GABRIEL FIELDING
IN THE TIME OF
GREENBLOOM
To
EDWIN A
My thanks are due and are gratefully given to the following for help or encouragement in the writing of this book: my wife, my brother Godfrey, Miss Erica Marx, Mr Richard Church whose delightful book Dog Toby was especially helpful to me, Miss Muriel Spark, Mr Derek Stanford, Mr Edward Julier, Mr David Nash, Chief-Inspector Drury of the Kent County Constabulary, the De Havilland Aircraft Company, Mr Hugh Reynolds and Lt-Comdr. J. H. Fordham, R.N. (ret.)
The Sequence
1. L’APRÈS MIDI
2. THE FIRST WEDDING
3. IN DANBEY DALE
4. IN THE TIME OF GREENBLOOM
5. ROOKER’S CLOSE
6. ISLAND SUMMER
A Note on the Author
Aspexi terram et ecce vacua erat, et nihil; et coelos, et non erat lux in eis.
Jeremiah.
1
L’Après MIDI
What can I say that was not sooner said
By poets flowering in the uncut dead?
What say or sing or verbally convey
When in my living I display
A sunken footprint in the earth,
A tongue distorted by its birth?
This one’s a rose: it throws a whiter shadow
Than the cloud, and no man knows or sees
The spectre when the eye’s unclosed;
The spectre is the rose.…
L’Après MIDI
The first thing he noticed about her was her whiteness; she was a very white girl, as white in the face as the snow-berries which grew under the elms at the foot of the Vicarage drive, and the skin of her delicate arms and legs was so pure in its pallor that it was almost indistinguishable from the tennis frock she was wearing.
Looking at her as she moved, or seemed casually to dance amongst the others in front of the summer-house, he was aware of a renewal of the sense of isolation which had held them both, Melanie and himself, when Simpson waved them a jaunty good-bye from the car before dusting away down the Clockwood drive to return to the Vicarage.
It was always like this to begin with; parties filled them both with an angry pride, making them stand away together in place and in mood so that they could touch one another’s hands carelessly, whisper small bitter confidences together without being overheard, and jointly challenge any attempts on the part of grown-ups to make them mix separately with the other guests. Later, if things went well, if they found someone they liked or who liked them, they might disclose a little and let the others come between them for a time; but fundamentally they were united, thinking the same sort of thoughts, feeling at once superior to all the others however rich they might be, and yet distinctly and annoyingly inferior because they were from the Vicarage and the car was only a Ford and Simpson’s familiarity was as disgraceful as his second-best uniform.
Today their arrival had been blacker even than usual because it was that sort of a day: still and sticky and with so little air that the birds themselves only moved short distances amongst the bushes, plumping heavily from one perch to another and abandoning their calls when they were halfway through them as though the spit were drying in their beaks. And worst of all it was a tennis tournament, an organised one with lists of names pinned up in the summer-house, partners, introductions and prizes at the end.
Clutching their large rackets, patently marked with initials which were not their own (for they used those of their elder brothers and sister), they moved closer together under the hard shadow of the summer-house, waiting for the first inevitable moment of challenge from Mrs Bellingham, from Tim and Carol’s governess, or from one of the older Bellingham boys.
And it was now, as Melanie whispered angrily to him, “There aren’t even any Booby Prizes!” that he felt suddenly glad of their close detachment in face of all these little swanks with their shiny new rackets and presses, their unmended clothes and their easy familiarity with one another. Their shared rebellion gave them strength and was delightful; it needed only a motive, a purpose, something round which to cluster and swarm like the stinging bees from a summer hive, and it would become powerful and profitable, would find a way, either overtly or covertly, of making this afternoon truly golden so that they might lay up a sweet honey from its hours and enjoy it long after the holidays were over and the dark winter’s term had begun.
The girl, he knew, had noticed them both from the moment of their late arrival. In the narrow white face the great grey eyes sought them constantly as she moved diffidently from one self-contained group to another in the unblinking sunshine of the hard court. Her fine hair, black as a funeral plume, was tossed a little affectedly to one side by occasional quick jerks of her chin as, from her tallness, she glanced over an intervening shoulder or head to steal yet another quick look at them. And then, when she saw that she had his attention, that he was openly, almost greedily, watching her from his high place on the bank, the pendulum-swing of her racket ceased instantly, depriving the slow smile she gave him of any place in minutes or seconds, so that as it spread outwards from her lips to her pale cheeks, it gathered an intimacy which seemed timeless and eternal.
Melanie, beside him, saw it too and moved restlessly, watching him a little foxily from beneath the sharp redness of her hair to see if he would smile back; and he did: swiftly and without defiance as he answered her whispered question:
“No, of course I don’t know her! but I like her.”
He paused, refusing to meet her eyes and then said loudly:
“Come on! it’s time we got to know people. Let’s go and find Tim.”
He knew that it was unfair to have spoken so openly but he did not care, and by leaving her there, alone and conspicuous, he forced her to follow him.
He was all arrogance now, was ready to meet any of them on their own terms and beat them too, so long as it did not involve too much tennis; and he would see that it did not. He must find Tim and pair him off with Melanie. He knew these tennis parties; they always started off with a show of organisation and enthusiasm; but in an hour or two, when the rabbits began hopelessly to outnumber the hares, a certain laxity always became apparent, drifting into the air as aimlessly as the long sprawl of the late clouds, and bringing with it a mellowness that was at once an opportunity and a delight.
He knew his Melanie too: young as she was, not yet twelve, already she liked an escort, someone in trousers to flutter at, a boy with an address for torchlight letters in the depths of the school dormitory. Tim Bellingham would do; although privately they laughed at him and, on account of his rather sallow face and smallness, had nicknamed him ‘the lemon pip’, his bounce and importance would please her, and he knew that he himself had only to flatter him a little in order to make him a willing participant in whatever might later develop. So the thing to do was to get hold of him quickly and establish an intimacy and ascendancy over him before the tournament got fairly started.
Looking round, he saw him almost at once, standing beside his elder brother Philip at the net. Carol, too, was with them, and this was a little awkward; he didn’t want Carol today. Somehow, if they were going to the orchard or the hayfield, they would have to give her the slip as unobtrusively and naturally as possible. She was too young, too proprietorial, and would probably give things away afterwards to the governess or Mrs Bellingham so that later when they reached home, Melanie, if jealous or dissatisfied in any way, might find an opportunity of hinting things to Mother. That was the trouble with Melanie these days: she had lost the spirit of their alliance and seemed increasingly to identify herself with Mary and Mother whenever things had gone slightly wrong.
In the
old days, when they were younger, her loyalty had been of a different kind, almost that of an animal; but lately, since they had stopped having baths together and sharing the night-nursery, she had become unreliable and increasingly ‘girlish’ as though she had been made party to a secret that was essentially feminine. He would have to see that whatever this afternoon’s adventure proved to be she would be as much in it as he was himself and that Carol, by joining them, did not stir up or reinforce any misgivings she might feel.
He glanced behind him; good! Melanie was following him towards the group by the net. Now was the moment to break in.
He touched Tim lightly on the shoulder.
“’Lo, Tim! Sorry we were a bit late. Do you know who’s playing with who yet?”
Tim turned round, he was obviously a little overawed by the nearness of Philip.
“’Lo,” he said. “Better ask Philip. It’s all up on the summer-house door anyway, haven’t you looked at the lists?”
From his superior height, across the immense distances separating Sedburgh from Aysgarth and the Abbey, Eastbourne, Philip looked down on them and glancing at his wrist-watch drawled:
“Ah! Young Blaydon and sister. We’d been waiting for you children to arrive before we could get started because you’re both in the first heat. What happened, Blaydon? That old Lizzie of yours break down again?”
“No, it’s just that we were a bit late starting. Simpson had to take Father over to see the Bishop,” John improvised rapidly; even the Bellinghams might be a little in awe of the Bishop.
“I see! Now where’s your partner got to? Tim, go and get hold of Victoria Blount for heaven’s sake or we’ll never get through the heats. I hope you’re in good form, young Blaydon, because your partner’s a little inexperienced.”
John struck an attitude: he always felt fairly confident before he started.
“I think I am today,” he said. “Of course I may be a little erratic, it just depends—”
Beside him Tim sniggered diminutively, hastily muffling his mouth behind his racket as everyone else stopped talking.
“A little erratic!” Philip Bellingham pronounced slowly. “Well! well! Not quite in your usual centre-court form eh! Blaydon?”
“No,” said John, wanting to smash his racket over Tim’s yellow ball of a face.
“Blaydon says he’s a little erratic—a little erratic—a little erratic!” he chanted to the others, drawing down the corners of his mouth between each repetition of the phrase.
One or two of the younger ones took it up and Melanie came angrily to his defence.
“Well, what is so funny about that?” she asked. “Just because you don’t know what it means there’s no need to make a fool of yourself, is there, John?”
“Now! Now!” said Philip. “No quarrelling. We want to get started. Tim! Have you found that Victoria girl yet? Ah! There she is. Come here, Victoria, I want you to meet your partner; this is John Blaydon and you’re going to have to play for all you’re worth because, as you’ve just heard, he says he’s a little—”
The white girl, cool and unsmiling, looked into John’s face. “Yes,” she said. “I heard, he’s feeling a little erratic; and I’m so glad, because that’s how I always feel.”
“Splendid!” It was Mrs Bellingham cooing up behind them. “Well you’re going to be most suited then; aren’t they, Philip?”
“Undoubtedly! Now then you two, you start at the Stable End, versus the Dormains, Pat and Richard. Clear the court please! There are plenty of chairs by the summer-house and we must see about getting the grass court into action.”
Followed by the others he led the way to the grass bank, leaving them alone in a sudden recession of the noise and the company.
They looked at one another carefully. Close to she had a distinct scent, not sweet or sharp, not really definable, but reassuring and exciting. Boys were like most vegetables, he thought, plain and unwonderful, consisting only of parts; but girls, like flowers, were more than the shapes of which they were composed, and always they had this secret scent. The perception of it, striking him so soon after her defence of him, filled him with a sudden wild gratitude; so that he wanted from that moment more than anything else in the whole afternoon to surprise her and win her interest and admiration.
They turned and began to walk slowly down to the far end of the court where the trees stood darkly over the shadowed fronts of the stables, the golden weather-cock on its turret pinned like a brooch against their still green foliage.
There was something a little old-fashioned about her clothes. Was it perhaps that they reminded him of pictures in the Encyclopaedia? Girls with long hair standing selfconsciously on the tops of horse-drawn buses? Or was it Alice in Wonderland? He could not be sure; but he saw that the skirt was heavily pleated and rather long, that the cotton socks were a little thin and that there were carefully stitched darns showing over each heel of her tennis shoes.
There was no time for him to observe more or to think about her more specifically, because the Dormains were obviously anxious to start the game and to win it; but he was glad to discover almost from the first ball that she was if anything even less accomplished than himself, and that their normally aggressive opponents of the summer-house-end became steadily more courteous and sporting as game succeeded game.
“Oh bad luck!” they called as John or Victoria muffed an easy return; or “Jolly good shot!” on the rare occasions when one of John’s rather flamboyant serves landed explosively in the correct court.
But they were not discomfited; after an initial attempt to improve their play with much marshalling of forces and hasty conferences between games, they threw their endeavours to the sun, and without any clowning or self-consciousness proceeded quietly to enjoy their frustration, gradually building up out of the ruin of their ambitions a secret and unspoken pleasure in the magnitude of their defeat. It became almost the thing to lose, so that they were on the verge of apologising when by some ineptitude on the part of Richard or Pat a straight shot curved serenely and successfully over the net.
And then, at the end of their set, as they made their way to the lemonade table, standing tinkling and frosty under its orange umbrella between the two busy courts, she looked at him delightedly and said:
“The trouble is, you know, that you’re too like me. You don’t think about it, do you?”
“About the tennis, you mean?”
“Yes. You think about it for a time; but just when the ball reaches you, when you should be thinking about it hard, you forget about it completely, don’t you?”
He wanted to take her hand.
“Of course!” he said, “that’s exactly what happens: how on earth did you guess?”
“Oh it was easy! I was watching the pigeons over the Stables, waiting for that white one to tumble again, and then when the others called out ‘Service’ for the umpteenth time I looked at you and saw that you were watching them too.” She touched his hand. “Things like that you know; it was easy.”
“Yes; but all the same I don’t think anyone else would have known that except possibly Melanie.”
“Who’s Melanie? Your sister?”
“Yes.”
“Oh!”
“Why? Don’t you like her?”
“I don’t know; but I don’t think I’ve ever been awfully keen on red-haired people, and I noticed that hers is very red; it looks angry. But it’s not really that. It’s just that I don’t think she would have known even though she is your sister.” She paused and then added hastily, “Of course I don’t really know anything about her, because I haven’t got any sisters, or brothers for that matter; I’m an ‘only’, but I just don’t think she would have known; not like I did anyway.”
“Why not?”
“Because she doesn’t look like you! I look much more like you. You might have been my brother: we’re both pale and thin and tall, aren’t we? and if you let your hair grow, why, some people might even think you were me, mightn
’t they?”
He looked at her searchingly. It had not occurred to him, but of course she was right; they were alike; dreadfully, excitingly alike.
“Are people always telling you that you look ill?” he asked suddenly.
“Oh isn’t it maddening?” all at once she was very grown-up; so that momentarily he could feel he was talking to her mother. “Does that happen to you too?”
“Yes.”
“But it’s so silly, isn’t it? We’re just pale people, that’s all. There are red people, yellow people—”
He laughed, “Like Tim you mean?”
“Yes—and there are pale people, like us. We don’t go about telling the red people they look ill, do we? They should leave us alone. It’s so—common to be ill isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he said, “I suppose it is.” They laughed, and taking her arm he led her over towards the refreshment table.
“Let’s have some lemonade and then explore together.”
It was lovely lemonade in great sparkling jugs with dew clinging to the sides. A whole bushel of lemons had drowned themselves in it, leaving only a few wisps of rind, a wizened pip or two and a floating debris of particles like transparent grains of corn.
Beside the jug on the limp white cloth there were plates of iced cakes melting in the slow blaze of the sun so that the cherries with which they were studded had slipped out of place and projected like drunken jockeys from their sides.
They drank two or three glasses of the lemonade each and gorged themselves on the cakes. There were pink ones, yellow ones, and white ones, and half-way through his second a sudden idea occurred to him.
“Let’s eat only the white ones!” he said, his mouth full, “they’re obviously ours and we’ll leave the others for the pink pigs and the yellow bellies.”
She giggled delightedly. “Aren’t they delicious? I always think iced cakes are at their best in summer: sticky and sweet like real Turkish delight. Oooh, this one’s loaded with cream! Like a bite?”
In the Time of Greenbloom Page 1
