Nobody's Business

by Doris M Holden

  The man and the girl lay under the trees, scarcely visible in the deep shade of the pines, her bare brown arms and legs toning with the brown of the pine-needles, his darker tweeds making but an added patch of shadow. Only a rhythmic glow and puff of smoke showed where their two cigarettes turned skyward. 

"So they don't like it?" asked the man.

 "Like it?" The girl's voice was scornful. “That's putting it mildly. Dad froths at the mouth and Mother goes all Victorian and weepy ‘My little daughter taking the wrong path!" 

She gave a gentle chuckle and then, after a pause, added in a meditative drawl: 

"Can't quite see what she got out of taking the right path.” 

The man puffed in silence for a while, searching for the right words. Slowly he tried to explain: 

"It is rotten for her. I can see her point of view... wish I couldn't. Maybe it's because I'm Victorian too.” He smiled away the girl's violent protest. "Oh yes, I am my dear. If I had not been so much older than you I should have met you before it was too late." 

The girl swung herself to a sitting position. 

It isn't too late,” she insisted. “What do we care what they say -- what anyone says? If you love me and I love you, that's all that matters. My Life is mine, and I'll do what I like with it.” 

She sprang to her feet and instinctively he rose too and confronted her. 

 “Once and for all” she insisted, her head defiantly erect, "I do what I like. Nothing that I do is any business of Mother’s or Dad's or of anyone else in the world." 

She sent her cigarette stub whirling in a gesture of contempt and, cupping her flushed face in his hands, he bent and kissed her. Silently they left the woods. 

Some half-hour later, as they parked their car in the already overcrowded parking ground of the "Hare and Hounds" whose super-swimming pool offered a refreshing dip before luncheon, Jim Napier sat down to a steaming plate of beef and vegetables in the keeper's cottage overlooking the woods. 

His wife smiled as he voiced his appreciation. 

"I can at least see as you get a good Sunday dinner,” she said. "Lord knows whether you'll get more'n a snack to~morrow, once you start on that there tree-felling.

" Jim paused, a potato suspended on his fork. 

“Now, Mother, at it again. You wouldn't think much of me if I didn't keep an eye on the men, would you? They're my woods after all." His eye travelled to the window, and Mrs. Napier followed his look. Slowly the smile faded from her cheerful face end was replaced by something almost wistful. 

“Seems a shame," she commented, “cutting them trees." Her eyes followed the line of a giant pine. "I've looked out on Marlow Woods since I was a baby ... seems they've been there for always, somehow." 

Jim nodded. 

"I bet the young Master feels about the same," he replied. "It’s not him that wants to cut the timber; why, he's run the woods with me since he could walk! But, with them death duties and all it's sell the timber or sell the place.” 

Mrs. Napier gasped.

 “That'd just about break Master George's heart, that would,” she said. “And us? What'd come to us?" 

For a moment there was silence as each remembered the men who had had to go, one by one, from the estate – skilled men, in their own line, but men for whom there was uo room in the machine-age, men whom no one wanted. Names flitted through Mrs. Napier's mind and, without need of any connection, she contimed: 

“Simminses will be glad about the tree-felling job. She was over to see me yesterday. Things have been bed for them since he got sacked, with a houseful of littl‘uns and all." She stopped abruptly end rose to her feet, as a dishevelled women rushed past the window and burst in upon them "

“If it ain't Mrs. Simmins herself .." she cried but the other woman had no thought but for her message. 

"It's the woods, Mr. Napier: They're on fire over our side. BILL said to come at once. He's gone to the village for help.

" Jim was on his foot, struggling into his coat, a grim look on his face. 

“God, if it's them picnickers again” he swore under his breath. “and the ground like tinder after all this heat!" 

* He was gone at top speed and Mrs. Simmins, her hand to her heart; leaned against the table, gasping, 

"What 'll we do, Mrs. Napier? What'll we do?”

 The older women was quietly Clearing the table. "

“Sit down a mite and got your breath," she advised, "then you get along back to your babes. They’ll need you most. I'm going to help my Jim. There was a fire in Marlow Woods when I was a slip of a girl... I remember …" 

She passed her hand over her eyes and seemed about to give a warning then, thinking better of it, she straightened her shoulders and went up the stair to get out of her Sunday clothes.

 Meanwhile the news was flying through the neighbourhood. From every cottage came running men with sacks and flails for beating; in the village, shop-men and labourers jumped from their Sunday dinners and seized their uniforms, bringing out the Marlow fire-engine in record time; while up at the Hall young Lord Marlow and his wife confronted each other with white faces and then, in silence, ran with the rest. 

It was late that evening when Jim Napier sat down to a long~since cold joint while, at the stove, his wife, her face lined and drawn, her hands shaking with weariness, filled the tea-pot. In silence she brought it to the table and sank into her chair; her hands, spread out on the cloth before her, were black and blistered, and she winced in spite of herself as she lifted the pot to pour. Jim leant across and took it from her and, with a pitiful, twisted smile, she let him fill her cup and lift it to her lips. No word passed between them.... there was nothing to say. 

They had saved the cottages and the Hall, but the trees were gone. Marlow Woods were woods no more. 

In Bill Simmins' cottage a blackened, grimy man sat with his head on his hands staring into an empty future. With a jerk of his head he rejected his wife's nervous offer of food, and as she put the pitiful little meal on one side she looked at each item with wide eyes. Tea, sugar, bacon, bread, all bought on credit. 

“Seeing as he's starting on that job in the woods tomorrow...” so she pleaded with the shop-keeper. 

That Job of tree-felling that was to bring in one week, two weeks' money: That might , if the luck turned, have led on to more work’. That job of tree-Selling which was a job no longer:

 "What now?" she asked herself. “How will I Manage now? Grocer won't let me have more till that's paid, and where is it coming from? Oh, how'll I manage, with the litti‘uns and all?" 

Her eyes turned to the window, where the smoke still eddied, but they saw only food and money and a never-ending demand that could not be met. They did not notice the two figures that passed the house with bowed heads. Yet the same question that tormented Mrs. Simmins' mind was on the lips of Lady Marlow, as she and her husband trod the blackened drive. 

“That now? is there any hope?” 

"It's damnable luck," he answered slowly, kicking his boot-toe into the grey ash at his feet, "but there's no getting over it that I can see. We could have carried on somehow, by selling the timber. Now -- we're finished." 

He shrugged his shoulders and thrust his hands deep into his pockets. Silently she slid her arm into his, gazing with him over the broken boughs and charred remains.

 A voice spoke behind them apologetically, and they turned abruptly to find one of the villagers who had helped fight the fire. His face was quivering beneath its layer of grime and his message was broken and halting. 

"It's Bert, m'lord, Bert from butcher's... We were coming away and a tree came down. It's got him, m‘lord... They're getting him home. Could you come?" 

Lady Marlow caught her breath and for a moment her hold on her husband's arm tightened. 

"We'll come of course,” she said, and quietly they followed the man to the village. A little crowd had gathered outside one of the cottages and curious eyes turned to greet them. 

"Nice of them to come straight away like that,” said one woman as she watched the two pass into the house, 

“Least they could do, I says,” said another, a newcomer to the neighbourhood “seeing as it was savin’ ‘his lordship's woods wot lost ‘im ;is life”

 “Don't you talk like that,my girl," said an old woman, laying her hand on the speaker's arm. It weren't only saving the woods, it were saving us oll. I know them fires and you don't. If Bert and the others hadn't gone out, It would have got the village too; aye, and your house and all. He give his life for all of us, Bert did.”



“Ay, that's so," went a whispered chorus among the older women, and the younger one lapsed into a silence through which the church clock chiming nine rang with the solemnity of a funeral bell. 

"Quite a decent place to eat, this,” said the Man, as the waiter turned away with his order, and he stretched out his hand to an evening paper that lay on a chair at his side and casually turned its pages. For a moment his attention was Caught and he geve a subdued whistle. 

The Girl raised her eyebrows in query. 

"Here's a queer thing," said the Man, "They've had a fire af those woods we were in this morning. Burnt the place out, apparently. Lucky we left when we did!" 

“What a bore!" said the Girl, as she considered her face in a mirror, (as more lipstick indicated, or would the present tint suffice? ) "It was one of the best places we had found, so marvellously undisturbed by trippers. We shall have to find a new place for next Sunday." 

The Men bent forward eagerly. 

“Then you are coming again next Sunday?” Whatever they say?" 

The Girl tapped the table impatiently. 

“Must I tell you again that I do what I like? What I choose to do affects me only, and nobody else in the world."