But it was not until the girls finally came home from school that they
felt the full weight of Granny’s dead old hand on their lives. Lucille
was now nearly twenty-one, and Yvette nineteen. They had been to a good
girls’ school, and had had a finishing year in Lausanne, and were quite
the usual thing, tall young creatures with fresh, sensitive faces and
bobbed hair and young-manly, deuce-take-it manners.
“What’s so awfully _boring_ about Papplewick,” said Yvette, as they
stood on the Channel boat watching the grey, grey cliffs of Dover draw
near, “is that there are no _men_ about. Why doesn’t Daddy have some
good old sports for friends? As for Uncle Fred, he’s the limit!”
“Oh, you never know what will turn up,” said Lucille, more philosophic.
“You jolly well know what to expect,” said Yvette. “Choir on Sundays,
and I hate mixed choirs. Boys’ voices are _lovely_, when there are
no women. And Sunday School and Girls’ Friendly, and socials, all the
dear old souls that enquire after Granny! Not a decent young fellow for
miles.”
“Oh I don’t know!” said Lucille. “There’s always the Framleys. And you
know Gerry Somercotes _adores_ you.”
“Oh but I _hate_ fellows who adore me!” cried Yvette, turning up her
sensitive nose. “They _bore_ me. They hang on like lead.”
“Well what _do_ you want, if you can’t stand being adored? _I_ think
it’s perfectly all right to be adored. You know you’ll never marry
them, so why not let them go on adoring, if it amuses them.”
“Oh but I _want_ to get married,” cried Yvette.
“Well in that case, let them go on adoring you till you find one that
you can _possibly_ marry.”
“I never should, that way. Nothing puts me off like an adoring fellow.
They _bore_ me so! They make me feel beastly.”
“Oh, so they do me, if they get pressing. But at a distance, I think
they’re rather nice.”
“I should like to fall _violently_ in love.”
“Oh, very likely! I shouldn’t! I should hate it. Probably so would you,
if it actually happened. After all, we’ve got to settle down a bit,
before we know what we want.”
“But don’t you _hate_ going back to Papplewick?” cried Yvette, turning
up her young, sensitive nose.
“No, not particularly. I suppose we shall be rather bored. I wish Daddy
would get a car. I suppose we shall have to drag the old bikes out.
Wouldn’t you like to get up to Tansy Moor?”
“Oh, _love_ it! Though it’s an awful _strain_, shoving an old push-bike
up those hills.”
The ship was nearing the grey cliffs. It was summer, but a grey day.
The two girls wore their coats with fur collars turned up, and little
_chic_ hats pulled down over their ears. Tall, slender, fresh-faced,
naïve, yet confident, too confident, in their school-girlish arrogance,
they were so terribly English. They seemed so free, and were as a
matter of fact so tangled and tied up, inside themselves. They seemed
so dashing and unconventional, and were really so conventional, so,
as it were, shut up indoors inside themselves. They looked like bold,
tall young sloops, just slipping from the harbour into the wide seas
of life. And they were, as a matter of fact, two poor young rudderless
lives, moving from one chain anchorage to another.
The rectory struck a chill into their hearts as they entered. It seemed
ugly, and almost sordid, with the dank air of that middle-class,
degenerated comfort which has ceased to be comfortable and has turned
stuffy, unclean. The hard, stone house struck the girls as being
unclean, they could not have said why. The shabby furniture seemed
somehow sordid, nothing was fresh. Even the food at meals had that
awful dreary sordidness which is so repulsive to a young thing coming
from abroad. Roast beef and wet cabbage, cold mutton and mashed
potatoes, sour pickles, inexcusable puddings.
Granny, who “loved a bit of pork,” also had special dishes, beef-tea
and rusks, or a small savoury custard. The grey-faced Aunt Cissie ate
nothing at all. She would sit at table, and take a single lonely and
naked boiled potato on to her plate. She never ate meat. So she sat in
sordid durance, while the meal went on, and Granny quickly slobbered
her portion--lucky if she spilled nothing on her protuberant stomach.
The food was not appetising in itself: how could it be, when Aunt
Cissie hated food herself, hated the fact of eating, and never could
keep a maid-servant for three months? The girls ate with repulsion,
Lucille bravely bearing up, Yvette’s tender nose showing her disgust.
Only the rector, white-haired, wiped his long grey moustache with his
serviette, and cracked jokes. He too was getting heavy and inert,
sitting in his study all day, never taking exercise. But he cracked
sarcastic little jokes all the time, sitting there under the shelter of
the Mater.
The country, with its steep hills and its deep, narrow valleys, was
dark and gloomy, yet had a certain powerful strength of its own. Twenty
miles away was the black industrialism of the north. Yet the village of
Papplewick was comparatively lonely, almost lost, the life in it stony
and dour. Everything was stone, with a hardness that was almost poetic,
it was so unrelenting.
It was as the girls had known: they went back into the choir, they
helped in the parish. But Yvette struck absolutely against Sunday
School, the Band of Hope, the Girls’ Friendlies--indeed against all
those functions that were conducted by determined old maids and
obstinate, stupid elderly men. She avoided church duties as much
as possible, and got away from the rectory whenever she could. The
Framleys, a big, untidy, jolly family up at the Grange, were an
enormous stand-by. And if anybody asked her out to a meal, even if a
woman in one of the workmen’s houses asked her to stay to tea, she
accepted at once. In fact, she was rather thrilled. She liked talking
to the working men, they had often such fine, hard heads. But of
course they were in another world.
So the months went by. Gerry Somercotes was still an adorer. There were
others, too, sons of farmers or mill-owners. Yvette really ought to
have had a good time. She was always out to parties and dances, friends
came for her in their motor-cars, and off she went to the city, to the
afternoon dance in the chief hotel, or in the gorgeous new Palais de
Danse, called the Pally.
Yet she always seemed like a creature mesmerised. She was never free
to be quite jolly. Deep inside her worked an intolerable irritation,
which she thought she _ought_ not to feel, and which she hated feeling,
thereby making it worse. She never understood at all whence it arose.
At home, she truly was irritable, and outrageously rude to Aunt Cissie.
In fact, Yvette’s awful temper became one of the family by-words.
Lucille, always more practical, got a job in the city as private
secretary to a man who needed somebody with fluent French and
shorthand. She went back and forth every day, by the same train as
Uncle Fred. But she never travelled with him, and wet or fine, bicycled
to the station, while he went on foot.
The two girls were both determined that what they wanted was a really
jolly social life. And they resented with fury that the rectory was,
for their friends, impossible. There were only four rooms downstairs:
the kitchen, where lived the two discontented maid-servants: the
dark dining-room: the rector’s study: and the big, “homely,” dreary
living-room or drawing-room. In the dining-room there was a gas fire.
Only in the living-room was a good hot fire kept going. Because, of
course, here Granny reigned.
In this room the family was assembled. At evening, after dinner, Uncle
Fred and the rector invariably played cross-word puzzles with Granny.
“Now, Mater, are you ready? N blank blank blank blank W: a Siamese
functionary.”
“Eh? Eh? M blank blank blank blank W?”
Granny was hard of hearing.
“No Mater. Not M! N blank blank blank blank W: a Siamese functionary.”
“N blank blank blank blank W: a Chinese functionary.”
“SIAMESE.”
“Eh?”
“SIAMESE! SIAM!”
“A Siamese functionary! Now what can that be?” said the old lady
profoundly, folding her hands on her round stomach. Her two sons
proceeded to make suggestions, at which she said Ah! Ah! The rector
was amazingly clever at cross-word puzzles. But Fred had a certain
technical vocabulary.
“This certainly is a hard nut to crack,” said the old lady, when they
were all stuck.
Meanwhile Lucille sat in a corner with her hands over her ears,
pretending to read, and Yvette irritably made drawings, or hummed loud
and exasperating tunes, to add to the family concert. Aunt Cissie
continually reached for a chocolate, and her jaws worked ceaselessly.
She literally lived on chocolates. Sitting in the distance, she put
another into her mouth, then looked again at the parish magazine. Then
she lifted her head, and saw it was time to fetch Granny’s cup of
Horlicks.
While she was gone, in nervous exasperation Yvette would open the
window. The room was never fresh, she imagined it smelt: smelt of
Granny. And Granny, who was hard of hearing, heard like a weasel when
she wasn’t wanted to.
“Did you open the window, Yvette? I think you might remember there are
older people than yourself in the room,” she said.
“It’s stifling! It’s unbearable! No wonder we’ve all of us always got
colds.”
“I’m sure the room is large enough, and a good fire burning.” The old
lady gave a little shudder. “A draught to give us all our death.”
“Not a draught at all,” roared Yvette. “A breath of fresh air.”
The old lady shuddered again, and said:
“Indeed!”
The rector, in silence, marched to the window and firmly closed it. He
did not look at his daughter meanwhile. He hated thwarting her. But she
must know what’s what!
The cross-word puzzles, invented by Satan himself, continued till
Granny had had her Horlicks, and was to go to bed. Then came the
ceremony of Goodnight! Everybody stood up. The girls went to be kissed
by the blind old woman, the rector gave his arm, and Aunt Cissie
followed with a candle.
But this was already nine o’clock, although Granny was really getting
old, and should have been in bed sooner. But when she was in bed, she
could not sleep, till Aunt Cissie came.
“You see,” said Granny, “I have _never_ slept alone. For fifty-four
years I never slept a night without the Pater’s arm round me. And when
he was gone I tried to sleep alone. But as sure as my eyes closed
to sleep, my heart nearly jumped out of my body, and I lay in a
palpitation. Oh, you may think what you will, but it was a fearful
experience, after fifty-four years of perfect married life! I would
have prayed to be taken first, but the Pater, well, no I don’t think he
would have been able to bear up.”
So Aunt Cissie slept with Granny. And she hated it. She said _she_
could never sleep. And she grew greyer and greyer, and the food in the
house got worse, and Aunt Cissie had to have an operation.
But the Mater rose as ever, towards noon, and at the midday meal, she
presided from her arm-chair, with her stomach protruding; her reddish,
pendulous face, that had a sort of horrible majesty, dropping soft
under the wall of her high brow, and her blue eyes peering unseeing.
Her white hair was getting scanty, it was altogether a little indecent.
But the rector jovially cracked his jokes to her, and she pretended to
disapprove. But she was perfectly complacent, sitting in her ancient
obesity, and after meals, getting the wind from her stomach, pressing
her bosom with her hand as she “rifted” in gross physical complacency.
What the girls minded most was that, when they brought their young
friends to the house, Granny always was there, like some awful idol of
old flesh, consuming all the attention. There was only the one room
for everybody. And there sat the old lady, with Aunt Cissie keeping
an acrid guard over her. Everybody must be presented first to Granny:
she was ready to be genial, she liked company. She had to know who
everybody was, where they came from, every circumstance of their
lives. And then, when she was _au fait_, she could get hold of the
conversation.
Nothing could be more exasperating to the girls. “Isn’t old Mrs.
Saywell wonderful! She takes _such_ an interest in life, at nearly
ninety!”
“She does take an interest in people’s affairs, if that’s life,” said
Yvette.
Then she would immediately feel guilty. After all, it _was_ wonderful
to be nearly ninety, and have such a clear mind! And Granny never
_actually_ did anybody any harm. It was more that she was in the way.
And perhaps it was rather awful to hate somebody because they were old
and in the way.
Yvette immediately repented, and was nice. Granny blossomed forth
into reminiscences of when she was a girl, in the little town in
Buckinghamshire. She talked and talked away, and was _so_ entertaining.
She really _was_ rather wonderful.
Then in the afternoon Lottie and Ella and Bob Framley came, with Leo
Wetherell.
“Oh, come in!”--and in they all trooped to the sitting-room, where
Granny, in her white cap, sat by the fire.
“Granny, this is Mr. Wetherell.”
“Mr. What-did-you-say? You must excuse me, I’m a little deaf!”
Granny gave her hand to the uncomfortable young man, and gazed silently
at him, sightlessly.
“You are not from our parish?” she asked him.
“Dinnington!” he shouted.
“We want to go a picnic tomorrow, to Bonsall Head, in Leo’s car. We can
all squeeze in,” said Ella, in a low voice.
“Did you say Bonsall Head?” asked Granny.
“Yes!”
There was a blank silence.
“Did you say you were going in a car?”
“Yes! In Mr. Wetherell’s.”
“I hope he’s a good driver. It’s a very dangerous road.”
“He’s a _very_ good driver.”
“Not a very good driver?”
“Yes! He _is_ a very good driver.”
“If you go to Bonsall Head, I think I must send a message to Lady
Louth.”
Granny always dragged in this miserable Lady Louth, when there was
company.
“Oh, we shan’t go that way,” cried Yvette.
“Which way?” said Granny. “You must go by Heanor.”
The whole party sat, as Bob expressed it, like stuffed ducks, fidgeting
on their chairs.
Aunt Cissie came in--and then the maid with the tea. There was the
eternal and everlasting piece of bought cake. Then appeared a plate of
little fresh cakes. Aunt Cissie had actually sent to the baker’s.
“Tea, Mater!”
The old lady gripped the arms of her chair. Everybody rose and stood,
while she waded slowly across, on Aunt Cissie’s arm, to her place at
table.
During tea Lucille came in from town, from her job. She was simply worn
out, with black marks under her eyes. She gave a cry, seeing all the
company.
As soon as the noise had subsided, and the awkwardness was resumed,
Granny said:
“You have never mentioned Mr. Wetherell to me, have you, Lucille?”
“I don’t remember,” said Lucille.
“You can’t have done. The name is strange to me.”
Yvette absently grabbed another cake, from the now almost empty
plate. Aunt Cissie, who was driven almost crazy by Yvette’s vague and
inconsiderate ways, felt the green rage fuse in her heart. She picked
up her own plate, on which was the one cake she allowed herself, and
said with vitriolic politeness, offering it to Yvette:
“Won’t you have mine?”
“Oh thanks!” said Yvette, starting in her angry vagueness. And with an
appearance of the same insouciance, she helped herself to Aunt Cissie’s
cake also, adding as an afterthought: “If you’re sure you don’t want
it.”
She now had two cakes on her plate. Lucille had gone white as a ghost,
bending to her tea. Aunt Cissie sat with a green look of poisonous
resignation. The awkwardness was an agony.
But Granny, bulkily enthroned and unaware, only said, in the centre of
the cyclone:
“If you are motoring to Bonsall Head tomorrow, Lucille, I wish you
would take a message from me to Lady Louth.”
“Oh!” said Lucille, giving a queer look across the table at the
sightless old woman. Lady Louth was the King Charles’ Head of the
family, invariably produced by Granny for the benefit of visitors.
“Very well!”
“She was so very kind last week. She sent her chauffeur over with a
Cross-word Puzzle book for me.”
“But you thanked her then,” cried Yvette.
“I should like to send her a note.”
“We can post it,” cried Lucille.
“Oh no! I should like you to take it. When Lady Louth called last
time....”
The young ones sat like a shoal of young fishes dumbly mouthing at
the surface of the water, while Granny went on about Lady Louth. Aunt
Cissie, the two girls knew, was still helpless, almost unconscious in a
paroxysm of rage about the cake. Perhaps, poor thing, she was praying.
It was a mercy when the friends departed. But by that time the two
girls were both haggard-eyed. And it was then that Yvette, looking
round, suddenly saw the stony, implacable will-to-power in the old and
motherly-seeming Granny. She sat there bulging backwards in her chair,
impassive, her reddish, pendulous old face rather mottled, almost
unconscious, but implacable, her face like a mask that hid something
stony, relentless. It was the static inertia of her unsavoury power.
Yet in a minute she would open her ancient mouth to find out every
detail about Leo Wetherell. For the moment she was hibernating in her
oldness, her agedness. But in a minute her mouth would open, her mind
would flicker awake and with her insatiable greed for life, other
people’s life, she would start on her quest for every detail. She was
like the old toad which Yvette had watched, fascinated, as it sat on
the ledge of the beehive, immediately in front of the little entrance
by which the bees emerged, and which, with a demonish lightning-like
snap of its pursed jaws, caught every bee as it came out to launch into
the air, swallowed them one after the other, as if it could consume the
whole hive-full, into its aged, bulging, purse-like wrinkledness. It
had been swallowing bees as they launched into the air of spring, year
after year, year after year, for generations.
But the gardener, called by Yvette, was in a rage, and killed the
creature with a stone.
“’Appen tha _art_ good for th’ snails,” he said, as he came down with
the stone. “But tha ’rt none goin’ ter emp’y th’ bee-’ive into thy
guts.”