Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal and Other Stories (16 page)

At first she was too shy and too quiet about her work in the bedrooms. She knocked on early morning doors too softly. Heavy sleepers could not be woken by the tap of her small soft hands and cans of hot water grew cold on landings while other fuming frowsy men lay awake, waiting for their calls. This early mistake was almost the only one she ever made. The hotel was very old, with several long back stair-cases and complicated narrow passages and still more flights of stairs up which she had to lug, every morning to attic bedrooms, twenty cans of water. She soon learned that it was stupid to lug more than she need. After two mornings she learned to hammer hard with her fist on the doors of bedrooms and after less than a week she was knocking, walking in, putting the can of hot water on the wash-stand, covering it with a towel and saying in a soft firm young voice:

‘Half-past six, sir. You've got just an hour before your train.'

In this way she grew used to men. It was her work to go into bedrooms where men were frequently to be startled in strange attitudes, half-dressed, unshaved, stupid with sleep and sometimes thick-tongued and groping. It was no use being shy about it. It was no use worrying about it either. She herself was never thick-tongued, stupid or groping in the mornings and after a time she found she had no patience with men who had to be called a second time and then complained that their shaving water was cold. Already she was speaking to them
as if she were an older person, slightly peremptory but not unkind, a little vexed but always understanding:

‘Of course the water's cold, sir. You should get up when you're called. I called you twice. Do you expect people to call you fifty times?'

Her voice was slow and soft. The final syllables of her sentences went singing upward on a gentle and inquiring scale. It was perhaps because of this that men were never offended by what she had to say to them even as a young girl and that they never took exception to remarks that would have been impertinent or forward in other girls.

‘I know, Thelma,' they would say. ‘That's me all over, Thelma. Never could get the dust out of my eyes. I'll be down in five shakes—four and a half minutes for the eggs, Thelma. I like them hard.'

Soon she began to know not only the names of travellers but exactly when they had to be called, what trains they had to catch and how they liked their eggs boiled. She knew those who liked two cans of shaving water and a wad of cotton wool because they always cut themselves. She was ready for those who groped to morning life with yellow eyes:

‘Well, you won't be told, sir. You know how it takes you. You take more than you can hold and then you wonder why you feel like death the morning after.'

‘I know, Thelma, I know. What was I drinking?'

‘Cider most of the time and you had three rum and ports with Mr Henderson.'

‘Rum and port!—Oh! my lord, Thelma——'

‘That's what I say—you never learn. People can tell you forty times, can't they, but you never learn.'

Once a month, on Sunday, when she finished work at three o'clock, she walked in the forest. She was very fond of the
forest. She still believed it was true, as people said, that you could walk through it all day and never come to the farther side of it but she did not mind about that. She was quite content to walk some distance into it and, if the days were fine and warm, sit down and look at the round grey trunks of the countless shimmering beeches. They reminded her very much of the huge iron-coloured legs of a troupe of elephants she had once seen at a circus and the trees themselves had just the same friendly sober air.

When she was eighteen a man named George Furness, a traveller in fancy goods and cheap lines of cutlery, came to stay at the hotel for a Saturday night and a Sunday. She did not know quite how it came about but it presently turned out in the course of casual conversation that Furness was quite unable to believe that the nuts that grew on beech-trees were just as eatable as the nuts that grew on hazel or walnut trees. It was a silly, stupid thing, she thought, for a grown man to have to admit that he didn't know about beech-nuts.

‘Don't kid me,' Furness said. ‘They're no more good to eat than acorns.'

For the first time, in her country way, she found herself being annoyed and scornful by someone who doubted the truth of her words.

‘If you don't believe me,' she said, ‘come with me and we'll get some. The forest is full enough of them. Come with me and I'll show you—I'll be going there tomorrow.'

The following day, Sunday, she walked with Furness in the forest, through the great rides of scalded brilliant beeches. In the October sunshine her hair shone in a big coppery bun from under the back of her green straw Sunday hat. Furness was a handsome, light-hearted man of thirty-five with thickish lips and dark oiled hair and a short yellow cane which he
occasionally swished, sword-fashion, at pale clouds of dancing flies. These flies, almost transparent in the clear October sun, were as light and delicate as the lashes of Thelma's fair bleached eyes.

For some time she and Furness sat on a fallen tree-trunk while she picked up beech-nuts, shelled them for him and watched him eat them. She did not feel any particular sense of triumph in having shown a man that beech-nuts were good to eat but she laughed once or twice, quite happily, as Furness threw them gaily into the air, caught them deftly in his mouth and said how good they were. His tongue was remarkably red as it stiffened and flicked at the nuts and she noticed it every time. What was also remarkable was that Furness did not peel a single nut himself. With open outstretched hand and poised red tongue he simply sat and waited to be fed.

‘You mean you really didn't know they were good?' she said.

‘To tell you the honest,' Furness said, ‘I never saw a beech-tree in my life before.'

‘Oh! go on with you,' she said.
‘Never?'

‘No,' he said. ‘Honest. Cut my throat. I wouldn't know one if I saw one anyway.'

‘Aren't there trees in London?'

‘Oh! plenty,' Furness said. ‘Trees all over the place.'

‘As many as this?' she said. ‘As many as in the forest?'

‘Oh! easy,' Furness said, ‘only more scattered. Scattered about in big parks—Richmond, Kew, Hyde Park, places like that—miles and miles. Scattered.'

‘I like to hear you talk about London.'

‘You must come up there some time,' he said. ‘I'll show you round a bit. We'll have a day on the spree.'

He laughed again in his gay fashion and suddenly, really before she knew what was happening, he put his arms round her and began to kiss her. It was the first time she had ever been kissed by anyone in that sort of way and the lips of George Furness were pleasantly moist and warm. He kissed her several times again and presently they were lying on the thick floor of beech-leaves together. She felt a light crackle of leaves under her hair as George Furness pressed against her, kissing her throat, and then suddenly she felt afraid of something and she sat up, brushing leaves from her hair and shoulders.

‘I think we ought to go now,' she said.

‘Oh no,' he said. ‘Come on. What's the hurry, what's the worry? Come on, Thelma, let's have some fun.'

‘Not here. Not today——'

‘Here today, gone tomorrow,' Furness said. ‘Come on, Thelma, let's make a little hay while the sun shines.'

Suddenly, because Furness himself was so gay and light-hearted about everything, she felt that perhaps she was being over-cautious and stupid and something made her say:

‘Perhaps some other day. When are you coming back again?'

‘Well, that's a point,' he said. ‘If I go to Bristol first I'll be back this way Friday. If I go to Hereford first I'll stay in Bristol over the weekend and be back here Monday.'

Sunlight breaking through thinning autumn branches scattered dancing blobs of gold on his face and hands as he laughed again and said:

‘All right, Thelma? A little hay-making when I come back?'

‘We'll see.'

‘Is that a promise?'

‘We'll see.'

‘I'll take it as a promise,' he said. He laughed again and kissed her neck and she felt excited. ‘You can keep a promise, Thelma, can't you?'

‘Never mind about that now,' she said. ‘What time shall I call you in the morning?'

‘Call me early, mother dear,' he said. ‘I ought to be away by six or just after.'

She could not sleep that night. She thought over and over again of the way George Furness had kissed her. She remembered the moist warm lips, the red gay tongue flicking at beech-nuts, and how sunlight breaking through thinning autumn branches had given a dancing effect to his already light-hearted face and hands. She remembered the way he had talked of promises and making hay. And after a time she could not help wishing that she had done what George Furness had wanted her to do. ‘But there's always next weekend,' she thought. ‘I'll be waiting next weekend.'

It was very late when she fell asleep and it was after half-past six before she woke again. It was a quarter to seven before she had the tea made and when she hurried upstairs with the tray her hands were trembling. Then after she had knocked on the door of George Furness' bedroom she went inside to make the first of several discoveries. The bed was empty and George Furness had left by motor-car.

Only a few years later, by the time she was twenty-five, almost every gentleman came and went by motor-car. But that morning it was a new and strange experience to know that a gentleman did not need to go by train. It was a revolution in her life to find that a man could pay his bill overnight, leave before breakfast and not wait for his usual can of shaving water.

All that week, and for several weeks afterwards, she waited
for George Furness to come back. She waited with particular anxiety on Fridays and Mondays. She found herself becoming agitated at the sound of a motor-car. Then for the few remaining Sundays of that autumn she walked in the forest, sat down in the exact spot where George Furness had thrown beech-nuts into the air and caught them in his red fleshy mouth, and tried intensely to re-experience what it was like to be kissed by that mouth, in late warm sunlight, under a million withering beech-leaves.

All this time, and for some time afterwards, she went about her work as if nothing had happened. Then presently she began to inquire, casually at first, as if it was really a trivial matter, whether anyone had seen George Furness. When it appeared that nobody had and again that nobody even knew what Furness looked like she found herself beginning to describe him, explain him and exaggerate him a little more. In that way, by making him a little larger than life, she felt that people would recognise him more readily. Presently there would inevitably come a day when someone would say ‘Ah! yes, old George. Ran across him only yesterday.'

At the same time she remained secretive and shy about him. She did not mention him in open company. It was always to some gentleman alone, to a solitary commercial traveller sipping a late night whisky or an early morning cup of tea in his bedroom, that she would say:

‘Ever see George Furness nowadays? He hasn't been down lately. You knew him didn't you?'

‘Can't say I did.'

‘Nice cheerful fellow. Dark. Came from London—he'd talk to you hours about London, George would. Used to keep me fascinated. I think he was in quite a way up there.'

And soon, occasionally, she began to go further than this:

‘Oh! we had some times, George and me. He liked a bit of fun, George did. I used to show him the forest sometimes. He didn't know one tree from another.'

One hot Sunday afternoon in early summer, when she was twenty, she was walking towards the forest when she met another commercial traveller, a man in hosiery named Prentis, sauntering with boredom along the roadside, flicking at the heads of buttercups with a thin malacca cane. His black patent leather shoes were white with dust and something about the way he flicked at the buttercups reminded her of the way George Furness had cut with his cane at dancing clouds of late October flies.

‘Sunday,' Prentis said. ‘Whoever invented Sunday? Not a commercial, you bet. If there's one day in the week I hate it's Sunday—what's there to do on Sundays?'

‘I generally walk in the forest,' she said.

Some time later, in the forest, Prentis began kissing her very much as George Furness had done. Under the thick bright mass of leaves, motionless in the heat of afternoon, she shut her eyes and tried to persuade herself that the moist red lips of Furness were pressing down on hers. The recaptured sensation of warmth and softness excited her into trembling. Then suddenly, feeling exposed and shy in the open riding, she was afraid that perhaps someone from the hotel might walk past and see her and she said:

‘Let's take the little path there. That's a nice way. Nobody ever goes up there.'

Afterwards Prentis took off his jacket and made a pillow of it and they lay down together for the rest of the afternoon in the thick cool shade. At the same time Prentis' feet itched and he took off his shoes. As he did so and she saw the shoes white with summer dust she said:

‘You'd better leave them with me tonight. I'll clean them nicely.'

And then presently, lying on her back, looking up at the high bright mass of summer leaves with her bleached far-off eyes, she said:

‘Do you like the forest? Ever been in here before?'

‘Never.'

‘I love it here,' she said. ‘I always come when I can.'

‘By yourself?'

‘That would be telling,' she said.

‘I'll bet you do,' he said. He began laughing, pressing his body against her, stringing his fingers like a comb through her sharp red hair. ‘Every Sunday, eh? What time will you bring the shoes?'

Presently he kissed her again. And again she shut her eyes and tried to imagine that the mouth pressing down on hers was the mouth of George Furness. The experience was like that of trying to stalk a butterfly on the petal of a flower and seeing it, at the last moment, flutter away at the approach of a shadow. It was very pleasant kissing Prentis under the great arch of beech-leaves in the hot still afternoon. She liked it very much. But what she sought, in the end, was not quite there.