by Henry Green
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, Marchbanks 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, miss,’ 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 lap, 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 yo
u,’ 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? Seb, 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 overladen 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.
While Elizabeth explained to her grandfather in a low voice, obviously with difficulty in making it plain, Merode and Sebastian drew near, and the child began to limp. When she was quite close to the others, who had drawn together, one of them cried out, gurgling,
‘Why what on earth’s happened to you, Merode?’
Whereupon Birt knew for the first time who she was, and doubted his wisdom in bringing her to the Rocks. He also knew he must keep Merode away from friends until she had made out her account; because there would be reports to be written to Edge, and beyond, and that lady was certain to say the girl had been given an opportunity to concoct the tale.
‘Dear me what a crowd,’ he suggested to Merode, in Edge’s accents. ‘Don’t you think we’d better take you back?’
‘My leg hurts so, Mr Birt,’ she complained.
&nbs
p; ‘You never said,’ he expostulated shrilly, becoming even more like the Principal. ‘Where does it pain most? Tell me.’
By this time the crowd of students was upon them.
‘Why, Merode,’ they cried, ‘Merode, just look at you,’ and ‘What on earth have you done to get in such a state, Merode?’ and they giggled.
Upon which the redhaired girl burst into loud, ugly sobs. She put up hands to cover her face.
Elizabeth hastened back to the group followed by Mr Rock, who had set his buckets on the ground. Daisy set forefoot on top of the timber of the pen, and, at the sight of that dinner laid by, redoubled the squealing, to do which there had to be opened a great pink mouth to make display of golden fangs.
‘Now my dear, you mustn’t,’ Elizabeth told the girl, and put thin arms about her. ‘Really not, you’ll be fine. We’re looking after you now,’ she said, with a wild look around.
‘Oh isn’t it awful?’ the child moaned.
‘We’d best rush her up to the Institute,’ Sebastian suggested, in his common or garden voice.
‘Whoever heard of such a thing, how could you, and in her state,’ Elizabeth replied, leading this girl in the opposite direction, towards their mauve and yellow cottage.
‘Now all you others hurry back then,’ Sebastian ordered, Edge once again. ‘How d’you think the decorations will get done if you stand here?’ he demanded. They went off. One or two still giggled.
‘They didn’t say a word, not a word passed between her and that lot, you’re my witness,’ he continued in all seriousness, but in a low voice for Mr Rock, unconsciously imitating now the manner of his colleague Dakers.
‘Witless?’ the old man asked, and laughed. ‘They don’t go by their wits at that age.’
Sebastian was so agitated he could not find it in him to answer.
‘You should know, whose work it is to teach the creatures,’ Mr Rock finished, went back to his buckets. At this moment Sebastian noticed the pig’s outcries for the first time. It might just have seen the knife the butcher was about to use. He was disgusted. To get away, he hurried after Elizabeth and the girl, into the cottage.
They took Merode back to the Institute as soon as they thought she was a little recovered, and handed her over to Matron, who sent for Marchbanks.