“There, you see,” she was saying to Arthur Brown, “everyone will be kind. Until I come. You must be kind to him,” she told the sergeant, as if the old boy hadn’t been there, and more than likely he wasn’t. “Kindness is something he understands.”
Sergeant Foyle was not going to pass judgment, except superficially, neither on the living brother, nor the dead.
When the old woman hunted him back towards the scullery, and said: “This is a good man, Sergeant. You know it in your heart” — he had to reply: “It’s not a matter of hearts, Mrs Poulter. The issue is something to be decided by better heads than mine.”
But the old woman had worked herself into a state of exaltation.
“This man would be my saint,” she said, “if we could still believe in saints. Nowadays,” she said, “we’ve only men to believe in. I believe in this man.”
“Okay, Mrs Poulter.”
The sergeant was pretty embarrassed. He couldn’t remember, ever, having to get himself out of a similar corner.
“Well,” he said, “Arthur — young fuller — how about coming along for a ride in the side-car?”
Arthur Brown got up. Filling the room, the body of this very vast old man had become the least part of him.
“Yes,” he said, and turning to the woman: “You’ll come on Tuesday, Mrs Poulter, as you promised?”
Then Mrs Poulter no longer cared.
“Oh yes, I’ll come! I’ll come, my pet! You needn’t worry! I’ll come, my love!”
Her head adrift above her cardigan was on fire with all the reflexions of grief.
“And bring the ju-jubes?”
“Yes,” she cried, “the orange ones!”
For Arthur the orange disc had not moved noticeably since he began his upward climb. It was the accompaniment which confused, by its increase in complexity: the groaning, and tinkling, and splintering of invisible icebergs.
But he realized he should be talking to his friend.
So he said: “By Tuesday I’ll have plenty to tell. We’ll walk about the grounds together. That’s how time passes. In little attentions.”
Somewhere it had to happen, and at this point Sergeant Foyle led out his charge into a more normal air. The sergeant glanced back once — well, to nod, it was the only sociable thing he could do, and the old girl was still standing in the doorway, arms crossed, holding herself together by handfuls, from under the armpits. The sergeant turned, and went on, to avoid looking any longer at her mouth.
Later in the afternoon, after she had patted her cheeks with Cyclax, like they told you, and drunk a cup of strong tea, and switched on the telly, though not the sound, the flicker of pictures which she didn’t have to look at, Mrs Poulter got control of herself. She did the things which needed doing. She threw a handful to the hens, she milked the cow, she stood the milk. Then she saw about Bill’s tea.
When Bill came in, from looking at a boar out Schofields way, she could hear him stamping off the mud. He was still spry except when he stopped to think about himself.
“What’s the news, Mother?” he asked.
It was his usual question, and that evening she would have to think a bit. Though of course you could always tell about the grub in the cabbage, or the double-yolkers. By news Bill never meant news. News could make Bill lay around without his teeth imagining an ulcer. He would turn pale at any suggestion of the knife.
“Eh?” he asked. “Don’t tell me nothun catastrophic’s happened?”
It was one of the words he had picked up and particularly favoured.
“No,” she said. “Nothing I can think of.”
It would all trickle out in time. For Bill’s temporary good she felt it would not be a kindness to announce: Waldo Brown is dead or worse killed several days the dogs eating him which the sergeant or young Kentwell shot and Arthur off his head gone with the sergeant Arthur who never hurt a fly Waldo can only of died of spite like a boil must burst at last with pus and nothing can touch Arthur nothing can touch me not the part of us that matters not if they tear our fingernails off.
“Saw old Dun,” said Bill. “Had to fetch the doctor to his missus.”
“Oh?” she said.
“Threw a sort of fit.”
It made Bill laugh.
“Mrs Dun, I believe,” Mrs Poulter said, “is not very strong.”
When she put his tea in front of him, Bill sat a moment, elbows cocked, hands laid on the knife and fork, looking down at the contents of his plate. He had always been suspicious.
“That’s a real nice loin chop,” she said, to encourage. “The other one isn’t so presentable. But perhaps it will eat better than it looks. I think it’s something Mr Finlayson threw in for luck.”
Then she turned, to do the expected things, before re-entering her actual sphere of life.
Notes
1 She jumped into the sea.
2 He noticed it and saved her.
3 I have saved money to buy a present for my sister.