“How was that?”
“Oh, weather. The election. Why not hold them in winter, keep warm inside listening to the speeches? What d’you think?”
“What election?” she asked indifferently.
The waiter drew back a step. “That’s good,” he said with an idiot smile. “I’d like to have handed that to some of them came in here—” he lowered his voice to mimic an elderly well-fed woman—“I hope you’ll do your duty by your country on Tuesday. G-r-r-r. If she had only known it waiters are all Socialists—if they’re good waiters. On your feet all day makes you think. One of them comes to see my wife; fur coat, rings, twelve stone if she was an ounce. Your country’s in danger, she says. We’re all in the same boat, she says, rich and poor. Quick as drop, my wife says, I hope you’ll keep to the middle of it or we’re sunk. Laugh!”
“I’d forgotten about it,” she said, more disgusted than ever with his way of speaking to her as though she were his friend and his wife’s friend. A low lot they must be.
“What—with your country in danger?”
She nodded sourly. It was true that she had forgotten. She never read the newspapers, only glancing over the pictures on Sunday morning—and she could not feel that any danger was or had been so deadly and pressing as her own.
More at ease now that the other customers had gone she listened, amiable, to his stories. She was in no hurry to go. The room had taken on the air of a friend’s house, in which if only for a little time she was at home. But she would outstay her welcome soon. She asked for the bill and gave the waiter the odd sixpence of change, leaving herself three shillings and some coppers in the suede bag. They stood for a moment in the passage, the woman large-bodied and impassive, leaning towards the agile little waiter. In an affectionate voice he directed her upstairs and lingered until she passed out of sight round the turn. When she came down, clutching the hand-rail, he had gone to his delayed lunch.
She had thought of going down to the river which gleamed, the colour of light, of the bleached sky, between trees and shining meadows—but the Park was nearer and thither she returned.
The morning clearness had vanished. Over all, over trees, grass, deer, and clouds, a hand had passed smearing the edges. She trudged over the grass, peering through half-shut eyes. The quilted green round her flickered moving as she lowered and raised her eyelids. She was sleepy and walked to find a place not too far from the road back, in which she could stretch herself comfortably and sleep. At last she chose the compact round shadow of a hawthorn. The tree was still thick with tarnished blossom under the young green. It gave out the dregs of its scent, reminding her of something, pleasant. Fanning herself with her bag, she tried for a few moments to think what it could be, but she was too sleepy to care.
She felt very happy. A sense of ease and contentment spread from her body over her thoughts. She took off her hat and shoes and lay down among the young stems of bracken, first hiding her bag with its few coins inside her blouse.
A cloud, shaped like a camel, held her attention for a time, until it moved off slowly and majestically. It lost its shape as it moved. There was nothing then between her and the intense brightness of the sky, neither blue nor white, a diffuse bland radiance that hurt her eyes. She turned her head and stared at the bracken. Seen in this way it was like a forest of strange trees. She watched a tiny spider clinging to the tip of a frond before it hurled itself off into the air, clinging, at the end of an invisible thread. She wished quickly that she were small, strong, and free, like a child or a spider.
The sun, penetrating the deep shadow in which she lay, warmed her all through. She felt its warmth flowing in her limbs, through veins, nerves, muscles, and washing the bones of her body. She scarcely existed now as a body, her fingers lying along the ground touched without feeling them the smooth stems of bracken, hairy stems of grass, and warm earth. She was for the time outside herself. She was not stout, not middle-aged, not poor, not afraid. There was no poverty or fear. She was born in ecstasy into a life that made no calls on body or mind; it was enough that she existed.
After a time she slept.
She had a dream—but perhaps it was not a dream, in the sense that it recalled and summed up an experience she had lived through not very long since. She was walking along Oxford Street when a cry and the screech of brakes made her start round. A girl had been knocked down and as she was half dragged half lifted from the wheels her hat fell back showing smooth bands of hair. There were no marks on her. Thus far the day. In the dream, the hat falling off dragged off the long fair hair. The dreamer with horror saw a head like a large smooth pale egg lolling over the rescuer’s arms. The victim was carried to her feet. There laid at the side of the pavement its clothes broke apart and the body shone through. But no longer the body of a girl, its folds and creases, the discoloured flesh, were dreadfully familiar. She knew before she looked at the face that it was her own, and for reassurance clapped her hands to her sides. At once the pain of the wheels overcame her, the houses and shops menaced, the sky over Oxford Street thickened its colours, and she felt a moment’s pure terror. Knowing that the ground was about to open and receive her, its weight pressing out blood, breath, and sense, but before death the agony of death, before nothing everything, before the end the Whole.
The sleeper moved uneasily, one hand, flung out, seized a growing stem and bent it to the earth. As she sank into deeper sleep her body ceased to twitch and at last lay perfectly still. She lay on her back and her mouth hung open. Her face, purple with heat and the effort of walking, was puffed and old.
A car drew up at the side of the road, and the picnic party, exploring, came close past the sleeping woman. One girl beckoned the others to look at her. They glanced aside with distaste : “She’s not lovely.”
“Poor thing,” the girl said aloud.
The sleeper had descended to her mother’s house. At first she was aware only of the room, familiar, darkened by the yard. It was outside her, part of the dream. Then she was in the dream, so that she saw the room on another level, not as something remembered but as lived. During the time it took her mind to describe an arc not measured in space, she thought and saw as a child. The part of her that went on while she slept, was actually and only a child.
She was by herself in the dark kitchen. Her mother was shut in the next room, preparing it for Aunt Ada. Soon the child heard the carriage and she drew back, placing the sofa between herself and the door. Her mother came hurrying in to open it for the men. They came in awkwardly, carrying the long coffin, and with some trouble—because of the little room and sharpness of the turn—they got it into the parlour. At once, with a subdued “Goodnight, missus,” they tramped out of the house again, feeling their hands, into which the edge of the wood had bitten. Involuntarily the child rubbed her own.
She felt bursting with excitement. The feeling had grown in her since she knew that this Aunt Ada, whom she had never seen and never until she died there in London heard of, was coming to lie a night in her sister’s house. She knew that there were children watching shivering in the cold dark outside the house. Some of her pleasure vanished after she was forbidden to lift the corner of the blind to sign to them. Her mother was still in the front room. Growing impatient, the child opened the door of the kitchen.
She meant to call, but she saw her mother at the end of the passage, her hand on the door. She did not say anything and the child was struck silent by the way she stood there, as if tired to her death, resting all her weight on the handle of the door. She did not look merely sorry about the death. It was something heavier than grief she felt, something that was in herself, not put there by the coffin. The child never forgot it.
The outer door opened at that moment and a woman’s voice called out softly : “Are y’there, missus?”
The child started. “Run in by the fire at once,” her mother said sharply, “you’ll get your death.”
She obeyed, and sat down near the range. The two women who had come
in were both neighbours. Since their call was in a sense made on the dead woman, it was more formal than just dropping-in on a friend, and one of them had discarded her shawl in favour of a cap which belonged to her husband. A jet hat-pin held it flat to her hair.
Her mother made tea, and she was given a saucerful, with an end of a loaf. She loved the taste of crusts soaked in tea. No one took any more notice of her. She sat quietly eating the sopped bread and listening.
“Did you hear from her, then?”
Her mother shook her head, slowly, to herself. “Never a word.”
“She was maybe ashamed.”
“I don’t think so,” her mother said drily. The child felt that she was vexed by the suggestion. “If she’d wanted anything she would have sent. She minded no one in Staveley.”
“I never blamed her,” the other woman said.
“Why should you?”
“Nay now, don’t take me up wrong,” the woman said mildly. “Ada and me was friends all our lives until then. I haven’t forgot her.”
Her mother was softened. “I see you haven’t,” she said.
“When our Will came in yesterday a’ said, A friend o’ yours had died. You can tell me, I said. Ay, I can tell you, he said; it’s Ada Martin. You could have knocked me down.” It was the formula for any unexpected news, an accident, a joke, a meeting, a death. It covered everything in their lives from birth to death.
“Yes, it was a shock,” her mother admitted.
The other woman could no longer repress her curiosity. “How did you hear? “she asked, leaning forward.
“She sent a letter—”
“Oh she did that, did she!”
“Not until the day before she went,” her mother said quietly. “She got the woman she was living with to write it for her.”
“And what did a’ say?”
“Told me she was very bad, dying, and would I let her come to my house the night to be buried. She’d always wanted to come, the letter said, and now it was too late—but if I wanted her I was to write and make arrangements.”
“It must have cost a pretty penny,” the other ventured.
“She left the money for it!”
Her mother had spoken sharply and the child, who was half asleep, started to the edge of her chair. She drew back again at once, afraid to be noticed and sent off. And her mother did look at her, but said nothing. For a moment the child had the strange tense feeling of Sunday night chapel, the preacher’s loud voice starting a shudder in her body—World without end. AMEN. She hated that, and yet longed for it, for the fear and the strange strung-up emotion. It was as though she were light and heavy at once, her head light and the rest of her as cold and heavy as lead. Her mother and the two women seemed to have been talking round the fire for a long time—years, centuries. She settled into her chair, not sleepy and yet not truly awake. The room was so dark, except for the fire, that she was sure to fall asleep before long.
“Was he good to her, d’y’think?”
“How should I know whether he was good or not?” her mother said quickly.
The woman in the man’s cap had been pouring herself another cup of tea and had missed the question. “Who—who? Good? Was that man who? I didn’t hear that.”
“It’s no use asking me,” her mother said. “Ada went keeping her mouth shut and she’s kept it tight shut since. But if you want to know what I think—I think it’s much the same life for a woman whatever she does, she has to eat humble pie. Either to her husband or her children, it’s all the same. They do as they like, and she waits on them—mending their clothes, on her knees cleaning after them. Nobody asks her if she wants to go to bed or to get up or to have children. I daresay Ada was no worse off than if she was married, nor no better. There’s bad days and good, and what else? Nothing—if you ask me.”
No one had asked her, but she seemed satisfied. So did the neighbour women. She shifted the big iron kettle over onto the coals and added a spoonful of fresh tea to that in the pot. The water poured in a strong hissing curve when she tilted the kettle. With an effort she lifted it away again to the side. It stood there at the side of the stove all day, ready in a moment to boil up when it was needed. Like all the other women, her mother believed in the virtue of stewed tea and usually the tea-pot stood close to the kettle, half full of a nearly black drink.
She filled their cups and poured milk with grudged hospitality from the half-emptied jug. Their thoughts had wandered a little from the dead woman. They sipped the tea, gripping the thick cups in their work-reddened hands, eyes glazed with staring at the fire. How much longer are they going to stay, the child wondered. She began to feel faintly anxious and to want to be alone in the warm kitchen with her mother.
“First thing mine does after he starts work is to fetch me up a drink of tea in the mornings. Here, mother, he says, see what I’ve fetched you. Looking at me round the cup. Fourteen last week. You could have knocked me down.”
“Does he work in Hart’s?” her mother asked.
“There weren’t room for him anywheres else.”
“They say it’s not so bad now,” she said kindly.
“They say owt.”
“They do that,” the capped woman said.
There was a silence. Reluctant to go, to leave the warmth and go into the black winter night outside, their minds turned them again towards the dead woman, the cause for which they were here.
“How many years is it since Ada …”
“Ten. It’ll be ten.”
“It was when our Will lost his three fingers. He was at home that day feeling sorry for himself as I can tell you. I was down then with our Rose, and Fred’s Kate coming in to do for me she said Ada’s gone. Gone! I said. Where gone?”
“Yes, yes. I know all that.”
“A ten years—our Rose is that. And she wanted to come back, did she? Did she so?”
“The letter says she wanted.” Her mother moved slightly to work it from under the chair seat. “Yes—here. I meant coming back to see you but have left it until too long, so now can you—and then she says, or the woman says, about sending.”
“No word for any of her old friends?”
“Well. She didn’t write it herself.” An awkward regret sounded in her voice. “Reach me your cup now. A drop’s left.”
“I can’t think why she didn’t come—she’s come now, of course, I’m not saying she hasn’t. Ttt. Never see her. What a do! It is.”
“Poor thing.”
Which of them said that? Starting awake now, the child looked at each of them in turn. Which? It must be that one, she thought. But uncertainty had entered her mind—and immediately after she knew that she would have to leave. This was not her real home, she had another life and another home—somewhere—where? The room became shapeless, and she struggled frenziedly to keep it. To keep herself in it. She went over to her mother and took hold of her. “You must keep me,” she said, filled with the most terrible grief; “I’ll do everything you tell me, I’ll work for you, do the step, wash up—I promise I’ll be good, if you’ll keep me.” Her mother said nothing, sitting still in her chair, vaguely smiling still but without a word to say. She did not seem to understand what was happening, nor to care very much. In terror the child appealed to the other women, offering to work for them, to run errands, if they would exert themselves for her. “Keep me,” she implored them, turning from their unresponding faces to her mother. Who had gone. “Keep me.
But it was no use. The room no longer held together. For a moment she seemed to be in the street. It was less substantial than the room, a faint tracing on the air. For another as brief instant she saw the Park through the outlines of the street. Shadows floated past her eyes. She lay staring at the branches, at leaves moving lightly in the bright air, dazzling : her eyes smarted.
Nothing remained of her dream except its sadness, and that too vanished.
Her hand went quickly to her blouse, feeling for the bag she had hidden there. Satis
fied, she sat up, and looked gapingly round her. The Park seemed changed, widened, as though the sun, throwing in his descent longer and longer shadows, had drawn the round midday earth out to either side.
She wanted to resolve something definite for her future. What, if George really had left her, must she do? Go back to Staveley and ask help from her married sister? That I’ll never come to, she cried. Unless I’m carried there in me coffin—like m’aunt Ada. A shiver, starting in the recesses of her life, broke at the surface into small bright bubbles. She saw a blind over a window; her mother who stood in the dark passage, leaning against the door; hands; rough, work-swollen, the wedding-ring sunk into the flesh, hands folded over the edges of saucers; the faces of women, not known, not remembered, yet not, not yet to be, forgotten.
What did I do? she cried. What made me this? Her body, its weight on her newly felt, became a burden she strove with uselessly. Everything she had done was foolish and a mistake, because she had never seen (until it was too late) what the next step must be. The steam of her acts rose all round her.
For a moment she thought with passion of her mother’s life—which had been hard, narrow, settled for good in the first moment of her marriage. Never, since that moment, had her mother depended for her safety on the kindness of any creature. She had her house, her way of living, her place from which she could not be put. Kindness might have sweetened her life but she could and did live nearly without it. Trembling with pride and anger she had said: Thank heaven I’m not beholden to a soul. Nor was she.
But I’m beholden, she thought, startled and disgusted. I’ve been beholden to some man or other for years. And for a brief flash she did really see that to expect kindness is a grave crime. No one has the right to depend on the kindness of another for his life. The exaction is too great. There must be rules, duties, to make life with another person tolerable. Because there was nothing between them but this thin, racking nerve of kindness men tumbled her off, went away to women to whom they owed a duty, not kindness.
A Day Off Page 7
