Jassy, page 23
All thought of my own affair, of Barney and our tryst tomorrow, had left me by this time. I really was, wholeheartedly, anxious to protect Jassy who seemed so young, so vulnerable in her arrogance.
‘You don’t understand,’ I said. ‘You have only seen father on his best behaviour. I’ve been watching him for years. I really think you’d better go, Jassy. And you must let me give you some money. Because it was my fault you left school and will have two months to wait before the new term … and the post you spoke of.’
‘Say lend,’ she said, still in that easy composed way. ‘And it needn’t be much. Perhaps I could get a place before the end of the term. Then I’d only need my coach fare. Barney would give me a bed and something to eat for a little while, until I was settled.’
‘Barney?’ I said, astounded. And despite those hours in Saints’ Spinney, despite the things we had said, despite the kisses, a feeling of quivering insecurity came over me, shaking every nerve in my body. I had a vision of Jassy flitting about that kitchen with a crisp white apron emphasising her neat waist. Everything that I had thought about the suitability of a match between Jassy and Barney rose again and hit me, this time painfully. A kind of inner wisdom began to work in me, too, an instinctive wisdom, and I knew that the more Barney and I assuaged our hunger for one another secretly, severing our ties from the world and ordinary things, the more attractive would be the sight of Jassy, open as the air, commonplace as bread, cooking at his fire, sitting at his table, making her place in his home.
‘You couldn’t do that, Jassy,’ I said. And so rapid had my thoughts been that there seemed to have been no pause at all.
‘Why not?’
‘It-it wouldn’t be seemly. What on earth would people say?’
‘Rude things that wouldn’t worry me a bit. Besides, don’t you think Meggie is sufficient chaperone?’
‘No. I’m sure it wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t do at all.’
Her voice was a little harder when she said, ‘I’ve got to have a bed, haven’t I? Barney is the only other person I know in the world. I’m not going back to school, if that’s what you’re suggesting. Nor to Mrs. Partridge. She’s Twizzy’s friend. So if I leave Mortiboys I shall go to Green Farm. I’ve no choice.’
I tried to think of something. ‘If you had some money Jassy, you could … ‘
‘’I’d rather not borrow more than I must. Don’t be ridiculous, Dilys. Barney is my friend and he has a house with seven bedrooms. I could work on the farm for my keep.’
As she claimed Barney’s friendship I thought, yes, there is a friendliness between them and with that my head began to ache. The dull pain hit me with a great thud and my brain went dead. It was the old, familiar feeling of a light having gone out which I knew so well.
‘You’d better stay at Mortiboys. But you’ll have to be careful, Jassy. Try to keep out of Old Nick’s way, especially when I’m not there. And don’t be—well, perky with him. I think he likes it.’
For just a second I imagined that her queer little face wore a look of triumph. It was gone instantly and my head was aching so badly that I could not think about it much. But when she twisted on the seat, so that she was facing me fully, her face was, not kind, she was never that, but smooth with a comfortable matter-of-factness.
‘Dilys, look. But for you, as you say, I should at least not be in search of a bed. It would suit me very well to stay here until Christmas. Suppose we make a bargain. You go your way and I’ll go mine with no questions and no vicarious responsibility. When you want my company you can ask for it; and if ever I want your protection I’ll let you know. We’re not children.’ She stood up, with the sheaf of flowers in her arms. ‘I’ll put these in water and then I’m going out on Major, by myself. I’ve never done that yet.’
She gave me a smile, a perfunctory yet sweet rearrangement of her features, nothing more, and moved with her own, peculiar grace away along the path to the house. I was amazed at the way in which, without any categorical phrases, she had cut to the very centre of the problem. ‘You go your way and I’ll go mine.’ What did she know? Or guess? And was it by deep craft or by simple sincerity that she had driven me into saying, ‘You’d better stay at Mortiboys’? She was, of course, very clever at lessons; yes, and she was very guileful. But so long as her guile was working for me I had not troubled to estimate its depths and possibilities. One thing was certain: I had, by this morning’s work, forfeited her friendship. That smile was proof of that. And my dead aching brain managed to remember that Jassy did not forgive easily. Mrs. Partridge had fallen from her favour because she had criticised Miss Hamilton. Now I had given offence by an apparent breach of hospitality. Oh, God, what a muddle! And how my head ached and ached!
Then I remembered that significant phrase, ‘No questions and no vicarious responsibility.’ That meant that tomorrow night, when I went to meet Barney, I need give no explanation. Tomorrow night, Barney. And for the first time in my memory my brain re-lighted of its own accord. Usually I could only be cured by sleep or by a merciful interlude of unconsciousness which people wrongly called fainting. But today I was healed by a thought. The pain went. I was mended. I sat for a little while enjoying the sunshine and thinking about Barney. And when at last I went back to the house and saw Jassy, mounted on Major, rounding the far corner of the house, I was able to smile and wave, signifying that our bargain was a good one. She could stay at Mortiboys and we could each go her own way. And with an uprush of physical well-being I thought and if Old Nick gets her it won’t be my fault. I warned her; God knows anyone so clever ought to be able to look after herself.
I gave myself up, body and mind and soul, to Barney. Each time we parted we fixed a meeting for some time in the immediate future and the days in between had no taste, no flavour, no sense in them. There was a poet named Marvell, whose work we did not study at school, but Miss Hamilton once lent Jassy a book of his poems and in one of them, which I read though I don’t suppose Miss Hamilton would have believed that I could understand it, was a phrase which I remembered:
‘Always at my back I hear
Time’s wingéd chariot hurrying near.’
That exactly described me. I knew that one day, any day, today even or tomorrow, something would happen which would drag Barney and me back into the world. Signs and portents were not wanting. The first time we really lay together and I gave up the virginity which I had protected from the stable-boy with my riding-crop, and from Charles with more subtle defences, Barney had been miserable and penitent and talked about marriage. And it was as though an icy hand had been laid on my breast where lately his warm one had wandered. I didn’t want to marry Barney and have everyone talking and thinking what a bad match I had made. I didn’t want to live at Green Farm and count pennies and learn, through sheer necessity, the business of housekeeping and butter-making and rearing calves and chickens. I wanted just what I had. Barney and secrecy, a world of my own. So I said that there was no need to talk about that yet; wait until after Christmas.
Christmas leapt at us. There seemed no time at all between my saying ‘Wait until after Christmas,’ and the season itself. On Boxing Day, Jassy and I were asked to the Fennels’ where there was a large, merry party and Stephen flattered me by singling me out by his attention. We stayed overnight and on the way home it began to snow. It snowed for three days and four nights; it lay to a depth of five feet in the open and there were drifts deep enough to engulf a mounted man. We were isolated at Mortiboys and father, who had planned a shooting party for the third day after Christmas and who was, besides, unused to being cooped indoors, fell into such a surly temper that it was at the risk of one’s life almost that one went near him. He even quarrelled with Melia. And although Jassy and I, crouched over the fire, listened to his bellowing and roaring and then saw Melia, very red-cheeked and with her head held high, flaunting along the passage, we took little notice. They had had at least three violent rows since we had been home. It did go through my mind that Melia had lasted as long as any of his wenches and that he was about due for a change and I said:
‘Now, I suppose, Agnes will take umbrage and we’ll starve.’
‘And deserve to,’ Jassy said noncommittally. ‘This is where you should step in and take advantage of the rupture and straighten things out in that kitchen.’
‘And look a fool when they make it up again. Not me.’
‘But you ought to get some practice. When you’re married you’ll need to be able to control your servants and run a house.’
‘Time enough to think about that when it comes. Besides, I shall have a housekeeper. And I’d like to know what has put the idea of my marrying into your head?’
‘Lady Fennel herself,’ Jassy said, with a peculiar smile. ‘Oh, not to me, of course, but I heard her talking to another woman. She seemed most enthusiastic about having you for a daughter-in-law.’
Despite myself I felt warmed and comforted. That short stay at Ockley had reminded me of what I was in danger of forgetting—how pleasant and orderly life can be in a house where people are normal and kind and sane. And I was touched to think that Lady Fennel did not hold it against me that my father was a mad, drunken old reprobate who slept with his maid servants. Oh, if only Stephen had one-tenth of Barney’s attractiveness! Oh, if only Barney had been heir to Ockley Manor! I sighed and crouched nearer to the fire, thinking how ill life was arranged.
The third day after Christmas seemed interminable and dull. Yet two momentous things had happened already. For father’s quarrel with Melia bore immediate results; and later on, looking back, I realised that Jassy’s few careless words about Lady Fennel had fallen into my mind like a pebble falling into a pool, quietly but starting a ripple which will widen. For on that afternoon I felt for the first time that one day, when I was older and Barney had tired of me or I of him, it would be nice to marry Stephen. It was as though, running wild in the woods I had heard, from the open window of a house, a voice calling to me to come in and tidy myself and behave like other people. I was not ready to do so, yet. But it was pleasant to know that I should be welcome within the circle whenever I chose to mend my ways.
The meal that evening was, as I had predicted, horrible.
Old Nick, who had not been quite sober all day, began to curse as soon as the food was put before him. He cursed Moult and Agnes, the food itself and then, looking along the table in a manner that reminded me of a bull about to charge, he shouted, ‘And you, Both of you. Damned parasites, like all women; sitting about on your backsides all day. One of you could have seen that there was something fit to eat.’ Beginning like that he worked himself into a fine fury, ending by telling me that I was just like my mother, without a thought beyond my own silly face, and then rounding on Jassy who, he said, was a greedy harpy who made no return for her keep. Moult had retired to a little distance from the table and stood there with an injured expression of self-righteousness on his face. And despite the feeling of sickness which attacked me, as it always did during father’s rages, it was with some amusement that I saw the heavy silver dish cover suddenly hurtle through the air and strike Moult plumb in the stomach.
‘Don’t stand there grinning like an ape, you——’ father bellowed. ‘Clear this muck away and bring some bread and cheese. And tell that fat—— in the kitchen that she’s sacked. They’re all sacked.’ He lifted the whole dish and it was about to follow its cover through the air when Jassy sprang up and snatched it.
‘I’ll see what can be done with it,’ she said, and tripped away.
Father dropped back in his chair, breathing loudly, his face a dusky red. He was never ashamed after one of his fits of temper, for shame after an outburst or a breakdown is only possible when one is conscious of criticism, either from within or without. Father did not care a sweep’s curse for anything that Moult or Jassy or I might be thinking and his faculties for self-criticism had withered long ago.
‘Bring me a bottle,’ he said to Moult, as he was slinking out in Jassy’s wake, and when it was brought he emptied three glasses in rapid succession and then loosened his neck-cloth.
‘When’s that little bitch going?’ he asked, no more pleasantly but with a faint rebirth of reasonableness.
‘On the t-tenth,’ I said, moistening my dry lips. I thought to myself that Jassy had almost too sedulously obeyed my instructions to be careful. Now he had turned against her. He had never before seemed to resent her presence, or shouted at her personally, or called her names. Probably in his dark confused mind he missed the smiles and little good-humoured retorts which Jassy had used towards him before I warned her. Though, of course, with him you could never tell. He wasn’t reasonable; and for women he seemed to have no feelings except lust and loathing, nothing in between and even those two were very much mixed.
‘She’s worth a dozen of you any day.’
‘Yes,’ I said. There was some truth in the remark and had there been none I should not have dared to contradict him.
‘Don’t be mealy-mouthed about it. That’s your mother all over again. Sweet, sweet, and rotten. Yes and no. Mealy-mouthed. Sweet as honey and full of poison. Are you listening?’
I put both hands on the edge of the table and pulled myself out of my chair.
‘I-I-must go, father.’
‘Sick? You look it. Go on then. Get out.’
I made for the door, tore it open, slammed it behind me and leaned back against it. Once out of that odious presence I felt better. It was only my nerves that loathed him. The day was long since past when anything he said could really hurt me. There had been a time when a scene like this evening’s would have made me cry for hours from misery and bewilderment. But now my mind was calloused. I was afraid of him, as one maybe afraid of a mad wild animal, but as soon as there was a stout door between us the fear was gone and so had that feeling of quivering nausea. In fact, standing there with my back pressed to the panels of the door, I thought what a fool I was, now I had missed my meal. Why hadn’t I had control enough to sit still and let him say what he liked, throw things at me if he had a fancy to, but not let myself be driven from the table?
As I thought this the door that led to the kitchen quarters opened and there came through it, first, a very savoury and appetising scent, then Moult, bearing a large tray, piled with dishes and then Jassy, empty-handed, fastidiously wiping her fingers on her handkerchief.
She looked at me without surprise and asked gaily:
‘Stood out?’
‘Standing out,’ as we called it, was a punishment at school and the idea that Old Nick had said, ‘Stand out for twenty minutes,’ was slightly amusing. I smiled as I stood aside to let Moult enter.
‘No. I was silly. I began to feel sick and just ran away. I wish now I hadn’t. Something smells good. What is it? You haven’t had time to cook anything.’
‘I didn’t need to. Come and look what I’ve found.’
Before I had time to protest that I couldn’t go back into Old Nick’s company she had taken me by the elbow and whisked me into the room. Moult had set the tray on the side table and was standing, dubious and a little scared, looking at father who sat where I had left him, staring down at the cloth upon which he was tracing patterns with his fork.
‘I’ll see to it,’ said Jassy, dismissing Moult with a jerk of her head towards the door. Then she laughed and, taking up the largest dish, set it under father’s nose and lifted the cover.
‘Does that make you feel better, Mr. Helmar? It should be good. It’s your servants’ supper.’
‘Good God!’ said father, looking into the dish, where, neatly skewered and perfectly roasted, four plump partridges reposed upon a bed of bacon curls and squares of toast. He stared at the dish for a moment and then, in a voice of ordinary anger, subtly and yet unmistakably different from the kind of perverse animal rage to which we were accustomed, he said, ‘This is insufferable. I’ll go into that kitchen and I’ll … ’ He began to raise himself on the arms of his chair.
‘No, no,’ Jassy cried. ‘Eat it while it’s hot. Everything else can wait.’
She darted about, bringing dishes of vegetables and gravy, serving us all with neat dispatch and at the same time relating, with comic gestures and amusing touches of mimicry, the horror of Moult and Agnes and Melia and Janey at seeing their supper snatched from under their noses. Father, with his fill of wine in him and his fill of food going down as fast as he could shovel it, changed his mood, forgot his grievance against us and deigned to laugh at last. Finally, when Jassy removed his empty plate, he looked down at the patterns he had been drawing on the cloth and said, ‘That reminds me. I have a proposal to make to you, young woman.’
‘Are you going to make an honest cook of me at last?’ Jassy said, laughing. He stared at her, astonished.
‘That’s just it,’ he said slowly. ‘If you’ll give up this tomfool job you’re going to and undertake to run this place so that a man may have a modicum of comfort, I’ll pay you whatever you ask and give you a better home than you’d have in any school.’
Jassy set her chin on her hand and looked at him, pursing her mouth. She looked astonishingly like a monkey at that moment.
‘That’s a nice offer, Mr. Helmar. But I’d have to make lots of conditions.’
‘Let’s hear them.’
‘A completely free hand for one thing. And the sack for everybody except Janey. Then, let me see, when I leave, if you send me away that is, I want fifty pounds. You see, I have a job to go to on the tenth. But if you fall out with me it might happen to be mid-term and I should need money in the interval. Is that fair? And the job I was going to meant my keep and six pounds a term. Is that too much?’
