Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead (8 page)

“Dead most likely!” she replied, shaking out her ear trumpet. “But she needs a blanket to cover up those shocking legs. My son had better help you carry her into the house.”

She eyed the dazzling and shapely legs with sullen disfavour and shouted to Norah when she appeared again from the kitchen, “Fetch a blanket and the Master, the blanket first and use one from your own bed.”

Ebin arrived before the blanket and stood staring in appalled horror at the beautiful body and coarse face of his old mistress. He was filled with pity and disgust. “How could I have ever touched her?” he thought; but he helped her husband carry her to the kitchen with the utmost care. As she was lifted from the ground the bloodstained body of the squashed cat was revealed.

“That woman has killed my cat,” the old woman declared, as she examined the pitiful little body; and she noted with interest that one eye had been squashed right out of its head, while the other remained almost normal.

“Quite remarkable!” she said as she trod purposefully towards the kitchen.

The baker’s wife lay on the kitchen table, still and dead. She would no longer prance down the village street in transparent blouses, or lie beneath the willow trees on the river bank on summer afternoons. Doctor Hatt came and made arrangements for the body to be taken to hospital for a post mortem; and now they were waiting for the horse-drawn ambulance to arrive. The red kitchen curtains were drawn across the windows, and the corpse was covered by a sheet—which Grandmother Willoweed pulled down now and then to have another look at the dead face.

“Did you know her hair was dyed, Norah?” she asked the terrified maid, whose trembling hands were plucking a chicken. The girl kept her back turned towards the table and envied Eunice, safe in her bedroom on the doctor’s orders—but why had he told her to call at the surgery the following day for an examination? “And bring your sister with you,” he had said. Did he think she was suffering from the madness? she wondered, but it was enough to make a girl faint seeing a mad woman going on like that. He had given her something to make her sleep; but perhaps that was to keep the madness at bay. Norah could bear it no longer and left the half-plucked chicken to creep upstairs and look at her sleeping sister. She felt her brow, and it was cool; and she looked so pretty and peaceful lying there in her deep sleep. Norah was reassured and returned to the kitchen. Grandmother Willoweed was there again hovering about the dead woman.

“Foolish girl,” she grumbled, “leaving the chicken like that, the cat might have got it.”

“There isn’t a cat any more,” said Norah sadly. She had been fond of that little white cat.

“No more there is,” the old woman replied thoughtfully. “The baker will have to take something off his bill. It was quite a valuable cat, and now his wife has killed it. I must speak to him about it when he comes to collect her.”

N
ORAH AND Eunice sat in Doctor Hatt’s waiting room. They wore their white cotton gloves and felt ill at ease. Eunice said nothing and gazed out of the window with unseeing eyes; but Norah talked to a fat woman who was worried by flatulence and to a small boy on his own who was obviously suffering from mumps. Someone had left a copy of
The Daily Courier
on the table, and on the front page there was an article headed, ‘Baker’s Wife Runs Amok.’ Norah turned her eyes away; but the woman next to her seized the newspaper and tried to read bits out loud.

“It says here she was a pitiful sight. I’ll say she was. And her husband is a very respected man in the village. That is more than his wife was, so he’s well rid of her, I say—”

The woman went on and on and Norah tried to give her attention to the little boy. The madness, the madness, you couldn’t get away from it. She glanced at Eunice; but there was no sign of any madness there, although she was strangely quiet and sulky and had been so for days.

“There’s the funeral bells,” the woman exclaimed, “I’d have dearly loved to have gone to that funeral if it hadn’t been for my wind,” and she listened enraptured to the sad tolling of the bells.

Doctor Hatt was standing at the surgery door saying, “I can see you now, Eunice,” and he smiled at the girls kindly. They followed him into the ether-smelling surgery and stood close together by the door.

“Now, Eunice,” he said, “I shall have to give you a thorough examination. You must take your clothes off behind that screen, and then I shall want you to lie on the couch.” They looked at the black, shiny couch with a strip of white running down the centre.

Twenty minutes later the girls were walking down the village street, and they could still hear the funeral bell tolling in their ears although it had ceased some time ago. Eunice held on to her sister’s arm; but they did not speak to each other.

They did not speak until they had reached the privacy of their bedroom, and then Eunice sat on their bed and cried, “Oh, Norah, what am I to do, it’s … Joe Lott’s baby and he can’t marry me. Norah, don’t be cross with me.”

She held her head in her hands and large tears rolled down her pink cheeks. Norah tried to think what to say or what suggestions to make and at last she said:

“I blame myself. I should have looked after you better. I was so happy with Fig walking out together in the fields and I really think he was coming round to marrying me. But he won’t now, not with the disgrace, and all.”

Then Eunice cried even more because she had ruined her sister’s chance of marriage, and Norah comforted her and they tried to make plans for the future. “I must see Joe just once more to tell him what has happened. I did kind of hint about it the last time I saw him, but he laughed, and said it couldn’t be true. Joe was always laughing, that’s what made me like him at first; but I don’t want him to laugh about the baby, just be kind.” And they sat there with their arms around each other until they were disturbed by the harsh voice of their mistress calling up the back stairs, “Come downstairs girls. Don’t you know it’s after four?”

Ebin Willoweed had telephoned an account of the funeral to the
Courier
from the village post office, and he laughed to himself on his way home thinking how his mother pounced on his articles after breakfast each morning, even reading bits out loud to him, but never suspecting they were written by her own son. He felt guilty when he thought of the dreadful suffering and horror going on around him, which was directly the cause of his happiness and sudden prosperity. Then he thought of his mistress’s poor dead body, with its raddled old face, lying out in the yard.

“I won’t think of it,” he muttered to himself. “They have had their happiness and I’ve been wretched for years. It’s my turn now. Perhaps I shall get the madness next, so I must enjoy the little time I have. Good God, I’m most likely mad now, talking to myself,” and he strode through the village in a purposeful manner to prove to himself he wasn’t going mad.

While the family were at tea, his mother suddenly attacked him about the children’s education and wanted to know why their lessons had abruptly ceased. He had been expecting this, and had indeed been rehearsing imaginary conversations with his mother on this subject, and to his surprise the discussion went just as he had hoped and he was able to produce his trump card and say that it was time Dennis went to school and he was in a position to pay the fees. “As a matter of fact, I’m thinking of sending him into the Navy later on.”

“As a stoker, no doubt,” his mother replied. “Anyway you are talking absolute nonsense. You are nothing less than a beggar dependent on my charity, and if you are counting on any publisher buying one of your trumpery novels you must be more of a fool than I already believe you to be.”

“Now mother, calm yourself.” He spoke to her in a mockingly soothing voice. “I’ve been doing quite well lately. I think the last cheque I paid into my bank yesterday was for ninety-eight pounds, and I shall be paying in another nice little sum in a few days, I expect. You can leave Dennis’s school fees quite safely to me, Mother.”

“I don’t believe it. You are lying. No one would pay you for the rubbish you write.” But as she spoke she remembered the sound of the long unused typewriter that had come floating down the stairs to be caught in her ear trumpet. “If you are speaking the truth you can pay … you can pay for your keep and for your children … all three of them,” the old woman spluttered out her words in jerks.

“Well, if that’s the position Mother, I think I’ll return to London. It will be near my work and most likely cheaper,” and, as he got up to leave the table, he glanced at his mother and saw she was almost purple in the face and seemed to be having trouble with her teeth. Hattie started to laugh but Emma frowned at her, so she covered her face with her hands and hoped her grandmother would think she was crying. The old woman clumped from the room to adjust her teeth in the pantry, and when she returned the dining-room was empty. She stood there for a moment gazing at the remains of the tea on the table and the hastily-pushed-back chairs. Her jaw started to tremble, and she stood tapping the table with her short, thick fingers; then she turned away and slowly climbed the stairs to her room.

Ebin was delighted. It was the first time he had routed his mother for years, and he had rushed his family from the room before she returned to spoil his victory. He suggested taking the children for a walk to the miser’s cottage—a little burnt house, hardly more than a hut, all deserted in a field. Once in an inventive mood he had told them it had been an old miser’s cottage and that the gold that was hidden there had never been found, although people had taken down most of the cottage in their search after the miser’s death. Hattie and Dennis half believed this story and loved to dig up the flagstones on the floor and pick away at the charred walls of the cottage for gold and treasure. For some reason, perhaps because their father had first told them about the old miser, they felt in honour bound never to go to the cottage without him, and often there were many months between their visits and always more of the cottage had fallen down since they had last been there. This time they were armed with a cork-screw and a long bone-handled nail-file, and with these they attacked the miser’s chimney, and after about half an hour’s scraping and filing they did manage to take out one brick. They would have been quite content to spend the entire evening taking down the rest of the chimney.

Ebin watched them at first with amusement and he thought, “I don’t care what anyone says, I’m a good chap really. Not many men placed as I am would spend their first earnings for years on their son’s education, and here I am in a little broken-down hovel just to give my children amusement. Emma didn’t want me to bring them here—jealous, I suppose. Didn’t want the children to walk through the village in case they caught this thing that is about. But you can’t coddle them like that; it’s making Dennis a damn cissy. Francis Hatt doesn’t seem to think this thing is contagious anyway. They haven’t found anything wrong with the water yet; so now they are having a shot at the bread, I believe. Might write something for the
Courier
about that.” As his thoughts rambled on, he leant against the blackened cottage wall, poking the floor with his stick. He noticed the tender young ferns pushing their way between the flagstones. “A few weeks ago I wouldn’t have noticed how beautiful those ferns were in this desolate place. It must be because I’m happier that I see things with new eyes these days.” And he wandered from the cottage and stood looking down the valley, and watched the cows returning from being milked and walking with their graceful walk, gently turning their heads from side to side. “If only women walked like cows instead of strutting and stamping with their heels they would look a damn sight better,” he thought; but suddenly he became impatient and was tired of the ruined cottage and the children and wanted to be at the White Lion talking to the journalists who were staying there.

The children were by this time extremely dirty and rather tired and did not want to be hustled home. Then, unfortunately, they came to one of the fields filled with the cows their father had so much admired. Dennis was frightened of cows and, when be saw the great beasts tossing their heads adorned with their curling horns, he knew he could never pass them. Even the ones who were grazing kept slashing at flies with their tails in an alarming manner. He stood at the gate and refused to budge while Hattie coaxed him and his father swore, “You bloody little fool, they won’t hurt you. If you don’t come immediately, I’ll leave you here and you’ll have to face them all alone!” And that is exactly what did happen. Ebin went on, although both children begged him not to, and he forced Hattie to go with him, which she sulkily did, looking over her shoulder every now and then at the sad little figure standing by the gate. When they had gone out of sight Dennis rushed back to the miser’s hovel with the idea of staying there until the following morning, when the farmer would take the offending cows away to be milked. The grimy little ruin had lost its charm and appeared a desolate place to the boy, who sat down on a pile of bricks to wait for the morning, which seemed so far away. When it was almost dark, some enormous flying beetles started a mad and dreadful dance round a may tree with the blossom all dried and brown upon it.

When they reached the bridge, Ebin told Hattie to go home by herself because he wanted to visit the White Lion. He felt depressed and the good esteem in which he had been holding himself had somehow gone. He hoped Dennis would have returned before he did; otherwise there would be great trouble with Emma. And now he kept thinking of the lonely small figure standing by the gate in the dusk. But a country boy afraid of cows—it was too absurd! I shall feel better after a drink, he thought as he tripped into the White Lion. When he left half an hour later he had heard that there were eleven new cases of the strange illness in the village. Also, the dog from the White Lion had died of convulsions.

W
HEN EMMA discovered Hattie had returned without Dennis she was rather unjustly angry with the child. She was not unduly worried because she thought her father must have returned for Dennis when he had sent Hattie home by herself. But later she heard the heavy front gates close and saw Ebin walking through the dank, tree-lined front garden alone.