“This is where the two lads sleep,” said Mrs. Nadin. “You’ll keep this floor right, and I’ll inspect it once a week; it’s too near heaven for an old sinner like me ta come often.”
One window was shut and the other open, and Flo guessed that the bed near the open window was Bert’s. That was in the end, too, which looked out like her own towards the lake.
Mrs. Nadin set off down again. Then Flo was shown round the first floor; into the room where Mrs. Nadin and “the old fool” slept, into “Young Dot’s” room, into the spare room “which doesna spare us from work nohow”, and into the bathroom, which was as large as any of the other rooms, having evidently been made out of a bedroom. “When we’re tight we fix a bed up ’ere an’ all, and all goo mucky,” Mrs. Nadin explained. Flo could not understand why they should ever need more sleeping rooms than there were already without the bathroom. By contrast with the two poky rooms in Balloon Street, Barrow, the farmhouse seemed to her colossal.
“You’ll non need ta worry ’bout bein’ short o’ work,” said Mrs. Nadin. “An’ non o’ your shoving dust under carpets an’ spiders inta cracks. If I find any of those goings on’ you’ll get th’ dust served up for your dinner an’ spiders with it.”
“Ough!” said Flo involuntarily.
When they got back into the kitchen a slim young woman was there drawing off white woollen gloves.
“Huh, you come back some time,” Mrs. Nadin barked promptly. “When I was your age if I’d ’a stayed out as you do it would have bin down with my drawers an’ my bare bottom spanked.”
“Thank heaven I wasn’t born in those days,” said the young woman.
“You’d find you were back in ’em if I had my way,” the older woman commented; and then with a complete change of tone, “Who’ve you seen?”
“Nobody very interesting,” was the slightly drawled reply.
“Then what have you bin gawpin’ at . . . nothin’?” demanded her mother with increasing aggressiveness. “If I stayed out, I’d stay out for summat.”
“Who’s this?” the young woman asked.
Flo saw a slight resemblance to Mrs. Nadin; small, somewhat crowded features, thin lips, and eyes inclined to glare.
“The new girl,” said Mrs. Nadin briefly. “Florence; though whether she was christened, or got it like a dog does, God knows. This ’ere’s Dot; should have bin born a duchess, but I hadna copped the right feller.”
Dot said, “How d’you do?” and began to loosen her coat, which was brown—a good Harris.
“If you want your things upstairs you’d better carry ’em,” said Mrs, Nadin. “See Matilda, or Gertrude, Dot?”
Flo thankfully took her costume coat off the hook and her bass and lugged them to the attic. She shut the door and sank on the ottoman. Suddenly she thought of the chintz and of how she was creasing it. She tried to smooth it and then crossed to the window. The catch was back and the frame went up unexpectedly easily so that the weights bumped in their slots. She poked her head out carelessly and abruptly gripped the sill ridge, taken unawares by the height. Dusk had thickened, making the ground seem a tremendous distance below. But after a moment she recovered, and instead of looking straight down she looked outward, and there was the lake, with a white sheen on, as if some of the last light from the sky had fallen there and would continue to glow through the night. Between the house and the water there was a hundred yards of gently sloping meadow, and then a thick hedge of sallow canes. Beyond the water was a dark cloud-like bank of trees with a hill rising behind. As Flo stared intently a shot smashed the silence, the flat, sharp report echoing distinctly three times away into distance. Totally unexpected, the shot made her start, and but for her grip on the sill ledge she might have fallen. She felt a brief recurrence of fear and drew back, and then leaned out again, forgetful, for from behind the sallows had whirled up a great flock of birds that flickered whitely against the opposite hillside. There was a brief crying which told her that sea-birds were there, and in the silence that seemed to close in on the echoes of the shot like a lid she believed that she heard the rush of wings; but it was very faint, and perhaps it was a wind current moving in the grass, though up there she could not feel it. For several minutes she did not move, fascinated by this unexpected shattering of a peacefulness which at first she had thought to be utter stagnation, complete emptiness. Now she sensed a mysteriousness, and was dimly aware that in the dusk there was an abundance of life that at present she did not know or understand; and she wondered if she would ever come to know about it.
The white flickering dissipated almost as swiftly as it had risen, but staring higher, above the opposite skyline into the grey shading of clouds, Flo saw occasional lonely black motes passing to and fro. Then the last of those disappeared, and her gaze came back to the still water-sheen and to the motionless dark grey thickness of the sallows. Slowly, so that at first she was not sure whether she saw anything or not, the black shape of a man seemed to materialize there; and then she knew that he was coming to the house. The thought that it was someone who had no right to be there, someone who intended evil, rushed through her mind; and then she smiled. Of course she knew who it was. If she had gone, as Mrs. Nadin had told here, she might have been with him now coming up the meadow. She felt a vague regret, but a moment afterwards shrugged it off, and hastily drew back into the room’s shadow. Instinctively she knew that he was not like Clem, but strangely there had flashed back to her the picture of the youth lying supremely at his ease on the curved shell of the submarine passing the Barrow bridge, and suddenly she was aware that it was youth that she wanted. She had come into a household of old folks; she must . . .
The click of a gate latch interrupted and she leaned past the curtain. But there was a thick dark tree below and she could not see. Suddenly she remembered how long she had been, and quickly began to tug her blouse over her head and side-stepped out of her skirt. She dashed at the bass and struggled with the rope, which was stiff and hard as though it had been baked. But soon she was shaking a blue gingham frock down over upstretched arms and stiff-necked head. Swiftly she patted and stroked herself and ran to the glass to look how her hair had survived. She could hardly see and there was no time to light the candle. She let her hair do with a brief bunching all round with cupped hands. The strangeness of the stairs made her creep carefully. The kitchen door was shut, outlined by fine lines of light. It was an effort to put her hand on the knob and turn it because she felt like an intruder.
“Half-an-hour ta titivate thisel’, by gum!” Mrs. Nadin greeted her. “Tha’ll be another like our Dot.”
Chapter 7
Flo thought that she would never be able to sleep in the strange bed. She lay for some time with open eyes towards the grey oblong of the window. She was conscious of the silence; next, only a few minutes later, as it seemed, she was wakened by a wild jangling.
Dimly she saw the bell kicking violently. Under the clangs of the clapper there was a tingling hum that seemed to spin in her eardrums. She jerked upright thinking of stopping the din, and then realized that she could not. The bell tossed for an intolerable time. She determined to knot a handkerchief round the clapper before next morning. When the bell nodded into peacefulness her head still buzzed with the spinning undertone. But after a while it cleared and she began to notice the house coming awake. A door banged somewhere, there were steps on the yard stones, a cow lowed knowing that a feed was coming; and a little later she heard the unmistakable rooting of a poker in the grate among the debris of a dead fire. This made her hurry.