Short Stories 1927-1956 (73 page)

Nonetheless Mrs Hopper’s sharp eyes had instantly noticed the change of clothes. ‘I thought you said George wasn’t coming tonight? You haven’t put a plate for him.’

And Nora, without a word, had gone to the dresser to fetch one.

Why had she prevaricated? What was there to conceal? She didn’t mind her mother. Why hadn’t she confessed straight out that like a fool she had fallen into the water, and had had the sense to change her clothes? To tell the truth was as much a habit with her as to wash her face in the morning and to do her hair. Yet she had looked back at her mother, as if she had been accustomed to telling lies all her life – lies shameless, brazen. Yet even while she did so, she had been perfectly conscious of that faintly outlined face still haunting senses, memory, heart and mind. And it seemed to have no more connection with her mother, no more connection with telling the truth, and with living one’s ordinary life than – well, Nora had no comparison.

A young man and a young woman were now straying hand in hand
aimlessly
and vacantly in her direction along the bank of the Ponds. The three small boys were squatting on the green grass in their shirts. The sun had
descended
a little in its narrowing autumnal arc. Nora, after yet another
fleeting
half-glance at the scene spread out before her, turned back and hastened home.

Sunday tea was never a talkative meal. Unlike her husband, Mrs Hopper was a heavy sleeper after meals, and – her Sabbath afternoon hour over – she invariably stumped down from her bedroom, cross, flushed and staring, and with sleep-glazed eyes, like a gently gaping fish. This afternoon, the meal was briefer than usual. There was High Tea or Early Supper to get. And Uncle Ben had a critical eye and a fastidious palate. But there’s nothing like getting busy and working hard at whatever comes next, to prevent one’s mind from brooding on what one is trying not to remember. Nora even sang over the peeling of the potatoes, and Mrs Hopper wondered, on
hearing her, why when she herself was young, she had been so squeamish, so strait-laced. Alf had been a good husband as husbands go, but there are all kinds of men.

In spite of her mother’s rather cantankerous snort at the arrangement, Nora seated herself between her father and Aunt Emma at the supper-table. But Mrs Hopper was a woman as easily placated as she was put out; and her hospitality was second-nature to her. ‘There’s Elf, now,’ she would
explain
. ‘He can’t be anywhere but he’s alone. He can’t be anywhere but cooped up in his shell. Not me! Give me faces; give me company; give me
talk.
I’d mope me head off with nobody to see.’

There was no doubt of it. The dark round table, with its cold boiled leg of mutton, its steak-and-kidney pie, pickles and beetroot, and glass and
cutlery
, and the china lamp in the middle, was packed as close with humanity as chairs would allow. They might be animals colloguing together. Yet Mr Hopper merely sat quietly smiling there, and looking as much alone as if he were an ascetic Robinson Crusoe on his desert island.

Uncle Ben, however, having assured himself that his sister-in-law hadn’t forgotten his distaste for bottled beer and his ‘pongshong’ for whisky, had lost no chance to keep up his reputation as a wag, and a lady-killer. And, with Aunt Emma for flattering ally, and Miss Mullings, as a new victim so far as he was concerned – sidling but appreciative – for audience, there was soon an unceasing roar of talk and laughter. And as naturally as flies round a chandelier, it had circled about the guest of the evening – the doomed bachelor, the greenhorn of matrimony, the wise-crack’s easiest cockshy – George. George was solid; George was a stayer; a bit thick-headed, if you like, but none the worse for that perhaps when life wields so clumsy a club and cracks a sensitive skull as easily as a steam-hammer cracks eggs. George was
there
;
to bear the brunt, to play the butt, the future bridegroom! And George, in his tight starched collar and ‘neat’ pepper-and-salt suit, had met every sally with unfailing good-humour, even though, with his head bent forward a little and his dark brown eyes slightly bulging, he resembled the while a bullock staring out of a cattle-truck.

Uncle Ben had the richest stock of jokes for all occasions – from a christening to a funeral. But his marrowiest were on the subject of widows, mothers-in-law, and young people in love.

‘Lor’, now, Ben,’ Mrs Hopper had come to the rescue at last, ‘give him a chance; give him a chance!’ With a hiccup of ribald amusement and a sigh of exhaustion, she wiped away the tears from her eyes.

‘Chance!’ retorted Uncle Ben, turning his long nose in her direction. ‘What’s he want with chances? Hasn’t he had his chance, and hasn’t he taken it? … And won’t he?’

George shifted an inch or two on his chair.

‘He don’t want no chances.’ Aunt Em intervened, drawing her hand across her mouth. ‘He’s happy enough,
I
can see, and so would any young man be.’

‘What I say is,’ said Uncle Ben, with extraordinary solemnity and almost squinting at his friends, from eyes that were, even at ordinary moments,
formidably
close together, ‘what I say
is
,
he’s joined the old redoubtables. He’s taken the plunge – and come up smiling.’ He looked firmly at the tumbler in his hand.

‘Anybody, to hear that, Mr Hopper,’ Miss Mullings insinuated, ‘would suppose that a journey to the altar was no better than a young couple going to their execution.’

‘Altar, did you say, Miss Mullings, or halter?’ inquired Uncle Ben
punctiliously
. ‘And what, might I ask you, does anybody expect at an execution? Why, to lose his head! Aye, and to have it picked up out of the sawdust before the trickling lids are down over the eyes. When I think of our young friends on that track – well, there –’ his voice sank into a plangent whisper and he emptied his glass, ‘my heart bleeds for them.’

‘Pull the long bow, you do,’ Mrs Hopper expostulated. ‘Why, if it wasn’t telling secrets, I recollect a time, Ben, when you as near as possible fell into the trap yourself; and a nice plump young widow, too, though I’m not too sure all that hair was her own!’

Mr Hopper, who had been steadily and quietly eating the while, at this, gently slid his eyes in his brother’s direction, and smiled. It was like a watery glint of sunlight in a raining sky.

‘That,’ retorted Uncle Ben imperturbably, ‘is what might look to be a bulls-eye. But, “twice shy” is my rendering of it. I read the other day, in an old book I came across, of two islands out in the East there, three
hundred
miles apart. Two islands: one inhabited by nothing but men, and the other by – well, in short – women. So I know where
I
’
m
going to when I die.’

‘But which, Mr Hopper?’ murmured Miss Mullings.

Uncle Ben threw up his two knuckly hands. ‘
Kamerad
!
Kamerad
!
’
he cried. ‘Now George, here …’ he began again.

George pushed his chin a little further over his stiff collar; and swallowed.

‘There’s some of us not so easily taken in,’ he muttered thickly. ‘What
I
say is, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.’

The worm had turned, but at the sound of his voice, Nora had begun hastily collecting the dirty plates together in preparation for the plum tart and custard and a plum-pudding that Mrs Hopper, since the Christmas before, had faithfully reserved for whatever occasion Providence might propose.

And it was not until after the supper dishes had been cleared away, and Uncle Ben – who didn’t think even as much as small beer of ‘all this
Voder-veal
’ – had entertained the company with a few out of his familiar repertory of songs, that the attention of the little party suddenly centred itself on Nora. From her brief solitude in the scullery she had slipped back into the room again and seated herself beside her father. His hand had crept out and gently clasped her own for a moment, where it lay in her lap, palm upwards, on her knee.

Aunt Emma, at the same moment, with a curious, crab-like movement, had slipped from her stool at the old rose-wood, silk-pleated piano, and Uncle Ben, whose third song had not been received with precisely the
volume
of applause to which he was accustomed, had observed this furtive little caress.

‘Now, if I was a goose,’ he cried gallantly, ‘there’s one young lady present which I don’t believe could say
boh
to me no how. What do
you
think, pretty Miss Pensive, now, with them dark eyes?’

Mrs Hopper who, up to this moment, had seemed to be completely
unaware
of her daughter’s small share in the evening’s entertainment, suddenly lost patience.

‘God’s sake! She’s sat there, dumb as an image, all the blessed evening. What’s wrong with you, girl?’

At this, George’s eyes, which had been as steadily fixed on his beloved as a bullock’s in a truck on a drift of green pasture at the railroad’s edge, turned heavily away, while a dull red mounted up into his naturally dusky face.

‘
I’m
all right, Mother,’ said Nora.

She was alone in the world again; for at first sound of Mrs Hopper’s rebuke, Mr Hopper had withdrawn his hand.

‘If you was “all right” as you call it,’ retorted Mrs Hopper, ‘you’d prove you had a tongue in your head. She’s been like this for days together,’ she explained to Aunt Emma. ‘I can’t think what’s come over the child.’

‘Maybe she’s not feeling quite the thing,’ Miss Mullings suggested
sympathetically
.

‘Now then, George! What about it?’ challenged Uncle Ben, in full tilt again at the dragon.

Nora had pushed herself more securely into her chair. ‘I don’t mind being laughed at, not a bit,’ she began. ‘Not myself. If I couldn’t stand being laughed at, I’d go into a home for the feeble-minded. But I don’t believe even you, Uncle Ben, would be talking quite so free if you’d been nearly drowned last night.’

The strange dismal word resounded through the little lamplit room like the call of a bugle. Complete silence fell. Uncle Ben gaped where he
stood. Then Mrs Hopper crossed her legs viciously, and clasped her hands together.

‘What kind of tale are you telling of us now?’ she cried angrily.

Nora stared steadily into her mother’s face. ‘I said drowned, Mother. I went out for a walk last night to “the Ponds” … It’s nobody else’s business – and I fell in.’

‘Fell in, my dear?’ Mr Hopper’s voice rang dulcet as a bell in the midst of the baa-ings of a flock of sheep.

‘Yes, Dad, and went clean under, too. Miles! It’s deep there. But it was nothing to worry about. I soon scrambled out. But naturally,’ she drew her hand over her forehead, ‘it’s given me a bit of a headache, perhaps.’

‘What I wouldn’t wonder at, my fine lady,’ cried her mother, ‘is if you aren’t in bed, come tomorrow morning, with a raging cold and
inflammation
of the lungs or something of that sort. Trapesing back all that way through the streets like a cod in a fishmonger’s shop!
I
don’t know what they’ll think of you. And not to say a single word to your mother neither!’

‘Feel my hand, Dad,’ said Nora. ‘That’s cool enough, isn’t it? There’s nothing wrong with
me
,
Mother. And I came back by the back-ways. It’s when everybody begins talking, and I don’t see why, and you all keep on at George – why, it makes
every-
thing
look silly. What
can’t
be made to look silly? There’s always those who’ll laugh. But I’d rather not say anything more about it.’

‘Now, what I say,’ Uncle Ben as usual pranced gallantly to the rescue, ‘what I say is,’ he repeated, his two cold small eyes as grey-blue as agates on either side his long inquisitive nose, ‘is that’s what they call a parable. Didn’t I say an hour ago that George here had taken the plunge, and come up smiling? And what’s Nora done else!
She
won’t hurt. Bless you! Strong, healthy young creature like that, Polly. None of your lacksidasical young ladies that die of pneumonia from a draught not strong enough to blow the powder off their noses. She’s all right. There now, Polly, she’s all right. The prettiest of chips from the handsomest of blocks.’ He pushed himself in on to the little sofa beside his sister-in-law, and put his arm round her waist.

‘Oh, you old fool!’ retorted Mrs Hopper with amiable scorn, flinging his hand aside. ‘You are all fat, and nothing to fry! I’ve no patience with you.’

But the position was saved, and Nora’s only penalty was a good-sized couple of spoonfuls of Uncle Ben’s whisky, in half a tumbler of scalding hot water.

‘If you insist on gadding about by yourself in the dark, my girl, and having cold baths in public, you must take the consequences,’ said Mrs Hopper, as she dropped two lumps of sugar into the steam.

Nora slipped out after George into the dusky passage.

‘Honest, Nora,’ he breathed hoarsely into her ear, ‘you’re not feeling
ill
?’

‘Ill! Not me. I’ll come along with you. George. Keep quiet. Stay
there.
I won’t be a minute.’ She hastened up to her room. It was filled with a clear, still, darkening twilight. Her face glowed softly in the glass; and she could see dove-cote and greenhouse in the dark-shadowed garden below, as plainly as if they had been carved, by magic out of mystery, for the scene of a play. She paused in marvel of it a moment, then pulled on her hat and hurried softly out again. And George was waiting for her where she had left him. Like the Lion on the Brewery he hadn’t moved the fraction of an inch.

‘I like coming out when no one knows anything about it,’ she whispered, as he opened the door. ‘I’m tired of all that, George.’

Not even the faintest of the fleeciest of clouds showed in the sky above the double row of small brick houses in the empty street; and the air was crisp and cold – as if the small hours might bring a tang of frost. A waning moon was showing in the west, shedding her faint light into the crystalline,
grey-blue
sky.