The Pandervils (28 page)

Egg, with the assistance of Bob himself, began again at the beginning of the story. But in the middle of their joint narration the inner door opened and Carrie entered, followed by Mabe, and, timidly, by Selina Bush.

‘Is that my dear Carrie?' cried Mrs Noom. ‘She
will
be pleased to see me, bless 'er kind 'eart!'

‘Ma! 'Owever did
you
get here?' Carrie ran forward and kissed her mother.

‘On my legs, girl. First one foot, then the other.'

‘Why, you might 'ave caught your death a night like this! So late and all. Why, it's eight o'clock nearly. Isn't it, Bob darling? Show Granny your beautiful watch, do, that your Uncle Algy and your Aunty Min give you.'

Mrs Noom laughed satirically. ‘She's my
daughter, she is.' No one answering her she leaned pointedly towards Mrs Farthing. ‘I say, she's my daughter.'

Mrs Farthing smiled vaguely and uttered soothing noises. ‘Yes, yes, Mrs Noom. Of course she is.'

‘That's why she turned me out into the street. Twenty year ago, a bitter winter's morning.'

‘What's she telling you?' cried Carrie.

‘I'm talking to Mrs Thingummy here,' said Mrs Noom sharply. ‘I'll thank you to hold your tongue, my girl. And when her own father was dying, dying on his deathbed he was, d'you know what she done, that fine daughter of mine? You don't. Well, I'll tell you. Wouldn't come near 'im, she wouldn't, no, not with me begging and praying her on me bended knees, she wouldn't. That's dear Carrie, that is … Bobby, where's my Bobby? I've said my say, and enough's enough.'

She trembled to her feet and stood swaying. ‘It's been a treat to see you all so happy,' she said, staring at the ceiling. ‘Good night, my dears! I'm not dying on you this time. That's to come.' Tittering, supported by Bob's arm, she moved slowly back into the darkness.

When the last guest was gone, and Carrie and Bob had retired to their beds, Egg heaved a deep
sigh and began performing his customary ritual of winding the big clock and making sure that all doors and windows were fast. Seeing a thread of light under the scullery door, he deduced that Selina had not yet finished the washing-up, and in his slippered feet—quietly, afraid of disturbing the household—he glided through the kitchen to remonstrate with her, being at once impatient and sympathetic. The door yielded to his push, and Selina's home, thirty-six square feet of bleakness and squalor, was revealed to him. Selina was bending over the sink, from which rose the steam and smell of greasy hot water. In her right hand she held a wet dishcloth; with the other she was feebly fending off the teasing amorous attentions of Egg's second son, Harold. Her face was averted from the boy, the tip of her nose being within half-an-inch of the plate-rack on her right. Before Egg could make his presence known, the situation quickly resolved itself. ‘Oh 'ave it your own way then!' cried Selina indulgently. She turned her face to Harold, received his kiss on her mouth, and pushed him away with motherly decisiveness. ‘Now leave me be!'

‘Harold, whad you doing 'ere!' Egg felt shocked and ashamed and perhaps a little excited. Yes, he was excited, slightly but indubitably, and it was that which made him ashamed. That young good-for-nothing Harold! He must be taught a lesson, by God he must! ‘How dare you!' shouted Egg angrily. ‘How dare you!' The impudence
of it, the impudence! The easy careless way she had offered her mouth, her young mouth! It was beautiful, terrible, disgraceful. And it must be put a stop to at once. We can't have this kind of thing going on. Ah, if only we could! ‘Be off with you, sir! Be off to bed at once. And … and … and you'll sweep that shop out in the morning at six o'clock—six o'clock d'you hear?— or I'll know the reason why.' Such things to happen in a respectable house! He glared at Harold. Harold, with flaming face and downcast eyes, slouched past him and away.

‘As for you, Selina!' Egg could think of nothing adequate to say. He could only say: ‘I'm surprised at you. Your ma shall hear of this, let me tell you!'

Sniffing loudly, and dropping tears into the greasy water, Selina made pretence at getting on with her work.

‘And I think,' said Egg, ‘you better take a month's notice.'

He spoke almost without intention, and largely at random. He was saying the things that he supposed ought to be said, the things—some of them —that Carrie would have said in his place. What he said came not from himself but from some piece of automatic mechanism in his mind. He himself was in the grip of quite other thoughts. He was hunted, bewildered. He saw himself as a kind of satyr running naked and joyous in a wood, and he was horrified at the sight. How
could a man at his age think such thoughts! He had almost forgotten Selina, but he remembered —though not the phrase—‘the women of the Seraglio'. A moment ago he had hated Selina, and hated Harold, for the discomfort they had caused him, for making him an eavesdropper, for dropping a spark of madness into the dry dangerous tinder of his heart. But he hated her no longer. She was nothing after all—a mere blubbering drab of a girl.

That last threat of his made her turn and face him. She was appalled and reproachful. ‘You woont do that, Mr Pandervil! You'd never turn me out, and me a Banana girl!'

‘Whadja mean?' Anger was lost in curiosity. ‘I don't understand you.'

‘Doctor Banana zomes,' said Selina. ‘I aint got any Mars and Pars, and never 'ad. You oughta know that. You'd never turn me out when I 'aven't done no 'arm!'

He realized that what she said by way of an appeal was in fact no more than the sober truth. He wouldn't and couldn't turn her out, and never for one moment had he intended to do so. He had frightened the girl; he had struck a blow for proper behaviour, made an effective protest against ‘goings-on'; and that was enough. What remained to be said was more practical.

‘Now look here, Selina, let this be a lesson to you, my girl. No one wants to be 'ard on you, I'm sure. It's more the boy's fault than yours, I
could see that right enough. But there's to be no more of it, see? I'm telling you for your own good, see? What I mean to say you better mind yourself. He's not a boy now, not 'ardly. He's getting on for a man, sixteen and more, and once you let him start taking liberties … well, just you mind what I tell you.' The picture of that swift kissing mouth flashed in and out of his mind as he added: ‘Apart from what's right and proper, 'tisn't safe. See?'

‘Jou mean,' said Selina, ‘as I won't 'ave to go away? I
will
be good, Mr Pandervil. Straight I will. It was on'y to stop 'im worriting of me while I was about me work I did it. You going to let me stay, Mr Pandervil?' A fresh storm of weeping shook her.

‘Oh, be done with that crying set-out!' Egg spoke sharply, his nerves quivering. ‘You've no call to cry, Selina. We're not turning you out, no such thing. Bless my soul ‘aven't you gotta 'ankerchief, girl! 'Ere, take mine and for mercy's sake use it!' The weeping became more copious. ‘And what's the matter with you now! Stop it, can't you!'

Selina raised her wet, red, quivering face. ‘You're so g-g-good to me!' she blubbered. ‘You always b-b-bin so good.'

‘What about getting these crocks washed?' retorted Egg, severely. ‘My, you're a pretty sight. If your Doctor Banana saw you now, Selina, he'd 'ave a fit, that's what he'd 'ave. Here—
I'll
do them. You get along to your bed, a girl your age!'
He snatched the dishcloth from her hand and turned towards the sink.

‘Having a nice time, Eggie dear, you and Selina?'

Carrie, muffled in a dressing-gown, stood in the doorway. A venomous smile twisted her lips.

‘I'm glad,' said Carrie, ‘you 'ad the sense to send Harold away before you started.' She turned on Selina. ‘What are you waiting for, madam? Me 'usband won't be wanting you again to-night.'

Alone in the scullery, husband and wife confronted each other. Egg, with his back against the sink, stood at bay, pale, angry, and frightened: frightened because he so bitterly hated scenes, and a scene was always the weapon with which Carrie punished his real or imaginary negligences and misdeeds. There was a twinge, too, of guilt in him, guilt for nothing that he had done or intended but—for what? He didn't know. He felt wretched, desperate, even murderous; perhaps in that moment he came as near as he could ever come to murder, for he caught himself thinking how easily with his strong hands he could strangle this alien woman and fling her out of his life for ever.

Shocked by this thought he became eager to defend himself.

‘I caught Harold …' But he left the sentence unfinished. He rejected that baseness. What Harold had done seemed no longer an impropriety to be bruited and execrated, but a confidence that he must respect.

‘Well? You caught Harold. …'

‘Caught Harold! Nothing of the sort. I found him here, that's all. Helping the girl wash up, he was. I sent him to bed, seeing it was so late.'

‘I thought as much.' Carrie was ominously quiet; she was working herself up to boiling-point; in a moment or two, he knew, she would scream at him. ‘And then, after 'e'd gorn, my precious 'usband stayed and helped little Sleena with her work, I s'pose. Is that the story, Eggie dear?'

‘No,' said Egg. ‘It isn't.' A mood akin to madness took possession of him. I'll have no more of it, he said to himself. I'll teach her a lesson, I will. ‘That isn't the story at all, my dear. You wanta know what I bin doing down here with Sleena. Well, I'm going to tell you.' He shook with excitement. ‘This is what I bin doing. You listen to me, Carrie, and you'll hear. This is what I bin doing.' His eyes blazed at her. ‘I bin making love to the girl. I bin kissing and cuddling of her and … I bin making love to her, see? And tomorrow I'm going to do it again, see? So now you know.'

Carrie stared, and the scream came at last. ‘Liar!' she cried. His face changed, and she repeated, with new conviction: ‘Liar! You'd never dare! You 'aven't got the sperit.' She laughed harshly. ‘Think you can fool me, do you!'

‘So that's it, is it!' Egg, emptied of his devil, could do nothing but state the obvious. ‘If you're so sure of me, why d'you come along with your nasty talk about me and Sleena!'

She could not answer that. For once in his life with her he had the last word. But it profited him nothing. Her barb had carried with it a subtle poison; for he was more than disconcerted, he was shamed, by her instant disbelief in his confession. Was he truly a man without spirit? Ought he from the first to have cuffed and beaten her into respecting him? It was too late for that now, he reflected. But the reflection was only half-sincere, for he knew in his heart that he could never have done quite that.

On the way upstairs she slipped her arm into his and touched his hand. For the moment they were friends again, and at once he became busy with excuses for her misconduct; and then, putting that out of mind, he said pensively, thinking back to that happy past of his invention: ‘My word, we've bin a few times up these stairs together, you and me.' She said nothing, and they went together through the darkness to their bedroom, where a lighted candle greeted them. She flung herself wearily into bed and turned her face to the wall. He glanced at her in surprise. She was weeping, and weeping, it seemed, from the heart, for there was no parade or lamentation.

‘Anything wrong, Carrie?'

He went over to her and touched the lump she made of the bedclothes. She put her hands up and hid her face. He became alarmed.

‘What's the matter, my dear?' Irresolutely he patted her shoulder.

She said nothing; she continued to hide her face.
After staring in perplexity for some minutes he began mechanically undressing. Moving to the chest of drawers to put his collar studs in their accustomed place for the night, he caught sight in the mirror of a grey-whiskered, elderly man, with a pointed chin, a high bald brow, and large dark bewildered eyes. The studs dropped with a tinkle into their saucer.

‘Eggie!'

He turned round. Carrie had uncovered her face.

‘Yes,' he said, coming again to the bedside.

She gave him a long look. ‘D'you wish you'd a never married me?'

‘Whatever makes you ask a thing like that,' he said. ‘After twenty-eight years of it too!'

She was answered, and perhaps she knew it. He hoped she didn't. ‘Yes, there's something you sorta keep back.'

‘You've no call to say that, my dear. I don't 'ave any secrets from you. You're not still thinking about that Sleena, are you?'

‘No, tisn't a secret I mean. I can't explain. But there's something, something of yourself. You keep it back. You've always kep' it back. Oh, I dunno. Get into bed, do.'

He got into bed, and lay trembling with apprehension of further questioning. And when that fear passed, with Carrie sleeping audibly at his side, he began asking himself what he had done with his life and Carrie's and what she had contributed to that doing, and how things might have
been different between them, and whether … And so on a tide of confused wonderings came sleep, the familiar magic that hushes all questions and answers none.

And in the morning Carrie was herself again.

Egg had never been encouraged to pay much attention to his daughter. Mabe was decidedly Mother's Girl, just as Bobby was Mother's Boy, and Egg had not, perhaps, been altogether displeased with his consequent isolation in the family, though he did sometimes say to himself that in the Noom household things had been t'other way about. But when Mabe was removed from him by marriage, becoming thereby a new person and one who could be seen with a certain detachment, he fell to thinking about her, wondering what she, in her private mind, was like, and whether marriage for her had proved bitter or sweet or just nothing at all. It surprised him to realize that though he had lived under one roof with his daughter for nearly a quarter of a century he could recall no intimate or revealing conversation with her. Was it his fault or hers? She was a stranger to him, but because he had not until now recognized her as a stranger he had never troubled to get to know her. Yet she was, after all, a person; and behind that plump, sullen, rather stupid face of hers, which he had perfunctorily kissed some ten or twenty thousand times, the mysterious process of
thought went on. Although for the first week or two of her marriage he had missed her about the house, and wished her back again, she had never been really important to him; but it flashed into his mind now—with all the startling brilliance of a new idea—that to herself she was all-important, that to herself she was ‘I', just as he to himself was ‘I'. He blinked at this revelation, tried to find words for it, got them, lost them, and was left desolate. The glamorous bubble of his little idea was pricked, and, as he served old Miss Hunt, the postmistress, with a bottle of his Own Special Peppermint Wine (try it for your indigestion), he was dismally wondering what it was that had so subtly pleased him a moment before.