Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead (2 page)

“Lunch, lunch, what about lunch! Is it ready?” The old lady waded into the dining-room where Dennis was amusing himself floating a fleet of toy boats.

“Hallo, landlubber!” his father greeted him. The boy didn’t answer, but bent down to float the boat he was holding. His ears became red.

“Would you like to come out with me and rescue a few sheep?” his father asked in a tone of forced heartiness.

“No thank you, father. I think I feel rather sick today.”

His father looked at him with impatient disgust.

“Christ! Don’t you ever want to do anything, you little cissy! Oh well, I’ll go up to my room; it’s the only comfortable place today. No newspapers, I suppose.”

He left the room still grumbling and mounted the stairs to his den at the top of the house.

“Anyone might feel sick,” the small boy said to himself, and went on playing with his boats. He had made them himself and they were his great pride.

“Don’t mind father,” said Hattie. “Have you realized this flood will put our lessons out of father’s mind for days, perhaps even a week?” She laughed happily and began to splash about in the water with her dark bare feet. The grandmother observed there were no signs of lunch and that she was being unnecessarily splashed, so she hit Hattie on her woolly head and said, “Stop doing that, child. Go into the kitchen and see what those lazy trollops are up to,” and Hattie went off bawling down the passage.

Upstairs Emma sat on her bedroom window-sill. The casement windows were wide open and she basked in the sun and combed her marmalade-coloured hair. She closed her eyes and forgot the sad, drowned sights of the morning. A feeling of deep satisfaction came over her as she felt the warmth of the sun and combed her hair, dreamily. Then she opened her eyes and examined her hands and pinched her nails at the tip, hoping they would become long and pointed.

“Oh, how I would love to go to a dance and wear a real evening dress,” she thought, “but nothing like that will happen—no dances, no admirers. I shall just be me, and nothing will happen at all.”

In his den above, her father sat in his shabby leather armchair and wondered if he had been rather hard on Dennis.

“Poor little wretch,” he thought, “he’s so damn nervous he drives me crazy. Of course he needs to go to school; but the old woman is so bloody mean she’d never pay the fees. There are not many men who would spend hours teaching their children like I do. People say I’m lazy but it takes a lot of energy to do a thing like that.”

He lit his pipe.

“It’s a good idea to smoke a pipe, then people don’t expect you to keep offering them cigarettes. I once knew a little nurse, she was a sweet little thing, but smoked like hell and expected me to provide the cigarettes. I had to give her up in the end; it was too expensive. I think that’s what started me on a pipe.”

He relit it.

“I like this room. People can laugh at it; but it’s jolly comfortable.”

He walked across the room to the shabby old cottage piano. Some of the ivories were missing and the ones that remained were yellow. He stood strumming for a few moments, then sat on the round plush stool and played some rather rollicking music which appeared to cheer him up quite considerably. Then his eyes fell on the mantelpiece. It was draped with dark green velvet, complete with pompoms, and on it were a half-empty bottle of beer and a dirty glass with a few dead flies floating about. He emptied the flies into the overflowing ash tray, and poured out a glass of beer. It was rather flat but not undrinkable. As he drank it, rocking backwards and forwards on his toes, he said to himself:

“After lunch I’ll go out in the boat again; I might see something interesting. There should be a lot of interesting things around after a flood like this. Surely in all this water someone must have drowned. I’ll take Hattie with me; she’s always game for anything. Emma’s strange, damn queer like her mother; but Hattie is so jolly, much the best of the lot. Of course she isn’t my child, I don’t believe in all that village nonsense about her being black because Jenny died before she was born; it’s just an old wives’ tale. The blackness didn’t notice so much when she was born; but it’s unmistakable now. How on earth Jenny found a black lover here, in this lonely village, that is what beats me.”

There was a great booming of the gong and his thoughts became disturbed; so he hurriedly finished his stale beer and went downstairs, where he found his family having lunch in the old nursery, which was comparatively dry. It was some years since he had been in the room. It was very dark with fir trees pushing in at the window. It had been his nursery when he was a child, and he was amused to see the wallpaper and furniture still the same, and the bow-fronted chest of drawers, the scrap-book screen, the old red couch with the springs hanging down below, and the tallboy which had got him into trouble because he kept frogs in the top drawer. He looked round the room with great satisfaction, and ate his gammon and green peas with his family around him, and felt content.

As the day went on the flood began to subside. It left the Willoweeds’ house, and in its place was mud and river weed and a deep smell of dampness. The children set stones in the garden to mark the flood’s retreat. The garden sloped down to the river and by the evening half of it was visible again, the flowers lying wet and heavy on the ground, the grass a verdant green. A few strange dead objects lay about. Old Ives collected them and put them in the stokehole. Dennis sadly watched him pushing in a peacock.

“Are you sure it’s dead, Old Ives?” he asked.

“Of course the poor bugger’s dead,” he muttered, and slammed the door on it. The remaining peacock began to screech. There was thunder in the air, and the sky had become yellow and grey.

“There, I said it would rain, and rain it will,” said the old man. “That peacock don’t half hum. It must be the feathers burning.”

He opened the stokehole door a chink and a great smoke and stench came out. Dennis said:

“I think it’s time I went to bed now. Good night, Old Ives, I’m glad your ducks came back.”

“Don’t go yet, boy! Look at this little puss I found,” and he produced a dead, sodden kitten from his pocket, the ginger fur had come away from its tail and the bone was exposed. Dennis had gone; so the kitten followed the peacock into the stokehole.

During the night the storm broke. The grandmother woke the children and maids who were sleeping quite peacefully.

“The house will be struck. Come to the cellars!” she cried, “Come to the cellars!”

The children were dragged down to the cellars which were completely filled with water, and everyone became very wet. Then they were herded into the large stone kitchen, and sat shivering and crying under the kitchen table.

“Pull the curtains, you fools!” screamed the grandmother as a flash of blue lightning filled the kitchen. Norah climbed onto the table to reach the window; but a great clap of thunder came, and she made a dash to the broom-cupboard under the stairs.

Grandmother Willoweed yelled, “Coward! What do you think I pay you for, you insubordinate slut?”

There was another flash, more yells and cries and a tearing clap of thunder. In the midst of it Ebin Willoweed appeared on the back stairs holding a candle. He saw his mother crouching under the table with the children. Emma remained upstairs. Eunice had joined her sister in the broom cupboard; Hattie was crying lustily; and Dennis sat apart, his teeth chattering.

“Pull the curtain, you fool!” shouted his mother, so he climbed on the table and did so just as another blinding flash came. A small china cup on the dresser broke into fragments, and he shot under the table to join his family. Now the heavy rain came beating down and the worst of the storm was over.

“What about some cocoa?” he shouted down his mother’s trumpet.

“Yes, those lazy bitches must make cocoa,” she said. “We always have cocoa after a thunderstorm. Come girls, out of the cupboard!”

The maids crept out and lit the smoking paraffin stove and the candles in their brass candlesticks on the mantelpiece, and the occasional flashes were not so visible.

As he watched Norah working, Ebin noticed that she had a great mole shaped like the map of Australia on her chest. She saw he had ginger-beer bottle tops wired onto his pyjamas instead of buttons.

“Poor man,” she thought, “we are a lazy lot.”

During the days that followed they had little time for laziness. The carpets had to be dragged onto the lawns to dry and the mud washed off the floors and furniture; the house had not had such a cleaning for years. Most of the heavy work fell on Emma and the two maids. Grandmother Willoweed went from one worker to another brandishing a wicker carpet-beater, and if anyone was not working to her satisfaction they received a whack with it. The two children were put on to furniture polishing, which they did in a half-hearted fashion. Dennis knelt on a book, which he read when his grandmother was out of sight. Eunice called to her sister:

“Have you heard that Grumpy Nan who lived in the cottage by the mill was drowned?”

“Yes, poor woman,” her sister answered, “but she has been dying this long time. They say she had cancer and suffered something awful, the poor thing! You could hear her groans as you passed the cottage. Yes, it’s a merciful release.”

Crack! The wicker beater came across her back. Subdued, the sisters bent over their work. Emma passed them with one arm outstretched to balance the weight of the bucket she carried. She emptied the dirty water it contained down the great brown sink. A smooth white cat had been sitting on the draining board watching intently the water dripping from the pump. It jumped on to her shoulder and rubbed its face against her neck. She stroked it absent-mindedly; but her hands were wet and the cat leapt to the dark stone floor and looked at her with reproachful yellow eyes.

Into the scullery her father tripped. Although he was a large man he always walked on his toes, rather leaning forward with his shoulders hunched.

“He is like a gingerbread man,” his daughter thought, “ginger hair, ginger moustache, ginger tweed suit.”

He put his breakfast tray on the draining board. He always had breakfast in bed. It was usually taken up to his room by Hattie; the maids seldom went to his room, and his bed was often left unmade for days. When he had deposited the tray, which was decorated with crusts and congealed egg yoke, he put his arms round his daughter, hugged her hard and kissed the back of her neck. She pushed him away impatiently.

“Oh, alright, I was only being affectionate,” he said crossly, “Where is your grandmother?”

“Oh, somewhere prowling around. She is in a rage.”

“Is she indeed? It’s all this cleaning, I suppose; but she can’t expect me to help; my hands are my best feature, and they would be ruined. Anyway I loathe housework, and any man who does it is a fool—or any woman for that matter. What’s that saying about a whistling hen and a working woman? … I don’t know,” and he stretched his arms and gave a large yawn. “I think I’ll go and see Dr. Hatt. There won’t be any cleaning women there because I hear his wife is away ill in a nursing home. Change of life, I expect,” and he gave a titter and wandered out through the back door.

“Father makes me hate men,” thought Emma as she pumped water into the bucket. A slug tumbled out of the pump and she caught it and put it in a dark damp corner under the sink.

“Poor creature,” she thought, “if the maids find it, it will be burnt; but, if I put it outside, it will be found by Ives and put in a bucket of salt or fed to the ducks.”

E
BIN WILLOWEED walked down the village street with his tripping walk. He unsuccessfully tried to get into conversation with several passers-by, but they were hurrying home to their twelve o’clock dinner. The labourers were carrying forks over their shoulders. Each prong had a large potato stuck on it. In theory this was for safety, but actually they achieved about eight potatoes a day by this ruse. Ebin went a little way over the bridge, which was built of stones from the Alcester Monastery by the Normans. The stones had been worn away in several places by generations of butchers sharpening their knives on them.

He stood looking down at the river, which had returned to its banks but was flowing very fast and full. In some way the river flowing with such purpose and determination depressed Willoweed. He felt humiliated and a failure in everything he undertook; the thought of all those half-completed, mouse-nibbled manuscripts in his room saddened him even more. He bit his lower lip and gave the bridge a kick, then turned away towards Dr. Hatt’s house. Dr. Hatt was an old family friend, and regarded by the villagers as a miracle man since he had brought Hattie into the world after her mother’s death. She had been named after him.

Willoweed walked up the steep flight of steps that led to the doctor’s house and rang the highly polished brass bell with the word ‘Visitors’ engraved on it. An elderly servant with a twisted back came to the door and asked him into the cool, flagstoned hall while she hobbled off to find Dr. Hatt. Francis Hatt was a rather melancholy-looking man until he smiled; then his whole face lit up in a delightful way and people talking to him often found themselves saying all manner of wild things to try to bring this smile back to his grave face. This morning he was distressed by his wife’s sudden illness and felt he could hardly bear Ebin Willoweed’s company. Nevertheless he asked his servant to bring some sherry, and decided to give half an hour to his old, but rather trying friend.

It was over ten years ago that Ebin had returned to his mother’s house bringing with him his beautiful young wife and Emma, then a child of seven.
The Daily Courier
, which employed him as a gossip writer, had dismissed him because his carelessness had resulted in a libel action which had cost them a considerable amount of money. Jenny Willoweed was expecting a baby at that time, and Dr. Hatt attended her at her very difficult confinement. After Dennis’s birth he warned her that it might kill her to have another child. Eighteen months later she died giving birth to Hattie. She died some minutes before the child was born, but Francis Hatt had saved the child’s life. In the years that followed Ebin Willoweed had turned to the Doctor for friendship and used his house as a place of refuge from his mother. Francis Hatt had been shocked by the deterioration that had occurred in him; but, although he often found him tiresome, he had devoted a lot of his time to him at first in the hope of providing some stimulus and later from pity.