The Wooden Shepherdess (11 page)

However the pulsing heart of the game lay more in its nationwide amateur wing, for it filled a long-felt want by releasing the lawless frontiersman buttoned in every American business-suit. Year after year the Amendment remained unrepealed for a simple reason: not even the Wettest of Wets really wished it repealed since, under its aegis, the young (and the not-quite-so-young) could unload their anarchical he-man instincts, and flout the Law with the bulk of the nation's approval. To such, the liquor itself was not much more than a symbol. At dances, whenever a stag stepped out of the stag-line and Janis (or some other girl who was getting a rush) by-passed the Brooks-Brothers cut of his clothes to look for the bulge of a flask before saying “Love to,” teenage addiction to liquor was seldom the cause so much as a likely result: that illicit bulge was simply the badge of his manhood—a scalp.

But now this manner of scalp was harder to win than it had been, down New Blandford way. Those raids had forced you to go ten miles further afield for your rye. This greatly increased the risk to your skin: for the Eighteenth Amendment had made “Transportation” of liquor a breach of the Constitution, which meant that even the auto itself which was caught with liquor aboard it was forfeit and Honor required you—if chased and you knew you couldn't escape—to tread on the gas and drive for a pile-up. You ditched the other guy too, if you could; but if not, straight into a tree or a wall so that all the Federals got was a write-off wreck (only last year, up in Maine, it was doing just this that Russell's big brother got killed).

If they chased you they shot-up your tires; and the cars which belonged to the Pack were none of them speedy, they hadn't the hope of a snow-flake in hell of escaping if chased. So you just had to trust your supplier to know if an ambush was set and to send you away empty-handed for once—provided his spies didn't fail him.

Much of this lore Augustine extracted from Russ before anyone thought to warn him about that brother. The rest came mostly from Sadie: for lately his early reactions to Sadie had changed. That reputed Student of Law, who reputedly once drove trucks for a mob and everyone said had been laid by the Big Shot himself—since Sadie made no parade of being a “good” girl, aiming rather to have you suppose her worse than she was.... Of course she was terribly unattractive, but really not such a bad old thing after all in a way....

Ever since his famous “insult” to Janis, Sadie had grudgingly showed a new-found respect for Augustine: in spite of his accent this wasn't no vaudeville Clarence or Claude and she didn't mean Maybe! This started her figuring over again what had landed him here—right out in the sticks, in a no-account place like New Blandford, and bumming around with a bunch of no-account kids. Who was the guy, anyway? Some sort of British Lord? For this wasn't no brush-ape—No, Sir! Spita look like he trim his own hair with a handsaw, and spita his threads let in daylight and sorta smell ocean like someone he maybe jump ship on the sea-board, she'd tell the world he had background—and how! The guy was high-class, in any crowd he'd be high-class.... Sister, your slip is showing....

Indeed (but without getting goofy about him like Ree) it had dawned on Sadie that making burlesque-show passes—Kee-rist, with that old routine she had loused things up good and proper! She better had mend her manners.... Little-Miss-Dirtymouth, go fetch the soap....

Anyway, Sadie had turned off the heat and Augustine responded. Regarding the tricks of the trade and ways of outwitting the Law this Sadie certainly knew her onions; and ever since Janis he'd felt more and more like attempting a getaway. Therefore he made great efforts to stomach the scent she was always drenched in and started attending her antinomian seminars, drinking in all the expert instruction he could. This Sadie had guts, as well as she knew all the ropes: she might even prove useful support if ever it came to the push....

Hold hard, though! For passing the time of day in a friendlier way with a Sadie was one thing—perhaps even picking her brains; but accepting actual help from a creature so common was altogether.... However it had to be faced that there wasn't much practical help to be hoped from the rest of the crowd! Lord, he was fed to the teeth with the place: not one of them here would he really miss when he left, apart from Russell (and when he remembered it, Ree ... ).

How he longed to be home!

“Home....” At Mellton, the topic still was Nellie's living to earn.

“Well,” said Wantage to Mrs. Winter, “How about teaching Ted's for a start?” Coventry Ted, with his seven.... For nowadays Ted hadn't only that shed out back for assembling the racing machines and “specials” he thought up himself: he'd a man for repairs, and a lock-up shop with Swifts, Rudge-Whitworths and pumps—and a cash-down house (Detached. And Select) of his own. A cut above sending his kids to the Board School.... But anywhere else cost the earth, with all those brats: some private schools had the nerve to charge eight guineas a term! So be doing a favor to both....

Mrs. Winter and Wantage had finished their midday meal (Head Housemaids come to the “Room” for the pudding-course only, so now again the two old friends were alone).

“Face it,” said Wantage, “It's all she knows how.”

“She's only done infants. How old's his George?” Mrs. Winter inquired.

“Fourteen, he's out of it. Works with his Dad. And last lot of twins is the only other two boys.”

“Age what?”

He thought for a moment. “Just after the War.” (Five-year-olds: otherwise, only girls.... Mrs. Winter sighed with relief.) “Mind you,” said Wantage, “She can't live off Ted's. Food and lodging alone could be close on a quid—or more, with a child: prices is chronic.”

“The Mistress is paying her two bob an hour.”

Wantage snorted. “She better not ask Ted for that! He'd tell her to go chase herself. What—twice his mechanic?” He paused. “See? Ted's is a start, like: she got to work up a connection—three lots at the least.”

“That won't leave very much time for her baby.”

“What of it? Sixpence will pay for a minder. The point is she got to earn something to put in his belly, that's what. A couple of years and he'll eat like a hawk.”

Mrs. Winter thought for a moment; and then: “You better write Ted and see what he says,” was her verdict.

Wantage still had the wines for dinner tonight to see to, but turned in the doorway: “Pi-anner?” he asked; and when Mrs. Winter said No she can't play a note, “Ted'll expect the pi-anner. Get her do one of them postal courses: it won't take her long.”

And then he was gone.

Ted, come to think of it (Wantage's steady hand was decanting a vintage claret), Ted hadn't done too bad for himself after all, hadn't Ted; and All his Troubles were Little Ones.

Ted
.... They'd been born out Binley way, Fred and Ted Wantage. There weren't any pits at Binley, those days: they'd been born on a Gentleman's Farm, where their father was a cowman before he got horned in the groin at a serving, and died. By then both boys had seen enough cows for a lifetime (even today Fred couldn't stand milk in his tea): so when Fred was given a chance of Service at Stumfort Castle he'd jumped at it—chances like that one don't grow on trees! But then, Fred was blessed with the proper physique and demeanor for indoors.... But Ted was a spindle-shanked runt, with neither the height nor the calves for a footman—and worse, couldn't wipe that eternal grin off his face: so Dad's old employer had paid his indentures and Ted had been sent into Coventry city itself to learn with an uncle.

Ted's uncle was one of the last of those old Master Weavers who once had made Coventry ribbon so famous, with even elaborate portraits woven in silk. This intricate art was performed on rings of cottage looms grouped round one single communal source of power; but factory looms were driving them all off the market—by now on a cottage loom you could hardly earn your steam (and you durstn't use kids on the treadle for power these days, however much money it saved). Ted had seen the red light, and once his indentures were worked instead of proceeding to journeyman gave up his art altogether for bikes. He had gone in the Humber Works, to learn all over again.

Then came the year when the Old Queen died, and black ribbon had sold by the mile: black sateen for little girls' hair-bows, black silk for hats, black velvet for bonnets—and crape, you just couldn't turn out enough of it.... Fred had thought his brother was crazy: he oughter at least gone in Cash's and pulled in a tradesman's wage setting up the looms for it wasn't all unskilled girls, there were jobs for a weaver. “Crazy.” ... But was he? For now Brother Ted had a loving wife and bulging quiver of “Troubles”: that handsome three-up-and-two-down, and a bicycle shop of his own. While Fred....

Fred sighed. But his mood of self-pity didn't last long: after all, what he'd got was security. Service was no bed of roses, but still.... “Old Servants”: savings or none, they don't leave you starve—not the genuine Gentry. In Coventry, plenty were starving—or near it—or had been till lately, though things were looking up now. And Ted had lost most of his nose from a splinter of glass when Dunn's shop was smashed in those Broadgate riots on Peace Day, five years ago (the mob had gone mad with rage at the sight of a Lady Godiva parading
in all her clothes
).

He wrote to his brother that night, and three days later he got the reply.

*

That last talk of Mary's with Nellie-the-three-times-bereaved had ended, as always before, with the fatal words left unsaid. Adoption, or put in a Home: what else could be done with Syl if Nellie must go out to work? But Mary had found herself quite unable to say it, the clearer it got that the mother her-self wasn't thinking on those lines at all. And now, thank heavens it hadn't been said: for only today Mrs. Winter had come in to tell her the problem was solved and the whole thing was settled, that Wantage had heard from his Coventry brother and Nellie could live there in lodgings he'd found (
with
her baby) and go out to teach by the hour—respectable shopkeepers' children and so on....

Mary's relief was intense—tinged by only a tiny chagrin that she hadn't been even consulted, and once they'd got the idea they'd settled it all by themselves with no help from her after all she had done.... Still, relief was what she'd felt most; and the Housekeeper's face as she told her had beamed like the moon. In two more weeks Miss Penrose (the Governess proper) was due to arrive: the solution had come just in time—and Lord, what a load off her mind!

The first half of August was wet, but today the sun had returned. The peonies blazed; and as Mary leaned from her window above it the sweep of her August garden bathed in the August sun reminded her somehow of Rubens, both as to colors and curves (and even the smells). Below on the terrace a thrush was tapping a drunken snail he had found asleep in the poppies: everywhere birds were singing their thanksgiving after rain, and somewhere unseen in the garden Polly was singing too.

Out on the velvet lawn a blackbird fought with a worm. Beyond in the shade of a spreading cedar—a Renoir sight to be never forgotten—Susan Amanda slept in her canopied pram, while Minta sat on a canvas stool beside with her straw hat forward over her eyes: one hand gently jigging the pram, as she read the sixpenny love-romance which she held in the other.

Then Mary saw Polly as well, slowly crossing the grass—slowly, because of the robin she hoped would alight on her shoulder (Polly was clever with robins). The sky was like angel's milk.... With a swelling heart so large that it nearly reached to her mouth, every inch from the crown of Mary's head to the tips of Mary's toes rejoiced at being alive.

When her long meandering song was all unwound, Polly had climbed from her singing-post in the fork of the podded laburnum just where its trunk emerged from the mock-orange thicket (which still smelled sweet even now the flowers were over); and once she despaired of the robin, had made her tiptoe way to a formal place between high hedges of box. Here was a formal circular goldfish pool, starred with lilies and edged with a coping of stone, surrounding a tiny fountain; and here, looking down on the pool, was seated one of her closest and quietest friends: a life-size figure in bronze. He wore a hat that was flat like a clergyman's: still, since he wore nothing else apart from the wings on his feet he probably wasn't a clergyman. Much more likely (she thought) an Indian, being also so brown.

Polly climbed on his lap and started to whisper, cooled by occasional wafts of spray: for he it was who listened to all her secrets now she had no Augustine.

In America Coué was really last year, but the young are so seldom right up to date that each morning Ree still rolled out of bed in her tousled pajama-trousers (all summer she slept without tops) and stood in front of her mirror repeating the magic words: “Every day, and in every way, I get better and better.” By this, all she probably meant was cuter and cuter. A fist next rubbed the sleep from her eyes, enough to allow them to see if her breasts had grown any more in the night and that tiny mouse-back of hair down in front. Then she wrapped her rather innocuous bust in a towel and thumped downstairs to wash in the kitchen.

But Ree today was sick at heart as she brushed her teeth in the sink; and later when dressed she could hardly face her breakfast cereal. Clumsy Junior kicked her chair as he passed, and she nearly burst into tears: life was devoid of meaning, she wanted to die. Baba was squealing over her prunes, Earl had an ocarina, her mother's voice clacked on and on like the wheels of a train.... Ree was longing to be alone: so she went outside in the yard and sat in the earthy gloom of the privy for nearly an hour, watching the dancing motes in the sunbeam that slanted down from the heart-shaped hole all “specialists” cut high up in the door for seeing if anyone's there.