Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal and Other Stories Page 6

  ‘Largely because of you, dear,’ he would say. ‘You’ve inspired the thing. You’ve fed me with your delicious viands. You’ve helped. You’ve given opinions. You brought the rose for the wall. You’ve got such marvellous instinctive taste, Mrs Corbett dear.’

  Sometimes too he would refer again to her eyes, that were so dark and looked so straight ahead and hardly moved when spoken to. ‘It’s those wonderful eyes of yours, Mrs Corbett,’ he would say. ‘I think you have a simply marvellous eye.’

  By November the weather had broken up. In the shortening rainy days the beeches began to shed continuous golden-copper showers of leaves. Electric light had now been wired to the outer walls of the house, with concealed lamps beneath the balconies and windows.

  She did not see these lights switched on until a darkening afternoon in mid November, when Lafarge greeted her with an intense extravagance of excitement.

  ‘Mrs Corbett, my dear, I’ve had an absolute storm of inspiration. I’m going to have the house-warmer next Saturday. All my friends are coming and you and I have to talk of hearts and livers and delicious things of that sort and so on and so on. But that isn’t really the point. Come outside, Mrs Corbett dear, come outside.’

  In the garden, under the dark, baring trees, he switched on the lights. ‘There, darling!’

  Sensationally a burst of electric light gave to the pink walls and the feather-grey canopies, doors, windows, balconies, a new, uplifting sense of transformation. She felt herself catch her breath.

  The house seemed to float for a moment against half-naked trees, in the darkening afternoon, and he said in that rapturously plummy voice of his, ‘But that isn’t all, dear, that isn’t all. You see, the rose has arrived. It came this morning. And suddenly I had this wild surmise, this wonderful on-a-peak-in-Darien sort of thing. Can you guess?’

  She could not guess.

  ‘I’m going to plant it,’ he said, ‘at the party.’

  ‘Oh yes, that will be nice,’ she said.

  ‘But that’s not all, dear, that’s not all,’ he said. ‘More yet. The true, the blushful has still to come. Can’t you guess?’

  Once again she could not guess.

  ‘I want you to bring that rose of yours to the party,’ he said. ‘We’ll fix it to the tree. And then in the electric light, against the pink walls——’

  She felt herself catch her breath again, almost frightened.

  ‘Me?’ she said. ‘At the party?’

  ‘Well, of course, darling. Of course.’

  ‘Mr Lafarge, I couldn’t come to your party——’

  ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘if you don’t come to my party, I shall be for ever mortally, dismally, utterly offended.’

  She felt herself begin to tremble. ‘But I couldn’t, Mr Lafarge, not with all your friends——’

  ‘Darling Mrs Corbett. You are my friend. There’s no argument about it. You’ll come. You’ll bring the rose. We’ll fix it to the tree and it will be heaven. All my friends will be here. You’ll love my friends.’

  She did not protest or even answer. In the brilliant electric light she stared with her dark diffident eyes at the pink walls of the house and felt as if she were under an arc-light, about to undergo an operation, naked, transfixed, and utterly helpless.

  It was raining when she drove up to the house on Saturday evening, wearing her cape and carrying the rose in a paper bag. But by the time she reached the hills she was able to stop the windscreen-wipers on the van and presently the sky was pricked with stars.

  There were so many cars outside the house that she stood for some time outside, afraid to go in. During this time she was so nervous and preoccupied that she forgot that she was still wearing the cape. She remembered it only at the last moment, and then took it off and rolled it up and put it in the van.

  Standing in the kitchen, she could only think that the house was a cage, now full of gibbering monkeys. Bewildered, she stood staring at trays of glasses, rows of bottles, many dishes of decorated morsels of lobster, prawns, olives, nuts, and sausages.

  As she stood there a woman came in with a brassy voice, a long yellow cigarette holder, and a low neckline from which melon-like breasts protruded white and hard, and took a drink from a tray, swallowing it quickly before taking the entire tray back with her.

  ‘Just float in, dear. It’s like a mill-race in there. You just go with the damn stream.’

  Cautiously Mrs Corbett stood by the door of the drawing-room, holding the rose in its paper bag and staring at the gibbering, munching, sipping faces swimming before her in smoky air.

  It was twenty minutes before Lafarge, returning to the kitchen for plates of food, accidentally found her standing there, transfixed with deep immobile eyes.

  ‘But darling Mrs Corbett! Where have you been? I’ve been telling everyone about you and you were not here. I want you to meet everyone. They’ve all heard about you. Everyone!’

  She found herself borne away among strange faces, mute and groping.

  ‘Angela darling, I want you to meet Mrs Corbett. The most wonderful person. The dearest sweetie. I call her my heart specialist.’

  A chestless girl with tow-coloured hair, cut low over her forehead to a fringe, as with a basin, stared at her with large, hollow, unhealthy eyes. ‘Is it true you’re a heart specialist? Where do you practise?’

  Before Clara could answer a man with an orange tie, a black shirt and a stiff carrot beard came over and said, ‘Good lord, what a mob. Where does Henry get them from? Let’s whip off to the local. That woman Forbes is drooling as usual into every ear.’

  Excuseless, the girl with hollow eyes followed him away. Lafarge too had disappeared.

  ‘Haven’t I seen you somewhere before? Haven’t we met? I rather fancied we had.’ A young man with prematurely receding, downy yellow hair and uncertain reddish eyes, looking like a stoat, sucked at a glass, smoked a cigarette, and held her in a quivering, fragile stare.

  ‘Known Henry long? Doesn’t change much, does he? How’s the thing getting on? The opus, I mean. The great work. He’ll never finish it, of course. Henry’s sort never do.’

  It was some time before she realised what was wrong with the fragile uncertain eyes. The young man spilt the contents of his glass over his hands, his coat, and his thin, yellow snake of a tie. He moved away with abrupt unsteadiness and she heard a crash of glass against a chair. It passed unnoticed, as if a pin had dropped.

  Presently she was overwhelmed by hoglike snorts of laughter, followed by giggling, and someone said, ‘What’s all this about a rose?’

  ‘God knows.’

  ‘Some gag of Henry’s.’

  A large man in tweeds of rope-like thickness stood with feet apart, laughing his hoglike laugh. Occasionally he steadied himself as he drank and now and then thrust his free hand under a heavy shirt of black-and-yellow check, scratching the hairs on his chest.

  Drinking swiftly, he started to whisper, ‘What’s all this about Henry and the grocer’s wife? They say she’s up here every hour of the day.’

  ‘Good lord, Henry and what wife?’

  ‘Grocer’s, I thought—I don’t know. You mean you haven’t heard?’

  ‘Good lord, no. Can’t be. Henry and girls?’

  ‘No? You don’t think so?’

  ‘Can’t believe it. Not Henry. He’d run from a female fly.’

  ‘All females are fly.’

  Again, at this remark, there were heavy, engulfing guffaws of laughter.

  ‘Possible, I suppose, possible. One way of getting the custom.’

  She stood in a maze, only half hearing, only half awake. Splinters of conversation went crackling past her bewildered face like scraps of flying glass.

  ‘Anybody know where the polly is? Get me a drink while I’m gone, dear. Gin. Not sherry. The sherry’s filthy.’

  ‘Probably bought from the grocer.’

  Leaning against the mantelpiece, a long arm extended, ash dropping greyly and seedily down her br
east, the lady with the yellow cigarette holder was heard, with a delicate hiss, to accuse someone of bitchiness.

  ‘But then we’re all bitches, aren’t we,’ she said, ‘more or less? But she especially.’

  ‘Did she ever invite you? She gets you to make up a number for dinner and when you get there a chap appears on the doorstep and says they don’t need you any more. Yes, actually!’

  ‘She’s a swab. Well, poor Alex, he knows it now.’

  ‘That’s the trouble, of course—when you do know, it’s always too bloody late to matter.’

  Everywhere the air seemed to smoke with continuous white explosions. Soon Clara started to move away and found herself facing a flushed eager Lafarge, who in turn was pushing past a heavy woman in black trousers, with the jowls of a bloodhound and bright blonde hair neatly brushed back and oiled, like a man.

  ‘There you are, Mrs Corbett. You’ve no drink. Nothing to eat. You haven’t met anybody.’

  A man was edging past her and Lafarge seized him by the arm.

  ‘Siegfried. Mrs Corbett, this is my friend Siegfried Pascoe. Siegfried, dear fellow, hold her hand. Befriend her while I get her a drink. It’s our dear Mrs Corbett, Siegfried, of heart fame.’ He squeezed Mrs Corbett’s arm, laughing. ‘His mother called him Siegfried because she had a Wagner complex,’ he said. ‘Don’t move!’

  An object like an unfledged bird, warm and boneless, slid into her hand. Limply it slid out again and she looked up to see a plump creaseless moon of a face, babyish, almost pure white under carefully curled brown hair, staring down at her with pettish, struggling timidity. A moment later, in a void, she heard the Pascoe voice attempting to frame its syllables like a little fussy machine misfiring, the lips loose and puffy.

  ‘What do you f-f-f-feel about Eliot?’ it said.

  She could not answer; she could think of no one she knew by the name of Eliot.

  To her relief Lafarge came back, bearing a glass of sherry and a plate on which were delicate slices of meat rolled up and filled with wine-red jelly. ‘This,’ he told her, ‘is the heart. Yes, your heart, Mrs Corbett. The common old heart. Taste it, dear. Take the fork. Taste it and see if it isn’t absolute manna. I’ll hold the sherry.’

  She ate the cold heart. Cranberry sauce squeezed itself from the rolls of meat and ran down her chin and just in time she caught it with a fork.

  The heart, she thought, tasted not at all unlike heart and in confusion she heard Lafarge inquire, ‘Delicious?’

  ‘Very nice.’

  ‘Splendid. So glad——’

  With a curious unapologetic burst of indifference he turned on his heel and walked away. Five seconds later he was back again, saying, ‘Siegfried, dear boy, we shall do the rose in five minutes. Could you muster the spade? It’s stopped raining. We’ll fling the doors open, switch on the lights, and make a dramatic thing of it. Everybody will pour forth——’

  He disappeared a second time into the mass of gibbering faces, taking with him her glass of sherry, and when she turned her eyes she saw that Siegfried Pascoe too had gone.

  ‘What on earth has possessed Henry? They say she’s the butcher’s wife. Not grocer’s after all.’

  ‘Oh, it’s a gag, dear. You know how they hot things up. It’s a gag.’

  She set her plate at last on a table and began to pick her way through the crush of drinkers, seeking the kitchen. To her great relief there was no one there. Suddenly tired, hopelessly bewildered and sick, she sat down on a chair, facing a wreckage of half-chewed vol-au-vents, canapés, salted biscuits and cold eyes of decorated egg. The noise from the big drawing-room increased like the hoarse and nervous clamour rising from people who, trapped, lost, and unable to find their way, were fighting madly to be free.

  Out of it all leapt a sudden collective gasp, as if gates had been burst open and the trapped, lost ones could now mercifully find their way. In reality it was a gasp of surprise as Lafarge switched on the outside lights, and she heard it presently followed by a rush of feet as people shuffled outwards into the rainless garden air.

  Not moving, she sat alone at the kitchen table, clutching the rose in the paper bag. From the garden she heard laughter bursting in excited taunting waves. A wag shouted in a loud voice, ‘Forward the grave-diggers! On with the spade-work!’ and there were fresh claps of caterwauling laughter.

  From it all sprang the sudden petulant voice of Lafarge, like a child crying for a toy, ‘The rose! Oh, my dear, the rose! Where is the rose? We can’t do it without the rose.’

  Automatically she got up from the table. Even before she heard Lafarge’s voice, nearer now, calling her name, she was already walking across the emptied drawing-room, towards the open french windows, with the paper bag.

  ‘Mrs Corbett! Mrs Corbett! Oh, there you are, dear. Where did you get to? What a relief—and oh, you poppet, you’ve got the rose.’

  She was hardly aware that he was taking her by the hand. She was hardly aware, as she stepped into the blinding white light of electric lamps placed about the bright pink walls, that he was saying, ‘Oh, but Mrs Corbett, you must. After all, it’s your rose, dear. I insist. It’s all part of the thing. It’s the nicest part of the thing——’

  Vaguely she became aware that the rose tree, spreading five fanlike branches, was already in its place by the wall.

  ‘Just tie it on, dear. Here’s the ribbon. I managed to get exactly the right-coloured ribbon.’

  From behind her, as she stood under the naked light, tying the rose to the tree, she was assailed by voices in chattering boisterous acclamation. A few people actually clapped their hands and there were sudden trumpeted bursts of laughter as the wag who had shouted of grave-diggers suddenly shouted again, ‘Damn it all, Henry, give her a kiss. Kiss the lady! Be fair.’

  ‘Kiss her!’ everyone started shouting. ‘Kiss her. Kiss! Kiss, Henry! Kiss, kiss!’

  ‘Pour encourager les autres!’ the wag shouted. ‘Free demonstration.’

  After a sudden burst of harsh, jovial catcalls she turned her face away, again feeling utterly naked and transfixed under the stark white lights. A second later she felt Lafarge’s lips brush clumsily, plummily across her own.

  Everyone responded to this with loud bursts of cheers.

  ‘Ceremony over!’ Lafarge called out. He staggered uncertainly, beckoning his guests housewards. ‘Everybody back to the flesh-pots. Back to the grain and grape.’

  ‘Henry’s tight,’ somebody said. ‘What fun. Great, the kissing. Going to be a good party.’

  She stood for some time alone in the garden, holding the empty paper bag. In an unexpected moment the lights on the pink walls were extinguished, leaving only the light from windows shining across the grass outside. She stood for a few moments longer and then groped to the wall, untied the rose and put it back in the paper bag.

  Driving away down the hillside, she stopped the van at last and drew it into a gateway simply because she could think of no other way of calming the trembling in her hands. She stood for a long time clutching the side of the van. In confusion she thought of the rose on the wall, of hearts that were like gooseflesh, and of how, as Clem said, the gentry would come back. Then she took her cape and the paper bag with its rose out of the van.

  When she had dropped the paper bag and the rose into the ditch she slowly pulled on the old cape and started to cry. As she cried she drew the cape over her head, as if afraid that someone would see her crying there, and then buried her face in it, as into a shroud.

  The Place where Shady Lay

  On the fat black stove sat nearly a dozen loaves, each brown and new and warm and all shaped, with one exception, like hay stacks. The exception was a very little one that sometimes looked rather like a mouse and sometimes rather like a pincushion and sometimes rather like a squatting toad staring across the darkening kitchen with two bright currant-black eyes.

  He was very proud of that littlest one. He had made it himself. Soon he would pick the currants out and then eat the
still warm bread with a piece of new red cheese.

  ‘Boy,’ Uncle Joe said. ‘Read us some o’ the police court bits.’

  ‘Police court bits,’ Aunt Nancy said. ‘Police court bits. Police court bits.’

  Aunt Nancy was all red and shining as a radish from bending over the stove too much. The kitchen was all blue with pipe smoke and she was at war with it with a flapping towel.

  ‘I wonder how either one o’ you can find time for police court bits of a Friday,’ she said. ‘The week’s gone a’ready. I know I never got no time.’

  Aunt Nancy never had time. The baking was hardly done and there were still six or more collars to iron and beeswax and still the violets to bundle and the oranges to sort from their papers.

  ‘And take your fingers off that there bread! It’s too hot yet. You’ll dream. You’ll get nightmares.’

  Uncle Joe was a placid, tender man. He had a big thistle-grey moustache. He was smoking a pipe and drinking tea out of a big brown moustache cup, with his elbows on the table. His head was white with curly hair that shone like fresh soapsuds. His spectacles were steel rimmed and tied round the back of his head with waxy string.

  ‘Ain’t you going to read to me, boy?’

  ‘I’m trying to find where the police court bits are.’

  ‘Generally on the back page, boy. Back page. Look on the back page.’

  Uncle Joe had a flat green cart and a white clattering little pony. On Saturdays he drove the cart about the streets. A pair of big brass scales jangled up and down among skips of potatoes and carrots, cabbages and parsnips, rhubarb and onions. There was a scent of oranges and violets in the air and, also in the spring, of daffodils.

  ‘Them oranges are a bad sample.’ Aunt Nancy was bees-waxing collars now. The iron sizzled fiercely when she spat on it. The collars shone like proud marble. ‘Half on ’em are ’tacked afore we start. If we see more’n a few ’eppence profit we’ll be lucky.’