“Is that your home, Willowfields?”
“Mm.”
“It sounds nice.”
“Yes, nice country. I don’t go there much.”
“Don’t you like it?”
“Love it.”
She was silent while he moved a few paces and cast again far out into the lake. He was an adept at withholding personal information; perhaps it was natural reserve, perhaps he was bored with her questions; perhaps, since it was never safe to judge by appearances, he had a past of secrets and sorrows to conceal. But he continued of his own accord:
“Only, I always seem to be somewhere else. Abroad, or somewhere; all over the place. I’d like to get down now for the fishing: but I don’t know how much more the office will swallow. I’ve already tried it on a good few times since the season started.”
He grinned, and then tried to check himself—remembering Tom again, she supposed.
She said, fingering his cigarette case:
“Are your mother and father alive?”
“Rather.” He seemed to imply with amusement how particularly alive they were. “Father, mother, two young brothers, and sister Clare, all alive and kicking.”
She could not picture him in his family character: there was something peculiarly unattached about him. It seemed unlikely that he was a dutiful son.
“And you’re the eldest?”
“I am.”
“And when you were twenty-one were there great rejoicings?”
“Oh, well”—he looked surprised and embarrassed—“there was a sort of beano. Of course, it’s all rot, but they expect it, you know. They enjoy it.”
The silence that ensued was uncomfortable. The little rift in her security seemed now a vast and ragged breach through which she beheld him dwindling and disappearing from her down alien vistas. There seemed now nothing more to say.
Suddenly he was tense, winding in a taut line. She saw the leaping fish come up and watched him unhook it and lay it on the grass.
“A good two-pounder,” he said. He looked up and smiled contentedly.
“Poor little fish,” she said, “enjoying its life a moment ago. Now, where is it?”
“Gone to glory.” He turned a laughing eye on her. “Does your heart bleed for the dear little chap?”
“It does, rather.”
“Cheer up. No more murder for to-day. This grass looks too inviting.”
He put down his rod and came and stretched himself at full length on the ground beside her. He lit a pipe and lay back, puffing and staring at the sky. He did not suggest moving: he did not seem bored at all.
Far away she saw the boat move into view and pass across the landscape: Gerald straining at the oars, Clare standing up in the bows, her head bare and bright in the sun. Silently as figures on a screen, they disappeared again, behind a little island of trees. She smiled to herself. They too were an incongruous couple. He said:
“This is extremely pleasant. I do like water. I must have water. Wherever I end up it will be by a good bit of water.”
Her mind leapt on and saw him elderly, in some strange place of his own choosing, some strange woman by him, his chosen wife … the chance acquaintance, the commonplace occasion of such an afternoon as this, long, long forgotten.
He said: “I shall never make a good business-man.”
“I’d rather you weren’t.”
“Why not? It’s as good as anything else.”
She caught a hint of something new and unexpected in the words and the tone … boredom, discouragement: what he would call being fed up. What had he had in his life?
After a silence he said, dreamily:
“Where’s old Grock? Rabbiting, I suppose, and won’t be back for hours. Silly old idiot, he does enjoy a day in the country.”
“Yes, it’s lovely for him.”
“Haven’t you got a dog?”
“No—” she paused, and added with a deep flush, “I had a puppy, a little mongrel I bought in the street. But he died.”
Something in her voice made him say swiftly, abruptly: “Bad luck.”
She had an impulse to tell him that never before had she been able to speak to any one of that ridiculously disproportionate little tragedy; but the words would not come. He said:
“I wonder if our host and hostess will turn up before we go?”
“Yes; it was queer about the grandson, wasn’t it?”
“Mm. It was bad luck on that chap.” (There was something about him that had given him a queer feeling of Oliver: a trick of the voice—a gesture.)
“I wonder what it was all about?”
“Don’t know, I am sure, but you could see he thought it was none of our business.”
So he had been conscious of the situation, sorry for the boy: deliberately helped him by feigning indifference to his predicament.
“He’s handsome.”
“Queer-looking chap. Bit too aesthetic-looking for my taste.”
So there was a limit to what was aesthetically permissible. He himself wore becoming colours and let his hair wave; but the other overstepped the bounds presumably, with his crêpe-de-chine and his pretty scarf.
“I thought he was posing, rather,” she ventured. “He needn’t have made us all so uncomfortable.”
“Mm. A bit conceited, perhaps. It’s a phase. I was the same at Oxford.” He chuckled. “I thought I was the hell of a chap.”
After a silence she said:
“I think these people must be nice to leave us to enjoy this without any supervision—instead of plodding round everywhere with us and making us see they wished we’d go. … I think this is true hospitality.”
He nodded.
“Some gardens give you a special feeling. It’s when they are made by people who—I don’t know—who have a sort of affinity—just as some people have with birds. Or it’s the difference between a work of art and a clever exercise. You can tell at once. This is the special kind. It was the same where I used to live in Sussex—my father’s garden.”
“Whereabouts did you live?”
“A tiny country village, just under the downs.” (The turfy, tender-looking down-shoulders, pasturing the dark flocks of the juniper bushes.) “My father was vicar. I’m still homesick,” she finished with a smile.
“Sussex is nice.”
She looked down at him. He seemed to be reflecting: he leaned on one elbow, and his clear eyes stared unblinkingly ahead of him … his shirt-sleeves were rolled back to the elbow, and she saw the muscular forearm and the strong blue veins running beneath the white skin. She was conscious of his length and grace, of the fine shoulders beneath the thin white stuff of his shirt. Seen thus in repose, the rather untidy lips folded, the eyes thoughtful, his face and form were memorable. Comely was the word for him … a comely young man.
He stretched out an idle hand and picked a bluebell, sniffed it and put it in a buttonhole of his shirt.
She said: “Where I lived, the beech woods were full of bluebells. You never saw such a sight. They almost made your eyes ache with the blue. I’ve scarcely seen a bluebell since I left my home. And the primroses—I think of them every spring … you simply can’t imagine. … I wish I could show you.”
She was back again, walking up the steep, chalky lane that wound up behind the village to the beech wood. The thorn flowered in the hedges and the grass beneath gleamed and foamed with the moon-coloured profusion of the flower which she called milk-wort or Star-of-Bethlehem. She went into the wood and saw the first wild flash of the bluebells. They ran away into the shadowy distance on every hand, flooding the ground with urgent blue—with a blue that cried like the sound of violins. She sat beneath the smooth, snake-striped, coiling branches of her chosen tree, and saw beneath her a creaming tide of primroses, clotting the mossy slopes, brimming in the hollows.
/> But these experiences could never be imparted: one could never explain to any one their supreme importance; say that bluebells made a musical outcry; that primroses, with their warm, faint, sweetish smell, were the milk of the earth. These disjointed words to this young man were all she had ever spoken aloud in praise of her memories.
He looked at her surreptitiously out of the corners of his eyes, noticing her for the first time that day. She was staring ahead of her, and he felt a kind of dreaming intensity in her expression and her pose. He saw her full firm breast outlined in the grey stuff of her frock as she sat above him; the strong modelling of a white and graceful neck. He wondered how she had looked as a young girl: quite attractive, perhaps. He supposed she was getting on now. He said to himself that she was a rum un; rather intriguing, rather nice; and somehow he kept on feeling sorry for her. He said:
“Do you go back sometimes?”
She opened her narrow eyes.
“Where? Home? Oh, no, I couldn’t.” Her voice was vehement. “Besides, the expense … we only have one holiday a year.”
She stated this not plaintively, but as a simple fact; and he had a moment of uncomfortable perception of the lives of those compelled by circumstance to remain in one place year in, year out, whether they liked it or no.
She continued:
“And up till now I have always had to go—somewhere I didn’t want to … my mother-in-law, in fact.” She made a confidential grimace. “However, she’s dead now.”
The triumph in her tone made him burst out laughing. She was like a child, half ashamed of herself. She clasped her hands together and cried:
“And this year—this year I’ll go where I like … by myself … where I like.”
He sat up and watched her, highly amused.
“Where’s that?” he said.
“I’m not sure, yet. I’ll find it.”
She felt in the depths of her being a thrill, a rush of expectation. She stared at the water and saw, as if upon its shining surface, the summer months stretching out before her, bearing a promise as rich and strange as any in the years of youth.
“It’s going to be a glorious summer,” she said.
She saw in dim, chaotic vision, what she would seek, and find: a southern landscape: cottage gardens crammed with flowers; cornfields bordered by tall elms; dog-roses and bryony in the leafy lanes; gentle slopes crowned with copses; clear brooks set with iris plants and bulrushes, running between plumy willows through the pastures. This was what she would seek and find.
“Tired?” he said, after a pause. “Want to move?”
“Oh, no.”
“Sure? I was forgetting you’ve been laid up.”
She flushed swiftly at such proof of his thoughtfulness.
“No, no,” she said softly. “I’d like never to move. …”
They sat on. He watched her again. She sat so still she hardly seemed to breathe. She was the most quiet person he had ever known; she made a sort of peaceful feeling. …
At last he stretched himself and said:
“Where’s everybody?”
As if in answer to his words, the boat slid into view again, with Gerald rowing towards the opposite shore and Clare winding in her line; and Norah emerged from the trees and came down to the landing and cried across the water: “Tea, tea!”
After tea they played tennis. Norah and Hugh played against Clare and Gerald; and Grace sat on a bench by the edge of the court and watched them. They made a well-matched four: Norah played a steady, feminine game; Clare was graceful and erratic; Gerald rediscovered an exasperating skill with cuts and top spins; and Hugh was all over the court, smashing furiously at the net, volleying from every position, running at top speed to the back line to send a wild lob backwards over his head, cursing himself, laughing, applauding his partner.
After two sets he came and threw himself down by Grace.
“Gosh! Out of condition. … Can’t serve for nuts.” He wiped his brow, patted his diaphragm, and turned a bright eye on her. “Now you must play.”
“I can’t play.”
“Rot! We’ll take ’em on and win every game. I’ll do all the running about. You stand in one place, and if anything comes near you I’ll yell ‘leave it,’ and you just duck. Have your shoes got heels? Take ’em off and play in your stockings. I often do. We’ll get on splendidly. Come on. I’ve eaten too much. Must work it off.”
Grace found herself on the court, racquet in hand, shoeless, giggling, while he encouraged her and leapt about her.
The game was resumed.
Norah stood by herself and looked at them. She said to herself, “I am left out again.” There was no doubt she was not wanted at all. Gerald had forgotten her and was so happy. He had rolled up his shirt-sleeves and was vying with Hugh in boyish zeal and good-humoured shouts. Lucky that nobody had suggested that husband and wife should play together this time … still, nobody had suggested it … no, she did not mind in the least. Her thoughts flew to her children, and she wished she had brought them: such a treat for them, and they would not have bothered any one: she could have taken them off to the quarry to look for birds’ nests. They liked to be with her. She heard in her mind’s ear Robin’s pipe, anxious and frequent: “Can we come with you, mum? Mum, will you play too?” Yes, they preferred her company … for a little while longer they would prefer it.
Was she a successful mother, she asked herself—did she really exert herself for them as much as she should? How differently, how spectacularly, she had imagined her children! But that was in the days of Jimmy, when she had wanted a son who should really be Jimmy himself, re-created through her, her own possession from the womb: so that the ache about his past should be appeased. Actually, motherhood had proved in anticipation chiefly a physical process; in realization—not overwhelmingly glorious: an enormous worry and responsibility, an enormous hindrance to liberty: a hot and cold perspiration when they shrieked, nervous terror mounting to panic and something like hatred when they went on shrieking, and an acknowledgment to oneself that they were quite ordinary babies: and then month by month, the growing feeling of being bound to them in one’s very bowels, so that if they had a pain one had a pain oneself.
She looked again at the players. What had Gerald and Clare made of their afternoon together; and the other two, what could they have found to say to one another? They seemed all to have made such progress during her absence. She thought suddenly: “Something is happening to everybody in this place except me. …” Some influence was at work, rapid and mysterious. Perhaps they were all falling in love … what an idiotic idea … or perhaps they might all be a trifle tight. Supposing Gerald were to come and tell her he had fallen in love with Clare … she hoped he would not. Apart from the imprudence and general upset, no happiness could come from loving Clare. Jimmy had said that long ago. She roused a perpetual sense of expectancy; in a moment, one thought, she was going to give something that no one else could give: and always, she gave nothing. These were Jimmy’s words: though fascinated (one suspected) he had not liked her much.
Where were the old people; and that curious, rude, offended boy, where was he? Their absence seemed almost sinister. It was as if from their hiding-places they were busy casting spells over all except herself. The boy had started the plot, the dream, with his unreal statement “I am their grandson”; now the excitement grew. As for herself, she was left out; but—her heart gave a jerk at the thought—left out, perhaps, on purpose, and so given her part, drawn into the unreality. For one afternoon, no ties, no dependants. She was free as a ghost.
She turned her back on the four, and escaped to find an old self among remembered haunts.
Down through the wood where the path was slippery with mud and moss, now, as in old days; (she had fallen down inelegantly, flat and sprawling, and Cousin George in the navy had picked her up and then kept his arm around her�
�to make sure she did not fall again). Along the lake path, over the little bridge at the farther end where the burn ran out again, into the cow pasture, up the hill to the birds’-nesting quarry. She was free and seventeen years old, swinging along. She wore a white, floppy, crêpe cotton blouse made by herself and smocked in red silk, and a pleated red skirt and a black patent leather belt tight and trim round her waist. What an extraordinary costume … it had seemed all right then, very becoming. “What a pretty figure,” Cousin Mary had said, patting her. “You’re as pretty as paint,” said George. She had had just the right looks for a cousin in the navy. Jimmy had transformed her through pain and passion into something more suitable to him, more interesting. Now, though her figure was still nice, her face was nothing. Gerald was not the kind of man one stayed pretty for.
Here was the quarry, looking just the same, smothered in brambles. How strange to come back here alone to find it, and to think of old days: to be caught at the quarry’s edge by the knowledge of time and change. She looked back at the girl in the white blouse and saw her so different, so unconnected with her present self, that there seemed no link at all. But from now on, whatever of change life held, there would be no new way for her to live it, no new experiments or experiences. She would feel the same inside now, till she died … and there was that nuisance Gerald, skipping about on a tennis lawn, falling in love. …
Agile, sure-footed, leaping down through the prickly bushes, tearing her stockings. … George had called “Mind out,” and lost his balance, and come slithering down on top of her. Grimacing and feeling himself carefully behind, he had remarked (he had a slight lisp): “Thtill got the theat of my panth, hooray.” That had seemed a pretty daring remark, and she had giggled, as was fitting. Also he had said, to frighten her, “Look out for thnakes,” when of course there weren’t any. Then they had sat in a comfortable, scooped-out shelf, draped round with long, leafy tentacles of bramble, and he had explained to her his theory of the fourth dimension and spoken highly of the works of Mr. H. G. Wells. He was one of those enlightening cousins—not only in an intellectual way. He had suggested kissing her, just to see what it was like. She had told him it was all right. After that, he had kissed her a few more times (what shy and innocent kisses!) and given her, at parting, a naval button made into a brooch.
A Note in Music Page 10