Chapter 8

Sunday Street was dazzled by its multitude of marriages. There had been Tom Beatup’s, not a year ago, then the curate’s, and Polly Sinden’s, on the top of each other in January, and now, in February, Nell Beatup’s. The last was a surprise; who would have thought, asked the village, that Nell would be married before Ivy? One or two mothers improved their daughters’ minds with the moral of demure, gentle Nell’s marrying before her sister with her loud, friendly ways. There was some jealousy, too, for Kadwell, heir of Stilliands Tower, was considered a good match, though a certain amount of suspicion attached locally to his morals, due to his having once spent a leave in Paris.

Nell’s wedding was a shorn affair. Her father was, of course, unable to come and give her away, and she had to go up the aisle on the arm of a shuffling and miserable Harry, to be finally disposed of by Mrs. Beatup, who was full of doubts as to the legality of a marriage thus officiated. Ivy could not get another day off, so had been obliged to content herself with sending Nell a silver-plated cruet and a rather tactless message to “come to [234] her if ever she felt things going a bit wrong.” Thyrza was not present, either. She had mended slowly, in spite of the joy of her little son, and felt unequal to the fag and excitement of a wedding, either socially or ecclesiastically. The gaps were completed by the absence of Mr. Poullett-Smith, who was still away on his honeymoon. He was expected back next week, and it was considered locally that Nell and Kadwell would have shown a more becoming spirit if they had waited for his ministrations. No one guessed that it was just this chance of being married in the curate’s absence which had finally dropped the balance, and made Nell give way to her lover’s entreaties and make him happy at once.

After the ceremony there was a breakfast at Worge, and that too was shorn. There had been no Ivy to help Mrs. Beatup with the cooking, and trug-faced Ellen had burnt the cake, which was not only sugarless, as Tom’s had been, but without peel or plums. “Might as well eat bread and call it caake,” said Mrs. Beatup drearily. “They both taaste lik calf-meal.”

There was no butter, as butter did not pay at its present price, and was no longer made at Worge. Some greenish margarine had been Ellen’s reward for standing two hours outside the grocer’s in Senlac, but the cake had swallowed it all up, and wanted more, judging by its splintering behaviour under the teeth. To balance these scarcities there was tinned salmon and tinned crab and tinned lobster—also two bottles of wine, left over from Tom’s wedding, and watered to make them go further.

“This is wot you might call a War wedding,” said Mrs. Beatup. “Nell, I’m unaccountable glad you got married in church—if it had bin a chapel marriage on the top of this”—and she waved her hand over the table—“I’d never quite feel as you wur praaperly wed.”

As a further counterblast to irregularity she had [235] insisted on Nell’s being married in white satin, with a stiff white veil like a meat-safe bound over her hair with a wreath of artificial orange-blossom. She looked very pretty, with a becoming flush in the thick pallor of her skin. Her eyes were bright and restless, and she breathed quickly, so that her little pearl-and-turquoise locket, “the gift of the bridegroom,” heaved under her transparencies—she was too shrinking and modest to have her gown cut low—like a shallop on a wave. She scarcely spoke during the meal, but sat twisting her wedding-ring and staring at her husband—following each movement with her eyes, apparently unable to look away from him.

The meal was not lively; it lacked Ivy’s good-humour, Mus’ Beatup’s talkativeness, Bill Putland’s wit, Mr. Sumption’s big laugh and childish enjoyment of his food. The party consisted only of the two families—Beatups and Kadwells. Old Mus’ Kadwell droned about the War, and the “drore” in which he prophesied it would end, Mrs. Kadwell compared with Mrs. Beatup a day’s adventures in search of meat, Lizzie Kadwell tried to flirt with Harry, who was overwhelmed with shame and annoyance at her efforts, and Sim Kadwell, who had been best man, gave wearying details of the Indispensable’s Progress from tribunal to tribunal.

Steve Kadwell could get only a week-end’s leave, so the honeymoon would be short, and afterwards Nell would come back to Worge, and live there as before, except for her “teachering,” which her husband had made her give up, so that she might be at hand when he wanted her, free to go with him on any unexpected leave. He would have longer leave given him soon, he promised her, and they would go to London and have a valiant time. On this occasion they were going no further that Brighton, but they would stay at a fine hotel and have late dinner and a fire in their bedroom.

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Nell drove away with her hand limp and rather cold in Kadwell’s big fondling clasp. The pale February sun slanted to Worge’s roof from the west, and a clammy, mould-flavoured mist hung over the hedges, like the winter ghost of those fogs which had webbed the farm with dusty gold in harvest-time. Nell looked back at the old house and the fields behind it—since she was leaving home only for two days, it was queer to feel that she was leaving it for ever.

9

It was raining and foggy when she came back. Thick white muffles of cloud drifted up the fields, and hung between the hedges, catching and choking all sound. Rain fell noiselessly, almost invisibly, apparent only in an occasional whorl, in the dripping eaves of the stacks, the shining roofs of the barns, and the whiteness of the beaded grass. Nell came from Hailsham station in a cab—her husband had told her to do so, giving her paper money for the fare. He certainly was princely in his ideas of spending, and there were loud and envious exclamations at Worge when, instead of the soaked and huddled figure expected, Nell appeared bone-dry, without even her umbrella unfurled.

“A cab from Hailsham!” cried Mrs. Beatup. “Reckon you’ve got a good husband.”

“And did you have the fire in your bedroom?” asked Zacky.

“Yes,” said Nell. “A shilling every night.”

She kissed her mother and brothers, and Ivy, who was over for the day and now came out of the kitchen, with a bear’s hug for her sister.

“You’ve got a new hat!” she exclaimed.

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“Yes; Steve saw it in a shop in Brighton and bought it for me.”

“Lork!” cried Mrs. Beatup.

“But it aun’t your usual style,” said Ivy; “you most-ways wear ’em more quiet-like. I’ve seen many of that sort of hat come on the tram, and it’s generally what the boys call a tart.”

Nell flushed and looked away.

“We’ve got Thyrza here,” said Mrs. Beatup. “She came up this morning afore the rain started, and we’re kipping her till it’s a done—fust time she’s bin out, and I’m justabout fritted lest she taakes cold.”

“Has she got the baby with her?”

“Surelye.... Here’s Nell, Thyrza, come up in a cab from the station, and her husband’s guv her a new hat.”

Thyrza’s eyes opened big in wonder. She sat by the fire, with her child in her arms; she was pale, but seemed plump and healthy, and her eyes had an eager, yearning look which was new to them. Nell kissed her and the baby, and sat down by the hearth with a little shiver.

“I’ll git you some hot tea in a minnut,” said her mother, “and then I’ll tell you a surprise about Ivy.”

“Adone do, mother—you’ve half toald her now.”

“I haven’t—I only said it wur a surprise, which I reckon it aun’t much of, since you’ve near married three men in the last twelvemonth.”

Ivy groaned—“Reckon your tongue’s lik a bruk wurzel-cutter—slipping all over the plaace. Well, Nell, you know it now—but guess who he is.”

This was more difficult, as there were at least half a dozen possible claimants, and Nell restored the secret to a little of its lost glory by guessing wrong several times.

“It’s Eric Staples,” said Ivy at last, “and we’re going [238] out to Canada soon as ever he gits his discharge, which woan’t be long now. He wur wounded and gassed at Vimy, but he’s a stout feller still, and has got a liddle farm in Saskatchewan wot me and him ull kip the two of us. He says I’m the woman born for a colonial’s wife.”

“Reckon you are,” said her mother fondly, “but I wish you cud have got a husband wot took you to hotels and guv you cab-rides and fine hats like Nell.”

“I aun’t the girl fur hotels and cabs—reckon I’m only the girl for washing the pots and scrubbing the floor, and lucky that’s the girl Eric wants. I’d never do wud Nell’s life—she’s a lady...” and she squeezed her sister’s hand.

Nell gave a faint squeeze in response. She was touched by Ivy’s affection, at the same time it made her feel a little cold, for she guessed the reason; Ivy was only saying without words, “I’m standing by you, Nell—you’ve done a stupid thing, and nobody knows it but you and I. Howsumdever you can always come wud any trouble to old Ivy.”

Tea was now on the table, with the remains of the wedding-cake. Mus’ Beatup was asleep upstairs, so it was arranged that later on Nell should take him up his tea and pay him her dutiful greetings. Harry and Zacky came in very grubby after handling roots. Harry was now a pitiless tyrant who drove and slaved his brother out of school hours, making him dig and rake and cart and dung; for the unthinkable thing of a year ago had happened, and the War was dragging on towards Harry’s eighteenth birthday, threatening to move his battle front from the furrows and ditches of Sussex to the blasted fields of France.

Thyrza had a letter from Tom, which she read to the company, every now and then stopping to hum over some passage which for obviously pleasant reasons could not be read out loud.

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“To think he’s never seen his baby,” she murmured, bending towards her crooked arm.

“To think of Tom ever having a baby to see,” said Mrs. Beatup—“and you’d know he wur Tom’s by his flat nose.”

“Wot have you settled to call him?” asked Ivy. “Is it still Thomas Edward?”

“No, it’s to be Thomas William, fur Bill Putland has promised to stand godfather.”

“I doan’t lik William as much as Edward. Wot maade you change, Thyrza?”

“Tom wants him called after his best pal, surelye.”

“And after the Kayser, too—William’s the Kayser’s naum.”

Thyrza looked shocked.

“You’ll have to call him Bill fur short.”

“That ud sound more like the Kayser than ever—I always call the Kayser Bill.”

“Then call him Willie.”

“That’s the young Kayser, and Tom when he fixed William said as he must never shorten it to Willie, ’cos there’s a kind of shell called Little Willie, and he says as if, when peace comes and he gits hoame, fulks wur to say, ’Here comes Little Willie,’ he’d chuck himself down in the lane and start digging himself in—Ha! ha!” and Thyrza laughed at the joke, and tickled the baby to make it laugh too, which it didn’t.

“Reckon he’s too young to laugh,” said Mrs. Beatup.

“He aun’t too young to cry.”

“We’re none of us too young fur that, nor too oald, nuther.”

Thyrza sighed gently—

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“I’m unaccountable set on Tom’s coming fur the christening—and Passon’s been wanting to christen him; he asked me at the churching. I thought maybe Tom cud git leave to see his baby christened, but seemingly he can’t.”

“They’re unaccountable short wud leave,” said Mrs. Beatup. “Steve couldn’t git more’n three days to git married in.”

“But reckon he’ll git some more later, woan’t he, Nell?”

Nell started—during the little womanly talk her mind had gone off on questionings of its own.

“Leave? Yes. He’s sure to get a week before he goes out to France.”

“You’re unaccountable lucky. Reckon he’ll taake you to another hotel and buy you another hat.”

“And send you home in another cab.”

“I’ll go up and have a look at father,” said Nell.

There was silence in the kitchen for a little while after she went. Harry and Zacky had gone back to their digging, and Ivy and Mrs. Beatup sat squatting against Thyrza’s lap, where the baby lay more helpless than a day-old kitten.

“Nell’s middling quiet,” said her mother at last.

“She’s sad at having said good-bye to Steve,” sighed Thyrza.

“I doan’t waonder as she’s vrothered,” said Mrs. Beatup. “Courted, cried, and married, all in a huddle lik that. Ivy, I hope as this ull be a lesson to you, and you’ll bide your banns praaperly and buy your bits of things in more’n one day’s shopping. Pore Nell, she sims all swummy and of a daze, and I doan’t woander, nuther, wud all the hurriment thur’s bin. Reckon she scarce knows yit if she’s maid or wife.”

“Reckon she does,” said Ivy.