Flo grasped her bass by the rope and struggled up the short flagged path. The door was dull red and was partly open. She rested the bass and hesitantly knocked. Instantly an irritated voice yelled: “Come in. Dunna stand knocking.”
Flo pushed the door and looked up a flagged passage ending at a second door outlined by light penetrating at its cracks.
“In ’ere,” the voice ordered from the left, and Flo saw a large kitchen with a very small, round, snub-nosed woman standing facing her from a rag rug in front of a big shining range. “I’m Mrs. Nadin; Peppr’y Monica they call me, them as dunna like pepper.”
“Oh,” exclaimed Flo, taken aback.
“There doesna seem ta be much pepper abaat thee, any road,” Mrs. Nadin commented, turning to stir with a wooden spoon in a two-gallon iron pan, causing to rise strongly a not unpleasant smell of warm soaked bran and potato peelings. Flo, still holding the bass, stood not knowing what to do.
“Eh, dunna stond theer; shape thysen. Tha hasna come ’ere ta be waited on,” exclaimed Mrs. Nadin, abruptly turning back again. “Tha’s gotten fine togs. Aa hopes tha’s non feart o’ work, cos’ if tha art tha’ll non stay ’ere long. There’s enough silly gawps awready.”
She bustled to a great stone sink beneath the window that looked into the yard and held a neatly black-leaded kettle under a big brass tap. Flo looked round, wondering what to do. She walked to a chair at the end of a long horse-hair upholstered settee and balanced the bass on it.
“Tha’s brought plenty o’ truck,” she heard the sharp comment behind her. “When I were a lass we had one frock for best an’ another to work, an’ nowt else, devil’s wedding or no. Tek your coat off, an’ if yo’ dunna know where ta put it, sit on it. I wonder where that long-legged strip o’ idleness is?”
She bustled out on to the flags and shouted harshly and penetratingly, “Emmott!” Without waiting she bustled back and the second she saw Flo again broke out into her sharp, truculent sentences.
“What did you say your name was?” Flo parted her lips, only there was no pause into which she could put even so small a reply as that. “If yo’ want ta stay, I’ll give yo’ a bit of advice,” went on Mrs. Nadin, apparently without taking breath. “Work hard, keep your mouth shut and your bowels open, an’ you’ll be all right.”
Flo reddened.
“Sit down,” came the next staccato order, “sitting’s cheap. We winna grumble if yo’ wear them through, on’y happen it’ll be your backside as’ll wear first.”
Mrs. Nadin never grinned at her own pleasantries. The chairs were solid with flat seats. Once they had been red stained. This showed between the spokes of the straight backs and on the insides of the legs, but elsewhere they were bare wood. Everything in the kitchen was solid and plain and worn, but the flag floor, uncovered except in front of the fire, was washed to the buff of the stone; the grate black shone, and its silver rails and bevelled edges were as bright as if new. A broad four-rail bamboo rack was hoisted close to the high ceiling, and three sheets that hung there were a delicious white, neatly folded and ironed. Flo was about to sit when Mrs. Nadin noticed her hat.
“Happen tha’s feart we shall pinch it,” she said. “But tha’ll get tired carryin’ it round on your yead, I reckon.”
Flo looked hurriedly round and saw seven hooks on a board fastened along the wall to the left of the door. Most of the hooks held bulky loads of old coats topped with shabby hats, but the end one from the door was empty. She took her costume jacket off and hung that there too.
“You’ll have our Dot as jealous as a bald flea,” said Mrs. Nadin. “Where the hell is that long length o’ pump-water?”
At first Flo thought she meant her daughter, but the little woman went energetically out again to the step and yelled carryingly and peremptorily, “Emmott!” Then back once more she came straight to the grate and lifted the kettle without troubling about the hotness of the handle and poured bubbling water into a tea-pot that had been waiting on the grate shelf. The pot was brown and round and matched the little woman perfectly. Flo had chance to study her for several seconds, and she was struck by the puckered smallness of her face, on which her tiny snub nose protruded exactly as the knob did on the tea-pot lid. Then she was talking again in her harsh quick way:
“Shape thysen. There’s cups an’ saucers in yon cupboard . . . if Emmott doesna come, it’s his own loss.”
The cupboard built into the wall on the left of the grate had six shelves, all holding great stacks of orderly pots. Flo was surprised at the number. She took pots for three and set them on the bare cream-scrubbed table. Mrs. Nadin came back from across the passage with a plate of currant pastry squares. The pastry was brown and thick, but Flo’s teeth broke in easily and it was flaky and delicious. With one elbow on the table and half turned towards the fire Mrs. Nadin sat opposite. Her feet did not touch the floor. She chewed quickly, her lower jaw working a little sideways as a sheep’s does at its cud; she chewed always on the left side as if it was only there that she had teeth.
“What done they call you?” she asked without warning. “Who the heck did they call you that after?”
“My mother chose it,” said Flo. They were the first words she had got in since her arrival, and they were only managed because Monica Nadin had taken up her cup.
“I thought oo were dead,” she commented the next second.
“Who?” Flo asked. “No, my father . . .”
“Happen it’s as well,” said Mrs. Nadin promptly. “If he were as much worry as my mon, she’s better ’bout him. Best thing as could be done to my mon would be tee a brick round his neck an’ drown him.”
Flo heard a slow approach of nailed boots.
“Here’s the long-legged devil,” Mrs. Nadin announced. “Allus turns up ’bout half an hour late.”
Flo nearly smiled at the contrast. Emmott Nadin could only just come in under the lintel. Broad though he was his height and straightness made him look almost slim. His head, too, was long, and was topped by white hair with which an old man would have appeared older, but which made his middle-age look younger. Flo liked him at once, though he did not give her any notice, walking slowly to the single high-backed arm-chair on the right by the grate. His cap he hung on a nail just under the mantelpiece, and one foot he rested on the steel fender in a posture that was obviously a habit.
“What the heckment have you bin doin’?” Mrs. Nadin attacked promptly. “Didna you hear me?”
“Happen I did,” he answered in a non-committal drawl; and he smiled very slightly at Flo.
“Done yo’ know who this is?” his wife demanded.
“Nao,” he replied, not in the least interested.
“It’s the new girl.”
“Oh, ay,” and he nodded very slightly and then looked back into the fire and went on sipping tea, drawing it in with a little hiss between nearly touching teeth.
“He’s ’bout as interestin’ as a log,” Mrs. Nadin commented. “If I didna talk, it ’ud be a dead place, this house. You dunna seem very talkative.”
“No,” said Flo.
“You’ll have no need ta be,” the farmer put in laconically. This time he looked up somewhat more directly, as if he wished to get a fuller impression. He seemed satisfied. “I guess Missis ’as told you already how to get on here . . . keep your mouth shut. If oo’d tek her own advice, there’d be a bit more peace.”
“Tha great gob!” exclaimed Mrs. Nadin, yet the dispute developed no further, and Flo gathered that this way of talking was more or less usual. As soon as he had finished his cup the farmer got up, put his cap on carelessly and went quietly out. Then Clem came in and dropped into the empty chair, keeping his cap on.