Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead

by Barbara Comyns

  It was Norah’s afternoon off, and she was wearing her shiny new blue dress to visit Fig’s mother; and she knew that if he was free in time Fig would see her home. He would not say very much except to remark on the crops as they passed them in the fields; but he would take her arm, and she would be filled with pride and happiness. It was an acknowledged fact now in the village that they were walking out. It had been one of the chief topics of conversation, combined with the doctor’s yellow car; but now the only subject of interest seemed to be the madness that had descended upon them. As Nora passed the Assembly Rooms, the people who had attended the inquest surged out into the street; and then when she crossed the bridge she passed the spot where the poor butcher had committed suicide and saw the sand which still covered his blood. When she reached the cottage, Mrs. Fig, as the village layer-out, could talk of nothing else.

  “Mind you, I love a beautiful corpse as much as anyone; but there is something about a suicide, especially one with his throat cut!” she chattered in her sad little voice, and Norah felt that, even if Fig saw her home, the afternoon was ruined.

  Eunice at Willoweed House was glad Norah was out of the way and she could lie on their bed and feel sick and grieve for herself. She had been very sick in the sink that morning—fortunately before Norah came down—and she thought she knew why she felt this way. She remembered the afternoon in the hayfield and another evening in an orchard when the blossom was still on the apple trees—and now little apples had already formed. “And I know what has formed inside me,” the poor girl cried, “it’s a baby as sure as fate”; and she felt her breasts and already they seemed to be enlarged. Then she put her hand on her stomach; but that remained quite flat. Slightly reassured she whispered, “Please God, don’t let me have a baby, even if I deserve one, don’t let it come.” She remembered her mother in her coffin with the little waxen baby lying beside her—and Norah had cried and called it a poor little thing, but she had hated it because it had killed her mother. Perhaps she would die too if she had a baby; “but I’m young and I don’t want to die yet. Oh, why is it so hard to be good when you are young?” she asked herself.

  She left the bed and sat on the window-sill; and through the fir trees she could see glimpses of the village street and remembered how she had watched from that window so often just to get a sight of the top of Joe’s cap as he drove past with the hay cart. And sometimes on Sunday she had seen him pushing his ailing wife in a borrowed wicker bath-chair. She could tell he was shy of pushing the chair, because he only used one hand and kept laughing and joking with his wife in a self-conscious manner. But it was kind of him to take his wife out like that—he was a kind man—but his kindness could be little help to her now.

  Emma had taken the children on the river, and they had been fishing with the grubs from a wasp’s nest Ives had given them. They ate cherries from a basket as they fished, and spat the stones into the water and watched their progress out of sight. “Perhaps even the cherries are contaminated,” thought Emma, “but they wouldn’t have enjoyed them if they had been boiled first.” Since she had heard of the two children in the village who were suffering from the madness Emma had been in an agony of mind in case it came to Hattie and Dennis. Dennis in particular, whom she loved so dearly and who was so dependent upon her. Although Hattie was younger, she was such a cheerful, independent child, Emma had not such strong feelings for her; she was her father’s favourite, and Emma almost hated her father and was disgusted and terrified of her grandmother. The only person she had to love was Dennis—and the dim lovers of her imagination.

  That evening the baker’s wife ran down the village street in a tattered pink nightgown. She screamed as she ran.

  - CHAPTER X -

  THE BAKER and Old Toby pursued the demented woman through the village street; but the baker was small and Toby old and she kept far ahead of them, swearing and shouting as she ran. All day she had been behaving strangely, saying she had pains in her stomach, and then drinking and muttering to herself and vomiting. Eventually the baker had persuaded her to go to bed and she had seemed a little calmer, so the worried man returned to his baking of funeral meats and rye bread, for the great joint funeral for the butcher and miller, which was taking place the following day. Toby was standing by his master admiring an enormous pie he was painting with egg yoke when the screams started, and the men exchanged startled glances and ran to the bakery door just in time to see a figure in a pink nightdress running through the open front door. The baker made a grab at his wife who gave him a great push and shouted, “You are the Devil—you bloody devil!” and rushed away leaving part of her nightgown in his hand. Toby helped the baker from the ground and they both ran after the yelling woman, who leapt and staggered through the village, as if she was on wires. People screamed and ran into their houses. Others put their heads out of windows; children started to cry. But no one came to the baker’s aid. When she reached the bridge she stopped for a moment by the White Lion, where only yesterday she had been drinking and laughing with the journalists. One of these journalists was standing by the swing doors of the saloon bar; and he took one startled look at the wild and terrible woman and ran into the closet and locked the door. She stood tottering and put her hands to her stomach and started to retch; then she saw her husband and Toby bearing down on her and yelled in a dreadful deep voice, “Leave me alone, you devils! Oh, leave me alone!” She lurched off down the street towards Willoweed house. When she reached the huge green back-gates she clawed at them like a demented animal, and suddenly they burst open and she staggered into the yard.

  The white cat, which had happily been playing with a leaf, rushed away and tore up a trunk of a beech tree and, as the baker came running into the yard, leapt to a branch, missed and fell. It fell on the unfortunate screaming woman below and clawed her bare shoulders. A look of such demented horror came over her face; then her jaws began to clamp and she fell to the ground in a fit with the cat below her. The husband, followed by the old, scarred man, stood at the gates and saw her long white legs writhing; and then she was quite still. The baker seemed dazed, stumbled to her assistance; but there was little he could do except send Toby for the doctor. He took off his apron to make some kind of pillow for the poor creature’s head and tried to pull the torn nightgown to cover the still legs; and he carefully wiped the foam from her lips with his floury handkerchief. While he was looking hopefully at the house windows and wondering if anyone would come to his assistance, Norah came running from the kitchen crying.

  “Oh, Mr. Emblyn, I’ll come and help you in a moment; but my sister has fainted. She saw it all from the window and is that shocked. Oh, dear!” And the girl ran back to her unconscious sister lying on the stone kitchen floor. Then there was a sound of stumping boots and Grandmother Willoweed appeared in the yard and exclaimed, “Good God! Whatever is all this? Is the woman drunk?”

  The overwhelmed baker tried to give an account of what had happened, which was difficult because the old lady constantly interrupted him, and he had difficulty with the ear trumpet. He ended his muddled explanations with, “Oh, ma’m, if only I could have a blanket for my poor wife, she feels so strangely cold.”

  “Dead most likely!” she replied, shaking out her ear trumpet. “But she needs a blanket to cover up those shocking legs. My son had better help you carry her into the house.”

  She eyed the dazzling and shapely legs with sullen disfavour and shouted to Norah when she appeared again from the kitchen, “Fetch a blanket and the Master, the blanket first and use one from your own bed.”

  Ebin arrived before the blanket and stood staring in appalled horror at the beautiful body and coarse face of his old mistress. He was filled with pity and disgust. “How could I have ever touched her?” he thought; but he helped her husband carry her to the kitchen with the utmost care. As she was lifted from the ground the bloodstained body of the squashed cat was revealed.

  “That woman has killed my cat,” the old woman declared, as she
examined the pitiful little body; and she noted with interest that one eye had been squashed right out of its head, while the other remained almost normal.

  “Quite remarkable!” she said as she trod purposefully towards the kitchen.

  The baker’s wife lay on the kitchen table, still and dead. She would no longer prance down the village street in transparent blouses, or lie beneath the willow trees on the river bank on summer afternoons. Doctor Hatt came and made arrangements for the body to be taken to hospital for a post mortem; and now they were waiting for the horse-drawn ambulance to arrive. The red kitchen curtains were drawn across the windows, and the corpse was covered by a sheet—which Grandmother Willoweed pulled down now and then to have another look at the dead face.

  “Did you know her hair was dyed, Norah?” she asked the terrified maid, whose trembling hands were plucking a chicken. The girl kept her back turned towards the table and envied Eunice, safe in her bedroom on the doctor’s orders—but why had he told her to call at the surgery the following day for an examination? “And bring your sister with you,” he had said. Did he think she was suffering from the madness? she wondered, but it was enough to make a girl faint seeing a mad woman going on like that. He had given her something to make her sleep; but perhaps that was to keep the madness at bay. Norah could bear it no longer and left the half-plucked chicken to creep upstairs and look at her sleeping sister. She felt her brow, and it was cool; and she looked so pretty and peaceful lying there in her deep sleep. Norah was reassured and returned to the kitchen. Grandmother Willoweed was there again hovering about the dead woman.

  “Foolish girl,” she grumbled, “leaving the chicken like that, the cat might have got it.”

  “There isn’t a cat any more,” said Norah sadly. She had been fond of that little white cat.

  “No more there is,” the old woman replied thoughtfully. “The baker will have to take something off his bill. It was quite a valuable cat, and now his wife has killed it. I must speak to him about it when he comes to collect her.”

  - CHAPTER XI -

  NORAH AND Eunice sat in Doctor Hatt’s waiting room. They wore their white cotton gloves and felt ill at ease. Eunice said nothing and gazed out of the window with unseeing eyes; but Norah talked to a fat woman who was worried by flatulence and to a small boy on his own who was obviously suffering from mumps. Someone had left a copy of The Daily Courier on the table, and on the front page there was an article headed, ‘Baker’s Wife Runs Amok.’ Norah turned her eyes away; but the woman next to her seized the newspaper and tried to read bits out loud.

  “It says here she was a pitiful sight. I’ll say she was. And her husband is a very respected man in the village. That is more than his wife was, so he’s well rid of her, I say—”

  The woman went on and on and Norah tried to give her attention to the little boy. The madness, the madness, you couldn’t get away from it. She glanced at Eunice; but there was no sign of any madness there, although she was strangely quiet and sulky and had been so for days.

  “There’s the funeral bells,” the woman exclaimed, “I’d have dearly loved to have gone to that funeral if it hadn’t been for my wind,” and she listened enraptured to the sad tolling of the bells.

  Doctor Hatt was standing at the surgery door saying, “I can see you now, Eunice,” and he smiled at the girls kindly. They followed him into the ether-smelling surgery and stood close together by the door.

  “Now, Eunice,” he said, “I shall have to give you a thorough examination. You must take your clothes off behind that screen, and then I shall want you to lie on the couch.” They looked at the black, shiny couch with a strip of white running down the centre.

  Twenty minutes later the girls were walking down the village street, and they could still hear the funeral bell tolling in their ears although it had ceased some time ago. Eunice held on to her sister’s arm; but they did not speak to each other.

  They did not speak until they had reached the privacy of their bedroom, and then Eunice sat on their bed and cried, “Oh, Norah, what am I to do, it’s … Joe Lott’s baby and he can’t marry me. Norah, don’t be cross with me.”

  She held her head in her hands and large tears rolled down her pink cheeks. Norah tried to think what to say or what suggestions to make and at last she said:

  “I blame myself. I should have looked after you better. I was so happy with Fig walking out together in the fields and I really think he was coming round to marrying me. But he won’t now, not with the disgrace, and all.”

  Then Eunice cried even more because she had ruined her sister’s chance of marriage, and Norah comforted her and they tried to make plans for the future. “I must see Joe just once more to tell him what has happened. I did kind of hint about it the last time I saw him, but he laughed, and said it couldn’t be true. Joe was always laughing, that’s what made me like him at first; but I don’t want him to laugh about the baby, just be kind.” And they sat there with their arms around each other until they were disturbed by the harsh voice of their mistress calling up the back stairs, “Come downstairs girls. Don’t you know it’s after four?”

  Ebin Willoweed had telephoned an account of the funeral to the Courier from the village post office, and he laughed to himself on his way home thinking how his mother pounced on his articles after breakfast each morning, even reading bits out loud to him, but never suspecting they were written by her own son. He felt guilty when he thought of the dreadful suffering and horror going on around him, which was directly the cause of his happiness and sudden prosperity. Then he thought of his mistress’s poor dead body, with its raddled old face, lying out in the yard.

  “I won’t think of it,” he muttered to himself. “They have had their happiness and I’ve been wretched for years. It’s my turn now. Perhaps I shall get the madness next, so I must enjoy the little time I have. Good God, I’m most likely mad now, talking to myself,” and he strode through the village in a purposeful manner to prove to himself he wasn’t going mad.

  While the family were at tea, his mother suddenly attacked him about the children’s education and wanted to know why their lessons had abruptly ceased. He had been expecting this, and had indeed been rehearsing imaginary conversations with his mother on this subject, and to his surprise the discussion went just as he had hoped and he was able to produce his trump card and say that it was time Dennis went to school and he was in a position to pay the fees. “As a matter of fact, I’m thinking of sending him into the Navy later on.”

  “As a stoker, no doubt,” his mother replied. “Anyway you are talking absolute nonsense. You are nothing less than a beggar dependent on my charity, and if you are counting on any publisher buying one of your trumpery novels you must be more of a fool than I already believe you to be.”

  “Now mother, calm yourself.” He spoke to her in a mockingly soothing voice. “I’ve been doing quite well lately. I think the last cheque I paid into my bank yesterday was for ninety-eight pounds, and I shall be paying in another nice little sum in a few days, I expect. You can leave Dennis’s school fees quite safely to me, Mother.”

  “I don’t believe it. You are lying. No one would pay you for the rubbish you write.” But as she spoke she remembered the sound of the long unused typewriter that had come floating down the stairs to be caught in her ear trumpet. “If you are speaking the truth you can pay … you can pay for your keep and for your children … all three of them,” the old woman spluttered out her words in jerks.

  “Well, if that’s the position Mother, I think I’ll return to London. It will be near my work and most likely cheaper,” and, as he got up to leave the table, he glanced at his mother and saw she was almost purple in the face and seemed to be having trouble with her teeth. Hattie started to laugh but Emma frowned at her, so she covered her face with her hands and hoped her grandmother would think she was crying. The old woman clumped from the room to adjust her teeth in the pantry, and when she returned the dining-room was empty. She stood the
re for a moment gazing at the remains of the tea on the table and the hastily-pushed-back chairs. Her jaw started to tremble, and she stood tapping the table with her short, thick fingers; then she turned away and slowly climbed the stairs to her room.

  Ebin was delighted. It was the first time he had routed his mother for years, and he had rushed his family from the room before she returned to spoil his victory. He suggested taking the children for a walk to the miser’s cottage—a little burnt house, hardly more than a hut, all deserted in a field. Once in an inventive mood he had told them it had been an old miser’s cottage and that the gold that was hidden there had never been found, although people had taken down most of the cottage in their search after the miser’s death. Hattie and Dennis half believed this story and loved to dig up the flagstones on the floor and pick away at the charred walls of the cottage for gold and treasure. For some reason, perhaps because their father had first told them about the old miser, they felt in honour bound never to go to the cottage without him, and often there were many months between their visits and always more of the cottage had fallen down since they had last been there. This time they were armed with a cork-screw and a long bone-handled nail-file, and with these they attacked the miser’s chimney, and after about half an hour’s scraping and filing they did manage to take out one brick. They would have been quite content to spend the entire evening taking down the rest of the chimney.

  Ebin watched them at first with amusement and he thought, “I don’t care what anyone says, I’m a good chap really. Not many men placed as I am would spend their first earnings for years on their son’s education, and here I am in a little broken-down hovel just to give my children amusement. Emma didn’t want me to bring them here—jealous, I suppose. Didn’t want the children to walk through the village in case they caught this thing that is about. But you can’t coddle them like that; it’s making Dennis a damn cissy. Francis Hatt doesn’t seem to think this thing is contagious anyway. They haven’t found anything wrong with the water yet; so now they are having a shot at the bread, I believe. Might write something for the Courier about that.” As his thoughts rambled on, he leant against the blackened cottage wall, poking the floor with his stick. He noticed the tender young ferns pushing their way between the flagstones. “A few weeks ago I wouldn’t have noticed how beautiful those ferns were in this desolate place. It must be because I’m happier that I see things with new eyes these days.” And he wandered from the cottage and stood looking down the valley, and watched the cows returning from being milked and walking with their graceful walk, gently turning their heads from side to side. “If only women walked like cows instead of strutting and stamping with their heels they would look a damn sight better,” he thought; but suddenly he became impatient and was tired of the ruined cottage and the children and wanted to be at the White Lion talking to the journalists who were staying there.