A Ford motor-van, old and repainted green with Jos. Hartop,
greengrocer, rabbits, scratched in streaky white lettering on a
flattened-out biscuit tin nailed to the side, was slowly travelling
across a high treeless stretch of country in squally November
half-darkness. Rain hailed on the windscreen and periodically
swished like a sea-wave on the sheaves of pink chrysanthemums
strung on the van roof. Jos. Hartop was driving : a thin angular
man, starved-faced. He seemed to occupy almost all the seat,
sprawling awkwardly; so that his wife and their daughter Alice
sat squeezed up, the girl with her arms flat as though ironed
against her side, her thin legs pressed tight together into the size
of one. The Hartops' faces seemed moulded in clay and in the
light from the van-lamps were a flat swede-colour. Like the man,
the two women were thin, with a screwed-up thinness that made
them look both hard and frightened. Hartop drove with great
caution, grasping the wheel tightly, braking hard at the bends,
his big yellowish eyes fixed ahead, protuberantly, with vigilance
and fear. His hands, visible in the faint dashboard light, were
marked on the backs with dark smears of dried rabbits' blood.
The van fussed and rattled, the chrysanthemums always swish-
ing, rain-soaked, in the sudden high wind-squalls. And the two
women sat in a state of silent apprehension, their bodies not
moving except to lurch with the van their clayish faces con-
tinuously intent, almost scared, in the lamp-gloom. And after
some time Hartop gave a slight start, and then drew the van to
the roadside and stopped it.

'Hear anything drop?' he said. 'I thought I heard something/

'It's the wind/ the woman said. T can hear it all the time/

'No, something dropped.'

They sat listening. But the engine still ticked, and they could
hear nothing beyond it but the wind and rain squalling in the
dead grass along the roadside.

'Alice, you git out/ Hartop said.



32



The Mill 33

The girl began to move herself almost before he had spoken.

'Git out and see if you can see anything.'

Alice stepped across her mother's legs, groped with blind in-
stinct for the step, and then got out. It was raining furiously.
The darkness seemed solid with rain.

'See anything?' Hartop said.

'No.'

'Eh? What? Can't hear.'

'No!'

Hartop leaned across his wife and shouted: 'Go back a bit
and see what it was.' The woman moved to protest, but Hartop
was already speaking again : 'Go back a bit and see what it was.
Something dropped. We'll stop at Drake's Turn. You'll catch up.
I know something dropped.'

'It's the back-board,' the woman said. 'I can hear it all the
time. Jolting.'

'No, it ain't. Something dropped.'

He let in the clutch as he was speaking and the van began to
move away.

Soon, to Alice, it seemed to be moving very rapidly. In the rain
and the darkness all she could see was the tail-light, smoothly
receding. She watched it for a moment and then began to walk
back along the road. The wind was behind her; but repeatedly it
seemed to veer and smash her, with the rain, full in the face. She
walked without hurrying. She seemed to accept the journey as
she accepted the rain and her father's words, quite stoically. She
walked in the middle of the road, looking directly ahead, as
though she had a long journey before her. She could see nothing.

And then, after a time, she stumbled against something in the
road. She stooped and picked up a bunch of pink chrysanthe-
mums. She gave them a single shake. The flower-odour and the
rain seemed to be released together, and then she began to walk
back with them along the road. It was as though the chrysanthe-
mums were what she had expected to find above all things. She
showed no surprise.

Before very long she could see the red tail-light of the van
again. It was stationary. She could see also the lights of houses,
little squares of yellow which the recurrent rain on her lashes
transformed into sudden stars.

When she reached the van the back-board had been un-



34 The Mill

hooked. Her mother was weighing out potatoes. An oil lamp
hung from the van roof, and again the faces of the girl and her
mother had the appearance of swede-coloured clay, only the
girl's bleaker than before.

'What was it?' Mrs Hartop said.

The girl laid the flowers on the back-board. 'Only a bunch
of chrysanthemums.'

Hartop himself appeared at the very moment she was speaking.

'Only?' he said, 'Only? What d'ye mean by only? Eh? Might
have been a sack of potatoes. Just as well. Only! What next?'

Alice stood mute. Her pose and her face meant nothing, had
no quality except a complete lack of all surprise: as though she
had expected her father to speak like that. Then Hartop raised
his voice :

'Well, don't stand there! Do something. Go on. Go on!
Go and see who wants a bunch o' chrysanthemums. Move
yourself ! '

Alice obeyed at once. She picked up the flowers, walked away
and vanished, all without a word or a change of that expression
of unsurprised serenity.