The Wooden Shepherdess Read online

  “The Mistress is paying her two bob an hour.”

  Wantage snorted. “She better not ask Ted for that! He’d tell her to go chase herself. What—twice his mechanic?” He paused. “See? Ted’s is a start, like: she got to work up a connection—three lots at the least.”

  “That won’t leave very much time for her baby.”

  “What of it? Sixpence will pay for a minder. The point is she got to earn something to put in his belly, that’s what. A couple of years and he’ll eat like a hawk.”

  Mrs. Winter thought for a moment; and then: “You better write Ted and see what he says,” was her verdict.

  Wantage still had the wines for dinner tonight to see to, but turned in the doorway: “Pi-anner?” he asked; and when Mrs. Winter said No she can’t play a note, “Ted’ll expect the pi-anner. Get her do one of them postal courses: it won’t take her long.”

  And then he was gone.

  Ted, come to think of it (Wantage’s steady hand was decanting a vintage claret), Ted hadn’t done too bad for himself after all, hadn’t Ted; and All his Troubles were Little Ones.

  Ted.... They’d been born out Binley way, Fred and Ted Wantage. There weren’t any pits at Binley, those days: they’d been born on a Gentleman’s Farm, where their father was a cowman before he got horned in the groin at a serving, and died. By then both boys had seen enough cows for a lifetime (even today Fred couldn’t stand milk in his tea): so when Fred was given a chance of Service at Stumfort Castle he’d jumped at it—chances like that one don’t grow on trees! But then, Fred was blessed with the proper physique and demeanor for indoors.... But Ted was a spindle-shanked runt, with neither the height nor the calves for a footman—and worse, couldn’t wipe that eternal grin off his face: so Dad’s old employer had paid his indentures and Ted had been sent into Coventry city itself to learn with an uncle.

  Ted’s uncle was one of the last of those old Master Weavers who once had made Coventry ribbon so famous, with even elaborate portraits woven in silk. This intricate art was performed on rings of cottage looms grouped round one single communal source of power; but factory looms were driving them all off the market—by now on a cottage loom you could hardly earn your steam (and you durstn’t use kids on the treadle for power these days, however much money it saved). Ted had seen the red light, and once his indentures were worked instead of proceeding to journeyman gave up his art altogether for bikes. He had gone in the Humber Works, to learn all over again.

  Then came the year when the Old Queen died, and black ribbon had sold by the mile: black sateen for little girls’ hair-bows, black silk for hats, black velvet for bonnets—and crape, you just couldn’t turn out enough of it.... Fred had thought his brother was crazy: he oughter at least gone in Cash’s and pulled in a tradesman’s wage setting up the looms for it wasn’t all unskilled girls, there were jobs for a weaver. “Crazy.” ... But was he? For now Brother Ted had a loving wife and bulging quiver of “Troubles”: that handsome three-up-and-two-down, and a bicycle shop of his own. While Fred....

  Fred sighed. But his mood of self-pity didn’t last long: after all, what he’d got was security. Service was no bed of roses, but still.... “Old Servants”: savings or none, they don’t leave you starve—not the genuine Gentry. In Coventry, plenty were starving—or near it—or had been till lately, though things were looking up now. And Ted had lost most of his nose from a splinter of glass when Dunn’s shop was smashed in those Broadgate riots on Peace Day, five years ago (the mob had gone mad with rage at the sight of a Lady Godiva parading in all her clothes).

  He wrote to his brother that night, and three days later he got the reply.

  *

  That last talk of Mary’s with Nellie-the-three-times-bereaved had ended, as always before, with the fatal words left unsaid. Adoption, or put in a Home: what else could be done with Syl if Nellie must go out to work? But Mary had found herself quite unable to say it, the clearer it got that the mother her-self wasn’t thinking on those lines at all. And now, thank heavens it hadn’t been said: for only today Mrs. Winter had come in to tell her the problem was solved and the whole thing was settled, that Wantage had heard from his Coventry brother and Nellie could live there in lodgings he’d found (with her baby) and go out to teach by the hour—respectable shopkeepers’ children and so on....

  Mary’s relief was intense—tinged by only a tiny chagrin that she hadn’t been even consulted, and once they’d got the idea they’d settled it all by themselves with no help from her after all she had done.... Still, relief was what she’d felt most; and the Housekeeper’s face as she told her had beamed like the moon. In two more weeks Miss Penrose (the Governess proper) was due to arrive: the solution had come just in time—and Lord, what a load off her mind!

  The first half of August was wet, but today the sun had returned. The peonies blazed; and as Mary leaned from her window above it the sweep of her August garden bathed in the August sun reminded her somehow of Rubens, both as to colors and curves (and even the smells). Below on the terrace a thrush was tapping a drunken snail he had found asleep in the poppies: everywhere birds were singing their thanksgiving after rain, and somewhere unseen in the garden Polly was singing too.

  Out on the velvet lawn a blackbird fought with a worm. Beyond in the shade of a spreading cedar—a Renoir sight to be never forgotten—Susan Amanda slept in her canopied pram, while Minta sat on a canvas stool beside with her straw hat forward over her eyes: one hand gently jigging the pram, as she read the sixpenny love-romance which she held in the other.

  Then Mary saw Polly as well, slowly crossing the grass—slowly, because of the robin she hoped would alight on her shoulder (Polly was clever with robins). The sky was like angel’s milk.... With a swelling heart so large that it nearly reached to her mouth, every inch from the crown of Mary’s head to the tips of Mary’s toes rejoiced at being alive.

  When her long meandering song was all unwound, Polly had climbed from her singing-post in the fork of the podded laburnum just where its trunk emerged from the mock-orange thicket (which still smelled sweet even now the flowers were over); and once she despaired of the robin, had made her tiptoe way to a formal place between high hedges of box. Here was a formal circular goldfish pool, starred with lilies and edged with a coping of stone, surrounding a tiny fountain; and here, looking down on the pool, was seated one of her closest and quietest friends: a life-size figure in bronze. He wore a hat that was flat like a clergyman’s: still, since he wore nothing else apart from the wings on his feet he probably wasn’t a clergyman. Much more likely (she thought) an Indian, being also so brown.

  Polly climbed on his lap and started to whisper, cooled by occasional wafts of spray: for he it was who listened to all her secrets now she had no Augustine.

  21

  In America Coué was really last year, but the young are so seldom right up to date that each morning Ree still rolled out of bed in her tousled pajama-trousers (all summer she slept without tops) and stood in front of her mirror repeating the magic words: “Every day, and in every way, I get better and better.” By this, all she probably meant was cuter and cuter. A fist next rubbed the sleep from her eyes, enough to allow them to see if her breasts had grown any more in the night and that tiny mouse-back of hair down in front. Then she wrapped her rather innocuous bust in a towel and thumped downstairs to wash in the kitchen.

  But Ree today was sick at heart as she brushed her teeth in the sink; and later when dressed she could hardly face her breakfast cereal. Clumsy Junior kicked her chair as he passed, and she nearly burst into tears: life was devoid of meaning, she wanted to die. Baba was squealing over her prunes, Earl had an ocarina, her mother’s voice clacked on and on like the wheels of a train.... Ree was longing to be alone: so she went outside in the yard and sat in the earthy gloom of the privy for nearly an hour, watching the dancing motes in the sunbeam that slanted down from the heart-shaped hole all “specialists” cut high up in the door for seeing if anyone’s there.

/>   It couldn’t be, couldn’t be true! When Janis had first come back with the story of how he’d insulted her, Ree was completely incredulous: Janis was lying, the wicked old Potiphar’s Wife! For he wasn’t that sort of a boy, as who knew better than Ree? But he must have been fully aware of what Janis alleged, yet made no public or even private denial: so doubt had begun to creep in, and every day and in every way got worser and worser....

  “Ree! Darn the girl, where you got to? Here’s Russ!” The high-pitched voice was her mother’s, so Ree came out of the darkness at last. All her dazzled eyes saw at first was her mother batting away at the flies as she emptied slops in the soakaway: then out in front she saw Russell’s Dodge. He had called to tell her the Pack were off to the lake for a swim: so she ran upstairs to put on her swimsuit, hoping with luck she might drown.

  Russell’s brother had died a hero’s death, fleeing from dry-law cops: so whoever it was might drive to that roadhouse out on the New Milford road to fetch the communal liquor they all agreed that it mustn’t be Russell, for one in the family’s surely enough. But the rest of the older boys had a rota. Augustine at first had been out of all this as a guest and a stranger; but once he’d discovered about it he told them this just wouldn’t do, and after his insult to Janis they’d weakened. To start with he’d gone as a passenger only, showing his face to Micky Muldoon at the Dew Drop Inn and learning the routes: for they rang the changes, and seldom returned by exactly the way they had come. But tomorrow, Sunday (it was to have been today, but today all the cars were wanted because of this trip to the lake), he’d be making the trip on his own in Russell’s old Dodge.

  He wasn’t much worried by thoughts of chases and federal agents, since Micky Muldoon must surely pay through the nose for immunity: no, what worried him most was the risk that the car broke down for his knowledge of wholly reliable Bentleys wouldn’t help much with a broken-back Dodge. Or a casual Trooper might ask for the driving license he just hadn’t got; and inquiries would start....

  But now these worries were all put off till tomorrow: today as he piled into somebody’s car already wearing the swimsuit he’d bought at the store they were only off to the lake for a swim.... Russell and Ree and the rest of them—even himself, in all this heavy knitwear and serge! In England that sort of nonsense went out with the War: nowadays upper-class youthful fashion in Britain even decreed both sexes kept their embarrassment under control and swam together in nothing at all when they could, like the Swedes. But here the Law and practice alike forbade you even to swim in cotton, which clings: it had to be wool, full-length and with sleeves, and even the men wore a minimal skirt. As for the girls, they were never seen so completely upholstered as times like these when dressed for a swim.

  22

  The lake was a winding reservoir high in the hills, with a wonderful view from the top of the dam (where sometimes they dived) right over the country below. You drove off the New Milford road at a weatherworn board which read: “NO automobiles NO gunning NO fishing NO swimming THIS MEANS YOU”—but seemingly nobody minded, and everyone used it. From there the approach was a difficult track through the pines. This presently forked: one prong slid down a steep incline to the dam, while the other meandered along through the trees to the shallower end of the lake a mile further on. Today the car in front turned off for the dam; but the next ones honked so loud on their horns that they stopped, and an argument started from which it emerged the majority wanted to go to “our island.” ...

  This faery island they’d found and adopted lay half-way along the lake in a bend of the winding shore. It was tucked in a cove and right out of sight till you got there, and couldn’t be reached at all direct from the dam. Since the Pack could never divide the divers gave in, and bumped back along a vestigial cross-trail on to the shallow-end track to rejoin their fellows—though arguing still.

  Reaching the end of the lake at last, they stopped their engines and all spilled noisily out on a tiny beach. There they found a family bivouacked: father asleep in the sun with his hat pulled over his eyes, mother busy with cutlery cans and cardboard cups, infants shrieking in inches of water, and twenty yards out the grandmother floating about on a truck-tire. These the Pack—including the family’s own boy and girl as completely as everyone else—all ignored, and trod over or through.

  The cove with the tiny islet they sought could only be reached from here; and you got there by threading your way for twenty minutes at least from boulder to boulder between the impassable woods and the mere itself. A secret island, with birch trees bowing over the water: an island, they all believed, which nobody knew.

  At first they waked the echoes, and splashed through the shallows; but once escaped from the world of men and well out of sight of the family camped on the beach, the Waldenish mood of the place began to take hold and even these boisterous creatures all fell silent. Indeed henceforth they were almost as quiet themselves as the trees: nobody spoke as they crept along, nobody splashed any more: they moved without sound at one with the water, the stones, the woods, the August day, and each other—and almost believing in God. Smelling of pines themselves, they advanced on silent feet that clung to the rocks much more like roots on the move than feet: with leafy fingers, and eyes brimming over with sky (except for Ree, whose eyes were full to the lids with Augustine).

  Above them the woods were dense as a wall. Below them the lake was clear and still, with waterlogged boughs on the bottom that laced the vivid reflections like ghosts.... Like—like that something white underneath in a pool, on the Marsh back in Wales; and with almost its earlier pang Augustine’s heart mourned again for the ill-starred child he had found.

  There was one more jutting of tree-clad rock still to round. In the silence, Augustine’s thoughts still dwelt on the loss to the world of the poor little drowned one: he quite forgot where he was. The rest of them too were so quiet that no one could possibly hear them coming, and far too intent on their mood and each other to notice voices themselves. Then at last they turned the corner and reached the cove and looked across to their private island; and saw on it under the birches, under those feathery leaves....

  For Ree (and indeed for most of these boys and girls) this was the first time they had seen it although they’d imagined it hundreds of times: the two-backed monster performing.

  *

  All the way home Russell’s old Dodge seemed hardly able to stagger. The valves were sticking, and causing cardiac trouble; and doctor’s-orders clearly were that it mustn’t hurry up hills. Thus Russell and Ree arrived long after the others. The journey seemed endless, and Ree felt sick all the way. When Russell asked her just to run round to Augustine’s shack and tell him the Dodge wasn’t fit to drive to the Dew Drop Inn next day, she refused: so, late that night, Russell was forced to go round and tell Augustine himself.

  In bed that night Ree couldn’t sleep. It was bad by daylight, but worse in the dark: for against the darkness her eyes shut or open couldn’t help seeing those coupling bodies. So this was what “lovers” did—though it looked more like murder than loving. But where was that blissful and magical melting-into-each-other she’d always imagined? Instead all this panting, and moans.... In fact it must hurt like hell; and she thrust both hands in between her legs as if to protect herself, taut as a bow-string.

  So Janis had hit him! It seemed past belief that Augustine should secretly want to do this to us girls, her kind and gentle Augustine. True, he’d tried it on Janis not her; but suppose one day those hundreds of times when he’d had her alone in the woods, he’d begun.... As the night wore on her nipples started to ache, and a burning began in the pit of her stomach: she tossed on her bed till the sheet was twisted like rope. If he had, could she conceivable even have let him and not minded how much he hurt her, because this was something he wanted so much and which she had to give?

  It was nearly dawn when at last she slept—to dream about windows with red lace curtains, and birds.

  23

  Next
morning Augustine was lucky. Soon after breakfast that Sunday Bella’s big brother Erroll had come on a visit: he drove his Second-Vice-President (Sales)’s shining “Bearcat” Stutz, with a whopping great polished copper exhaust all along one yellow cheek like somebody playing a flute (whether with or without his Second-Vice-President (Sales)’s permission, no one inquired). Erroll had driven all night and ought to be left to sleep in peace; and anyway everyone felt that the less he knew of the errand it went on the better for Erroll, if something went wrong.... Out of sheer niceness of feeling moreover they didn’t tell Bella either: one hates to occasion a brotherly-sisterly rift. As for Augustine, they told him no more than that here after all was a car for his use.

  Augustine rejoiced: this wasn’t his Bentley, but still.... And once ensconced at the wheel of that big yellow Stutz on yesterday’s road past the way to the lake he rejoiced even more. The local lanes had been grim with their “thank-you-marms” and outward banking at blind right-angle bends and general absence of surface, but now he was out on the State Road at last he felt with a steed like this his errand should soon be over. That was what everyone thought: he’d be back in a brace of shakes, and long before Erroll could wake.

  Micky Muldoon looked always half asleep: his single wandering bloodshot eye was heavily lidded, his paunch was the conical kind which carried a belt like an architect’s “swag”— depending below it and purely for ornament. But Micky never forgot a face. The Stutz out front was a stranger, and yet when Augustine came through to the back demanding a gallon of rye it was served—after one quick glance—like a packet of peas. There wasn’t a soul in sight as Sadie disposed the couple of half-gallon jars behind in the rumble-seat under a rug (Sadie’d insisted on coming: “Just” she had said “for the buggy-ride”).