The Beauty of the Dead and Other Stories (17 page)

‘No!' she said. ‘I don't think there will.'

‘I'll call, just in case.'

‘Just as you like!' she said. She stood with her hat and gloves, waiting for him to go.

Two weeks later, for the first time in fifteen years, he did not call. He pushed the heavy tricycle about the lanes with a deep and pointless sense of frustration. He found himself taking the complication of events like a skein of tangled wool and trying to roll them into a simple ball. For what he wanted now was very simple. He wanted the love and beauty of the girl for himself. He wanted to open a little shop in the town
and give up the tricycle. At the back of the shop there would be, he imagined, a room where they could eat, and over the shop a room where they could sit and look down at people passing in the street below. As he lived now he did not eat very well: hasty cold meals in the country, bits of bread and cheese washed down by cocoa in the evenings. But in the shop there would be contentment and comfort and the smell of steak and onions.

Finally he could bear it no longer. He decided to go back and call once again on Mrs. Armitage. Conquering his shyness, he would somehow tell her what it was all about. For once he would unfold himself, and say how he wanted the girl, how he could go on no longer without her.

The following week, almost six weeks after his last call, he again knocked with his habitual timidity on the door, and then waited. It was a grey January afternoon, not quite dark, the land settled deep in winter, and he saw that the snowdrops were not yet out in the grass. It was Mrs. Armitage who answered his knock, and she said:

‘Oh! it's Mr. Penfold.'

She held open the door and he went into the house. As he entered the room he almost stopped. It seemed to him, just as it had once before, that a strange girl was sitting by the fire. It was Katie. She was wearing
the same bright blue jumper as before and her hair, still as pale as honeysuckle, was brushed in the same way, yet she looked like an inexpressibly strange person, farther away from him than ever. As he came in she stood up, smiling a little. In a moment he knew that the smile, sudden and a little forced and without a trace of hostility, was the signal that something was the matter, and before he could speak to her she went out of the room.

He was surprised by that action but not really troubled. Perhaps it would be easier without her. ‘Has Katie come back?' he said. ‘I mean for good.'

‘I don't know what you mean, good,' Mrs. Armitage said. ‘She's come back.'

‘Is anything the matter?' he said.

‘Matter?' she said. She walked away from him and stood looking bitterly into the fire. ‘She's going to be married.'

He stood immovable; he felt deeply and inexpressibly sick at heart.

‘She's got to be married,' she said, ‘that's all. You might as well know first as last.'

He stood there for some moments before realizing fully what she had said. Then he knew that there was nothing he could do or say, and he went out of the house. It was dark outside, and he lit the lamp of his tricycle. As he rode away he recalled that in the papers
that morning there had been a forecast of rain, and now he could feel it spitting on his face and hands out of the strong heavy western wind.

He rode on for some distance before the gradient of the road made him dismount. He could not think clearly, but was conscious only of the strange, once rebellious and now resigned beauty of the girl filling and troubling his heart. He did not feel any bitterness, but only that behind his lifelong shyness something terrible was at last preparing to explode and shatter him. It was as if he had no longer anything to which he could look forward. He walked heavily, oblivious of the rain. The winter was dead all about him and back in the Armitages' house the snowdrops had not yet come in the grass. ‘Oh! my God,' he said to himself, ‘Oh! my God, my God.'

Every morning, when he came into the town, going to school, he would see this large and to him discomforting notice in blue and scarlet letters on a board outside the church. It had been there since a month before Christmas. ‘Annual Collection of Christmas Gifts in this Church on Christmas Eve. Help Us to Help Others. No Gift too Large. None too Small. Give generously.' And then, in very much larger, startling and to him almost angry letters: ‘THIS MEANS YOU!'

He was a small, extremely puzzled-looking boy with a look of searching determination on his rather thin lips. Large brown trousers, which looked as if they had been cut down from his father's, gave him a curious look of being out of place in the world. His hair looked as if it had been shorn off with sheep shears; his forehead had in it small, constant knots of perplexity. There was always mud on his boots and, though he did not know it, there were times when he did not smell very sweet.

There was a reason for this smell. His father and mother had a small farm-holding of about ten acres two miles out in the country. On a little pasture they grazed a mare and two or three cows, with a score of
foraging hens. Outside the house ran a wide strip of roadside verge, and here they grazed a dozen goats. It was because of the goats that the boy sometimes created a very pungent and startling impression. He was very fond of the goats and it was his job to tether them on the roadside grass every morning and again, if he were home before darkness fell, to house them up in the disused pigsty for night. He treated the goats like friends. He knew that they were his friends. At frequent intervals the number of goats was increased, but his father could never sell the kids or even give them away. The boy was always glad about this and now they had thirteen goats: the odd one a kid of six weeks, all white, as pure as snow.

Every morning when he went by the church the notice had some power of making him uneasy. It was the challenge in larger letters, THIS MEANS YOU! that troubled him. More and more, as Christmas came near, he got into the habit of worrying about it. The notice seemed to spring out and hit him in the face; it seemed to make a hole in his conscience. It singled him out from the rest of the world: THIS MEANS YOU!

Soon, as he walked down from the country in the mornings and then back again in the evenings, he began to think if there was anything he could do about it. It seemed to him that he had to do something. The notice, as time went on, made him feel as
if it were watching him. Once he had heard a story in which there had been a repetitive phrase which had also troubled him: God Sees All. Gradually he got into his head the idea that in addition to the notice God, too, was watching him. In a way God and the notice were one.

It was not until the day before Christmas Eve that he decided to give the goat-kid to the church. He woke up with the decision, lying as it were, in his hands. It was as if it had been made for him and he knew that there was no escaping it.

He had already grown deeply fond of the little goat and it seemed to him a very great thing to sacrifice. That day there was no school and he spent most of the afternoon in the pigsty, kneeling on the strawed floor, combing the delicate milky hair of the little goat with a horse comb. In the sty the powerful congested smell of goats was solid, but he did not notice it. It had long since penetrated his body and whatever clothes he wore.

By the time he had finished brushing and combing the goat he had begun to feel extremely proud and glad of it; he had begun to get the idea that no other gift would be quite so beautiful. He did not know what other people would give. No gift was too great, none too small, and perhaps people would give things like oranges and nuts, perhaps things like toys and
Christmas trees. There was no telling what would be given. He only knew that no one else would give quite what he was giving: something small and beautiful and living, that was his friend.

When the goat-kid was ready he tied a piece of clean string round its neck and tethered it to a ring in the pigsty. His plan for taking it down into the town was simple. Every Christmas Eve he had to go and visit an aunt who kept a small corner grocery store in the town, and this aunt would give him a box of dates for his father, a box of chocolates for his mother and some sort of present for himself. All he had to do was to take the kid with him under cover of darkness. It was so light that he could carry it in his hands.

He got down into the town just before seven o'clock. Round the goat he had tied a clean meal-sack, in case of rain. When the goat grew tired of walking he would carry it in his arms; then when he got tired of carrying it the goat would walk again. Only one thing troubled him. He did not know what the procedure at the church would be. There might, he imagined, be a long sort of desk, with men in charge. He would go to this desk and say, very simply, ‘I have brought this,' and come away.

He was rather disconcerted to find the windows of the church full of light. He saw people, carrying parcels, going through the door, He saw the notice, a
little torn by weather now, but still flaring at him: THIS MEANS YOU! and he felt slightly nervous as he stood on the other side of the street, with the kid at his side, on the string, like a little dog.

Finally when there were no more people going into the church and it was very quiet he decided to go in. After taking the sacking off the kid he took it into his arms, smoothing its hair into place with the nervous tips of his fingers.

When he went into the church he was surprised to find it almost full of people. There was already a sort of service in progress and he sat hastily down at the end of a pew, seeing at the other end of the church, in the soft light of candles, a reconstruction of the manger and Child and the Wise Men who had followed the moving star. The stable and its manger reminded him of the pigsty where the goats were kept, and his first impression was that it would be a good sleeping-place for the kid.

He sat for some minutes before anything happened. A clergyman, speaking from the pulpit, was talking of the grace of giving. ‘They,' he said, ‘brought frankincense and myrrh. You cannot bring frankincense, but what you have brought has a sweeter smell: the smell of sacrifice for others.'

As he spoke a man immediately in front of the boy turned to his wife, sniffing, and then whispering:

‘Funny smell of frankincense.'

‘Yes,' she whispered. She too was sniffing now. ‘I noticed it but didn't like to say.'

They began to sniff together, like dogs. After some moments the woman turned and saw the boy, sitting tense and nervous, the knots of perplexity tight on his forehead and the goat in his arms.

‘Look round!' she said.

The man turned and now he too saw the goat.

‘Well!' he said. ‘Well, no wonder!'

‘I hate them,' the woman whispered. ‘I hate that smell.'

They began sniffing now with deliberation, attracting the attention of other people, who too turned and saw the goat. In the pews about the boy there was a flutter of suppressed consternation. Finally, at the instigation of his wife, the man in front of the boy got up and went out.

He returned a minute later with an usher. Before going back to his pew he whispered:

‘There. My wife can't stand the smell.'

A moment later the usher was whispering into the boy's ear, ‘I'm afraid it's hardly the right place for this. I'm afraid you'll have to go out.' At the approach of a strange person the little goat began to struggle, and suddenly let out a thin bleat of alarm. As the boy got up it seemed to him that the whole church turned and
looked at him, partly in amusement, partly alarm, as though the presence of the kid were on the fringe of sacrilege.

Outside, the usher pointed down the steps. ‘All right, son, you run along.'

‘I wanted to give the goat,' the boy said.

‘Yes, I know,' the man said, ‘but you got the wrong idea. A goat's no use to anybody.'

The boy walked down the steps of the church into the street, the goat quiet now in his arms. He did not look at the notice which had said for so long THIS MEANS YOU! because it was clear to him now that he had made a sort of mistake. It was clear that the notice did not mean him at all.

Outside the town he walked slowly in the darkness. The night air was silent and the kid seemed almost asleep in his arms. He was not now troubled that they did not want the goat, but was already glad that it would be his again.

It was only by some other things that he was troubled. He had for a long time believed that at Christmas there must be snow on the ground, and bells ringing, and a moving star.

But now there was no snow on the ground. There were no bells ringing, and far above himself and the little goat the stars were still.

All that the Johnsons had was the earth. Very often it seemed as if it were all they had ever had.

It was true that they also had possessions – a plough, a two-wheeled cart, tools, a bony brown mare which slowly dragged the plough and the cart about their rough four-acre plot – but without the earth these things were useless. It was true that they also had a son.

The Johnsons' son was named Benjy, and it was more than thirty years since they had surrendered to the idea that he was not right in his head. It was not that he was insane or imbecile or even that he could not read and write and count figures, but only that he was simple, not quite like other people. And because he was their only son, the Johnsons had spent many years being a little too kind, too anxious and too sacrificial towards him, so that he had grown up to seem worse, in their eyes, than he really was. Benjy had the large loose limbs that often belong to the simple-minded, and thick soft fair hair on his face. He had the look of being a simple-hearted man as well as a simple-minded man. His eyes were blue and all day long he had a simple smile on his face. But somewhere
behind the blue eyes, the simple smile and the soft childish hair, simplicity seemed gradually to have become a kind of cunning.

It was more than thirty years since the Johnsons, realizing that he was not quite like others, had taken Benjy to a doctor. This doctor had persuaded them that he needed interests that would strengthen his mind. It would be good if they gave him something to do, some occupation, which would help his development. It would help a great deal if they gave him a special interest, to feed his sense of responsibility. ‘You are people on the land,' the doctor said, ‘let him keep hens.'