Birchwood Read Free Page B

from day to day. When it was finished they were lost. Mama drifted back to the window, while the old woman sat scratching the counterpane with her nails and turning her eyes vacantly from side to side. Theirs was a curious relationship. Granny Godkin, before she met her, had imagined Beatrice as a tough blue-eyed bitch. What a royal battle there would be! She polished her weapons and waited. That day of the wedding, when she sat staring into the garden, she burned with excitement. The real Beatrice, a gentle creature dazed by her passion for my father, was a bitter disappointment, but, refusing to give up her dreams of flying blood and Jiair, the old woman launched her attack regardless. Mama, mistaking what was expected of her, pretended that things were other than they were, made herself agreeable, replied to what she wanted to hear not what was said, smiled, smiled, and raged in her dreams. Such tactics were unbeatable because of their innocence, and Granny Godkin, in baffled fury, turned on her son and cried, She has no style, no style ! Joseph grinned, and lit a cigar, and strolled out into the garden. Something in his mother folded up, she took to grumbling, and began to die, and there at last she found her finest weapon, for Beatrice knew, without knowing how, that she was killing the old woman. Joseph, mildly amused, observed this unexpected turn in the tide of war, and when Beatrice guiltily spoke of his mother's decline he grinned at her too and said that she would never die, not, my dear, so long as she has you. Which might have proved true had not the house, weary of this wild old woman, finally turned on her and extinguished her itself.
    There was a scratching at the bedroom door, and it opened wide enough to allow in Granda Godkin's wizened skull. My grandmother turned her face away from him. The ancient couple could not remember when they had last spoken to each other, which is not to say that they did not have their suspicions, although it often occurred to me that each may well have thought the other already dead and come back a spiteful and tenacious ghost. Still with only his head inside the room Granda Godkin winked at Mama, who had turned from the window in sudden alarm.
    Tn a pet today, are we, in a pet?’ he inquired, and nodded toward his wife. He withdrew his head with its sprinkling of ginger hairs, and a rattle of phlegm in the corridor betrayed his secret laughter. He was a wicked little old man. Once again his pixie's face appeared, and he was already speaking when Mama began to shake her head at him in urgent mute appeal.
    ‘I see the tinkers have moved in.’
    Another retreat, another laugh, and this time the door closed. Granny Godkin's eyes and mouth flew open—
    ‘Where's that Josie?’ Mama muttered, and fled. She was in the corridor before the old woman began to bray. Josie's ragged gray head came up the stairs, and she stopped, slopping tea into the saucer, and turned her ear toward the commotion in the bedroom with a bleak little grin.
    ‘What's wrong with her now?’ she asked.
    ‘Bring in the tea, Josie, bring it in,’ her mistress answered wearily. Poor Mama.
    She went out into the garden, into the stained light and the birdsong, and walked on the lawn by the edge of the wood. A wind from the sea lashed the tops of the trees together and made spinning patterns of the fallen may blossom on the grass. Nockter the gardener, a square hulk of a man, knelt in the flowerbeds uprooting the weeds that flourished among the violets.
    T-p-powerful day, ma'am.’
    ‘Yes, glorious.’
    He edged away from her and bent again to his task, nervous of her mad placid smile.
    She sat on the iron seat in the little arbour under the lilacs. An early cricket ticked among the bluebells. She heard without hearing it the music fade down in the fallow field. All was still in her little chapel, while, outside, spring whistled in the leaves, the chimneys, ran shrieking through the long grass under the trees.