In the Time of Greenbloom

by Gabriel Fielding

  He opened his mouth and she popped it in. “There! and now you can lick my fingers for me, they’re covered in white icing.”

  “No. I’ve got a better idea; come close and I’ll tell you.”

  Tossing her hair away from the whiteness of her ear she leaned towards him.

  “There’s a lake,” he whispered, “a secret one in the depths of the wood. We could slip away and wash our hands in it and see the swans.”

  “Is it far?”

  “No; but what does it matter? No one would mind, and anyway we did so badly against the Dormains that I don’t suppose that we’ll be playing again for ages.”

  “What about your sister?”

  “Oh, she’ll be all right.” He searched the courts. “Look! She’s playing with Tim and he’s pretty good so she’ll be pleased with herself. Do let’s! If you go first, as though you were going to the house to wash, no one will think anything at all and then I could meet you in the Rose Garden in five minutes’ time.”

  “All right. But don’t be longer or I shall get nervous: I’m a dreadful coward about grown-ups—other people’s I mean.”

  “No,” he said, “only five minutes.”

  She was drooping over the sundial in the centre of the Rose Garden when he got there.

  “Did it seem very long?” he asked.

  “No, as a matter of fact I wouldn’t have minded if you’d been even longer.” She waved an arm. “All these roses,” she said.

  He looked round at them as they hung in their fullness dropping slow white petals on to the weedless soil.

  “And the scent,” she went on. “It must be the heat of the sun—do you know what I was imagining?”

  “That you were the Sleeping Beauty?”

  “No, not that! You know those little insects you find in roses; the ones with the wavy tails?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I was shutting my eyes and breathing in the sweetness deeply and pretending that I was one of those little things sitting quite still in the centre of a huge, an enormous, rose.”

  “What a lovely idea!”

  “Have you ever wanted to be one? A rose-insect, I mean?”

  “Yes, d’you know, I think I have—when I was younger. It’s funny how one forgets isn’t it?”

  “It’s awful. I keep on saying to myself, ‘I must never forget, I must never forget,’ about everything! I tried to keep a diary once; but it was no good, the words weren’t the same, or if they were I couldn’t think of them.”

  “I know! I’ve tried that too. But I’ll tell you what, let’s pick a rose and then you can smuggle it home and you’ll always have it. You’ll never forget what it was like—this afternoon I mean, today.”

  “Do you think they’d mind?”

  “Of course not. They’ve got hundreds. Look! they’re dying all over the place; but I’ll pick you a young one that you can keep in your bedroom for a bit and then press and take back to school with you.”

  “Do you hate school?”

  “Yes—Look, here’s a beauty.” Leaning out awkwardly from the grass verge he snatched it quickly. “Dash, I’ve scratched myself.”

  “Let me look,” she took his hand. “Oh, your poor thumb.” And suddenly she stooped and laid her lips against it nipping at it expertly with her teeth and sucking hard.

  “There! It will be all right now, I’ve got the thorn out for you.” She laughed, “I saw a film once: Rudolph Valentino I think it was, and he picked a rose for a girl in a garden, and as they were pinning it to her dress, it scratched him, and do you know what she said?”

  “No.”

  “She said, ‘You gave me a rose and you drew my blood.’ I think that’s rather romantic don’t you?”

  “What did he say?”

  “I can’t remember that bit very well. I think he didn’t say anything, he just folded her in his arms and kissed her passionately. It was in the evening you see and they were in Morocco or somewhere—he was an Arabian Sheikh.”

  “Oh.”

  “Will you pin on mine for me? My brooch would do.”

  “All right; but we’ll have to be quick you know. I do so want you to see the lake and the swans.”

  Carefully and with much heavy breathing he impaled the stem of the rose on her brooch and then pinned it to her dress, a little to one side of the neckline, just below her collarbone. He knew that this was the right place because he had seen Robin Clifton, one of his elder sister Mary’s young men, do the same thing for her when they were going to a dance.

  “Thank you.” She sniffed it appreciatively. “Now I feel that you really gave it to me and I’ll always keep it, always. Which way do we go to get to the lake?”

  “There’s a gate into the wood at the back of the stables.”

  “Come on then, I’ll race you.”

  She ran quickly over the grass towards the stable yard, hesitated a moment and then fled straight on through the archway to the wicket gate. She was through it before he himself was half-way across the yard, and he did not catch her up until they were deep under the trees.

  “By Jove! You can run,” he said as they slowed to a walk.

  She was pleased.

  “Yes, not much to carry and long legs to carry it. At school the games-mistress calls me Atalanta.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “Oh I don’t know—some classical person, ‘renowned for her fleetness of foot’ I think—I say! Isn’t it different in here?”

  He nodded and then put his fingers to his lips. “Let’s listen; don’t make a sound, and then we’ll see who can hear the most.”

  They were silent for a moment.

  “It’s no good,” she said. “I’m puffing so much I can’t hear anything but my own noises.”

  “Well, take a few deep breaths—we both will.”

  They inhaled conscientiously a few times.

  “Now then,” he said. “Let’s try again with our eyes shut this time.”

  The silence dropped round them like a curtain, a green curtain: and then, gradually, as their ears became attuned, innumerable little noises became apparent to them weaving themselves into the background like flowers into a tapestry.

  From the distance they could hear the sieved laughter and shouts from the tennis courts; and nearer at hand, the rattle of crockery and cutlery, the high backchat of servants from the kitchen of the house; above them, all about them, were the still dry sounds of the woods: the cooing and clapping of grey pigeons, the fall of seed or twigs, and the papery sounds of last year’s leaves disturbed by the passing of tiny animals.

  His eyes tight shut, he waited; he could picture her standing there in front of him, sharing in her private darkness each identical sound as it came to them through the dim greenness beyond. He wondered how she would look with her eyes closed and tried hard to visualise the sleeping secrecy of her face with the lids drawn down over the large eyes.

  Atalanta! Such places as these, he thought, ought to have girls in every tree: nymphs and dryads in willows and oaks, and the printless flashing of white feet through sphagnum and fern and the hint of laughter at the stream’s edge. Always, on the moors, by rivers, in woodland; in the sudden moments of the inward sun, he had had this feeling that somehow in the corner of the twinkling of an eye the place was feminine; that if only he were quick enough he would catch the bright gleam of a mouth or the whiteness of a hand before they merged tantalizingly into a flower or a stone. And now here she was alone with him sharing it all; he had only to open his eyes and he would see her, not through the slow syntax of his Latin or Greek lessons at the Abbey—though he decided he would take more interest in them next term—but in actuality, and with her eyes closed. He would steal something from her and yet she would never know.

  He opened his eyes. At once, mysteriously, even before the light broke in on him afresh, he realised that he was too late; knew that he would see what in fact he was seeing: the grave and unabashed inspection which confronted him in the greyness
of her own.

  “Oh!” he said, “you cheated—you were looking all the time!”

  “And how did you know?”

  “Well—”

  “Yes, ‘well’,” she mimicked, “because you were going to cheat yourself; but I knew you would and so I decided to do it first. And besides,” she moved on ahead of him looking at her feet, “besides I wanted to see what you looked like with your eyes shut. My mother says that when a person closes their eyes you can tell all about them by looking at their faces. She said my father had a horrid face when he was asleep.”

  “Did she?”

  “Yes, she said that if she’d once seen him asleep before they got married then she’d never have married him in the first place.”

  “Oh,” they moved on down the ride, walking absurdly on tiptoe and swinging their joined hands.

  “But how awful!” His expostulation was sudden.

  “What?” she asked blithely.

  “To be married to someone whose face you hated when they were asleep.” He felt her hand, her whole arm, tense against him.

  “I mean it must rather spoil things; although I suppose that since they’d mostly be asleep at the same time, it doesn’t matter all that much.”

  “Oh but it does—I mean it did,” and her hand started to swing again. “But you needn’t worry now. You see they were divorced ages ago.”

  “Oh I see.”

  “And the funny thing is he’s much nicer now; you know, he’s polite to Mummy when we meet in hotels and places: helps her off with her coat and things like that. I go and stay with him sometimes and he gives me the most wonderful presents: this butterfly brooch for instance.”

  “How lovely.” He fingered it.

  “You see the eyes?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Those are real rubies.”

  “I say!”

  They turned a corner.

  “Ooh!” she said. “Look! The lake and the swan, no two, just as you said. I do love it when things come true don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  They quickened their pace so that very soon they were trotting without realising it.

  “When I was young you know, nearly everything used to come true; but now, even though I’m not awfully old I’m beginning to be surprised when they do. Enid, that’s Mummy, says that when I’m older nothing will ever come true at all, and that when I come out I’m to be sure to have as much fun as—”

  “Please!” he said.

  “What?”

  “Please don’t talk about that any more.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “I don’t know; it just makes me feel uncomfortable. I mean we might as well still be up at the tennis courts, mightn’t we?”

  She was crestfallen. “I’m sorry! Somehow when I’m with you I can’t help saying the things I’m actually thinking about, and I suppose I think an awful lot about Enid and my father, even though I don’t really want to think about them.”

  “I know; I do that too. I keep on wanting and not wanting to think about next term; and today, well I jolly well won’t. You do the same. Just think about today, about the lake and the swans and the cakes we ate—things like that.”

  “All right.” She looked at him carefully. “I’ll tell you what! If you promise to be happy about next term, I’ll write to you every week and what’s more I’ll never even mention you-know-what however much I want to.”

  “Oh no, you mustn’t do that; letters are different, and if you are thinking about something you must write it so that I can answer, and then it really will be as though we were talking to each other.”

  “But it won’t,” she was laughing, “because you won’t let me talk about it.”

  He was bewildered for a moment and could think of no reply.

  “Don’t frown,” she said. “It makes you look old. I understand; you mean that because we won’t be together we can afford to be nearer, more real to each other.”

  “Yes that’s it. You are clever!”

  “No I’m not really; it’s only that I think I’m a little older than you in some ways—girls are you know.”

  They had reached the edge of the lake now: an almost perfect circle with a sagging boat-house on the far side, it lay under the throng of the tall trees in all the stillness and heat of late afternoon. Only a narrow path fringed with rushes and reeds separated its margins from the boles of the trees so that their origins, grey as the legs of elephants, were reflected upon its surface where each vagary of their branches, each fan of their foliage, was darkly contained within its circumference.

  Only at the centre where the tops of the trees, blemished with the black nests of the rookery, ended evenly in an enclosed smaller circle was there a glimpse of the high blue medallion of the sky. The rest, the large periphery, was a closer greener forest strewn over with the white heads of water-lilies and swaying slightly from the movements of the two swans by the farther bank.

  From the water rose the thin reedy smell of river-mud and water-plants. Here and there ‘water-boatmen’ jerked over the reflections, while every now and again a black bubble rose from the depths and broke softly on the surface.

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” she breathed.

  “I knew you’d like it.”

  “Oh I do! It’s so small—I never thought it would be like this, I imagined it much bigger; but this is like a lake in a story or a peep-show, you almost feel you can hold it between your hands as though it were really yours. Almost,” she went on, “as though it were enchanted; as though at any moment a hand with Arthur’s sword in it might rise out of that blue centre and point at the sky.”

  “Yes. Come on! Let’s go and sit on the boat-house platform; you can wash your fingers there and we might be able to see some fish.”

  They walked round the path and climbed carefully on to the lichen-covered planks of the small platform. The swans watched them placidly until they sat down, and then quietly drew away to the farther bank.

  “There!” he said. “Now you lie down and dabble your fingers in the water while I hold your ankles.”

  Obediently, her hair drooping round her white face, she lay down and lowered her hands into the water. She sat up suddenly.

  “That settles it!” she said. “I’m going to.”

  “Going to what?”

  “I’m going to bathe of course. It’s irresistible: feel it.” She patted his cheeks with her dripping fingers. “It’s fresh and cool and clean, there must be a stream somewhere. It will be heavenly. Come on! Let’s bathe together.”

  “But can you swim? It’s quite deep you know.”

  “Of course I can—I passed the test last term. Why, can’t you?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But what?” She was undoing her shoes and peeling off her thin cotton socks.

  “Well,” he said. “Do you think we ought to—I mean suppose somebody came and saw us?”

  “Oh don’t be a prude,” she said. “You’ve got a sister, haven’t you?”

  “Two.”

  “Well then—”

  “But someone might come down from the tennis-party looking for us.”

  “That’s just what they will do if you don’t hurry up. But if we’re quick, we can be in and out in no time and no one will ever know—except us and the swans.”

  “All right,” he said uneasily, “but only on one condition.”

  “What,” her question was muffled, coming to him from behind the dress which she was pulling over her head.

  “That you undress in there.” His hands on her shoulders he swivelled her round away from him. “In the boat-house.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know; but please!”

  Her head emerged from the dress again. “You are funny!” she said. “You’ll see me when I come out so what’s the difference?”

  She left him then and disappeared inside, and the moment she was gone he stripped off his flannels, shirt, socks and shoes and tiptoei
ng to the edge of the platform sat with his feet dipping into the cool water.

  A moment later he heard the swift pad of her feet behind him and in a sudden flush of fear pushed himself off into the lake.

  Down and down he went, the bubbles of his descent frothing up past his ears as he sank swiftly into the ever colder layers of the water. Although his eyes were open he could see nothing but the clouded green-brownness which surrounded him.

  All at once he remembered that other moment when they had stood silent and voluntarily blind beneath the green shade of the wood. He had intended then, by opening his eyes to see her unobserved, to steal something from her. In another moment the opportunity would be his once again; the round eye of the lake had closed over him shutting her from his sight; but when he rose, when the green eye opened for him again as it must, he would be able to see and steal even more from her than he had at first intended. This time it would not be his fault; it would be nobody’s fault.

  Then, lunging for the surface, he trod the darkness vigorously with his feet and broke into the air and the light.

  Thin as the ivory tusk in the hall she was standing on the very edge of the platform; on her slender thighs and the naked curve of her stomach, the shaken water threw green and shifting shadows. Something about the narrow sweep of her waist rising to the early fullness of her breasts hurt him like a pain so that he gasped out loud and then raised his eyes to her face as she leaned over him, dipping her lips and eyes into those reflected greens which were playing over the surfaces of her body.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Is it very cold?”

  Through the ringing of the water in his ears her voice came to him indistinctly like chimes in the wind and he could only look up at her, shaking the water from his hair and plucking at the slippery stem of a water-lily leaf which had twined itself round his shoulders.

  “Here!” she said as, kneeling, she put her hands down to him, “let me help you.”

  He grasped them and she pulled him in to the platform so that he could grip it and heave himself up quickly beside her.

  “All right?” she asked.

  “Yes.” He got to his feet and stood before her. “Why?” She said. “What happened? Did you get stuck in the mud or something?”