till night-time. Youâll have to get his tea when he comes back.â
âI see.â
âYou must do all you can for him. I ainât much good to him now.â
âI see.â
âYou can come up again when youâve done the taters.â
Downstairs Alice found the potatoes in a wet mould-green sack and stood at the sink and pared them. The kitchen window looked out on the mill-stream. The water foamed and eddied and kept up a gentle bubbling roar against the wet stone walls outside. The water-smell was everywhere. From the window she could see across the flat valley: bare willow branches against bare sky, and between them the bare water.
Then as she finished the potatoes she saw the time by the blue tin alarum clock standing on the highsmoke-stained mantelpiece. It was past eleven. Time seemed to have flown by her faster than the water was flowing under the window.
III
It seemed to flow faster than ever as the day went on. Darkness began to settle over the river and the valley in the middle afternoon: damp, still November darkness preceded by an hour of watery half-light. From Mrs. Hollandâs bedroom Alice watched the willow trees, dark and skeleton-like, the only objects raised up above the flat fields, hanging half-dissolved by the winter mist, then utterly dissolved by the winter darkness. The afternoon was very still; the mist moved and thickened without wind. She could hear nothing but the mill-race, the everlasting almost mournful machine-like roar of perpetual water, and then, high above it, shrieking, the solitary cries of seagulls, more mournful even than the monotone of water. They were sounds she had heard all day, but had heard unconsciously. She had had no time for listening, except to Mrs. Hollandâs voice calling downstairs its friendly advice and desires through the open bedroom door: âAlice, have you put the salt in the potatoes? Youâll find the onions in the shed, Alice. The oil-man calls today, ask him to leave the usual. When youâve washed up you can bring the paper up, Alice, and read bits out to me for five minutes. Has the oilman been? Alice, I want you a minute, I want you.â So it had gone on all day. And the girl, gradually, began to like Mrs. Holland; and the woman, in turn, seemed to be transported into a state of new and stranger volatility by Aliceâs presence. She was garrulouswith joy. âIâve been lonely. Since Iâve been bad I ainât seen nobody, only Fred, one weekâs end to another. And the doctor. Itâs been about as much as I could stanâ.â And the static, large-eyed, quiet presence of the girl seemed to comfort her extraordinarily. She had someone to confide in at last. âI ainât had nobody I could say a word to. Nobody. And nobody to do nothing for me. I had to wet the bed one day. I was so weak I couldnât get out. Thatâs what made Fred speak to your dad. I couldnât go on no longer.â
So the girl had no time to listen except to the voice or to think or talk except in answer to it. And the afternoon was gone and the damp moving darkness was shutting out the river and the bare fields and barer trees before she could realise it.
âFredâll be home at six,â Mrs. Holland said. âHe shaves at night. So you git some hot water ready about a quarter to.â
âAll right.â
âOh! and I forgot. He allus has fish for his tea. Cod or something. Whatever he fancies. Heâll bring it. You can fry it while heâs shaving.â
âAll right.â
âDonât you go and fry that roach by mistake!â
And Mrs. Holland, thinking again of the fish in Aliceâs hand, lay back on the pillows and laughed, the heavy ripe laughter that sounded as before a trifle strange, as though she were a little mad or hysterical in the joy of fresh companionship.
Mrs. Holland and Alice had already had a cup of tea in the bedroom. That seemed
Rebecca Hamilton, Conner Kressley