Daniel Martin

by John Fowles

  An hour later I was doing much more than just envying him; I was hating every inch of his body. I had had the foolish idea it was going to be (at least in work terms) something of a jolly afternoon off. That was before he and I started sawing the branches off the main trunk, while the twins stood by with the tractor and chains to haul the cut baulks down. Of course he was peasantsly, Nancy was also there watching, he was bound by rural law quite apart from what he might have already sensed in the situation, to turn it into a contest of strength. He set the saw across the first bough, as if I must know as well as he did how to use it; which gave him the chance, after the first few to-and-fros, laboriously to instruct me on how to stand and hold the thing. But once we got started he wouldn’t stop. After a minute or two I could feel my arms ready to drop off with exhaustion and pain, and we weren’t even halfway through. The return thrusts from my side got feebler and feebler. I had to stop.

  ‘Too fast, is it, then?’

  ‘Of course not. Just get my breath.’

  ‘Smoke?’

  He thrust a packet of Woodbines at me.

  ‘No thanks.’

  He lit one, then winked behind me to where Nancy was sitting; then spat on his palm and took the wretched saw-handle again. After a time he began sawing single-handed, and smoking, setting a much slower rhythm, but making it quite clear whose fault that was. He was so blatantly determined to put me down that he gave me strength; and it mercifully wasn’t all sawing, the stems had to be levered and rolled down to the cart-track where the tractor, waited and chained up for dragging. He was as strong as an ox, had to give him that. For the first time I realized that the the twins weren’t. After a while, I began to take the sawing better, exhausting though it was; but he was relentless, perhaps there was a bit of the old chapel-church hatred in it as well, in showing me up as a weak-muscled tyro. Then right at the end of that afternoon of torment, I’d just rolled down one of the smaller branches by myself to the track… he was standing watching beside Nancy.

  ‘Turn ‘im arsy-varsy, Danny.’ He had kept calling me by the hated version of my name from about mid-afternoon, another gross crime. ‘I keep telling ‘ee. ‘E’ll jag else.’

  Nancy turned sharply away. The tractor engine was running, I couldn’t hear what she said to him, but I saw him take a step after her and put his hand on her shoulder—and have that sharply removed too. It didn’t mean much at the time, I just felt angrier: that she had had to pity me. He was still there when I went off home, and I knew he was asked to supper. Even the twins saw it had been a tough afternoon’s work and thanked me specially for it. From Nancy I got hardly a look. She had disappeared when I said goodbye. I cycled home aching, humiliated and furious with the world.

  The next day she had gone shopping with her mother to Torquay and I didn’t see her at all. We were going to start the harvest in three days, this was their last day off before that started. I even begrudged them that; gadding about while I had to grease the reaper and file endlessly at the teeth of the mowing blades.

  The weather held good, and we were up in the two big wheat-fields the following day scything the first swathe round the hedges for the reaper to get in. We took it in turns, the twins and I, tying up the sheaves by hand, then scything. Nancy brought our lunch up and helped for an hour with the binding, but it was very hot, and we hardly talked. Again she had disappeared when I looked into the dairy to say goodbye to Mrs Reed.

  The road home led steeply up for a while, through a natural cutting, thick with trees and the thorn-bushes that must have given the combe its name. It was always shady, rather secretive, gloomy. There were old limekilns to the left, cut into a small broken cliff. Above and beyond that was a common, dense with brambles and bracken: this time of year, where we sometimes used to picnic before the war. After the incline the lane levels out, another valley; then up and in half-a-mile, the village. I was too tired that day to cycle up the first hill. I was pushing up the steepest part, thin old nothing, counting steps. Then something moved, where the limekilns were hidden behind the August leaves. Nancy stood out in the little path that led down from them above the lane. She was wearing a pink and white frock, one I had seen before, school-girlish, sleeves that ended just above the elbow. It had a darn at the bottom she had done herself, badly. Mrs Reed had joked about it one day, at midday dinner, and Nancy had naïvely raised the hem and I had seen above her knees for a moment. Now she looked at me, then down at the sycamore leaf she was shredding.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing. Just a walk.’

  ‘Where you going?’

  ‘Old quarry. Mebbe.’

  ‘I didn’t know you could get that way.’

  ‘There’s a path.’

  She went on shredding the leaf, as if she didn’t care whether I went on or stayed talking.

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘It’s a secret.’

  She didn’t smile, but she looked at me, and I knew it was a challenge, not an announcement. I turned my bicycle across the lane.

  ‘Can I come with you?’

  She shrugged. ‘If you want to.’

  ‘I’ll just hide my bike.’

  She nodded, and I hastily pushed it into the undergrowth on the other side of the lane, then went back across and started to climb up to where she stood. She turned before I reached her and led the way up through the trees to where the rocks rose vertically for twenty feet from the earth; then along the face beside the rubble choked mouths of the old kilns. She stopped where the cliff gave way and there was a steep scramble going up. She stood to one side and smoothed her dress.

  ‘You go first.’

  So I went first. It was difficult at the top, one had to yank oneself up the last yard or two by holding a tree-root. I turned there and held out my hand. She took it and I pulled her up, wondering if I dared keep hold of it. But she moved away and led me on up through the more gently sloping trees. The sun still shone at this height. I caught a glimpse of the farm down below through the leaves, the sound of one of the sheepdogs barking, one of the twins’ voices stilling it. There was no wind. The pink stripes and bands of small roses of her back, the fair hair. She wore old black shoes, school shoes, no socks. I knew I had entered the Garden of Eden.

  ‘It’s not my real secret place.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  She pointed casually back, beyond the farm, as she walked. ‘Up over.’ Then, ‘when I was little.’

  I wanted to say more, to make her talk, but I couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t silly, and she walked quickly, keeping to the trees on the east slope of the valley crest, though I could see the common in the evening sunlight to our right. It was peculiar, not a stroll at all; more as if we were walking somewhere with a purpose. At last she turned up towards the common and soon we were pushing through the green bracken. She still led the way. Then suddenly we were on the brink of the old quarry, looking out across the valley to the distant village. It was nice, a surprise, the sudden openness and view. The rabbits running, the green sward they had won from the bracken. She pointed.

  ‘There’s the church.’

  I was not interested in the church.

  She walked on a little, to where you could scramble over the lip of the quarry and climb down a grassy slope to its bottom. She began picking centaury and eyebright there, then knelt by a clump of the pink-headed starry flowers. Daniel sat beside her, then leant his elbow. He felt abominably gauche and tongue-tied, at a toss before her apparent composure; still sought for something to say, something that… ‘They’re not much good, actually. They won’t open indoors.’

  ‘My dad likes ‘em.’

  ‘They’re called centaury.’

  ‘Earth-girls.’ Her blue eyes met his a moment, then away. ‘That’s what we say.’ He didn’t find that quaint (or inexact, she meant earth-galls; but in embarrassing. His intellectual superiority, he was so anxious not to seem stuck up, he shouldn’t have shown off about the real name
. The umbrage hovered permanently, and as if to prove it, she stopped picking and sat back; then unlaced her shoes and kicked them off, curled her toes in the short grass.

  He tried again. ‘I thought you didn’t like me any more.’

  ‘Who says I liked you in the first place?’

  ‘After the other day.’

  ‘What other day was that then?’

  ‘You said something to him.’ He picked at the grass in front of him. Bloody girls, why were they so impossible? Why did they have bare feet? ‘When he was trying to boss me about.’

  ‘He shows off. Thinks he knows everything.’

  ‘Is that what you said to him?’

  ‘Mebbe.’

  ‘He’s more used to it than I am. That’s all.’

  ‘All he’s used to is having everything his own way.’

  ‘I thought you liked him.’

  She sniffed, said nothing; and kept staring at her feet, as if they interested her far more than he did. He felt out of his depth: first she said one thing, then another. She seemed waiting, as if someone else was going to join them there. Almost bored.

  He said in a low voice, ‘I like you awfully.’

  Suddenly she smiled back at him, a little flash of mischief, of her old Sunday School self.

  ‘I’ll tell your father.’

  ‘Well I do.’ He felt his cheeks going red. She went back to her toes. ‘Don’t you care at all that I like you?’

  ‘Perhaps I do. Perhaps I don’t.’

  ‘You never call me by my Christian name.’

  ‘Nor do you.’

  ‘Yes I did. Only yesterday.’

  ‘Not when we’re alone.’

  ‘I never know what to say.’ He added, ‘in case you think I in being stuck-up.’

  ‘It’s just the way you talk sometimes.’ Then she said, ‘I know you can’t help it.’ There was a silence. The green evening air, the humidity on the still warm rock behind them. Without warning she turned on her stomach, her elbows bent, her chin propped; then she reached out a hand and picked off a tiny branch of thyme. Bit it. Then turned a little to face him. They were three feet apart. Those arched eyebrows, that enigmatic mischievous-simple mouth. Her eyes. They were the colour of germander speedwell flowers: shy and bold, dared and doubted.

  ‘I bet you don’t really like me.’

  He looked down. ‘It’s all I think about. Seeing you. Not seeing you. Like yesterday. I hated yesterday.’

  ‘We bought you a present.’

  ‘Why?’

  She smiled at his almost offended shock. “Cos we all like you so much.’ She bit the sprig of thyme again. ‘It’s a secret. You mustn’t tell anyone I told you.’

  ‘Of course I won’t.’

  ‘Cross your heart.’

  ‘Cross my heart.’

  She said, ‘It’s a book.’ As if a book were some rare object, and its matter irrelevant. Now she rolled away on her back and stared up at the sky; then closed her eyes. He stared at her face, those cheeks, those closed lashes, those much more than childish breasts beneath the pink cotton, those bare feet. He plucked nervously at more grass.

  ‘I’d write to you. When I have to go back to school. If you wanted me to.’

  ‘Je mis, tu es, il est. Amo, amas, amat.’

  Now she was being much too subtle for him. What on earth was that supposed to mean?

  ‘Would you write back?’

  ‘I might.’

  ‘I wish you would.’

  But she gave no further promise. She just lay there, her eyes closed, as if she had forgotten he was present. Perhaps she would let him kiss her now? But he wasn’t sure, all this stepping forward, stepping back, noticing him, ignoring him. He felt irresistibly drawn to lean forward across the turf; and just as irresistibly tied to her, like Gulliver, by the thousand strings of convention, his home, his ignorance, everything. And supposing she should laugh; she were just teasing him, leading him onto make a fool of himself.

  Suddenly she sat up and reached for her shoes.

  ‘I’m going home now.’

  She was offended. He was an idiot, wet, he had missed his chance he had… he watched her lace her shoes, then gather up the little bunch of flowers she had picked and stand. He followed her up the slope to the lip of the quarry again, waited while she picked one or two late wild strawberries, then through the bracken and back into the wood. Without a word. He could have walked beside her, there was room, taken her hand at least or tried to take it, but he trailed behind. Then. No warning. She just stopped and turned, so abruptly that he almost bumped into her; put her hands and the flowers behind her back and simply stared at him, the old game of staring. Five seconds it lasted. Then she closed her eyes and raised her mouth to be kissed. He hesitated, he poised, he somehow found his hands gingerly on her upper arms; then the entire world, or sixteen years of it, melted.

  Her lips tasted of thyme and caraway seeds, her body was his lost mother’s, her giving forgave in a few seconds all he had thought he could never forgive. From gentle he suddenly grew rough, pulling her to him. He had a strange sensation: the stable wood around them abruptly changed into an explosion, a hurtling apart of each leaf, branch, bough, smell and sound that constituted it, It disappeared, in fact. There was only Nancy, Nancy, Nancy; her mouth, her breasts, her arms slipping round his back, clinging as well, until she pulled her head away without warning and buried it against his shirt. How small she was, how much more understanding touch was than sight, how all faults of size, curve, visual appearance disappeared before touch and pressure. And victory! By several metaphorical decibels, the loudest cockle-cockadoo of all his life.

  They said each other’s names, at last.

  Then they kissed again. This time he felt the tip of her tongue and began to have an erection. He was terrified that she would feel it. Perhaps she did, because she said, ‘Don’t be so rough,’ and pushed him away; stood a moment with her face down, then turned and knelt and picked up the flowers she had dropped. He knelt beside her, put an arm round her waist.

  She said, ‘We mustn’t. Not any more. Not now. I don’t want to… you do like me?’ She nodded. ‘Very much?’ She nodded again. ‘I thought you were just teasing.’ She shook her head. ‘You never seem to want to work with me or anything.’

  ‘It was mum.’ She said, ‘I’ll die if she finds out.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘That I wasn’t to make eyes at you. Flirt.’ Still kneeling she spoke to her lap. ‘That day you dropped the apples on me. She must have been watching. She told me off afterwards. We mustn’t let anyone see.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘Of course I promise.’

  ‘She said you’d tell at the Vicarage if I misbehaved.’

  ‘That’s stupid.’ His opinion of Mrs Reed suffered an abrupt drop. ‘I’d never tell them. Never.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Please let me kiss you again.’

  She twisted her head round, but wouldn’t let it last. After a moment she took his hand, laced her small fingers through his, stared down.

  ‘What about Bill Hannacott?’

  ‘I sent him packing. The other evening. Great fool.’

  ‘Was he… angry?’

  ‘I don’t care what he is.’

  He felt her fingers lace his a little harder. It was like a dream, too delicious to be true. She liked him, she preferred him, she sought his protection.

  ‘Will you come every evening?’

  She shook her head. ‘I can’t. She’ll guess.’ But she added, ‘Sunday afternoon’s best. They all go to sleep then.’

  Ten minutes later, having dawdled, stopped, kissed again, gone entwined through the trees to the cliff over the old limekilns, scrambled down, one last kiss above the road, desperate, as if it were their last, a moment’s blueness in her eyes, still a doubt, a searching, a tenderness he hasn’t seen before: she leaves. He watches her run down the lane, then break into a
walk, round the bend and out of sight, in the green and gold evening light, towards the farm. Then he slowly drags his bike out of the undergrowth, stunned, ravished, rent with joy. Already distilling it, though not yet in worth; that first touch of her mouth, that melting away of all her wiles and tricks, the taste of her, the feel of her, the mystery of her.

  And the lovely guilt, the need to lie, he took singing home.

  A heavy dew, the good weather had held, the cutting would start, the world was all Ceres and simplicity, green early sunlight in the tunnelled lanes, and Nancy. He felt, that first fine tomorrow of victory, like a bird freed from its cage, totally liberated; too liberated, as she tacitly warned him by not looking at him, not noticing him at all, when he appeared in the byre. They hadn’t finished off the milking.

  Only a snatched half-minute alone, in the dairy, before they all went up to the field. It was fraught with an unexpected shyness his move, this time. But when he managed at last to reach gingerly for her hand, as if she might leap away with a scream at the first touch, she turned at once. He didn’t mind when she snatched away almost as soon as their mouths had touched; it was enough—and her mother did come in a few seconds afterwards, as if to confirm how careful they must be.

  Stooking, stooking, all day long; an old man hired out of retirement from the village for the day was there, and his grandsons, a little tacker of twelve, and they helped. Even Nancy joined in. No opportunity to touch, but chances to look, to whisper a few sentences from time to time, the secrecy of it, the being so close, the endless rerun of that evening before (although she warned him she would have to stay at home this one, all the usual daily jobs down at the farm had to wait until the corn was ‘on its legs’). But she wished she could, she wished she could, she’d thought about him as soon as she woke up. The deprivation seemed less cruel than he expected. It was the old harvest magic, that primeval breath of relief—there was still the ricking and threshing to be done, but it was like a voyage safely done, a landfall and solstice achieved, a promise kept. Nothing could really go wrong now.