The Fountain Overflows

by Rebecca West

  “Weel,” he said, “how are you all in this guid Scots home that’s established itself among the heathen? One of you scrapin’ on the fiddle till all hours, I hear, while the rest of you are going on pom-pom-tweedle-tweedle on the pianno-forty, as I’ve nae doot ye call it in your refined cirrcles. I just thocht I’d call in and tak awa’ ma leddy wife and ma young duchess of a daughter, who have graced ower long your hospitable halls. Hey there!”

  He had laid his flute-case on the hall chair, and I had laid his hat and coat on top of it. It was with a snarl that he snatched it up, and I snarled back at him. Then it occurred to me that he thought his flute-case might have been in an unsafe place under a coat which anybody might have picked up, and after all a musical instrument is a musical instrument, no matter whose it is, so I swallowed and said I was sorry, and prepared to take him into the sitting room, but he pushed past me, with a movement that said he despised me, because I was not grown up, and a female and a fool at that.

  Mamma swung round on the piano-stool and said, “Why, Jock! You should have told us that you were coming!” Constance said placidly, “Where in the world have you come from?” Rosamund laid aside her needlework and went to kiss her father’s cheek, not hurrying to get it over, but ready to turn away at once just as any of us might have kissed Papa when we did not know whether he wanted to talk or not. I felt angry with them for being nice to him.

  “What way would ony mon need to explain the irresistible attractions that draw all and sundry to the fair toon of Lovegrove? Forbye,” he added, as if he were saying something very clever and satirical, “I am playing first flute in the Croywood Choral Society’s performance of The Messiah next month. A repeat performance. We played it at Easter and thousands were turned away. Or so it was believed by the more simple-minded members. So we are giving it again, God help us, and I came down for a wee rehairsal and a crack with the secretary.”

  “How does it happen that you belong to the Croywood Choral Society?” asked Mamma. Croywood was a borough some miles south of us, outside London, in Surrey.

  “I do not, but there’s not a mon living has played first flute in The Messiah more often and with a greater number of associations devoted to the art of song than your humble sairvant,” said Cousin Jock. “And I’m tellin’ ye all, there’s something gey and wrong with that composition, ower many gowks sing it, ower many gowks listen to it. Gie a lug to one that kens.”

  Mamma asked, “Have you had supper? Will you not have something to eat?”

  Rosamund had pushed forward a chair for him, but he preferred the one from which Mary had risen on his entrance. Though she was standing in front of it he waved her away loutishly and planted himself down in it. “A humble glass of beer I wouldna scorn, if anything so low and vulgar can be found in this genteel home. Ay,” he said, after a pause during which he breathed deeply and noisily, “and a sawndwich. I think I desairve a sawndwich. For tee-hee, tee-hee,” he giggled, “I’ve been at heavier work in Lovegrove than attending a rehairsal. Ay, I wasna idle this afternoon.”

  Plainly he wanted Mamma to inquire what it was that he had been doing, but she would not let herself be drawn. He was playing an intolerable game. He was hoping that some of us might be embarrassed by having a relative who spoke with so coarse an accent, but hoping even more strongly that we might be acute enough to see through his affectation and know a fiercer embarrassment at having a relative who had visited us with an uncivil and a candid intention of embarrassing us. He had asked for beer with that same double intention. It was certain we would have none in the house, for it was considered a vulgar drink in those days; I do not think that my father ever tasted it in his life. If Cousin Jock lost on the roundabouts he would get it back on the swings; we would be ashamed either of a beer-drinking relative or of one who pretended to drink beer for malicious purposes. But each time he produced his twin-pointed barb we answered him as if he had put before us a simple and reasonable proposition.

  Richard Quin said, “Mamma, I will get Cousin Jock some beer. The old man at the second of the little houses down the road, he drinks beer, he always has a bottle or two, he likes me very much, he has seen me play cricket, he goes to all the cricket matches round here, he was a groundsman at the Oval for thirty years, he says I could be a great cricketer if I would work at it, he will give me some beer.” He ran out of the room.

  “Games, games,” sighed Cousin Jock, “that’ll never boil the pot.” He repeated it with a worse accent. “That’ll niver bile th’ pot.”

  “What kind of sandwich would you like?” asked Mamma.

  “Och, I canna expect a meal, coming at this hour, and me no invited.”

  “A ham sandwich is what he prefers,” said Constance placidly. “I think there was some ham left over at midday. Perhaps Rosamund might go down and cut a sandwich, if there is any stale bread. Remember your Papa likes pepper as well as mustard.”

  “She’ll need the reminder,” said Cousin Jock. “She will have forgotten a’ her puir feyther’s foolish and unfashionable ways, being awbsent from his hairth so long.”

  My mother said, “Girls, if you want to go and finish your homework, you can.”

  “Am I to be treated like a leper?” asked Cousin Jock, suddenly in full whine. “I suppose things have been said about me round here that are past a’ believing. Ah, weel, that was a’ that could be expected.”

  I went down with Rosamund to the kitchen. On the stairs she said, “I hope we will find some pepper. None of you take it, but perhaps Kate does.”

  “Perhaps she does,” I said, “she likes some horrid things, like pickles and vinegar. But listen, your Papa said when I opened the door’ to him that he had come to take you and your Mamma away with him. What are you going to do?”

  “Well, if he wants us to go home with him, I suppose we will have to go,” said Rosamund. I tried to hold her back so that we would discuss this hateful crisis in the passage, but she hurried on into the kitchen and stammered, “K-Kate, my Papa has come, and I have to make him a sandwich. No, I will make it for him, I know how to make it for him. But have you any pepper?” The gaslight streamed down on her and showed her as wonderful as I thought her, golden, elect, superior; but she was taking the threat of her degradation with what seemed to me stupid calm.

  Kate put down The Daily Mail and told us, “Of course we have pepper. It is up there in that small blue canister. We have to have it for Irish stew, it wouldn’t be right to make Irish stew without pepper.”

  “That’s why none of us ever like Irish stew,” I said furiously, “we like the onions and the way the mutton comes off the bone, but we hate the pepper, why can’t you leave it out? And, Kate, it is too horrible, Rosamund’s father wants her to go home! We must not let her go with him!”

  “It would not be Irish stew if you left out the pepper,” said Kate, “and if Miss Rosamund’s Papa wants her to go home, she cannot stay.”

  “It can’t be right to put pepper in Irish stew if it makes it nasty,” I said, “and why should Rosamund go home with her horrible Papa?”

  “It is right,” said Kate.

  “Oh, like the pepper,” I raged.

  “Have you black and white pepper?” asked Rosamund.

  “Yes, the white is in the little blue canister, as I said, the black is in a plain tin,” said Kate. “But why do you want both?”

  “Papa likes to grumble,” said Rosamund, in full tranquillity. “I am going to make him two sandwiches, one with the ham thick and the other with the ham thin. He will bite into one, and complain of the way the ham is in that particular one, and then I will tell him to try the other one. And I am going to cut each in half, and in one I will put black pepper, and in the other white; and when he bites into one of those he will say that he likes the other kind of pepper, and again I will tell him to try the other one.”

  These words shocked me. I was prepared to think it right that Rosamund should hate her father, but not that she should regard him with what seemed
to me a hard and frivolous amusement. I tried to make her speak more honestly and more savagely, and I called, “But he is a monster! He is a cruel monster! You cannot go back to him!”

  “Oh, poor Papa, poor Papa,” said Rosamund, with a lazy smile, as she continued to cut the sandwiches.

  “Miss Rose,” said Kate, “you must not speak so about Miss Rosamund’s Papa, or you will become plain Rose, and plain Kate will box your ears. Growing up is going to do you no good at all with me. You are not built big, and you will never come up to my shoulder. I will not have these tempers in my kitchen, and I will not be taught how to make Irish stew, and I will not have you speaking so rudely about a visitor’s Papa. Miss Rosamund, does all this mean that they would be better for a pot of tea upstairs?”

  “I think they would,” said Rosamund.

  As Kate busied herself with the kettle at the range, I stood in miserable silence beside Rosamund. But as she sprinkled the pepper from a knife on the ham, I noticed how the right side of her forefinger was roughened by continual sewing, and I burst out in anger, “How can you bear to go back to him when he is so disgustingly mean about money?”

  Through her laughter, she slowly stammered, “Oh, p-p-poor P-p-papa! Oh, p-p-poor Papa!” My love was laced with hatred. I even wished I could have found it in my heart to mock her by imitating her stammer.

  “No, Miss Rose, take up this tray and remember to honour thy father and mother that thy days shall be long in the land,” said Kate.

  “He is not my father,” I sulked.

  “Everything in the Bible includes visitors,” said Kate. “You should know that, the way you have been brought up.”

  I carried the tray upstairs, with Rosamund just behind me, stammering conciliatory remarks which I ignored because there was surely still amusement in her voice. In the sitting room we found Mamma passing her handkerchief over her brows and saying gently, “No, Jock, I have not heard of this Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, and I will not go near her.”

  “Awa’ wi’ ye, for an unspiritual woman,” said Cousin Jock. “There she sits, a wee hauf-mile fra here, bang opposite Lovegrove Station, a bairn couldna miss it, and she kindly offers to welcome you or ony ither buddy that has a mind to pairt with five shillings of the King’s silver and to share with you all the secrets of Etairnity. Think shame on yersel’ for no taking advawntage of such a handsome offer.”

  “I would have thought,” said my mother, “that you of all people would have known why you should not encourage this poor woman in this horrible way of making a living.”

  “A nice wee flat above a fishermonger’s shop is where she bides,” pursued Cousin Jock. “Verra commodious, though the smell of the fish rises strong as Agag in his armour, towards the end of the day, when all things should rest, but it seems ye canna bring home the necessity to a herring. And up in a nice wee room in this nice wee flat sits Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, a decent widdy woman in her blacks, trussed up like a chicken and bound hand and foot so that there canna be any conjuring tricks, and the curtains are drawn, and the sitting begins. My, but the curtains have surely been dyed. The smell of the dye jines with the smell of the fish, very eloquent to the nose. But yon curtains sairve their purposes. They’re drawn close as if there was a corpse in the house, and they turn day into nicht, a black nicht of fish and dye and dust. And doon fall the walls between the quick and the dead.”

  “It has been an exceptionally fine afternoon,” said Constance. “It was a pity to spend it in this way.”

  “Woman, you lack a’ sense of the mysteries of time and space and our miserable being,” said Cousin Jock, piously rolling his eyes. “What better way to spend a fine afternoon than to hear the comfortable doctrine of the Lord? For there was Mrs. O’Shaughnessy’s Red Indian control roaring down a trumpet to tell us that death has no sting, the grave no victory, endeavouring to convey the same message as Corinthians First Fifteen Fifty-Five, but with a poorer command of language, no sae surprising in the offspring of a taciturn race. Ay, but there was better than doctrine. It did me guid to see how the mourning were comforted, even as it is promised in the best of buiks. There was a decent body who was assured by her father, passed on thirty years before, that her guid man would recover from his galloping consumption in six months’ time, ay, and very affecting, there was a puir soul whose face was stroked by the wee hand of the wean she lost last Christmas Day.”

  “Yet I have heard you say yourself,” said Constance, “that such hands may be made of inflated balloon tissue.”

  “Why Jock,” said Mamma coldly, “you know that someday there will be a horrible scene in that wretched flat, someone will tear down the dyed curtains, the light will stream in, and those poor idiots, God pity them, will see that they have been cheated. Will they blame themselves for their idiocy in thinking that Eternity has taken lodgings over a fishmonger opposite Lovegrove Station? You know they will not. They will turn on this unhappy woman, exposed there with the slipped knots hanging round her wrists and ankles—what indignity!—and they will find yards of balloon tissue—”

  “Nae doot inside her corsets, saving your presence,” giggled Cousin Jock, “or inside the elastic of less mentionable garments. Oh, what a stromash, to shame the sacred ground on the verra frontiers of time and Etairnity!”

  “You are not showing the good I would hope you might to a creature so much less fortunate than yourself,” Mamma remarked with distaste. “You know that Mrs. O’Shaughnessy may be a fraud, and then you should have nothing to do with her unless you can help her to be honest. But if she has real powers, she must be a worse fraud still. For if there be such powers, then one of the few things we know about them is that they come and go and are not at the command of those who possess them. This woman must be very poor if she lives in that sordid station square; though that fishmonger is a very decent man. So if she tells a woman that for a fee of five shillings she will show her dead child at three o’clock on Wednesday afternoon, she will be tempted to keep her engagement. It is all on a very low level indeed, and, children, I hope none of you will ever have anything to do with it. It is so low that, see, I have done the woman an injustice. She might as well be moved by pity as by the thought of the five shillings.”

  “Rosamund and I have had our poltergeist,” said Constance, “and we want nothing more to do with the occult world.”

  “Your poltergeist, Jock!” said my mother with sudden heat. “I have read very strange things about poltergeists. I have heard that many are caused by fraud. Malicious people who want to alarm their families decide, it seems, to play a trick on them by contriving it so that it seems as if evil spirits had taken possession of the house. They fix up curtains so that they are bound to fall when nobody is by them. They pay mischievous boys to steal into the house and rattle fire-irons and break furniture. But these malicious people sometimes get more than they bargain for. Curtains they never fixed fall down when nobody is by them; the fire-irons follow when the mischievous boys are in their beds. The malicious people end by fearing they have helpers they never hired.”

  There was silence in the room. Cousin Jock said, “Aweel, aweel!” and then demanded, in an aggrieved tone, “Ma sawndwich. Wisna there great talk about cuttin’ me a sawndwich?”

  “It is here, Papa,” said Rosamund.

  “The ham’s awfu’ thick.”

  “It is thin in the other one, Papa.”

  “Thick or thin, I doot I can manage it with ma dentures,” grieved Cousin Jock. “It’s awfu’ thing to have ill-fitting dentures. They roll about like a ship on the sea, and if I was to tell ye what I found under them at nicht—”

  He might, we feared, have taken them out to exhibit their defects, had not Richard Quin at that very moment come back with a bottle of beer and a glass. He said, “The old man had a spare bottle. But he was having supper, and he had a bottle, and he let me taste it, and it was beastly, why do you like it?”