Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead (12 page)

As Williams was preparing to leave Ebin returned.

“I’m home, Mother, and completely drenched,” he said dejectedly. “Oh, good afternoon, Williams. I didn’t see you.”

His round blue eyes darted to the papers the lawyer was stuffing in his brief case; but he could make nothing of them. As he climbed the stairs he pondered on the significance of Williams’s visit and guessed that his mother must be making considerable changes to her will now Dennis had died. For years he had worried over his mother’s will and wondered how much she was worth and how she would divide it. What had rankled most of all was the injustice of his father leaving his entire fortune to his wife and making no provision for his son at all. But now he suddenly realized he didn’t care what she did with her money. It no longer interested him, and as far as he was concerned she could leave it to a home for starving horses. He almost hoped she would, for he had always liked horses. He suddenly felt light-hearted, as if a great weight had been lifted from him, and as he discarded his wet black clothes he threw them round his room, and when he saw his trousers hanging pathetic and limp from the piano he suddenly started to laugh.

Emma had been lying on her bed with her head covered by a pillow to drown the sound of the tolling funeral bell. When it ceased she suddenly remembered Hattie, probably alone and bitterly unhappy somewhere, and she left her bed and went to search for her. She passed the morning-room and heard her grandmother’s voice and the lawyer’s bleating laugh, and guessed Hattie couldn’t be there. She opened the drawing-room door and mustiness came out. There was Hattie sitting on a yellow rug in front of the window, bent over an exercise book. She turned her dark, tear-stained face to Emma, who thought she looked like a pansy that had been too much rained upon.

“I’ve been writing a poem,” she said, “but there are only two lines and I don’t think they rhyme.” And she read out loud—

“Two people were swimming in the sea

One was alive and the other dead. See.”

Emma assured her it was a beautiful poem except that it was trifle short; and, as they stood by the window, the sun suddenly shone for the first time that day and the garden became brilliant and glistened.

“Look how enormous the hollyhocks have grown,” cried Emma, “I’ve never known them so tall before.”

“And look at the sunflowers,” laughed Hattie, “They really are like suns this year.”

They opened the French windows and ran down to the river, and their home-dyed black dresses looked kind of greenish in the bright light. They stood on the landing-stage looking down into the water, which had become so clear that fish could be seen darting below the surface.

Days passed and the village slowly returned to normal and the last cases of ergot poisoning recovered. Cricket matches were again played in the field by the river with the little white pavilion perched on the side. The choirboys had their annual outing with the brass band playing on the vicarage lawn; and the first field of corn was cut, with the usual slaughter of rabbits on the last evening. Plums were gathered in the orchards, and in small gardens enormous marrows were fattening for the coming Harvest Festival. But things were not normal for the Willoweeds—far from it. There had been a dreadful afternoon when Norah had given in her notice to Grandmother Willoweed.

“You see, I’m going to be married to Mr. Fig,” she explained with pride.

“I don’t see, and I don’t like people saying ‘you see’ to me, and in any case I expect you have made a mistake. I shouldn’t think anyone would want to marry a big lumping girl like you. I suppose you’re in the family way, all you village girls are the same.”

Norah flushed right down to the large mole shaped like Australia.

“I am not in the family way, madam, and I must say you have no call to say such things about me.”

Then she remembered Eunice’s shame and it seemed as if it was her own and tears came to her eyes.

“Ha! You are becoming quite brave now you are leaving; but if you think I shall keep your lazy sister on when you’ve gone you are very much mistaken.”

“Oh, no ma’am, my sister is leaving too. She is going to work for the old ladies at Roary Court. They need help badly since Miss Nesta has been so ill.”

“Good God! What a scheming pair you are. I shan’t give her a reference!”

The old woman’s voice rose and echoed round the red walls of the morning room.

“That is quite alright, madam. Miss Nesta said she had known Eunice so long it was unnecessary.”

Grandmother Willoweed struggled to her feet and she shouted from shaking jaws.

“So you are all in league against me! I won’t have it!
I won’t have it, you ungrateful wretch!”

She suddenly seized a chair and started beating the horrified Norah with it.

“Bloody scum! Bloody scum!” she yelled as she rained blows on the girl who had fallen to the ground and was cowering in a corner.

Emma heard the terrible noises that were going on from the garden, and she ran to the morning-room, calling to her father on her way. For a moment she stood at the open French window so disgusted and filled with terror she could not bring herself to go to Norah’s assistance. But she overcame her feelings and rushed at her grandmother and tried to wrest the chair from her iron grip. To her immense relief her father seemed to appear from nowhere and suddenly slapped his mother’s face. She cried out in indignation, dropped the chair and then sank to the floor in hysterics. Emma helped the battered Norah to her feet and led her to the door; and when it was opened, a startled Eunice was found shivering in the doorway. She led her weeping sister down the long stone passage leading to the kitchen. The spluttering and screaming old woman on the floor gradually recovered and demanded burnt feathers, and Emma rushed to the hen-pen and quickly returned with a handful, which were burnt under her grandmother’s pinched red nose. The smell was frightful, partly because the feathers were far from clean; but she seemed to enjoy them, although she was suffering from an attack of hiccups. Her son brought her a glass of water; but she threw it across the room and muttered reproachfully, “You struck me; you struck your own mother!”

She would not accept her son’s assistance up the stairs and Emma had to support her to her room, and when at last she was in her bed she asked for marigolds to be burnt in the fire grate.

“Burnt marigolds used to be used with great success in cases of miscarriage; but I feel they would do me good,” she whined. So Emma went to the garden and returned with a great bunch of orange flowers, which were damp and refused to burn.

“Yes, they are used for mourning in Spain. The coffins are all strewn with them,” the old woman said sleepily.

W
ITH THEIR wicker baskets under their arms Norah and Eunice ran away from Willoweed House. Eunice went to Roary Court, where she was petted and fussed over by the two old ladies and quite soon had taken the place in their hearts that had once been occupied by their dead goat. Norah returned to her father’s cottage and prepared for her wedding, and to earn a little money worked in the dairy that belonged to the farm where her father worked. In the evening she would meet Fig on the bridge and they would walk through the fields to his cottage and work there until it was dark. They scrubbed and polished and painted and papered the walls, and were completely happy in their quiet and gentle ways.

At Willoweed House there was absolute confusion. The grandmother kept to her bed and Emma had to struggle with the great range, which was appallingly vicious and refused to stay alight. There was no hot water and usually only an oil stove to cook on, and that was not much use because no one knew how to cook. Hard-boiled eggs and burnt bacon appeared on the table three times in one day, and Ives kept arriving at the kitchen door with baskets of vegetables and fruit which no one knew how to cook. Potatoes turned into an extraordinary watery white soup when Emma boiled them, and the runner beans became dark yellow and tasted of nothing. Hattie tried to help and did succeed in making a kind of burnt toffee that set like iron. She boiled some coffee for over an hour, waiting for the grounds to disappear; but they didn’t and it just became all cloudy and her grandmother said, “That’s a bitter brew, child. Are you trying to poison me?”

The stone kitchen floor became black and greasy and, when Emma washed it, it refused to dry and stayed in muddy patches which trod all over the rest of the house. Ives tried to help and said he would make something called a skip-and-jump pudding. It turned out to be a rather dirty spotted dick, which never became completely cooked, and even his ducks looked unhappy after an evening meal of skip-and-jump.

Ebin Willoweed kept away from the kitchen and told Emma running the house would be an invaluable experience for her. He complained bitterly about the food, but said little about the lack of hot water because he felt rather guilty about the range, although determined to have nothing to do with it. He thought: “If I once start that sort of thing, who knows where it might end? My hands will be ruined, and they will expect me to take up the old lady’s breakfast and God knows what.”

Then suddenly Ives produced a middle-aged niece.

She came from Norton-in-the-Marsh and had never been seen in the village before. Her name was Constance, and she was a Roman Catholic, and twice a week she rode away into the misty autumn morning on her enormous iron bicycle to attend mass in another village. On those days breakfast was an hour late; but Grandmother Willoweed never said a word because the memory of Emma’s cooking was still too strong. Constance’s cooking was plain and wholesome, and however often her mistress ordered soufflé, fricassee of veal, or stuffed turbot, she had to be content with salt beef, Irish stew, or boiled cod, and the only consolation was that the butcher’s and fish-monger’s bills were considerably reduced.

“But I don’t want to save money on food,” the old woman wailed to her son. “There are so many other ways one can save money, and I shall be dead soon and have to go all through eternity without a single meal. Do you know, I even dream about tasty little dishes now and wake up to find I’m chewing the collar of my nightdress. It’s not right—and she even roasts the ducks without sage and onion stuffing.”

“Well for heaven’s sake, Mother, don’t complain and upset her. We can’t return to Emma’s cooking, and at least she does keep the house reasonably clean without any outside help.”

“Yes, that is true, and I like to save on labour. I think we could shut up the drawing-room and perhaps just open it once a year—on my birthday, for the whist drive. And then there is Dennis’s room. That won’t be needed any more and may just as well be closed … Good God!” She suddenly leapt from her chair, “I shall have to send for that fool Williams again!” She had just recollected that she had forgotten to bequeath Willoweed House in her will. How could she have forgotten her beautiful house standing in its four acres of well-stocked gardens? She hurried from the room to write the lawyer an urgent note demanding his presence the following day.

Emma delivered the note. She pushed it through the letter-box of the ugly yellow and red brick house where the lawyer lived with his wife and daughter. As she hurried down the steps she thought she heard someone tapping a window; but she fled away because she did not want to be enclosed in the stale drawing-room with its beaded curtains and anaemic inhabitants. As she left the house she saw Doctor Hatt’s enormous car, as yellow as a crow’s foot, coming towards her, driven by Philip Andrew. He offered to drive her home. But, although she longed to accept, she connected Philip with Dennis’s death, although he hadn’t actually been there when he died, and she turned away and said she’d rather walk. Eventually he persuaded her to get into the car, and they roared through the village street and Emma was sorry to see the dark gates of Willoweed House leering at her between the pine trees. As he helped her from the car, he asked if she liked motoring.

“Oh yes, it’s heavenly!” she said breathlessly as she smoothed her hair with her hands.

“Well, tomorrow is my last day here. Would you like to come for a drive? I’m sure Doctor Hatt would lend me the car.”

“I don’t think I could do that. My grandmother would never let me.” She turned away, her face puckered by a worried frown.

“But need your grandmother know?”

“She’d know, I’m sure she would,” Emma muttered.

It was the young doctor who looked worried now.

“It’s my last day, Emma, and I’ve been wanting to see you so much; but didn’t like to call and be a nuisance when you were so unhappy. I’ve seen you in the distance and on the river, but, when I try to catch you, you always disappear. Isn’t there some way I can see you tomorrow?”

“Well,” she said slowly. Then turning away she said over her shoulder, “I may be on the river tomorrow afternoon and, if you were on the bank walking or something, you would see me, wouldn’t you?”

She reached the gate, fumbled with the handle and disappeared without looking back. Then she rushed into the house and managed to reach the boot-room window in time to see the big car start down the village street, changing colour as she saw it through different panes of glass. “But I like it best yellow,” she thought as she walked upstairs swinging her little hat by its elastic.