What did you say?'
'I said we'd order them at once by telephone and that
you'd bring them out to her personally as soon as they
arrived.'
'Good girl! Did she ask who you were?'
'Oh, naturally. We had quite a little chat.'
She kissed me quickly on the cheek, took off the shopcoat
and hung it on the back of the door.
'Now I'm going out to find some lunch and do the shopping.
You can give me some housekeeping money if you
like -'
195
'Well, that's fine, Mrs Taswell. Thank you very much for
looking after everything so well. By the way, here's your
money -'
'Oh, that doesn't matter, Mr Desland. That's quite immaterial.
You shouldn't have bothered in the least.' (I knew
she must have been short.) 'I can perfectly well manage, you
know -'
'No, here you are. I've added a little extra -'
'I've told you before, Mr Desland, I shall only put it in the
collection -'
'Well, that's up to you. I suppose Mr Hatchett-'
'And about the mouse-trap, Mr Desland -'
'Oh, yes: yes. I'll get one, don't you bother any more
about it. By the way, my wife's here; she's talking to Deirdre
at the moment. She very much wants to meet you. I wonder,
would you care to go down and make her feel at home for a
few minutes?'
'Well, if you wish me to, Mr Desland, of course.'
I proceeded to telephone Mr Hatchett, who was ruffled,
completely nonplussed by the inexplicable Mrs Taswell but
finally more or less mollified, and assured him that his cheque
was in the post. (It wasn't, of course, but it would darned
well have to be before close of play.) I then descended into
the depths of Mrs Taswell's 'In' tray, shuddering at every
step, and soon became so much absorbed that I even forgot
about Kathe.
Towards the end of the morning I had dealt with the more
urgent correspondence, checked the turnover and holdings
of most of our non-antique stock, given Mrs Taswell a list
of items for orders to wholesalers and, after a quick glance
through such catalogues and notices of sales as had arrived
while I had been away, planned my programme for the next
three weeks. Shortage of capital was going to be the principal
problem. Since it was Saturday I could not talk to the bank,
but I had already worked out that I must be even lower
than I had feared. I would have to raise a loan (and find the
interest) or else sell some pieces from my private collection.
Either prospect was depressing, and I postponed a decision
194
until next week. Flick's detached opinion was likely to be
helpful: it often had been in the past.
At least I could hear customers coming and going with
pleasing frequency, and supposed, since she had not come
to ask for my help or Mrs Taswell's, that Deirdre must be
coping with them. I was just thinking of knocking off for an
early lunch when Kathe strolled into the office, wearing a
'Desland' shop-coat and drying her wet hands on a sheet of
tissue.
'Cor, no towel in the loo, Mistralan?' she said happily. 'I
bet it's different at Bing & Gr0ndahl.'
'Kathe! Whatever have you been up to?'
'Working, of course. This coat looks rather professional,
don't you think? I've sold twelve white plates, two china dogs
and an ashtray made to look like a bird's nest.'
'You never?'
'But of course. Oh, yes, and there's been one person someone
called Lady Alice - er -'
'Mendip?'
'Yes, that's right.'
'I know her; lives out at Cold Ash. She's hooked on modern
Copenhagen - I hooked her myself. She knows quite a
bit about it now. Nice old girl. What did she want?'
'She wanted us to get her some Danish pieces by Hans
Tegner - the Blind Man's Buff set. I pretended I knew all
about it.'
'Well, we can get them all right, but it's going to cost her.
What did you say?'
'I said we'd order them at once by telephone and that
you'd bring them out to her personally as soon as they
arrived.'
'Good girl! Did she ask who you were?'
'Oh, naturally. We had quite a little chat.'
She kissed me quickly on the cheek, took off the shopcoat
and hung it on the back of the door.
'Now I'm going out to find some lunch and do the shopping.
You can give me some housekeeping money if you
like -'
195
'Hang on five minutes and I'll come with you.'
'Oh, no, darling, I think better not. One of us should be
here, in case of more Lady Alices, don't you think? I won't
be long, promise.' And she was gone.
'Well,' I said to Mrs Taswell, 'it looks as though she may
be going to be quite a help to us, don't you think?'
'Oh, certainly, Mr Desland; and of course when people get
married we always hope they're going to be very happy,
don't we?'
I took a stroll down the passage to find Deirdre and tell
her I'd take over in the shop while she went out for lunch.
'Hope you don't mind me mentionin' it, Mistralan, but I do
like your young lady - that's to say, your wife. She seems
ever s' nice. I'm goin' to tell Dad if the Germans are all
like that I don't see what we was fightin' 'em for.'
'I shouldn't say that, Deirdre - that'll only annoy him before
he's met her. But I'm very glad you get on well together.'
'She bin askin' me questions all mornin' 'bout the china
- much as I could do to answer some of 'em an' all. Real
keen, ent she? Oh, and when Lady Mendip come in, you
could see she was very struck on 'er. "Well," she says to
'er, "I think Mr Desland's a very lucky man," she says -'
'Oh, splendid. Well, you'd better pop off for lunch now,
Deirdre. I'll carry on for an hour till you get back.'
'She was on tellin' me 'bout that Meissen factory in Germany,
where they makes all the Dresden porcelain an' that.
'Twas a king of Poland, she says, as started that, best part
of three 'undred year ago.'
'That's right. Augustus the Strong.'
'Ah, that's what she called 'im.' Deirdre paused, and then
added with relish, ' 'E seems t'ave bin a bit of a lad, be all
accounts.'
'The V. & A. in London have got a porcelain goat that used
to belong to him. It's life-size, the largest porcelain figure
ever fired. Rather suitable, I've always thought.'
At half-past three Kathe collected her parcels together and
said, 'I'm going home now, Alan, to cook the dinner. Beef
goulash.'
196
'But how, darling, without the car?'
'There's a bus from the Wharf, that's how - I found out and
I've got less than fifteen minutes to catch it. When will
you be back? I'll be all ready to go to Tony Redwood's, if
you can tell me what time we're going. The goulash'll take
about two-and-a-half hours, so it can go on simmering by
itself and be done when we get
back from Tony's. Then I'll
do Pfannkuchen mil Zitrone. Nice?'
'Sounds marvellous. Are you sure you want to be bothered
to go to Tony's? It was only a very casual invitation, you
know.'
'Of course I want to!' answered Kathe in a tone of surprise.
'I like him.' She took a glance into Mrs Taswell's
looking-glass on the office wall and then said, 'And I believe
he likes me.'
17
IN her arms I was growing, increasing, reaching an inner
stature I had never known. The canny deliberation, like a
farmer driving a bargain - the pondering to impose form
upon or to pluck a meaning from the rainbow or the rose these
were falling, melting away from me, nightly under the
simple stars as I rode to sleep, the horses flashing into the
dark. Kathe seldom or never wasted words by talking in any
serious way about love-making. Humans have devised ways
of flying and accordingly discuss the mechanics. With swallows
it is otherwise. And since swallows know nothing of
technique, it never shows, never obtrudes upon their intent,
joyous courses, from the day they leave the nest till their
brightness falls from the air. For her, though there could be
variation, there could be no growth.
Variation - it was a continual astonishment to me. There
was change like the light throughout a summer day. Not
talk, I was coming to realize, not clothes, not cooking or
playing the piano, but making love was the way in which
197
Kathe expressed her feelings and reciprocated with the inexhaustible
world. Sometimes her love-making was grave
and deliberate - never detached or distant, indeed, but
passionately majestic - like Hera in the bed of Zeus. The
world is a great matter, and so is wedlock. Sometimes she
seemed a milkmaid in the hay. Play is a great matter, the
rightful complement of work, for if work fills bellies, play
fills cradles as well. And she could be lewd, a sow in heat
grunting under the boar. Appetite is the headspring, and 'I
reckon the One above made pigs an' all' Jack Cain once retorted
sharply when I, a small boy in gum-boots helping to
muck out the sty at the bottom of his garden, complained of
the sucking, viscous mud. It is foolish to say that a wife's
abilities should include those of a whore, for whores give
short weight, cold-hearted and rapacious. But mistress she
comprised, and mare, and the girl chance-met at the shearing;
and clothed in her flesh they, like any natural and unthinking
creature - a hovering dragon-fly, or a kitten chasing
leaves - expressed both dignity and joy.
For me, there was coming to be the act of creation. A
true player has an air of authority about his game, sport
though it may be. I was learning to make love. And as with
the long swims of my boyhood, when it had been made,
sometimes it seemed almost tangible; as though, having
given all, I lay down beside it, fulfilled and spent, like Benvenuto
Cellini beside the Perseus, household vessels melted,
furniture burnt and a good job too.
Tony was delighted to see us and to hear about our wanderings
in Florida. I had brought him two bottles of a Southern
Bourbon (called 'Rebel Yell') and we made mint juleps
and drank them in the garden. Kathe, in her stockinged feet,
made a valiant effort for twenty minutes to learn singlewicket
cricket from little torn (who had a terrible cross-bat)
and then resigned and sat on the grass, talking to Freda
about shops in Newbury. Later, when Freda had taken torn
indoors for bath and bed, our conversation turned to travel
in Europe and the great art galleries. Tony and I spoke of the
198
Louvre, the Jeu de Paume and the Uffizi. At length Kathe
broke in,
'You mean to say, darling, that when you visited the
Meissen factory you never went to see the gallery at Dresden?'
'No, I'm afraid not. My time was so limited, you see.'
'Have they got some good stuff there?' asked Tony.
'Oh, yes, wonderful things! Raphael's Madonna - San
Sisto, I think they call it - and another by Holbein. And oh,
well - Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens. Oh, and there's a
simply lovely Mary Magdalene by Correggio.'
'I bet she's been painted more than any other saint,' I
said. 'It's pure box-office. They've been sentimentalizing that
lady any time these five hundred years.'
'Sentimentalizing?' said Kathe. 'Why, whatever do you
mean, Alan? Come on, Tony, here's something you and I can
agree on at last. Stand up and defend Mary Magdalene!'
'Well, I can see what Alan's getting at,' answered Tony,
'and I'm deploring it good and hard, but I'm afraid I've got
to concede him the sentimentalizing, anyway.'
'I don't see why you're deploring,' I said. 'It's about time
somebody nailed it. There are two separate inaccuracies,
really. First of all, the gospels don't say that the woman
who anointed Christ's feet in Simon's house was Mary Magdalene
-'
'Perfectly true.'
'Not only that, but they don't say or even suggest that the
sins she felt so sorry for were sexual, or that she'd been of
loose life, or anything like that at all. St Luke just says "a
woman which was a sinner". And yet you can see her little
statue over the College gate at Magdalen, with her pot of
ointment - been there nearly five centuries now - a beautiful
young girl with long hair.'
'Well, you're right, of course,' said Tony, 'though actually
she'd have to have had long hair to wipe Christ's feet, if you
come to think of it.'
'So you are backing him up, Tony,' said Kathe.
'No-o,' replied Tony reflectively. 'Actually, I'm not at all
sure that I am. You see, I think the popular legend of Mary
199
Magdalene's quite important. It's one of these accretions like
Joachim and Anna, or the whole Catholic thing about
the Virgin, who actually gets very little space in the gospels.
Accretions ought to be taken seriously, because they originate
from people's spiritual needs; or their spiritual demands,
anyway. I mean, there's a demand, so it gets supplied
by a legend, which people come to accept. "If God didn't
exist, it would be necessary to invent Him," and all that.
Religion isn't history, though far too many clergymen seem
to think it is. Spiritual truth's beyond history.'
'What's the demand with Mary Magdalene, then?' asked
Kathe.
'Well, I suppose the idea of Christ offering forgiveness to
girls who get in a mess sexually. After all, so many always
have and always will. For the matter of that, the story of
Christ forgiving the woman taken in adultery - that's now
widely thought to be an addition to St John. And yet it's
about the most well-known and popular of all the stories
about Christ. Same thing - it makes a strong appeal, you
see.'
'People who want to destroy th
e past,' said Kathe. 'Oh,
there must be so many of those! If Christ was alive today,
d'you think He'd maintain that sex without marriage was
wrong?'
'Well,' replied Tony, 'I think His line would be the same
as it always has been - that it's understandable and forgivable,
but wrong to the extent that it's less than the best.
Actually, that follows automatically from acceptance of the
rest of His doctrine. It's all of a piece. One thing flows from
another, you know.'
'Surely,' I said, 'with the Mary Magdalene legend - that is,
assuming for the sake of argument that she had been a
prostitute - the question of emotional feeling comes into it.
Setting aside the sanctity of marriage, it's always been pretty
generally agreed, even by non-religious people, that it's
rather grubby and contemptible to use sex for money or
material gain, without any real warmth or feeling. I suppose
the point of the story is that when the woman - I won't
call her Mary Magdalene! - got the message, what she really
200
discovered was the difference between the wrong notion of
sex and the right notion.'
'Do you think any sin can be forgiven?' asked Kathe suddenly.
'Sure,' said Tony, 'always provided people can forgive
themselves. That's what's not generally understood. Selfforgiveness
is essential, and it can be very hard to forgive
yourself. Sometimes impossible; like Lady Macbeth.'
'Oh, that's the trouble with the English; they always start
bringing in Shakespeare! What's a poor German girl to do?'
'Sorry. I only meant that forgetting's not forgiving. The
thing about Lady Macbeth was that she thought she could
put what she'd done out of her mind, but found she
couldn't. Her condemnation came entirely from herself - it
didn't come from anybody else.'
torn, barefoot, came running out on the lawn in his
pyjamas, shouting, 'Look, Mrs Desland, look! I can turn a
cartwheel!' He started, but fell over, narrowly missing a
flowerbed.
'You need some more practice, my lad,' said Kathe, picking
him up.
' 'Bet you can't, anyway,' retorted torn cheekily, with a
touch of mortification.
Kathe kissed him on both cheeks. 'You shouldn't say
things like that when I've had two mint juleps. Just for that
I'm going to show you.'
Thereupon she kicked off her shoes and turned three perfect
cartwheels across the grass. Her skirt fell over her head
and got caught in her hair, and she stood up, putting herself
to rights and laughing as Torn danced delightedly round her,
shouting, 'Mummy! Mummy! Mrs Desland can turn cartwheels!
Come and look!'
'When you can do a proper one for me, I'll do you another,'
said Kathe. 'Come on, I'll carry you upstairs if you
like.'
Torn hung back. 'Don't want to.'
'Good heavens, bed's the nicest place in the world,' said
Kathe, picking him up for the second time. 'You must be
crazy not to want to go there! Come on, and on the way I'll
201
tell you about Fundevogel, right? Well, now, once upon a
time -'
That night, after we had made love, she fell asleep in a
few minutes, her hand, which had been clasping mine, loosing
its hold and falling on the sheet as gently as a leaf on a
lawn.
I lay awake for some time, reflecting. It seemed to me that
I now had a plain clue to the cause of Kathe's trouble over
the wedding. Clearly, she was more sensitive and scrupulous
than one might have supposed; and Tony, in his counsel, had
been wiser than I had given him credit for. I could only wait
and see what this extraordinary girl - this marvellous, unpredictable
mixture of exhibitionism and secrecy - might
later disclose. It wouldn't affect me, whatever it was. I'd go
to the farthest shore, turn my life upside down for her.
'Come on,' I said mentally to God, 'try me! Make it something
big! My love's equal to anything!' But no doubt, I
thought, like most things in their past that people feel
ashamed of, it would turn out to be something perfectly forgivable
by any right-minded person. Anyway, she'd find me
ready and waiting as soon as she got around to telling me.
Then, perhaps, we could be married by Tony.
Next morning, waking early to the sound of a thrush in
the silver birch on the lawn, I slipped out of bed without disturbing
her, left a note on the dressing-table and went to
seven o'clock Holy Communion. Presumably she wouldn't
want to go to church later in the day, and I certainly wasn't
going to suggest it to her. But after these weeks away I myself
The Girl in a Swing Page 23
