“No, it wasn’t that.”
“Well, what was it? You’re so pale—you’re paler than me now. What frightened you?”
“I don’t know. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Yes I would.”
“No.”
“It was me, wasn’t it? Seeing me when you came up?”
“Yes.”
“You see!” She danced briefly. “I told you I knew, didn’t I?”
“All the same”—and she was suddenly still beneath her frown—“I don’t quite see why—?”
He was shivering and for some reason he felt suddenly angry; he bit hard on his teeth.
“Well, I’ll tell you. It may sound stupid but I was frightened because when I first saw you I thought for a moment that you were me—and yet I knew you weren’t. See if you can understand that if you’re so clever!”
She looked him up and down intently. “Of course I can; it was I who told you how alike we were in the first place; and yet of course we’re completely different—we must be, because I’m a girl and you’re—”
“That’s just what I mean; we are and we aren’t,” he said. “And after being down there where it was dark,” he pointed at the water, “it frightened me; that’s all.”
“Well I don’t see that it’s anything to be frightened about.” She was laughing now. “I think it’s exciting and lovely to be the same and yet different.” She took his hand. “Help me in will you? I don’t want to get my hair wet because it’ll never get dry in time.”
With no pause she had dropped quickly to her knees and lowered her legs over the edge of the platform. Stooping down behind her he put his hands under her shoulders, and as she swung away from him he let her slip gently into the water.
She was silent for a moment as she took the sudden shock of the coldness against her sun-warmed skin. A black streamer of her hair snaked across her cheek, its tail clinging to the corner of her mouth as though it had just emerged. Her eyes laughed up at him.
“Ooh, lovely lovely water,” she said as she started rather unsteadily to swim away towards the middle of the lake. He watched her uneasily for a moment.
“Don’t go too far,” he said. “It’s very deep—I never even reached the bottom.”
“I’m going to that blue bit,” she called. “Right in the very middle where the sun is.”
He sat down and started to pick the little tendrils of water-weed from between his toes. She had laughed at him; that was the funny thing. When people laughed it was usually because they didn’t understand; but she had understood, and yet she had laughed. He wondered why. Had she understood more than he had himself, in order to be able to laugh, or had she understood less? And who was right? He, to have been serious and frightened, or Victoria to have been excited and laughing? It was like Melanie over again. She always laughed at his secrets, at his more intimate speculations about the nature of girls. But he was sure that really he was right, that there was something that girls wouldn’t and couldn’t and never would understand even though there were some things they seemed to know naturally which made no sense to him.
One thing he did know. And that was that he loved, yes loved Victoria. He would always love her; even when he was old enough to love people he would love her and go on loving her for ever—
Suddenly, like a knife thrown into his head, he heard her scream; dispassionately, with no engagement of his feelings, he looked across the broken surface of the lake and saw her: noted that her cheeks were round and white as a wind-cherub’s, that the water was flooding into her open mouth, and that she was riding raggedly up and down in her attempts to swim out of the net of water-lilies in which she was caught.
He noted all this, saw it on the instant: but at first it held no fear for him, was no more than an arrested picture at which he through his warm blood and live senses gazed as rapt and objectively as a child at a lantern lecture. Then, as the range of his vision widened to take in the thick tracts of the leaves which surrounded her like the green footprints of some enormous beast, he saw the riding swans; and seeing them, knew at once the full cold measure of his terror.
All that he felt for her, all of pity guilt and horror, all of the sudden evil risen like a spectre from the lake, became fixed and resident in the swans as they floated in their white indifference a few feet away watching her easily, contentedly, and with no curiosity.
Then as her hands came up and beat the water, as she choked in the sprays and splashes of her own predicament and turned wordlessly towards him in the persistent silence, he found that he himself was at last with her in the lake seeming scarcely to move through its coldness as he writhed his way towards her.
He shouted once, loudly; and up above, the rooks took to the air. High, high above him he was conscious of their dark shapes and rough cries as they swirled in the circle of the sky; and then ahead of him he saw her thin arm rise out of the water, the fingers fluttering like bones against the darkness of the wood, and she was gone.
Measurably, the swans turned; slowly and in unison, with no flicker of their tails nor lingering glance from their painted black eyes, they swept away to the farther side out of his line of vision.
A few more convulsive strokes and he was above her, occupying the very place where a moment ago she had been a reality as, astonishingly diminished, she had coughed and fluttered in the embrace of her panic. He remembered then how far he himself had sunk on that first jump, his passing surprise at the largeness of the waters beneath its bright surface; and at once, he dived.
So light she must be, so short the time that had elapsed, that she could not be far beneath him; must surely if her eyes were still alive to it see the green sunlight and the round hearts of the leaves above them both. His feet struck into the air and impatiently he forced himself downwards with swinging strokes of his arms until at last he was deep enough to find full purchase against the water. Two more co-ordinated efforts of all his thin muscles and he was in the sepia-dimness of the middle depths. He turned like an eel, searching all about him with his eyes; every finger and toe alert for the least touch against it; but he saw nothing, felt only the yielding sliminess of the lily stems as they slid past his face and shoulders.
Not yet uncomfortable, bearing no physical burden within his chest or ears, he swam down farther: three full strokes into the darkness where the water was thicker and colder, and turned about him yet again seeking with all his heart and head for some inkling of her presence. But there was nothing. He was in a world of death and emptiness, numbed in all save the urgency and desperation of his wish.
He felt then that he would never, could never, come up without her: that rather he would open his own mouth and draw into himself the coldness and silence so that for that other world, harsh with questions and light, there would never be any necessity for an answer. He saw Melanie, the outraged faces of Mrs Bellingham and his Mother, the emptiness of his bed and the remote dignity of his father; and behind his unshed tears he was happy. There could be no disgrace, no dreadful twisting explanations as to why and whatever-made-you, but only this for ever and ever.
He was on his back now, still and effortless, making no further attempt to seek or to find; and as he lay there he floated a little nearer to the surface counting the thuds of heart and waiting uncritically for the moment when he would know that he must certainly do it and drown. Then above him and a little to one side he saw her; a pale green shape with a drift of black hair swinging against the surface. In a moment, with all his thoughts fled and his arms linked tightly round her chest, he was kicking and pushing beneath her. Still on his back he pumped at the water with his feet and together, with her hair in his mouth and eyes, they broke to the surface and the swans.
He swept away her hair and drew in the delight of the air. They were safe; he had found her. Soon she would breathe again properly, he would revive her on the bank in the way he had been taught at school. He would dry her and dress her and they would run back together. No one would
ever know.
Breathlessly, the water sheeting over his face at every progress, he kicked out with his legs on either side of her narrow hips; never daring to turn his head in order to see how far they were from the platform nor even if they were moving in the right direction. Before him, in the bright sky, mingled with the water, so that they seemed to be immersed in it like ragged black fish, the rooks still circled and called over the tops of the trees. Out of their other world they watched him as the swans had watched Victoria sink; but not in silence like the swans, for they were participants in all he did, were excited and involved, keener to his success or failure and not content to let him have his fight alone. He did not know what they wished for him: whether they hoped to see him reach the bank and there build his safety like a nest, or whether they hoped to see her drop once more from his arms and fall for ever unattainable into the depths of their reflected trees; but he knew by their alarms and laughter, by their shrills and shrieks, that they acknowledged him in a way the swans had never done.
Suddenly he was aware of a new note in their mockery or distress, something higher than their threats and more regular than the gasp of his own breathing. There were voices: his own name being called over and over again with rising exasperation, someone else whistling.
“John! Jooohn! Where are you?” and then the see-saw of the whistle, long-drawn and enquiring: again and again.
Nearer and nearer they came, so that he longed suddenly for the silence of the swans and the clamour of the rooks and would, had it been possible, have made no sound nor asked for any interest or help.
But it was too late: a few feet away a head broke through the ranks of the reeds. It was Wully, the Bellingham cocker spaniel. For a moment, immobile save for the working of his nostrils and with his long orange ears absurdly cocked, the dog gazed at him; and then he turned his head away to the path and gave tongue. His wild hysterical ‘Yollop yollop!’ split the afternoon, quelling even the cawing of the rooks and John heard the drumming of feet breaking into a run as the others made for the periphery of the lake.
“Here he is!” It was Melanie alert and angry who was the first to arrive. Typically, she allowed her triumph full play even before she had seen him, her questions and his relayed answers being shouted out over the concealing screen of the rushes and reeds.
“John? where are you? We’ve been looking for you all afternoon. You are rude; he is rude, Tim, isn’t he? Tim’s here and Mrs Bellingham’s coming and Colonel Bellingham has had to go to the ruins. Why ever didn’t you tell us—John?”
With a last kick he impelled himself and Victoria to the side of the lake just as Melanie reached the platform above it. He heard her, the sudden gasp of her astonishment; but he did not look up. Let her look at him, he thought, take it all in so that she would make no mistakes later when she told Mother and Mary.
“What ever’s the matter with Victoria? Tim, come quickly. John, answer me! What’s the matter? What have you been doing?”
“Oh shut up!” he said, “and give me a hand with Victoria; she’s fallen in and I had to rescue her.”
“But you’ve got no clothes on! You’ve neither of you got any clothes on.”
He spat out some water.
“No, we’ve got no clothes on,” he said nastily. “Tell Tim: ‘They’ve got no clothes on’, we’ve got no clothes on, ‘they’ve got no clothes on.’”
He wanted to go on saying it for ever in a Punch-and-Judy voice like a gramophone record which has got stuck in a groove; but somehow he managed to control himself and wriggled out backwards on to the muddy part of the bank by the boathouse dragging Victoria after him.
“Quick!” he said to Tim who was behind him. “Don’t worry about Melanie, we’ve got to give Victoria artificial respiration; she’s swallowed a lot of water and stuff.”
Side by side, so that his shoulder felt the warmth of Tim’s envied shirt they squatted on the bank and pulled Victoria out of the water on to the short grass at the top. Their urgency and roughness disturbed her, she half-opened her eyes and closed them again, then gave a feeble cough.
John jumped astride her and kneeling down placed his hands on the chrysalis of her chest where the thin ribs heaved like folded wings against the skin. He leaned forward counting slowly out loud. “One … Two … Three …” and then, still counting, sank back on his haunches: “Four … Five … Six.” He swung forward again: “One … Two … Three …” and heard the bubble of water in her throat as the air was expelled: then back again on to his haunches and the coldness of her thighs. The air entered between her blue lips, beneath his relaxed hands the flat muscles contracted as the tip of her tongue protruded blackly between her teeth and suddenly as he counted again: “One … Two … Three …” she was sick: chrystallised half-cherries swallowed entire, a strange debris of cake and white icing streamed out on to the grass from her pale profile like bait disgorged into the bottom of a boat by a hooked whiting.
All three, they watched her fascinated; and then when the spasm was over John leaned forward again keeping up the magical enumeration with a triumphant rise of his voice as the last of the old air rose from the depths of her chest mingled with muddy water.
He was about to ask Tim to run secretly to the house for towels and hot-water bottles when he saw that he was no longer there. Only his ankles and knees were visible and across the whiteness of Victoria’s chest there was thrown, like that of a badly taken snapshot, the shadow of a head and shoulders.
Horrified, he looked up: it was Mrs Bellingham. Against the sun he could not see her face, he could see only the garden-party expanse of the frock over her bosom as it swelled beneath its flare of bougainvillaea and chrysanthemum; but from somewhere above it, between her mauve neck and the shadow cast by her floppy hat, came the sonorous ominous gong of her voice.
“Victoria Blount! John Blaydon! Whatever, yes whatever are you doing?”
The vibrations broke ineffectually against the green doors of the forest. In the pause he looked up at Melanie, and her sharp eyes black with excitement looked back into his own for an instant before she looked away from him to the shadows beneath the picture hat on his other side. This was something like, he thought bitterly, an enormous woman, a tremendous ally all flowers and silk and outrage.
The gong struck again. “Get up at once, yes at once, John.” Her dress swirled as she turned away from him “Tim!”
“Yes Mother.”
“Run and get Nanny immediately and tell your Father where we are. We shall want some towels—and hot-water bottles.”
“All right.”
“No! wait a moment—we must cover this child at once, yes at once. Give me your shirt.”
Suddenly, all creaking efficiency, she swooped down upon him before John was able to move. His nakedness was growing on him like a mushroom, pushing its way with awful rapidity through every nook and cranny of his consciousness. From nowhere a parasol flowered over Victoria and beneath it Mrs Bellingham’s white-gloved hands tucked in Tim’s shirt so that he could see only her knees and the upper part of her sweat-dewed face.
Mrs Bellingham’s head emerged from a scolloped corner of the silk parasol.
“You had better put your clothes on immediately, I think. Yes, with no delay—and in the boathouse.” She looked at Melanie.
“Now then Elizabeth, my dear, run after Tim quickly there’s a good girl and tell him on no account to tell anybody anything. Do you understand? Not anybody anything at all!”
“Yes Mrs Bellingham—”
“Well run along then dear.”
“All right.” Melanie looked at her importantly, “Mrs Bellingham?”
“Yes dear—what is it?”
“My name’s Melanie! I’m John’s sister you know.”
“Of course, how foolish of me Melanie. But never mind that just now Elizabeth. Run along do and overtake Timothy—oh and you might ask Nanny to telephone the Vicarage for your car. I’m sure that boy—I’m sure that your brother
John should get home and into bed as quickly as possible.”
From the boathouse John watched Melanie run with never a backward glance until she was deep in the green shadows of the ride where so short a time before he and Victoria had paused in the woodland silence.
He put on his clothes slowly; there was no point in hurrying; the afternoon was over and he could never go back to where he had been before he took them off. They were the same clothes, but he was different and once he had resumed them everyone and everything else would be different and go on being different for ever. He was sure of it.
Outside, Mrs Bellingham was talking to Victoria. She had put away her gong now and the wood-pigeons were back: she was cooing …
“Well what’s oop this time?” asked Simpson without taking his eyes off the road.
John sat stiffly in his corner in the back seat of the Ford. Let Melanie tell him, he thought. It will be interesting to know what’s she’s thinking.
“It’s John,” she said. “He left me all alone and went bathing with a girl in the lake. She nearly drowned and Mrs Bellingham found them there together. They had to get hot-water bottles and blankets to cover her with and send for the doctor. That’s why she sent us home, because she was so furious! John’s spoiled the whole afternoon for me and disgraced everyone.”
Simpson squawked the klaxon as they turned into the Worsley road.
“’Eavens aboove!” he said. “’OO fetched t’lass out then?”
“I did.”
John edged a little farther away from Melanie and gazed intently at the back of Simpson’s yellow head. “I jumped in and swam out to her and I got her back from the bottom of the lake, then I gave her artificial respiration until she was sick.” He paused dramatically. “I think I saved her life.”
“Tha did?” Simpson turned half round, his hands crossed easily on the high steering wheel. “Tha woont get no disgraëce for that, ya might even get a swimmin’-gala medal—but not from t’mistress.”
In the Time of Greenbloom Page 3
