by Thomas Hinde
Not till I was beyond Percy’s drive gate did I realize the madness of that calendar. I ran back. Controlling my panting I hurried across the lawn, hid it inside my shirt and stood at the office door. No one was in sight. I slipped down the back path and crossed the back drive to my pine copse. I put a match to it.
It wasn’t the ink blot that had frightened me. I’d been careful enough to use that and not some obvious circle or star. It was the way I’d idiotically drawn oblique strokes through the rest of the days on that sheet and the way I’d absent-mindedly turned the pages and put a single oblique stroke across the rest of the months that year. They were about as absent-minded as the visitor a suicide invites for ten minutes after he’ll have taken the pills.
I stood in the back drive, watching the pale line of smoke rising through the fir tops. It went straight up. There wasn’t a breath of wind. Presently I couldn’t see it any more.
It was one of those afternoons when the sun develops a haze. Though it was hazy up there it was no cooler. The opposite. As I worked with the cutters in Percy’s kitchen garden the sun burnt my neck, as if the mist had the properties of a lens and was making it fiercer. The bushes were neglected and needed several main stems taken from each one, which would have been easier cut with a saw. My face ran with sweat and sometimes I could taste the salty drops and sometimes I could see them falling into the grass. I thought I must stop and stand in the shade, but I went on working.
It was the size of Percy’s kitchen garden which reminded me that Percy had a gardener. Why couldn’t his gardener have pruned his blackcurrants? Who had done them in other years?
I was worried after that. I wondered why I’d had no answer when I’d rung Percy’s bell. I tried to calm myself: Percy had only this year realized that I was the ideal man to prune his blackcurrants. He’d never trusted his gardener’s pruning. At that moment I became aware of Percy himself, standing beyond a beech hedge, watching.
I could only see him from the chest up. He gave the impression of watching not me but my work. ‘Hallo,’ I called.
‘Hallo,’ he said. He paused before he said it, as if startled that I’d noticed him.
‘They’re a bit neglected,’ I called, to make the occasion ordinary. ‘Hope you don’t mind me giving them a thorough slashing.’
I saw him give such a start that I wasn’t able to connect it with what I’d said. I glanced left and right for some other shocking thing which might have appeared. By the time I looked at him again he was almost out of sight, only the back of his thin grey head visible beyond the beech hedge as he hurried away. From the way it went up and down I thought he might be trotting.
I can’t explain why but it made me panic. I’d felt safe while he was there. I finished the bushes in a perfunctory way and hurried down his drive to the New Lane. I was as relieved as if I’d escaped from a trap. The strange thing was, I didn’t associate this trap with Percy. I felt that he had been as anxious as I was.
I felt that I had hurt him by the callous way I’d spoken about his bushes. It was as if he’d only expected a little delicate trimming and would never have asked me if he’d known I’d be so violent. Rather than what I’d done, he’d have let them grow big and useless.
Molly was on the lawn, holding the empty watering-can, looking at what she’d watered.
‘That was quick.’
‘Not particularly.’
I got my four-ten and went through the back door, down the hillside path. It was the wrong time of day, but there was a chance. As soon as I reached the far orchard I saw a small brown hummock. It was the shape of a rabbit nibbling, though it didn’t move. The more I watched it the less clearly could I see it in that hot hazy afternoon. I raised my gun, lowered it, raised it and fired.
It must have been a long time since I’d shot because I’d forgotten how this small gun kicked. I lost sight of the hummock. I ran forward, stopped to look for it, became unsure how far away it had been. I ran back but was unsure how far I’d run forward. From wherever I looked I could see nothing like the hummock I’d fired at but neither was there any sign of a dead or struggling rabbit. I was disturbed by the memory of a spurt of dust only about ten yards in front of me. Surely that could not have been my pellets.
Now that I had made this loud noise there was less need for caution and I fired several more times at suspicious humps or shapes in the hedges. I was surprised to find that my pocket of cartridges was empty. I came up the hill path, sweating and shaking.
They were having tea in the veranda.
‘Any luck?’ Molly said.
I shook my head.
‘We heard you shooting,’ Peggy said.
‘Was all that you?’ Dan said.
I couldn’t bear it. I went away from them back across the lawn. They must have thought it odd.
I stood beyond some trees near the tennis court, facing away from them. I should have been able to think of something to do there. The gun I still held seemed to get in the way. I glanced back through leaves. I was appalled to realize that I wasn’t even out of sight.
Their tea seemed to go on and on.
I came back across the lawn towards the empty veranda. As if she had been waiting, Peggy came and stood in front of me.
‘When can we go bathing?’
‘What’s that?’
‘You promised you’d take us bathing.’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘You did. But you won’t.’
‘If I promised, then I will,’ I said, my anger growing.
‘You won’t. When will you?’
‘Next week.’ I was frightened as soon as I’d said it. It was a bad omen, like saying you’ll win a game before you start.
‘That’s what you always say.’
I tried not to listen.
‘But you won’t.’
I tried to go past her, but now I’d seen Molly inside the french windows, watching us. Perhaps she’d been there all the time but because it was dark I hadn’t seen her.
‘I knew you wouldn’t.’
‘Shut up.’ I shouted. ‘I will. Didn’t you hear me?’
She turned and went quickly away. I heard her say in a low voice, ‘You won’t.’ Inside the sitting-room she stood with her face against the belly of Molly’s skirt. She was crying, I knew, and Molly was probably saying things to comfort her, but for some reason I couldn’t hear them in there. I saw Molly look up once towards me but she seemed more anxious than angry. I guessed she might be saying that I was worried and mustn’t be bothered.
How did she know I was worried? I didn’t want to hear that. It would make me want to shout at Molly too.
The people at the Brightworths’ party were the same people who had come to their barbecue just eighteen days before. I knew they would be. That was why I hadn’t wanted to come.
How could I speak to them about the weather and the drought and their cars when I suspected them as I did? When I was more and more aware, buried under their laughter, of how they hated me.
At six I told Molly I had a headache. It was true. It was coming in waves behind my eyes. But I needn’t have told her. I registered it in case I needed it later.
Percy Goyle was there with his peke. Had he forgotten the fight it caused last time? Or didn’t he think that mattered, realizing that for the dogs it had made their party? I was surprised at how relieved I felt to see him.
He stood by the fireplace (finished in smooth grey concrete in which rounded beach boulders had been set), grey and thin, watching us as we came in. I wanted to tell him that I understood how he felt about his currant bushes.
But when I stood near him I didn’t try to say it. Suddenly, as if he had taught me something, I realized that this was the best, perhaps the only, way to say it. I was conscious of his calmness and sanity. I felt that if things had been different he might have given me back my trust in other people.
The Draycotts came next, without their dog. I waited to hear what had hap
pened, uneasy not to be able to see at once evidence of some accident. Wilfred’s hands were in smaller bandages.
The Quorums followed. Charlie paused dramatically at the door when he saw me. Something was coming, but I’d forgotten what. ‘Careful of that man,’ he said in a stage-aside to Queenie.
‘What’s that, dear?’ Queenie said, as she came past him to give me a big hug and kiss. Beyond her I could see Charlie giving convulsive jerks of mock alarm.
‘Whatever is it, dear?’ she said, taking him by the arm, smiling up at him, leading him on.
‘Haven’t you been told?’ Charlie said, not looking back, apparently careless whether or not I heard. ‘The lion of the links. Hammer-drive Harry.’ They went down the room, Queenie hanging on, smiling round at everyone with delight. I remembered my clever request to be taught golf. It was another mistake which was to be used against me.
Several others followed, including, rather late, Mrs. Willis. She had a hat with upright ostrich feathers, like a hussar’s plume. Perhaps it was some new fashion, or perhaps it came from some thirty-year-old moth-box, or both. Like a helmet, it had straight sides which covered her ears and all her blue-rinsed hair but a coy fringe in front.
‘Birdie Bale,’ I heard Charlie say, and caught him giving me a quick glance then looking away with ostentatious embarrassment.
‘All here, then?’ Jim shouted. ‘Come on, you slackers.’
‘Oh, be quiet,’ Janie said. ‘Let’s not go and see this rotten old pool.’ But I guessed she was as excited about it as Jim. She no longer called it Jim’s rotten old pool. Though she began to encourage people to dance, I thought she wanted them to insist on going.
In a ragged procession we went down the garden, through trees to the swimming pool. Dusk was coming, earlier than I’d expected, reminding me again that the month was ending. It was then that I noticed one person in the party I’d not seen before.
She was a frail, fair girl and she walked with Janie. At the same moment that I looked back and noticed her I saw Hubert shambling by himself ten yards behind everyone else, but I didn’t connect them.
As soon as she saw me turn Janie called, ‘Come and meet our friend Jeffy.’
I went back and met Jeffy. I must have, though it’s a moment I can’t clearly remember, perhaps because I was too disturbed and confused. I must have said hallo and perhaps shaken hands. I must have felt or at least seen how astonishingly frail her hand was, like a small bird’s.
My feelings for Jeffy seemed to rush on me, knocking aside half a dozen usually effective barriers, leaving me facing them as amazed that it had happened as by the feelings themselves. That’s the only way I can explain how I behaved that night.
As soon as we reached the pool I took her away down one side and we sat together on a stone seat.
The others stood at the far edge, looking down into the black square of water. It was much bigger than most private swimming pools, especially ones which are home dug. Everyone seemed to realize this and their chorus of exclamatory cooings sounded genuine and lasted a full minute.
Jim stood a little way from them. He wasn’t making self-deprecatory noises, as I’d have expected, but listening. I wondered whether he was already feeling the shock of disappointment, now that it was finished. I asked Jeffy.
‘Why, of course,’ she said.
But I could only see for certain that he went on standing there and didn’t hurry to fetch champagne, as Janie kept shouting at him.
Presently he said, ‘Shut up. It’s filled with champagne. Didn’t I tell you?’
Beyond where they were standing he’d built a long wooden shelter and at its centre the barbecue was a red glow in an iron bowl on an iron tripod. The antelope skull with red bulbs for eyes hung in this open-sided shelter. They began to move towards it, holding out their hands to the fire, leaving the pool and the grass empty. And now, instead of the last pale light of day we were in moonlight. The moon was shining right into this dell-like cutting among the trees.
Clustered in that open shelter across the pool, they seemed to have gone far away from us. The popping of corks and the sizzling of steaks came out of a hum of talk which was faint and hard to hear.
We didn’t join them. We didn’t feel cold.
We talked in that astonishing way when understanding runs ahead of words, so that I was again imagining a moment when silence would not merely be all that was needed but something positive, which any words must reduce and contaminate. It was at once easy and terribly exacting. Sometimes I would lose track and wonder what it was all about.
Even when we crossed and mixed with them we stayed apart. We stayed together. It was less that I didn’t care that everyone else should see how we were behaving than that I was only distantly aware of it. Comparatively, they and their feelings had ceased to be real.
I didn’t normally behave like this. I can’t remember it happening before. It wasn’t that sort of a party, or the way these people carried on. They weren’t particularly old-fashioned or principled people. They just didn’t do it that way. Later, it was the way I had done it so openly in front of them and in front of Molly that shocked me, giving me the feeling that I was ceasing to be a person I could recognize.
At once, and though we were separated by several others who sipped and gnawed, we came together and walked into the trees. We held hands. We lay together and looked at the moon through the pine branches. We kissed and held on to each other.
We held each other with a relief that was like no other I had ever known. And with terror that they should separate us.
For me the relief was partly anticipation, because I knew that sooner or later I was going to tell her things which I had told no other person. I hoped it didn’t matter, now that the time was so near. Whether it mattered or not I was going to tell her.
Their giggles and squeals drew us back to the pool. There was a splash and some wet flapping. Holding hands, we came through the trees and stood at the edge of the water, empty of people now, but still disturbed.
Behind and around us they were giggling and running in the darkness, though who they were I couldn’t tell. They were in the shadows or passing quickly across patches of moonlight. A second later someone in a bathing costume hurtled past me. I never knew if they were pushed or ran. I think it was Janie but I never knew because at once they had landed heavily a few feet out and a curtain of water had risen over us.
We were drenched.
They stood round us, dabbing and apologizing. First there was Hubert, as if he had been watching. He wiped her dress with a towel and led her away to change. Suddenly I understood. Jeffy was Hubert’s girl. As well as all the others who had watched us casually, he had been watching us specifically, knowing all the time where we were.
I wouldn’t let them dry me. I said I wasn’t wet, although my shirt and trousers were soaked and I was shivering. The party at the pool was over and I followed them to the house. No one tried to walk with me.
I would have liked to leave at once, but I couldn’t bear to speak to Molly. I couldn’t bear to admit that she was here.
They danced and became gay. Janie, dressed again, danced with her shoes off, kicking up her heels. She danced marvellously, making Charlie’s thick stomach seem part of her dance. Jim danced with Molly. The Draycotts danced together, holding each other neatly. They were like mice on their hind legs. I sat in the doorway of the veranda, on a single seat where no one could join me.
Then I was watching again. I was watching Mrs. Willis.
There she sat, wearing that hussar’s hat, like a pantomime principal boy, showing that coy fringe of blue rinse above her white, bloodless face with its powder-filled valleys. Again I was being astonished at my obtuseness.
What were these bridge parties she was supposed to give, though I had never met anyone who played with her? Why did they go on so late? What was this story about gin bottles put out each morning, when I had never seen her the smallest part drunk? Couldn’t ev
en remember her holding a drink.
The next moment my warning message had come back to me. ‘H.Q.’ It seemed so obvious. I was looking at H.Q. Her bridge parties, her secret meetings. Her drunkenness, an invented screen. I had been bothering myself with Wilfred, Charlie, Jim, trying to decide which of them mattered most. They mattered equally and hardly at all. They were the creatures of Mrs. Willis.
I stared at her with horror and hatred. Strangely, what made me most angry was not this new evil power I had discovered in her but the fact that she was still here, alive when she ought not to be. More alarming, as I stared at her she turned her grey chicken’s neck and saw me. In that instant recognition passed between us.
I had to leave. As soon as the dance finished I found Molly and we said good-bye.
‘Oh, don’t go,’ Janie said, putting her arms round Molly, trying to walk her back.
‘We won’t let them,’ Jim said, shaking my hand and keeping it in his big grip.
For a second I thought that others were moving forward, about to close behind me and jostle me back. They would be playful but they wouldn’t let me pass. ‘I must . . .’ I said. I controlled myself, hearing my panic. ‘It’s late.’
The music changed and Janie took Jimmy to dance. ‘Let ’em go,’ she said. ‘They don’ like our parties.’
She danced away from us, not looking back, and for a moment we hesitated in the doorway. Across the party I saw Jeffy for the first time since the garden. She was standing alone against a far wall and saw me but didn’t wave. I understood nothing.
The Brightworths’ drive was lit grey by the high moon. It was only two nights from full. So was ours when we crossed the New Lane. Ahead I saw a lighted window in our house. I wanted to run. It showed me how my nerves were in pieces. I clenched my fists and walked steadily towards it.
We never left lights burning when we were out, to frighten burglars. I had more respect for burglars’ intelligences.
