by E. H. Young
“May I?”
“Of course, and next time you come I hope James will be here.”
James, at the moment was, unknowingly, giving Flora a hard lesson in love. Already, one of her disappointments had been his lack of money; not that she wanted him to spend it on her; in fact, she told herself romantically, she loved him all the more for having none, but it did hamper their movements. He could not often afford a meal outside his home, he told her frankly, or many visits to cinemas and theatres. Besides, here was the masculine touch, he did not like them. He liked being out of doors.
“Oh, so do I,” Flora said, quickly adapting herself. She would have been an ardent playgoer at a word from him, and he had found her wonderfully interested in what he could tell her about farming; indeed, but for her father, she would have switched over to that University course herself. Knowing this and thinking all the better of her, he had no scruples against giving her detailed reports of his lectures. A silent person at home, he did not spare this listener. Often she wished he would change the subject to herself and look at her sometimes, but it was she who looked at him, keeping an intelligent half ear open to the action of different chemicals on the soil, the other half hearing the quiet tones of his voice, her eyes studying each line of his face and noting each characteristic movement, and this was her reward for the little shifts and stratagems to which she was impelled. Her mother never asked any questions, but her father’s interest in her doings was very inconvenient; he must always know what subject had been discussed at the debating society and what music she had heard at the music club and, as she foresaw that her answers would tax her ingenuity and might lead to her undoing, she had wisely told him there were no such meetings during the summer term, just informal ones among friends. And was not that true enough? Was not James her friend? She had to answer the second question with an affirmative too emphatic for her happiness. That first kiss under the hawthorn tree had been as sacred and significant to her as a betrothal but she had had to realize it was not that to James. She had had no experience, and she was slowly to discover that kissing was quite a commonplace amusement to many of her generation. Even more passionate encounters were treated lightly. Hitherto she had known very little about her contemporaries and while, inevitably, she was shocked, she was excited by this new world where people acknowledged and indulged emotions of which she thought she ought to be ashamed. She had to tell herself that James’s love was of more valuable mintage than the current coin and his undemonstrativeness, the rareness of his kisses, were the highest compliment he could pay her. When he did kiss her it was with the same matter of fact suddenness he had shown under the hawthorn as though he might as well enjoy the clearness of her skin, the natural redness of her lips. It was a simple, unpremeditated act and she was attractive with her dark hair and red mouth and greenish eyes and lately she had cleverly counteracted the somewhat artistic arrangement of her hair by wearing clothes as fashionably severe as her dress allowance and her parents’ prejudices would permit. Nevertheless, it was she who instigated most of their secret meetings; the secrecy was nearly all of her choosing; and on the evening when Piers Lindsay was supping comfortably in the Square, Flora had arranged to have a picnic meal in a nook overlooking the river.
“Won’t it be too cold?” James had said with cruel honesty. Then, seeing her face fall, he had agreed, but it was far from warm there and it was not a good meal. She had had to buy what she could and the second course, jam tarts, had too much resemblance to the first one of meat pies.
“Now, if only we had something to drink,” James said, wounding her a little, “I’d drink Miss Spanner’s health.”
Backed by trees and bushes and then by the broad stretch of grass on one side of the Avenue, they sat near the edge of the cliff and looked down at the river, now a narrow channel between muddy banks, and across at the trees climbing the opposite slope. All shades of green were there, from palest to almost black, and here and there the trunk of a silver birch looked like the ghost of a tree among the living ones. On their left they could see the great pier supporting the farther end of the bridge, but a bastion of rock on their right screened off a more extended view of the river.
“It’s nice here, isn’t it?” Flora said hopefully.
“Yes, but we’re sitting on the best side instead of looking at it.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
“It doesn’t matter, does it?”
“No, not really,” Flora said with a touch of tenderness. “Why do you want to drink Miss Spanner’s health? Is it her birthday?”
“Not that I know of, but she’s made it a kind of birthday for all of us. Given us some money for our holidays.”
“Oh,” Flora said, and added feebly, “How kind!”
“I hadn’t expected to have one, but now Felix and I can go off in September. Grand, isn’t it?”
It was a moment or two before Flora could say, “That’s just when we may be going abroad.” Now all the trees seemed to have turned black, the sluggish strip of water and the grey banks were melancholy and the hoarse cries of the gulls as they searched for garbage had a cruel mocking note.
“Looking at churches and things?” James said with a grin.
“Not necessarily,” Flora replied. “I expect it will be very gay. I expect we shall have quite a lot of fun,” but she saw herself under a glaring sun, trying to keep pace with her father, gazing at cathedrals and trailing on tired feet through picture galleries while Rhoda, looking glum, followed some way behind, Mary wanted to go somewhere else and her mother walked calmly, with her peculiar, somewhat swaying gait and pretended not to be hot and weary, a sight-seeing family with only one member of it enjoying himself. And sometimes, they would sit outside a café and have an ice for a treat. But what did it matter? Here was James, happy in his plans for going away and a little while ago she had felt sick at the threat of being parted from him.
“The Loire country, that’s what we thought of,” she said. “All those lovely castles and beautiful scenery.”
“And we’re going to the mountains—at last,” James said.
“Switzerland?”
“No. Wales.”
“Oh,” said Flora in a slightly disparaging manner.
James did not notice it. “I saw them once, from a long way off,” he said, wiping his fingers on the grass, then clasping his hands round his knees and staring in front of him. “From our O.T.C. camp,” he said.
“My father thinks those O.T.C.s are very bad things,” Flora said. “He says they make people war-minded.”
“Does he?” James drew his inward gaze from the invisible hills and looked at her. He was not exactly handsome, she thought. Perhaps Felix was really better looking, but then Felix had never taken more notice of her than the barest courtesy required, and she did not think a man ought to have red hair. James was dark, his features were good but roughly finished and their shape seemed to change with his moods. It was his height and his broad shoulders and the strong ease with which he carried himself that moved her. “Oh, does he?” he repeated. “Well, if messing about in the mud and sleeping in a leaky tent makes you war-minded, he’s quite right. And seeing those hills,” he said, turning from her again, “and not being able to get at them. But I always meant to. So did Felix. And then, when we had our birthday presents this morning—”
“When’s your real birthday?” Flora asked.
“Never mind that, April, we both knew what we were going to do. And there’ll be enough money for the boots as well.”
“Boots?”
“Yes, with proper climbing-nails in them. Very expensive. We don’t know anything about it but we’re going with a man who does, and living in a sort of hut where we do our own chores and cooking. Cheap. And September’s often the best month in the whole year. A little bit frosty in the early morning sometimes and blazing hot in the middle of the day.”
“Only a fortnight, I’m afraid, but we might stretch it to three weeks.”
In her disappointment and desolation, she was mercifully able to despise him a little. He did not look like a young god now, desirable and remote, nor like the tall young man who sometimes kissed her: sitting there, hugging his knees, he looked like a boy, the corners of his mouth compressed with pleasure.
“We’re going to do some good long walks to get into training,” he said. “Let’s go up to the hill now, shall we? We can see Wales from there if it’s clear enough. Not the real mountains. They’re much farther north, but you get a sort of promise of them. And it’s cold here. Rather damp, too,” he said, getting up and rubbing the seat of his trousers. “Coming? It will warm us up.”
“No, I’m going home. But we must bury all this first,” she said, gathering up the paper bags and feeling she was burying something else as she pushed them into the hole he found for them and laid a stone on the top.
“Why, what’s the matter?” he exclaimed, as they straightened themselves from their task. He held her firmly by both arms. “I believe you’re crying. Are you? What on earth for? What’s the matter?”
“It’s all been so horrid,” Flora said. Big tears rolled down her cheeks. “And I meant it to be so nice.”
He let go her arms and put his own round her comfortingly. “It’s been a very nice picnic and we’ve had a good talk, haven’t we?”
“Have we?” she said, jerked by a sob. She did not wipe away her tears. She expected him to do that in the obvious manner, but there, too, he failed her, though he took her hand kindly as they walked across the grass and let it linger in hers before they parted. But she knew his thoughts were on those hills and it had been a boring mistake to cry.
Chapter IX
After seeing his wife and Rhoda in the garden, Mr. Blackett went back to his study. He was quite deserted. Mary had gone to bed, Flora was out, the only available companion was Connie in the kitchen, the patient car still stood outside and his unaccountable feeling of dissatisfaction with himself changed to one of irritation with his family, with Piers Lindsay and that woman next door. And what was Flora doing? Curious as he was about her mental development, he had never considered what effect these new friends of hers might have on it and on her character. In fact he was very little concerned with her character. He took for granted its being everything he desired and these friends of whom she spoke existed, for him, very vaguely. While he could keep them like that they were of no importance either to him or her. They were too shadowy to be asked into his house or to make any impact on his private world. But to-night, in his loneliness, he did wonder what charms they had to keep her from the pleasant intercourse there had been between him and her and he decided, not to go in search of her, any idea of that vain pursuit did not occur to him, but to take a walk, since no one wanted him at home, a long walk which would keep him out late and make Bertha a little anxious.
Thus it chanced that when he came to the bottom of Chatterton Road on his way to the Downs and there, where several roads met, looked this way and that before he braved the crossing, he saw his daughter on the wide path of the Avenue, her hand just dropping from that of a tall young man he recognized as a Fraser and while she stood and gazed after him as he went striding up the hill, Mr. Blackett, as quick as lightning, turned the corner on his right and he was round yet another corner before he paused. It was difficult to explain an instinctive flight from a situation he did not know how to deal with: he did not want to admit to a liking for knowledge which some other person did not wish him to have: he told himself, and it was true, that he needed time for thought, that here was something to be delicately handled and must not be attempted while he was in a state of anger and disappointment and disgust. Disgust was paramount, disgust at deceit and at the remembrance of those linked hands. If this was the public behaviour of his daughter and that young man who came from a home he thoroughly distrusted, what would they not do in secret? Terrible visions passed through Mr. Blackett’s mind and at that moment, as he thought of her in any sort of physical contact with a member of his own sex, a thought he had hitherto avoided, he felt a violent distaste for his daughter; he did not want to see or touch or speak to her but she presented herself in his imagination and, for the first time, as another man might see her; he understood what his wife had meant when she said Flora was attractive. She had also said Flora was more like her father than she knew. He had accepted these words as compliments but had they implied more than they said, about Flora, about himself? That would not have been like Bertha and he was distracted from these conjectures when he realized that he was standing stock still and must be an object of interest to anyone who passed, so he walked on, reaching the Downs a little farther eastwards than he had intended, mounting the rough ground there with the energy of his emotions, and finding no relief for them.
It was after nine o’clock, still light, but the slow approach of darkness could be felt and those who could not or would not wait for it, who sat or lay in the doubtful shelter of the hawthorn bushes, presented Mr. Blackett with hateful possible replicas of Flora and young Fraser. Though he kept his head high, his beard thrust forward, he could not keep his eyes completely shut and through their lowered lids he got glimpses of forms close pressed, dark arms clasping pale bodies and pale arms stretched across dark coats. And there were girls and men sometimes in pairs, sometimes in groups for greater ease and safety, not yet lost to everything except each other, and from these came voices and loud laughter, slaps responding to snatched kisses, make-believe skirmishes before surrender, and all this was abhorrent to Mr. Blackett, yet he did not make his way to one of the intersecting roads where he would not have been offended by these sights and sounds, nor did he connect them with the decent couples, followed by a tired child or two who ought long ago to have been in bed. A few years ago these men and women whom, if he had thought of them at all, he would have respected for their bonds of matrimony and the fruits of it, might have been rollicking or oblivious among the bushes, and while he realized that there were varieties of approach to the married state and to that family life of which he much approved, almost any approach seemed to him objectionable for his daughters and the thought of their marrying was only endurable if it could be achieved without preliminary dallyings and with mutual attraction of a purely intellectual kind. And already Flora had shown herself unlikely to oblige him in this way. She was not what he had thought her and the puzzle was whether he should find relief in speaking of his disgust or enjoy the subtler pleasure of pretending ignorance, but there was danger there and Mr. Blackett, beyond the hawthorn bushes now and on a bare stretch of grass, checked himself in his stride. The bare possibility of the impossible made him feel sick with fury and if he had not been spared the sight of Flora’s tears he would have been certain that the horrible worst had happened. But he was able to calm himself: he was exaggerating matters. He knew most parents would accept such a situation lightly, but then he was not like other people. Hardly a day passed that did not bring this fact home to him. It was inconvenient, but he would not have had it otherwise and, in this happier state, he reached the edge of the cliff where it dropped away in two hundred feet of bare rock. Protected by railings, Mr. Blackett could look down without fear. Slowly the tide was coming in and the light from the lamps on each side of the river struck steadily across the mud and waveringly across the water and slowly the different greens on the opposite cliff were becoming one, gathering together for the night and leaving the silver birch trunks still more solitary and ghostly. It was very quiet down there. The lamps from a car on the road immediately below the cliff sometimes flung a big beam across the water and seemed to sweep away the lesser lights, but the car passed on and the lesser lights remained, waiting to guide the ships which would soon be coming up the river
. And on the road behind Mr. Blackett a car sometimes went by, and that too passed, after holding him for a moment, as though he were a figure on a stage with a spotlight turned on him. That gone, only a pair of lovers sitting decently on a bench shared this high place with him and he was soothed by the beauty of the scene and cooled by a little breeze, coming just then when he needed it, and he took off his hat to let the wind blow through his hair. He was a little ashamed of his late excitement but Flora must be protected from undesirable young men—he hoped she need not be protected from herself—and, as he turned away, a very pleasing idea occurred to him and carried him briskly homewards.
Here he found a dark, quiet house. Far from being anxious about him, Bertha had gone to bed, and the streak of light under Flora’s door vanished as he topped the stairs. There was no light under his own and he did not turn it on until he heard Bertha saying, “I’m not asleep.”
“Aren’t you feeling well, Bertha?” he inquired.
“Yes. Why shouldn’t I?”
“I thought you couldn’t be,” he said blandly. “What time did Flora get back?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve been in the garden all the evening.”
“Ah, no wonder you are tired,” he said as Mrs. Blackett shut her eyes. “But—are you laughing, Bertha?” he asked as, clad only in his shirt and socks, he approached the bed and saw the agitation of the bed clothes.
“Yes,” she said, her eyes still shut.
“I’m afraid I don’t see the joke.”
“No,” she said. “That’s just it. You can’t.”
“This is certainly fatigue,” he said, as the bed clothes continued to move. “And I hope I have as much sense of humour as other people, and considerably more than you have yourself. What is the matter?” he asked testily. “Has anything upset you?”
