in it. And the table was laid. Miss Antonia stitched on.
Again the door opened, pushed feebly this time. A little dog trotted in, a spaniel nosing nimbly; it paused. The door stood open. And then, leaning on her stick, heavily, old Miss Rashleigh entered. A white shawl, diamond fastened, clouded her baldness. She hobbled; crossed the room; hunched herself in the high-backed chair by the fireside. Miss Antonia went on stitching.
“Shooting,” she said at last.
Old Miss Rashleigh nodded. She gripped her stick. They sat waiting.
The shooters had moved now from the King’s Ride to the Home Woods. They stood in the purple ploughed field outside. Now and then a twig snapped; leaves came whirling. But above the mist and the smoke was an island of blue—faint blue, pure blue—alone in the sky. And in the innocent air, as if straying alone like a cherub, a bell from a far hidden steeple frolicked, gambolled, then faded. Then again up shot the rockets, the reddish purple pheasants. Up and up they went. Again the guns barked; the smoke balls formed; loosened, dispersed. And the busy little dogs ran nosing nimbly over the fields; and the warm damp bodies, still languid and soft, as if in a swoon, were bunched together by the men in gaiters and flung into the cart.
“There!” grunted Milly Masters, the housekeeper, throwing down her glasses. She was stitching, too, in the small dark room that overlooked the stable yard. The jersey, the rough woollen jersey, for her son, the boy who cleaned the Church, was finished. “The end ’o that!” she muttered. Then she heard the cart. Wheels ground on the cobbles. Up she got. With her hands to her hair, her chestnut coloured hair, she stood in the yard, in the wind.
“Coming!” she laughed, and the scar on her cheek lengthened. She unbolted the door of the game room as Wing, the keeper, drove the cart over the cobbles. The birds were dead now, their claws gripped tight, though they gripped nothing. The leathery eyelids were creased greyly over their eyes. Mrs. Masters the housekeeper, Wing the gamekeeper, took bunches of dead birds by the neck and flung them down on the slate floor of the game larder. The slate floor became smeared and spotted with blood. The pheasants looked smaller now, as if their bodies had shrunk together. Then Wing lifted the tail of the cart and drove in the pins which secured it. The sides of the cart were stuck about with little grey-blue feathers, and the floor was smeared and stained with blood. But it was empty.
“The last of the lot!” Milly Masters grinned as the cart drove off.
“Luncheon is served, ma’am,” said the butler. He pointed at the table; he directed the footman. The dish with the silver cover was placed precisely there where he pointed. They waited, the butler and the footman.
Miss Antonia laid her white film upon the basket; put away her silk; her thimble; stuck her needle through a piece of flannel; and hung her glasses on a hook upon her breast. Then she rose.
“Luncheon!” she barked in old Miss Rashleigh’s ear. One second later old Miss Rashleigh stretched her leg out; gripped her stick; and rose too. Both old women advanced slowly to the table; and were tucked in by the butler and the footman, one at this end, one at that. Off came the silver cover. And there was the pheasant, featherless, gleaming; the thighs tightly pressed to its side; and little mounds of breadcrumbs were heaped at either end.
Miss Antonia drew the carving knife across the pheasant’s breast firmly. She cut two slices and laid them on a plate. Deftly the footman whipped it from her, and old Miss Rashleigh raised her knife. Shots rang out in the wood under the window.
“Coming?” said old Miss Rashleigh, suspending her fork.
The branches flung and flaunted on the trees in the Park.
She took a mouthful of pheasant. Falling leaves flicked the window pane; one or two stuck to the glass.
“The Home Woods, now,” said Miss Antonia. “Hugh’s lost that.” “Shooting.” She drew her knife down the other side of the breast. She added potatoes and gravy, brussel sprouts and bread sauce methodically in a circle round the slices on her plate. The butler and the footman stood watching, like servers at a feast. The old ladies ate quietly; silently; nor did they hurry themselves; methodically they cleaned the bird. Bones only were left on their plates. Then the butler drew the decanter towards Miss Antonia, and paused for a moment with his head bent.
“Give it here, Griffiths,” said Miss Antonia, and took the carcase in her fingers and tossed it to the spaniel beneath the table. The butler and the footman bowed and went out.
“Coming closer,” said Miss Rashleigh, listening. The wind was rising. A brown shudder shook the air; leaves flew too fast to stick. The glass rattled in the windows.
“Birds wild,” Miss Antonia nodded, watching the helter-skelter.
Old Miss Rashleigh filled her glass. As they sipped their eyes became lustrous like half precious stones held to the light. Slate blue were Miss Rashleigh’s; Miss Antonia’s red, like port. And their laces and their flounces seemed to quiver, as if their bodies were warm and languid underneath their feathers as they drank.
“It was a day like this, d’you remember?” said old Miss Rashleigh, fingering her glass. “They brought him home—a bullet through his heart. A bramble, so they said. Tripped. Caught his foot….” She chuckled as she sipped her wine.
“And John…” said Miss Antonia. “The mare, they said, put her foot in a hole. Died in the field. The hunt rode over him. He came home, too, on a shutter … They sipped again.
“Remember Lily?” said old Miss Rashleigh. “A bad ’un.” She shook her head. “Riding with a scarlet tassel on her cane….”
“Rotten at the heart!” cried Miss Antonia.
“Remember the Colonel’s letter. Your son rode as if he had twenty devils in him—charged at the head of his men. Then one white devil—ah hah!” She sipped again.
“The men of our house,” began Miss Rashleigh. She raised her glass. She held it high, as if she toasted the mermaid carved in plaster on the fireplace. She paused. The guns were barking. Something cracked in the woodwork. Or was it a rat running behind the plaster?
“Always women…” Miss Antonia nodded. “The men of our house. Pink and white Lucy at the Mill—d’you remember?”
“Ellen’s daughter at the Goat and Sickle,” Miss Rashleigh added.
“And the girl at the tailor’s,” Miss Antonia murmured, “where Hugh bought his riding breeches, the little dark shop on the right…”
“… that used to be flooded every winter. It’s his boy,” Miss Antonia chuckled, leaning towards her sister, “that cleans the Church.”
There was a crash. A slate had fallen down the chimney. The great log had snapped in two. Flakes of plaster fell from the shield above the fireplace.
“Falling,” old Miss Rashleigh chuckled. “Falling.”
“And who,” said Miss Antonia, looking at the flakes on the carpet, “who’s to pay?”
Crowing like old babies, indifferent, reckless, they laughed; crossed to the fireplace, and sipped the sherry by the wood ashes and the plaster, until each glass held only one drop of wine, reddish purple, at the bottom. And this the old women did not wish to part with, so it seemed; for they fingered their glasses, as they sat side by side by the ashes; but they never raised them
