Читать книгу Seven for a Secret - Mary Webb - Страница 9

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The Makepeace kitchen was even more miraculously neat than most country kitchens. The saucepans and frying-pans looked as if they could never by any possibility have been used. The tiles had the soft polish given by daily washing with milk and water. The open grate shone smooth and immaculate as a fine lady’s shoe. The check tablecloth of red and blue revealed, when folded back for culinary operations, a table of honeycomb whiteness. The lustre jugs, the Broseley plates and Coalport teapot gleamed from the dresser. The eight-day wall-clock of inlaid oak, with the soothing tick and the chime that sounded as if it were made of pale gold, was rich with satiny polish. Everything seemed to be there to satisfy Mrs. Makepeace’s love of cleaning. Things were cleaned not because they needed it, but because it was ‘their day.’ The result was that Jonathan and Robert appeared as wild hill-men of some earlier race strayed into the trim residence of an elf.

They sat, on an evening in mid-January, one on each side of the fire. Mrs. Makepeace was at the farm, helping Gillian to pack. The thaw had come, and the path from cottage to farm was full of large dark patches where the snow had melted. The jessamine bush by the door showed bright green points, and the lingering afterglow was green beyond the window.

Robert looked across the room into the pale sky, and the pelargonium with the white eye, that stood beside the one with scented leaves against the muslin curtain of the lower half of the window, returned his gaze limpidly. There was something of Gillian, he thought, in its wistful boldness. He called it, to himself, ‘peartness’ and ‘bashfulness,’ and he began to make a poem about it, humming beneath his breath as he whittled thatching-pegs. The sticks for these lay in a pile on the rug, which was one of Mrs. Makepeace’s own manufacture—of bright-coloured wools with the word ‘Welcome’ in the centre. They were using their pocket-knives, of large and practical make. The potatoes for supper simmered gently, hanging above the fire, and a stockpot on the hob gave out a good herby odour.

Jonathan paused in his work and looked at Robert for a long time, his mouth a little open.

‘So she’s going?’

Robert nodded.

‘The missus ’ere,’ said Jonathan, with a backward jerk of his thumb towards his wife’s sacking apron hanging on the door, ‘gave me so to understand.’

Jonathan was so used to being watched and guarded by his wife that he lived in a perpetual sense of her imminence. Whether she was away at market, when the door was tenanted by her apron and sunbonnet, or at the wash-tub, when her cloak and hat were there, she was always present to him.

‘Ah! She says, “When they shake their wings, it goes hard, but they wunna come back till they break their wings.” ’

On the upper half of the window Robert saw a picture of Gillian in the slatey dress, which was real to him because she had described it, lying as he had often seen a wild duck lie, with one broken wing trailing out beside it.

‘We mun see to it as she dunna.’

‘I reckon it’ll be me to drive her to the station to-morrow-day, Bob?’

‘No; me.’

Jonathan fell into a seemingly mystical contemplation of his pegs. The clock registered a quarter of an hour.

‘Flocks, hill pasture, a new shippen and a sight of money in the bank, so they do say!’ he remarked.

Robert came out of a dream of wild duck and rose-coloured pelargoniums.

‘Money? What money?’

‘Money as young Gillian Lovekin’ll get when the maister goes.’

‘Money,’ said Robert, going on with his work, ‘is nought but dung.’

‘Dear sores, man! It buys all but Paradise. And some say it buys even that.’

‘Can it buy love?’

‘So they do say!’ Jonathan chuckled.

‘Where did they say that?’

‘At the public—the “Naked Maid.” ’

‘I dunna like that name. Why dunna they say “The Mermaid’s Rest,” like the sign says?’

‘Well, lad, there she is over the door, shameless as the Woman o’ Babylon, mother-naked to the waist. We call ’er what she is. I’m thankful she’s got some decent scales. She’s not so ondecent as Eve in my poor mother’s Bible. It’s little wonder to me as Adam went wrong. Now if Eve had bought a calico chemise and a pair o’ stays and a tuthree petticoats and a nice print dress and apern, there’d ha’ been no such May-games with serpents and apples and what-not. Maybe their eldest would ha’ bin a decent lad and brought up a family close by the old people, and there’d never ha’ bin niggers then.’

‘Why ever not?’

‘Cain’s love-children were the beginning of the niggers.’

Where Jonathan had gained his Scriptural (and apocryphal) knowledge was a mystery. This, and the legendary lore of the countryside, formed the basis of the tales for which he was famous.

‘Paint the wench out, I say, or paint a bodice in. It draws the eye like that. It’s bad for the lads. For till they get married and find out what a poor ornary thing an ’oman is, the lads think she’s summat grand and curious.’

Suddenly, in the midst of the dream of wild duck and pelargoniums, Gillian’s face swam up on the green sky with the pale, lissom body of the mermaid on the sign. Robert got up, threw the pegs on the floor, and walked up and down the little room. Two strides and a half. Turn. Two strides and a half. Turn. He must stop this garrulous old voice, or lead it elsewhere.

‘Tell about the mermaid coming first!’ he said.

‘Washed ashore at Aberdovey. Ah! That’s what came to pass. High tides they get at Aberdovey, time and agen. This was a spring tide like none’s seen since. A mort of queer shells and seaweed came in on that tide, and coloured fishes and sea-flowers from countries far away. And her. There she lay in a swound among the green weed, and a fisherman found her and went nigh mad with love. So she wiled him and she bewitched him, and she sang at him:

‘ “Back to the sea, fisherman! Back to the sea!”

‘ “No danger!” says he. And he kisses her.

‘ “Put me in fresh watter, then,” she says, “so long as it is watter.”

‘ “What’ll you give me?” he says.

‘ “My love for one night!”

‘ “But you’re a cold mermaid. You canna love!”

‘ “I’ll come mortal for one night!”

‘So she came mortal for one night. And in the grey dawn he chucked her into the river. And she swam up-stream to the top of a mountain, and crept across to the spring of another stream, and so to another agen, and at last she was at Dysgwlfas inn, just where the little gyland goes down to the stream. And she sang at the inn-keeper, and wiled him away. Some say they went down to Severn, and so to the sea. But they never heard tell of the inn-keeper agen, only they found a bit of old sea-money in the shallows. Some say as she was seen on the moor with a shepherd that knew a charm to keep her mortal for ever. But anyway, a sign-painter put her on the signboard, and there she be.’

‘She was Gillian!’ thought Robert. This braving of circumstance, this luring of men, this boldness and elusiveness, were all Gillian, and the starting-out to-morrow to conquer the world was very like the mermaid’s journey. Would he might be that shepherd at the end! He knew so well what she wanted, and he was powerless to give it her. He could only put his soul into a poem and enthrone her there. Would she care? He snapped his finger and thumb.

‘Not that!’ he said, and began to love her.

‘Laws, lad! you nearly made me cut meself!’

Jonathan whittled always in fear of ultimate dissolution.

Quick steps came through the slush. With a scraping and rubbing of shoes, Abigail came in, and immediately began to get supper ready.

‘Well, missus! Packed and labelled?’ asked Jonathan.

A noticeable stillness came upon Robert. His brown hands lay motionless on his knees. His eyes waited on his mother’s face.

She was hindered in her dialogue by the supreme necessity of watching Jonathan. No guardian angel with a sinner, rifleman with a target, or cat with a bird, could have been more tense and absorbed than she was when Jonathan wielded a knife. Each time he picked up a stick and began to hack bits from one side to make a firm stay for the cord she leaned a little forward, working her mouth with each cut, unable to speak. Then, as he relapsed into the less dangerous task of marking out a slight groove round the stick, she would relax. Finally, when he flung the peg on to the heap, she would sigh, smile, and take up her parable. So it was only in scattered sentences that Robert heard how the new dress fitted; how Miss Gillian had bought a pink ready-made blouse, three white night-dresses—not unbleached, such as she usually wore—shoes with heels, and a veil; how lovely she looked in the toque made of the slatey drake; how she had taken six rabbit-skins to the chief draper at Weeping Cross, and had them made into a muff and tippet; how she had laughed like half a dozen woodpeckers, and sung like twenty throstles; and how they had finally made some paste and fastened on the label:

Miss Juliana Lovekin,

Passenger to Silverton.

Ah, how sad the white eye of the pelargonium! Almost it seemed to Robert that a dew had fallen in that quiet room, for he saw it through tears.

‘A fine mingicumumbus! And only to go to her a’ntie’s!’ observed Jonathan.

‘Going opens the door to the world,’ said Abigail, turning the stockpot upside-down over an immense basin, and proclaiming supper.

Robert hummed very softly:

‘And howsoever far I’d roam,

I couldna find the smiles and tears of whome.’

‘What a kimet—’ began Jonathan, looking at him open-mouthed. But at this point he cut himself, and Abigail took command. She had everything at hand. No trick of an unkind fate could surprise her. She had simple disinfectants, ointments, clean needles for thorns, soft linen, bandages, even a bit of iron for cauterizing, in case some mad dog should seek out Jonathan and bite him (which Abigail was sure would happen if there were even one case of rabies in the West Country). While she bound him up, she made him feel like a wounded hero, so that a glow came over him, and he enjoyed his troubles, and the idea that he was clumsy was never allowed to enter his mind.

Robert looked at the heap of pegs beside Jonathan. They would take him till midnight with his own. It did not occur to him to leave them undone. There was the task, just as in potato setting or haying, and, if one was incapacitated, the others must do more.

‘What time’ll she start, mother?’

‘The noon train.’

‘Then I’ll please to ask you to give me bite and sup as soon as I’ve milked. I’ll just put on me market coat and wrap horse-rug round me.’

‘You’re set to take her, then?’

‘Ah.’

With a safety-pin in her mouth, Mrs. Makepeace looked at her son across Jonathan’s bandaged hand. Her eyes were keen with love—futile love, for she could not help him. She would have liked to ‘cosset’ him as she did Jonathan, but she knew it was useless. He looked back at her with those deep eyes of his—brooding and sad, stern and a little mocking—and his secret, which she had guessed, but had not certainly known, leapt across the quiet room.

‘Drat the girl!’ thought she. ‘I didna want it to be this way. ’Twas she should ha’ loved first. Now here the lad’ll sit and mope like a bird with a shot mate. Nowt said. Nowt done. Oh, deary me! Canna you hold still a minute, Jonathan, my dear?’

Jonathan, who had been enjoying his cut very much, looked up wistfully, like a child in fault, at this sudden irritability.

‘Mother, is there ever a bit o’ writing-paper in the place?’ asked Robert.

‘Ah! There’s a sheet or two left from the box Mrs. Fanteague sent me Christmas was a year.’

She fetched it.

‘A pen, mother?’

But no pen could be found. They were not a writing family. Isaiah kept the farm accounts, Robert’s songs were in his mind only, and when Abigail wrote on the jam-covers she borrowed a pen from Gillian.

‘There’s a drop of ink, but the pen’s lost,’ she said.

Robert lit the lantern and went out, returning soon with a quill from the poultry-house, which he cut into shape. His mother’s mouth did not work when he used the knife, nor did she watch him. Was he not the marrow of his father, that man of absolute, though quiet, competence?

Robert put the quill and paper on the chest of drawers beside the shell box and the Bible in readiness, and went on with the pegs.

As Mrs. Makepeace washed up she thought: ‘So it goes! Nowt said to her. Nowt said to me. It’ll be a wonder if the Lord Almighty gets a word out of the lad. He’ll just eat sorrow. Now, what’s that letter he’s set on writing when we’ve gone upstairs?’

She fetched the candlestick.

‘Time for us to be going, my dear.’

‘Which was what Lord ’Umphrey said when the Dark Coach came for the Lady Rosanna Tempest,’ remarked Jonathan. ‘ “Time for us to be going,” he says. And in she got. And off they druv. And clap went all! For Lord ’Umphrey was the owd lad himself, and none saw ’em after.’

‘It’s raining soft and quiet,’ said Abigail, opening the door and looking out into the night.

‘Heavy going to-morrow, mother.’

‘Ah, Bob!’ she sighed.

As she knelt in her unbleached nightdress and the red woollen shawl that John had given her, she made an extra prayer for her son.

‘O Lord! Let Miss Gillian and Master and everybody bend to my lad’s will like corn to the wind. Amen.’

But whether this prayer was addressed to Christ or Jehovah or a pagan god it would have been difficult to say.

As soon as he was alone, Robert set out the writing materials and began his letter. It was very short. He addressed it to ‘Mister Gruffydd Conwy, by the kindness of Mister Cadwalladar, Grocer, The Keep.’

With his face bent over the letter, his dark, slightly wavy hair and well-shaped head outlined against the white wall, he made a pleasant picture. When he lifted his wide brows to glance at the golden-sounding clock, the yellow, figured face seemed to congratulate itself, as though it were feminine and had charmed these grey eyes.

Robert was glad when the letter was done. He drew a mug of beer from the cask in the larder and went on with the pegs again. These done, he fell into a deep cogitation, while the low firelight shone up into his face, accentuating the strong jaw, the fine lines about the eyes, the slightly hollow temples, the decisive nose. So he was to sit, alone and brooding, on another winter night not so very far away, while the clock ticked low as if in awe, and the red firelight tinted his face like that of the Roman soldier in Gillian’s picture. Perhaps even now, in the silence, the future spoke; perhaps even now his very self was aware and ready.

She was going from him. Should he ask her to write? Of what use were letters? Either you had a person’s very self beside you or—nothing. Of what use would it be to him, wanting her laugh, her stamp of rage, wanting her there to watch and plan surprises for, of what use to have a letter, stilted and formal, saying she was well and A’ntie sent compliments? Also, she would not be allowed to write to him when her family were aiming at the Church.

‘All as is, is this,’ he thought, ‘the way I feel to the child must be the secret that’s never been told.’

He pondered.

‘No reason I shouldna know she’s well,’ he thought, ‘and things going pleasant.’

He wrote another letter. This was addressed to:

‘Gipsy Johnson,

‘The Caravan on the Fair Ground,

‘Silverton.’

Gipsy Johnson travelled into Wales by way of the Gwlfas every spring, returning in the autumn, and living through the winter at Silverton. He was one of Robert’s friends. Robert had a silent, unstressed, lifelong friendship with a good many people. Each spring and autumn he and Johnson smoked a pipe together by the gipsy fire, saying little, asking few questions, but conscious of mutual trust. There was very little that Johnson did not know about Silverton and the country where lay his beat. Also, he had the key to that curious express system which, in lonely places, can bring news almost as quickly as the telegraph wires, running over the land like secret wildfire—the Mercury of democracy. Under his eye Gillian would be safe. That desire of hers to go to London alone, of which Robert knew, could not be carried into practice without Johnson’s knowledge. It was a desire that must be decisively treated, Robert had decided. Of what use was parental authority or the aphorisms of aunts, or the mild shockedness of a Mr. Gentle, when dealing with a girl like Gillian? His lips took their forbidding line and there was a flicker of amusement in his eyes. He and Johnson were the men for that job, for they could meet wiles with action, and boldness with superior knowledge of the situation, and they were not polished and would have no qualms about using force if necessary. At the idea of himself daring to dictate (though silently) to Miss Lovekin, Robert threw back his head and laughed soundlessly. Yes. He and Johnson would carry it through.

‘Dear sores! If she went flaunting in her innicence to that wilderness o’ men, she’d soon be trod under foot,’ he thought.

He wrote:

‘Dear Friend,

‘Master’s girl’s coming to Mrs. Fanteague of the Lilacs to stop a bit. Please to keep a glim on her. Leave me know all’s well time and agen. Send quick if you hear tell of her travelling anywhere. Hoping all’s well as it leaves me.

‘Robt. Rideout.’

He lit his pipe and sat looking at the envelopes with some complacency.

‘That job’s jobbed,’ he reflected. He went to the window. Velvet-dark night leant against it with an almost palpable weight; it was as if the glass might fall inwards at any moment. He drew back the bolt and went out, stepping straight into the breast of a great cloud that lay across the Gwlfas like a grey bird. Through the fold, under the drift-house, he went, on to the little lawn in front of the farm, where the mossy grass was spongy and white fragments of snow lay to the north. He stood by the pigeon-cote. Yes! There was her lit window—pale yellow, like a Lent lily. Once he saw her head outlined against the light.

He threw a pebble. It struck sharply on the glass. He threw it as if it were a signal of distress, because of the sudden pain of knowing that to-morrow there would be no bright Lent lily there. She opened the window and leant out. She had a white shawl on. Underneath he could see in the flickering candle-light a sleeve with frills—one of those new, extravagant nightgowns, no doubt.

And it was only for two old ladies to admire! Oh, dear!

‘Good neet!’ he said abruptly. For now that she was there he could think of nothing to say. He had ceased to be the usual human word-coining machine, and was just a surge of wild instincts and desires.

A ripple of laughter fell.

‘And you called me up out of my beauty-sleep to say “Good neet!” as crousty as can be!’

‘You werena asleep.’

‘What’s kep you up so late?’

‘Writing letters.’

‘Letters! I didna know you could!’

‘I can do whatever I set mind to do.’

‘Where be they? Who to? Can I see?’

Robert slapped his chest.

‘They be in my pocket. They be to friends o’ mine. You canna see ’em. But they consarn you.’

He laughed.

‘Oh, you aggravating man!’

She slammed the window.

The Lent lily faded.

‘Well, God bless ye!’ said Robert, as his heavy boots went ‘sook, sook’ across the lawn.