The Song of the Wren Page 5

  Sometimes at dinner-time he ate eight or ten good-sized potatoes. As she watched them disappear into the large soft-lipped mouth she could tell exactly from the expression of his eyes, which never appeared to change at all, whether she had brought him too many or not enough. She could always tell from his eyes, that were apparently so bone-like, so bleached and so inexpressive, what he was thinking. And perhaps next day she would bring him only five or six potatoes, or as many as ten or a dozen, according to the depth of hunger she saw there.

  There were days, during the meal, when he hardly spoke a word. She was used to that. His father had also been a man of few words. She had grown used to long silences just as she had grown used to trudging up the road every day at noon, in all weathers, without ever questioning it.

  But occasionally she managed to talk; perhaps she would say:

  ‘Johnson’s paid.’

  That simply meant a little more to put by in the cash-box under the bed in her room at home and there was nothing he needed to say in answer.

  Or perhaps she would say:

  ‘Blackburn come asking about his spiles again. I told him they’d be ready Thursday.’

  There was nothing he had to say in answer to that, either. Thursday was what he said; Thursday was what he meant. If he didn’t mean Thursday he wouldn’t say Thursday. He was a man of his word.

  After his meat and potatoes there was either pudding or pastry to follow and after that he simply sat filling the bowl of a pipe with tobacco, pressing the shreds slowly and firmly down with a thumb that was like a big brown wooden spoon. He liked puddings; they wore well. He liked apple, plum or damson when the fruit could be got, or simply jam and treacle and sometimes dates in winter. He liked a pipe too.

  As soon as he knocked the ashes out of the pipe she knew it was time to go. While he smoked she stared at the collar of his shirt, the bright eye of the stud that shone brassily in the collarless neck below the enormous Adam’s apple, the big outspread thighs, the hobbed kip boots, the thick black cap that he always took off and laid aside when he was eating. Something, somewhere, would be needing a stitch or a patch very soon and accordingly she noted it.

  She noted his hair too. It grew strongly, like dense black wool, curly in a wiry sort of way, into his neck and ears. It needed cutting pretty often; he needed to shave every day. The backs of his hands were hairy too and in summer, when he opened the shirt at the neck, his chest and neck were like a dense dark pelt without a trace of grey.

  With this unblemished blackness of hair he did not look more than thirty-five: ten years younger than he was. The skin of his face and neck looked oak-stained. It was stretched as tight as leather. He looked completely content, unquarrelsome, unperplexed, as if nothing could bowl him over. And the reason for this, she had long convinced herself, was because he had never had any truck with women. Women had never bothered him. And she didn’t suppose, now, that they ever would.

  He might have supposed it too as he stood in the shelter and watched her pick her way in her narrow high-buttoned boots through drifts of primroses and white anemones that covered all the floor of the woodland in March and April, or among the thick cover of bluebells and rose campion of April and May, or across the big papery tongues of chestnut leaves in November. Every day she took back with her a sack of shavings, a few white axe-chippings, for her fire; and sometimes, not content with that, she picked up a fallen oak branch or a bough or two of ash and carried them down the hill on her shoulder.

  Watching her, axe poised over the block where he was pointing spiles, he would tell himself she looked like a squirrel: greyish, nimble, darting through the undergrowth and down the road, brightly eager, hoarding things. Money under the bed, scraps of wool and cotton, buttons, useless bits of patchwork, sticks, axe-chips, shavings: everything had to be saved, nothing wasted, everything would come in useful, somewhere, some day.

  And presently, in the quiet of the afternoon, squirrels actually came down from trees and sat on the threshold of the shelter and looked at him. Nimble as his mother, fussing through the undergrowth of ash and hazel, they came to within a yard or two of his enormous feet to watch him, generally two or three of them, sometimes as many as five or six, small fore-hands playing about their mouths until finally he actually laughed and started to throw them scraps of cake and bread.

  His pleasure at seeing them come down there to disturb his silence and share his food every afternoon not only showed itself in laughter. He actually started talking. He knew each of them by sight; some of them by name; he loved them all.

  ‘Here, Greedy, drop that. Drop it, I tell you. Blackie, Blackie, come on Blackie. Not you, Woolly, not you. Here, Blackie, come on – look out, Blackie, here comes Ginger.’

  He supposed there were scores of squirrels in that wood and no two of them quite alike. All of them had their special ways. As a boy he remembered nothing but red ones, but they were gone now, all of them, and only the grey remained. But the one he called Ginger had a trace of rust down the back; Blackie was stained dark down the spine of the tail. The one he called Woolly had fur of cat-like, Angora lightness, fluffed as down in the slightest wind and there was another he called Pinkie, with rosy eyes.

  A few years before there had also been an albino, a pure snow-white one, that always pranced like a nervous ghost among the highest branches, too timid ever to come down to join the rest. He had never seen it quite so often as the others and finally, after a winter and a summer, he missed it altogether.

  He could only suppose that someone had shot it: some stranger, a trespasser, somebody who had no right to be there. That was the one and only thing that sometimes made him mad: people trespassing, traipsing in, breaking fences, tugging up bluebells, leaving the gate open.

  They had no damn business there. He hated the sight of them. They had no right at all to poke their noses into his world.

  On a hot afternoon in July he came struggling up the hillside with his horse and wagon and a big load of poles. It was always a long hard pull up the steep and narrow track and whenever he knew he would have a pretty heavy load up he always left the gate open so that the horse could get a long straight pull without a pause.

  That afternoon, to his irritated surprise, the gate was shut.

  He stopped the horse in the road. He unlatched the gate and slowly walked a dozen paces into the wood, listening. It was very quiet. Summer had enclosed and darkened everything over.

  He walked as far as the shelter and stood first on the sunless threshold and then inside it, listening again. All his tools were in place. The paraffin burner and the filling can were on the bench, where they always were.

  He listened for a minute longer. Then he thought he heard a sound of splashing from the stream. In full summer the water hardly ever splashed down like that, except after storms. The surrounding hills of chalk sucked up the rain too rapidly.

  Over by the stream he stopped again, listening. Then he started to walk down the stream. Twenty yards away it widened to a shallow pool and beyond it a good bed of watercress grew.

  On the bank of the pool a girl was sitting, back to him, washing her bare feet. Her legs above the shallow water, in shadow, were very white and he looked down at them with a still white stare, eyes as expressionless as bone.

  ‘You know you ain’t supposed to be in here, don’t you?’

  She turned her face sharply, looking up at him. Her hair was pale yellow. It was long and rather straggly and in the sunless air under the trees it was hard to tell how old she was – twenty-seven or twenty-eight, he thought, anyway old enough to know better.

  ‘No?’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She looked straight up at him. He stood in silence, staring back at her feet in the stream.

  ‘I was just cooling my feet, that’s all,’ she said. ‘Not before they needed it. I walked all the way up from Ashfield. Where’s Hill Cross, by the way?’

  As so often with his mother t
here was no need to answer. She was sitting on a folded grey coat. Her stockings, her handbag and her shoes were lying on the bank beside her. One of the shoes was turned on its side. It was powdered white with chalk dust and there was a crack across the sole.

  ‘They said this was the road to Hill Cross,’ she said. ‘They said there was a bus up here.’

  She pressed her outstretched feet against the bed of the stream, raising cloudy chalk mud that sailed greyly away in the shadow.

  ‘It’s always the way when you try to walk it. I got lost as soon as I missed that bus,’ she said. ‘Then the road stopped all of a sudden and I looked in at the hut to ask somebody—’

  ‘You bin in there?’

  ‘Only looked,’ she said. ‘Just looked.’

  She turned her face away. The back of her neck was plump. Soft fair hair grew like down to the very beginning of her shoulders. A button had snapped at the back of the dress, at the top, clean as a half-moon, and was hanging by a thread.

  For the second time she started pressing her feet against the bed of the stream. He resented the white-grey mud that was churned up, discolouring the water, and he said:

  ‘You git out of here. I don’t allow nobody in here.’

  It was her turn not to answer. She stood up in the stream. She picked up the grey coat and slowly unfolded it and put it back on the bank. He saw then that she was tallish, rather big. Her limbs were firm and heavy, her hair very thick. It was only her eyes that, like her voice, were lively. They were quick and blue and small.

  ‘If everybody—’

  ‘I’m going, I’m going,’ she said. ‘Just tell me where Hill Cross is. Can I get to it up the hill or do I have to go back down there?’

  For a moment she looked suddenly sullen, lips pouting. The lips too were rather big. The entire mouth was loose and red in the shadow as she turned and sat down on the folded grey coat and swung her legs out of the water.

  He stood looking down. She opened her handbag and took out a small white handkerchief and started to dry her feet with it. The toes were soft, even and well-shaped. The nails were carefully trimmed. On the pure white skin little drops of water had collected like seeds.

  ‘I said can I get to it up the hill?’

  She was drying between her toes and he watched her almost without being aware of it, fascinated.

  ‘What time is it? Must be four o’clock, mustn’t it? I’d got to be there by three.’

  Still staring, he started to answer her questions at one remove, not really thinking.

  ‘Path’ll take you up to the main road. About half a mile from there.’

  ‘How far to the main road?’

  He simply answered her earlier question:

  ‘Quarter to four when I come up the lane.’

  By this time she had finished drying her feet. Her legs had dried naturally in the warm air and now she simply ran her hands about them, smoothing away the last few patches of dampness.

  He saw her white calves quiver as she touched them. She did not look up. Instead she searched in her handbag again and found her stockings.

  ‘Must be a quarter past now,’ she said. ‘God, if it’s that late I’ll have to phone. Can’t split this, I suppose, can you?’

  She was holding the stockings in one hand and dangling a ten shilling note in the air with the other.

  ‘About a mile,’ he said. ‘Bit less.’

  ‘This, I said. Split this.’

  She held the ten shilling note over her shoulder. He made a half-clumsy effort to take it but she let it go a moment too soon and it fluttered down to the bank of the stream.

  ‘Here, careful with that,’ she said. ‘All I got in the world.’

  She turned her head and smiled at him over her shoulder. It was the first time she had smiled. Her teeth, like her toes, were well-shaped, even and very white.

  ‘Bet you don’t believe me, do you? Honest, though.’

  By the time he had picked up the note she had half-pulled on one of her stockings. As she rolled it up over her white thigh he started to feel in his pocket for change. Most days, working in the wood, he hardly carried a penny in his pocket. But on days when he bought poles he often carried ten or fifteen pounds on him, sometimes more. He liked to pay for poles as he fetched them; he liked to pay for things on the nail.

  As she rolled up her second stocking she turned and looked over her shoulder just in time to see him fumbling with a bundle of notes and some silver.

  ‘Anything’ll do,’ she said. ‘Coppers though. Must have some coppers.’

  She fixed the top of her second stocking to her suspender and pulled down her skirt.

  ‘Know anybody named Gilbert up there? Mrs Robert Gilbert? House called Ferndown.’

  ‘Can’t do it,’ he said. ‘All I got is eight and five pence. Three half-crowns, sixpence and the coppers—’

  She turned round on the grey coat, kneeling now, legs concealed, a black comb in her hands.

  ‘My hair look a sight? How much did you say?’

  ‘Gilbert?’ he said. ‘That’s just after you get to Hill Cross. House on the right-hand side—’

  ‘It’ll be a local call anyway. I can do it from a box. How much did you say you could do?’

  She had started to comb her hair. The yellow threads of it, smoothed out, ran like honey through the black teeth of the comb.

  ‘Might have another copper or two in my jacket,’ he said. ‘It’s on the truck.’

  He turned as if to move away. Her hair had partially fallen across her eyes and forehead as she combed it. She threw it back now with a toss of her head.

  ‘She said I was to phone if I couldn’t get there by three. Fivepence did you say you had?’

  ‘I might have another copper or two—’

  ‘It won’t be more than fivepence,’ she said. ‘Lend me the fivepence. That’ll do.’

  He simply stared. His eyes were bony, suspicious, defensive.

  ‘Oh! Lord, don’t worry, I’ll pay you back. I’ll get the note changed in the village. I’ll walk back this way.’

  She combed the last strand of her hair. He hurriedly pushed the notes into his pocket and then stood awkward and uneasy, the silver and coppers still in one hand while he scratched his dark forearm with the other.

  ‘Don’t think I’d let you down, do you?’ she said.

  She stood up on the grey coat. She turned her shoes over with her stockinged feet and started to slip them on. He watched her, still with nothing to say in answer.

  ‘Blimey O’Reilly, just fivepence,’ she said. ‘Only fivepence.’

  She stooped, not smiling now, to button her shoes.

  ‘Good thing I trust you, though, isn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You put my ten-bob note back in your pocket.’

  He flushed dark to the roots of his hair. He dived a hopelessly troubled hand into his trousers pocket and she stood up in time to see him staring at the red note he had folded in with the others.

  ‘You’ll ruin me, you will,’ she said. Now she laughed again, teeth fully exposed, gleaming pure white in the shadow of the wood. ‘But I’m ruined anyway, though. Never get that job now. Be five o’clock before I get there.’

  ‘Job?’

  It was again her turn not to answer. She picked the ten shilling note from his outstretched hand. A pigeon started a soft continuous moan in a tree farther down the stream and over by the gate his horse rattled its bridle with a shudder in the hot still air.

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘You take it. You have it.’

  He counted the five coppers into his right hand, holding them out.

  ‘Mean it?’ she said.

  She might have been mocking him with the small quick blue eyes but he was watching her hands instead and failed to notice it. They were smooth, fleshy hands.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘You take it.’

  ‘Better have the sixpence too, hadn’t I?’ she said. ‘Do you
mind? In case it’s more?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. The six coins, one silver, five copper, lay for a second or two in the palm of her hand. Then suddenly she shut her fingers over them and then smiled up at him. ‘Thanks a lot. I won’t forget. I won’t let you down.’

  A few minutes later he was standing by the gate, where his one and only horse stood fixed with glassy patience in the fringe of shadow that had crept across the track, and he was pointing out the way for her up the hillside.

  ‘Be seeing you,’ she said as she moved away. ‘And a lot sooner than you think, perhaps, at that.’

  He half-nodded, staring after her as she started to walk up the track. At that time of year, at the height of summer, the thick branches of hazel and blackthorn met completely overhead, making a tunnel of leaves, completely shutting out the sky.

  Half a minute later she was standing at the mouth of this tunnel, turning to lift her hand.

  ‘Elevenpence I owe you,’ she called. ‘Won’t forget.’

  She waved her hand. The long inner forearm was whiter than peeled ash in the dense summer shadow.

  He watched it, transfixed. It was the first time in all his life a woman had ever lifted her hand to him and waved good-bye.

  He was not very good at arithmetic. He was lost in a world of calculation. Like his father before him he understood an axe, a pole, and how they could be brought together. He knew the fragmentary balance necessary to bring a blade against the tip of an ash-pole and trim it as smooth as a pencil or a matchstick sharpened with a razor. He was not very good at time either. His mother was really the one for time and money and calculations. She was the stickler.

  That afternoon and evening his efforts at calculation gave the girl half an hour to reach the house, half an hour there and half an hour to come back again – he could safely say, he thought, two hours in all. She would be back by seven.

  In summer he generally knocked off by half-past seven, sometimes earlier if he had the horse to fodder or work he wanted to do in the garden down the road. He usually had a cup of tea about half past four but that afternoon it was well past five before he put the tea-can on the oil burner and walked across to the stream to pick himself a bunch of watercress.