The Feast (32 page)

Mrs. Cove rose and went to a drawer for a small safety razor which she used regularly upon her own upper lip.

Beatrix and Maud broke into wails of protest.

‘Oh not here! Not here, where everybody can see! Oh Mother! Please … please … the Feast … she can’t go like that to the Feast … please don’t do it till after the Feast….’

‘There’ll be no Feast for any of you,’ said Mrs. Cove, turning, ‘unless Blanche tells the truth.’

The wails rose to shrieks.

‘I am telling the truth! I am! I am!’ howled Blanche.

Mrs. Cove took no notice whatever. She took a soap dish from the washing stand and marched down to the bathroom to get a little hot water. The Coves wept
hopelessly
until Maud, with the courage of the desperate, jumped up and locked the door. A sudden silence fell upon the room.

‘She shan’t do it,’ said Maud. ‘We’ll lock her out.’

‘She’ll break down the door,’ whispered Beatrix.

‘She can’t, by herself. It’s very strong. And she won’t
dare tell anyone. It’s wicked. It’s cruel. They’d stop her.’

‘She’s our mother,’ said Blanche.

‘We shall starve to death,’ observed Beatrix.

‘No. They’ll find out. When we don’t come to the Feast they’ll come and look for us. We shall be very hungry, but we shall have food at the Feast. They will save us.’

Beatrix sighed an assent. Blanche felt too faint to say more. They waited, shivering and still sobbing a little until their mother came back. To her knocks and calls not even Maud had the courage to reply. They let the locked door deliver their ultimatum for them.

She hammered and threatened for some moments until a fresh voice interrupted her.

‘Whatever’s the matter, Mrs. Cove? Locked you out, have they? Well!’

It was Miss Ellis. Their mother stopped hammering and asked if there was such a thing as a screw-driver in the house.

‘I don’t know, I’m sure. Not very likely, I should think. But fancy your girls playing you such a trick! Bet those Giffords put them up to it.’

‘No we didn’t!’

The twins, aroused by the tumult, were peering out of their door.

‘If I were in your shoes, Mrs. Cove, I’d leave. Take them away before they learn worse. Even if I had to pay for the rooms….’

‘Thank you, Miss Ellis. I’m quite able to manage my own children.’

‘Doesn’t look like it. And if you knew as much as I do, Mrs. Cove, you wouldn’t even pay for the rooms. They wouldn’t dare make you pay….’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Can’t tell you here. Little pitchers have long ears. Come in my room for a minute. You really should know….’ 

Footsteps receded, a door closed, silence fell.

‘They’ve gone to Miss Ellis’s room,’ surmised Maud.

Blanche, who had been lying on the floor, stirred and sat up.

‘It’s no use,’ she said feebly. ‘We can’t lock mother out of her own room. We can’t do anything except offer it up.’

‘Oh
no
!
’ cried Maud and Beatrix.

‘Then Jesus will decide.’

‘I’d rather He didn’t,’ said Maud. ‘We offered up the stray kitten, but He didn’t make her let us keep it.’

‘He was very sensible,’ Beatrix reminded her. ‘We saw that, afterwards. How could we have fed it? He made the next-door people take pity on it, and it had a much nicer home.’

‘If He’d been even more sensible He’d have let us keep it and sent us food for it.’

‘We couldn’t have brought it here. Perhaps He knew we were coming here. What would have happened to it?’

‘Maud!’ cried Blanche. ‘Don’t you trust Jesus?’

‘Not to give me anything I want. He only cares about Kingdom Come, which won’t be for millions of years. If I want anything very much I just particularly
don’t
offer it up.’

‘If we offer it up, nothing bad can happen. Nothing He wants can be bad. That clergyman said so, on Good Friday.’

‘I daresay. But something very nasty can happen, all the same,’ muttered Maud.

They said no more. Maud was quite right. Their previous attempts to offer things up had never saved them from disaster, though Blanche had insisted that this was because they had never achieved complete
indifference
to their own wishes. She could not do so now. She could not escape from the hope that Kingdom Come might not require her head to be shaved.

But after twenty minutes of suspense even Maud began to falter. The desperate naughtiness of their conduct became increasingly apparent to all of them.

At last they heard their mother coming back. She tried the door, found it still locked, and called to Blanche. Her voice was changed; it was worried and uncertain.

‘Don’t be so silly. Open the door, I want to talk to you.’

Blanche tried to get up, but Maud held her down.

‘If you’ll stop this nonsense, perhaps I’ll let you off for once.’

‘Don’t! Don’t! It’s a trap,’ cried Maud, struggling with Blanche.

‘Rubbish!’ replied the anxious voice outside the door. ‘If I let you off it’s because I have other things to think of. I may have to go away … to London … I may have to leave you here…. In that case …’

‘Why should she have to go away all of a sudden?’

‘If you want to stay here you must behave sensibly. I can’t ask Mrs. Siddal to keep three crazy children …’

Blanche threw Maud aside and rose to her feet.

‘Will you solemnly promise to let Maud and Bee go to the Feast?’ she called. ‘If you do, it doesn’t matter about me.’

‘What? The Feast? Yes, I suppose so … I said I’d let you all off, if you’ll come to your senses.’

Blanche turned to the others.

‘Offer it up! Offer it up!’ she exhorted them. ‘There’s no other help. If Jesus wants us to escape we shall. If not, not. But I must open the door.’

Beatrix and Maud, closing their eyes, began to offer it up.

Blanche unlocked the door. All three children stood rigid, with tightly shut eyes, as their mother came in.

It was half-past nine by the old cherry-wood clock in the Thomas kitchen when Nancibel wearily pushed open the door. A blast from the radio greeted her and her mother’s voice, asking wherever she had been. All the rest of the family had gone to bed, but Mrs. Thomas was sitting up in a mood which swung between indignation and excited curiosity.

Indignation spoke first.

‘I thought this was your half day. I thought Millie Stephens was going to give you a perm.’

‘I cancelled it,’ said Nancibel, throwing herself into a chair. ‘I rang up Millie from Pendizack. Mrs. Siddal took faint so I changed my day and stopped on. There’s no hurry for my old perm.’

‘Just what I thought,
just
what I thought. I said you’d given up your half-day again. It’s getting too much of a good thing.’

‘Only changed it, Mum. I’ll take two days one week later on. Got a cuppa? I’m dying of thirst.’

‘It doesn’t do to let yourself be put on,’ said Mrs. Thomas, bringing the teapot from the stove. ‘They aren’t grateful. They only take it for granted. And there’s such a thing as being too unselfish. You’re only young once. Now’s the time to enjoy yourself. There’ll be plenty of giving up for others later on, without you going out of your way to look for it. When you’re married it’s never anything else.’

Nancibel smiled as she sipped the sweet, stewed tea.

‘Yet you’re always going on at me to get married,’ she observed.

‘Husband and children, that’s life,’ declared Mrs. Thomas, pouring out a cup for herself. ‘It’s not much fun, but neither is life much fun here below. What I mean is, Pendizack’s not your funeral. Mrs. Siddal has bitten off more than she can chew, poor thing; but
that’s not to say you have to lose your sleep over it. You can’t set the whole world to rights. Do your work you said you’d do, and do it properly, and let her boil her own kettle of fish.’

‘Oh, don’t go on, Mum.’

They both shouted, for the radio was playing at full strength, unnoticed by either of them. They had become so used to it that they never thought of turning it off. Ever since half-past six in the morning it had supplied an
obbligato
accompaniment to the life of the family.

Mrs. Thomas, having vented her displeasure, turned to a more agreeable topic.

‘Oo!’ she shouted. ‘I forgot. There’s a letter for you.’

She took it from the mantelpiece where it had stood all day, leaning against a china statuette of John Wesley preaching in a verdant bower.

Nancibel sat up, eyes sparkling and cheeks flushed. A letter? Bruce?

But it was not his hand, and the postmark was
Wolverhampton
. She took it and sat hunched up at the table, reading it slowly, while her mother tried not to watch her too eagerly and Geraldo’s Band played a foxtrot.

All the Thomas family had been discussing this letter ever since its arrival, for they knew that Brian lived in Wolverhampton, and they had decided that he might be writing to make it up with his old love. But they could agree about nothing else. Mr. Thomas, furious at all the grief which this wretched youth had brought on Nancibel, had wanted to throw the letter behind the fire. Myra hoped that the match might still come off; she had smarted under the reproach of having a jilted sister and longed for a chance to be a bridesmaid. Mrs. Thomas was uncertain; Brian had good prospects, but she had much preferred the look of Bruce. The rest of the family was merely frantic with curiosity, which should have been satisfied in the afternoon, had not Nancibel changed her half-day. They had wished to sit up till she got home,
but Mrs. Thomas had forbidden it and packed them all off to bed. She thought that she might have more chance to say a sensible word if she got the girl to herself.

‘Is it from … Brian?’ she asked, when Nancibe had finished.

‘No. From his father. Read it.’

Nancibel, with a little laugh, pushed the letter across the table and went back to her tea. Mrs. Thomas read:

‘Poor Brian!’ said Nancibel, with another laugh. ‘First his Mum says he mayn’t. Then his Dad says he may. Did you ever hear anything so soft?’

‘What’ll you do?’ asked Mrs. Thomas.

‘Oh, I’ll write the old bird. I’ll write Sunday. Say I’m sorry his wife is gone and all that, but my feelings are changed, thank you.’

‘They are?’

Nancibel took the letter and put it on the dresser behind the communal bottle of ink.

‘They certainly are, Mum. If nothing else had changed them, this letter would do.’

‘It’s a pity Brian didn’t write himself,’ agreed Mrs. Thomas, doubtfully.

‘He’s nothing but a spoilt kid. First he lets them talk him out of it and then he moans and groans over spilt milk. I snapped out of it and forgot him. But he’s got no guts.’

‘Guts! I wish you wouldn’t use such common
expressions
. Why do you?’

‘Because I am common, that’s how come. Too common for the Goldies.’

‘You never learned such a way of talking from me, or your Dad.’

‘I know. But we had all sorts in the A.T.S. We had girls with handles to their names, and if I talked the way some of
them
did, you’d turn me out in the snow.
Look Mum, the big kettle’s on and I’m as dirty as a crow. I got so hot and sticky down in Pendizack kitchen
tonight
. Can’t I have a nice wash down here, comfortable, in front of the fire before I go to bed?’

‘O.K.,’ said Mrs. Thomas, clearing the tea things.

The unspoken name of Bruce hung heavy in the air between them. Mrs. Thomas was acutely aware that he had not yet been mentioned. Memories of her own youth, experience with other daughters, told her that it is not the boys you hear about who matter. She longed to ask if he had anything to do with this change in
Nancibel’s
feelings, but she dared say nothing lest she should get her head snapped off.

She went into the back kitchen to get a basin, soap and a towel. Nancibel, as if determined to change the subject, launched into a spirited account of the day’s doings. She told of Gerry Siddal’s engagement, the mystery of the disappearing library, the burnt letters in the boiler, Mrs. Siddal’s collapse, Miss Wraxton’s
competence
as a cook, and her own fear lest she should go bats if she stayed at Pendizack much longer.