‘Stop it!’ Mary cried once more across the shadows. ‘Nein, I tell you! Ich haben der todt Kinder gesehn.’
But it was a fact. A woman who had missed these things could still be useful – more useful than a man in certain respects. She thumped like a pavior through the settling ashes at the secret thrill of it. The rain was damping the fire, but she could feel – it was too dark to see – that her work was done. There was a dull red glow at the bottom of the destructor, not enough to char the wooden lid if she slipped it half over against the driving wet. This arranged, she leaned on the poker and waited, while an increasing rapture laid hold on her. She ceased to think. She gave herself up to feel. Her long pleasure was broken by a sound that she had waited for in agony several times in her life. She leaned forward and listened, smiling. There could be no mistake. She closed her eyes and drank it in. Once it ceased abruptly.
‘Go on,’ she murmured, half aloud. ‘That isn’t the end.’
Then the end came very distinctly in a lull between two rain-gusts. Mary Postgate drew her breath short between her teeth and shivered from head to foot. ‘That’s all right,’ said she contentedly, and went up to the house, where she scandalized the whole routine by taking a luxurious hot bath before tea, and came down looking, as Miss Fowler said when she saw her lying all relaxed on the other sofa, ‘quite handsome!’
The Wish House1
The new Church Visitor had just left after a twenty minutes’ call. During that time, Mrs Ashcroft had used such English as an elderly, experienced, and pensioned cook should, who had seen life in London. She was the readier, therefore, to slip back into easy, ancient Sussex (‘t’s softening to ‘d’s as one warmed) when the bus brought Mrs Fettley from thirty miles away for a visit, that pleasant March Saturday. The two had been friends since childhood; but, of late, destiny had separated their meetings by long intervals.
Much was to be said, and many ends, loose since last time, to be ravelled up on both sides, before Mrs Fettley, with her bag of quilt-patches, took the couch beneath the window commanding the garden, and the football-ground in the valley below.
‘Most folk got out at Bush Tye for the match there,’ she explained, ‘so there weren’t no one for me to cushion agin, the last five mile. An’ she do just-about bounce ye.’
‘You’ve took no hurt,’ said her hostess. ‘You don’t brittle by agein’, Liz.’
Mrs Fettley chuckled and made to match a couple of patches to her liking. ‘No, or I’d ha’ broke twenty year back. You can’t ever mind when I was so’s to be called round, can ye?’
Mrs Ashcroft shook her head slowly – she never hurried – and went on stitching a sack-cloth lining into a list-bound 2 rush tool-basket. Mrs Fettley laid out more patches in the Spring light through the geraniums on the window-sill, and they were silent awhile.
‘What like’s this new Visitor o’ yourn?’ Mrs Fettley inquired, with a nod towards the door. Being very short-sighted, she had, on her entrance, almost bumped into the lady.
Mrs Ashcroft suspended the big packing-needle judicially on high, ere she stabbed home. ‘Settin’ aside she don’t bring much news with her yet, I dunno as I’ve anythin’ special agin her.’
‘Ourn, at Keyneslade,’ said Mrs Fettley, ‘she’s full o’ words an’ pity, but she don’t stay for answers. Ye can get on with your thoughts while she clacks.’
‘This ’un don’t clack. She’s aimin’ to be one o’ those High Church nuns, like.’
‘Ourn’s married, but, by what they say, she’ve made no great gains of it…’ Mrs Fettley threw up her sharp chin. ‘Lord! How they dam’ cherubim do shake the very bones o’ the place!’
The tile-sided cottage trembled at the passage of two specially chartered forty-seat charabancs on their way to the Bush Tye match; a regular Saturday ‘shopping’ bus, for the county’s capital, fumed behind them; while, from one of the crowded inns, a fourth car backed out to join the procession, and held up the stream of through pleasure-traffic.
‘You’re as free-tongued as ever, Liz,’ Mrs Ashcroft observed.
‘Only when I’m with you. Otherwhiles, I’m Granny – three times over. I lay that basket’s for one o’ your gran’chiller – ain’t it?’
‘’Tis for Arthur – my Jane’s eldest.’
‘But he ain’t workin’ nowheres, is he?’
‘No. ’Tis a picnic-basket.’
‘You’re let off light. My Willie, he’s allus at me for money for them aireated wash-poles folk puts up in their gardens to draw the music from Lunnon, like. An’ I give it ’im – pore fool me!’
‘An’ he forgets to give you the promise-kiss after, don’t he?’ Mrs Ashcroft’s heavy smile seemed to strike inwards.
‘He do. No odds ‘twixt boys now an’ forty year back. Take all an’ give naught – an’ we to put up with it! Pore fool we! Three shillin’ at a time Willie’ll ask me for!’
‘They don’t make nothin’ o’ money these days,’ Mrs Ashcroft said.
‘An’ on’y last week,’ the other went on, ‘me daughter, she ordered a quarter pound suet at the butchers’s; an’ she sent it back to ’im to be chopped. She said she couldn’t bother with choppin’ it.’
‘I lay he charged her, then.’
‘I lay he did. She told me there was a whisk-drive that afternoon at the Institute, an’ she couldn’t bother to do the choppin’.’
‘Tck!’
Mrs Ashcroft put the last firm touches to the basket-lining. She had scarcely finished when her sixteen-year-old grandson, a maiden of the moment in attendance, hurried up the garden-path shouting to know if the thing were ready, snatched it, and made off without acknowledgment. Mrs Fettley peered at him closely.
‘They’re goin’ picnickin’ somewheres,’ Mrs Ashcroft explained.
‘Ah,’ said the other, with narrowed eyes. ‘I lay he won’t show much mercy to any he comes across, either. Now ’oothe dooce do he remind me of, all of a sudden?’
‘They must look arter theirselves – same as we did.’ Mrs Ashcroft began to set out the tea.
‘No denyin’ you could, Gracie,’ said Mrs Fettley.
‘What’s in your head now?’
‘Dunno… But it come over me, sudden-like – about dat woman from Rye – I’ve slipped the name – Barnsley, wadn’t it?’
‘Batten – Polly Batten, you’re thinkin’ of.’
‘That’s it – Polly Batten. That day she had it in for you with a hayfork – time we was all hayin’ at Smalldene – for stealin’ her man.’
‘But you heered me tell her she had my leave to keep him?’ Mrs Ashcroft’s voice and smile were smoother than ever.
‘I did – an’ we was all looking that she’d prod the fork spang through your breastes when you said it.’
‘No-oo. She’d never go beyond bounds – Polly. She shruck too much for reel doin’s.’
‘Allus seems to me,’ Mrs Fettley said after a pause, ‘that a man ’twixt two fightin’ women is the foolishest thing on earth. Like a dog bein’ called two ways.’
‘Mebbe. But what set ye off on those times, Liz?’
‘That boy’s fashion o’ carryin’ his head an’ arms. I haven’t rightly looked at him since he’s growed. Your Jane never showed it, but – him! Why, ’tis Jim Batten and his tricks come to life again!… Eh?’
‘Mebbe. There’s some that would ha’ made it out so – bein’ barren-like, themselves.’
‘Oho! Ah well! Dearie, dearie me, now!… An’ Jim Batten’s been dead this – ‘
‘Seven and twenty year,’ Mrs Ashcroft answered briefly. ‘Won’t ye draw up, Liz?’
Mrs Fettley drew up to buttered toast, currant bread, stewed tea, bitter as leather, some home-preserved pears, and a cold boiled pig’s tail to help down the muffins. She paid all the proper compliments.
‘Yes. I dunno as I’ve ever owed me belly much,’ said Mrs Ashcroft thoughtfully. ‘We only go through this world once.’
‘But don’t it lay heavy on y
e, sometimes?’ her guest suggested.
‘Nurse says I’m a sight liker to die o’ me indigestion than me leg.’ For Mrs Ashcroft had a long-standing ulcer on her shin, which needed regular care from the Village Nurse, who boasted (or others did, for her) that she had dressed it one hundred and three times already during her term of office.
‘An’ you that was so able, too! It’s all come on ye before your full time, like. I’ve watched ye goin’.’ Mrs Fettley spoke with real affection.
‘Somethin’s bound to find ye sometime. I’ve me ’eart left me still,’ Mrs Ashcroft returned.
‘You was always big-hearted enough for three. That’s somethin’ to look back on at the day’s eend.’
‘I reckon you’ve your back-lookin’s, too,’ was Mrs Ashcroft’s answer.
‘You know it. But I don’t think much regardin’ such matters excep’ when I’m along with you, Gra’. Takes two sticks to make a fire.’
Mrs Fettley stared, with jaw half-dropped, at the grocer’s bright calendar on the wall. The cottage shook again to the roar of the motor-traffic, and the crowded football-ground below the garden roared almost as loudly; for the village was well set to its Saturday leisure.
Mrs Fettley had spoken very precisely for some time without interruption, before she wiped her eyes. ‘And,’ she concluded, ’they read ‘is death-notice to me, out o’ the paper last month. O’ course it wadn’t any o’ my becomin’ concerns – let be I ’adn’t set eyes on him for so long. O’ course I couldn’t say nor show nothin’. Nor I’ve no rightful call to go to Eastbourne to see ‘is grave, either. I’ve been schemin’ to slip over there by the ‘bus some day; but they’d ask questions at ’ome past endurance. So I ’aven’t even that to stay me.’
‘But you’ve ’ad your satisfactions?’
‘Godd! Yess! Those four years ’e was workin’ on the rail near us. An’ the other drivers they gave him a brave funeral, too.’
‘Then you’ve naught to cast-up about. ‘Nother cup o’ tea?’
The light and air had changed a little with the sun’s descent, and the two elderly ladies closed the kitchen-door against chill. A couple of jays squealed and skirmished through the undraped apple-trees in the garden. This time, the word was with Mrs Ashcroft, her elbows on the tea-table, and her sick leg propped on a stool…
‘Well I never! But what did your ’usband say to that?’ Mrs Fettley asked, when the deep-toned recital halted.
‘’E said I might go where I pleased for all of ’im. But seein’ ’e was bedrid, I said I’d ‘tend ’im out. ’E knowed I wouldn’t take no advantage of ’im in that state. ’E lasted eight or nine week. Then he was took with a seizure-like; an’ laid stone-still for days. Then ’e propped ‘imself up abed an’ says: “You pray no man’ll ever deal with you like you’ve dealed with some.” “An’ you?” I says, for you know, Liz, what a rover ’e was. “It cuts both ways,” says ’e, “but I’m death-wise, an’ I can see what’s comin’ to you.” He died a-Sunday an’ was buried a-Thursday… An’ yet I’d set a heap by him – one time or – did I ever?’
‘You never told me that before,’ Mrs Fettley ventured.
‘I’m payin’ ye for what ye told me just now. Him bein’ dead, I wrote, up, sayin’ I was free for good, to that Mrs Marshall in Lunnon – which gave me my first place as kitchen-maid – Lord, how long ago! She was well pleased, for they two was both gettin’ on, an’ I knowed their ways. You remember, Liz, I used to go to ’em in service between whiles, for years – when we wanted money, or – or my ’usband was away – on occasion.’
‘’E did get that six months at Chichester, didn’t ‘e?’ Mrs Fettley whispered. ‘We never rightly won to the bottom of it.’
‘’E’d ha’ got more, but the man didn’t die.’
‘’None o’ your doin’s, was it, Gra’?’
‘No! ’Twas the woman’s husband this time. An’ so, my man bein’ dead, I went back to them Marshall’s, as cook, to get me legs under a gentleman’s table again, and be called with a handle to me name. That was the year you shifted to Portsmouth.’
‘Cosham,’ Mrs Fettley corrected. ‘There was a middlin’ lot o’ new buildin’ bein’ done there. My man went first, an’ got the room, an’ I follered.’
‘Well, then, I was a year-abouts in Lunnon, all at a breath, like, four meals a day an’ livin’ easy. Then, ‘long towards autumn, they two went travellin’, like, to France; keepin’ me on, for they couldn’t do without me. I put the house to rights for the caretaker, an’ then I slipped down ‘ere to me sister Bessie – me wages in me pockets, an’ all ‘ands glad to be’old of me.’
‘That would be when I was at Cosham,’ said Mrs Fettley.
‘You know, Liz, there wasn’t no cheap-dog pride to folk, those days, no more than there was cinemas nor whisk-drives. Man or woman ‘ud lay hold o’ any job that promised a shillin’ to the backside of it, didn’t they? I was all peaked up after Lunnon, an’ I thought the fresh airs ‘ud serve me. So I took on at Smalldene, obligin’ with a hand at the early potato-liftin, stubbin’ hens, an’ such-like. They’d ha’ mocked me sore in my kitchen in Lunnon, to see me in men’s boots, an’ me petticoats all shorted.’
‘Did it bring ye any good?’ Mrs Fettley asked.
‘’Twadn’t for that I went. You know, ‘s’well’s me, that na’un happens to ye till it ’as ‘appened. Your mind don’t warn ye before’and of the road ye’ve took, till you’re at the far eend of it. We’ve only a backwent view of our proceedin’s.’
‘’Oo was it?’
‘’Arry Mockler.’ Mrs Ashcroft’s face puckered to the pain of her sick leg.
Mrs Fettley gasped. ‘’Arry? Bert Mockler’s son! An’ I never guessed!’
Mrs Ashcroft nodded. ‘An’ I told myself – an’ I beleft it – that I wanted field-work.’
‘What did ye get out of it?’
‘The usuals. Everythin’ at first – worse than naught after. I had signs an’ warnings a-plenty, but I took no heed of ’em. For we was burnin’ rubbish one day, just when we’d come to know how ‘twas with – with both of us. ’Twas early in the year for burnin’, an’ I said so. “No!” says he. “The sooner dat old stuff’s off an’ done with,” ’e says, “the better.“ ‘Is face was harder’n rocks when he spoke. Then it come over me that I’d found me master, which I ’adn’t ever before. I’d allus owned ’em, like.’
‘Yes! Yes! They’re yourn or you’re theirn,’ the other sighed. ‘I like the right way best.’
‘I didn’t. But ‘Arry did… ‘Long then, it come time for me to go back to Lunnon. I couldn’t. I clean couldn’t! So, I took an’ tipped a dollop o’ scaldin’ water out o’ the copper one Monday mornin’ over me left ‘and and arm. Dat stayed me where I was for another fortnight.’
‘Was it worth it?’ said Mrs Fettley, looking at the silvery scar on the wrinkled fore-arm.
Mrs Ashcroft nodded. ‘An’ after that, we two made it up ‘twixt us so’s ’e could come to Lunnon for a job in a liv’ry-stable not far from me. ’E got it. I ‘tended to that. There wadn’t no talk nowhere. His own mother never suspicioned how ’twas. He just slipped up to Lunnon, an’ there we abode that winter, not ‘alf a mile ‘tother from each.’
‘Ye paid ‘is fare an’ all, though’; Mrs Fettley spoke convincedly.
Again Mrs Ashcroft nodded. ‘Dere wadn’t much I didn’t do for him. ’E was me master, an’ – O God, help us! – we’d laugh over it walkin’ together after dark in them paved streets, an’ me corns fair wrenchin’ in me boots! I’d never been like that before. Ner he! Ner he!’
Mrs Fettley clucked sympathetically.
‘An’ when did ye come to the eend?’ she asked.
‘When ’e paid it all back again, every penny. Then I knowed, but I wouldn’t suffer meself to know. “You’ve been mortal kind to me,” he says. “Kind!” I said. “’Twixt us?” But ’e kep’ all on tellin’ me ‘ow kind I’d been an’ ‘e’d never forget it all his day
s. I held it from off o’ me for three evenin’s, because I would not believe. Then ’e talked about not bein’ satisfied with ‘is job in the stables, an’ the men there puttin’ tricks on ’im, an’ all they lies which a man tells when ‘e’s leavin’ ye. I heard ’im out, neither ‘elpin’ nor ‘inderin’. At the last, I took off a liddle brooch which he’d give me an’ I says: “Dat’ll do. I ain’t askin’ na’un’.” An’ I turned me round an’ walked off to me own sufferin’s. ’e didn’t make ’em worse. ’E didn’t come nor write after that. ’E slipped off ‘ere back ’ome to ‘is mother again.’
‘An’ ’ow often did ye look for ‘en to come back?’ Mrs Fettley demanded mercilessly.
‘More’n once – more’n once! Goin’ over the streets we’d used, I thought de very pave-stones ‘ud shruck out under me feet.’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Fettley. ‘I dunno but dat don’t ’urt as much as aught else. An’ dat was all ye got?’
‘No. ‘Twadn’t. That’s the curious part, if you’ll believe it, Liz.’
‘I do. I lay you’re further off lyin’ now than in all your life, Gra’.’
‘I am… An’ I suffered, like I’d not wish my most arrantest enemies to. God’s Own Name! I went through the hoop that spring! One part of it was headaches which I’d never known all me days before. Think o’ me with an ‘eddick! But I come to be grateful for ’em. They kep’ me from thinkin’…’
‘’Tis like a tooth,’ Mrs Fettley commented. ‘It must rage an’ rugg3 till it tortures itself quiet on ye; an’ then – then there’s na’un left.’
‘I got enough lef to last me all my days on earth. It come about through our charwoman’s liddle girl – Sophy Ellis was ‘er name – all eyes an’ elbers an’ hunger. I used to give ‘er vittles. Otherwhiles, I took no special notice of ‘er, an’ a sight less, o’ course, when me trouble about ‘Arry was on me. But – you know how liddle maids first feel it sometimes – she come to be crazy-fond o’ me, pawin’ an’ cuddlin’ all whiles; an’ I ’adn’t the ’eart to beat ‘er off… One afternoon, early in spring ’twas, ‘er mother ’ad sent ‘er round to scutchel up what vittles she could off of us. I was settin’ by the fire, me apern over me head, half-mad with the ‘eddick, when she slips in. I reckon I was middlin’ short with ‘er. “Lor’!” she says. “Is that all? I’ll take it off you in two-twos!” I told her not to lay a finger on me, for I thought she’d want to stroke my forehead; an’ – I ain’t that make. “I won’t tech ye,” she says, an’ slips out again. She ’adn’t been gone ten minutes ‘fore me old ‘eddick took off quick as bein’ kicked. So I went about my work. Prasin’ly, Sophy comes back, an’ creeps into my chair quiet as a mouse. ‘Er eyes was deep in ‘er ‘ead an’ ‘er face all drawed. I asked ‘er what ’ad ‘appened. “Nothin’,” she says. “On’y I’ve got it now.” “Got what?” I says. “Your ‘eddick,” she says, all hoarse an’ sticky-lipped. “I’ve took it on me.” “Nonsense,” I says, “it went of itself when you was out. Lay still an’ I’ll make ye a cup o’ tea.” “’Twon’t do no good,” she says, “till your time’s up. ‘Ow long do your ‘eddicks last?” “Don’t talk silly,” I says, “or I’ll send for the Doctor.” It looked to me like she might be hatchin’ de measles. “Oh, Mrs Ashcroft,” she says, stretchin’ out ‘er liddle thin arms. “I do love ye.” There wasn’t any holdin’ agin that. I took ‘er into me lap an’ made much of ‘er. “Is it truly gone?” she says. “Yes,” I says, “an’ if ’twas you took it away, I’m truly grateful.” “’Twas me,’ she says, layin’ ‘er cheek to mine. “No one but me knows how.” An’ then she said she’d changed me ‘eddick for me at a Wish ‘Ouse.’