The Day of the Tortoise Read online

  ‘It’s really very kind of you. Really awfully kind, but—’

  ‘I’m the kind sort,’ she said. Another laugh, on even higher scales than the rest, seemed actually to lift her hair from her face as she threw back her head and parted her red lips widely. ‘Kind-hearted Kitty my mother used to call me.’

  ‘Will you really bring the eggs and things up?’

  ‘Just after twelve,’ she said. ‘I’ll be there.’

  She laughed again and Fred, picking up the milk bottles, smiled and thanked her.

  ‘Come round to the kitchen door,’ he said. ‘I’ll be able to hear you better.’

  All the way back to the house, walking more slowly than usual in the windless sunny morning, under the street limes, he kept asking himself how old she could possibly be. It baffled him completely. Her face had sometimes the naïve candour of the very young. A moment later it seemed altogether older; the penetrative grey-green eyes were quite mature. A restless innocence seemed to be the cause of that almost continuous laughter of hers; yet he couldn’t be sure. He felt it seemed to be hiding something too.

  He spent part of the morning gathering gooseberries; he was going to make jam in the afternoon. But at a quarter to eleven Flossie, sixty last birthday, was awake and at the window of her bedroom, in an impossibly fluffy bright blue dressing jacket, calling to him that she only wanted a cup of coffee and a biscuit and would he bring it up? She was going out early to meet some of her girl friends.

  Dutifully Fred abandoned gooseberries, made the coffee and took it up to Flossie’s room. Flossie was busy at the elaborations of making up. Her dressing table was like a pink crinoline, fussy with lace and ribbons, crowned all over with packs of skin food, nail polish, vanishing cream, lipstick, mascara, eau-de-cologne and several expensive perfumes. As he entered the room with the coffee she seemed to be absorbed, before her mirror, in the exacting business of putting on eye-shadow in an improbable shade of turquoise, but she was alert enough to give him the quickest of glances and say:

  ‘You’re very forgetful this morning, aren’t you, Fred?’

  ‘Forgetful?’

  ‘You didn’t bring the biscuit I asked for.’

  Without a word Fred went downstairs to get the biscuit. Back again, he found Flossie putting on her eye-lashes, a pair of long bright golden ones. The skin of her face was a pink crust and he said:

  ‘Will you be back for lunch today?’

  ‘I might and I might not,’ she said. ‘It all depends. I’m going to have coffee with some of the girls at half past eleven and you know how it is. We get talking and then it’s lunch time and before you know it—’

  ‘Shall I keep something hot?’

  ‘Well, you might. What is there?’

  ‘Steak and kidney pie,’ Fred said, ‘and I’m going to get some broad beans.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘It’s too hot. If I get back you’ll have to do me an egg or something before I have my lie-down.’

  In the garden Fred finished picking gooseberries and then gathered broad beans and thought again of the girl in the dairy and what made her laugh so much and how old she was. The sun was hot on his back in the bean-rows and presently he took the basket of beans and sat on a seat under the thick shade of the catalpa tree, with a colander on his knees, and started to shell them.

  After the stables the catalpa tree was his favourite spot in the garden. It was a haven; there was something wonderfully embalming and friendly about the umbrella of huge pale green leaves.

  He was half way through the beans, still thinking in his baffling, groping way about the girl, when he saw Aggie’s basket descending on its pulley down the side of the house. It meant that she wanted something.

  Going over to the basket he found in it six letters, a bundle of dirty laundry, a paper bag of yesterday’s fish scraps for the cats and a note which read:

  ‘Out of cocoa. Not fish today. Do Rawlinsons have chicken breasts? I’d like some. Stamps, ink, envelopes, string, sealing-wax, barley water. And you didn’t send the post up. Was there none? And the papers.’

  Fred realised he had utterly forgotten post and papers, just as he had forgotten Flossie’s biscuit. Bemused, he put Aggie’s note in his pocket and promptly forgot that too.

  After seven or eight letters and the morning papers had gone sailing up the house side in the basket he went back to the catalpa tree to finish the beans. The tortoise, William, was crawling aimlessly about the lawn in the sun. Every now and then, just as life seemed to be opening out for him, he reached the limit of his string and halted.

  In the same way Fred’s thoughts kept straying this way and that, never getting anywhere. The string of long-fixed circumstances kept him constantly in check. Every now and then a fresh development of thought about the girl in the dairy seemed about to take him away into new territory, but the habitual call of beans, gooseberry jam, lunch, washing, Aggie’s shopping list and the potatoes he still hadn’t scraped kept pulling him back again.

  ‘Good God,’ he suddenly thought, ‘I wonder if Ella wants breakfast?’

  Ella, irregular of breakfast habits, could ring her bedroom bell if she wanted him. He hadn’t heard a thing all morning and now he rushed into the house, went upstairs, knocked on her bedroom door and said:

  ‘Ella, is there anything you want? Ella, you haven’t rung, have you?’

  Nothing but complete silence, not so much hushed and prayerful as condemnatory, greeted him on the darkened landing at the head of the second flight of stairs.

  ‘Ella, will you have breakfast? Is there anything you want?’

  ‘I rang six times and you never once answered.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I was in the garden—’

  ‘You just abandon me as and when you think you will.’

  ‘Yes, but I was in the garden—’

  ‘You wouldn’t do it to Aggie, or to Flossie, but you do it to me.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘I don’t want anything, thank you. Go away. I can do without it now, thank you.’

  ‘You haven’t had any more trouble with mice, have you?’ Fred said. Ella was always complaining of mice, though her principles forbade her to trap them. There was no reply.

  Downstairs in the kitchen, less disconsolate than still bemused, Fred put some of the gooseberries in a saucepan to stew. He supposed Ella would eventually come round when she remembered it was custard day. She was very fond of gooseberries and custard.

  There were still potatoes to scrape and presently he took a saucepanful over to the shade of the catalpa tree. William had disappeared now in the direction of a clump of rhododendrons, where he could do no harm, but now and then the string gave a brief jerk on the grass, like a long, dreamy worm.

  ‘Hullo there. I’ve been ringing at the back door for hours.’

  The pealing laugh of the red-haired girl brought Fred to his feet with energetic apology.

  ‘I’m most awfully—’

  ‘I put the eggs and things in the kitchen,’ she said. ‘Your gooseberries were boiling over, so I took them off the gas. Heavens, it’s hot today.’

  She gave a surprised glance at the colander of half-scraped potatoes but offered no comment either on that or on the fact that Fred was wearing an apron.

  ‘Do sit down,’ Fred said. ‘Stay a minute, won’t you?’

  ‘I think I will at that. It’s farther than you think up that avenue. I still can’t think why you lug those bottles up it every day.’

  Fred, fussing with his apron in an indecisive way, wondering whether to take it off or not, said it was awfully, awfully good of her to come and perhaps he could get her something cool to drink now?

  ‘Yes, please,’ she said. ‘You can say that again. That’s talking.’

  ‘Orange or something? Lemonade?’

  The girl, sitting down on the seat, seemed to give a sigh, part dubious, as it seemed, part reflective, pressing her tongue against her upper teeth before again laughing gaily
.

  ‘Haven’t got a drop of gin, I suppose, have you?’

  The remote possibility of finding gin in the house disturbed Fred less than the thought that presently either Aggie or Ella, or both of them, might hear that ringing laugh. Ella, always on the suspicious side, might even come into the garden to see about it. And he was sharply aware of not wanting them to hear. He didn’t want a soul to come and see.

  ‘I’ll pop into the house and see what there is,’ he said. ‘What will you have if I can’t find gin?’

  ‘Oh! a drop of whisky.’

  Fred drank neither gin nor whisky, but a half bottle of gin, used once or twice by Flossie as an improbable cure for heartburn, stood on a shelf in the old butler’s pantry, now mostly full of fish kettles, meat covers, copper ladles and gigantic stew pans no longer ever used.

  Going back to the catalpa tree with gin, glasses and a bottle of orange squash he found to his surprise that the girl had disappeared. A moment later her voice called from the inner shadows of the rhododendron shrubbery:

  ‘I thought I’d see what was on the end of the string. It keeps moving but I can’t find a thing.’

  ‘It’s William,’ he said. ‘Our tortoise.’

  Another splendid laugh shook the calm air of the garden and a moment later the girl came into sight brushing a dry leaf or two from her hair with her hands. Once again she said how hot she thought it was, especially after the thick shade, and Fred said:

  ‘I found the gin. Wouldn’t you come and have it up in the stables? It’ll be cooler. I’ve got a sort of den up there.’

  ‘Lovely idea,’ she said.

  Above the stables, where he opened a window wide on the north side, he set gin, glasses and orange squash on an old round mahogany table in front of the sofa.

  ‘Nice in here,’ the girl said. ‘You don’t sleep in here, do you?’

  No, Fred told her, it was just his den. A place to be quiet in.

  ‘You could do, though,’ she said, ‘couldn’t you?’

  Fred said he had never really thought of it and asked:

  ‘Would you care to help yourself to gin? I’m not sure how you like it.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Are you having some?’

  Fred, who rarely if ever took a drop of anything at midday, said he thought he’d have a beer and came back from finding a bottle in a crate over by the north window to see the girl pouring herself a three-quarter’s glass of spirit, topping it up with a bare half inch of orange. It seemed, he thought, about a treble measure.

  ‘Well, cheers,’ she said. ‘Thanks. Just what I wanted.’

  She drank eagerly, in a big gulp, and presently Fred sat down on an old Windsor chair and sipped his beer. As he occupied the chair she swung her legs upon the sofa, stretching them out. They were slim and pretty.

  ‘Nice to relax a minute. Been on my feet since eight,’ she said. ‘Sisters older than you?’

  ‘Oh! yes. Quite a bit older.’

  ‘Active, though?’

  Oh! yes, they were active enough, Fred told her. In their own different ways.

  After drinking again she ran her tongue over her lips. The fresh wetness made them shine as scarlet as rose-hips and she said, looking at him shrewdly:

  ‘I’ve got a funny idea you’re the maid-of-all-work round here. Saw you scraping potatoes.’

  ‘Oh! I potter at various things. I like it. I’ve done it for years. The girls rely on me.’

  ‘The girls, eh?’ She drank again; the level of the gin was dropping fast. ‘Lucky them. I wish I had someone to rely on.’

  ‘What about your sister?’

  ‘Oh! her. She’s a lemon.’

  Fred sipped beer, not speaking. The lightest of breezes, stirring from the heavy shade of the big chestnut tree, drifted in through the north window, disturbing the red fringe of her hair. For some reason it now seemed much paler in colour in the shadow of the stable loft. It was the colour you sometimes saw in the manes of certain young horses, but infinitely softer.

  ‘Proper damn meanie,’ the girl said. ‘In fact she’s going to turn me out. We fight like cats and dogs.’

  ‘Oh! dear.’

  ‘She threatened me at breakfast. I’ll know the worst when I get back for lunch – that’s if there is any.’

  She raised her glass, drank again and assured Fred that that was why she needed this.

  ‘But that’s awfully hard,’ Fred said. ‘She can’t just do that, can she?’

  ‘Oh! can’t she? You don’t know Rita. Well, suppose she’s got reason, though. I’ve been out of a job six weeks and haven’t been able to give her a penny.’

  The gin had diminished to a mere orange blob, the size of a sixpence, in the bottom of the glass. She eyed it with a certain ironic regret and then looked at him with the full, candid grey-green eyes that constantly disturbed him so much.

  ‘Mind if I have a drop more? Don’t, do you?’

  ‘Oh! please,’ Fred said. ‘Please.’

  Watching her pour another treble measure he was suddenly overwhelmingly consumed by a mental picture of her wandering across infinite numbers of dusky streets, dragging a suitcase. It was the sort of thing he found it impossible to tolerate dispassionately; you couldn’t do that to people.

  ‘Ah! well, something’ll turn up,’ she said and laughed again. ‘It’d better, though, quick.’

  A sudden impulse made Fred get up, go and stand by the window and look out across the lawn. William was crawling out of the catalpa shade into a shining bright sea of sunlight. The saucepan of potatoes stood where he had left it on the grass. In the distance Aggie’s basket was descending on its pulley with a rapidity that might have been ominous and for once in his life he ignored it completely.

  Behind him the girl laughed again and it might have been gin that now gave her voice an almost exuberant crackle.

  ‘Well, suppose I’d better go. Got to hear the worst.’

  She was about to swing her legs to the floor when Fred remembered, as in an astonished dream, that he hadn’t made any custard. The morning ought to have been in ruins; but he ignored that too.

  ‘For a girl who’s about to be turned out of house and home,’ he said, ‘I must say you take it most cheerfully.’

  She swung her legs back to the sofa, knees exposed.

  ‘Well, it’s like I said. No use crying about it, is there? Besides, that’s me. That’s how I am. I like being cheerful. Can’t help it. I like laughing.’

  Fred sat sipping beer again, looking solemn.

  ‘Now here,’ she said, ‘don’t you go getting mopey about it. There’s nothing to get mopey about.’

  A certain sadness had begun to spread through Fred’s mind and he found no way, in words at any rate, of expressing it. He could only feel once again like the tortoise. His thoughts kept straying out, never getting anywhere.

  ‘Well, anyway,’ he said at last, ‘you’ve got the job.’

  ‘That’s a fact,’ she said, laughing again. ‘I can always sleep in the warehouse. With the bacon.’

  Years of service to Aggie, Ella and Flossie had given Fred a quality of uncomplaining resource in crises. If a thing had to be done, it had to be done. He had long since given up kicking against the pricks.

  ‘I suppose you’ll know by this evening,’ he said.

  ‘You bet. Unless there’s been a miracle. And I don’t believe in them.’

  ‘No?’ Fred said. ‘I rather do. In a way.’

  She drained the last of the gin and got up off the sofa. He was a funny fellow, she told him. She liked his little place up here. She supposed he’d never thought of having a gramophone and a few records? That would make it gay.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind my asking,’ Fred said, ‘but I’d like to know how things go. I always go down to the post every evening about six and I just wondered—’

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Meet me out. We’ll have a drink somewhere and you can watch me cry into my gin.’

  He pro
mised to do that and for some time after she had slipped out of the back garden gate, under the chestnut trees, he sat at the table, staring at his beer. His tortoise-like thoughts wandered in and out of shadow. The existence of Aggie, Flossie and Ella became shut away from him, in a haze.

  Even a peremptory screech of distress from a second floor window, that of Ella shedding the needs of prayer for those of hunger, or the frantic jogging of Aggie’s basket by the house-wall, hardly woke him.

  How old was that girl? What in the world made her laugh so much? He wandered across the lawn under the blistering midday sunlight, blue lozenge-like eyes apparently more absent, more than ever floating. There was something hidden behind it all.

  By a quarter to six he had made gooseberry jam, set the custard to cool, cut egg-and-cress sandwiches for Flossie, who had woken for late tea after a long lie-down following a fresh salmon-and-cucumber lunch with some of the girls at the Ladies Liberal Club. He had cooked the potatoes, made a salad of them, with mayonnaise, and popped round to the fish shop to buy four pieces of fish for Aggie, who had changed her mind after all and didn’t want the chicken breasts. Aggie also liked sliced bananas with her salad. That particular combination went so well with fish and he made it separately.

  All this time Ella was sulking, unwilling to answer her door. Nothing, not even custard, would make her eat a thing. The heat didn’t suit her. Earlier, at five o’clock, he made tea, took it upstairs and said through the door, ‘I’ve brought your tea, Ella. It’s china. With lemon. I know you like that.’ Only something like a sob reached him in answer and he went back downstairs to wash up the remainder of the lunch things, hang out the tea towels to dry, boil the eggs for Flossie, give the budgerigars water, make up the stove and water a bed of dahlias which were wilting sadly in the sun.

  Just as he was about to depart with Aggie’s letters, altogether nine of them, Ella woke to desperate life and called that she had run out of aspirins and the pills she had had to take for blood pressure. He said he would call for them at the chemist’s and was already outside the kitchen door with the letters when a rousing tap on the drawing room window checked him in his stride.

  It was Flossie, pink, fresh and all band-box after rest, fussy in a dress of lavender silk, calling him pettishly to heel. Whatever was the matter with him today? There was no salt in the sandwiches.