The Brides of Solomon (19 page)

‘I don’t want no more of ’is papers,’ Mrs Swallop answered.

‘Ain’t no papers, not to speak of, me dear! You delivers your eggs to me whenever you happens to be passing, and along comes the money and your National Poultry Food regular. If you
mixes it up with a bit of barley, which maybe I can find for ’ee, the hens won’t hardly know what they’re eatin’. Oh, it’s all as easy as kiss your ’and, missus,
begging your pardon,’ he said.

Trancard was obviously making money out of his fine flock of Rhode Island Reds, so Mrs Swallop decided to take his advice. While there was plenty she wouldn’t understand, there was nothing
she couldn’t once she got her lips moving silently round the problem. She collected another score of hens, one by one wherever a bird caught her eye, and a shocking lot of mixed breeds they
were; but she soon had them in the pink of condition and laying up and down the hedgerows as fast as if they had been their orderly sisters in Trancard’s deep litter house.

When Mrs Swallop came up with her third load of eggs, six inches deep in the bottom of the pram, Trancard graded them and gave two dozen back to her. They were too small or too crooked.

‘And what must I do wi’ ’em, mister?’ she asked.

‘Do what you likes with ’em. The government don’t want ’em.’

‘They be all egg inside,’ she said.

‘But the public won’t buy ’em in the shops, missus.’

‘Can I sell ’em,’ she asked, ‘without that young Grott comin’ up after me wi’ the constable?’

‘No, you can’t. Not to say sellin’ ’em as
is
sellin’ ’em. But you can give ’em away, and I’ll tell ’ee where. And that’s Mr
Buckfast up at The Bull, with all his guests wanting two fried eggs to their breakfasts when he can’t hardly give ’em one. He’ll take all you can give ’im, and it
wouldn’t surprise me if ’e was to pay you at seventy bob instead of the fifty we gets from the government. But ’e won’t be paying you for eggs, mind, but for carrots or
such-like.’

Mrs Swallop leaned against the gate-post, calculating in so fast a whisper that she couldn’t keep listening to herself; so she fell into a sort of trance, and old Trancard had to take her
up to the house and bring her round with a glass of port.

‘And there’s no point in you bringing eggs as ain’t legal eggs up to me for grading,’ he said, when he had given her an arm back to the pram. ‘You know an egg as
ain’t when you sees it as well as I do. But don’t you go giving away an egg that’s an egg within the meaning of the Order, because it’s not worth the risk.’

Next week it was all over the district that Mrs Swallop had another male to keep the buck rabbit company. He was a black Leghorn cock of a fine laying strain, with a certificate to prove it; but
his breast-bone was twisted over to one side like a plough-share, so that when he stretched out his neck to crow he had to spread his tail the other way to balance himself. Mrs Swallop, naturally
enough, did not have to pay a penny for him, though she may have done some little favour to the bees in passing.

In spite of his looks the hens took to this young cripple, as females will. And Mrs Swallop groomed his tail feathers and whispered to him and stuffed him with National Poultry Food till the old
buck was so jealous that he set about him and got a spur down his ear-hole before they could be separated.

When spring came, Mrs Swallop was not delivering anything like the proper number of eggs, in spite of the fact that she and the black Leghorn between them had raised her flock to nearly a
hundred birds, most of them laying pullets of her own breeding. Trancard went down to her holding to see if he could help at all, and a repulsive sight the yard was for a careful farmer. He stared
at those miscoloured, lopsided, sinister-looking freak pullets, and went purple in the face with the pressure of all he did not like to say.

‘Why, what’s wrong wi’ ’em?’ she asked him.

‘Missus,’ he said, ‘there’s everything wrong with ’em. But if they’re yourn, they’re laying—and that young Crott has been up, lookin’ at me
books.’

Mrs Swallop gave him a sly smile under her moustache, with a twitch of the lips that must have enchanted Tom Swallop fifty years before.

‘Don’t ’ee worry over me, me dear,’ she said.

But Trancard did worry. He knew Mrs Swallop was making a mysterious profit. So did Percy Crott. She had had her fences repaired, and a pipe laid to the spring where she got her water instead of
old lengths of rusty gutter stopped with clay. And there was nothing to account for all the eggs in town, especially at The Bull, except the visits of Mrs Swallop’s pram.

Crott timed it nicely. He watched Mrs Swallop deliver a parcel of eggs—which should have been all she produced—to Trancard, and he let her go down to the town with her pram. Then he
took his government car and the local cop from behind the haystack where he had parked the pair of them, and drove into Trancard’s yard and asked to see the books.

Old Trancard tried to muddle him by passing off some of his own eggs as Mrs Swallop’s. The cop did his best to help. But the ink was hardly dry in the book, and there was no getting away
from the figures. Mrs Swallop had delivered only two dozen eggs that morning, and nothing else for a week.

‘She’ll be on her way to The Bull now, constable,’ said Percy Crott, pushing him into the car.

He started to drive slowly down the hill so as to reach the hotel about the same time as Mrs Swallop. All Trancard could do was to rumble behind in a tractor wondering how Mrs Swallop could ever
pay the fifty pounds or so which the beaks would have to fine her, and whether they would give her six months if she didn’t.

When they stopped in front of The Bull, Percy Crott and the constable nipped round into the backyard, with Trancard a second or two behind them trying to look as if he had just called to return
the empties. There was Mrs Swallop talking to Buckfast, the proprietor.

‘Madam,’ asked the inspector, ‘what have you got in that perambulator?’

‘Nothing but eggs, sir. Nothing at all,’ she answered, pretending she was frightened of the cop.

‘And were you thinking of selling them?’

‘No, she weren’t,’ Buckfast told him pretty sharply. ‘She was giving them to me. And it’s legal.’

‘Uncommonly kind of her!’ said Percy Crott in a sarcastic way, and he whipped the cover off the pram.

It was stuffed with eggs. And not one of them was fairly oval. There were eggs which might have been fat white sausages, and round eggs and oblongs and lozenges, and pear-shaped eggs and eggs
with a twist like a gibbous moon with round points.

Inspector Crott pushed them aside with the tips of his fingers as if they were something the dog had been rolling in. They were all the same quality right down to the bottom of the pram.

‘Don’t your hens lay anything fit for human consumption?’ he asked.

‘No, sir,’ she told him, ‘they don’t. A poor old woman can’t afford good ’ens like you gentlemen.’

Then Buckfast was taken with a fit of the sniggers, and old Trancard slapped his breeches and grinned at Mrs Swallop as if she were the knowingest farmer in all the county.

‘Damme if she ain’t been breeding for rejects!’ he roared. ‘Damme, and I tried to tell ’er how to run fowls! I tell you, Mr Percy Crott, that if only she ’ad
a cock with a face like yourn, them ’ens would lay eggs and bacon, and burst out laughin’ when they turned their ’eads round to look at what they ’ad done,’ he
said.

D
EAREST
C
ONCHITA
,

You will have had my telegram that I am in Lima. I could not have stayed another day on that ship. I
had
to leave it.

Do not let Mama be worried. As we all told her, it is perfectly correct in these days for an unmarried woman to travel alone. No one showed me the slightest disrespect.

I am quite well, and I am not in love—at least not in the usual sense. I am remaining here for a few days before I continue my journey up the coast to join Papa in Panama. I have of course
sent a telegram to him, too. What has happened is nearly unbelievable.

You remember the untidy foreigner who came on board singing at Valparaiso when you were saying good-bye to me, and saluted us all with such exaggerated politeness that we thought he must be
drunk. He and I turned out to be the only passengers. He was travelling on the
Naarden
only as far as Peru, so I had no reason to discourage him. Besides, there was no one else to talk
to.

The German captain and his officers were appallingly formal. I would not like to marry a German; it would be difficult to call him by his Christian name. And the officers would stare at my face,
which I hate. I can always tell what people are like by the way they look at me. Those who are truly kind forget all about my disfigurement after the first few minutes. I do not mean that they try
to forget. They really do. Are you surprised at my mentioning what we never speak of?

The tall foreigner was an Englishman, and of tradition! Our grandfathers always said they were mad, but people of our generation have found them most dull and respectable. Now I know what our
grandfathers meant.

His name was unpronounceable. It was written Harborough-Jones. He said that he was once a major in the Horse Guards of the Queen of England, but that he found it ridiculous to use the title of
rank while travelling in jams and jellies.

Jams and jellies! You would expect them to be sold by a fat Greek from Argentina, not a major in an aristocratic regiment! I could not tell what he really was, and it would have been useless to
press him for an answer. He amused himself by making the wildest fantasies sound like truth. Even when sober, his imagination was out of control.

He spoke Spanish with a queer, clipped accent and tremendous gusto. I think our language and our Latin-American civilisation intoxicated him as much as the glass which was too frequently in his
hand. He told me that when he spoke English he was quite a different person and of the utmost propriety.

‘I have no sympathy for Major Francis Harborough-Jones,’ he said. ‘The man I like is Don Francisco Jones y Harborough.’

You will see that he had the mixture of nobility and craziness which we all adore. He behaved to me at once as if I were a daughter from whom he had long been absent. Mama will think that an
impertinence. But I liked it. I am so shy with strangers. With him I could be gay as I only dare to be at home. He made me feel completely irresponsible, as if nothing in life mattered but to enjoy
it. I forgot my loneliness and that doctors could not help me without leaving a scar as hideous as what they removed. If he had been twenty years younger I should have fallen desperately in
love.

On the last evening before the ship reached Lima, where Don Francisco was to disembark, we were sitting together as usual on deck. I will give you his own words as exactly as I can remember
them, and you must fancy that you are listening to a play. My own deep voice you can imagine; his was always loud and kind and laughing. Think of Papa telling us stories in bed, and how there was
nothing we could believe but his affection.

‘I should like to give a party tomorrow in the ship’s lounge,’ he said, ‘if I can get the permission of the other passenger and the purser.’

I replied that of course he had my permission, and asked if the party was for his customers.

‘Buy, buy my jams and jellies!’ he called like a street vendor. ‘Very cheap, my jams and jellies!’

‘But calm, Don Francisco!’ I begged him.

‘Yes, my daughter. I shall not leave out the customers. But I want the President of the Republic if he will come. The generals and the admirals and all the Children of the Sun! What joy,
what joy is Spanish America!’

‘Would it not be better to give the party on shore?’

‘Dearest—’ he used such words most improperly, but as he was a foreigner I forgave him, ‘—dearest, it would indeed! But the fact is that in Peru I cannot
give a party because I am not allowed to pay for anything.’

That must, I thought, be due to some misunderstanding. The Peruvians are no more hospitable than the rest of us. We all entertain a foreign visitor as well and as long as we can; but
eventually—at any rate in commercial circles—he is allowed to pay.

I asked him if he would let me suggest some delicate way of returning hospitality. He insisted that it was utterly impossible. And off he went again upon his love for our Americas, as eloquently
as any politician upon Independence Day. The long glass at his side was frequently refilled by the steward, who had orders to watch it and take it away when it was empty. He called that being
refuelled in the air.

I refused to have my curiosity deflected.

‘But why, Don Francisco,’ I persisted, ‘are you not allowed to pay for anything in Peru?’

‘Because, little one,’ he answered superbly, ‘I am descended from the conqueror Pizarro and the daughter of the Inca Atahualppa.’

‘So at last I know why you wear a bath towel instead of trousers,’ I replied, pretending to believe him and throwing back the ball.

Such was his usual dress in the morning—a bath towel and an old tweed coat. The first time he appeared in my presence like that I intended to show myself a little cold, but a moment later
I was giggling childishly at the look the captain gave him.

We went to dinner—he at the officers’ table, and I, by preference, alone. When I had finished, I waited on deck for him. It was his habit to sit on for half an hour over his wine,
amusing himself if none of the officers remained to amuse him. That was, he said, an English ceremony.

As it was our last evening and still he did not come, I went down to my cabin for a book, but he was not in the saloon. On my return, as I passed the ship’s office, I saw the purser
standing in the doorway and pounding his fist into his hand with one of those clumsy gestures of northerners who do not know by nature how to gesticulate. Don Francisco, who was opposite him in the
passage, must have been much angrier than he appeared; but he only smiled down at the purser and swayed a little at the knees.