Authors: Stella Gibbons
With such guides to follow, it was not possible to get into a mess.
Flora decided that before she tackled Aunt Ada she would refresh her spirit by re-reading part of ‘The Higher Common Sense’; the famous chapter on ‘Preparing the Mind for the Twin Invasion by Prudence and Daring in Dealing with Substances not Included in the Outline’. Probably she would only have time to study a page or two, for it was not easy to read, and part of it was in German and part in Latin. But she thought that the case was sufficiently serious to justify the use of ‘The Higher Common Sense’. The Pensées were all very well to fortify one’s spirit against everyday pricks and scourges; Aunt Ada Doom, the crux of life at Cold Comfort, was another matter.
While she was eating the last piece of bread and butter, Flora was thinking that there might be a difficulty about her food while she was at Cold Comfort, for possibly Adam was cook to the family, and eat food prepared by Adam she could not and would not. She would probably have to approach her Cousin Judith, and have what older people love to call a little talk about it.
On the whole, Cold Comfort was not without its promise of mystery and excitement. She had hopes that Aunt Ada Doom would provide both; and she wished that Charles could have been there to enjoy it all with her. Charles dearly loved a gloomy mystery.
Adam, meanwhile, had finished slicing turnips and had gone out into the yard, where a thorn-tree grew, and returned
with a long thorn-spiked twig torn from its branches. Flora watched him with interest while he turned the cold water on to the crusted plates, and began picking at the incrustations of porridge with his twig.
She bore it as long as she could, for she could hardly believe her own eyes, and then she said:
‘What on earth are you doing?’
‘Cletterin’ the dishes, Robert Poste’s child.’
‘But surely you could do it much more easily with a little mop? A nice little mop with a handle? Cousin Judith ought to get you one. Why don’t you ask her? It would get the dishes cleaner, and it would be so much quicker, too.’
‘I don’t want a liddle mop wi’ a handle. I’ve used a thorn twig these fifty years and more, and what was good enough then is good enough now. And I don’t want to cletter the dishes more quickly, neither. It passes the time away, and takes me thoughts off me liddle wild bird.’
‘But,’ suggested the cunning Flora, remembering the conversation which had roused her that morning at dawn, ‘if you had a little mop and could wash the dishes more quickly, you could have more time in the cowshed with the dumb beasts.’
Adam stopped his work. This had evidently struck home. He nodded once or twice, without turning round, as though he were pondering it; and Flora hastily followed up her advantage.
‘Anyway, I shall buy one for you when I go into Beershorn tomorrow.’
At this moment there came a soft rap at the closed door which led out into the yard; and a second later it was repeated. Adam shuffled across to the door, muttering ‘My liddle wennet!’ and flung it wide.
A figure which stood outside, wrapped in a long green cloak, rushed across the room and up the stairs so quickly that Flora only had the merest glimpse of it.
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Who was that?’ she asked, though she was sure that she knew.
‘My cowdling – my liddle Elfine,’ said Adam, listlessly picking up his thorn twig, which had fallen into the snood of porridge on the hearth.
‘Indeed, and does she always charge about like that?’ enquired Flora, coldly; she considered her cousin deficient in manners.
‘Ay. She’s as wild and shy as a Pharisee of the woods. Days she’ll be away from home, wanderin’ on the hills, wi’ only the wild birds and the liddle rabbits an’ the spyin’ maggies for company. Ay, and o’ nights, too …’ His face darkened. ‘Ay, she’s away then, too, wanderin’ far from those that loves her and cowdled her in their bosoms when she was a mommet. She’ll break my heart into liddle sippets, so she will.’
‘Does she go to school?’ asked Flora, looking distastefully in a cupboard for a rag with which to dust her shoes. ‘How old is she?’
‘Seventeen. Nay, niver talk o’ school for my wennet. Why, Robert Poste’s child, ye might as soon send the white hawthorn or the yellow daffydowndilly to school as my Elfine. She learns from the skies an’ the wild marsh-tiggets, not out o’ books.’
‘How trying,’ observed Flora, who was feeling lonely and rather cross. ‘Look here, where is everybody this morning? I want to see Miss Judith before I go out for a walk.’
‘Mus’ Amos, he’s down seein’ the well drained for Sairy-Lucy’s Polly we think she’s fallen into it; Mus’ Reuben, he’s down Nettle Flitch, ploughin’; Mus’ Seth, he’s off a-mollocking somewheres in Howling; Miss Judith, she’s upstairs a-layin’ out the cards.’
‘Well, I shall go up and find her. What does mollocking mean?… No, you need not tell me. I can guess. What time is lunch?’
‘The men has their dinner at twelve. We has ours an hour later.’
‘Then I’ll come in at one. Does – do – are – I mean, who cooks it?’
‘Miss Judith, she cooks the dinner. Ah, was ye feared I would cook it, Robert Poste’s child? Set yer black heart at rest; I wouldn’t set me hand to cook even a runnet of bacon for the Starkadders. I cooks for the men, and that’s all.’
Flora had the grace to colour at his accurate reading of her thoughts, and was glad to hurry upstairs out of his accusing
presence. But it was a relief about the cooking. At least she would not have to starve during her visit to Cold Comfort.
She had no notion where Judith’s bedroom might be, but she found a guide to take her there. As she reached the head of the stairs the tall girl in the green cloak, who had just dashed through the kitchen, came running lightly down the corridor towards her. She stopped, as though shot, at the sight of Flora, and stood poised as though for instant flight. ‘Doing the startled bird stunt,’ thought Flora, giving her a pleasant smile; or rather, smiling at the hood which half concealed her cousin’s face.
‘What do you want?’ whispered Elfine, stonily.
‘Cousin Judith’s bedroom,’ returned Flora. ‘Would you be a lamb and show me the way? It’s so easy to get lost in a large house when everything is strange to one.’
A pair of large blue eyes looked at her steadily above the green hand-woven hood. Flora pensively noted that they were fine eyes, and that the hood was the wrong green.
She said, persuasively, ‘Do forgive my saying so, but I would love to see you in blue. Some shades of green are good, of course, but dull greens are
very
trying, I always think. If I were you, I should try blue – something
really
well cut, of course, and very simple – but
definitely
blue. You try it, and see.’
Elfine made a brusque, boyish movement, and said offhandedly, ‘This way.’
She strode along the corridor with a long, swinging step, letting the hood fall back so that Flora could see the back of her unbrushed mane of hair; it might have been a good gold if it had been properly dressed and cared for. It all seemed deplorable to Flora.
‘Here,’ jerked out Elfine, stopping in front of a closed door.
Flora thanked her so much; and Elfine, after another long stare at her, strode away.
‘She will have to be taken in hand at once,’ thought Flora. ‘Another year, and there will be no doing anything with her; for even if she escapes from this place, she will only go and keep a tea-room in Brighton and go all arty-and-crafty about the feet and waist.’
And sighing a little at the greatness of the task which she
had set herself to perform, Flora rapped at Judith’s bedroom door, and, in reply to a muttered ‘Come in’, entered.
Two hundred photographs of Seth, aged from six weeks to twenty-four years, decorated the walls of Judith’s bedroom. She sat by the window in a soiled red dressing-gown with a dirty pack of cards on the table in front of her. The bed was not made. Her hair hung about her face, a nest of lifeless black snakes.
‘Good morning,’ said Flora. ‘I’m so sorry to interrupt you if you are busy writing letters; I just wanted to know if you would like me to amuse myself and make my own arrangements, or would you like me to come in and see you about this time every morning. Personally, I think it’s much easier if a guest wanders round and finds her own ways of passing the time. I am sure you are far too busy to want to bother with looking after me.’
Judith, after a long stare at her young cousin, flung back her head with its load of snakes. The raw air splintered before the harsh onslaught of her laugh.
‘Busy! Busy weaving my own shroud, belike. Nay, do what you please, Robert Poste’s child, if so be as you don’t break in on my loneliness. Give me time, and I will atone for the wrong my man did to your father. Give … us … all … time …’ – the words came draggingly and unwillingly – ‘and we will all atone.’
‘I suppose,’ suggested Flora, courteously, ‘you would not care to tell me what the wrong was? I do feel it would make matters a little easier …’
Judith thrust the words aside with a heavy movement of her hand, like the blind outflinging of a tortured beast.
‘Haven’t I told you my lips are sealed?’
‘Just as you like, of course, Cousin Judith. And there is another thing …’
Then Flora, as delicately as possible, asked her cousin when and how she should pay to her the first instalment of the hundred pounds a year which Flora had anticipated that she would have to hand over to the Starkadders for her keep.
‘Keep it – keep it,’ said Judith, violently. ‘We will never touch a halfpenny of Robert Poste’s money. While you are here, you are here as the guest of Cold Comfort. Every middock you eat
is paid for with our sweat. ’Tes as it should be, seeing the way things are.’
Flora politely thanked her cousin for her generosity, but she privately resolved that, as soon as it was possible, she would make the acquaintance of Aunt Ada Doom, and find out if the old lady approved of this prodigal arrangement. Flora felt sure that she would not approve; and Flora herself was irritated by Judith’s remark. For, if she lived at Cold Comfort as a guest, it would be unpardonable impertinence were she to interfere with the family’s mode of living; but if she were paying her way, she could interfere as much as she pleased. She had observed a similar situation in houses where there were both poor relations and paying guests.
But this was a point which could be settled at some other time; just now there was something more important to discuss. She said:
‘By the way, I adore my bedroom, but do you think I could have the curtains washed? I believe they are red; and I should so like to make sure.’
Judith had sunk into a reverie.
‘Curtains?’ she asked, vacantly, lifting her magnificent head. ‘Child, child, it is many years since such trifles broke across the web of my solitude.’
‘I’m sure it is; but do you think I might have them washed, all the same? Could Adam do them?’
‘Adam? His frail arms have not the strength. Meriam, the hired girl, might have done them, but—’
Her gaze strayed again to the window, past whose open casements a fine rain was blowing.
Flora, who was willing to try anything once, gazed too. Judith was looking at a little hut which stood at the far end of Nettle Flitch Field, and almost abutted upon the sag-pieces which railed in the yard. From this hut came distinct cries of distress in a female voice.
Flora looked at her cousin with enquiring eyebrows. Judith nodded, lowering her eyelids while a slow scarlet wave of blood swept over her breasts and cheeks.
‘’Tes the hired girl in labour,’ she whispered.
‘What – without a doctor or anything?’ asked Flora, in alarm. ‘Hadn’t we better send Adam down into Howling for one? I mean – in that grim-looking hut and everything—’
Judith again made the blind animal gesture of repudiation which seemed to thrust a sodden wall of negation between herself and the world of living things. Her face was grey.
‘Leave her in peace … animals like Meriam are best alone at such times …’Tes not the first time.’
‘Too bad,’ said Flora, sympathetically.
‘’Tes the fourth time,’ whispered Judith, thickly. ‘Every year, in the fulness o’ summer, when the sukebind hangs heavy from the wains …’tes the same. And when the spring comes her hour is upon her again. ’Tes the hand of Nature, and we women cannot escape it.’
(‘Oh, can’t we?’ thought Flora, with spirit, but aloud she only made such noises of tut-tutting regret as she felt were appropriate to the occasion.)
‘Well, she’s out of the question, anyway,’ she said, briskly.
‘What question?’ asked Judith, after a pause.
She had fallen into a trance-like muse. Her face was grey.
‘I mean the curtains. She can’t wash them if she’s just had a baby, can she?’
‘She will be about again tomorrow. Such wenches are like the beasts of the field,’ said Judith, indifferently.
She seemed bowed under the gnawing weight of a sorrow that had left her too exhausted for anger; but, as she spoke, an asp-like gleam of contempt darted into her overlidded eyes. She looked quickly across at a photograph of Seth which stood on the table. It showed him in the centre of the Beershorn Wanderers Football Club. His young man’s limbs, sleek in their dark male pride, seemed to disdain the covering offered them by the brief shorts and striped jersey. His body might have been naked, like his full, muscled throat, which rose, round and proud as the male organ of a flower, from the neck of his sweater.
‘He is a thought too fat, but really very handsome,’ mused Flora, following Judith’s glance. ‘I don’t suppose he plays football any more – probably mollocks, instead.’
‘Ay,’ suddenly whispered Judith, ‘look at him – the shame of our house. Cursed be the day I brought him forth and the nourishment he drew from my bosom, and the wooing tongue God gave him to bring disgrace upon weak women.’
She stood up, and looked out into the drizzling rain.
**The cries from the little hut had stopped. An exhausted silence, brimmed with the enervating weakness which follows a stupendous effort, mounted from the stagnant air in the yard, like a miasma. All the surrounding surface of the countryside – the huddled Downs lost in rain, the wet fields fanged abruptly with flints, the leafless thorns thrust sideways by the eternal pawing of the wind, the lush breeding miles of meadow through which the lifeless river wandered – seemed to be folding inwards upon themselves. Their dumbness said: ‘Give up. There is no answer to the riddle; only that bodies return exhausted, hour by hour, minute by minute, to the all-forgiving and all-comprehending primaeval slime.’