The Wooden Shepherdess (47 page)

By now it was past ten-o'clock, and Norah was starting to panic....

The only other person in sight was an unimpressive figure in gray flannel bags and an old tweed jacket with leather patches: a weather-worn man in his thirties, leaning against a large old-fashioned open two-seater and wholly absorbed in a map. Still, he might at least know where she ought to inquire: so she walked across. But even when she was standing right over the man he never looked up from his map.

“Hi,” she said, “You! Wakey-wakey!”

He jumped. “O-oh.... Are you the young lady I've come here to meet? Forgive me: I'd told the girl in the office to let me know.—Coffee before we start?”

Dumbfounded, to answer both questions at once she nodded first and afterwards shook her head.

Just then a hotel porter arrived with a large leather case which he strapped to the luggage-rack at the back. Whereupon the Mystery Man said “Allow me,” took Norah's small cardboard case from her hands (it was glaringly tied up with string where a catch had burst) and carefully stowed it away in the dicky.

“Now: are you sure you've got all you want? If so we'd better be moving.”

He handed her into the passenger-seat, tucked her well up in a Shetland rug, cranked the engine—and Lo! Before she had fully recovered her wits they were off, with a roar, amplified in that cavernous place, which recalled the cathedral organ.

The car might be ancient but ate up the miles: the scruffy driver looked scarcely a regular chauffeur but certainly knew how to drive! They had shot through Warwick before he remarked: “Did Nellie tell you how my sister got crippled?”

(His
sister
? Crikey....) “No, Sir.”

“A toss out hunting, ten years ago. She broke her neck.”

“But—that kills yer!” Norah blurted out in surprise.

“They saved her life. But it left her paralyzed.”

“Cruelty, not to let her die!” thought Norah—They would, one of us.... “How she pass the time?”

“She still has the use of her hands: which is where you come in.”

Norah thought for a moment. “Kids?”

“The eldest is just sixteen. She's abroad in school—But frankly,” (he spoke with a note of deep concern in his voice) “Polly's more a source of worry now than a help.”

“Boys, is it?”

“
Eh
?” He seemed rather taken aback: “No. It's her craze for Hitler.” (Hitler? Surely that name rang some sort of bell—but never mind now....) “She's twice done a bunk from school in Geneva simply to hear him speak.”

Without losing speed he swerved to avoid a wandering horse and cart with the carter asleep, throwing Norah from side to side in her ample seat. When that was over,

“G'roother kids?” she asked.

“Two. A girl of ten and a boy nearly eight who is backward a bit: slight brain-damage when he was born, though not too bad—mental age, six.” He drove at a dizzying speed, but Norah was more elated than frightened. “Most of the day she reads; but it tires her eyes. Or listens to Wireless Talks; but they're often boring. She doesn't care much about music—like me: so gramophones aren't any use. Hence my idea that she ought to learn something new she could do with those hands of hers. It was Mrs. Winter suggested tapestry-work, and offered to ask her sister to find us a teacher: it
had
to be somebody young who wouldn't get on my sister's nerves, as one of those usual middle-aged Homespun Emmas would. Mary isn't a fool; and she finds that jabbering hospital-nurse we have to keep in the house quite trial enough!” He gave Norah a sideways appraising glance: “I can't tell you how grateful we are to you, saying you'd have a go.”

“Think I'll do?”

“Nellie's certain you will. She told me so only last night.”

Norah stiffened: “
Last night
?”

“Why yes: I came round, hoping to find you and meet your mother. No one was in, so I went to see Nellie instead.”

Cheeky blighter, poking his nose in her Yard on the sly while they were all round at the Fish-and-Chips! “Well, what did you....” Norah corrected herself: “What did she tell you?”

“Plenty—from when you were still just a kid but ran the whole place and had all of them eating out of your hand. But it all boils down to she thinks you're a girl in a thousand. You're bound to be very much missed. And” (he was wondering how best to put it) “you're bound to miss them very much—the whole box-of-tricks, I'm afraid.” He glanced at her quickly again: “Frankly, I wonder what makes you willing to leave.”

“So do I wonder!” thought Norah, pondering what lay ahead in that outside world which she knew so little about.

An awkward silence set in. She was prickly still about what he must think of her home, whereas he—though of course he had noticed the sudden abrasive note in her voice but couldn't guess why, having seen too much of how out-of-work Welsh miners lived to find anything odd in any Coventry yard—had let his mind wander off onto other things. What a curious city this Coventry was, he mused. In spite of its noble cathedral, that fairy-tale medieval center was not a bit like the center of other cathedral cities, but mostly the derelict relics of ancient trades (and medieval “yards,” like the one where this young woman lived): then in contrast, those miles of enormous up-to-date factories hemming it in! A continuous manufacturing town ever since the Middle Ages, and still one today.... Moreover the worst of the slump must be over, he thought: shift-working was starting again, to judge by the distant roar of machines all night and the glow in the sky....

But soon the awkwardness seemed to fade of itself, and they found themselves simply enjoying together the autumn sun: the rush of the wind, and the way that these High Cotswold roads allowed his old Bentley—built to his order while still at Oxford—to show its paces.

In forty-three minutes they'd covered the forty-five miles from Warwick to Cirencester (“We won't go through beastly Swindon: I made that mistake coming up”); and stopped for an early corned-beef and pickles lunch at a pub on the Warminster-Shaftesbury road.

The nearer they got to Mellton, however, the less call there seemed for speed. He wanted “to show her the country,” and presently turned up a sunken lane (incredibly steep, with the Bentley just fitting between its banks) to somewhere on top of the downs which he called “the chase.” It was wonderful, seen through the single turreted gate in its miles of lofty wall: there were streaks of red and yellow already in wilder woods than Norah had ever seen. “What picnics!” Norah thought, even though the deer he'd promised her failed to appear.

Then headlong down to the flint-built village of Mellton. There he stopped the car by the church: “Let's leave the car here, and walk—no, don't bother about your case, Young Trivett will drive it round.” He paused, and grimaced: “Thank heaven that after his second stroke Old Trivett retired at last, and passed the job on to his son!”

Crossing the park together on foot she found herself almost forgetting how unlike he was to anyone else she knew; and that in spite of his BBC accent, and some of the words he used which made you keep on your toes all the time to make out what he meant. Then they passed through a gate, and entered a twilit tunnel of ancient yews. Here two children suddenly dropped from a branch overhead, shrieking and jumping all over the man like puppies. “
They
seem ter like 'im,” she thought as the pair of them clambered up, one of his shoulders and one on his back.

“Susan and Gillie,” he told her: “And there goes my sister!”

Norah gasped with surprise as something crossed a distant lawn at speed with the pop-pop-pop of a two-stroke engine, then vanished behind some trees: for surely cripples were kept indoors wrapped up in rugs, not left running wild in the garden like jumping-crackers on Guy Fawkes night!

“She didn't see us; but never mind, you'll meet her tomorrow.”

Decanting the children he led her into the house and down lots of passages: “Now let's find Mrs. Winter.”

At last they found that majestic person—a monument in black silk. He attempted an introduction: “Ah Mrs. Winter, this is Miss.... Gosh, do you know I'm afraid I've forgotten your name?”

“How like a man!” said the queenly presence, already lit up by a welcoming smile: “Anyway—here you are my dear, safe and sound! We all thought he might have killed you, driving the pace he does.” She took Norah's arm in a motherly way: “Well, come to my room for a nice cup of tea: you'll be glad of it after your journey. And tell me all the news,” she went on, leading Norah away: “How's my Nellie? And dear little Syl?”

Next morning when Norah woke to a tap-tap-tap on her window she couldn't believe at first she was really in bed at all: for the sun shone straight in her eyes! No window she'd known in the past looked out on anything better than somebody's wall; you had to go right outside for even a glimpse of the sky.

Yet indoors and even in bed she most certainly was, as she found when she wriggled her toes; and this tapping against the glass was not that old knocker-up any more but just an inquisitive bird. From her bed she could see the gardens, just waking up too; and the misty trees of the park. Beyond that again rose the high bald downs, with hanging woods on their sides....

Norah heaved a luxurious sigh, surprised at beginning to feel that in time she might even come to
like
living somewhere like this. “Seein' the sky through yer winder's what done it,” the slum-child decided.

Then, after breakfast with Mrs. Winter and somebody called Mr. Wantage who seemed to know Coventry well (he'd been born just outside at Binlay, he said), she had to be taken to see the loom. This was the queerest contraption, designed for not using your feet, and had had to be specially made. As she studied its workings, “You won't find teaching the Mistress too easy, you know,” Mrs. Winter warned her: “She's got back the use of her hands, fair enough—and they're strong as a blacksmith's, but clumsier than she thinks.”

Norah mused for a moment. “What she
can't
do, how she take bein' 'elped?”

“Ah, that needs a bit of doing....”

Upstairs in her room, she made her bed under Mrs. Winter's watchful (but tactful) eye. While talking of something else Mrs. Winter still managed to teach her the front from the back and the head from the tail of a sheet, and how to fold in “hospital corners.” Norah took it all in good-as-gold because Mrs. Winter was kind and because there was manifest sense in it—
if
you'd got time. It was just as they finished the bed that they heard a high-pitched hysterical hubbub which rose from the garden below; and Norah crossed to the window to look.

The morning was bright for the time of year but colder: hoar-frost lay on a lawn where two Red Indians—fully tricked out with small bows-and-arrows and feathered head-dresses—chased an unfortunate Paleface she recognized as yesterday's driver; that “Mr. Augustine” (everyone here called him this, and she couldn't remember the rest of his name). They pursued with blood-curdling yells as he leapt over bushes and flower-beds, vainly crying for mercy. Then one of them shot an arrow: it went pretty wide, but the archer shouted “You're dead!”—and at once the obedient Paleface died, falling flat on his face on the frosty grass.

The whooping Red Indians fell on him, savagely tugging his hair and almost tearing it out as they fought for his scalp. “Mother of God!” murmured Norah, vaguely shocked at the violent scene although she didn't exactly know why.

Mrs. Winter forbore to refer to the children as “highly strung” (which is what their governess would have). All she said was: “That's how our Mr. Augustine is.”

This “Mr. Augustine”: an uncle only, yet somehow he seemed like the only man in the family, Norah thought: not once had anyone mentioned the children's Dad. “This
Mrs
Wadamy: is there a
Mr
?” she asked on the way downstairs.

“Yes.”

That was that! Norah thought she sensed a warning it wasn't her place to ask too many questions. But presently Mrs. Winter went on: “The Master can't get home very often these days, not since the time of the General Strike when he went back to Parliament. Now, he's a Minister.”

Mary herself had made of the General Strike a crisis-excuse to insist on Gilbert's return to the Parliamentary stage, rather than letting his life be wasted dancing attendance on someone as good as dead. There he had soldiered on in the Liberal ranks till Labour's disastrous second tenure of office had led to the stirring events of 1931: to Financial Crisis, an all-party National Government formed, new elections called.

In those crucial days, with the Liberal Party split wide-open again (and this time, for good), he had simply followed his conscience. Gilbert had long distrusted Lloyd George (who was it said Lloyd George had been “born with a silver tongue in his cheek?”); and Herbert Samuel only “led” under L.G.'s orders, while L.G. was ill. Moreover Gilbert suspected dear Herbert himself of failing to understand that the country's paramount need today was for National Unity, not any outworn King Charles's Head (or in other words, that Samuel's stubbornness over Free Trade must soon force him out of the “National” Cabinet). Clearly then Conscience called him to throw in his lot with his old friend Simon among the faction leaders, and fight that autumn election of 1931 on the Simonite “Liberal-National” ticket....

This meant that the Tory opponent to whom he'd so nearly lost his seat in the Liberal shambles of 1924 had been forced to stand down; and not only had Gilbert romped home on the “National” landslide but found himself given (at last, after all these frustrating back-bencher years) a small ministerial post.

*

Norah was not someone easily scared; but this Friday morning when first she saw Mrs. Wadamy close she was scared like you feel when you walk in a graveyard at night. That corpse-like body, on top of which was a head never moving except for the lips and eyes; and too like a head popping up at you out of a grave for comfort—like somebody starting to resurrect but got stuck.... It shows how badly she wanted to look away that she glued her eyes to Mrs. Wadamy's face and stared.