The Woman Who Had Imagination (6 page)

‘Can you 'itch up a bit?' said the fishmonger suddenly.

Henry moved along the plush seat a fraction, but without speaking.

‘That's better. Ain't it hot? If this weather holds I'm a dunner. Fish won't keep, y'know. I had a case o' fresh whiting in yesterday and the missus fainted. Went clean off. That's the fish-trade. See y'money go bad under your eyes.'

The fishmonger's coarse red skin oozed little yellow streams of sweat, which he kept wiping off with his handkerchief, puffing heavily as he took off his bowler hat and mopped his red bald head. He was renowned for his voice, a light sweet tenor, and for his moving and passionate interpretation of ‘Come into the Garden, Maud'.

‘Blimey,' he kept saying. ‘I'm done like a dinner.'

The road, after climbing up a little, had begun to
drop down again towards a wooded valley. The country stretched out infinitely green and yellow under the pure intensity of noon light. In the near distance the road shimmered under the heat like quivering water. Cattle had gathered under the shade of trees, unmoving except for the clockwork flicking of their tails as they stared at the passing brake with its crowd of laughing passengers. By a woodside there was a murmur of doves invisible in the thick-leaved trees, warm, liquid, sleepy, and no other bird-sound except the occasional cry of a jay disturbed by the noise of wheels and voices. The brief cool wood-shade was like a draught of water; the shrill voices and clocking hoofs made cool empty echoes in the deep sun-flickered shadowy silence. Someone in the brake reached up and shook a low-hanging bough that in swishing back again seemed to set all the leaves in the wood rustling with a soft, dry, endless whispering. The scent of honeysuckle was suddenly very strong and exquisite, pouring out from the wood in a sweet invisible mist that seemed to disperse as soon as the brake was out in the sunshine again. After the dark coolness of the overhanging trees the day was blinding and burning. And out in the full glare of sunlight the world was steeped in other scents, the smell of drying hay, the thick vanilla odour of meadow-sweet, the exotic heavenliness of lime trees.

The road went down to a village. There, at a whitewashed public-house with red geraniums blazing
vividly in the window-boxes, the brake pulled up to a concert of cries and laughter.

‘Whoa! What's the matter with you, old horses? Whoa there! Are they teetotallers? Whoa!'

Shouting and laughing, the passengers began to alight and vanish into the public-house. Those who did not drink walked about to stretch their legs or stood in the shade of the inn wall. Men reappeared from the public-house doorway with glasses of golden beer, their mouths ringed with beads of foam. From the tap-room a bass voice boomed and pompommed deep impromptu notes of noisy pleasure.

Henry got down from the brake and walked about moodily. His father and mother stood in the shade, each drinking a small lemonade.

‘Get yourself a lemon, 'Enry, my boy,' said his father.

‘No thanks.'

‘Feel dicky?'

‘I'm all right.'

‘Liven yourself up then. Haven't lost nothing, have you?'

‘I'm all right,' said Henry.

He refused to sip of his mother's lemonade and walked away. He felt bored, morose, out of touch with everyone.

With relief he saw the passengers emerge from the public-house and begin to climb back into the brake. He climbed up also and found himself sitting, this time, between a tall scraggy man with a peg-leg who
gave off the mustily dry odour of leather, and a girl of his own age who was dressed as if she were going to a baptism, in a white silk dress, white straw hat, long white gloves that reached to her elbows, white cotton stockings, white shoes and a white sunshade which she carried elegantly over her left shoulder.

‘Oh! It's going to be marvellous,' she said.

‘What is?' he said, ‘Don't poke me in the eye with that sunshade.'

‘The choir, the house, everything.'

‘Glad you think so,' he said.

The brake had begun to move again, the shouting and excited laughter of the passengers half drowning the girl's voice and his own. And above the din of the brake's departure there arose the sound of insistent argument.

‘I tell you it's right! Seen it times with my own eyes.'

‘You dreamt it.'

‘Dreamt it! I
seen
it. Plain as a pikestaff.'

‘In a churchyard? Tell your grandmother.'

‘Well, if you don't believe me, will you bet on it? You're so cocky.'

‘Ah, I'll bet you. Any money. Anything you like.'

‘All right. You'll bet as what I've told you ain't on that tombstone in Polwick churchyard? You'll bet on that?'

‘Ah! I'll bet you. And I
know
it ain't.'

‘Well, go on. How much?'

‘Tanner.'

There were shouts of ironical laughter and reckless encouragement. A little black frizzy-haired man was bobbing excitedly up and down on the brake seat urging a large blond man wearing a cream tea-rose in his buttonhole to increase the bet. ‘Go on. Make it sixpence ha'penny. You're so cocky. How can you lose? You know it ain't there, don't you? Go on.'

‘Sixpence,' said the blond man. ‘I said sixpence and I mean sixpence.'

‘You'll go to ruin fast.'

‘I dare say. But I said sixpence and I mean sixpence. And here's me money.'

‘All right! Let the driver hold it.'

The blond man handed his money to the fishmonger, who had climbed up to sit by the driver, and then began to urge the little man:

‘Give him your money. Go on. And say good-bye to it while you're at it. Go on, say good-bye to it. Ah, it's no use spitting on it. It's the last you'll ever see o' that tanner.'

‘You're so cocky. Why didn't you bet a quid?'

‘Ah, why didn't I?'

Up on the driving-seat the driver and the fishmonger rolled against each other in sudden storms of laughter. Women giggled and men called out to each other, making dark insinuations, urging the driver to stop at the churchyard.

Opposite Henry and the girl a handsome man with
a dark moustache and wearing a straw hat at a devilish angle had rested his hand with a sort of stealthy nonchalance on the knee of a school teacher in pink. She in turn averted her eyes, trying to appear as though she were thinking profound, far-off, earnest thoughts.

‘What's the matter?' he said.

‘It's so hot,' she murmured.

‘So are you,' he whispered.

The school teacher's neck flushed crimson and the blood surged up into her face.

And as if to cover up her own embarrassment the girl at Henry's side began to talk in a rather louder voice to him, but her prim banal voice became lost for him in the giggling and talking of the other passengers, the loud-voiced arguments about the bet, the everlasting sound of wheels and hoofs on the rough, sun-baked road. Down in the valley the sun seemed hotter than ever. The brake passed a group of haymakers resting and sleeping in the noon-heat under the shade of a great elm tree. They waved and called with sleepy greetings. A woman sitting among them suckling a baby looked up with sun-tired eyes. Further on a group of naked boys bathing in a sloe-fringed pond jumped up and down in the sun-silvered water and about the grass pond-bank, waving their wet arms and flagging their towels. In the brake there was a thin ripple of giggling, the women suddenly ducking their heads together and whispering with suppressed excitement. The blond man and the frizzy-haired dark man
argued and taunted each other with unending but friendly vehemence. And under the intense sunshine and the dazzling fierce July light the slowness of the brake was intolerable. Up the hills it crawled as though the horses were sick. Down hill the brakes hissed and checked the wheels into the deathly pace of a funeral. Henry sat drugged by the heat and the wearisome pace of progress. Faintly, through the sun-heavy air, came the strokes of one o'clock from a church tower. Already it was as if the brake had travelled all day. And now, with the strokes of the clock dying away and leaving the air limitlessly silent beyond the little noises of the brake it seemed suddenly as if the journey might last for ever.

Twenty minutes later the brake went down hill through an avenue of elms towards a square church tower rising like a small sturdy grey fortress out of a village that seemed asleep except for a batch of black hens dust-bathing in the hot road. The sudden coming of the brake sent the fowls squawking and cluttering away in panic-feathered half-flight.

‘Ah! Your old horses are too slow for a funeral. Might have had a Sunday dinner for nothing if you'd been sharper. What d'ye feed 'em on? Too slow to run over an old hen. Gee there! Tickle 'em up a bit.' And mingled with these shouts the repeated cry:

‘And don't forget to stop at the churchyard.'

The frizzy-haired man began to stand up and wave his arms. He became ironically tender towards the
blond man. ‘I feel sorry for you. It's like taking money from a kid. Pity your mother ever let you come out.' The blond man kept shaking his head with silent wisdom. The brake crawled slowly by the churchyard wall. ‘A bit farther,' cried the dark man with excitement. ‘T'other side o' that yew-tree. Gee up a bit.' The passengers were craning their necks, laughing, standing up, bantering remarks. With mock sadness the frizzy-haired man patted the blond man on the back, shaking his head. ‘Feel sorry for you,' he said in a wickedly dismal voice. The blond man airily waved his hand with a gesture of pity. ‘Not half so sorry as you'll feel for yourself in a minute,' he said.

The frizzy-haired man did not listen. He was beginning to survey the tombstones with great excitement, craning his neck. Suddenly the blond man seized him and held him aloft like a child.

‘Now can you see, ducky?' he cried.

‘A bit farther! Farther! Steady now. Whoa there! Whoa!'

The brake stopped. The small man wriggled down from the blond man's arms. There arose a pandemonium of laughter and shouts in the brake. The driver stood up and chinked the money in his hand. The small man spoke with twinkling irony.

‘Oh! No, it ain't there, is it? It ain't there? It's melted. Well, well, I must be boss-eyed. The sun's so hot it's melted. Would you believe it? Fancy that. Just fancy that. It ain't there.'

The blond man was staring with dumb gloom at a gravestone.

‘What are you looking at?' began the small man mercilessly. ‘What? — If it ain't a tombstone I'll never. Well, well!'

‘I'll be damned,' the blond man was saying slowly. ‘I'll be damned.'

‘Read it!' yelled the little man in triumph.

‘I've read it.'

‘Read it out loud,'

‘Ah, what d'ye take me for? Three pen'worth o' tripe? You read it.'

‘All right. It's worth it.' Solemnly the small man read out the rhyme on the tombstone:

‘Let wind go free where'er you be:

In chapel or in church
.

For wind it was the death of me.'

Suddenly the driver clicked at the horses and the brake jerked violently on. The women shrieked, the blond man sat disconsolate, the small man piped in triumph above the bubbling and spluttering of laughter.

Henry sat with a little smile on his lips, faintly aloof, his thoughts lofty and cool. He felt wonderfully above and detached from the puerile jokes and empty laughter of the rest of the brake, his brain manufacturing little self-conscious philosophies which seemed very clever, and when the mood seemed to be dying at last it was suddenly revived by the spectacle of his father
standing up in the brake, signalling the driver to halt for a moment and delivering his final words of advice and admonition to the choir.

‘Well, we shall be there in a few more minutes. And I just want to remind you of a few things. We've had our little jokes. And now I want to be serious for ten seconds. This is a serious business. We are down to start singing at four o'clock. All hear that? Four o'clock. Four o'clock on the big lawn in front of the house. We shall start off with “Calm was the Sea”; and then after that it will be “On the Banks of Allan Water” and then last of all “My love is Like a Red, Red Rose”. We shall sing these three in the afternoon. And then in the evening, at seven o'clock, we shall sing a test piece chosen from one of these and three others. It might be one of these three. It might not. It might be anything. We don't know. We've got to stand ready to sing anything at a moment's notice.' He waved his arms up and down constantly in his excitement. His voice was like that of a little chattering ventriloquist's doll. ‘And one more thing. Remember the words. When it says “Calm was the Sea” don't sing it as if it were “The Wreck of the Hesperus”, but sing it as if it were calm — calm and soft. Imagine it. Lovely day. Boats hardly moving. Softly, softly, does it, softly. Imagine it. Imagine you're on Yarmouth pier if you like, looking at the sea. Water hardly moves. And then “the wandering breezes”. Soft again, very soft. Let them wander. Let them flow from
you. And breezes — remember it's breezes. Not a thunderstorm. Still soft — you'll see in the copy is marked
dulce
. Italian word — means sweet, soft, gentle. Remember dulcimer. Close your eyes if you like. Sing it as if you was dreaming.' He closed his fair-lashed eyes and put on a wrapt, dreamy expression of soft ecstasy. ‘Dah — dah-dah — daaah-dah!' he sang in a soft falsetto. ‘Wand'ring bre-e-e-zes.' He opened his eyes. ‘Feeling — that's it — feeling. Expression. That's everything. Anybody can bellow like a bull. But that's not singing. That's not interpretation. Not feeling. And don't be afraid of how you look. The judges aren't looking to see how pretty you are. They're
listening
. Well, make them listen, soft, softly does it, remember, softly.'

His voice trailed off to a fine whisper and he sat down. Henry smiled and the brake went on, the passengers in a changed mood after his father's words, the women tidying their hats and smoothing their stiff puff-sleeves and long dresses, the men fingering their buttonholes, clearing their throats and sitting in silence as though suddenly musingly nervous of the thought of the singing.