She sounded so cool.
“Mr Poulter doesn’t like it,” she said. “They don’t like it. So you’ll have to lump it, Arthur.”
She was making herself sound brutal — he could hear that — so as he would not be hurt by the brutality of what they called life, only by her. He would realize she was a coarse and brutal woman unworthy of his trust.
“So there we are,” she said, looking at him for the first time, slamming the strainerful of hair and muslin back into the empty bucket.
“All right,” he said. “All right, Mrs Poulter” — trying to work out his steps towards the door. “I don’t have to tell you I’ll be sorry, though.”
The night of his outburst Waldo congratulated Arthur on the decision he and Mrs Poulter had come to. Waldo was obviously pleased by what he called its ethical rectitude, though immediately gloomy over a situation he had read about but not experienced. Perhaps Waldo was a bit jealous, as well as contemptuous, of Arthur’s miserable affair. If he had not admired his brother, Arthur might have felt hurt.
What did hurt Arthur was the attitude of Bill Poulter who, every time they ran across each other, turned his face away from the obscenity Waldo had brought to light.
All of this lost its importance the morning their father died.
The metal of the bucket as Arthur milked was too obtrusive. The too clear morning clanked. Waldo, he knew, would be prowling round outside the house in his shirtsleeves and arm-bands, before putting on his coat, before leaving for the Library. Arthur stood up, giving the cow’s voluminous velvety belly a push. For the time being she was only a thing. He had already begun to pant for what must have happened. He ran through the grass, slopping the milk.
Waldo by then was running off, away from the house, into the garden. It was much as Arthur had expected.
And finding their father in the dark room. Because touch was his approach, Arthur touched George Brown’s head. Before pushing his way through the house. Before bursting out on the classical-tragic veranda.
The words were shouted out of him: “Our father, our father is dead!”
Not that George Brown had done more than withdraw from Arthur a second time. Who would bear it now as before. Perhaps their afflictions, which had caused the withdrawal, helped him to.
Or Waldo’s running away.
Soon Waldo was coming back along the path, and Arthur had to control his own unhappiness. He had to take Waldo in his arms. Pity replaced admiration. Not that he would have admitted it, or not more than occasionally.
Arthur would have liked to admire their mother less. He would have liked her to continue loving him, but she had no time, from living in her own thoughts. Excepting the morning George Brown died. She needed him then. To get them breakfast.
“Yes, darling,” she sighed.
It was like somebody turning in bed, turning, waking, returning to your arms, asleep.
“You shall get it for me,” she breathed. “Wouldn’t you like that?”
Of course he liked it. Anything to keep on the move. To keep her eyes on him. He brought the warm milk in her favourite bowls with the pattern of camomile sprigs. He couldn’t help it if he couldn’t manage the skin of boiled milk. If the skin swung from his lip. It brought an expression to her eyes, out of the depths. She was wincing, her eyebrows pinched together, for their father dead in another room, or the string of burnt milk.
“It always burns,” he apologized, “if you so much as turn your back.”
But neither Waldo nor Mother had ears for it. They were too busy translating their own thoughts. Waldo used to say Dad was teaching himself Norwegian to translate his thoughts into a language which could not be read.
So Arthur said: “I’d better be making tracks. Allwrights will be wondering.”
Then Mother’s: “I’d hoped you would stay with us.”
Though her voice made him interpret it as “me”. He was afraid that, on finding himself left out, Waldo might feel hurt.
“Today,” said Mother.
If only today. It was only today that Arthur was the big brother, or lover. When she was stroking back his damp, his ugly old hair, he moved his cheek, his neck, just so much, against his shoulder, to catch her hand in the hinge. And she didn’t even cry out. She went on looking into his face for someone else.
And soon her voice lost its satin. The milk was standing cold in the bowl under the wrinkle of skin. She no longer needed Arthur.
Until she needed him again for the sherry. He would bring the occasional bottle in case she had forgot, and ask Mrs Allwright to chalk it up. It was the only thing he bought on credit.
“You’ll rot your liver, Arthur, if you’re not careful,” Mrs Allwright said. “I’m surprised at a man, otherwise steady, like you.”
“Every person’s got their vice,” Arthur quoted Mrs Poulter.
“I like to think I haven’t,” Mrs Allwright said. “I like to feel I have dispensed with vice. Anyone can who tries. To live up to the advice we are given in the Gospels.”
Of course Arthur knew that Mrs Allwright knew. It was all over Sarsaparilla. What’ll happen when she’s filled the gully with her bottles? Mrs Allwright knew all right, but enjoyed this game of not knowing. That was how she got her pleasure, though she wouldn’t have admitted it, even with her hand on the Gospels.
For another, for Mother, another pleasure.
“Here’s a drop to help out,” Arthur used to say, or: “Thought you might be going short.”
At such times she would hardly turn her cheek, let alone look over her shoulder.
“Thank you, dear. It was thoughtful of you.”
As though she scarcely needed him.
He would hear her crinkle up the foil, however. And sometimes the corks were terribly tight.
“My wrists are losing their strength,” she complained.
Needing him.
“You couldn’t do without me. Eh? Could you? Eh?”
“Hardly,” she had to admit.
His strength of wrist, if not of principle, as Mrs Allwright insisted, often made him laugh.
“Everyone’s got their uses.”
“Almost everyone,” Mother said.
Then she would sit down to nursing the bottle. She was going to make it last till tonight. Oh, yes. You could if you tried. You stood a chance up to the first third.
But at the first third Mother would have to begin.
“Tell me, Arthur,” she would say, “tell me if you feel I’ve failed you.”
The importance of it made the sherry slop over the glass.
“No!” she said, quickly, in her own defence. “Don’t tell me! Nobody normal ever enjoyed settling their accounts.”
She would grow louder, annoyed too, at spilling the good stuff in her glass.
“All good money,” she complained. “But don’t tell me. Nobody likes to be told. That they’ve got a spot. On their nose. On the night of the ball.”
Insects in the air made it sound more fretful.
“At least,” she said, “once upon a time — when people observed the conventions — all that sort of thing was avoided. Nowadays it isn’t considered realistic. Then, it wasn’t good form.”
“Oh,” she said, shaking her hair, “we would dance, though! In the mornings the lawns used to swim up under the windows. We would swim out, just as we were, against the mist. The ladies, of course, were at a disadvantage because their hems were filled with dew. Heavier than anyone would believe. To sink a punt. If one hadn’t felt so light with light. The men in kilts came off best. I never cared for the nubbly knees of black Scots. Strong men can be boring in their aggressiveness. And weak.”
She could not forgive them their strong legs.