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Many Are Disappointed 355
The four men were tall and large beside her in the little room
and she gazed up at them as if she feared they would burst its walls.
And yet she was pleased. She was trying to smile.
'This is on me,' Sid said. 'Mild and bitter four times.'
'O.K., Mr Blake,' Ted said. 'Bring me my beer.'
'But let's get into the bar,' said Bert.
Seeing an armchair, Ted sank into it and now the woman was
reassured. She succeeded in smiling but she did not go out of the
room. Sid looked at her, and her smile was vacant and faint like
the smile fading on an old photograph. Her hair was short, an im-
pure yellow and the pale skin of her face and her neck and her
breast seemed to be moist as if she had just got out of bed. The
high strong light of this place drank all colour from her.
'There isn't a bar,' she said. 'This isn't a public-house. They call
it the Tavern, but it isn't a tavern by rights.'
Very anxiously she raised her hands to her blouse.
'What!' they exclaimed. 'Not a pub! Here, Harry, it's marked on
your map.' They were dumbfounded and angry.
'What you mean, don't sell beer,' they said.
Their voices were very loud.
'Yes,' said Harry. 'Here it is. See? Inn.'
He put the map before her face accusingly.
'You don't sell beer?' said Bert. He looked at the pale-blue-veined
chest of the woman.
'No,' she said. She hesitated. 'Many are disappointed,' she said,
and she spoke like a child reciting a piece without knowing its
meaning. He lowered his eyes.
'You bet they ruddy well are,' said Ted from the chair.
'Where is the pub?' said Sid.
She put out her hand and a little girl came into the room and
clung close to her mother. Now she felt happier.
'My little girl,' she said.
She was a tiny, frail child with yellow hair and pale-blue eyes like
her mother's. The four men smiled and spoke more quietly because
of the resemblance between the woman and her child.
'Which way did you come?' she asked, and her hand moving
over the child's hair got courage from the child. 'Handleyford?' she
said. 'That's it. It's ten miles. The Queen's Arms, Handleyford, the
way you came. That's the nearest pub.'
'My God!' said Bert. 'What a country!'
356
V. S. Pritchett
'The Queen's Arms,' said Ted stupefied.
He remembered it. They were passing through Handleyford. He
was the oldest, a flat wide man in loose clothes, loose in the chin
too, with watery rings under his eyes and a small golden sun of
baldness at the back of his head. 'Queen's Arms,' he had called.
'Here, what's the ruddy game?' But the others had grinned back at
him. When you drop back to number four on the hills it comes
back to you: they're single, nothing to worry about, you're married
and you're forty. What's the hurry? Ease up, take what you can get.
'Queen's Arms' — he remembered looking back. The best things are
in the past.
'Well, that's that!' said Sid.
'Queen's Arms, Harry,' Ted said.
And Bert looked at the woman. 'Let's go on,' he said fiercely. She
was not the woman he had expected. Then he blushed and turned
away from the woman.
She was afraid they were going and in a placating voice she said:
'I do teas.'
Sid was sitting on the arm of a chair, and the child was gazing at
a gold ring he wore on his little finger. He saw the child was gazing
and he smiled.
'What's wrong with tea?' Sid said.
'Ask the man with the brain,' said Ted. 'Ask the man with the
map.'
Harry said: if you can't have beer, you'd better take what you
can get, Mr Richards.'
'Tea,' nodded Sid to the woman. 'Make it strong.'
The woman looked at Sid as if he had performed a miracle.
'I'll get you tea,' she said eagerly. 'I always do teas for people.'
She spoke with delight as if a bell had suddenly tinkled inside her.
Her eyes shone. She would get them tea, she said, and bread and
butter, but no eggs, because the man had not been that morning,
and no ham. It was too early, she said, for ham. 'But there are
tomatoes,' she said. And then, like a child: 'I put them in the win-
dow so as people can see.'
'O.K.,' Sid said. 'Four teas.'
She did not move at once but still, like a shy child, stood watch-
ing them, waiting for them to be settled and fearful that they would
not stay. But at last she put out her hand to the child and hurried
out to the kitchen.
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