The Fourth Pig (9 page)

But Mary said: “I've got to understand. It spoils everything if I don't know this. Once and for all, Mother, I have chosen. Make me understand. Give me what they've got. I don't want to be different any longer.”

And April said: “I can't keep it from you now. You have chosen.” And there were tears in her eyes, as it might be great still raindrops on the end of a pussy willow bough before you break it off to take home. But Mary didn't see that.

And then all sorts of things came edging along and getting at Mary. Pretty things mostly: primroses and cowslips and lambs and that, and misty soft mornings and evenings like you'd feel all mazed in, hearing bells from somewhere at the back of the elm trees: and little brown bubbly streams coming down between ferns; and the first cuckoo and the first tulips, and the last of the big daffodils: and plum blossom like you see it on each side of the Bromsgrove Road going down into Worcestershire, and blue sky and little white clouds, and split-sticky chestnut buds. And some of the things weren't exactly pretty, but they got at her all the same, things, you know, like frogs in a pool, croaking like mad and messing and heaving about in the dirty water till you don't know which way to look, hardly—Well, there they were, all April's creatures let loose on Mary Snow. And by and bye she let go her hold on her mother and she lay back, smiling a bit, and the next morning she woke up in bed but she couldn't remember how she'd got undressed, and when she tried to remember she began to giggle, all by herself under the bed-clothes. And when she got up she didn't once look at her books, but she spent the best part of half an hour trying to fix her hair a new way, like she'd seen in
an advertisement in the
Herald
. And she was late for school the first time for months.

Her teacher didn't scold her, because she'd got so used to Mary being the best in the class, but she got a bit worried because all morning Mary didn't seem to be attending the way she'd always done before, and she'd have been more worried if she'd known that Mary was thinking about that young traveller, George Higginson, and how he was due back in Birmingham that day. It was queer for Mary, because she could still remember how she used to think about him, but she didn't think like that any longer. She was wanting him to take her to the pictures and her to sit next him, and she knew already somehow just how she'd let him know by sitting a bit closer—and how his hand would come creeping over onto her knee, creeping under the edge of her frock—Well, that wasn't what she ought to have been thinking at school, not about a young fellow that had given another girl the chuck, but still, one can't blame her. Most girls would be like that with that kind of a mother.

Next day she told Mrs. Smith that she and George Higginson were going to get married the end of the month. Mrs. Smith was as pleased as Punch; she thought it was her doing. They weren't so pleased at the school, for it meant an end to all the scholarship plans. The head mistress had her up and gave her a talking to, telling her what a fine thing it would be for her to go to the University, trying to get her all worked up about it like she used to be. But Mary just stood there, grinning a bit, looking as pretty as ever but somehow very aggravating for the head mistress, and all she'd say was—No, she was getting married.

She was like that all the time till the wedding; George Higginson told her to drop all this schooling—what was the good of it for a commercial traveller's wife?—he didn't want a scholar, he wanted a pretty kid to come back to evenings, and take out to pictures or cuddle up at home, a pretty kid to squeeze up to, to keep a chap out of mischief—and by God, she was a warm little kid now! And Mary giggled and said yes, that was right, she didn't want any more silly old school. And she made herself peach and mauve undies, and when young George came in she hid them and then let him see a corner. Oh well, they always say the nicest time in a girl's life is when she's engaged to a fellow, don't they?

So Mary Snow got married to George Higginson, and then—well then, she just seemed to melt away, to fade right out some-how. Like an ice-cream sundae on a hot afternoon. Some girls do seem to go like that after they get married. But I've never known it to happen to anyone like it did to her. Sudden-like. “That poor little Mrs. Higginson,” I said to my boy only last Sunday, “she just seems to have melted away. There's no other word for it.” Once again the Snow Maiden, daughter of January and April, was hated by the sun-god, the man-god, the god of life and potency. Once again he caught her and touched her with his rays, and once again the Snow Maiden melted away, was dissolved into nothing, became no more than a story which is ended.

HANSEL AND GRETEL

Once upon a time there was a boy and a girl called Billy and Minnie Jones, and they lived in Birmingham, just like you and me. Billy was a big, lumpy, grinning boy, not quite ten, and his sister Minnie was a bit more than a year younger; because she was little and pretty and merry, she was mostly called Minnie Mouse. Their father was a mechanic, but he had been out of work for the best part of two years and had dropped out of his Union and out of the brass band he used to play in—it made him feel uncomfortable meeting the other chaps now he'd only got the one suit for Sundays and weekdays and he got to think everyone was staring at him at the band practise, so he stopped going. But he and another fellow had a bit of an allotment between them, and he spent a good lot of time down there. All the same, Mrs. Jones used to say he got that hungry after working that it wasn't worth it for the amount of vegetables he brought home.

Mrs. Jones was fed up. She couldn't help it. She'd had to make do all her life and it didn't seem somehow as if any of it had been worth living, especially the last six or seven years. She was a bit short-sighted too, but they couldn't afford glasses for her. So she was mostly cross to Billy and Minnie and they were frightened of her. Their father was nicer to them, especially when he'd made a bit, betting. He used to have a threepenny double most weeks, and sometimes it came off. Those days he used to bring back a penn'orth of mixed drops for the two children, and tell them stories; he told them fairy stories, like I'm telling you. They used to
sit on his knee, smelling his breath all beery like it was every time when he'd won, and suck their sweets, and listen to the stories. But mostly Mrs. Jones was crosser than ever those days.

One afternoon she went over to the shop at the comer to get some rice and dried beans on tick, and she left Billy and Minnie at home. She told Minnie to peel the potatoes and mind she peeled them thin, and she told Billy to get on with scrubbing the kitchen floor and mind he didn't use up the soap. And then she put on her coat which was one she'd got at the Church Jumble three years back, and used to belong to the vicar's mother, who was shorter and fatter than Mrs. Jones was, but somehow, what with Mr. Jones and the children, she'd never had time to alter it, and then she went out.

After a bit Billy looked up from the floor where he was kneeling to scrub on an old wad of newspapers, and he said: “Me knees is wet. Mum won't be back, not for hours. I don't like scrubbing, Min'.” “We've got to help Mum, ain't we?” said Minnie, going on with the potatoes, “or the P.A.C. man'll catch us.” “Our Min, always going on about helping Mum!” said Billy. “Proper little angel, ain't you?” Minnie threw a potato at him and he jumped up and threw the wad of newspapers from the floor at her, and she squealed because it was all squashy and cold. Then the two of them fought, oh real wicked!—and they broke one of the knobs off the fender, though goodness knows how they did it, but there, us mothers know what real tigers a pair of kids can be!

Well after that they rolled about on the floor, scrapping and biting and tearing each other's clothes, and then Minnie bumped her head on the table leg and began crying. Then Billy got sorry
and gave her his dead frog that he'd got tied onto the end of a string and stuffed into his pocket—the nasty little thing—but there, you know what boys are—and they got playing with the dead frog, and Billy left off his scrubbing in the middle, and Minnie hadn't got half the potatoes done, and they were as happy as could be. And then all of a sudden Mrs. Jones came back from the shop.

She wasn't half wild with them when she saw the mess they'd got the place into, and how the floor wasn't near washed nor the potatoes near peeled, and she lammed into young Billy. He ducked under the table and she hit out, and she broke the milk jug. Now, the milk was what she'd been saving for the kids' supper—she'd done without it in her own tea for weeks now except on Sundays when she had a drop of condensed—and the jug was one she'd had for a wedding present and it belonged, as you might say, to the times when she'd thought life was worth living. And there it was all to bits on the floor, and a nasty mess to pick up, and those two kids were laughing as if it was all a joke, for breaking things mostly is a joke, to kids. So Mrs. Jones caught Billy by the collar and gave him a good smack on the face that set him off blubbering, and she shook Minnie till she'd shaken all the laughing out of her, and she called them names which I shan't repeat and which she was sorry for five minutes after, and she opened the front door and she shoved them both outside, telling them she couldn't bear the sight of them one minute longer, and she slammed it on them so that the wall shook and a bit of plaster came down off the corner, and that was another mess on the kitchen floor. And no more she could bear the sight of them just then, what with all she'd had to put up with, and seeing the groceries
in the Co-op that she couldn't afford to buy for them, and having her jug broken. She didn't even try to clean it up; she just sat down by the table and let herself go slummocking all across it, and she cried and cried.

But Billy and Minnie, after the first minute or two, they didn't care. It all went off them like water off a duck's back. And off they went trotting and chattering, and along by the tram lines and under the railway arch, and past the sweet shop and past the fire station, and round the corner by the Red Lion where they hoped they might see their Dad, but they didn't, and past Mr. Butler the Pawnbroker's, which was a place they both knew pretty well, Friday evenings and Mondays, and past the chapel with the board outside about the Wrath to Come, and through the passage way and up, and so into Corporation Street itself. And there were all the gentlemen with white collars and shiny shoes and hats like the Prince of Wales, and all the ladies with real silk stockings and paint and powder on their faces, and the grand blue-chinned policemen to look after the ladies and gentlemen and make their big glossy motor-cars slide carefully along between the traffic signals this way and that. And Billy and Minnie watched the ladies and gentlemen going into the beautiful great shops and movie palaces that were just beginning to light up, all gay and golden, or with red and blue and green lights in tubes like tooth-paste. And they stuck their noses and dabbed their grubby fingers against the glass, and stared and pointed at the insides of the shops, that looked so warm and cosy and full of softness and brightness and safety.

But they weren't safe really, those shops. They weren't what they looked like. Things aren't, mostly. Because, after Billy and
Minnie had been standing there for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, who should come up to them but an old witch?

Of course, they didn't know she was a witch. And perhaps you or I wouldn't have known either. She was rather old, and she wore silk and a fur coat, very soft and warm, with another kind of fur for its collar, and she wore jewels on her ears and fingers and throat, though one didn't see them at first, because she wore gloves and kept the fur collar high over her neck, and she wore a hat with a bird's feather as bright and lovely as a fairy in it, and she stepped down carefully and circumspectly onto the pavement out of her Rolls-Royce. And she came up behind Billy and Minnie and smiled at them and said: “Now, my little dears, come along with me into the shop and I will buy you each a lovely present.”

Both the children were a little bit frightened, but not frightened enough, so they went into the shop with the old witch, and they didn't dare to say a word to one another. It was all grand and huge and quiet, higher and more shining than the new Woolworth's, and full of things so beautiful and clean and new, that they could hardly breathe. They just didn't know what to choose. There were all sorts of toys and dolls and trains and teddy bears, more and bigger than they'd ever dreamt of, and they just gaped and the old witch watched them. At last Minnie suddenly made up her mind and chose a work-basket for her mother. It was ever such a beautiful work-basket, full of scissors and needles and every kind of thing, and a tape measure looking like a tiny apple and the thimble in real silver. You see, Minnie was sorry about the milk jug now, and she thought this would make up for it, and besides it would pawn for five shillings easy. But Billy was slow in making up his mind, and a bit dazed and stupid, and at last he
chose a train and rails, and it was done up in a box, and then he knew he'd really have liked a meccano set or a model sports car, only it was too late.

After that, the old witch bought them each a huge box of chocolates, pink ribbon for Minnie, blue ribbon for Billy, and they tucked in, and she watched them. And then all three of them got into the Rolls-Royce and it drove off, going so softly they couldn't have told they were moving. They sat one on each side of her, rolled up in a big rug, and every now and then she smiled and glanced and shifted a little, and you could just see the tip of her tongue showing between her lips, which were rather too pink and moist-looking for anyone her age. So they drove along through the lighted, crowded streets, and the policemen held up the traffic for them and the fur rug snuggled them down into the deep cushiony seat of the car.