Cold Comfort Farm (16 page)

‘But do the letters,’ enquired Flora, who was fascinated by this recital, ‘actually say that he is writing “Wuthering Heights”?’

‘Of course not,’ retorted Mr Mybug. ‘Look at the question as a psychologist would. Here is a man working fifteen hours a day on a stupendous masterpiece which absorbs almost all his energy. He will scarcely spare the time to eat or sleep. He’s like a dynamo driving itself on its own demoniac vitality. Every scrap of his being is concentrated on finishing “Wuthering Heights”. With what little energy he has left he writes to an old aunt in Ireland. Now, I ask you, would you expect him to mention that he was working on “Wuthering Heights”?’

‘Yes,’ said Flora.

Mr Mybug shook his head violently.

‘No – no – no! Of course he wouldn’t. He’d want to get away from it for a little while, away from this all-obsessing work that was devouring his vitality. Of course he wouldn’t mention it – not even to his aunt.’

‘Why not even to her? Was he so fond of her?’

‘She was the passion of his life,’ said Mr Mybug, simply, with a luminous gravity in his voice. ‘Think – he’d never seen her. She was not like the rest of the drab angular women by whom he was surrounded. She symbolized mystery … woman … the eternal unsolvable and unfindable X. It was a perversion, of course, his passion for her, and that made it all the stronger. All we have left of this fragile, wonderfully delicate relationship between the old woman and the young man are these three short letters. Nothing more.’

‘Didn’t she ever answer them?’

‘If she did, her letters are lost. But his letters to her are enough to go on. They are little masterpieces of repressed passion. They’re full of tender little questions … he asks her how is her rheumatism … has her cat, Toby, “recovered from his fever” … what is the weather like at Derrydownderry … at Haworth it is not so good … how is Cousin Martha (and what a picture we get of Cousin Martha in those simple words, a raw Irish chit, high-cheekboned, with limp black hair and clear blood in her lips!) … It didn’t matter to Branwell that in
London the Duke was jockeying Palmerston in the stormy Corn Reforms of the “forties”. Aunt Prunty’s health and welfare came first in interest.’

Mr Mybug paused and refreshed himself with a spoonful of orange juice. Flora sat pondering on what she had just heard. Judging by her personal experience among her friends, it was not the habit of men of genius to refresh themselves from their labours by writing to old aunts; this task, indeed, usually fell to the sisters and wives of men of genius, and it struck Flora as far more likely that Charlotte, Anne or Emily would have had to cope with any old aunts who were clamouring to be written to. However, perhaps Charlotte, Anne and Emily had all decided one morning that it really
was
Branwell’s turn to write to Aunt Prunty, and had sat on his head in turn while he wrote the three letters, which were afterwards posted at prudently spaced intervals.

She glanced at her watch.

It was half-past eight. She wondered what time the Brethren came out of the dog-kennel. There was no sign of their release so far; the kennel was thundering to their singing, and at intervals there were pauses, during which Flora presumed that they were quivering. She swallowed a tiny yawn. She was sleepy.

‘What are you going to call it?’ she asked.

She knew that intellectuals always made a great fuss about the titles of their books. The titles of biographies were especially important. Had not ‘Victorian Vista’, the scathing life of Thomas Carlyle, dropped stone cold last year from the presses because everybody thought it was a boring book of reminiscences, while ‘Odour of Sanctity’, a rather dull history of Drainage Reform from 1840 to 1873, had sold like hot cakes because everybody thought it was an attack on Victorian morality?

‘I’m hesitating between “Scapegoat: ‘A Study of Branwell Brontë’”, and “Pard-spirit: ‘A Study of Branwell Brontë’” – you know … A pard-like spirit, beautiful and swift.’

Flora did indeed know. The quotation was from Shelley’s Adonais. One of the disadvantages of almost universal education was the fact that all kinds of persons acquired a
familiarity with one’s favourite writers. It gave one a curious feeling; it was like seeing a drunken stranger wrapped in one’s dressing-gown.

‘Which do you like best?’ asked Mr Mybug.

‘Pard-spirit,’ said Flora, unhesitatingly, not because she did, but because it would only lead to a long and boring argument if she hesitated.

‘Really … that’s interesting. So do I. It’s wilder somehow, isn’t it? I mean, I think it does give one something of the feeling of a wild thing bound down and chained, eh? And Branwell’s colouring carries out the analogy – that wild reddish-leopard colouring. I refer to him as the Pard throughout the book. And then, of course, there’s an undercurrent of symbolism …’

He thinks of everything, reflected Flora.

‘A leopard can’t change its spots, and neither could Branwell, in the end. He might take the blame for his sisters’ drunkenness and let them, out of some perverted sense of sacrifice, claim his books. But in the end his genius has flamed out, blackest spots on richest gold. There isn’t an intelligent person in Europe today who really believes Emily wrote the “Heights”.’

Flora finished her last biscuit, which she had been saving, and looked hopefully across at the dog-kennel. It seemed to her that the hymn now being sung had a sound like the tune of those hymns which are played just before people come out of church.

In the interval of outlining his work, Mr Mybug had been looking at her very steadily, with his chin lowered, and she was not surprised when he said, abruptly:

‘Do you cah about walking?’

Flora was now in a dreadful fix, and earnestly wished that the dog-kennel would open and Amos, like a fiery angel, come to rescue her. For if she said that she adored walking, Mr Mybug would drag her for miles in the rain while he talked about sex, and if she said that she liked it only in moderation, he would make her sit on wet stiles while he tried to kiss her. If, again, she parried his question and said that she loathed walking, he would either suspect that she suspected that he wanted to kiss her, or else he would make her sit in some dire
tea-room while he talked more about sex and asked her what she felt about it.

There really seemed no way out of it, except by getting up and rushing out of the shop.

But Mr Mybug spared her this decision by continuing in the same low voice:

‘I thought we might do some walks together, if you’d cah to? I’d better warn you – I’m – pretty susceptible.’

And he gave a curt laugh, still looking sombrely at her.

‘Then perhaps we had better postpone our walks until the weather is finer,’ said she, pleasantly. ‘It would be too bad if your book were held up by your catching a cold, and if you really have a weak chest you cannot be too careful.’

Mr Mybug looked as though he would have given much to have brushed this aside with a brutal laugh. He had planned that his next sentence should be, in an even lower voice:

‘You see, I believe in utter frankness about these things – Flora.’

But somehow he did not say it. He was not used to talking to young women who looked as clean as Flora looked. It rather put him off his stroke. He said instead, in a toneless voice: ‘Yes … oh yes, of course’, and gave her a quick glance.

Flora was pensively drawing on her gauntlets and keeping her glance upon the stream of Brethren now issuing from the dog-kennel. She feared to miss Amos.

Mr Mybug rose abruptly, and stood looking at her with his hands thrust into his pockets.

‘Are you with anybody?’ he asked.

‘My cousin is preaching at the Church of the Quivering Brethren opposite. He is driving me home.’

Mr Mybug murmured his dear, how amusing. He then said:

‘Oh … I thought we might have walked it.’

‘It is seven miles, and I am afraid my shoes are not stout enough,’ countered Flora, firmly.

Mr Mybug gave an ironical smile and muttered something about ‘Check to the King’, but Flora had seen Amos coming out of the kennel and knew that rescue had come, so she did not mind who was checked.

She said, pleasantly, ‘I must go, I am afraid; there is my cousin looking for me. Goodbye, and thank you so much for telling me about your book. It’s been so interesting. Perhaps we shall meet again some time …’

Mr Mybug leapt on this remark, which slipped out unintentionally from Flora’s social armoury, before she could prevent it, and said eagerly that it would be great fun if they could meet again. ‘I’ll give you my card.’ And he brought out a large, dirty, nasty one, which Flora with some reluctance put into her bag.

‘I warn you,’ added Mr Mybug, ‘I’m a queer moody brute. Nobody likes me. I’m like a child that’s been rapped over the knuckles till it’s afraid to shake hands – but there’s something there if you cah to dig for it.’

Flora did not cah to dig, but she thanked him for his card with a smile, and hurried across the road to join Amos, who stood towering in the middle of it.

As she came up to him he drew back, pointed at her, and uttered the single word:

‘Fornicator!’

‘No – dash it, Cousin Amos, that wasn’t a stranger; it was a person I’d met before at a party in London,’ protested Flora, her indignation a little roused by the unjustness of the accusation, especially when she thought of her real feelings for Mr Mybug.

‘’Tes all one – ay, and worse too, comin’ from London, the devil’s city,’ said Amos, grimly.

However, his protest had apparently been a matter more of form than of feeling. He said nothing more about it, and they drove home in silence, save for a single remark from him to the effect that the Brethren had been mightily stirred by his preaching and that Flora had missed a good deal by not staying for the quivering.

To which Flora replied that she was sure she had, but that his eloquence had been altogether too much for her weak and sinful spirit. She added firmly that he really ought to see about going round on that Ford van; and he sighed heavily, and said that no doubt she was a devil sent to tempt him.

Still, the seeds were sown. Her plans were maturing.

It was not until she glanced at Mr Mybug’s card in the
candle-light of her own room that she discovered that his name was not Mybug but Meyerburg, and that he lived in Charlotte Street – two facts which were not calculated to raise her spirits. But such had been the varied excitements of the day that her subsequent sleep was deep and unbroken.

It was now the third week in March. Fecund dreams stirred in the yearlings. The sukebind was in bud. The swede harvest was over; the beet harvest not yet begun. This meant that Micah, Urk, Amos, Caraway, Harkaway, Mizpah, Luke, Mark and four farm-hands who were not related to the family had a good deal of time on their hands in one way and another. Seth, of course, was always busiest in the spring. Adam was employed about the beasten-housen with the yearling lambs. Reuben was preparing the fields for the harvest after next; he never rested, however slack the season of the year. But the other Starkadders were simply ripe for rows and mischief.

As for Flora, she was quite enjoying herself. She was mixed up in a good many plots. Only a person with a candid mind, who is usually bored by intrigues, can appreciate the full fun of an intrigue when they begin to manage one for the first time. If there are several intrigues and there is a certain danger of their getting mixed up and spoiling each other, the enjoyment is even keener.

Of course, some of the plots were going better than others. Her plot to make Adam use a little mop to clean the dishes with, instead of a thorn twig, had gone sour on her.

One day, when Adam came into the kitchen just after breakfast, Flora had said to him:

‘Oh, Adam, here’s your little mop. I got it in Howling this afternoon. Look, isn’t it a nice little one? You try it, and see.’

For a second, she had thought he would dash it from her hand, but gradually, as he stared at the little mop, his expression of fury changed to one more difficult to read.

It was, indeed, rather a nice little mop. It had a plain handle of white wood with a little waist right at the tip, so that it could be more comfortably held in the hand. Its head was of soft white threads, each fibre being distinct and comely instead of being matted together in an unsightly lump like the heads of most little mops. Most taking of all, it had a loop of fine red string, with which to hang it up, knotted round its little waist.

Adam cautiously put out his finger and poked at it.

‘’Tes mine?’

‘Ay – I mean, yes, it’s yours. Your very own. Do take it.’

He took it between his finger and thumb and stood gazing at it. His eyes had filmed over like sightless Atlantic pools before the flurry of the storm breath. His gnarled fingers folded round the handle.

‘Ay …’tes mine,’ he muttered. ‘Nor house nor kine, and yet ’tes mine … My little mop!’

He undid the thorn twig which fastened the bosom of his shirt and thrust the mop within. But then he withdrew it again, and replaced the thorn. ‘My little mop!’ He stood staring at it in a dream.

‘Yes. It’s to cletter the dishes with,’ said Flora, firmly, suddenly foreseeing a new danger on the horizon.

‘Nay … nay,’ protested Adam. ‘’Tes too pretty to cletter those great old dishes wi’. I mun do that with the thorn twigs; they’ll serve. I’ll keep my liddle mop in the shed, along wi’ our Pointless and our Feckless.’

‘They might eat it,’ suggested Flora.

‘Ay, ay, so they might, Robert Poste’s child. Ah, well, I mun hang it up by its liddle red string above the dish-washin’ bowl. Niver put my liddle pretty in that gurt old greasy washin’-up water. Ay, ’tes prettier nor apple-blooth, my liddle mop.’

And shuffling across the kitchen, he hung it carefully on the wall above the sink, and stood for some time admiring it. Flora was justifiably irritated, and went crossly out for a walk.

She was frequently cheered by letters from her friends in London. Mrs Smiling was now in Egypt, but she wrote often. When abroad in hot climates she wore a great many white dresses, said very little, and all the men in the hotel fell in love
with her. Charles also wrote in reply to Flora’s little notes. Her short, informative sentences on two sides of deep blue notepaper brought details in return from Charles about the weather in Hertfordshire and messages from his mother. What little else he wrote about, Flora seemed to find mightily satisfying. She looked forward to his letters. She also heard from Julia, who collected books about gangsters, from Claud Hart-Harris, and from all her set in general. So, though exiled, she was not lonely.