Cold Comfort Farm (18 page)

He stared thickly at her. She observed with distaste that his chest was extremely hairy.

‘’Tes impossible,’ he said at last. ‘The old lady would never let him go.’

‘Why not?’ asked Flora. ‘Why should he not go? Why does Aunt Ada Doom like to keep you all here, as though you were all children?’

‘She – she – she’s ill,’ stammered Reuben, casting a fleeting glance at the closed, dusty windows of the farm high above his head, where the lin-tits were already building under the sheaves. ‘If any on us says we’ll leave the farm, she gets an attack. There have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort. None on us mun go, except Harkaway, when he takes the money down to the bank at Beershorn every Saturday morning.’

‘But you all go into Beershorn sometimes.’

‘Ay, but ’tes a great risk. If she knew, ’twould bring on an attack.’

‘An attack? What of?’ Flora was getting a little impatient. Unlike Charles, she deplored a gloomy mystery.

‘Her – her illness. She – she ain’t like other people’s grandmothers. When she was no bigger than a linnet, she saw—’

‘Oh, Reuben, do hurry up and tell me, there’s a good soul. All the sun will be gone by the time I get up on to the Downs.’

‘She – she’s mad.’

Flat and dark, the word lay between them in the indifferent air. Time, which had been behaving normally lately, suddenly began to spin upon a bright point in endless space. It never rains but it pours.

‘Oh,’ said Flora, thoughtfully.

So that was it. Aunt Ada Doom was mad. You would expect, by all the laws of probability, to find a mad grandmother at Cold Comfort Farm, and for once the laws of probability had not done you down and a mad grandmother there was.

Flora observed, tapping her shoe with her walking-stick, that it was very awkward.

‘Ay,’ said Reuben, ‘’tes terrible. And her madness takes the form of wantin’ to know everything as goes on. She has to see all the books twice a week: the milk book an’ the chicken book an’ the pig book and corn book. If we keeps the books back, she has an attack. ’Tes terrible. She’s the head of the family, ye see. We mun keep her alive at all costs. She never comes downstairs but twice a year – on the first of May and on the last day of the harvest festival. If anybody eats too much, she has an attack. ’Tes terrible.’

‘It is, indeed,’ agreed Flora. It struck her that Aunt Ada Doom’s madness had taken the most convenient form possible. If everybody who went mad could arrange in what way it was to take them, she felt pretty sure they would all choose to be mad like Ada Doom.

‘Is that why she doesn’t want to see me?’ she asked. ‘I’ve been here nearly a month, you know, and I have never seen her yet.’

‘Ay … maybe,’ said Reuben, indifferently. His long speech seemed to have exhausted him. His face was sodden, sunk in on itself in defensive folds.

‘Well, anyway,’ said Flora, briskly, ‘because Aunt Ada is mad there is no reason why you should not try to persuade
Cousin Amos to go on a preaching tour, and then manage the farm while he is away. You have a stab at it.’

‘Do ye think,’ said Reuben, slowly, ‘that if I was to look after th’ farm while the old devil was away, moitherin’ about hell fire to a lot of frittened birds and cows a long way off, he’d come back and see as I could do it, and maybe leave it to me for my own when he’s gone?’

‘Yes, I do,’ said Flora, firmly.

Reuben’s face became contorted with a number of emotions, and suddenly, even as she watched him, victory was hers!

‘Ay,’ he said, hoarsely, ‘dang me if I doan’t din into the old devil how he must be off speechifyin’ this very week.’

And much to her surprise he held out his hand to her. She took it and shook it warmly. This was the first sign of humanity she had encountered among the Starkadders, and she was moved by it. She felt like stout Cortez or Sir James Jeans on spotting yet another white dwarf.

She was cheerful as she walked away towards the downland path. If Reuben did not overdo the persuading stunt (and this was a real danger, for Amos was astute and would soon see through any obvious attempt to get rid of him) her plan should succeed.

It was a fresh, pleasant morning and she felt the more disposed to enjoy her walk because Mr Mybug (she could not learn to think of him as Meyerburg) was not with her. For the last three mornings he had been with her, but this morning he had said that he really ought to do some work. Flora did not see why, but one excuse was as good as another to get rid of him.

It cannot be said that Flora really enjoyed taking walks with Mr Mybug. To begin with, he was not really interested in anything but sex. This was understandable, if deplorable. After all, many of our best minds have had the same weakness. The trouble about Mr Mybug was that ordinary objects, which are not usually associated with sex even by our best minds, did suggest sex to Mr Mybug, and he pointed them out and made comparisons and asked Flora what she thought about it all. Flora found it difficult to reply because she was not interested.
She was therefore obliged merely to be polite, and Mr Mybug mistook her lack of enthusiasm and thought it was due to inhibitions. He remarked how curious it was that most Englishwomen (most young Englishwomen, that was, Englishwomen of about nineteen to twenty-four) were inhibited. Cold, that was what young Englishwomen from nineteen to twenty-four were.

They used sometimes to walk through a pleasant wood of young birch trees which were just beginning to come into bud. The stems reminded Mr Mybug of phallic symbols and the buds made Mr Mybug think of nipples and virgins. Mr Mybug pointed out to Flora that he and she were walking on seeds which were germinating in the womb of the earth. He said it made him feel as if he were trampling on the body of a great brown woman. He felt as if he were a partner in some mighty rite of gestation.

Flora used sometimes to ask him the name of a tree, but he never knew.

Yet there were occasions when he was not reminded of a pair of large breasts by the distant hills. Then, he would stand looking at the woods upon the horizon. He would wrinkle up his eyes and breathe deeply through his nostrils and say that the view reminded him of one of Poussin’s lovely things. Or he would pause and peer in a pool and say it was like a painting by Manet.

And, to be fair to Mr Mybug, it must be admitted he was sometimes interested by the social problems of the day. Only yesterday, while he and Flora were walking through an alley of rhododendrons on an estate which was open to the public, he had discussed a case of arrest in Hyde Park. The rhododendrons made him think of Hyde Park. He said that it was impossible to sit down for five minutes in Hyde Park after seven o’clock in the evening without being either accosted or arrested.

There were many homosexuals to be seen in Hyde Park. Prostitutes, too. God! those rhododendron buds had a phallic, urgent look!

Sooner or later we should have to tackle the problem
of homosexuality. We should have to tackle the problem of Lesbians and old maids.

God! that little pool down there in the hollow was shaped just like somebody’s navel! He would like to drag off his clothes and leap into it. There was another problem … We should have to tackle that, too. In no other country but England was there so much pruriency about nakedness. If we all went about naked, sexual desire would automatically disappear. Had Flora ever been to a party where everybody took off all their clothes? Mr Mybug had. Once a whole lot of us bathed in the river with nothing on and afterwards little Harriet Belmont sat naked in the grass and played to us on her flute. It was delicious; so gay and simple and natural. And Billie Polswett danced a Haiwaian love-dance, making all the gestures that are usually omitted in the stage version. Her husband had danced too. It had been lovely; so warm and natural and
real
, somehow.

So, taking it all round, Flora was pleased to have her walk in solitude.

She passed a girl riding on a pony and two young men walking with knapsacks and sticks, but no one else. She went down into a valley, filled with bushes of hazel and gorse, and made her way towards a little house built of grey stones, its roof painted turquoise green, which stood on the other rise of the Down. It was a shepherd’s hut; she could see the stone hut close to it in which the ewes were kept at lambing-time and a shallow trough from which they drank.

If Mr Mybug had been there, he would have said that the ewes were paying the female thing’s tribute to the Life Force. He said a woman’s success could only be estimated by the success of her sexual life, and Flora supposed he would say the same thing about a ewe.

Oh, she
was
so glad he wasn’t there!

She went skipping round the corner of the little sheep-house and saw Elfine, sitting on a turf and sunning herself.

Both cousins were startled. But Flora was quite pleased. She wanted a chance to talk to Elfine.

Elfine jumped to her feet and stood poised; she had something of the brittle grace of a yearling foal. A dryad’s smile
played on the curious sullen purity of her mouth, but her eyes were unawake and unfriendly. Flora thought, ‘What a dreadful way of doing one’s hair; surely it must be a mistake.’

‘You’re Flora – I’m Elfine,’ said the other girl simply. Her voice had a breathless, broken quality that suggested the fluty sexless timbre of a choir-boy’s notes (only choir-boys are seldom sexless, as many a harassed vicaress knows to her cost).

‘No prizes offered,’ thought Flora, rather rudely. But she said politely: ‘Yes. Isn’t it a delicious morning. Have you been far?’

‘Yes … No … Away over there …’ The vague gesture of her outflung arm sketched, in some curious fashion, illimitable horizons. Judith’s gestures had the same barrierless quality; there was not a vase left anywhere in the farm.

‘I feel stifled in the house,’ Elfine went on, shyly and abruptly. ‘I hate houses.’

‘Indeed?’ said Flora.

She observed Elfine draw a deep breath, and knew that she was about to get well away on a good long description of herself and her habits, as these shy dryads always did if you gave them half a chance. So she sat down on another turf in the sun and composed herself to listen, looking up at the tall Elfine.

‘Do you like poetry?’ asked Elfine, suddenly. A pure flood of colour ran up under her skin. Her hands, burnt and bone-modelled as a boy’s, were clenched.

‘Some of it,’ responded Flora, cautiously.

‘I adore it,’ said Elfine, simply. ‘It says all the things I can’t say for myself … somehow … It means … oh, I don’t know. Just everything, somehow. It’s
enough
. Do you ever feel that?’

Flora replied that she had, occasionally, felt something of the sort, but her reply was limited by the fact that she was not quite sure exactly what Elfine meant.

‘I write poetry,’ said Elfine. (So I was right! thought Flora). ‘I’ll show you some … if you promise not to laugh. I can’t bear my children to be laughed at … I call my poems my children.’

Flora felt that she could promise this with safety.

‘And love, too,’ muttered Elfine, her voice breaking and changing shyly like the Finnish ice under the first lusty rays
and wooing winds of the Finnish spring. ‘Love and poetry go together, somehow … out here on the hills, when I’m alone with my dreams … oh, I can’t tell you how I feel. I’ve been chasing a squirrel all the morning.’

Flora said severely:

‘Elfine, are you engaged?’

Her cousin stood perfectly still. Slowly the colour receded from her face. Her head drooped. She muttered: ‘There’s someone … We don’t want to spoil things by having anything definite and binding … it’s horrible … to bind anyone down.’

‘Nonsense. It is a very good idea,’ said Flora, austerely, ‘and it is a good thing for you to be bound down, too. Now what do you suppose will happen to you if you don’t marry this Someone?’

Elfine’s face brightened. ‘Oh … but I’ve got it all planned out,’ she said, eagerly. ‘I shall get a job in an arts and crafts shop in Horsham and do barbola work in my spare time. I shall be all right … and later on I can go to Italy and perhaps learn to be a little like St Francis of Assisi.’…

‘It is quite unnecessary for a young woman to resemble St Francis of Assisi,’ said Flora, coldly; ‘and in your case it would be downright suicidal. A large girl like you
must
wear clothes that
fit
; and, Elfine,
whatever
you do, always wear court shoes. Remember – c-o-u-r-t. You are so handsome that you can wear the most conventional clothes and look very well in them; but do, for heaven’s sake, avoid orange linen jumpers and hand-wrought jewellery. Oh, and shawls in the evening.’

She paused. She saw by Elfine’s expression that she had been progressing too quickly. Elfine looked puzzled and extremely wretched. Flora was penitent. She had taken a fancy to the ridiculous chit. She said in a very friendly tone, drawing her cousin down to sit beside her:

‘Now, what is it? Tell me. Do you hate being at home?’

‘Yes … but I’m not often there,’ whispered Elfine. ‘No … it’s Urk.’

Urk … That was the foxy-looking little man who was always staring at Flora’s ankles or else spitting into the well.

‘What about Urk?’ she demanded.

‘He … they … I think he wants to marry me,’ stammered Elfine. ‘I think Grandmother means me to marry him when I am eighteen. He … he … climbs the apple-tree outside my window and tries to watch me going to … to bed. I had to hang up three face-towels over the window, and then he poked them down with a fishing-rod and laughed and shook his fist at me … I don’t know what to do.’

Flora was justly indignant, but concealed her nasty temper. It was at this moment that she resolved to adopt Elfine and rescue her in the teeth of all the Starkadders of Cold Comfort.

‘And does Someone know this?’ she asked.

‘Well … I told him.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Oh … he said “Rotten luck, old girl”.’

‘It’s Dick Hawk-Monitor, isn’t it?’

‘Oh … how did you know? Oh … I suppose everybody knows by now. It’s beastly.’

‘Things are certainly in rather a mess, but I do not think we need go so far as to say they are beastly,’ said Flora, more calmly. ‘Now, you must forgive my asking you these questions, Elfine, but has the young Hawk-Monitor actually
asked
you to marry him?’