The Nature of Love (3 page)

By July summer began to burn the thin earth of the hillside until the chalk was like dry white flame and there was an evening in late July when she found it too hot to sit in the kitchen. Instead she sat on the stone steps outside, writing her accounts in the small black book, her cotton stockings rolled down, for coolness, over her ankles.

That evening Parker came unexpectedly from the barn behind the house, surprising her. She was torn for a moment between the necessity of hiding the book and the necessity of rolling up her stockings, and she decided on the book. Some moments later Parker was crossing the threshold, stepping over her thick bare legs as he went into the house for supper.

‘Everything's on the table,' she said. ‘I'll be there in a minute.'

She stretched out her big fleshy legs and began to roll up her stockings and Parker, at the kitchen table, sat watching her.

He watched her for some time longer, across the table, as he ate his meal. Heat came in pulsating thick waves as it rose from the valley. Once again she began to long for a breath of air and suddenly she decided, a little earlier than usual, to get up and go.

As she reached the doorway Parker got up from the table, his eyes curiously excited, and said:

‘How about you coming up here for good?' he said. ‘I bin wanting to ask you.'

‘Me?' she said. ‘No.'

‘Ah, come on,' he said. ‘You like it up here. Don't you like it?'

‘I like it.'

‘You come up and keep house for me. I'll pay. When you finished in the house you can give me a hand outside. I'll pay.'

‘I couldn't,' she said.

‘I'll pay.'

‘I couldn't.'

‘Why?' he said. ‘Why? I git on well with you. I'll pay.'

‘Oh! I don't know,' she said. It was as if she seemed to give way a little, to consider it. She looked past him with black slow eyes, in remote calculation. ‘You keep saying pay but how do I know? What'll you pay?'

‘Two pound,' he said. ‘And keep.' It was like speaking of an animal. ‘Two pound a week.'

‘I could get that down in the village. Without traipsing all this naughty way up here.'

She lied flatly, calmly, as if for some time she had prepared herself for it.

‘All right. Two pounds ten.'

‘Then there's what you owe me.'

‘I know, I know that,' he said. Clumsily he tried to grasp
her shoulders but she held herself back, pressed against the doorpost. ‘I bin meaning – you didn't think I wadn't goin' to pay, Dulcie, did you? Eh? You didn't think –'

‘You'll pay,' she said. ‘I know.'

‘You come then,' he said, ‘will you? Eh? It'll be all right? Two pound ten, eh?'

‘I got to think it over. There's –'

‘What?' he said. ‘There's what?'

‘There's a lot of things. Well, there's other people –'

‘Ah,' he said. He could not guess now at what she was thinking; she simply gave the impression of holding something back.

‘I'll tell you to-morrow,' she said.

When she came back, next day, in the early evening, she was surprised to find him already home from the fields. He had changed his shirt and had put on a clean celluloid collar, high and rather old-fashioned, with a brown clip-on tie.

‘You think about what I said?' he asked her.

‘A bit.'

‘You'll come then, will you? Eh?'

She did not answer; for some time she walked about the kitchen, and then into the scullery and back again, getting his tea. He began to follow her, dog-like, his face in its scrubbed cleanness queerly earnest above the high choking collar.

‘It ain't bad up here, is it? You like it, don't you?'

‘Yes, but what am I going to do with myself all day? Nobody to talk to – nobody up here.'

‘I'll take you into town – market days, Saturdays – no need to be lonely –'

‘It ain't that.'

She seemed to dispose of one objection and then suddenly, flatly, emotionlessly, bring up another.

‘It ain't only what I think,' she said.

‘Who else then? Your dad?'

‘No,' she said. ‘I don't care about him.'

‘Who else then?'

‘Well – there's somebody.'

‘Who?' he said. ‘Who?'

‘My boy. My young man.'

‘Never knowed you had one.'

‘You don't know everything, do you?' she said.

He sat at the table, not answering, confused and very quiet. He stared down at her strong thick legs and then up at her arms. The flesh of her arms, for all its plumpness, was fine and smooth and now in high summer it gleamed a strong soft brown from sun.

‘Don't think he'd want you to?' he said.

‘Well, I got to think about him, haven't I?' she said. ‘I got to consider him.'

‘What's his name?'

‘Albert.'

She spoke readily, lying again about the name as she had already lied about the young man himself and as yesterday she had lied about the village and the money. It was as if she wanted to fire in Parker a terrible and foolish eagerness; and then in turn to break down, by a series of little things, the caution in him that had once conceived her as a trap.

‘You think he wouldn't like it?' he said.

‘It ain't only that.'

‘What else is it?'

She lied again: ‘He gives me a few shillings a week,' she said. ‘Saving money. So we can git a few things ready. So we can be married some day.'

‘Married?' he said. The eagerness in him, already roused, seemed to split his eyes with small fires of helpless bewilderment. ‘You goin' git married?'

‘Well, some day I hope.'

‘Three pound a week,' he said. ‘If I give you that, will you come?'

Once again she looked beyond him with her small dark eyes.

‘I'll ask Albert to-night,' she said. ‘He'll probably murder me.'

When she moved in, two days later, with all her belongings packed in a cheap brown fibre suit-case, she gave Parker the impression not that it was something she had long prepared but that it was something she was doing with his own peculiar caution, as a favour, reluctantly.

‘I'll try it for a week,' she said. ‘I'll give it a trial.'

She moved into the front bedroom and at night she locked her door. She made a point, during those first few days, of speaking often of Albert. She wondered what Albert would say if he could see her now; she wondered what on earth she would do if Albert popped in. Albert came gradually forward into the situation not simply as a third party but as a watchful and terrifying eye, keeping guard on her. She brought him along as a person of possessive and jealous desire. Albert was a terror for getting to know everything; you couldn't keep anything from Albert. Whatever she did Albert got to know. Albert would brain her if she didn't do this and didn't do that. There was no fooling Albert.

On the following Tuesday she and Parker drove down to market together for the first time.

‘I only hope we don't see Albert,' she said. ‘I had to kid him with all sorts of tales about you.'

Parker felt pleased at this. In his ignorance of her lying he was flattered.

‘Never mind about Albert. You keep along o' me,' he said. ‘I got a few fly deals on to-day.'

Throughout the day Parker went about the market like a nosing fox. She had grown used to the fact that, up at the farm, he sometimes did not speak much. Now he hardly spoke at all. Now whatever he was thinking seemed to become locked up. The dumb grey eyes flickered occasionally in a tight-drawn face that otherwise had no expression. He leaned on cow-stalls, making bargains, staring at dung-splashed concrete, eyes downcast. She saw him for the first time as a person of ruthless and one-track brain, scheming and cunning, lying too, fanatically pursuing one end. And
gradually, beside him, her own thoughts and her own lying seemed very little, quite innocent, of no serious account at all.

During most of that time he did not notice her. Somewhere about noon he went into the
Market Arms
to start the first drinking of the day. She went away alone and bought herself a dinner of roast beef and potatoes and apple tart and afterwards a cup of tea in a back-street dining-rooms. While she drank the tea she wrote in her little book: ‘Dinner. July 15. 3/4.'

After that, about two o'clock, she went back to find Parker. She found him drinking, but not drunk; and she pulled nervously at his sleeve:

‘Mr Parker, I just seen Albert. I don't know whether he seen me or not but I'm scared of what he'll do.'

‘We'd better git home.'

‘That's what I thought,' she said.

And once again Parker, because of what she said about Albert, was pleased. It flattered him greatly to think that she was afraid of Albert for his sake. He drove home with a smile on his face and a little more caution than usual: a good day, a hat full of money and now, on top of it, they were kidding Albert. They were running away from Albert together.

In this way they lived for three or four weeks, through July and into harvest. On the hill the summer had been very hot, almost rainless, scorching the barley straw so that it was short, no higher than white grass, and easy to gather. Besides herself Parker had no help except a part-time hand, an oldish man named Barnes, and the three of them worked at the small harvest together.

One afternoon Barnes stopped working and stood staring down the hillside; then he walked forward across the stubble a yard or two and squinted.

‘Somebody a-prowlin' about down there,' he said. ‘Somebody with a gun.'

‘Oh!' she said.

‘Where's that?' Parker said.

‘Down aside the bottom gate,' Barnes said. ‘Young chap. I can see the gun.'

‘It looks like Albert,' she said.

After a time the young man with the gun disappeared, and once again Parker got the feeling that he had done very well for himself. Not merely was she a good girl, a willing girl, a hard-working girl; she was a girl that someone else wanted. The thought of Albert jealous, Albert prowling about with a gun, Albert watching her, was something that puffed him with satisfaction.

That evening she was changing in her room when Parker went past on the landing. Her door was open a little. She had taken off her dress and she was stooping over her attaché case, which lay open on the bed.

Parker opened the door slightly and looked in. ‘Was wondering where you were,' he said.

‘I'm just changing,' she said.

He saw the attaché case open on the bed.

‘Ain't goin' nowheres, are you?' he said.

‘Oh! I don't know,' she said. ‘I don't know. I get worried.'

‘Worried?' he said. He came into the bedroom. ‘Here, what's this?'

‘Well, it's Albert,' she said. ‘It's Albert.' She began quickly brushing her hair as if she were nervous, almost a little distracted. ‘When people start prowling about with guns I think it's time I got back home –'

‘No,' he said. ‘Don't do that.'

He came over to her and put his arms across her bare shoulders, clumsily. He began to seem a little distracted too, troubled by the thought of losing her.

‘God, no,' he said. ‘Don't do that, Dulcie, you can't do that.'

‘I can if Albert says so.'

She gave her hair a long deep casual stroke with the brush. That summer, for the first time in her life, she had found time to spend on her hair, and now it brushed out into a thick black fringe that fell over his hands. As she
tossed it back again, the dark hair falling over her white plump shoulder, her big breast was strained upward. In a tortured and clumsy way he struggled for a few moments to thrust himself nearer her body, and she pushed him away.

‘Here, steady, we're not married.'

‘I don't want you to go –'

‘Yes, but people prowling about with guns. Besides,' she said suddenly, ‘you ain't paid me –'

‘I know. I'll pay,' he said. ‘I'll pay.'

‘You keep saying that.'

‘I'll pay,' he said. ‘I'll pay to-night. I'll git it after supper.'

‘All of it?'

‘Yeh,' he said. ‘Yeh. All on it. I'll pay.'

‘All right,' she said. ‘You git it after supper. I'll reckon how much it is.'

She brushed her hair once again with long, casual, and now almost contemptuous swinging of the brush; she brought it down in a black arch over her sun-brown face, tossed it away again, bringing up the arch of her plump white shoulder.

‘Don't look so miserable,' she said. ‘I ain't gone yet.'

‘Don't go,' he said. ‘I wouldn't want you to go.'

After supper he got up from the table, looking round with troubled rabbity eyes.

‘You want me to pay you now?'

‘I could do with it,' she said.

‘How much d'ye reckon it'll be?'

‘I don't know exactly. I got it all down somewheres,' she said, ‘in my room. You git the money. I'll be up there. It ain't so much.'

She spoke casually, off-hand, as if now, after all, the money did not matter. She looked at his furtive face and she saw that he was past being troubled and was almost frightened. Then she recalled his face as she had seen it in the market, making his deals, unrelaxed and relentless, the face of a dumb fox, and it almost surprised her to see now, at last, how excruciating the change in him was.

She went up to her room. She did not look at the little book. Instead she lay full length on the bed, listening, looking at the blue August evening sky, turning the figure in the book over and over in her mind: twenty-one pounds five-and-six, twenty-one pounds five-and-six, twenty-one –

All this time she could hear Parker lumbering in the attic above her head. She had never been up to the attic. A little flight of wooden steps led up to it and the door was always locked. What was up there she did not know but she felt that perhaps soon, now, there would be ways of knowing. She could persuade Parker, perhaps, to tell her what was there. Twenty-one pounds – did it matter what was in the little book? Did it matter to a pound, one way or another? Twenty-four pounds, twenty-seven? Need Parker know? She stared dreaming at the August sky, still quivering with the heat of the day, and decided that Parker need never know.