Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal and Other Stories (12 page)

‘They've frightened them away!'

‘That reminds me,' Mr Pickering said. ‘I meant to have had my swim.'

‘Oh! it's too late now. Let's walk instead. You can have your swim before breakfast.'

‘I guess the morning's better,' Mr Pickering said. ‘Anyway I need more time—I got to practise with the new diving outfit Wilson lent me.'

‘Wilson lent you?'

‘It's the latest thing,' Mr Pickering said. ‘Cost the earth and it's pretty complicated. But you can stay under for a couple of hours. You should come diving, you know, it's a beautiful new world down there. The colours are out of this world——'

‘I don't swim that well,' she said. ‘By the way, what about the gold? Where does that fit in?'

The first breeze from landward, a mere breath, seemed to
creep down the mountain slopes as Mr and Mrs Pickering turned to walk across the sand.

‘It could be Louie again,' Mr Pickering said, ‘couldn't it? Louie was the favourite girl when the gold was salted down. I'll bet Louie knows where it is. And now and then, as I say, a little comes in handy for palm-oil.'

‘It's too fantastic.'

‘I guess life is too,' Mr Pickering said, ‘isn't it? Those dollars and sovereigns have got to come from somewhere. And it's smart for these boys to sell them when they can.'

Mrs Pickering, hardly listening, turned to see if the herons had come back to the shore, but the two delicate figures, no more than stringless kites, were sailing seaward past the edge of the promontory.

‘By the way,' Mr Pickering said. ‘Did you see my friend the crab?'

‘Yes,' she said and in the humid evening she felt once again the quick cold stab of repulsion go thinly down her spine. ‘He was there. The ugly thing.'

Next morning when Mr Pickering came down to the shore, about six o'clock, nothing moved there except the two herons gracefully wading along the bright shallow edge of sea. They flew up at his approach and settled farther along the white sea-flattened sand as Mr Pickering sat down to put his flippers on. Out on the expanse of rose-blue sea nothing moved except a small out-island fruit boat, slowly tacking with full white sail in the breathless air across the gold-pink path of rising sun.

When Mr Pickering had fixed his flippers he once again had the appearance of a semi-naked, balding, upright frog. It took him some time to adjust the breathing apparatus, with its long curved tube and its big protuberant face mask, and to fix the
oxygen bottle comfortably to his chest. He put on the mask and took it off again several times before it fitted.

‘The trouble is it's so damn buoyant,' Wilson had said. ‘You may find difficulty in stopping under. But you can get over that by carrying a weight or something. Put a basket on your back for your fish and put a rock in the bottom. That'll hold you down.'

‘I never keep my fish with me,' Torgsen said. ‘Spear 'em and bring 'em up—that's what I say in these waters. I don't want no shark sniffing for me.'

‘This thing's different,' Wilson said. ‘It's designed for stopping down. You can stay down a couple of hours with no bother. There's no point in keep coming up.'

Just before Mr Pickering succeeded in fixing his oxygen breathing apparatus the long curved boat of the craw-fish boys drew smoothly past the end of the promontory. Mr Pickering waved his hand, but the two brown-skin boys, rowing quickly, were too far away to reply. When the boat had disappeared the sea was completely empty between the long dark reef and the curious half-frog, half-warrior figure of Mr Pickering, entering the water with his blue water-spear upraised in his hand.

Soon, as the sun rose higher, it struck the black edge of the promontory of rock, heightening the startling yellow band of high-water mark. It flared too on the incense trees, lighting up the trailed butterfly ribbons of the rosy parasite orchid flowers. After nearly two hours it spread with full harsh whiteness on the entire shore, deserted except for the two herons daintily walking in the sea, the young one so like a green shadow of the other. It burned down on Mr Pickering's bright-flowered abandoned dressing wrap and on his empty crimson shoes.

And presently it fell too on the black eyes of the yellow crab, emerging with sinister caution from its hole in the sand—once again as if it had an appointment with Mr Pickering that Mr Pickering had not, for some reason, been able to keep after all.

At noon the seven women stacked their hoes by the fence and sat on a bank of grass and broom, at the end of the sugar-beet field, where the track came up by a wood of hazels.

‘I'm goin' a-sit more in the lew o' the wood today,' Ma Hawkins said. ‘I sat out there yesterday and the wind cut holes in me breeches.'

‘Puzzle it to cut through mine,' Poll Sankey said. ‘I got two pair on. Me thick 'uns and me thin 'uns.'

‘Hark at old Poll!' they all said. ‘Hark at Poll!—Poll's off again.'

Blue as water, pale and never still, a field of flax stirred with limp and tender waves below the field of sugar beet, cool green and glittering in the midday sun. Columns of sweet chestnuts in fresh dusty yellow flowers were piled high beyond it, crested with breezy summer cloud that swept big brushes of shadow across the long blue hollow.

‘I'll git me joint out,' Poll said. ‘Who wants a cut off me joint? Don't all speak at once—and them as open their mouths don't say nothing!'

In the breezy air, cool for July, the laughing voices of the women were scattered like a crackle of crows.

‘Hark at old Poll!' they said. ‘Hark at old Poll! Hark at her!'

Ma Hawkins filled her mouth with beetroot until her lips were scarred with purple. ‘You can see where we bin today,' she said. ‘We made a mark on 'em today.'

‘Jist as well,' Liz Borden said. ‘A mite higher and they'll strangle us.'

Thistle and bind-weed and dock and fat-hen lay curled like a grey cast of snake-skins down the rows of beet, dying in the sun.

‘Gawd!—she must think I'm slimming!' Poll said. ‘Look at it—one bit o' bacon and half a yard o' rind. Just like our Ma. Grabs up the first thing she sees and puts it between two bits o' bread and calls it dinner. One day she'll pack the cat up.'

Liz Borden, grey and straight as a slit fence rail, said in a smeary voice that Poll had enough on her to last till Michaelmas if she never had another mite in her lips.

‘Me?' Poll said. ‘There's no fat on me. It's what I'm saving up to get married with.'

She slapped her hands on the tight broad front of her body, running them over the great curves of her hips and down the taut bulge of her thighs. Her eyes were fresh and black as berries in a big happy face of burnt rose colour, with strong white teeth and masses of tangled blue-black hair. When she laughed the sound came up from down in her throat like a coarse burst of brass, a deep fleshy trumpet call.

‘I'm just ripening off,' Poll said. ‘That's all. That's how they like it.'

‘It ain't all fruit as'll keep,' Liz Borden said.

‘No, and it ain't all fruit as wants to.'

‘Good old Poll,' they said. ‘Poll's off again!'

‘Where's Phebe?' Ma Hawkins said. She was like a bag of
sun-brown leather with a few windy bristles of grey sticking out from under the apron she had tied over her head.

‘In the wood,' they said.

‘Pauline'll soon be here,' Cath Johnson said. ‘It'll soon be time for Pauline to be here with the baby.' She, the youngest, was eating pale red-orange cherries and hanging others, in pairs, on her small delicate ears, under close brown cushions of side hair.

‘Anybody dancing tonight?' Poll said. ‘I think I'll go. Help to fill the floor up.'

Phebe Harlow, a tall high-cheeked girl with long fine legs and pale brown arms, came out of the wood and sat on the bank and began to comb her hair. The hair was blonde-yellow and smooth and she combed it down with slow fine strokes until it fell in a curtain over her lowered face.

‘Dancing tonight, Phebe?' Poll said.

‘I might.'

‘I think I will if Harry'll take me,' Poll said.

All of them except Phebe Harlow laughed about Harry. Everybody knew about Harry. Harry came across by the field once a day, perhaps twice, a gnome on an orange tractor, a little man with a flat black head and piercing doleful blue eyes that searched the skirts of the women and roved along the line of bodies bowed against cross-winds as they hoed the fields.

‘Harry'll come if I ask him,' Poll said.

‘Ask him!' they said. ‘Go on—ask him!'

‘See me with Harry,' she said.

‘Ask him—go on, Poll, ask him!' they said. ‘He'll be by at one o'clock. He'll be coming by to the hay-field.'

‘See me dancing with Harry,' Poll said. ‘His head wouldn't come up to me belt. I'd laugh like a drain.'

‘See what he says—ask him,' they said.

Pairs of cherries danced deep orange on Cath Johnson's ears and Phebe Harlow shook back her hair from her face and fingered pale gold strands of it left shining on the comb. Wind caught her hair and separated it suddenly into transparency, letting sunlight through it, turning it more white than yellow. She looked as if about to be blown away on skeined soft wings.

‘You want to be careful about laughing at men,' she said. ‘That's the way it starts.'

‘Not with me,' Poll said. ‘I'm laughing all the time and it's never started yet.'

‘My sister's gal up at Ulcumbe laughed at a chap,' Liz Borden said. ‘Met him in a pub and laughed at his neck-tie. She and two more gigglin' bits o' work stood and laughed at his neck-tie. Afore she knew where she were she married him and now she's got four.'

‘That's what I want to do,' Poll said. ‘Laugh and have thousands of kids. Thousands of 'em. I've got to have kids. I've got to have a man.'

‘Harry!' they said.

‘He's so little I'd lose him in bed,' she said.

‘Hark at Poll!' they said. ‘Poll's off! Poll's off again.'

‘You be careful about laughing,' Phebe Harlow said.

A running breeze clapped down the rows of sugar-beet, turning the leaves over so that they whitened briefly in the sun. It caught at the skirts and the dinner-papers of the seven women and blew Phebe Harlow's hair into lighter transparency. It freshened gustily about Ma Hawkins, who said she could feel it blowing holes in her trousers again. It rattled the brown pods of broom seeds and finally it brought the cough of a tractor, coming up the track from below the wood of hazels.

‘Harry!' the women said. ‘Poll!—it's Harry. Get ready.'

‘He's got eyes,' Poll said. ‘He can see me, can't he?—there's enough of me.'

Phebe Harlow stopped combing her hair and stretched herself on the bank, her arms making a cushion under her head, her legs apart. The breeze crept about her, stirring the edges of skirt and hair, seeming suddenly to blow the lids of her eyes shut, covering them with a veil of olive-blue.

Poll Sankey slapped her thighs and said, ‘Come on, Harry. Some of us are laying down waiting a'ready—oh! Harry, I want you like a Sunday joint—Harry, you're my leg o' lamb—Harry, I'm hungry for my leg o' lamb——'

‘Gal, for Gawd's sake,' Ma Hawkins said, ‘they'll hear you down at Benacre.'

Everybody giggled except Phebe Harlow. A quiver like another run of wind went through the women as Cath Johnson said the tractor was coming through the gate and she'd better make up her lips for Harry. Her neat young lips were already wet with cherry-stain and now she began to turn them a redder, richer orange with smears of bitten fruit. Her ears were delicate and looked mischievous when the pairs of cherries trembled about them, and she called:

‘Who wants a cherry? Any more for a cherry before Harry comes?'

‘Save 'em for Harry,' Poll Sankey said.

‘You save 'em for yourself,' Liz Borden said. ‘Let him buy his own.'

The tractor, like a creeping orange sloth beaded at the head with two piercing eyes of pale sky-blue, drew up by the bank with a dying roar. Harry pushed an oil-black cap to the back of his head and scratched a mob of ageless mouse-brown hair and spat at the earth, showing cheerful teeth of gaping brown.

‘Ah! here's Harry!—how's Harry?' they all said, as if
Harry were now a surprise to them. ‘Windy enough for you, Harry?'

‘All depends what it's a-blowin',' Harry said.

His fierce little eyes roved from the cherried ears of Cath Johnson to Phebe Harlow's long sleeping brown legs and then to Poll Sankey lifting her big mocking breast and laughing at him with fleshy lips and black rolling eyes.

‘Had y' dinners?' Harry said.

‘Just waitin' for the leg o' lamb, Harry,' Poll said.

All the women laughed and said Poll was off again and Harry laughed too, his eyes giving off fierce male spurts, blue and dancing.

‘Don't want a nice bit o' sauce on it, I reckon?' Harry said.

‘You got plenty,' Liz Borden said, and Harry, with cracked teeth and a low droll glint of blue from half-closed eyes that suddenly leapt open again to a wink, said:

‘Ain't got enough to waste on old mutton, know that.'

‘Then you keep it to yourself!' she said. ‘You ain't so young and tender.'

‘I'm very like a lot tender'n you think,' Harry said. ‘Here and there——'

‘He's tender-hearted,' Poll said. ‘That's one thing. Ain't you, Harry? We all know he's tender-hearted.'

‘There's ways o' finding that out,' he said.

‘Harry!' Cath Johnson said. ‘How do you like my earrings, Harry? I just got my lips up for you, Harry! How d'ye like them, Harry?'

‘Looks like some young heifer-calf bin a-lickin' ship reddle,' Harry said.