The Matchmaker (32 page)

“You can do the potatoses,” announced Mrs. Hoadley as Sylvia entered the tiny kitchen, which was dark, despite the brilliant light outside, because of the rags stuffed in the windows. “Dere’s de bowl, dere’s de water, dere’s a knife, dere’s de saucepan. Dey won’t take more’n an hour. Now you get on. I’m going away.”

She nodded up at Sylvia, like a female gnome standing before some tall goose-girl whom she had enslaved but of whose docility she was not quite assured. Her mouth was firm but her eye had a gleam of doubt.

Sylvia was annoyed; she had not put on her good dress and painted her fingernails in order to peel potatoes. However, such a service was in keeping with her temporary assumption of gentleness, and as she was also as good-natured as a young carthorse, she set to work with no outward grumbles, and Mrs. Hoadley did go away. She disappeared completely into the low rooms of the tiny ruinous cottage to which the old husband had added shacks and outhouses until there was ample room for the junk which they collected and hoarded like two old magpies, and Sylvia peeled potatoes in silence unbroken even by the ticking of a clock. It must be after two, she thought despairingly, and am I hungry!

However, the kitchen was warm and peaceful, and beautified by the red and gold china of which Fabrio had caught a gleam between the curtains. There were at least forty pieces of a dinner service, arranged upon the green dresser: red grapes and golden birds twined and flew all over the generous surfaces. It must be Oriental, I bet that’s worth something, Sylvia thought, and in spite of her hunger and her unsuitable employment, she
felt
cheered, and decided that the old Hoadleys could not be as poor as their hovel implied. She enjoyed the thought: and a conviction that The State ought to look after all old people and that No One Ought to Have Savings and Property existed comfortably side by side with it in her half-baked little brain.

The knife which she was using was worn down to a stub and as sharp as a razor, and while she was gazing at the china, it slipped and cut her finger. She stanched the brilliant blood as best she could with the sacking apron which she had put on to protect her dress, and managed to get the potatoes on to boil without much of it dropping into the water. She was looking about for a rag to bind the cut when Fabrio came in.

“You’ve brought half the garden!” she exclaimed, surveying his fistfuls of sappy leaves. “Here, find me something to bind this up, I can’t do a thing,” and she held up her finger.

He was inclined to tease her gently rather than to show concern, and they soon found a piece of comparatively clean cotton in a cupboard below the dresser, but the water had been heating on the little range while she peeled the potatoes, and they were now boiling much too fast.

“They’ll be a mash,” she said, peering at them. “Oh, give me modern amenities every time! There’s no way of slowing them down, that I can see.” Then a hand gently clasped her wrist—surprisingly gently, for it was an unusually large hand—and she turned quickly. But it was plain that he was thinking of nothing but binding up the cut; he looked compassionate and was frowning slightly as if considering the best way to begin. She stood quietly, studying the thin young face close to her. He’s got a nice face, she thought, though he isn’t exactly good-looking. Her heart did not beat faster; she felt no embarrassment. She felt towards him as she did towards her own brothers or the young animals at the farm.

Suddenly there sounded a soft cackle; the old woman had come in noiselessly behind them and now stood surveying them
with
her brown face screwed up in sly laughter. Sylvia quickly pulled her hand away and took the rag from him.

“Here, I’ll do it,” she said sharply, furious to feel a blush coming up into her face, and she began to wind the bandage clumsily round her finger. Fabrio looked delighted, which increased her annoyance.

“The potatoses’ll be just-about boiled to mash, tearin’ away like dat,” said Mrs. Hoadley. “Can’t you move ’em on to the cool?” and she pulled the saucepan sideways.

“Sorry. I’m not used to cooking with these old—with a coal range, Mrs. Hoadley.”

“Dey do middlin’ well; and better dan a ’lectric one when it goes on strike, and we’ve all got to learn,” darting a mischievous glance from one youthful face to the other.

Sylvia tried to look haughty but her anger vanished. The old girl was quite a character in her way. She glanced at Fabrio’s face and burst into a giggle in which he joined.

Then the old woman attended to the finger, making no comment upon it, but dragging a chair across the room and standing on it in order to reach the tall mantelshelf, where a silent clock stood among other dusty objects. She fumbled in the space behind it, and at last brought out a round thing resembling a bun. Sylvia exclaimed; it was covered in mould.

“Take off dat rag,” Mrs. Hoadley commanded, stepping down from the chair with a scornful look, “and we’ull put a bit o’ dis on de place.”

“Put blue mould on my finger? Not if I know it, you won’t!”

“Yess, yess,” the old woman insisted, “dat’s good for it, dat ’ull heal it up an’ make it sweet, won’t it?” appealing to Fabrio, but with an increasing contempt in her black eyes. Fabrio shrugged his shoulders and politely smiled. He had the peasant’s respect for a Wise Woman, and although the little cake did not look like a medicine, its recommender did look very like a white witch.

“It’ll poison it,” said Sylvia resignedly, beginning to unroll
the
bandage. She thought it best to give way, for further objections would delay the serving of dinner.

“No, it won’t,” Mrs. Hoadley snapped. “I don’t go for to poison girls. Dis is a cheese bun, like my granny used to use for us liddle children. Hold it out.”

Sylvia held it out, and watched in disgusted silence while a piece of mouldy bun was put upon the cut and bound in place.

“Dere!” said Mrs. Hoadley, when the operation was completed. “Now you leave dat alone for three days, and den take it off. De cut’ull be just-about healed up so’s you won’t know dere’s
been
a cut.”

Sylvia earnestly promised that she would do so, resolving to fling off the dressing as soon as they should be out of sight on their way home.

Dinner passed off gaily. True, the tablecloth was two sheets of the
Sunday Pictorial
and Sylvia’s plate rested upon a photograph of a large pair of naked female thighs while Fabrio was interested to see the words
God
and
Murder
glaring up at him from between the cups (for they drank strong tea with their meat), but the pork was rich and sweet and the potatoes eaten with big dabs of butter. The talk was anecdotal, reminiscent, teasing, and they all began to like one another. Old Mr. Hoadley came in, wearing his best suit, and devoted himself to Sylvia, passing her the bread, the pickles, with slow politeness. He was a silent old man, seemingly much older than his wife, and she sometimes became impatient with his halting movements and spoke roughly to him, but he did not seem to mind. They had spent all their lives together (Mrs. Hoadley told Sylvia that they had married from the same village when she was fifteen and he nineteen) and had grown so close together in body and habit that words between them had ceased to mean much to either.

They all enjoyed the strong tasty food, the sunlight pouring into the room and gleaming on Mrs. Hoadley’s grand collection of china pieces and busts that was ranged all round the walls, the sweet fitful cries of birds ringing in through the open door.
Summer
is coming, thought Fabrio, leaning back with a little black cigar, produced by Mr. Hoadley, between his teeth and stirring the treacle in his tea, and this summer she will be here too; I shall see her every day, my Sylvia, my girl. He smiled at her gently, across the untidy table. Every shade of coldness, of sullenness and suspicion, had vanished from his face, leaving it frank and happy. His mother and sisters would have seen him, at this moment, as if the war and his captivity had never been. The two pairs of blue eyes met, and Sylvia smiled at him in return: for the first time she saw him as a comely, friendly young man, with a sweet, lazy ardour in his eyes that she did not resent.

Then three o’clock struck hastily from an ancient grandfather clock wedged amidst the mugs and the pottery busts of Victorian statesmen. It seemed in a hurry, which is never a good state for a clock to be in. Mrs. Hoadley glanced at it, and briskly got up.

“Can’t sit here all afternoon, dere’s the pigs to be fed,” pronounced Mrs. Hoadley, “Sylvia, you come along with me and have a tidy-up and Mr. Hoadley’ll take Albert” (early in the proceedings Mrs. Hoadley had said that she could not bother with Fabrio’s name, and as he minded her of a Belgium who had worked with Mr. Hoadley in the last war-but-one whose name was Albert, she would call him Albert). Fabrio’s eyes followed Sylvia as the two women went out of the room and her last glance as she passed through the door (like that exchanged between two children who share a secret) was for him.

“The pigg-as!” exclaimed Fabrio eagerly, as soon as the door had shut, “I will like much, much to see them, please.”

“Dey won’t run away,” said Mr. Hoadley placidly, blowing out smoke. “We’ll put these scraps,” indicating their plates, “into the bucket and take ’em along in a minute or two. Haven’t you ever” glancing at him in mild surprise “seen pigses afore?”

“Only when I was far off. I would like much, much to see pigg-as close to me.”

Mr. Hoadley nodded as if this were a perfectly understandable wish, and presently—he having silently indicated to his guest on their way out to the sties a little black shed with a door lolling off its hinges—Fabrio joined him at the sties, having found the way there through a tangle of blackberry bushes and hazel wands by the sound of grunts.

The sties were large and unexpectedly clean in such surroundings and there was an enormous sow with fifteen piglets. Fabrio’s respect for the old Hoadleys, which had been shaken by the poverty of their home, was partly restored. He remembered Giulio Ferraro at home in San Angelo, whose miserable existence in the hovel where he had starved himself to death had not prevented the legend of his wealth persisting, and when Father Mario had entered the den after Giulio was dead, holding his nose and gathering up his cassock from the floor, had he not found bundle upon bundle of lire hidden in the walls? No, a poor house did not always mean that its owners were poor; they might be clever and he, Fabrio, would be courteous to these old people.

It was easy for him to be, for he was happy here. He liked the grunting, and the birds’ cries, and the faint scents from flowers and woods, and the strong odour of pigs; he liked the huts, with the warmth from the oil-stoves, and those beautiful plates, and the cushions made from thousands of tiny gay rags; he liked the tales (but half-understood by him) about her young days and the scandals about her neighbours of to-day that Mrs. Hoadley had related at lunch, and he was full of rich pork and strong tea. And over all his bodily happiness, like a sweet scent, floated the thought of Sylvia.

He leant his arms companionably upon the wall of the sty beside Mr. Hoadley, and complimented him upon the fatness and strength of the
porcelli
, and began haltingly to ask questions about them to which Mr. Hoadley slowly but willingly replied, for he had taken a fancy to him.

The air in the bedroom was warm and close. Sylvia wandered
over
to an old dim mirror that stood on the dressing-table and saw her young face looking greenish and twisted, as if reflected in a pool. The tiny window was shut, and dead flies lay along its sealed frame. The beds were unmade; a rank odour came from the stiff, ancient clothes that stuffed the cupboards; from worn slippers and huge muddy boots lying amidst the grey fluff on the bare boards. She saw an overflowing hair tidy, a china tree laden with brass rings and the cornucopia earrings, a tray scattered with rosebuds and filled with huge iron hairpins worn shiny with age, curlers, burnt-out matches. She turned quickly round; she did not like it here; she wanted to get outside into the air. In the dim light Mrs. Hoadley was pottering about, opening a drawer, pushing a dirty garment under a pillow. Now she turned round too, and as she saw Sylvia’s disturbed face, a smile stole over her own. She sat down upon one bed and leant forward and patted the quilt upon the other in invitation.

“He’s a very nice young man,” she began soothingly. “And so Molly’s in de family way at last? About time, too.”

Half an hour later Fabrio heard Sylvia’s voice calling, “Hullo, you there! Where on earth are you?” and in a moment she blundered out through the hazel thickets into the glade. She was followed by Mrs. Hoadley carrying the pig bucket, with eyes brighter, fuller, younger than they had been at lunch; bright and black as a snake’s in the shade of her chip hat.

“Thought you’d gone home,” she said roughly, and shook back her curls, which, unaccustomed to lying low upon her neck, were beginning to come loose. “I hate my hair this corny way, I’m going to put it up,” and she gathered the whole mass in her hand and with a pocket comb scraped it back from her brow and up into a knot upon her skull, revealing the pompadour once more. The two men stared at her, the old one placidly, Fabrio in bewilderment. Her face was flushed, her mouth sullen, her very voice was harsher. She was
La Scimmia
again; her graceful clothes did not seem to belong to her.

“Hideous things, aren’t they, really,” she said, turning from the spectacle of the sow and her sucklings, “I shan’t fancy pork again for some time,” and she gave an angry laugh.