by Henry Green
"We have. And we won't cut the flowers, ever, not where they can see."
"It was just a thought," the older woman said. "Fir trees and waltzes. The snow for all of your white frocks as you go round.
Rather a pity, don't you think? But come in or out child, do. Don't stand there neither one thing nor the other." The girl laughed comfortably.
"You sent for me," she said.
"We're so busy. We've been started ages. But please come and look, oh please. We want your advice particularly." At this she shut the door, came up to the desk. They're incalculable, Marchbanks told herself. And up to yesterday I was so confident I knew their ways. Then her heart missed a beat as she wondered whether the child could be hinting.
"It's the fireplace," Moira said. "Very big." She stood close and absolutely still, to give the older woman, whose body age had withered, a full, wonderful, firm round smile.
"Well, we don't want to root up a whole rhododendron bush, and put that in," the woman gently said.
Then the girl leaned right over, stroked that white cat. She smelled warm to the older lady.
"Why it's Alice, Mr Rock's," she said.
"Every morning," Marchbanks agreed. "Every single day You couldn't do without, could you?" she said to the puss, which Moira could now at last hear purr, which she could tell was in a cat's swoon.
"Isn't it awful," the girl casually said.
"What d'you mean, dear?"
"Why, about Mary and Merode."
Marchbanks swallowed a gulp of the morning.
"Now don't be so silly," she said, in a bright voice. "But I do wish you'd each of you come to see me before you decide on some of your little foolishnesses." She looked in a dazzled way at the large, brilliant, smooth face bent over the cat. She began to drum the fingers of her left hand on Edge's table.
"What mightn't Alice be able to tell?" the child remarked.
"Now Moira, you know as well as I, they've simply gone off somewhere and the car's broken down most probably," Marchbanks said. "Besides we rely on you senior girls, you realise, before the bird is flown, so to speak, you know."
The younger woman did not reply. She went on stroking puss, which had opened huge blue eyes.
"Of course Miss Edge will be very cross with them when they get back properly ashamed of themselves," Marchbanks continued. "But I'll have a word with Miss Baker first. Why child, you don't know anything, do you?" she asked, with an uneasiness as shrill as Sebastian's in her voice.
"Oh Miss Marchbanks, we always tell you all," the girl replied.
"Then what did you mean about Mr Rock's cat?" the older woman said, and put on her spectacles.
"She might have seen them when she was coming over," Moira explained. Now that she could watch the girl in detail Miss Marchbanks no longer approved, and was even half irritated with the creature's blankness. You could admire children when you were not in a position properly to focus them, she thought, because, soon as you had your glasses on, they were merely fat, or null, unless of course they were babies.
"You've a smut on your nose, child," she said.
"Oh have I? Thank you," the girl said, rubbing with a hand.
"Well I must get along at once or we'll never get finished," she excused herself. "I know they'll be disappointed over the fir trees," she said, and backed away with a look of complicity about her nose. "It would have been too lovely. But some people, I mean . . . well . . . you know," she finished on an adorable smile of pure respect, then was gone.
There was a knock at the door. Upon being bidden to do so, Winstanley entered.
"Why come in, my dear, sit down," Miss Marchbanks said, and took the spectacles off again.
"I wouldn't have bothered you, ma'am, today of all days, but I wanted to know if there was any sort of help at all I could give."
"My dear," Marchbanks said. "And less of this ma'am to me. I hold the position only for twelve hours, if I last those," she said. "No, I've just had Moira along, to find whether I could arrive at anything."
"Why Moira particularly?"
"It was just a thought. Such a pretty child."
"I suppose I mustn't ask, but. . . ?"
"Not a word," this lady answered. "We're as we were except that I'm very kindly left in charge, and no-one's to know lest it gets out. But I'm to use my discretion continuously, thank you."
"I wouldn't put up with it, "Winstanley said.
How can the lovesick make such sweeping statements, March-banks wondered.
"Especially with the Inspector of Police," she went on without a sign of what she thought. "He's to come over because I'm not to tell him on the telephone. 'We must be discreet'," she quoted with irony. "I mustn't say to his face."
"But I know both girls well," Winstanley protested. "I can't imagine ..."
"My dear," Marchbanks said, "what do either of us know?"
"Yes, quite. But. . ."
"My dear," Marchbanks interrupted a second time, "you're well out of this."
"You don't mean . . ."
"What I suggested was they should have fir trees in the alcove for the ball," Miss Marchbanks said, and put the spectacles on again. Her tired eyes were sharpened by lenses to a very light brown. Winstanley scanned anxiously for a hint of the inner meaning, but without result. "Adams is round here now," the older woman continued, "and it wouldn't have taken him a whole morning to saw half a dozen over in the new plantation. But, so it seems, we are to continue with our traditional decorations," she ended, with a gesture of dismissal. "My dear, thanks all the same," she said.
"Oh I know what I meant to ask," Winstanley said, as she gave in, and went to the door. "Some of us, the staff naturally, thought we might have a swim in the lake this afternoon since it's a holiday. You'd have no objection? We'd keep to the end away from the weeds, of course."
You think Sebastian will like you in your bathing dress? was what Marchbanks did not ask.
"I shouldn't, not just today," she said with a look of resignation that silenced the agitated query with which Winstanley was about to take her up. The older woman sighed once the door was closed, and she was alone again. Who could say what might be in that water?
"Adams," she began, when in his turn the man entered. He interrupted her at once. While attending outside for the day's orders, Mr Rock's hints had preyed on his mind. He was beside himself.
"It wouldn't be about my cottage, now would it, ma'am?" he demanded. "There's no question, is there? For I've a nephew over to me directly, with the girl he married in church. Can't find a place of their own anyhow. It's cruel this housing shortage, miss, I mean ma'am."
"Why of course not, Adams. Whoever gave you that impression?"
"You know the ways things are with a place this size. Nothing but rumours and buzzes about your ears the whole day, ma'am. Till a man can't tell what to believe, and that's the truth."
"But I only wanted to ask your advice, Adams."
"How would that be?" he enquired, putting on his dullest expression.
"You've heard of our two silly students? You must have."
"Me? I wouldn't know the first thing, miss."
"Well, there's two of them gone, Adams, absolutely without trace. Of course, only temporarily. But can you imagine such
deceit?"
There was a pause. Adams might, or might not, have been amazed. Then he said, in a voice of doom, "I pity those two lasses."
"Oh, you know, I don't think there's any necessity to be tragic," Miss Marchbanks said. "I'm sure not, indeed. I only wanted to ask if you had noticed anything."
"Me, miss? What should I see of them?"
"Why possibly they may have fallen into the habit of meeting strangers from outside in the grounds, perhaps?"
"There's been none like that, miss, or I'd have reported it, and double quick to be sure."
"I know you should. That's why I was so determined to ask. Then you haven't come across them?"
"I can't tell one of your learners from t'other, mi
ss," Adams said. "I've no call."
"Exactly," Marchbanks agreed, to humour him. "But you haven't noticed anything unusual?"
"If I was in your place," the man replied, "I'd speak over the telephone with the station."
"Yes, I've done so, Adams."
"They can't have passed that way, then. And the coach halt?"
"Of course," she patiently said. "You don't imagine we've been seated idly by," she said, going over in her mind again the guarded, embarrassed enquiries she had made.
"Well, it's got me beat," he said.
"You see, I just wondered if you might have marked down some little detail, all over the woods in your day's work, and trained to be observant."
"I don't know about trained to be observant, miss?"
"Why yes, naturally, in the course of your duties. Foresters always are," she said, to flatter him.
"It's not me you should enquire of," he said, at last. "Some of the creatures will for ever hang around Mr Rock's place, any day of the week you care to name."
"I know," she said to encourage the man. "He has those animals," and remembered the cat on her Jap, the goose, and the pig, all white.
"Well, to my way of thought, Mr Rock's your money, miss, if you'll excuse me now, because if you've nothing special today I should get on with our logs for the firewood."
"There's just one matter, Adams," she said, and ordered fir branches to be brought up, in case room could be found. Then she dismissed him. At the door, however, he turned back. "It's the overstrain, there you are," he announced. "They overtax their strength," he said, and went.
* * *
A great beech had fallen a night or two earlier, in full leaf, lay now with its green leaves turned to pale gold, as though by the sea. It had brought more vast limbs down along with it, so, in the bright morning, at the thickest of the wood, colourless sky was suddenly opened to Elizabeth and Sebastian above a cliff of green. The wreckage beneath standing beeches was lit at this place by a glare of sunlight concerted on flat, dying leaves which hung on to life by what was broken off, the small branches joining those larger that met the arms, which in their turn grew from the fallen column of the beech, all now an expiring gold of faded green. A world through which the young man and his girl had been meandering, in dreaming shade through which sticks of sunlight slanted to spill upon the ground, had at this point been struck to a blaze, and where their way had been dim, on a sea bed past grave trunks, was now this dying, brilliant mass which lay exposed, a hidden world of spiders working on its gold, the webs these made a field of wheels and spokes of wet silver. The sudden sunlight on Elizabeth and Sebastian as, arms about one another's waists, they halted to wonder and surmise, was a load, a great cloak to clothe them, like a depth of warm water that turned the man's brown city outfit to a drowned man's clothes, the sun was so heavy, so encompassing betimes.
"It will be hot," she said, as though stroking him.
"I love you," he said. She pretended to ignore it.
"I wonder what brought her down," she said. She might, from the tone, have had in mind a middle-aged woman he'd seduced.
"Oh Liz, I do love you, and love you," he replied.
"Adams won't like this," she said, and turned with a smile which was for him alone to let him take her, and helped his heart find hers by fastening her mouth on his as though she were an octopus that had lost its arms to the propellers of a tug, and had only its mouth now with which, in a world of the hunted, to hang onto wrecked spars.
"Darling," she said in a satisfied voice, coming up to breathe.
"Help," another girl's voice then distinctly uttered, close to these lovers. Sebastian felt Elizabeth go stiff. Neither of them spoke.
"Help," it came again. Sebastian stepped sharp away from his love.
"A snooper," he said with a little hiss. "A Paul Pry."
"Who is it, oh dear . . . ?" Elizabeth called out. She had at once put on her vagueness for protection in the circumstances.
"Help," the voice called once more, louder. By this time both had gathered its direction, which was left-handed to the deepest of the stricken beech. Sebastian began to force his way through and, as Elizabeth cried out, "Now do mind, take care, it's your best suit," he had parted a screen of leaves that hung before him bent to the tide, like seaweed in the ocean, and his pale face, washed, shaved, hair cut and brushed, in this sun a bandit, he looked down on a girl stretched out, whom he did not know to be Merode, whose red hair was streaked across a white face and matted by salt tears, who was in pyjamas and had one leg torn to the knee. A knee which, brilliantly polished over bone beneath, shone in this sort of pool she had made for herself in the fallen world of birds, burned there like a piece of tusk burnished by shifting sands, or else a wheel revolving at such speed that it had no edges and was white, thus communicating life to ivory, a heart to the still, and the sensation of a crash to this girl who lay quiet, reposed.
"What are you about? Come off at once," Sebastian said, unaware that he had been shocked into a close parody of Edge upon his recognising Institute pyjamas. As there were three hundred students he could not be blamed if he did not know the girl, although he was at fault in forgetting, as he did until too late, because of the kisses, that there were two young ladies absent or adrift.
"I must ask you to come away off," he repeated, like Miss Edge.
"I can't, I'm hurt," she said. After which she added, as though terrified, "Oh Mr Birt."
"My dear girl, we can't have this," he said, clambering down. And then became confused. Because her soft body, stretched out, was covered only in thin geranium red cotton, it lay with all grace and carelessness, the breasts lightly covered and the long limbs, and he saw, so that it interrupted his breathing, that she had mud on the white of leg below the knee, with enamelled toes in sandals caked with mud. Sun, through the bright leaves, lit all this in violent dots, spotting the cotton with drips as of wet paint, and making small candle lamps of flesh. Then he was reprieved, now that he was so at her side, for she reached behind and brought out some nondescript overcoat which she pushed over her middle. A schoolmaster mind knew she must have put this away at the back before she called. Thus he was saved because she had made him suspicious.
"Can't you walk?" he asked, unkindly.
"Yes," she said.
"What is it, dear?" Miss Rock demanded.
"You're not to worry, I can manage," he shouted back.
"But what will, in heaven's name, what is it?" Elizabeth insisted. "Look," he said, to the girl he still did not know for Merode, and in his natural voice once more. "Hang on to me." He was frowning.
"I can manage, Mr Birt," she said, awkwardly struggled up to turn a drooping back and shrugged herself into the coat.
"But there must be some explanation," he said, in another severe imitation of Miss Edge.
In reply she just walked out of the place she had made for herself, and this when he had laboriously climbed down to her. She was gone. He found a rent in his own trouser leg and scowled. Then went out after.
He came upon Elizabeth who was being her most warm-hearted with the girl.
"Have my comb, sit here, let me button this up," she was saying, Sebastian imagined, so there might, for not a moment longer, be displayed in full sunlight that expanse of skin how like vanilla ice cream where one of her jacket buttons had come undone. So Elizabeth drew the coat about the girl who, from raised arms, snuffling, and with an absent, ceremonious look, combed out the heavy hair a colour of rust over a tide-washed stovepipe on a shore.
"Why, you poor dear, there, that's better," Elizabeth was saying to Merode, "well... I can't think . . . but we needn't bother now, shall we? Sib, she must go back with us, it's too far all the way up to the house. We're only a few yards, really, from our little place," she said to the girl. "Then we'll get a cup of hot tea, I mean to put inside you, d'you think you can manage?"
There was no reply.
"You take her on that arm," Elizabeth ordered Sebastian.
"Now lean on me, dear, d'you see, that's right, only a step," and in this fashion they started off to Mr Rock's, neither Birt nor Merode speaking so much as one word.
Meantime, some five or six of those who had been sent to collect azalea and rhododendron had wandered through the woods, had stopped here and there, braving wasps and bees and even a hornet to cut out great bundles of bloom and were overlade now, for, even with arms outstretched, the red and white flowers came half up over their faces; the gold azalea nodding next their gold heads, in all this flowering they carried like a prize. Although they were so burdened, they had decided to move on to see Daisy, and had arrived to stand by emerald nettles at the edge of her sty.
She lay, very white, on a froth of straw and dung which fumed to the warm of day. She was on her side and twelve most delicate fat dugs in pink struck out from a trembling belly in a saw toothed frieze. She had violet, malevolent small eyes under pink cornucopia ears. Her corkscrew tail twitched as though its few inches could reach, in a hog's imagination, far enough to plague the brilliant, busy flies on her white, dirt dusted flanks. She was at rest.
"Isn't she sweet?"
"Do look,"
"Oh fancy," they cried out one to another through a frond of flowers held to bursting chests, "There, doze Daisy,"
"Isn't she a beaut."
Mr Rock came out of the cottage with two buckets of boiled swill. His eyes burned behind spectacles at this bevy of girls. And, when she heard his step, Daisy got up with a start and a heave to squeal with anticipation while her audience, crying out in the alarm they affected, backed from the now simmering pen.
But he did not feed his pig at once, because he had not gone three yards before he heard Elizabeth call 'Gapa,' and then there she was, tearing towards him, hair straight out behind, running with her legs extended sideways from the knees. The group round Daisy ceased to exclaim the better to watch the woman old enough to be its mother. And, in watching, they saw emerge down a ride behind Elizabeth the figures of Birt and the girl they knew at once for Merode. This set them off in whispers, as a cloud passes the moon, like birds at long awaited dusk in trees down by the beach.