“Is Mother cross?”
“Ech! She’s like a toop’nny cracker on a hot stove,” said Simpson. “But tha never knaws. T’Mistress mae be thinkin’ different when she hears how brave tha were.”
Without turning his head John allowed the corner of his brief smile play in the direction of Melanie.
She saw it and responded quickly so that he felt the lurch of the seat as she leaned forwards to engage Simpson.
“No she won’t! They were naked Simpson! they had no clothes on at all, not even their shoes. Mrs Bellingham saw them herself without anything on. She was horrified and sent us both home although it was nothing to do with me except that I was the first to find them.”
Simpson’s whistle was low and frightening and the Ford slowed down.
“Not only that,” went on Melanie quickly, “but when Mrs Bellingham found him he was sitting on her—on her stomach—with nothing on.”
“I was giving her artificial respiration,” said John.
For the first time since they had left Clockwood John and Melanie looked at one another as they waited for Simpson’s comment.
“’Ow old is t’little lass?” he asked.
“She’s taller than me,” said Melanie. “I should say she’s at least thirteen. I didn’t like her at all. She was very rude to me, from the very moment we arrived she never spoke to me.
“She’s not, Simpson,” said John. “She’s only twelve. It’s only that she’s thinner, that makes her look taller.”
“That’s not what he means,” said Melanie. “Simpson wants to know who is the oldest, don’t you Simpson? And even I know that it’s wrong to take all your clothes off in front of other people, especially in front of boys.”
“You were premature,” said John. “You jolly nearly died before you were born and sometimes I wish you—”
“Now look ’ere,” said Simpson. “What’s t’sense in quarrellin’ like this before we reach t’Vicarage?”
“It’s John. He’s always doing these things. At the Drummond’s Christmas Party he got drunk on the butler’s sherry and set light to the table-cloth with an indoor firework. This time he’s done something much worse, something rude. And he knew he was doing wrong or he wouldn’t have gone off without me.”
Melanie was not far from tears but his heart did not soften because he knew that she would time her weeping for her appearance in front of Mother. She had said every single thing he hadn’t wanted her to say and soon she would be retelling the whole story to all the grown-ups.
“You did know, didn’t you John?”
“Didn’t I know what?” he asked.
“Don’t be silly, you know what I mean. You knew you were doing wrong at the party and you haven’t answered.”
“No, and I’m not going to.”
“There! You see? He’s guilty, isn’t he, Simpson? He’s guilty!”
“Now, now!” said Simpson. “Tha’s nearly ’ome now. Joost ’old tha gobs, as they say in Beddin’ton, or t’Mistress ’ll roast ya both.”
They ignored him, glaring at each other over the intervening waste of the shiny black seat. Outside, the elm trees swept past as they turned into the long drive.
John spoke slowly, “Well if I’m guilty, you’re jealous; and that’s how you know.”
“I don’t know what Jealousy means,” said Melanie.
“No, and I don’t know what guilty means until someone says it; it’s a horrid word.”
“You’ll know what it means when Mother says it, you just wait.” She picked up her racket expectantly. “You can let me out here, Simpson; I’m not going back with him—I’ll walk up the little lane.”
“I’m not stoppin’ on t’bend,” said Simpson. “You can get out at the front door, Miss Melanie, and Master John can go in at the back.”
They drew up and she got out quickly without looking at them. She frisked up the front steps and in behind the old glass of the front door while they drove round to the stables. Simpson switched off the engine.
“Ee! Ut looks bad,” he said in the sudden silence. “If ya taks my tip ya’ll saw nowt. Remember t’Mistress is lak a bonfire, more you put on ’t’more she blaëzes.”
“Yes,” said John. “Thanks awfully for backing me up, Simpson!” He clambered out of the car.
He couldn’t face the kitchen and the maids; the front door was out of the question because Melanie had used it. He would have to go through the french windows into the dining room. That would catch them off their guard, it would surprise everyone including the big square Vicarage. The house would not be expecting him to enter it that way and once he was in he would know what to do next.
He ran through the silence of the beech walk, the shadows roofing him in against the early twilight of the garden. This at least was the same, had changed not at all between the morning and the evening save in its air of expectation of the hours of night. The dews were held here safely from the declining power of the sun and he could smell the greenhouse-moistness of the grass and soil: the enclosed air was as cool as a hand against his forehead as he passed down the way: above him on the falling willow a thrush singing carefully.
He looked up at it as he passed. He himself was small, between the hedges no one could see him even though they might be looking. He was smaller than the thrush and no guiltier. One day, he decided, he would be a bird living in green places, seeing everything, knowing nothing save how to fly to sing and to hide. This very night when it was all over he would come out here again for a little time and forget all but the secrecy and the silence. He would close his eyes and out of the air and the night-scents fashion words without meaning and notes more remote than flowers. There in his bird-brain he would recapture the loveliness of Victoria as he had seen her by the lake; and no one would ever know of it or praise or blame him for it or alter it in any way.
He ran down the broad steps by the yellow broom bushes and across the flagged garden by the french windows. As he approached he saw at first only the unreal reflection of the garden in the dark panes of the glass; a drowned garden with all its shadows emphasised and its colours muted against which his distorted countenance moved like some pale fish a little way under the water. He stopped then, his gaze fixed on the glass trying to recognise the trees and the flowers behind him, to fasten this other face into the unreality of its other world. He tilted his head a little so that his image-face leaned and swam against the fall of the glass-willow; and then as he moved nearer, as the reflection of the screened room solidified and its interior absorbed his vision, he saw the others; all of them.
Mrs Mudd’s jet-black coat and Sunday hat with its shining crow’s feathers trembling over the daze of her expression as she stared blankly back at him; beside her, Emma Huggins, her busy wig making up for her lack of eyebrows and eyelashes; Grace Boult in her usual pale blue and rouge with a golden bun on the back of her neck. All of them, faces and hats, bosom on bosom, stretching down either side of the long oak table like the opposing ranks of some terrible female army; and at their head, small against the blue-white array of the Crown Derby on the sideboard, Mother: a tiny fiery General in conference at an Armistice.
How could he have forgotten? It was Friday, the first Friday of the month and the day for the Meeting of the Mothers. He had heard them planning it at lunch: the Maypole cake, the Indian tea, rock buns and Yorkshire tea-cakes. The events of the afternoon had driven it out of his head and apparently, out of Simpson’s and Melanie’s too. Well, that was one good thing anyway: whatever Mother had heard of the telephone message Melanie would not have had time to fill in all the awful details, and if things fell out well for him he would get his story in first.
He smiled brightly in through the glass at Mrs Mudd, put his finger to his lips and started to tip-toe elaborately away over the flagstones. If he didn’t look back, if he kept to the middle of each of the stones, all would be well. The great thing was to forget them all in there, to pretend that this was a normal afternoon drawing t
o a nonchalant close. Mrs Mudd Emma Huggins Grace Boult were none of them there and therefore could not possibly have seen him, and that being so, it would be quite natural to break into a run at any moment, to race for the summer-house and see if there were any cigarette-ends between the cracks in the floorboards.
He broke into a run. Behind him he almost thought he heard the door open and the chilling egress of high and confused talk; but it was probably only imagination and to look back was forbidden. He went on up the stone steps. If only he could reach the beech walk everything would be all right. The beech walk was Sanctuary and no one could touch him once he was within it. He slowed down to a walk. Had someone called? Impossible! a hen squawking or a cock in the paddock signalling the dusk as they sometimes did. It was safe to look now because he was hidden by the shrubbery and would see nothing; so he halted and looked into the leaves and branches by his shoulder.
Nothing, nothing at all, only footsteps. Quick footsteps clipping across the flags like a rain of nails. His whole face tingled suddenly as though the blood were being sucked out out of it by a whirlpool in his chest. It was Mother: through a gap in the branches he could see the bobbing black and white of her Mothers’ Union dress; and she was not speaking or calling, she was simply chasing him in silence.
Unable, like Herod, to summon him again for the sake of them that sat with her and yet furiously angry she was pursuing him with all the impersonality of a nightmare. In his mind he could see her intimately: her fists tight by her side, the whites of her pale eyes netted with full vessels, her tiny chin clenched against her upper teeth like it had been the time Bessie bolted with them in the Phaeton when she had been at the reins.
His heart smithied inside him, the blows reverberating up into his throat and head. Swiftly he slipped into the gap between the beech hedge and the shrubbery and crouched there with his eyes tightly shut. Up the steps she came: in the half of a second she would be level with him and he would not see her. He was cheating by keeping his eyes closed and vengeance would befall him if he did not look. So he looked.
She was standing there waiting for him in the bright green light and he felt as though she really had caught him, as though he had been doing something wicked and dreadful in the darkness under the tree.
“Come here,” she said softly.
He slunk out of his hiding, looking into her face to see it as it really was; and it was the same as he had imagined it only much more terrible.
Without a word she took his wrist tightly in her own small dry hand and led him under the archway into the beech walk where a few moments earlier the thrush had sung. They went along it in silence faster and faster so that if she had been bigger and he smaller, by the time they had reached the summer-house after crossing the tennis court, she would have been dragging him as she dragged the dog at the end of its lead when it had offended her.
She shut the door behind them and in the smell of the tennis net and distemper confronted him in the wooden silence. There were laden spider’s webs in the corners of the windows; and the closed croquet box spoke of the holiday that was so nearly over.
“Well!” she asked. “What have you to say for yourself?”
“What about?” The hand holding his own shook and suddenly she began to twist his arm.
“You’re a coward,” she said, “a dirty little coward; don’t be a liar as well.”
“I’m not—I’m not—I’m not dirty.”
“Oh yes you are.” She gave his arm another twist. “You have disgraced me, haven’t you?”
“No.”
“Yes you have.” She drew in a deep breath. “You saw all those people in the dining room, didn’t you? My Mothers?”
He made no answer.
“Didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Tomorrow or the next day they may all know what I know; they may know more, they may know both the things you did do as well as the things you didn’t do; and I want to know them first so that I shall know what to do with you and what to say to them. Do you understand me?”
“Yes Mother.”
“Don’t call me Mother, answer me. What did you do?”
Still he said nothing and suddenly she dropped his arm; it throbbed by his side far more grievously than if it had suffered at the hands of anyone else.
“Look at me,” she said. “No, look into my eyes, John. Let me look into yours.”
He met her newly hateful eyes; nothing but her eyes mattered to him now. While it was still not too late he would look into them and hold them before the truth was lost, before it sank into the roots and mud over which they were both sustained, before it merged into something which he now knew would always be there and always be terrible. He remembered the lake and the terror which he had thought past and he remembered Victoria as she had stood there in the sunlight. He had done nothing but love her, nothing but want her to keep for himself, to wait for as he waited for the happiness which though he always expected it always eluded him.
Her eyes slipped away from his own.
“Very well then,” she said coldly. “You will stay here until you are prepared to tell me—all night—if necessary, with only yourself and your nasty impurity for company. While you are waiting I shall go and telephone Mrs Bellingham and apologise to her for my son’s behaviour. I shall explain that I can do nothing with him and that I shall quite understand if he’s never invited anywhere again. I shall also write to this girl’s mother and make our apologies—mine and Daddy’s—to her as soon as I know her name.” She paused. “What was her name?”
“Victoria Blount.”
“And how old was she?”
“Simpson asked me that—and I don’t see that it matters.”
“Of course it matters you young fool!” she blazed at him, and he remembered the bonfire. “That’s why Simpson asked you; it’s what they’ll all be asking tomorrow.”
“I don’t see why,” he muttered, bewildered by the new access of her anger.
“How old was she? Was she older than you or younger?”
“Older—a little; I think she was twelve and a bit.”
“Why did you make her take her clothes off?”
“I didn’t! I tried to stop her.”
“What?”
“I tried to stop her,” he spoke rapidly. “I only took her to see the swans, Mother. I only wanted to be alone with her and the swans and when we got there she wanted to bathe. She—”
“Yes?”
“Nothing.” It was dreadful to have to talk about her at all; like saying a prayer backwards.
“What did you say her name was?”
“Victoria, Victoria Blount.”
“From Newcastle?”
“I think so.”
“And were her parents there, both of them?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because she hasn’t got two parents. She told me that they were divorced or something.”
“Ah.” Her mouth relaxed. She looked at him again almost kindly for a moment as though he had stopped a pain for her, a headache.
“Of course,” she said. “I remember now,” and she sighed again.
They stood there together. For the first time since they had entered they heard small sounds from the garden outside. His body seemed to be working again; he was aware of his knees his ears the curl of his fingers by his side. In some indefinable way he knew that it was nearly over now, that soon he would be able to go on with things again where he had left them so long ago by the edge of the lake.
Opposite him, against the flaking distemper, she was watching him once more.
“One thing more I want to know,” she said, “to feel quite happy about you.”
“Yes Mother.”
“When she was—after she had taken all her clothes off did you do anything to her? Did you touch her in any way?”
“No.”
For one last moment her eyes looked into his again and this time he looked away.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
Her face was utterly relaxed for a moment; then when she spoke he saw the first flicker of personal interest she had betrayed that afternoon.
“Did you look at her, John?”
Yes, he thought, I did, I looked at her and I saw her as I see her now, as I’ll always be able to see her even without closing my eyes whether I’m asleep or awake. I saw her, all of her that was to be seen, and that no one else will ever be able to see again no matter how long they may look or live.
In this moment there was no one there but himself; they were all gone under the clock and did not matter at all. They were fixed for ever in the dining room in front of their empty cups under their absurd hats and he would tell them nothing.
“Did you?”
Her insistence roused him from the secrecy of his thoughts, he recalled the question and considered it afresh: her question, what she wanted to know.
“Yes,” he said boldly. “Yes I did—in a way.”
She drew breath to reply. He saw her lips dilate to shape words; but before she had time to utter even the first syllable of the expletive which he knew must follow, he spoke again.
“But that wasn’t wrong, not to see. I didn’t look, I saw! If other people want to turn seeing into looking it’s they who are wrong not me, isn’t it? So we needn’t ever tell them, need we?” He felt his hands clasp convulsively together in front of him. “Oh please don’t tell them, will you Mother?”
He saw her eyes, pale as ever, falter; and her neck, braceleted with creases flushed with quick pink as she replied:
“No! But—”
She never finished; her voice was far far away; it was more a memory even than the song of the thrush and he smiled to himself as she turned away from him and opened the door that gave on to the garden.
He watched her hurry across the dimming lawn into the dusk, saw her black dress, her eager thrusting little body become one with the darkness under the beech hedge, and turning caught sight of himself in the long cracked summer-house mirror. Tall and thin, pale as Victoria, the shadows clung like fine dark hair to the temples of his forehead.
In the Time of Greenbloom Page 4
