Sarah.

“Now you go home to bed,” he said, leaning rather limply against the wall.

“Will she be all right?”

“I’ll knock up my shepherd and get him to come to her.”

“Where does he live? Have you got a car here?”

“No. He’s in Maythorpe village. I can walk it in half an hour.”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind. I’ll run you there in my car. How long had you been here before I came?”

“Since about half-past eight. I’d just come round to have a look at her and found this.” His speech was blurred with fatigue.

The engine of the little car was still throbbing softly as they climbed out through the broken hedge together.

“Your fence isn’t any too good,” observed Sarah.

“No. I’ll have to get it seen to,” he yawned.

“Still, it’s better than my cloakrooms.”

He looked sideways at her and chuckled. They drove almost in silence to Maythorpe village. She suspected that Carne was more than half asleep; but as they passed the first cottage he said, “The second block on the left.” They stopped. Carne climbed out and threw stones at a window. After two or three efforts, the narrow panes were shoved aside and a head poked out.

“Who’s that?”

“Me. Carne. Look here, Shep, sorry to knock you up, but the Jersey’s calved—Pudsey was drunk last night. Can you get up there?”

“Were you with her? Is she all right?”

“Not too good. What we feared. But she’ll do, I think.” He gave brief, clear directions.

“Right you are.”

Naylor withdrew his head. The window slid back, and a light glowed softly behind its little pane.

Carne turned back to Sarah. “That’ll be all right now.”

“Get in. I’ll drop you at your house.”

“It’s not necessary.”

“Don’t argue. I pass your gate anyway.”

He got in. She swung the car round.

It occurred to her that he had never thanked her.

“Was it a valuable cow?” she hinted.

“Prize Jersey.”

She turned to her left and drove up the dark avenue to his front door. He did not speak. He was huddled in the little car, motionless with the heavy sleep of exhaustion. She smiled. He was in her power this time and no mistake.

She flashed on the inside light and he started.

“It’s nearly five,” she said.

He fumbled for his watch, an old-fashioned gold hunter. “Exactly six minutes past,” he corrected her and unfolded himself out on to his own doorstep.