Chapter 6

Another woman in Sunday Street was being courted from the Waterheel Y.M.C.A., but she did not fill her part as comfortably as Thyrza. Not that Ivy Beatup had much real concern for Jerry Sumption’s passion, beating against her indifference as a wave beats and breaks against a rock. Her chief trouble was that Jerry now threw out hints of an approaching leave, and though she had no objection to his mingling rage and tenderness [81] on paper, she disliked the thought of having to confront them mingled in his gipsy face.

The minister’s son was one of Ivy’s mistakes—she made mistakes occasionally, as she would herself acknowledge with a good-humoured grin. But they were never very serious. And, as the saying is, she knew how to take care of herself. Unfortunately, Jerry had given her more than ordinary trouble. After some years of standoffishness and suspicion—for Mrs. Beatup had never liked her children to play with the gipsy woman’s son—Ivy and Jerry had somehow been thrown together during his last holiday from Erith, and she had good-naturedly allowed him to kiss her and take her to Senlac Fair, as she would have allowed any decent lad on leave. It was unlucky that what had been to her no more than a bit of fun should be for Jerry the tinder to set his body and soul alight. Ivy, more buxom than beautiful, and, with her apple-face and her barley-straw hair, typical of those gaujos his mother’s people had always distrusted, somehow became his earth and sky. He loved her, and went after her as the tide after the moon.

Ivy tried to detach him by the various means known to her experience. For a long time she ignored his letters and postcards. Then when these continued to pour upon her, she sent a cold, careless reply, which had the contrary effect of making his furnace seven times hotter; so that her next letter was warmed unconsciously by the flame of his, and she saw that instead of having shaken him off, she had gone a step further in his company.

No doubt the best thing to do was to tell him to his face that she would not have him. He would not be the first chap she had told this, but Ivy had an unaccountable shrinking from repeating the process with Jerry. There was in him a subtle essence, a mystifying quality—perhaps it was no more than the power of a sharper [82] life and death—which made him different from the other lads she knew, and struck terror into her country soul. He was the first man she had been ever so little afraid of. Ivy had the least imagination of all the Beatups. That spark which sent Nell to the church, and Harry to the woods, which made Tom feel more than roots and clay in the earth on which he trod, and Zacky sometimes almost think himself a British army corps, even that little spark had never flickered up in Ivy’s honest heart. Her world was made of things she could taste and see and hear and smell and handle, and very good things she found them. She resented the presence in her life of something which responded to none of these tests. Jerry’s love for her was “queer,” just as Jerry himself was “queer,” and Ivy did not like “queer” things.

When the long-dreaded leave came at last, it took her by surprise. She had not heard from Jerry for a week, and one morning, having run to the pillar-box at the throws, with some letters for her soldier friends, on her return she met Mr. Sumption, waving his arms and cracking his joints and shouting to her even from beyond earshot, that Jerry was coming home that evening.

“A letter came this morning. Maybe you’ve got one too?”

Ivy shook her head, and Mr. Sumption tried to disguise his pleasure at being the only one to hear.

“He’s a good boy, Jerry—never forgets his father. But he wants to see you though, Ivy. Maybe you’d come and have supper with us this evening?”

“I’m unaccountable sorry, but I’m going up to Senlac town.”

[83]

“That’s a pity. Perhaps you’ll come another day?”

“If I’ve time, Mus’ Sumption—but I’m justabout vrothered these days wud the harvesters here. Thank you kindly though, all the same.”

She had been sidling away as she spoke, and now walked off with a brisk “Good mornun.” She was sorry to have to disappoint Mr. Sumption, whom she liked and pitied; but there was no good letting him think she had any use for Jerry.

Before going home she ran down the drive to Little Worge, and told Polly Sinden she was at all costs and risks to come with her to Senlac that evening.

For the rest of the day she was less her cheery, placid self than usual, and the evening in Senlac town was not the treat it might have been. All the time she was haunted by a sense of Jerry’s nearness—perhaps he had come as far as Lewes by now, perhaps he was already in Sunday Street, perhaps in Senlac itself. What a fool she had been to tell Mr. Sumption where she was going! Her heart was troubled—another of those “queer” aspects of the situation which she so disliked. Generally when she wanted to get rid of a boy, she did not have feelings like these. All through the soft August twilight, when she and Polly Sinden, in the clumsy finery of country girls, strolled arm-in-arm up and down the Upper Lake and the Lower Lake—those two lakes of blood which an old, old war had made, giving the town its bloody name—and even afterwards, when having by arts known to themselves acquired two soldiers, they sat in the picture palace with a khaki arm round each tumbled muslin waist, even then the terror lingered, haunting, tearing, elusive as a dead leaf on the wind. Ivy looked nervously into the shadows of the little picture-hall, thinking she saw Jerry’s face, angry and swarthy, with eyes like the Forge at night.... Suppose he had come after her to Senlac ... he certainly would if he was home in time. Then came a picture of a girl who was “done in” by her lover. Ivy could stand it no more, and rising to her feet, plunged out over the people’s knees.

[84]

“That plaace is lik an oven,” she said to the Anzac corporal who followed her out.... “No, thank you. I’ll go home wud Polly.”

Polly was a little annoyed that Ivy should have broken up the party so soon; but it certainly was very hot—both the girls’ faces were spotted with sweat and their gowns were sticking to their shoulders. Besides, it would be as well not to get too thick with this Australian chap now Bill Putland was writing so regularly.... Miss Sinden and Miss Beatup dismissed their escort, and, after the proper number of “Good-by-ees,” shouted across longer and longer darkness-muffled distances, they trudged off homewards on the North Trade.

When Ivy reached the farm, she was told that Jerry Sumption had called about eight o’clock—on his way from the station, without even going first to leave his kit-bag at the Horselunges—and that Mrs. Beatup had had an unaccountable to-do to git shut of him.