‘Aren’t you goin’, then?’ she asked, and he shook his head.
He was curious about his companion, and did not feel at ease with her, but who did he feel at ease with? Certainly not his current bed-partner.
‘Didn’t Frank tell you? I’m staying here for the week while they’re away.’
‘Never said a thing. Where they goin’, then?’
‘To my cottage on the Essex border. It’s near Bury St Edmunds.’
‘Have I got to cook for you?’ Juliet demanded angrily, and he laughed.
‘I probably cook a damn sight better than you do, and I’m used to looking after myself, and I prefer it.’
She began to move away, saying over her shoulder: ‘That’s all right then. S’pose you wouldn’t like to do the washing-up as well?’ with a gleam of mischief towards the small red-haired man standing on Frank’s threshold.
‘I’ll do it tomorrow,’ he said mildly. ‘Goodnight. See you when I do.’
She was already halfway across the long-grassed, buttercup-spangled meadow and did not reply. But as she opened her own door, and at once the waves of the strange seas of thought began to sound within her, her last thought was: We’ll get on all right, him and me.
20
Juliet and Edmund existed amiably enough by the simple method of each doing what they liked, without consulting the other.
Edmund, mindful of certain instructions from Frank about the care of this unique creature, did venture once to tap on her door and call, ‘Juliet, how long since you ate?’ to be rebuffed with an absent-sounding snarl: ‘I’m all right. Got some cheese. And watercress.’
However, on the evening of the day on which he had thus been rebuffed, she appeared at the door of the Cowshed.
‘Got any supper? . . . Hullo.’
‘Oh, hullo. Yes, of course, stew. Just ready. Come on in.’
‘I got up, see,’ explained Juliet, as she seated herself, rather carefully, at the table, ‘and me legs give way and down I went. Me head felt funny, too.’
‘Starvation,’ he muttered, ladling out mutton and dumplings.
She pulled up her jeans and revealed a thin leg, faintly sheened with hair and showing a long scratch, seeping blood. ‘Done that on me biscuit tin.’
‘Your what? You’ll need some TCP,’ he said, paling. (He had been known to faint at the sight of blood.)
‘I’ll finish this first,’ voraciously eating. ‘Me biscuit tin what I keep me notes in.’
‘Oh.’
The meal continued in silence.
Edmund felt that he should have been aware, as a healthy youngish male, of their isolation in the midst of the flower-starred fields; in fact he felt nothing but a sense of how odd she was, and a bored impulse about telling her to eat sensibly in order to keep up strength for her ‘work’.
Glancing at her from under his long reddish eyelashes, he wondered if she were slightly dotty. Was the ‘work’ the obsession of a mentally deficient?
On the fifth day of the Pennecuick honeymoon, Juliet retched on coming in to supper for only the second time. Edmund turned from Frank’s small iron range, where he was putting the final touches to a ratatouille, and snapped:
‘You are— It’s just bloody selfishness.’
Juliet stared.
‘How j’oo mean?’ she said at last, sitting down as she absently retched again, and still staring at him.
‘Being such a nuisance.’ He poured the rich mess into her soup plate. ‘Starving yourself until you’re sick with hunger, worrying me and—’
‘Who wants you to worry?’ Her eyes, those of a hungry child, were now on the food.
‘God knows I don’t want to, but Frank asked me to keep an eye on you.’
‘I never used to feel sick, like, when I was hungry,’ she said, with her mouth full.
‘It’s probably because your health is better. Your body got used to regular meals at Hightower.’
The word ‘body’ sent him off into a fantasy about kissing her. He felt not the faintest impulse to do anything of the sort, but he did wonder what effect it would have. Suddenly he laughed.
‘What’s funny?’ She did not look up from her plate.
‘Do you ever think about whether you’re inconveniencing or hurting other people?’
‘Why should I?’
‘Thanks – at least now we know where we are. By the way, what is it that you do think about?’
Juliet was half full of excellent food, and a little drunk in consequence: fullness, after prolonged deprivation, can produce this effect. She fixed on him her extraordinary eyes, and said with as much earnestness as her flat tones could convey: ‘Coincidence.’
He was disappointed. He half expected, after old Frank’s enthusiastic talk, some exotic revelation of the science-fiction type.
‘Do you mean to say you sit there all day and half the night chewing over that? Coincidence like when people say “What a coincidence!”?’
‘Course not,’ with an impatient shake of her head. ‘That’s ordinary, everybody does that. What I think about is . . . why?’
She bent over her food again, eyelids lowered, knife and fork moving inelegantly.
‘“Why?” But how do you mean? A coincidence is just a coincidence.’
She shook her head.
He made his tone gentler, as he said: ‘Do tell me. I’m really interested.’
‘Why they happen, I mean.’ She put her knife and fork together and stood up. ‘Maths comes into it, and geometry, but a lot more than that. Thanks, I feel better now, that was good. I have to – to get into a kind of – a way of thinkin’, see. That’s why I forget to eat.’
‘So it’s mathematical problems you work on all day?’
She shook her head. ‘Not really working them out – I kind of see the answers straight off.’
‘You what?’
‘Look, I’m busy on something now – can’t spare the time to explain, and you wouldn’t understand anyway – cheerio,’ and she was gone.
He glanced gloomily at the washing-up. It was a beautiful evening: the dandelions had changed from broad feathery discs to dark pointed buds, the shadows spread languidly from great elm and tiny spearhead of grass. He wandered out into the fading light, wondering vaguely how the honeymooners were faring – in three days they would be home.
Edmund’s own cottage had been a complete surprise, left to him by an ungracious uncle whose comment on Edmund’s poetry had always been, ‘That boy will never make a ha’penny out of his scribbling.’
Edmund went there infrequently; he loved it, and the landscape of low undulating hills and fields of dark purple or corn gold in which it was set. But he could not write poetry there: the Suffolk sky was too vast; the beauty laid on him too gentle a silencing hand. He found it impossible to live in the midst of poetry and also write it, and was always pleased to return to his dingy bed-sitting room in a Luton backstreet. There, he could write poetry as he wanted.
He made little money, but it was more than the ha’penny referred to by his benefactor, and his tastes, though difficult to satisfy in an age which lauded simplicity while making it increasingly difficult and expensive to attain, were simple. As a poet, reviewers bracketed him with Charles Causley. He avoided the society of literary people.
On the morning of the return of the honeymooners, Edmund was up at five and out in the meadows, picking handfuls of buttercups and varied grasses to fill one of Frank’s big red clay jars. He lit a fire which he banked down, made a stew of meat, herbs and assorted vegetables, and, having set it to simmer, printed WELCOME HOME on a sheet of paper, spread it conspicuously on the hand-woven hearthrug, looked with satisfaction about the long, light, bare, charming room, and got on his motorcycle and chugged away to the dingy Luton bed-sitter.
Glancing at Juliet’s house as he passed, he saw through its low window a fair head pillowed on two arms, resting on the table amidst books. Up all night, he reflected; thank goodness I’m quit of her, and ro
de lightheartedly on.
He would be glad to be alone again. He had avoided with a snail-like shrinking those cries of ‘Here you are, then!’ and ‘Well, what was the weather like?’ with which normal people greet returning travellers. Frank, he remembered, had once told him that his, Edmund’s, idea of perfect enjoyment was sitting alone on a tombstone by moonlight, and there had been enough truth in the remark to make him laugh.
Juliet woke about seven, aroused by the scraping of a starling’s wings against the window. Yawning, she stumbled across the room, crumbling bread as she went, and opened her house to the bird, which was a regular visitor. While it was pecking superciliously at the scatterings on her doorstep, she thought, Oh Lord, she’s coming back today.
With Frank, she now felt as unconscious and comfortable as she did with her hooded cape or her books; but there was a quality of natural practicality in Clemence that disturbed her.
About half-past three that afternoon, a taxi deposited its occupants at the gate leading into Frank’s meadows, and he and Clemence, carrying suitcases, came across the new grass and marguerites, and set down their baggage in front of the Cowshed.
Frank showed a tendency to go off immediately to his vegetable patch, but checked himself, and returned smiling to his bride, advancing upon her with outstretched arms.
‘Come on . . . over the threshold.’
He held her closely as, in two strides, he set her down over the doorstep.
‘There. Didn’t think I could do that, did you?’
‘I hoped you would – though everybody does seem to make a joke of it – but I didn’t think – you’re so slim . . .’
‘Sounds prettier than “skinny”. You forget, my love, that I spend hours digging.’ He rolled up his sleeve, displaying impressive muscles. ‘There – look at that.’
Clemence laughed, looking approvingly around her, and then, rather avidly, at the stack of parcels large and small in a far corner. The wedding presents!
‘Ha!’ he said, and peered into the casserole, where a barely moving reddish surface was just sheened by delicate fat. ‘Good for Edmund – his manners are on the inside, unlike most people’s, which are on the outside. Leave the cases, dear – I’m going to inspect my vegetables.’
He was off; and, sighing with contentment, she ventured to cross the room and open one of the smaller parcels.
She was packing a basket to take tea into the meadow, when a shadow fell across the open door and a flat voice said:
‘Hullo. Can I— Will it be OK if I have tea with you?’
She turned. Juliet stood there, holding out – horrors! – a wild orchid of a rare type growing only in three or four places in England. Frank would explode – it was marked with an asterisk on the list of plants forbidden to be gathered.
‘Found it in that wood over there,’ jerking her head. ‘There was only one. It’s – pretty, isn’t it?’ doubtfully.
In fact, it was strange and ominous-looking rather than pretty. But Clemence’s one thought was to get the thing out of sight before Frank appeared from his inspection of the vegetables, and she almost snatched it.
‘It’s beautiful,’ heartily, ‘and thank you very much from us both – I’ll put it in water, in the bedroom. Of course, we were expecting you,’ hurrying off with the precious object, which she shoved into a drawer, thinking, Blow everything. ‘And get out a pot of jam, will you?’
‘What sort?’ called Juliet, standing before the rows of comely jars.
‘Oh strawberry – that’s the best, don’t you think? And,’ Clemence hurried back into the living-room and thrust the tea basket at her, ‘be a dear and carry that for me.’
They went out into the westering sunlight, and saw Frank coming towards them with his scythe over his shoulder.
‘Let’s have it under my tree,’ Juliet called. ‘There’s cow muck, but we can put those big leaves over it,’ kicking at a dock plant as she passed.
‘The authentic rustic scene is a blend of the idyllic and the coarse,’ said Frank, bending to kiss his wife. ‘There . . . I shall do that every time.’
She said, ‘You are an ass,’ and laughed, but she experienced a calm, deep happiness.
The sun went down; the afterglow lingered; back at the house Frank worked over some excruciatingly boring-looking figures supplied by the AIEG, and Clemence, having stolen away to destroy the already fading orchid, began to unpack another wedding present.
The air was very still. The fire in the massive range gave out its barely noticeable heat; a cricket obligingly chirped, and some miles away on the St Alberics road car headlights probed the soft sky, while their noise offended the ancient country silence, yet left it, after their unhappy passing, unstained. And Juliet had vanished after tea; her light burned steadily at the other end of the Big Meadow.
‘Well,’ Frank said at last, looking up from his work with an air of finality, ‘something’s been achieved.’
‘Going well, is it?’ Clemence asked, being the good-wife-interested-in-husband’s-boring-business, and he laughed.
‘I didn’t mean the AIEG – I meant Juliet asking us to have tea under her oak.’
‘Oh, that . . . Yes, it was nice of her.’
‘In anybody – ordinary – it wouldn’t have been worth remembering. But from her, it was a distinct step forward. I’m very pleased – and very happy,’ glancing round him. ‘God, I am turning into an old pussy cat. Is there any cheese?’
There came an afternoon some weeks later when he returned exulting from his interviews with experts at Hightower.
‘It’s on,’ he shouted to his wife, striding across the meadow. ‘We’re keeping the house and running it as a centre for the AIEG . . . A grant from the Min. of Ag., a goodish bit from the Soil Society raised by that appeal, lots of fifty pieces from the Friends of the Earth (bless their mostly young hearts). We’re in business. We’ve just been going through the finances.’
Clemence, at the front door in her cooking apron, nearly exclaimed, ‘Oh Frank!’ in dismay. Hightower, with its land, had been valued at £500,000. It was true that they had plenty of money, but what were the hypothetical children going to say when they were twenty about this throwing away (for so she regarded it) of potential riches?
She said nothing.
‘It’s the best thing,’ he argued, feeling a disappointed quality in the air. ‘The place might hang about for months waiting to be sold and there’s so much to be done, here and with the AIEG . . . Now they can use the money we’ve collected and start in a rent-free place . . . Besides, I know the soil round here like the back of my hand.’
‘Wouldn’t the money you got for Hightower have been enough to start the AIEG?’
‘Perhaps. But there would be all the bother of finding a suitable place. No, this is a splendid solution. By the way, I shall be off to Canada next week.’ He emerged from the cloakroom, flapping his hands vigorously.
‘Frank! Don’t do that, it looks really dotty. What did you say?’
‘Saves towel-wear,’ he grinned. ‘Besides, the Romans always did it—’
‘No they didn’t. They had hot air. What about Canada?’
‘To investigate that four thousand square miles of scrub in the north-west – irrigation and fertilizing possibilities. A bunch of experts is going. Wives too – you can come. But I warn you, it will be no expense-account picnic.’
‘Who’d look after Juliet?’ Clemence said grimly, seating herself before the teapot. ‘No, don’t say she could look after herself – she’d starve to death.’
‘Yes – I hadn’t forgotten her. I was going to think about that later. But wouldn’t you like to come, darling?’
‘I’d like to be with you, of course.’
‘I don’t expect you’d see much of me – I shall be flying all over the place, taking soil samples.’
‘And I’d be a bit bored and lonely . . . No, I think I won’t come.’
‘Oh. Don’t you want to be with me?’
‘Of course I want to be with you, you great goat, but we can’t have everything in this world,’ she said demurely. After years of living almost beside him with the notion of marriage always in her head and never in his, there was certainly satisfaction in seeing him a little piqued at her decision.
21
When Frank came back from Canada, he set about organizing a place for Juliet at Cambridge.
He chose the Margaret Fuller Foundation, an American college that was the newest and glossiest addition to the cluster of ancient beauties gathered beside the Cam.
The building was the design of a Californian architect, and based upon the lines of a condor in flight; the effort of producing buildable plans, in which weight was married to airiness, had sent him mad at the beginning of what could have been a career as notable as that of Frank Lloyd Wright, but as the college was strongly imbued with the doctrines of the Women’s Liberation Movement, his fate was seldom mentioned except as illustrating the inherent weakness of the male.
The staff tended towards youth. Flying hair, unconfined busts and large mouths – all displayed with intimidating arrogance and almost perpetual anger. They laughed a good deal, loudly and sneeringly. The old male dons at the old colleges shook their heads on encountering these Amazons, and made unanswerable statements about biological facts; and very old Dr Amory, PhD and goodness knows what else, called them the Bacchae and quoted Tennyson – ‘Let them rave, let them rave.’
Frank did not notice the liberation flavour; what attracted him to the Margaret Fuller Foundation was the fact that it had produced, during its brief existence, four Double Firsts in Atomic Physics, while its Principal, Mrs Saltounstall, was currently engaged in discussions with the university’s governing body about a new prize – for women only, and for some scientific subject. ‘There is absolutely no doubt at all,’ she emphasized in her soft, accentless voice, ‘that the old theory that women cannot excel at the more, shall we say, objective disciplines, is extinct. And I am particularly anxious that the Foundation should draw in girls from the working class who have taken high numbers of A levels in the British comprehensive schools.’
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