by Ursula Bloom
She talked about her home in California, the beauty of the sunshine there, and the blueness of the sky. He knew that one day he’d go there, and perhaps with her. Hollywood wasn’t much, she insisted, and reeled off a lot of jargon which left him gasping. Then she kissed him again, warmly, as though she did not know how it went to his head, as though she were just a child amusing herself with a toy.
They walked home later, and on the Saturday she took him out in her car. Men ran after her, she told him, they were always pursuing her, and she hated it. She liked to do her own choosing, she wouldn’t be chivvied. He was jealous at the thought of other men, he hated to hear and yet asked her for further details.
‘Did you kiss them all?’ he inquired at last, and knew that this was vital.
‘What a babe it is!’ was her reply. A maddening one.
They quarrelled then; he wasn’t a babe, he was a man, and he wanted her to know it. He talked quickly, and the words ran away with him because he was so anxious to impress upon her that he was quite old really, and that this was not his first affair at all. There had been a girl only last summer, he said, as though this sort of thing often happened to him. But of course nothing like this had ever been before really. He knew as he talked that he had got to impress her and he knew that he failed.
They parted good friends, but he went home miserable. How cruel life was, how terribly hard to live! He oughtn’t to have told her about a girl last summer, because Muriel hadn’t been like that at all. Nothing had ever been like this affair with Wynne. Nor could be again. Should he write and tell her how dreadful he was feeling about it? Or should he go round first thing in the morning to see her? He shirked that, because supposing that she wouldn’t see him? He did not think that he could bear that. Arriving at no definite decision on the right course to pursue, he could not sleep for the second night.
He didn’t write and he didn’t go round, because he was afraid. He saw her in church next morning, sitting across the other side of the aisle, and he caught her eye in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer, when he ought to have been concerned only with his trespasses. She glanced at him, over the top of her little gloved hands, and he saw that she was all in black, with diamanté stars on those gloves, and her eyes were starlit to match. The eyes looked at him and laughed. He half smiled, not daring to believe that she meant it, just hoping, and she reflected that smile radiantly. It was all right. Everything was all right. How grand life was! It hadn’t been cruel at all, it hadn’t been hard. All that was over and now it was a beautiful world. Jesus Christ had risen to-day, he sung, and his heart rose with it.
He must say something on the Monday, because it was quite plain that the affair could not go on this way, and on Tuesday his father would be home and Wynne would be off to visit other relations. If he let her go and nothing was said, he would never feel the same again. He’d got to say something definite. Sunday had been entrancing. He had gone to tea with the Longs, and afterwards Alfred and Ada had gone pottering down the road to see some friends, and Hugo and Wynne went out into the garden, she with a little mink wrap, looking soft and kittenish. She was lovely to him. She let him hold her hand, and kiss her in that shy way of his. Time flew. He had no idea what they talked about, only that it was absorbingly interesting, and all the while his heart made a noise, and he knew that he was most desperately in love. It wasn’t something that he could uproot, it wasn’t something that he could tear up and out of himself, because it actually was himself.
He must say something definite on the Monday, because this would be the last chance that he would have. For a third night he lay awake planning it, and in the morning he was wan, with dark rings round his eyes from lack of sleep. He had been in the tea office such a short time, as he kept telling himself, but of course the day would come when the business would be his. He would inherit it, and although his father kept arguing that tea was doing badly, the income that it afforded them was a very comfortable one. A man could marry on it. His mind forged ahead and he became very serious over it, far more serious than if he had been a grown man. He had prospects. Lynton Lodge would be his, the office, everything; his father had no one else to leave it to, and James Blair was not a strong man at all.
Yes, he must speak to Wynne on the Monday.
He did speak to her.
‘I’ve got something to say to you,’ he said, when she called for him in the car, ‘come in here, please,’ and he took her into the drawing-room. It was looking less Edwardian than usual, for the green glass bowls were full of daffodils, and there were new pale green cushions which matched the daffodil leaves.
‘You look pretty serious?’
‘I feel it. I want to talk to you about us,’ and he shut the door.
She went over to the fireplace and stood there, tapping a cigarette on the jade lid of her case. ‘So what?’ she said.
He’d never forget the way that she looked in her off-white suit, with the jade facings, and the little jade cap pulled over her eyes. She was the first woman who had had it in her power to stir his imagination in this particular way, and although he refused to admit it, she had the most volcanic effect on him.
‘You know that I’ve fallen in love with you?’
‘That’s swell!’
‘No, it isn’t, it’s made me feel awful. To-morrow I go back to work, and you go away. Wynne, we can’t part like this. I tell you, you’ve got to listen to me, I’m most terribly in love with you.’
She put out a hand and touched his cheek with a finger, but it was the playful gesture of a woman amusing a fat baby. ‘Grand,’ she said, only it was unreal.
‘I’m just nothing now, nobody, but one day the tea office will be mine, and this place too; then I shall be able to marry.’
She stood laughing a little, her eyes bright, her hips so slim, and the jade case still gleaming in her hand. ‘Don’t be so dumb,’ she said. ‘Why, I’m older than you, lots older in years, worlds older in wisdom. This is nothing. You’d got to the falling-in-love stage, and I happened along. That’s all there is to it.’
‘But, Wynne, what do you feel for me?’ He went closer, pinning her arms with his hands to look into her face. His own was flushed and anxious.
‘You’re swell, but I’m not taking the works.’
‘Talk English, Wynne. Oh, Wynne, I do love you so much.’
‘Wow! That’s nothing. By this time to-morrow you’ll have forgotten.’
‘I shan’t.’ It was dreadful that she wouldn’t believe him, because he knew how true it was. The memory of this moment would last his whole life, it wasn’t something that he could forget. He pressed closer, and kissed her. Now, because he was distressed, he touched her mouth. The very fact that he could do it stupefied him, and also that he could kiss her again, forcefully, and meaning it.
‘Don’t,’ she said sharply and pushed him away, ‘you’re getting into my hair.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just that you’re getting into my hair. You put my back up. The thing’s over. This nonsense about marriage isn’t good enough. All I wanted was an affair for the week-end, and I guess I got it.’
‘All you wanted ‒’ His eyes were dry and unreal, his mouth too. He hardly knew himself.
‘Shucks! You don’t expect me to languish doing nothing with those two old fossils of an uncle and aunt? You were the only young thing here, the only green thing ‒’ Again she laughed.
‘You can’t mean it?’
Women should be good, and beautiful, and kind, and she was beautiful, but not good, and certainly not kind. He knew it now and did not think that he could bear it. The veil had fallen; she was lovely still, but like a potent drink that has merely the capacity to make a man drunk but not to give him reality. There was something too brilliant about her eyes, too sharp about her mouth.
‘What am I going to do?’ he asked. ‘When people love like we do, they have to get married. I never thought of anything else. I never supposed ‒’ He could not f
ind the words with which to express his feelings.
‘Well, that’s that.’ She picked up the jade case, and pushed it down into her bag. She gave him one look ‒ he did not know whether it was an invitation or a refusal, it was as vague as that ‒ then she marched out of the room, and he saw her go out of the gate and get into her car. Pride held him back from rushing after her. He’d never see her again! He knew it. Oh, God! how would he ever bear it?
Four
Gradually Hugo got over the affair of Wynne Morgan, but the scar stayed for years. Youth takes its emotions very seriously, he had flung himself whole-heartedly into what he had believed to be his big romance. At first he could not believe that she had openly laughed at him; she was doing it to shield somebody else, he thought. He made the usual romantic excuses for her, he believed that he had been to blame in some way, but not Wynne. Never Wynne.
Unfortunately she talked; she was one of those gas-bag women who collect men as entomologists collect butterflies, sucking the life out of them, and spiking them through with a pin and exhibiting them in a collection, bragging about them. James Blair got to hear of it.
‘So, you young fool, you wore your heart on your sleeve and the daws pecked at it,’ he said. ‘I told you to let women alone. That sort of damned nonsense doesn’t work.’
‘Don’t let’s talk of it, please, father.’
‘Squeamish? Not much good now. She traded on your greenness, and you thought you were clever, didn’t you? How she must have laughed!’
He gashed open the scar and rubbed salt into it, satisfying some sadistic appetite within himself. He would not let Hugo forget.
The summer came, and the holiday, and Hugo went down to Hindhead again, on his cycle. James Blair did not care where the boy went, as long as he cost little, and left the place quiet. ‘Go where you please,’ he said, ‘but remember that at the moment I’m paying, and I won’t have my good money wasted.’
Hugo took his time cycling south, and he was lucky in that the weather was good, and England was at its loveliest. This time he benefited by his last experience and gave London a wide berth, coming into Berkshire through the green Thames valley, and crossing into Surrey. He slept one night in Berkshire, with the Thames only just across the road, at a little fishing inn, whose public bar was hoary with tall stories. He sat in a corner listening to the older men talking well into the night, and rode on next day to break his tour in the neighbourhood of Guildford, but being careful to avoid the town.
As he neared Hindhead with the noon of the third day, he knew that he was becoming very excited at the thought of meeting Muriel again. The Wynne Morgan affair still had the power to hurt him, but now perhaps more because he knew that he had been a fool, than because he had been in love.
He cycled towards the farm, and saw it as before, with the trees in front of it, and the field of wheat alongside. It was tantalising. He went up the broken lane, with the strong sweet scent of the elderberries in their creamy blossom, and he saw the house itself. The door was open and the morning glory wreathed it; the yard beside the low wall was much the same, with a cow chewing the cud and a calf nuzzling at her udders; a gaggle of geese padded towards the pond, and beyond he could see the barn, with the loft window open, just as it had been last time.
His pulses quickened.
He propped the bicycle against the wall, setting the pedal along a trough where the fowls were slaking their thirst, raising beaks and agonised eyes to heaven as they drank. It was one of those sudden very hot days, with the far hills faded into a haze of amethyst, and the swallows flying high. He tapped at the door, waiting for a moment, then the woman came. He did not recognise her, but then he had not supposed that he would.
‘What do you want?’ she asked.
‘You don’t remember me? You gave me a shake-down in the hay loft last year. How’s Muriel?’
‘There now, and I’d quite forgotten you. Of course. You’re the lad who stayed the night and got drunk on the beer. Oh yes, I remember. Come in.’
He followed her into the kitchen, which had not changed. The furry cactus still shouldered the geraniums on the shelf, and there was the fire stoked up for the dinner, and the hams swinging in their dark smoky bags from the roof.
She said, ‘Muriel’s away, gone for a holiday to her auntie’s in the New Forest. Ringwood way. She’ll be that sorry to have missed you.’
Suddenly he knew that he was bitterly disappointed, and how much he had looked forward to seeing her again. It wasn’t passionate love, as it had been with Wynne; it was nothing wildly emotional, but a strong friendliness; he did not know what to say.
‘We’ve nobody staying here now, so if you want a night’s lodging the bedroom’s free.’
The bedroom wasn’t the same thing. It was whitewashed, with ill-matching furniture, and a patchwork quilt spread on the bedstead with its iron rails trimmed with yellow brass daisies. He couldn’t bear that and he made excuses. ‘I’m only passing through but thought that I must look you up. I’ve to be getting along,’ and then because an idea was newly born in his mind, ‘I’m on my way to the New Forest too, maybe I’ll see Muriel.’
‘It’s so nice there, she says.’
‘I’m sure of it.’
‘Stay and have a mite of dinner? My husband’ll be back in ten minutes, and there’s some pork chops with apple; they’re good.’ And then, because she had noticed his uncertainty, ‘He won’t try to make you tight this time.’
‘Thank you very much, I’d like to stay.’
‘Well, you sit down and rest a bit. You mustn’t mind if I get on with my cooking.’
‘Not at all. I’ll go out to the pump and have a wash. Perhaps I could look at the loft?’
‘Of course.’
He went out to the trough with the rusty pink paint faded from red, and he marked the place where Muriel had written up his address; it was as clear as last year when she had written it down. He wondered if she had ever looked at it, or if she had grown tired of him, or if, like Wynne Morgan, she had thought him green and callow. Then he knew it couldn’t be so.
He went into the coach-house with the remembered earth scent, and up the ladder to the loft; it was the same with the pungency of stored apples from next door, and this year’s hay, with its abundant newness, the harvested glory of the summer. He sat by the window where he had lain last time, feeling so ill. There were the firs, their pink trunks shining in the sunshine, looking like the almost indecent flesh of apes; their dark boughs spread against the sky. It was good to be back here, but disappointing that Muriel should be away.
He brought out his map, because now he knew that he would go to the New Forest, he had got to see Muriel whatever else happened. He marked out the route laboriously, with a stub of pencil; it shouldn’t take so long really. He put a circle round Ringwood, and made notes of the places, then folded the map carefully and pushed it back into his pocket. He got up. He took a last look at the loft and knew that there amongst the hay there was a harvest of memories which he would carry with him all his life. He might never see it again, but it would always be with him, always part of him.
Then he went down to dinner.
The farmer was as morose as before, hardly speaking, but sitting dourly, shovelling the food into his mouth. It was the woman who accepted him as an old friend. She gave him Muriel’s address readily enough, and hoped they’d meet. Muriel had talked about him a good deal, she said, and had been very pleased with the beauty of the Christmas card that he had sent to her.
Hugo left immediately after dinner, in the heat of the day, and he set his course for the Forest. Somehow he did not think that he would ever go back to the farm.
He spent that night at a friendly village, where the postmistress gave him a bed, and an enormous breakfast which she fussed over because he could not eat it all. He liked country folk with their kind hearts. He liked staying in a cottage rather than an inn, because inns were stuffy and smoky, and so noisy at night, and they had
not the same family ties. Having no family, Hugo ached to be admitted into a family circle. He was sensitive, quick to respond to atmosphere, chameleon-like in the way that he responded to backgrounds, and a home made all the difference to him.
He cycled most of the next day and came to the region of Ringwood by supper time. He had little idea where the actual village was, having been misdirected by a hedger and ditcher, who was assailing a hedge which bore pathetic evidence of his previous assaults. He was far more anxious to impress upon Hugo his prowess as a weather prophet, than as a scout. He said, ‘Thaird right,’ when he meant third left. Hugo was discovering that country folk were ill-acquainted with rights and lefts, and this was not the first time such a thing had happened to him.
The night was hot, with a suspicion of thunder, and a heavy morose cloud coming from the direction of Romsey. He found himself nearer to his destination than he had thought, and doubling up, took the last mile quickly. It was a long low village, with a wide street and thatched houses, with stucco fronts, and leafy with all the tender verdure of the forest.
The farm had the attractive name of ‘Jasmine Nest’, but when he reached it, he saw that it was quite the ugliest house for miles, brick red, of doll’s house architecture, too high, too square, too formal, and built in the latter part of Victoria’s reign when proof positive existed of a plague which carried off any architects there might have been. He turned in at the gate. The farmyard was well away from the house, screened off as though they were ashamed of it. There were none of the farm scents, nor had it the personality of a farm. He walked between pergolas weighed down with Dorothy Perkins’, too cerise, too ragged. Muriel’s aunt must be town bred, he thought, because there were sunblinds, and a curtain across the door to save the paint from blistering, and curtains looped at the windows like the hair from a girl’s centre parting.
