But what was the good of dreaming?—dreaming never did anyone any good. There was George, he might be working in the meadow to-morrow, and then she would lean over the stile—climb over the stile?—and talk to him and get a few shy answers back, perhaps. George was wonderful, George was so exciting. With his fair hair, with his honey-coloured eyes, with his brick-red face so passionate, with his strength, with his smell. The one that drove the milk factory’s lorry and that was always smoking a cigarette on his upper lip and that had that look in his eyes like a snake looking for his prey, she could not understand how she had seen anything in him. But George, with his honey-coloured ones, slow, but with it at the back of them, and with his shortness, and with his force, oh, it would, it must be something this time after such years of waiting. To find out all about it. “Yes, George, go on, go on.”
What nice toes she had, except that the nails were rather dirty. But what was the good of keeping clean now? They weren’t in the Vicarage any more, and there was no one to tell her how dirty or how pretty they were, except Father when he was drunk, but that, of course, did not count. George would say all that. She would teach him, if he didn’t know.
She moves to a looking-glass and wrestles with her hair. In the glass was the brown-papered wall behind, the paper hanging in strips, showing the yellow plaster beneath. Those holes in the roof. And there was the rash that broke out in the top right-hand corner of the glass where the paint had come off the back. She was so miserable. The only chair has no back, and the front leg is rickety, so that you have to lean over to the right when you sit down. The bare boards of the floor are not clean, the bed-clothes are frowsy, the pillow greasy. Everything is going to go wrong to-day. It is close in here. She goes across the room and flings the window open. By the window there was a small table, on it a looking-glass. She never used this one because you had to sit down to it, and that was tiresome. Draped round the oval frame and tied in wide, drooping bows to the two uprights was a broad white ribbon. Tied to the handles of the two drawers beneath were white bows also. On the low table were hair-brushes, a comb with three teeth out, a saucer full of pins and hairpins and safety pins and a medicine bottle, empty, with a bow round the neck made out of what had been left of the white ribbon. Violets, in a little bunch, lay by the bottle, dead.
She goes through the door into the next room, which is his. He is lying noisily asleep, with the bed-clothes half off his chest, and his red beard is spread greasily over the lead-white of his skin. One arm hangs down to the floor, the other, trying to follow it, is flung across his chest. His face has a nose, flat, hair red and skin blotchy. There is the usual homely smell of gin. The window was wide open to let out the snores.
And this was Father, Daddy, Daddums. Oh, he was pretty in bed. She couldn’t remember him very well as he was at the Vicarage such ages ago, without his beard. It had been wonderful then: they had had a servant, which you could order about. And Mrs. Haye, she used to terrify her, now she did not care two snaps of the finger although she had run away from her when she had seen her coming down the lane the other day; and Mrs. Haye had called him Mr. Entwhistle, the ordinary people, Passon, and Colonel Waterpower, whom they had met occasionally, had called him Padre. Silly all those people were with their silly ways, but they were so well dressed and the ladies too, those stuffs, so . . . And it was his fault that they were like this. You could see what people thought by their faces as they passed, they always went a little quicker when they caught sight of you coming. And they might still have been in the Vicarage.
Poor Father, perhaps it was not all his fault. And after all she was the only person left now to look after him. And the life wasn’t too bad, he left her alone except when he was drunk and wanted someone to talk to. And he told her the most wonderful things. He was really a wonderful man, a genius. All it was, was that he was misunderstood. He saw visions and things. And really, in the end, it was all Mother’s fault for being such a fool, though of course Father had been fond of gin before that. Mother, when she lay dying, with Father and her at the bedside, instead of whispering something she ought to have, had cried out quite loud “John” as if she was calling, right in front of the doctor and the village nurse and that. Then she was dead, and they were her last words. John was still the postman. She had been a fool, and Father had drunk much more gin ever afterwards. After Mother died Father had been unfrocked, that was soon after the beginning of the war, partly for the gin, and partly for the talk about Mother. Mr. Davies died in time, and with most of the money that Uncle Jim had left them when he was killed they had bought this house here, only two miles away. It would have been nicer to go somewhere new, but as Father said, “he was not going to run away from those that had hounded him from the parish.”
What was she doing standing still? She had to wake him and then get breakfast and then clear up. “Here, wake up. Wake up,” and she picks up the clothes, flung anyhow on the floor, and smooths them, putting them at the foot of the bed. Roses on wallpaper, roses hung down in strips from the damp wall pointing. “Get up, get up.” He was shamming, that he might give her more work to do. Yes, that was it. “Do you hear? Get up.” She lifts his white shoulders and shakes him till the blue watery eyes open. She lets him flop back on to the pillow, the red finger-marks on his skin fading away again.
His eyes open painfully. He scratches, gazing vacantly at the ceiling.
“Another day?”
“Yes.”