The Yellow Meads of Asphodel Read online

  I here murmured that I supposed in consequence Pouchy was after her but he merely gave me another look of rather sharp reproof and said:

  ‘I’m comin’ to that if you’ll let me breathe. You will git so fur ahead on me. No, she wur a-courtin’ at the time.’

  He laughed briefly, his old voice cracking, and took another sharp swig of wine.

  ‘Well, you could call it courtin’, in a way. This goodly chap Will Croome was arter ’er. Well, I say arter ’er. All he done wur to sit all night in the bar and just stare at ’er over ’is beer. Nice enough chap, but onaccountable shy. Bit on the deaf side, too.’

  It was about this time, he went on, that Nell slipped on a patch of ice in the pub-yard and fell and broke her leg. It was mighty cold that winter: ten weeks of frost. You could put your skates on in the house and skate all the way through the frozen streets to the river. That was frozen solid too.

  ‘Well, about that time there wur allus me and Tupman Sanders and Olly Sharman and Ponto Pack and Gunner Jarvis in the Swan of a night and o’ course this goodly Will Croome staring at Lucy.’

  And then, no sooner had Nell been taken off to hospital, than Pouchy began to come in.

  ‘Taters ready yit? Me belly’s rollin’ round. Give ’em another five minutes. I like ’em a bit black outside. Yis, Pouchy started to come in. Belch-guts. Mister High-and-Mighty. Notch above a tapper.’

  ‘After the girl?’

  ‘Well, at fust it wad’n so much that. It wur the way he kept on a-tauntin’ and a-teasin’ Will. Never give ’im no peace. Allus on at ’im. Nasty bits outa the side of ’is mouth. You know–”I see we got Will the Lady Killer in again tonight. Fast worker, Will. Moves like a whippet. Brought your salt with you tonight, Will boy? That’s how you catch birds, Will – puttin’ salt on their tails.” It made it wuss because most o’ the time Will couldn’t hear.’

  It would never have happened, he went on to say, if Nell had been there. You wouldn’t have got away with that lark if Nell had been behind the bar. She’d have had you by the scruff of your neck and breeches and you’d have been out on your arse in one bounce if you tried that kind of caper.

  ‘Better git the taters out, boy. Afore me belly drops out.’

  While I was getting the potatoes out of the oven and finding plates for them and putting the salt and butter handy on the kitchen table he reminded me that all this was in the days before the Swan burnt down. It was the old Swan then, stone and thatched, and along one side of it was the big covered way for coaches. Every Saturday night, in winter, a man named Sprivvy Litchfield came and stood in there with his old hot potato oven, with a paraffin flare on top.

  ‘We’d nip out and git half a dozen and eat ’em with the beer. Very good too, they wur. No better’s these tonight, though.’

  The potatoes, scalding hot and floury and drenched in butter, were too much for my tongue but Silas simply forked them into his ripe old mouth with never a cooling breath and as if they were nothing but luke-warm custard. He crackled at the dark burnt skin too and it struck me that it was just like the skin of his own gnarled earth-brown hands.

  ‘Well, it got wusser and wusser, this ’ere teasin’ an’ tauntin’. I could see Lucy, poor gal, gooin’ off her napper. Then one night I caught her wipin’ her eyes and havin’ a bit of a tune in the passage and she said it wur more’n flesh and blood could bear. Tupman and Olly and Gunner and Ponto wur all fer bouncing Pouchy out but I said—’

  At this point my Uncle Silas suddenly broke off, looking uncommonly crafty, his bloodshot eye half-shut, the other reflectively contemplating a lump of well-burnt potato skin.

  ‘Allus teks me back, whenever I git a-holt of a hot tater.’ He laughed very softly, shaking his head. ‘Never fergit it. See it now.’

  My potato was cooler now and I sat eating the buttery salty flesh with relish too, waiting to hear what happened.

  ‘I recollected seeing a chap once in a pub over at Swineshead. He wasn’t quite all ninepence and two fellers put rum in his beer. Knock-out. Fast asleep in five minutes, just like a baby.’

  Here I said that if this was all they did to Pouchy it sounded pleasant rather than otherwise and anyway harmless enough.

  ‘Well, it ain’t quite all,’ Silas said and once again he laughed very softly, his lips shining red with wine, ‘it ain’t quite all. Fust we treated him to a beer wi’ one rum in it, then one wi’ two in it, then one wi’ three in it. Lucy wur slippin’ on ’em in and we wur a-keepin’ Pouchy talking. He wur very happy and in about half hour or so he went out like a light.’

  ‘And then?’

  Before answering my Uncle Silas took a long swig of wine and laughed with all his old fruity wickedness.

  ‘I went out and got a good big hot tater.’

  And what, I begged him to tell me, did they do with the hot potato?

  ‘Dropped it into his breeches.’

  ‘Front or back?’

  ‘Well, he wur a-sittin’ down at the time, so we couldn’t very well git it down the back.’

  He laughed again, really loudly this time, and said he wisht I’d bin there. Had I ever heard a pig being killed? It sounded just like that.

  ‘Injury permanent?’ I said.

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that. But it wur a good big tater and we got it well down there.’

  Now I noticed that he had finished his first potato and I opened the oven door and took out another. As he pressed it with his thumb even he recoiled a bit and said blandly:

  ‘Sting a tidy bit when they’re hot, boy.’

  As I sat watching him break the skin of the potato with his crusty fingers, I begged to know what happened to Pouchy after that.

  ‘Well, it wur a funny thing. He sort of went downhill. Took to the beer very bad. Went to the dogs. Never boasted about women no more. And in the end he wur half a cripple.’

  This, I said, didn’t at all surprise me.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. Slowly he picked up the bottle of elderberry, filled up the two glasses, held his own up to me and gave me one of those long solemn blood-shot winks of his. ‘Lost his pride. Onaccountable bad. Pass us the butter.’

  The House by the River

  ‘I think I’ve found a cottage. A house, rather. On the River Ouse. I mean right on it. The garden actually runs right down to the river bank and there’s a quarter of a mile of fishing. It belongs to a lady who finds it too big for her and she wants to sell. Sounds marvellous, absolutely idyllic.’

  ‘Have you seen it yet?’

  ‘No. I just saw this advertisement in the county paper.’

  ‘Never believe what you read about houses in advertisements.’

  ‘Don’t be cynical. The point is are you free this afternoon? If you are I’ll come over and pick you up, and we’ll run out and see it. All right? About three?’

  The voice at the other end of the telephone was that of my friend Alex Sanderson. Alex was in the business of making boots and shoes and hated it. I had long had a suspicion that his ultimate dream in life was to live in the sort of house he had just described and grow tomatoes or strawberries or flowers and do a little fishing in the summer. Alex was unmarried and looked less like the businessman he was than a country solicitor or doctor or something of that sort. His features, especially his hands, were delicate. He suffered a good deal from catarrh. He wore spectacles and when he took them off, which he did frequently in order to polish them, his eyes had a curious distant diffidence which in turn gave him a look of painful hesitancy, as if he couldn’t make up his mind about something. That in fact was a dominant characteristic of his and was precisely why he was fetching me in order to view his idyllic dream.

  We drove out in leisurely fashion to the Valley of the Ouse. The July afternoon was exquisite. When we reached the crest of the valley we could see below us the broad curves of the river winding through tranquil meadows and on the surface of the water what at first looked like flotillas of white ducks but which were in fact pur
e shining white water-lilies.

  ‘God, I love this bit of country,’ Alex said. ‘I’ve always felt I wanted to live here.’

  I said that I loved it too. It was indeed idyllic.

  ‘If my map reading is correct,’ Alex said, ‘it ought to be down the next turning on the left. That should take us to the river.’

  We duly turned left, drove past a small labourer’s cottage and eventually drew up at a rather big untidy-looking Edwardian house in red brick that truly stood, as the advertisement had said, on the bank of the river.

  ‘This must be it,’ Alex said. ‘I’ll give the bell a ring.’

  I heard the jangle of the bell echoing through the house. It stopped at last and there was no answer. Alex rang again, and again there was no answer. Then Alex rang a third time and again the same thing happened. I don’t know why, but the sound of that bell had an uncanny effect on me. There was something mournful, if not sinister, about its jangling echo.

  Alex came back to the car. ‘Doesn’t seem to be anybody at home. I’ll try round the back.’

  Before Alex could turn I suddenly noticed a figure standing behind him. It hadn’t been there a moment or two before and it suddenly seemed to have materialized out of nowhere.

  Then Alex noticed it too. It was always a characteristic of his to be extremely polite and he at once raised his hat and said:

  ‘Miss Waterfield? Good afternoon. My name is Sanderson.’

  The figure didn’t move and offered no word in answer. It was a very tall figure and very broad and angular, I thought, for a woman. It stood with feet wide apart and hands clasped behind its back. The features of the face were strong and bony and on the upper lip was a dark smear of incipient moustache.

  ‘I wrote to you about the house.’

  ‘Ah! yes. You wrote to me about the house.’

  The voice was remarkably strong but it was not in fact the strength of the voice that impressed me or that the words sounded almost guttural. Like the sound of the bell echoing through the house it was the repetition of the words that had an uncanny, almost sinister effect on me.

  ‘I hope it’s convenient to look over the house.’

  ‘I shall have to make it convenient.’

  This remark struck through the very heart of the idyllic afternoon like a chill.

  ‘Better come in.’

  Alex said thank you and, turning to me, asked if I was coming too.

  Suddenly I didn’t want to go into that house and I was on the verge of saying so when Alex gave me a short, pleading look and said:

  ‘Yes. You must. That’s what I brought you for. I really want your opinion.’

  If the air had been deliciously warm outside it struck uncommonly cold inside. Alex in fact gave a catarrhal cough or two as we entered the wide carpetless hall in which, I noticed, stood an umbrella stand full of walking sticks. As I noticed them I noticed too that Miss Water-field gave me a look of strong suspicion and I got the impression that she had somehow taken a singular dislike to me.

  I thought this was a good point at which to say that I had left my camera in the car and that I’d go back and fetch it. I duly did this. When I got back into the hall there was no sign of either Alex or Miss Waterfield but there was a strong smell of tobacco smoke in the air. I followed it through the hall, at the end of which a door leading to a long oak-panelled room was open. I heard the voices of Alex and Miss Waterfield coming from the room and I went in.

  Miss Waterfield, again standing in her habitual attitude of legs wide apart and hands clasped behind her back, was puffing heavily at a pipe, blowing strong clouds of smoke.

  ‘This is the sitting-room,’ Alex said. ‘Rather nice, I think. You like it?’

  I didn’t like it and I didn’t answer. There was something stuffily impersonal about that room. It was heavy with shadow. You often hear of houses needing a woman’s touch, a vase of flowers, pretty curtains and so forth. But here there was no hint of a feminine touch nor any hint of anything at all to relieve the unremitting gloom.

  ‘Miss Waterfield is going to show me the rooms upstairs. Will you come up too? I’d like it if you would. Or perhaps we should have a look at the river first, while it’s fine. It feels a bit thundery to me.’

  We walked to the river. Miss Waterfield took one stride to two of mine and Alex’s. The river was pretty with white water-lilies, long skeins of emerald water weed, yellow mimulus and blue water forget-me-not. After walking a short distance I said I expected Alex would like a picture of the house and he said yes, he would.

  I turned to point my camera at the house and immediately I was assailed by a strange impression. It was that the house was watching us. And for some curious reason I suddenly felt it was like another Miss Waterfield, a tall, gaunt personification of her in red brick. Then as I started to focus with the camera I got another and this time more sinister impression. It was that there was really a face, actually watching, from one of the upstairs windows. It was gone in a second and I was left with the chilly, uneasy notion that I had been the victim of a mocking hallucination.

  We walked farther up the river, coming presently to a bend that provided a shallow, limpid pool. In the pool were some dozens of fish, quite motionless except for occasional slight quivers of tails and fins, all silver and red in the afternoon sunshine.

  ‘Roach,’ I said.

  ‘Rudd.’

  No single word could have been more withering. It confirmed for me beyond all doubt that Miss Waterfield had conceived a deep fundamental dislike of me. I turned to Alex.

  ‘If you and Miss Waterfield want to go upstairs to see the rest of the house please go ahead. I’ll walk a little further along the river.’

  ‘Oh! no, no. You must come. I really do value your opinion. Do come.’

  There was always something touching about Alex’s uncertainties. He could never really make up his own mind. If he discovered a new girl to take out to dinners or dances it was always essential that he introduce her to you. ‘Do tell me what you think of her. Frankly I mean.’ And for that reason, I suppose, he had never married.

  We went back to the house. If Miss Waterfield’s attitude to me had grown rapidly more chill and withering I now noticed that hers towards Alex had grown warmer. At one point she actually took his arm.

  The stairs leading to the upper storeys of the house were exactly like the rooms below: shadowy and full of gloom. Miss Waterfield showed us into a large funereal bedroom in which I noticed, in one corner, a double-barrelled shotgun, several fishing rods, a shooting stick and a heavy riding crop.

  ‘How many bedrooms are there?’ Alex said.

  ‘Five on this floor. But two I never use.’

  ‘What about the next floor?’

  ‘Don’t need them. Always keep them locked.’

  We looked at two more bedrooms, both complete with old-fashioned marble wash-stands and two brass bedsteads, one of which I felt had, with its thrown-back sheets, been recently slept in.

  As we looked at them I felt all of Alex’s uncertainties coming back. I felt that once again he was about to plead for my opinion and sure enough he did.

  ‘Well, what do you think? How does it strike you?’

  ‘Of course you’ll have to have a proper survey.’

  ‘Survey? Survey?’ Miss Waterfield said. ‘What survey?’

  ‘It’s customary to have a proper survey carried out by a competent person.’

  ‘Not in this case. The property is structurally sound. It has always been kept in good repair. What purpose could a survey serve?’

  ‘There are such things as dry rot. Faulty damp courses. Defective gutters. Drains not working properly—’

  ‘Piffle.’

  ‘Exteriors,’ I said, ‘don’t necessarily reveal what is underneath.’

  Miss Waterfield now gave me a glance of such deliberate hostility that it is no exaggeration to call it malicious. Indeed her eyes had in them an almost diabolical coldness as she suddenly thumped a la
rge hand hard against the bedroom wall.

  ‘Structurally sound, I tell you. Absolutely. Like a fortress.’ She turned to Alex. ‘Perhaps you’d like to see the cellars? There may be further defects for your friend to discover? Come along.’

  To my disturbed astonishment she actually put her arm round Alex’s shoulder. I found the moment acutely embarrassing, so much so that when Alex again started to express his uncertainties I begged to be excused the visit to the cellars, saying that if Miss Waterfield had no objection I would like to take a picture of the river valley from the window at the end of the landing.

  ‘Don’t let me hinder you.’

  Alex and Miss Waterfield went downstairs. I walked slowly to the window at the end of the landing. That exquisite pastoral scene of river, meadows, willows and water-lilies now seemed even more entrancing after the stifling claustrophobic gloom of the house and I stood for some minutes gazing down on it, thinking of Alex’s words ‘I love this bit of country’ and my own brief reply ‘I love it too.’

  How long this reverie of admiration lasted I have now no idea. The silence of the house and the utter tranquillity of the world of river and meadows outside together produced such a deep sense of embalmment that I might have stood there for as long as twenty minutes or so. Another thing than the river, the meadows, the willows and the water-lilies that attracted my gaze was a column of smoke from a bonfire at the end of the garden. The air was so still that it rose, greyish-white, in true perpendicular, like some vaporous Indian rope-trick that might at any moment disappear into thin air.

  I was still intent on watching this when I thought I thought I heard a sound behind me. It sounded like the click of a door being either opened or shut. I turned and there at the other end of the corridor stood a man.

  He was dressed in a brown velvet jacket, purple trousers and a green kerchief round his neck. He had blue feminine eyes and pale slender hands that he kept clasped together in front of him. For some moments he neither moved nor spoke. We simply gazed at each other. Then just as I was about to make some remark, partly of explanation, partly of apology for being there at all, he suddenly turned in silence, took a key from his pocket, opened the door of one of the rooms that Miss Water-field always kept locked and disappeared.