The Song of the Wren Page 8

  ‘Don’t allus need to see ’em,’ she said, ‘afore you know as they want shooting. Sometimes you can smell ’em a mile away.’

  He never carried in his pockets, as a general rule, more than a handful of silver. He had not, on the whole, all that much use for money.

  Whenever he needed money for chestnut or hay or oats or a new axe or to pay a bill of some sort he went to his mother. She in turn went to the box under the bed upstairs. He never went with her to the box; he had never cared very much what was in the box; he had never asked questions. She in turn didn’t ask many questions either.

  ‘Charge plenty for a few oats nowadays, don’t they?’ she might say, or perhaps: ‘When one thing ain’t going up I’ll be blamed if another one is.’

  But presently, as autumn came on, he began going upstairs to the box. Every Tuesday, and occasionally again on Saturday, his mother walked southward to the cross-roads and waited for a bus to take her to market. It didn’t seem so very long, she sometimes thought, since she had travelled by carriers’ cart, holding a big string bag in one hand and the baby on her knee. It took all day to go down to market in those days and half the night to come back again. You went round half the villages, delivering oil and seed potatoes and groceries and chicken in crate and chicken feed, and it was eight or nine o’clock at night before you got home by lamplight and took the baby upstairs to bed, still asleep in your arms.

  On days when she went to market she always asked him:

  ‘Coming back for dinner? Or shall I pack it and you take it up there?’

  In the whole course of the year he came back to dinner perhaps half a dozen times. Except that the food never tasted quite so fresh he liked it better in the wood, alone, in the company of birds and squirrels, working away in his own time, in his own solitude.

  That autumn he began coming home to dinner every Wednesday. When after a month or so she noticed this he suddenly changed his mind.

  ‘Long drag down here and back again. I’ll take it up with me.’

  She always reached market by eleven o’clock and soon, every Wednesday, he was coming back to the box by noon. At first it was money for a pair of shoes. He was glad about that. There was nothing he wanted the girl to have so much as a decent pair of shoes. Then, as she herself said, it wasn’t much use having a new dress and a decent, good-looking pair of shoes if your stockings looked as if they’d spent six weeks rolled up in the rag-bag. She was tired of looking as if she’s been drawn through a hedge backwards.

  ‘Look at this pair. The damn colours don’t even match: one fawn and the other sky-blue-pink if you ever saw anything like it. I don’t say my legs are perfect, but a good pair of stockings makes a difference. And it’s getting too cold to go without any.’

  That was always the trouble with clothes, she said; there was no end. You had to have shoes and stockings, then handbag and gloves, then scarf and hat if you wanted to look anyway decent at all.

  ‘And another thing,’ she said, ‘you can’t be all show on top and nothing underneath. Look at this slip. I’ve had it four years now, nearly five. Looks like a dishcloth. Did you know I sleep in this slip? Did you know that? I haven’t even got a night-gown.’

  At first he took the money apprehensively, nervously, in small sums, not more than a pound or two at a time. Sometimes he simply asked for it, making ordinary plausible excuses.

  ‘Chiesman says he got two thousand poles up there he wants to get rid of. Better get ’em in while the ground’s dry. Better pay him while I’m at it an’ all – he always looks in your hand afore you start talking.’

  Presently the first few sharp snaps of October frost coloured hornbeams and maples a pure daffodil gold and soon sweet chestnut leaves were swimming down through the still air like slow shoals of brown-yellow fish, slapping against baring branches as they fell.

  It was sharply cold on mornings of frost and sometimes he made himself a fire over which his mother sat while he ate at midday, rubbing her hands together like greyish slabs of pumice-stone, scratching the rough skin of the palms against each other.

  ‘Got all your poles in? Don’t look so many to me.’

  ‘All there. Stacked ’em close this year.’

  ‘See you did. About as close as Christmas is.’

  All this time she was careful never to speak of money or his absences at night and on Sunday afternoons; nor of the lipstick stains on his handkerchief and the fact that sometimes he brought home two cups, washed clean.

  But once she spoke suddenly of something entirely unexpected.

  ‘Burn me if I didn’t see a gal in that grey coat you had up here. Day afore yesterday.’

  ‘Where? Up here?’

  Startled, he was tricked into raising his head sharply before he was aware of it, so that his eyes were full-faced and naked for her to penetrate with her squinting stare.

  ‘Down by the bus-stop. Biggish gal. Fair hair. Dyed I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘Never see nobody up here looking like that.’

  ‘Never said you did, did I?’

  He had nothing to say in answer; but it was enough for her to see the stunned blank eyes, bone-white as ever except for a faint flush of blood at the edges.

  The girl too began to feel the autumn cold. She too began to sit over his fire on afternoons when the sun went down early and left a splintered, naked sky, cold and distilled, behind thinning yellow branches. And as she sat there rubbing her hands together, holding them out to the cracking chestnut flame and then drawing the white fingers of one hand slowly down the full length of the other, he could never help contrasting the sound and the look of them with his mother’s stony, grating palms, harsh as a saw.

  ‘My God, it starts to get cold.’

  ‘You should wear your coat.’

  ‘What coat?’

  She laughed shortly.

  ‘The coat you had. The grey coat. The one you left up here.’

  ‘That!’ she said. ‘I sold that. Sold it to a second-hand place in Ashfield.’

  He watched her shudder over the fire. He saw the skin of her bare arms pimpled with gooseflesh.

  ‘Have to get something soon,’ she said. ‘Can’t go on this way. No use – I’ll have to slip down next Wednesday and get myself something. God knows what with, though.’

  She watched him as he seemed to brood on this exactly as he had brooded in turn on the shoes, the stockings, the scarf, the handbag, the nightdress and the underclothes: partly in pain because he hated the thought of her going without them, partly in pleasure at the thought of giving the things she wanted.

  He was quiet for such a length of time that presently two squirrels emerged from a clump of hornbeam and sat in front of the shelter, followed by a third and then a fourth a few minutes later.

  Watching them, the girl sat with a smile on her face, brooding and dreaming too.

  ‘You know what would be nice?’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know what I’d really like? What I’ve always wanted? Looking at them reminds me.’

  He saw her staring at the squirrels that now, after several weeks, had begun to grow tamer and more used to her.

  ‘A squirrel coat,’ she said. ‘That’s what I’ve always longed for.’

  There was no sign either in his face or his bony unmoving eyes that he had ever heard of a squirrel coat.

  ‘Some hopes though,’ she said. ‘Some hope for a squirrel coat for this kid.’

  ‘They cost much?’

  ‘Terrify me to ask. Terrify me to think of asking.’

  ‘How much?’

  She begged him, with a sudden laugh, not to think of it. It terrified you to think of it. You might as well, she said, think of having diamond shoes.

  ‘My God, though, they’re warm. I’ll bet they’re warm.’

  She sat clutching her shoulders with hands crossed over her chest.

  ‘About how much?’ he said.

  ‘Oh! about a hundred. You could pay more I
expect. Might pay less. I tell you I’ve always been terrified of asking.’

  He had already started to brood on this stunning and impossible figure when suddenly he saw her jump, to her feet, swinging her arms.

  ‘Oh! let’s forget about it. I just remembered something. There’s a dance next Wednesday. What about going dancing?’

  ‘No. Not me. I told you—’

  Again she swung out her arms, laughing.

  ‘I’ll teach you. I’ll bet you’re quick learning. I’ll teach you.’

  ‘No, I could never—’

  ‘I tell you there’s nothing to it. I’ll teach you—’

  She gave another sudden laugh that drove the last of the squirrels back into hiding, quick and ghostly as ever.

  ‘We’ll go dancing. Have some fun. Have a few drinks and have some fun. And I’ll wear all my glad rags,’ she said. ‘All the things you bought me. All the things you’ve never seen.’

  During the next three days he could think of nothing but the glad rags. His mind fermented constantly as it brooded on the glad rags. He wanted nothing else except to see her miraculously emerge from the chrysalis of shabbiness in which he had first seen her. What she would look like he couldn’t remotely imagine.

  And when finally he saw her he felt nothing but a shock of grievous disappointment. At first it shot through his confused head that she had turned up simply to have some sort of twisted fun with him, making him look a plain, simple stupid.

  She arrived wearing an old soiled brown mackintosh with the belt and the collar both done up, although it was a mild evening without rain, and with an old green scarf, faded almost to colourlessness, tied over her head.

  ‘Have a few drinks first?’ she said. ‘Shall we? It’s early yet. The dance won’t get worked up till ten.’

  In the pub on top of the hill he drank thoughtlessly, stared at the mackintosh, which she never bothered to undo, and the messy colourless bag of a scarf that completely covered her blonde hair.

  Several times she seemed amused by this stare. Once she laughed outright and started fingering the lapels of the dark blue serge suit he was wearing. It was his best suit; he had had it for twenty years. The cut of the lapels was high and old-fashioned. His white collar was narrow and stiff. A blue and white ready-made tie was fixed to it by elastic and under it he wore a thick blue-striped shirt.

  ‘Got yourself up all right tonight, didn’t you?’ she said. ‘No flies on you tonight.’

  ‘I thought you were going to wear your things,’ he said. ‘Your glad rags.’

  ‘Oh! You thought, did you?’ she said. ‘Well – you know what they say.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You shouldn’t think,’ she said and once again she was laughing. ‘It makes your brains tired.’

  After this kind of talk he could do nothing but get his beer filled up again and then stare once more at the frowsy, incredible image of her wrapped in the dirty mackintosh.

  ‘Well, if we’re going to dance we’d better dance.’ she said. ‘The bar’ll be closing in ten minutes anyway.’

  ‘Want one more?’

  The drink was a mere excuse; he was too shy to confess that he dreaded dancing.

  ‘Not unless you do.’

  ‘We’ll have one more,’ he said. ‘Last chance we’ll get.’

  When he finally stumbled out with her into the street at closing time the October air was blowing cooler and he thought she huddled her shoulders still deeper into the mackintosh. And suddenly he found himself more than ever hating the mackintosh and dreading the dancing.

  ‘Let’s call the dance off,’ he said. ‘Let’s go home.’

  ‘Good God, no!’ she said. ‘The night’s young. Only just beginning.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘I know,’ she said, ‘it’s just because you’ve never danced before. Here, come here. I’ll show you. Give me your hand. Like this, see.’

  She started to show him, in the middle of the darkened village street, a few simple steps of dancing. He shuffled about the tarmac, tripping over her feet, and she laughed again.

  ‘Loosen up,’ she said. ‘Let yourself go. That’s all you got to do. Let yourself go. Heavens above, man, what’s eating you?’

  Ten minutes later he stood on the edge of the dance floor waiting for her to come out of the cloak-room. By this time he was so nervous that he was actually on the point of slipping out into the street again when he woke up from a beer-fuddled trance to see her standing beside him.

  Slowly and stupidly he grasped that she was wearing the glad rags. She came towards him with outstretched arms bare to the shoulders. Her dress was silk, bright emerald green and cut low at the bust so that an inch or two of her breasts were showing. The skin of her breasts and arms was remarkably smooth and white and clear. Her shoulders were heavy and sloping and the whiteness of their flesh was sharpened because she was wearing a black lace scarf across them, narrow and thrown well back and falling away behind her arms.

  ‘I had to wear that awful mackintosh because it was the only thing I’d got. I don’t wonder you looked surprised.’

  He was not only already long past surprise; he was long past any sensation whatever.

  ‘Same with the scarf. Only thing I’d got and I didn’t want to ruin my hair in case it rained. Do you like my hair?’

  Her hair had been newly permed that afternoon into a mass of ringlets that folded close against each other like tight golden shells. He was dumbfounded by that too.

  ‘Well, say something. You paid for it.’

  ‘I think it’s all right. Nice.’

  ‘Thank you for it,’ she said. ‘You’re awfully good to me. You know that? You’re terribly good to me.’

  He was not really aware of much else that happened that evening on the dance floor and he was still moving and thinking in a beer-fuddled and unbelieving sort of way when he found himself out in the street again, carrying the dirty mackintosh over one arm and holding the bare warm shoulders of the girl with the other.

  ‘Well, this is me. This is where you leave me. Say “Good-night” to “Sir” and “Miss”—’ She laughed again. ‘God bless them.’

  They were standing in front of a large bay-windowed Edwardian house faced with red tiles and skirted with limes from which big flat leaves were falling on to the street path outside.

  ‘That’s me. Right at the top. In the roof – right under the lightning conductor.’

  He stood without saying anything, gazing up at her window.

  ‘Not much of a room. Still, you can imagine me up there, can’t you? Snug and asleep in bed. In my new night-gown.’

  Every fall of leaf from the limes outside the house was like an echo of her voice dropping her words with quiet and careful separation.

  ‘That’s another thing you haven’t seen yet. The night-gown. Nobody has. Except “Sir”.’

  ‘Except who?’

  ‘Oh! he caught me going along the landing the other night and peeped at me. He’s always peeping.’

  He suddenly turned her body to him, trembling with jealousy.

  ‘Peeping? Peeping? How? – how does that come about? – peeping?’

  ‘Oh! it’s just his game. He’s always at it. Trying the bathroom door. Knocking on my bedroom to ask if I want any letters posting. Thinks he’ll catch me in the never-never. Take no notice of him.’

  He found himself quivering, fired by improbable jealousies.

  ‘If he does it many more times I’ll tell him something though. And you know what? I’ll tell him he can buy me a proper dressing-gown.’

  ‘I can buy you a dressing-gown. I can buy you a dressing-gown.’

  ‘Oh! let him buy it for a change. Let him spend a copper or two, the old skinny. They’ve got plenty. It’s right what I said – they roll in it. I know. I saw a paying-in slip on “Sir’s” desk the other day – paying into the bank. Two thousand odd.’

  ‘They ain’t the only ones with money,’ he said. ‘They ain�
��t the only ones. I found out—’

  ‘Found out what?’

  ‘How much Mum’s got. In the box. Under the bed.’

  ‘All wrapped up in cotton-wool?’

  ‘Over twelve hundred,’ he said. ‘In a brown paper parcel. I always thought it was just papers. Deeds or something. Twelve hundred or more.’

  A breeze that lifted the limes had almost a sea-breath of warmth in it. Leaves dropped from the branches like a falling pack of cards. With a sudden odd detachment the girl lifted her face to a sky crowded with stars and said:

  ‘Oh! it’s too good a night to shut myself up in that box yet. Look at the stars. I’m going to walk part of the way back with you.’

  As they walked back, arm in arm, she paused sometimes, looked up at the stars again and said how wonderful they were. She thanked him several times for a wonderful evening, for the drinks and for the dancing. She thanked him for the emerald dress, the black lace scarf, the new shoes and stockings and what had been done for her hair.

  ‘And all the other things,’ she said. ‘All the underneath ones.’

  Listening, he was almost unaware that they had reached the track going down to the wood between arches of blackthorn and hornbeam that were shedding, like the limes, a gentle and almost continuous shower of leaves.

  ‘That beer made me thirsty,’ she said. ‘I tell you what. I’ll come as far as the hut with you and you can make a fire and we’ll have a cup of tea.’

  Twenty minutes later she sat in the way she so often did, quiet, clasping her bridged knees in her arms, rocking slightly backwards and forwards, shoulders naked and rosy-white in the glow of the fire. When he had brewed the tea she sat with the cup half-balanced on her knees, staring over it at the sparking chestnut bark, her shoulders hunched forward, the neck of her dress falling forward like an opened purse.

  He let the fire die down a little before saying, ‘You said you’d show me your other things. You know, the—’ and in the pause as he searched for words she turned fully towards him where he sat crouching in her shadow. With her voice lowered she asked him what it was he wanted to see and while he was still searching for words a second time she lifted the hem of her dance dress and pulled down the lace edge of her slip five or six inches, holding her hand underneath it so that the flesh of her palms shone through the filigree. ‘It’s just a skirt,’ she told him, ‘one of the new kind. Without a top. Do you like it? I bought a black one too, but I thought the pale green one was better with the dress. Can you see it’s pale green? Can you see it in the light of the fire?’