The Wish House and Other Stories (56 page)

‘Stop it!’ Mary cried once more across the shadows. ‘Nein, I tell you! Ich haben der todt Kinder gesehn.’

But
it was a fact. A woman who had missed these things could still be useful – more useful than a man in certain respects. She thumped like a pavior through the settling ashes at the secret thrill of it. The rain was damping the fire, but she could feel – it was to dark to see – that her work was done. There was a dull red glow at the bottom of the destructor, not enough to char the wooden lid if she slipped it half over against the driving wet. This arranged, she leaned on the poker and waited, while an increasing rapture laid hold on her. She ceased to think. She gave herself up to feel. Her long pleasure was broken by a sound that she had waited for in agony several times in her life. She leaned forward and listened, smiling. There could be no mistake. She closed her eyes and drank it in. Once it ceased abruptly.

‘Go on,’ she murmured, half aloud. ‘That isn’t the end.’

Then the end came very distinctly in a lull between two rain-gusts. Mary Postgate drew her breath short between her teeth and shivered from head to foot.
‘That’s
all right,’ said she contentedly, and went up to the house, where she scandalized the whole routine by taking a luxurious hot bath before tea, and came down looking, as Miss Fowler said when she saw her lying all relaxed on the other sofa, ‘quite handsome!’

Late came the God, having sent his forerunners who were not regarded –

Late, but in wrath;

Saying: “The wrong shall be paid, the contempt be rewarded

On all that she hath.’

He poisoned the blade and struck home, the full bosom receiving

The wound and the venom in one, past cure or relieving.

He made treaty with Time to stand still that the grief might be fresh –

Daily renewed and nightly pursued through her soul to her flesh –

Mornings of memory, noontides of agony, midnights unslaked for her,

Till the stones of the streets of her Hells and her Paradise ached for her.

So she lived while her body corrupted upon her.

And she called on the Night for a sign, and a Sign was allowed,

And she builded an Altar and served by the light of her Vision –

Alone, without hope of regard or reward, but uncowed,

Resolute, selfless, divine.

These things she did in Love’s honour…

What is a God beside Woman? Dust and derision!

T
HE
new Church Visitor had just left after a twenty minutes’ call. During that time, Mrs Ashcroft had used such English as an elderly, experienced, and pensioned cook should, who had seen life in London. She was the readier, therefore, to slip back into easy, ancient Sussex (’t’s softening to ‘d’s as one warmed) when the bus brought Mrs Fettley from thirty miles away for a visit, that pleasant March Saturday. The two had been friends since childhood; but, of late, destiny had separated their meetings by long intervals.

Much was to be said, and many ends, loose since last time, to be ravelled up on both sides, before Mrs Fettley, with her bag of quilt-patches, took the couch beneath the window commanding the garden, and the football ground in the valley below.

‘Most folk got out at Bush Tye for the match there,’ she explained, ‘so there weren’t no one for me to cushion agin, the last five mile. an’ she
do
just about bounce ye.’

‘You’ve took no hurt,’ said her hostess. ‘You don’t brittle by agein’, Liz.’

Mrs Fettley chuckled and made to match a couple of patches to her liking. ‘No, or I’d ha’ broke twenty year back. You can’t ever mind when I was so’s to be called round, can ye?’

Mrs Ashcroft shook her head slowly – she never hurried – and went on stitching a sack-cloth lining into a list-bound rush tool-basket. Mrs Fettley laid out more patches in the spring light through the geraniums on the window-sill, and they were silent awhile.

‘What like’s this new visitor o’ yourn?’ Mrs Fettley inquired, with a nod towards the door. Being very short-sighted, she had, on her entrance, almost bumped into the lady.

Mrs Ashcroft suspended the big packing-needle judicially on high, ere she stabbed home. ‘Settin’ aside she don’t bring much news with her yet, I dunno as I’ve anythin’ special agin her.’

‘Ourn, at Keyneslade,’ said Mrs Fettley, ‘she’s full o’ words an’ pity, but she don’t stay for answers. Ye can get on with your thoughts while she clacks.’

‘This ‘un don’t clack. She’s aimin’ to be one o’ those High Church nuns, like.’

‘Ourn’s married, but, by what they say, she’ve made no great gains of it…’ Mrs Fettley threw up her sharp chin. ‘Lord! How they dam’ cherubim do shake the very bones o’ the place!’

The tile-sided cottage trembled at the passage of two specially chartered forty-seat charabancs on their way to the Bush Tye match; a regular Saturday ‘shopping’ bus, for the county’s capital, fumed behind them; while, from one of the crowded inns, a fourth car backed out to join the procession, and held up the stream of through pleasure-traffic.

‘You’re as free-tongued as ever, Liz,’ Mrs Ashcroft observed.

‘Only when I’m with you. Otherwhiles, I’m Granny – three times over. I lay that basket’s for one o’ your gran’chiller – ain’t it?’

“Tis for Arthur – my Jane’s eldest.’

‘But he ain’t workin’ nowheres, is he?’

‘No. ’Tis a picnic-basket.’

‘You’re let off light. My Willie, he’s alius at me for money for them aireated wash-poles folk puts up in their gardens to draw the music from Lunnon, like. an’ I give it ’im – pore fool me!’

‘An’ he forgets to give you the promise-kiss after, don’t he?’ Mrs Ashcroft’s heavy smile seemed to strike inwards.

‘He do. No odds ‘twixt boys now an’ forty years back. Take all an’ give naught – an’ we to put up with it! Pore fool we! Three shillin’ at a time Willie’ll ask me for!’

‘They don’t make nothin’ o’ money these days,’ Mrs Ashcroft said.

‘An’ on’y last week,’ the other went on, ‘me daughter, she ordered a quarter pound suet at the butcher’s; an’ she sent it back to ’im to be chopped. She said she couldn’t bother with choppin’ it.’

‘I lay he charged her, then.’

‘I lay he did. She told me there was a whisk-drive that afternoon at the Institute, an’ she couldn’t bother to do the choppin’.’

‘Tck!’

Mrs Ashcroft put the last firm touches to the basket-lining. She had scarcely finished when her sixteen-year-old grandson, a maiden of the moment in attendance, hurried up the garden path shouting to know if the thing were ready, snatched it, and made off without acknowledgement. Mrs Fettley peered at him closely.

‘They’re goin’ picnickin’ somewheres,’ Mrs Ashcroft explained.

‘Ah,’ said the other, with narrowed eyes. ‘I lay
he
won’t show much mercy to any he comes across, either. Now ‘oo the dooce do he remind me of, all of a sudden?’

‘They must look arter theirselves – same as we did.’ Mrs Ashcroft began to set out the tea.

‘No denyin’
you
could, Gracie,’ said Mrs Fettley.

‘What’s in your head now?’

‘Dunno…But it come over me, sudden-like – about dat woman from Rye – I’ve slipped the name – Barnsley, wadn’t it?’

‘Batten – Polly Batten, you’re thinkin’ of.’

‘That’s it – Polly Batten. That day she had it in for you with a hay-fork-time we was all hayin’ at Smalldene – for stealin’ her man.’

‘But you heered me tell her she had my leave to keep him?’ Mrs Ashcroft’s voice and smile were smoother than ever.

‘I did – an’ we was all looking that she’d prod the fork spang through your breastes when you said it.’

‘No-oo. She’d never go beyond bounds – Polly. She shruck too much for reel doin’s.’

‘Allus seems to
me,’
Mrs Fettley said after a pause, ‘that a man ‘twixt two fightin’ women is the foolishest thing on earth. Like a dog bein’ called two ways.’

‘Mebbe. But what set ye off on those times, Liz?’

‘That boy’s fashion o’ carryin’ his head an’ arms. I haven’t rightly looked at him since he’s growed. Your Jane never showed it, but –
him!
Why, ’tis Jim Batten and his tricks come to life again!…Eh?’

‘Mebbe. There’s some that would ha’ made it out so – bein’ barren-like, themselves.’

‘Oho! Ah well! Dearie, dearie me, now!…an’ Jim Batten’s been dead this —‘

‘Seven and twenty year,’ Mrs Ashcroft answered briefly. ‘Won’t ye draw up, Liz?’

Mrs Fettley drew up to buttered toast, currant bread, stewed tea, bitter as leather, some home-preserved pears, and a cold boiled pig’s tail to help down the muffins. She paid all the proper compliments.

‘Yes. I dunno as I’ve ever owed me belly much,’ said Mrs Ashcroft thoughtfully. ‘We only go through this world once.’

‘But don’t it lay heavy on ye, sometimes?’ her guest suggested.

‘Nurse says I’m a sight liker to die o’ me indigestion than me leg.’ For Mrs Ashcroft had a long-standing ulcer on her shin, which needed regular care from the village nurse, who boasted (or others did, for her) that she had dressed it one hundred and three times already during her term of office.

‘An’ you that
was
so able, too! It’s all come on ye before your full time, like. I’ve watched ye goin’.’ Mrs Fettley spoke with real affection.

‘Somethin’s bound to find ye sometime. I’ve me ’eart left me still,’ Mrs Ashcroft returned.

‘You was always big-hearted enough for three. That’s somethin’ to look back on at the day’s eend.’

‘I reckon you’ve
your
back-lookin’s, too,’ was Mrs Ashcroft’s answer.

‘You know it. But I don’t think much regardin’ such matters excep’ when I’m along with you, Gra’. Takes two sticks to make a fire.’

Mrs Fettley stared, with jaw half-dropped, at the grocer’s bright calendar on the wall. The cottage shook again to the roar of the motor traffic, and the crowded football ground below the garden roared almost as loudly; for the village was well set to its Saturday leisure.

Mrs Fettley had spoken very precisely for some time without interruption, before she wiped her eyes. ‘And,’ she concluded, ‘they read ‘is death-notice to me, out o’ the paper last month. O’ course it wadn’t any o’
my
becomin’ concerns – let be I ’adn’t set eyes on him for so long. O’ course I couldn’t say nor show nothin’. Nor I’ve no rightful call to go to Eastbourne to see ‘is grave, either. I’ve been schemin’ to slip over there by the bus some day; but they’d ask questions at ‘ome past endurance. So I aven’t even
that
to stay me.’

‘But you’ve ‘ad your satisfactions?’

‘Godd! Yess! Those four years ’e was workin’ on the rail near us.

An’ the other drivers they gave him a brave funeral, too.’

‘Then you’ve naught to cast-up about. ‘Nother cup o’ tea?’

The light and air had changed a little with the sun’s descent, and the two elderly ladies closed the kitchen door against chill. A couple of jays squealed and skirmished through the undraped apple-trees in the garden. This time, the word was with Mrs Ashcroft, her elbows on the tea-table, and her sick leg propped on a stool…

‘Well I never! But what did your ‘usband say to that?’ Mrs Fettley asked, when the deep-toned recital halted.’

“E said I might go where I pleased for all of ‘im. But seein’ ’e was bedrid, I said I’d ‘tend ’im out. ’E knowed I wouldn’t take no advantage of ’im in that state. ’E lasted eight or nine week. Then he was took with a seizure-like; an’ laid stone-still for days. Then ’e propped ‘imself up abed an’ says: “You pray no man’ll ever deal with you like you’ve dealed with some.”

“An’ you?” I says, for
you
know, Liz, what a rover ’e was. “It cuts both ways,” says ‘e, “but
I’m
death-wise, an’ I can see what’s comin’ to you.” He died a-Sunday an’ was buried a-Thursday…an’ yet I’d set a heap by him – one time or – did I ever?’

‘You never told me that before,’ Mrs Fettley ventured.

‘I’m payin’ ye for what ye told me just now. Him bein’ dead, I wrote up, sayin’ I was free for good, to that Mrs Marshall in Lunnon-which gave me my first place as kitchen-maid – Lord, how long ago! She was well pleased, for they two was both gettin’ on, an’ I knowed their ways. You remember, Liz, I used to go to ’em in service between whiles, for years – when we wanted money, or – or my ‘usband was away – on occasion.’

“E
did
get that six months at Chichester, didn’t ‘e?’ Mrs Fettley whispered. ‘We never rightly won to the bottom of it.’

“E’d ha’ got more, but the man didn’t die.’

‘None o’ your doin’s, was it, Gra’?’

‘No! ’twas the woman’s husband this time. an’ so, my man bein’ dead, I went back to them Marshall’s, as cook, to get me legs under a gentleman’s table again, and be called with a handle to me name. That was the year you shifted to Portsmouth.’

‘Cosham,’ Mrs Fettley corrected. ‘There was a middlin’ lot o’ new buildin’ bein’ done there. My man went first, an’ got the room, an’ I follered.’

‘Well, then, I was a year-abouts in Lunnon, all at a breath, like, four meals a day an’ livin’ easy. Then, ‘long towards autumn, they two went travellin’, like, to France; keepin’ me on, for they couldn’t do without me. I put the house to rights for the caretaker, an’ then I slipped down ‘ere to me sister Bessie – me wages in me pockets, an’ all ‘ands glad to be’old of me.’