Gilbert Licks the Spoon.
Let none complain that I pry indecently into the privacies of the spoon. A spoon is an open mirror, necessarily a public concern. I do but walk down the public road, past the Co-op. entry, and see Emmie and Mr Noon stepping guildessly forth through the aperture in the big doors, as integral a part of the Sunday night as is the darkness itself, or me in my after-service expansion of soul; and since all is told to me, in the innocent act of slipping through the Co-op. aperture, I tell all again including the innocence.
Neither let the experts and raffinés of the spoon object that my account is but the bare outline of what actually is. I insist that this is the summary and essence of all that is above-board in spooning. There are variations on the spoon. There are tricks, dear reader. In the old days wicked black silk bed-sheets, for example. Ah, but mere interlarded tricks. Different seasoning, the soup is the same. I have heard too of Frenchy, and even of Neapolitan spooning, which I should not like to speak of from hearsay. There are all kinds of kissings. Every nation, every city, every individual introduces a special and individual touch. There are dodges and peculiarities which I leave to experience and to other novelists. I concern myself with the essential English kiss, within the spoon. Yes, and with the basis of the essential: in short, the radical Co-op. entry spoon of the common people, that has neither champagne and shoulders, nor yet cocktails and fard to embellish it and to obscure its pure simplicity. I am no dealer in abnormalities. Far from it. I take the thing at its best, as one should. I speak of the spoon pure and simple, the spoon of our clean-minded age, from which we sip love’s limpidest sweets. Ah infinite spoon-moments! dear spoon-memories!
Mr Noon, however, was in no such complacent mood as ours.
“It’s not raining so much, I shan’t bother with the brolly,” said Emmie, turning her Noon-kissed face to the dim moist heavens. “That was half-past I heard strike. I s’ll be in a row with our Dad if I don’t hop it.”
She spoke rather breathlessly as she tripped along.
“Why what’s the matter with him?” asked Gilbert irritably, turning traitor to the spoon-grail in the very moment when he had quaffed his dose.
“Because he’s a wire-whiskered nuisance, and I’ve got to be in by quarter to ten, because he’s on night duty.”
“What would he do if you weren’t in by quarter to ten?”
“Ay, you ask me! Make my life a blooming hell. — Oh — !” and she stopped for a second in the road— “now I haven’t got a book, and I told our Sis I was calling for one. Little fool! Little fool I am! Drat!” And she stamped her foot. “You haven’t got a book on you? He’s sure to twig. Oh what a bally nuisance!”
Gilbert fortunately had in his pocket a volume on Conic Sections, and this Emmie at once appropriated, hugging it under her arm.
She ran tripping forward, Gilbert strode beside her. She lived down in the valley, about a mile out of Woodhouse. She was uneasy now because of her father, and had almost forgotten Mr Noon, at her side.
He, however, had not forgotten her. A black vindictiveness had come over him.
“What time does your father go to work?” he asked. He knew that Mr Bostock had a job on the railway.
“Ten. He’s on duty at ten: and it takes him quarter of an hour to get there, or he says so. It would take me about five minutes. Like him to make a mountain of it.”
“Come out a bit after he’s gone,” suggested Gilbert.
“Go on!” said Emmie, with suggestive sharpness.
Now this was not the first of Emmie’s spoons — even with Gilbert. And she was quite prepared for after-spoon developments — even naughty ones. So that when she said “Go on,” she was merely non-committal.
She knew that young men would frequently follow up a nice innocent lovely spoon with a certain half-tiresome persistence in going further. Half-tiresome, because it is the last step which may cost. And yet rather wickedly nice, you know. Remember that Emmie is a sport, and that in defiance of fathers and stone tablets there is also bliss. And moreover the man who is a true and faithful spoon makes this ultimate so dear, such a last clean sweep in sympathy! Ah, talk not of grossness in this soft and sympathising conjunction! Don’t you agree, dear reader?
“You’ll come, won’t you?” said Gilbert.
“Let’s see how the land lies, first,” she replied. “You needn’t wait if I don’t come out and cooey.”
By Cooey she meant call a soft, lurking Coo-ee! to him.
Gilbert was behaving in the accepted way — or one of the ways — of after-spoon, and she took no alarm. He was quiet, and seemed persuasive. His silence came suggestive and rather pleading to her, as they hurried down the hill. She was a sport — and she liked a man who could come on: one who pressed fearless forward, a Galahad of sentiment, to the bitter end. Bitter! Well, bitter-sweet. Oh gentle joust of ultimate sentiment, oh last sweet throw of love, wherein we fall, spoon-overthrown! Shall I be Minnesinger of the spoon?
But alas, there is a fly in the ointment. There is a snake in the grass. It is in Gilbert’s mood. Alas, poor Emmie. She is mistaken about his soft, sweet, sinful coming-on. Instead of being in the melting stage, just ready to melt right down with her, the final fuse within the spoon, he is horrid. Ah, in the last coming on, how gentle is the Galahad of kisses, how subtle his encroachment to the goal! But Gilbert was a snake in the grass. He was irritable, in a temper, and would not let her go though he did not really want her. Why he was in a temper, and why he hated her he did not know. Doubtful if he ever knew his own state of feeling. Beware, gentle reader! For if in the course of soft and kissy love you once get out of the melting spoon-mood, there is hell to pay, both for you and for her.
Emmie’s garden gate opened from a little path between two hedges that led from the high-road between cottage gardens to the field stile. The two arrived at the bottom of the hill and crossed the road to where the path, called a twitchel, opened between thick hedges.
“Don’t come down the twitchel,” she said to him in a low tone. “I’ll bet he’s watching. — If I can slip out when he’s gone I shall cooey. Au revoy.”
She disappeared between the dark hedges of the twitchel, and shordy he heard her gate clash. He loitered about again, and was in a temper because he was kept waiting. He was in a rage with himself, so turned his wrath against circumstances.
He was in a rage. He did really like women — so he put it to himself. There was nothing he liked better than to have one in his arms — his own phraseology again. And Emmie was a regular little sport, a regular little sport. He admired her. And he fidgetted about in a temper waiting for her. Black devils frisked in his veins, and pricked him with their barbed tails. He was full of little devils. Alas, he had fallen from the white election of the spoon. He plunged into the twitchel, saw the row of cottages, of which hers was the end one; saw the lighted window, heard voices; heard a man’s voice from the back premises, from the back door, and plunged on. He clambered over the stile and went forward down the black, muddy field-path towards the canals. No good going very far, however.
He heard a step behind him, and listened. Her father, ten to one. He loitered on the dark, open field. The man came nearer. Glancing round, Gilbert saw the dark whiskers on the pallid face, and sent out a wave of hatred. He loitered whilst her father strode past him, on into the night. Then he turned back towards the cottage.
He had been in a similar situation more than once. Nay, for the young fellows of the colliery-places like Whetstone and Woodhouse, for the young bloods who had a bit of dash of warmth about them, the situation was almost traditional. Bostock, Emmie’s father, had done the same, and worse, many a time in his day. So had old Noon, Gilbert’s father. Gilbert was but keeping up a human tradition. And yet he was in a temper about it. He sort of felt himself in a ready-made circumstance, going through a ready-made act, and he was thoroughly annoyed with everything. Yes, he was, in Woodhouse phraseology, a womaniser: and he knew it: and he meant to be a womaniser. So why make any bones about his present situation? But his temper mounted. Yes, he would be a womaniser. He prided himself on it. Wasn’t “Down Among the Dead Men” one of his favourite songs? Fine tune too.
“And may Confusion still pursue The senseless woman-hating crew”
Alas, he would be a womaniser. Yet he kicked with fury against the universal spoon. He fought like a fly in oil.
Meanwhile Emmie indoors was going through her own little act. She enjoyed play-acting. She had lied like a little trooper to her father, having a sulky innocence-suspected look which he exacted, and a pert tongue which he threatened with extraction. For Alf Bostock had been a womaniser both before and after his marriage to his mild, lax Jinny: and him a man with a swarm of little children. She had no rosy time of it. Till he got kicked out of his job; and suddenly became religious, with all the ferocity of an old trotter. So he proceeded to put his children through the paces of narrow-pathdom. His poor Jinny was always wax, but his own offspring tended to bristle. And Emmie, who was perhaps his favourite — a pretty, taking, sharp-answering little thing, with a way of her own — she was his special enemy as she grew up. A roaming bitch, he called her in his wrath. And it was curiously appropriate, for she had the alert, inquisitive, tail-in-the-air appearance of a bitch who has run away and finds the world an adventure, as she tripped the streets.
Once the tyrant was gone, Emmie was quite equal to any occasion. She had retreated upstairs, as if to bed, before his departure. Now down she came again.
“Hey, our mother, I’ll have my supper now in peace,” she said, taking a knife and going into the pantry for bread and cheese and cake.
“There’s a bit of apple-pie if you’d like it,” said her indulgent, easy mother.
Emmie walked out with the pie-dish, and sat scraping it with a spoon.
“I’ve got my lessons to do yet,” she said cheerfully.
“Be ashamed,” said her mother. “Last minute.”
“Make use of the fag-ends of time,” said Emmie.
“Ay, fag-ends,” said her mother.
Emmie spread her books on the table under the lamp, to write the compulsory notes for the morrow’s lessons. She pulled her hair untidy on her brow as she did so.
“Go to bed, Mother Bostock,” she said to her mother. “Don’t sit dropping off in that chair. How do you think anybody can make notes, when they have to watch for your head dropping on to the floor. Get up. Go on.”
“Ay,” said her mother amiably. “How long shall you be?”
“About twenty minutes I should think. Go on now — go to bed. You know you’ll get a crick in your neck.”
“Ay, you’d like to think so,” said her mother, weakly rising and obeying. “I shall listen for you, now,” she added from the foot of the stairs.
“Go on — I shan’t be a minute if you leave me in peace.”
And Mrs Bostock slowly mounted the creaky stairs. Emmie scribbled away in her flighty fashion for some time, pausing occasionally to listen. At length she shut her books and stretched her arms. Then with startling suddenness she blew out the lamp. After which she stood in the darkness and listened.
All seemed quiet. She slipped to the back door and pushed away the bar. Closing the door behind her, she sauntered down the front path with all her leisurely assurance and bravado. The sense of danger was salt to her. The rain was now only very slight. Glancing over the hedge on the left, she could see, through the clearing darkness, the far-off lamps of the station and the junction sidings where her father would by now be safely occupied. So much for him.
She reached the gate and peered down the dark twitchel.
“Coo-ee!” she called, very softly.
And the dark shadow of Gilbert was approaching.
“Think I was never coming?” she said.
“I wondered,” he answered.
They stood for a moment with the gate between them.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“All right. Coming out?”
“No, you come in.” And she opened the gate for him to enter the dark garden.
“Ma’s put her light out. Sleeping the sleep of the nagged by now, I bet. My Dad’s gone.”
“I’m not going in the house,” said Gilbert suspiciously.
“Nobody asked you.”
She led him down the little winding side-path, in the wintry garden, between the currant bushes, to a little greenhouse. The door was locked, but the key was on the nail. She knew the greenhouse of old. It was pretty small, but she knew how to move the plants and arrange things. Luckily there were not many plants to move.
“Hold on a bit,” she whispered to Gilbert, who hung in the doorway whilst she made a place.
Meanwhile, we are sorry to say, the enemy was on their tracks. Alf Bostock should not have been a railwayman, but a policeman. Now that he was a reformed character, the policeman in him had no rest. Before Emmie arrived home, at a quarter to ten, he had been in the back yard listening for her. He had heard her voice speaking to Mr Noon, though he had not caught what she said. But he had smelled a rat. And he was a very keen rat-catcher these days.
Therefore he did nothing that could betray his suspicions, and he set off to work a few minutes earlier than he need in order that he might turn back and do a bit of spying. When he passed the more-than-doubtful figure of Mr Noon in the field the smell of the rat was very hot in his nostrils. Like the wicked, he exulted, and said Ha — Ha! He let Gilbert return towards the cottage.
And then the reformed parent swerved from his way to his work, made a bend over the sodden field in the black darkness, and came to the big hedge at the bottom of his garden, near the summer-house. There, among the old nettle-stalks, he crouched and watched. He heard Gilbert champing in the twitchel and away on the high-road, and prepared the net for the bird. He saw his wife’s candle go upstairs, and at once supposed that she, poor thing, was conniving at her daughter’s shame. He saw his wife’s candle go out — heard Mr Gilbert champ and chafe and light a pipe — and at last, Ah-ha! — saw the kitchen go suddenly dark.
Yes, there she was, the little bitch, prancing her shadowy, leisurely way towards the gate, and staring at the hedge where he crouched as if she too could smell a rat. He ducked low, and watched.
“Coo-ee!”
He heard it, and his veins tingled. He’d give her Coo-ee, else his name wasn’t Alfred.
Up comes the Johnny to the gate. Who could he be? But wait a bit. Wait a bit. He’d follow soon and find out.
Hush! He strained his ears in vain to hear what they were murmuring. He rose to his feet, and cracked a stick. He would stalk them. Then all at once he ducked again under the hedge. Inside the garden, they were coming towards him. His nerves were keen on the alert, to gather if they had heard him.
But they, poor darlings, were all unsuspecting. Alf Bostock crouched on his heels. His greenhouse! His little glass-house. She was opening the door with the key. Well of all the evil, low little bitches, if she wasn’t a sly one. For a second his mind reverted to his own youthful escapades, and the girls he despised so much for escapading with him. For it is a peculiarity of his type, that the more they run after sin, the more contempt they feel for their partner in sinning, the more insufferably superior they rise in their own esteem. Till nowadays, he would spoon with nobody but his Saviour. In religion he was still oh, so spoony. So spoony, listening to the sermon, so spoony saying his prayers. Ah, such relish! With women he had always been rather gross. No wonder he hated Emmie for bringing it home to him again, now that his higher nature had triumphed.
He’d kill her. He’d flay her. He’d torture her. Wouldn’t he! My word wouldn’t he! What? Was she going to shame him, her father? Was he going to be shamed and disgraced by her. His indignation rose to an inquisitorial pitch. At the thought of the shame and disgrace he might incur through her, he could have burnt her at the stake cheerfully, over a slow fire. Him to be shamed and disgraced by a daughter of his! Was anything on earth more monstrous? The strumpet. The bitch. Hark at her clicking the flower-pots, shifting the plants. He’d give her shift the plants. He’d show her. He longed to torture her. Back went his mind over past events. Now he knew. Now he knew how the pink primulas had been smashed and re-potted before he got home. Now he knew a thousand things. If his daughter had been the Whore of Babylon herself her father could not have painted her with a more lurid striping of sin. She was a marvel of lust and degradation, and defamation of his fair repute. But he’d show her. He’d show her.
They had gone into the greenhouse and shut the door on themselves. Well and good — they had fastened themselves in their own trap. He straightened his creaking knees and drew himself upright. He was cold, damp, and cramped: and all this added venom to his malignancy.
Lurching awkwardly, he shambled along the grass to the stile, climbed, and went along the twitchel to his own gate. If it cost him his job once more, he’d settle this little game. Wouldn’t he just. He’d show them. He’d show them.
He was in such a rage, as he drew near the greenhouse, he went so slowly, on tiptoe, that he seemed to emanate in hate, rather than to walk to the threshold of the poor little place. He got there, and stood still. He stood evilly and malignantly still, and listened: listened, with all his ‘cute attention and shameful old knowledge.
Poor Emmie. She thought she’d got a demon inside the greenhouse: she little suspected a devil outside. Gilbert did not make her happy any more. Instead of being nice and soft and spoony, and pleasant in his coming on, he was rough and hard. She was startled, jarred in her rather melty mood. She hadn’t bargained for this. If she had not possessed a rather catty courage, she would have cried out. But her soul rose against him, and she hated him.
And then, at an awful moment, the door slowly opened, and she gave an awful, stifled yell.
“What’s going on in there?” came a beastly, policeman’s voice.
Emmie heard it, and seemed to fall for a moment into a fit, paralysed. Gilbert was arrested, perfectly still.
“You’re coming out there, aren’t you?” said the voice. “Come on, let’s see who you are.”
And there was a little rattling sound of a box of matches. He was going to strike a light. Emmie was making a funny little sound, as if she had fallen into icy water. Gilbert, on his knees, turned. He saw the stooping figure, stooping policeman-like in the doorway, and black rage burst his head like a bomb. He crouched and leapt like a beast, but aimed too high, and only caught the cap and hair of his assailant. The two men went with a crash down upon a gooseberry bush.
Emmie had leaped to her feet with another hoarse cry. The men were a confused heap. She heard gurgling curses from her father. She gave a third, raven-like cry, and sped straight down the garden, through the gate, and away into the night.
A window had opened, and a frightened voice was saying:
“What’s amiss? Who is it? Is it you Emmie? Who is it?”
Children’s voices were calling “Mother! Mother!”
Gilbert had risen to his feet, but the other man clung after him, determined not to let him go, frenzied like some lurking creature of prey. In a convulsion of revolt, Gilbert flung the gripping horror from him, madly: flung himself free, and turned blindly to escape. He was through the gate, down the twitchel and over the stile in one moment, making for the dark country, whereas Emmie had made for the lights of Woodhouse.
The disorder of his clothing impeded his running. He heard the other man rushing to the stile. He turned, in the darkness of the open field, and said loudly:
“Come on, and I’ll kill you.”
By the sound of his voice, he probably would have done so.
Women and children were screaming from the house. The other man thought better of it, and turned back. Gilbert, standing there on the defensive, adjusted himself and waited. No one came. He walked away into the night. He had lost his cap in the fray.