Wild Geese Overhead (2 page)

“Excuse me,” he said to the elderly woman who appeared, “but would you mind giving me a glass of water?”

After a moment's frank pause, she said: “Certainly.”

“I have been walking”, he explained, “and am very dry.”

Her round grey eyes smiled and she nodded. A comfortable, energetic woman, with a kind full face and strong greying hair. “Just wait a minute.” But she had no sooner turned away than she turned back. Perhaps it was the way he raised his hat; or perhaps the pallor of his face touched her heart; she asked him: “Would you like a glass of milk?”

“Well——” he paused, his expression deepening, “that would be too much.”

“Not at all.” She was quite herself now. “Come in.”

“With a vague word or two of protest, he followed her and was shown into the parlour on the left. She said she was sorry there was no fire, but if he took a chair she would not be a moment, and in a swirl of air she closed the door upon him.

Quick work! He smiled, looking about him. There was a china dolphin on each end of the pitchpine mantelshelf. There was an enlarged solemn photograph of a man in the prime of life, with a heavy moustache, hanging above the small black marble French clock on the centre of the shelf. Other photographs. A wedding group. A young man of to-day. Black hair-bottomed arm-chairs, male and female. An oak table, laden with ornaments and one or two more photographs in upright silver-bright frames. A slightly stuffy smell, preserved by camphor balls. Very clean. And silent—the clock was stopped. Sunday in a Scots farm parlour!

The window drew him and he went and looked out. The brightness of that bare world was even more silent than the room—but how wide and immensely high! And the light on the trunk of the elm-tree picked out its wrinkles. Like an elephant's hide. What a world! And the crocuses, the amazing crocuses, tiny yellow and purple lights for a fête—come up at the wrong time or left over from some wild night revel. The clumps of snowdrops—drooping arc lights with the inner radiance dimmed in the cold daylight. He held his breath and listened, and everything listened with him—until he heard her footsteps and turned towards the door.

She brought the glass on a little tray. A kind-hearted woman, with a warm bustling manner. “Not at all,” she said. “It's nothing.” He saw the marriage ring and took a mouthful of the milk. Lord, it was cold! He was not used to drinking cold “dead” stuff and had better go canny. “This is delicious milk. I have come out from the city, and the walking, with this heavy coat!…”

She understood. “Having a day in the country? Well, it's a pleasant day, but the country is not at its best just now, is it?”

The milk was delicious, but its coldness anaesthetized his gums. In his stomach, he could feel a few alcoholic microbes getting the fright of their lives!

“It's so quiet out here—after the rush of the city. I work in a newspaper office where things keep going.”

“Do you?” She obviously had never looked at a pressman before. “You'll be up most of the night?”

“Well, no. As it happens I am on an evening paper, so I don't have to work late.”

“Oh?”

“I could wish we had some of this quiet occasionally.” He took a mouthful and held it a moment thoughtfully before letting it down, then he turned his face to the window. As he looked out, he felt the sensation of what he was going to say coming over him in an odd hush. “I don't suppose there is any one hereabouts who would take a fellow like myself as a lodger?”

A minute ago the question would have surprised him even more than it now surprised her. His expression, however, was almost casual in its friendly way. “I had a beastly cold this winter—twice, in fact—and I feel some time in the country might do me good. You don't actually know of any one?” And he looked into her eyes.

“No. No, I don't know of any one,” she answered slowly, her head tilted upward, thoughtfully. “No. We're all so far away from anywhere.”

“Quite.” He nodded.

Then there was silence, and she knew he was too polite to put the personal question direct.

“As for myself,” she added, in a constrained way, “I'm afraid I had never thought of such a thing.”

“You wouldn't care to think about it?”

“Well—no. I—my husband died three years ago. I am keeping the place going for my son. He's in East Lothian, where my husband's brother has two farms. He's learning dairying in particular. He's studying to take his B.Sc. in agriculture. In less than two years he should be home and then he will run this place himself.”

But he could see, while she was speaking, that she was really thinking of his offer, that it excited her, that she was tempted.

Her expression caught a self-conscious warmth. “In any case,” she concluded, “I don't know anything about keeping a lodger.”

“Oh, that's quite easy,” he answered, glancing at the table. “A boiled egg in the morning and anything handy you might have for supper at night. I wouldn't be home for lunch except on Sundays. I would pay thirty-five shillings a week—if that wouldn't be too little.” His eye was caught by a photograph in a small silver frame. It was the photograph of a girl he had met somewhere.

“I don't know,” she replied, agitated by the temptation. It would be “found money”. She did not know what to do. “Would you excuse me,” she asked, “till I—till I go and see——”

“No, never mind just now,” he answered. “I want you to think it over. Here's my card.” As he was withdrawing it from his pocket book, he “placed” the photograph as that of the girl he had encountered up the road. “Now I'll come along and see you this day week. That will give you plenty of time to think it over. And please don't feel that I shall be disappointed if you cannot take me. I mean—I will be disappointed—but——” They both smiled.

“All right,” she said.

He finished the milk. “That was grand. Thank you very much indeed.”

“Would you like——”

“No, thank you. I've been admiring your many photographs. Members of the family?”

“No, just friends—apart from our son there, our only child. And, of course, my husband.” The man with the moustache.

He nodded and they were silent a moment. “Well—goodbye. Whatever happens, this has been very pleasant!” They shook hands warmly.

Lord, that was a narrow squeak! he thought, as he went up through the trees. What on earth possessed me? And he had all the relief of having escaped from a trap. The whole incident brightened him up wonderfully.

For the idea of coming and lodging in a place like this had, after all, its exciting side. He could stop lodging in it at a day's notice. It wasn't really a trap. Something bright behind the idea prompted him to laugh; something behind and above the idea, reaching up to the radiant blue sky. His eyelids crinkled in humour as the sky acknowledged his confidence.

And then the sub-editors' room—if he did come and live here! It would almost be worth doing it for the comment. Bulls, cocks, hens' food, rats, and the servant girl—the going would be pretty bawdy now and then! A chuckle came in soft gusts through his nostrils.

He would do it! Even if it would mean a lot of drink. He looked around on the bare lands. A lovely economy in their austere lines. Lovely! lovely! he thought, and his bright humour moved in his head like a song.

It meant even more drink than he had imagined. But his wit served him well enough, for there was a sense of freedom in the project that gave him unexpected power. He had thought that he would have to be on the defensive. Whereas he found he could even afford to say nothing and merely look in a certain way, the way that implies a fool's confidence. Or laugh with the laugh against himself.

On the Monday afternoon, between five and six, when the usual three or four of them were having a parting drink, Mac, out of a lengthy silence, nodded. He had got it at last! “It's none of all that,” he said, referring to innuendo about “the simple life” on a farm. “After all, that sort of thing requires a certain amount of guts. In this specific instance, they don't apply.” His lips pursed tight and he nodded slowly. He was a man of forty-three with a sandy face and a satiric disintegrating manner. As he regarded his glass, his lips moved leftwards into a fleshy opening that exposed three strong upper teeth, and a heavy sniff moved brown hairs in his nostrils. The four of them waited as they generally did for Mac. He looked up. “Remember Tommy Stink?”

Don and Rob burst into laughter.

“Who was Tommy Stink?” asked Jackie, the youngest, a slight nondescript Glasgow boy, full of the bright camaraderie of his native streets.

“He was a man,” said Mac, “or at least, he was a sub-editor, who went to the country, to write a book!”

“A book?” said Jackie. “A book!!”

Mac's head went up and then down like the head of an old brown horse. Laughter warmed them.

“If you weren't all so preoccupied with intestinal matters——” began Will.

“Guts got him!” cried Don, a quick-thoughted black Highlander.

Mac nodded.

“——You would have tumbled to that long ago.” Will's calm judicious manner was expected of him. “However, you have sure got it now. But of one thing you can be certain: in my book I shall do the decent by you. I'll draw each of you to the life. I'll shirk nothing. Everything will go in—everything. And even you, Jackie, who are so astonished at the thought of a book, will not be forgotten.”

“You make me blush,” said Jackie with ironic modesty.

“I shall not forget the secret dreams you drew from Rupert Brooke, the verses you made in emulation, and hid, and secretly re-read; the ambition that walked with you at night down quiet streets, from one island lamp-post to another—for we are all lonely dogs after our fashion—the ambition that saw itself in the world-renowned glory of a book, not of verse, but of poetry.”

“Oh, dry up!” cried Jackie, boisterously.

Will dipped a forefinger in the spilt beer and began drawing a pattern on the table. “No need to blush, for yours is the ambition that's launched ten thousand subs. Take Mac here. What would you say now is the secret ambition of Mac's soul?”

“You'll know, I suppose?” said Mac.

Will tilted his head and looked at the pattern, then resumed his drawing. “Lost dreams looped out in lewd jest, in the mirthful sarcasms of the damned, bedewed with Scotch, soddened with beer, irrigated with coffee. Looped round and round by this octopus till all the blood and juice has oozed out——”

Don tilted Will's mug and drowned the pattern.

“Yes?” said Mac.

“
Slàinte
!” said Will, lifting his mug.

“Clever, what?” Mac looked at him with his iceblue, unrelenting eyes.

“No,” said Will, “merely descriptive. You don't like it?” The way he raised his eyebrows in a casual smile set the others laughing, for they felt that between these two men, so opposed in temperament, there was a latent hostility, and it was as well to keep it within bounds.

They were not wholly right in this, for Will had a curious regard for Mac's strong character. And he was aware that Mac responded to his presence more than to that of any of the others though the response was almost always satiric, as if his was the type of mind that Mac must hunt and worry.

The hunt was on.

By the end of the week, he felt compelled to visit the farm in sheer self-defence.

So on Sunday off he set. There was a touch of dry spite in his going, an uneasiness. It was a fool's business. He was inclined to drift into things in a vague intuitive way. He needed more character, more certainty of aim in life.…

He got off the bus. The day was dry but overcast. No radiant blue to herald his approach! The farm steading on the right was more squalid than ever. But as the road rose to the crest he found his spirits rising with it. There was something in a wide expanse that either frightened you or let you take wing.

And if there were no geese, at least there was no city female either! A peewit blew up from the roadside with noisy wings and a sharp crying. He stood and watched it circle and tumble. His new friends!

The crocuses were still alight, but the snowdrops were burning low. The lady of the farm answered the knocker with a welcoming smile. There was a fire in the sitting-room!

“I've been thinking it over,” she said. “I don't know, but I thought if you cared to chance it we—we could see in a week or two if we suited each other. I mean I have never done this before and—and I'm not sure if——”

She was nervous over so extraordinary an undertaking! “I'm very glad,” he said. “And then if you find in a week or two that it's awkward or difficult, why, I'll perfectly understand. And if I should have to leave for any reason, you'll understand.” When he smiled in spontaneous friendliness, his face was very attractive.

“Yes.” She nodded. “Yes—that will do fine. I'm glad you understand.” She hesitated, then went on: “This will be your sitting-room. Will it be all right?”

“Couldn't be better. Ideal.”

“Would you like to see your bedroom?”

“Well, all right.” He followed her up the rather narrow steps of the stairs to a brown-linoleumed landing. “It's a bigger house than I thought.”

“You don't see this back part from the front. But this would be your room.”

It was a clean room, aired, with a slope on the roof in front towards an out-jutting peaked window. There was a faint autumn fragrance of apple that made him involuntarily pause and sniff.

“I had some apples spread out on the floor,” she explained. “I thought the smell would have gone by now.”

“I think it's exciting,” he answered. “I'm trying to remember where I got it before.” But he was quite sure he had never got that scent before, not in such a place. Whence this vivid memory? But he turned his face aside to hide his wonder and saw the flat window in the gable wall to his right. He went over to it and exclaimed: “Why, a garden!”