VISIT

The carriage door is shut. The guard shows all his teeth
again, touches his cap to Mary, blows his whistle and goes away
to get into the train. The train gives a jolt and the platform,
with Mary on it waving her hand, moves away until all the station
has gone and there are fields. This is the Journey. There is
Pug, opposite. But not like she is at home. Like a stranger,
Berry feels alone.

The wheels keep saying: Going-to, going-to, Bilberry Hill,
Bilberry Hill, Bilberry Hill. If they went more slowly, they
would be saying something else. But they hurry because they know
tey must get to Bilberry Hill. All the time it is coming nearer.
Not like it was in the garden, when Mother said about going, and
Berry and Pug had danced round the lawn singing Off to Philadelphy.
Berry looks across at Pug and sees that she knows it is not the same.

When another station has come, the guard looks in at the
window with his teeth and goes away, waving his flag. The wheels
begin again, slowly. Auntbertha, they say, Unclehemry, Unclealbert,
Greatamtstone.

Another station and the guard comes and says: 'Next station,
young ladies!' and Berry thanks him politely and looks at Pug as
soon as he is gone, to try and feel happy. But Pug's face says
there is no help. Home is gone, for three whole days. Berry stares

at Pug, trying to think of something to make her say something
instead of just sitting there with her pug-face, nose all screwed
up, like looking out of the window when it rains on a holiday.

'Watery-boughtery-oive,' says Pug, and looks away, trying
to show she does not care. But she does care. She is thinking of
the strange place and strangers.

'Great-aunt Stone won't say grace for tea,' says Berry, and
feels better. Busy, with things to explain to Pug. Pug is wonder-
ing about blind Great-aunt Stone. She has never seen a private
blind person. 'Pug, if you think Great-aunt Stone will be wearing
a cardboard label, she won't.'

It is a little station, with wet bushes. Nobody there. The
guard comes and lifts them out into a smell of sweetbriar.

'There's yer uncle, that's Mr. Albert, getting out of the
chaise.'

Berry stands looking. Her feet won't move. A countryman is
coming in at the little gate, looking about jerking his head, with
his eyes nearly shut because the sun is in them. He comes across
the platform, to take them to Uncle Albert.

'Ber-rie an' Nan-oie?'

It can't be Uncle Albert. But it is Uncle Albert. His mouth
is pulled sideways to pretend he is not frightened. But he is
frightened.

'I'll drive y'long.' He turns round and waits a second as

if he is not sure Berry and Pug will follow, and then goes on, in
a jerky walk, showing off, all to himself.

The chaise is very low, almost on the ground, so that the
dusty, fat pony looks too large. When they are inside with the
little portmanteau standing on end, they all seem too large and
close together. Close together, and all alone. Uncle Albert has
to sit sideways to drive. All the time, every day, he is frightened,
ashamed, like a little boy in disgrace. But now he is being very
grand because there is nobody there.

'Chee-er up!'

He has seen we think him dreadful and are not liking the bumpy
drive in the little basket.

'I'm sure,' Berry says, and hears her voice come out fright-
fully loud: 'we shall be very happy.'

'Chee-er up, Carrie!' says Uncle Albert, flicking the pony
with his whip. He is not thinking about us at all. Berry sits
quite still, with the blush burning her face, and looks at the
shining back of the pony where the big bones move under the fat.
They are going downhill and the chaise shakes and bumps, and a polite
couch Pug gives comes out in two pieces.

'How's all at home?'

'Quite-well-thank-you.' Pug has not said anything yet. But
she is sitting up nicely and her face is looking polite. A village
has come. Uncle Albert stops at a butcher-shop.

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'Got that for me, Mr. Pither?' he shouts in a high, squeaky
voice.

Pug is pinching Berry's arm and looking up the street. 'Look!'
she says in a loud whisper: 'Bald-faced Stag!' Berry pretends not
to hear. 'Berry! Bald-' 'Sh' says Berry and feels like Miss Webb.
Pug is quiet at once. She knows it is rude to make remarks. And
she is silly to expect a village public-house to be called The
Northumberland Arms. There is honeysuckle somewhere. But Pug
doesn't smell it because she is still looking out for something
funny.

Mr. Pither comes out of his shop in a large white apron, with
a parcel, and looks. He has no whites to his eyes; like a horse.

'Nice after the sha-oo-er. So ye found the little misses.'
He smiles into the chaise with his eyelids down as he puts in the
parcel. Berry watches the eyelids to say good afternoon when they
come up. Uncle Albert says thankee Mr. Pither and gives a click
and the pony moves and Mr. Pither looks down the street. He is
thinking about the village, the only place he knows.

* * * * *

A cottage, hidden in dark creepers, joined on to another
cottage, plain white. As Berry goes up the little path, the strange
cottage seems to be one she has been into before. She knows she
has never been into it, and yet feels her face suddenly get unhappy

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because she must go again into a place she doesn't like.

'Come in, children!'

Aunt Bertha's voice, in a room. It is low and small and
musty, sending away the summer. Aunt Bertha is there, twisted round
in her chair, to welcome. While Berry kisses her she sees home and
the mornings with Aunt Bertha, making the Text, and Aunt Bertha
smiles and sees them, too, but after Pug has quickly kissed her
she only says now go and give your Great-auntie a kiss, and the
little room is full of Great-aunt Stone sitting in a low armchair
with no arms. The back of it, going up beyond her head, looks like
half a pipe.

Aunt Stone does not move or speak as Berry goes towards her.
Her eyes are open, staring at nothing, with a film over them like
the fish on the slab at Pratt's.

'Mother! Berry!'

So Great-aunt Stone is deaf as well as blind. What is the
good of her, sitting there? That is what happens if you are eighty-
five. You sit somewhere being no good.

'How do you do, Aunt Stone?' Berry asks, speaking very loud,
to be heard. And now Aunt Stone knows she is there, because the
dreadful mauve lips are going to speak and one of the twisted
hands, with the big mauve veins standing up on it, comes a little
way off her knee.

"Give me a kiss, my-little-dear."

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When her own face is near enough to the dreadful old face she must kiss, Berry shuts her eyes. But just before her eyelids go down she sees a piece of sunlight on the wall behind the chair and stays in it while she gives her kiss and thinks of how she will be able to look at it again presently; but remembers politeness:

"This is my sister Nancy," she shouts, and bumps into Pug standing too near behind.

It is rude to be seeing Aunt Bertha frowning and being cross. Every day, for every meal, someone has to get her to the table like this. Perhaps Uncle Albert always makes the same mistakes, making her angry. At home she clung on to the servants' arms and made little jokes as she came, and made funny faces at Pug and me to make us laugh. Aunt Bertha on a visit happy and polite. This is Aunt Bertha at home. Quite different. Angry like a little girl, and making Uncle Albert frightened. She knows I have seen, and is smiling at me now that she is sitting down; and I can't smile back.

Those things she can see on the other side of the room as she sits at the tea-table beside Pug have always been there, making a home like other things make other homes; a grandfather clock with a private face, high up above everybody; plush frames on the walls with bunches of flowers inside, painted by hand; a sheffaf-near with

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a mirror and photographs in plush frames and a bowl, like the bowl of dried rose-leaves at home: po-pooery. I am on a visit to all of them, and not to the uncles and aunts. Those things are always there, whatever happens. And the little patch of sunlight is often there, like someone saying something special.

There is no bread-and-butter. The <u>loaf</u> is on the table and a dish with a large round of butter with a picture of a cow on the top, and a little china beehive. No cake. A dish with a Yorkshire pudding in it. But jam, and a bowl of cream. Uncle Albert is cutting bread-and-butter, screwing up his face and being almost as grand as he was in the chaise. Aunt Bertha is looking at him, frowning. Suddenly she tells Berry to begin. As if she has been seeing her without looking, and knows she has not begun. And now she and Pug are eating lovely new crusty bread and butter. Bilberry Hill. It goes down being Bilberry Hill, not tasting of the musty smell in the room. Berry looks at the lovely little beehive, munching and thinking how unkind it is to be happy without caring about the aunts and Uncle Albert although it is their bread-and-butter and their beehive. Perhaps they are happy, too? She looks at Aunt Bertha, and Aunt Bertha is smiling at her like she used to do at home. And now she is leaning over and helping Berry to honey out of the beehive.

'Would Berry like a piece of lardy-cake?'

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Berry quickly says yes please and looks all round the table again, for cake. But there is not any cake. Uncle Albert is cutting out a corner of the Yorkshire pudding, and now he has slid it oh to her plate. When she has taken a small bite, she wants to talk about it. It is like the outside of very brown doughnuts, only much nicer and crisp. Uncle Albert is looking at her with his head on one side and is going to speak. She wishes he wouldn't, wishes nobody would look or speak to her. The cake won't go on tasting so good if she must think of people too.

'Ye won't get that,' Uncle Albert's voice is angry, as if I had done something wrong - 'not outside Burksheer.'

'Did you get that bitta brisket, Albert?'

Now they are all attending to Aunt Stone and something they all know about. I am alone with the lardy-cake and Pug. She is eating her piece neatly, in nice little bites, but listening too.

Suddenly Pug's voice comes out: 'We have all our meat done in a roasting-jack in front of the fire.'

'That'll be Jo-erge,' says Uncle Albert.

'And Father cuts the usparrygus; not gardener.'

Berry kicks hard, sideways, and hits Pug's ankle and Pug stops and Berry quickly sighs and says I'm awfully happy, to make up for Pug showing off, and as soon as she has said this without meaning it, she means it, and wants to be staying at Bilberry Hill for a long time, long enough to see everything there is, instead

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of just three days.

Eliza picks up the candle and says good night little misses and opens the door. She doesn't want to stay and she doesn't want to go. Her footsteps creak, like her voice. They are the only footsteps and voice she has. She will have them when she is back in the kitchen.

Black darkness. Taking away the walls. You can only tell it is the same room by the musty smell. All the things are in it like they were when the candle was there. The Chair, No, no, NO! I won't see the Chair.

'Pug,' very quietly, just to show she is there, even if she is asleep. She is asleep. Berry pokes her eyelids, to make colours. Where do they come from, these pretty colours? When the colours are gone, the Chair is there, inside her eyes, with Great-uncle Stone sitting in it. Dead. Like Eliza said they found him. But with certainly a gold watch-chain. Look at the watch-chain. All gold and shining, like it was when he was going about the house and going out. Going to Weslen chapel. But one day he couldn't go out. He came upstairs and sat in that Chair. For ten years.

'Pug!'

Pug is asleep, far away. Berry turns quickly round, to be

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nearer to her. The quilt crackles as she turns, telling her to
remember the pink roses on it. They are still there, in the dark.
And it isn't quite, quite dark. Over there, in the corner, is a
little square of faint light showing through the window curtain,
telling about getting up in the morning, with Pug.

Rose leaves and roses, coming in at the window, almost touch-
ing the little washstand. Berry washes very slowly, to be staying
as long as possible, with her back to the room, in this corner
where the morning comes in with the roses. Not talking to Pug.
Just being altogether Berry.

Downstairs, it is dark. In the Morning, Uncle Henry is still
not there. Uncle Albert has a shiny face and a Cambridge blue tie;
for Sunday. But he cuts large slices of the cold bacon, and it is
lovely; very mild and with pink fading away into the fat part.

After breakfast Uncle Henry suddenly comes in. He has a
black beard, but all the same is short like Uncle Albert. He says
some of the things relations say, only in the funny way they all
speak at Bilberry Hill. Then he goes away behind his beard and is
sad. And frightened too. But not of people, like Uncle Albert.

It is nice running down the lane with Uncle Henry, joining
hands and running and laughing, out in the sunlight. When he
laughs, his white teeth come out of his black beard. But the lane

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ends in a muddy yard, with pigs running about and grunting. Pug says aren't they funny. But they are not funny. They are dirty and frightened.

'Race you back,' says Uncle Henry, and runs up the lane very fast and into the house. And now there is only the sitting-room again, and Uncle Henry gone away somewhere. There's nothing to do but look through the glass of the door that goes into the garden; until Aunt Bertha comes down to read Line upon Line. Perhaps she can find the piece about a bell and a pomegranate, a bell and a pomegranate, round about the hem of Aaron's robe.

Aunt Bertha said not to play in the garden until to-morrow. But we can just open the door and look. There is a little pavement outside, running along the back of the cottage.

'Come along, Pug. This isn't the garden.'

The little path is very nice. Secret. Pug is just behind me, liking it too. Only somewhere in front, further along there is a dreadful harmonium sound, wheezy and out of tune. The path reaches the plain white part of the cottage, and the slow, dismal sound is quite near. Just inside this door. Another sitting-room. Perhaps that is where Uncle Henry went. Berry opens the door. Uncle Albert. All alone, sitting at a crooked harmonium, playing How Sweet the Name in a bare room with no carpet, and bulging sacks lying about on the floor. Poor Uncle Albert playing, all out of tune and out of time, the only Sunday music he knows. Holding on to it; all alone.

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'Pug!' Pug comes running; is near. Good little Pug, not saying anything, waiting to be told what to do. I can smell the lineny smell of her pinafore. The gate won't move. It won't.

'Hold on to me, and pull!'

<u>Wudge.</u> It's open.

A green hill, going up into the sky. A little path at the bottom for people to walk and go somewhere.

'Pug, Pug!'

Berry runs up the bright green grass. Into nowhere. Sees the wind moving the grass. Feels it in her hair. No one knows about this hill. No one knows it is there. Near the top she stands still, to remember how it looked from the door; long, long ago. It will always look like that. Always. Always. She lies down, to smell the grass, puts her cheek against it, feels grass-blades in her ear.

'Pug! This is the country. Bilberry Hill. We've found it.'

Pug looks down at her, standing still, waiting. Berry hides her face in the grass, to be alone.

'Berry! Aren't you glad we are going home to-morrow?'

'I don't know.'

LIFF & LETTERS,
Sept. '45.