Two Lives

3

Arrangements are being explained to her: she doesn’t listen. The words are no more than a gabble, a sound like a dog grieving in the distance or the wail of wind through branches. Jeanne d’Arc worked a plough like a man; she wasn’t a mimsy thing like Possy Luke with her cracked spectacles. Miss Mullover said Jeanne d’Arc’s courage was beyond all comprehension.

‘Good of you to come over.’ Miss Foye has returned. Her strict tone interrupts the visitor’s drone, still going on about the way things are now being done. There is a smile on Miss Foye’s plump face. Forty-two she is, a known fact. Courted by a road surveyor.

‘We’ll take it easy,’ the man remarks, lowering his voice. ‘We won’t rush our fences.’

They glance at her, both of them. She introduces a vacancy into her eyes, staring over their heads, upwards, at the ceiling.

‘It’ll be a saving for you,’ Miss Foye observes.

He shakes his head, implying that that isn’t a consideration. ‘All I want to do is the right thing. Will the house close down, Miss Foye?’

‘We have fourteen to place elsewhere, fourteen that can’t go back where they came from. The house’ll put up its shutters then.’

‘You’ll be OK yourself?’

‘To tell the truth I would be finishing with it anyway.’

Miss Foye looks coy. A month ago a ruby stone appeared on her engagement finger. Miss Foye is to become the wife of the road surveyor, an autumnal romance if ever there was one. ‘There’s juice in the old girl yet,’ Dot Sterne remarked when the news spread. ‘Isn’t that one bold for her age?’

‘Friday week.’ He says it, Miss Foye nods. Friday week’ll be grand. It’ll give everyone time, only fair to an inmate to let her get used to the change in advance. ‘D’you hear us, dear?’ she asks, raising her tone. ‘D’you follow what you’ve been told?’

The woman smiles, first at Miss Foye, then at her visitor. She shakes her head. She hasn’t heard a thing, she says.