Singing Waters

by Ann Bridge

  They talked for some time about the Alps, Miss Glanfield asking what climbs she had done, and Gloire rehearsing them—with obvious pleasure, but with that characteristic drawling vagueness of hers about times and routes. When pressed, she proved to remember quite clearly; it was a sort of affectation, Miss Glanfield decided, or the poco curante attitude of her generation which made her talk like that. She was not to know that Gloire was in fact struggling with a desperate embarrassment; she wanted to talk openly of Tony, whose life and death were implicit between them in every word they spoke—and this very embarrassment, and her effort to screw herself up to the point of speech, made her affected as she had not been when she spoke of climbing to Nils Larsen. Miss Glanfield of course realised the unspoken presence of the dead man between them, and if she had really been a lover of humanity she would probably have guessed at Mrs. Thurston’s need, and helped her; but, as has been said, she was not—she felt, and was, sympathetic and friendly, but no more, and it was insufficient. Gloire fell back presently from the too difficult attempt, and turned to something else. She had enjoyed even this rather superficial talk about climbing with the writer, and her faint sense of disappointment was quite untinged with criticism; she was so wholly without moral sophistication herself that it never occurred to her to feel anything lacking in the older woman’s treatment of her, since she had nothing better, or even as good, to compare it with; indeed her growing liking made her interested beyond her wont in the other’s views, and she reverted to the conversation up on the ridge.

  “I never heard anyone before say all those things about not having babies in nursing-homes,” she began, swinging along beside Miss Glanfield with a stride as easy as hers. She does walk well, the writer thought; they had topped the lesser ridge now, and were descending rather steeply into another valley by a rough path—she noticed how Mrs. Thurston loosened her knees for the descent, and her skilful easy swing on the inner heel at each angle of the path. She was a beautiful walker, anyhow.

  “Do you really believe,” Gloire continued, “that it can affect the baby, being kept from its mother and air-conditioned and all that, just for those first three weeks?”

  “I think it very probable. One can’t measure how sensitive a new-born infant is to impressions, but the whole trend of modern psychology is to suggest that the first months and even weeks of a child’s life are enormously important. There’s no possible doubt, of course, that there is a quite different emotional link, lasting right into maturity, between a breast-fed child and its mother and a bottle-fed one; and since that is undoubtedly so, I think the other is probably true too. Certainly the indirect effect, through the parents’ attitude, can’t fail to affect the child—and anyone who takes the trouble to use his eyes can see for himself that it does,” said Miss Glanfield.

  “Did you ever talk to Mr. Larsen about this?” Gloire surprised her by asking.

  “Good Heavens, no! I haven’t seen Mr. Larsen for twenty years at least. But why?”

  “I just thought you might have. He hates all gadgets, and he’s pretty anti-American too.”

  Miss Glanfield wheeled sharply round to her, and spoke brusquely, if good-naturedly.

  “My dear child, for goodness’ sake don’t start that line,” she said. “Surely you’ve lived long enough in Europe to know that we all talk perfectly cheerfully about one another, and criticise the institutions even of nations we’re devoted to, and nobody minds. The English don’t think Dr. Renier anty-”—she pronounced it as Americans do—“British because he wrote that very amusing book ‘The English—are they Human?’—we all loved it, and thought him very clever. And if one criticises or makes fun of certain aspects of their national life to Hungarians or Spaniards or Austrians or Chinese, they don’t at once tax one with being anti their country—they laugh and argue. The only people in the world who make that particular fuss are the Americans, and considering the wealth and power of the U.S., it’s really too absurd—and madly boring.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Gloire. “I know we—they—are that way. It’s a kind of bad habit, I guess.”

  “A frightful habit!” said Miss Glanfield, smiling. “Tell me, how American are you, actually?”

  “Only half. My father was British. But I have always been over there a lot, and I was brought up in a kind of American way, with my mother making several marriages,” said Gloire with great simplicity.

  Miss Glanfield laughed.

  “I see. Well, don’t get me wrong! I’m not really anti-American at all, only anti-mechanisation—because I think that mechanisation, pushed beyond a certain point, is bad. It’s the great problem of this century, I feel, for the whole world: how to adjust human life to the mechanisation we have already acquired, at what point to limit it for the future, and above all, how to prevent its impact on more primitive nations, like this country here, from producing the results that it has produced elsewhere.”

  “You mean in America?”

  “America, and other countries. People tend to instance America when this is being discussed, because mechanisation has been pushed further there than anywhere else, and for longer, so that we are beginning to see the results on the human species—and also because the Americans themselves attach such a fantastic importance to their baths and plumbing and gadgets of all sorts. They talk as if people could hardly be human beings without all that; we in Europe are beginning to wonder if people can be human beings with it! But it is really a problem for the whole world, and each nation has got to solve it somehow.”

  “But you think the results on the human species are bad?” Gloire persisted. Larsen, the Swede, was almost present to her, so vividly did the writer’s words recall his.

  “If it goes too far, yes. I think electric light in cottages, and plenty of hot water, is good for everybody, from the African kraal to the Swiss chalet—where they have it anyhow! The Swiss, as usual, have made this adjustment, so far, better than any other nation.”

  “Could you tell me what values you think people lose by gadgets? And how they lose them, exactly?” Gloire enquired. She was wondering when Miss Glanfield, whose mind seemed to run so much on the same lines as the Swede’s, was going to use the word “virtue”.

  She did not use it then—nor did she answer at once. Their path had reached the valley, and emerged from the musical greenery of the scrub which clothed the slope; meadows stretched before them, with a few small houses tucked under a wooded hillside; beyond the meadows a river raced past, singing its strong loud song, and curved round a rocky knoll on which stood a grove of immense ash-trees. The air was very still, and fragrant with the smell of wood smoke; the voices of children rang from the waterside; in the evening light the scene had a simple beauty, homely and very tranquillising. Miss Glanfield turned to her companion.

  “How do you feel, now at this moment?” she asked. “Don’t you feel different to what you usually feel at about 6.30—when you are pulling up your socks, as we all are, to go off to some cocktail party?”

  “My God, yes! I feel absolutely grand,” said Gloire, stretching her arms and inhaling. “And terribly hungry.”

  “So do I. But don’t you think there may be some connection? You realise what we’ve been doing, don’t you? We’ve been travelling today as people have travelled for the last five thousand years.”

  Gloire gaped at her.

  “Have we? I suppose we have,” she said slowly.

  The others were close behind them, and at this point they too came out of the wood, a straggling little procession; Mrs. Robinson was riding, and the Colonel walked at her side. Miss Glanfield pointed to them.

  “The Flight into Egypt was like that,” she said—“the Woman riding, the man walking beside her. And that is how St. Augustine travelled from Rome to Britain, and Marco Polo from Venice to Peking, and Virgil to Mantua and Dante to Verona.”

  “Well, so what?” said Gloire, but without derisive intention.

  “So, apart from the fact that you’ve walked
and ridden till you’re stiff, today, you feel differently from if you had been travelling in a stream-lined air-conditioned Pullman. You haven’t come nearly so far, but you’ve seen more, felt more, and learned infinitely more about the country you’ve been passing through. And the fact that you’ve been travelling as man has always travelled has done something to you—unless you’re quite abnormal.”

  “Yes, but exactly what?”

  They were interrupted.

  “Well, here we are,” said Colonel Robinson, coming up to them. “This is Shpali. We camp over there—” he pointed towards the grove of ash-trees. “I think our fellows are there already. Come along.”

  Sure enough the caravan had halted in the ash-grove, and the animals had been unloaded and were already grazing the deep grass under the trees; the foal was being suckled by its mother. On their way to the grove they passed a small white building with a projecting flag-pole and an oval metal shield over the door; some gendarmes were drawn up by it, and there was more saluting and reciting. Colonel Robinson came with them as far as the grove, checked over the bundles on the ground, gave some hasty orders, and then excused himself. “I must go and see my chaps. Fran will see to everything. Robina, you say where you want the tents. I shan’t be long,” and he strode off.

  There ensued the usual slightly confused pause which always accompanies arrival at a camp on the first days of an expedition, before everyone has got into their regular routine. There was everything to be done, and except for Fran, no one quite knew where to begin. Fran however did know. He unrolled bundles of bedding and tents, sorted them out, and erected them—General Stanley’s small and workmanlike Mummery for Miss Glanfield, and that tent which had been likened to a Methodist chapel for Mrs. Thurston. The three women sat on the grass and watched. Now that the exertion was over, and their goal reached, they all realised that they were pretty tired—indeed it soon became clear that Mrs. Robinson was rather overtired. Gloire roused herself, went and retrieved her green-and-white suitcase from the heap of luggage, and produced a bottle of vermouth; they drank, smoked, and felt better. Miss Glanfield brought out her flower-press—several sheets of wire netting with layers of lint between, held in place by webbing straps; in this she placed her flowers, flattening out the leaves, spreading the petals, and arranging the stalks. Colonel Robinson now reappeared.

  “We haven’t any drinks, have we?” he asked his wife. “Oh yes, you’ve got some vermouth—splendid.”

  “It’s Mrs. Thurston’s vermouth,” said Robina.

  “Oh, but do have some,” said Gloire.

  “Mind if I take it away? I’d like to give these fellows a drink,” said the Colonel.

  “Not a bit,” said Gloire, wondering how long her vermouth would last at this rate, but glad to have done the right thing for once.

  “What about your fire?” said the Colonel to his wife—“Fran will be needing it for supper. Better get it going, hadn’t you?”

  “I’ll get the wood,” said Gloire, springing up. “You sit still,” she said to Mrs. Robinson, who was beginning rather painfully to heave herself to her feet.

  “Sure you can manage?” asked Miss Glanfield, rather rhetorically, Gloire felt—she was still intent on her flowers.

  “Sure.”

  She moved rapidly here and there through the grove, gathering fallen boughs; the teamsters were occupied in the same way— they grinned and made cheerful remarks as they passed her. She collected dried grass from the rocky slope above the river, laid her fire neatly, and set the grass alight—soon she had a fine fire going. Fran, flashing his splendid teeth at her, set covered pots in the edge of the blaze; he made some remark which she couldn’t understand.

  “Fran says you’re a very good fire-maker,” said Mrs. Robinson.

  “Quite the boy scout! Asht mirë?” she said to Fran.

  Gloire was enjoying herself. After a long day—it was now nearly seven, and she had been up and about since three—she was delighted to feel still so fresh and strong. She went on collecting wood, but as she walked about she was aware of the beauty of her surroundings. The ash-trees were immensely lofty, tall as English elms, and beautifully grouped: the tents, the hobbled ponies grazing, the camp-fires and the men in their strange dress made up a striking scene. She thought, as she passed to and fro, of what Miss Glanfield had been saying just as they arrived. Gloire was in a much more receptive mood now than she had been when she talked with the Swede in the train. The ideas presented by Larsen had then been absolutely novel to her, and as uncomfortable as they were novel; but the leaven had been working ever since, helped on by additions from George, from Warren Langdon, and finally, today, by her pleasure in the trip itself. Yes, it was all pretty good, this, she thought, pausing for a moment in her labours—there might be something, there might be quite a bit in what Miss Glanfield said. If she and the Swede both said it, there almost had to be.

  Presently Miss Glanfield joined her.

  “Well done you!” she said. “How nice to have a young energetic person in the party, to do all the hard work! But I’m sure you’ve got enough now—come and look at the chapel.”

  Gloire had noticed a small ruined stone structure in a little clearing at the edge of the trees, where the ground fell away steeply to the river, but her uninstructed eye had not recognised it for a church. Half the roof had fallen in; on the other half the rafters remained; but it had a minute shallow semicircular bulge in the solid stone wall at one end, which Miss Glanfield pointed out to her as the apse—a crumbling wall of unmortared stones enclosed it. Very small, it was, rough and simple, with a curious grace and pathos in both its simplicity and its decay, under the delicate protecting greenery of the immense trees.

  “Not very like our St. Paul’s, is it?” Miss Glanfield said.

  “But why should it be?”

  “It’s St. Paul’s Church—Shpali means St. Paul’s They say he preached here,” said Miss Glanfield with a happy look. “I wonder if he was here at Whitsuntide too?”

  This reminded Gloire of the main purpose, for her, of the expedition.

  “Do you know how far it is on to Torosh?” she asked. “And what time High Mass will be?”

  “No, I don’t. Are you a Catholic?” Miss Glanfield asked.

  “Oh no. But we have to get there in time for High Mass, haven’t we?” said Gloire—“I mean to see the people and the costumes, and be at the service.”

  “Yes, we ought to. We’ll find out at supper.”

  But they did not find out much. Sitting, some on stools and some on the wooden boxes in which the main stores were carried, round the little folding table, they presently ate an excellent meal of Fran’s preparing—soup brought ready made in bottles by the Robinsons and a vast omelet with kidneys in it, for which Fran had raised the materials in Shpali. Over it Gloire put her questions to Colonel Robinson. Torosh was some three and a half hours’ walk on from Shpali, and there was a terrifically steep pull up to it, he said—he supposed High Mass would be at eleven.

  “Oh, nonsense, Dick. You’re thinking of England. It’s always at 10.30 in Scutari, if it isn’t at ten.”

  “Well, ask Fran, then.”

  But Fran did not know; nor did the two Shpali gendarmes, who stood at a small distance, rifle in hand, mounting guard over the party.

  “Well, if it’s at 10.30, I suppose we start at seven,” said Gloire hopefully.

  “That’s about it—seven or sevenish. Get up at 5.30, breakfast at six,” said the Colonel carelessly. “I’ll tell Fran. We must turn in early, with two early starts, today and tomorrow.”

  No one disagreed with this. The food was making them sleepy again, and aware of their fatigue. They sat smoking after their meal, watching Fran’s endeavour to blow up the Lilo on which Mrs. Robinson intended to sleep—the Robinsons, hardened to camping, had not bothered with tents. The Lilo’s pump had been forgotten, and Fran, kneeling on the ground, blew with his shapely mouth; the pony-men strolled over to watch. One of them ma
de a remark which caused Fran to relax his efforts and burst into laughter—Mrs. Robinson laughed too.

  “Now what’s the joke?” Miss Glanfield enquired.

  “They say Fran ought to do that to my pony, the one with ‘the breath weakness’, and put some air into it,” said Robina, still laughing.

  “Dick, what are these trees? Not ordinary ashes, are they? The leaves are so much finer, more like a mountain ash,” said Miss Glanfield, tilting herself back on her stool to gaze overhead, where the foliage made a delicate feathery pattern against the pale sky and the first stars.

  “My dear Susan, I haven’t an idea—I’m no. botanist. We call them ash-trees,” said Colonel Robinson.

  “The leaves are more like rowans, now I come to think of it,” said Robina. “I’m sorry we’re such ignoramuses, Susan.”

  “I can send a bit to Kew when I get home,” said Miss Glanfield, “it doesn’t matter—they’re lovely, anyhow.”

  They were. Even Gloire felt that when, having unpacked, undressed, and washed in the folding canvas wash-basin on four legs with which her magnificent tent was provided, she went to empty out the water. Having done so, and put back the unusual vessel, she stood for a moment at the tent door. Close by, Mrs. Robinson was heaving and chuckling on the Lilo, which Fran had blown up too hard, and was being rebuked by her husband, rolled up in his sleeping-bag on the ground beside her, and already half asleep. Beyond, the little chapel glimmered palely in the light from the two immense fires which the teamsters had made—Gloire stepped round the corner of the tent so that she could see them. They lay or sat round them, the black and white of their dress, and their very defined features, emphasised in the rich fierce light, which added to their romantic splendour. What people!—what a place! Oh, she had been right to come; and she had not been mistaken in her first reaction on the lake road to Scutari. Splendid things must happen here. She glanced upwards. It was dark now, and against the blackness of the sky the foliage on which Miss Glanfield had commented, lit up by the firelight to a golden green, etched a most delicate tracery, through which stars burned here and there; it was like an embroidered canopy supported by the vast columns of the trees. The nightingales were singing their heads off; the river sang its strong untamed song in its rocky bed. Gloire breathed deep. The peace, the natural glory of the place, struck deeply into her. As she turned back, reluctantly, into her tent, which smelt canvasy, looped up the door, and got into her camp-bed, she was actually aware of a feeling which she had not known for years. She wanted someone, some person, to share all this with, and to relate it to in her mind afterwards. Inevitably, her thoughts turned to Larsen. He would understand. Quite consciously, at that moment, she wished that he was there—and her last thought, before she fell asleep, was that she wished she knew where to find him, so that she might write (in her large uneducated hand) and tell him about it.