Authors: Stella Gibbons
Flora was desperately sleepy; she felt as though she were at one of Eugene O’Neill’s plays; the kind that goes on for hours and hours and hours, until the R.S.P.C. Audiences batters the doors of the theatre in and insists on a tea interval.
There was no doubt that the fun was wearing a bit thin. Judith, huddled in a corner, was looking broodingly at Seth from under her raised hand. Reuben was brooding in another corner. The sukebind flowers were fading. Seth was studying a copy of ‘Photo Bits’ which he had produced from the pocket of his evening jacket.
Only Aunt Ada Doom sat upright, her eyes fixed upon the distance. She was rigid. Her lips moved softly. Flora, from her refuge on the table, could make out what she was saying, and it sounded none too festive.
‘Two of them … gone. Elfine … Amos … and I’m alone in the woodshed now … Who took them away? Who took them away? I must know … I must know … That chit. That brat. Robert Poste’s child.’
The great bed of red coals, slowly settling into its last sleep towards extinction, threw a glare on her old face, and gave her the look of a carving in a Gothic cathedral. Rennett had crept
forward until she was within a few feet of her great-aunt (for such was the relationship between Rennett and Ada Doom), and stood looking down at her with a mad glare in her pale eyes.
Suddenly, without turning round, Aunt Ada struck at her with the ‘Milk Producers’ Weekly Bulletin and Cowkeepers’ Guide’, and Rennett fled back to her corner.
A withered flower fell from the sukebind wreath into the coals.
It was half-past four.
Suddenly, Flora felt a draught at her back. She looked round crossly, and found herself staring into the face of Reuben, who had opened the little concealed door behind the great bulge of the chimneypiece, which led out into the yard.
‘Come on,’ whispered Reuben, soundlessly. ‘’Tes time ’ee were in bed.’
Amazed and grateful, Flora silently woke Elfine, and with breathless caution they slid off the table and tiptoed across to the little door. Reuben drew them safely through it, and closed it noiselessly.
They stood outside in the yard, in a bitter wind, with the first streaks of cold light lying across the purple sky. The way to their beds lay clear before them.
‘Reuben,’ said Flora, too drunk with sleep to articulate clearly, but remembering her manners, ‘you are an
utter
lamb. Why did you?’
‘You got th’ old devil out of th’ way for me.’
‘Oh …
that
,’ yawned Flora.
‘Ay … an’ I doan’t forget. Eh, th’ farm’ll be mine now, surelie.’
‘So it will,’ said Flora, amiably. ‘Such fun for you.’
Suddenly a shocking row broke out in the kitchen behind them. The Starkadders were off again.
But Flora never knew what it was about. She was asleep where she stood. She walked up to her room like an automaton, just stayed awake long enough to undress, and then fell into bed like a log.
The next day was Sunday, so thank goodness everybody could stay in bed and get over the shocks of the night before. At least, that is what most families would have done. But the Starkadders were not like most families. Life burned in them with a fiercer edge, and by seven o’clock most of them were up and, to a certain extent, doing. Reuben, of course, had much to do because of Amos’s sudden departure.
He now thought of himself as master of the farm, and a slow tide of satisfied earth-lust indolently ebbed and flowed in his veins as he began his daily task of counting the chickens’ feathers.
Prue, Susan, Letty, Phoebe and Jane had been escorted back to Howling by Adam, at half-past five that morning, and he had returned just in time to begin the milking. He was still bewildered by the fact of Elfine’s betrothal. The sound of old wedding-bells danced between the tufts of hair in his withered ears, and catches of country rhymes sung before George IV was born:
‘Come rue, come snow,
So maidies mun go.’
he sang, over and over again to himself as he milked Feckless. He saw, yet did not see, that Aimless had lost another hoof.
The dawn widened into an exquisite spring day. Soft, woollike puffs of sound came from the thrushes’ throats in the trees. The uneasy year, tortured by its spring of adolescence, broke into bud-spots in hedge, copse, spinney and byre.
Judith sat in the kitchen, looking out with leaden eyes across the disturbed expanse of the teeming countryside. Her face was grey. Rennett huddled by the fire, stirring some rather nasty jam she had suddenly thought she would make. She had decided to stay behind when the other female Starkadders had gone off with Adam; her flayed soul shrank, obliquely, from their unspoken pity.
So noon came, and passed. A rude meal was prepared by Adam, and eaten (some of it) by the rest in the great kitchen. Old Ada Doom kept to her room, whence she had been carried at six o’clock that morning by Micah, Seth, Mark Dolour, Caraway and Harkaway.
None dared go in to her. She sat alone, a huddled, vast ruin of flesh, staring unseeingly out between her wrinkled lids. Her fingers picked endlessly at the ‘Milk Producers’ Weekly Bulletin and Cowkeepers’ Guide’. She did not think or see. The sharp blue air of spring thundered silently on window-panes fogged by her slow, batrachian breath. Powerless waves of fury coursed over her inert body. Sometimes names burst out of her green lips: ‘Amos … Elfine … Urk …’ Sometimes they just stayed inside.
No one had seen anything of Urk since he had gone galloping out into the night carrying Meriam, the hired girl. It was generally assumed that he had drowned her and then himself. Who cared, anyway?
*
As for Flora, she was still asleep at half-past three in the afternoon, and would have slept on comfortably enough until tea-time, but that she was aroused by a knocking at her door and the excited voice of Mrs Beetle proclaiming that there was two gentlemen to see her.
‘Have you got them there?’ asked Flora, sleepily.
Mrs Beetle was much shocked. She said indeed not, they was in Miss Poste’s parlour.
‘Well … who are they? I mean, did they tell you their names?’
‘One’s that Mr Mybug, miss, and the other’s a gentleman ’oo says ’is name’s Neck.’1
‘Oh, yes … of course, how delightful. Ask them both to wait till I come. I won’t be long.’ And Flora began slowly to dress, for she would not make herself feel ill by bounding vigorously out of bed, even though she was delighted at the idea of seeing her dear Mr Neck again. As for Mr Mybug, he was a nuisance, but could be coped with easily enough.
She went downstairs at last, looking as fresh as a leaf, and as she entered her little parlour (wherein Mrs Beetle had kindled a fire) Mr Neck advanced to meet her, holding out both his hands and saying:
‘Well, well, sweetheart. How’s the girl?’
Flora greeted him with warmth. He had already had some conversation with Mr Mybug, who was looking rather sulky and miserable because he had hoped to find Flora alone and have a lovely long scene with her, apologizing for his behaviour last night, and talking a lot about himself. He became more sulky at first on hearing Mr Neck address Flora as sweetheart, but after listening to a little of their conversation, he decided that Mr Neck was the sort of Amusing Type that calls everybody sweetheart, and did not mind so much.
Flora instructed Mrs Beetle to bring them some tea, which soon came, and they sat very pleasantly in the sunlight, which streamed through the window of the little green parlour, drinking their tea and conversing.
Flora felt sleepy and amiable. She had made up her mind that Mr Neck must not go without seeing Seth, and quietly told Mrs Beetle to send him to the parlour as soon as he could be found; but apart from this decision, she was not worrying about anything at all.
‘Are you over here looking for English film stars, Mr Neck?’ asked Mr Mybug, eating a little cake that Flora had wanted for herself.
‘That’s so. I want to find me another Clark Gable. Yeah, you wouldn’t remember him, maybe. That’s twenty years ago.’
‘But I have seen him at a Sunday Film Club Repertory Show, in a film called “Mounting Passion”,’ said Mr Mybug, eagerly. ‘Do you know the work of the Sunday Film Club Repertory people at all?’
‘I’ll buy it,’ said Mr Neck, who had taken a dislike to Mr Mybug. ‘Well, I want a second Clark Gable, see? I want a big, husky stiff that smells of the great outdoors, with a golden voice. I want passion. I want red blood. I don’t want no sissies, see? Sissies give me a pain in the neck, and they’re beginning to give the great American public a pain in the neck too.’
‘Do you know the work of Limf?’ asked Mr Mybug.
‘Never heard of ’em,’ said Mr Neck. ‘Thank you, sweetheart’ (to Flora, who was feeding him cake). ‘You know, Mr Mybug, we gotta responsibility to the public. We gotta give them what they want, yet it’s gotta be clean. Boy, that’s difficult. I’ll tell you it’s difficult. I want a man who can give them what they want, yet give it them so’s it don’t leave a taste in their mouths.’ He paused and drank tea. The sunshine, vivid as a Kleig light, revealed every wrinkle in his melancholy little monkeyish face and lit the fresh red carnation in his button-hole. For Mr Neck was a great dandy, who usually changed his button-hole twice a day.
‘I want a man to fetch the women,’ he went on. ‘I want a new Gary Cooper (but, lessee, thass twenty years ago), only more ritzy. Someone who can look good in a tuxedo, and yet handle one of them old-world ploughs. (Say, I seen four ploughs since I been over this trip.) Well, who’ve I got? I got Teck Jones. Yeah, well, Teck’s a good kid; he can ride all right, but he’s got no body-urge. I got Valentine Orlo. Well, he looks like a wop. They won’t stand for no more wops since poor Morelli went to the chair in ’42. No, wops is off. Well, I got Peregrine Howard. He’s a Britisher. No one can’t say his first name right, so he’s no good. There’s Slake Fountain. Yeah, I’ll say there is, too. We keep a gang of hoodlums on their toes at twenty a week each to sober him up every morning before he comes on the set. Then there’s Jerry Badger, the sort of nice egg you’d like your kid sister to marry, but nothing to him. Nothing
at
all. Well, what do I get out of it? Nothing. I gotta find somebody, that’s all.’
‘Have you ever seen Alexandre Fin?’ asked Mr Mybug. ‘I saw him in Pepin’s last film, “La Plume de Ma Tante”, in Paris last January. Very amusing stuff. They all wore glass clothes, you know, and moved in time to a metronome.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ said Mr Neck. ‘A frog, eh? Frogs is all under five feet. I want a big, husky fella: the kinda fella that would look good cuddling a kid. Is there another cup, sweetheart?’
Flora poured him some.
‘Yeah,’ he went on. ‘I seen that film in Paris, too. It gave me a pain. Gave me a lot of new dope, though. What not to do, and all that. I’ve met Pepin, too. The poor egg’s cuckoo.’
‘He is much admired by the younger men,’ said Mr Mybug, daringly, glancing at Flora for approval.
‘That helps a whole heap,’ said Mr Neck.
‘Then your interest in the cinema, Mr Neck, is
entirely
commercial? I mean, you think nothing of its aesthetic possibilities?’
‘I gotta responsibility. If your frog friend had to fill fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of movie seats every day, he’d have to think of a better stunt than a lot of guys wearin’ glass pants.’
He paused and reflected.
‘Say, though, that’s an idea. A guy buys a new tuxedo, see. Then he offends some ritzy old egg, see? A magician, or something, and this old egg puts a curse on him. Well, this egg (the guy in the tuxedo) goes off to a swell party, and when he comes in all the girls scream. That kind o’ stuff. Well, he can’t see his pants is turned into glass by this other old egg (the magician, see?), and he says: “Whattha hell”, and all the rest of it. Yeah, that’s an idea.’
While he was speaking, Seth had come silently, with his graceful, pantherish tread, to the door of the room; and now stood there, looking down enquiringly at Flora. She smiled across at him, motioning him to be silent. Mr Neck’s back was towards the door, so that he could not see Seth, but when he saw Flora smile he turned half round, and looked across at the doorway to see at whom her gesture was directed.
And he saw Seth.
A silence fell. The young man stood in the warm light of the declining sun, his bare throat and boldly moulded features looking as though they were bathed in gold. His pose was easy and graceful. A superb self-confidence radiated from him, as it does from any healthy animal. He met Mr Neck’s stare with an impudent stare of his own, his head lowered and slightly
forward. He looked exactly what he was, the local sexually successful bounder. Millions of women were to realize, in the next five years, that Seth could be transported in fancy to a Welsh mining village, a shoddy North country seaside town, a raw city in the plains of the Middle West, and still remain eternally and unchangeably the local irresistible bounder.
Is it any wonder that Mr Neck broke the silence by flinging up his hand and saying in a hoarse whisper: ‘That’s it, sweetheart! That’s got it! Hold it!’
And Seth was so soaked in movie slang that he held it, for another second or so of silence.
Flora broke it by saying: ‘Oh, Seth, there you are. I wanted Mr Neck to see you. Earl, this is my cousin, Seth Starkadder. He’s very interested in the talkies. Mr Neck is a producer, Seth.’
Mr Neck, forgetful of everything else, was craning forward with his head slightly bent downwards, to hear Seth speak. And when that deep, warm drawl came – ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Neck’ – Mr Neck looked up with an expression of such relief and delight that it was just as though he had clapped his hands.
‘Well, well,’ said Mr Neck, surveying Seth rather as though Seth were his dinner (as indeed he was to be for some years to come). ‘How’s the boy? So you’re a fan, eh? You and me must get acquainted, huh? Maybe you’d thought of going in for the game yourself?’
Mr Mybug tilted comfortably back in his chair, choosing a little cake to eat, and prepared to enjoy the sight of Seth being roasted. But he had (as we know) backed the wrong horse.
Seth scowled and drew back. Mr Neck almost patted his face with rapture as he observed how Seth’s every mood was reflected, like a child’s, in his countenance.