David Garnett

“ Yockney was a trifle vulgar, while his unpleasantness to me has at all events the merit of being sincere and well-bred.” And Anne told herself that the only explanation must be that she was as much a burden to her father as he was to her. “But only I realize it,” she burst out. “For I am young enough to recognize the truth, and to welcome it; he does not understand himself or other people; all his life he has hidden his head in the sand like an ostrich, and after all what else can one expect of a clergyman?” ”

“ Anne let herself in at the iron gates, thinking to herself that it was very strange that no farmhouse had been rebuilt there on the site of the old one, that no labourer had been allowed to work the rich garden as his allotment, and that it was impossible to guess why everything should have been let go to ruin except the square dove house of red brick, which must have stood for three centuries and which looked as if it would stand for as many more. ”

“ Anne asked herself as she followed the grocer up the little staircase into the poky bedrooms, which smelt of varnish.
“A little shop like ours is a great snare for a man with ambition. I have wasted the best years of my life in it, years during which I might have built up a great merchandising house. But this hotel, and others like it, will soon make my son a rich man, and provide for Rachel. A Temperance Hotel with a grand loggia looking over the river, pillars with climbing roses, a small winter garden with azaleas.... We must move with the times, you know, Miss Dunnock.” ”

“ Grandison asked in astonishment. “Oh, yes, perhaps he did telegraph. I wrote and told him that I was in love with Ginette and that I proposed taking her to live with us.... That was a dreadful thing to have done. You see, Richard was very fond of me; he cares about nobody else,” he said suddenly, wiping the sweat off his forehead.
“I have always, all my life, mismanaged my love affairs. But that is because I have never been in love before. Now I am in love with you and I determined not to mismanage that but to make a clean sweep of everything.” ”

“ Anne wondered what their life had been in Paris, and slowly a picture of Miss Grandison formed itself clearly in her mind—a fair woman she must be, with a white skin like the flesh of a hazel nut, with fair almost colourless hair and [95] light blue eyes, a thick, slightly aquiline nose.... That certainly was Miss Grandison, and at the opera she wore diamonds and was wrapped in white fur. On summer evenings her habit must be to drive with Sotheby out of Paris in her limousine to have supper in the open air, of lobsters and cream, raspberries and iced champagne.... ”

“ All my emotion is nonsense. To me everything seems changed, but it is only a joke to the carters; they will laugh about it over a pint of beer to-day, but in a week’s time they will have forgotten it; the fact that some dog has killed a rat will seem more important. My life is not changed: to-morrow the mason will come to lay the doorstep in its old place, and I shall say: ‘It’s a fine day,’ when I go to the grocer’s shop, and: ‘Very seasonable weather,’ when I take the loaves from the baker. ”

“ In the middle years of life we live too much in the affairs of the day, and a child troubles the mind of its mother. So many burdens to be borne, so many duties to be fulfilled.... We were too occupied to look into each other’s hearts, and old age, the sweetest portion of life if it be filled with harmony, and the happiness of memories shared in common, old age is reserved for me only; a lonely and miserable old age. Now that I have lost Mavis, intimacy is impossible with anyone else, and I feel myself growing far away from everyone, and farthest of all from Anne. ”

“ Anne found the confession of her cowardice was difficult; Sotheby was staring at her as if he were surprised by her words.
“I think that would be behaving very heartlessly,” he said when she had done. He filled the lid of the kettle with tea, blew on it and added: “It would be a great shock to him, and it seems to me so unnecessary. Children have parents so much at their mercy; their one duty to them, surely, is to avoid shattering their illusions. I’m not a good son; my father is excessively irritating; quite as irritating as yours. I don’t love him, and that makes me feel ashamed.... ”

“ Each whisper was a charm that breathed love into her, that stole away her strength, and that changed her nature. Yet Anne still held herself alert, danger seemed near; at any moment a heavy footstep might sound upon the stairs, a voice break in. It seemed to her that if she sat very still the danger might pass, and when Grandison’s voice rose she stroked his hair nervously—hair as short and thick and soft as fur.
[208] “Richard—the danger is Richard,” she said to herself, recognizing that she was helpless in face of that danger. ”

“ The streets were crowded with men and beasts; the market place was full of farmers and machinery, and half a dozen cheap-jacks, each surrounded by a dense crowd, were shouting against each other.
Anne quickened her pace; the noise of a steam organ told her that the merry-go-rounds were in a field near the railway station, but when she had passed the first booths, the coco-nut shies, the rifle-range, and the places where she was invited to win cups and saucers by throwing rings, she suddenly became embarrassed. ”

“ Anne liked the way men whistled, and their deep voices as they spoke to the cart-horses drinking at the pond, voices so full of restraint and kindliness. There was no way for her to speak to these young men who looked so cheerful as they went by to work in their rough clothes, though sometimes, when she was out on a long walk and was far from home, she had tried to get into conversation with a young farmer leaning over a gate, or with a gamekeeper idling along the edge of a wood, his black and white spaniel at his heels. ”

“ As the night drew on she would become bored, and drag young Sotheby after her to a vast hotel in Paris where they could dance all night. The men in their starched shirtfronts would turn pale, and wilt in the small hours of the morning under the tropical palms, but La Grandison would dance on and on, ruthlessly, first with one man and then with another. Richard Sotheby would be forgotten, a young man from the Peruvian Embassy would escort her home, while Richard, disconsolate and brokenhearted, would be left to pay for the buckets of iced champagne, and the mounds of uneaten sandwiches.... ”

“ He threw a piece which was lost in the snow. “A wedding-cake! How strange it is to reflect that Anne is older now than her mother when I married her! Yes, the world is become a wedding-cake. Something very strange has happened, and who knows what will be the end of it? for it has begun to snow again, and the rare flakes drift slowly to the ground like feathers from the angels’ wings. Are they moulting up there? Or has Satan got among them like a black cat which has climbed through the wire netting into the dove loft?” ”

“ The women must have a hard life, but I would rather be one of them than the wife or daughter of a [50] clergyman. If I were to join them; but that cannot be—some dark woman would stab me rather than have me for her daughter-in-law, yet if one of these handsome gipsies asked me, I would not hesitate to go with him. I would rather that my son were a clown or a lion-tamer than an archdeacon or a bishop.”
Anne roused herself after a few minutes; the sun was setting, she felt chilly, and her thoughts had depressed her. “My mind runs in a circle,” she said. ”

“ The mild sunlit air was full of bees as Anne left the vicarage after lunch; the celandines were gaping in the sunlight on the bank above the Broad Ditch. Wagtails ran round the water’s edge, goldfinches flew up into the elms, and yellowhammers trotted before her on the road.
As she passed the Post Office she remembered Richard Sotheby and his strange telegram, and tired of the turmoil of her own emotion, she welcomed the memory. “I am tired of thy little love affairs and of my own love. I consent. Write.” ”

“ But she could not speak of the young man, or of the circus, to Mr. Sotheby, whom she disliked; she could not continue her happy talk with Rachel in front of him, and they drove in silence—a silence broken at last by the grocer remarking on the number of foreigners that there were at the fair.
“Nothing interests us country folk more than to see a foreigner,” said he. “A black man will draw a crowd anywhere, and no wonder either, for however contented we may be with our own lives, we always wish to learn about those of other people.”
“He is a foreigner, of course,” Anne was saying to herself. ”

“ Anne turned to look back. Behind her the lower branches of the elms were already in shadow, their tops shone in the sunlight; between the trunks she could see a glimpse of the village green beyond, with the yellow painted roof of a roundabout. There was a silence and suddenly Anne gave a long sigh, a sigh of happiness.
“I am happy now and completely at peace. I was never happy here before, but I am now, for I am free. The opinion of neighbours cannot weigh on me, for my life is full and happy and satisfied. Each day is rich and full, and though [243] summer passes it returns again. ”

“ I can do what I like; I can live how I like. I may never see Richard or his friend or anyone I have ever met, again. I have no friends in the world. Nobody can interfere now with my happy life!” And suddenly, as she gazed over the water, Anne remembered how she had wept in her bedroom on the morning when the ploughmen had come. ”

“ Sotheby began to poke up the fire in the grate, and the flames shot up; they had been sitting almost in the dark.
“A wonderful story,” said Richard. “I often think of Jack Putty as a model: a man who was really able to love his brother as himself. That is the only sort of love, love which will sacrifice everything, put up with everything, yet ask for nothing in return. Selfish love is misery, I suppose it deserves to be, but how does one avoid it?”
“Why do you think Jack Putty felt unselfish love?” Anne asked, feeling rather puzzled. ”

“ Anne could see that the hard work was done, that they were enjoying themselves playing at hay-making, clearing up what the men had left behind. Soon she was out of the hay-field, slipping over the wall of the churchyard, a wall which had been worn smooth by the breeches of generations of labourers, for a short cut to the footpath ran among the graves beneath the limbs of the giant sycamore. ”

“ As Anne came in front of the house, it seemed strange to her to see the fine iron gates, with great ilexes on either side of them, and the flagged path that ran so cleanly up to a mere heap of broken bricks, where the front door had been. Not a weed had taken root on the pathway, not a bramble strayed across it, and even the pond, by whose bricked side it ran, was clear [98] water. Irises grew there and flowered in the summer time; on the grassy bank opposite there were daffodils in bloom. ”

“ Anne looked about her wildly, but Mrs. Sotheby had lifted a flap of the counter and was saying:
“Come into our parlour and sit down for a little while, Miss Dunnock; it was foolish of me to speak, but I never guessed you would have taken such nonsense to heart. If one were to pay attention to half the silly things men do, our lives would not be worth living.”
Anne followed Mrs. Sotheby through the shop into a little room, with a coal fire burning in the grate. She sat down in the armchair pushed forward for her, while the grocer’s wife hurried back into the shop, summoned by the jangling bell. ”

“ Each man leans forward to make a hole with the dibber in his right hand, sticks in a young plant and treads it firm with his left heel as he passes in his stride forward to strike the next hole. So they work all day, and this will be a vast expanse of cabbages before the winter. The life of these men is to labour all day in the sun, or in the rain, in these immense fields, alone for hour after hour, with nothing to speak with but horse, and to go back at night to sleep in a tiny room with a candle burning in the closed window, then to rise again with the first colour of the dawn. ”

“ I only know of the existence of Ginette Grandison by an accident; he would not trust me with his secret and would be annoyed at my knowing it. No friendship can be based on anything so one-sided as our conversations have been. And the reason is plain, only that I have been too stupid to see it before. The reason is that he never intended a friendship. It amused him to get my little secret from me; it flattered his....”
But Anne suddenly checked her thought, crying: “No, that is vulgar, that is unworthy. ”

“ Here the accursed chain can never be unwound, but when I am living a free life, among new people, and my father is forgotten, I shall escape, and speaking easily to everyone I shall be accepted by them; I shall love; I shall be beloved....” Anne shook her head and a shower of hairpins flew out on to the floor. ”

“ Anne was astonished to see them with their plough and horses so close to the doorstep, and was filled with a sense of strangeness even before she saw what was most strange about these visitors. That a plough should be standing so close to the house was strange, and even for the moment seemed to her shocking, for one of the horses was standing on a flower-bed, but this was nothing to the appearance of the men, for all of them had their faces blacked and their shoulders and their caps were white with snow. The black faces against the whiteness of the snow frightened her ”

“ But if Anne admired the way Maggie scrubbed the scullery floor, she felt envy when she saw her sauntering along the lanes with her hands in her pockets, whistling like a ploughboy, and stopping to speak to every person she met on the road. Did she envy Maggie only because she had so many friends, or was it partly because she knew all the boys and the young men, and went in the grove in the evenings, coming out with her cheeks no redder than they were by nature? ”

“ Sotheby’s words Anne started, all her shame came back to her suddenly, but she saw that she must answer. A lump came in her throat, and her mouth trembled as she said:
“No, neither father nor I had ever heard of Plough Monday. It was entirely my father’s fault: he is sometimes impatient when he is disturbed reading.” ”