The fall, in fact, is only a matter of four or five feet, and onto soft ground at that. He comes down sideways with a thump that makes every one look over to the grotto, the immediate response one of embarrassment rather than concern. They expect to see an elderly man humiliated. It is only two or three people who see that his head, jerking back as he falls, has struck the projecting edge of a rock.
These, hurrying towards him rather faster than the rest, see that humiliation does not enter into it, the doctor being unconscious.
“Oh look!” cries Tessa, her hand to her mouth, “he’s bleeding like mad!”
Nick, who has come forward with the others, turns hastily away.
The doctor, head to one side, mouth slightly open, lies sprawled upon the grass. The blood, in fact, is not copious but creeps in separate trickles down the side of the scalp, seeping into the ground. A fly arrives and settles. No one, for several seconds, does anything but stare. Then, as though by common consent, they all turn to Toby.
Toby’s expression – for anyone who knows him well – is one of furious irritation. The group, lacking such familiarity, take it for concern, and wait for guidance.
Illness repels him: old men coughing on park benches, hunched whimpering children, the messy ailments of women. Unmoved himself by sympathy, he has none for others. “It might be you,” Paula shouted at him once from a hospital bed, having something whipped out or put in; Toby, knowing it would not, touched her hand and loped away down the ward. “We all come to it,” his father mumbled, disgusting in a wheelchair, egg on his stubbly chin; Toby stared at him in incomprehension.
He says, “What a damn stupid thing to happen.”
The group rustles, not quite happy at this. Mary Chambers gets down on her knees beside the doctor. Someone says “I don’t think we should move him.”
“Do you,” Keith Harrap asks Toby,” know anything about first aid?”
“Not a blind thing.”
Someone else murmurs about the kiss of life.
“I don’t think so,” says Mary Chambers. “Not for this. He’s breathing, after all. It may only be superficial. Head injuries always do bleed a lot, I believe.”
Toby wipes a hand across his forehead. “Christ. That’s all one needed. These courses are enough of a strain without anything idiotic like this.”
The group, disturbed, rustles again.
“I think,” says Keith, “we’ll have to get an ambulance.” He looks at Toby “Don’t you think so?”
“Oh, Christ …” snaps Toby.
Someone observes that it is going to be awfully awkward being so far from the road.
Toby raises exasperated eyebrows, sighs. “I cannot, I absolutely cannot, have some bloody great vehicle driven down the woodland way.”
Mary Chambers stands up. “I do honestly think we ought to do something rather quickly.”
“Should I go to the house and phone?” suggests Keith.
Toby, wiping his forehead again, appears to nod.
“Or would it be better perhaps if you did?”
“The nearest hospital’s at Woodbury,” says Toby, “renowned for inefficiency, I believe. I shouldn’t care to fetch up there myself.”
Mary Chambers, on her knees once more, mopping the doctor’s head with a tissue, looks up. “There presumably isn’t any choice. I think Toby should go since he knows the number and so forth and can tell them the nearest point to bring the ambulance to. And anyone else who’d rather. I’ll stay here and maybe you would, Keith, and someone else, just in case.”
Toby, sighing again, makes a gesture of acquiescence. He sets off, at a pace that suggests weariness rather than urgency, followed by a straggling file of those members of the group who have decided that their continued presence is of no help.
Mary Chambers, Keith Harrap and Tessa, left in the tranquillity of the clearing, stand awkwardly around the prone figure of the doctor. A further attempt is made to mop up the blood with tissues. Keith points out the heavy breathing, and hopes it is a good sign. Nick, forgotten and unnoticed, hovers in isolation some distance away. Belts of light drive across the trees, creating a myriad shades of green. A small brown butterfly settles on the doctor’s trousers, opening and closing its wings to the sun.
And Mary, much later, telephones her husband. A man, she says, fell off the top of a grotto and hurt his head but apparently it is only concussion, there will be no long-term damage. Grotto? says her husband, doubtfully. But Mary is talking now of some business with a Nature Trail and a mushroom and someone who knew something all along. Human nature, enquires her husband, or the other kind? There was rather a lot of both today, replies Mary. Well, says her husband, so long as it’s worth it to which Mary answers a trifle sharply, he feels, that she can’t know that yet, can she? We couldn’t, he says, find Helen’s gym things and I’m afraid the cat was sick in the hall last night. Mary, in the Framleigh gun-room, stares at a heap of stringless airy tennis rackets; the gym things, she snaps, are in a bag under her bed, as she should know, and the cat must be put in the downstairs loo when you go to bed.
Chapter 4
“No way,” they can hear Paula shouting, “do I do the damn cooking. Let’s get that straight, right?”
Doors, throughout Framleigh, tend to stand open. From the Common Room you can hear the clatter of dishes in the kitchen and refectory. And voices. This morning, Wednesday morning, there are no dishes, only voices. Paula’s, loud, and Toby’s and Greg’s and Nick’s, less loud. In the Common Room, the course members, risen and descended but as yet unbreakfasted, fall silent and listen. It is not difficult to pick up what has happened. The Filipino girls, overnight, have packed their bags and left. In a kitchen laden with unwashed crockery the Framleigh faculty are assessing the situation. Paula’s voice rises and falls. Toby is heard to say that she should never have bloody well taken them on in the first place, Dutch girls have always worked out better. Greg suggests that everybody cool it. Nick twitters. There is a crash and sound of breakage, as though the discussion is moving onto another plane. Paula is asking what Toby has to suggest and Toby responds with icy and not quite audible politeness and Greg says look, let’s quit that stuff, you two … And Jason can be heard loudly and imperviously demanding something to eat.
Sue says, with a nervous giggle, “It doesn’t sound as if we’re going to get any breakfast, does it?”
“Of course,” observes the dentist’s receptionist, “you can’t really expect people like them to be terribly practical, can you, when it comes to a crisis? I mean, with their temperaments.”
Keith stares out of the french windows, disconcerted; he has caught in Paula’s voice a tone eerily similar to the peevishness of his mother’s domestic row language. His mother, of whom he is fond but unadmiring, is a vet’s wife active in the Townswomen’s Guild. There must be some mistake.
He says “I think we’d better offer to lend a hand.”
“In point of fact,” says Toby, “it’s made me wonder if we shouldn’t re-think the entire staffing situation.” He looks thoughtfully at Greg and Paula. “Switch over to a commune arrangement of some kind.”
Greg points out that if you make it a regular thing for the course members to do the cooking and wash the dishes, and it isn’t a bad idea, you’d maybe have to lower the fees.
Toby thinks not necessarily. He is wondering if you couldn’t introduce a sideline by way of Creative Cookery, that sort of thing …
“I don’t mind having a go at that,” says Paula. “It might be amusing.”
There will always, Greg considers, be the awkward cuss who thinks he is being exploited.
“Nonsense,” declares Paula. “They like it. Look at this lot – they’re only too pleased to set to and get things sorted out. Rotas for this and that and Christ knows what. People like them can cope with that sort of thing. It’s what they’re for, basically.”
“You’re an elitist, Paula” says Toby.
“If that’s meant to be rude I d
on’t bloody well care at the moment.”
“It was a statement, merely.”
“Pushing it a little,” says Greg, “for a guy born into a place like this.”
“Right!”
Toby says coldly, “I thought we were discussing the future staffing set-up, but apparently not. In which case I’m going to have a rest. I’d prefer not to be disturbed.” He goes.
After a moment Paula says, “Toby’s so incredibly self-centred it just isn’t true.”
“Right,” agrees Greg. He lays a soothing hand on her thigh, which Paula almost immediately covers with her own.
“I might come back to America with you next year.”
Greg, under the pretext of scratching his wrist, withdraws his hand. He is not planning to return to America just yet. The Fellowship in Creative Writing at a small mid-west university to which he frequently refers has not in fact been offered. He is planning, since there is nothing better around for the moment, to stay at Framleigh until something turns up. One or two straws are in the wind, but none, as yet, secured.
“You know, Paula, you could be getting Toby wrong. O.K. – so he’s selfish but I’m sure he has a very genuine love for you.”
Paula turns to look at him with an expression of undisguised astonishment.
“You’re a part of Framleigh,” Greg goes on, with a sigh. “I can’t be responsible for destroying a very real and creative relationship. I mean you and Framleigh as well as you and Toby.”
“It sounds as though I’m a bit of furniture,” says Paula with dissatisfaction.
“Toby has a deeply recessive personality. He’s into self-consideration but he’s still a very worthwhile person. He needs you.”
Paula gives him another look of surprise; what he says is disconcerting not so much because of content (though that is, too) but because she has never before heard him give this kind of reflective attention to anyone other than himself. She says “Yes, well … We’ll see.”
Greg pats her thigh again. “Attagirl.”
Kevin sidles into the Framleigh kitchen, in which people bustle. There are rather too many people, bumping into each other and chattering; the atmosphere is a little heady but Kevin does not notice this since all he is interested in is whether Jason is around or not. He is fascinated by Jason, who is more fun to play with than anyone else though also worrying. When Kevin is with Jason the world, sometimes, rocks a little.
He finds Jason and says, “What shall we do?” Jason ponders and decides that they will go down to the village and buy something to eat at the shop. Kevin casts his mind over his financial resources and works out that he has fifteen pence left of this week’s pocket money. It is only when they are half way across the park that Jason thinks to dive in his jeans pocket and finds he has only two pence. They are distracted, however, from consideration of this problem by the sight of a rabbit, which they chase whooping to a ditch where it vanishes. At this point Kevin, struck by a thought, says “What ’ud we have done if we’d got it?”
“We’d have kept it for a pet.”
Kevin is silent for a moment. He is a person dogged by reality. He says, “My dad ’ud have killed it and ate it”.
Jason looks surprised and indeed a trifle shocked. “That’s stupid.”
Kevin frowns, trying to work this out.
At the shop, Kevin buys a Mars Bar. Jason, restricted in his choice, scrutinizes the trays of gob-stoppers, aniseed balls, lollies, mints and jelly babies in child-high trays along the front of the till. Above him, the shop lady serves another customer.
Jason, with a deft snatch, takes four gob-stoppers and pops them in his jeans pocket.
Kevin experiences a cold thrill in his stomach. He looks nervously upwards; the shop lady is still busy with till and customer. Jason is once more examining the trays of sweets.
The customer goes. Jason beams upon the shop lady and says can he have an aniseed ball please. The shop lady says of course you can my love. She beams back at Jason; two pence and an aniseed ball change hands.
Outside, Kevin says “You didn’t ought to have done that. That’s stealing.”
“She didn’t see,” says Jason. He pulls a gob-stopper from his pocket, offers it. “Here you are.”
Kevin hovers, hesitates, flounders. He takes the gob-stopper. “But it’s stealing if she’s seen you or not.”
Jason sucks and reflects. “She’s got lots of them.”
Kevin gropes for an answer. At last he replies, “You can’t just take things off of other people.”
“But I wanted some,” says Jason reasonably, “and I’d only got two pence.”
Kevin gropes again. His mother prompts. “You can’t always have what you want.”
Jason, jovial, wallops Kevin across the back. “S’ all right if you only do it sometimes.”
Kevin, wildly confused, puts the gob-stopper in his mouth and then spits it out. It is a flavour he doesn’t like. “The police could get you and put you in prison.”
Jason, for an instant, is disconcerted. Then he says, “I’d escape, wouldn’t I? I’d get over the wall with a rope.”
Kevin, defeated, is silent. He wants, suddenly, the basic certainties. He announces, “I’m going back to our house.” “O.K.” says Jason equably.
The small figures separate, at the cross-roads; Kevin to go to a cramped kitchen in which his mother will presently accuse him of getting under her feet, Jason to the perplexing freedoms of Framleigh. Neither looks back; each, almost instantly, forgets the other.
The course members, meanwhile, have assessed and discussed the domestic situation and taken action. It is agreed that in the interests of all, not least themselves, something will have to be done; reason suggests self-help. Keith Harrap draws up a rota: so many people to organize each meal, so many to lay tables, so many to wash up. Most – especially the younger members of the party – consider all this something of a lark. Honestly, says Jean Simpson, wait till I tell my husband, it’s the bohemian life all right, isn’t it? Sue says actually you’d feel a bit let down in a place like this if everything did run smoothly, wouldn’t you? I mean, things being predictable all the time is so ordinary, that’s what we’re here to get away from. She looks over Keith’s shoulder to see if by any chance she will be in the same duty group as Toby. But Keith, after some silent reflection, has left both Toby’s and Paula’s names off the lists. He could not say in so many words why he has done this, and hopes no one will draw attention to the matter; it just seemed, somehow, lèse-majesté – you simply could not see Toby washing a dish and Keith does not want Paula diminished by such activities. Happily, no one appears to notice.
The group responsible for getting lunch hasten to the kitchen to see what resources they have to draw upon. It is a quarter to ten and everyone is due on the terrace at ten to start the morning’s activities. As it is, they will have to cut short their studio sessions in order to give themselves time to prepare the meal.
The kitchen, now, is tidy but the larder is unpromising. There is plenty of bread, and butter (though the butter is in fact margarine, as one or two people had already expected); spaghetti and packet soups and a fair amount of cheese and tinned stuff of one kind and another. The freezer yields a block of mince and a mass of stewing steak, which are taken out for later on. Eggs. Potatoes. Onions. The red-haired teacher, who has had experience of school camping trips, does some swift calculations and proposes a sensible and indeed tasty-sounding menu. Tasks are allocated for later, and the kitchen searched for things that will be required: pans, implements. While they are doing this they observe, through the window, Toby, Greg and Paula in the garden; Greg and Paula sit on a bench beside the path, Toby stands looking down, with that transitory stance he always has, as though he were only tenuously present, already half-departed for some more pressing and personal business. And indeed as they look he goes; whereupon Greg lays a hand upon Paula’s thigh and the watchers, embarrassed, snap their gaze away, all together, and bustle once more
in search of a tin-opener.
“Here we are,” says the teacher, “not a marvellous specimen, but it’ll do. Of course I imagine people like that are more relaxed in, well, in relationships, that sort of thing, than, than …”
“Than people like us?” says Keith, sharply. He, too, has seen the hand on thigh and has mixed feelings, none of them agreeable.
“But are Toby and Paula married?” asks Tessa. “I mean, nobody seems to know.”
Keith, silent, slams potatoes into the sink. Tessa goes on to say that personally she thinks everyone should be creative in their lives whether they’re artists or not and that means relating to other people in a creative way apart from anything else. She says this a little doubtfully since it is a theory heard for the first time last night from Bob, whose large confident relating arm was around her at the time. The teacher, who is old enough to be Tessa’s mother, shoots her a suspicious glance and says well, I daresay, but up to a point. At which Tessa giggles and says you sound like my mum, which does not endear her to the teacher.
Keith, the irony of whose original remark has escaped everyone, is driven by exasperation to point out that he does not actually suppose Toby, Paula etc. to be a species apart. It’s their life-style merely that’s different, most of the rest of us have drives and emotions and impulses. The feel of the potatoes swirling in muddy water and the brisk domestic conversation of the teacher have pitched him back to his own Dulwich life-style, which he came here to get a break from. And indeed at this point Jason arrives at his side, one cheek ballooned out by a gob-stopper, and begins thickly to ask boring and unanswerable questions, bringing to mind Keith’s own children who he dearly loves but at times would gladly strangle. Children he had not reckoned with, here. He dries his hands on a grubby dishcloth and goes.
Next to Nature, Art Page 5