about that. We remember you are the youngest. And we do not expect you to use three crumb-brushes.’
Clara tossed her head and left the room. But her brothers remained standing together long afterwards, apprehensively staring about them, and puzzling over the meaning of various objects which they had caught sight of for the first time.
Two days later, in the absence of the gardener, Clara made her own bonfire – a magnificent affair, far bigger than the last, and lighting the whole garden up to the tops of the highest trees. When the three brothers came out of the house to see it they exclaimed in admiration. This time they could show little interest in what was being burned, for great flames destroyed the boxes and packets before they could be identified, but they drew nearer, step by step, to warm themselves, and their eyes shone outrageously in the light. Every now and then, as the garden grew darker, the fire threw a shimmer of light upon the front of the house. When this happened the woman and the three men stood motionless to stare at the quivering windows and wagging chimneys and at the grey stone which swelled and trembled as though it were no more solid than parchment. Now Joseph, the oldest man, went striding off quickly towards the house and returned in a few minutes with a heap of papers which the flames tore from his hands and devoured with a roar as soon as he had thrown them down.
‘Papers are not enough to keep it going,’ said Clara as the fire subsided again. She went back to the house, running this time, and returned, out of breath, with a couple of heavy wooden trays.
‘There was no time to pick and choose,’ she explained. ‘I took the largest of the half-dozen behind the sideboard. At any rate they will keep it going while we find more stuff.’
They waited for a moment to see the flames lick round the tray-handles which were carved in the shape of crouching monkeys, gripping melons between their fingers.
‘What a sin to waste them – and all the people who must be wanting trays!’ cried Clara, shuddering with disgust and pleasure. All four of them now started to run towards the house, looking back over their shoulders to judge how long the fire might last. Clara sped upstairs – but not to her sister’s room. For the moment she had almost forgotten about Edith. Instead she ran to a spare bedroom, and opening the drawers of a large chest, she began to shake out rolls of cloth and undo the great bags of woollen underwear. Mothballs bounced about the floor as she dug down into the piles with her fingers, but at last she had pulled out as big an armful as she could carry. The men were in the garden before her, however, making for the corner where a thin smoke still rose, and carrying between them as many inflammable objects as they had been able to lay hands on. With their awkward loads and anxious faces, they had the look of people working to save their possessions from a burning house, having caught up the first things which came to hand. James, in the lead, was carrying a basket-chair, piled up with raffia table-mats which he tossed on, one after the other, when he was still some distance away from the fire. Bursts of flame and a crackling like a forest going up forced them to stand aside when the chair went on; and the work-baskets, tea-cosies, clothes-brushes and picture-frames which followed the chair were lost at once in a blaze which sent sparks flying far above the chimneys of the house. This was no ordinary fire. It was more exhilarating than an explosion of sky-rockets. Beyond the vibrating circle where they stood, they caught glimpses of a house which appeared to rock gently on the quaking ground. Clouds, flowers and iron railings trembled together, and the agitation of their own faces made them appear to one another like persons undergoing, moment by moment, the most violent changes of emotion from quivering despair to the wildest glee. When the time came for Clara to unwrap her bundles of underwear their spirits were dampened.
‘Perhaps they will smother the fire,’ said Clara as she threw on the pants, vests and combinations bequeathed from uncles and great uncles who had died young, long before they could wear a hole in the wool. But when she saw the flames slowly eating through the outer layer she added: ‘There must be thousands of people who could do with them – people without a stitch to their backs. What a waste and a sin!’
But the sin and the shame of it stirred them to even greater efforts, and they prodded at the fire until it leapt up again to devour a clothes-horse and a couple of small wooden cake-stands in a matter of minutes.
It was dark before the fire at last fell apart into a smouldering heap of ashes. Clara and her brothers were so exhausted with their orgy of destruction that they could scarcely stand upright, but as they approached the house they lifted their heads and stared up at it boldly. A little of the stuffing had already been taken out of it – even through the darkness they could feel that. The stone did not seem as smooth to them now. They could imagine it dented, here and there, where the surface caved in over certain hollow patches, odd corners which were not packed so tightly as before, and in spite of their exhaustion they felt a quiet satisfaction in the evening’s work.
After super Clara went up to see her sister. She was sitting up in bed, reading, looking fresh-cheeked and rested, and she glanced up with a smile when her sister came in. There was no mention of bonfires, but Clara asked casually, as she drew the curtains: ‘I suppose you will be getting up tomorrow?’
‘Hardly so soon,’ replied Edith. ‘No, not yet – it is not quite time for me to get up and come downstairs, if that is what you mean. But I will certainly dress and get up for tea in my bedroom. That will be a beginning and help to cheer you all up.’
They were not cheerful as they brought up the heavy trays to her room next afternoon, but they sat with an expectant air, talking absentmindedly and listening for the sound of the lorry which arrived at this hour every week to remove the rubbish. They heard it at last a long distance away, coming up the steep road below their garden wall, and while it laboriously turned the corner of their drive, they excused themselves one by one and went out to meet it, accompanying it for the last few yards of the way as though guiding a triumphal car to the chosen place. When the three dustbin men saw this place – not the mean pair of ashcans, nor the paltry pile of tins, papers and grass-cuttings, but a great hillock of soft stuff, studded with glinting ornaments – they stopped some distance off and approached it reverently on foot. In five minutes, having prodded through the top layer, they returned to the family who were waiting nearby.
‘Say – what’s going on, here?’ asked one, pointing to what he held up in his other hand – a green china mermaid, who also pointed with a puzzled air to the wave on which she sat. ‘Are you moving off or what? Sure, that’s a funny way to be doing it – clearing out all the fancy stuff and hanging on to the plain. Maybe you’ve made a mistake, folks. We’re not buying and we’re not selling and we’re not mending and we’re not shifting the stuff to any other place. There, it’s on the lorry – Cleansing Department – and that’s us. In other words – your things are for the dump!’
But as they only backed away, nodding and smiling, he went after them.
‘Tell us what’s up,’ he shouted. ‘For all I know you’ve got heirlooms and all tucked away under that little pile! And what about her?’ He brandished the mermaid in front of them, but James waved him back nervously and angrily, exclaiming: ‘Take it away! Take them all away! There is nothing to discuss. There is illness here – a nervous breakdown in the house. The things are to be removed in the normal way, and there is nothing more to be said!’ Still shouting he disappeared with the rest of them inside the house.
The men now got to work on the pile with gusto and without wasting further words. The inmates of the house might be cracked, but the stuff they unearthed was unbelievably whole – basins and ewers, teapots and metal trays which had not taken a dint or a crack in fifty years, china baskets of unchipped violets and draped dancing figures without a pointed toe or finger missing. They lay together, smugly shining there amongst beaded shoes and piled soup-plates, as though on their usual spring-clean outing.
The family did not come out again, but the men worked on in
