The Pandervils (49 page)

‘Ah yes.' Old Smart nodded kindly. ‘What news of the boy?'

‘Seems he's right enough. We don't hear much just now. The last we had was one of these Field Postcards. You know 'em, I expect. Scratch out what don't apply: that's the idea. Better than nothing. But there was talk, there
was
talk—' He paused: should he tell or not? Was it tempting fate, to publish the glorious hope? ‘There was talk of a bit of leave soon, to look at the baby, you know. He wasn't sure, but he said he'd try for it.'

‘That'd be soonish, I expect?'

The hope made Egg almost breathless. ‘Almost
any time,' he said, with strained quietness. His heart pounded noisily; he saw old Smart through a mist.

‘A bad bad business, the war,' said Smart, staring at his pony's ears and shaking his head slowly.

‘Um,' said Egg. ‘But it can't go on for much longer now.' It was half a question. He watched for the reply.

‘Ay, a bad business,' repeated Smart.

‘I give it another three months,' said Egg, anxious to provoke an opinion from Smart, whom now, suddenly and for no clear reason, he regarded as an oracle. The turn of phrase, so foreign to his own way of thinking, was borrowed from younger and more confident prophets, who ever since the war's beginning had been generously giving it another month or two. The months of its duration now numbered twenty-six, but Egg's appetite for prophecy was undiminished. He always listened eagerly to such discussions, and treasured in his memory all the more hopeful things that were said. He himself was not, in general and in public, optimistic about the war: rather was he apt, in conversation, to take a gloomy view, so that others might contradict and convince him. Instinctively, without thought, he cultivated the art of making people say about the war what he most wanted to hear, his method varying, of necessity, with the disposition of his interlocutor. With William Smart he dared to sound a hopeful note. ‘I give it,' he said again, ‘another three months.' And getting no answer he was forced
to add: ‘How does it strike
you
, Mr Smart?'

Smart deliberated. ‘Well, what I say is this: when the end does come, it'll come sudden. That's my view. Don't ye think so, Mr Pandervil?'

Balked of his desire for a comforting prognosis, Egg lost interest in the talk. ‘Mrs Smart well?' he asked civilly, not unwilling to make an end of it.

‘Thank ye. Ay, she's middling well'

Egg made a noise of polite gratification. ‘Glass of cider, Mr Smart?'

At this invitation the visitor got out of his cart, tethered the pony to the gatepost, and walked across the yard with his neighbour in the direction of the cider-barrel. He tasted the cider and found it good. ‘A bit of good stuff this, Mr Pandervil. Here's luck, sir, to you and yours!' Having emptied the glass he waved away his host's suggestion of refilling it, and stood ruminating. ‘You asked me a question I'm not often asked, Mr Pandervil.'

‘Eh?' said Egg. ‘What was that?'

‘Yes, you did. A neighbourly question. How's Mrs Smart keeping, you said. Now that's a question I'm not often asked.'

Egg felt uncomfortable, suddenly remembering the great Smart scandal. At the beginning of the conversation it had been prominently in his mind, but Nicky and the war had driven it out. ‘Sure you won't have another drop o' cider?'

‘Not another drop. I dursn't, neighbour. Old Topsy'd run away with me if I'd two glasses of
that
sparkler in my belly. Well, your remark
about Mrs Smart minds me of what the Vicar said, time I ploughed up his lawn for 'im. I've bin hearing a strange tale about you and y'r brother, Mr Smart, he says; a strange tale and a sad, says he. So I waited and waited to hear what this strange tale might be, but seems the Vicar was shy, for he um'd and ah'd and coughed before he could get out a word of it. I hear, Mr. Smart, you no longer live with y'r wife: is it true? Yes, it's true enough, I said, this is the way it happened—And you a churchman, says the Vicar, never missing a Sunday! What do you come to church for, man? Well Vicar, give us a chance, sir: a man can't break with all his bad habits at once. But he wouldn't smile, not him, but must needs go on to say how that's not all he heard, and then,
oopsa
-daizy, out comes the story of me and brother Bob. It was this way, Mr Pandervil. Me and my wife, Alice by name, took and drove over to have a bite of supper with Bob and Katie. Alice and Katie are sisters, and Bob and me, being much of an age, courted 'em together. We were getting along for fifty then, and I'd been married before, but Bob was new to it. Nice girls both, and 'twas touch and go which of us had which. Well, I was saying, we drove over to see Bob and Katie back in the summer, a matter of three months ago, and it just popped into our heads, all four of us, that a change was as good as a rest. So up you get, Katie, says I, bundling her into the trap, and if you're as good a girl as y'r sister you'll do, for there's something about you … Well we joked a bit on the way
home, but time we come in sight of the house seems Katie 'ad been thinking it over. Doesn't seem hardly right, William, me coming with you like this. Not right, why what's wrong with it: I'm not such a bad old fellow and there's but twenty years between us. It's not that, William, there's no harm in you, healthy and spry you are, and I've always had a kindness for you if it comes to that. But I'm not your wife, and talking won't make me so. Wife, my dear! You're wife enough. You're Mrs Smart, aint ye? And I'm
Mr
Smart. So what's wrong wi' that? … So off we went to bed, if you please, and she soon got into the way of it, did Katie, and she's here to this day and asking no better. But there's not so many folks as speaks after Mrs Smart in a neighbourly way like y'rself, Mr Pandervil.'

Egg was taken aback. He did not know what to answer. Here was most flagrant sin rioting unchecked, and he, against his will, was being made almost a party to it. He grunted; and bent down to examine the tap of the cider barrel.

‘Ah,' said William Smart. ‘And I dare say
you
think I'm a wicked old rascal, too, eh?'

Egg stood up and met a searching glance. ‘Wicked, yes. It's wicked enough, there's no gainsaying. But that's between you and them and … well, and the Almighty, I spose, if it's my opinion you're asking.' Profoundly embarrassed, and wishing he had said nothing, he went on hastily: ‘None of my affair anyhow.
I'm
not God, and don't set up be. Now just you come
and look here, Mr. Smart, at my cowshed.'

‘Cowshed? Why, what's to do with the cowshed?'

‘You'll see, you'll see!' As they crossed the yard to the cowshed Egg became excited with triumph, anticipating the day when he would enact this same scene with Nicky. For an instant, having his back to William Smart, he pretended that this was Nicky following him. ‘There, Mr Smart. What d'ye think of that?'

‘Well, well, well!' Smart was impressed. ‘I shouldn't know the place. Never seen it looking so clean before, and I've known the Ridge Farm, being a neighbour, for a matter of forty year.'

‘New concrete floor, y'see, with a trifle of slope on it,' said Egg, anxious that no feature of the change should be overlooked. ‘You see that, Mr Smart?'

‘Indeed, I do, sir. Indeed I do.
And
a runnel for the muck. That'll make all the difference, that runnel will.'

Egg's heart warmed to the man. ‘Making everything shipshape, don't you see,' he confided, ‘against the boy's coming home. Got this cowshed up my sleeve, as they say. A little surprise for him.'

Smart nodded. ‘Well …' He hovered a moment; then nodded again, and was away, stamping back to his pony and cart. Egg lingered awhile, his eyes enjoying the sunlit yard and the many-gabled house, until he remembered that it was about time for the postman to come with the
second delivery: unless, he said to himself as he hurried in, my watch has gone and got fast again. ‘Jane, where are you, my dear?' She was not in the kitchen, and he was about to call again, but checked himself lest he should wake the cradled child, whose life, as yet, consisted of little beyond feeding and sleeping. She'll be out at the front door watching for the postman, he thought, and, going to look for her there, he began preparing himself for the possibility, even the probability, of there not being a letter this afternoon. Most days he and Jane were disappointed, and were put to the trouble of pretending, each to the other, that they hadn't expected anything. He tried now to discourage the silly hope in his breast, that tiresome fluttering bird; but, no matter what he said, the creature wouldn't rest, wouldn't be still, wouldn't stop singing its lovely nonsense.

He found Jane in the road, receiving a letter from the hand of the postman. The impudent dog was staring at her rather curiously, Egg thought. What the devil does he mean by it! A fine girl she was, a fine hearty girl, and being a mother had enriched her charm. But she was Nicky's wife, wasn't she!—and not one to be stared at by this moony-eyed postman. She was Nicky's wife, and Nicky's father clicked the latch of the gate with angry emphasis.

‘Is there a letter, Jane?' His tone was almost peremptory.

Even then, confound it, she didn't instantly look round. She was saying something to that fellow.
When she did turn she confronted her father-in-law with a strange face, a stubborn child's face he thought it. She came to him with Nicky's letter in her hand, took his arm, and contrived to smile.

‘Stared at you, that man did!' said Egg.

‘What man?' Her face seemed to close again; its habitual candour had vanished.

‘That postman, who else!' Egg's voice was sharp. ‘What's he want to stare for!'

‘I didn't notice,' said Jane. She hadn't yet opened her letter, though her eyes were fixed upon it. ‘Let's go in and read what he says, Dad.'

They went through the kitchen together. Jane, tearing the envelope open, paused to examine the censor's pencilled signature in the left-hand corner. Egg was impatient. What's the matter with the wench, he asked indignantly. Don't she
want
to read her letter! She drew the letter from its sheath and stared at the first page. Her face was wooden. Suddenly she pushed the letter towards him.

‘You read it first, Dad.' Egg, nervously polishing the lenses of his spectacles, shot a quick surprised glance at her. ‘I must go to Eggie,' said Jane. ‘He's crying.' She ran from the room.

Egg had heard no crying. He was mystified and suspicious. But here was Nicky's letter for him to read, and his fingers trembled as they approached it. It would be a family letter, with a little private one, doubly folded, for Jane alone. How unlike Jane to be so cool about a letter from France. That absurd hope still fluttered in his
breast: perhaps this was to say that the boy would soon be back home, on a ten days' leave, or even, perhaps, that the end was in sight. But no, it was the usual letter, saying nothing much, bits of Nickyish fun here and there but on the whole rather mechanical in its cheerfulness. A disappointment, as letters always were. Egg had been disappointed in this way so many times before, but he had not yet mastered his lesson, he had not yet learned to save himself pain by abandoning hope. He left the letter lying on the kitchen table, and turned away feeling empty and defeated. He had eaten his cake, every crumb of it, and was still hungry. There was nothing to do but go on waiting.

But indeed there was much to do, and next morning he and his men were busy in the orchard filling their baskets with Camleys, a small dark-green apple much grown in South Mershire and very plentiful this year. It was a private point of honour with Egg to do his share—rather more than his share—of stripping the taller trees, because the having to climb the ladder, stood as it often must be against a swaying branch, challenged his courage; he dreaded the ordeal, and for that very reason would not shirk it; he had been nimble enough at this work in his boyhood, and he was resolved to prove to himself, against all reason and despite all appearances, that he was as
young as he used to be. This morning the world was fresh to his sight and fragrant to his nostrils; standing on his ladder in the heart of an apple tree, with the laden boughs enclosing him and the ground a green patch dizzily far below, he half-believed himself a boy again. Leaning dangerously this way and that, towards such fruit as hung beyond easy reach, he worked on until the basket was so heavy that the forearm from which it hung throbbed with pain, and the shoulder ached and the hand longed to loosen its clutch on the ladder. Before beginning the hazardous downward journey, he must pause, nevertheless, to taste once more that queer vision of a bright sky trickling through the gaps in the green roof; and when he was safely back on the ground he looked about him with wondering eyes, seeing the orchard saturated with his own history. It was not that he recalled in this moment the incidents of that history; faces from the past did not throng into his vision, nor voices long silenced sound in his ears; it was rather a quality that he perceived, the distilled essence of a vanished yet real and existing time; he felt the orchard as personal to him, one with him, part of his intimate life. The feeling came and went like a breath, and then he was thinking how they must look sharp about getting the wheat sown. Next week'll be soon enough. I must give Roger a hand wi' the roots again; he's not as quick as he was this time twelvemonth, and he was never what you'd call quick.

Next day, after breakfast, at which ceremony
Jane excused herself from appearing (what ails that girl? he thought; there's something mighty queer about this!), Egg made ready to drive into Keyborough with a load of fruit for the market; for some of the more enterprising local people, Nicky among them, had started a Poultry and Fruit Market that was held every fortnight at a place very handy for Keyborough Station. The packed boxes were heavier, it seemed to Egg, than they had been last year, and Beechy, who helped him with the loading, was even more stupid than usual. Egg began to fume and fret in the privacy of his mind, being still, by lifelong habit, too gentle to give verbal vent to his impatience. We shall be late, that's what we shall be, I know we shall. And the more he worried the more his back ached, and the less able was he to cope with the complication of difficulties which this once simple-seeming task confronted him with. ‘Come along, Beechy. Look alive, my boy.' Beechy, grinning and blushing, fumbled with the harness; his master, in a state of controlled frenzy, snatched the belly-strap from him and after two abortive attempts succeeded in fastening it. ‘ That'll do. You be off now and help Roger with those roots, boy.'