The Happy Prisoner (16 page)

“Oh no,” she said quickly, “he wouldn't. I mean, he wouldn't be able to, thank you all the same.”

“It was Ma's idea. She's very fond of you, Ma is, for some reason. I believe she imagines you're the kind of girl she'd like to have had for a daughter. Satisfactory, you know—turns out right every time, like a blancmange. I don't know what she'll do when you go. What will
you
do, by the way?”

“Oh, I don't know.” Elizabeth turned and looked into the fire. “Take on another case, I suppose. Unless I get married.”

“To Arnold Clitheroe? Don't kid yourself. You'll never marry him.”

“What do you mean?” He enjoyed seeing her get angry. Although she controlled her features, her forehead became bright pink and her eyes opened very wide.

“You don't love him.”

“You don't know what you're talking about.”

“I do. If you loved him, you'd want to talk about him. You couldn't help yourself. Simple. Anyway, he's too old for you.”

“You don't even know how old he is.”

“I can guess from the kind of places he takes you to dinner. I bet he often says he wishes he could take you to the dear old Kit Kat, doesn't he?”

“I haven't the slightest idea where the old Kit Kat is.”

“There you are!” said Oliver illogically. “That proves he's a different generation. What's he look like?” he asked, and then, as she did not answer: “As bad as that? You must give him up, Elizabeth, and find some nice young man with less money
and less paunch.” He knew he was being horrid, but when he got wound up like this he could not stop. “Elizabeth Clitheroe. How would you like saying that in shops?” She was very cross with him. He was suddenly smitten by the narrowness of her shoulders as she stood with her back to him, kicking the brick kerb of the hearth.

“Don't do anything foolish, Liz,” he said gently, “just for the sake of being married. It might be even worse than being a nurse.”

She turned round and put up a hand to tidy her tidy roll of hair. “Please don't bother about me,” she said. “I can look after myself.”

“Ah, but can you? That's just the point. Just because you know how to look after me, Liz, you think—”

“And please don't call me Liz.”

“What does Arnold Clitheroe call you? I bet he calls you Liz when he's being bearishly affectionate.” She went out without answering. People who were not bedridden had the unfair advantage of being able to break off any conversation that was getting too much for them. He rang the cow-bell, but Elizabeth did not come back. He didn't blame her.

.…

On the following day, Violet was seen to have powder on her nose. Even Mrs. North, who needed a new prescription for her glasses as soon as she could find time to go to her oculist in London, noticed it. The powder was not clinging very well, because there was no vanishing cream underneath, and Violet, who had a cold, had soon blown and wiped a clear area round her nostrils, so that there was a line across her nose between the chalky top and the red tip. Heather had probably remarked on this at breakfast-time, because Oliver noticed when Violet came to take away his tray that she had rubbed off the rest of the powder and looked normal again.

“Hullo,” he said. “Where's Elizabeth?”

“I said I'd do it so she can get on with the washing up and catch her train—ouch!” Everything on the tray slid down to one end and the coffee-pot fell to the floor, its lid rolling away under the furniture.

“Good job you'd drunk all your coffee,” said Violet with satisfaction as she picked up the pot.

“But I hadn't quite. Look, there on the rug.”

“Where?” Violet stooped and peered. “Oh cripes, Ma'll think it's one of the dogs.” This made her laugh. She rubbed the little pool into the rug with her foot. “Good for carpets.”

“That's cigarette ash. Aren't you working today?”

“Not with this filthy cold.” She sniffed juicily at the thought of it. “I thought I'd take a day off.”

“Well, that's a change,” Oliver said, “considering last time you had ‘flu it was all Ma could do to stop you going harrowing in an east wind with a temperature of a hundred and one. What'll Fred say?”

“Oh, he can manage,” she said casually. “I told him yesterday I wasn't coming. They're whitewashing the cow barns this week-end.”

“But, Vi, I thought whitewashing was one of your favourite sports. How can you bear to miss it? It wouldn't hurt you, you'll be indoors.”

“Oh, shut up, Ollie,” she said in her cold-thickened voice. “I've said T'm not going. Why does everyone keep on so?”

At lunchtime, Evelyn, looking like a skewbald pony, with whitewash on her hair and clothes, reported that she had just seen Violet making her bed.

“She was turning the mattress,” she told him in an awed voice. “She
never
does that. She never does more than just pull the clothes up usually. I know because of when I've slept with her when there's been visitors in my room.”

“Say, whatever's bitten your eldest sister?” asked Mrs. North, coming in with Oliver's lunch. “I've just seen her shaking her bedroom rug out of the window.”

“There, you see,” said Evelyn darkly. “D'you think she's ill, Aunt Hattie? Fred wasn't half wild she didn't come down to the farm this morning. D'you know what he said to me? He said women are the devil. I think that's rude.”

“She should have gone,” Mrs. North said to Oliver. “After all, he does pay her. Go and wash for lunch, Evelyn.”

“I have,” she said cheerfully. “It doesn't come off.”

“There's some turpentine in the coal shed. Try that.” She automatically picked up Evelyn's dangling forelock and slid the bow back into place. “I shall have to wash your hair tonight, childie.”

“Oh, not tonight.” Evelyn pulled away. “What's the use? We shan't nearly have finished the whitewashing, specially if Vi doesn't come this afternoon. Fred's wild, you know, because the cows have to go in the old sheds till the stink's worn off and you can't use the electric milker in there. Fred says he reckons to lose five gallons over this week-end. He says I can do some milking tonight, though; that'll help.”

“We're going to tea with the Fosters,” Mrs. North reminded her.

“Aunt Hattie, I can't!” she wailed. “Fred said I could milk. He said I could milk Bonny and Alice and Serene—Serene's difficult, but he said I could try her—”

“Stop telling me what Fred said,” her aunt told her, “and go and use that turpentine. I've ironed your red dress. You can wear that this afternoon. You'd better put it on after lunch and not go out again, or I shall never get you in.”

Evelyn kicked a chair. “Don't be that way,” said Mrs. North. “It isn't pretty. You'll have to start learning to act like a lady soon. What are they going to think of you in New York?”

“Not going there,” Evelyn said sulkily. “Daddy's going to buy a ranch. He said so in his last letter.”

“I wouldn't count on that too much, dear. Grown-ups make foolish promises sometimes that they don't always keep.”

“Daddy doesn't,” retorted Evelyn fiercely. “He's going to buy a ranch and live there and I'm going to have a horse and a three-speed bike and a heifer calf of my own to breed from, and a pair of chaps. I think that's a kind of trousers,” she told Oliver.

“Oh dear,” sighed Mrs. North when she had gone out, “I do hope Bob doesn't let her down, but I don't think he means it. I'm sure he'd never live anywhere but in the city. We shall have to spruce Evie up a bit before he comes for her. She's been too much with Vi.”

“I shouldn't worry about her,” said Oliver. “She'll be all right.”

“I'm not worrying about Evie,” said his mother. “Right now, I'm worrying about Vi. I can't think what's bitten her. It's so unlike her to take any account of a cold, but she's just been hanging around the house all morning blowing her nose on those enormous khaki handkerchiefs you gave her. I do hope she isn't sickening for anything. You might catch it.”

Oliver laughed. “It wouldn't matter about poor old Vi, I suppose.”

“Oh, she's all right. She's as strong as an ox; she'd weather anything. Look dear, I want you to start with soup today, and I've opened a bottle of stout. It won't do any harm to try and build up your resistance, just in case.”

.…

“How comes it, then,” asked Cowlin, when he limped in with a bucketful of logs in each hand, “that Miss Violet idn't down to the farm today? I seen 'er in the hall just now, so I thought I'd see what she talks about, and—Ha!” He had a
way of giving a staccato, toothless laugh in the middle of his sentences. “Didn't she bite my yead off!”

“She has a cold,' said Oliver patiently. “She doesn't feel well.”

“Ha! If you ask me, I'd say her and Mr. Williams 'ave 'ad words.” Having put down his buckets, he bent to transfer the logs carefully, one by one, to the log basket. His breeches were very baggy at the seat and his legs, in leather gaiters, spindled into enormous boots.

“What about?” shouted Oliver. Cowlin had been deaf for years. Indeed, not one of his five senses was intact, for he had lost an eye in the last war, had no feeling in four fingers of one hand, and untreated sinusitis had left him unable to taste all but the most strongly flavoured food. Mrs. North seldom let his wife help with the cooking because a pinch of salt to her meant a fistful, and a few drops of essence was half a bottle. Occasionally, if the wind was right, Cowlin could smell decaying cabbage stalks, but he could smell none of the flowers he grew so lovingly, nor could he even see them properly, for his one eye was colourblind. Having acquired all these infirmities by the age of sixty, he looked forward to an old age in which there could be no further decay. He was already half crippled with rheumatism.

You could sometimes make him hear by saying the same thing in a slightly different way. Oliver tried: “What were they having a row about?” and “Why were they fighting?”

“Dunno. I couldn't year. But I seen'em, going at it out there in the rick yard, in a nasty old wind too. Then there was quite a time when they wasn't saying nothing—just kickin' at the ground.” Oliver could picture it. “Then Miss Violet she goes off one way and Mr. Williams 'e goes off another and I says to myself: ‘Ha!'” He straightened up and gazed at Oliver impressively with one misty eye and one puckered socket. Oliver nodded. It was the easiest thing to do.

Cowlin always lingered as long as possible when he brought the logs. He stood, with his back to the fire, trying out his knees like a policeman. “Well, I'll be getting along,” he said, making no attempt to go. “That ought to last you till tomorrow. That's apple wood, that is, you won't get no better.”

“I know,” shouted Oliver. Cowlin cocked his head enquiringly, so Oliver nodded. Cowlin stood happily on, his fallen-in lips spreading in a slow smile as he felt the warmth creeping into his back. Oliver offered him a cigarette. This made Cowlin laugh.

“Ha!” he said. “I can't taste they. I can't hardly taste my shag now that they've made it so austerity.” He would have
been quite content to stay there all afternoon. Oliver knew he must have a lot to do, for he managed the whole garden and the kitchen garden on his own, with the occasional hindrance of a nephew known as Sloppy Joe. He never seemed to be in a hurry, yet he got through an astonishing amount of work and always had time to knock up a garden seat or mend a puncture or skin a rabbit. Oliver had often wondered how country people managed to do as much work as London people, although going at half the pace. A country cook could amble about her kitchen and inconvenient passages and sit for hours in a creaking wicker chair and always have time to help a small boy make grubby pastry balls, while a London cook flew irritably about a labour-saving kitchen, at her wits' end if there were suddenly one more to dinner and ridiculing the idea of finding time to make cakes or jam which could perfectly well be bought in the shops.

Mrs. North and Heather and the children went off in the car to their tea-party, after a great deal of horn-pipping and: “For heaven's sake, if we don't go soon, it'll be time to come home directly we get there. You know what David's like if he's late to bed.”

“My goodness, Heather, if I can't even say goodbye to my own son! You'll just have to wait two more minutes while I fill his hot bottle. He says it's warm enough, but that's only because he hears you yelling.”

Mrs. Cowlin did not come on Saturday afternoons, so Violet had been commissioned to give Oliver his tea. Mrs. North had left his tray quite ready; she had even put tea in the teapot, but she would be uneasy all the time she was out. She would have been still more uneasy if she could have heard Violet, after telling Oliver what was on his tray, saying: “
But
there's a scrummy bowl of dripping in the larder. Should we have dripping toast, like we used to on Sundays with Father? I could make the toast in here, like he used to. Do let's, Ollie.”

“What about my tea, though? Ma'll create if she thinks I haven't had it. Don't forget I'm supposed to be on a diet now.” Violet gave it to her dogs, watercress sandwiches, sponge cake, buttered Marie biscuits and everything, mixed up in a tin bowl.

“And I tell you what,” Oliver said. “Let's have the tea frightfully strong, just the way I'm not allowed it. Know how to make tea, Vi?”

“I think so.”

“Look, when you've boiled the kettle, bring me in the tea and a tin jug and some condensed milk, if we've got any, and I'll show you how we make tea in the Army.”

“What a lark.” Oliver could hear her crashing about in the kitchen, dropping more things than usual in her pleased excitement. Her day indoors had bored her beyond endurance, and ever since lunch she had been wandering in and out of Oliver's room saying: “I can't think of anything to do.”