Wild Places, page 12
But with a loud whirring noise the clock on the wall struck half-past eight; and no soldier is allowed in a café after eight o’clock at night.
‘It is fast,’ said the blue-eyed soldier. The little corporal’s watch said the same. So did the immense turnip that Blackbeard produced and carefully deposited on the head of one of the horned beetles.
‘Ah, well, we’ll take the risk,’ said the blue-eyed soldier, and he thrust his arms into his immense cardboard coat. ‘It’s worth it,’ he said. ‘It’s worth it. You just wait.’
Outside, stars shone between wispy clouds and the moon fluttered like a candle flame over a pointed spire. The shadows of the dark plume-like trees waved on the white houses. Not a soul to be seen. No sound to be heard but the Hsh! Hsh! of a far-away train, like a big beast shuffling in its sleep.
‘You are cold,’ whispered the little corporal. ‘You are cold, ma fille.’
‘No, really not.’
‘But you are trembling.’
‘Yes, but I’m not cold.’
‘What are the women like in England?’ asked Blackbeard. ‘After the war is over I shall go to England. I shall find a little English woman and marry her – and her pair-rot.’ He gave a loud choking laugh.
‘Fool!’ said the blue-eyed soldier, shaking him; and he leaned over to me. ‘It is only after the second glass that you really taste it,’ he whispered. ‘The second little glass and then – ah! – then you know.’
Café des Amis gleamed in the moonlight. We glanced quickly up and down the road. We ran up the four wooden steps, and opened the ringing glass door into a low room lighted with a hanging lamp, where about ten people were dining. They were seated on two benches at a narrow table.
‘Soldiers!’ screamed a woman, leaping up from behind a white soup-tureen – a scrag of a woman in a black shawl. ‘Soldiers! At this hour! Look at that clock, look at it.’ And she pointed to the clock with the dripping ladle.
‘It’s fast,’ said the blue-eyed soldier. ‘It’s fast, Madame. And don’t make so much noise, I beg of you. We will drink and we will go.’
‘Will you?’ she cried, running round the table and planting herself in front of us. ‘That’s just what you won’t do. Coming into an honest woman’s house this hour of the night – making a scene – getting the police after you. Ah, no! Ah, no! It’s a disgrace, that’s what it is.’
‘Sh!’ said the little corporal, holding up his hand. Dead silence. In the silence we heard steps passing.
‘The police,’ whispered Blackbeard, winking at a pretty girl with rings in her ears, who smiled back at him, saucy. ‘Sh!’
The faces lifted, listening. ‘How beautiful they are!’ I thought. ‘They are like a family party having supper in the New Testament …’ The steps died away.
‘Serve you very well right if you had been caught,’ scolded the angry woman. ‘I’m sorry on your account that the police didn’t come. You deserve it – you deserve it.’
‘A little glass of mirabelle and we will go,’ persisted the blue-eyed soldier.
Still scolding and muttering she took four glasses from the cupboard and a big bottle. ‘But you’re not going to drink in here. Don’t you believe it.’ The little corporal ran into the kitchen. ‘Not there! Not there! Idiot!’ she cried. ‘Can’t you see there’s a window there, and a wall opposite where the police come every evening to …’
‘Sh!’ Another scare.
‘You are mad and you will end in prison, – all four of you,’ said the woman. She flounced out of the room. We tiptoed after her into a dark smelling scullery, full of pans of greasy water, of salad leaves and meat-bones.
‘There now,’ she said, putting down the glasses. ‘Drink and go!’
‘Ah, at last!’ The blue-eyed soldier’s happy voice trickled through the dark. ‘What do you think? Isn’t it just as I said? Hasn’t it got a taste of excellent – ex-cellent whisky?’
(written 1915, first published in Something Childish and Other Stories, 1924)
The Wind Blows
Suddenly – dreadfully – she wakes up. What has happened? Something dreadful has happened. No – nothing has happened. It is only the wind shaking the house, rattling the windows, banging a piece of iron on the roof and making her bed tremble. Leaves flutter past the window, up and away; down in the avenue a whole newspaper wags in the air like a lost kite and falls, spiked on a pine tree. It is cold. Summer is over – it is autumn – everything is ugly. The carts rattle by, swinging from side to side; two Chinamen lollop along under their wooden yokes with the straining vegetable baskets – their pigtails and blue blouses fly out in the wind. A white dog on three legs yelps past the gate. It is all over! What is? Oh, everything! And she begins to plait her hair with shaking fingers, not daring to look in the glass. Mother is talking to grandmother in the hall.
‘A perfect idiot! Imagine leaving anything out on the line in weather like this … Now my best little Teneriffe-work teacloth is simply in ribbons. What is that extraordinary smell? It’s the porridge burning. Oh, heavens – this wind!’
She has a music lesson at ten o’clock. At the thought the minor movement of the Beethoven begins to play in her head, the trills long and terrible like little rolling drums … Marie Swainson runs into the garden next door to pick the ‘chrysanths’ before they are ruined. Her skirt flies up above her waist; she tries to beat it down, to tuck it between her legs while she stoops, but it is no use – up it flies. All the trees and bushes beat about her. She picks as quickly as she can, but she is quite distracted. She doesn’t mind what she does – she pulls the plants up by the roots and bends and twists them, stamping her foot and swearing.
‘For heaven’s sake keep the front door shut! Go round to the back,’ shouts someone. And then she hears Bogey:
‘Mother, you’re wanted on the telephone. Telephone, Mother. It’s the butcher.’
How hideous life is – revolting, simply revolting … And now her hat-elastic’s snapped. Of course it would. She’ll wear her old tam and slip out the back way. But Mother has seen.
‘Matilda. Matilda. Come back im-me-diately! What on earth have you got on your head? It looks like a tea-cosy. And why have you got that mane of hair on your forehead?’
‘I can’t come back, Mother. I’ll be late for my lesson.’
‘Come back immediately!’
She won’t. She won’t. She hates Mother. ‘Go to hell,’ she shouts, running down the road.
In waves, in clouds, in big round whirls the dust comes stinging, and with it little bits of straw and chaff and manure. There is a loud roaring sound from the trees in the gardens, and standing at the bottom of the road outside Mr Bullen’s gate she can hear the sea sob: ‘Ah! … Ah! … Ah-h!’ But Mr Bullen’s drawing-room is as quiet as a cave. The windows are closed, the blinds half pulled, and she is not late. The-girl-before-her has just started playing MacDowell’s ‘To an Iceberg’. Mr Bullen looks over at her and half smiles.
‘Sit down,’ he says. ‘Sit over there in the sofa corner, little lady.’
How funny he is. He doesn’t exactly laugh at you … but there is just something … Oh, how peaceful it is here. She likes this room. It smells of art serge and stale smoke and chrysanthemums … there is a big vase of them on the mantelpiece behind the pale photograph of Rubinstein … à mon ami Robert Bullen … Over the black glittering piano hangs ‘Solitude’ – a dark tragic woman draped in white, sitting on a rock, her knees crossed, her chin on her hands.
‘No, no!’ says Mr Bullen, and he leans over the other girl, puts his arms over her shoulders and plays the passage for her. The stupid – she’s blushing! How ridiculous!
Now the-girl-before-her has gone; the front door slams. Mr Bullen comes back and walks up and down, very softly, waiting for her. What an extraordinary thing. Her fingers tremble so that she can’t undo the knot in the music satchel. It’s the wind … And her heart beats so hard she feels it must lift her blouse up and down. Mr Bullen does not say a word. The shabby red piano seat is long enough for two people to sit side by side. Mr Bullen sits down by her.
‘Shall I begin with scales,’ she asks, squeezing her hands together. ‘I had some arpeggios, too.’
But he does not answer. She doesn’t believe he even hears … and then suddenly his fresh hand with the ring on it reaches over and opens Beethoven.
‘Let’s have a little of the old master,’ he says.
But why does he speak so kindly – so awfully kindly – and as though they had known each other for years and years and knew everything about each other.
He turns the page slowly. She watches his hand – it is a very nice hand and always looks as though it had just been washed.
‘Here we are,’ says Mr Bullen.
Oh, that kind voice – Oh, that minor movement. Here comes the little drums …
‘Shall I take the repeat?’
‘Yes, dear child.’
His voice is far, far too kind. The crotchets and quavers are dancing up and down the stave like little black boys on a fence. Why is he so … She will not cry – she has nothing to cry about …
‘What is it, dear child?’
Mr Bullen takes her hands. His shoulder is there – just by her head. She leans on it ever so little, her cheek against the springy tweed.
‘Life is so dreadful,’ she murmurs, but she does not feel it’s dreadful at all. He says something about ‘waiting’ and ‘marking time’ and ‘that rare thing, a woman’, but she does not hear. It is so comfortable … for ever …
Suddenly the door opens and in pops Marie Swainson, hours before her time.
‘Take the allegretto a little faster,’ says Mr Bullen, and gets up and begins to walk up and down again.
‘Sit in the sofa corner, little lady,’ he says to Marie.
The wind, the wind. It’s frightening to be here in her room by herself. The bed, the mirror, the white jug and basin gleam like the sky outside. It’s the bed that is frightening. There it lies, sound asleep … Does Mother imagine for one moment that she is going to darn all those stockings knotted up on the quilt like a coil of snakes? She’s not. No, Mother. I do not see why I should … The wind – the wind! There’s a funny smell of soot blowing down the chimney. Hasn’t anyone written poems to the wind? … ‘I bring fresh flowers to the leaves and showers.’ … What nonsense.
‘Is that you, Bogey?’
‘Come for a walk round the esplanade, Matilda. I can’t stand this any longer.’
‘Right-o. I’ll put on my ulster. Isn’t it an awful day!’ Bogey’s ulster is just like hers. Hooking the collar she looks at herself in the glass. Her face is white, they have the same excited eyes and hot lips. Ah, they know those two in the glass. Goodbye, dears; we shall be back soon.
‘This is better, isn’t it?’
‘Hook on,’ says Bogey.
They cannot walk fast enough. Their heads bent, their legs just touching, they stride like one eager person through the town, down the asphalt zigzag where the fennel grows wild and on to the esplanade. It is dusky – just getting dusky. The wind is so strong that they have to fight their way through it, rocking like two old drunkards. All the poor little pahutu-kawas on the esplanade are bent to the ground.
‘Come on! Come on! Let’s get near.’
Over by the breakwater the sea is very high. They pull off their hats and her hair blows across her mouth, tasting of salt. The sea is so high that the waves do not break at all; they thump against the rough stone wall and suck up the weedy, dripping steps. A fine spray skims from the water right across the esplanade. They are covered with drops; the inside of her mouth tastes wet and cold.
Bogey’s voice is breaking. When he speaks he rushes up and down the scale. It’s funny – it makes you laugh – and yet it just suits the day. The wind carries their voices – away fly the sentences like little narrow ribbons.
‘Quicker! Quicker!’
It is getting very dark. In the harbour the coal hulks show two lights – one high on a mast and one from the stern.
‘Look, Bogey. Look over there.’
A big black steamer with a long loop of smoke streaming, with the portholes lighted, with lights everywhere, is putting out to sea. The wind does not stop her; she cuts through the waves, making for the open gate between the pointed rocks that leads to … It’s the light that makes her look so awfully beautiful and mysterious … They are on board leaning over the rail arm in arm.
‘… Who are they?’
‘… Brother and sister.’
‘Look, Bogey, there’s the town. Doesn’t it look small? There’s the post-office clock chiming for the last time. There’s the esplanade where we walked that windy day. Do you remember? I cried at my music lesson that day – how many years ago! Goodbye, little island, goodbye …’
Now the dark stretches a wing over the tumbling water. They can’t see those two any more. Goodbye, goodbye. Don’t forget … But the ship is gone, now.
The wind – the wind.
(first published in 1915, first book publication Bliss and Other Stories, 1920)
Late at Night
(Virginia is seated by the fire. Her outdoor things are thrown on a chair; her boots are faintly steaming in the fender.)
Virginia (laying the letter down): I don’t like this letter at all – not at all. I wonder if he means it to be so snubbing – or if it’s just his way. (Reads.) ‘Many thanks for the socks. As I have had five pairs sent me lately, I am sure you will be pleased to hear I gave yours to a friend in my company.’ No; it can’t be my fancy. He must have meant it; it is a dreadful snub.
Oh, I wish I hadn’t sent him that letter telling him to take care of himself. I’d give anything to have that letter back. I wrote it on a Sunday evening too – that was so fatal. I never ought to write letters on Sunday evenings – I always let myself go so. I can’t think why Sunday evenings always have such a funny effect on me. I simply yearn to have someone to write to – or to love. Yes, that’s it; they make me feel sad and full of love. Funny, isn’t it!
I must start going to church again; it’s fatal sitting in front of the fire and thinking. There are the hymns, too; one can let oneself go so safely in the hymns. (She croons) ‘And then for those our Dearest and our Best’ – (but her eye lights on the next sentence in the letter). ‘It was most kind of you to have knitted them yourself.’ Really! Really, that is too much! Men are abominably arrogant! He actually imagines that I knitted them myself. Why, I hardly know him; I’ve only spoken to him a few times. Why on earth should I knit him socks? He must think I am far gone to throw myself at his head like that. For it certainly is throwing oneself at a man’s head to knit him socks – if he’s almost a stranger. Buying him an odd pair is a different matter altogether. No; I shan’t write to him again – that’s definite. And, besides, what would be the use? I might get really keen on him and he’d never care a straw for me. Men don’t.
I wonder why it is that after a certain point I always seem to repel people. Funny, isn’t it! They like me at first; they think me uncommon, or original; but then immediately I want to show them – even give them a hint – that I like them, they seem to get frightened and begin to disappear. I suppose I shall get embittered about it later on. Perhaps they know somehow that I’ve got so much to give. Perhaps it’s that that frightens them. Oh, I feel I’ve got such boundless, boundless love to give to somebody – I would care for somebody so utterly and so completely – watch over them – keep everything horrible away – and make them feel that if ever they wanted anything done I lived to do it. If only I felt that somebody wanted me, that I was of use to somebody, I should become a different person. Yes; that is the secret of life for me – to feel loved, to feel wanted, to know that somebody leaned on me for everything absolutely – for ever. And I am strong, and far, far richer than most women. I am sure that most women don’t have this tremendous yearning to – express themselves. I suppose that’s it – to come into flower, almost. I’m all folded and shut away in the dark and nobody cares. I suppose that is why I feel this tremendous tenderness for plants and sick animals and birds – it’s one way of getting rid of this wealth, this burden of love. And then, of course, they are so helpless – that’s another thing. But I have a feeling that if a man were really in love with you he’d be just as helpless too. Yes, I am sure that men are very helpless …
I don’t know why, I feel inclined to cry tonight. Certainly not because of this letter; it isn’t half important enough. But I keep wondering if things will ever change or if I shall go on like this until I am old – just wanting and wanting. I’m not as young as I was even now. I’ve got lines and my skin isn’t a bit what it used to be. I never was really pretty, not in the ordinary way, but I did have lovely skin and lovely hair – and I walked well. I only caught sight of myself in a glass today – stooping and shuffling along … I looked dowdy and elderly. Well, no; perhaps not quite as bad as that; I always exaggerate about myself. But I’m faddy about things now – that’s a sign of age, I’m sure. The wind – I can’t bear being blown about in the wind now; and I hate having wet feet. I never used to care about those things – I used almost to revel in them – they made me feel so one with Nature in a way. But now I get cross and I want to cry and I yearn for something to make me forget. I suppose that’s why women take to drink. Funny, isn’t it!
The fire is going out. I’ll burn this letter. What’s it to me? Pooh! I don’t care. What is it to me? The five other women can send him socks! And I don’t suppose he was a bit what I imagined. I can just hear him saying, ‘It was most kind of you, to have knitted them yourself.’ He has a fascinating voice. I think it was his voice that attracted me to him – and his hands; they looked so strong – they were such man’s hands. Oh, well, don’t sentimentalise over it; burn it! … No, I can’t now – the fire’s gone out. I’ll go to bed. I wonder if he really meant to be snubbing. Oh, I am tired. Often when I go to bed now I want to pull the clothes over my head – and just cry. Funny, isn’t it!
