South of the Lights

by Angela Huth

  For the second time that afternoon Brenda’s plans were foiled, this time by Wilberforce. He came striding across the waste ground towards the post office, a look of annoyance twisting his face. Brenda opened her eyes, angry at the disturbance.

  ‘You’re going to be late back, aren’t you? What, waiting for the lover boy?’ Brenda said nothing, kept her eyes on his newly shaven cheeks. He had cut himself twice. Two sparks of dark blood, not quite congealed, were forming into drops ready to start falling. He wore a clean checked shirt: sickly after-shave mingled with the old smell of sweat.

  ‘He’s not in the Star,’ said Wilberforce, ‘I just been there.’

  ‘I know,’ said Brenda.

  ‘Something the matter?’

  ‘No.’ She shrugged.

  ‘Daresay he’s gone home for a bite.’

  ‘Daresay he has.’

  ‘Come on, or I’ll be docking your wages, won’t I? Extended dinner hours. I’ll ring about the chicken food, tell you what they say.’

  There was nothing Brenda could do. In silence she walked beside him back to the farmhouse. If she had insisted on staying at the post office for another five minutes he’d most likely have given her the sack then and there. She knew his moods: something had happened to annoy him and, in that state, he acted without thinking. On many occasions she had seen him lose his temper and sack employees with no explanation. It was lucky she had managed to last out so long, and she had no wish to lose her job. It suited her, the solitude, and she loved the chickens. She had a private and rewarding kind of communication with them, each one individually. In spite of what she had told Evans recently, about not caring if Wilberforce gave her the push, she knew in truth she would miss them if she had to go.

  They returned to the kitchen. Wilberforce shut the door, pushed a few things from the table on to the floor to make himself enough space to sit, and lifted the dirty telephone on his lap. Brenda went over to the stove, sniffed at the pigs’ trotters, turned out the flame beneath them.

  ‘If I don’t turn it off the water’ll boil away,’ she said.

  Her initiative seemed to please Wilberforce. He smiled.

  ‘Anyhow where’s Mrs Wilberforce – Eileen?’ went on Brenda. ‘Haven’t seen her for days.’

  Wilberforce picked something from between his teeth.

  ‘She cleared out last week. Gone to London, I believe. I told her to go, mind, bloody trollop, carrying on like she was. Here –’ he inclined his head – ‘come and listen to what they say while I give them a piece of my mind.’

  Brenda went and stood by him. She leaned her head close to his, the telephone receiver at his ear between them. The various smells made her feel sick again, and the heat was something terrible. Evans was in his car with a blonde, first time he’d ever been unfaithful to her, she could swear, and Wilberforce was breathing noisily. When he put his free hand on her stomach, and ran it gently down to her thigh, Brenda felt an extraordinary sense of helplessness. Revenge was not precisely in her mind. But she had no more energy, no desire to move.

  It was a particularly dull afternoon in the post office for Evans – scarcely a customer, two flies buzzing and flicking against the window panes. He busied himself with a sheaf of pink papers, but could not concentrate on the small print. He was trying to define for himself the line of demarcation between sexual attraction and sexual vulgarity. What imperceptible thread of gold divided one from the other? How was it that Brenda, for all her warm and vibrant sluttishness, could never be called vulgar? – While the fur-coated woman, she was quite a different matter. Neat, in a way: expensive clothes, shoes and hair. But coarse. Calculated. Hard. A lot of men, thought Evans, would find her sexy, couldn’t wait to make her. But not him. He wrinkled his nose, remembering her smell. Not in a whole year, on a desert island, would he lay a finger on her. It was a dreadful thought, all that powder and lipstick. No. She was definitely the kind of woman, no matter what the circumstances, he would make a special effort to avoid.

  The land surrounding the village was flattish, the fields unlush. They provided scant grazing for sheep and cattle or, when ploughed, dull earth. It was an unlovely part of the Midland countryside, scarred by the quarries and brickworks, untempting to the builders of suburban houses. Even the beauty of the elms would soon be a thing of the past: fast ravaged by the disease, they were being slaughtered by the hundred. Except from the lawns of Wroughton House, there were no pleasing views – and even from there, the detached observer might say, there was nothing much to fulfil the visual senses. At the foot of the great sweep of lawn to the west side of the house lay the natural pond: beyond it, fields inclined gently towards a minor peak. In these parts such a rise was considered a hill: a hill crested by the woods which had become Henry’s refuge over the years.

  They were owned by a local farmer who cared little for such an unproductive gathering of trees. His lack of attention had resulted in thick undergrowth and the general tangle of unpruned boughs. But still there remained a few paths through the rubble of foliage, worn down by generations of people from the village in search of privacy and shade. At bluebell time the ground was an almost solid, steamy haze of blue and later, in September, the place was rich with blackberries. Henry knew and loved every part of the woods: the sharp snapping sounds in winter, the softer summer noises, the spring birdsong. He liked, from one side of the trees, the distant view of Wroughton House, classic façade aloof above its bed of lavender. He liked even better, in the other direction, the sight of the tall, smoking chimneys, five times the height of trees, against changing skies.

  But fond though he was of the woods, Henry doubted whether they could provide him with much solace this afternoon. The happenings of the last few hours, at the risk of being dramatic, formed the greatest catastrophe of his life. He was still stunned by incredulity, and yet he knew them to be true. He had had to believe his own eyes. The Boy and the Leopard driving off together – his son and the only woman he had ever loved, mightily, causing his blood to churn and his mind to writhe night and day – the two of them had disappeared before him. It was his own fault, what’s more. Why had he been such a bloody fool as to make his decision with rash speed, dashing off to get the bloody cauliflowers? It wasn’t as if she would have wanted the things, even had he been successful. What woman in her senses could be wooed with vegetables? He must have been out of his mind.

  He must have been out of his mind, too, not to have accepted the Boy’s invitation. Had he only said yes, and gone with him to the bar for a pint instead of darting away like a scared rabbit, it might be him, Henry, the Leopard was passing her afternoon with now, instead of with the Boy. At this very moment they might be gliding through the lanes in the Morris Minor (taking the corners at quite a speed, to impress) looking for a good field, or a small café, in which to have their first conversation. Whoever it was up there guiding our destinies – and surely God as Henry believed in Him could not be so unfair – had made a right balls-up. What, now, was to be done? Cursing himself, over and over again, whiplashes in his mind, Henry could see no solution.

  But there was one thing he was quite positive could not be done: he could not question the Boy. They had always preserved between them a lack of interference and that, at all costs, should not be broken. The Boy was reserved about his own affairs, so it was unlikely he would drop any hints, even in jest. He might, of course, mention – when Rosie wasn’t there – having seen his father on a bicycle: but even if he did, it would not be up to Henry to enquire who was with him in the car at the time, or why. That would be breaking the rules. No: the only thing he could do, without any intention of spying, was to watch the Boy carefully, and to spend every possible moment in the Star.

  Henry tramped heavily up and down the same path: he had no energy to turn corners and find himself in a denser part of the wood. He sucked on his pipe and listened without pleasure to the thrushes. A horrible restlessness fluttered with him, sour as indigestion. His own son so near the Leopa
rd, in a car with the Leopard, touching (most likely) the Leopard – regoaded by these thoughts, he stopped sharply. He leant against the trunk of a larch tree, needing physical support in his despair. Oh God, he thought, I am no match for the Boy. Really, I should be glad: this turn of events might take his mind off Brenda. And yet, I am not glad. I am twisted and ugly with regret. I want what he has. I love the Leopard. I want her for the rest of my life. I want someone to live for: she has inspired in me that need. I must have her, or I must die.

  Henry blinked. Through a small space in the branches he could see two distant chimneys. In his vulnerable state, they increased his desolation. He thought, as he had on the day he first saw the Leopard, of his happy years among the bricks: of his good mates, and of the satisfaction of getting through the work. To Rosie, it had been no more than his job, not worth talking about. The Leopard, if and when he could explain, would understand it was more than that: the point of his existence. But it was no use thinking of such a luxury: the Leopard would never be his, now. He could never tell her the multitude of things piled up in his heart, and the burden of them was too great. Moving again, this time towards a small grassy clearing he often visited, furnished only with an old tree stump that made a comfortable seat, Henry made his decision to die.

  But even in his raging gloom practicalities came bubbling to his mind. Out here, he was equipped with neither a gun nor pills. And as the woods were the only place he could find the courage to do it, there was but one alternative. Henry took a box of matches from his pocket. There were three left. Even if he lit three different parts of his clothing at once it would be a horrible death. Once on fire, it would be unlikely he could put out the flames should the agony of it force him to change his mind. However, he doubted he would do any such thing. Physical suffering would be trivial in comparison with his present feelings: it would be worth enduring the vilest death rather than continue to live a life without the Leopard, knowing his son was enjoying her. ‘The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.’ The words came back to Henry for the first time in thirty years: a friend in the Navy had tried to make him read Marx. It had not made much sense to him, except for that one message. An encouragement, now, he’d have Marx on his side. Shaking the matches, Henry reflected briefly on how he would be mourned: Rosie, knowing her, would have a search party out by evening and they, poor things, would experience the nasty shock of finding his charred body. Rosie would be hysterical, need tranquillising shots from the doctor. The Boy, well, he might be quite upset. They’d arrange a decent funeral, pile up the coffin with Rosie’s favourite flowers, no doubt, and his friends at the Star would bend their heads in respect at the graveside. There might be a small paragraph about him in the local paper, if they were short of news this week, and he would be remembered as a loyal, happy husband and devoted father.

  Henry reached the clearing. He stood looking at the tree stump, trying to choose his spot. There was an old straw boater on top of the stump. For a moment Henry presumed somebody had left the hat behind. Then he saw it move. His heart surged. One more twist in the bad dream of the afternoon, perhaps? Had the Leopard somehow arrived here?

  Even as he contemplated such a thing Henry realised his own foolishness. The hat was a cruel trick. Someone from the village was here to usurp his privacy. He would have to go elsewhere, to the far end of the woods.

  Quietly, not wanting to disturb whoever it was, Henry edged his way round the clearing, protected from sight by the trees. Then he saw that the hat belonged to Rosie. There she sat, dressed up in her Sunday clothes, looking about her in some kind of trance as if a choir of angels up in the trees, invisible to anyone else, sang her lullabys. She had thrown off her shoes and her stockinged toes wiggled in the grass. Every now and then she touched her hair, or patted the absurd hat, with one of her huge red hands. Henry, hardly breathing, stared.

  His instant reaction was that she had gone mad and he would have to hurry off for help. She had been acting strangely, of late, since he had been ill: smiling constantly, filling the larder with small dishes of pudding, and brandishing her hands in the strangest manner at bedtime, as if she expected him to remark upon them. But now, here, there was no madness in her eyes – rather, a kind of waxy calm. Unfortunately, Henry coughed. Rosie instantly spun round, standing up. She spied him at once in the tangle of branches.

  ‘Henry! Oh, Henry.’

  She had trapped him. If he turned and ran away now she would come screeching after him. All he could do was to get rid of her as soon as possible.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he asked. His gruff voice in no way damaged her expression of beatitude. She merely smiled, an aged nymph daft as a button in her gaberdine skirt.

  ‘I thought, like you, it would be nice up here,’ she said. ‘And of course it was – it is. I’ve been listening to the birds. They make quite a noise, don’t they, when you’re just sitting, listening, alone?’

  ‘Not this time of the afternoon, they don’t,’ said Henry, but Rosie was still not snubbed.

  ‘Anyhow, I’ve been enjoying myself and I hoped I might run into you so that we could walk back together for tea.’

  ‘Not much chance of missing another person in woods of this size,’ said Henry gloomily. ‘Why don’t you go off home and put on the kettle? Cut me a slice of rice pudding’ (anything to get rid of her) ‘and I’ll be along later.’

  ‘Henry! That’s very unfriendly.’ She moved towards him, stood very close so that he could count the bubbles of seersucker on her blouse – a dreadful blue. He looked at her eyes, remembering them as they had been forty years ago: clear and bright, not a line on the skin around them. She had had a fine pair of eyes when she was young, he had to admit. Now they were quite dim, trapped in a mesh of pouchy lines, small blood vessels wiggling across the whites like a continuation of the marks on the skin. At this very moment they were full of pleading. Henry’s stomach heaved. The bravery of spurned women was only slightly less bad than their tears.

  He sucked on his pipe and spat out a bitter piece of tobacco, a thing that always taxed Rosie’s tolerance to its hilt. But she said nothing. Henry lit one of the matches, held it to the dying tobacco, then let it fall to the ground. With only two matches left, his problem increased.

  ‘Do go on home, Rosie,’ he said. ‘Can’t you understand a man likes a few moments’ peace on his own sometimes?’

  But on such occasions, when Rosie’s will surged strongly within her, understanding evaporated. She took Henry’s arm, laughed. She slid her feet into her shoes, and patted her hat.

  ‘Oh, come on, you silly old thing. You’ve been quite ill, you know, and you need someone to take care of you. What’s a wife for if it isn’t to support a man when he’s down?’ She was horribly flirtatious, flapping her great hands perilously near to Henry’s face. He kept his pipe firmly in his mouth to protect himself from her actual touch. And all the time he felt the strength of resolve draining from him. ‘You spent far too long out at lunchtime – you looked quite done in when you came home. And I shouldn’t wonder you’ve had nothing to eat since breakfast. There’s a fruit cake in the tin, and a new pot of honey. So come on, my love, for I shan’t go without you.’

  In a reluctant daze Henry felt himself move forward, close to her. They retraced his old steps down the path, Rosie keeping up her blinking chatter all the while. Henry remained silent. At least, he thought, the search party would be spared a gruesome time: that was the only good thing about Rosie’s unwanted appearance. God, she was a nuisance, the woman. It was all he could do not to hit her. And yet, in the depths of his sad and empty stomach, he felt a pang of hunger. If she forced him, he wouldn’t say no to a bit of fruit cake. It would give him the strength to work out what to do next.

  They reached the edge of the woods, started down the gentle hill. The late afternoon sky was cloudless, the soft grass bent about their ankles. They moved slowly, locked into that uncomfortable position when one person clutches and th
e other leans. Augusta Browne, standing by the pond at the bottom of her lawn, looked up and saw them. She thought what a loving old couple they made, and reflected that her own chance of ever becoming one of such a partnership was now quite over.

  Augusta, too, had had a disturbing afternoon. The agency had rung to say the office men were keen for the house, and would shortly return with their architect to discuss its possibilities. Its possibilities: Augusta tried to put from her mind all the ways in which such people could destroy the house. In great anguish she attempted to keep herself busy: picking flowers, dusting, sorting out a cupboard – all unnecessary things which did nothing to alleviate her gloom. She tried to think, as she had so many times in the past months, about her future. For there was no escaping the reality of the situation: eventually the house would be sold. And what then? A small flat in London? A country cottage? She would never mind the solitude: that would not perturb her. But she doubted she could find the strength ever to care about a house again, once Wroughton House had gone. She would have to work, of course. She would not expect Hugh to support her. In any case, she would enjoy working again. But she could not, at this moment, contemplate looking for the kind of job she wanted any more than she could consider looking for somewhere new to live. The future was a murky space she had no energy to inspect. Only the present was vital: the savouring of each moment as time ran out. Lowered by such reflections, Augusta felt a sudden and rare longing for company. She hoped that Evans and Brenda would be coming to the room tonight. She would like to waylay them and invite them to supper. She would like to hear about their lives – and so put aside for a while the melancholies of her own.

  That same day Lark, at work, felt ill. She had a sharp pain in her lungs – a familiar pain, it had often struck her in the past few years. She knew it to last a couple of days, then to vanish as fast as it came. Its cause she could not discover, hard though she tried to work out whether it was to do with something she had eaten or drunk. She had given up cheese at night and had cut down her smoking: but still the pain returned from time to time. The doctor – whom she hadn’t thought worth consulting for a couple of years – said it was surely indigestion, and prescribed tablets. They did her no good. She was forced to the conclusion the mysterious pain was something she would have to put up with every now and then.