The Forgotten Story (20 page)

The shop door was not open, so he had to carry a bucket round from the kitchen door and up the steps at the side. He realised he had brought nothing to work with and ran back for a cloth and a scrubbing brush.

He began on the window, and at once found that the stuff used was not whitewash, as he had first thought, but paint, and it had been dry several hours. The letters would be removable only with great difficulty. He could barely reach the top of the letters, but that did not matter so long as he made them unreadable.

He had been at work about five minutes when Warne's milk cart stopped at the corner. Fred Warne, the big, overgrown son, came down the narrow, sloping street carrying a milk churn. He stopped at the sight of Anthony and set down his can.

Fred Warne was the result of a marriage of first cousins and was not among the brighter intelligences.

‘Whar'ee doing that fur?'

Anthony stopped a moment and shrugged his shoulders.

‘L-O-R-S,' spelt Fred laboriously. ‘O-N-L-Y. That don't make sense. Who's been writing on the pavement?'

‘Don't know,' said Anthony.

‘Out early this morning,' said Fred. ‘Don't b'long to see anyone stirring round 'ere s'early as this. Not since the Ole Man died. What are 'ee out s'early fur?'

Anthony began to sweat with the effort of his work. Fred Warne watched him with a slightly open mouth. There was silence while the L O disappeared.

‘Call-in-any-time-you-are-in-port,' Fred read out, putting his tongue round his mouth in between words. ‘What fur should anyone want fur to write that, eh?'

‘Isn't it time you delivered the milk?' the boy suggested.

‘Reckon you're opening again,' said Fred, suddenly struck with the idea. ‘ Reckon that's what 'tis. 'Tis a bit of a joke fur to attrack people. Did Widow Veal ask fur that there notice to be splashed on the pavement, eh?'

‘Your horse is straying,' said Anthony, glancing up the road. ‘Look …'

Fred scratched the fair stubble on his chin.

‘E can't do that fur 'e's tethered to the lamppost. Reckon that's another joke, eh?' He burst into hearty but contemptuous laughter.

‘You'll waken everybody.'

Fred shifted on to his other foot and leaned a hand on his milk churn. ‘ Well, 'tis daylight. Didn't people ought to be woke up when 'tis daylight, eh?' His hearty laughter brayed out again. A small child came to the end of the street and stared down with his finger in his mouth.

‘Call-in-any-time-you-are-in-port,' said Fred. ‘I'll tell fathur 'bout you opening 'gain. Maybe you'll be wanting more milk again, eh?'

A window opened above their heads. With a sinking feeling the boy saw Patricia looking down.

‘Anthony! Whatever are you doing?'

‘I thought,' said Anthony. ‘ I thought I'd – I'd clean the windows. They were dirty and I thought it would be –'

‘What's that writing? Move the bucket, will you? I –' She broke off and her face went a sudden white.

‘Shall I tell fathur you be goin' t'open up again, eh?' called Fred.

She quickly shut the window.

‘Don't seem to like it, eh?' said the milk boy. ‘ What's the matter with she?'

‘Mind your own business!' Anthony suddenly snapped, losing his temper. ‘ Get on with your milk round …' He stared at the shop window. The R S had gone. ONLY did not convey much. He glanced at his water, which was now a greasy grey.

‘You must be windy ' bout something,' said Fred Warne. ‘Getting snappy an' –'

But the water had been suddenly emptied on the pavement, swilling almost over Fred's feet, and Anthony and the empty bucket were gone.

In the kitchen Anthony came full tilt into the girl. He swerved past her and hurriedly clanged the bucket under the kitchen sink and turned the tap on full. She came and stood beside him without speaking while the bucket filled; he could see one white sleeve of her dressing-gown trembling against the table.

The tap was turned off and he grabbed the bucket.

‘Leave it, Anthony,' she said, speaking rapidly but with some difficulty. ‘What does it matter? Leave it. Don't – show that – we care …'

‘It'll be gone soon,' he gasped, and rushed out up the steps and round the corner to the front of the shop.

The small boy and a strange man and Mrs Treharne, the publican's wife from the corner, had joined Fred Warne. An effort of will was needed to go out and ignore their questions and their sly looks and get down on your knees and begin to scrub for dear life. Learning from experience, Anthony concentrated on the important words: CALL, TIME and PORT.

Three youths going to work at the docks now joined the gathering, and then a shrewish little woman from a cottage next to the public house who, having had the situation explained to her, gave it as her opinion that after all folks generally got what they asked for in this world, but that boy didn't ought to be the one scrubbing it off, the one to do it should be
her
that was in the fault.

All the time he was at work the audience remained, though in the nature of things it was a fluctuating one. Even with such a pleasant and original spectacle to view and discuss, people in the early morning were generally up at that hour to some purpose, and work called the faithful to their several tasks. But others came to take their places.

When the thing was at last done, Anthony took up his bucket and brush and, ignoring the last questions and humorous remarks, slid quietiy round to the back of the house, leaving the solitary word ONLY still upon the shop window as a mark of the detainer's hand.

Breakfast that morning was a joyless meal. Patricia had gone upstairs and did not reappear, Perry as usual was still asleep, so Aunt Madge presided in due solemnity with Anthony beside her and Fanny occupying an obscure seat at the end of the table. Without the lightening effect of the two other adults Madge was like a blanket, and conversation ran into blind alleys. The only time Madge was ever talkative was when she had a grievance.

The morning passed, and it was not until lunch time that Patricia came quietly down the stairs and took her seat at the table. She smiled faintly at Perry's humorous sallies, but bent over her meal in silence until little Fanny had carried off her own meal into the scullery.

Then Pat raised her head. ‘Madge,' she said, ‘ don't think I'm not happy here; but I'm going to get a job.'

Her stepmother put up a plump, white hand to pat the pad in her hair.

‘While I'm alive …'

‘Yes, I know, my dear, and thank you. But I can't stop here on your – charity all my life. Besides, forgive me, but I don't want to. I've been trying to make up my mind for days – ever since the Will was read. This morning has decided me –'

‘Pah! What's there in that to take on about?' said Perry, patting her knee. ‘You've no need to pay attention to a few old gossips. They mean no harm. Everyone gossips. Even me. Even Anthony, don't you, boy? It will die down in no time. Now in China –'

‘What,' asked Aunt Madge, turning up her eyes, ‘did you think of doing?'

The girl puckered her smooth brow. ‘I've hardly got as far as that yet. There's so few things a woman can do. But I'll find something.'

‘People will think,' said Aunt Madge, blinking. ‘ People will blame me. Your Aunt Louisa. They'll say …'

‘In China,' said Perry, ‘there's a sign language, you know. If they draw one little figure under a roof, that means harmony. If they put two little figures that stands for marriage. If they put three little figures that means gossip. It's just the same wherever –'

‘I don't see why they should say anything against you,' said Patricia. ‘I'll tell Aunt Louisa it's nothing to do with you. I'm a free agent and –'

‘Not the solution,' said Aunt Madge; ‘not the solution Hi should have … A good husband …'

Pat's firm young face did not alter. ‘ I can't, Madge. I don't want to go back to him. I want to live my own life, stand on my own feet …'

‘Whereas in Japan,' said Perry, ‘there isn't the same inducement, as you might say.'

‘Not nice,' said Aunt Madge. ‘A young girl to go out … earning her own … Later. This restaurant. We shall open again. Shan't we, Perry?'

‘Yes, duck. Anything you say. I remember in Yokohama, there's a geisha palace. I've heard it said that they thrash the girls' bare feet with bamboo canes if they aren't obliging to customers. Which just shows that there's two sides to every story.' He pushed his hair out of his eyes. ‘ There's one side, and there's the other side. Like young Pat wanting to go out and earn her own living. Some would say it was all right, and others –'

‘I shall try in Falmouth first,' said Pat. ‘But if nothing turns up here I shall try somewhere else. I'm fairly good with my fingers and there might be an opportunity at somewhere like Martins or Crosbies.'

‘No cause to hurry,' said Mrs Veal. ‘Your father. Dead only a little while. I don't think … would have liked …'

But this time she had definitely chosen the wrong appeal. Patricia said: ‘I'm not concerned with anything my father would have liked.'

Aunt Madge rose slowly, and her pince-nez wobbled a little on the top of the monument. She took away Perry's plate before he had quite wiped up all the gravy and began to stack the dishes.

‘In that case … nothing further … Nothing Hi can say … One goes one's own way … regardless. Naturally I …' She mumbled on for some moments and her voice mixed itself up with the clack-clack of the plates.

‘What's for after?' Perry asked, trying to smooth things over. ‘Lemon pud? D'you like lemon pud, boy? Don't tell me, I believe you hate it. It always reminds me of an African native I knew once. His head had been burned in a bush fire and all his hair was gone –'

Pat got up from her chair and went up to Aunt Madge and kissed her soft loose cheek.

‘No offence, Mother Madge. Nothing against
you
, you know. Besides …' After a pause she went on: ‘Besides, it may be weeks and weeks before I'm off your hands in any case. So cheer up.'

The pause had been occasioned by the kiss. As she withdrew her lips Anthony saw a peculiar expression cross the girl's face and disappear. It was as if she had had a sudden twinge of pain or distaste … or it might even have been one of presentiment.

After dinner, in the privacy of her own bedroom, Pat stared at the reflection of her flushed face. She felt bitterly rebellious and bitterly unhappy. With this morning's tide Ned had gone, perhaps for weeks, perhaps not to return. Now she was alone, desperately alone.

She did not regret her refusal of last evening; she felt she had done right; but that did not comfort her loneliness now; rather did it accentuate it, for a woman does not think the worse of any man for being in love with her and wishing to marry her, and these last few days Ned had been her only companion, the only one she could trust and to some extent confide in. Anthony, of course, remained, and in a way his friendship was the most reliable of all because his devotion was without any thought of personal profit. She would not forget his work this morning when, but for him, the writing might have been there until midday for everyone to see. But you could not talk to an eleven-year-old boy in quite the same way as you could to an adult.

She wondered, as she had wondered several times during the last week or so, what it was in her character which made her rebel against so many of the things which the average person, the average girl, accepted as a matter of course. Was there some perversity in her nature which prevented her from living a normal life? Above all, in all her actions of the last six months, was
she
in the wrong? Pat had a reasonable belief in her own judgment, but she could not help but think of the Irishman who said all the regiment was out of step but himself.

In the first place she supposed she should have put affection for and obedience to her father above an abstract love of justice in the case of the wounded Dutchman. Then again filial piety should have prevented her from going against her father's wishes by marrying Tom. Or, if she had married Tom, she should have accepted such dispositions as he had made fon their married life meekly and without criticism. Other women did. When you accepted a man in marriage you did so for better or worse; you automatically transferred your fidelity from one man to another. Henceforward husband came before father. It was like changing situations. In either case the man was not open to criticism.

Or was this a jaundiced view of the matter? Were they truly right and she wrong? Perhaps the rest of the regiment were not entirely mistaken in their views. Between a man and a woman who loved each other there was often a sort of sex loyalty which went beyond mere personal judgment. There was something rather admirable in the type of patriot who in a crisis said, ‘My country, right or wrong.' So, in married life or in family relationship, was there not something equally admirable in the woman who …

Yes, she thought; in times of crisis, yes. But there was nothing so admirable in the patriot who said, ‘My country, right at all times.' The best type of patriot was surely the man who would always stand by his country in a pinch but reserved the right to his own judgment when the pinch was over. Why then could a woman not reserve a similar right?

The point was, of course, to define exactly what was a crisis. She had certainly not seen the incident of the Dutchman as such at the time, but from the immense consequences following it she was prepared to admit her mistake. And the analogy of a crisis did not quite work out in her relations with Tom. A sudden incompatibility had emerged, had hardened, and she had come to see that it was insurmountable. In such circumstances, was the patriot justified in leaving his country?