Starlight (Vintage Classics) Page 13

  She stood there for some time. Then her brooding stare caught, at the far end of the Brobdingnagian view, miniature reddish blurs that, in contrast to the immobility of the gaudily painted ones, were moving; something beside men and women was alive down there. She took her arms off the rail, and went slowly down into the organized confusion.

  Presently, after a considerable walk, she found herself outside a square enclosure surrounded by tiers of seats, where the Highland steers were being judged, and went in.

  She sat down, among people whose faces were not London faces and heard, just behind her, two men talking in Welsh. The few women seated near her had soft, alive faces; gently alight as they chatted, or watched in considering silence. Many in this crowd were laughing, but quietly, as if in the pleasure of a holiday that was too natural to create excitement. And then – drifting casually, moving along the heated air, as if it had nothing to do with the scene and had its own power and could ignore everything else – she caught the scent of hay.

  She sat forward, watching, as the stubborn steers were pushed and tugged into line by the stockmen in their white coats.

  There was one that attracted her attention, as he did everyone’s.

  His wild, stupid eye looked out through fringes of orange hair and his massive body resisted every step forward. Occasionally he moved sideways or backwards in a movement pettish yet charged with the strength never fully exerted. The audience, with none of the amused anticipation of trouble that would have been shown by a London one, observed him with a critical, yet detached interest: it was a steer that did not want to do what it was told, no more and no less, and the men and women from the Highlands and Cumberland and Denbighshire took in every point that the judges would consider in deciding their awards, commenting occasionally on some outstanding example; assessing the bulks of flesh paraded before them.

  Peggy had no sentimental love for the row of thick bodies veiled in amber hair, but she felt for and with them; hers was the wild eye turning in useless rage, the horn helplessly slanted in a half-threat towards the stockman’s white-coated breast, the hoofs spurning the sawdust, and she drew something from them too; strength from their thews and their thick fat, and their tufted sides and horns like dim, yellowy mother-of-pearl.

  The conspicuous steer was in charge of a man nearer seventy than sixty, with a face long-nosed and deep-coloured; and stubborn as the beast’s on which he was compelled to fix all his attention. At the end of the judging, this steer, as if maddened by four minutes of enforced stillness, suddenly jerked loose from the rope round its neck and made for the exit, followed by the man.

  One or two people scattered. No woman screamed. A quiet grin played over the faces in the seats and those outside the exit, and there were some quick sideways jumps for safety as the beast and man swayed straining together from side to side, along the plank barrier. A thud sounded, unmistakable in origin to this crowd; it was a horn landing on wood; then two more stockmen came round the side of the pen and began to hustle the rebel into his quarters.

  The stockman in charge growled out something in an unintelligible dialect, and they sheered off, grinning; Bob was as bad as Bhaddain for having his own way; best leave him to it.

  Peggy sat on, looking broodingly at the re-formed line of thick bodies and glinting eyes and coarse fringes of hair, before which the judge, silent and grave in bowler hat and a dark suit suggesting an earlier day, walked with his notebook.

  She was thinking, now, about her own situation: wondering, for the first time, why her strong pride was keeping her from the thing, the only thing, that she wanted to do in the world?

  The thought recurred to her in the midst of the party this evening; the people were fools, and the room stifling, and she wanted only to be in the meadows with her lover, where she could never be again.

  Glancing over the chattering groups, replenishing empty glasses, observing whose conversation was distracted by glances at a distant plate of canapés, drawing the servants’ attention to lack of alcohol – so the time wore towards eight o’clock. She found herself near Arnold Corbett, who was standing by the Christmas tree, looking out heavily across the crowded room. As she passed, he made to catch at her arm, then checked himself.

  ‘You’re the one who doesn’t like being touched, that’s the drill, isn’t it? Am I forgiven?’

  Peggy moved her head in a way that meant nothing. She did not answer, and looked stony; she began to move away.

  ‘I say – don’t go. Stay and … you look simply lovely in that … you look simply lovely.’ He was drunker than he had been earlier, but not embarrassingly so; she had to admit that he carried liquor well. ‘Stay and talk to me, Peggy.’

  ‘I hate talking.’

  ‘Just a few minutes.’

  ‘All right. Only keep it short.’

  ‘You can be damned rude.’

  ‘Can I?’

  ‘What have I done? It’s Christmas Eve, isn’t it? Time for jollity and kissing under the blasted mistletoe and all that, isn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘You know, you’re a mystery girl. You puzzle me. You bother and bewilder me (I won’t say bewitch – early days yet). What’s your background? Why aren’t you married or going to be? You don’t look English. Remember I said so, that first evening you came?’

  ‘I do remember, and I told you, I am English. My father has a chain of shops and property in London, and my mother’s an invalid … I met your mother on the front at Hove and we got into conversation about the dogs and she took a fancy to me because they did, and here I am … any more you want to know?’

  ‘Yes, a damn sight more … I want to know about you. Come for a run in the car to-morrow afternoon?’

  ‘On Christmas Day? Be your age … I’m wanted here – and I hate motoring.’

  ‘You hate a lot of things, don’t you? … be a sport.’

  ‘With twelve for dinner in the evening? … I’ll have to ask your mother.’

  ‘Why? We’re both over sixteen.’

  She turned and looked full at him.

  ‘Look here. It suits me, being here. It’s quiet, and no-one bothers me … so far. I’m not going to do anything that might get me sacked.’

  He shrugged. ‘Oh … all right. Have it your way. Fair enough.’

  But as she walked off she turned her little head over her shoulder to say mockingly:

  ‘I’m going to see my mother to-morrow. You can drive me over and bring me back, if you like.’

  ‘I don’t know that I particularly want to,’ he said, looking sadly at her, yet sullenly too, out of his protuberant eyes.

  ‘All right. As you’d say, fair enough,’ she answered indifferently.

  16

  ‘But how will you manage about getting back, dear?’ asked Mrs Corbett, sitting after lunch on Christmas Day in the warmth of the drawing-room, with the Christmas tree glittering and occasionally tinkling gently, in the background, and the dogs dozing around her feet. ‘There are no buses or trains, and I doubt if you’ll get a taxi.’ She looked at Peggy with a trace of the annoyance that only came to her when her plans for entertaining were threatened. ‘I shall want you here quite by six, you know. I’d forgotten the buses.’

  Peggy ventured to smile. ‘Mr Corbett has very kindly offered to bring me back … and to take me, too. I hope … is that all right?’

  ‘Oh quite all right, dear – so long as you’re both here by six, and it will do him good,’ Mrs Corbett said. ‘He’s been stuck in that room of his all day smoking himself like a kipper and …’ she checked herself; there was a bottle of whisky up there, too, but she was too old, and too tired, to think about the whisky … ‘it’ll do him good,’ she ended.

  They drove away about three. Peggy, who was wearing a black jacket and cap, carried a bunch of Christmas roses. He had not seen her clothes before, and commented on them.

  ‘I like your fur.’

  ‘It’s new. I just bought it. It isn’t fur, it�
�s nylon.’

  ‘Well it looks like fur … most of the girls I know wouldn’t be seen dead in imitation fur. But I must say that looks all right.’

  ‘Most of the girls you know aren’t interested in what happens to wild animals, I suppose.’

  ‘I’m damned sure they aren’t … are you a crank, as well as a lot of other things, Peggy?’

  ‘Probably.’

  She turned aside and watched the empty grey roads going by. The cap she wore was shaped like a silky black bag and sloped away from her olive brow, giving her an Egyptian look. A scarf of Indian silk, purple and orange, was tucked into the neck of her jacket. The roses looked stiff and very white against the black coat. She smelt sweet.

  Hers was not a charm of warmth or kindness. But it was a strong charm; he could think of, and feel, nothing else.

  ‘Look out! You’d better let me drive, if you’re going to sleep!’ she exclaimed in a minute.

  ‘Better let you! I should think so. It’s your fault – I can’t concentrate,’ he said angrily.

  Peggy laughed.

  As they approached their destination, through meaner and meaner streets, Arnold’s interest became stronger. He had been puzzled to ‘place’ her since his first sight of her; for she seemed one of the rare people who truly are classless; even her voice gave no clue to her background, and when the car, on her instructions, stopped at last outside the two cottages, side by side at the end of the street of silent, half-ruined houses, he frankly stared at her. Would she say anything about the neighbourhood in which her mother lived? He betted himself she would not.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said casually, preparing to get out.

  ‘Wait a minute – I’ll do that.’

  She waited while he went round to open the door.

  Rose Cottage and Lily Cottage had a festive appearance, for, as in every other house in the neighbourhood, their rooms had been decorated with paper-chains; and festoons of pink and yellow could be seen through their windows in a glow of light. A red paper crown had been fixed somehow on the head of the horned and bearded mask that smiled down between them.

  Peggy went up the steps, and paused for a moment at the door, looking back at Arnold where he stood beside the car. Dusk was falling, the air was clear and still; the railway lines caught a faint sheen from the dying light. The windows of the Council flats across the gap glowed golden, filled with intricate patterns of red and green and blue.

  ‘I’ll come back for you – what time?’ he called, hoping to see what kind of a someone opened the door. The house looked prosperous enough, incongruously so. But a lick of paint, he told himself, cost little and could do a lot.

  ‘Oh – five-ish. Thanks.’ She waved and turned away as the door was opened by Erika, who looked fearfully at her. Arnold, trying to see, but getting only an impression of youth and a coloured dress, backed the car and drove quickly away.

  ‘Mrs Pear-son in zir living-room,’ said Erika over her shoulder, painstakingly repeating what she had evidently been taught to say, and Peggy followed her.

  She came upon a scene which continued the festive note struck outside. Three people were sitting on the rose-covered chairs drawn up to a bright fire; the fourth, Annie Barnes, was stretched, with an air of trying to take up as little room as possible, on the sofa. There was a table laden with bottles and glasses, an open box of sweets, a smell of roasting chestnuts, and Gladys Barnes, with a green paper cap over one eye, lifted a glass, crying ‘Here’s Peggy! Merry Christmas!’ The only gentleman present, Mr Fisher, began to get slowly to his feet as she appeared, and totter into the curve of a formal bow.

  ‘Dearie! I knew you were coming; I saw you!’ Mrs Pearson cried, from her place close to the fire. ‘We’re having a party – come on, Erika, near the fire, schatz – I knew it was you, when I heard the knock. See who’s here?’ pointing with a skeletal finger at Annie. ‘Isn’t it grand?’

  ‘Never thought to see Annie downstairs at a party again,’ put in Gladys, as Annie, deprived of balaclava and coats, looked around for something to shrink into, ‘ever so kind, well, I said, turkey and all, sent it up on a tray, doesn’t speak hardly no English but means well, and Mr Fisher too – you all come, your mother said, not but what we hadn’t got a bit of something for ourselves but that’ll do over Boxing Day, I said, and came up, ever so kind, just said, you take my hand and try – you’ll find it’s much easier, and down she came.’

  Gladys signed off with a flourish, finishing her glass of port.

  ‘Got to get up again, though, mayn’t be so easy,’ put in Annie, in a warning pipe.

  ‘Oh, you’ll do it, you see,’ Mrs Pearson assured her smilingly. ‘Come to the fire, Peggy.’

  ‘Mother, I can’t stay long,’ Peggy said. ‘I just came to bring you these. She has twelve people for dinner to-night.’ She put the roses into her mother’s hand.

  ‘Mercy it isn’t thirteen!’ said Gladys, re-filling Mr Fisher’s glass. ‘No more – no, Miss Gladys, I beg of you no more. This will have very serious results for me,’ the old man protested, but Gladys imperiously filled it up to the brim, saying that she could always drink it if he didn’t.

  ‘Oh Peggy – Christmas Night! Can’t you phone her?’ Mrs Pearson cried.

  ‘I said definitely I’d be back by just after five.’

  ‘Well, have a drink with us then – you must have a drink. What’ll you have? Whisky, port, gin?’

  ‘Whisky – strong.’

  Gladys, who seemed to have appointed herself Ganymede to the gathering, poured out a potion strong indeed and held it out to her.

  ‘How’s Erika getting on, Mother?’ Peggy asked, taking it; she sounded bored, and was.

  ‘She’s getting along fine,’ said Mrs Pearson, looking indulgently at the girl seated on a tuffet at her knee and slowly eating something. ‘Doesn’t her hair look pretty? I did it for her, this morning. And she’s going to learn a new English sentence every day, aren’t you, schatz?’

  ‘Wood – yuh – lakyuh – tea?’ said Erika with lowered head, looking up from under the yellow ribbon circlet that confined a tiny knob of hair, and Gladys broke into clapping.

  ‘Bravo – that’s the style – be chattering away nineteen to the dozen soon, won’t you, Erika?’ Mrs Pearson also clapped; lightly, as if two skeleton leaves rattled together in the wind, and Gladys glanced at the window. ‘Getting dark, isn’t it – brrr! glad I’m not outside – shall I draw the curtains?’

  Mrs Pearson silently indicated that Erika would do it, and, when it was done and she had stumbled back to her place, Gladys, glowing with port and still pleasantly distended by a generous Christmas dinner which did not seem to have suffered by being confined in frozen packets, and glasses, and tins, almost shouted –

  ‘Christmas Night! Christmas is the time for ghost-stories, always sit round the fire and tell ghost-stories at Christmas. What say we put out the light?’ and before anyone could speak or move, she had blundered up and across to the door and touched the switch. The room sank instantly into deep shadow and sumptuous red glow, in which every face became transformed into a mask of strong lines and cavernous darkness or blanched with ruby fire.

  ‘That’s better – nice and cosy,’ said Gladys, as no-one else seemed inclined to speak. ‘Now who’ll begin? Mr Fisher, I bet you know some ghost-stories, don’t you? At your age. Come on, don’t be shy.’

  But the room continued silent. Peggy leant back, nursing her glass and staring into the fire, and Annie’s eyes were fixed doubtfully on her sister; Mr Fisher moved uneasily, muttering, under Gladys’s exhortations.

  ‘Oh come on now – ninety next birthday and don’t know no ghost-stories –’

  Mr Fisher either could not, or would not, find any words, but sat on the edge of Annie’s sofa, nursing his glass and staring down at his barely visible slippers, and was mute. Annie felt sorry for him; Glad ought to know that he never had liked the ladies, and here he was, the only man among five women; enough to make anyone
shy. He was moving his head from side to side in a movement that conveyed absolute refusal, discernible even through the dimness, and Gladys was compelled at last to give way.

  ‘Oh all right then – some people can be very funny – what say I start, then –’

  ‘Mother?’ Peggy’s voice came sharp and low across the good-natured one, ‘are you all right?’ She made a movement then checked herself, listening. They were all listening now.

  ‘She’s breathing funny,’ Gladys said doubtfully, staring across the soft dim glare into the darkness where Mrs Pearson reclined. ‘Here, I’ll put on the light –’

  ‘No!’ Peggy whirled round on her, ‘whatever you do – no-one’s to put on the light.’

  ‘She does sound funny – better go for the doctor, p’raps? Only they’ll all be out probly – being Christmas Night –’ Gladys shivered, suddenly and violently, ‘You got the door open, anyone? There’s an awful draught in here – cold as charity.’ She glanced overhead; the paper chains were moving, with a faint rustling sound.

  ‘You’d all better –’ Peggy was beginning, when a high soft shrill sound began to waver up into the darkness. The room was bitterly cold now. No-one moved. The fire glowed wild but still, giving out light but no heat.

  ‘… I … see …’ keened a voice that might have been the wailing of a suddenly awakened evening wind, ‘and people … red … red light … food in them … I … taste … taste … one, two three, four … kinds food … and smell … her tongue … her mouth …’ And then … ‘Go now. Coming back soon.’

  Gladys uttered a moo of terror.

  ‘She’s gone mad – she’s raving – get a doctor, quick –’ and Annie began to struggle up from her couch, silently pushing her feet against the old man, who was sitting as if frozen, his eyes fixed on the dim corner whence the sounds were coming. Only Erika did not move from her place by Mrs Pearson’s knee but crouched down to the floor, and slowly covered her face with both hands.