The Farm by the Lake полностью

Flo supposed that she meant the workhouse. The young woman took no notice; in fact, she beamed and seemed still to be thinking of how she might marry a prince; and Flo thought that that was what was much more likely to happen to her. But the mention of the lock house was Mrs. Collin’s final word. She sat with her hands on the bulge of her stomach apparently brooding. The young woman turned to Flo.

“Did she say you were going to a farm?”

“Yes,” said Flo.

“D’you like it?” she asked. “Ugh, it’s the last thing, the very last, that I’d like. I couldn’t stick it, I simply couldn’t. I don’t suppose that you ever go to the theatre, but if you get the chance you should come and see our show. Gertain’s fine, if she is a bit stuck up. I wish I had her voice and figure. Can she show herself? Oh gee!”

The young woman had a bubbling sort of enthusiasm and seemed glad of a listener like Flo. The meek woman stared straight to her front and did not seem to mind being talked across, simply taking no notice. Mrs. Collin seemed to have forgotten about everybody but herself.

“How long will you be in Manchester?” asked Flo.

“Oh, only a fortnight; a mouldy hole. Then we go on to the Potteries . . . Hanley Hip. The manager there, he’s a beaut; if they were all like him . . .!”

She laughed once more and began to search in her handbag and brought out a Goldflake packet and lit a cigarette with a match snipped out of a flat, green booklet. Leaning back she used the opposite seat as a footrest, carelessly crossing legs bare of stockings. Mrs. Collin turned a little to stare.

“You deserve your death,” she declared solemnly. “Wait till you’re my age an’ you’ll be as stiff as a clothes-horse wi’ rheumatics.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be dead by then,” said the young woman pertly. “A merry life and a quick one, that’s me. I want to die young.”

“You’ll manage it, I should think,” said Mrs. Collin. “If you’d ’ad to work, like what I have, you’d take more care.”

“Olive oil’s the best thing for rheumatics,” the meek woman put in unexpectedly. “Rub it in night an’ mornin’, well into the joints.”

“Emmott Nadin ’as it,” said Mrs. Collin looking informatively at Flo. “Most farmers ’as it, and serve ’em right, th’ skinny beggars. It’s non a thing as they die of, but it gives them a bit o’ hell before they gets there.” Mrs. Collin thrust her tongue along her teeth beneath her thick upper lip as if savouring her own remark. “Not as ’e’s as bad as Pepp’ry Monica . . . it’s her as should have rheumatics, hand a few other things. Mean . . . she’d squeeze a penny till it squealed.”

Flo had never heard this before. She felt inclined to laugh.

“If there’s one sort of person I can’t stick, it’s the mean sort,” said the young woman. “Thank Heaven you don’t get many in our line. We mayn’t get much, most of us, but we enjoy it.”

The meek woman somehow by her look indicated that she didn’t believe this. Mrs. Collin said succinctly, “There’s enj’yment hand enj’yment”, but Flo wished that she were going to Manchester to go on the stage instead of having to face the strange couple that the fat woman seemed to despise so. Glancing aside Flo saw sliding past a dark weed-grown pit bank and then starved-looking fields; after the good rolling country between Barrow and Lancaster this country seemed empty and unlovely, and Flo realized how far she was already from home. Then a spired tower came into view, and Mrs. Collin saw it, too, and exclaimed with genuine satisfaction:

“Eh now, there’s where you buried yo’r Bert, Sal. Best place for ’im were underground, I always thought.”

The meek woman neither nodded nor spoke, though a slightly more distant look seemed to come into her pale mild eyes. Flo forgot her own unhappiness in feeling sorry for her, and as if attracted by some intuition the meek woman turned slowly towards her and perhaps intended to smile, but did not. Instead she spoke: “Soon be in now. D’you know your way?”

The last few minutes of the run were spent with Flo trying to memorize confusing instructions from Mrs. Collin, cut into twice by the meek woman, on how she should cross from Manchester’s Victoria Station to it’s London Road Station; and then just as the train began to slow the young woman let her bare legs down from the seat and said:

“Hell, why mess about? I’m taking a taxi . . . come with me.”

She said it so matter-of-fact that Flo felt that there was nothing else to do. Mrs. Collin was struggling with the window and did not hear, but the meek woman murmured, “Be careful”, though as she did not look at any of them, Flo thought that she must be talking to Mrs. Collin, who was just putting her head out. To the first porter Mrs. Collin shouted, “Eh, you!” but the train slid on unconsideringly. As it slowed, however, another porter began to trot with them. “That!” he exclaimed when he saw the bundle. “I’ll need a damn truck.”

“Oh, no you don’t. I know the trick; I’ll never see you agen,” said Mrs. Collin peremptorily. “If I can carry it, you can.