Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead (3 page)

Ebin Willoweed had hoped to be asked to stay for lunch; but no invitation materialised. He felt discouraged by the doctor’s distracted manner and suddenly took his departure, still feeling depressed in spite of the sherry.

When he reached home he had a solitary lunch. The family had already eaten theirs. He caught sight of his mother ascending the stairs, still carrying the wicker carpet-beater and half-heartedly bashing a fly with it. She looked over the banisters and shouted, “You’re late, and your hair wants cutting,” then continued her climb to her bedroom for her afternoon sleep.

As soon as she was enclosed in her peppermint-smelling room a drowsy peacefulness descended on the house. The maids went up the back stairs to the bedroom they shared, and took off the striped print frocks they wore in the morning. Eunice lay on their bed dressed only in a large white chemise, while Norah washed in a cracked china bowl. She held up her hair with one hand, and with the other worked away with a soapy flannel. The large mole on her chest showed above her camisole. When she had finished her toilet she rinsed the bowl and wiped it carefully with a cloth; but Eunice, when it was her turn to wash, left the basin filled with dark, scummy water. As they dressed in their black afternoon frocks they quarrelled over this. Then Norah lent her sister her silver brooch with
Amelia
, their dead mother’s name, engraved on it, and they were happy again and sat in the window with their arms around each other, looking down on the village street.

In the garden Old Ives was tying up the flowers that had been damaged by the flood. While he worked he talked to his ducks, who were waddling about hopefully, as it was almost time for the red bucket to be filled with sharps and potato-peelings. Emma dawdled up to him and said:

“Don’t you think, Ives, we should send a wreath to Grumpy Nan’s funeral? It’s tomorrow, and people seem to be making a great fuss about it.”

“Of course they are making a fuss, her being drowned and all. It’s a long time since we had a drowning by flood; that’s an important event in this village. And don’t you worry about the wreath neither. I was just telling my ducks as you came along about the pretty wreath I’m going to make this evening. White peonies it will be made of, Miss, and little green grapes. There won’t be another to touch it, will there, my dears?” and he turned to the ducks who agreed with him in chorus.

“Thank you, Ives,” she said, “no one makes wreaths like you,” and she left him still talking to his white birds.

“If ever I die,” she thought, “I’d like a wreath of water lilies, only they’d go brown so soon.”

She came to a swing that hung from a pine tree near the river. Once when she had been swinging on it she had disturbed a bumble-bee from above, and it came buzzing out from the pines and was as large as a lemon; but when she told people about this they wouldn’t believe her and said it must have been a buzzing bird. She sat in the swing now in the hope of seeing this strange insect again. She swung for a few minutes; but no lemon-sized bee appeared. So she sat quite still dreamily gazing at the shining river between the pine trees.

She had pinned her hair in a large knot at the nape of her neck, and she felt very conscious of her altered appearance.

“But no one will notice,” she thought.

She looked down at her little feet in the clumsy shoes made by the village cobbler, and she felt like crying. Even Eunice wore pointed black shoes with high heels on her day out. Twice a year the cobbler, who was also the village bookmaker, came to the house by the river and measured the feet of anyone who needed new shoes; and a week or two later he came again with some clumsy pieces of leather heavily nailed together. It was the same when Emma or Hattie needed new clothes. Lolly Bennet would be summoned from the little house that you had to go down steps to reach the front door. She was the village old maid, and almost a dwarf. It was with great difficulty that she managed the great bales of cloth provided by Grandmother Willoweed, who stood over the poor little thing as she crawled about the floor with her mouth full of pins trying to cut dresses with the aid of paper patterns.

“You will waste the material if you cut it like that, you little freak. Good God! Don’t you know how to make a gusset? If you let your hands shake like that you will cut the material to ribbons,” and so it went on. The results of Lolly Bennet’s labours were lumpy and bunchy, and dipped at the back and cut across the shoulders. Grandmother Willoweed had not added to her own wardrobe for twenty-five years and she still wore a form of bustle.

As Emma sat swinging gently she felt overcome with a longing for beautiful clothes and an admirer, or several admirers; overcome with a longing to travel, perhaps even in a private yacht. She imagined a white one gliding through impossibly blue water, and saw herself on deck wearing an evening gown with a train. And then there was the tango. How beautiful it would be to tango to exotic music, and perhaps go to something called a tango tea! Her thoughts were disturbed by the sound of shrill chirping and she remembered she had not fed the small chickens that had been bought to replace the ones that had been drowned….

She wandered towards the kitchen, and there was Norah sitting in the Windsor armchair, staring into space with unseeing eyes. On her lap was her best black straw hat, which she was absentmindedly stabbing with a hatpin.

Norah had spent the afternoon in the damp cottage where Fig the gardener lived with his mother. The village people rightly called Mrs. Fig a dirty little body. Her cottage was so filthy it was almost uninhabitable; but recently Norah had devoted her free afternoons to bringing some kind of order to the place. This afternoon, as she scrubbed floors and beat mats, Mrs. Fig had sat huddled over the fire and talked in her soft dreamy voice. Occasionally a stray tear slipped from her protruding, misty blue eyes. Her only garment was a greasy old mackintosh all gathered together with pins; it smelt sour. She was the village layer-out. When Fig returned for his tea, instead of the soggy bread that smelt of paraffin and the jar of fish paste with green mould on top which were usually arranged on a newspaper, there was a neatly laid table with a newly-baked cake. All around there was a strong smell of soap and floor polish.

Fig drew down his long upper lip and scowled. Much as he disliked his mother’s filthy ways, he resented Norah’s interference even more. For some time he had suspected she was cleaning his mother’s cottage; now he knew. He sat down at the table with barely a nod to Norah and morosely ate her cake. She tried to make conversation and talked about the coming Coronation; but he only answered in monosyllables and the meal ended in complete silence.

When he had finished eating, he pushed his chair back from the table and stood biting his nails for a moment. Then he went into the garden and started thinning carrots. Norah watched him from the window. She thought his long, sallow face the most handsome she had ever seen. “He’s like a Puritan,” she thought. Half-heartedly she listened to his mother’s gently complaining voice; then turned from the window and put on her hat and picked up her white cotton gloves.

When she had said goodbye to Mrs. Fig she left the cottage. She had to pass Fig as she walked down the narrow cinder path. When she drew near him, she stopped and held up one of the net curtains that covered the currant bushes.

“How well the currants are coming on, Mr. Fig,” she called gaily; but he only grunted and bent over the carrots. She turned away and sadly opened the gate. As she did so, she noticed two snails crawling over the grey-green wood. She suddenly took them off and hurled them across the road. Their shells cracked on the stones, and she looked over her shoulder at Fig; but he was still bent over the carrots.

As Norah sat on that Windsor chair sticking pins in her best hat, her mind went over the events of the afternoon, and she wondered why Fig so persistently ignored her. Perhaps if she was as pretty as Eunice things would be different. Maybe she would take some of her savings from the post office and buy a new frock; or she could buy one through her club and pay so much a week. She had just finished paying for the grey corsets she was wearing; so she could afford to buy a dress. She imagined herself walking through the meadows on Fig’s arm. They would pass other couples and everyone would know they were “walking out”; their shoes would be new and shiny and make squeaks as they walked; perhaps they would sit on the river bank when it became dusk … Norah’s sadness departed, and she glanced round the room as if she had only just discovered herself there. When she saw Emma looking at her, she smiled and helped her chop up hard boiled eggs for the chickens. Afterwards they went down the garden together to pick peas for supper, and to dream their dreams in the summer dusk.

I
T WAS Grandmother Willoweed’s birthday. She was seventy one. Directly breakfast was finished, and while she was sitting behind the silver teapot still gently chewing, Old Ives came in with a basket of duck eggs and some Hog’s Pudding as a birthday offering. They always exchanged birthday gifts, and each was determined to outlive the other. Ives was a year older than Grandmother Willoweed, but considered he had the better chance of survival: He thought she would die from overeating. The grandmother thanked him for his presents and said, “Ah, Ives, I’m afraid, when it’s your birthday, I shall be bringing flowers for your grave.”

The old man replied, “Do you think so, Ma’am? Well, I know you will have stuffed yourself until you be choked by the time your next birthday comes round.”

“Well, we shall see,” Grandmother Willoweed said quite imperturbably. “I expect I shall last out the day and enjoy my meals as well; so perhaps you will be so good as to cut plenty of roses and bring them to the house some time this morning. I’m having my annual whist drive this afternoon.”

Every year on her birthday she gave a whist drive. No one enjoyed it very much. The tenant farmers’ wives (she owned three farms) used to attend, and Dr. Hatt and his wife, and the sleepy clergyman and his mother. Grandmother Willoweed always declared the clergyman took opium, perhaps because he rather resembled a Chinaman. His mother was a little frightened bird of a woman, who held her twisted, claw-like hands clasped near her face as if she was praying. This made it rather difficult for her to play cards and they would fall round her like the petals from a dying flower. The three old maids from Roary Court would come on their tricycles. Their pet billy goat would trot behind them as they rode down the village street, and they would tether him where he could be seen from the drawing room window. He had a mania for eating ivy, and, when he had finished all the ivy within his reach at Roary Court, the old ladies had put a step ladder at his disposal. It looked rather unusual to see this great black and white goat perched on a ladder, gorging away on the ivy that was wrapped all round their house.

The village bachelor, drink-sodden Lumber Splinterbones, usually ambled along to Grandmother Willoweed’s birthday party. He was a grey-haired giant of a man, who stank of beer, but was gentle and kind. He never became really drunk, nor was he ever entirely sober. He was so heavy he had broken several of the Willoweed chairs, and a hefty Irish Chippendale chair with arms was now reserved for him. The old maids from Roary Court thought he needed mothering and quarrelled over him quite a lot. Lame Lawyer Williams would drive over with his wife and anaemic daughter. He looked after the Willoweed money and, whenever he came to the house, Ebin Willoweed would buttonhole him in a corner and try to discover how much money his mother actually had and how she had disposed of it in her will. No doubt he would do so today with his usual lack of success. Ebin had inherited one hundred a year from his wife after her death. It wasn’t very much; but it meant he was not entirely dependent on his mother. It was years since he had earned anything from writing. When Emma came of age the hundred a year passed to her. This worried Ebin considerably. Unless his mother died before then, he would be completely penniless. Sometimes in the night he thought about the future quite a lot.

When it became afternoon and the guests began to arrive, Emma stood beside her grandmother to receive them. Grandmother Willoweed wore a magenta gown trimmed with black lace, and on her head three purple plumes attached to a piece of dusty velvet. The magenta gown was split in several places; but she considered it was the general effect that mattered. Emma wore a green tussore dress she had made herself. It had a tightly fitting bodice and a long gathered skirt. It was the first time she had worn it and she thought it a great success. Perhaps it wasn’t quite the success she thought; but the green suited her vivid colouring—although, when she and her grandmother stood side by side receiving their guests, the magenta and green did look rather strident against the browns and blacks of the visitors. Lumber Splinterbones was quite overcome by Emma’s appearance, and made several clumsy grabs at her before he could be persuaded to sit at a card table.

When all the guests were seated and had begun playing, Emma slipped away. She remembered whist drives, when her grandmother had failed to win the first prize and there had been piercing screams and roars of anger. This time the first prize consisted of several pots of
pâte-de-foie-gras
, and she knew her grandmother was looking forward to eating them at night in bed. The tenant farmers’ wives were well trained; but some of the guests were not to be depended on. The second prize was quite harmless—just a silver toast-rack.

Emma went down the long stone passage to the kitchen, and collected a picnic-basket Norah had prepared for her. There was a great tumult in the kitchen. Eunice was giving a final polish to the silver tea-service, and all around there were cakes and sandwiches. Old Ives was looking very self-conscious dressed up as a waiter, and Norah was almost in tears because the range had gone out and there was no hot water. Emma took the basket unobserved and hurried down to the river, where Hattie and Dennis were waiting in the rowing boat. She felt guilty she had not offered to help in the kitchen; but she was glad to have escaped. She and Hattie each took an oar. Dennis had a whole fleet of boats tied to various pieces of string. Sometimes one or the other of them would capsize and the small boy dashed from one side of the boat to the other putting them to rights.