The Farm by the Lake

Chapter 3

Sunday afternoon and evening passed quickly. So well did Flo’s things suit her that everybody that knew her responded at once with open, pleased admiration, or ill-hidden jealousy, both of which Flo could enjoy. The feelings of meanness and littleness of the morning she escaped from. Most jealous of all was Ivy, who, of course, had to try everything. Ivy had a natural grace which let her look well in almost anything; Flo was somewhat stumpy and generally hard to suit. But for once the navy blue costume was too stiff and sober for Ivy’s untidy beauty, though exactly right for the more staid Flo.

“Well, if you don’t land a feller in that, you’re a wet hen,” said Ivy. “I bet I wouldn’t be long skivvying, anyway.”

She went out again; it was very seldom she told where she was going. Mrs. Royer was gossiping somewhere and Flo went up to pack. Mrs. Howell had given them a travelling bass, one half of which went over the other half in the same way as a soap container does. The halves did not fit tightly, so that clothes could be stacked right up out of the lower portion and the upper half became a very deep lid. It should have been strapped, only Mrs. Howell had kept the straps thinking that they might still be useful, and Flo was going to have to manage with old rope. It was rather a relief after her many visits to be left alone to pack, because she wanted to decide carefully about things. She had begun to realize that it might be a year before she came back. All the things that she knew she wanted and all the things that she might take were put on the bed. Into the bottom of the bass at once went the spare new underclothes. The choice of other clothes was difficult, not because there were so many to choose among, but because by contrast she saw how shabby the other things were. Most of them were Ivy’s cast-offs, Ivy always having been in work of some sort, while Flo had only had one job since school, three months of office cleaning for the Thistle Trust Limited. Then even more difficult were decisions over intrinsically worthless possessions, which nevertheless were to Flo most valuable. A hand-mirror encrusted with queer shells that her mother had brought from Morecambe from a Mothers’ Meeting trip had as a rival a rounder mirror in which she could see herself much better, but which had only a plain wood back. The Bible which she knew that she ought to take got left behind because she felt that “Sir Gibbie” and “Peg o’ my Heart” would really be better company. A photograph taken at the age of three went into the bass, while another more recent which showed Ivy as well was thrown out because Flo considered that Ivy looked more intelligent on it than herself. Into the bass, too, went a blood-streaked pebble, somewhat resembling a heart, found at Walney Island on the same day that she picked up a sixpenny bit. Afterwards she had carried the stone everywhere for three weeks hoping that it would give more luck, though it hadn’t. Now, however, she felt that she ought to try it again. She had an uneasy fear that even if it didn’t give good luck, it might, if left behind, cause bad luck. Beside the stone went a green glass pig half an inch long with three legs and no tail. This pig had a mate with only two legs and no tail, but after considerable thought that one she left to look after her mother. Last of all, in preference to a morocco pocket-wallet of her father’s, a pair of opera glasses of his went into the bass. They were plain, and had never been in a theatre, though the black enamel had been worn off the yellow metal of the frames of the lenses, and one of the barrels was rust-pitted from much use in all weathers. Flo remembered how her father had always carried them in his left trouser pocket, and how he had brought them out and let her toy with them very occasionally when she was very young. But he had always been so careful to see that they did not get dropped that the whole family had grown up with the impression that they were valuable; and when he died suddenly of pneumonia in the late spring when Flo was six, the glasses had been carefully put away in the polished walnut box which was one of Milly Royer’s few maidenhood treasures. Flo, of course, had not known this, but one day in the last year of her schooling, she had been attracted by the round eye of mother-of-pearl let into the box lid and had found the glasses and had taken them out. By that time her mother had grown careless, and when she saw her with them she merely tried to recall where they had been put, and then forgot them again. But Flo had remembered how her father once had taken her to Walney and let her look at a yacht far out, with the sun on its white sails. On deck there had been a woman in a poppy jumper, and the sun had enriched her hair to gold; and Flo, seeing all this with unexpected intimacy, in the enclosed field of the lenses, had suddenly felt a romantic thrill. How lucky the woman was, how good it must be to be out there, she thought, and then knew envy. The picture was in her memory never to be forgotten, and how often she had prayed to be able to have a husband who would give her a yacht like that, or how many times she had day-dreamed of herself on a yacht, she could not have told. As she handled the glasses now, the thought strayed into her mind that the way the youth had been lying on the deck of the unfinished submarine was exactly how she would lie on the deck of “her” yacht. She laughed lightly at that, and put the glasses in without hesitation. She had been told that her father had wasted a lot of time uselessly staring through the glasses at ships when he might have been working, but what did that matter? She thought that it was a good thing to have done.

So now everything was in the bass. She tested the weight, but it wasn’t very heavy, after all. The tying could be left, for there was sure to be something that she had forgotten. She went down and sat by the fire which was nearly out because the half hundredweight of coal was nearly gone and would have to last till Monday. At eleven Mrs. Royer came in with three-pennyworth of chips, which they shared, eating them straight from the newspaper. Flo liked them except for the grease that clogged her fingers.

“Wonder if there’ll be a chip-shop where you’re goin’?” Mrs. Royer murmured, indifferent after a gossipy day. She wiped her fingers on her skirt down her thigh, feeling too indolent to reach to her stockings.

Flo without thinking rinsed when she went to run more water into the kettle.

“To-morrer night, where will you be?”

“I don’t know,” said Flo; after that they scarcely spoke till they were both about to get into bed. Flo, though usually she slept by the window, asked if she could be in the middle.

“Warmest place, but I’ll give it to you . . .,” said her mother, resigned. Nevertheless, she was asleep in less than ten minutes, and began a series of little snoring bouts; she would snore louder and louder, and then unexpectedly her whole body would jerk and the snores would end abruptly, though only to begin within a minute or two and work up to the climax once more. Flo had known of this previously, but she had never realized how regular and peculiar it was; and the next night there would be no more of this snoring and twitching going on beside her. This was the end of their intimacy. She lay and stared at the blank of gloom that was the ceiling and wondered whether even yet she might draw back; announce firmly in the morning that she was not going to go away. Why should she?

At half-past eleven Ivy came in, but idled about downstairs till after midnight. She came up with a candle carelessly held so that grease dripped and congealed in long icicles. She noticed the bass and Flo’s costume ready over the cane chair.

“Lucky devil . . . wish it was me,” she said gruffly, seeing Flo open-eyed.

Mrs. Royer jerked into silence but did not wake.

“I’d sooner stay,” said Flo.

“Don’t be a wet hen. What is there in this hole?” asked Ivy, pulling things off and dropping them anywhere round the bed foot. “Anywhere’d be better than here. God, if I got half a chance . . .”

She flopped into bed and curled her back so that Flo felt her notched spine.

“What’s up; had a row with Charlie?” Flo asked gently.

“The squirt!” and Ivy lay loggishly and would say no more.

Flo, touched by her companions’ warmth, was aware of their utter indifference. On the bare wood floor the alarm clock ticked harshly and busily, keeping to its job in the manner of a businessman with no time to waste. Above the roofs the periodic boom of the Town Hall clock told of the new day’s coming. Flo, too unsettled inside herself to sleep, dozed fitfully. Then the gratering running of the first tram along Duke Street, a hundred yards eastward, told that day was begun—five o’clock. The alarm burst so suddenly into its crow that Flo, who had been waiting expectant, started spasmodically; the others lay on unmoving. The clock set off on its ticking job again, as if nothing had happened, and the steady snoring crescendo started towards yet another climax.

“Time,” said Flo, putting her hand on Ivy’s shoulder. And it was as if the smooth skin there was magnetic. The hand closed; and after the hand the body was drawn, so that for a moment they lay close incurved together. “The last time,” whispered Flo in a sudden access of love.

Ivy stirred, came out of the depth of sleep slowly and stretched. She was still doped and muttered, “’As it gone?” and then shrugged, as if at last becoming aware of herself, breaking the warm contact of the embrace with unknowing callousness. Flo shrank back, rebuffed, and felt her sister lift herself and shake her head as a dog does. Ivy swung half of the curtain back and the inflow of pale light set going the clockwork of Mrs. Royer’s day habits; her snores abruptly stopped as if she had been clutched at the throat, she moaned and almost at once rolled on her right side and out from under the clothes. landing on the floor with a clumsy squirming action. Then she picked up the first of her things that she saw: an odd stocking, her grey woollen petticoat, her black working apron, and rolled them into a bundle and lurched off down the narrow stairs. Almost invariably she went without something and had to come back. Flo had tried to get her to be more tidy so that she might save this extra journey, but this morning it should give them a last moment together. Ivy went down with a, “Well, so long, Flo; an’ look out for yourself”, and Flo waited. But her mother did not come. Ivy banged the door and went running as usual towards the tram. Flo heard the pots as her mother pushed them from her. She slid from bed and went down as she was. Mrs. Royer was pinning on the black hat with the mangy ostrich feather which Mrs. Howell had passed on. She slewed a little leftwards from the glass.

“When shall I see you again, mother?”

“I got to go; you know what cook’ll say,” broke in Mrs. Royer, flustered and uncomfortable. “It’ll all be for the bes t; you ’member what Missis said . . .”

“What about . . . praying or paying?”

Only her mother was in the doorway, and suddenly poked her mouth towards her. On the elder woman’s lips was the warm sweetness of tea from the last hurried sup, and this was the taste left with Flo. For several seconds she watched her mother’s hobbling rush and the swing of her black American cloth bag on its worn string. Then the grin of the paper boy interrupted. Slamming the door, Flo clutched her pink flannel nightdress and stumbled upstairs.