Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal and Other Stories Page 5

  In due course, if such things happened, she supposed Clem would know how to deal with them. Clem was experienced, capable and shrewd, a good butcher and a good business man. Clem knew how to deal with people of class. Clem, in the early days of business, had been used to supplying the finest of everything, as his father and grandfather had done before him, for house parties, shooting luncheons, ducal dinners, and regimental messes. The days of the gentry might, as Clem said, be under a temporary cloud. But finally, one day, class would surely triumph again and tradition would be back. The war might have half killed the meat trade, but it couldn’t kill those people. They were there all the time, as Clem said, somewhere. They were the backbone, the real people, the gentry.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ he said one day. ‘Just like I told you. Belvedere’s opening up. Somebody’s bought Belvedere.’

  She knew about Belvedere. Belvedere was one of those houses, not large but long empty, whose chimneys rose starkly, like tombs, above the beechwoods of winter-time. For six years the army had carved its ashy, cindery name on Belvedere.

  ‘See, just like I told you,’ Clem said two days later, ‘the gentleman from Belvedere just phoned up. The right people are coming back. We got an order from Belvedere.’

  By the time she drove up to Belvedere, later that morning, rain was falling heavily, sultrily warm, on the chalk flowers of the hillsides. She was wearing the old war-time cape, as she always did under rain, and in the van, on the enamel tray, at the back, lay portions of sweetbreads, tripe, and liver.

  High on the hills, a house of yellow stucco frontage, with thin iron balconies about the windows and green iron canopies above them, faced the valley.

  ‘Ah, the lady with the victuals! The lady with the viands. The lady from Corbett, eh?’ A man of forty-five or fifty, in shirtsleeves, portly, wearing a blue-striped apron, his voice plummy and soft, answered her ring at the kitchen door.

  ‘Do come in. You are from Corbett, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m Mrs Corbett.’

  ‘How nice. Come in, Mrs Corbett, come in. Don’t stand there. It’s loathsome and you’ll catch a death. Come in. Take off your cape. Have a cheese straw.’

  The rosy flesh of his face was smeared with flour dust. His fattish soft fingers were stuck about with shreds of dough.

  ‘You arrived in the nick, Mrs Corbett. I was about to hurl these wretched things into the stove, but now you can pass judgment on them for me.’

  With exuberance he suddenly put in front of her face a plate of fresh warm cheese straws.

  ‘Taste and tell me, Mrs Corbett. Taste and tell.’

  With shyness, more than usually meek, her deep brown eyes lowered, she took a cheese straw and started to bite on it.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘if it’s utterly loathsome.’

  ‘It’s very nice, sir.’

  ‘Be absolutely frank, Mrs Corbett,’ he said. ‘Absolutely frank. If they’re too revolting say so.’

  ‘I think——’

  ‘I tell you what, Mrs Corbett,’ he said, ‘they’ll taste far nicer with a glass of sherry. That’s it. We shall each have a glass of pale dry sherry and see how it marries with the cheese.’

  Between the sherry and the cheese straws and his own conversation she found there was not much chance for her to speak. With bewilderment she watched him turn away, the cheese straws suddenly forgotten, to the kitchen table, a basin of flour, and a pastry board.

  With surprising delicacy he pressed with his fingers at the edges of thin pastry lining a brown shallow dish. Beside it lay a pile of pink peeled mushrooms.

  ‘This I know is going to be delicious,’ he said. ‘This I am sure about. I adore cooking. Don’t you?’

  Speechlessly she watched him turn to the stove and begin to melt butter in a saucepan.

  ‘Croûte aux champignons,’ he said. ‘A kind of mushroom pie. There are some things one knows one does well. This I love to do. It’s delicious—you know it, of course, don’t you? Heavenly.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Oh, don’t call me sir, Mrs Corbett. My name is Lafarge. Henry Lafarge.’ He turned to fill up his glass with sherry, at the same time fixing her with greyish bulbous eyes. ‘Aren’t you terribly uncomfortable in that wretched mackintosh? Why don’t you throw it off for a while?’

  The voice, though not unkindly, shocked her a little. She had never thought of the cape as wretched. It was a very essential, useful, hard-wearing garment. It served its purpose very well, and with fresh bewilderment she pushed it back from her shoulders.

  ‘Do you think I’m a fool?’ he said. ‘I mean about this house? All my friends say I’m a fool. Of course it’s in a ghastly state, one knows, but I think I can do things with it. Do you agree? Do you think I’m a fool?’

  She could not answer. She felt herself suddenly preoccupied, painfully, with the old brown dress she was wearing under the gas-cape. With embarrassment she folded her hands across the front of it, unsuccessfully trying to conceal it from him.

  To her relief he was, however, staring at the rain. ‘I think it’s letting up at last,’ he said. ‘In which case I shall be able to show you the outside before you go. You simply must see the outside, Mrs Corbett. It’s a ravishing wilderness. Ravishing to the point of being sort of almost Strawberry Hill. You know?’

  She did not know, and she stared again at her brown dress, frayed at the edges.

  Presently the rain slackened and stopped and only the great beeches overshadowing the house were dripping. The sauce for the croûte aux champignons was almost ready, and Lafarge dipped a little finger into it and then thoughtfully licked it, staring at the same time at the dripping summer trees.

  ‘I’m going to paint most of it myself,’ he said. ‘It’s more fun, don’t you think? More creative. I don’t think we’re half creative enough, do you? Stupid to allow menials and lackeys to do all the nicest things for us, don’t you think?’

  Pouring sauce over the mushrooms, he fixed on her an inquiring, engaging smile that did not need an answer.

  ‘Now, Mrs Corbett, the outside. You must see the outside.’

  Automatically she began to draw on her cape.

  ‘I can’t think why you cling to that wretched cape, Mrs Corbett,’ he said. ‘The very day war was over I had a simply glorious ceremonial bonfire of all those things.’

  In a cindery garden of old half-wild roses growing out of matted tussocks of grass and nettle, trailed over by thick white horns of convolvulus, he showed her the southern front of the house with its rusty canopies above the windows and its delicate iron balconies entwined with blackberry and briar.

  ‘Of course at the moment the plaster looks frightfully leprous,’ he said, ‘but it’ll be pink when I’ve done with it. The sort of pink you see in the Mediterranean. You know?’

  A Virginia creeper had enveloped with shining tendrilled greed the entire western wall of the house, descending from the roof in a dripping curtain of crimson-green.

  ‘The creeper is coming down this week,’ he said. ‘Ignore the creeper.’ He waved soft pastry-white hands in the air, clasping and unclasping them. ‘Imagine a rose there. A black one. An enormous deep red-black one. A hat rose. You know the sort?’

  Again she realised he did not need an answer.

  ‘The flowers will glow,’ he said, ‘like big glasses of dark red wine on a pink tablecloth. Doesn’t that strike you as being absolute heaven on a summer’s day?’

  Bemused, she stared at the tumbling skeins of creeper, at the rising regiments of sow-thistle, more than ever uncertain what to say. She began hastily to form a few words about it being time for her to go when he said: ‘There was something else I had to say to you, Mrs Corbett, and now I can’t think what it was. Terribly important too. Momentously important.’

  A burst of sunshine falling suddenly on the wet wilderness, the rusting canopies and Clara’s frog-like cape seemed abruptly to enlighten him. ‘Ah—hearts,’ he said. ‘That was it.’

&
nbsp; ‘Hearts?’

  ‘What’s today? Tuesday. Thursday,’ he said, ‘I want you to bring me one of your nicest hearts.’

  ‘One of my hearts?’

  He laughed, again not unkindly. ‘Bullock’s,’ he said.

  ‘Oh! Yes, I see.’

  ‘Did you know,’ he said, ‘that hearts taste like goose? Just like goose-flesh?’ He stopped, laughed again, and actually touched her arm. ‘No, no. That’s wrong. Too rich. One can’t say that. One can’t say heart’s like goose-flesh. Can one?’

  A stir of wind shook the beech boughs, bringing a spray of rain sliding down the long shafts of sunlight.

  ‘I serve them with cranberry sauce,’ he said. ‘With fresh peas and fresh new potatoes I defy anyone to tell the difference.’

  They were back now at the kitchen door, where she had left her husband’s basket on the step.

  ‘We need more imagination, that’s all,’ he said. ‘The despised heart is absolutely royal, I assure you, if you treat it properly——’

  ‘I think I really must go now, Mr Lafarge,’ she said, ‘or I’ll never get done. Do you want the heart early?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘afternoon will do. It’s for a little evening supper party. Just a friend and I. Lots of parties, that’s what I shall have. Lots of parties, little ones, piggy ones in the kitchen, first. Then one big one, an enormous house-warmer, a cracker, when the house is ready.’

  She picked up her basket, automatically drawing the cape round her shoulders and started to say, ‘All right, sir. I’ll be up in the afternoon——’

  ‘Most kind of you, Mrs Corbett,’ he said. ‘Goodbye. So kind. But no “sir”—we’re already friends. Just Lafarge.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mr Lafarge,’ she said.

  She was halfway back to the van when he called, ‘Oh, Mrs Corbett! If you get no answer at the door you’ll probably find me decorating.’ He waved soft, pastry-white hands in the direction of the creeper, the canopies, and the rusting balconies. ‘You know—up there.’

  When she came back to the house late on Thursday afternoon, not wearing her cape, the air was thick and sultry. All along the stark white fringes of chalk, under the beechwoods, yellow rock-roses flared in the sun. Across the valley hung a few high bland white clouds, delicate and far away.

  ‘The creeper came down with a thousand empty birds’ nests,’ Lafarge called from a balcony. ‘A glorious mess.’

  Dressed in dark blue slacks, with yellow open shirt, blue silk muffler, and white panama, he waved towards her a pink-tipped whitewash brush. Behind him the wall, bare of creeper, was drying a thin blotting-paper pink in the sun.

  ‘I put the heart in the kitchen,’ she said.

  Ignoring this, he made no remark about her cape, either. ‘The stucco turned out to be in remarkably good condition,’ he said. ‘Tell me about the paint. You’re the first to see it. Too dark?’

  ‘I think it’s very nice.’

  ‘Be absolutely frank,’ he said. ‘Be as absolutely frank and critical as you like, Mrs Corbett. Tell me exactly how it strikes you. Isn’t it too dark?’

  ‘Perhaps it is a shade too dark.’

  ‘On the other hand one has to picture the rose against it,’ he said. ‘Do you know anyone who grows that wonderful black-red rose?’

  She stood staring up at him. ‘I don’t think I do.’

  ‘That’s a pity,’ he said, ‘because if we had the rose one could judge the effect—— However, I’m going to get some tea. Would you care for tea?’

  In the kitchen he made tea with slow, punctilious ritual care.

  ‘The Chinese way,’ he said. ‘First a very little water. Then a minute’s wait. Then more water. Then another wait. And so on. Six minutes in all. The secret lies in the waits and the little drops of water. Try one of these. It’s a sort of sourmilk tart I invented.’

  She sipped tea, munched pastry, and stared at the raw heart she had left in a dish on the kitchen table.

  ‘Awfully kind of you to stop and talk to me, Mrs Corbett,’ he said. ‘You’re the first living soul I’ve spoken to since you were here on Tuesday.’

  Then, for the first time, she asked a question that had troubled her.

  ‘Do you live here all alone?’ she said.

  ‘Absolutely, but when the house is done I shall have masses of parties. Masses of friends.’

  ‘It’s rather a big house for one person.’

  ‘Come and see the rooms,’ he said. ‘Some of the rooms I had done before I moved in. My bedroom for instance. Come upstairs.’

  Upstairs a room in pigeon grey, with a deep green carpet and an open french window under a canopy, faced across the valley.

  He stepped out on the balcony, spreading enthusiastic hands.

  ‘Here I’m going to have big plants. Big plushy ones. Petunias. Blowzy ones. Begonias, fuchsias, and that sort of thing. Opulence everywhere.’

  He turned and looked at her. ‘It’s a pity we haven’t got that big black rose.’

  ‘I used to wear a hat with a rose like that on it,’ she said, ‘but I never wear it now.’

  ‘How nice,’ he said, and came back into the room, where suddenly, for the second time, she felt the intolerable dreariness of her brown woollen dress.

  Nervously she put her hands in front of it again and said:

  ‘I think I ought to be going now, Mr Lafarge. Was there something for the weekend?’

  ‘I haven’t planned,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to telephone.’

  He stood for a moment in the window, looking straight at her with an expression of sharp, arrested amazement.

  ‘Mrs Corbett,’ he said, ‘I saw the most extraordinary effect just now. It was when I was on the ladder and we were talking about the rose. You were standing there looking up at me and your eyes were so dark that it looked as if you hadn’t got any. They’re the darkest eyes I’ve ever seen. Didn’t anyone ever tell you so?’

  No one, as she remembered it, had ever told her so.

  The following Saturday morning she arrived at the house with oxtail and kidneys. ‘I shall have the kidneys with sauce madère,’ he said. ‘And perhaps even flambés.’

  He was kneading a batch of small brown loaves on the kitchen table, peppering them with poppy seeds, and he looked up from them to see her holding a brown-paper bag.

  ‘It’s only the rose off my hat,’ she said. ‘I thought you might like to try——’

  ‘Darling Mrs Corbett,’ he said. ‘You dear creature.’

  No one, as she remembered it, had ever called her darling before. Nor could she ever remember being, for anyone, at any time, a dear creature.

  Some minutes later she was standing on the balcony outside his bedroom window, pressing the dark red rose from her hat against the fresh pink wall. He stood in the cindery wilderness below, making lively, rapturous gestures.

  ‘Delicious, my dear. Heavenly. You must see it. You simply must come down!’

  She went down, leaving the rose on the balcony. A few seconds later he was standing in her place while she stood in the garden below, staring up at the effect of her dark red rose against the wall.

  ‘What do you feel?’ he called.

  ‘It seems real,’ she said. ‘It seems to have come alive.’

  ‘Ah! but imagine it in another summer,’ he said. ‘When it will be real. When there’ll be lots of them, scores of them, blooming here.’

  With extravagant hands he tossed the rose down to her from the balcony. Instinctively she lifted her own hands, trying to catch it. It fell instead into a forest of sow-thistle.

  He laughed, again not unkindly, and called, ‘I’m so grateful, darling Mrs Corbett. I really can’t tell you how grateful I am. You’ve been so thoughtful. You’ve got such taste.’

  With downcast eyes she picked the rose out of the mass of sow-thistle, not knowing what to say.

  Through a tender August, full of soft light that seemed to reflect back from dry chalky fields of oats and wheat and barley just b
elow the hill, the derelict house grew prettily, all pink at first among the beeches. By September, Lafarge had begun work on the balconies, painting them a delicate seagull grey. Soon the canopies were grey, too, hanging like half sea-shells above the windows. The doors and windows became grey also, giving an effect of delicate lightness to the house against the background of arching, massive boughs.

  She watched these transformations almost from day to day as she delivered to Lafarge kidneys, tripe, liver, sweetbreads, calves’ heads, calves’ feet, and the hearts that he claimed were just like goose-flesh.

  ‘Offal,’ he was repeatedly fond of telling her, ‘is far too underrated. People are altogether too superior about offal. The eternal joint is the curse. What could be more delicious than sweetbreads? Or calf’s head? Or even chitterlings? There is a German recipe for chitterlings, Mrs Corbett, that could make you think you were eating I don’t know what—some celestial, melting manna. You must bring me chitterlings one day soon, Mrs Corbett dear.’

  ‘I have actually found the rose too,’ he said one day with excitement. ‘I have actually ordered it from a catalogue. It’s called Château Clos de Vougeot and it’s just like the rose on your hat. It’s like a deep dark red burgundy.’

  All this time, now that the weather had settled into the rainless calm of late summer, she did not need to wear her cape. At the same time she did not think of discarding it. She thought only with uneasiness of the brown frayed dress and presently replaced it with another, dark blue, that she had worn as second-best for many years.

  By October, when the entire outside of the house had become transformed, she began to feel, in a way, that she was part of it. She had seen the curtains of creeper, with their thousand birds’ nests, give way to clean pink stucco. The canopies had grown from bowls of rusty green tin to delicate half seashells and the balconies from mere paintless coops to pretty cages of seagull grey. As with the fields, the beechwoods, the yellow rock-roses running across the chalk and the changing seasons she had hardly any way of expressing what she felt about these things. She could simply say, ‘Yes, Mr Lafarge, I think it’s lovely. It’s very nice, Mr Lafarge. It’s sort of come alive.’