Cut and Come Again (2 page)

For a moment I didn't say anything. I was tired, but I hadn't asked if they could put me up. Then I tried speaking very quietly, with my face half turned away.

‘I asked about a drink,' I said.

The man gave no answer. Then I remembered that I must have been ten or twelve yards from him when I first spoke. And looking at his face I saw that it was a deaf face: it had the soft, touching, half-stupid look of quiet vacancy that the faces of the deaf have. It was responsible for the look of blank fear and the sweet mild expression in the dark eyes. It explained why he had come so slowly in answer to the girl and why he had misunderstood me.

And when I spoke again I raised my voice a little:

‘All right,' I said. ‘Thank you.'

‘She's gitten' the room ready now.'

‘All right. But can I have a drink?'

‘Ain't no water,' he said, ‘only milk. You don't fancy that, I expect?'

‘Anything,' I said.

‘I'll git it.'

He began to walk across the yard. Looking after him, I saw something white moving at one of the bedroom windows. It was a girl: not the girl I had already seen, but another. She was combing her hair and watching me: combing the hair straight through, then tossing it back and then looking at the comb, all the time pretending she did not see me. Then she vanished behind the curtain, abruptly, as though she had been pulled there. And in her place I could see a woman: a big florid woman, like an older
and fatter replica of the girl I had already seen. She took one look at me and vanished.

Before I could see who appeared in her place the man was calling from the door.

‘I never thought. Come in. I never thought about you standing out there in the sun.'

I followed him into the house, through the front door and along the red-brick passage. The white and grey splashes of hen-dung became mixed with bluish-white splashes of milk as I went farther into the house, the trail following the bend of the passage, and finally at the foot of the stairs a great star-splash of milk lay on the bricks.

Just beyond the stairs the man stopped, his hand on a door-knob. ‘You make y'self at home in here,' he said. ‘She'll be down in a minute.'

He opened the door and I just had time to see a deal table covered with dirty dinner crocks before the man hastily shut it again.

‘Huh!' he said.

He walked across the passage at once and opened another door. They were old-fashioned varnished doors, with comb-grained patterns and knots of sepia and gold. And for a moment, when the man pushed it, the second door stuck, as though the varnish had liquefied in the heat. Then it opened all of a sudden. And the man burst in.

‘Better come in here,' he said.

Going in, I met the stale summer odour of the shut-up room coming out with a rush. It was stifling. Half-stupefied flies were crawling up the closed windows and on the varnished wallpaper and the oil-smoked ceiling and the pier-glass standing on the green plush-draped mantelpiece.

‘She'll be down in a minute,' the man said. The
words were like a chant of reassurance. I put my rucksack down on the oilclothed floor. ‘All right,' I said again, but he left the room hurriedly, without having heard. When he had gone I sat down and stared at the gramophone.

I couldn't help staring at it. Standing in the centre of the table, surrounded by black piles of records, its horn was like some great yawning ship's ventilator in blue and gold. Looking at it, I wondered and waited. Nobody came. Then I listened; and I could hear the clatter of crockery and then the bump of feet in the rooms above. Every now and then the bumps would increase, shaking the glass in the brass oil lamp hanging from the ceiling. But still nobody came. And the room was intolerable. I began to separate the stale odours: odours of sunstale air and sour milk and hens and then the softer odours of stale cigarette smoke and women's scent and women's clothes. At last I got up and walked round the room, looking at the cheap pictures on the walls and the tea-caddies on the cheap sideboard, all the stale paraphernalia of the farmhouse front room, seeing nothing to interest me until I came back to the gramophone and the pier-glass again.

Then I saw that the pier-glass frame was filled with all sorts of gilded and silver-lettered cards of invitation, stuck one above another: ‘The Committee of the Oakwood Tennis Club request the pleasure of the company of Mrs. and Miss Rita and Miss May Thompson, at a Dance'; ‘Lord and Lady St. John of Dean request the pleasure of the company of Mrs. and Miss Rita and Miss May Thompson, at the Servants' Ball'; ‘Mrs. and Miss Rita and Miss May Thompson are cordially invited to …'

I was still reading the cards when the bumping
began upstairs again. Suddenly it grew louder and nearer, and a second or two later the door opened and Mrs. Thompson came in.

‘Good afternoon,' she said. ‘Do please excuse me.'

It was the same ladylike, put-on voice with which the daughter had murmured her almost timid ‘Good afternoon' as she hurried past me into the house. And the mother was like the daughter: the same florid body, with the big breasts, the heavy-fleshed passionate face, the black rope-thick hair. An odour of flesh and violets rushed in with her, half driving away the sun-staleness of the room. And she was dressed all in white: white shoes and stockings and a dress of white silk that stretched skintight over her big breasts and hips, leaving her arms bare to the shoulders. She was an imposing woman, and there was no doubt that once she had been a beauty. Now she looked like a fat white pigeon.

‘That's all right,' I said.

‘I'll take you up to see your room,' she said.

She opened the door and I followed her across the milk-splashed passage and up the oilclothed stairs, carrying my rucksack. Going up behind her I could see nothing but her fat white back and her tight-clothed heavy hams straining and quivering with the exertion of climbing. It was only when she turned the bend in the stairs at the top that I could see her face; and I saw then that she had the same little soft-shaped white ears as the daughter.

A minute later we stood in the bedroom. White bed, white washstand, blue ivy growing on white wallpaper: it seemed all right.

‘It's all right,' I said. ‘But what I want most is a drink. Some tea.'

‘I'll do my best,' she said. ‘But the water is running out. We're praying for rain.'

I thought for a moment of asking her when she prayed for rain, and how, and how often, but she went on:

‘How long will you stay?'

‘I shall be away to-morrow morning,' I said. ‘Early.'

‘The room will be eight-and-six,' she said.

She kept fingering the silver locket-chain where it touched her breast.

‘What does that include?' I said.

‘Everything.'

‘It's more than I wanted to pay.'

‘It includes everything.'

I stood in thought. What did she mean by everything?

‘It includes a good supper and a good breakfast,' she said.

‘And tea?'

She hesitated. Then:

‘Yes, and tea.'

‘All right,' I said.

I dropped my rucksack on the floor. She still stood waiting. All the time she was the lady, speaking with that put-on aristocratic voice that nevertheless had something in it faintly hostile. And still the lady, but a little more hostile than before, she said:

‘Could I ask you to pay for the room in advance?'

‘It isn't usual.'

She smiled by merely pressing her lips together, so that they widened a little, but without opening. All the time she kept up the ladylike fingering of the locket on her bare breast.

‘I don't know you,' she said.

‘You don't think I shall run off without paying?' I said.

‘Oh! no. Not that.'

Then what? I said nothing. It was a deadlock. And there we stood: she the ladylike white pigeon, fingering her locket, I looking straight at her, for some reason uneasy, not speaking only because I did not know what to say.

And then the door opened. It burst open abruptly and the young daughter was in the room before either the mother or I could move.

‘Rita!'

‘I'm sorry, mother.'

‘What do you want coming into the gentleman's room?'

‘Nothing.'

‘Don't be so silly. What do you want? Haven't I brought you up better than that?'

‘A handkerchief.'

‘Where do you keep them?'

‘In the second drawer, mother.'

The mother strutted across the room to the chest of drawers and opened the second drawer. While she was finding the handkerchief I took one look at the girl. She seemed about nineteen, and as she stood there, with her bright red dress and black hair showing up against the white bedroom door, the hair curled back away from her small white ears, I thought she looked lovely. Later she would run to fat, acquire the same grossness as her sister and mother, but now she was delightful, her sallow face plump but delicate, her breasts firm and sweet as oranges, her naked arms smooth and pinky white, like barked willow. And there was a kind of sulky hauteur about her, only half-conscious, a kind of natural immobile contempt, as if to say, ‘Damn you, who do you think you are? Who are you staring at?'

In another moment the mother was hustling her
out of the room. ‘Now you know better than that in future. Here's your handkerchief,' and so on. I could hear them going downstairs, the mother's voice purposely raised in reprimand so that I could hear it.

And the mother did not come back. I began to unpack my things, and then, all of a sudden, I heard the long ripping shriek of a car hooter. After the first long shriek there were two or three shorter jerked hoots, and then a longer one, and then the short ones again.

I went to the window and looked out. The car was standing down on the road, at the end of the cart-track. Two men were in it: one was sitting in the driving seat pressing the hooter-button, the second was standing up. He was whistling with his fingers in his mouth. The man sitting down had his hair cut with long side-linings that came low down on his cheeks. Every now and then the other would cease whistling and shout something and wave his hand. They were wearing straw hats.

In about another minute the three women, the two daughters first, and then the mother, floundering behind, began to run across the farmyard and down the cart-track. They were dressed up to the nines, flashily, and as they ran the man on the hooter played short excited notes of encouragement. The mother, floundering behind, very soon ceased running and began to walk. She was still walking down the cart-track long after the two girls had reached the car and were sitting inside, laughing with the men at the sight of her floundering and stumbling in her white high-heeled shoes down the wheel-rough track.

Finally, the men ceased hooting and calling and began to clap her, as though she were coming in from a race. They were all hilarious and friendly by the
time she reached the car, and when the car began to move down the road I could see her sitting on the knees of the man behind, laughing and giggling with her head thrown back and her mouth opened like a fat contralto.

It was strangely silent when the car had gone. The farm seemed to recapture abruptly the deadness of the hot afternoon. I could feel the silence of the house and the fields about it: a scorching August silence, without wind or birds.

I went downstairs at last to find the tea the woman had promised me.

The house was deserted. A cup and saucer and a plate had been laid on the front room table by the gramophone, but there was no teapot and no milk or sugar.

I went outside to look for Thompson. The yard was deserted too. I called once, but no one answered.

And then suddenly I saw Thompson. He was coming over the brow of the nearest field, carrying two water-buckets on a sway-tree. He began to quicken his pace a little when he saw me and he was spilling the water rapidly over his legs and boots when he came into the yard.

‘Ain't y'ad no tea?' he said.

‘No,' I said.

‘They gone?'

I told him they must have been going as he came across the field. Hadn't he seen them? He was silent. Already he had set down the buckets by the pump; now he picked them up again and began to walk towards the house, motioning me with his head to follow him.

In the house Thompson boiled the kettle and I got some tea about half-past six. He scarcely spoke to me
while he was getting the tea. Dumb embarrassment seemed to govern all his movements, and I scarcely spoke myself, partly because I could see he was troubled, partly because I was afraid always of his not hearing me.

The sunlight was going rapidly, but it was still hot and more than ever silent when I went out into the farmyard again. Thompson was still carrying water. He was filling a wooden cattle tub that stood by the kitchen door. He must have made by that time half a dozen journeys with the sway-tree, and the tub held less than a foot of water.

‘If you'd got another yoke and the buckets,' I said, ‘I could give you a hand.'

‘You rest,' he said.

‘I'm rested. I haven't come far.'

‘What d'ye call far?'

‘Twenty miles.'

He stared at me. I could see that he thought it a great distance, that I had come from somewhere beyond his world.

‘Go on,' I said, ‘let me help.'

‘You couldn't manage the yoke,' he said. ‘You rest.'

‘I learnt to carry a sway-tree,' I said, ‘when I was so little the buckets dragged along the ground.'

‘Ah?'

He stood a moment longer, considering. Then he seemed to accept me.

‘You take this,' he said. He set the sway-tree across the buckets. ‘I'll git another.'

So we began to make the journeys across the fields together, to fetch the water. The spring came out of the hillside beyond the brow of the first fenced-in field, and the earth was so red that the water seemed, at first sight, to gush out like watery blood. But in
the buckets it was wonderfully clear, like ice. We went on making the journeys for more than an hour. It was a short journey, simply past the potato patch and across the field and half-way down the hill, but it seemed long sometimes because, from first to last, Thompson never spoke a word. He just walked and stared at the sky. Then when he did speak it was to repeat himself, like someone nervous. ‘How far did you say you come? How far did you say you come?' And then I would tell him again, raising my voice a little for fear he had not heard. ‘Twenty miles.' And once I said, ‘Twenty miles. From Langford up through Dean and Nassingham.'