The Serpent (17 page)

Janet's tones were practical, slightly mimicking the minister's verbal manner, but with an undertone of excitement.

But for Tom it was exactly as if a finger of premonition had touched his heart; and from the touch a darkening, a dizzying, spread over his mind, obscuring everything but a
nameless dismay that with immense effort rose to a point in him and then slowly sank.

‘I must say you are full of congratulations!'

‘Do you want to go?'

‘Well, I don't mind. It will be something to do at least. And besides …'

‘What?'

She did not answer.

‘What?' he repeated in a light expressionless tone.

‘Well,' she said, ‘we must go on living. I'll have to earn something. It won't be much but it will be a little.'

That touched his heart; their hidden domestic problem left him without a word.

‘Why don't you want me to go?' she asked.

‘It's not – I don't know – I'm not against you,' he replied slowly. ‘I suppose I don't want things to change.'

‘But why should they change? I won't be staying at the manse. I'll be coming home at night.'

‘Oh, will you?' he said. ‘That's good!'

‘You don't sound too cheerful yet!' she rallied him. She had been keeping the news about coming home at night as a surprise. She was not puzzled by his behaviour, though curious over some note of excess in it.

‘Well, I'm glad, if you're glad,' he said.

‘You sound like a sermon!'

‘Do I?' But the attempt at lightness was not convincing. ‘I'm sorry. I don't mean to.'

She laughed, closing her throat to a low note. ‘Oh, you're funny!' she said. She hugged her knees, distant from him.

But he could not rise against the extraordinary feeling of inertia that had overcome him. This annoyed him, but he could not help it. All at once, however, a surge of emotion rose out of his dismay and he suddenly put his arms round her and muttered against her temples, ‘Ach, I'm sorry, Janet.'

She put her arms round him then, as if he were a hurt boy, and murmured, ‘You're such a foolish one!'

Thereafter relations became more normal and he discussed the matter frankly, asking when she would be home
at night, agreeing that it was difficult for her to be definite about anything until she saw how she was placed.

At the corner of her croft, he could not let her go. She was still inclined to laugh at him, to tease him. She had a way of raising her eyebrows, of drawing herself back, a little bit of acting, of grotesquerie, with pontifical words spoken deeply. She did this rarely and only when complete mistress of herself and the moment. An echo of the town, of her High School days. It never failed to flood him with mirth. ‘“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” …'

Five paces away she turned and threw him a kiss, and was gone.

It is difficult to describe that feeling of impending disaster for which there seems to be no rational basis. Tom could argue against it as he liked, could face up to it frankly, mockingly, say inwardly, ‘You're jealous of Donald Munro, that's the whole thing!' He could even agree with himself, see that whatever might happen in the future at least nothing had happened to make him jealous so far, that everything was as it had been. Had he any reason to mistrust Janet? The question warmed him with shame. He remembered the handsome George and how Janet had dealt with him. All in a moment the feeling was dispersed, and he smiled in relief and forgot it.

Working away, happily intent on what he was doing, suddenly he was beset by the notion that he had forgotten something, that he should be somewhere else on a job. He dropped his tools and stood up to think, worried. And in upon his mind came that which he had forgotten, stronger than ever, with the beat of a pulse in it, a hunted pulse out of the wilds.

He became haunted, against all sense and reason, by his premonition. He could drive it from him no more than he could his shadow. For spells he forgot it, and then, without actually recognising it, he knew it was walking beside him.

Once his desire to see Janet grew hectic, worked him up into such a rage that if she had been at home he swore he would have gone to her door and asked for her. But she was not at home. She was at the manse, and he had not heard from her. He made himself realise that she had only been gone six days. After that bout of unreason – short but disturbingly intense – he realised that he had better keep himself in hand.

On the seventh day Donald appeared. He had raised the wind and was in great form, and Tom found himself delighted to see him, genuinely delighted, the shadow lifted, gone. There was no explaining this. It was early afternoon and no-one else about. ‘Out with the iron horse!' cried Donald, taking it for granted that Tom would come with him, though normally Tom did not waste his time teaching anyone to ride. Alec and himself had taught each other when the cycles had first arrived. The process was known and youths did not want Tom around when they were having their spills. ‘One of the spokes just broke,' said a trembling, sweating boy of thirteen. ‘It was probably weak,' answered Tom, ‘but don't you let it get weak again.' ‘No,' answered the boy.

Donald twisted the handlebars, tore a small hole in the left knee of his trousers, and gave his leg and shoulder such a crack that he rolled in pain. ‘And I was nearly off!' he moaned.

As he limped back to the shop, Tom agreed that another lesson was all he needed, for now he could mount and keep going without help. The handlebars were straightened. But the front wheel was slightly off the true. ‘That's going to be a job,' said Tom cheerfully. Donald made himself more comfortable and watched Tom at work.

He stayed for two hours, chatting away, telling Tom how lucky he was to have such an interesting place of his own. He put his threepence casually on the bench, dusted his clothes, found the small hole in his trousers again, and smiled ruefully. ‘Williamina is getting a bit cranky,' he said. His dark eyes, lifting to the door, paused and glimmered, as if taken by a new and amusing thought. ‘Well, I'm off. I'll be back the day after tomorrow. And oh, look here, if I went into town, next week or the week after, and stayed away the night, how would you? … I would be staying with a friend. I mean I wouldn't be riding all through the night!'

‘Oh, we could fix that up, I think,' answered Tom, smiling also.

‘That's grand. Just to go there and come back in the morning – at the latest in the afternoon. We'll see.'

‘Right,' said Tom.

Tom stood facing the window, but when he saw Donald's dark-clad slim figure going up to the road, he at once turned away, a wrench in his hand, and began looking about the shop as if he had mislaid something. Presently he was staring at the bicycle, upside down on its saddle and handlebars, and, going to the front wheel, he spun it. There was still the least suggestion of wobble. Trueing a wheel absolutely was a very delicate operation. He looked around for the wrench until he found it in his hand.

Two days later Donald appeared again. Tom went with him, and ran out beside the bicycle when Donald slowed down to dismount. After one or two awkward attempts, Donald succeeded in jumping off by the back step. ‘I have got it now!' he cried, delighted with himself. He mounted, rode for a short distance, and got off again. Tom began to walk home. Donald flew past him at a great speed, letting out a cheer and ringing the bell.

When he came back to the shop with the bicycle he was sweating but still exhilarated. Then he felt between his legs. ‘That seat is made of iron!'

‘You'll be a bit sore tomorrow,' agreed Tom.

‘Never mind. No torn trousers this time!' And he glanced, laughing, at the neatly darned rent.

‘Had Miss Williamina a few things to say?'

‘She didn't get the chance,' said Donald. Then he looked at Tom, his eyes glimmering with mirth, as if he might say something, but he didn't. Tom seemed duller a bit today.

‘How's your father?' he asked.

‘Much as usual,' answered Tom, pleasantly but quietly. Then he looked at Donald with a smile. ‘I'm afraid I'll have to go. I have a job to do outside.'

‘Have you? Oh well … How long was I?'

‘Let's call it half an hour,' said Tom.

They went out together and Tom locked the door, acknowledged Donald's farewell, and went down to the barn. He had nothing to do in the barn. Through the door he saw his father walking slowly past the byre towards the lower gable-end. He looked like a figure in a dream of an ancient and relentless world, a
patriarch who spoke to the invisible God in waste and arid regions.

A dream of pity that had died and was no more. The vengeance of the Lord God.

Feeling that his father might come upon him, Tom left the barn and went back to the shop. Already his mother had come to the door, but Tom walked by in his usual way. Then he suddenly stopped. ‘I've got to go up the Glen,' he said to his mother absently. ‘I'll leave the key in the lock and if any of the lads come you could let them have the bicycles. It'll be all right.'

He listened to her, and answered, and then went away.

It took him nearly two hours to climb and circle round the hills, but at last he got to the ridge at the back of the village from which he could see the manse. It was still a long way off and the outhouses obscured part of the back wall, but he could see and recognise anyone who left it for the village. Presently a young woman appeared going towards the manse. It was Janet. She was carrying a hand-basket and he lost sight of her just as she was entering at the back door.

Some time afterwards, Donald appeared round the gable of the house, passed the kitchen window and was lost in the outhouses. Half an hour later he reappeared, stood by the gable for a few minutes, and then went round to the front door.

It began to grow dark. She would have to prepare supper, wait until it was over, then wash up and leave things tidy for the night. When it was so dark that he could no longer be certain of any movement, he caught a figure against the pale gable-wall and knew it was Janet going home alone.

By the time he got back to the shop it was deserted. The key was not in the lock but he found it on the narrow ledge under the wooden eave. He locked the door behind him, but did not light the lamp. He was very tired now. After ten minutes he was on his way to the hollow. It was Friday night, a lucky night between them hitherto. He waited in the hollow for over an hour and then went along the hillside and carefully down to the henhouses. There was a light in the blinded kitchen window.

Presently voices arose at a back door twenty yards away. Tom crouched against the wall, his face hidden as a man went by with a dog. If the dog had discovered him and barked, the man, in the country fashion, would have investigated.

He stood looking at the lighted window. It had the blindness of his father's face.

A dull heavy spite came down upon him. He could not go to the window. All at once, without making any conscious decision, against his will, he turned away and, without looking back, went up to the hillside and back to the shop.

God knows what it was had got hold of him so strongly. But he could not shake it off. Common sense told him not to give himself away. ‘I won't give myself away,' he answered. ‘You can trust me for that!' Common sense told him not to take it in that bitter mood either. But already he was not listening.

On Sunday he saw Janet's mother in church but not Janet herself. She would be busily cooking the Sunday dinner for the minister and for Donald, who was alone in the manse pew. Donald's black hair rose from the white parting and was brushed over, smooth and trim and glistening, with a simple natural wave over the left temple. He had his father's delicate straight nose. There was an underlash of colour in the skin, not the pallor of the student.

Janet's absence was in some strange way a relief. It drained the church of a living quality, turned the worshippers to mindless beings who let the minister's words pour over them as they stared in silence. Tom heard the words but their meaning was distant and the mindless hypnotic state caught him, so that he was lost for a time in a trance, then wandered beyond it into sad hill places he half knew where nothing moved and no-one came. Without change of mood, his mind came back and felt the worshippers about him, and he looked at the minister fixedly and his words had no meaning. The singing caught at a high supplicating terror, at sacrificial rites. From the wail of his mother's voice his mind closed upon itself, smooth as wet stone.

Three nights thereafter he met Janet in the hollow.

‘I wondered if you would understand when I mentioned tomorrow night,' she said gaily. She had cleverly introduced the words ‘tomorrow night' in a chance meeting the previous evening on the Glen road with Tina and a few others. ‘I was longing to see you.'

‘Were you?' His mind came out from its burrow to look upon the green earth.

‘Yes. Were you waiting for me on Friday?'

‘I was.'

She was silent for a moment. ‘I couldn't come.' Her voice was sombre, but quickly it came clear. ‘Never mind! Here we are. Let us forget about it.' And then she added, ‘But you mustn't be disappointed if I cannot come. It's not always easy for me.'

‘I know. But I cannot help it. And, dash it, I did miss you, Janet. I did really.' And he caught hold of her.

She gave in to him, indeed for a moment as if a deep passion moved her, a new need of her body. She clung to him – then broke away from her own ardency, but lingeringly, with a hand that stroked his face. ‘Poor boy!' she said.

He could not get enough of her, not nearly enough of her, and the dumb craving mood that was deep in him made him feel awkward and shy.

Her brightness, however, her spirit of gaiety was something he so loved that its presence renewed him. He could not destroy it out of any boorish craving to salve his own wounds and in no time she was telling him about her ‘situation'. She mimicked Williamina so well that Tom shook with mirth. And what a wealth of detail she had, of trivial happenings and sayings! She was not naturally a quick talker, but now her voice could race. And then there was the minister himself, quite different from what he was in the pulpit, talking in a pleasant sort of sing-song voice. He was really very kind and thoughtful in his own house. ‘You could not believe how nice he is.' It was Williamina who ran everything and looked after the pennies. ‘Of course I only see them at meal times – except for Williamina. They never come into the kitchen.'

‘And you like it?'

‘Yes, it's new. It's a change from being at home. I like it fine,' she said frankly, her voice already bubbling with some new memory.

And when, for the moment, she had exhausted her memories, she asked Tom about his own affairs.

Tom came to Donald's learning to ride the bicycle. ‘He tore a small hole in his trousers. He was wondering who he would get to mend it!'

She was silent. ‘I know about that,' she said.

‘Did you mend it?'

‘Did he say I did?'

‘Well, no – but I gathered as much.' Keeping the amusement in his voice he had to ask again: ‘Did you?'

‘It was like this,' she replied in a confidential voice. ‘He beckoned me into the front passage. He whispered that Williamina would be angry with him if he showed her what he had done. He pressed me to do it. So I did it, but I was in terror lest Williamina would find out. What else could I do? And they're funny, too, in some ways. The minister himself is a bit frightened of Williamina about certain things. He raises his voice high as he comes near her door and cries, ‘William-eena, may I come in?' The other night, just before I came away …'

She made no further reference to the mending and Tom was vaguely relieved, because he had felt mean, bringing it up. It had been the one thing his pride was not going to permit him to mention. But he was glad now he did, for Janet's attitude was so natural that he understood it.

Their talk, however, was altogether so natural, so set them apart, that when Janet exclaimed that oh, she must run because she had said she was only going round to see Tina for a few minutes, and got to her feet, Tom could not break through to a more intimate mood.

At the corner of the field they said good-night. She responded again with an unexpectedly swift and strong warmth – and was gone.

Her presence remained with him as he went back along the hillside. Everything was all right. She was excited about her new job and that was only natural. There had been, too,
an extra entrancement about her tonight, something that was hers alone. He had wanted to invade it and break it down and take it to himself. Because he hadn't, he was feeling a little baffled. That was all. Selfishness.