Lunch was ready on the kitchen table, steaming on the gaily cheeked cloth.
Whoever did it must have known about their pool, must in fact have been standing in it. Maybe he got in from the woods next to the garden, maybe it was possible to climb through the fence and down among the bushes. But it was not possible to see the pool from the woods -- or the hill -- or the road -- or anywhere but from the garden. The person must have known about it and the statue; must, in fact, be a friend of theirs.
Mrs. Beer passed her the mashed turnips and potatoes, she helped herself and took two lamb chops. Thomas had his lunch cut up for him while he sat with his chin on his hands, staring at Kate with his pale blue eyes.
She racked her brains. They had not many friends -- her father did not care to entertain if he could not do so in the grand manner. Their few relations lived too far away to visit often. Miss Bybegone, her teacher, knew the garden; but it was impossible to imagine her taking off her lisle stockings and sensible shoes in order to wade their pond and write nonsense round their statue. She looked up from her plate at Mrs. Beer's crimson face, as she clucked and cooed at Thomas to make him eat up his lunch. (She spoiled him; he ate perfectly well when she was not there and nobody cared whether he ate or not.) It couldn't have been Mrs. Beer -- or her husband. They were too honest. Neither of them would go hiding, writing things in secret.
There was a knock on the kitchen door. Mrs. Beer flew to answer it. An old man stood outside, bent double under a sack of potatoes. He wore a striped shirt fastened at the neck with a brass stud and no collar, an ancient coat and breeches, leather gaiters, and boots so heavy it seemed unlikely that his wizened legs could gather enough strength to push them along. His hair needed cutting, it made a little hedge around his face that was smooth and pink like a washed turnip. A battered felt hat stuck on the back of his head by some magical means, against the law of nature. Continual use in all weathers had dyed his clothes a uniform color, a sort of grayish green: that had also an earthy look, one half expected to see barleycorn shooting up out of his pockets.
“Thank you very much, Farmer Wyatt,” said Mrs. Beer, taking in the vegetables. She paid the old man with some of the loose change kept for emergencies in the best silver teapot (it had not been used since Thomas's christening). Now Kate remembered that Farmer Wyatt used to prune the rose arbor when her mother was alive. But he could not have written around the statue. She was pretty sure that he did not know how to write: very few people had even heard him speak.
Then she thought of the four girls who did lessons with her at Miss Bybegone's. But the nearest of them lived ten miles away; and, anyway, why? That was the question she could not get out of her mind: not so much who had done it, but why, why had it been done?
First we'll wait, then we'll whistle, then we'll dance together.
“I'll take Thomas up to our place for tea this afternoon, Kate,” said Mrs. Beer. “There's the nice fruity cake he likes I made last night, and I left a note for Baker to leave me some chocolate biscuits. He'll enjoy that, won't you, my love?” She clucked over his head at Kate, while he calmly finished his pudding, scraping up the last custard, as though what went on in the room did not concern him at all. “Bless his heart, how he does love his Beery's marmalade pudding,” she went on. “Now let me give you another spoonful, darling.” But he pushed his plate away with a pettish movement that made Kate want to hit him, and went to sit in a corner with a large book of pictures that he had taken from the drawing room.
“I'm sure you oughtn't to have that book, Thomas,” said Kate, “it isn't yours.” But he took not the slightest notice of her.
“Mr. Pawley won't mind,” soothed Mrs. Beer, collecting the dirty plates. “Dry for me, Kate dear, will you, Father’s home for his lunch today and I've got to get back up there by half past. Let the little soul amuse himself,” she continued, in a lower tone, although Thomas could still hear what she said. “He won't hurt anything, he's wonderfully careful with books.”
“He's jolly disobedient,” Kate answered loudly. He went on slowly turning the pages, absorbed and deliberate. Little beast, she thought. “Mrs. Beer,” she said aloud, “who do you think has been writing on our statue?” And as she asked the question she would have given a good deal to get an answer from Mrs. Beer as matter of fact.
“Who's been writing where, dear?”
“On our statue -- the little one, of the little boy, in the lily pond. Someone's been writing on it.”
“Well I never!” said Mrs. Beer, emptying the water from the yellow plastic bowl, and drying her large rough hands on the roller towel behind the kitchen door.
“Who can it have been, do you think?”
“I don't know, dear. I don't know who would have been writing on that. Now, my love, are you ready to come to tea with Beery? Yes, take the book if you want to,” with a wink over her shoulder at Kate. “I'll see you look after it.” Usually it took her a long time to put on her cardigan, change her shoes and put her slippers and pinafore into her basket; but today she was in a hurry. There she stood, ready to go at the door, holding it open for Thomas to slip through with the large picture book held firmly under his arm. And Kate quite definitely did not want to be left alone. She thought of Mrs. Beer's warm living room with its curtains and cushions, the smell of baking and of warm wool, the sound of a soft voice that went on and on saying nothing in particular, with pussy curled on the mat and Father home for his lunch. “May I come?” asked Kate.
“Of course you may, my dear,” came the ready answer, “and welcome.” But she knew that really Mrs. Beer liked to have Thomas to herself. And usually she was glad to be left at home, especially on a beautiful afternoon like this, when she could get on with her own things, and dream away the time in peace. It was too stupid to be frightened – yes, she had to admit that she was still frightened -- by that writing on the statue. Mrs. Beer obviously hadn't given it a second thought. And Thomas at the front gate now turned and stared at her. He liked to be alone with his Beery, who let him play with her Victorian dolls' tea set and the music box with the dancing lady on it, and fed him with cakes and biscuits got specially for him. There was hostility -- and could it be contempt as well? -- in Thomas's eyes. Kate could not help it, she would not be left alone.
It was very hot walking up the steep path to Mrs. Beer's cottage. The air was dusty, and full of the scent of cow parsley, the hedges were white with it and with stitchwort. Thomas would pick flowers, so that the climb dragged on; and then he stung his hand on a nettle. He bawled, and dock leaves had to be found, and his hand had to be rubbed and kissed better, which Mrs. Beer did sympathetically, although she was in a hurry to get home, while Kate would gladly have bitten it. They arrived at the same time as Mr. Beer on his bicycle from the other direction: he worked most mornings at the municipal gardens in Scroop, twelve miles away. It was some time before everybody got sorted out in the hot living room; but at last Mr. Beer was eating his lunch on the little table that was covered with red and green oilcloth, while Thomas sat in a big armchair by the open fire, sucking his thumb and looking at his book. Mrs. Beer buzzed and hummed in and out of the kitchen; as for Kate, she found some old books among the plates on the dresser, and settled down in the chair opposite Thomas to read about the Fairchild family.
It got hotter and hotter. When he had finished his lunch Mr. Beer lit a pipe of the tobacco he grew and cured himself, which had a fearful smell. There was just one window in the room, open only a crack: Mrs. Beer hated opening windows, in winter because it was cold and in summer because of flies. Dark red chenille curtains framed a view of the wide golden common; the sunshine outside made the old-fashioned furniture look black and poky, and pointed out that the ceiling was too low and needed whitening.
Mr. Beer knocked out his pipe in the horny palm of his hand, threw the ashes with accurate aim into the center of the fire and went to his garden, leaving wreaths of blue smoke hanging in the air. How was it possible, Kate thought, looking up,
to have so little light indoors when there was so much of it outside I It was desperately hot and stuffy in the room, yet she could not bring herself to the point of moving. “Why don't you go into the garden?” she asked Thomas, but he seemed not to hear. He knew, as she did, that Mr. Beer's garden consisted of a vegetable patch, a concrete path, a locked-up outhouse and a clothesline.
Presently Mrs. Beer came in with a basket of socks to be mended, and pulled up another chair to the fire, where she sat apparently in perfect comfort. Kate was intrigued by the desperate life of the Fairchild family, but she was also aware that her head had begun to ache. From time to time, as she turned a page, she glanced at Thomas. He looked pale: she hoped he wasn't feeling sick.
All of a sudden, she saw him bite his lip, and then he deliberately tore one of the pictures out of his father's book and threw it onto the fire. Kate was so astonished that she was speechless for a moment: usually he was careful with books. The torn page was already curling, and flaring up the chimney. She jumped out of her chair.
“'What's the matter?” said Mrs. Beer, raising her head from her mending.
“Thomas just tore a page out, and threw it on the fire.”
“Well, now, but I expect he didn't mean to.”
'He did, he tore it out deliberately, he jolly well meant to. Let me see.” She took the book away from him. Immediately he burst into tears, and buried his face in Mrs. Beer's lap.
“Why did you do it, Thomas, why?” He went on howling, shaking his head and howling, while Mrs. Beer patted his back and murmured soothingly, staring accusingly at Kate meanwhile. “There there, love, there, my ducky, there now, I'm sure it doesn't matter so much, does it, Kate.”
“Of course it does, it's one of Father's books, that he draws by, the one with animal pictures in it. He's torn out a whole one; of course it matters.” A footnote on the next page said what the illustration had been, and she read it aloud: “ 'Satan Premier, of Salterton, by Blackboy out of Lady Lightfoot.' I remember that picture, it was of a gorgeous black dog with a bird in its mouth. Daddy will be furious.”
“There, my love, let's see what Beery's got for you, come and see what's in her tin,” and she went out to the kitchen with howling Thomas clasped in her arms, leaving Kate to hold the picture book and feel mean. And the odd thing was that he was really upset, he really was crying. But he loved dogs, he couldn't have minded the picture.
Peace was restored with tea. Thomas was given the music box to play with and they ate to the accompaniment of its tinkling tune, while the doll turned and turned stiffly on top of it in her short lace dress. Mrs. Beer told them all about her nephews and nieces during tea. They had egg and tomato sandwiches and two sorts of cake, and chocolate biscuits wrapped in silver paper.
“His little face was twisted like a walnut, with the chronic indigestion, well, it was really drastic, and of course he was born into the world a month before his time. It was killing his poor mother to look at him. I had him from a month, well, I’d the experience to deal with it, and I tell you true, I'd not one bad night with him. Not one.”
“Nor” said Kate, taking the last sandwich.
“I had him till his birthday, and what a lovely baby! Thirty pounds if he was an ounce. He's grown into a fine child. It's a pity they live over Scroop way, we don't see a lot of them since they moved; well, there's been a lot of changes here, and it's good when a family stays put in a house, like yours has.”
“Yes, we've been there quite a long time, I think.”
“Though not as long as we have here; this place was built a hundred years before the Pawleys'. And it was always our own, we've never rented.” She spoke as though she had inhabited the house herself all those years, and indeed to look at her it was impossible to tell how old she was. Her wide face had scarcely a line on it, her neck was smooth and round, her hair streaked with silver. Her large fat hands had probably been creased and reddened when she was Kate's age.
“I think we built ours,” said Kate, not to be outdone.
“Yes, you did, and Beers helped with it because they were carpenters at that time, father and son together. They put in the second staircase later on, you know the one that goes from your room down to the drawing room: that was when it was thought to divide the house in two.”
“I didn't know that was why we had a second staircase. Why did they want to divide the house?”
“Because your grandfather married again after his first wife died, and never got on with his second wife. Now I don't like to repeat anything horrible about anybody, but I know it is true. We were just married at that time and living over to Scroop, but my husband's uncle died soon after and we came here. I remember the second Mrs. Pawley quite well, it was her second marriage, too, if you follow me, she had a daughter by her first who was here with her, a very expressive sort of a girl.”
“Yes,” said Kate, following: Mrs. Beer had a habit of mixing up words in midstream.
“She was quite elderly, the second Mrs. Pawley, and so was your grandfather. I remember thinking they must have got married for the companionship, but then they never did get on.”
“So they lived in separate parts of the house?”
“No that didn't work, and I'm sure I can see why not, it's difficult enough to put up with a lodger, let alone someone in the family trying to be independent and getting across each other all the time. It wasn't much more than a twelvemonth after the marriage that Mrs. Pawley left the house ; but she didn't go far, just to her daughter's that rented a cottage down in the village, over to Long Lead, Farmer Wyatt's place.”
“That is all ruined now.”
“That's it, the roof went and water got in, and when that happens your house is gone. What is it, my dear?” to her husband who was standing silently in the doorway. “He wants his tea,” she explained, although he had said nothing; and she hurried away to dish up a stew that waited in the oven.
Thomas had eaten a whole packet of chocolate biscuits, and now he had the dolls' tea set laid out on the table, and he was gravely filling the tiny cups with tea, and the plates with scraps of cake and bread and butter.
Kate was a quick reader and skipped when she was in a hurry, and she wanted to finish The Fairchild Family. They stayed on in the hot living room, while the gold of the common outside deepened gradually to copper.
“Well, you must be getting on down home,” said Mrs. Beer at last. “Shall I walk the hill with you?”
“Oh no, we'll be fine. It's too hot for walking, you'd have to climb all the way back up again.”
“At least there's no traffic, that's a mercy. Just look at the time, getting on for half-past seven, it'll be dark directly.” They stood in the doorway with the whole valley opened below them like the palm of a hand. There was the common sloping down to the Pawleys', the woods next to it marking the end of the valley and reaching round to line the opposite horizon. A thin gray ribbon was the Exeter road, leading from the few stone cottages that made up Long Lead, through green and yellow fields to rolling country on the right as far as the eye could see. From this height one had an intimate view not only of Long Lead, its gardens and washing, Mr. Morris shutting up the village shop and young Mrs. Mardy smacking her little daughter, and Wyatt's farm spotless in the middle of his buttercup-yellow acres, with scarlet Dutch barns and elegant machinery in the yard; but could see right over the next fold of country to Middle Mow where the Plentipots lived. It was all peaceful, and richly colored, and lovingly held down by beautiful blue sky in which, this evening small white clouds had appeared. A few rooks few lazily overhead, and a chestnut hen clucked and peeked along the hill path.
Kate carried Thomas's book for him and they held hands and skipped down the hill, sliding through the crumbly dry mud. Mrs. Beer stood at her gate above them, smiling and waving until they were out of sight. They were quite out of breath when they ran in at the gate of Hurst Camber. There were sandwiches and milk in the larder, and when they had eaten, Kate helped Thomas to bed. He
slept in the smaller of the front rooms, with a view of the road to the woods and the roofs of Long Lead; she stood by his window looking out, before drawing his curtains. Already he was asleep.
It was quite dark, and even in an hour the clouds had spread so that there were no stars and the sky was like smudged ink. She heard someone walking up the hill from the village, whistling; he turned left at the fork, towards Middle Mow: people seldom went right, along the road that led only to Hurst Camber and the woods. Here, now, was a dog, a large black dog, trotting purposefully past their gate, probably set for a night's hunting. She wondered how he would get into the woods, which were wired around to a height of four feet; but evidently he had his own way, he knew where he was going. And how silently animals moved! She had heard the man for a quarter of a mile, but the dog, with twice as many feet, made not a sound.
And the whole landscape lay flung out before her in the darkness, wide-awake with creatures who only dared come out at night, and to whom this quiet earth was a battlefield; under the low sky the armies of trees were on the alert, poised, waiting.
She suddenly remembered the writing on the statue.
But it was too late to go and see if it was still there. She drew Thomas's curtains, and went to her own room.
Kate slept in an attic on the other side of the bathroom; it had a staircase of its own that led into the drawing room. She liked to feel separated from the rest of the house, and kept the door between her stairs and the drawing room locked on her side; and she had also a key to the bathroom door if she wanted to be completely private. Another of its charms was its several windows: one on either side of the old fireplace, and one in the wall opposite her bed, letting in the first light, from which it was only a step down onto the common. In sunlight the faded pattern on her old curtains hung like baskets of flowers, but when it was dull it looked a bare, shabby room.
Moon Eyes Page 2
