Text for analysis «The Fury» by Stan Barstow
(Moscow News. 2001. №3—4)
There were times when Mrs. Fletcher was sure her husband thought more of his rabbits than anything else in the world: more than meat and drink, more than tobacco and comfort, more than her — or the other woman. And this was one of those times, this Saturday morning as she looked out from the kitchen where she was preparing the dinner to where she could see Fletcher working absorbedly, cleaning out the hutches1, feeding the animals, and grooming his two favourite Angoras for the afternoon's show in Cressley.
She was a passionate woman who clung single-mindedly to what was hers, and was prepared to defend her rights with vigour. While courting Fletcher she had drawn blood on an erstwhile rival who had threatened to reassert her claims. Since then she had had worse things to contend with. Always, it seemed to her, there was something between her and her rightful possession of Fletcher. At the moment2 it was the rabbits. The big shed had been full of hutches at one time, but now Fletcher concentrated his attention on a handful of animals in which he had a steady faith. But there were still too many for Mrs. Fletcher, who resented sharing him with anything or anybody, and the sight of his absorption now stirred feelings which brought unnecessary force to bear on the sharp knife with which she sliced potatoes3 for the pan4.
'Got a special class for Angoras today, Fletcher said later, at the table. He was in a hurry to be off and he shoveled loaded spoons of jam sponge pudding into his mouth between the short sentenced. 'Might do summat5 for a change. Time I had a bit o' luck.' He was washed and clean now, his square, ruddily handsome face close-shaven, the railway porter's uniform discarded for his best gray worsted. The carrying-case with the rabbits in it stood by the door.
Mrs. Fletcher gave no sign of interest. She said, 'D'you think you'll be back in time for t' pictures?'
Fletcher gulped water. He had a way of drinking which showed his fine teeth. 'Should be,1 he answered between swallows. 'Anyway, if you're so keen to go why don't you fixup with Mrs. Sykes?'
'I should be able to go out with you, Saturday nights,' Mrs. Fletcher said. 'Mrs. Sykes has a husband of her own to keep her company.'
'Fat lot6 o' company he is Saturday night,' Fletcher said dryly. 'Or Sunday, for that matter anyway, I'll try me best. Can't say fairer than that, can I?'
'Not as long as you get back in time.'
Fletcher pushed back hie chair and stood up. 'I don't see why not. It shouldn't be a long job today. It isn't a big show. I should be back by half-past seven at latest7.'
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'Well, just see 'at you are'8, she said.
She stood by the window and watched him go down the road in the pale sunshine, carrying-case, slung from one shoulder, prevented from jogging by a careful hand. He cut a handsome, well-set-up figure9 when he was dressed up, she thought. Often too handsome, too well-set-up for her peace of mind.
By half-past seven she was washed, dressed, and lightly made-up ready for the evening out. But Fletcher had not returned. And when the clock on the mantelshelf chimed eight there was still no sign of him. It was after ten when he came. She was sitting by the fire, the wireless10 blaring unheard, her knitting needles flashing with silent fury.
'What time d'you call this?' she said, giving him no chance to speak. 'Saturday night an' me sittin11 here like a doo-lal11 while you gallivant up an' down as you please.'
He was obviously uneasy, expecting trouble. I' m sorry,' he said. 'I meant to get back. I thought I should, but there were more there than I expected. It took a long time ' He avoided her eyes as he went into the passage to hand up his overcoat. 'Didn't win owt12, either,' he muttered, half to himself. 'Not a blinkin' sausage13.'
'You knew I specially wanted to see that picture, didn't you?' Mrs. Fletcher said, her voice rising. 'I've been telling you all week, but that makes no difference, does it? What does your wife matter once you get off with your blasted rabbits, eh?'
As though he had not heard her Fletcher opened the case and lifted out one of the rabbits and held it to him, stroking the long soft fur. 'You just wasn't good enough14, was you, eh?' The rabbit blinked its pink eyes in the bright electric light. 'Nivver 15 mind: you're a beauty all t'same.'
His ignoring of her maddened Mrs. Fletcher almost more than she could bear. 'I'm talking to you!' she stormed.
'I heard you; an'I said I'm sorry. What more do you want?'
'Oh, you're sorry, and that's the end of it, I suppose. That's all my Saturday night's worth, is it?'
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'I couldn't help it,' Fletcher said. 'I said I couldn't help it.' He put the rabbit back in the case and sat down to unlace his shoes. She watched him, eyes glittering, mouth athin trap of temper.
'Aye, you said so. You said you'd be home at half-past seven an' all, and we've seen what that was worth. How do 1 know what you've been up to16 while I've been sitting here by myself?'
He looked quickly up at her, his usual fall colour deepening and spreading. 'What're you gettin' at now?'
«You know what I'm getting at.' Her head nodded grimly.
Fletcher threw down his shows. 'I told you,' he said with throaty anger, «at that's all over. It's been finished with a long time. Why can't you let it rest, 'stead o'keep harping on about it?'
He stood up, and taking the carrying-case, walked out in his slippers to the shed, leaving her to talk to the empty room. He always got away from her like that. She grabbed the poker and stabbed savagely at the fire.
On Sunday morning she was shaking a mat17 in the yard when her next-door neighbour spoke to her over the fence.
'Did you get to the Palace18 this week, then, Mrs. Fletcher?' Mrs. Sykes asked her. 'Oh, but you did miss a treat. All about the early Christians and the cloak 'at Jesus wore on the Cross. Lovely, it was, and ever so sad.'
'I wanted to see it,' Mrs. Fletcher said, 'but Jim didn't get back from Cressley till late. His rabbits y'know.' She felt a strong desire to abuse him in her talk, but pride held her tongue. It was bad enough his being as he was without the shame of everyone knowing it.
'Oh, aye, they had a show, didn't they?' Mrs. Sykes said. 'Aye, I saw him in the bus station afterwards. He was talking to a woman I took to be your sister.
Mrs. Fletcher shot the other woman a look. What was she up to? She knew very well that her sister had lived down south these last twelve months. Her cheeks flamed suddenly and she turned her back on her neighbour and went into the house.
Fletcher was lounging19 unshaven and in shirt sleeves20, his feet propped up on the fireplace, reading the Sunday papers. She went for him as soon as she had put the thickness of the door between them and Mrs. Sykes, who still lingered in the yard.
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'You must think I'm stupid!'
'Eh?' Fletcher said, looking up. What's up21 now?'
'What's up? What's up? How can you Find the face to22 sit there with your feet up and ask me that? You must think I'm daft23 altogether; but it's you 'at's daft, if you did but know it. Did you think you could get away with it? Did you really think so? You might ha' known somebody 'ud see you. And you had to do it in the bus station at that — a public place!'
'I don't know what you're talking about, Fletcher said, but his eyes gave him away.
You'll brazen it out to the very end, won't you?' she said. 'You liar you. «Oh, I've made a mistake,» he says. 'I will never see her again', he says. And what do you do but go running back to her the minute you think you can get away with it!»
Fletcher got up, throwing the newspaper to one side. I tell you I don't — 'Then he stopped, the bluster24 draining out of him. All right, he said quietly. If you'll calm down a minute I'll tell you.'
'You'll tell me!' Mrs. Fletcher said. 'You'll tell me nothing any more. It's all lies, lies, lies every time you open your mouth. Well, I've finished. Bad enough your rabbits, but I draw the line25 at fancy women. You promised me faithful26 you wouldn't see her again. You said it sitting in that very chair. And what was it worth, eh? Now a row o' buttons27. What d'you think I feel like when me own neighbours tell me they've seen you carryin' on?
'If you wouldn't listen so much to what t' neighbours say an take notice o' what I have to tell you—' Fletcher began.
'I've done listening to you,' she said. 'Now I'm having my say.'
'Well, you'll say it to yourself, and t'rest o't 'street mebbe, but not to me.' He strode, across the room and dragged down his coat. 'I'll go somewhere where I can talk to somebody 'at's not next door to a ravin' lunatic28.'
'And stop there when you get there,' she told him. 'Go to her. Tell her I sent you. Tell her I've had enough of you. See if she'll sit at home while you traipse about countryside with a boxful o' mucky vermin29.'
He was at the door, pulling on his coat.
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'And take your things,' she said. 'Might as well make a clean sweep30 while you're about it.'
'I'm goin' to our Tom's31,' he said. Ti'll send for 'em tomorrow.'
'I'll have 'em ready,' she said.
When the door had closed behind him she stood for a moment, eyes glittering, nostrils dilated, her entire body stiff and quivering with rage. Then suddenly she plucked a vase from the mantelshelf and dashed it to pieces in the hearth. She clenched and unclenched her hands at her sides, her eyes seeking wildly as the fury roared impotently in her.
At half-past ten she was in the kitchen making her supper when she heard the front door open. She went through into the passage and her hands tightened involuntarily about the milk bottle she was holding as she saw Fletcher there.
'Well?' she said. 'Have you come for your things?' Her voice was tight and unnatural and Fletcher took it as a sign of her lingering anger.
He closed the door and stood sheepishly behind it, his eyes avoiding hers. «I just thought I'd come an' see if you'd calmed down,» he said.
'I thought we'd heard the last of that this morning?' Her eyes were fixed, bright and unmoving, on his face, and Fletcher caught them with his own for an instant and looked away again.
'We were both a bit worked up like,' he said. 'I know how it is when you get mad. You do an' say a lot o' things you don't really mean. Things you regret after.'
There was silence for a second before she said, the same tight, strained note in her voice, 'What things?'
'I mean like me walkin' out,' Fletcher said. 'All it needed was a bit o' quiet talkin' an' it wouldn't ha' come to that, it'd ha' been all right if only you'd listened to me.'
'I never expected you to come back,' she said, and moved almost trance-like, across the room to the fire, still watching him intently, almost disbelievingly, as though she had expected that with his slamming of the door this morning he would walk off the edge of the world, never to be seen again.
He came over to the hearth to stand beside her. He started to put his hand on her shoulder, but as she moved away slightly he dropped his arm again and looked past her into the fire.
'What I said before, I meant,' he said, speaking quietly, earnestly, with the awkwardness of a man not used to expressing the finer feelings. 'I could ha' told you about it last night; only I didn't see any point. It was all forgotten as far as I am concerned. Finished. But she was waiting for me when I came out o' the show. I told her I didn't want to see her again. There was never owt much between us anyway. But I couldn't get rid of her. She hung on like mad. An' when I looked at her, all painted an' powdered up, I found meself thinkin' what a great fool I'd been ever to risk losing all that mattered for brazen baggage32 like her. It took me a couple of hours to get rid of her. She got proper nasty towards the end. Started shoutin' and swearin', right in the street. It was awful.' Fletcher sighed and shook his head and a shudder seemed to run through Mrs. Fletcher. 'I had to jump on a bus in the end and just leave her standing there. There was nowt else I could do-bar give her a clout or summat…'
As he finished talking something seemed to snap inside Mrs. Fletcher and she began to cry softly. He put his arm round her shoulders, tentatively at first, then, when she offered no resistance, with pressure, drawing her to him.
'Now, lass33. Now then. Cryin' won't do any good. We've had our little bust-up, an' now it's all over an'done with.'
'Oh, why didn't I listen?' she sobbed. 'None of this would have happened then.'
He drew her down into an armchair and held her to him. 'Never mind now, lass, no harm done. Don't cry any more?' After a time, he said, I'll just nip out an' see to the rabbits, then we can get off up to bed».
She held him to her. «No, leave'em. Come to bed now».
He smiled quietly, indulgently. 'Still a bit jealous, eh? Well, I reckon they'll manage till morning.'
Later still, in the dark secret warmth of the bed, she clung to him again. 'Did you mean it? ' she said. 'When you said you loved nobody but me?'
'I did,' he said.
'Say it, then,' she said, holding him hard.
'I love you, lass,' he said. 'Nobody but you. It'll be better in future. You'll see.'
She could have cried out then. Better in future! Oh, why hadn't she listened? Why, why, why? If only she had listened and heard him in time! For now this moment was all she had. There could be no future: nothing past the morning when he would go out and find the rabbits slaughtered in their hutches.
Commentary for the text
1 hutches: a hutch is a small wooden cage for keeping small animals in, esp. rabbits; in AmE, however, the word means a piece of furniture used for storing and showing dishes known in Britain as a Welsh dresser and in Russia as горка or буфет.
2 At the moment: at this point in time, "now" in contrast to "at the time" — at the moment in the past when something happened, "then"; cf. also "at one time" lower down which means "formerly".
3 sliced potatoes: other "kitchen" verbs for cutting are "chop" ("cut food, such as a cabbage head or onions, and also wood into smaller pieces" — not a precision job like slicing), "dice" ("cut food, e.g. carrots, into small square pieces"), and "carve" ("cut a large piece of cooked meat into smaller pieces with a big knife").
4 the pan: a cooking pot, usu. with one long handle and a lid, that R. learners of E., inexplicably, always assume to mean the frying pan.
5 summat: dialectal for «something»; the story is set in Yorkshire, and the characters use the North Country accent and vocabulary.
6 Fat lot: a common coil, way of expressing the opposite of the literally stated (e.g., You're a fat tot of use, aren't you = you're worse than useless; What, John get a job? Fat chance of that! — extremely unlikely).
7 at latest, usu. "at the latest" (also "at the earliest"), though its companion phrase "at the most" can be used without the article.
8 see 'at you are: coll. for "see that you are."
9 He cut a handsome, well-set-up figure: a fairly literary phrase; "to cut a fine/strange, etc. figure" means to have an impressive, strange, etc. appearance.
10 wireless: the old-fashioned word for "radio."
11 a doo-lal: apparently, a corruption of "doolalli" or "doolally," originally army slang for an unbalanced state of mind. Formerly, time-expired soldiers in India were, sent to Deolali, a town near Bombay, to await passage home. There were often long frustrated delays, when boredom and the climate may have led to some odd behavior. In full the phrase has the form "doolally tap" ("tap" is the E. Indian for "fever").
12 Didn't win owt: "owt" is a dialectal word for «anything» common in Northern English.
13 Not a blinkin' sausage: "blinking" (also "bleeding" and "blooming") is a BrE informal intensifier, usu. suggesting annoyance, originally, a euphemistic substitute for "bloody"; the somewhat old-fashioned BrE phrase "not a sausage" means "nothing at all."
14 You wasn't good enough: the common ungrammaticality of using "was" with plural (pro)nouns and "were" with words in the singular ("we'was wrong," "he weren't too keen," etc.).
15 Nivver. dialectal pronunciation of "never."
16 what you've been up to: this coll. phrase normally implies that the activity is of a reprehensible nature ("That boy's been up to no good, I can tell from the look in his face").
17 a mat, smaller than a rug, which is in its turn smaller than a carpet; a mat is also the least "glamorous" of the three and serves not for decoration but for wiping feet on.
18 the Palace: in BrE, a large building for public amusement; quite a number of cinemas used to be called Picture Palaces.
19 lounging', sitting (or standing) in a lazy way.
20 in shirt sleeves: wearing a shirt but no jacket; figuratively, (done) in an informal and direct way, e.g., "shirtsleeve diplomacy" — a practice popularized by Yeltsin as "meetings without the tie."
21 what's up: informal phrase used to ask what is wrong; often followed by "with" ("What's up with Tom? He hasn't spoken all morning").
22 How can you find the face to: normally, "have (got) with the face/the cheek/the nerve/the gall to do sth" — "show impudence or impropriety in doing sth" ("I don't think I'd have the face to ask for a holiday just at that time").
23 daft, the commonest British coll. word for "stupid," "foolish" ("What a daft thing to say!").
24 bluster, noisy or boastful talk.
25 draw the line: if someone says that they draw the line at something it means they do not do it because they think it is wrong or too extreme ("I like a beer or two; but even I draw the line at sitting in a pub on my own and drinking").
26 You promised me faithful, non-standard for| "promised me faithfully"; a common coll. ungrammaticality.
27 Not a row o'buttons: variation on the phrases "not worth a button" — "completely worthless".
28 next door to a ravin'lunatic, "only slightly better than a lunatic" (cf. "Leaving a man to die is next door to murder").
29 mucky vermin: "mucky" is an informal BrE way of saying "dirty" (for example, with mud or oil) "vermin" are creatures that destroy crops, spoil food, etc. and are difficult to control, or the more repulsive species of blood-sucking insects ("a bed alive with vermin"); used figuratively, the word is a pretty strong term of abuse (e.g., "He thinks all beggars are vermin").
30 a clean sweep: a complete change, usu. in an organization, made by getting rid of people; also, a victory in all parts of a game or competition ("The 200m race was a clean sweep for France").
31 our Tom: coll. North English way of suggesting that the person mentioned is your child, brother or sister ("Our Sharon did really well in her exams").
32 a brazen baggage: old-fashioned, "a rude, unpleasant, annoying woman."
33 lass
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