The Quick and the Dead (7 page)

Our reception at the Tin Tabernacle had always fulfilled the promise blazoned on the board outside: A HEARTY WELCOME TO ONE AND ALL. We were greeted with smiles and dismissed with handshakes. This was part of a routine common, I believe, to smaller nonconformist tabernacles everywhere. But after our breach with Little Bethel we were all, each in secret from the others, watching for some change in the demeanour of these Suthergate people. I could not suppose that our notoriety was confined to Broad Green, or that Mr Jarnders and his friends would suffer it to be so confined. My fears exaggerated the danger. Between Broad Green and Suthergate there was little or no human commerce. Both places, by now, were mere incidents in a large scheme of suburbanization. Suthergate, the more advanced growth, was exceedingly populous; and Broad Green was rapidly becoming so. The urban habit of not knowing one's neighbours had largely displaced rural friendliness
and the inquisitiveness that goes with it. Yet I was suspicious of the Tin Tabernaclers: I fancied their smiles were now veiling a conjecture, if not an accusation; I had an idea that their handshakes were more perfunctory than hitherto. One evening on our way home I tried, with such finesse as I was capable of, to discover if Calamy thought the same.

‘Do you like those people, Father Calamy?'

‘What people?' asked my mother quickly.

‘The people at Mr Latitude's chapel.'

‘Yes, my boy.' Calamy considered my question. ‘Why, they're good friendly folk, aren't they?'

‘Yes.' I shifted my ground a little, anxious not to betray my true suspicion. ‘But, I say! Don't they shake hands rather a lot?'

Calamy laughed, understandingly. ‘I think I know what you mean, Claud. You mean it's just a habit with them, a formality.'

‘Yes,' I said eagerly. ‘That man who stands at the door—'

‘Shaking his hand is a bit like working a pump-handle, eh?' laughed Calamy. ‘Still,' he added, with a gentle seriousness, ‘I think it's only their way of being neighbourly. It's a better way than some have. I sometimes wonder why Mr Latitude himself doesn't come amongst us like that.'

‘I'm glad he doesn't,' said I. I doubt if I could have explained myself; but I think I was grateful to Tom Latitude for keeping his distance and so preserving his mystery. We had never spoken to him: he lived, for me, in a luminous cloud. ‘Did you like the sermon to-night?' I asked. For some unfathomable reason I felt rather lonely, and wished to set Calamy talking.

But my question was never answered. We were walking along the footpath that would bring us, in five minutes or less, to Tallent's Dairy, which stood at the corner of our road; and at a turn in this path we suddenly became aware of a group of hobbledehoys standing within a few yards of us. In workaday clothes these young men had a dignity of their own, but in their Sunday serge they had an awkward and rather stupid look. What silenced us, however, was not their dress, but their unmistakable air of being in wait for us. There were five of them. I thought at first that they intended to block our way. But at the last moment they moved sulkily, with insolent deliberation, aside; and stood staring at us maliciously.

I burned from head to foot.

No sooner were we past them than they broke into loud jeering speech. ‘Pretty little
barstard, ain't he!' And—‘Who's yer farver, boy?'

Calamy's hand was on my shoulder. ‘No, Claud. Go straight on, my boy. Quietly now!'

The incident baffled us. It lacked credibility. A malice so pointed, and exhibited after so long an interval, was more than we could believe natural. Arrived home we did not hesitate to discuss it; for the day of pretending that nothing unusual had happened was over for us. We decided, in conference, that these fellows had been set on to us by their betters. It was not a comforting conclusion, and it boded no good for the future. Was this the beginning of a new campaign? It looked like it. We were very weary of it all, and I for one was more than a little frightened. For myself there was nothing much to fear, except unpleasantness; but my mother had been vaguely ailing for weeks, and she was in no state to stand up against an open persecution. The strain of these past weeks had told on her; some of her elasticity was gone; and it flashed into my mind, as I covertly watched her on this particular evening, that she was being threatened by something invisible. It was a fantastic idea, and I scouted it angrily. But it did not die: for
the moment I was at the mercy of my morbid fancy.

My mother was strangely quiet that night, and it was not until the evening of the next day that I overheard a significant fragment of conversation between her and Calamy. I heard and I listened; and since it was a matter that concerned me so closely I listened without shame.

‘They
hate me because
you
won't,' said my mother's voice. ‘If you were to send me away … '

‘Send you away!' echoed Calamy in shocked tones.

‘Yes, Robert. Be sensible. I've brought all this on you. On you and Claud. I'm nothing but a trouble to you now. If you were to send me away, they'd think you'd done the right thing at last, and … '

‘Essie,' said Calamy. And his voice trembled. ‘Don't ever talk such nonsense again. You and the boy shall go away for a little holiday. It's been in my mind for a long time. It'll do you good, both of you. And while you're away I'll see what can be done about getting rid of the business, and making a start elsewhere. But as for
sending
…' He broke off, and I guessed him to be as near angry as I had ever known him.

But a happy idea struck me. I plunged into the room.

‘Oo, Mother! Are we going to Uncle Claybrook's?' said I.

My progress in this chronicle is like that of the frog in the well: with every three hops up, I slip down the equivalent of two. For now nothing will content me but to unravel some of the memories bound up in that word Lutterthorpe: an enterprise that will take me back to small childhood once again. You must picture me, then, as a child four or five years old; dressed, if the day were Sunday or had the sartorial status of Sunday, in a sailor suit and a wide-brimmed straw hat with H.M.S. VICTORY emblazoned on its ribbon. I can feel now the tug of the elastic under my chin. I can remember the peculiar pleasure it gave me to have that little flannel singlet tied over my chest. I can remember the smell, texture, and pattern of the starched sailor collar; the joy of the lanyard, and the rapture of the whistle that depended from it. But if the day were not Sunday, or in any way special, I would as likely as not be wearing a kind of blouse, a fauntleroy silk collar, velvet corduroy knickers, and white socks. There was a conspiracy in those days to make all children,
whatever their sex, look as much like little girls as possible. Nevertheless I had my manly pursuits: my bow and arrow and (later) my catapults; and, when I was not being exhibited to my Aunt Claybrook's female visitors as a sweet little thing, I was made free of a large garden, which was divided into two parts by a tall brick wall. One of these parts, moreover, was subdivided by the intervention of shrubberies and the variety of ground-levels. You had to descend no fewer than four stone steps to reach the croquet-lawn: this alone, for me, was an occasion of much bliss. In another part of the garden, in the shadow of tall pines and with pine needles strewing the dark ground underfoot, there was a hammock to which I could resort; and in yet another part, remote from the house, was the strangest corner—dank, dark green, overgrown, and pungent with the reek of the ivy that covered the angle of the old wall. This corner, with its dimness and rank growth, had a quality that both repelled and attracted me: it became a primary symbol, part of my mental make-up, and appeared often in dreams. On the other side, not of this wall but of its opposite fellow, lay the kitchen garden, where raspberries were sometimes to be had; and fallen apples, called
‘summerings'; and peas, fresh from the smooth green creakable pod that would lie so sleek and cool in a small fist.

So far, in this sketch of Lutterthorpe, I have been piecing my memories together with deliberation; but now a particular moment—or maybe a composite of particular moments—becomes vivid and translucent. I enter it and am enclosed: the past is present to me. I am standing in the cobbled farmyard at my Uncle Claybrook's. Its rich blend of smells gives me the greatest possible satisfaction. Here, I tell myself, it is pouring with sun; and here, within reach and almost within sight, is everything I can want to make perfect my lazy afternoon. Yes, it is afternoon: there is that quality in the aspect of things that we call afternoon. Comfortably ranged round the yard are stables, the granary, the cowshed, the pigsty, and a big ruin of a barn. The horses and the cows are out at grass just now, but I think of them with pleasure for a dreaming moment, reflecting that when they are at home they must count themselves very lucky indeed. The stables have one kind of smell, and the cowshed has another: each in its way very pleasing to my nostrils because nothing quite like it is to be encountered at home. Where shall I go? What shall I do?
The pigsty hardly needs a visit; for I have already had my fill of staring at the great black sow, and the grunts and squeaks of the little pigs are the only noises that even this afternoon drowsiness cannot quite subdue. Well, the granary then. Ah yes! For the granary is perhaps the most exciting place of all. You go up stone steps to it; and the dimness of that upstairs room, and the height of it, give you the authentic feeling of adventure, of remoteness, of being in an old story. In this high dim place—almost dusky it seems after the brightness of outside—there are bulging bags leaning against the wall, and the air smells of sacking and cider-apples. Glancing back at the doorway that I have just entered by, I can see, at first, nothing but a dazzling oblong space. But presently, when my eyes get accustomed once more to the bright sunshine, I find it good to stand and look down into the yard, across which, as I stare, seven absurdly dignified geese come waddling in single file, all their heads and beaks held at the same slant. Suddenly I am seized with the impulse to make them scatter. I shout and wave my arms. ‘Boo, geese! Boo!' For I have been told that this is the way to talk to geese. But the geese take no notice of me, so presently, tired of being in the granary, I
come to earth again and go and peep in the barn, where, to my inexpressible delight and alarm, I find five small black-and-white puppies nuzzling against their mother, who lies, serenely disregarding them, in the bed she has made for herself in the straw. I would like to snatch one of the puppies into my arms, but the bitch snarls and bares her fangs at me, so I think better of it, and run off into the nearest field, where, in a sun-spattered copse, I lie on my back, staring up at the shining green of the leaves that pattern the sky for me, and at the little shapes of blue and white that show here and there between them. I am close to the hedge, with its cow-parsley and sweetbriar; and close to the dry ditch where, among the roots and undergrowth, I choose to pretend that all manner of small creatures, birds and mice and moles and voles and weasels, sit listening with cocked heads. I can feel the warm breath of clover blowing into my face.

This is so real to me now, as I write, that it must certainly have happened in fact as well as in dream, though I can recall no circumstantial details by which to pin it down to some definite historical occasion. Equally clear, equally and exquisitely lifted out of time and space, is my sense of walking with my elders,
in the late dusk of a summer's evening, along a rain-washed country road: the freshness of the air in my nostrils; the clear pattering pattern of our many boots on the ground, a sound mysteriously enhanced by the waning of daylight; and, above all, sharpening a lovely moment to a point of memorable meaning, the fun and rapture of finding the wet road jumping alive with hundreds of tiny frogs—frogs so many and so small that, having squealed my delight and gazed my fill (or, that being impossible, having exhausted my companions' patience) I have to sneak past on tiptoe, taking elaborate precautions to avoid treading on them. It was an incident, this, as vital and unexpected as a fairy tale, and it became my permanent possession: for, though in time I forgot it, here I come upon it again, find it lying as it were at the bottom of the ocean, glazed to a new brightness by the intervening time, rounded and magnified as by a vast water. Near it there is another evening, an evening when, with a conjecture more deep than usual, I watched the shadows gathering in the sky, and saw the cawing rooks questing with sharp beaks, beating the air with black wings, curving in and out of their huge nests in the elm-trees: this from the window of the bedroom I shared with my mother, and
it is Sunday night, for church bells from a lonely distance bring me a message of unutterable melancholy. I creep back into bed and lie listening in desolation. The world is empty: my mother is not in the house. Yet not empty, for the room, this strange room at Aunt Claybrook's, is filling with shadows and presences. Unseen faces are looking and smiling at me; the room is unfriendly, knowing as well as I do that my mother is far away. A cunning room. When Mother is with me it shelters us two benignly, being warm with love. But when she is downstairs the room becomes reserved, indifferent, a thing to be on one's guard against. And with Mother out of the
house
—ah, then there is cruelty here, and the darkness is like a stifling blanket, and the sound of bells chiming under a darkened sky makes me think of the Last Judgement, and the Witch of Endor calling spirits from the deep, and Elijah riding to heaven, and the gargoyles grinning down upon the churchyard, and the putty-coloured people lying glassy-eyed in their graves. That one day these same people would rise from their graves, and troop up for judgement, was the last touch of nightmare; for I feared it might happen at any minute and the night become populous with the shrouded persons of the
dead. Religion, and especially the ‘consolations' of religion, provided the chief of all my terrors in childhood.