stood at the bottom of the bed and looked down on him where he slept. She stood there for a few moments, and then she realised with a shock that she had been thinking of other things—of Barnes, of the stew, and of how she could make things easier for him in a thousand little ways.
She hastened downstairs and began once more to taste the stew. She did so with horror. She had hoped that in the interim it might have matured, or that, returning to it after a breather, she would find that her fears had been exaggerated. But it seemed, if anything, even less tasty than before. It was very far from being the ideal stew after which she had hankered.
She realised now, when it was too late, that the success of a stew depends not so much on the nature of the ingredients as upon their relationships among themselves, one to another. The sweetest carrot tastes bitter inside a camembert. At first the introduction of ingredients into the casserole had improved the stew, but only at first. She had introduced too many, far too many, so that it had become a struggle for survival down there in the cauldron. It would be difficult to state the exact moment at which the stew had ceased to improve, and had begun to deteriorate. Very likely it was with the introduction of the lobster. Anyway Mrs Pollard became certain that, could she but remove the lobster, the dish would become, if not ideal, at least edible. The lobster, however, had disintegrated, as lobsters will, given the slightest encouragement, and had permeated the stew to such an extent that not only was there nothing which could be said to be the lobster, but there was nothing that could be said not to be.
The only thing for it was to remove from the wreckage those objects which she judged most likely to be completely distasteful, and which were still sufficiently whole to be distinguishable—the sprig of tarragon, for instance. After removing each object she tasted the remainder and to her delighted surprise it began to grow more and more edible. With increasing excitement she removed objects and with increasing relish she tasted what was left. Really, it was almost delicious. She removed something which looked suspiciously like a burnt carrot, and ate another spoonful. She decided that it was perfect. At last! She had done it, and she could have cried for joy.
It was at this moment that she discovered that not a morsel of stew remained. She had just eaten the last spoonful.
Chapter 5
FOR A FEW MOMENTS HER HAND QUIVERED ON THE knob of his door, but she exerted no pressure, and the handle did not turn. Her stomach felt hollow. Her hands were weak. Once or twice she wavered, as if she was plucking up her courage and determining to walk boldly into his room and tell him the terrible news, but in reality she already knew that she would not.
She walked slowly through the kitchen, past the dying fire and the deserted knitting basket, and crept up the narrow staircase. Up there, separated from Veal by a thin and peeling wall, she lay wakeful. In the distance a steel bar was being hammered upon her forehead, and nearer at hand, a long while later, she heard a jangled squeak, as Barnes converted his sofa into a bed.
For he had noticed suddenly that the fire had gone out. He stood up, stretched painfully, and creaked into the kitchen. All round the range stood pots and pans and tins, and there, in the centre, was the empty, unwashed casserole. It was most strange.
Hunger was biting into him, and furtively he found some bread and ate three slices, dry. After that there was no point in staying up, so he cleaned his teeth, undressed, placed his clothes untidily over the back of his wooden chair, tightened the cord of his pyjamas, converted his sofa into a bed, and crept into it. The moon rose in a sky that was cold and hard and empty at last of snow. The trees drooped under the weight of the snow that had fallen, and there was no movement anywhere. He drifted towards sleep without reaching it, and he settled down for a long vigil, gazing at the ceiling till his eyes smarted, remembering the nights when it had thundered and he had longed to lie warm and crumpled beside whatever mother he had at the time. In this way he came near to the warmth of sleep, and then suddenly he was awake again, and there it was inside him, happiness. It forced him out of bed and sent him scampering to the window.
The moon was falling over the bare top of a hill, and light fingers of cloud were stretching wakefully across the sky. A grey light was beginning to spread from the east, and from the earth a thin steam was rising and dying as it rose. Mists began to gather and the sky turned slowly orange. Here and there a bird sang in surprise at finding itself alive on such a morning, after the storm.
The morning! In the morning he would start to discover the purpose of existence. It was not here, in this dingy room. It was not inside himself. It was not to be found through the rarefied isolation of artistic creation, even if what he had produced had been art. He realised that now. It was out there on the sides of the hills, where people lived, and in the factories, where they worked. He must work, feel himself useful, and embark upon a voyage of discovery. In the morning he would find himself a job. In the morning he would thrill to the vibrant excitement of human activity. In the morning he would become a new man, Fletcher.
Meanwhile he closed the curtain and went back to bed, and fell, like Mrs Pollard, into a kind of sleep.
Chapter 6
FLETCHER EMERGED THREE HOURS LATER IN A MANNER that astounded Mrs Pollard. His face, taking cheerfulness almost to the point of no return, carried all before it in a manner that she had not seen from him before. In her embarrassment she assumed that he would mention the events of the previous evening, but he made no reference to them. Rather he announced his intention of taking a short walk before breakfast. This could have knocked Mrs Pollard over with a feather. Judge then of her shock when she saw him leap down the steps in one bound and set off in the general direction of the Midland Station at a pronounced trot, rubbing his hands eagerly together.
She couldn’t understand it, and she didn’t like it. He had never taken a walk at any time, let alone before breakfast, and he had certainly never rubbed his hands together when she was looking. However, there was no time to worry about that. She must make him his breakfast. Stew.
It was not the usual thing for breakfast, but she felt that there would be no peace between them until she had redeemed herself. She decided, having learnt from her mistake, to aim at something simple, and she chose from her larder onions, potatoes, carrots, stewing beef and haricot beans. Onto these she poured a generous proportion of stock. Next she secured to the floor, at a yard’s distance from the casserole, a wooden chair, and she then sat on it. She began to stir the stew. This she did with an enormous spoon. It really was enormous, for a spoon. One would have been excused had one mistaken it for a dredging bucket. This spoon, this great spoon, had once belonged to Builth Evans, of the Merioneth Axe Murders, and had become a valuable family heirloom. Mrs Pollard, who was descended from the Evanses on her grandmother’s side, was extremely proud of the spoon, and had made a will bequeathing it to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, should it survive her. It was over four feet long and had at its head a curious double joint, characteristic of the best Welsh domestic spoons. The purpose of this joint was to allow the spoon to lie in the vertical while the handle was in the horizontal position, and vice versa. When the handle of the spoon was wiggled, the wiggle communicated itself, via the joint, to the spoon, thus setting up a cross-wiggle. The result was a stir only slightly inferior to that obtainable with any other spoon.
Mrs Pollard believed that by thus employing the spoon she was making it useful, and that it was therefore a boon to her, in that it was of use. Wearisome and clumsy though her efforts were, she firmly believed that she was using a labour-saving device.
Fletcher, in the meantime, was advancing by leaps and bounds, as he grappled with the problems involved in discovering a new city. His nervous excitement led him on a prodigious walk, up and down the hills, through parks, past quaint old pubs and great modern stores, the dreams of master hacks. On all sides stretched streets of square brick houses, appealing or appalling, according to one’s spelling. Eventually, at
