The Matchmaker (10 page)

But as he worked, his anger gradually died away, driven down into the heaps of fodder and lifted into the air by his aching arms. This work was very different from driving the wedges into his father’s olive-press in the courtyard of the ruinous stone cottage where the Caetani had lived for many, many generations; or trampling the scanty vintage in autumn with his sisters, but this cold, damp earth strewn with gleaming yellow straw was the same earth that he knew, crumbling under the lizard’s flicking flight, in Italy (he could feel it now, hot between his toes) and that bird with the red bosom who perched on the gate and sang his sweet notes out into the still air lived in a wood even as did the nightingales of San Angelo. Fabrio looked meditatively at the bird and wondered if it were good to eat, and so his anger ran out and was lost in the vast, frontierless fresh air.

Mr. Hoadley, having been to see what Emilio was up to and found it comparatively harmless, encountered his wife picking her way across the farmyard with a bottle of warm milk pressed against her white coat for the kids which were her especial care. Not a hair was out of place under her neat turban and her face expressed resigned disgust. She glanced at him, then asked:

“What’s the matter, Neil?”

“Oh—Fabrio. I sent him up to the cottage with their letters and there he was, wasting his time jabbering away to Mrs. Lucie-Browne. I’ve had enough of it; I’m going in to Horsham this afternoon to ask the Office” (Mr. Hoadley meant the West Sussex Agricultural Board’s office) “to let us have a girl to train. We can teach her all we shall want her to know in the six weeks they allow, and if she’s quick and willing it’ll be well worth it.”

“Oh yes—if,” said his wife, but as she did not dislike the prospect of some female company, she did not put forward any objections to the plan, of which he had been talking for some time, and he went off.

She swung open one of the stable doors and five tiny kids rushed across the dim, clean place to greet her, white as snow and gleamy as silk, with bells of delicate flesh swinging from their throats. She shut the door and knelt among them, singling out the weakest and thrusting the teat of the bottle into his eager mouth to make sure that he received his share and was not crowded out by his stronger brothers. While he jerked and sucked and his yellow eyes shone with pleasure, she looked distastefully down upon the innocent heads of the others, who butted her sides and trampled her boots with tiny sharp hooves as they ravened for their turn.

Alda sat for a moment by the open window to re-read her friend’s letter. Jean must be told candidly that she could not come before Christmas, because there was a chance that Ronald might come home on leave. After Christmas, though it would mean a complicated reorganisation of the sleeping arrangements she would be glad of Jean’s company, her help with the housework and, frankly, of her contribution to the household expenses, for although it was possible to live more cheaply in the country than in a city, the rent of the cottage and other expenses came to nearly five pounds a week, and after Christmas the elder children’s
school
fees would be added to the total. To meet it, there was Alda’s allowance from Ronald’s pay as a Major, and a small income from some investments made before the Second World War in various municipal undertakings in Ironborough which paid a low rate of interest. Alda occasionally received handsome cheques from her father, whose favourite she was, but Ronald’s widowed mother, of better birth than Alda’s family, could not afford to do this for her son; indeed, he and his sister occasionally had to help her with money.

Poor old Jean, I expect she will find it lonely in that awful luxury flat without a tree for miles, thought Alda as she addressed her letter. And it did not seem strange to her that Jean, used to every comfort, should suggest coming to stay in a poky, dark, ugly cottage that was too crowded with people to be agreeable, for she had become used, in the twenty years of their friendship, to having Jean seek her company.

After Fabrio’s outburst, the Italians came no more to the cottage with the letters, and Alda who rightly assumed that Mr. Hoadley had forbidden them the place saw them only rarely. The children missed their visits, and something amused and mischievous in herself (which never seriously contended with the Dissenters but prevented them from having things all their own way) missed the sight of Fabrio’s comeliness and the admiring glances of Emilio.

Jean had written to say that she would come down immediately after Christmas, but since her own letter Alda had sadly heard that the chance of Ronald’s arriving for Christmas had vanished. Still, with a faint lingering hope, she had not sent this news to Jean.

“Mother!” exclaimed Jenny in her scandalised tone, on the morning of Christmas Eve, “that poor man’s books! Here they are still poked away in a cupboard and not read, and you haven’t even thanked him for them yet.”

“No more I have, love. Look—will you paint him a Christmas
card
? and Louise can run down to the farm and find out his address? We’ll post it this afternoon.”

There was a carol service at St. Wilfred’s Church in Sillingham that day at three o’clock, and Alda had thought it better to take the children to it rather than attempt Matins on Christmas morning.

“Do a golden bell,” said Louise, hanging over Jenny as the latter arranged her paint-box on the table.

“All right. (Don’t loll on me, Weez, you know I hate it.) And we’ll all sign it, shall we, Mother?”

“Meg can do
Meg her mark
, like people used to in the old days when they couldn’t write,” said Louise.

“I can wite ‘Meg,’” said that person indignantly, looking up from her game with bricks beside the fire.

“Only copying, you can’t really write. Shut up now, please. I want to do this,” and Jenny began to draw a large bell upon a square of stiff paper. She drew and painted neatly in a conventional style, but there was more life and originality in the scenes crammed with odd, stiff little figures with which Louise sometimes filled half an exercise book in a drawing fit lasting for days.

“I suppose there’s no hope of father coming at the very last minute, is there, Mother?” Louise now asked wistfully, letting her hair fall over her eyes which peered mournfully through it.

“Not a hope, I’m afraid. (
Don
’
t
do that to your hair, darling, you look like a homesick Skye terrier.)”

“It is miserable,” said Louise, and sighed.

It is, thought Alda; and then she remembered the people—children—existing in cellars in Europe with not enough food and warmth to keep the life in their bodies, and felt heartily ashamed of herself.

“Ow!” protested Meg, finding herself suddenly pulled sideways and kissed in an access of thankfulness. “What a howwid kiss. Wait a minute and I’ll gib you a marbellous one.”

She had just concluded this ceremony, which she performed with tightly-shut eyes as if to concentrate her energies, when Jenny said proudly:

“There. Finished,” and held up the card.

“That’s very nice, Jenny. Now, Weez, get your things on and run off to the farm and ask Mr. Waite’s address. You’d better write it down.”

Louise did not like going out of the warm parlour into the freezing air. She possessed less vigour than Jenny, and enjoyed warmth and solitude, and “the wreathéd trellis of a working brain” employed upon reading or drawing better than running about in the open air; but after she had once or twice drawn her breath in gasps and pushed her chin down into her muffler to escape the fierce cold, she suddenly noticed that there was
ice
on the puddles; grey ice looking so solid that—perhaps one could stand on it with one foot (Louise stood so, for an instant)—and then with two! (she brought the other foot forward)—and still it did not break!

There was a chain of such pools leading towards the farm and along them she went; now sliding, now grinding her heel into the cat-ice at the edges, now glancing vaguely about her and enjoying the novelty, rather than the beauty of the scene. Behind the cottage the pines towered up, covered with heavy white frost and revealing the beautiful symmetry usually concealed by their own darkness. Louise had quite forgotten what she had come out for.

Mr. Waite was returning along the track from the farm, where he had gone to telephone about some balancer meal for his battery birds which had failed to arrive. Walking slowly with his head down against the slight, wandering, icy wind, he was thinking what a beastly cold morning it was; the corn on the third toe of his left foot throbbed steadily and the one on the little toe of his right foot was quiet, biding its time. This meant that rain was coming; there would be a thaw; there would be impassable roads; breakdowns; burst pipes. These thoughts passed in
gloomy
, orderly procession through his head as he trudged along the causeway between the frozen lagoons, and on either side of his boots the round silver faces of billions of crowding air bubbles imprisoned in the ice looked up at him; the tideless winter air floated above, below and all about him, with its country sweetness frozen into an arctic freshness, and every grass blade had its mail-coat of frost and its miniature shadow, cast by the faint sunlight.
O ye Ice and Snow, bless ye the Lord
. A beastly cold morning and the pipes will probably burst, thought Mr. Waite.

Had he followed his strongest instincts, which were to make himself comfortable and to disapprove of other people, he would have ignored Louise, but some other instinct prompted him, as their paths crossed, to address her.

“Where are you going to, my pretty maid?” he inquired. “Fairyland?”

Louise gave him the polite smile with which properly-mannered children acknowledge whimsiness in grown-ups, and answered: “No. I’m going to the farm to ask Mr. Hoadley for Mr. Waite’s address.”

“Well, now, that’s very interesting,” said Mr. Waite, pausing and looking suspicious. “And what do you want with ‘Mr. Waite’s address,’ if I may ask?”

“It’s to send him something for Christmas.” Her large eyes, neither green nor blue and pale as those of the Ice Maiden, stared seriously up at him; pale curls of hair were sprayed against the dark fur that bordered her hood.

“Oh-ho, I see! I suppose I mustn’t ask questions, then?”

Louise nodded. She was always so interested in looking at a new person that she never heard what they said, and this inattention, combined with her unwavering stare, frequently caused brisk young aunts and sharp elderly acquaintances to pronounce her half-witted.

“I
may
ask questions? What! so near Christmas?”

This time she shook her head, and, bored, produced a grubby
handkerchief
and thoughtfully made use of it. Mr. Waite was repelled. He liked children to be neat, silent, polite, clean and admiring of grown-ups: in other words, he did not like children. Louise then went off into a trance, in which she waggled one foot as though she had lost her senses.

“Who do you think I am?” he demanded, as conversation seemed at a standstill and his corn was excruciating.

“Mr. Waite,” she answered at once.

“Oh, you
know
who I am, then?”

She nodded. “We can see you out of mother’s bedroom window.”

Spying on me. Out of her
bedroom
window, too. Rather peculiar, thought Mr. Waite;
and
inquisitive.

“Aren’t you going to ask me for my address?”

She nodded again.

“It’s Mr. Phillip Waite, Meadow Cottage, Sillingham, Sussex,” he said impressively. “Now can you remember that?” Here he observed that she was carrying a pencil: he made her produce the piece of paper from her pocket and write down the address, using his notebook as a rest, in her straggling baby hand. This took about ten minutes.

“What dreadful writing; I can hardly read it,” commented Mr. Waite helpfully, when the task was accomplished. “Why, do you know that when I was your age I won a prize for writing; a beautiful book about the St. Bernard dogs——”

“They go and find people in the snow,” interrupted Louise, “and they have lovely hot soup and brandy in a dear little bottle round their necks; a very good man called Saint Bernard invented it, he’s in Heaven now, of course, but the monks still live in the place he invented, and they’ve built another place, in Tibet, up in the mountains and they have the dogs and the soup and brandy there too, in case anyone gets lost far away in Tibet. Isn’t it a good idea? Saint Bernard was very clever and kind to think of it.”

Mr. Waite had looked forward to imparting this information
himself
and furthermore had never heard about the hospice in Tibet. He said sarcastically:

“What a well-informed young lady! And where
is
Tibet?”

The Ice Maiden opened her lips, which were shaped like a small, full, pale rose, and replied without hesitation:

“In the north-east of India, between India and China; the highest mountains in the world are there. Father showed me on the map. And he cut out the bit about Tibet from the
Daily Telegraph
and I pasted it in the Commonplace Book.”

“You’ve forgotten my address!” cried Mr. Waite triumphantly, finding the conversation unbearable.

“No, I haven’t. Mr. Phillip Waite, Meadow Cottage, Sillingham, Sussex. I must go now, good-bye,” and she slid away and did not turn round to wave.

Mr. Waite walked on, convinced that her family must be an unpleasant one; ungrateful, inquisitive, tending towards indelicacy (or why peer at people from bedroom windows?) and priggish. I do like a child to
be
a child, thought Mr. Waite, who did not like anything of the sort, and then his reflections took a darker turn as he thought of the Christmas posts, with letters and parcels from his family in Daleham, being delayed. Considering how he cursed the place when he was there, blaming it for lack of scope, dullness and narrow-mindedness, it might surprise those who do not know human nature to hear how deeply and persistently he longed for news of his mother and sisters at home in Daleham; small, prosperous, smug Daleham, untouched by six years of war, with its minster and its waters that relieved rheumatism, set in a valley amidst the Derbyshire hills.