The H.G. Wells Reader (94 page)

“Provinder,” he whispered, drawing near to the Inn. “Cold sirloin for choice. And nut-brown brew and wheaten bread.”

The nearer he came to the place the more he liked it. The windows on the ground floor were long and low, and they had pleasing red blinds. The green tables outside were agreeably ringed with memories of former drinks and an extensive grape vine spread level branches across the whole front of the place. Against the wall was a broken oar, two boat-hooks and the stained and faded red cushions of a pleasure boat. One went up three steps to the glass-panelled door and peeped into a broad, low room with a bar and beer engine, behind which were many bright and helpful looking bottles against mirrors, and great and little pewter measures, and bottles fastened in brass wire upside down with their corks replaced by taps, and a white china cask labelled “Shrub,” and cigar boxes and boxes of cigarettes, and a couple of Toby jugs and a beautifully coloured hunting scene framed and glazed, showing the most elegant and beautiful people taking Piper's Cherry Brandy, and cards such as the law requires about the dilution of spirits and the illegality of bringing children into bars, and satirical verses about swearing and asking for credit, and three very bright red-cheeked wax apples and a round-shaped clock.

But these were the mere background to the really pleasant thing in the spectacle, which was quite the plumpest woman Mr. Polly had ever seen, seated in an armchair in the midst of all these bottles and glasses and glittering things, peacefully and tranquilly and without the slightest loss of dignity, asleep. Many people would have called her a fat woman, but Mr. Polly's innate sense of epithet told him from the outset that plump was the word. She had shapely brows and a straight, well-shaped nose, kind lines and contentment about her mouth, and beneath it the jolly chins clustered like chubby little cherubim about the feet of an Assumptioning-Madonna. Her plumpness was firm and pink and wholesome, and her hands, dimpled at every joint, were clasped in front of her; she seemed as it were to embrace herself with infinite confidence and kindliness as one who knew herself good in substance, good in
essence, and would show her gratitude to God by that ready acceptance of all that he had given her. Her head was a little on one side, not much, but just enough to speak of trustfulness, and rob her of the stiff effect of self-reliance. And she slept.

“
My
sort,” said Mr. Polly, and opened the door very softly, divided between the desire to enter and come nearer and an instinctive indisposition to break slumbers so manifestly sweet and satisfying.

She awoke with the start, and it amazed Mr. Polly to see swift terror flash into her eyes. Instantly it had gone again.

“Law!” she said, her face softening with relief, “I thought you were Jim.”

“I'm never Jim,” said Mr. Polly.

“You've got his sort of hat.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Polly, and leant over the bar.

“It just came into my head you was Jim,” said the plump lady, dismissed the optic and stood up. “I believe I was having forty winks,” she said, “if all the truth was told. What can I do for you?”

“Cold meat?” said Mr. Polly.

“There is cold meat,” the plump woman admitted.

“And room for it.”

The plump woman came and leant over the bar and regarded him judicially, but kindly. “There's some cold boiled beef,” she said, and added: “A bit of crisp lettuce?”

“New mustard,” said Mr. Polly.

“And a tankard!”

“A tankard.”

They understood each other perfectly.

“Looking for work?” asked the plump woman.

“In a way,” said Mr. Polly.

They smiled like old friends.

Whatever the truth may be about love, there is certainly such a thing as friendship at first sight. They liked each other's voices, they liked each other's way of smiling and speaking.

“It's such beautiful weather this spring,” said Mr. Polly, explaining everything.

“What sort of work do you want?” she asked.

“I've never properly thought that out,” said Mr. Polly. “I've been looking round—for Ideas.”

“Will you have your beef in the tap or outside? That's the tap.”

Mr. Polly had a glimpse of an oaken settle. “In the tap will be handier for you,” he said.

“Hear that?” said the plump lady.

“Hear what?”

“Listen.”

Presently the silence was broken by a distant howl. “Oooooo-ver!” “Eh?” she said.

He nodded.

“That's the ferry. And there isn't a ferryman.”

“Could I?”

“Can you punt?”

“Never tried.”

“Well—pull the pole out before you reach the end of the punt, that's all. Try.”

Mr. Polly went out again into the sunshine.

At times one can tell so much briefly. Here are the facts then—bare. He found a punt and a pole, got across to the steps on the opposite side, picked up an elderly gentleman in an alpaca jacket and a pith helmet, cruised with him vaguely for twenty minutes, conveyed him tortuously into the midst of a thicket of forget-me-not spangled sedges, splashed some water-weed over him, hit him twice with the punt pole, and finally landed him, alarmed but abusive, in treacherous soil at the edge of a hay meadow about forty yards down stream, where he immediately got into difficulties with a noisy, aggressive little white dog, which was guardian of a jacket.

Mr. Polly returned in a complicated manner to his moorings.

He found the plump woman rather flushed and tearful, and seated at one of the green tables outside.

“I been laughing at you,” she said.

“What for?” asked Mr. Polly.

“I ain't 'ad such a laugh since Jim come 'ome. When you 'it 'is 'ed, it 'urt my side.”

“It didn't hurt his head—not particularly.”

She waved her head. “Did you charge him anything?”

“Gratis,” said Mr. Polly. “I never thought of it.”

The plump woman pressed her hands to her side and laughed silently for a space. “You ought to have charged him sumpthing,” she said. “You better come and have your cold meat, before you do any more puntin'. You and me'll get on together.”

Presently she came and stood watching him eat. “You eat better than you punt,” she said, and then, “I dessay you could learn to punt.”

“Wax to receive and marble to retain,” said Mr. Polly. “This beef is a Bit of All Right, Ma'm. I could have done differently if I hadn't been punting on an empty stomach. There's a lear feeling as the pole goes in—”

“I've never held with fasting,” said the plump woman.

“You want a ferryman?”

“I want an odd man about the place.”

“I'm odd, all right. What's your wages?”

“Not much, but you get tips and pickings. I've a sort of feeling it would suit you.”

“I've a sort of feeling it would. What's the duties? Fetch and carry? Ferry? Garden? Wash bottles?
Ceteris paribus
?”

“That's about it,” said the fat woman.

“Give me a trial.”

“I've more than half a mind. Or I wouldn't have said anything about it. I suppose you're all right. You've got a sort of half-respectable look about you. I suppose you 'aven't
done
anything.”

“Bit of Arson,” said Mr. Polly, as if he jested.

“So long as you haven't the habit,” said the plump woman.

“My first time, M'am,” said Mr. Polly, munching his way through an excellent big leaf of lettuce. “And my last.”

“It's all right if you haven't been to prison,” said the plump woman. “It isn't what a man's happened to do makes 'im bad. We all happen to do things at times. It's bringing it home to him, and spoiling his self-respect does the mischief. You don't look a wrong 'un. 'Ave you been to prison?

“Never.”

“Nor a reformatory? Nor any institution?”

“Not me. Do I
look
reformed?”

“Can you paint and carpenter a bit?”

“Well, I'm ripe for it.”

“Have a bit of cheese?”

“If I might.”

And the way she brought the cheese showed Mr. Polly that the business was settled in her mind.

He spent the afternoon exploring the premises of the Potwell Inn and learning the duties that might be expected of him, such as tarring fences, digging potatoes, swabbing out boats, helping people land, embarking, landing and time-keeping for the hirers of two rowing boats and one Canadian canoe, baling out the said vessels and concealing their leaks and defects from prospective hirers, persuading inexperienced hirers to start down stream rather than up, repairing rowlocks and taking inventories of returning boats with a view to supplementary charges, cleaning boots, sweeping chimneys, house-painting, cleaning windows, sweeping out and sanding the tap and bar, cleaning pewter, washing glasses, turpentining woodwork, whitewashing generally, plumbing and engineering, repairing locks and clocks, waiting and tapster's work generally, beating carpets and mats, cleaning bottles and saving corks, taking into the cellar, moving, tapping and connecting beer casks with their engines, blocking and destroying wasps' nests, doing forestry with several trees, drowning superfluous kittens, and dog-fancying as required, assisting in the rearing of ducklings and the care of various poultry, bee-keeping, stabling, baiting and grooming horses and asses, cleaning and “garing” motor cars and bicycles, inflating tires and repairing punctures, recovering the bodies of drowned persons from the river as required, and assisting people in trouble in the water, first-aid and sympathy, improvising and superintending a bathing station for visitors, attending inquest and funerals in the interests of the establishment, scrubbing floors and all the ordinary duties of a scullion, the ferry, chasing hens and goats from the adjacent cottages out of the garden, making up paths and superintending drainage, gardening generally,
delivering bottled beer and soda water syphons in the neighbourhood, running miscellaneous errands, removing drunken and offensive persons from the premises by tact or muscle as occasion required, keeping in with the local policemen, defending the premises in general and the orchard in particular from predators. . . .

“Can but try it,” said Mr. Polly towards tea time. “When there's nothing else on hand I suppose I might do a bit of fishing.”

Mr. Polly was particularly charmed by the ducklings.

They were piping about among the vegetables in the company of their foster mother, and as he and the plump woman came down the garden path the little creatures mobbed them, and ran over their boots and in between Mr. Polly's legs, and did their best to be trodden upon and killed after the manner of ducklings all the world over. Mr. Polly had never been near young ducklings before, and their extreme blondness and the delicate completeness of their feet and beaks filled him with admiration. It is open to question whether there is anything more friendly in the world than a very young duckling. It was with the utmost difficulty that he tore himself away to practise punting, with the plump woman coaching from the bank. Punting he found was difficult, but not impossible, and towards four o'clock he succeeded in conveying a second passenger across the sundering flood from the inn into the unknown.

As he returned, slowly indeed, but now one might almost say surely, to the peg to which the punt was moored, he became aware of a singularly delightful human being awaiting him on the bank. She stood with her legs very wide apart, her hands behind her back, and her head a little on one side, watching his gestures with an expression of disdainful interest. She had black hair and brown legs and a buff short frock and very intelligent eyes. And when he had reached a sufficient proximity she remarked: “Hello!”

“Hello,” said Mr. Polly, and saved himself in the nick of time from disaster.

“Silly,” said the young lady, and Mr. Polly lunged nearer.

“What are you called?”

“Polly.”

“Liar!”

“Why?”

“I'm Polly.”

“Then I'm Alfred. But I meant to be Polly.”

“I was first.”

“All right. I'm going to be the ferryman.”

“I see. You'll have to punt better.”

“You should have seen me early in the afternoon.”

“I can imagine it. . . . I've seen the others.”

“What others?” Mr. Polly had landed now and was fastening up the punt.

“What Uncle Jim has scooted.”

“Scooted?”

“He comes and scoots them. He'll scoot you too, I expect.”

A mysterious shadow seemed to fall athwart the sunshine and pleasantness of the Potwell Inn.

“I'm not a scooter,” said Mr. Polly.

“Uncle Jim is.”

She whistled a little flatly for a moment, and threw small stones at a clump of meadow-sweet that sprang from the bank. The she remarked:

“When Uncle Jim comes back he'll cut your insides out. . . . P'raps, very likely, he'll let me see.”

There was a pause.

“
Who's
Uncle Jim?” Mr. Polly asked in a faded voice.

“Don't you know who Uncle Jim is? He'll show you. He's a scorcher, is Uncle Jim. He only came back just a little time ago, and he's scooted three men. He don't like strangers about, don't Uncle Jim. He can swear. He's going to teach me, soon as I can whissle properly.”

“Teach you to wear!” cried Mr. Polly, horrified.

“And spit,” said the little girl proudly. “He says I'm the gamest little beast he ever came across—ever.”

For the first time in his life it seemed to Mr. Polly that he had come across something sheerly dreadful. He stared at the pretty thing of flesh and spirit in front of him, lightly balanced on its stout little legs and looking at him with eyes that had still to learn the expression of either disgust or fear.