Illyrian Spring

by Ann Bridge

  It was delicious in the garden. The storm had passed over long since, and it was still and warm; the sweetness of the stocks and roses filled the air with the peculiar intensity of fragrance of flowers after rain – in the evening light they had the unnatural shadowy vividness of a coloured photograph. The rain had stirred up the nightingales too – near and far, their bubbling ecstasy welled out from the dark shelter of ilexes and cypresses, and through the open windows of the villa there came presently the cool elusive sequences of Debussy’s music – ghosts of melody rather than melodies, evocations rather than statements; gleams on water and pale lights in spring skies, a single star, slow waves beating in mist on a deserted shore. Grace leant back in the corner of her seat, listening, watching the leaves of the buckthorns, like little curved pencils, against the sky above her head; in the relaxation of fatigue her attention was fixed on nothing, but some part of her was profoundly aware of all these things – the scent of the flowers, the song of the nightingales, the cool western music, with its memories of her own Atlantic shores. In the shadows under the ilex Nicholas was visible as a rather indeterminate shape, his shirt front, his head and the polish on his shoes concentrating all the light which reached him, and indicating the rest. He had been silent, but not exactly gloomy at dinner; out of a vague desire to re-establish contact Grace said, when a pause came in the music – ‘I like Debussy.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes. When he thinks of an island, he thinks of the same sort of island as I do – small and low, with pale bents on it, and very little birch trees, and wind blowing; his islands have the same emptiness as mine, and the same sort of strangeness – almost fear.’

  Nicholas stood up. ‘This marble is most frightfully hard,’ he said. ‘Is there room for me on your seat?’

  Grace thought so, and moved further into the corner to make space for him; he sat down beside her, and stretched his arm along the back.

  ‘Go on about your island,’ he said.

  ‘That’s all. L’Isle made me think of it.’

  ‘What’s this he’s playing now?’

  ‘La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin.’

  He sat turned rather towards her. Presently he said, ‘Are you tired?’

  ‘Only healthily.’

  ‘You’ve got shadows under your eyes.’

  ‘Have I? How disagreeable.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. I think I shall paint you with smudges under your eyes – it’s very becoming to them.’ He peered at her in the dusk. ‘Altogether your face is more exciting when you’re tired, or half-cross,’ he said.

  ‘Yours isn’t at all nice when you’re cross!’ said Grace with deliberate lightness. A faint uneasiness, which she imagined to be embarrassment, was beginning to creep over her, tired and inattentive as she was; Nicholas’s arm, lying along the seat-back, just brushed her shoulders if she really relaxed into the cushions – and there was a sense of emotional disturbance about him, like the uneasy atmospheric quality of a day which will end in thunder.

  ‘My face is never nice,’ he said sombrely. ‘People like you have no idea what it’s like to go about with a face and hair that put everyone off.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense! Your face isn’t in the least off-putting, except when you’re cross.’

  ‘Was I very cross this afternoon?’

  ‘Not really – a little glum. Why were you?’

  ‘No real reason.’ He stared ahead of him across the darkening garden, and Grace knew that there was a reason, and that if he could find the courage she would hear it. Somehow this was a little frightening – she waited in a suspense that surprised her till he spoke again.

  ‘I think I’m really rather a bestial little boy,’ he said slowly.

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘You make me think it, primarily,’ he said, turning towards her face, so close beside him, shadowy in the dusk. ‘I’m a coward, I’m selfish, and I’m not honest.’ He paused, and she waited, curiously shaken, for more. The words were unsensational enough, but words are not everything – a strained, almost stern note in his voice which she had never heard before, something even in the way he held his head gave a sense of crisis which was unmistakeable. But what chiefly troubled her was a confused awareness of some movement in herself which was more than the mere recognition of a crisis; something in her was responding to the emotional disturbance in him in the most unexpected way. She knew all sorts of things suddenly; knew that it was not quite an accident that his arm had slipped down off the back of the seat, so that it just rested on her shoulders; knew that at that moment he wanted very badly to kiss her, and that some incredibly small thing would decide whether he did or not; most disconcerting of all, the thought of being kissed by Nicholas actually made her heart beat. In a moment, if he didn’t speak again, she would have to say something sensible and soothing, which wouldn’t be so easy with this silly pulsation in her throat. But he did speak again – in a curious speculative tone – ‘Why are you so nice to me, Lady K.?’ he asked.

  Something about the humility and simplicity of the question brought Lady Kilmichael back out of that disquieting emotional spell onto solid ground again – the solid ground of affection and goodwill.

  ‘I think probably because you’re so very nice to me, my dear child,’ she said, a little uncertainly, but more readily than she would have thought possible. ‘You may really be very nasty, but you haven’t shown it much so far!’ She rose. ‘I think it’s time I went home. I am tired, actually.’

  Dr Halther accepted her early departure without protest. Rather surprisingly without protest, she thought afterwards; did he guess that something might have happened in the garden? Had he even expected something to happen? Crafty old man! Had he had the temerity to arrange it? A touch of indignant colour came into her face at the thought. But she did not spend much time on thinking about the Professor and his motives, long though she remained awake that night. She lay in bed, listening to the nightingales and the river under her window, and asking herself in a sort of exasperated astonishment whether she could really be falling in love with Nicholas.

  That young gentleman sauntered round next morning and finished her portrait, in a sitting which was monosyllabic on his side and rather flowingly conversational on hers; any possibility of embarrassment Lady Kilmichael always met with a rather more social manner than usual. At the end he asked her if she liked it. Grace studied the picture carefully. It was unexpectedly good. That idea of concentrating most of the light in the background in those blazing flowers, leaving the figure in shadow, was unusual and curious, but he had brought it off; in that dim filtered light the relaxation of the pose, the tones of dress and skin took on a remarkable quality. There was no over-precision this time, either; though the painting was forcible and direct there was an ease, an expansion about it – the warmth and light were there all right, but used with a stroke of ingenuity that was almost genius to emphasise the quiet meditative aspect of the portrait itself. It was an extraordinary advance on the Traü picture; and remembering how she had thought at the time that that gave away his youth, his uncertainty, she felt suddenly that this portrait revealed, more than he ever could or would reveal in words, some interior development.

  ‘I like it very much,’ she said.

  ‘Would you be satisfied with it as a portrait, if you’d come to me as a sitter?’

  ‘I think so.’ She narrowed her eyes at it. ‘Yes, definitely – and what’s more I think Walter would, too.’

  He grunted at that, did up the canvas, and took himself off to the villa. It occurred to her when he was gone that he wasn’t looking very well – he was paler than usual, and his eyes looked headachy. Probably he was tired after the walk; and he had obviously been in rather a fuss about her last night, which was tiring too. Well really, she mustn’t let herself get into a fuss as well – that would be too much! She had probably exaggerated her own disturbance – she had been tired and sleepy, and his coming and sitting like that had taken her by
surprise, that was all. He was a dear delightful child, and she was very fond of him indeed; but to put it higher than that was to be too irrational. She would start that picture this afternoon, and forget about it all.

  She duly started her picture, but she was not to be allowed to forget about herself and Nicholas. After lunch she carried her camp stool and easel a couple of hundred yards out onto the small promontory opposite the island, and set them up in the shade of a single tree. A great bed of pale reeds fringed the shore at this point, and over them the cypresses on the island showed nearly as grey as olives in the high afternoon light; to the right was a glass-green expanse of river, and beyond it the clear pinks and whites of the houses on the further shore. It was rather an exciting subject – she saw it all in tones of buff and cream and green, and as sun-flooded as she could make it; she worked away at her underpainting in pale umber, now and then pausing to listen to a loud babble of notes, more liquid and far more powerful than the nightingales’, which broke out from the reeds close by. It was very near, she ought to be able to see the bird, and presently she did, clinging sideways to a reed and pouring out those enormous bubbles of sound from a distended throat of the most vivid coral. It was a bird as big as a thrush, and the same soft brown above, but its whole breast was of that extraordinary colour, as startling as its voice. A lovely creature – by its note and its attitude, a warbler. Suddenly it flew off. Vexed, she turned round to see what had startled it; there behind her, in his Panama hat and pale suit, stood the Professor. ‘I disturb?’ he asked, raising the hat.

  ‘No no – good afternoon,’ Lady Kilmichael replied.

  He came and looked at the canvas. ‘Ah, you underpaint thoroughly. That is what I like to see. These naked canvases, the grain of the toile staring through sea, mountains, human faces – it is not painting, this! Young Humphries says you paint professionally; it is your métier?’

  ‘As much as a married woman with a family can be said to have a métier, yes,’ she answered, smiling.

  Dr Halther smiled back – he seemed in a benevolent mood that afternoon. ‘See, now I learn something!’ he said. ‘Up till now we meet like spirits in Limbo – I know nothing of you but what I see. How large a family?’

  ‘Three – the boys are twins, and at Cambridge – the girl is younger; she’s nineteen.’

  Dr Halther appeared to digest this information carefully, while he looked round for something to sit on – he had evidently come prepared for conversation. There was nothing but the ground – eventually he spread out a large bandana handkerchief and seated himself upon it.

  ‘Three children, a husband, and some painting,’ he observed. ‘This is already quite a full life. And now there is young Humphries too.’ He looked a little amused. Grace could think of nothing to say, and was silent. The Doctor lit a cheroot.

  ‘Something has happened,’ he said presently, in a different tone. ‘He knows.’

  The colour, not unobserved, came into Lady Kilmichael’s face at this announcement. ‘How do you know?’ she asked.

  ‘I see it. Did you know?’

  ‘No – not for certain.’

  He looked shrewdly at her. ‘I am quite certain,’ he said. ‘Something has happened yesterday which has told him. So now you must answer your question, what shall I do?’

  Again Lady Kilmichael was silent. Dr Halther, she knew, would think that she ought to find her own answer; but she was singularly without theories as to how one dealt with young men who were in love with one and knew it, and this disquieting new element of uncertainty about her own feelings for Nicholas made her more hesitant even than usual.

  ‘Is it so difficult?’ Dr Halther asked at length.

  ‘Yes – very difficult,’ she said, with a sudden smile which for once he could not interpret.

  ‘Why? To me it is simple, if you wish, as I suppose, to do what is best for him, to give him what he most needs?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But gnädige Frau, think then! He needs most love, and the experience of love; and this you – older, married – can give him with grace, with beauty, as a younger woman could not. Obviously you give him this.’

  ‘Do you mean have a love affair with him?’

  ‘Natürlich. You may have to help him considerably; he is nervous, reserved, he does not express himself easily. But this is his need, and you can fulfil it. You will be his mistress.’

  Lady Kilmichael’s principal feeling at this speech was one of astonishment that a man as clever as Dr Halther should be so utterly mistaken. She hardly hesitated at all this time.

  ‘No, I shan’t do that,’ she said, so decidedly that the Doctor in his turn was surprised.

  ‘And why not?’

  ‘Because that isn’t what he wants; not from me. He would be shocked to death at the bare idea.’

  ‘What do you think then that he does want from you?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Grace thoughtfully. ‘I should think really just kindness, and to be let off his own feelings as lightly as possible, as it were. But I’m sure he doesn’t want the other thing.’

  Her tone of unhesitating conviction appeared to impress the Doctor. ‘How do you know this so surely?’ he asked.

  ‘I just know it. They don’t want that at that age, not the nice sensitive ones. If they fall in love they only think of getting married. All that other business comes much later, if they can’t marry. Anyhow about him I’m certain I’m right.’

  He looked at her consideringly, and puffed at his cheroot. ‘It is possible,’ he said at length. ‘You English are a most extraordinary people – unlike any other race.’ He puffed again; it was clear that he was thinking hard. ‘I think I shall speak with him about it,’ he said finally.

  ‘For pity’s sake don’t talk to him like you talk to me!’ said Lady Kilmichael, startled out of her usual civil circumspection of speech at the idea.

  He looked at her in surprise. ‘Do you dislike the way I talk to you?’

  ‘No, as a matter of fact I don’t. I think it helps me to have everything put rather brutally, because I’m so woolly-headed.’

  ‘It is brutal, the way I speak to you?’ He made the enquiry with judicial detachment.

  ‘Perhaps brutal is the wrong word – unsparing. Anyhow I don’t mind. But I think it would upset him terribly. He’s a mass of sensitiveness anyhow, and just now, about me, I think you might really hurt him.’ She spoke with urgent concern. ‘Please be careful with him, Doctor Halther.’

  ‘Very good, gnädige Frau, I shall.’ He sat looking at her in silence for rather a long time – Grace was sure that some fresh idea was brewing in his mind. At last he asked, ‘Is it your husband – his feelings – which stops you from giving yourself to this young man?’

  Grace considered. She really hadn’t thought about Walter at all yet in connection with Nicholas; until the Doctor made his extraordinary proposition there had been no occasion to.

  ‘Perhaps it would be that partly – but it’s more me, myself,’ she said.

  ‘Are you still in love with your husband?’ Dr Halther next asked.

  Grace sat looking out over the river. With her eyes she was seeing the clear hot colours of the buildings on the other bank, but the picture that came into her mind, involuntarily, was the sable figure of the great Madonna in the basilica at Torcello, and with it, the memory of her own sudden panic there when she thought that Walter might take her at her word, and disjoin their lives for good. In love – it was a foolish phrase, really, set against that reality, the very thought of whose loss had caused her such terror. But Dr Halther was not a foolish person; though he was so mistaken about Nicholas, she still felt a strong confidence in his real goodness and wisdom. These astonishing questions of his were asked in no spirit of levity or impertinence – it was just that he overrode everything in his drive at the truth; and she had a conviction that not to answer them as truly as she could would be to lose such a chance of enlightenment as might not come to her again. She
did her best.

  ‘I don’t think people are usually in love much, when they’ve been married over twenty years,’ she said. ‘It’s something rather different. Even if there are difficulties, the other person is somehow more important to you than anyone else in the world – he and the children.’

  ‘And there are difficulties, in your case?’

  ‘Some. I think it’s mostly my fault. Walter is very clever, and—’

  ‘Pardon!’ Dr Halther interrupted her. ‘Your husband is Walter Kilmichael? The economist?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked at her with increased interest. ‘That is a most remarkable man,’ he said with emphasis. ‘Though economics are not my subject, I read all he writes. He has a beautiful intellect – one of the most beautiful in existence.’

  ‘I know. Well, you have seen me – I’m not like that,’ said Grace, with great simplicity. ‘I never was a clever woman, and I seem to get stupider every year – except for my painting. Two of the children are clever too, like him – and I – well, somehow I’m not quite equal to them all anymore. When they were younger it didn’t seem to – to show so much.’ She broke off, a little uncertain of her voice; the memory of those years when her stupidity hadn’t ‘shown’ so badly, when to the children she was perfect, and to Walter at least necessary and dear, was rather too much for her just then.

  ‘Why do you mind this, that they think you stupid?’ Dr Halther asked, not ungently.

  Why did she mind, Grace wondered. The flat reasonableness of Dr Halther’s question put her unhappiness in a new and curious light. She thought rather hard before she answered.

  ‘A lot of it is silly, I expect,’ she said. ‘But being thought stupid is rather disabling. I think it makes me stupider yet, for one thing. And now that they are so critical, I don’t think they’re so fond of me anymore.’