The Only Poet by Rebecca West Page A

lowered her mother on to her feet and stood looking round her with an ardent smile. On this first victory of her strength she felt a peculiar infantile ecstasy, such as inflames a small boy who has just bought his first pup. For the first time Saltgreave seemed as romantic as San Francisco, as dusky with adventurous villainies, as prodigal in opportunities for heroism. Her own chivalry in protecting her mother’s age and fragility gave her passionate pleasure. For one second she stood silently, breathing in deep breaths of the grand free winds of Saltgreave. Then Mrs Furnival’s angry sobs caught her ear.
    â€˜Adela!’ she squeaked. ‘It was all your fault! If you’d only behaved properly –’
    â€˜What!’
    â€˜Picking me up in your arms like that.… They’d think you were mad and would give them anything … or drunk perhaps. I wish you wouldn’t carry on so queer.’
    The romantic city of Saltgreave fell in ruins about Adela’s head: it became once more the dungeon of youth. ‘I’m sorry …’ Shyness fell on her terribly like sullenness.
    â€˜It’s no use your getting cross. And all those great men so strong, they might have killed you. And it’s so unladylike you fighting and kicking them … and they may be all lying dead … and the police coming tomorrow.… You always are so queer …’
    It is terrible to be seventeen. Her heart quaked to see their deep affection turn to nothingness between her own ‘queerness’ and her mother’s fatigued peevishness. But she could produce no sound but an inarticulate growl.
    In vexed, unhappy silence they made their way across the road to the crescent in which was their home. Adela walked slouchingly, with her hands deep in her pockets, feeling a fool. She knew that her adventure had been the exploit of a message-boy well-read in penny dreadfuls.
    Garibaldi Crescent toppled downhill in a double cascade of lean stucco houses projecting ornate and dirty patios into tiny front gardens choked with shabby laurels: down the middle ran no road but a flagged pathway, from which grew a row of dusty lindens, their haggard charms protected by high iron railings. At this evening hour there was nothing much to notice, except that Mr Spence the joiner had come home drunk rather earlier than usual and was clinging to the pillars of his portico like the pictures of Samson pulling down the hall of the Philistines. The humiliations of poverty rose up from the fetid little street as the odour of stale food stank from the little provision shops round it. Disgusted and unhappy she turned in her loneliness to her angry mother and was about to make some hopeless overture towards peace, when something caught her eye.
    â€˜Mother, there’s someone standing on our doorstep.’
    â€˜If it’s Coggs sending that beef I ordered for this morning I’ll not take it,’ declared Mrs Furnival fretfully. ‘We pay prompt and I’m sure –’
    â€˜No, it’s a visitor. He’s tall and he’s got a great big beard – Mother!’
    â€˜Yes, dear.’
    In her heart Adela was saying: ‘No. I can’t stand this. The rest has happened and I’ve just got to bear it. But this – this is too much.’
    And aloud she said: ‘It’s father come back.’ She said it plumply with the insensate bravery of the young.
    For one minute Mrs Furnival stood motionless, her mouth gaping hideously. Then the colour left her slack cheeks and she dropped like a broken doll against the railings.
    â€˜Mother, don’t be silly!’ cried Adela, half pathetically, half impatiently.
    Digby Furnival ran down the steps and stood looking down on his wife; her bulging purple lips and the tarnished hair straggling down underneath her disordered black bonnet made her an unlovely object.
    â€˜For God’s sake, Amy,’ he said in his fastidious voice,