by Jane Gardam
Still silence. I so longed to speak. I wanted so much to smile at him.
He clicked his teeth at the pony and leaned and put his hand over his sister’s on the reins and shook them. ‘Off we go Bec. Goodbye Miss Flint.’
‘Goodbye,’ I said to my book.
As they moved off he called, ‘Where did you say you lived?’
‘The yellow house.’
‘How old are you?’
‘I’m over twelve.’
‘What’s the book?’ called Rebecca.
‘Robinson Crusoe.’
She said nothing and I looked up then and thought, ‘She’s not changed. She likes to be the one who knows most. He’s nicer.’ He must be that shadowy boy who had gone off somewhere instead of playing with us.
He called as the trap started away, ‘We’ll leave you a footprint.’
I heard the carriage creak, the pony walk, then trot and then the hoofs drumming again, going away to the south now, and when I let myself look again, the trap had turned once more into a bouncing dot. I read
GOOD
God wonderfully sent the ship
in near enough to the shore.
I read on and on but I still seemed to hear the drumming and the story became only words I was looking at as the sun flicked out behind the Works and the day faded and was over.
The following Wednesday it snowed and I had a headache and Charlotte’s nephew came to Oversands as he did every Wednesday on his way home from school. A long walk it must have been too, all the way from the West Dyke where most of the fishermen’s children went to school, if they went at all.
He was called Stanley and his Wednesday presence was as inevitable and unchanging as the rest of the timetable at the yellow house. The clocks were wound on Sunday evening, the milkman paid and given tea on Monday morning, sitting in the kitchen in the steam of the first washday of the week. Tuesdays were celebrated by the visitation of Mr Box of Boagey’s, the provisions-merchants over the marsh, Mr Box taking the order for delivery in a long greenish notebook and wearing a long greenish coat which was never removed in the house. He sat at the kitchen table eating Eccles-cakes and drinking tea while Charlotte stood over him smiling her smile.
Mr Box was a ferrety man and made me uneasy because he had slippery red lips and wet eyes and because he changed—intensified—Charlotte. They always stopped talking when I came into the kitchen. Once they were not in the kitchen but there was a crash from the pantry and a scuffling and when I went running to see, Charlotte was in there with him and looking at me in a way that said: ‘There’s plenty for you to learn yet. If you ever do.’ Mr Box said, ‘Just checking on the little extras,’ and sniggered.
Wednesday was a weekly festival of house-cleaning and Thursdays were for Father Pocock, the day when Aunt Frances wore a different dress and her cameo brooch and her mother’s ruby dress-ring; and sometimes there was a big event, like a nun to tea.
Friday was the day of the garden-lad who was also the milkman’s-lad and Mr Box of Boagey’s lad. He was a silent glum boy who was meant to tidy up the privet hedge and saw wood for the week though he never sawed quite enough. He lurked in the sheds around the yard and looked at me over the stick pile. Once he saw me unexpectedly and dropped a spade on his foot. Once—it was in spring—he came out of the chicken-house and said, ‘Give us a kiss then,’ turned dark red and ran away. Once he gave me some milk for a present. I was about nine. It was too deep an event to share—there were not many presents at the yellow house—and I drank the milk alone in the coal-house and washed out the jar and put flowers in it and set them on my mantelpiece. I thought deliciously of the milkman’s-lad for many weeks as I went to sleep, although I’ve never liked milk.
The milkman’s-lad, like most of the children round about—though I saw very few of them—looked as if he needed the milk himself, for he couldn’t have weighed more than three stone and his toes stuck out through his boots.
Charlotte’s nephew was very different, though he was as undersized and probably as undernourished as the rest. He must have been about seven when I first noticed him but there was already an authority and vigilance about him. He was very heavy footed and his feet grew heavier and surer as he drew nearer to our back door on which he never knocked. Stamp, stamp, along he marched; click went the latch and in he came, gathering up the sixpence Charlotte always had ready for him as he passed by the draining-board. He would look across at Charlotte and nod briskly, rather like Father Pocock, professional accepter of donations to a worthy cause. Then he would sit down thump in Charlotte’s rocking-chair and let his hands hang down between his large red knees.
Down the side of one of his skimpy, much-darned socks he kept a ruler and in the pocket of his jacket a row of sharp pencils. ‘He’ll go far,’ said Charlotte, ‘Stanley’s ambitious.’ He had a purple nose and his hair fell limp like a whitewash brush all round his head from a bald spot in the middle—colourless hair and scant. His nose ran, always, at all seasons and he grunted a lot. Even if one of my aunts came into the kitchen he never stood up, and, oddly, they never asked him to and Charlotte never suggested it. He slurped up cup after cup of tea, pouring it into himself by way of the saucer, and ate everything put before him—stale cakes, old scones, cold milk-pudding from as far back as the Wednesday before. It was all kept for him. Once I remember an elderly fish-pie—or rather its remains, the old crusty bits round the dish you have to soak off for hours before you wash it up. Stanley had them hammered off with a knife-handle in five minutes. Anything freshly cooked that morning—new bread, a still-warm cake, a lush plum tart—down they all went with the rest and with no comment. If it was food, then Stanley ate it. He was more like a dog than a boy, though with little of the bounce and gratitude of dogs.
As he left, every Wednesday, Charlotte would put an apple in his pocket with his freshly darned socks and he would shoulder his satchel, settle his balloon of a cap over the miserable hair, say, ‘Bye then, auntie,’ and be gone. The apple would be clear of the pocket by the time he reached the chicken-house and his mouth hugely open over it by the time he reached the yard gate. I said, ‘Maybe, he’s got worms,’ but Charlotte said, ‘No. I’d not think so.’
‘Is Stanley poor?’ I asked Aunt Mary.
‘Oh yes. They’re very poor. Charlotte’s sister married very badly. A very insignificant man. They live in Phyllis Alley.’
Phyllis Alley is an offshoot of Fisherman’s Square and had been built and named to give the area a more sylvan tone, though looking at it, there seemed no difference. Fisherman’s Square had had the cholera not many years ago, and there was still sometimes typhoid fever and typhus. Fishermen, being used to water controlled from afar, are not good at the arrangement of drains, and the cesspits and the drinking water of the Square and the Alley were mingled together. Mrs Woods often spoke of the wells and the middens of that part of the marsh and they made her eyes shine.
‘What does Stanley’s father do, Aunt Mary?’
‘He doesn’t do anything now. He was at the works, but he was in the explosion. He lives in bed and his wife does washing and the children gather crabs and get the scraps from the butcher. We help as we can of course. There are four other children.’
The Wednesday visits must have been going on for years before Stanley spoke to me, and I had quite stopped seeing him. He was as the kitchen-table, the dock, the steel fender, the tea-caddies, or the row of pewter meat-covers clinging like giant oval limpets to the wall.
‘Regular as the swallows,’ said Aunt Frances once, ‘dear Stanley,’ and she slid a penny into his hand. ‘You are sure and fair as the primrose in spring.’
I looked at her surprised and Charlotte’s lips pursed up, and two of her heavy hairpins fell into her pastry. But Aunt Frances was not making fun. She never did that. She was smiling at Stanley and her face was looking beautiful. She put out her hand and touched his head and Stanley stopped kicking about at the fender and smiled up at her and a look passed between the
m which said, ‘We like each other.’ It was a less upsetting look than the ones between Charlotte and Mr Box and not the sort to keep you awake at night like the smile of the milkman’s-lad: yet when Stanley’s eyes found Aunt Frances’s, I felt jealous. It was the moment I learned that our bodies are only furniture. That attractiveness has nothing to do with looks or years.
‘How old is Aunt Frances?’ I asked Charlotte.
‘You don’t ask things like that.’
‘Yes, but how old?’
‘She must be forty,’ said Charlotte. She slammed fiercely about with pans, ‘Every day of it. Maybe fifty.’
‘How old’s Stanley?’
‘Stanley’s ten next month. The tenth.’
The first time Stanley spoke to me was the Wednesday after the angel and the blood, when I was sitting head-achey at the kitchen table doing French for Mrs Woods. Charlotte, as usual, had been baking and the room was the warmest in the house and smelled of the lines of loaves and cakes that stood about on every surface, gold and brown and cream. All the loaves stood on their upside-down baking-tins with their tops puffing out like clouds and it was comfortable because you could stretch out and pick little crazed bits off when Charlotte wasn’t looking. Outside the blizzard blew and snow fell and was even settling quite deeply on the marsh, which was rare. There was an exciting light across the yard and the sea roared. I had a cold and was glad to be left to myself. I didn’t intend to stir. I didn’t even look up at Stanley’s crumping step and the attack upon the latch or see him when he stamped his snowy feet on the mat and picked up the sixpence. Through the French I heard the usual voices—Charlotte’s, less syrupy, more Yorkshire, when she was talking with her own family, and Stanley’s, gruff and low; and the shake and scuffle as his coat was taken off him. I paid no more attention than when the cat had been let in.
After a time though I heard a rhythmic angry bashing which continued. And continued. I looked up and saw that Charlotte had left the room and Stanley by the fire was holding the long poker and hitting the top bar of the grate with it—bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. His face was turned to me—the thin cold nose with the dew-drop, mouth open, hair still sopped. He said, ‘What yer at?’
‘It’s my homework.’
‘You go to a school, then?’
‘No. They teach me here.’
‘It’s all homework, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘We don’t get it. What ist?’
‘It’s French.’
‘French?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can yer do it?’
‘A bit.’
‘Read us some.’
I read some and after a while looked at him and he was sitting with his head cocked as if he were straining to hear something else. He looked sharp. The skin over his cheek-bones was very bright.
‘Gis a bit more ont.’
I read on.
‘Tell us it, then.’
So I had to translate it. I liked that. French and German were easy—as easy as Welsh had been once. I went slowly for Stanley, but even so, he kept stopping me to hear it over again.
‘So one’s tother?’ he said.
‘Yes. It’s called translating. D’you like it?’
‘I could like it,’ he said, ‘I could like translating.’
‘Aye, it’s grand,’ he said in a moment. ‘Translating’s grand.’
And then he threw down the poker, picked up a cinder, pulled the ruler out of his sock, put cinder to ruler and flexed it at me.
‘I like it grand,’ he said. ‘You want to go easy—you. See?’
‘What?’
He gave a huge thick sniff, narrowed his eyes and said, ‘Rot you,’ focussed the cinder and fired.
It hit me on the check and hurt and I shouted out, jumped up and flung the French book at his head. He ducked down and the book flew into the fire which was very hot and bright from the baking. There was a cheerful flap of flame and the book was gone.
It happened so fast, so beautifully, that we both stood still in awe. Curved-back, coffee-coloured pages with borders of sparks were poised in the red coals for a second, then collapsed and were air. Stanley said, ‘Sorry, Polly Flint,’ and looked at me and I saw that he had dark blue eyes and they were frightened at last.
I ran away out of the kitchen then and down the passage and up the stairs to the drawing-room where Mrs Woods was sitting alone, eating muffins from a silver dish. I said, ‘My French book’s burned. lt’s burned in the fire,’ and she stared at me with a wodge of muffin in her hand. She said, ‘This is a matter for your Aunt Mary. You dropped it in the fire?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Yes. I dropped it in.’
‘I see,’ she said, and began to eat the muffin. I ran out of the room and to my bedroom and got into bed.
Fortunately it was the beginning of influenza—or something in the nature of the week had informed the influenza it might be worth calling in. What I remember after getting into bed is very muddled. Grey people stood around. Darkness fell, sleet rattled its nails across the window as I shivered with cold and burned with sweat. Across the marsh the nuns and Father Pocock were busy with the bells and the wind howled around my headache and mysterious tears, in an eternal argument to do with French books, flames, wickedness, flames, angels, flames, crucifixions, blood, flames, and footprints in the sand.
Now and then Charlotte’s voice came through. ‘It’s just because of the blood. It’s now that the blood’s come.’ ‘Cold baths,’ said someone. ‘Cold baths!’
The mandarin returned and brought his friends. They nodded in conclave on tables and shelves and in mid-air. The seventy times seven Samurai. The angel kept away.
Then slowly everything was replaced by a comforting sense of defeat. A happiness. It was a happiness outside myself and after a time I realised that it was emanating from Aunt Mary. It was her happiness seeping about the room, and she was happy because she was being skilful, nursing someone, doing what she was particularly qualified to do. From the sheepskin rug she had fled. That was a dark mystery, not spoken of, stirring the many things that Father Pocock’s ministry was working to discount. But sickness of the body was a matter which training and skill could overcome, and she stood beside me in a long encouraging apron, glossy with starch, a watch pinned to her chest, wiping my hot forehead with a damp cool cloth and commanding red flannel, feeding-cups, a fire in the grate, hot water, action. The fire dappled the ceiling at night and she, herself, crept in through the small hours to make it up with her own hands, her hair in fat white plaits swinging over her white tent of nightdress and shawls.
In the mornings, when I grew better, snow-light shone in at the window and the world was still.
When at last I was sitting up again, though just in the bedroom, Aunt Frances said, ‘You musn’t worry about the book, Polly. Accidents do happen,’ and Mrs Woods arrived, or at any rate one of her arms arrived round the door, and placed something on a table. ‘Breathing-lamp,’ she said. ‘Her breathing-lamp!’ said Aunt Frances. ‘She’s brought you her breathing-lamp from Africa!’
‘But I can breathe perfectly—’
‘Say thank you—quickly, quickly. She never lends her breathing-lamp.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Woods.’
‘It’s to ease you,’ said her voice. ‘We had it for Woods. Not that there was much that it could do.’
They were very slow to let me go downstairs and for a fortnight or more I sat in the bedroom wrapped in iron-grey hospital blankets brought from a lead-lined trunk in Aunt Mary’s room and old enough for Scutari. I drank broth and was read The Cuckoo Clock. They said, ‘Oh Polly dear, you have been so ill,’ and I felt happier all the time. I forgot Stanley and his queerness that afternoon and the way he had suddenly been unable to bear me.
‘What day’s today?’ I asked, at last back in the kitchen.
‘Wednesday.’
‘Stanley isn’t here yet.’
‘Stanley’s ill. He took the infl
uenza too, only he’s very bad,’ said Charlotte. ‘He had it on him that day you went mad with your French. He was queer that day. Gave it you, they say.’
‘Poor Stanley. Perhaps I gave it to him. I’d caught cold on the Sunday, I think. I had a cold bath,’ I said, not looking at her.
‘That I know. I saw the bathroom. I wasn’t to mention it. You were for killing yourself likely.’
‘Have you seen him?’
‘I went to see him yesterday and the day before. And Sunday I spent there.’
‘All day? However did we manage?’
She wasn’t looking at me but out of the window.
‘Here,’ she said, ‘he’s sent something for you. We’ll hope it’s not tainted with infection,’ and she stood on the fender and brought a dirty folded envelope down from behind the tea-caddies. In it was a torn end of paper with ‘Sorry Polly Flint’ written on it, and three sixpences.
Stanley died that night and Charlotte went on Friday to the funeral. She sat still for a long time when she got back, not removing her bonnet and shawl.
And with his death the even pattern of days and weeks of seven years at the yellow house ended. On the Friday evening, Charlotte still sat in the rocking chair by the kitchen fire in the funeral crêpe that Mrs Woods had lent her. There she sat.
And there she sat, and Aunt Frances brought her some brandy and talked to her and said she should have stayed longer with her family, and then left her, thinking that was what she wanted.
And the kitchen fire went out, and there Charlotte sat.
When it got nearer to supper-time, Aunt Mary came to the kitchen to say that we could look after ourselves tonight and perhaps just warm a little soup, but Charlotte did not speak.
‘You’ve let the fire go, Charlotte. Dear, oh dear—and such a cold day. Now sit still. We shall see to it. I learned all about lighting fires when I was a young nurse. Polly and I will relight it easily.’
But she could find no sticks. We muffled up in coats and scarves and wraps and went through the snow to the sheds but sticks were still inside huge trunks of wood, for the milkman’s-lad had been cut off by the snow. Aunt Frances found some old newspapers under the copper and I found some safety matches in a cup, and there was plenty of coal. Aunt Mary picked up the heavy axe that stood near the tree-trunks, then quickly put it down again. We needed a hot drink. The kettle hung on its chain over the fire-place, but the water in it was cold.
