8
MRS PINN
When I came into the kitchen early last evening, there was an old woman sitting bolt upright in the courting chair. At least, I came to the conclusion that she really was old after a moment or two's watchfulness. Her flowered hat, her shape—though a little angular and stiff,—her gestures and her bright lively damson-coloured eyes were all youthful enough. But one could see that her inquiet hands, which were folded on her lap, had been worn by many a washing-day. Her skin, though wrinkled, was taut over the outstanding facial bones, as if the wrinkles might have opened out and have equalized the strain, had age not hardened them to brown cracks—and the tan of her complexion had old age's lack of clearness. As so often happens when the teeth remain good in spite of receding gums, her mouth was tightly stretched semicircular-wise around them, and the lips had become a long, very long, expressionless line, shaded into prominence, as in a drawing, by a multitude of lines up and down, from chin and nose;—a Simian jaw, remindful of the Descent of Man. All the accumulated hand-to-mouth wisdom of generations of peasantry seemed to lurk behind the old woman's quick eyes; to be defying one.
I was introduced to her—Mrs Pinn, Mrs Widger's mother. She was bound to shake my proffered hand; she did it, half rising, with a comic mixture of respect and defiance; then sat back in the courting chair as if to intimate, 'I knows how to keep meself to meself, I du!'
I went outdoors, leaving them to talk; helped Tony haul up the beach his lumpy fourteen-foot sailing boat, the Cock Robin, and returned with him to supper.
"Hullo, Gran Pinn!" he roared. "Yu here! Didn' know I'd got a new mate for hauling up, did 'ee? Have her got 'ee yer drop o' stout eet? Us two'll take 'ee home if yu drinks tu much."
"Oh yu...." screeched Mrs Pinn with facetious rage followed by a swift collapse into company manners again.
"Thees yer be my mother-in-law, sir."
"Mr Whats-his-name knaws that, an' I knaws yu got he staying with 'ee—there!"
"Well then, gie us some supper then."