1.

CHANGE.

When I woke up I thought I might do it, cross the belt of
villas and the open wood, wade up the sandy lane, climb the hill
to the common where we used to pick fir-cone mushrooms, and enter
the dark wood that overhangs their house. It hangs on a cliff
between the orchard and the house. From it we used to count the
planes of the roof with pigeons walking about on them. Over the
roofs we watched the harbour running.

I did not tell the old people. My washed-out cotton dress
said: 'dis-inherited'. They gave me a packet of biscuits I did
not want, because the child was weight enough to carry.

I thought I might go round by the farm and up the drive,
but I was afraid to meet them in the lanes. The drive up from
the sea is very long. I should have been crushed under the
avenue. The fields would not have hidden me. If one of them
had come, I should have crawled into the ditch, and faced them
with the embarrassment that would have degraded the three of us.

I walked up the common. There were mushrooms at the top,
but few and slug-eaten and kicked. I walked confidently because
it would have been easy to hide in the gorse-bushes run through
with secret paths.

When I came to the edge where the wood dropped, it was as
though I could have leaned over and touched the house. They had
so cut the trees that one could look down into the windows.
They were black and transparent. I did not see anyone go up or
down the stairs. Outside, the harbour was empty of ships. I
sat with my back against a tree, and my feet in an arbutus bush

2.

spread out across me. I could see the orchard and the flower-
garden, the box-edged paths converging on the six wells. There
was a new green-house and three men at work. The trees opened
in an oval lunette onto the stables at the head of the drive.
I heard the side door open. The trees hid a walking body till
it came out onto the drive. It was my mother. The flesh on
her face was made pink for the morning, her hair was yellow
under her hat, her widow's veil hung down straight like a black
pillar following her.

She went up to the stables, and stood in front of the white
garage door. She did not peer through the grill. She was
looking at shut doors. She began to walk up and down the red
cobbles where the horses used to be washed, and turned and went
to where the men were working, and told one of them what to do.
She went from him to a man with red hair, and made him walk up
and down the path with her, while she explained. He had on a
green baize apron, and there were times when she took his advice.

She walked away into the rose-garden, and stood by the well
with the lead lions, picking at a dead tree.

My brother came out of the front door of the house. He looked up to see if the sky was clear. His cigarette was in a very long holder, the smoke was so far from his face. He turned about and about. Once he went back into the porch, once he made off down the drive to the sea. He tried to crack an almond stone from the tree on the terrace, and it shot away under his heel. At last he walked, following my mother very slowly up to the stables. He was not looking for her, but he knew where she was.

3.

She heard him a long way off. "Boy-oy, Boy-oy". He began to drag. He threw away his cigarette and lit another. I saw the flame a foot away from his face.

"Boy-oy. I'm here. Boy-oy". She came down to meet him, and drew his arm into hers, and led him up the garden. She pointed something out to him asking for his opinion. After a time he began to answer, and changed her arm into his. She put a rose in his coat, he stuck one in her hat.

They stood at the foot of the apple-tree where were the graves of my animals. Some had grave-stones. The others had been marked out in patterns with pebbles and marble chips. I could not see what had happened to them. They called up a man and gave orders for the tree to be cut down. My brother kicked over my pony's grave-stone. They moved away and picked plums off a rich young tree. He asked her for something, and she shook her head. He asked again, and she spread out her hands. She was pouting. He asked a third time, and she shrugged her shoulders. They went down to the house. I heard my brother speaking on the telephone, and the bell ring off.

A servant I did not know crossed the yard, and tore bay leaves from the tree at the back door. There would be a sweet dish flavoured with bay-leaves. A gardener came down with vegetables. I remembered our greengrocer, up a side street, where the fine fruit was shewn in cotton wool. had a huge cabbage for the knife to split like frozen butter.

Behind the stables there would be figs. I could not go down and pick. A workman would ask me who I was, and the child would show. I felt it move. I looked up and saw the harbour

4.

streaming out into the sea. I crossed the gorse-field where I
had lain with my husband and listened to the pods snicking.
The gorse-field led into a meadow that belonged to a kind,
cultivated woman who did not like my mother, but would have been
afraid if she had met me. The grass in her field was heavy,
cool and wet. I skirted the hedge that ran alongside our drive.
Once I thought she was standing among her fowls looking at me.

There was no one there, and I remembered that she was almost
blind. When I put my hands down into the pockets of my coat,
down my loose gown
and let it fall straight open, no one would have seen the child.
My earrings swung. Then I heard someone
coming down the drive. I thought my mother was walking out to
the farm. I fell down under the hedge. The foot-steps
found out about them. I thought it would be bad for the child
not to shew courage and I left the field and walked down the
long drive to the sea.

I looked back every few yards, and each time the house
sat higher on its hill, its lawns were greener, its trees had
more shape. Though they had no car, they had spent a great
deal of money on the terrace and inside the house
were the cool shining rooms, and dishes piled with fruit, and
mirrors to reflect them, and they had got rid of me. It had
given them some trouble but they were rid of me, and I could
never go back. There was no getting back. The boy found it
dull, but he was ashamed of me. And I would never go back until
she would let me, and he thought that if she did there would
be less for him. She had made him see that he could not do
without money to buy the things with which she had corrupted

5.

him. And I wanted less money for clothes and books, and not to
be hurt when the child was born.

The gate was open. I unhooked it, and it swung across, as
we had been told not to do, my heavy shoes destroying the paint.
I made a face as I went out. The house was too far up for
anyone to see it. I went down to the shore. There were the
round orange stairs, the sea-pinks, and the tough grass that was
salt and scratched my nose, but with them I could make free, and
not with the roses in the shut garden. I walked all round the
marsh and under the trees and through the deep lane past the
farm. The sea-wind does not blow there. I grew tired. Round
the corner, by the cemetery where they buried my young aunt who
drowned herself because she could not bear it, I met my brother.
His body was fatter, his face thinner. The pink and white
candied face had green moons under the eyes. His trousers
shewed how wide his hips were. His eyes glittered as he was
thinking to himself. He said: "Oh ! my sister", and tried not
to look at my waist.

I kissed him, and said: "Darling, I'm not a high explosive."
I couldn't remember properly what had happened about the grave-
stones, but that on our left, Aunt Vera was dead and buried, and
that they had not been able to kill me.

He took my arm, and we went along together. He said:

"It is such fun to see you. I'm so bored. There is nothing
to do here, and we have no money. You don't know how awful it
is to have no money..... I suppose you are staying with the old
people. I don't know how you can stand it."

"They are very kind."

7.

"Here," he said, "nothing happens, and nothing ever can
till my guardians pay what they owe. You don't know what it
means...."

"Who should know better than I ?"

"Oh, yes. I know that too, but mother has not had an easy
time. We're growing fruit now for the market, and all that I
can do is see that the best of it feeds me. In the evening we
hunt for slugs. We caught one yesterday, six inches long and
buried it in salt."

"I hate slugs."

"It kills them at once."

I had pushed up the dust with my toe, and thought of the
slug bubbling underneath. He knew.

"Either the slug or the peach had to go under."

We got up and crossed the last field where the country
ends. He said :

"You might remember me to the old people."

"I will."

"They're not bad sorts."

"They are very good to me."

"I suppose you know that it was all through mother she got
that appointment."

"Possibly. She is making a great success of it." You
horrible little boy, leave Aunt
Elizabeth alone.

I wanted to throw him down under the palings where the
first villa began, and kneel on him, and dig into his throat,
and score his face, and kick him, and get away from him, his
watch, and links, and tie pin and shoes. They would do for my man.

["8.", "The more there is for you, the less for him. Can you\nwonder...?", "We were at the field's edge. He said, gravely: \"I don't\nknow that you have so much the worst of it, Sis. It is awful\nhere. Haven't we always known that there is something wicked\nabout the house ? I have to hang about there all day, and\nlisten to the clocks striking.\"", "\"Go away and get something to do.\"", "\"My guardians won't let me.\"", "\"You have friends and books.\"", "\"A lot you'll find people want you when you have no money\nto spend on them.\"", "\"A nice set you know.\"", "\"They're not used to beggary.\"", "\"Thank God, mine are.\"", "That was it. I was looking at the splintered sphere of\nthat world that had given us birth. I saw its ruins turned\nbrothel for him to live and solicit in. An eternal priest.\nOutside, I was working in the clay. In the woman is the race.", "x x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x