At once the farm’s pleasant mood of anticipation was turned to anxiety. Sylvia (who was pleased at this threat of drama) frequently stopped her work to scan the cloudless sky, while Emilio (whose mood of late had been divided between fatherly indignation and swelling pride because his eldest bambino had been caught robbing an American lorry and promptly adopted by the regiment as a mascot) became sulky. Only Fabrio, bemused with love, hardly noticed what was being said.
However, Mr. Hoadley decided to stand by his first plan, for he had a low opinion of the experts upon the Air Ministry roof, preferring to trust to the weather lore which he had followed since his father had taught it to him as a boy, and it was his opinion that there would be no storms.
By tea-time the sky was still tranquil and cloudless and the heat showed no sign of becoming oppressive. Sylvia had the afternoon free, and had spent it quietly for once, resting in the garden at the back of the farmhouse and studying The Petrified Forest, in which she fancied herself in the part of Gabby.
Mary Parkes obligingly brought her tea out to her, and Sylvia, having overwhelmed her with loud and surprised thanks, cleared the tray in ten minutes. Then she set it down beside her chair, flung up her arms in a yawn, and decided to go for a walk.
It was too hot to move briskly, and she sauntered along the lanes enjoying the shade of overhanging trees until an open gate attracted her, and she wandered down a path that led through a field of ripe barley into the woods.
Late afternoon sunlight filled the coppices, and now and then a pigeon called among the green shadowy boughs. Her mood was quiet as the hour, and to-day she wanted neither excitement nor noise. She was happy, wandering on with a grass stem between her lips and her eyes fixed dreamingly upon the leafy distances, while there drifted through her mind the image of Fabrio’s smiling face. That ever-returning image increased her happiness, and when she remembered that he would be at the farm when she returned, and was to stay there throughout the harvest, she parted her lips and sang softly to herself—in that voice which even his love for her had not been able to praise, but which now, sounding quietly in the stillness, had a lulling charm.
For once she was not thinking of any film hero; she was remembering Fabrio’s kiss, and regretting that she had been unkind to him—but here her thoughts shrank in happy confusion—and she pulled a fresh head of grass, while a smile trembled upon her mouth and the woodland light shone down upon her young face.
Then she heard voices. Glancing away down a mossy ride she saw coming towards her Alda and the three children. She called and waved to them and they waved back and hastened to join her.
“Hot enough for you, Mrs. Lucie-Browne?” she asked.
“Too hot—” as the party walked on, “though one shouldn’t grumble. It’s grand for the harvest.”
“The wireless says there may be storms. It was on the eight o’clock news this morning.”
“I do hope not—it would be such a shame if the wheat were spoiled. We need it so badly.”
“Mr. Hoadley doesn’t think it’ll come to anything. Are you coming to the Harvest Supper, Mrs. Lucie-Browne? Mrs. Hoadley said she was going to ask you and the kiddies.”
“Of course. We’re looking forward to it.”
“Meg too?” glancing down at the small silent figure toiling along by Alda’s side, with plump arms and back tanned to gold.
“Oh yes. She can sleep late the next day and it would be a pity for her to miss it—a harvest supper is something to remember.”
Alda was wondering how soon she could introduce the name of Fabrio. She was determined to give Sylvia advice, and here was the perfect occasion.
Usually she did not take much notice of people’s appearance, for her practical mind was occupied with the plans and duties of the moment, but now she studied Sylvia and thought that she looked “attractive” (“beautiful” did not come into Alda’s vocabulary unless suggested by a landscape or flowers). Sylvia’s white skin had gradually turned to rosy gold beneath the heat of the sun, and her hair, which to-day she wore parted in the centre and spread upon her shoulders in abundant curls, had acquired the glint of copper. Amidst this gold and bronze her blue eyes looked wonderfully cool and clear.
Alda slightly despised her, of course, for her lack of education and her wrong values, but as she looked at her she understood why Fabrio loved.
“The Italians are staying at the farm for the harvest, aren’t they?” she asked.
“Oh yes. Just over the harvest,” Sylvia answered, and that was all. No joke, no mock-rueful “Worse luck!”, none of her usual forthright comments followed, and a note in her voice, the slightest shade of consciousness in her manner, caused Alda to fix her at once with a keen, mischievous gaze.
“How do you get on with Fabrio nowadays?” she began.
“Oh—all right.” Sylvia turned aside to pull off another head of grass; she was suddenly alarmed, for she did not want to talk about Fabrio to anyone, least of all to Mrs. Lucie-Browne with that look in her eyes. She wished that she could laugh too, but she could not: she only felt helpless, and her one wish was to keep her thoughts and her feelings about Fabrio to herself.
“Is he still as keen on you as ever?”
“Oh—I don’t know—I don’t think so. Who said he was—?” Her voice died off in a mutter.
“Nobody. The way he looks at you is enough.”
Sylvia said nothing. A kind of sickening misery was creeping over her. She had been so happy, and now everything was being dragged out and spoilt.
“You look at him as if you liked him, too,” the kind, teasing voice went on. “You do, don’t you?”
“He’s all right.” At that moment she felt that she hated him, and Mrs. Lucie-Browne as well. She added loudly, with an effort, “He’ll pass in a crowd with a shove,” and laughed.
“Well, you know, Sylvia, I think you might do very much worse than marry him. I’m sure he’s going to ask you—he’s got that look in his eye,” laughing. “Has he asked you yet?” and she inclined her charming face, full of curiosity and laughter, nearer to the girl’s.
Sylvia could only shake her head.
“Well, I’m sure he will. And if you take my advice you’ll say ‘Yes.’ That young man means business.”
Sylvia was trying to think of something to say, but it was useless, and she could only walk along in silence with a foolish smile and burning cheeks.
Alda glanced at her and thought that her sulky expression was not becoming, then lightly slipped her arm through the other’s sunburnt one.
“You’re thinking about your stage career, I know. But actors don’t make good husbands, Sylvia, and I’m sure that Fabrio would. And then what fun it would be, living in Italy! Sunshine all the year round, and it’s such a beautiful place; you can’t imagine how beautiful if you’ve never seen it. (I have; I spent my honeymoon there, in Venice.) You wouldn’t be rich, of course, but you’d have a real life, with Fabrio’s farm to live on——”
“It isn’t Fabrio’s, it’s his eldest brother’s.”
“Oh. Well, I expect he’ll have a share in it——”
“Not for years, he says. There’s a whole tribe of them—dirty, skinny, jabbering Eyeties. No thanks.” And she slipped her arm from Alda’s and lifted up Meg, who had suddenly halted and stood gazing at her mother in weary silence.
Sylvia settled the hot little body, scented with sunlight and the sweetness of bruised grass, comfortably into her arms. Her throat ached, but she angrily swallowed, and began at once in her usual tone:
“No, really, Mrs. Lucie-Browne, I’m afraid it’s a case of no-can-do. I’ve known girls who’ve married foreigners and it’s never worked. You never know what they’re really like until they get you into their own country; they’re quite different over here. Besides—hark at me! Better wait till I’m asked!”
“I think you’re very silly. There aren’t so many good-looking, devoted young men about, you know.”
“I’ll chance it,�
�� Sylvia said indifferently, setting Meg down as they reached the beginning of the meadows, and the edge on her voice, the expression on her face, foreshadowed how she would look in twenty years, if nothing befell her to bring the woodland light to dwell in her eyes for ever.
Alda was annoyed but she laughed.
“I’m sure it will be ‘yes,’ when he does ask you, all the same,” she said, as she beckoned to her children and moved away.
“I bet you it won’t!” Sylvia called ringingly after her, and Alda turned with a mocking wave as she went through the cottage gate.
“What’s up? You looked browned-off,” said Mary Parkes, as Sylvia came up the path.
“I’m all right; I’ve only got a bit of a headache.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. It’s the heat, I expect. Shall I get you an Aspro? You were so full of beans at lunch, weren’t you? I’ve been laughing all over again at some of the things you said.”
Sylvia smiled vaguely and went up to her room.
Fabrio and Emilio had only been informed on the previous day that they were to sleep at the farm, and for the past twenty-four hours they had been alternately in delight, and in agony lest the authorities should at the last minute prevent them from going. Now they were safe; their passes signed and all formalities fulfilled; and here they were, actually spreading two lumpy mattresses upon the floor of a large old chamber, dim with dust and still scented by the apples which it had harboured last autumn, extending over the whole area of the farmhouse, and having one small window through which could be seen the elms, the pond and meadows, the distant woods, and far off the dark hills below a pink sky.
Fabrio’s dreamy mood had gone and he was very gay, tossing the mattresses about and peering into all the dark corners of their bedchamber in search of rats or overlooked apples. Somewhere, under the same roof with him, was Sylvia, and the day after to-morrow he would ask her! Emilio dryly inquired why was he so cheerful.
“I am happy to be out of that thrice-cursed place.”
“This is not much of a place,” glancing about him. “They might have given us a proper room with decent beds. For seven years I have not slept upon a proper bed.”
Emilio meant a soft bed, not a clean one.
“They have not enough rooms, as thou knowest well. We shall be very comfortable here. Look!” and he brought out, from the shadowy corner where he had concealed it earlier in the day, a two-pound pot of redcurrant jelly. “I will bring bread away from the supper-table and to-night thou and I will have a feast.”
“Ah-ha!” Emilio nodded. “It is made by the padrona and will taste good. She cooks well. And to-morrow thou wilt go to Mass with this upon thy soul?”
Fabrio’s expression became confused and sorrowful, and he shook his head.
“To-morrow I shall not go to Mass,” he muttered, and pushed the jar back into its place of concealment. He would go to confession and Mass no more until Sylvia had promised to be his wife, for he feared the keen eyes of Father Francesco upon his happy face, and searching questions as to his state of mind and heart. When once Sylvia was betrothed to him he would go to Mass again, for Father Francis could not command him to renounce a girl, even if she were a protestante, and thus break her heart.
As for Sylvia’s heresies, he, Fabrio, would deal with them all in good time. She must give them up and become of the Faith, even as her husband was. His joyful expression returned, and he finished the spreading of the beds with a song from Cavalleria Rusticana.
He gave a last glance over the expanse of dim leafy country, rejoicing in the absence of hateful barbed wire, and drew in a breath of night air before he felt his way down the black narrow stairs behind Emilio, who was grumbling at the darkness.
He hoped to see Sylvia at supper-time, but Mrs. Hoadley had instructed everyone to take bread and cheese and draw a cup of tea from the brown pot standing on the range (which had been lit for the Saturday night baths) without troubling her, and had gone up to bed. The two Italians, Mary Parkes and Mr. Hoadley passed an hour or so of gossip with the door open to the twilight, but Sylvia too was tired, and had retired.
And the next day she had left for London before Fabrio was even awake. Poor chaps, said Mrs. Hoadley to her husband, it must be years since they had a lay-in, and he had rather grudgingly conceded that they need not be roused until eight o’clock. In any case, the Italians did not understand fully how to perform any of the tasks connected with the early milking because their own work had always been with the crops and soil, and Mary and Sylvia did the work before the latter left for London.
At home among her family, she threw herself into the loud discussions and chatter and noisy gossip with an interest she had not shown for weeks; vowing that she was sick and tired of the country, and only dying to get back to London and begin looking for work on the stage. Her brothers and sisters applauded, sitting about the kitchen and scattering cigarette ash on their dirty dressing-gowns while they coughed and argued and waved their arms about. The brown houses loured against the pale hot sky, and the ice-cream man’s bell rang in the Sunday hush as he pedalled slowly down the drowsing streets. Once or twice the face of Fabrio came before Sylvia’s eyes with a sensation of pain, and she laughed the louder and argued more fiercely.
The day passed quietly at the farm and the threatened thunder kept off. Fabrio was disappointed that Sylvia was not there, but the morning passed pleasantly enough for him in gossiping and dozing and roaming about, and in the afternoon he helped Emilio and Mary Parkes to put finishing touches to the long shed where the Harvest Supper was to be held. Two unemployed men from Horsham had been engaged to help with the work, and Mrs. Hoadley flatly refused to entertain them in the farmhouse kitchen, fearing that they would stealthily take note of the house’s locks and bolts and bars while eating their Harvest Supper, with future burglarious visits in mind. Mr. Hoadley thought she was an ass but humoured her.
Mary Parkes was shyly taken by Fabrio’s looks, and once or twice tried to draw him into conversation, but he answered politely and without real interest and although he worked industriously his manner was absent, for all his thoughts were with Sylvia who, to-morrow, would be his.
About ten o’clock she came down the path between the snapdragons and marigolds in the twilight, swinging in one hand a new hat made for her by her mother, and whistling.
“Hullo, all! Poo, is it hot!”
“I hope you’ve had your supper, Sylvia, for there’s only two sandwiches left and Emilio’s just finished the last of the lemonade,” warned Mrs. Hoadley, peering desolately over plates and into jugs.
“Had some in town, but I could always find room for a bit more; you know me. Poo! I’m nothing but a grease-spot, I had to walk from the station,” and she sat down heavily upon the warm brick doorstep and sighed, pushing back her hair and arranging her dress over her knees. She smiled brilliantly upon the company (which had now started an earnest and most interesting discussion as to why the 9.10 bus from Horsham did not stop at the crossroads, conveniently for late returners to the farm) and offered to the party her cigarettes.
Fabrio was seated in the kitchen beyond the last faint light from the sky, and his eyes were fixed yearningly upon her, waiting for their own happy secret smile, but she did not look at him directly—or perhaps she did, but he could not see clearly in that dim light—and she only spoke to him amidst the general conversation, and when she took her candle and hurried upstairs at the end of the evening she gave him no more than the hasty “Good night” which she threw over her shoulder at everyone.
That sent him to bed with a slight heartache, and the night was so hot that even he, used to the heat of Mediterranean nights, could not sleep. He and Emilio lay for some time smoking and talking in whispers; then they ate a pound of redcurrant jam and became so ragingly thirsty that Emilio had to make a perilous journey down to the kitchen for water, and tripped over the cat with much uproar and reassuring shouts in Italian to Mr. Hoadley.
28
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p; NO ONE HAD slept well and everyone was irritable and pale as they assembled to begin the day’s work. The two unemployed men arrived and their outraged comments upon the earliness of the hour were silenced with a cup of tea, while Sylvia and Mary hurried out to get the cows in and milked, and Emilio and Fabrio were instructed by Mr. Hoadley to take the two new men down to the Big Field and lift the ground-sheet off the tractor attached to the harvester which he had borrowed from a large farm nearby.
The wheat stood up shadowy and still in the warm grey light. The sun was not yet risen, and the men’s boots, already black with dew from their walk across the meads, soon ran with water as they moved about. There was not a ripple of wind, and the night-scents of wet grasses and the faint strawy breath from the wheat lingered on the air.
“Going to be a storm,” said Spray, one of the unemployed men, pausing to wipe his forehead and look up at the louring sky.
“Do not say so!” retorted Emilio crossly. Fabrio said nothing. He was not very happy but now, for the first time for days, when he saw it spread before him waiting to be reaped, he was not thinking of Sylvia, but only of this harvest, and how to get it in. A harvest was the same everywhere, no matter whether it was olives or grapes or wheat, and a storm threatened it in Liguria exactly as it did in Sussex. He hauled the ground-sheet off the tractor in great folds and packed it into a square, with energy. There was no time to be lost.
“What’s your union, mate?” inquired the other elderly man with mild sarcasm, sitting down on the slip-gate and lighting a cigarette. “Where’s the ’urry?” Fabrio did not answer but his lip curled. This fool was born in a town, he thought.
The Matchmaker Page 35
