Turf or Stone (21 page)

The following morning she walked as far as the Salus road, where she caught a bus, which put her down at the door of the Pendoig Arms. It was a cold, windy morning.

The Pendoig Arms resembled an E with the middle left out. It was of stone, whitewashed, and had an air of cleanliness and order. Phoebe waited outside to speak to a man who had run out in his shirtsleeves and was standing talking to the driver of the bus. As it drove off he flourished his arms in ironical farewell. She approached him.

‘Does Easter Probert live here?’

‘Well, miss, I don’t by rights belong to the place, you’d best step inside and ask,’ he replied, still following the bus with preoccupied eyes. She pushed open the door which led straight into the taproom. The stone floor was swimming with steaming water, a large zinc bucket stood in a corner with an upright broom in it; holding the handle of the broom, supporting it in a discoloured fist, was an elderly grey-faced woman who had long prominent teeth and inflamed eyelids. Nevertheless, she looked pleasant.

Phoebe repeated her question in a docile voice. The woman nodded her white head.

‘Yes, he lives here,’ she answered, leaning on her broom.

‘I’d like to see him.’

‘He’s out, I think, but I’ll just inquire.’

She opened an inner door and called out: ‘Sheppy, is Easter anywhere about?’

‘Gone to Salus,’ answered a man in a kind of rusty distant bellow.

She repeated the information. Was it anything urgent?

‘Yes,’ said Phoebe, considering. ‘Do you know when he is likely to be back?’ she added.

‘Nobody can’t say that, but I’d say he’d certain sure be here by six o’clock. Can you leave a message?’

‘I’m afraid not. I must see him.’

‘Well, miss, if you’re here by seven you’re pretty sure to catch him.’

The water in the bucket was getting cold and from the back premises a child began to scream. ‘Oh Gran, Polly’s bit me finger!’

‘Then you shouldn’t put your fingers in the cage,’ Gran retorted, as she let her broom fall with a clatter against the wall and ran from the room.

Scarcely ten minutes later a bus going towards Salus overtook Phoebe. She stopped it. She passed a strange solitary day in the town. As it grew dusk she walked in the grounds which overlooked the centre of the river. The meadows in the twilight were of a soft brownish colour, the swelling uplands towards her home melted into the low-hanging clouds. Owen Cross was a constellation of mellow lights. She stood close by the iron railings; the sandstone cliff dropped to the shining main road below where traffic was humming.

Walking up and down she made up her mind that rather than permit her mother to hear the truth in court, or to find out that such a truth had there been revealed, she would tell it herself; yet – surely it would be almost better that she should have her eyes opened by strangers than by her daughter. Phoebe walked to and fro with numbed feet. Her head was beginning to ache, she felt absolutely forlorn and helpless. She came very near being locked in the grounds for the night and caught her bus by a minute. However, she arrived safely at the Pendoig Arms by six o’clock, shaking all over from nerves.

‘What time do you return?’ she asked the conductor as she descended.

‘Seven-thirty – nine-thirty. Goodnight, miss.’ The bell rang, and the bus moved off, a strip of lights and wooden profiles sliding past her. She turned slowly towards the pub. A pile of bicycles were propped up against the wall already, a lantern hung from a hook at the side of a porch.

She entered the warm bar. Four men were sitting at a long deal table playing cards.

‘Can we do anything for you, miss?’ a bright-eyed little man, with a broken nose, inquired. She stammered and bungled over her reply. Three more pairs of brooding eyes were raised from the cards to stare at her. Fortunately the woman whom she had seen in the morning came in; she slapped a crumpled newspaper on the table, picked up an empty tankard and said: ‘Easter Probert’s here if you want to see him, miss. I seen him come into the yard wheeling his bicycle half an hour ago. If you don’t mind waiting here, I’ll go and find him. He won’t come for no shouts. I’m sorry I can’t show you into the parlour, but we’re having it papered, and it’s in a mess.’

Phoebe thanked her. While the woman was gone she looked at the large parrot cage covered with an old curtain which was standing on the floor. She stooped and lifted a corner of the curtain; the parrot opened one brilliant eye and moved its grey feet along the perch. The men behind her continued to play cards in silence except for the one who had spoken to her; he kept exclaiming under his breath while running his fingers along the sides of the table. Presently the woman returned and told her that Easter refused to stir. She was almost ashamed to ask a young lady into his quarters, but it seemed to be the only way. She regarded Phoebe doubtfully: ‘You see, he don’t
live in the house. It suits us all better that he shouldn’t. Will you please to follow me?’

She led the way through a back kitchen where she took a lantern from a shelf. They stepped outside. When they had gone a few paces she turned round whispering: ‘Excuse me, miss, but you’re very young and that Easter isn’t a nice man. I’ll just leave the door ajar, and if you’re in any difficulty give a shout; we shall hear.’

‘Thank you.’

They went on, the lantern shedding a circle of light about their feet. Phoebe saw that they were traversing a garden by a straight box-edged path. The smooth trunks of young fruit trees were subtle strokes on the blackness. They took a sharp turn behind a tin-roofed pigsty and arrived at a row of wooden sheds. A lamp was shining in a cobwebby window. They stopped before a plank door, which had recently been mended with a strip of flashing white wood.

‘Here you are,’ said Phoebe’s guide, ‘I’ll leave the lantern.’

She set it on the ground, regarded Phoebe earnestly, and turned away. When she was out of sight Phoebe stepped softly to the window, which was rather high, and tried to look through it. She fancied she saw Easter, but he was no more than a huddled shadow. She went and knocked at the door with a hand which visibly trembled. All her muscles were locked and strained in an effort to be calm.

Her hand had scarcely fallen to her side when the door was hauled open. She saw Easter as a dark shape, standing right athwart the threshold. It flashed through her mind that she had waited all day to speak to him, and now she had only to ask and he would refuse. No matter what she said…

‘Will you let me come in?’ she asked.

He moved sullenly aside, and she entered. Herself she shut the door.

This dwelling place was no more than a common draughty shed. The plank walls were roughly nailed and tarred. There was a fire in a rusty stove, and the smoke escaped through an iron pipe which pierced the roof. The floor was hard earth. The furniture consisted of a camp bed, a bench, and a green-painted table.

Easter was about to eat his supper; on the table were a teapot, milk jug, a loaf, a tin of treacle, and a ham with a gash in it.

Easter looked filthy and vicious. He was at his very worst, although instead of the usual leering smile he stood regarding her with a sullen and menacing gravity.

‘You’ve got some reason for coming here, I suppose?’ he growled.

She approached him.

‘Easter – is there anything I can do to persuade you to leave my father’s name out of the proceedings next Friday?’

He did not speak. She went on urgently: ‘Must you do us all so much harm?’

He went close to the table.

‘Look you,’ he said, lifting the loaf with his dirty hand, then banging it down with so much violence that she heard the china plate crack…‘Look you, Miss Phoebe – bread-and-butter – Kilminster… I’m not your father’s groom now, and you’ll get no respect from me… if I was starving and you came up mincing so pretty and said to me: “Can’t I persuade you to leave that loaf alone?” d’you
think you’d stand a chance of keeping me off it? Eh, what could you say with that milky little trap of yours that would keep me from devouring the loaf?’

‘I’d tell you it was poisoned; that you’d be worse off afterwards.’

‘Ah, would you? That’s bloody silly talk. Well, I’d eat it – in great bites – and die quick and satisfied. But the loaf
isn’t
poisoned. It’s sweet and sound. Maybe I’ll feel better for it. Better when I hear ’em tattling that your father took his groom’s wife and made a whore of her in his own house where he lives with his own wife and kids.’

She would have interrupted him, but her voice was overwhelmed in the rush of his vehement speech.

‘You’re a lady, though your mother isn’t. I’ll say that for you. I like to see you change when you look at me – you know what I think you’re good for. And I don’t particular dislike you. I’ve seen worse girls and ones with less spirit. But you got to get it with the rest. When a man’s driving a flock of sheep he don’t choose one out for special tender treatment. I’m not going to change my ways because you comes and lifts your face, all pure and pleasant, and says: “Please, Easter”. Please be damned – why should I please you? Why shouldn’t I give your father what he bloody well richly asked for?’

‘But it’s you – it’s you that will be harmed!’ she cried incoherently.

‘I reckon I can look after myself.’

He put one foot on the bench, laid his elbow on his knee, and cupped his chin, while he stared at her with eyes which she could not meet without a spasm of shame and something besides, something sharp and acute which
stirred her so deeply that she began to shake. He desired Phoebe ardently, had done so for a long time, almost unaware; even as he sneered at the purity of her face it fascinated him. He experienced once more the voluptuous and painful craving for unsought caresses. The furious rancour which he had fostered for the last two years was beginning to give way before a sense of isolation which at times sapped his manhood and caused wild outbreaks of unconscious weeping at night. He was discovering that no creature of seven skins can be an outcast without suffering at least intermittent grief and yearning.

Phoebe was silent.

‘There’s no sense in your staying,’ he resumed obstinately, ‘why, God blast it all, you innocent toy, you don’t know what you’re asking of a man! It’s my nature to be revengeful; you’re asking me to change my nature… you mid as well say “hop out of your skin, Easter, you’d be handsomer in a new one”.’

‘I
do
believe you have a cleaner one underneath.’ For the first time he was moved a little beyond his predatory senses. She heard him sigh.

‘Perhaps,’ he went on, ‘but you wouldn’t touch it! You don’t even offer me anything. You’d make me a new man if you could, but you won’t take the new man near you and keep him against harm. You’re Miss Kilminster and I’m a groom, and that’s enough.’

He broke off, watching her. Her heart was beating so hard that he could see the throbs shaking her breast. Had he been aware to what extent she was fighting her own rising instincts he might have gone forward and taken his revenge on Matt without leaving the shed.

‘The Salvation Army offers more. There you gets plenty of music and a pi reputation. Jesus Christ, Miss Phoebe, you’re mean!’

‘I wasn’t bargaining, I was asking a favour,’ she said.

‘Don’t you ask no favours from this quarter, see? I’m going to get my own back – I got some of it already. I never thought it ’ud be so good. I thought she’d chuck him that was all, when she heard he’d paid me two pounds a week for the lend of her. But up she goes, like dynamite, and before I knew what I was doing, I’d got my hands on her. Then off she goes to lay information, and whether she tells on Kilminster or not, out it’ll all come beautiful, that you may be sure!
I
don’t care for the bloody beaks – never did. I been before them for boozing and breaking in a door, and assaulting a copper, but, God, this ought to be a sight worth seeing – a parafenaria.’

During this last speech he became wildly animated and he concluded it by slapping his knees and going off into a fit of uncontrolled laughter.

Phoebe turned away defeated. As she walked slowly towards the door, she let fall a glove and a handkerchief, without perceiving that she had done so. Easter followed her: ‘You b— off and expect the worst.’

She went out quietly, without making any reply, picked up the lantern, and walked rapidly out of his sight. He looked after her, because he fancied she was in tears. The branches of the loftier trees sighed in a passing current of air, and a flock of dead leaves fell rustling. He re-entered; as he shut the door he noticed Phoebe’s scattered belongings. He picked them up, examining them as minutely as he had Mary’s clothes on the night of their
wedding, handling them more carefully, with wonder. Their cleanliness, the freshness and delicacy which emanated from them, pleased him exceedingly. The white handkerchief was scarcely crumpled – unscented. He rolled back the glove, exposing the fur lining, which he brushed across the back of his hand. Then he put them on the table, stoked the fire, ate his supper, all the time pondering on the interview which had just passed. He sat in his favourite attitude, his head drooping, his arms crossed before him, eating lazily with his fingers.

He was troubled; the image of Phoebe pleaded more potently when she was gone than when present, her features recalled the existence of her father. Solitary she would always have power over him, when his mind had time to single her out and dwell on her.

He took the glove again in his hand and, opening a drawer in the table, pulled out a piece of brown paper and a ball of string. Having made it into a neat parcel he pushed it into the drawer with the string, got up, pulled on a coat and, yawning, walked towards the door. Suddenly the lamp, which had been gradually growing dimmer and dimmer, went out altogether. Left in the dark Easter paused, his breath whistling between his teeth. Then he turned, reached out his hand and grabbed the handkerchief, which he stuffed carelessly into his pocket. This time he really quitted the shed.

When he returned, after ten, he was quite drunk. He tugged open the stove door muttering and fuming vague obscenities. There were only a few embers red at the heart. He flung the handkerchief in, rolled to the bed and fell across it. He slept like a log till morning, and
awakening, went to kindle the fire; the handkerchief, black, filthy, scorched all over, as sordid a tag as ever blew in a gutter wind, was, nevertheless, intact. The initials were grimed. He pored over them, stretching the shred of material between his thumbs. Then half smiling, so that his upper lip took on its peculiar curve, he gravely tied it round his wrist. From the drawer he took the small parcel which he untied. All this was done slowly, with many pauses, as if his mind were wavering, but at this point he began to move rapidly, even excitedly. He searched for a pencil and a bit of paper, scrawled a line or two, retied the parcel, and immediately went out and posted it. He had at last decided.