With the whole afternoon before her, and in a landscape as familiar to her as the shrubberies of her birthplace, she drove with elegance through a network of lanes and lesser lanes, turning aside to skirt round villages or houses where someone in a gateway might recognize her. Once, she got out of the car and watched through a gap in a laurel hedge a charitable fête that was being held on the lawn beyond. There were the stalls, with their calico petticoats flapping; there were the little tables, and the enlisted schoolchildren bringing tea on trays, there were the ladies of the locality and their daughters. How dowdy they looked, and how cheerful! Six months ago, she had been quite as dowdy and quite often cheerful too; but now the secret was lost, never again would she wear a small floral pattern with a light heart. Dowdy, cheerful, dutiful and self-satisfied—that was the lot appointed for Belinda Leslie. And if she had had a living father, or a brother, a decent allowance, a taste for religion or blood sports, or had been sent to a secretarial college—any alternative to Mother’s swaddle of affection, fidget and egotism—she might have accepted the lot appointed and been at this moment at one of the little tables, agreeing that raspberries were really nicer than strawberries: a reflection made by all when the strawberry season is over. But to get away from Mother she had married Leo, who was so much in love with her and whom she immediately didn’t love; and then to get away from Leo, and with nowhere else to run to, she had run home. Somehow it had not occurred to her that Leo would come too. For the first few days, he had stalked about being intolerably uncivil to his hostess. Then there had been that ghastly bedroom quarrel, the worst they had ever had. The next day, Mother, smelling the blood of his misery, had settled on him, assiduously sucking, assiduously soothing, showing him old snapshots and making him one of the family. And Leo, who had started up in her life as a sort of mother-slaying St. George, lay down like a spaniel to be tickled, and like a spaniel snarled at her from under Mother’s skirts. Well, the one-of-the-family process could be continued on the heath. There would be touchingly comic stories about little Belinda, a sweet child really, but perhaps a trifle spoilt, needing a firmer hand…. Mrs. Whitadder and old Miss Groves at the table nearest the laurel hedge were startled to hear a car they hadn’t known was there being so impetuously driven away.
In a landscape as familiar to her as the shrubberies of her birthplace Belinda found she had managed to mislay the turning beyond Upton All Saints and was temporarily lost. This, while it lasted, was quieting and dreamlike. The high road banks, bulky with late-summer growth, with scabious and toadflax and hemp agrimony, closed her in. Silvery, waning, plumed grasses brushed against the car, swish-swish; smells of unseen wheat, of turnips and once of a fox, puffed in at the open window. She passed a pair of cottages, brick-built and of surpassing ugliness, called, as one would expect, ‘Rose’ and ‘Coronation’. A baker’s van stood in front of them, and the baker and Mrs. Coronation were conversing across the garden fence. It would be childish in the extreme to imagine herself into that woman’s shoes, with Mr. Leo Coronation coming placidly home from a day’s work to eat a substantial meat tea in his shirtsleeves and then go off to spend the evening at the pub—unless he did a little twilight gardening. She managed not to imagine this, and drove on and soon after approached the cottages, the baker’s van and the conversation once more, having driven in a circle. Quieting and dreamlike though this might be, if she persevered in it the conversation would begin to feel itself being hurried to a close. So this time she turned to the left, and, coming to a road post, consulted it. Billerby & Frogwick. She was much farther east than she supposed. Yet she could have known it, for in the very faint haze spreading over the eastern sky one could read the sea. It was still a beautiful, endless summer afternoon; the shadows of the whin bushes and the clump of alders could be left to lengthen for a long time yet while Mother and Leo got to know each other better and better. Having forgotten them sufficiently to have to remember them she was nearer forgiving them. They had looked so very silly, sitting on the hot heath and toying with Unwin’s uneatable cakes. By now they would be looking even sillier. The longer she left them there, the better she would be to endure seeing them again. Billerby & Frogwick. It was beyond Billerby that a track off the road to Frogwick ran past a decoy wood and between fields of barley and of rye to the barn that stood on the sea wall and had once been a church. Years ago, exploring on her bicycle, she had found the barn, and talked with the old man who was sheltering there from the rain; and even then had known better than to report it. ‘Time of the Danes,’ he had said, looking cautiously out across the saltings, as if the Danes might be coming round the corner in their long-beaked ships. ‘Or thereabouts.’ ‘But how do you know it was a church?’ ‘Course it were a church. What prove it—that there door ain’t never been shut.’ Not wanting to endanger her find, she never went back to it.
Sure enough, the door was open. There were two farm workers in the barn, tinkering at a reaper. She heard one say to the other, ‘Tighten her up a bit, and that will be all.’ So she went and sat on the wall’s farther side, listening for the last clink of their spanners. They came out not long after, had a look at the car, called it a rum old Methusalem, and went away on motor bicycles. But she continued to sit on the slope of the wall, listening to the grasshoppers and watching the slow, ballet-postured mating of two blue butterflies. If you brush them apart, they die; yet from their fixed, quivering pattern they seem to be in anguish. Probably they don’t feel much either way. It was then that she became aware of what for a stupid moment she thought to be a cuckoo, a disembodied, airy tolling of two notes, somewhere out to sea. But it was a bell buoy, rocking and ringing. It seemed as though a heart were beating—a serene, impersonal heart that rocked on a tide of salt water.
The breeze dropped, the music was silenced; but the breeze would resume, the heart begin to beat again. She sat among the grasshoppers, listening, so still that a grasshopper lit on her hand. All along the wall the yellow bedstraw was in bloom, its scent and colour stretching away on either side like a tidemark of the warm, cultivatable earth. If the silly Leslies had held on to their farmlands, it would be fun, uneconomic but fun, to take in another stretch of saltings: to embank and drain it, to sluice the salt out of it, to watch the inland weeds smothering glasswort and sea lavender, and bees adventuring, warm and furry, where little crabs had sidled along the creeks; then to plough, to sow, to reap the first, terrific harvest. But no one did that sort of thing nowadays. The sea continued to retreat, and the farmers to squat behind the wall and complain of the cost of its upkeep. There was that cuckoo again—no, that bell buoy. She addressed herself in a solemn voice: ‘If you sit here much longer, you will fall asleep.’ Exerting herself to sit erect, she heeled over and fell asleep.
Once, she stirred towards consciousness, and thought the Danes had arrived. Opening one eye, she caught sight of her yellow silk trousers, reasoned that the Danes could not possibly arrive when she was dressed like this and was asleep again. When next she woke, a different arrival had taken place. The sea mist had come inland, was walking in swathes over the saltings, had silenced the grasshoppers, extinguished the sun. Her blissful, Leo-less sleep was over. She was back in real life again, compelled to look at her wristwatch in order to see how long she had possessed her anonymity. It was past eight. Good God!—Mother and Leo on the heath!
She snatched up her bag and ran. Because she was in a hurry, the car wouldn’t start. When it did, it baulked and hesitated. Just before the decoy, it stopped dead. It had run out of petrol.
It was useless to repine; she must leave the car on the marsh, as earlier in the day she had left Mother and Leo on the heath. Obviously, it was the kind of day when one leaves things. Billerby could not be more—at any rate, not much more—than four miles away; though it was a small village, it must be able to produce a gallon of petrol and a man to drive her out to the decoy. If not, she could ring up a garage. Walking briskly, she could reach Billerby in not much over an hour—once on the
road, she might even get a lift. By half past nine at the latest … She stopped; a stone had got into her shoe, a thought had darted into her head. By half past nine those two would have finished their dinner, would be drinking coffee and wondering when foolish Belinda would come home, bringing her tail behind her. For of course, they had not remained on the heath. Mother would have sent Leo to look for a man. ‘I think we ought to look for a man’ was how she would have expressed it. And Leo, urban ignoramus though he was, would eventually have found one. Yes, they were all right. There was no call to waste pity on them. It was she who was cold and footsore and hungry and miles from home. Miles from home, and at least two miles from Billerby, and faint with hunger! Now that she had begun to think how hungry she was, she could think of nothing else. Two paste sandwiches, half a lettuce sandwich—Oh, why had she rejected that hard-boiled egg? Beasts! Gibing, guzzling beasts! By the time she walked into Billerby, Belinda was hating her husband and her mother as vehemently as when she walked away, leaving them on the heath.
But not with such righteous calm and elation. Her first sight of Billerby showed her that it would have been better to go to Frogwick. There was no inn. There was no filling station. There was a post office, but it was duly closed in accordance with government regulations. There were two small shops. One of them was vacant and for sale, the other appeared to sell only baby clothes. Nowhere held out the smallest promise of being able to produce a gallon of petrol. As for a man who would drive her, there was no man of any sort. At one moment there had been three. But they had mounted bicycles and ridden away, as though Billerby held no future for them. There was no sign of life in the one street and the two side streets of Billerby. Her footsteps disturbed various shut-up dogs, and in one house an aged person was coughing. That was the only house with a lighted window. Either the people of Billerby went to bed very early, or they all had television sets. There were, however, only a few aerials—as far as she could tell. The dusk and the gathering mist made it difficult to be sure.
However, there was the public call box, and when she shut herself into it the light went on like a public illumination. The light showed her that her purse held four pennies, one halfpenny and a five-pound note. Excellent! The pennies would pay the local call to some near-by garage; the note would look after the rest. Unfortunately, the call box had no Trades Directory book. She went and banged on the post office door. Nothing resulted except more barks and the wailing of an infant. She went back to the call box, and began to read through the ordinary directory, beginning with an Abacus Laundry. The public illumination did not seem so brilliant now, the print was small. She read from Abacus to Alsop, Mrs. Yolande, and found no garage. Perseverance had never been Belinda’s forte. Moreover, honour was satisfied, and when reduced by famine it is not disgraceful to yield. She took off the receiver. She dialled O. She gave the Snewdon number.
‘Put ninepence in the box, please.’
‘I can’t. I’ve only got fourpence; the rest must be collect.’
‘We don’t usually …’
‘I’m not usual. I’m desperate.’
The operator laughed and put her through.
‘This is Snewdon Beeleigh two two-seven.’
‘Mother.’
‘This is Snewdon Beeleigh two two-seven.’
‘Mother.’
‘This is Snewdon Beeleigh two two-seven. Can’t you hear me?’
‘Mother!’
‘This is Snewdon …’
‘Press button A, caller,’ said the operator.
Belinda pressed button A and said icily, ‘Mother?’
‘Belinda! Oh, thank heavens! Where are you, what happened to you? I’ve been in such a state—we both have. Leo! Leo! She’s found!’ The shriek seemed to be in the very call box.
‘When did you get home?’
‘When did we get home? I haven’t the slightest idea. I was far too worried to notice when we got home. What I’ve been through! We waited and waited. At last I said to Leo, “I’ll stay here in case she comes back, and you go and find a man to drive us.” What I felt—every minute like an hour—and the flies! … By the way, I saw a nightjar.’
‘A nightjar? Are you sure it wasn’t a hawk?’
‘My dear child, I wasn’t so frantic about you that I didn’t know the difference between a hawk and a nightjar. Well, then I began to think Leo was swallowed up, too. I’d told him exactly how to get to Gamble’s farm, but for all that, he went wrong and wandered all over the place, till at last he saw a spire, and it turned out to be my dear old Archdeacon Brownlow, and he came at once and rescued us. And ever since then, we’ve been ringing up the police, and the hospital, and the A.A. and Leo has been driving everywhere we could think of to look for you, he’s only just come in. Yes, Leo, she’s perfectly all right, I’m talking to her. And I don’t wish to judge you, Belinda, till I’ve heard what you’ve got to say for yourself, but this I must say—it was the most horrible picnic of my life and I never want to live through another. Now I suppose I shall have to ring up the police and say it was all a false alarm. How I hate grovelling to officials!’
‘While you’re about it, you might ring up the A.A. too—about the car.’
‘The car? … Oh, my God!’
‘And tell them to fetch it away tomorrow.’.
‘Fetch it? What’s happened to it?’
‘I ran out of petrol.’
‘Well, why can’t you have some put in, and bring it back? I can’t do without it, I shall need it tomorrow, for I must take the Mothers’ Union banner to Woffam to be invisibly darned and I want to take some gooseberries over to the Archdeacon, who was so very kind—and tactful. Not a single question, not one word of surprise. Just driving us home in such a soothing, understanding way. Leo thought him——’
Belinda slammed down the receiver. A minute later, the operator rang up Snewdon Beeleigh two two-seven to say there would be a collect charge of one and twopence on the call from Billerby. This time the telephone was answered by Leo.
The call-box door was not constructed to slam. Belinda closed it. The public illumination went out, and there was Billerby, unchanged. She had never lost her temper with so little satisfaction. She could not even enjoy her usual sensation of turning cold, for she was cold already. ‘Well, at any rate, I’ve done my duty by them‚’ she said to herself. ‘They know I’m alive and that the car isn’t a wreck. And I’ve got five pounds and a halfpenny. With five pounds and a halfpenny I can at least buy one night to myself.’
But where was it to be bought, that idyllic night in a lumpy rural bed? For now it was ten o’clock, an hour at which people become disinclined to make up beds for strangers who arrive on foot and without luggage. Farther down the street, a light went on in an upper window—some carefree person going to bed as usual. She knocked on the door. The lighted window opened; an old man looked out.
‘Who’s there?’
‘My car’s broken down. Where can I find a bed for the night?’
‘I don’t know about that. It’s a bit late to come asking for beds.’ He looked up and down the street. ‘Where’s your car? I don’t see no car.’
‘On Frogwick Level. By the decoy.’
‘That’s a pity. If it had broken down nearer, you could have slept in it. Won’t do it no good, either, standing out all night in the mermaid. These mermaids, they come from the sea, you see, so they’re salt. That’ll rust a car in no time.’
Like Mother, he thought of the car’s welfare first. But he called the sea mist a mermaid: there must be some good in him.
‘I don’t want to stand out in it all night, either.’
‘No, course you don’t. So the best thing you can do, Missy, is to wait round about till the bus comes back.’
‘The bus?’
‘Bringing them back from the concert, you see. The concert at Shopdon, with the Comic. Everyone’s gone to it. That’s why there won’t be no one here you could ask till they come back.’
‘I
see. Do you think …’
‘They might and they mightn’t. Of course, it will be a bit late by then.’ He remained looking down, she remained looking up. Then he shook his head and closed the window. A moment later, the light went out. He must be undressing in the dark, as a safeguard.
Hunger and cold and discouragement narrowed her field of vision; she could see nothing to do but to walk up and down till the bus came back, and then plead with its passengers for a night’s lodging. They would be full of merriment, flown with the Comic…. It wouldn’t be very pleasant. She didn’t look forward to it. Besides, they would be a crowd. It is vain to appeal to simple-hearted people when they are a crowd: embarrassment stiffens them, they shun the limelight of a good deed. She walked up and down and tried not to think of food—for this made her mouth water, which is disgraceful. She lit a cigarette. It made her feel sick. She threw it away.
It was a pity she couldn’t throw herself away.
Opposite the shop that sold baby clothes was a Wesleyan chapel. It stood back from the road and produced an echo. Every time she passed by it she heard her footsteps sounding more dispirited. In front of the chapel was a railed yard, with some headstones and two table tombs. One can sit on a table tomb. She tried the gate. It was locked. Though she could have climbed the railings easily enough, she did not, but continued to walk up and down.
She might just as well throw herself away: she had always hated hoarding. Tomorrow it would all begin again—Mother’s incessant shamming, rows and reconciliations with Leo. ‘Darling, how could you behave like this?’ ‘Belinda, I despair of making you out.’ ‘It’s not like you to be so callous.’ ‘Very well, very well! I am sorry I’ve been such a brute as to love you.’ Or else they would combine to love her with all her faults. ‘Darling, as you are back, I wonder if you could sometimes remember to turn off the hot tap properly.’ But to throw oneself away—unless, like Uncle Henry, one is sensible and always goes about with a gun—one must do it off something or under something. The Wesleyan chapel was such a puny building that even if she were to scale it and throw herself off its pediment, she would be unlikely to do more than break her leg. And though there had once been a branch line to Frogwick, British Railways had closed it on the ground that it wasn’t made use of. She could have made use of it. One would squirm through the wire fence, lie down on the track, hear the reliable iron approach, feel the rails tremble … ‘and the light by which she had read the book filled with troubles, falsehoods, sorrow and evil …’
A Stranger with a Bag Page 6
