The white flickering dissipated almost as swiftly as it had risen, but staring higher, above the opposite skyline into the grey shading of clouds, Flo saw occasional lonely black motes passing to and fro. Then the last of those disappeared, and her gaze came back to the still water-sheen and to the motionless dark grey thickness of the sallows. Slowly, so that at first she was not sure whether she saw anything or not, the black shape of a man seemed to materialize there; and then she knew that he was coming to the house. The thought that it was someone who had no right to be there, someone who intended evil, rushed through her mind; and then she smiled. Of course she knew who it was. If she had gone, as Mrs. Nadin had told here, she might have been with him now coming up the meadow. She felt a vague regret, but a moment afterwards shrugged it off, and hastily drew back into the room’s shadow. Instinctively she knew that he was not like Clem, but strangely there had flashed back to her the picture of the youth lying supremely at his ease on the curved shell of the submarine passing the Barrow bridge, and suddenly she was aware that it was youth that she wanted. She had come into a household of old folks; she must . . .
The click of a gate latch interrupted and she leaned past the curtain. But there was a thick dark tree below and she could not see. Suddenly she remembered how long she had been, and quickly began to tug her blouse over her head and side-stepped out of her skirt. She dashed at the bass and struggled with the rope, which was stiff and hard as though it had been baked. But soon she was shaking a blue gingham frock down over upstretched arms and stiff-necked head. Swiftly she patted and stroked herself and ran to the glass to look how her hair had survived. She could hardly see and there was no time to light the candle. She let her hair do with a brief bunching all round with cupped hands. The strangeness of the stairs made her creep carefully. The kitchen door was shut, outlined by fine lines of light. It was an effort to put her hand on the knob and turn it because she felt like an intruder.
“Half-an-hour ta titivate thisel’, by gum!” Mrs. Nadin greeted her. “Tha’ll be another like our Dot.”
Flo thought that she would never be able to sleep in the strange bed. She lay for some time with open eyes towards the grey oblong of the window. She was conscious of the silence; next, only a few minutes later, as it seemed, she was wakened by a wild jangling.
Dimly she saw the bell kicking violently. Under the clangs of the clapper there was a tingling hum that seemed to spin in her eardrums. She jerked upright thinking of stopping the din, and then realized that she could not. The bell tossed for an intolerable time. She determined to knot a handkerchief round the clapper before next morning. When the bell nodded into peacefulness her head still buzzed with the spinning undertone. But after a while it cleared and she began to notice the house coming awake. A door banged somewhere, there were steps on the yard stones, a cow lowed knowing that a feed was coming; and a little later she heard the unmistakable rooting of a poker in the grate among the debris of a dead fire. This made her hurry.
A cool draught met her from the back door. Yellow light from the kitchen falling over the passage emphasised the outer darkness. The grandfather clock told her that it was only half-past five. Mrs. Nadin was bending near the fire which was roaring fiercely behind a “blower” made of part of an iron sheet advertisement. The edges where the enamelling survived showed bright yellow, making Flo think of mustard. The handle in the centre was a clumsy piece of hoop iron.
“’Mornin’,” said Mrs. Nadin in the same staccato manner. “Set them basins out.”
With a piece of charred flannelette she grabbed the blower and, carrying it like a shield, walked swiftly to the door. Specks of glowing soot eddied over her and the thing smelt. She dumped it with a clatter against the wall outside. The fire tossing its flames up the great chimney fascinated Flo by its prodigality. At home Mrs. Royer had always been so niggardly with coal. Already the white cloth was newly laid on the big oblong table pushed towards the corner behind the door. Flo set five thick white basins in a row and then was told to add another. Mrs. Nadin spooned dollops of stiff oatmeal stew from a big-bellied brown pot out of the oven into an iron pan and poured milk on it generously from a two-quart blue enamel jug.
“Come an’ wipe; an’ keep an eye on this,” she ordered, “an’ if you let it burn, Dickie help you, ’cos I winna.”
So Flo wiped the supper pots and every now and then vigorously stirred the porridge on the bar. From outside came more lowings, occasional shouts, little explosive clatterings of clogs on cobbles. Then steps passed along the passage and Flo caught sight of Clem going out.