‘Define your terms,’ I say, playing for time like. (I heard a bloke say that once in a pub and I always remembered it.)
Mortimer’s mouth always looks cold, I mean suffering from cold. His lips are very pale. You don’t forget Mortimer’s face.
‘Define your terms,’ I say.
‘Take my word for it,’ he says. ‘That Joyce has seen more pricks than you’ve had hot dinners, Josiah. I bet they could bear witness in Wigan. We’d better be getting back. That old cow will be missing us.’
Simon . . .
THE IDEA OF engaging a gardener was entirely my sister’s. ‘I have been to the Labour Exchange,’ she said, spacing the words out, ‘and I have notified them that a vacancy exists.’ This while I was sociably, and in a cravat, having coffee with her on the terrace, on the first really warm day of the year; suffering, of course, as I always suffer, from the general abrasiveness of her attitudes and remarks, but concealing all offence as I wanted to discuss with her a boy that I had come upon shortly before in the grounds, roaming about at will, claiming to have permission. A boy with a bloody leg.
Before I saw him it was a day like any other. Whenever the weather is at all possible, and I include in that days of light drizzle and gusty days—indeed those jolly blowy days are just the thing—I spend the half hour between nine forty-five and ten fifteen in a certain corner of the grounds, carefully chosen to give me a view, on one side, of the drive for a short way, and on the other, of the little brick bungalow set quite on its own about three hundred yards off in the adjoining field. The bungalow belongs to a farm labourer whose wife, a woman not fat, but possessing generous proportions, is the reason for my stationing myself here so regularly. I wait to watch her sweep the concrete area at the front of the bungalow.
I am wearing my tunnelling suit of course; it is impregnated with clay, and the smell of dry clay rises to my nostrils, an intensely clandestine smell, seeming to contain the sum of all my secretive fevers in this little corner, screened by the hedge on the field side and the road side and protected behind by an abundant laburnum which was planted by my brother-in-law Howard five years ago, shortly before he died. Altogether it is what I call a jolly good hide.
I remain here, standing still, not thinking of anything in particular. It is not silent, these grounds are never silent, not to one who spends as much time in them as I do, but there are no discordant noises. Let us say that it is May. I look up beyond the laburnum, which of course is in flower. It is early enough still for the clouds to have preserved their roseate, nacreous look. High up in the sky I see gulls, the sun elicits flashes from them as they turn. We are only five miles from the sea here. Herring gulls, I name them, since they must be named, but they are too far away to be identified with any certainty, invisible almost until the sunlight bursts on them and then they seem not birds at all but particles of light.
All this time, while I look at the clouds, the gulls, the laburnum flowers, a feeling of apprehension grows in me as if I shall be required to do something beyond my powers. The clay smell of my person seems to intensify. Now, without exactly looking across the field, I know that the woman has come out. How shall I describe the effect on me of her appearance? It is like shedding what is gross, looking deeply into a new element. Six minutes past ten. She is wearing the red dress this morning.
Now I need the binoculars. They are heavy ones, much too heavy; twelve by forty, an excessive magnification; I was too ambitious when I bought them. So heavy that it is impossible for me, with my frail wrists, to hold them still. However I have, in my cunning, cut a hole in the hedge two-thirds of the way up, in which to rest them. I kneel to focus them, quickly, no fumbling now. She is beginning. I am unwilling to miss the smallest of her movements, not the least sketch or adumbration of a gesture would I forgo. Now I have her face before me, distinct to the smallest detail, the dear brown mole on the left cheek, the shiny skin below her eyes. All around her still as ice, the house front, the bushes of the garden, all quite motionless, herself a figure of incessant activity with her little yellow brush. Now begins my familiar torment and ecstasy, the never being able to arrest her, to halt her in any one of the innumerable provocative postures of her body, and the inveterate hope that perhaps she might stop, remain still long enough to be properly seen, dwelt upon; or perhaps repeat one gesture frequently enough, one exact gesture frequently enough for the effect in the end to be static. It would be like a reiterated caress on some intimate part of my body. But it will never happen of course, each of her movements flows into the next for ever and ever.
This morning she begins sweeping from the left hand corner towards the centre, with her back to me. She bends, reaching with the brush to the farthest extent of her arm and the skirt of the red dress rises higher. I see the backs of her legs tauten as she reaches farther forward with the brush; irrepressibly the hope that she may remain thus rises in me, but already her arm has moved, sweeping towards her, and with this her body rises higher, the skirt is lowered some inches, she half turns, completing the movement of the sweeping, and now one leg is somewhat behind the other and bent at the knee so that I see the exact curve of the calf, the flesh of the inner thigh of her left leg, but before this can compose itself for me, it has dissolved into another, feet together, legs straightening, body almost upright then inclined again, facing me now, I see the crown of her head as she stoops, a pale irregular parting not quite in the middle and the loose dress falling away in front, so that I divine for one second the hang of her heavy breasts before her head is lowered farther, blocking my view, and before I can sharpen my excitement on the memory of what I think I have just seen—can it be true that she is not wearing a brassière?—her position has changed again, she has raised her head and I am looking at her thick white throat.
Now she stands upright. She has finished the sweeping and stands still for a moment or two looking out across the field behind the bungalow, which has been sown with wheat, a white-skinned, ample woman with untidy dark-brown hair and a round face and round brown eyes. I think she will be about thirty-five. I do not know her name. She has brought me often, and especially on windy days when I am vouchsafed incidental revelations, to the threshold of intense pleasure, and on occasion I have been enabled, kneeling in my little corner here, with the complicity of the laburnum—what would Howard think, I wonder?—to cross the threshold. I have never been nearer to her than I am now, I do not desire any closer proximity.
She goes back into the bungalow, leaving me with the accustomed feeling of desolation, the accustomed self-disgust. It is ten minutes past ten. I spend several more minutes here, in order to recover poise. Bees clot the laburnum flowers. The clouds are bleaching, no longer pearly, the seagulls have gone. From somewhere deeper in the grounds, towards the house, a yellow-hammer sings the first half of its refrain, then stops. A lazy singer. The binoculars I place in their case, which I strap bandolier-wise across my body. I emerge cautiously from my corner and begin to make my way across the grounds towards where my tunnel begins. I stęp very lightly crossing the drive in order that my feet make no sound on the gravel. The entrance to my tunnel is not more than a dozen yards from the edge of the drive, but I have chosen it with great care, it is screened from view completely by the enormous rhododendrons, indeed it is only by crawling under one of the bushes, right into the heart of it, that the entrance can be reached. . . .
Before leaving the drive I always glance about and pause. It is a measure of caution which has become a habit—on such habits my safety depends. Here on the drive I am part of the world of normality in which I arouse no, or only momentary, speculation, a resident of the house, standing on the gravelled drive of the house, a tall, thin, sharp-featured man, with thin sandy hair. In his late forties one would say. A conspicuous mildness of manner. No one can challenge me. But once having stepped over the tall plumy grasses that border the drive, once having stepped gingerly over, I am subject immediately to suspicion. What can he be doing? He is not garden
ing, a man who is gardening is unmistakable, he assumes an absolute right to be there, his behaviour is never secretive. I who am no gardener must always take care, I must never relax my vigilance. . . .
It was while I was still lingering there, enjoining on myself caution, that I heard it, the sound of clumsy human passage through vegetation. Someone not even attempting stealth. Someone inside the grounds. The realisation of this was so shocking that for some time after I was unable to move. The sounds had come from the direction of the road, not from the interior of the grounds. Between me and them were fifty yards or so of thick shrubbery, a group of birch trees and an ornamental pond. I paused a moment longer summoning resolution, then began to walk as quietly as possible diagonally through the shrubbery, aiming to emerge at the far right of the hedge that borders the road.
I saw him as soon as I emerged from the shrubbery into the open space that adjoins the hedge. A small boy with his blazered back to me, crouching slightly and looking up through the hedge, looking obviously for that local density against the sky that would denote a bird’s nest. Intent on this he had not, it seemed, heard my approach, did not hear now my heavy breathing. He had on grey flannel shorts and his grey stockings had slipped down to his ankles. The whole side of his left leg, below the knee, was messy with blood.
I stood still, just inside the clearing, watching him, attempting to control my breathing, without much success. He seemed so unaware, it was difficult not to feel myself the interloper, he the one there by right. I said at last, not very loudly, ‘What are you doing here?’ The boy immediately straightened and turned. Cropped hair, a blunt puppy head, eyes small, deepset, blue. The side of his face had a shine as though smeared with something sticky, resin, sap, as though he had actually been thrusting his head into the vegetation, his whole head into it. I felt predatory no longer, but invaded, this was alien life. ‘What are you up to?’ I said. ‘Don’t you know that this is private property?’ The round face tightened briefly, almost with a grimace as though the face was too slack, without this preliminary, for speech, and then, instead of speaking, he looked away. ‘I suppose you know,’ I said, ‘that you are trespassing actually?’
I got permission,’ the boy said. He had a husky voice.
‘How can you have got permission?’ I said. ‘You are talking nonsense.’ But a chill of doubt had already invaded me. Audrey, I thought immediately. Audrey.
‘I am an observer,’ the boy said.
‘What on earth do you mean by that? You’d better clear off,’ I said. What if I hadn’t seen him, been away this particular morning—I have to leave the grounds sometimes. The creature had a sapper’s, a burrower’s head, and there was that shine on his face, he might easily have come upon my tunnel. The thought alone was sufficient to disturb my breathing once again. ‘You’d better go,’ I said, raising my hand and making a gesture as of waving on traffic.
The boy didn’t move. ‘I got permission,’ he said again. ‘From a lady in a red hat.’
‘When was that?’ A cunning question. I took some paces towards him.
‘Day before yesterday, she said not to touch the trees but I could get bluebells.’
Good God, he had been wandering about, then, for days.
‘I showed her my badge.’
‘Badge,’ I said. ‘Badge?’ In my agitation my eyes had begun watering. The boy turned the lapel of his blazer to show on the reverse side a small oval badge with some sort of emblem, ornate initials in blue. I peered forward but my vision was blurred. ‘Badge?’ I said again, peering vainly. I was in the grip of nightmare now, this creature had credentials.
The boy raised his head and said proudly, ‘Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Junior Branch. I am a member.’ He looked at me intently, still displaying the hideous insignia. ‘I wrote away for it,’ he said.
‘I shall have to look into this matter.’ I felt more confidence now that the badge had been explained. All the same, there was need for caution. Audrey must have given him permission to range about in the grounds. One of her moments of aristocratic largesse. Audrey was not in her right mind, of course. However it would be rash to countermand her instructions; if anything made her furious that did. . . .
‘Well,’ I said, nodding my head up and down, ‘you can remain for the time being.’ I began to withdraw, but found it impossible to turn my back on his victor’s silence, so that I was still facing him, several yards away, when I stopped again. I simply could not leave him in possession, with his blunt burrower’s head. ‘No,’ I said loudly. ‘You must leave these grounds immediately. At once.’ I again advanced upon him, making shooing motions with both arms. He regarded me for a moment, something changed in his expression—then he turned and began to make his way along the hedge towards the gate. ‘And never come back,’ I said, following at his heels. I followed him until I saw him through the gate on to the road. He had a bicycle there, propped against one of the concrete pillars of the gate. I watched him mount the bicycle and pedal slowly away in the direction away from the town. Except for him the road was quite empty in both directions, to the right, dead straight for over a mile, hazed on the horizon with thin summer mist, gradually disappearing into the flat and featureless arable plain, in the other direction, only visible for a hundred and fifty yards or so before turning sharply away to the left; beyond this bend was the bus-stop, the beginnings of the town.
I watched him diminish, disappear finally into the haze. For some time longer I stood there. Nothing passed on the road. Behind me in the choked grounds I sensed a multifarious life. It was mid-morning. From the folds of my person rose up a concentrated odour of clay. My tweed suit, originally green, is now a reddish colour owing to the impregnations of clay it has received in my passage to and fro along the tunnel. I thought for a moment, longingly, of the tunnel now, but I knew that I would have to see my sister first, get this matter of the boy cleared up. I began to walk again, still following the line of the hedge, until I reached the farthest corner of the grounds where the birch trees, planted close together, form a separate little copse with intermingling foliage. The earth here is moist, compounded with leaf mould, and it is soft underfoot. I come to a stop for no particular reason, look around, walk on again. I stop once more by the lily pond. This, like everything else, has been neglected of late years; it is reedy, fringed with green scum. The dark lily leaves float on the clear space where the scum has not encroached. There are huge Kingcups round the edges. From here, skirting the dense, the well-nigh impenetrable shrubbery in the centre of the grounds, I describe a wide curve through straggling rhododendron and azalea until I reach the fringe of rowan trees that separate the grounds from the rectangular lawn, the raised terrace beyond it and the house itself.
I stand in the shadow of the trees looking across the lawn at the house, which is of red brick with a long, low and pleasingly proportioned frontage, gabled at each end, the woodwork painted white, though the paint has blistered and flaked away in the years since Howard died, and some of the window frames have been warped out of shape. The grass of the lawn is knee high and smells still, despite the sun, of wet. My hands and my suit, and the earth around me are stippled with sunlight as the rays pierce through the thin leaves. The lawn beyond is dense, green, bright, without a stain of shadow. The wrought-iron chairs with their blue cushions wait on the terrace. Three Cabbage Whites, flying in a sort of formation, hover about the lawn nuzzling down into the tall grass for the shorter daisies. Not a grass moves but the whole area is clamorous with insects, from their throatless bodies contriving to emit a diversity of noises, whirrs, rasps, drum beats. The clay smell comes to my nostrils again, my essence, and I am assailed suddenly by a sensation familiar enough in childhood but of late years infrequent, a sort of displacement of personality. The boy pedals down the empty road, Audrey behind that brick façade brushes her hair, does something private to her appearance, oblivious of everything, Marion in the kitchen, wearing one of her light-coloured cotton dresses, prepa
res the coffee, in silence setting things out on a tray, the sky through the birch leaves is deep blue; where am I, from what point am I effecting these conjunctions?
I blink away these thoughts. I refocus. The house exposes its red brick front, its skeins of virginia creeper. Nothing moves in the house, nothing stirs the curtains, there is no sound of activity from within. Now, however, as though aware that a change of mood is necessary, Marion appears in a white dress, carrying the tray. I see the bright frizz of her hair in the sunshine—she will inflict on herself these unbecoming home-perms—and sense, rather than see the care, the anxious parting of her lips as she sets the tray down on the wicker table. Poor Marion, her life bristles with obstacles. A moment later my sister comes through the french window on to the terrace, wearing a long-sleeved pale-blue dress. Her hair is a luminous silver-grey this morning, newly rinsed.
Audrey has coffee served to her at eleven o’clock every morning she is at home, taking it on the terrace when the weather is fine enough. But I am usually too busy in the grounds. Indeed, since the onset of spring, what with all the watching and the tunnelling I have not often made an appearance in the mornings. And to be perfectly truthful, if I had not had these reasons for absenting myself, I would have found others. I do not willingly consort with Audrey these days. There is something very disturbing about her and I blame the Dramatic Society for it. Three years ago, that is about eighteen months after Howard’s death, Audrey suddenly decided to join the Dramatic Society, although she has no acting ability whatever, and this connection with the theatre has had in my opinion harmful effects: her manner has grown steadily more artificial, she changes tone with startling abruptness, and furthermore she has lately become very extreme and precipitate in her actions. Take this matter of the hair, a small matter certainly, but symptomatic. I daresay there are women—perhaps it is a numerous class—who dye their hair grey, although I do not number any such among my acquaintance. If their hair is already greying they may do it, or if it is some hideous colour that needs to be changed. Audrey’s hair in its natural state is a pleasant brown with no admixture of grey and she is not yet fifty; yet for the last year she has been dyeing it grey. And just three months ago, without a word to me or anyone, she went off to hospital to have her womb removed. There was nothing wrong with it at all; the doctor told me that. Considered solely as an organ it was perfectly healthy. Simply, Audrey no longer wanted to have a womb. That is what I mean by precipitate.
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