The hired girl huddled closer over the oil stove, looking at Flora in what the latter interestedly recognized as the Tortured Dumb Beast manner. When she spoke, her voice was low and drawling:
‘Why do ye come here, mockin’ me in me shame – and me only out of me trouble yesterday?’
Flora started, and stared a little.
‘Yesterday? I thought it was today. Surely you – er – didn’t I hear? – that is, weren’t you crying out, only about ten minutes ago? Mrs Starkadder and I both heard you.’
The beginnings of a sullen smile, rather like a plum in quality, touched the hired girl’s sensual lips.
‘Ay, I moithered out a bit. I was rememberin’ me trouble yesterday. Mrs Starkadder she weren’t in the kitchen when me time came on me. How should she know what I bin through, and when I bin through it? Not that I ever says much while it’s goin’ on. ’Tain’t so bad as some people make out. Mother says it’s because I keeps me spirits up and eats hearty aforehand.’
Flora was pleasantly surprised to hear this, and for a second wondered if the women novelists had been misinformed about confinements? But no: she recollected that they usually left themselves a loophole by occasionally creating a primitive woman, a creature who was as close to the earth as a bloomy greengage and rather like one to look at and talk to, and this greengage creature never had any bother with her confinements, but just took them in her stride, as it were. Evidently, Meriam belonged in the greengage category.
‘Indeed,’ said Flora, ‘I am glad to hear it. When can you take the curtains down? The day after tomorrow?’
‘I never said as I’d wash your curtains. Haven’t I enough to bear, wi’ three children to find food for, and me mother lookin’ after a fourth? And who’s to know what will happen to me when the sukebind is out in the hedges again and I feels so strange on the long summer evenings—?’
‘Nothing will happen to you, if only you use your intelligence and see that it doesn’t,’ retorted Flora, firmly. ‘And if I may sit down on this stool – thank you, no, I will use my handkerchief as a cushion – I will tell you how to see that nothing happens. And never mind about the sukebind for a minute (what is this sukebind, anyway?). Listen to me.’
And carefully, in detail, in cool phrases, Flora explained exactly to Meriam how to forestall the disastrous effect of too much sukebind and too many long summer evenings upon the female system.
Meriam listened, with eyes widening and widening.
‘’Tes wickedness! ’Tes flying in the face of Nature!’ she burst out fearfully at last.
‘Nonsense!’ said Flora. ‘Nature is all very well in her place, but she must not be allowed to make things untidy. Now remember, Meriam – no more sukebind and summer evenings without some preparations beforehand. As for your children, if you will wash the curtains for me, I will pay you, and that can go towards buying some of whatever it is children have to eat.’
Meriam seemed unconvinced by the argument for coping with sukebind, but she finally agreed to wash the curtains on the next day, much to Flora’s satisfaction.
While Flora was making the final arrangements, her glance was wandering thoughtfully round the hut. It was of the variety known as ‘miserable’, but it was plain to Flora’s experienced eyes that, unlikely as this seemed, somebody had been tidying it up. She was sure that the greengage had never even heard of such a process and wondered very much who had been at work.
While she was drawing on her gloves, there came a sharp tap at the door.
‘’Tes mother,’ said Meriam, and she called: ‘Come in, mother.’
The door then opened and on the threshold, taking in Flora from heels to beret with snapping little black eyes, stood a rusty black shawl with a hat alighting perilously upon the knob of hair which crowned the top of its head.
‘Good morning, miss. A nasty day,’ snapped the shawl, furling a large umbrella.
Flora was so startled at being addressed in a respectful and normal manner by anyone in Sussex that she almost forgot to answer, but habit is strong, and she recovered her wits sufficiently to agree graciously that the day was, indeed, nasty.
‘She comes from up at the farm. She wants me to wash her bedroom curtains – and me with me trouble only a day behind me,’ said Meriam.
‘Who’s “she”? The cat’s mother?’ snapped the shawl. ‘Speak properly to the young lady. You must excuse her, miss; she’s more like father’s side o’ the family. Ah! it was a black day for me when I took up with Agony Beetle and left Sydenham for Sussex (all my people live in Sydenham, miss, and have these forty years). Wash them? Well, I never thought I’d live to hear of anyone up at Cold Comfort wanting a bit of washing done. They might begin on that old Adam of theirs, or whatever he calls himself, and no harm would be done, I’ll lay. She’ll wash them for you, miss. I’ll bring them along myself tomorrow afternoon and put them up for you.’
Flora replied that this would do very well, and it says much for the cumulative effect of the atmosphere of Cold Comfort that she felt almost moved as she spoke the words to one who seemed to possess some of the attributes of an ordinary human being, and who seemed to perceive (however dimly) that curtains must be washed and life generally tidied up before anyone could even begin to think of enjoying it.
She wondered if she should enquire after the welfare of the baby, and had just decided that this might be a little tactless when Mrs Beetle demanded of her daughter:
‘Well, ain’t you going to ask me ’ow ’e is?’
‘I knows. There ain’t no need to ask. He’ll be doing fine. They allus does,’ was the sullen reply.
‘Well, you needn’t sound as though you wished they wouldn’t,’ said the shawl, tartly. ‘Lord knows, they wasn’t very welcome, pore little innercents; but now they are ’ere, we may as well bring them up right. And I will, too. It’s to me advantage. Come another four years and I can begin makin’ use of them.’
‘How?’ asked Flora, pausing at the door. Was a flaw about to disclose itself in the hitherto admirable character of the shawl?
‘Train the four of them up into one of them jazz-bands,’ replied Mrs Beetle, promptly. ‘I seen in the “News of the People” that they earns as much as six pounds a night playin’ up West in night-clubs. Well, I thought, here’s a jazz-band ready-made to me ’and, as you may say; and it’s better still now there’s four of them. I’ve got ’em all under me hand in one family, so’s I can keep an eye on the lot of them while they’re learnin’ to play. So that’s why I’m bringing them up right, on plenty of milk, and seein’ they get to bed early. They’ll need all their strength if they ’ave to sit up till the cows come ’ome playin’ in them night-clubs.’
Flora was rather shocked, but she felt that, though Mrs Beetle’s scheme might be a little callous, it was at least organized, which was more than could be said of any other life which the four embryo musicians might lead if their upbringing were left to their mother or (a yet darker thought) to Grandfather Agony Beetle himself.
So she went off, after a pleasant farewell to Meriam and her mother, and a statement that she would come in some time to see the new baby.
**After she had gone the hut sank into a dim trough of languor, pierced only by the shrill beam shed by the personality of Mrs Beetle, which seemed to gather into one all the tenuous threads of the half-formulated desires of the two women which throbbed about them.
Meriam huddled on her stool, the coarsened lines of her body spreading like some natural growth born of the travail of the endlessly teeming fields. In thick, lewd whispers, she began to tell her mother what Flora had advised her to do. Her voice rose … fell … rose … fell … its guttural syllables punctuated by the swish of Mrs Beetle’s broom. Once Mrs Beetle flung open a window, muttering that the place was enough to choke a black, but save for this interruption Meriam’s voice droned on like the voice of the earth itself.
‘Well, you needn’t sw-sw-sw-sw about it as though you was talkin’ to someone from the V
icarage,’ observed Mrs Beetle at the conclusion of her confidences. ‘It’s no news to me, though I wasn’t quite sure ’ow it was done nor ’ow much they cost …
Anyway, we know now, thanks to Miss Interference from up the ’ill. And I’ll lay she’s no better than she ought to be, a bit of a kid like ’er sailing in ’ere as bold as brass and talkin’ to you about such things. Still, she does look as if she washed ’erself sometimes, and she ain’t painted up like a dog’s dinner, like most of them nowadays. Not that I ’old with wot she told you, mind you. It ain’t right.’
‘Ay,’ agreed her daughter, heavily, ‘’tes wickedness. ’Tes flyin’ in the face of nature.’
‘That’s right.’
A pause, during which Mrs Beetle stood with her broom suspended, looking firmly at the oil stove. Then she added:
‘All the same, it might be worth tryin’.’
CHAPTER VII
Flora’s spirits were usually equable, but by lunch-time the next day the combined forces of the unceasing rain, the distressing manner in which the farmhouse and its attendant buildings seemed sinking into decay before her eyes, and the appearance and characters of her relatives, had produced in her a feeling of gloom which was as unusual as it was disagreeable.
‘This will not do,’ she thought, as she looked out on the soaking countryside from her bedroom window, whence she had retreated to arrange some buds and branches which she had picked on her morning walk. ‘I am probably hungry; lunch will restore my spirits.’
And yet, on second thoughts, it seemed probable that lunch cooked by a Starkadder and partaken of in solitude would only make her worse.
She had managed yesterday’s meals successfully. Judith had provided a cutlet and some junket for her at one o’clock, served beside a smoky fire, in a little parlour with faded green wallpaper, next door to the dairy. Here, too, Flora had partaken of tea and supper. These two meals were served by Mrs Beetle – an agreeable surprise. It appeared that Mrs Beetle came in to the farm and did her daughter’s work on those occasions when Meriam was being confined. Flora’s arrival had coincided with one of these times, which, as we know, were frequent. Mrs Beetle also came in each day to prepare Aunt Ada Doom’s meals.
So Flora had thus far escaped meeting Seth and Reuben or any of the other male Starkadders. Judith, Adam, Mrs Beetle and an occasional glimpse of Elfine represented her whole knowledge of the inhabitants and servants of the farm.
But she was not satisfied. She wished to meet her young cousins, her Aunt Ada Doom and Amos. How could she tidy up affairs at Cold Comfort if she did not meet any of the Starkadders? And yet she shrank from boldly entering the kitchen where the family sat at the manger, and introducing herself. Such a move would lower her dignity and, hence, her future power. It was all very difficult. Perhaps Judith did not actively intend to keep Flora from meeting the rest of the family, but she had so far achieved just this result.
But today, Flora had decided, she would meet her cousins, Seth and Reuben. She thought that tea-time would present a good opportunity on which to carry out her intention. If the Starkadders did not partake of tea (and it was probable that they did not) she would prepare it herself, and tell the Starkadders that she intended with their nominal permission to do so every afternoon during her visit.
But this point could be considered later. At the moment, she was going down into Howling to see if there was a pub in which she could lunch. In any other household such a proceeding would be enough to terminate her stay. Here, they probably would not even notice her absence.
At one o’clock, therefore, Flora was in the saloon bar of the Condemn’d Man, the only public-house in Howling, asking Mrs Murther the landlady if she ‘did’ lunches?
A smile indicating a shuddering thankfulness, as of one who peers into a pit into which others have fallen while she has escaped, passed over the face of Mrs Murther, as she replied that she did not.
‘At least, only for two days in August, and not always then,’ she added, gladly.
‘Couldn’t you pretend it is August now?’ demanded Flora, who was ravenous.
‘No,’ replied Mrs Murther, simply.
‘Well, if I buy a steakatthe butcher’s, will you cook it for me?’
Mrs Murther unexpectedly said that she would; and added even more surprisingly that Flora could have some of what they was having themselves, an offer which Flora a little rashly accepted.
What they was having themselves proved to be apple tart and vegetables, so Flora did quite well. She obtained her steak after some little delay with the butcher, who thought she was mad; and it seemed to her that a surprisingly short time elapsed between the purchasing of the steak and her sitting down before it, browned and savoury, in the parlour of the Condemn’d Man.
Nor did the hovering presence of Mrs Murther cast an atmosphere sufficiently dismal to spoil her appetite. Mrs Murther seemed resigned, rather than despairing. Her face and manner suggested the Cockney phrase dear and familiar to Flora in London: ‘Oh well, mustn’t grumble’, though Flora knew better than to expect to hear it in Howling, where everybody felt that they must grumble, and all the time at that.
‘Now I must be off and see to my other gentlemen’s dinner,’ said Mrs Murther, having hovered long enough to see that Flora had all the salt and pepper, bread, forks and the rest of it that she wanted.
‘Have you another gentleman?’ asked Flora.
‘Yes. Stayin’ here. A book-writer,’ rejoined Mrs Murther.
‘He would be,’ muttered Flora. ‘What’s his name?’ (for she wondered if she knew him).
‘Mybug,’ was the improbable answer.
Flora simply did not believe this, but she was too busy eating to start a long and exhausting argument. She decided that Mr Mybug must be a genius. A person who was merely talented would have weakly changed his name by deed-poll.
What a bore it was, she thought. Had she not enough to do at Cold Comfort without there being a genius named Mybug staying a mile away from the farm who would probably fall in love with her? For she knew from experience that intellectuals and geniuses seldom fell for females of their own kidney, who had gone all queer about the shoes and coiffure, but concentrated upon reserved but normal and properly dressed persons like herself, who were both repelled and alarmed (not to say bored) by the purposeful advances of the said geniuses and intellectuals.
‘Well – what kind of books does he write?’ she asked.
‘He’s doin’ one now about another young fellow who wrote books, and then his sisters pretended they wrote them and then they all died of consumption, poor young mommets.’
‘Ha! A life of Branwell Brontë,’ thought Flora. ‘I might have known it. There has been increasing discontent among the male intellectuals for some time at the thought that a woman wrote ‘Wuthering Heights’. I thought one of them would produce something of this kind, sooner or later. Well, I must just avoid him, that’s all.’
And she fell to finishing her apple tart a little more quickly than was comfortable, for she was nervous least Mr Mybug should come in, and fall in love with her.
‘Don’t you ’urry yourself; ’e’s never in afore half-past two,’ soothed Mrs Murther, reading her thoughts with disconcerting readiness. ‘He’s up on the Downs in all weathers, and a nice old lot of mud ’e brings into the ’ouse too. Was everything all right? That’ll be one and sixpence, please.’
Flora felt better on her return walk to the farm. She decided that she would spend the afternoon arranging her books.
There were sounds of life in the yard as she crossed it. Buckets clattered in the cowshed, and the hoarse bellow of the bull came from his dark shed. (‘I don’t believe he’s ever let out into the fields when the sun’s shining,’ thought Flora, and made a note to see about him, as well as about the Starkadders.) Belligerent noises came from the hen-house, but nobody was to be seen.
*
At four o’clock she came downstairs to look for some tea.
She
did not bother to glance into her little parlour to see if her own tea were on the table. She went straight into the kitchen.
Of course, there were no preparations for tea in the kitchen; she realized, as soon as she saw the ashy fire and the crumbs and fragments of carrot left on the table from dinner, that it was rather optimistic of her to have expected any.
But she was not daunted. She filled the kettle, put some wood on the fire and set the kettle on it, flicked the reminders of dinner off the table with Adam’s drying-up towel (which she held in the tongs), and set out a ring of cups and saucers about a dinted pewter teapot. She found a loaf and some butter, but no jam, of course, or anything effeminate of that sort.
Just as the kettle boiled and she darted forward to rescue it, a shadow darkened the door and there stood Reuben, looking at Flora’s gallant preparations with an expression of stricken amazement mingled with fury.
‘Hullo,’ said Flora, getting her blow in first. ‘I feel sure you must be Reuben. I’m Flora Poste, your cousin, you know. How do you do? I’m so glad to see somebody has come in for some tea. Do sit down. Do you take milk? (No sugar … of course … or do you? I do, but most of my friends don’t.)’
***The man’s big body, etched menacingly against the bleak light that stabbed in from the low windows, did not move. His thoughts swirled like a beck in spate behind the sodden grey furrows of his face. A woman … Blast! Blast! Come to wrest away from him the land whose love fermented in his veins like slow yeast. She-woman. Young, soft-coloured, insolent. His gaze was suddenly edged by a fleshy taint. Break her. Break. Keep and hold and hold fast the land. The land, the iron furrows of frosted earth under the rain-lust, the fecund spears of rain, the swelling, slow burst of seed-sheaths, the slow smell of cows and cry of cows, the trampling bride-pride of the bull in his hour. All his, his …
‘Will you have some bread and butter?’ asked Flora, handing him a cup of tea. ‘Oh, never mind your boots. Adam can sweep the mud up afterwards. Do come in.’