February: grey, black-bellied clouds crawling over Greffington Edge, over
Karva, swelling out: swollen bodies crawling and climbing, coming
together, joining. Monstrous bodies ballooning up behind them, mounting
on top of them, flattening them out, pressing them down on to the hills;
going on, up and up the sky, swelling out overhead, coming together.
One cloud, grey as sink water, over all the sky, shredded here and there,
stirred by slight stretchings, and spoutings of thin steam.
Then the whole mass coming down, streaming grey sink water.
She came down the twelve fields on the south slope of Karva: she could
say them by heart: the field with the big gap, the field above the four
firs farm, the field below the farm of the ash-tree, the bare field, the
field with the thorn tree, the field with the sheep's well, the field
with the wild rose bush, the steep field of long grass, the hillocky
field, the haunted field with the ash grove, the field with the big barn,
the last field with the gap to the road.
She thought of her thirty-four years; of the verses she had sent to the
magazines and how they had come back again; of the four farms on the
hill, of the four tales not written.
The wet field grasses swept, cold, round her ankles.
Mamma sat waiting in her chair, in the drawing-room, in the clear, grey,
glassy dusk of the cross-lights. She waited for the fine weather to come
when she would work again in the garden. She waited for you to come to
her. Her forehead unknitted itself; her dove's eyes brightened; she
smiled, and the rough feathers of her eyebrows lay down, appeased.
At the opening of the door she stirred in her chair. She was glad when
you came.
Catty brought in the lamp. When she turned up the wick the rising flame
carved Mamma's face out of the dusk. Her pretty face, delicately dinted,
whitened with a powdery down; stained with faint bistres of age. Her
little, high-bridged nose stood up from the softness, clear and young,
firm as ivory.
The globed light showed like a ball of fire, hung out in the garden, on
the black, glassy darkness, behind the pane. Catty drew down the blind
and went. You heard the click of the latch falling to behind her. The
evening had begun.
They took up their books. Mamma hid her face behind Anthony Trollope,
Mary hers behind Thomas Hardy. Presently she would hear Mamma sigh, then
yawn.
Horrible tension.
Under the edge of her book she would see Anthony Trollope lying in
Mamma's lap and Mamma's fingers playing with the fringe of her shawl. She
would put Thomas Hardy down and take up Anthony Trollope and read aloud
till Mamma's head began bowing in a doze. Then she would take up Thomas
Hardy. When Mamma waked Hardy would go down under Trollope; when she
dozed he would come to the top again.
After supper Mamma would be wide awake. She would sit straight up in her
chair, waiting, motionless, ready. You would pick up your book but you
would have no heart in it. You knew what she wanted. She knew that you
knew. You could go on trying to read if you chose; but she would still
sit there, waiting. You would know what she was thinking of.
The green box in the cabinet drawer.
The green box. You began to think of it, too, hidden, hidden in the
cabinet drawer. You were disturbed by the thought of the green box, of
the little figures inside it, white and green. You would get up and go to
the cabinet drawer.
Mamma would put out her hands on the table, ready. She smiled with shut
lips, pouting, half ashamed, half delighted. You would set out the green
and white chequer board, the rows of pawns. And the game of halma would
begin. White figures leap-frogging over green, green over white. Your
hand and your eyes playing, your brain hanging inert, remembering,
forgetting.
In the pauses of the game you waited; for the clock to strike ten, for
Catty to bring in the Bible and the Prayer-book, for the evening to end.
Old verses, old unfinished verses, coming and going.
In the long pauses of the game, when Mamma sat stone-still, hypnotised by
the green and white chequers, her curved hand lifted, holding her pawn,
her head quivering with indecision.
_In dreams He has made you wise
With the wisdom of silence and prayer...._
Coming and going, between the leap-frogging of the green figures and the
white.
_God, Who has blinded your eyes
With the dusk of your hair...._
Brown hair, sleek and thin, brown hair that wouldn't go grey.
And the evening would go on, soundless and calm, with soft, annihilating
feet, with the soft, cruel feet of oblivion.