Turf or Stone (15 page)

Easter emerged, looking wild with a glitter in his eyes. He strode up to the horse and, laying his left hand on Matt’s knee, made a curious abrupt gesture with the right, almost as though he were pointing at him.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I think my wife’s gone, sir.’

‘Gone?’

‘Run off.’

It was quite true. Ever since Shannon’s birth Mary had made up her mind to leave Easter. Only weakness tied her to The Gallustree; directly she was strong enough to go she went.

Her plans were simple: in the bank she had forty pounds of her own which would enable her to live until she could find and undertake work. She would go to friends in Shrewsbury whom she vaguely hoped might help her. She knew she could easily be found, but she would refuse point blank to return, and if pushed to it, she would try to get a separation. In reality she had not recovered sufficiently to contemplate sustained work of any kind, but the fact was mind and body alike were temporarily undermined, and she was incapable of arranging details.

The effort proved abortive from the start. She put the baby into the pram and wheeled him to the Chepsford road where she intended to get on the first bus that overtook her.

It happened to be early closing day in Chepsford, and no bus appeared. At eight o’clock in the evening she was still pushing wearily, having been nearly an hour and
three quarters on the road. She was almost done.

She decided to spend the night at the nearest roadside inn. Ten minutes later, when no house or building of any sight was within view, a wheel came off the pram. She drew one deep sigh of bitter exasperation and fatigue, lifted the baby in her arms and walked distractedly on. Very little farther there was a crossroads, or rather, a place where two narrow lanes branched off, and, lifting her jaded glance to the signpost, she read: Weir End; Gillow.

Afterwards considering the state she was in, her plight, and the time that had passed since she met him, she could never understand how her mind had leapt so quickly to William Dallett, whose gun-metal ring on her finger was the only sign of her wifehood to another man. She thought at once: ‘I’ll go to him.’

She walked back to the pram, opened a gate, and lifted it into a field, where it would not be seen from the road. Then once more, and with a long breath, she took up the child whom she had laid on the ground, and went on.

She went painfully slowly, for she was practically exhausted. All the time she saw Matt. She could not think of him ardently any more than she could have passionately clasped him, for she was too weak even to imagine action. Had he been near she would have gone to him and wound his arm about her, and leant upon him.

Lifting her head which hung almost upon the baby’s breast, she moved him from one arm to the other. Two girls on bicycles were approaching her. They were laughing, shaking their machines all over, playing the fool. Their light dresses blew about and they held their hats in their hands.

‘Can you tell me where William Dallett lives?’ she asked as they passed.

‘Next cottage.’

‘Is it far?’

‘Just round the corner.’

She saw it. That helped her.

The cottage was ugly, of grey stone, slate-roofed. There was a narrow flower bed under the front windows, and a green wooden fence dividing it from the road. A little girl in a red dress with a bandaged leg was standing on a pile of stones, dipping her hands into a corrugated-iron water butt. A little way behind the cottage was a small, dark spinney enclosed by wire.

‘Does Mr Dallett live here?’

The child ducked her head and did not answer.

Mary pursued: ‘Is he your father?’

The little girl sprang away and ran behind the house. Mary went up to the open door. It led straight into a littered kitchen. A flaming fire burned in the high grate; the table was spread with a blue cloth on which were plates, a loaf on a folded newspaper, and a pot of jam. Another girl, a little older than the first, was kneeling on a chair, vigorously flapping a cloth to keep off the flies. There was a smell of hotpot.

Mary repeated her question. This child, who considered herself quite grown up, answered her in a mincing, responsible little voice.

‘Yes, Mr Dallett lives ’ere.’

‘Can I speak to him?’

‘No, because ’e aren’t at home.’

Mary could hardly bear the pang of despair occasioned
by this self-possessed announcement.

She faltered: ‘Where is he?’

This time the child hesitated, as if she were becoming embarrassed. She seldom spoke to strangers. At last she said her father must be at the pub.

‘Is that far?’

Silence.

Mary would have tried to coax her, but she felt only impatience. Had she been aware that her eyes were fixed on the little girl with the same stare she was accustomed to meet with in an impetuous schoolteacher, she might have softened her tone. She repeated, was it far?

But the child had come to the end of her resources. She stopped, waving her arm over the jam pot, and her face turned red. There were steps outside. A thin girl with short, rough, brown curls and glittering eyes was approaching slowly, carrying a bucket of water. She was dragged sideways, one arm in the air, her teeth set. She appeared to be about fourteen years old. She was so very short-sighted that she had to go right up to Mary to find out what sort of a person this was.

‘Did you want anything, ma’am?’ she asked, setting down her burden on the doorstep.

‘I want to speak to Mr Dallett.’

‘’E’s down at the Three Magpies. It’s only a step.’

‘Thank you.’

She made a slow movement.

‘Oh I can’t carry the baby any farther!’ she broke out. ‘May I leave him here on the sofa? He’ll be good. He never cries.’

The girl stared at her, biting her finger, then nodded.

‘Yes, leave ’un, do. I’ll mind ’un. Aren’t ’e small? ’E won’t be more than a few weeks old?’

‘Two months. How shall I get to the Three Magpies?’

‘Look ’ere, Alice’ll fetch dad up. Sit down, ma’am.’

She fetched a chair, and as soon as Alice had run off after a whispered conversation behind the door, bent over Shannon and begged that she might be allowed to pick him up.

‘Yes,’ said Mary listlessly.

The flies were crawling all over the table, the heat was terrific. Dallett’s daughter held Shannon, devouring him with her glittering, short-sighted eyes.

Alice stood under the deep wooden porch of the Three Magpies afraid to knock because of a little liver-coloured dog curled up on the mat. Above her head a faded sign swung from a hook. The dog barked lazily without moving. Presently the landlady came to the door.

‘Well then, Alice, you seem in a hurry. What d’you want?’

‘I want dad.’

‘Bill, ’ere’s a lady wants yer,’ said the man on the bench nearest the door.

Dallett came forward, rubbing his flank. He was in a dirty magenta shirt, the sleeves rolled up above the elbows, corduroys, and a large flat, straw hat famous all over the parish.

‘What’s up?’ he asked. But Alice had fits of silence when she would open her mouth for nobody, and she would not reply.

‘’Ere, missus, I’m off,’ he said. ‘Something’s amiss perhaps.’

He nodded and walked away.

‘Shall us drink up tha’ pint, Bill?’ shouted a voice from within.

‘Ay, an’ treat me another day.’

When they were close to the cottage, Alice found her tongue.

‘There’s a lady with a baby at ’ome,’ she exclaimed, throwing her father into the most profound astonishment. He hurried on, leaving her behind.

So, more or less prepared for something extraordinary, he entered his kitchen with a dead cigarette in his mouth and saw Mary lying back on the old sofa, the baby beside her.

‘Eh… you!’ he exclaimed, ‘you
be
in a way. Whatever’s wrong?’

Involuntarily his eyes fell on her left hand. His ring was there. He pitched the cigarette in the fire and, going close to her, stooped and said: ‘Now, mum, what can Bill Dallett do for you? Don’t you be afraid to ask.’

She started up: ‘Come out and I’ll tell you.’

Dallett restrained her, and told the children to go outside. Mary wept.

‘My husband’s cruel to me… I’ve left him…’ speaking in a breathless, disconnected way, she clasped his arm between her two hands and turned her worn, alluring face up to him. She wore the same expression that had so touched and charmed him months before when she told him of her marriage. He would do anything to please her. As she rose, one hand covering her eyes, he looked at her compassionately.

‘Ah, I can see as you haven’t done well for yourself! You’d best lean your weight on me. There now…’

He went on after a deep pause: ‘My missus is dead an’ my home aren’t fit for you.’

‘I’m going on.’

‘No, no, that won’t do. Why, look at the baby! You can’t go on tonight, nor tomorrow either. When you’ve drunk a cup of tea I’ll take you down to the Magpies. And mind, whatever they ask – say nowt. They won’t get nothing out o’ me.’

In a passion of gratitude, humbler than she had ever been in her life, she put her lips to his bare arm and kissed him.

The landlady of the Three Magpies ran about, waiting on Mary and Shannon, who lay upstairs in the big bedroom. She admired the picture while she absorbed the roughness of Mary’s hands, her delicate, haughty speech, and the fine quality of her linen.

Nature had been very reserved over the landlady: nothing in her rather vacant, flat countenance, tied up in its morning glory of a pink cotton duster, betrayed her inquiring propensities. Dallett understood her, as he understood most people, and Mary did well to follow his directions. The landlady’s mind ground on short commons; she was sour with the customers that day, inclined to flounce and snap. The big bedroom was a sensitive, moody room, where the light changed from hour to hour. In the morning a sun-ray, quivering on the low ceiling, took a peculiar shape like a bony arm and hand, weaving a long golden thread; the fingers moved, the wrist
turned and the thread twisted. Towards midday it disappeared, the sun with it. Behind the lace curtains the room settled to shadowless afternoon.

Mary lay with her back to the child, her hair all twisted and wild. As the hours drew towards evening her mental pain increased. It was a simple, repeated agony of longing for Matt which she could have put into three words without any difficulty whatever.

At six o’clock she bathed Shannon in the basin. She had him at the breast when she heard a horse descending the pitch, disturbing the loose flints which had made walking so difficult for her the night before.

She went to the window and saw that it was Matt.

Such a nervous tremor of anticipation ran through her whole body that the child rejected her and burst into a suffering wail. From that moment there was no question of a continued flight. She put Shannon on the bed and began hastily to dress. She was only half clothed, standing in her petticoat, her hands in her hair, when, scarcely pausing to knock, he walked straight into the room and with one distraught glance at her, sprang forward and seized her in his arms. She felt his lips on her cheek, and desiring only to meet his mouth with her own, turned her head in a moment as violent as his advance, and her hand behind his neck, pressed his face down upon hers.

Two hours later he was riding back to The Gallustree in a triumph of love.

The evening was solemn; the hills lay like lions in the fields.

Dorothy took Rosamund and Philip to Torquay for the first three weeks of September. It was cool, and in the hotel they were obliged to put on subdued behaviour. They were glad to return.

Dorothy had been well amused. At first she thought she would keep it to herself, but in the end she told Matt about her admirers at the hotel.

‘Look,’ she said, throwing herself back in her chair, blowing out her stomach, extending her legs and pointing her toes, ‘he used to sit like that and say I was charming! Every minute I thought he’d fall asleep in the middle of a compliment. Oh!’ she laughed, sprang up, and threw her arms in their elaborate sleeves round Matt’s neck. Matt smiled. He was turning things over in his head, very far from heeding her adventures. Matters needed a little readjusting at The Gallustree. Between furtive transports it
was necessary to arrange the periodical absence of Easter in a natural, inevitable manner which could not be questioned.

Matt and Mary were not a frank, cold-blooded pair of lovers; they preferred to keep the relationship more or less spontaneous, and to discuss the disposal of Easter would have disgusted Mary, who was turning out surprisingly romantic. The whole of the responsibility therefore devolved on Matt. He rose to the occasion.

The stabling at The Gallustree consisted of five loose boxes and four horses were kept. Matt, with sudden extravagance which Dorothy bitterly upbraided, bought another hack and two more hunters.

At the conclusion of a long, angry conversation, she ran out of the room. However, she was no sooner out of the door than she returned, for she had really made up her mind to try to be more patient. Matt had not moved. She sat down again and lit a cigarette.

‘What on earth are you going to do with so many horses?’

‘Well, you’ve done away with the hounds, so I shall keep horses instead. Have you any objection?’

‘Oh, none, if you can afford it.’

‘Thank you so much. That’s kind.’

There she sat, pulling at the end of her hair and sending out sickly fumes of Turkish tobacco. His violent, hidden happiness kept bursting like breakers; the room was dark, she could not see the transformation.

‘But where are you going to keep them?’

‘Well, at first I thought of Davis’. But that’s too
tumble-down
. In fact, it wouldn’t do at all. So I’ve arranged to have them over at Sidney Jones’, Pendoig.’

‘Pendoig, Matt! That’s five miles away!’ she said, amazed.

‘True, oh Queen! You’re always complaining that our Easter has too little to do. Now he’ll have plenty.’

‘I
don’t
complain that he has too little to do; my complaint is that he should have anything – here.’

‘Then you’ve changed your song.’

‘You are disagreeable. You used to make yourself pleasant to me sometimes.’

‘The fault’s not altogether mine,’ he said gloomily.

They were silent until a charred log fell flaming to the hearth and the bitter smoke found its way into their eyes. Matt lifted it into its place. He remained leaning forward, his profile exposed in the red light.

Dorothy continued: ‘You’ll have to get another man. More expense. Really…’

‘Nothing of the sort. It’s quite simple. I shall get a boy. Cyril Price wants to work up here. He asked me for a job months ago. Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays you’ll have to put up with the presence of your old friend Easter. Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays he’ll be over at Pendoig and I shall do the work here with Cyril.’

His face glowed.

‘It seems a funny arrangement,’ said Dorothy uncertainly.

‘Why?’

‘Just at this time… so much added and unnecessary expense.’

‘You must curtail your clothes and cinemas.’

Dorothy flew into long-suppressed vixenish abuse.

‘All right, all right,’ said he, sardonically, soothing. ‘Go on with your little amusements. But I don’t see why I shouldn’t have mine as well. And I’m going to.’

Dorothy looked anxiously at her husband.

‘You do such dreadful things: drinking, gambling…’ she began, throwing away her cigarette and sighing.

‘And going into strange women.’

‘Matt, don’t talk like that! If I ever find out you’ve been unfaithful it will kill me,’ she exclaimed hysterically.

He broke into a loud laugh.

‘Oh, nonsense, you’d survive.’

‘I’m not so sure.’

‘Then if my footsteps ever deviate I must take pains to conceal them.’

He rose, lit a cigarette, and sauntered towards the door.

‘Come back,’ said Dorothy slowly, modulating her
high-pitched
voice, ‘I want to talk to you.’

He returned, unwillingly, and stood with his arm on the mantelpiece, looking soberly at her.

‘Do you know you have a very remarkable daughter?’ she began portentously.

‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘I knew it long ago.’

‘Phoebe.’

‘Exactly… Phoebe, you said it, lady. God damn it, Dolly, I’m not blind or deaf; nobody’s died, either, that I know of, and you’re not in church. For heaven’s sake, don’t pull such a long face. What is it?’

She sat up, extended her thin, graceful arms, and felt in his pockets while she talked.

‘Give me a cigarette, and don’t bluster. Shall we have the lamps?’

‘No, I’m going in a minute. Do tell me what all this is about.’

‘Mother wants Phoebe to go and live with her in
Clystowe. She says a school in Salus isn’t good enough for her, and she wants her to have proper music lessons. She says Phoebe’s playing and singing are really remarkable.’

‘How old is Phib exactly?’

‘She was fifteen last February.’

‘If she has a voice she shouldn’t
begin
to use it before she’s seventeen or eighteen.’

‘Rubbish! What do you know about it?’

‘I’ve heard your mother say so herself.’

‘Yes, but, Matt, she wants Phoebe to
live
with her.’

‘Well, what does Phoebe say?’

‘I haven’t asked her, and she hasn’t mentioned it.’

‘Then I’ll ask her tonight.’

‘Shall you let her go?’

‘By all means.’

He looked across the room with a strange, preoccupied stare: ‘for we aren’t good enough for her either,’ he added.

Phoebe described the adventures of Calpurnia and Cleopatra every night when Philip went to bed. Rosamund also adored to listen; the tears sometimes came into her eyes just thinking of the little animals walking on their hind legs, giving concerts and going shopping. For this reason she sat on the floor, her head bent over her knees. Phoebe lay across the bed, twisting her hands and playing with her plaits while her invention ran on: ‘Calpurnia sneered as she drove past. “Aren’t you getting wet walking about in the rain, Miss Cleopatra?” So next day, as it was still raining, Cleopatra took out her new umbrella…’

‘Oh, Phib, where did she get it?’

Phoebe laughed and said: ‘Out of a cracker. You see, Philip Kilminster had a birthday party on the lawn, with crackers, and this tiny, tiny umbrella dropped out of one and Cleopatra found it.’

‘Yes, but how did she hold it? Cleo-pat-ra hasn’t any hands.’

‘She had a subservient sparrow-servant who walked behind and carried it in one claw.’

‘A subservient sparrow!’ cried Rosamund.

‘A froggy an’ a snail and a sparrow with an umbrella!’ screamed Philip.

They all burst out laughing.

Matt stood outside, watching them through the open door. Presently Phoebe turned down the lamp and took away the hot water bottle. Matt followed her and questioned her.

‘Do you want to go, Phib?’

‘Yes,’ she said in her low, mature voice, as if she had made up her mind long before.

In the beginning of October she went. At the same time Matt put his plans into execution. Life at The Gallustree was changed, less gloomy, less high-strung, because Matt himself was active, healthy, and stirring. Mary was none the less fascinating for being easily accessible… besides, she knew instinctively how to draw a fine inner line which kept Matt continually interested. They were violently in love with each other.

Easter drank more, but for a long time it passed unnoticed, like so many of his subterranean activities. It pleased him to think of himself as a mole, silently
destructive beneath the green, smooth surface. He grew haggard, lost a great deal of his former malicious gaiety. There was usually a brooding morose look on his face.

He did not want to live at Jones’ farm in Pendoig. The farmer was ostentatiously religious, and Easter was a blatant scoffer. They would never have agreed. So Matt bought a small cottage, one up and two down, which, owing to its mouldy condition and dreary situation, was going very cheap. He had the roof and spouting put in order, the windows made weather-tight and stopped up the rat holes in the floor. The place was full of rubbish, a broken wooden bedstead, a couple of rotting potato baskets, and a heap of smashed china. The rubbish was carted away to be tipped in the river, but Easter retained the bed, which he slept on the whole time he was there. It was low and wide, and mended with wire netting which sagged beneath the mattress. The rude, obscene figures of men and women had been burnt into the headboard with a hot poker and some power. They were grotesque, but not amusing. Most of them were erotic in character, but one represented two undertakers pushing a child into a coffin. A woman stood by with her arms flung out in an attitude of the most abandoned grief.

With a little money that he had in hand, Easter bought a few bits of furniture at a cottage sale, all rather weird. He had a bamboo tripod, holding a cactus in a red pot, a wooden gramophone, a rocking chair, one or two cups and saucers belonging to a really beautiful old tea set, three china plates adorned with flowers and birds, a steel fender, a milking stool, a pair of large wooden candlesticks, and an engraving in a fretwork frame called ‘Parted’. Easter liked
this engraving which represented a fair, large-eyed woman leaning on a stone wall, perusing a letter while a tear flowed down her cheek. Behind her appeared a suggestion of melancholy, windswept distance; the noble trees in the foreground were represented as rocking in an autumn gale, which, however, did not disturb one sculptured fold of the maiden’s colourless robe.

The gypsy in him recognised no necessity for carpets or curtains. His bed was made up of old horse rugs and blankets; the rocking chair was uncushioned. He usually sat on the milking stool close to the high, old-fashioned grate and partly screened from the roaring draught between door and window by a projecting cupboard.

Inside the cottage looked bare, utterly comfortless, slovenly and pathetic; outside it merely seemed uninhabited.

It was a bare quarter-mile from Pendoig village, right on the main road, having no more than a few feet of loose gravel between the door and the tarred surface. Heavy traffic shook it so that even the spiders did not spin their webs among the beams, and in summer dust coated the windows until it became impossible to see in or out. The raving south-easterly storms tilted full at them; the rain was dashed under the door. At all seasons it was infested with flies and midges, active or torpid. It was a plain whitewashed cottage, built of large, irregular stone blocks and with a bluish slate roof. The garden – such as it was – was to one side. A yard from the rear wall sprang a rocky precipice, casting its cold shadow over the cottage and half the road. In the crannies of the sandstone, which was piled in long, powerful, sloping layers, grew enormous, wet green ferns, oddly and repulsively luxuriant. The deep
bed of rich red marl which the blasting of the rock had temporarily exposed, was now hidden by a weltering mass of crawling vegetation; it had killed the hedge and used the dried sticks to support its own exuberant life. It was like a great green wave breaking over the precipice, crested in autumn with silvery diaphanous old man’s beard. In wet weather, surplus water used to pour down behind the cottage, trickling through the garden into the road. One might have almost supposed that this seedy dwelling place had been constructed by a savage misanthrope, who, bearing a general grudge against human comfort, and a furious contempt for life, health, or joy, had calculated on torturing its future inhabitants with rheumatism, and sending them either twisted and crippled to their premature coffins, or driving them sore and stricken to some drier situation. Its history lent colour to the idea. I will add that anyone beholding Easter’s goings and comings, or seeing him through those same bleary panes as he sat absorbed in his reflections, with his brow knitted, his strange eyes fixed on the back of the fireplace, that person might have thought the influence persisted and gone away, thanking his stars that
he
was not that man and not his friend.

That which the door failed to exclude, as it did the rain, was the washing sound of the river. The road was an intermediary step between it and the crag, divided from it solely by a steep willow-fringed bank and some rusty iron railings. Occasionally the floods rose nearly to the brim; very exceptionally the road was under water right up to the doorstep. The cottage windows then afforded a heartening and invigorating view of reddish, livid waters
swirling over the opposite flat meadows, with spiky thorn hedges very sparse and starved sticking up through the desolation encompassing them.

In other weathers, sheep of much the same sulky hue wandered about, picking at the brown grass, limping on three legs and coughing up their lungs like sickly tramps under a haystack at night.

The cottage and its site were altogether cheerful and picturesque. Easter never said anything. He chose to live there rather than at Pendoig. He seemed happy.

The cottage was called ‘The Hollow’. He usually referred to it as the ‘Louse Pit’.

At any rate, there he lived for two years, every blessed Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Emily Queary being too far away for his immediate casual needs, Easter sought the acquaintance of various young women. The first was a Russian, about thirty years old, who lived with her aunt and grandmother. The latter did not approve of her connection with the groom on the grounds that she had noble blood in her veins. But Katya declared that all the English were swine, anyway, and a groom would do just as well for a lover as a certain widowed Colonel Aston, who wished her to go and live with him.