The rainy moonlit sky, vast and vacant, looked down at her; cold and sweet, the wet air blew against her face. No one was there, and across the fields, sheeted with fresh pools, shone reassuringly the lights of the farm.
She took a lengthy look all about her. A sixty-foot ash tree stood up in the wind, sighing steadily, and she could hear the pines at the back of the house sighing too; their sound was like the sea’s sound, the sea fifteen miles away across the black, turfy
downs
. Suddenly, something made her glance down at her feet, and there, neatly arranged upon the doorstep, was a pile of books.
“Oh, how kind!” Alda exclaimed, and stooped to examine them, not realising that the unknown might have put them there as a lure to engross her while creeping up to bash her on the head.
She had just read the title of the first one,
In Touch with the Transcendent
, and had time to experience dismay, before a gust of rain blew in over herself and the books and she shut the door.
Back in the parlour she put them on the table and finished her inspection. The titles were:
With Rod and Gun in Jugoslavia; Foch, Man of Orléans; In Touch with the Transcendent; Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant; To Haiti in a Ketch
.
In Touch with the Transcendent
, a volume of vaguely religious essays, was the most worn of the five, and was clearly a favourite with its owner, but
Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant
also bore traces of frequent use. It was not easy to conjure up a personality who should delight in both works, and when Alda went up to bed an hour later she had got no further than the conviction that he was good-natured, eccentric, and a man.
AT BREAKFAST THE
next morning Jenny and Louise instantly assumed that the unknown was a spy, and worked out an elaborate plan by which he could be identified and trapped, while Meg methodically worked her way through a large bowl of cereal and milk, glancing continually from one animated face to another.
The subject kept them absorbed until breakfast was over and before them—long, rainy and dull—stretched the day. The
irregular
nature of their lives during the war had never permitted Jenny and Louise to acquire the sense of order and routine which is alleged to play such an important and valuable part in a child’s upbringing, and Alda herself was no routine-lover; the impromptu picnic, the unheralded treat, were what she enjoyed, and her housekeeping was slapdash and cheerful. She was well fitted to bring up children (who do not miss routine and order if they have security and love) and her daughters, with imaginations kept in play by the many home-diversions provided by an ingenious mother, were happy children.
They each had a paint-box; there was the hoard of old
Best-way
and
Weldon
’
s Fashion Books
that travelled round with the family for colouring and cutting out; there was Louise’s box of dolls’ clothes and the unfailing interest to be obtained from swapping them with those in Jenny’s box; there were books (two of Louise’s favourites were
Bessie in the Mountains
, a pious mid-nineteenth-century American story, and
By Order of Queen Maud
, a Late Victorian tale in which the highly exhibitionist heroine ended up as a cripple for life, just to learn her); and finally,
all three owned raincoats and sound rubber boots
. This meant that they were made free of the pleasures of an English winter; if all else failed to amuse, they could go for a walk.
Alda knew that bread, vegetables and groceries would be brought to her door, and she reckoned that it would not be necessary to shop in the village more than twice a week. There was, therefore, no sound excuse, after she and Jenny had whisked through the washing-up and sketchily made the beds, for going out.
But the fire burned cheerfully in the kitchen and three heads were bent placidly (even Meg, who was too young for painting, was temporarily entertained in watching) over the painting books. Alda went across to the window and looked out; green, wet, fresh and empty the fields stretched away to the brown woods. She felt the raindrops on her face and the suck of wet
mud
at her boots and the cold crystal scatter of water over her hand as she pulled at a late blackberry; she could taste its soft rotten sweetness on her tongue. I’ll go over to the farm, she decided, and see what happens about letters and milk. She had received an impression that the Hoadleys did not want to be friendly but there was no harm in asking.
When she came down in her oilskins, Meg was sitting on the floor.
“Just getting on me boots,” she explained. “Meg will go with mudder.”
“Oh now, Meg darling, you can’t come this time, it’s pouring with rain,” exclaimed Alda impatiently, wild to be off. “You stay here goodly with Jenny and Weez.”
“Meg doesn’t want to.”
“
We
don’t particularly want
you
, goodness knows,” said Jenny, without looking up from her work.
“I should think not, indeed,” from Louise.
“Dwell, if vey don’t want me and you don’t want me, what shall I do?” roared Meg, bursting into tears and standing up with one boot off and one on. “Oh, oh, oh, what shall I do?”
“Put your silly ass boot on and come with me,” said Alda crossly and gaily, snatching her up and pulling on the boot. “Oh, for goodness’ sake don’t make that noise!”
A few minutes later she was splashing across the meadow with the rain driving in her face and the laughing Meg on her back. A raised track strengthened by flints led from the cottage to the farm, but in parts it had been broken away and deeply worn down by the passage of hay wains and herds of cows, and in these places the pools were inches deep, while on either side extended quagmires. Alda would have preferred to enjoy this wet day by herself, but Meg’s weight felt pleasant upon her shoulders and she liked the clasp of the little hands round her throat.
Keats said that poetry should
steal upon the senses
. Even so,
Naylor’s
Farm stole upon Alda’s eyes. At one moment she was plodding along the track, moving her wet eyelashes to free them from the raindrops, while ahead of her lay a group of barns and sheds built of tarred weatherboarding and thatched with ancient straw that had changed in the course of years from gold to silver; the next moment, she had passed the buildings, and the farm (whose upper storey alone had been visible from the track) lay before her in a hollow. And what had been a pleasant country landscape was transformed.
It looks like the end of somewhere, she thought vaguely, lifting her hand again to wipe the rain from her eyes, and yet it is not shut in. How very beautiful.
There was nothing special or solemn in the scene: it was only that the guardian group of elms was perfectly shaped, and that a sheet of water brimmed between herself and the low, rose-red farmhouse so that the building seemed rising from a lake. Rose-vines, on which masses of withered white blossoms and even a few living ones lingered, overgrew porch and windows; how sheltered the place must be! the gentlest possible slopes and folds in the surrounding meadows enclosed it and made it remote rather than lonely. A low wall of the same rosy brick surrounded the tangled garden, threaded by a narrow brick path; there was not much attempt at flower growing and the place seemed a little neglected, gradually settling into this hollow
among
the fields, where throughout the years the pond had gathered and white ducks sailed in the rain.
Having walked round the water, Alda pushed open the faded wooden gate and went up the path. After she had used the creaking knocker, she let Meg slip to the ground and stood gazing away at the endless gentle folds of meadow, the farm buildings and the disturbed grey sky. There were no signs of life until a man in a brown uniform came out of a shed with a sack over his head and a sullen face under it; she recognised the blue-eyed Italian of the woods, but though he glanced in her direction he made no reply to her pleasant “good morning” and disappeared among the buildings towards the back of the farmhouse. At that moment the door opened.
“Yes?” said the young woman who stood there, unsmiling under a coquettish turban, with a duster in one hand. “Oh—good morning,” recognising her.
“Good morning, Mrs. Hoadley. I hope I’m not disturbing you. Can you tell me what happens about letters here? Does the postman come or do we have to fetch them?”
“Sometimes she does (it’s an old lady—or was, before she was taken ill a month ago) but most days we have to ride down to Burlham for them.”
She paused, obviously waiting for Alda to thank her, and go away; her manner was perfectly civil and equally perfectly designed to keep Alda at a distance.
“I see. That won’t always be convenient for us,” said Alda, who sometimes did not notice when people intended to keep her at a distance. “What a nuisance.”
“Yes, it is. Mr. Hoadley or one of the men has to go down there every day, never mind the weather or the work.” She did not add an offer to let one of them bring Alda’s letters.
“You are going to let us have our milk, aren’t you?” Alda went on, eager to get the details of their new life into working order.
“Yes.” Here Mrs. Hoadley’s eyes strayed to Meg.
She was sitting on the low brick wall supporting the wooden porch and kicking her boots and trousered legs against it, and such looks as she had were not improved by wet tails of hair hanging out of her pixie hood on either side of her fat pale cheeks. Her attitude and manner, which were detached to indifference, were not attractive unless the beholder happened to like children.
“Don’t kick holes in the wall, please, it’s bad enough now,” said Mrs. Hoadley with a cross smile.
Meg stopped kicking and gazed up at her with interest. Then (for she was not accustomed to a tone lacking in affection) she turned inquiring eyes upon her mother.
“Perhaps you’d better take the milk now, it’ll save one of us a journey later,” went on Mrs. Hoadley. “I won’t ask you in, it’s so wet and children make such a mess, don’t they? I’ll go and get it.”
She turned back into the house, leaving the door open, and with one impulse Alda and Meg peered into the hall to see what this cross lady’s house was like.
All was in noticeably good taste; grey-papered walls, an etching of a cathedral, a grandfather clock with
J. F. Cole, Horsham
painted upon his face in a wreath of flowers, and on the floor a grey drugget. How boring, thought Alda, whose taste certainly did run to the Christmas Supplement in Colours. I would have white paper all over red grapes and green leaves, a brick floor, apple-green paint——
“Here you are,” said Mrs. Hoadley, reappearing, and she handed her two open zinc cans filled with milk.
“Thank you, but I’m afraid I can’t take them now; I’ve got Meg to carry and I can’t manage both,” said Alda decisively, putting them down on the brick coping. “I’ll come back for them later.”
Mrs. Hoadley was plainly preparing to open her compressed lips with something hasty when a man came up the path, saying, “Letters from Ironborough, Molly,” at the same time putting a packet into her eager hand; and when she did speak all that came out was:
“Here is Mr. Hoadley; he may have some letters for you.”
“Yes, I have. We saw your lights last night and knew you must be in,” smiled Mr. Hoadley and handed Alda a bundle which included two from Germany. Her face lit up.
“Oh, thank you. How kind,” she said.
“Somebody has to go down anyway (there’s always a pile of forms for me to fill up by every post) so we may as well save you the journey. Is this your milk?”
Mrs. Hoadley, apparently losing interest in the proceedings, had hurried with her letters into the house.
“Yes. I was coming back for it later. I’ve got
this
to carry,” giving a little shake to Meg, who was now on her back, “and I can’t manage both.”
“I’ll take the milk for you, I’m going up that way,” and he picked up the cans. “Gone up to see Mr. Waite if anyone wants me, Molly; shan’t be long,” he called to his wife, who was standing by the window reading her letters. She nodded impatiently without looking up.
“Now you can say I’ve been watering the milk,” he remarked with his friendly smile, when they were walking through the rain, which was now slightly less heavy, towards the cottage. A hound-puppy whom Mr. Hoadley addressed as Ruffler had joined them and walked at his heels.
“It’s delicious creamy milk; we had some for tea yesterday didn’t we, Meg?”
“Meg hab milk?” said Meg questioningly; she had never taken her eyes from the farmer since he joined them, and by the way he looked at her, though he said nothing, Alda knew that he liked children. She thought that he had none of his own, or Mrs. would not have made that remark about children making a mess. She’s too right, thought Alda, they do; and if you don’t like them that’s your first thought about them; mess, and a noise.
“Was it you who kindly left some chopped wood for us?” she went on. “I was so pleased when I found it yesterday.”
“Well, I thought you might be glad of some, it was such a nasty raw day, you’d want to get a fire going. I had one of the Italians chop it and take it up,” he answered, a little awkwardly.
“You have two of them, haven’t you? Meg and I met them in the woods the other day and they told us they were working here.”