Cut and Come Again Read online

  And Albert noticed it. It struck him as funny. She would stare at him across the kitchen, dishcloth in hand, in a state of dumb absorption, as though he were some entrancing boy of her own age. But there was no joy in her eyes, no emotion at all, nothing. It was the same when, after a week’s rest, Albert began to repair the chicken-coop beyond the dumps of old iron. Alice would come out twice a day, once with a cup of tea in the morning, once when she fed the hens in the early afternoon, and stand and watch him. She hardly ever spoke. She only moved to set down the tea-cup on a box or scatter the corn on the ground. And standing there, hatless, in the hot sunlight, staring, her lips gently parted, she looked as though she were entranced by Albert. All the time Albert, in khaki trousers, grey army shirt, a cloth civilian cap, and a fag-end always half burning his straggling moustache, moved about with stolid countrified deliberation. He was about as entrancing as an old shoe. He never dressed up, never went anywhere. When he drank, his moustache acted as a sponge, soaking up a little tea, and Albert took second little drinks from it, sucking it in. Sometimes he announced, ‘I don’t know as I shan’t go down Nenweald for half hour and look round,’ but further than that it never went. He would fish in the mill-stream instead, dig in the ruined garden, search among the rusty iron dumps for a hinge or a bolt, something he needed for the hen-house. In the low valley the July heat was damp and stifling, the willows still above the still water, the sunlight like brass. The windless heat and the stillness seemed to stretch away infinitely. And finally Albert carried the wood for the new henhouse into the shade of a big cherry-tree that grew between the river and the house, and sawed and hammered in the cherry-tree shade all day. And from the kitchen Alice could see him. She stood at the sink, scraping potatoes or washing dishes, and watched him. She did it unconsciously. Albert was the only new thing in the square of landscape seen from the window. She had nothing else to watch. The view was even smaller than in winter time, since summer had filled the cherry-boughs, and the tall river-reeds had shut out half the world.

  It went on like this for almost a month, Albert tidying up the garden and remaking the hen-house, Alice watching him. Until finally Albert said to her one day:

  ‘Don’t you ever git out nowhere?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t you want to git out?’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  The old answer: and it was the same answer she gave him, when, two days later, on a Saturday, he said to her: ‘I’m a-going down Nenweald for hour. You git ready and come as well. Go on. You git ready.’

  She stood still for a moment, staring, not quite grasping it all.

  ‘Don’t you wanna come?’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘Well, you git ready.’

  She went upstairs at once, taking off her apron as she went, in mute obedience.

  Earlier, Albert had said to Mrs. Holland: ‘Don’t seem right that kid never goes nowhere. How’d it be if I took her down Nenweald for hour?’

  ‘It’s a long way. How’re you going?’

  ‘Walk. That ain’t far.’

  ‘What d’ye want to go down Nenweald for?’ A little sick petulant jealousy crept into Mrs. Holland’s voice. ‘Why don’t you stop here?’

  ‘I want some nails. I thought I’d take the kid down for hour. She can drop in and see her folks while I git the nails.’

  ‘Her folks don’t live at Nenweald. They live at Drake’s End.’

  ‘Well, don’t matter. Hour out’ll do her good.’

  And in the early evening Albert and Alice walked across the meadow paths into Nenweald. The sun was still hot and Albert, dressed up in a hard hat and a blue serge suit and a stand-up collar, walked slowly, with grave flat-footed deliberation. The pace suited Alice. She felt strangely heavy; her body seemed burdened down. She could feel her breasts, damp with heat, hanging heavily down under her cotton dress. In the bedroom, changing her clothes, she could not help looking at herself. The dropsy seemed to be getting worse. It was beyond her. And she could feel the tightly swollen nipples of her breasts rubbing against the rather coarse cotton of her dress.

  But she did not think of it much. Apart from the heaviness of her body she felt strong and well. And the country was new to her, the fields strange and the river wider than she had ever dreamed.

  It was the river, for some reason, which struck her most. ‘Don’t it git big?’ she said. ‘Ain’t it wide?’

  ‘Wide,’ Albert said. ‘You want to see the Rhine. This is only a brook.’ And he went on to tell her of the Rhine. ‘Take you quarter of hour to walk across. And all up the banks you see Jerry’s grapes. Growing like twitch. And big boats on the river, steamers. I tell you. That’s the sort o’ river. You ought to see it. Like to see a river like that, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ah, it’s a long way off. A thousand miles near enough.’

  Alice did not speak.

  ‘You ain’t been a sight away from here, I bet, ’ave you?’ Albert said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘How far?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What place? What’s the farthest place you bin?’

  ‘I don’t know. I went Bedford once.’

  ‘How far’s that? About ten miles, ain’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know. It seemed a long way.’

  And gradually they grew much nearer to each other, almost intimate. The barriers of restraint between them were broken down by Albert’s talk about the Rhine, the Germans, the war, his funny or terrible experiences. Listening, Alice forgot herself. Her eyes listened with the old absorbed unemotional look, but in reality with new feelings of wonder behind them. In Nenweald she followed Albert through the streets, waited for him while he bought the nails or dived down into underground places or looked at comic picture postcards outside cheap stationers. They walked through the Saturday market, Albert staring at the sweet stalls and the caged birds, Alice at the drapery and the fruit stalls, remembering her old life at home again as she caught the rich half-rotten fruit smells, seeing herself in the kitchen at home, with her mother, hearing the rustle of Spanish paper softly torn from endless oranges in the kitchen candlelight.

  Neither of them talked much. They talked even less as they walked home. Albert had bought a bag of peardrops and they sucked them in silence as they walked along by the darkening river. And in silence Alice remembered herself again: could feel the burden of her body, the heavy swing of her breasts against her dress. She walked in a state of wonder at herself, at Albert, at the unbelievable Rhine, at the evening in the town.

  It was a happiness that even Mrs. Holland’s sudden jealousy could not destroy or even touch.

  Suddenly Mrs. Holland had changed. ‘Where’s that Alice! Alice! Alice! Why don’t you come when I call you? Now just liven yourself, Alice, and git that bedroom ready. You’re gettin’ fat and lazy, Alice. You ain’t the girl you used to be. Git on, git on, do. Don’t stand staring.’ Alice, sackcloth apron bundled loosely round her, her hair rat-tailed about her face, could only stare in reply and then quietly leave the bedroom. ‘And here!’ Mrs. Holland would call her back. ‘Come here. You ain’t bin talking to Albert, ’ave you? He’s got summat else to do ’sides talk to you. You leave Albert to ’isself. And now git on. Bustle about and git some o’ that fat off.’

  The jealousy, beginning with mere petulancy, then rising to reprimand, rose to abuse at last.

  ‘Just because I’m in bed you think you can do so you like. Great slommacking thing. Lazy ain’t in it. Git on, do!’

  And in the evenings:

  ‘Fred, that Alice’ll drive me crazy.’

  ‘What’s up?’ Holland’s fear would leap up, taking the form of anger too. ‘What’s she bin doing? Been saying anything?’

  ‘Fat, slommacking thing. I reckon she hangs round our Albert. She don’t seem right, staring and slommacking about. She looks half silly.’

  ‘I’ll say summat to her. That fish ain’t very grand o’ n
ights sometimes.’

  ‘You can say what you like. But she won’t hear you. If she does she’ll make out she don’t. That’s her all over. Makes out she don’t hear. But she hears all right.’

  And so Holland attacked her:

  ‘You better liven yourself up. See? Act as if you was sharp. And Christ, you ain’t bin saying nothing, ’ave you? Not to her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not to nobody?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t you say a damn word. That’s over. We had a bit o’ fun and now it’s finished with. See that?’

  ‘Yes.’ Vaguely she wondered what he meant by fun.

  ‘Well then, git on. Go on, gal, git on. Git on! God save the King, you make my blood boil. Git on!’

  The change in their attitude was beyond her: so far beyond her that it created no change in her attitude to them. She went about as she had always done, very quietly, with large-eyed complacency, doing the dirty work, watching Albert, staring at the meadows, her eyes eternally expressionless. It was as though nothing could change her.

  Then Albert said, ‘How about if we go down Nenweald again Saturday? I got to go down.’

  She remembered Mrs. Holland, stared at Albert and said nothing.

  ‘You git ready about five,’ Albert said. ‘Do you good to git out once in a while. You don’t git out half enough.’ He paused, looking at her mute face. ‘Don’t you want a come?’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘All right. You be ready.’

  Then, hearing of it, Mrs. Holland flew into a temper of jealousy:

  ‘You’d take a blessed gal out but you wouldn’t stay with me, would you? Not you. Away all this time, and now when you’re home again you don’t come near me.’

  ‘All right, all right. I thought’d do the kid good, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s all you think about. Folks’ll think you’re kidnappin’!’

  ‘Ain’t nothing to do with it. Only taking the kid out for an hour.’

  ‘Hour! Last Saturday you’d gone about four!’

  ‘All right,’ Albert said, ‘we won’t go. It don’t matter.’

  Mrs. Holland broke down and began to weep on the pillow.

  ‘I don’t want a stop you,’ she said. ‘You can go. It don’t matter to me. I can stop here be meself. You can go.’

  And in the end they went. As before they walked through the meadows, Albert dressed up and hot, Alice feeling her body under her thin clothes as moist and warm as a sweating apple with the heat. In Nenweald they did the same things as before, took the same time, talked scarcely at all, and then walked back again in the summer twilight, sucking the pear-drops Albert had bought.

  The warm air lingered along by the river. The water and the air and the sky were all breathless. The sky was a soft green-lemon colour, clear, sunless and starless. ‘It’s goin’ to be a scorcher again tomorrow,’ Albert said.

  Alice said nothing. They walked slowly, a little apart, decorously. Albert opened the towpath gates, let Alice through, and then splay-footed after her. They were like some countrified old fashioned couple half-afraid of each other.

  Then Albert, after holding open a towpath gate and letting Alice pass, could not fasten the catch. He fumbled with the gate, lifted it, and did not shut it for about a minute. When he walked on again Alice was some distance ahead. Albert could see her plainly. Her pale washed-out dress was clear in the half light. Albert walked on after her. Then he was struck all of a sudden by the way she walked. She was walking thickly, clumsily, not exactly as though she were tired, but heavily, as though she had iron weights in her shoes.

  Albert caught up with her. ‘You all right, Alice?’ he said.

  ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘Ain’t bin too much for you? I see you walking a bit lame like.’

  Alice did not speak.

  ‘Ain’t nothing up. Alice, is there?’

  Alice tried to say something, but Albert asked again: ‘Ain’t bin too hot, is it?’

  ‘No. It’s all right. It’s only the dropsy.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘What your mother’s got. I reckon I catched it off her.’

  ‘It ain’t catchin’, is it?’

  ‘I don’ know. I reckon that’s what it is.’

  ‘You’re a bit tired, that’s all ’tis,’ Albert said. ‘Dropsy. You’re a funny kid, no mistake.’

  They walked almost in silence to the mill. It was dark in the kitchen, Holland was upstairs with Mrs. Holland, and Albert struck a match and lit the oil-lamp.

  The burnt match fell from Albert’s fingers. And stooping to pick it up he saw Alice, standing sideways and full in the lamplight. The curve of her pregnancy stood out clearly. Her whole body was thick and heavy with it. Albert crumbled the match in his fingers, staring at her. Then he spoke.

  ‘Here kid,’ he said. ‘Here.’

  She looked at him.

  ‘What’d you say it was you got? Dropsy?’

  ‘Yes. I reckon that’s what it is I caught.’

  ‘How long you bin like it?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s bin coming on a good while. All summer.’

  He stared at her, not knowing what to say. All the time she stared too with the old habitual muteness.

  ‘Don’t you know what’s up wi’ you?’ he said.

  She shook her head.

  When he began to tell her she never moved a fraction. Her face was like a lump of unplastic clay in the lamplight.

  ‘Don’t you know who it is? Who you bin with? Who done it?’

  She could not answer. It was hard for her to grapple not only with Albert’s words but with the memory of Holland’s: ‘You tell anybody and I’ll smash you. See?’

  ‘You better git back home,’ Albert said. ‘That’s your best place.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Soon as you can. Git off to-morrow. You no business slaving here.’

  And then again:

  ‘Who done it? Eh? Don’t y’ know who done it? If you know who done it he could marry you.’

  ‘He couldn’t marry me.’

  Albert saw that the situation had significance for him.

  ‘You better git off to bed quick,’ he said. ‘Go on. And then be off in the morning.’

  In the morning Alice was up and downstairs soon after sunlight, and the sun was well above the trees as she began to walk across the valley. She walked slowly, carrying her black case, changing it now and then from one hand to another. Binders stood in the early wheatfields covered with their tarpaulins, that were in turn covered with summer dew. It was Sunday. The world seemed empty except for herself, rooks making their way to the cornfields, and cattle in the flat valley. She walked for long periods without thinking. Then when she did think, it was not of herself or the mill or what she was doing or what was going to happen to her, but of Albert. An odd sense of tenderness rose up in her simultaneously with the picture of Albert rising up in her mind. She could not explain it. There was something singularly compassionate in Albert’s countrified solidity, his slow voice, his flat feet, his concern for her. Yet for some reason she could not explain, she could not think of him with anything like happiness. The mere remembrance of him sawing and hammering under the cherry-tree filled her with pain. It shot up in her breast like panic. ‘You better git back home.’ She could hear him saying it again and again.

  And all the time she walked as though nothing had happened. Her eyes had the same dull mute complacency as ever. It was as though she were only half-awake.

  When she saw the black gas-tarred side of the Hartop’s house it was about eight o’clock. She could hear the early service bell. The sight of the house did not affect her. She went in by the yard gate, shut it carefully, and then walked across the yard to the back door.

  She opened the door and stood on the threshold. Her mother and her father, in his shirt-sleeves, sat in the kitchen having breakfast. She could smell tea and bacon. Her father was sopping up his plate with br
ead, and seeing her he paused with the bread half to his lips. She saw the fat dripping down to the plate again. Watching it, she stood still.

  ‘I’ve come back,’ she said.

  Suddenly the pain shot up in her again. And this time it seemed to shoot up through her heart and breast and throat and through her brain.

  She did not move. Her face was flat and blank and her body static. It was only her eyes which registered the suddenness and depths of her emotions. They began to fill with tears.

  It was as though they had come to life at last.

  The Revelation

  My great-uncle Silas was a man who never washed himself. ‘God a’mighty,’ he would say, ‘why should I? It’s a waste o’ time. I got summot else to do ’sides titivate myself wi’ soap.’ The housekeeper washed him instead.

  Every morning, winter and summer, he sat in the high-backed chair under the window of geraniums waiting for that inexorable performance. He would sit there in a pretence of being engrossed in the newspaper of the day before, his waistcoat on but undone over his collarless blue shirt, his red neckerchief dangling on the arm of the chair, his face gloomy and long with the wretchedness of expectation. Sometimes he would lower the corner of the newspaper and squint out in the swift but faint hope that she had forgotten him. She never did. She would come out at last with the bowl of water and the rank cake of yellow soap that he would say she had been suckled on, and the rough hand-flannel that she had made up from some staunch undergarment she had at last discarded. In winter the water, drawn straight from the well, would be as bitter and stinging as ice. She never heated it. And as though her own hands had lost all feeling she would plunge them straight into it, and then rub the soap against the flannel until it lathered thinly, like snow. All the time he sat hidden behind the newspaper with a kind of dumb hope, like an ostrich. At last, before he knew what was happening, the paper would be snatched from his hands, the flannel, like a cold compress, would be smacked against his face, and a shudder of utter misery would pass through his body before he began to pour forth the first of his blasphemous protestations. ‘God damn it, woman! You want to finish me, don’t you? You want to finish me! You want me to catch me death, you old nanny-goat! I know. You want me …’ The words and their effect would be drowned and smothered by the renewed sopping of the flannel and he would be forced at last into a miserable acquiescence. It was the only time when the look of devilish vitality and wickedness left his face and never seemed likely to return.