Day's End and Other Stories (6 page)

Some photographs he would pick up twice or even three times. At one of these he shook his head and murmured: ‘Who's that, wearing that big brooch?'

‘That's mother.'

‘Who?'

‘It's mother. This is the same brooch.'

He saw her finger the brooch on her dress, yet he did not understand. She looked dismayed, weary and ready to cry. He took the other photograph she held out to him.

It was of himself, he could see as much. What black hair, what a look of something solid and contented, what a buttonhole he had! And for a moment he reflected how he had loved flowers and in the early days had grown, in spring, daffodils, crocuses and primroses of different colours, and in summer larkspur, sunflowers, stocks, columbine and a lily which had had petals looking like drops of blood.

What had become of that lily? Where was it? And suddenly he wanted to ask Henrietta, but he only said:

‘I'm thirsty. Some water.'

He was given some water – and so it seemed to him – that some one impersonal and unknown gave him the water. A confusion spread over him. He wanted to ask: ‘Who are you? Why are you waiting? Why am I here?'

Instead he motioned feebly with his head and said:

‘Leave me alone. Take them away.'

He closed his eyes and there was for a long time no sound, no pain either in his head or at his heart.

XIII

He awoke and opened his eyes, the lids of which felt sad and drooping. It was dark and he could no
longer see the poplars. Right across the window stretched the Milky Way, in a sky of deep, sombre blue.

His head was full of dreams, uppermost of which was an odd dream of a money-bag tied to a tall arm of a fir-tree. His efforts to reach this bag were all in vain. He could not jump high enough, the bag would not shake off, and though he chopped constantly at the tree it never fell. And so he was miserable, agitated and in despair when he woke.

Suddenly in the darkness he said: ‘Where are you?'

There was silence. He began to ask himself: ‘Where is Henrietta? Why have I been left alone? How long have I been alone?'

To all this no answer came. Outside, except for the poplars sighing over the duck-pond, it was silent too. He lay listening, looking at the Milky Way.

He felt tired. How long was life to last? How long had it lasted? How long since he had lain here?

These questions were not answered either. His mind wandered off to thinking of the orchard, of the number of sacks in the corn-loft, of all the photographs Henrietta had showed him that day. A taste of frumenty, which he had not tasted since boyhood, came suddenly into his mouth, and this taste produced memories of the days when he had been a young man, had chased rats in the river, got drunk at fairs, and caught eels in summer before dawn.

He felt sad. In sadness he invariably reproached
himself. Now he began to belittle his own life, feeling contemptuous in a feeble way of his lack of foresight, decision and achievement. He chided himself.

‘I have done nothing. I have not provided for Henrietta.'

How this thought troubled him, how his brow ached with it. He saw once again the fir-tree with the money-bag in its branches. He thought of how he must shake it down and his frame trembled as if he were really shaking it.

His despair grew deeper. In his despair the Milky Way seemed to reel backwards and forwards across the bluish sky.

Suddenly Israel pulled himself upright, tried to push back the bedclothes, failed, tried once more, and succeeding at length, put his tottering legs to the floor.

As he tried to walk he too seemed to reel. He seemed to smell something burning, yet it was cold, he shivered and the latch of the door was like ice. In order to walk he had to strain his shoulders, his heart, his stomach, and most of all his legs, which did not seem to belong to him.

Droves of stars, like sheep, kept flocking before his eyes. When he reached the room where he had left the money a horrible greenness prevented his seeing anything. Then when this passed a clear, transparent blue came, like a summer sky, and he was able to see the window and the bureau with its littered papers and the leather-bag.

The journey back was longer, more painful, more confused with shapes, colours and noises than the first had been. Yet at the back of all this was a dim sense of satisfaction that he could distinguish a shape from a colour, and the chest-of-drawers from the bed.

He lay down again, tired out. He shivered awfully, placed the money on his chest, and lay gazing at the sky. How far off it seemed, how many stars there were! And he thought: ‘If I could lie here and count all the stars I should still live a long time.'

Yet if he was to go on living there would be no farm, no cows, no orchard to live for, and he thought of how unhappy he would be.

How unhappy he was! His feet were numbed and the money, which he had placed on his chest, was too heavy ever to be lifted away again, and heavy also were the spasms going through his heart and the pain where the ball had struck him.

Suddenly the ball rolled by again and with the ball came a smell of frumenty. Then both were gone.

The room seemed to grow darker. Farther and farther seemed to stretch away the sky, the Milky Way and the stars. For one instant Israel longed desperately for lines to catch eels with, for summer, for the red ball of his childhood. And when none of these things were attainable he caught himself sinking into a sadness without terror, but with reproach and with regret.

‘If only it had been different,' he thought.

He closed his eyes. And suddenly the young fir-tree, most graceful and lovely, stood up in the darkness before him. And whether because of this or not he knew that his life could not have been different. He saw this sadly, but clearly. And he saw suddenly the face of the man who had come and given him details of the burial of his pigs, the depth of the pit, the amount of lime, when swine-fever had come. And this to him was horrible and he shrieked: ‘Leave me alone! For God's sake go away!' Then he was quiet and lay still, listening. In the stillness it seemed to him that he heard the sound of bells on a winter evening. They came closer, jangled in his ears, and then died in the distance. He pursued them, trying to catch them as he had tried to catch the ball and the smell of frumenty. But they escaped him. Silence and darkness came, and he lay listening, longing with all his might for sounds, for shapes and light.

And suddenly the fir-tree appeared again, dark and sad-looking. Its branches trembled, whispered and sighed. And it seemed to him that they were whispering, ‘We are falling, we are falling.' And he felt he must reply to them, ‘Fall on me – I shan't feel you, I shall never know.'

Somehow he expressed this thought and waited. His body felt light and frail, like a shell. Yet he longed for the tree to fall, cease its agony and cover him.

And suddenly in the branches of the tree a lovely commotion began, as of gladness and relief, all the
leaves seemed to shake with laughter, and the tree did fall.

And in that moment his beard gave a sleepy droop, his hands fell away from his chest, and he paused to draw a long breath in which, too, was relief, thankfulness and an end.

Again and again, shaking with anger, his voice bellowed up the stairs:

‘Janet! Janet! when are you coming down?'

But the woman in the bed only hunched her shoulders, and shrinking deeper beneath the sheets, remained silent. The flame of a candle standing on the chest of drawers at the bedside reeled and uprighted itself, burning with a proud, long sheath of light. In the shining eyes of the woman, as she watched it carelessly, its reflections were sharp and bright, giving them the same air of serene indomitable pride visible in the slow twining of a single black curl about her long right forefinger.

The voice called again, imperatively: ‘Janet, Janet!' For a moment the motion of the finger went on, then suddenly the hair fell in a dark ringlet across her uncovered breast, and she answered slowly: ‘I'm coming now,' and swung her feet to the floor.

She carried the candle with her to the dressing-table and set it against the clock there. The hands stood at half-past three. She shuddered and yawned, then went to the little cracked washstand in the
corner and dipped her hands into the water. Her fingers moved like the pale feelers of some slow water creature, listless and dispirited. Her movements were apprehensive, too, as if she expected every moment another reminder from the voice below, and she brushed her hair in long, nervous sweeps that set her ears tingling, and stared at her young face in the glass from under lashes that blinked swiftly, as if repressing desperately a flood of regretful weeping.

And then again the voice from below startled her: ‘When the devil do you think you're going to be ready, eh?'

Her lips moved quickly in a sharp reply and snapped together again. The other voice growled:

‘Every one else is on the road. Didn't they wake you goin' past? For God's sake hurry!'

Without another word she dressed quickly, almost viciously. From the road outside the low rumble of passing vehicles reached her, with the sharp clap of horses' feet and an occasional shout. When she had finished her hasty dressing she drew up the blind in impatient jerks and looked down into the street below. Between the long gulf of dark houses was passing a ragged procession of wagonettes, carts, vans and traps, each with its pair of lamps shining over the shadowy figures of the riders, men and women and even children, huddled together in the chill summer darkness. The sight seemed to weary her afresh and suddenly she blew out the candle fiercely. In the other houses there were no lights, and except for the
lamps passing endlessly below, and a few stars hanging over the roofs in the clear sky, the sombre darkness was unbroken.

As she was descending the stairs, the warm smell of fresh-baked bread rose and met her. In a moment her nostrils seemed to quiver with nausea and she stood still, trembling. Then her husband came running from the bake-house, loaded with a great basket of fancy rolls. She could hear his breath hissing through his teeth. He caught sight of her standing there, and shouted as he passed out: ‘Don't stand there like a dummy! Do something! You see how late we are!'

When he returned his mouth was full of bread. Angry and excited, he thrust a basket into her hands and told her to work. She obeyed without a word, but he filled four baskets to her one. She shuddered when he came near her. Everything – the sight of his lank figure, its pale, thin face running with sweat, its shirt wide open at the chest, its apron flapping like a dusty flag about his knees as he scurried hither and thither, its long, lean arms, its splay feet thrust into untidy slippers – was all hateful to her in its meanness. She flung her basket of rolls and pastries carelessly into the cart outside. One or two were damaged and thick jam ran from their wounds.

In the bake-house she asked: ‘About breakfast?'

He pointed to her damaged pastries which he had discovered and brought in. ‘Clear your rubbish up,' he sneered. ‘And be quick!'

She snatched a roll. An oath was flung at her, but a moment later he shuffled off again, stuffing the pastries greedily into his own mouth. As she stood there eating tastelessly, a grey light began to penetrate the floury windows, and she heard some sparrows set up a confusion on the roofs outside. But the signs of dawn only seemed to increase her aversion against the day which seemed to stretch endlessly before her.

Less than an hour later they drove off through the grey light of the street. The dawn had still not come. The long, continuous procession was still phantomlike, the singing sound of its wheels mysterious, and its figures like a crowd of fleeing refugees. Only the bluff hails of the men and the shrill shouts of the women and children revealed their destination.

‘Burton Fair again! Burton Fair!'

‘By God, the years roll round!'

Often the baker would join in with hoarse, croaking greetings to his friends. At his side, however, Janet never spoke, but locked her arms across her breast and tried to keep from shivering. As they drove on the chill air began to awaken her hunger and sometimes, when the horse fell into a walk, she would catch the sweet smell of warm bread still rising from the cart beneath. But she said nothing. The sensation of hunger grew into a pain. She began to wish she had eaten greedily, like her husband, but she remembered the long hours of twisting, weighing, and twisting the dough until midnight and recalled
her sickness at the sight and touch of the rows and rows of pale, unbaked shapes that were to be sold at the fair on the following day.

Once she fell into a doze, but her hunger woke her again. When she looked around she saw that the sun had risen. The long line of vehicles had put out its lights while she slept. And now on the grasses and wheat-ears, over the waving red oat-stalks, on the spiders' threads in the hedges, and dripping from the trees, everywhere she could see the heavy dew shimmering exquisitely. Overhead the larks were singing. Along the hedge-sides blackbirds squawked in terror, brushing off the dew with their wings. And whenever she bent her head against the breeze made by the motion of the cart, she could feel a faint mist settling in cool dampness on her face and hair.

A long hill, arched by great beeches and elms, came into sight. She watched the thin dark line of carts climbing it laboriously. On the nearer vehicles she could see the ribbons on the horses and women begin to sag listlessly, without a flutter, as the horses slowed down. Under the trees there was no wind. The thick roof of leaves rustled with the sound of wheels grinding, and of voices chattering gaily, and the sun threw stripes of gold between the trees on the glittering harness and the bright heads of the women.

She suffered the climb in silence. The hill seemed interminable. All the horses blew out great rays of cloudy breath and groaned heavily. Then, just as it seemed they would never reach the top, she was conscious
of something green flashing by, mounting the hill like an arrow. Like her, every one followed with astonishment the course of that bright green trap, ascending effortlessly. The ring of its horse's hoofs was like the crack of bullets in a quiet wood. The whisper travelled along the line like a spark: