Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal and Other Stories (8 page)

‘Known Henry long? Doesn't change much, does he? How's the thing getting on? The opus, I mean. The great work. He'll never finish it, of course. Henry's sort never do.'

It was some time before she realised what was wrong with the fragile uncertain eyes. The young man spilt the contents of his glass over his hands, his coat, and his thin, yellow snake of a tie. He moved away with abrupt unsteadiness and she
heard a crash of glass against a chair. It passed unnoticed, as if a pin had dropped.

Presently she was overwhelmed by hoglike snorts of laughter, followed by giggling, and someone said, ‘What's all this about a rose?'

‘God knows.'

‘Some gag of Henry's.'

A large man in tweeds of rope-like thickness stood with feet apart, laughing his hoglike laugh. Occasionally he steadied himself as he drank and now and then thrust his free hand under a heavy shirt of black-and-yellow check, scratching the hairs on his chest.

Drinking swiftly, he started to whisper, ‘What's all this about Henry and the grocer's wife? They say she's up here every hour of the day.'

‘Good lord, Henry and what wife?'

‘Grocer's, I thought—I don't know. You mean you haven't heard?'

‘Good lord, no. Can't be. Henry and girls?'

‘No? You don't think so?'

‘Can't believe it. Not Henry. He'd run from a female fly.'

‘All females are fly.'

Again, at this remark, there were heavy, engulfing guffaws of laughter.

‘Possible, I suppose, possible. One way of getting the custom.'

She stood in a maze, only half hearing, only half awake. Splinters of conversation went crackling past her bewildered face like scraps of flying glass.

‘Anybody know where the polly is? Get me a drink while I'm gone, dear. Gin. Not sherry. The sherry's filthy.'

‘Probably bought from the grocer.'

Leaning against the mantelpiece, a long arm extended, ash dropping greyly and seedily down her breast, the lady with the yellow cigarette holder was heard, with a delicate hiss, to accuse someone of bitchiness.

‘But then we're all bitches, aren't we,' she said, ‘more or less? But she especially.'

‘Did she ever invite you? She gets you to make up a number for dinner and when you get there a chap appears on the doorstep and says they don't need you any more. Yes, actually!'

‘She's a swab. Well, poor Alex, he knows it now.'

‘That's the trouble, of course—when you do know, it's always too bloody late to matter.'

Everywhere the air seemed to smoke with continuous white explosions. Soon Clara started to move away and found herself facing a flushed eager Lafarge, who in turn was pushing past a heavy woman in black trousers, with the jowls of a bloodhound and bright blonde hair neatly brushed back and oiled, like a man.

‘There you are, Mrs Corbett. You've no drink. Nothing to eat. You haven't met anybody.'

A man was edging past her and Lafarge seized him by the arm.

‘Siegfried. Mrs Corbett, this is my friend Siegfried Pascoe. Siegfried, dear fellow, hold her hand. Befriend her while I get her a drink. It's our dear Mrs Corbett, Siegfried, of heart fame.' He squeezed Mrs Corbett's arm, laughing. ‘His mother called him Siegfried because she had a Wagner complex,' he said. ‘Don't move!'

An object like an unfledged bird, warm and boneless, slid into her hand. Limply it slid out again and she looked up to see a plump creaseless moon of a face, babyish, almost pure white under carefully curled brown hair, staring down at her
with pettish, struggling timidity. A moment later, in a void, she heard the Pascoe voice attempting to frame its syllables like a little fussy machine misfiring, the lips loose and puffy.

‘What do you f-f-f-feel about Eliot?' it said.

She could not answer; she could think of no one she knew by the name of Eliot.

To her relief Lafarge came back, bearing a glass of sherry and a plate on which were delicate slices of meat rolled up and filled with wine-red jelly. ‘This,' he told her, ‘is the heart. Yes, your heart, Mrs Corbett. The common old heart. Taste it, dear. Take the fork. Taste it and see if it isn't absolute manna. I'll hold the sherry.'

She ate the cold heart. Cranberry sauce squeezed itself from the rolls of meat and ran down her chin and just in time she caught it with a fork.

The heart, she thought, tasted not at all unlike heart and in confusion she heard Lafarge inquire, ‘Delicious?'

‘Very nice.'

‘Splendid. So glad——'

With a curious unapologetic burst of indifference he turned on his heel and walked away. Five seconds later he was back again, saying, ‘Siegfried, dear boy, we shall do the rose in five minutes. Could you muster the spade? It's stopped raining. We'll fling the doors open, switch on the lights, and make a dramatic thing of it. Everybody will pour forth——'

He disappeared a second time into the mass of gibbering faces, taking with him her glass of sherry, and when she turned her eyes she saw that Siegfried Pascoe too had gone.

‘What on earth has possessed Henry? They say she's the butcher's wife. Not grocer's after all.'

‘Oh, it's a gag, dear. You know how they hot things up. It's a gag.'

She set her plate at last on a table and began to pick her way through the crush of drinkers, seeking the kitchen. To her great relief there was no one there. Suddenly tired, hopelessly bewildered and sick, she sat down on a chair, facing a wreckage of half-chewed vol-au-vents, canapés, salted biscuits and cold eyes of decorated egg. The noise from the big drawing-room increased like the hoarse and nervous clamour rising from people who, trapped, lost, and unable to find their way, were fighting madly to be free.

Out of it all leapt a sudden collective gasp, as if gates had been burst open and the trapped, lost ones could now mercifully find their way. In reality it was a gasp of surprise as Lafarge switched on the outside lights, and she heard it presently followed by a rush of feet as people shuffled outwards into the rainless garden air.

Not moving, she sat alone at the kitchen table, clutching the rose in the paper bag. From the garden she heard laughter bursting in excited taunting waves. A wag shouted in a loud voice, ‘Forward the grave-diggers! On with the spade-work!' and there were fresh claps of caterwauling laughter.

From it all sprang the sudden petulant voice of Lafarge, like a child crying for a toy, ‘The rose! Oh, my dear, the rose! Where
is
the rose? We can't do it without the rose.'

Automatically she got up from the table. Even before she heard Lafarge's voice, nearer now, calling her name, she was already walking across the emptied drawing-room, towards the open french windows, with the paper bag.

‘Mrs Corbett! Mrs Corbett! Oh, there you are, dear. Where did you get to? What a relief—and oh, you poppet, you've got the rose.'

She was hardly aware that he was taking her by the hand. She was hardly aware, as she stepped into the blinding white
light of electric lamps placed about the bright pink walls, that he was saying, ‘Oh, but Mrs Corbett, you must. After all, it's your rose, dear. I insist. It's all part of the thing. It's the nicest part of the thing——'

Vaguely she became aware that the rose tree, spreading five fanlike branches, was already in its place by the wall.

‘Just tie it on, dear. Here's the ribbon. I managed to get exactly the right-coloured ribbon.'

From behind her, as she stood under the naked light, tying the rose to the tree, she was assailed by voices in chattering boisterous acclamation. A few people actually clapped their hands and there were sudden trumpeted bursts of laughter as the wag who had shouted of grave-diggers suddenly shouted again, ‘Damn it all, Henry, give her a kiss. Kiss the lady! Be fair.'

‘Kiss her!' everyone started shouting. ‘Kiss her. Kiss! Kiss, Henry! Kiss, kiss!'

‘Pour encourager les autres!'
the wag shouted. ‘Free demonstration.'

After a sudden burst of harsh, jovial catcalls she turned her face away, again feeling utterly naked and transfixed under the stark white lights. A second later she felt Lafarge's lips brush clumsily, plummily across her own.

Everyone responded to this with loud bursts of cheers.

‘Ceremony over!' Lafarge called out. He staggered uncertainly, beckoning his guests housewards. ‘Everybody back to the flesh-pots. Back to the grain and grape.'

‘Henry's tight,' somebody said. ‘What fun. Great, the kissing. Going to be a good party.'

She stood for some time alone in the garden, holding the empty paper bag. In an unexpected moment the lights on the pink walls were extinguished, leaving only the light from
windows shining across the grass outside. She stood for a few moments longer and then groped to the wall, untied the rose and put it back in the paper bag.

Driving away down the hillside, she stopped the van at last and drew it into a gateway simply because she could think of no other way of calming the trembling in her hands. She stood for a long time clutching the side of the van. In confusion she thought of the rose on the wall, of hearts that were like gooseflesh, and of how, as Clem said, the gentry would come back. Then she took her cape and the paper bag with its rose out of the van.

When she had dropped the paper bag and the rose into the ditch she slowly pulled on the old cape and started to cry. As she cried she drew the cape over her head, as if afraid that someone would see her crying there, and then buried her face in it, as into a shroud.

On the fat black stove sat nearly a dozen loaves, each brown and new and warm and all shaped, with one exception, like hay stacks. The exception was a very little one that sometimes looked rather like a mouse and sometimes rather like a pincushion and sometimes rather like a squatting toad staring across the darkening kitchen with two bright currant-black eyes.

He was very proud of that littlest one. He had made it himself. Soon he would pick the currants out and then eat the still warm bread with a piece of new red cheese.

‘Boy,' Uncle Joe said. ‘Read us some o' the police court bits.'

‘Police court bits,' Aunt Nancy said. ‘Police court bits. Police court bits.'

Aunt Nancy was all red and shining as a radish from bending over the stove too much. The kitchen was all blue with pipe smoke and she was at war with it with a flapping towel.

‘I wonder how either one o' you can find time for police court bits of a Friday,' she said. ‘The week's gone a'ready. I know I never got no time.'

Aunt Nancy never had time. The baking was hardly done
and there were still six or more collars to iron and beeswax and still the violets to bundle and the oranges to sort from their papers.

‘And take your fingers off that there bread! It's too hot yet. You'll dream. You'll get nightmares.'

Uncle Joe was a placid, tender man. He had a big thistle-grey moustache. He was smoking a pipe and drinking tea out of a big brown moustache cup, with his elbows on the table. His head was white with curly hair that shone like fresh soapsuds. His spectacles were steel rimmed and tied round the back of his head with waxy string.

‘Ain't you going to read to me, boy?'

‘I'm trying to find where the police court bits are.'

‘Generally on the back page, boy. Back page. Look on the back page.'

Uncle Joe had a flat green cart and a white clattering little pony. On Saturdays he drove the cart about the streets. A pair of big brass scales jangled up and down among skips of potatoes and carrots, cabbages and parsnips, rhubarb and onions. There was a scent of oranges and violets in the air and, also in the spring, of daffodils.

‘Them oranges are a bad sample.' Aunt Nancy was bees-waxing collars now. The iron sizzled fiercely when she spat on it. The collars shone like proud marble. ‘Half on 'em are 'tacked afore we start. If we see more'n a few 'eppence profit we'll be lucky.'

‘Found it yet, boy?'

‘Is it where it says Petty Sessions?'

‘That's it, boy. That's it. You got it now.'

Uncle Joe blew contented smoke. He found it increasingly hard to read in the twilight and Aunt Nancy was always slow, even obstinate, about lighting the lamps. No sense in wasting
light, she said. If you couldn't see you could always feel.

‘Elizabeth Emma Brown, 42, housewife, of 12 Pond Cottages, Little Harlow, was charged with stealing two quartern loaves, the property of Charles Mayhew, and further charged that on or about——'

‘And put half on 'em in the swill-tub I'll bet,' Aunt Nancy said. ‘I see three half loaves in the swill-tub only yesterday. Enough bread to keep a family.'

‘What'd she get?' Uncle Joe said.

‘If they had to bake it, like me, they'd think twice about wasting it. Nicking bread—that's a fine thing.'

‘It says fined ten shillings or in default seven days.'

‘They'll be lettin' 'em off scot free soon,' Aunt Nancy said. ‘It's enough to make your blood rise.'

‘Lot o' cases this week, boy?'

Uncle Joe, puffing smoke, smacked his lips and juicily sucked at his moustache. He loved a lot of cases. The boy loved it too. A lot of cases meant that he could stay up long after the lamps were lighted. He could help to sort the oranges and make up bunches of violets surrounded with fresh collarettes of leaves. Strange blue eyes of mould shone from the rotting oranges under the golden lamplight and curious winey odours filled the night air.

‘Charged with indecently assaulting a girl of fifteen, George Henry Parker, 42, said to be——'

‘Read us the next bit, boy, read us the next bit.'

Aunt Nancy attacked with a powerful poker the frontal bars of the stove, making fire leap out. The black tip of the poker reeked with smoke and she said:

‘They want this down their gullets, some on ‘em. That'd cool 'em down. Well, I'm going to start them oranges, if nobody else ain't.'