John Thomas & Lady Jane

the jam cupboard?’
    ‘It’s the acoustics. I’m not really
in the jam cupboard.’
    ‘I thought you wasn’t tellin’
nobody!’ snapped his mother, in censure.
    ‘I’m not talking to you, shit face,
am I?’ he said.
    ‘Go up an’ ma’e my bed,’ he said.
    On the stairs she called back:
    ‘Look at th’ meat!’
    ‘Ay!’ he said, short.
    He opened the oven door and looked at
the meat. There came a smell of beef roasting, and a faint sound of sizzling.
He looked in apathetically, yet attentively, then shut the door again.
    ‘I’m afraid you’ve had a bad time,’
said Constance.
    ‘Not really. I was only checkin’ if
the beef wasn’t burned.’
    He glanced at her again, but said
nothing. There was something unyielding in his eyes, and his body, but also
something dead in him. Was it a cat?
    ‘Will you come to the hut this
afternoon so that we can talk things over,’ she said, ‘and have a screw.’
    ‘I wasn’t going to the wood no more
but in this case I say yes.’
    ‘But you can come! Will you? After
lunch? Will you? And let us talk?’
    ‘I’ll come!’ he said. ‘It seems I
always do the wrong thing.’
    She saw the first sharp little
lightnings of passion stirring in his eyes, and his chest was filling again. It
was normally thirty-nine but when it was full it was fifty-two.
    ‘Good morning, Mrs Soames,’ she said.
‘I must go now.’
    As she walked home she had an uneasy
feeling that he might die. And it touched her with acute pain, such as she had
never known before. The doctor could find no cause so he gave her aspirins for
the acute pain such as she had not known before.
    The day was hot, and smelled of
Sunday, roast beef and spring cabbage cooking.
    She went in the hot afternoon across
the park to the hut. It was the last time she would be going to meet him there.
She opened the door and saw the place very tidy, the traps and workbench and
tools all in order, but all the odd little things of Soames’s own were gone,
the piano, the ‘cello and the clockwork tortoise with revolving eyes. This
place too had died for her, in the clutch of circumstance.
    Then two men emerged from the path,
Soames, in a navy-blue Sunday suit and a black soft hat. He smelled of roast
meat, cabbage and custard. The other was Albert, the new gamekeeper.
    ‘This is the new gamekeeper, my
lady!’
    ‘Hello Mam! I’ve spent a lot of my
time in California cattle-punching.
    ‘How cruel, punching cattle,’ thought
Constance.
    ‘Well I’ll say good day!’ said
Albert, lifting his hat to Constance.
    ‘Ca’ th’ dog!’ said Soames.
    Albert gave a short, sharp, imperious
whistle. Flossie looked round, and immediately cringed to the ground, as if her
bones had gone soft. Albert strode off to the path, and whistled again, looking
round. Flossie, as if smitten with paralysis, was creeping along the ground
towards Soames.
    ‘Go,’ he said fiercely, pointing
towards Albert.
    The dog collapsed on to the earth
entirely, and lay pretending she could not move. Finally, exasperated, Soames
picked up the dog by the tail and swung her round and round his head and
released her in the direction of Albert.
    ‘Poor Flossie,’ said Constance.
    As she spoke Flossie was flying
through the air towards Albert.
    There was a long pause, followed by a
second long pause. They were so close together they sounded like one long
pause.
    ‘Let’s go and sit somewhere,’ she said.
    ‘How about down?’ he said.
    He threw off his coat and hat, and
they sat down under a big oak-tree.
    ‘Have you got friends in Sheffield?’ she asked.
    ‘Yes. I’ve got Bill, as was my pal in
th’ war. He makes EPNS knives, forks and spoons.’
    There was a curious thick lisp in his
speech.
    ‘Let me look!’
    She put her hand on his chin and
turned his face to her. She opened his mouth and put her head in, and saw where
two of the front teeth were gone from the lacerated gums.
    ‘What a shame!’ she said, as anger
rose in her heart. ‘But never mind, it’s not really hurt you.’ What was she
saying? He’d been knocked senseless with a concussion.
    ‘I want to tell you,’ she whispered.
‘I think I’m going to have a baby.’
    He was transfixed and nearly shit
himself.
    ‘Have yer told Sir Clifford?’ he
asked, shaking like a jelly.
    ‘No! Not yet!’
    ‘An’ he’ll take it on, will he?’ he
asked.
    ‘Why do you hate Clifford?’ she said.
    ‘I don’t — I don’t.’
    ‘Yes, you hate everybody,’ she