South Riding Read online

  She wore her brown cloth dress, because it was short and the roads at Cold Harbour would be muddy. She put on her fur coat because it was warm and the weather was fearful. Although the thaw had set in snow still smothered the hedges and lined the drains. She found her best brown hat, velvet, with a feather curled around it, and chose newish gloves and sprinkled the silk “front” of her gown with scent. Carne was taking her to the meeting in the Sunbeam car hired from Tom Sawdon.

  The Cold Harbour colonists had invited him to be guest of honour at their Club this evening, and asked Mrs. Beddows— an honorary member since its foundation—to take the chair for him.

  She consented, for she had business of her own there—the inclusion of the Colony in a subscription scheme for supplying nurses to South Riding cottagers. Also any expedition with Carne was a delight.

  She had scorned his dog-cart.

  “I may have as neat an ankle as any in the South Riding,” she had told him. “But when you get to my time of life you’ll think twice before scrambling into that trap of yours like a monkey up a puzzle tree.”

  But she was proud to have him hire a car for her. He could afford this small extravagance, though commonly she grudged every payment that he must make as though his depleted resources were her own.

  She was contented and gay and eager. This was her night out; she would enjoy herself.

  She paused to look at her reflection in the long mirror before she turned the gas down, and recognised with a shock the woman of seventy-two. When she tossed the scent on to her brown frock she had felt not a day older than thirty-five. She sighed, restored to the sad realism of common sense, and went downstairs to find Carne already in her dining-room, straddled before the fire, his overcoat thrown on to the table.

  Deflated as she was by the knowledge of time’s victory, she could not quite control the lift of her heart as he came forward to greet her, to ask if she would be warm enough, if she had everything—gloves, scarves, notes, rugs enough. She knew that such solicitude was not born in him. Muriel had taught him. His whole life and nature had been reshaped by his marriage. He moved through the world now, the ghost of Muriel’s lover. “If I were a younger woman, I should hate her,” thought Emma Beddows.

  They went out to the car together, and she let him tuck the rug round her and put a cushion behind her back. She greeted Tom Sawdon approvingly. He was smart in his chauffeur’s uniform, a fine fellow, a great acquisition to the district. They swung together through the cold February night, mainly silent, and when they talked, only discussed affairs of the Colony and the Council.

  Cold Harbour Colony owed its existence to a nineteenth century philanthropist, Sir Rupert Calderdyke, who believed in making two acres grow where one had been before. He had set thorn fences in the mud of the Leame Estuary, against which receding tides piled clay and drift-wood that slowly from week to week grew from piles to banks, from banks to shallow islands, from islands to outworks of the coast itself then, mile by mile, into level arable land, lightish towards the river where the tides drained off the clay, and heavy as pudding farther in. Sir Rupert raised dykes, dug drains, built heavy double cottages in pseudo-gothic style marked with their varying dates, 1845 to 1889, then died full of plans and debts, leaving to his heirs his many problems.

  Those problems increased. The land was isolated and uneven, the buildings too elaborate, the drains and dykes expensive to maintain; but in 1919 an adventurous county council took over the whole estate as part of an abortive scheme of reconstruction, bought the dark, gabled cottages as homes for heroes, and the reclaimed acres as holdings for ex-service men.

  But it was one thing to beat swords into ploughshares, another to provide the three horses required to pull them through the heavy clay. Few colonists had had previous agricultural experience. The agents sent to supervise their efforts were unpopular with the local farmers, and by the spring of 1933 poverty and despair had weeded out all except the bravest, the most sanguine or the most efficient. A source of financial loss to the Ministry of Agriculture, of controversy to the Council, of ridicule to their neighbours and bewilderment to themselves, the survivors hung on tenaciously, some of them even learning to love the wide Dutch landscape, haunted by larks and sea-birds, roofed by immense pavilions of windy cloud; the miles of brownish-purple shining mud, pocked and hummocked by water and fringed by heath-like herbs; the indented banks where the high tides sucked and gurgled; the great ships gliding up to Kingsport, seen from low-lying windows as though they moved across the fields; the brave infrequent flowers, the reluctant springs, the loneliness, the silence, the slow inevitable rhythm of the tides.

  “Was it Heyer who wrote to you?” asked Mrs. Beddows after a longish silence.

  “Yes.”

  “He’s a fine fellow. That Recreation Club was really his idea. Shouldn’t wonder if there’s a bit of breeding somewhere about there.”

  “Butcher’s son near Ripon,” said the practical Carne.

  “Ah,” Mrs. Beddows was romantic. “You never know. He’s got initiative. Queer that he never married.”

  “He lives next door to Widow Brimsley. Says she does him very well.”

  “Still—a good-looking man like that. Not that there’s any reason why he should marry.” Mrs. Beddows laughed at herself. “I always want to pair them all off—two by two—like the animals in Noah’s Ark. I remember Heyer once said, ‘They say I’m good company to myself.’”

  “He wants us to go and have a cup of tea with him after the meeting. Do you mind?”

  Mind? Prolonging her evening with Carne? She even preferred visiting with him Bill Heyer’s cheerful cottage to the gloomy haunted stateliness of Maythorpe Hall.

  “I’ve been there before,” she said. “He keeps it perfectly. I believe he takes his disablement as a game. He enjoys finding out just what he can do—and showing it off.”

  They were in perfect harmony. If Carne was grave, she knew him to feel as much at peace as his tormented spirit could ever let him be. He liked the colonists; he was glad to serve them. “And he’s at ease with me. He trusts me. He’s glad I’m here,” Mrs. Beddows told herself. She glowed with the satisfaction of that knowledge.

  The car stopped outside the recreation hut. Bill Heyer came forward to greet them. Inside the rough wooden building a score or so of men and women huddled on benches round a black smoking stove. Oil lamps hung from the rafters. A Union Jack spread across the platform table, and paper festoons, wilted relics of Christmas festivities, slung from wall to wall, made the only colour. The women wore shapeless cloth coats with rabbit fur collars and deflated hats. The men wore their workaday clothes. But they clumped with heavy boots on the floor as Heyer escorted the visitors up the room.

  They all liked Carne—a sportsman, a gentleman and a practical farmer, but it was Mrs. Beddows who lit the candles on the Christmas tree. She tripped up the room, throwing open her fur coat, scattering the luxury of expensive perfume (sent by Chloe, who knew her mother’s tastes), distributing smiles like prizes. She recognised every one. She had greetings; she had jokes. She refused to mount the platform.

  “Now,” she said, “I’m going to suggest that instead of moving forward, like Mr. Heyer here says you ought to do, you all go and get as close to the stove as possible, and Mr. Carne and I will come and join you. It’s not as though this was a formal meeting. Anything- Mr. Carne and I have to say can be said as well sitting as standing, can’t it?”

  They clapped her.

  Her presence had the effect of turning a formal meeting into a party. Carne was an indifferent speaker; slow and awkward. “The wind has time to change between every sentence,” they said of him; but he could answer questions and give advice which they respected. Before five minutes had passed he knew that the real object of the colonists was to secure his support over two matters: the more rapid repairing of buildings for which the council was responsible, and opposition to the preposed new road from Skerrow to Kiplington.

  “It st
ands to reason,” George Brimsley explained heavily, “if they make road there, they won’t make it here. Now we need a better road to Yarrold. We’d like railway an’ all.”

  “Hear, hear.”

  “But if they spend north, they won’t spend south. Why should they? Stands to reason.”

  “We know that there’s jealousy. We know what they call us, but what we say is . . .”

  “Who wants more motor roads to Kiplington, anyway?”

  The smallholders drew towards him, warming to their grievance. The women collected round Mrs. Beddows. She did not wait for Carne to finish. She never had any use for forms or ceremonies. In a few minutes there were two meetings—a masculine one to plead for the transference of the new road from north to south of the railway line, so that it could benefit Cold Harbour Colony, and a feminine one to consider the establishment of a district nurse.

  The two discussions formed a blended symphony of rural experience—strophe and antistrophe, arguing, reaffirming— transport from farm to market, transport from death to life.

  Men.—Mind you, apples ain’t worth the packing. What the missus don’t make into pies, we give to pigs.

  Women.—Nay, now, Mrs. Beddows, I said: If Jack’s got quinseys he’ll get better, and if he’s got diphtheria, like he’ll die. But if he goes into fever hospital, there’s no telling what’ll happen, so I’ll just keep him at home.

  Men.—They used to pay 4s. an acre for binding sheaves, but now reapers does it all so we get no tack-work even if we tried to go out and earn a bit. . . .

  Women.—Mrs. Beachall’s a nice little woman and has obliged for many of the ladies round here, for all Doctor says she’s dirty and uncertified; but I was three days and three night in trouble with our Percy and if the devil hisself could have helped me, I’d have took him.

  Men.—So his fowls never got no prizes; no more would the Angel Gabriel himself if he’d been moulting.

  Women.—We thought the air out here would do Lucy good, so we brought her straight home and she never went to no “after-care.” Maybe if there’d been a nurse to tell her she was going wrong way we’d not have lost her.

  Men.—It’s the going on year after year with no prospect for the lads that vexes me. What you grow, you eat, and what you can’t grow, you do without.

  Women.—But what should we have to pay her, Mrs. Beddows? Dad and me’s putting weekly into the Christmas club and boot fund, and burial, and if we had to put down 6d. or so for a nurse as well, we’d have to drop one of ’em, and burial would go. And I know what that means. We’ve been owing ever since we lost our Benny, because we’d no insurance and to pay money down. You may say it’s like sacrificing the living to the dead, but what I say is—you never need get ill, but you’re bound to die some day. . . .

  Men.—Government put us here. Government should help us. If we could get out stuff straight to Kingsport market we might sometimes make a little profit. . . .

  Mrs. Beddows sat back and let the talk ripple round her. She could watch Carne’s face under the swinging lamp, and learn by heart the concerned kindliness of his expression. To see him listening, nodding, frowning, answering, so good, so patient, so serious in his desire for understanding, was to be confident of his ripeness for giving comfort, because only by giving could he receive it.

  They ought to have made him alderman, she thought. He must never give up his public work. It’s his salvation.

  She did not care much whether the road ran from east to west or from north to south, but she cared urgently that Carne should have a case worth fighting for. The championship of the colonists would involve him in a quarrel with Snaith, but, since the chestnut mare was killed, that enmity seemed past mending anyhow. She was too old to hope for romantic reconciliation. Well then, let Carne fight; warfare would distract him.

  One day, of course, his hurts would heal; he would be able to stand outside his grief and look all round it, take its full measure and accept it as Bill Heyer accepted his crippled body, as she had accepted her disappointing marriage.

  He’s too sore now, she thought. His wounds were still open and agonising. She could remember well when she had been in the same case. For she had gone to Jim Beddows in love with his brisk efficient geniality, expecting him to prove a gallant lover and stalwart companion. She had found him a man of straw, mean, ungenerous, jealous, hugging his little grievances and grudges, rejoicing when other men could lose a fortune, but lacking the enterprise himself to make one. Emma’s first two babies had died at seven weeks, and in both cases she was sure they could have been saved if her husband’s economics had not included the prohibition of medical advice. For years she had thought her hatred and unhappiness irremediable.

  But one comes through, she reflected. One comes through it all. She had learned to manage Jim; she had her living children; she had built up a new life on other people’s needs. The regret, the anguish, the humiliation faded as one grew older.

  If only she could persuade Carne that this was so indeed, that his loneliness would fade; that his pain was mortal, but that the love and tenderness which he had expended upon his wife and daughter, the kindness which he showed to his neighbours, were bread cast on the waters and would return to enrich his later years.

  Only he must be brave; he must endure; he must learn that even remorse can be used as a weapon to conquer wisdom. It was the man of sorrows acquainted with grief whom the world needed.

  The business was over; the meeting had drifted into desultory discussion of the storm.

  “I’ve seen nothing to turn my stomach like them sheep since I was at Passchendale,” said Heyer. “You coming to have a cup of tea with me now, alderman? And you, Mr. Carne?”

  Alderman and councillor went off together with him, to his clean lamplit cottage.

  No dwelling-place in the colony was neater. The coarse white tablecloth shone like damask; the red tiled floor was spotless; hyacinths in pots lent their faint melting sweetness to the smell of tobacco, harness and scrubbed linoleum. Tom Sawdon, no longer the chauffeur but the innkeeper, ratepayer, and neighbour, came in to add his word to that of the colonists. Mrs. Beddows smiled happily and helped herself to a third slice of saucer cheese cake.

  “I shall have indigestion to-night and blame you, Bill.”

  “Mrs. Brimsley’s cook,” he defended himself.

  “Why do you never come and patronise the Nag’s Head, Mrs. Beddows?” asked Sawdon. “I’d get Lily to make you pastry West Riding way.”

  “I’m afraid of your big dog.”

  “The Alsatian? That’s my wife’s. Gentle as a kitten.”

  “Not in sheep-folds. You’ll have to watch out, Sawdon,” Carne warned him. “Folks round here don’t like Alsatians about lambing time.”

  But he spoke casually. There was no threat in his warning.

  The whole evening was splendid—an unqualified success. It was not until they were shut away again together in the car that Mrs. Beddows remembered something.

  “Look here—Have you called yet on Miss Burton?”

  “No.”

  His convivial humour was suddenly clouded over by the old sullen darkness. “No. But I’ve met her,” he added.

  “Well?”

  No answer.

  “You didn’t like her?”

  Oh, he could be difficult. He must have driven Muriel crazy sometimes. That was, of course, just what he thought he had done. Poor boy. Poor boy.

  “I didn’t think much about her at all.”

  “You did. I’m sure you did. Or you wouldn’t sound so cross.”

  “Did I?”

  “Oh, it’s all right. But you can’t come the strong silent man over me, you know. I’m too old. And I know you too well.”

  He paused at that, then confessed ungraciously, “Midge thinks she’s the world’s wonder.”

  “And you’re jealous,” concluded Mrs. Beddows. She pressed on. “Aren’t you?”

  “Oh, she’s harmless. I suppose.”


  “Well. I think you’re both wrong myself,” said Mrs. Beddows.

  2

  Alderman Snaith is Very Fond of Cats

  ALDERMAN ANTHONY SNAITH entered his beautiful bathroom to wash his hands.

  He never set eyes on that bathroom without pleasure. Through his mind floated the memory of a shallow enamel basin half full of cooling grey suds, a dank flannel, a cracked slab of red carbolic soap, and a moist threadbare towel dropped on to the worn brown oilcloth. There had been no bathroom in his aunt’s house at Kingsport; he had been a fastidious and self-conscious little boy.

  Now he could make a delightful entertainment even of washing his hands before afternoon tea.

  He removed his coat and hung it on a special padded hanger. He slid the links through the cuffs of his delicate lavender grey poplin shirt and rolled up his sleeves, baring his slender blue-veined forearms. He turned a hot tap and a cold tap and watched the rising steam bedew his stainless fittings. The water was artificially softened. It gushed out into the pale green porcelain basin. The soap was of a deeper green, with a faint herbal fragrance.

  The towel was bordered with green, and hung, warm and smothering-soft, on the shining water pipes.

  Alderman Snaith regarded his fine toothbrushes, his loofahs, shaving tackle, disinfectants and mouth washes. Everything was in order—neat, expensive, the thoughtfully designed equipment of a man of sensitive taste.

  Washed, brushed, provided with a clean linen handkerchief, he went along the corridor to the library, where, before a leaping cheerful fire, the tea-table waited, silver kettle bubbling and shining teapot already warmed, caddy of Earl Grey mixture, a covered hot-plate of buttered anchovy toast, an angel cake like a sugar snowdrift.

  He surveyed the table critically, but his inquiring eye found no imperfection, no finger mark on the silver, no crease in the cloth. He sat down with satisfaction to make the tea, to nibble the toast and cut the powdery cake, from time to time pausing to stroke with affectionate foot the immsense tom-cat that lay trustfully on its back along the hearthrug.