At eleven o’clock, fulfilling Fred Clopton’s promise, the fog lifted and the sun gleamed out for a couple of hours. Every last clinging leaf and all the bare twigs shone damply in the sudden brief light. Then the air thickened, by three o’clock it was dusk, and soon after four quite
dark.
Mrs Palfrey, walking heavily, came away from Flocky, where she had been helping with the last preparations for the party. She had earned a precious shilling and had also gained an unexpected prize. The whole skin, the ‘swathe’, of a ham, with a good lining of fat, just as Mrs Clopton had peeled it from the joint before applying the browned breadcrumbs. The Palfrey family had not tasted any form of animal food for at least six weeks. At the end of harvest Spitty had applied for ‘parish relief. In the course of the investigations following this application it transpired that the Palfrey family was not the responsibility of Clevely; Spitty had been born in Baildon, and his relief must be claimed there. He was, by law, entitled to the price of a one-gallon loaf of bread per week, his wife and each dependent child to the price of a half-gallon loaf. In that month the gallon loaf was worth one shilling and eightpence, so the allowance granted to the Palfrey family was five shillings, or sixty pence. And lest this grant should lead to idleness and pauperism the careful guardians arranged that the week’s dole should be divided into six equal parts, and Spitty was allowed to collect tenpence each day for six days a week. This made sure that he, at least, had never an idle moment. Lithe, able-bodied Danny Fuller, with his heart light with hope, had found the walk from Clevely to Baildon twice a week quite a strain; for poor, shambling Spitty, product of a lifetime’s malnutrition, the walk twice a day was a task only just within his power. He had to set off early in the morning and returned, late in the evening, utterly exhausted; yet, despite the exhaustion, so hungry that he would have found no difficulty in devouring the tenpenny loaf without help from his family. The spiteful and petty-minded arrangement worked woe for the family in another way too, making it difficult for Mrs Palfrey to take any small odd job’ which did happen to come her
way, since it was impossible to leave three children, all under five years of age, alone in the house for long. In desperation she had done so on the day of Mrs Clopton’s party; she had tied the two youngest to the table legs, leaving four-and-a-half-old Betsy free and in charge. Mrs Ashpole had promised to ‘look in’ once or twice. So Mrs Palfrey came home in triumph, sharpened the family knife and chopped the ham skin into fine mincemeat, the small yellowish-brown, semi-translucent fragments of boiled pigskin shining in the base of soft, lardy fat. She would have fed the children and put them to bed before Spitty came home, but the last crumb of yesterday’s bread had been eaten at midday. So they waited, the children wailing with hunger, until, very late on account of the ‘ fog, Spitty arrived, dewed all over with grey misty drops and almost dead with weariness. Seizing the stale tenpenny loaf, Mrs Palfrey cut it into thick slices and spread them thinly with the ‘minced’ meat. She was ravenously hungry herself, but just as she spread the fifth slice the new child moved within her, a nauseating lurch. Tightening her mouth, she drew the knife twice across the slice, cutting in into four.
‘I did my eating up at Flocky. So you all get a bit extra. Right a feast tonight, ain’t it?’ she said bravely.
Damask herself carried up Miss Parsons’ tray. The old lady had developed a cold two days earlier and was keeping to her bed. Her appetite was good and she welcomed the tray with little eager sounds.
‘Quite a feast tonight,’ Damask said, pausing to set one covered dish from the tray on the silver heater with the three thick candles under the grid and then carrying the tray itself to the bed. ‘Oxtail soup and a roast partridge, some grapes from the Ockley hothouses and our own pears.’
‘Delicious I’ said Miss Parsons. ‘Lying here I have been thinking. One should cultivate gluttony, without practising it too much, in one’s youth, so that one may have one dependable pleasure left in old age.’
Thinking of Julie and the tea—Julie had, most oddly, veered clean over to Amos’s side and refused the tea and the teapot and even the medicines which Damask had taken over on the day following the row—Damask said, If one can afford it.’
She lifted the cover from the bowl of soup.
‘And we can, can’t we, dear child? There was a time when … when we, when I … nothing but cold mutton, the nastiest kind, all fat and little bones. That was before you came. Now you’re here and everything is all right. You’ll never go away, will you? Promise me.’
‘I have promised you. I shall never go away. I am going out for a while this evening, though. Mrs Bennett will come and make you comfortable for the night and I shall be here when you wake in the morning.’
‘Oh dear. I shall be alone.’ Miss Parsons’ wrinkled old lips, glistening with the rich soup, assumed a childish
pout.
‘I must go and see my mother. She isn’t very well, you know.’ She had told Mr Mundford to stop the carriage in which he was fetching her at the gate of the Dower
House. I hope you find her better,’ Miss Parsons said, untruthfully. With the passing of time she had grown more possessive about her ‘dear child’ and jealous of Julie. It was, of course, natural and proper and admirable that the child should care for and visit her parents, but Miss Parsons grudged every one of the brief, infrequent visits. She rather hoped that Julie would die soon; then she would have Damask’s undivided attention.
‘I have a mother myself,’ she remarked as Damask removed the empty soup-bowl and placed the partridge before her. ‘She doesn’t care for me, though. Being a girl, you know—a great disappointment. My father says that in China—or is it India? No, China, I think—unwanted girl babies are put out to die of exposure. Did you know
that?’
‘No. What a horrible custom.’ ‘Is he in the library?’
‘Who?’
‘Papa. If not, on the top shelf of the cupboard to the left of the window there is a big brown-covered book, a kind of journal which he kept when he was on his voyages. Most interesting. Not intended for female eyes, of course, but most enjoyable reading. We might peruse it together.’ ‘Not this evening. I told you. I have to go out presently.’ ‘You must wrap up well. I have a cold, you know.’ ‘You have had. It is better now. I think you will be able to get up tomorrow.’
‘I sincerely hope so. It must be almost time for Charles to visit me, and it wouldn’t do, would it, for me to receive him in my bedroom. His wife would object. She’s very jealous, you know. And quite crazy, poor creature. I do sympathise with him, in a way. But they say, don’t they, “Fools and knaves are always paid out, but fools first.” He brought it on himself. Of course she is quite unbelievably beautiful and very well-connected. I do realise that. Papa was quite disgusted and said if that is gentlemanly behaviour give me seafaring men every time. This is a very young tender partridge, or exceptionally well cooked.’
‘Eat it while it is hot.’
‘And afterwards we might play cards. We could play on the tray, or would you prefer it if I got up and sat by the fire?’
‘We’ll do that tomorrow. This evening I have to go out.”
‘Of course. I’m afraid I keep forgetting. I am very forgetful. But not mad, whatever that woman says.’
The beauty of this kind of conversation was that one need not attend, need make no effort at all. One could go on pursuing one’s own thoughts, remembering all the things which Mr Mundford had said, all the cajoleries and the promises and the mysterious, tantalising things which meant nothing, because one was young, and ignorant, ‘just a beginner’, as Mr Mundford pointed out. The promises she did understand; they shone, distant and golden, rather like a sunset, and outlined against them,
stark and black, was the silhouette of Sally Fuller’s figure, just as it had been when Damask, leaving the cobbler’s cottage one evening, had seen it standing by the Ashpole door: full and ripe, bursting with promise, for Sally was big with her second child. At that sight the slight but vigorous vein of scepticism which in her Methodist days had often troubled her by producing doubts and questions about God began to work again, questioning this other Power. These questions were more quickly silenced; she had only to look around her, or down at her own hands, to find proof of this Power’s favour towards her, its omniscience and potency. And there was Mr Mundford, with his signs and wonders, always ready to encourage her.