第7章

Flora’s spirits were usually equable, but by lunch-time the next day the combined forces of the unceasing rain, the distressing manner in which the farmhouse and its attendant buildings seemed sinking into decay before her eyes, and the appearance and characters of her relatives, had produced in her a feeling of gloom which was as unusual as it was disagreeable.

‘This will not do,’ she thought, as she looked out on the soaking countryside from her bedroom window, whence she had retreated to arrange some buds and branches which she had picked on her morning walk. ‘I am probably hungry; lunch will restore my spirits.’

And yet, on second thoughts, it seemed probable that lunch cooked by a Starkadder and partaken of in solitude would only make her worse.

She had managed yesterday’s meals successfully. Judith had provided a cutlet and some junket for her at one o’clock, served beside a smoky fire, in a little parlour with faded green wallpaper, next door to the dairy. Here, too, Flora had partaken of tea and supper. These two meals were served by Mrs Beetle – an agreeable surprise. It appeared that Mrs Beetle came in to the farm and did her daughter’s work on those occasions when Meriam was being confined. Flora’s arrival had coincided with one of these times, which, as we know, were frequent. Mrs Beetle also came in each day to prepare Aunt Ada Doom’s meals.

So Flora had thus far escaped meeting Seth and Reuben or any of the other male Starkadders. Judith, Adam, Mrs Beetle and an occasional glimpse of Elfine represented her whole knowledge of the inhabitants and servants of the farm.

But she was not satisfied. She wished to meet her young cousins, her Aunt Ada Doom and Amos. How could she tidy up affairs at Cold Comfort if she did not meet any of the Starkadders? And yet she shrank from boldly entering the kitchen where the family sat at the manger, and introducing herself. Such a move would lower her dignity and, hence, her future power. It was all very difficult. Perhaps Judith did not actively intend to keep Flora from meeting the rest of the family, but she had so far achieved just this result.

But today, Flora had decided, she would meet her cousins, Seth and Reuben. She thought that tea-time would present a good opportunity on which to carry out her intention. If the Starkadders did not partake of tea (and it was probable that they did not) she would prepare it herself, and tell the Starkadders that she intended with their nominal permission to do so every afternoon during her visit.

But this point could be considered later. At the moment, she was going down into Howling to see if there was a pub in which she could lunch. In any other household such a proceeding would be enough to terminate her stay. Here, they probably would not even notice her absence.

At one o’clock, therefore, Flora was in the saloon bar of the Condemn’d Man, the only public-house in Howling, asking Mrs Murther the landlady if she ‘did’ lunches?

A smile indicating a shuddering thankfulness, as of one who peers into a pit into which others have fallen while she has escaped, passed over the face of Mrs Murther, as she replied that she did not.

‘At least, only for two days in August, and not always then,’ she added, gladly.

‘Couldn’t you pretend it is August now?’ demanded Flora, who was ravenous.

‘No,’ replied Mrs Murther, simply.

‘Well, if I buy a steakatthe butcher’s, will you cook it for me?’

Mrs Murther unexpectedly said that she would; and added even more surprisingly that Flora could have some of what they was having themselves, an offer which Flora a little rashly accepted.

What they was having themselves proved to be apple tart and vegetables, so Flora did quite well. She obtained her steak after some little delay with the butcher, who thought she was mad; and it seemed to her that a surprisingly short time elapsed between the purchasing of the steak and her sitting down before it, browned and savoury, in the parlour of the Condemn’d Man.

Nor did the hovering presence of Mrs Murther cast an atmosphere sufficiently dismal to spoil her appetite. Mrs Murther seemed resigned, rather than despairing. Her face and manner suggested the Cockney phrase dear and familiar to Flora in London: ‘Oh well, mustn’t grumble’, though Flora knew better than to expect to hear it in Howling, where everybody felt that they must grumble, and all the time at that.

‘Now I must be off and see to my other gentlemen’s dinner,’ said Mrs Murther, having hovered long enough to see that Flora had all the salt and pepper, bread, forks and the rest of it that she wanted.

‘Have you another gentleman?’ asked Flora.

‘Yes. Stayin’ here. A book-writer,’ rejoined Mrs Murther.

‘He would be,’ muttered Flora. ‘What’s his name?’ (for she wondered if she knew him).

‘Mybug,’ was the improbable answer.

Flora simply did not believe this, but she was too busy eating to start a long and exhausting argument. She decided that Mr Mybug must be a genius. A person who was merely talented would have weakly changed his name by deed-poll.

What a bore it was, she thought. Had she not enough to do at Cold Comfort without there being a genius named Mybug staying a mile away from the farm who would probably fall in love with her? For she knew from experience that intellectuals and geniuses seldom fell for females of their own kidney, who had gone all queer about the shoes and coiffure, but concentrated upon reserved but normal and properly dressed persons like herself, who were both repelled and alarmed (not to say bored) by the purposeful advances of the said geniuses and intellectuals.

‘Well – what kind of books does he write?’ she asked.

‘He’s doin’ one now about another young fellow who wrote books, and then his sisters pretended they wrote them and then they all died of consumption, poor young mommets.’

‘Ha! A life of Branwell Brontл,’ thought Flora. ‘I might have known it. There has been increasing discontent among the male intellectuals for some time at the thought that a woman wrote ‘Wuthering Heights’. I thought one of them would produce something of this kind, sooner or later. Well, I must just avoid him, that’s all.’

And she fell to finishing her apple tart a little more quickly than was comfortable, for she was nervous least Mr Mybug should come in, and fall in love with her.

‘Don’t you ’urry yourself; ’e’s never in afore half-past two,’ soothed Mrs Murther, reading her thoughts with disconcerting readiness. ‘He’s up on the Downs in all weathers, and a nice old lot of mud ’e brings into the ’ouse too. Was everything all right? That’ll be one and sixpence, please.’

Flora felt better on her return walk to the farm. She decided that she would spend the afternoon arranging her books.

There were sounds of life in the yard as she crossed it. Buckets clattered in the cowshed, and the hoarse bellow of the bull came from his dark shed. (‘I don’t believe he’s ever let out into the fields when the sun’s shining,’ thought Flora, and made a note to see about him, as well as about the Starkadders.) Belligerent noises came from the hen-house, but nobody was to be seen.

*

At four o’clock she came downstairs to look for some tea.

She did not bother to glance into her little parlour to see if her own tea were on the table. She went straight into the kitchen.

Of course, there were no preparations for tea in the kitchen; she realized, as soon as she saw the ashy fire and the crumbs and fragments of carrot left on the table from dinner, that it was rather optimistic of her to have expected any.

But she was not daunted. She filled the kettle, put some wood on the fire and set the kettle on it, flicked the reminders of dinner off the table with Adam’s drying-up towel (which she held in the tongs), and set out a ring of cups and saucers about a dinted pewter teapot. She found a loaf and some butter, but no jam, of course, or anything effeminate of that sort.

Just as the kettle boiled and she darted forward to rescue it, a shadow darkened the door and there stood Reuben, looking at Flora’s gallant preparations with an expression of stricken amazement mingled with fury.

‘Hullo,’ said Flora, getting her blow in first. ‘I feel sure you must be Reuben. I’m Flora Poste, your cousin, you know. How do you do? I’m so glad to see somebody has come in for some tea. Do sit down. Do you take milk? (No sugar … of course … or do you? I do, but most of my friends don’t.)’

The man’s big body, etched menacingly against the bleak light that stabbed in from the low windows, did not move. His thoughts swirled like a beck in spate behind the sodden grey furrows of his face. A woman … Blast! Blast! Come to wrest away from him the land whose love fermented in his veins like slow yeast. She-woman. Young, soft-coloured, insolent. His gaze was suddenly edged by a fleshy taint. Break her. Break. Keep and hold and hold fast the land. The land, the iron furrows of frosted earth under the rain-lust, the fecund spears of rain, the swelling, slow burst of seed-sheaths, the slow smell of cows and cry of cows, the trampling bride-pride of the bull in his hour. All his, his …

‘Will you have some bread and butter?’ asked Flora, handing him a cup of tea. ‘Oh, never mind your boots. Adam can sweep the mud up afterwards. Do come in.’

Defeated, Reuben came in.

He stood at the table facing Flora and blowing heavily on his tea and staring at her. Flora did not mind. It was quite interesting: like having tea with a rhinoceros. Besides, she was rather sorry for him. Amongst all the Starkadders, he looked as though he got the least kick out of life. After all, most of the family got a kick out of something. Amos got one from religion, Judith got one out of Seth, Adam got his from cowdling the dumb beasts, and Elfine got hers from dancing about on the Downs in the fog in a peculiar green dress, while Seth got his from mollocking. But Reuben just didn’t seem to get a kick out of anything.

‘Is it too hot?’ she asked, and handed him the milk, with a smile.

The opaque curve purred softly down into the teak depths of the cup. He went on blowing it, and staring at her. Flora wanted to set him at his ease (if he had an ease?) so she composedly went on with her tea, wishing there were some cucumber sandwiches.

After a silence which lasted seven minutes by a covert glance at Flora’s watch, a series of visible tremors which passed across the expanse of Reuben’s face, and a series of low, preparatory noises which proceeded from his throat, persuaded her that he was about to speak to her. Cautious as a camera-man engaged in shooting a family of fourteen lions, Flora made no sign.

Her control was rewarded. After another minute Reuben brought forth the following sentence:

‘I ha’ scranleted two hundred furrows come five o’clock down i’ the bute.’

It was a difficult remark, Flora felt, to which to reply. Was it a complaint? If so, one might say, ‘My dear, how too sickening for you!’ But then, it might be a boast, in which case the correct reply would be, ‘Attaboy!’ or more simply, ‘Come, that’s capital.’ Weakly she fell back on the comparatively safe remark:

‘Did you?’ in a bright, interested voice.

She saw at once that she had said the wrong thing. Reuben’s eyebrows came down and his jaw came out. Horrors! He thought she was doubting his word!

‘Ay, I did, tu. Two hundred. Two hundred from Ticklepenny’s Corner down to Nettle Flitch. Ay, wi’out hand to aid me. Could you ha’ done that?’

‘No, indeed,’ replied Flora, heartily, and her guardian angel (who must, she afterwards decided, have been doing a spot of overtime) impelled her to add: ‘But then, you see, I shouldn’t want to.’

This seemingly innocent confession had a surprising effect on Reuben. He banged down his cup and thrust his face forward, peering intently into hers.

‘Wouldn’t you, then? Ah, but you’d pay a hired man good money to do it for you, I’ll lay – wastin’ the farm’s takins.’

Flora was now beginning to see what was the matter. He thought she had designs on the farm!

‘Indeed I wouldn’t,’ she retorted, promptly. ‘I wouldn’t care if Ticklepenny’s Corner wasn’t scranleted at all. I don’t want to have anything to do with Nettle Flitch. I’d let’ – she smiled pleasantly up at Reuben – ‘I’d let you do it all instead.’

But this effort went sour on her, to her dismay.

‘Let?’ shouted Reuben, thumping the table. ‘Let? A mirksy, capsy word to use to a man as has nursed a farm like a sick mommet – and a man as knows every inch of soil and patch o’ sukebind i’ the place. Let … ay, a fire word—’

‘I really think we had better get this straight,’ interrupted Flora. ‘It will make things so much easier. I don’t want the farm. Really I don’t. In fact’ – she hesitated whether she should tell him that it seemed incredible to her that anyone could possibly want it, but decided that this would be rude as well as unkind – ‘well, such an idea never came into my head. I know nothing about farming, and I don’t want to. I would much rather leave it to people who do know everything about it, like you. Why, just think what a mess I should make of the sukebind harvest and everything. You must see that I am the last person in the world who would be any use at scranleting. I am sure you will believe me.’

A second series of tremors, of a slightly more complicated type than the first, passed across Reuben’s face. He seemed about to speak, but in the end he did not. He slapped down his cup, gave a last stare at Flora, and stumped out of the kitchen.

This was an unsatisfactory end to the interview, which had begun well; but she was not disturbed. It was obvious that, even if he did not believe her, he wanted to; and that was half the battle. He had even been on the verge of believing her when she made that lucky remark about not wanting to scranlet; and only his natural boorishness and his suspicious nature had prevented him. The next time she assured him that she was not out after Cold Comfort Farm, Reuben would be convinced that she spoke the truth.

The fire was now burning brightly. Flora lit a candle, which she had brought down from her bedroom, and took up some sewing with which to beguile the time until supper in her own room. She was making a petticoat and decorating it with drawn threadwork.

A little later, as she sat peacefully sewing, Adam came in from the yard. He wore, as a protection from the rain, a hat which had lost – in who knows what dim hintermath of time – the usual attributes of shape, colour and size, and those more subtle race-memory associations which identify hats as hats, and now resembled some obscure natural growth, some moss or sponge or fungus, which had attached itself to a host.

He was carrying between finger and thumb a bunch of thorn twigs, which Flora presumed that he had just picked from one of the trees in the yard; and he held them ostentatiously in front of him, like a torch.

He glanced spitefully at Flora from under the brim of the hat as he crossed the kitchen, but said nothing to her. As he placed the twigs carefully on a shelf above the sink, he glanced round at her, but she went on sewing, and said never a word. So after rearranging the twigs once or twice, and coughing, he muttered:

‘Ay, them’ll last me till Michaelmas to cletter the dishes wi’ – there’s nothin’ like a thorn twig for cletterin’ dishes. Ay, a rope’s as good as a halter to a willin’ horse. Curses, like rookses, flies home to rest in bosomses and barnses.’

It was clear that he had not forgotten Flora’s advice about using a little mop to clean the dishes. As he shuffled away, she thought that she must remember to buy one for him the next time she went into Howling.

Flora had scarcely time to get over this before there sounded a step in the yard outside, and there entered a young man who could only be Seth.

Flora looked up with a cool smile.

‘How do you do? Are you Seth? I’m your cousin, Flora Poste. I’m afraid you’re too late for any tea … unless you would like to make some fresh for yourself.’

He came over to her with the lounging grace of a panther, and leaned against the mantelpiece. Flora saw at once that he was not the kind that could be fobbed off with offers of tea. She was for it.

‘What’s that you’re making?’ he asked. Flora knew that he hoped it was a pair of knickers. She composedly shook out the folds of the petticoat and replied that it was an afternoon tea-cloth.

‘Ay … woman’s nonsense,’ said Seth, softly. (Flora wondered why he had seen fit to drop his voice by half an octave.) ‘Women are all alike – aye fussin’ over their fal-lals and bedazin’ a man’s eyes, when all they really want is man’s blood and his heart out of his body and his soul and his pride …’

‘Really?’ said Flora, looking in her work-box for her scissors.

‘Ay.’ His deep voice had jarring notes which were curiously blended into an animal harmony like the natural cries of stoat or teazel. ‘That’s all women want – a man’s life. Then when they’ve got him bound up in their fal-lals and bedazin’ ways and their softness, and he can’t move because of the longin’ for them as cries in his man’s blood – do you know what they do then?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Flora. ‘Would you mind passing me that reel of cotton on the mantelpiece, just by your ear? Thank you so much.’ Seth passed it mechanically, and continued:

‘They eat him, same as a hen-spider eats a cock-spider. That’s what women do – if a man let’s ’em.’

‘Indeed,’ commented Flora.

‘Ay – but I said “if” a man let ’em. Now I – I don’t let no women eat me. I eats them, instead.’

Flora thought an appreciative silence was the best policy to pursue at this point. She found it difficult, indeed, to reply to him in words, since this conversation in which she had participated before, (at parties in Bloomsbury as well as in drawing-rooms in Cheltenham) was, after all, mainly a kind of jockeying for place, a shifting about of the pieces on the board before the real game began. And if, as in her case, one of the players was merely a little bored by it all and was wondering whether she would be able to brew herself some hot milk before she went to bed that night, there was not much point in playing.