“Never mind, Tim,” she said quickly, “your letter was lovely, and today she must be all smiles, like us. Let’s be foolish today and leave all the news till tomorrow. I haven’t been foolish since you went. I’ve worked and worked, and been sad for dear Mater, and, Tim, I got distinction in five subjects, and, oh, Timmy-Tim, your flowers were lovely, and they’re still fresh in my room. I missed you at the college, and I must tell you this—after graduation they thought I might really be a student, and I’m going to England for third year Arts.”
Tim’s face changed to a radiant smile, and she saw all of his eyes.
“That’s news, indeed, Gretel. I wish I’d known it before. I’ve been eaten up all winter, wondering, worrying about that last day by the river.”
“Why, Tim?” she asked quickly, and then regretted her question.
“Because, Gretel, when you put me off, about us, I thought I might come back and find you doing something else. I don’t want to be a boy any more—”
“Not even today, Tim?” she said beguilingly. “Not even to run off and be just ourselves?”
“Just ourselves, Gretel,” he said, breathing hard, “not just our make-believe? I’ve been thinking hard all winter.” Then he smiled a little. “I bet they said the same thing to you at graduation, the usual stuff about launching your own ship and grappling with your problems.”
“They did, Tim, real provehito in altum stuff.”
“Launch into the deep, Gretel! It’s a clarion call for us, telling us to get out of the garden and face up before people.”
“Tim,” she said with wide eyes, “you’re not faithless to Gretel and Isolde?”
He smiled in a much older way than she remembered. Travel abroad must be ageing!
“Not faithless, ever, to one bit of you and me, Gretel, but I’d like to add to it, plunge into ordinary life with you.”
“Tim,”—she smiled with eyes that had to be met—“just for today can’t we really be provehito in altum, meaning, can’t we go for a swim, out in the country, and do things we’ve never done before? Timmy-Tim—I must go on with my Arts—and…”
“O.K., Gretel,” he said with his usual agreement. “I’ll give you today because it’s more than I dared dream of, and I’d hate to waste a second. I must get my bathing-things.”
She was out of the car before he could even open the door.
“I’ll walk up the road. Get your things and pick me up. Pity to take off the new suit, Tim.”
With a laugh of high delight she sped up the road, and the proud slope of her legs was a challenge towards speedy pursual. When he caught her up she had walked half a mile. Easing by, he opened the door and she was beside him before he had really halted.
“Now we’re off,” he said with a laugh as infectious as her own. She rolled down the window, and a soft summer breeze became intensified by shattering speed.
“Tim!” she gasped.
He seemed impervious to rules or regulations. His eyes were no longer sleepy, and if he could spare a glance from the road it was for her and not for the beauty of the countryside. She did all the talking, letting him take her where he willed. They ran out of the town by a coast road high above wide blue sea. Useless to tell him to look at the great clumps of Rhodora. When they had mounted to a dizzy precipice they shot into a grove of spruce trees. The ground on either side was tawny, pungent with fallen needles. Tim turned into a grassy lane and they were lost from the sight of the road. He dragged on the brake, and they sat in sudden suspension. The slight tremble had come back to his lips.
“Gretel, I must kiss you. All this long time I’ve thought of you, and kept you in front of my eyes. Millions of times I saw your face between me and my book. Gretel, tell me you’re glad I’m back?”
Tim had grown up. His arms were experienced through a burning devotion. His lips were gentle through reverence for her youth. When he kissed her his eyes were closed; hers were open, seeing the blue sky and the high points of the trees. Against her mouth she felt the jut of his two crooked teeth. When she felt her own eyes droop with some impalpable rival to the summer day she sat up in trepidation.
“Tim,” she appealed, “we came to swim.” He sat back, still holding her shoulders.
“Gretel, you’re not half as happy to see me as I am to see you.”
He looked puzzled, as if some of his joy had been quenched. He might have just come away from a swamping bout of geology. It was impossible not to make her usual return. She leaned forward, stroking his face. “Tim, I’m bursting because you’re here, and we’re free and it’s such a lovely day.”
His face suggested the answer was unsatisfactory, but she opened the door with decision.
“I’ll race you down to the head if you’re not afraid of your new suit.”
The way was beset by stumps and boulders. Sometimes they were in his way and sometimes in hers. The odds made them arrive on an open headland at the same time. Instinctively they brought up together, arm in arm. The blue sea belonged to them if they could get down to it. He knew how to do it. Turning to the right, he plunged into a grove of spruce. It was her native heath, although Tim was the vassal, holding branches from her face. Crashing through the smothering green, feet trod on needles, squeezing out a richer fragrance from the ground. There was a rush of water in their ears. Emerging breathless on a river, they saw it splash against rock, tear through flats, hurl over a long drop and widen with estuarine ease to the surge of the sea. So much water called for immediate immersion.
“Tim, I’m going to undress. Turn your back and find your own dressing-room.”
Dallying did not have any place in her mind. In less than a minute a spruce tree held a few frail garments, and long white legs plunged into a royal-blue bathing-suit. When he emerged she was poised on a rock with nerve-destroying balance. Tim did not plunge with the same confidence. The sight of her milky body accomplished his last enslavement. He appeared to dismiss the aching beauty of the day, and find nothing to admire but herself. He was a boy sorely tried by his own emotions. She dragged him out of them, as she had done many times before.
“Tim,” she screamed, “let’s stay in the river, unless we let the waterfall wash us down to the sea. It’s not very far—it might be fun— people have gone over Niagara in a tub.”
“Don’t be foolish, Gretel,” he said more sanely. Her leap to another rock brought her into the current, and there he joined her. Wearing her own flesh without consciousness, she expected him to wear his. Only a childhood’s friendship could give forth such naive candour. “Tim, you’re a nice white boy,” she said approvingly. “The same height as me, and I’m glad you’ve got no whiskers on your chest.” It was impossible not to lose some of his emotional surge. The sun on his back suggested he should be pagan and not personal.
A river is an endless source of enchantment. The body can soak in black pools, loll on grey rocks, be floated on a current and impelled towards danger. They found a submerged ledge under a gradient, leaning back, while the water flowed over their shoulders in a foaming cape. From their necks to their knees they were part of the river, with their chins on its bubbling bosom. From a distant meadow came the sound of a cow-bell, and a white-throated sparrow made its fisherman’s call. Mary Immaculate flung an arm into the air in wild salute.
“Good-luck, friend-fisherman, fisherman, fisherman,” she intoned again and again.
“Yes, it’s just like that,” said Tim with his head cocked in the air. “I’d like to play this—the rush of the river, its flats and falls, that cow-bell and how I feel myself. If I knew exactly how you feel, I’d play your part first. Once I thought I knew how you felt, but now I don’t know.”
“I’ll feel as you feel, Tim,” she said happily. “Only make me a little more treble. First violin and second violin, they play the same part. I wish I could play the violin, Tim, and then we could do some Brahms sonatas for violin and piano. I’m crazy about Brahms.”
He looked at her almost in awe.<
br />
“You must be liking them, Gretel, because I willed you to, this winter. I’m crazy about them myself.”
“Tim, you’ve been directing me from long distance,” she said, holding out her arm for drops to shine like diamonds. Tim sat forward, half sideways, taking a shoulder from his watery cape. He made a reach for her arm, playing on it with his lips as if it might be a flute.
“Your skin is so cool and smooth, Gretel! I think I love touch,” he said with a little pucker of his brows. “Love can’t be just great crashing chords. It must be the whole gamut of scales and harmonies.”
“That’s what I think, Tim; something with a long taste. It would be dreadful to come to the bottom of the glass too soon. I love watching David drink golden lager from a big tankard. He has a glass one, and it takes a bottle and a half. It seems to go on for ever.”
Tim hardly heard. He was staring at her arm as if treading on the tail of a thought. Looking out to sea, one white-sailed boat gleamed against the far horizon.
“Gretel; my dream!” he said thoughtfully. “This must be it. Last night it was quiet coming in, and I went to sleep very quickly. I dreamt right away. I was running as hard as I could, dragging you by the hand. For once in your life you were behind me and I was ahead. We seemed to be racing for dear life, away from loud noises and people and something I couldn’t see. Then we got into the open, and we were by the sea. I ran and ran, and there was a ship with a white sail, just setting out. You ran with me until I got to the rail, and an arm reached out and gave me one great tug and pulled me on board.”
“Didn’t I go, too, Tim?” she asked carelessly.
“No, I seemed to be sorry about that, but just as I turned back to get you I heard lovely music, and I looked up the deck. Then I woke up. Some fellows were having a binge and were talking in the alleyway. I wonder what I would have seen if I hadn’t waked up.”
Mary Immaculate shook her head. “I don’t often dream, Tim. Mom does, though, and always waits for things to happen. She didn’t dream the night before I went into the woods, but that must be where I fooled her. Good thing, too, or she would have kept me home, and I would never have come to town. Things must be arranged, Tim. It’s foolish to think otherwise.”
“I expect so, Gretel, but I’m not going to wait.”
“Let’s swim in the sea now, Tim. My back is cold.”
The way was hazardous, but her white flesh dipped amongst granite rock. They descended by the land, sanity forbidding Mary Immaculate to use the waterfall as a plank. She raced to the sea, plunging into its blue. Warmth lay only in its colour. It was freezing cold, as if it had just dissolved its icebergs. They shivered until exercise raced their blood.
“Now, Timmy-Tim,”she said, throwing an arm round his neck. “I’m drowning! Life-save me!”
She gave a realistic exhibition of drowning, making him grab her by the arm. As if to make it difficult for him, she caught him in a stranglehold.
“This is what I did before,”she gasped. “Will you knock me out?”
“No,” he said, swimming with his legs. Her white helmet bobbed near his face, and he put his arms round her body, hugging her strongly under water.
“Mermaid’s kiss,”he grinned, giving her a very wet salute with his mouth. The sun yellowed her eyes to clear topaz.
“Save me, Tim,” she said dramatically, floating sensuously on the water.
Lax and languorous, she let him hold her head out of water and swim towards land, with her body trailing beside him. With her head tucked in the crook of his arm, she recited softly:
“And the judge bade them strip, and ship them, and bind, Bosom to bosom to drown and die…”
Tim gave her a deep, wakening glance. For a moment his eyes went naked. Because she knew little poetry that he did not know, he muttered through his teeth, “You’re not fair, Gretel. Remember, the white girl winced and whitened, but he caught fire—and they died, drowned together.”
“Sorry, Timmy-Tim,” she said contritely.”It’s unpleasant, drowning, no matter how poetical.” Turning into his neck she kissed his shoulder.
“Tim, let’s dress, and go and find something to eat. I’d like a chocolate bar, an ice-cream cone and a package of gum. Have you got any money ?”
“Tons,” he said, laughing out loud and shipping some sea in his mouth. “Gretel, I know now why you’re not a musician. You never could rest to perfect one bar.”
They had reached the shore, relaxing on hot stones, with their legs in the water. She was reproachful.
“Tim, and I’ve tried to play all the things you liked.”
That there could be any fault in her seemed an appalling heresy, in sight of her body lying so near. All at once he pressed his head in her shoulder, nuzzling against her neck.
“Gretel,” he sighed. “I love you, love you, love you, and I wish we could go down with locked hands and feet.”
“Timmy-Tim,” she said, patting him with a wet hand, “it’s Heaven today. Let’s dress and get something to eat.”
The glitter had gone out of the sky, and the day was easing to night. The sea breathed on the land, wetting the air to a fog. Caplin weather, thought the fisherman’s daughter; bait for the cod! She could visualise little coves and bays and fishermen casting-nets.
She tramped round the flower-beds with no diminution of restlessness. The electric afternoon had forked her veins with lightning. Tim was different, more of an individual, and several times he had taken the reins out of her hands. Returning to her lonely meal and Hannah’s sour comments, she had circumvented conversation by propping a book in front of her. Reading Les Noyades again, it seemed disturbing, full of possession by death. Why was literature so full of death, with lovers embracing it in exultation? It seemed a morbid union, when the world was round like a rich girdle. Tim would be melancholy if he were left to himself. With her, his notes soared in alt. Impossible to remember the afternoon in tranquillity. Tang of sea-water made it hot-cold, with the feel of her head clasped by Tim’s arms. There was the blue heat of his eyes, and his wet sea-kiss. The whole afternoon returned a sense of touch. Heaviness of winter, grief for the mater, the burden of study had slipped away, catapulting her to communion with Tim. His mouth on her arm, her shoulder and his strong under-water embrace held new elements. They seemed like the edge of some felicity, towards which she was being impelled. Sweet hard kisses are strong like wine! Having read for intoxicating words, they now seemed promises of delicate delight. What more? There must be a whole lot more, like an ease into the current, and the forward rush over the waterfall. Yet Tim had bade her be sane when she suggested foolhardiness.
Hannah was inside the privet hedge plodding about, examining green vegetable shoots. Hooked up in black, she looked as crude and changeling as Molly Conway. She had been there a long time, so long that the girl wished her rheumatism would send her inside to nurture her joints. The garden was not Hannah’s care, except that everything seemed her self-appointed burden since Lady Fitz Henry’s death. She had no life of her own when her work was done, except to moil at grudges. Often she muttered to herself in some muddy communion.
There was an undeniable swish of feet and a scrape against the wall. The girl brought up on her feet, and underneath the stalky part of the hedge, she saw the old woman’s dress become limp with listening. In her hand she trailed a long twisted root. The girl’s imagination seemed fearfully acute. Had it shrieked like a mandrake when it came from the earth?
Silence came down like a fall of black flakes. Nothing stirred as Tim played a waiting game. If Philip were fishing he would certainly stay for the perfect hour when flies flew low on the water! The girl continued her walk, round and round, and round again. The air increased in dampness, threatening the bones of age, but it was almost dark before Hannah left the vegetables.
“Why don’t you come in out of the damp ? There’s the evening paper? Not as interested in it as you were this morning, I’m thinking.”
What was the use
of answering? Hannah passed like a bent black sail. The girl sped up the garden, as Tim dropped from the fence.
“God, Gretel,” he said, brushing some rind from his hands. “I thought she’d never go. What’s old witchface up to?”
She was so careless and confident in her long sustained luck. Lightly callous, Hannah was dismissed.
“She’s dippy, Tim. I never take any notice. Were you late for your supper ?”
“Let’s sit on the bank, Gretel.” He took her arm, drawing her down beside him. The seriousness of his voice dismissed eating and drinking.
“Gretel, listen to me.”
“Yes, Tim,’’ she said, surprised.
“I mean,” he explained, “listen to me without any interruption. I have some funny news, and I’ve had a terrific row with Uncle, and walked off with Mother’s car. I was steaming away when I remembered you said the doctor had gone for the whole day, and I came on the chance of seeing you. You couldn’t come for another drive, could you? It’s easier to talk when we’re going.”
“No, Tim,” she said briefly, obeying his first injunction.
“Very well, then.” The light was good enough to see him looking ahead at the grass. “After supper Uncle came round to have one of his advisory chats with me, checking up on how much benefit I had received, etc., etc. I think I behaved very well, at least I hope I was civil, although you can never tell when you feel inside that your voice has an edge. Then he informed me, as if I didn’t know, that I’d be twenty-one in a couple of months! I was expecting a lecture, when he took the wind out of my sails by telling me that Father had provided a clause in his will to the effect that I could have a long trip when I was twenty-one—”
“Tim!” she ejaculated.
“And,” he said impressively, “it seems a lot of money to me. I was thrilled, and a whole row of countries passed in front of my eyes— when…”
“Yes?” she asked urgently.
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