Stories (48 page)

“Well I did I did I did I did I did….” He paused for breath, his eyes popping, and his older brother chanted: “No you didn’t, you didn’t, you didn’t.”

“Yes I did I did I did I did….”

And the father said, brisk but irritated: “Now then, Dennis, use your loaf, you couldn’t have, because it is obvious you have not.”

“But I did I did I did I did….”

“Well, then, you had better go out of the room until you come to your senses and are fit company for rational people,” said his father, triumphantly in the right.

The child choked on his battling breath, and ran howling out into the garden. Where, after a minute, the older boy followed, ostensibly to control him.

“He did what?” I asked.

“Who knows?” said Mary. There she sat, at the head of the table, bright-eyed and smiling, serving apple pie and custard, a dark changeling in the middle of her gingery, freckled family.

Her husband said, brisk: “What do you mean, who knows? You know quite well.”

“It’s his battle with Basil Smith,” said Mary to me. “Ever since Basil Smith shot at his blue rabbit and broke it, there’s been evil feeling on both sides. Dennis claims that he set fire to the Smith farmhouse last night.”

“
What?
”

Mary pointed through a low window, where the Smiths’ house showed, two fields away, like a picture in a frame.

William said: “He’s hysterical and he’s got to stop it.”

“Well,” said Mary, “if Basil shot my blue rabbit I’d want to burn his house down too. It seems quite reasonable to me.”

William let out an exclamation of rage, checked himself because of my presence, shot fiery glances all round, and went out, taking the youngest boy with him.

“Well,” said Mary. “Well …” She smiled. “Come into the pottery, I’ve got something to show you.” She went ahead along a stone passage, a tall, lazy-moving woman, her bright brown hair catching the light. As we passed an open window, there was a fearful row of shrieks, yells, blows; and we saw the three boys rolling and tussling in the grass, while William danced futilely around them shouting: “Stop it, stop it at once!” Their mother proceeded, apparently uninterested, into the potting room.

This held the potting apparatus, and a great many jars, plates, and jugs of all colours and kinds, ranged on shelves. She lifted down a creature from a high shelf, and set it before me. Then she left it with me, while she bent to attend to the kiln.

It was yellowish-brown, a sort of rabbit or hare, but with ears like neither—narrower, sharp, short, like the pointed unfolding shoots of a plant. It had a muzzle more like a dog’s than a rabbit’s; it looked as if it did not eat grass—perhaps insects and beetles? Yellowish eyes were set on the front of its head. Its hind legs were less powerful than a rabbit’s, or hare’s; and I saw its talents were for concealment, not for escaping enemies in great pistoning leaps. It rested on short, stubby hind legs, with front paws held up in a queer, twisted, almost affected posture, head turned to one side, and ears furled around each other. It looked as if it had been wound up like a spring, and had half-unwound. It looked like a strangely shaped rock, or like the harsh twisted plants that sometimes grow on rocks.

Mary came back and stood by me, her head slightly on one side, with her characteristic small patient smile that nevertheless held a sweet concealed exasperation.

“Well,” she said, “there it is.”

I hesitated, because it was not the creature I had seen on the old potter’s palm.

“What was an English rabbit doing there at all?” she asked.

“I didn’t say it was an English rabbit.”

But of course, she was right: this animal was far more in keeping with the dried mud houses, the dusty plain, than the pretty furry rabbit I had dreamed.

I smiled at Mary, because she was humouring me, as she humoured her husband and her children. For some reason I thought of her first husband and her lovers, two of whom I had known. At moments of painful crisis, or at parting, had she stood thus—a calm, pretty woman, smiling her sweetly satirical smile, as if to say: “Well, make a fuss if you like, it’s got nothing at all to do with me”? If so, I’m surprised that one of them didn’t murder her.

“Well,” I said at last, “thanks. Can I take this thing, whatever it is?”

“Of course. I made it for you. You must admit, it may not be pretty, but it’s more likely to be true.”

I accepted this, as I had to; and I said: “Well, thanks for coming down to our level long enough to play games with us.”

At which there was a flash of yellow light from her luminous eyes, while her face remained grave, as if amusement, or acknowledgement of the truth, could only be focussed in her thus, through a change of light in her irises.

A few minutes later, the three boys and the father came round this part of the house in a whirlwind of quarrelling energy. The aggrieved Dennis was in tears, and the father almost beside himself. Mary, who until now had remained apart from it all, gave an exclamation, slipped on a coat, and said: “I can’t stand this. I’m going to talk to Basil Smith.”

She went out, and I watched her cross the fields to the other house.

Meanwhile Dennis, scarlet and suffering, came into the pottery in search of his mother. He whirled about, looking for her, then grabbed my creature, said: “Is that for me?”, snatched it possessively to him when I said: “No, it’s for me,” set it down when I told him to, and stood breathing like a furnace, his freckles like tea leaves against his skin.

“Your mother’s gone to see Mr. Smith,” I said.

“He shot my rabbit,” he said.

“It wasn’t a real rabbit.”

“But he thought it was a real rabbit.”

“Yes, but you knew he would think so, and that he’d shoot at it.”

“He killed it!”

“You wanted him to!”

At which he let out a scream and danced up and down like a mad boy, shouting: “I didn’t I didn’t I didn’t I didn’t….”

His father, entering on this scene, grabbed him by his flailing arms, fought the child into a position of tensed stillness, and held him there, saying, in a frenzy of incredulous common-sense: “I’ve never—in—my—life—heard—such—lunacy!”

Now Mary came in, accompanied by Mr. Smith, a large, fair, youngish man, with a sweet open face, which was uncomfortable now, because of what he had agreed to do.

“Let that child go,” said Mary to her husband. Dennis dropped to the floor, rolled over, and lay face down, heaving with sobs.

“Call the others!”

Resignation itself, William went to the window, and shouted: “Harry, John, Harry, John, come here at once, your mother wants you!” He then stood, with folded arms, a defeated philosopher, grinning angrily while the two other children came in and stood waiting by the door.

“Now,” said Mary. “Get up, Dennis.”

Dennis got up, his face battered with suffering, and looked with hope towards his mother.

Mary looked at Basil Smith.

Who said, careful to get the words right: “I am very sorry that I killed your rabbit.”

The father let out a sharp outraged breath, but kept quiet at a glance from his wife.

The chest of Dennis swelled and sank—in one moment there would be a storm of tears.

“Dennis,” said Mary, “say after me: ‘Mr. Smith, I’m very sorry I set fire to your house.’”

Dennis said in a rush, to get it out in time: “Mr. Smith I’m very sorry I set fire to your … to your … to your …” He sniffed and heaved, and Mary said firmly: “House, Dennis.”

“House,” said Dennis, in a wail. He then rushed at his mother, buried his head in her waist, and stood howling and wrestling, while she laid large hands on his ginger head and smiled over it at Mr. Basil Smith.

“Dear God,” said her husband, letting his folded arms drop
dramatically, now the ridiculous play was over. “Come and have a drink, Basil.”

The men went off. The two other children stood silent and abashed, because of the force of Dennis’s emotion, for which they clearly felt partly responsible. Then they slipped out to play. The house was tranquil again, save for Dennis’s quietening sobs. Soon Mary took the boy up to his room to sleep it off. I stayed in the great, stone-floored pottery, looking at my strange twisted animal, and at the blues and greens of Mary’s work all around the walls.

Supper was early and soon over. The boys were silent, Dennis too limp to eat. Bed was prescribed for everyone. William kept looking at his wife, his mouth set under his ginger moustache, and he could positively be heard thinking: Filling them full of this nonsense while I try to bring them up reasonable human beings! But she avoided his eyes, and sat calm and remote, serving mashed potatoes and brown stew. It was only when we had finished the washing-up that she smiled at him—her sweet, amused smile. It was clear they needed to be alone. I said I wanted an early night and left them: he had gone to touch her before I was out of the room.

Next day, a warm summer Sunday, everyone was relaxed, the old house peaceful. I left that evening, with my clay creature, and Mary said smiling, humouring me: “Let me know how things go on with your place, wherever it is.” But I had her beautiful animal in my suitcase, so I did not mind being humoured.

That night, at home, I went into the marketplace, and up to the old potter, who stilled his wheel when he saw me coming. The small boy lifted his frowning attentive eyes from the potter’s hands and smiled at me. I held out Mary’s creature. The old man took it, screwed up his eyes to examine it, nodded. He held it in his left hand, scattered water on it with his right, held his palm down towards the littered dust, and the creature jumped off it and away, with quick, jerky movements, not stopping until it was through the huts, clear of the settlement, and against a small outcrop of jagged brown rocks where it raised its front paws and froze in the posture Mary had created for it. Overhead an eagle or a hawk floated by, looked down, but failed to see Mary’s creature, and floated on, up and away into the
great blue spaces over the flat dry plain to the mountains. I heard the wheel creak; the old man was back at work. The small boy crouched, watching, and the water flung by the potter’s right hand sprayed the bowl he was making and the child’s face, in a beautiful curving spray of glittering light.

T
he chair facing the door was covered in coffee-brown satin. Maureen Jeffries wore dark brown silk tights and a white ruffled shirt. She would look a delectable morsel in the great winged chair. No sooner was she arranged in it, however, than she got out again (with a pathetic smile of which she was certainly unconscious) and sat less dramatically in the corner of a yellow settee. Here she remained some minutes, thinking that after all, her letter of invitation had said, jocularly (she was aware the phrase had an arch quality she did not altogether like): “Come and meet the new me!”

What was new was her hairstyle, that she was a stone lighter in weight, that she been dowered afresh by nature (a word she was fond of) with delicacy of complexion. There was no doubt all this would be better displayed in the big brown chair: she made the change back again.

The second time she removed herself to the yellow settee was out of decency, a genuine calculation of kindness. To ask Peggy Bayley to visit her at all was brave of her, she had needed to swallow pride. But Peggy would not be able to compete with the ruffled lace shirt and all that it set off, and while this would be so precisely because of her advantages—that she was married, comfortably, to Professor Bayley (whose mistress she, Maureen, had been for four years)—nevertheless there was no need to rub in her, Maureen’s, renewed and indeed incredible attractiveness, even though it had been announced by the words: “the new me.”

Besides, her attractiveness was all that she, Maureen, had to face the world with again, and why not display it to the wife of Professor Bayley, who had not married herself, but had married Peggy instead? Though (she whispered it to herself, fierce and bitter) if she had tricked Tom Bayley into it, put pressure on him, as Peggy had, no doubt she would be Mrs. Bayley…. She would go back to the brown chair.

But if she had tricked Tom into it, then it would have served her right, as it certainly served Peggy right, if from the start of this marriage Tom Bayley had insisted on a second bachelor flat into which she, Maureen, was never allowed to go, just as Peggy was not. She, Maureen, would have refused marriage on such terms, she must give herself credit for that; in fact, her insistence on fidelity from Tom, a natural philanderer, was doubtless the reason for his leaving her for Peggy. So on the whole she did not really envy Peggy, who had achieved marriage when she was already nearly forty with the eminent and attractive professor at the price of knowing from the start she would not be the only woman in his life; and knowing, moreover, she had achieved marriage by the oldest trick in the world….

At this point Maureen left the brown chair for the third time, found the yellow settee obvious, and sat on the floor, in the grip of self-disgust. She was viewing the deterioration of her character, even while she was unable to stop the flow of her bitter thoughts about Peggy. Viewing herself clear-sightedly had, in fact, been as much her occupation for the last six months of semi-retreat as losing a stone and regaining her beauty.