‘Right-oh. I’ll wear your frock, and you wear mine, and then we can change.’
Everard and Kate, who had been playing a final set against the Birketts, were the last to leave the Rectory. Old Bunce ferried them across and they went through the water meadows towards the house. Everard looked at Kate as she walked before him on the narrow, rush-bordered path, and thought not for the first time how lovely she looked, how exquisitely she had danced with Noel, how well she played tennis, and how very kind and thoughtful she was. In fact, the ideal wife, and one whom he desperately wanted. As his friendship with Kate had gently flowered, he had become increasingly aware of the charm of her conversation. Her good manners, her unaffected interest in what he was doing, struck him afresh each time he met her, and her conversation was the sweetest and wittiest he had ever heard. Matron, by her status and environment suspicious of mothers and sisters, had taken to her completely, and had several times asked Mr Carter about that delightful sister of Mr Keith’s and expressed a hope that she would visit the school again. Everard’s answers, though carefully calculated to put matron off the scent, failed entirely in the desired effect, and matron was able to write to her married sister whose son had now joined his ship with promotion, that Mr Carter was a Case.
Everard decided that as Kate was as good as engaged to Noel Merton, he could safely treat her with the friendly familiarity suitable to the promised bride of another. He liked Noel Merton, in fact if it hadn’t been for a ridiculous and unreasonable something which he would not encourage by calling jealousy, he would like him very much indeed, and he felt a remark to this effect would be appreciated by Kate.
‘I’m so glad Merton is down here again,’ he said.
‘The rushes swish so much that I didn’t hear what you said. I wish they’d hurry up and cut them,’ said Kate.
The words were not so easy to repeat, but Everard repeated them.
‘Yes, isn’t it nice?’ said Kate.
Everard’s spirits sank.
‘He is so very nice to Colin,’ said Kate.
Everard’s spirits rose a little.
‘So are you,’ said Kate. ‘Colin says you were so nice to him all last term that he will miss you dreadfully, though he is glad to be doing law.’
Everard tried to think of a remark which would imply that he hoped Kate would miss him dreadfully too, but it sounded so fatuous and presumptuous that he gave it up. Kate enlarged upon his kindness and the pleasure her visit to the school had given her, and inquired after matron. There were, she said, a lot of interesting things that she would have liked to ask matron about, only there wasn’t time, as, for instance, how the cook’s and housemaids’ times off were arranged, and if she had much difficulty in getting servants. She thought a job like matron’s must be one of the most interesting things one could do.
‘What did you say?’ said Kate.
Everard had actually said nothing, but he had made a noise which was the beginning of a wild suggestion that if she thought she could care for him, he could offer her the job she liked. But he had to stifle it, for it was ungentlemanly to offer your heart where it wasn’t wanted, and in any case he didn’t want a matron, he wanted a wife, so he made a kind of clucking noise instead, and had to say it was a cough.
‘I’ll tell Palmer to bring you some lozenges,’ said Kate. ‘Suck one before dinner and one when you go to bed. When Colin had a cough at Easter they did him a lot of good. But I do wish,’ she added, thinking as usual of Colin’s career and happiness, ‘that Noel weren’t going to Austria.’
‘Is he?’ asked Everard hopefully.
‘Yes,’ sighed Kate. ‘And if only he would have stayed in England – but that is silly of me,’ she finished, with a note of forced gaiety that wrung Everard’s heart and did not deceive him for an instant. In his anxiety to feel as well as do the right thing, he found her confidence in him a very beautiful and touching thing. If she cared for him enough to tell him her secret sorrow, that ought to be enough for him, though he strongly felt that it wasn’t. He couldn’t ask if Noel were trifling with her affection, he couldn’t reasonably ask Noel whether he knew what he was doing. He must content himself with a silent worship, a chivalry that could never be expressed except in thought, a sword which could never be drawn in her defence, though what exactly the sword was he wasn’t sure. It made him think of German poems where people become monks and nuns because they haven’t the wits to speak out on the one side and are so pure on the other, and the landscape seemed a little obscured.
As they passed through the wicket gate into the garden, Kate plucked a piece of honeysuckle and offered it to him. He took Kate’s hand and looked at it. It appeared to exercise a strong and irresistible magnetic attraction upon his head, for try as he might he simply could not help stooping lower and lower till he could lay his cheek against it. At the same time Kate felt an inclination to stroke the top of his head which positively alarmed her by its intensity. After faintly struggling with her better self, she shut her eyes so that she should not see what she was doing, and touched his hair with her free hand. There they would probably have stayed till midnight, mute, adoring, extremely cramped and uncomfortable, had not Noel come down the grass alley. Even tennis shoes on grass are heard by lovers’ ears. Everard grabbed the honeysuckle and stood up, carelessly looking at his wrist to see what time it was.
‘Hullo,’ said Noel, ‘what’s the matter? Bee stung your hand?’
‘No,’ said Everard lightly. ‘Oh, no. I just wondered what time it was.’
‘I see you haven’t a watch,’ said Noel. ‘It’s about half-past seven.’
Everard, remembering that he had left his wrist-watch on his dressing-table because he was going to play tennis, said, ‘Well, I’ll leave you to look after Kate,’ and walked quickly away.
‘I was giving Everard some honeysuckle,’ said Kate, as if in a trance. She was standing in the full evening sun and Noel was not sure how much the flame in her face and neck came from without, how much from within, but thought he could guess. She made the words sound very loving.
‘Would you care for some?’ said Kate, pulling the branch towards her and plucking another bloom.
‘Do you know,’ said Noel, ‘I think honeysuckle is more suitable for Everard. I shall pillage the conservatory for a red carnation. Do you think it will be open still?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Kate.
They found the door still unlocked and got the carnation. As they came out onto the terrace, Noel paused.
‘Do you think you could look upon me as an uncle, Kate?’ he asked. ‘A nice uncle I mean, not a wicked one.’
‘Yes, darling,’ said Kate.
Something in her voice that he had never heard before made him look at her. Her eyes were looking into some imagining of her own and her thoughts were beyond her eyes. Noel knew that the caressing word had been thrown to the air, to be carried where her eyes and thoughts were musing, and he felt an absurd compassion and affection for her.
‘Well, remember that uncles have their uses,’ he said. ‘You can tell them anything.’ And putting an arm round her in an avuncular way, he gave her a reassuring hug and went indoors.
Kate, who had hardly heard what he said, or noticed what he did, stood in the sunlight, honeysuckle in her hand. Everard, looking out of his bedroom window, saw Noel detaching himself from Kate’s waist, and thought if it weren’t for the bitter pleasure of seeing her again he might as well send a telegram to himself and leave next day.
Swan and Morland, going back to the cottage that night from the Manor, made a detour by the river, just to get wet and dirty. While they were doing so, and despising Hacker who had gone straight back to reassure himself about Gibbon, they became aware on the opposite bank of a solitary figure, moonlit against the dark trees.
‘It’s Mr Winter,’ said Swan. ‘Hullo, sir, isn’t it a lovely night?’
Mr Winter stopped and looked across.
‘Hullo, Swan,’ he said. ‘Yes, lovely.�
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He strolled onto the little wooden footbridge and looked into the water.
‘That was a very interesting talk you had at tea, sir,’ said Morland. ‘Eric and I were listening.’
‘Why didn’t you join us?’
‘We didn’t think you needed us, sir.’
‘Why should I need you?’
‘Well, sir,’ said Swan, emboldened by the night and the holidays, ‘sometimes if people are feeling a bit down, it is rather a help to be contradicted. It peps them up.’
‘So you think I need pepping?’
‘Oh no, sir,’ said both boys together.
‘Well, heaven knows what you think,’ said Philip, ‘and heaven knows what I think. One just has to go on. Thank God I’m off to Russia next week. If I had some stones I’d throw them in the water.’
‘It’s mostly mud here, sir, but we’ll see what we can do,’ said Swan obligingly. He looked along the bank, assisted by Morland, and found a little patch of pebbles. They each chose a handful of the best and went onto the bridge.
‘Thanks,’ said Philip, as he dropped the biggest into the river. ‘That was a most satisfactory plop. It did me a lot of good. So did that. Well, thank you very much. Good night.’
He walked away up-stream towards the Rectory. Confound it, he thought, if those boys weren’t being kind again! Getting stones for me to throw into the water as if I were a baby. He thought of all these queer, agreeable animals called Boys, hiding their eagerness under an air of ancient wisdom, critically kind, agreeably aloof, living private lives in the public eye, exploring every wilderness of the mind, yet concerned with a tie or a scarf. Then without a word of warning this pleasing anxious being vanished, leaving behind it undergraduates, subalterns, civil servants, bank clerks, airmen. Perhaps, thought Philip, one’s real death is at about seventeen, and I have been dead for eight years. What happened to me at seventeen? Where did I go? But such thoughts were too difficult, too much like thinking of infinity and eternity. He quickened his pace and walked back to a silent house. Rose and her cavaliers had gone to dance at a roadhouse on the other side of Barchester and the Birketts were in bed. At least, thought Philip, there will be next term, and somehow the thought of being back among his inscrutable pupils was comforting.
Swan and Morland, having exhausted the pleasures of wet mud, went back to the cottage where Mrs Twicker, who had sat up for them, regaled them rapturously on cold duck and her own dandelion wine, and anecdotes of all her former charges and the prizes Twicker had won at the Flower Show.
10
Cleaning the Pond
On Sunday morning the early sunlight illuminated the heavily sleeping forms of Swan and Morland in one room, Hacker in the other. As for Gibbon, no one had yet discovered whether he ever went to sleep or not, for at whatever hour his master looked at him, he had the same cold, unwinking stare. Swan and Morland, in a spirit of scientific discovery, had once decided to keep awake all night to make observations, but after midnight their minds had become a total blank, and they knew no more till the school bell rang. This Swan attributed to the peculiar soporific effect of Hacker’s snoring, for at that time they all slept in the dormitory, and Hacker refused to help Swan with his Latin Unseens for two days.
Mrs Twicker, who rose early, came upstairs in her bedroom slippers. She had been asked the night before to awaken them without fail by half-past six, but when she saw Swan sprawled starfish-like across his bed, and Morland looking like a cherub, as she said to herself, her heart failed, and she went downstairs thinking of all her former charges.
Lydia, barefoot, in Geraldine’s frock with one sleeve half out, came over the dewy grass and up Twicker’s path, between his brilliant flower borders. She was carrying a large glass bowl and a landing net.
‘Hullo, Nanny,’ she said to Mrs Twicker, who was getting an early breakfast ready. ‘Aren’t the boys up?’
‘No, Miss Lydia,’ said Mrs Twicker. ‘They looked so peaceful I couldn’t bear to wake them. Would you like some breakfast? There’s new bread.’
‘Love it,’ said Lydia. ‘I couldn’t find anything to eat except pickles in the dining-room. They’d finished the biscuits last night. But I must get those boys up. We’ve got to clean the pond.’
She went towards the staircase.
‘No, Miss Lydia, you don’t,’ said Mrs Twicker. ‘None of my young ladies goes into my young gentlemen’s rooms. I don’t know what their mothers would say. I’ll go up myself.’
Lydia looked pityingly after Nanny and began to cut the best pieces of crust off the loaf and anoint them liberally with butter. Sounds overhead announced that the boys were getting up at a hand gallop, and in a few moments they were down, in old shorts and coloured sweat shirts, as they were elegantly known at school.
‘I hope you don’t mind we haven’t washed,’ said Morland, ‘but as we were going to get dirty in the pond, it seemed rather a waste.’
‘I say, Lydia, you are mean, taking all the crust,’ said Swan. ‘Nanny promised me the crustiest bit.’
‘I’m ashamed of you, Miss Lydia,’ said Nanny, taking the rest of the crusts off Lydia’s plate. ‘Here you are, Mr Eric, and here’s some for you, Mr Tony and Mr Percy.’
‘Hurry up,’ said Lydia. ‘The great thing is to let the water out soon, because once it’s out they can’t stop us cleaning the pond, because it’ll stink like fun. Twicker won’t interfere, will he, Nanny?’
‘No, miss,’ said Nanny. ‘He’s laying in this morning, and I’ve got him something nice for his breakfast.’
‘Not washing is one thing, but you might wipe your face a bit, Hack,’ said Lydia. ‘It looks filthy.’
Swan and Morland burst into ribald laughter.
‘He has to shave twice a week,’ said Swan, ‘and it’s Tuesday and Saturday, and yesterday he forgot, and this morning he hadn’t time. He’s going to train Gibbon to shave him when he goes to Oxford. He really ought to do it every day, but he’s lazy.’
‘How often do you shave?’ asked Lydia, helping herself to jam.
‘According. Once a week for ordinary, twice for special. Tony only needs once yet, because he’s fair, but I’m going to be one of those fine, black-a-vised men who have to shave twice a day if they are taking the girlfriend out.’
‘And have great hideous hairy chests like the Chaplain’s,’ said Morland, beating upon his breast after the manner of a gorilla.
‘And what do you know about the Chaplain’s chest, my boy?’ asked Swan, shocked.
‘Not what you think, my lad,’ said Morland.
Lydia then regaled the party, amid vain hushes from Nanny, with an account of a mistress at school who had a moustache, and the party went off in high good humour, with Nanny waving from the porch.
The pond was supplied by a little stream, tributary to the river. Lydia first shut the little sluice by which the pond was filled and then opened the lower sluice, standing knee-deep in the water with the landing net, to catch the three goldfish popularly supposed to live there. No goldfish appeared, but Hacker caught with his hands a large frog, which was sitting on a damp stone, and put it in the bowl, stating that frogs made good barometers.
‘That’s true,’ said Swan. ‘Because Dumas knew a frog called Mademoiselle Camargo, and she went up and down a ladder to show what the weather would be. Let’s make a ladder.’
‘Not now,’ said Lydia. ‘We must start cleaning the pond first. If we get some of the muck and squelch out on the lawn, they’ll have to let us miss church to get it all tidied up.’
The muck and squelch proved to be of a thoroughly agreeable nature, being partly green and all slimy. Hacker sat a little apart, cross-legged on the grass, talking to the frog, while the others worked in fits and starts. They were presently joined by Geraldine, who was wearing the frock in which Lydia had fallen into the river. As it had spent the night lying in a heap in Geraldine’s shoe cupboard in case anyone came prying, it looked extremely crumpled and disreputable.
‘Hullo,’ said Lydia, ‘we’d better change. Come into the rhododendrons. I’ve split another bit of your frock for you, where it does up down the side.’
‘Thanks awfully,’ said Geraldine, looking complacently at the frock, which now hung almost in rags about her.
About nine o’clock Nanny came to warn them that it was nearly breakfast-time. She found the lawn round the pond strewn with smelly green weed and mud, and all the workers in the pond, through which Lydia had allowed a little trickle to run, cleaning the concrete bottom and sides with brooms and scrubbing brushes.
‘Wherever did you get those brooms and things, Miss Lydia?’ asked Nanny, recognising some of Twicker’s cherished twig besoms.
‘The tool-house window was open,’ said Lydia. ‘Tell Twicker the catch wants seeing to. I got the scrubbing brushes out of the housemaids’ cupboard. We’re making an awfully good job of it.’
Summer Half: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC) Page 21