She stood upright, straightening her back with a little moan.
A green woodland light fell through the dirty window of the scullery, and gave a ghostly look to her face as she glanced up. She had been a very pretty woman, and her large blue eyes, delightfully set in her head with an attractive slant, were still beautiful; her little nose was pretty too. But she had hardly any teeth; dirt was grimed into her skin, and her expression was discontented. She had thick brown hair, badly cut in a bush and caught with a pink mother-o’-pearl slide; a dirty blouse was pulled tightly over her bosom, and the hem of an old-fashioned skirt made of very good but very dirty cloth dipped in pools of water on the stone floor. This was Me Skirt; she had worn it for twenty years, and hoarded it for years before that. It had the rounded hips and braided hem of the early 1900s.
The deep blue eyes, swelling bosom, and a hint of laughter in her look, shining through the discontent, made her a woman that men would always want to talk to. She looked as though she would grizzle but take nothing seriously.
‘Nothen to him, it isn’t,’ she went on, bending again over the tin bath. ‘“Why don’t you get up earlier,” says he (mimicking). ’Cause I don’t care to trouble, mie lad, that’s why. When I am up, there’s no comfort, no prosperity nowhere. Never thinks I might like a drink up The Arms, never takes maye to the Pictures—’
Slam! A bowl of steaming clothes went down on the greasy flagstones.
‘… aye, he’s ashamed o’ maye, that’s what it is. Maybe I have got a bit slumocky, had enough to make maye, t’ain’t as though I were old yet. I’m not old, nay, I’m not. If t’weren’t for the old man, where’d I be for a bit o’ company? Aye, much he cares. A bad son he is, bad and cunnin’. And who’d wash his seven shirts a week if I died? Seven shirts a week to wash ’n iron for him, and no prosperity nowhere.’
While she wrung the last drops from a cheap shirt of pale blue cotton, the scullery door opened and a man, outlined against the bright forest landscape, stood looking into the little cell.
‘Mother, is my shirt ready?’ he asked crisply.
‘Aye,’ she answered, not looking round.
It was the beautiful young chauffeur.
CHAPTER V
For a fortnight nothing interesting happened.
The weather, the sky and woods, grew steadily more lovely as the spring deepened, with its exciting feeling of promise that ends in the black-green trees and almost silent birds of August. But none of the people in this story could be satisfied with perfect weather and landscape; they wanted other things.
Mr Wither said not a word more to Viola about their little talk. When she thought about this silence of his, she was disturbed for her future, and wondered if he would turn her out of The Eagles, and almost hoped that he would, because then she would have to go and live with Shirley; or go back to work in the shop and live with Catty or one of the aunts. She would not mind doing that, if she could go to town sometimes and see Shirley and The Crowd.
Mr Wither, however, was not going to turn his daughter-in-law out. He did not think it necessary to tell her this, because he had never threatened to turn her out, and therefore did not consider that she needed reassuring; but his mind was made up. There she was; there she would have to stay. Mrs Wither had made it up for him. She agreed with him that Viola was a silly, extravagant and rather deceitful girl, but she gave a number of reasons why she should be allowed to stay. All the cousins would Say Things if she went, she did not really cost much to keep if one thought of their income (though I know that we are not rich, said Mrs Wither hastily) and she was, after all, their dead son’s wife. Also, she was company for Tina.
Madge ought to be enough company for Tina, objected Mr Wither. Her own sister.
Madge has her golf and tennis, dear, said Mrs Wither. She is not really much company for Tina. Tina is very fond of Viola, she said so the other day.
Oh well, then. Mr Wither supposed that Viola must stay. After all, he seldom saw her except at meals, and though he would never forgive her for having deceived him about the money, she now gave him no active trouble. She was a woman. She could always be organized.
It did not occur to Mr Wither that Viola had already on several occasions shown that she would not be organized.
As for Viola, she had settled down. The Withers did not often make a remark which drew attention to the depths hidden under the surface of daily life, because their attention was fixed upon its details, and when the depths insisted upon being noticed, the Withers ran away; but Mrs Wither did once remark to Madge that Viola seemed to have quite settled down.
‘H’n’h,’ retorted Madge, with a contemptuous expression.
Like her father, she mistrusted Viola because Viola was so young and rather pretty; she suspected that Viola had ‘caught’ Teddy. ‘Caught’ was not clearly defined in Madge’s mind, but it meant that Teddy had been bamboozled into marrying Viola by wiles, possibly ‘beastly’ ones.
Madge described all the natural development of love between men and women, when its expression passed beyond the handshake, as beastliness. It was possible, of course, to have a man pal without any slop. In moments of emotion, when he had just done something pretty super at some game, you might bang him on the back; in return, he might slap you between the shoulder blades. That was all right; that was the decent friendly expression of deeply felt emotion. There were one or two young men up at the Club whom Madge enjoyed banging on the back on somewhat slight excuses. A very hard handgrip was all right, too, when saying goodbye to a soldier who was sailing next week for India with a young wife. Such a grip showed him that, though he had chosen to be sloppy over a fool, there was still a sensible woman left in the world who could give a man the unsloppy palship that he really needed – as he would no doubt realize jolly soon and be pretty fed-up.
But kisses were sloppy, unless accompanied by scuffles and shrieks under the mistletoe in front of a tolerant Christmas crowd, and all stronger manifestations of love were beastly.
Madge’s ideal was simple: it was decency, just common decency, but surprisingly few people managed to come up to it. If one looked, it was pretty sickening how much beastliness one could see in a week, even round a tiny place like Sible Pelden, especially in the spring.
Dogs, of course, were decent, more decent than human beings. Also, they could be controlled. But Mr Wither would not let Madge keep a dog. They had fought that battle out many times during the last ten years; and now Madge never suggested that she should have a dog. But she went on wanting one, ‘pretty badly’, as she once blurted out to Tina.
Cautiously as a sea-anemone, as any apparently fragile growth that must adapt itself to its world or die, Viola had been making little pockets of fun and comfort for herself during her first weeks at The Eagles.
Tina was an unexpected help. She was old, of course, but she was so awfully kind, and together they discovered the joy of laughter over incidents that did not amuse other people. Viola had a little humour, Tina had a little too, and when these came together they fed one another and grew.
It made life at The Eagles less depressing, less like a frightening marking-time that would go on for ever, until one was old, if two people could see that it was all rather funny, really. And perhaps, after all, something would happen.
The worst part of life at The Eagles, Viola and Tina decided, was the constant wanting something to happen; one did not know what, not necessarily something wonderful, but just something. This desire, and the illogical feeling that it would be fulfilled, haunted their days like a perfume or a tune. It made them restless, glancing at their watches to see how long it was until a meal, then wishing that it was time for the next one as soon as that one was over, wishing that it was time to go up to bed, to get up, to go down to breakfast, glance over the paper … the days and nights glided into one another like a long dull dream, and the weeks. It was May.
Once Viola took the bus into Chesterbourne and had a lovely afternoon with Catty and the Aunt
s. Her happiness came mostly from sticking it on to Catty and the Aunts, and pretending that she was perfectly happy in a gay, luxurious home surrounded by adoring in-laws, but this she did not realize. She only felt the pleasure of being once more in places she knew, smelling the familiar lineny odours in the shop, patronizing the two latest little ’prentice girls in their shabby frocks, with their big alarmed eyes; and drinking in Miss Cattyman’s mixture of affection and disapproval, and watching the tears come into her ageing eyes when she spoke of ‘your father, Vi. Your dear father.’
This slow gathering of tears while Miss Cattyman spoke of Howard Thompson was one of the earliest things that Viola could remember; when she was a little girl she used to watch for it, fascinated, as Miss Cattyman knelt before her, circling Viola’s small velvet waist with her two hands, seamed by countless tiny worklines. Miss Cattyman, and two recurring shrimps of ’prentices with popping eyes and sudden fits of impertinence, were like the foundations of Burgess and Thompson’s: it was impossible to think of the shop without them.
The Aunts were Howard Thompson’s sisters, two kind, small, fattish, stupid women, solemnly anxious that Viola should do her duty and be a good girl. One was a district nurse, the other kept house for her. They were devoted to one another, and found their busy life, darkened by small cares and lit by small escapes from care, well worth the living.
But Viola rather spoiled her chances with Catty and the Aunts by pretending that she was so happy at The Eagles.
Before they saw her, so cheerful in a new hat bought that day in Chesterbourne, they had been prepared to offer her comfort, advice, and even a home for life if she needed one. But she made it so clear that she had a pleasant home already, and did not need advice or comfort, that the Aunts and Catty lost a little of their interest in her. Happiness can never hope to command so much interest as distress.
She’s all right, thank goodness, thought the three old women, a little relieved at not having to give up what spare rooms they had, but also a little disappointed because now none of them would be able to say ‘… and so I gave the poor child a home; what else could I do?’ And Viola, riding home in the bus, felt depression creeping over her as she realized that now it would be difficult to go to the Aunts or Catty and ask to be given a home in return for fifteen shillings a week out of a salary earned at Burgess and Thompson’s. What had made her pretend that she was quite happy at The Eagles? She was bored, depressed, haunted by a feeling that the months were flying and she would soon be old.
I am a silly ass, she thought; she seldom discovered her true motives for her behaviour. Actually, it was her loyalty to the dead Teddy, whom she had not loved, that made her pretend she was so happy with his family.
Also, like most very young people, she found it difficult, almost impossible, to admit that she was unhappy to somebody old. Old people (she dimly felt) were so beastly pleased when you said you were fed-up. Ah, their faces said, so life isn’t all roses and honey, after all, you see! Just because you’re twenty-one, you needn’t think you’ll escape. You’ll learn. You just wait.
That was what Mr and Mrs Wither’s faces had said only yesterday about Saxon, when they saw him walk past the window on his afternoon off, wearing a grey suit in which he looked as beautiful as he did in his dark uniform (differing therein from many chauffeurs, whose appearance when in mufti suggests that of escaped convicts).
Not that Viola was interested, now, in Saxon. He was only a local boy whose people had come down in the world, whose services Mr Wither had got cheap because he had picked up his knowledge of driving at the cross-roads service station and this was his first job. He used to mess about at the station doing odd jobs for the proprietor, and when Mr Wither’s own chauffeur left him to get married, Saxon had applied for the post. His mother lived over on the other side of the wood in a dirty little cottage, and they had no money except what Mrs Caker made by taking in washing and the two pounds a week that Saxon earned by driving the car and looking after the garden.
His father had been a prosperous miller, who drank away every penny he earned; ten years ago, one snowy Christmas morning, he had been found drowned under his own mill-wheel.
‘… fell in when he was drunk,’ ended Tina, with a spiteful note in her voice, as she finished telling Viola Saxon’s story. They were sitting in Viola’s bedroom with the big window open to the lovely afternoon, mending their stockings and gossiping, a day or two after Viola’s visit to Chesterbourne.
‘Isn’t his name really Saxon, then?’
‘Oh yes, but when he asked Father for the job he said could he drop the Caker and just be called Saxon and Father said yes. It’s such an ugly name. Caker, I mean.’ Tina sharply bit off her silk.
‘He’s rather conceited, isn’t he?’
‘Oh, that’s just his manner. He’s very keen on being the perfect chauffeur nowadays, but he wasn’t always such a model, I can tell you. When I was a kid about your age, up at the Art School in London and coming home for weekends, I used to see him leading a gang of his own age all over the neighbourhood, trespassing, and robbing orchards.’ Her hands sank in her lap, the needle poised over the grey silk, and she stared through the open window at the light-filled sky with an absent expression. ‘He was always in some kind of a mess, and as cool as a cucumber, never lost his head, and used to make people laugh when they wanted to be angry with him. He had an old red jersey full of holes, I remember, and such bright eyes. I used to think he looked like a young wolf – sort of silky and dangerous.’
‘Good lord!’ said Viola mildly, opening her own narrow grey eyes with a cheerful smile. ‘As bad as all that?’ This was her usual comment on any flight of fancy.
Tina laughed, but she looked a little annoyed, and ashamed, too. No, it had not been as bad as all that. The book on feminine psychology was teaching her to try to be honest with herself; and she had to admit that her comparison of Saxon with a young wolf had been made, not twelve years ago, but last week. The truth was not ‘I used to think that he looked like a young wolf,’ but ‘Now, remembering how he looked, I think he was like a young wolf.’
And had he looked so like a young wolf? Why dangerous?
Damn the book; damn trying to be honest with oneself. How unhealthy introspection is!
‘He’s not much good, anyway,’ she ended crisply. ‘Out for what he can get, I should imagine.’
‘What’s his mother like?’
‘Oh, an awful old slut. At least, she’s not so old really, I suppose, but she’s had a lot of trouble, and that class,’ she bit off her silk sharply again, ‘ages so quickly. Mother has some old story about Mrs Caker being the Belle of Sible Pelden umpteen years ago, and driving to church with her father every Sunday in a pony-trap and a white dress, with a big hat all over poppies. It’s difficult to imagine her now, anyway. They’ve just gone down and down.’
‘You don’t like Saxon, do you?’
‘My dear child, he’s only the chauffeur,’ quickly, with such hauteur in her voice that Viola looked up, surprised. ‘One doesn’t like or dislike servants. As a matter of fact I’m rather sorry for him. He’s had a rotten time since he grew up; country people won’t let you forget, you know, when there’s been a mess-up in your family, and I think he feels it more than most boys in his position would. Or perhaps he doesn’t. I really don’t know. Anyway, he’s quite a good chauffeur now, and Father gets him cheap, so we’re all happy. What about a walk before tea?’
Tea that afternoon was to be graced by the presence of a visitor, one Mr Spurrey, an old friend of Mr Wither.
Mr Wither honoured so few people with his friendship that those he did honour were invested with an awful importance, which made their visits resemble a Personal Appearance of the Dalai Lama. For days after Mr Wither had announced, from a letter read at breakfast, that Gideon Spurrey was visiting in the neighbourhood and would come to see them all at The Eagles on Friday afternoon, a vibration of solemn excitement was felt throughout the house. The maids we
re instructed to prepare Mr Spurrey’s favourite sandwich and cake, Saxon was detailed to call for Mr Spurrey at the house where he was staying with the car, and all the womenfolk were warned by Mr Wither that tea would be at a quarter-past four, not a moment before, not a moment after. Tina and Viola must have their hair properly arranged (or whatever it was that made them so frequently late for meals), Madge must cut short whatever game she happened to be charging about in that afternoon, and Mrs Wither must forgo her nap. By four o’clock four women and Mr Wither must be seated in the drawing-room to receive Mr Spurrey.
So when Tina, at a quarter to three, suggested going out for a walk, Viola said,
‘But what about Mr Spurrey? Will there be time?’
‘Oh heavens, yes, of course there’ll be time. We’ll only go a little way. What are you going to wear?’
‘This.’
‘So am I; I changed after lunch on purpose. All we need do when we get back is our faces. Come along, for heaven’s sake; I want some air.’
Viola was used to these desperate little fits of air-wanting on Tina’s part; they blew up like typhoons on a smooth sea, out of hungry depths. She docilely put on a pair of clean gloves (Shirley had taught her, on some unknown authority, that it is smarter to wear gloves and no hat than it is to wear hat and no gloves) and they set off, proposing to return in an hour.
The energy and beauty of the spring afternoon, the fact that each was wearing a new and becoming dress, and the prospect of a ramble on the fresh edge of the wood before the ordeal of tea with Mr Spurrey raised their spirits to gaiety. Also, after Mr Spurrey had gone, he could be giggled over; and they giggled in anticipation. They walked along by the wood talking loudly, swinging their arms and kicking at bits of stick, picking a bluebell here and pulling a spray of young leaf there, and deciding that they would just have comfortable time to walk to the cross-roads before turning back. They meant to go round by the road, as they had not been that way for some time.