The Wooden Shepherdess Page 8

  Augustine’s story was growing more and more incoherent, but what happened next in fact was this. Once inside, he retreated behind his sister expecting the worst: yet that terrible Aunt ignored him. She stopped by the door, mumbling witchily under her breath (really rehearsing her speech while waiting her cue): then all of a sudden was gone. Mary and he were alone. The curtains were drawn, and outside a big black cloud had covered the sun: indoors it was almost dark—till there came a flicker of lightning, followed by thumpings of thunder that drowned the droning voices. Then a long pause, dismal with certainty something frightful was coming without knowing what (for biting is always punished).

  “I want to go somewhere,” Augustine told Mary loudly (the lightning had made it seem darker than ever in here: they could hardly see one another).

  “S-sh!” said Mary, “You’ll have to wait. First, you’ve got to be killed.”

  “Killed....” So that’s what mad aunts did when little boys bit! “Same as a farmer I’d seen grab one sheep out of the fifty penned in a fold, sit it upright on a bucket and cut its throat while the others just watched. And a picture hung on this Halton nursery wall: the boy tied up while a man dressed very like Aunt stood over him waving a knife.... It was Isaac of course, and Nanny had told me the boy didn’t get killed after all; but now I knew that she must have been wrong! And Mary I knew would really just watch, for the way she said ‘killed’ had sounded she didn’t care two pins I was going to be sat on a bucket and have my throat slit.”

  Meanwhile the remembered blood gushed down, the remembered sheep went suddenly limp with its tongue hanging out. But Augustine had stood there impatiently rocking from foot to foot, because there are needs which won’t wait even for murder.... Suddenly Aunt Berenice was with them again, and “Now!” thought Augustine. But no: for instead of taking a knife and sitting him up on a bucket at once, “Oh abhorréd ...” she whispered to Mary: and then when Mary looked blank, “Go on! What shall I do? What is it?” she prompted.

  “What-shall-I-do-what-is-it-keep-me-fast-from-Mother,” his sister whispered, like learning your prayers after Nanny.

  “‘I know nothing. Brother! Oh....’”

  “I-know-nothing Brother-o, I-think-she-means-to-kill-us ...”

  Out in the courtyard the Chorus voices ended in a dying fall. All of a sudden Aunt Berenice turned on Augustine, her glittering eyes half starting out of her head: “Now scream, you little beast!” she hissed, and shook him. But Augustine was far too terrified to scream. “You, then!” she said, turning in disgust to Mary; and out of a face still perfectly placid Mary let out a yell that had nearly burst his ear-drums—just as he felt the warm flood coursing down his leg.

  This had been one of those nightmares where people “change”; and after that scream even Mary—his only protector, his last anchor in the world of sanity—went mad as Aunt: she started gabbling meaningless words in two loud singsong voices! Yet those words weren’t quite meaningless enough, for again he caught something about “Mother” and “Means to kill us,” and “Has a sword.”—But this wasn’t Mother, though ... or, was it (for the worst thing about a nightmare is never to be quite sure who people are)? And she hadn’t got a sword—or had she? For now to his suggestible eye a blade indeed seemed to materialize out of nowhere into that terrible bleeding hand.

  “I was so petrified I still didn’t scream: for if even Mary was one of them after all there was no help in the whole world left to scream for.”

  As he struggled out the unwilling words Augustine relived his fear, waves of it prickled all over his scalp as he spoke. Scarcely intelligible though he was, something of what he was feeling got over to Janis; and Janis was deeply moved: “Why, you puir wee thing!” she exclaimed, and kissed him.

  Astonished—but strangely released—Augustine returned the kiss. Thereupon with a happy shiver she melted into his arms and they lay on the ground together, all infant terrors forgotten, the whole length of her body pressed against his, bone to his bone. After a moment or two their mouths met again, and she opened his lips with her tongue.

  18

  When Augustine and Janis got back they were riding a long way apart. Augustine was flushed, and Janis was white to the lips. But then, thought Janis, what Englishman ever had morals? Let all American maidens beware, for that famous English coldness is sheer hypocrisy: inside they’re just as much lechers as any Latin—and more of a menace because at least with a Latin you know where you are!

  You’d suppose she’d want to keep quiet about it; but no, she’d a duty. Like wildfire the news ran around that Augustine was not to be trusted: he didn’t know where to stop! For these were all “good” girls, be it understood: which merely meant not taking the ultimate step which made you a bad one, finding it simple—with practice, and help from the boy—to get complete satisfaction without.

  That Augustine was equally shocked and looked on Janis’s morals as worse than a whore’s entered none of their heads: for they hadn’t a notion how widely the code he conformed to differed from theirs. His English Gentleman’s one started off from the premiss that girls are “cold” and “pure,” which means that Nature has left them without any carnal urgings at all unless and until engendered by love. Perhaps his knowledge of girls was small, even granted his country and class; but Augustine had always been led to suppose that a girl, on the rare and almost incredible times that she starts, most certainly wouldn’t have started a thing that she didn’t intend to go through with; and then for the man to draw back is the grossest of insults (could even lead to her suicide, bearing in mind that she wouldn’t have possibly done it unless knocked clean off her perch by a deeply passionate love she thought was returned). So once this girl had begun and Augustine had let her begin he felt deeply committed: not that he’d had any wish to draw back, for few young men are lucky enough to start with anyone half so attractive as Janis; and Janis indeed had seemed consumed by a passionate love compared with which Cleopatra was almost an icicle.

  Janis moreover had done her best to inflame him as well: right up to the very last moment of all when, just in time, she had hit him across the face (for how could she know he wouldn’t abide by the rules of the game like a wholesome American boy?).

  It was telling Janis that story about his childhood had crumbled his last reserve—like a Chow when at last it consents to uncurl its tail; and if only he hadn’t, this mightn’t have happened. But then he might never have known what a sink she was, and have fallen really in love! For Augustine had liked her so much, till now: indeed only now he was finished with Janis and hated her guts did Augustine discover he must have been more than half in love with the girl before this horrible thing occurred: while Janis discovered her-self to be half in love with this terrible guy right now, even since ... could it even be really because of the way he’d behaved?

  But how could those two make it up, when each of them felt so grossly ill-used and insulted by someone without any morals at all? Janis could never forgive his brash assumption that she was the stuff unmarried mothers are made of: Augustine could never accept the idea of a man being used as merely a “thing,” without any nerves or needs of his own—as just an impersonal post for a girl to rub herself on....

  But the Pack had plenty to think about other than sex. The problem of getting their drink, for example. That Trooper whose ominous call at the store had scared Augustine so much: it wasn’t Augustine at all he was after. Normally Troopers were not concerned with enforcement (Troopers were State police, Prohibition was Federal law and Connecticut one of the only states where the Eighteenth Amendment had never been ratified): this was a nosey fellow however, and hand-in-glove with the Federal agents—as soon appeared when a number of farmers’ stills were discovered and seized, farmers whose names he had found in the ledger as billed for those sundries “useful for various purposes.”

  Troopers should never know more than is good for their health. One night this Trooper crashed a trip-wire suddenly tautened across th
e road: his machine was wrecked, he broke two ribs and his nose and the fat was properly in the fire. It was proved to the hilt that none of those raided farmers had done it; and yet it seemed odd if they really knew nothing that every last one of them had such a cast-iron alibi just for the night it occurred.

  Thus for a time the Pack went thirsty. Their usual sources had suddenly dried and it took them a while to discover the Dew Drop Inn, that road-house ten miles out on the New Milford Road.

  Prohibition was commonly blamed on the late war in “Yurrup”: American Mothers (they said) had wangled it through while their sons were fighting in France. Ree’s cousin Russell agreed in blaming the War, but argued more subtly: “Your darned War packed in too soon,” he complained to Augustine, “with hardly a shot fired” (he meant, an American shot). With an army of four million men—nearly twice the whole population of Wales—there were probably fewer American soldiers killed in total than Welsh ones.... General Pershing had done his best but he hadn’t had time: thus America found herself left with a wealth of hatred minted for war still nowhere near spent, yet suddenly robbed of its object. “To cap it,” said Russell, “the country was acting just like a turtle with bellyache (Boy, you could hear her gut rumble right through the horn!) blaming the world outside for her pains and drawing back into her shell, poor nut, to escape them!” In short the country had gone Isolationist, putting herself out of arm’s-reach of any outsider to work off hostility on: thus America had to divide against herself, to work off all this excess war-emotion (and surely safer this random way Prohibition provided, than any more rational fission of class-against-class or Black-against-White). “Just like a lonesome old monkey reduced to fighting front legs against back, his hind feet doing their best to scratch out his eyes and his teeth sunk deep in his own private parts....”

  If Russell was right, thought Augustine, the pundits would call this whole Prohibition behavior-pattern “Play Therapy.”

  Hardly indeed was “peace” declared before left-wingers began letting bombs off: all over the country a million men at once were on strike—and in Boston even the City Police struck. What Russell called a “Kilkenny-concatenation” of squalls of hurricane force and from every point of the compass soon had the Washington law-makers tossing around like corks. “Those days, if a statesman wasn’t a lightweight he sank— like President Wilson was sunk. So under Pussyfoot pressure it isn’t surprising those corks in Congress and Senate all voted like corks!—However,” said Russell, that wise young man: “These lightweight guys on Capitol Hill weren’t born yesterday—No, Sir! They’d voted Dry because they were pressured; but all the Enforcement Laws they cooked up don’t work—couldn’t ever have worked—and why? Because it’s my truly-belief they were never intended to work.”

  So the whole Enforcement set-up, Augustine thought, was meant to be crazy as well as it was so? Intended or not, the legal provisions seemed certainly odd to Augustine, with selling liquor a crime yet you couldn’t be faulted for buying it—only for toting it home, and that was a breach of the Constitution itself! Yet once you were home you were safe. You’d think that the one thing you do with a drink that really mattered a cent was you drink it; and yet they hadn’t made even a misdemeanour of drinking the stuff once you’d got it to drink.... These anomalies mightn’t have mattered so much if every-one wanted to make the thing work; but when most of you didn’t.... Well, such were the rules of the game.

  19

  Once big money has got involved, popular national games that attract professionals soon turn ugly and bloody. Nor had professional bootlegging teams got far to look for bloody-minded recruits: for among those four million “Veterans” trained and conditioned to kill there was hardly a tithe of a tithe who had fired one shot in anger in France: all too many had found their lives as Enlisted Men just months and months spent training, followed by even more months spent waiting discharge—with virgin trigger-fingers still itching.

  However the pulsing heart of the game lay more in its nationwide amateur wing, for it filled a long-felt want by releasing the lawless frontiersman buttoned in every American business-suit. Year after year the Amendment remained unrepealed for a simple reason: not even the Wettest of Wets really wished it repealed since, under its aegis, the young (and the not-quite-so-young) could unload their anarchical he-man instincts, and flout the Law with the bulk of the nation’s approval. To such, the liquor itself was not much more than a symbol. At dances, whenever a stag stepped out of the stag-line and Janis (or some other girl who was getting a rush) by-passed the Brooks-Brothers cut of his clothes to look for the bulge of a flask before saying “Love to,” teenage addiction to liquor was seldom the cause so much as a likely result: that illicit bulge was simply the badge of his manhood—a scalp.

  But now this manner of scalp was harder to win than it had been, down New Blandford way. Those raids had forced you to go ten miles further afield for your rye. This greatly increased the risk to your skin: for the Eighteenth Amendment had made “Transportation” of liquor a breach of the Constitution, which meant that even the auto itself which was caught with liquor aboard it was forfeit and Honor required you—if chased and you knew you couldn’t escape—to tread on the gas and drive for a pile-up. You ditched the other guy too, if you could; but if not, straight into a tree or a wall so that all the Federals got was a write-off wreck (only last year, up in Maine, it was doing just this that Russell’s big brother got killed).

  If they chased you they shot-up your tires; and the cars which belonged to the Pack were none of them speedy, they hadn’t the hope of a snow-flake in hell of escaping if chased. So you just had to trust your supplier to know if an ambush was set and to send you away empty-handed for once—provided his spies didn’t fail him.

  Much of this lore Augustine extracted from Russ before anyone thought to warn him about that brother. The rest came mostly from Sadie: for lately his early reactions to Sadie had changed. That reputed Student of Law, who reputedly once drove trucks for a mob and everyone said had been laid by the Big Shot himself—since Sadie made no parade of being a “good” girl, aiming rather to have you suppose her worse than she was.... Of course she was terribly unattractive, but really not such a bad old thing after all in a way....

  Ever since his famous “insult” to Janis, Sadie had grudgingly showed a new-found respect for Augustine: in spite of his accent this wasn’t no vaudeville Clarence or Claude and she didn’t mean Maybe! This started her figuring over again what had landed him here—right out in the sticks, in a no-account place like New Blandford, and bumming around with a bunch of no-account kids. Who was the guy, anyway? Some sort of British Lord? For this wasn’t no brush-ape—No, Sir! Spita look like he trim his own hair with a handsaw, and spita his threads let in daylight and sorta smell ocean like someone he maybe jump ship on the sea-board, she’d tell the world he had background—and how! The guy was high-class, in any crowd he’d be high-class.... Sister, your slip is showing....

  Indeed (but without getting goofy about him like Ree) it had dawned on Sadie that making burlesque-show passes—Kee-rist, with that old routine she had loused things up good and proper! She better had mend her manners.... Little-Miss-Dirtymouth, go fetch the soap....

  Anyway, Sadie had turned off the heat and Augustine responded. Regarding the tricks of the trade and ways of outwitting the Law this Sadie certainly knew her onions; and ever since Janis he’d felt more and more like attempting a getaway. Therefore he made great efforts to stomach the scent she was always drenched in and started attending her antinomian seminars, drinking in all the expert instruction he could. This Sadie had guts, as well as she knew all the ropes: she might even prove useful support if ever it came to the push....

  Hold hard, though! For passing the time of day in a friendlier way with a Sadie was one thing—perhaps even picking her brains; but accepting actual help from a creature so common was altogether.... However it had to be faced that there wasn’t much practical help to be hoped from the res
t of the crowd! Lord, he was fed to the teeth with the place: not one of them here would he really miss when he left, apart from Russell (and when he remembered it, Ree ... ).

  How he longed to be home!

  20

  “Home....” At Mellton, the topic still was Nellie’s living to earn.

  “Well,” said Wantage to Mrs. Winter, “How about teaching Ted’s for a start?” Coventry Ted, with his seven.... For nowadays Ted hadn’t only that shed out back for assembling the racing machines and “specials” he thought up himself: he’d a man for repairs, and a lock-up shop with Swifts, Rudge-Whitworths and pumps—and a cash-down house (Detached. And Select) of his own. A cut above sending his kids to the Board School.... But anywhere else cost the earth, with all those brats: some private schools had the nerve to charge eight guineas a term! So be doing a favor to both....

  Mrs. Winter and Wantage had finished their midday meal (Head Housemaids come to the “Room” for the pudding-course only, so now again the two old friends were alone).

  “Face it,” said Wantage, “It’s all she knows how.”

  “She’s only done infants. How old’s his George?” Mrs. Winter inquired.

  “Fourteen, he’s out of it. Works with his Dad. And last lot of twins is the only other two boys.”

  “Age what?”

  He thought for a moment. “Just after the War.” (Five-year-olds: otherwise, only girls.... Mrs. Winter sighed with relief.) “Mind you,” said Wantage, “She can’t live off Ted’s. Food and lodging alone could be close on a quid—or more, with a child: prices is chronic.”