The Pandervils (14 page)

‘Like this,' said Miss Noom. She danced to the door; slammed it; bolted it. ‘You just shut it, see?' She grinned at the young man, her head cocked pertly on one side, so that one of her two pigtails was shaken out of place and fell across her bosom. ‘It's quite easy when you know how.'

Egg laughed. He liked this child. ‘What about the shutters?'

‘Yes,' admitted the girl. ‘There's them too. And this top bolt here—‘stoo high up for me.'

‘Lemme try,' said Egg. With magnificent ease —his arm stretching over her head—he shot the top bolt.

‘My!' said the girl. ‘You
are
a lank and no mistake!' Her frank admiration warmed him.

There was a pause, and he was beginning to feel self-conscious when she remarked: ‘Well, we'd better be getting in. Perhaps you'd like a bite of something. But I may as well tell you—you've got to know sooner or later—Mother's not speaking to-day.'

‘Not speaking?'

The girl nodded. ‘There's days when she don't speak. You'd as well know now as later.'

‘Is she … ill?'

‘Well, you might say so.' Her manner was judicial rather than mysterious. ‘Headaches and that. When she gets one of her headaches she don't speak. And she's got one of her headaches to-day… Let's come and talk to Pa.'

Pa was discovered to be sitting quietly by himself in the kitchen, an unregarded book on his knees.
He was a small, plump, chubby man of sixty or more, with bluer eyes and redder cheeks and less hair than most men of his age. Eyebrows raised, and head held at an angle that enabled him to peer ever the lenses of his reading spectacles, he was gazing at the patch of dove-grey sky framed by the inadequate window.

‘Well, Pa! Here's Mr Pandervil come.'

Startled out of a reverie, Mr Noom turned blinking eyes upon his daughter. ‘What's the matter, my dear?'

‘This is the new man come to help in the shop. Name of Pandervil.'

The old gentleman—for indeed he seemed old rather than elderly—rose to his feet. Until then he might have passed for an eccentric scholar, a gentle dreaming academic person like Egg's own father. But his movements, his manner, his half-deferential clasping of hands—these things suggested his trade. ‘Ah!' said Mr Noom. ‘Good evening, young man. I remember perfectly. Name of Pennyman—no, Pandervil.
I
remember.' Vaguely benevolent he stared at Egg. ‘Let me see. Ah yes! It was Mr Twigg told us about you. Gave you a good character, Mr Twigg did. And there's nothing like a good character, my boy. And so you want to be a grocer, do you?'

What madness was this! Put into plain words the suggestion sounded fantastic. Yet Egg had to admit that no one could be blamed for supposing he wanted to be a grocer. He had himself—once
the suggestion was put to him—said as much. But now the idea was absurd, even terrifying; and he was in half a mind to snatch up his bundle and run out of the house to seek his fortune elsewhere. Mr Noom was a charming and kindly old gentleman, but a moment ago he had been staring at the already dark sky with a wistfulness that made the boy quite suddenly, irrelevantly, wish to be anything but a grocer. What, then, had he wanted? What folly had set him on the road of which Noom's Stores was the logical conclusion? He had wanted a change of occupation; he had wanted to get away from the farm with its cruel mocking memories of a loveliness he would never know again; and with both his parents dead (for Mrs Pandervil had not for long survived her husband), and Sarah married, and Algernon very ready to shoulder undivided responsibility, there had remained no reason why he shouldn't follow his whim.

‘Yes, sir,' answered Egg.

‘Very nice, very nice.' Mr Noom rubbed his hands together still more emphatically. Between his fragments of articulate speech he made little mooing noises. ‘Yes,. I remember Mr Twigg telling Mrs Noom as how . . mmmm . . well, that's all comfortably settled. Perseverance and industry, my boy. Mmmm. Top of the ladder. Very nice!'

‘Oh, Pa!' exclaimed the girl. ‘I don't believe you remember a word about it. Now who is
Mrs
Twigg, frinstance?'

Mr Noom seized his daughter by a pigtail and drew her within reach of his arm. ‘Never you mind, Miss Impudence!' he said, with his arm round her slim waist. ‘You get the young man a bit of supper. Mmmm. He'll be peckish, I'll be bound.' But as soon as her back was turned, he began making conspiratorial grimaces at Egg, which Egg, after a moment's confusion, interpreted as a question.

‘My sister,' mouthed Egg.

Carrie began laying the cloth.

‘Of course,' said Mr Noom, in a loud voice, ‘we all know that Reverend Mrs Twigg, mmmm, is the young man's sister. We know that as well as we know Mr Twigg himself, that was curate here all one blessed winter. And a hard winter too, it was.'

He smiled mischievous triumph at his daughter. She looked from one to the other, and detecting the beginnings of a grin on Egg's face she fixed him with a gaze of mock sternness. ‘You've been telling, Mr Sneaky Pandervil!' The two men looked comically rueful, like little boys caught stealing apples. ‘Precious pair of babies!' cried Carrie. And all three burst out laughing.

Mr Noom was the first to recover his gravity. ‘Sh! Sh! Poor Mother's headache—I quite forgot it!'

Laughter was now a thousand miles away. Father and daughter exchanged an anxious glance. ‘Lumme!' said the girl.' ‘Is it a bad one, Par'

‘About as usual,' said Mr Noom.

‘I wonder what started it?'

‘It come on at breakfast,' said Mr Noom. ‘You were sweeping the shop out or something and … well. …'

Mr Noom turned away with a shrug, and Carrie invited Egg to sit down to supper. ‘You must be ready for it, aren't you? Travelling
makes
a person hungry,
I
always say.'

But Egg was not deceived by this outward cheerfulness, admirably sustained though it was, as well by Mr Noom as by Carrie. The young man suspected that this quiet gaiety must be short-lived. He pictured Mrs Noom as a thin-lipped, angular, sharp-tongued woman who might at any moment appear in the doorway and destroy with one cold glance the ease and geniality of this suppertime. Meanwhile, his shyness rapidly evaporating, he tried to satisfy Carrie's curiosity about the life of a farmer. ‘And then,' said he, ‘there's a market every week. That's a bit of a change. Ever been to a market town, Miss Noom?' But as an undercurrent to these memories ran a dark and bitter tide. They're nice people, but I don't belong here. She's a pleasant child, but she means nothing to me, nothing. And he was suddenly filled with wonder and passionate protest that he who had once been made free of the kingdom of heaven should be sitting here dethroned and outcast, a grocer among grocers.

But now there was someone coming. The two Nooms visibly listened and waited. Light steps descended the stairs; the door opened; and there
entered a smallish, bright-eyed, and rather buxom woman of perhaps fifty.

‘Well I never!' said she, in great good humour. ‘Quite a party, I declare!' For one startled moment Egg wondered who this visitor could be. ‘And this, no doubt,' went on Mrs Noom, advancing with smiles upon the supper-table, ‘this is Egg Pandervil. And welcome, I'm sure, young man!'

Egg rose, blushing, to shake the hand which Mrs Noom extended to him across the table.

‘The Reverend Twigg's brother-be-law, isn't it?' said Mrs Noom.

‘Yes,' admitted Egg confusedly.

‘I thought as much,' declared Mrs Noom. ‘Well, and now we'll have a bit of supper together.'

She sat down at the table, and at once was in command. It was as if even the plates and cutlery obeyed her. The meal, so far from being half finished, was only just about to begin; and it was to be a meal at which only two persons, Egg and Mrs Noom, would be present. Of the others she took no notice at all, and by her seeming unawareness she contrived to annihilate them. And when Mr Noom ventured in tones of conciliation to inquire about her poor head, she turned blandly to Egg saying: ‘Another bite of cheese, Mr Pandervil? Do! Just a morsel! … And now we've got to know each other I shall call you Egg. Just plain Egg. It's so much more homely and comfortable to my way of thinking.'

Egg was employed as man-of-all-work at Noom's Stores for four years, during which time he learned the names and natures of a hundred and one articles of grocery, acquired the science of weighing and the arts of sweeping and dusting, kept wicket and made an aggregate of ninety-three runs for the local cricket club (his average was two point four), grew a moustache three times and shaved it off twice, made friends with Carrie, made friends with Mr Noom, provided Mrs Noom with a cause of war, on one occasion got drunk, on many occasions thought wistfully of Mershire fields, and was not, all things considered, unhappy. There was unhappiness in him, hidden somewhere, and ready, when the hour should strike, to rise up and overwhelm him. In dreams, both by night and by day, he was haunted sometimes by sweet stinging memories of a lost Eden. But there was so much to be done in this new life that he had no time, it seemed, for the indulgence of idle regret, even had not the urgent youth in him forbidden it. Farringay offered, after all, a wider variety of interest than ever Saffron Ridge had done, and despite the determined endeavours of Blogg and Brother there remained, even at the end of the four years, a few trees, a few blades of grass, a few unviolated hedgerows, to bear witness to its unregenerate rural past and to comfort Egg's heart. In fact, for all that local patriotism might protest to the contrary, Farringay was rural still. The
population, none the less, grew rapidly; for Blogg's villas, which were the colour of raw beef, struck a note of gaiety not to be resisted by emigrants from the crowded metropolis; and the train seldom took longer than half an hour to travel the six miles. A new grocer—alarming portent—set up business in the High Street, and the post office, of which the parent-shop, Noom's, had been as it were delivered the very day before Egg's arrival, now employed a dark young lady wearing pigtails as well as the elderly yellow-haired Miss Linney who was the post-mistress. In later years it was to become possible by favour of Miss Linney to send messages speeding through wires across England, but these days were not yet. Meanwhile, by diligence and perseverance, virtues recommended, sometimes with a touch of asperity, by the amiable Mr. Noom, Egg Pandervil made himself proficient in his new duties. He could say, ‘Was there anything else, madam?' or, ‘And the next article, please, madam?' and, ‘Allow me to send it for you!' with an intonation copied—not quite unconsciously, not quite without malice—from that of the Reverend Ernest Twigg, whose reading of the lessons had been the admiration of Miss Minnow, Mrs Pandervil, Sarah, and some others. He learned how to accommodate a pencil behind his ear, how to manage a queue of impatient customers, how to open biscuit-tins without cutting his fingers, and the price of everything in the shop from beeswax and feather dusters to Noom's Own Guaranteed Bottled Plums. He learned that if
you put the cheeses near the oil-drum, someone is certain to complain; and he learned how to make the tin of golden syrup lie down with the enamel pudding-basin. For he was an expert packer. With a deliberate care cunningly concealed under a display of briskness—smart marshalling of the purchases, smart spreading out of the paper, smart folding, smart snapping of the string—he would compose the most incongruous shapes and sizes into a golden brown-paper harmony. A dozen of matches, a bundle of firewood, a bottle of sauce, a pot of Gentleman's Relish, a roll of sandpaper, two camelhair brushes and a small tin of black enamel—such an assortment presented no insuperable difficulty to the young man at Noom's; and you could always be sure that your brown paper parcel would be provided with a little loop of string by which, at your peril, you could carry it home. Moreover at the other counter, formerly dedicated to postal affairs but now used for the sale of dairy produce, young Mr Pandervil, with sleek hair and a shining forehead, would pat and slap and weigh you up a pound of best butter at one and a penny, or half a pound of lard at fivepence, as dexterously as you could wish. Indeed, whatever he was in the privacy of his own thoughts, outwardly he became, before those four years were past, very much the smart young grocer.

During this time Egg opened his heart to no one, perhaps not even to himself. Among the local tradesmen he made acquaintances but no intimate friends. Chief among his companions
were Mr Farthing the cobbler, Mr Wimmett the ironmonger, and Mr Pummice the proprietor of that little stationery and fancy goods shop which was one of the more recent glories of Farringay. Farthing was a short, hirsute, gnomish-looking fellow who was much given to winking and nudging; it was notorious that Mr Farthing enjoyed his joke. Wimmett was sandy, through and through; his very words seemed coloured by his person—a pale drooping lily of a man always audibly wishing that he could lay his hand on a fifty-pound note. The third of the trio, Mr Pummice, was considered to be a cut above his neighbours. He possessed abnormally sloping shoulders, and always walked slightly aslant as though he were trying to squeeze himself through a narrow passage; his face, faintly suggestive of a friendly bull-dog, was excessively mobile, like indiarubber; when he spoke there was such commotion among his features that it was almost impossible to listen and look at the same time, for which reason Egg got into the habit of fixing his gaze on Mr Pummice's white stock—crowning emblem of gentility—whenever that gentleman engaged him in conversation. Speech was indeed a complicated performance for Mr Pummice. It began with a sucking-in of the cheeks, a contraction of the eyebrows, a pursing of the large mouth into a small round tunnel through which one expected a plum-stone to emerge; from these contortions words resulted, and, having spoken, Mr Pummice —if, as was his wont, he had spoken at all weightily
—would smack his lips and allow his lower jaw to drop and remain open for a moment in a very knowing manner. Small wonder that Mr Pummice was universally respected. Moreover at Mr Pummice's shop you could buy not only note-paper, sticky labels, ladies' handbags, d'oilies, antimacassars, God is love, and macramé thread, but —if you were, in local phrase, fond of a bit of a read—the complete works of William Shakespeare in one large wretchedly printed red-bound volume, Every Man His Own Doctor, Ministering Children, The Scottish Chiefs, and the Bible. Egg could not afford to buy any of these books; but, as Mr Noom reminded him, there were several books in the house already.