PART IV: IVY Chapter 1

TOWARDS June the country bounded by the Four Roads woke to a certain liveliness. A big camp had sprung up on the outskirts of Hailsham, on the ridge above Horse Eye, and the excitement spread to Brownbread Street, Sunday Street, Bodle Street, Pont’s Green, Rushlake Green, and other Streets and Greens—and cottage gardens were a-swing with lines of khaki shirts, “soldiers’ washing,” taken in with high delight at an army’s big spending.

The girls of the neighbourhood began to take new sweethearts with startling quickness. They came, these strangers from the North, leaving their girls behind them, and the girls of the South had lost their men to camps in France and Midland towns. No doubt some kept faith with the absent, but the spirit of the days mistrusted space as it mistrusted time, and the wisdom of love took no more account of happiness a hundred miles away than of happiness a hundred months ahead. There were wooings and matings and partings, all played out in the few spare hours of a soldier’s day, in the few spare miles of his roaming, under the thundery thick sky of a Sussex summer, when heat and drench play their alternate havoc with the earth.

In those days Ivy Beatup lifted up her head. She had had a dull time since Kadwell and Viner and Pix went out to France. Thyrza’s cousin had turned out miserable prey—he had actually proposed himself as her husband to her father and mother, bringing forward most [154] satisfactory evidence of a more than satisfactory income, derived from Honey’s Suitall Stores in Seaford. Thus the strain between Ivy and her family was increased, and her presence at home became a burden of reproach. They could not see why she refused to bestow her splendid healthy womanhood on this poor creature, why she would rather scrub floors and gut fowls than sit with folded hands in his parlour—that she had “taken him on” merely to kill time, and that it wasn’t her fault if he chose to treat her seriously and make a fool of himself.

“You’ll die an old maid,” said her mother. “You’ll go to the bad,” said her father, and Ivy, who had no intention of doing either, felt angry and sore, and longed to justify herself by a new love-affair more gloriously conducted.

When the soldiers came to Hailsham, she saw her chance, and resolved to make the most of it. She persuaded Harry to take her into the town on market-day, and also found that she preferred the “pictures” there to those at Senlac. Polly Sinden refused to abet her—Bill Putland had given her distinct encouragement on his last leave, and Polly decided that in future discreet behaviour would become her best. So she refused to prowl of an evening with Ivy, either in Hailsham or Senlac, and Ivy—since no girl prowls alone—had to take up with Jen Hollowbone of the Foul Mile, the same whom Bob Kadwell had jilted, but who, soothed by time and a new sweetheart, had generously forgiven her rival, especially as Bob had once again transferred his affections, and was now no more Ivy’s than Jen’s.

The two girls went into Hailsham on market-days, and strolled that way of evenings, winning the South Road by Stilliands Tower and Puddledock, through the little lanes and farm-tracks that were now all thick with June grass, and smelled of hayseed and fennel. With grass [155] and goose-foot sticking to their skirts, and their hair spattered with the fallen blossoms of elderflower, they would come out on the South Road, where the dust swept through the twilight before the wind. Warm and flushed, with laughing eyes, and arms entwined, and slow proud movements of their bodies, the girls would stroll past the camp gates, leaning clumsily together and giggling. The men would come pouring out after the day’s routine, seeking what diversion they could find in lane or market-town. It was in this way that Ivy met Corporal Seagrim of the Northumberland Fusiliers.

He was a tall, dark giant, well past thirty, with a becoming grizzle in his hair, over the temples. His face was brown as a cob-nut, and his speech so rough and uncouth in the northern way that at first Ivy could hardly understand him. They met in the market-place. He had a companion who paired with Jen—an under-sized little miner, with a pale face and red lips, but good enough for Jen, since she already had a boy in France. Of course Ivy had several boys—but they were no more than good comrades, the interchangers of cheery postcards on service and cheery kisses on leave. If she had had a boy like Jen’s, she would have been more faithful to him than Jen was, but she was free to do as she liked with Seagrim—free when they met in the market-place, that is to say, for by the time they said good-bye at Four Wents under the stars, she was free no longer.

They had gone to the “pictures,” but soon the moving screen had become a dazzle to Ivy, the red darkness an enchantment, the tinkling music an intoxication. Seagrim’s huge brown hand lay heavily on hers, and her limbs shook as she leaned against his shoulder, almost in silence, since they found it hard to understand each other’s speech. The man thrilled and confused her as no other had done—whether it was his riper age, or his [156] almost perfect physical beauty, or some strange animal force that thrilled his silence and slow clumsy movements, she did not seek to tell. Self-knowledge was beyond her—all she knew was that she could never give him the careless chum-like affection she had given her boys, that between them there never would be those light hearty kisses which she had so often taken and bestowed. She felt herself languid, troubled, full of a dim glamour that brought both delight and pain. The music, the red glow all seemed part of her sensation, though before she used scarcely to notice them, except to hail a popular tune or an opportunity for caresses.

When the show ended, the soldiers offered to walk with the girls as far as Four Wents, where the Puddledock lane joins the South Road. Jen and the miner walked on ahead, she holding stiffly by his arm, in a manner suitable to one demi-affianced elsewhere. Ivy and Seagrim followed. They did not speak; his arm was about her, and every now and then he would stop and pull her to him, dragging her up against him in silent passion, taking from her lips kiss after kiss. The aching passionate night looked down on them from the sky where the great stars jigged like flames, was close to them in the hedges where the scented night-wind fluttered, and the dim froth of chervil and bennet swam against the hazels. For the first time Ivy seemed to feel a hushed yet powerful life in the country which till then she had scarcely heeded more than the music and red lamps of the show. Now the scents that puffed out of the grass made her senses swim, the soft sough of the wind over the fields, the distant cry of an owl in Tillighe Wood, made her heart ache with a longing that was half its own consummation, made her lean in a drowse of ecstasy and languor against Seagrim’s beating heart, as he held her in the crook of his arm, close to his side.

[157]

At the Wents the parting came, with a loud ring of laughter from Jen, and a “pleased to ha’ met yo’” from the miner. But Ivy clung to her man, her eyes blurred with tears, her throat husky and parched with love as she murmured against his thick brown neck—

“I’ll be seeing you agaun?...”

“Aye, and yo’ will, li’l lass, li’l loove” ... he swore, and straightway made tryst.

When he was gone the night still seemed full of him—his strength and his beauty and his wonder.