In the Time of Greenbloom

by Gabriel Fielding

  Ah well! he thought, you could only leave a place once, and it was all over now; that is to say, as much over as anything that affected you deeply was ever over.

  He sighed and getting down from the wall picked up the haversack and started to run along the gritty road. This afternoon there was the expedition to the caves; he would think about that. After all, there were still five days left with Victoria and if he concentrated on those, on every live minute of every brilliant hour they would lengthen and enchant him even longer. Had he remembered everything they had decided to buy? Yes, he thought so. Mentally he ran through the list: six candles, a loaf of brown bread, a pot of heather honey, four boxes of Bryant and May’s matches in case they lost any, a new penknife for digging up the truffles when they found them, a new battery for Victoria’s torch, First Aid tin with bandages, iodine and plaster and two reels of white cotton to spread out behind them in case they lost their way in the galleries.

  He rounded the last bend and saw Victoria at once. She was standing on the open gate swinging herself backwards and forwards under the shadows of the oak tree.

  “You have been a time,” she called as she saw him. “I’ve been waiting here for ages and ages. Annie Moses is furious with you.”

  “I’m sorry, it was farther than I thought.”

  “Whatever kept you? Did you go into one of your dream-sessions?”

  “No, not exactly. At least—”

  She jumped off the gate. “You did!” she said. “It was about going to your public school, to Beowulf’s, wasn’t it?”

  “No it wasn’t.” He was definite about this; for once she was wrong.

  “Then it was about leaving the Vicarage?”

  He said nothing.

  “Yes?” she said, turning round as she danced ahead of him. “Yes?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “There, I told you I knew, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you always do—very nearly always.”

  “Of course I do! I get it from Mummy, she’s got psychic powers too. She could have been a clairvoyante, and I take after her. When I grow up I might be a clairvoyante.”

  “What exactly is a clairvoyante?”

  “You know, it means clear-seeing; they’re people who see things clearly before they happen and I think they can somehow feel other people’s thoughts.”

  “You mean anybody’s thoughts?”

  “Oh no, not anybody’s; there has to be a special bond between them, they have to have been born under sympathetic stars.”

  “It sounds awful rot to me.”

  “That’s because you’re jealous! But you oughtn’t to be really, because it means that we’re fated. I mean I find you the easiest of anyone, so there must be a very strong bond between us, the same destiny.” She jumped at an overhanging acorn. “Did you remember all our things for the expedition?”

  “Yes everything.”

  “I bet you forgot one thing.”

  “What?”

  “The revolver!” She was laughing at his frown. “You know, I told you, in case one of us gets pinned under a fallen rock and the other one has to put him out of his agony.”

  He shuddered. “Horrible!” he said.

  “But it was cruel of you, especially after I’d reminded you and reminded you; and it’s not horrible at all really! I wouldn’t mind dying a bit as long as I’d been loved—I mean, as long as I’d known I’d been loved—” She stopped suddenly and confronted him. “Now think!” she said. “Think very hard, as darkly as though you were in your bed at night when thoughts become so real that you live in them and they are your life; and just suppose that it was me and that with my last breath I was begging you to finish me off with the blood coming out of my mouth, wouldn’t you feel awful if you couldn’t? If there was nothing to do it with?”

  “Don’t!” he said. “Not even as a joke. It makes me feel ill.”

  “But I’m not joking,” she said. “We were reading Romeo and Juliet last term and it was wonderful. In the tomb-scene I felt much happier at them dying than I would have done if they’d gone on living and got old and out of love. I know Romeo’s last speech off by heart:

  “Eyes look your last

  Arms take your last embrace! and lips oh you

  The doors of breath seal with a righteous kiss

  A dateless bargain to engrossing death!

  Come bitter conduct, come unsavoury guide!

  Thou desperate pilot now at once run on

  The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark!

  Here’s to my love—oh true apothecary

  Thy drugs are quick—thus with a kiss

  I die—”

  She swallowed and looked at him, her eyes suddenly uncertain. “There, don’t you think that is beautiful? I think it’s the most beautiful thing that was ever written.”

  He was discomforted by the brightness of her eyes, the tiny involuntary tremor of her lip. “It’s only a story,” he said. “It never really happened.”

  “What difference does that make?” she said so sharply that he did not know whether she were angry or amused. “Things that never happened are often more important, more beautiful, or sadder than things that did. If Shakespeare made her die like that in Italy four hundred years ago, it’s much more terrible than if a girl was really knocked over by a bus only yesterday. And anyway it’s different! You think I’m crying and I’m not, I’m happy.”

  “Well it’s a funny way of showing it,” he said awkwardly. “As Simpson would say, ‘you look like a dying dook’.” He laughed loudly and alone. “Oh come on! Cheer up. We’re going to have such fun.”

  “I’m not sure that we are; and what’s more, I don’t think you care at all. Mummy says men are different, that they don’t really mind about things—don’t feel them like we do.”

  “That’s not true; it’s because we feel them so much more that we don’t show it.”

  “Well you ought to show it. How’s anyone to know if people never show what they feel?”

  He abandoned his attempt to be reserved and ran up to her.

  “I do mind, really I do! I mind so much that I don’t even like to think about you dying let alone talk about it.”

  “How do you mind about my dying? Tell me.”

  “So much that if you died I should want to die myself.”

  “Oh but that’s not enough.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well! anyone could say that. It’s not wonderful; it’s not like Romeo. You must say more than that, or I’ll know you’re not my true love. You must make a speech and tell me beautifully how much you would mind. Look! I’ll show you.” She flopped down on the grass by the hawthorn hedge. “Now! You imagine that I’m dying in the darkness by the light of one of our candles and then tell me what you feel.”

  “I can’t,” he said. It was getting late. They ought to be at the house, they ought to be having lunch; if it wasn’t late, it ought to be late.

  “Please get up, Victoria! we’ll be late for lunch and Mr Harkess and your mother will be disapproving.”

  “No,” she said. “Not till you tell me.”

  “Oh all right.” He kneeled down beside her and leant over her white unlaughing face. It was not because it was difficult that he had fought against it, but because it was so easy; it was so much what he had most naturally wanted to do, what in some foreign country perhaps he would have done beautifully like Romeo with music and singing; it was easy, so much wanted, and so uncovering, that it must be wrong. Extraordinary, that beyond letting him, she should actually have invited him to find words for all the miseries and delights which like ravens and doves encircled her image in his mind.

  “If you died,” he said slowly, “it would be like—being blinded.” Searching for words he looked down at her as she lay there with her eyes closed, her lashes resting like crescents of dark pollen on her cheeks; so still and so silent.

  “‘Else a great prince in prison lies,’” he quoted softly. “My brother Dav
id once told me that if you took one flower to a man who had been locked up in prison for a long time and let him look at it he might go mad or die. Well that’s how I used to feel whenever things were beautiful and I was alone. But now I dare to look at them because they can answer me with your voice, look back at me with your eyes, and touch me with your hands. I’m not in prison any more.” He leaned and whispered into her ear, “I’m a great prince and I’m free. But if you died, if you were to die, there’d be just nothing for ever and ever.”

  She opened her eyes.

  “That was beautiful,” she said. “You must love me if you can talk like that. If you like you can kiss me.”

  “Not here,” he said.

  She got up quickly and picking up the haversack ran on ahead of him towards the rickyard.

  “I know someone who would like to kiss me,” she called out, “even if you wouldn’t.”

  He caught her up by the haystack and held her against its sweet-smelling side.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “A hiker.”

  “A hiker? Where did you see him? What hiker?”

  “By the gate when I was waiting for you. He had crinkly golden hair and very smart khaki trousers and a haversack like Daddy’s old army one. He said he’d got a big car too up by the Stump Cross. Didn’t he pass you on your way back? He was going towards Corby.”

  “No, no one passed me that I remember.” He frowned as he recalled the ghost of a noise, the essence of a shadow between himself and the sunlight as he had sat by the holly tree a few minutes earlier. “Unless someone went past without me knowing while I was sitting on the wall.”

  “That’s it,” she said. “Whatever were you doing sitting on a wall? Oh I know, thinking of your home; and you’ve got nothing to be sorry about really, because by this time, you’ll have another home; and from what your sister Melanie said to me at the wedding it’ll be much more exciting and unusual than the Vicarage ever was—come on, let me go now,” she tried to duck beneath his arms but he was too quick for her and held her shoulders firmly. “We must get this soup back to the house.”

  “No. I want to know why you said that this hiker man wanted to kiss you.”

  “Well he did.”

  “How do you know?”

  “By the way he looked at me.”

  “What way?”

  “Oh! Just the way people look at something they like or want. Greedy old women in cafés look at buns in that way sometimes—or the way George Harkess looks at Mummy in the evenings, that’s really what it’s like. Anyway, I always know.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes, all women do. Mummy says so.” His fists slackened on her shoulders as he laughed. Swinging the haversack between them they walked across the cobbles towards the kitchen door.

  “You’re not a woman. You’re only a girl.”

  “I’ll be fourteen on my next birthday; and besides—”

  “Besides what?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  They pushed open the kitchen door and Victoria dumped the tins of soup on to the table. “It’s quite all right,” she told Annie Moses. “It’s still five minutes to lunch time and you’ve only got to heat it up in a pan.”

  “That bloomin’ clock’s ten minutes slow Miss Victoria, and Mr Harkess has been in and out like t’bell-ringer at Ripon this last quarter of an hour. Whatever have the two of you been up to?”

  “I got off with a young man at the gate, a golden hiker.”

  Annie Moses clucked her lips, “These blessed visitors,” she said. “Danbey’ll be as thick with ’em as Scarborough uff ut goes on like this with all these motor-cars and by-cycles. I can’t think what they cooms for. Thur’s nobbut t’old church and t’Shepwash Cairn an’ t’Stump Cross fur ’em ter look at when they does get here.”

  They laughed at her and left her there, stooping over her scrubbed white table, as they closed the door behind them and made their way through the hall to the study.

  George Harkess was standing by the mantelpiece staring moodily at the aneroid barometer in its glass box. He looked up as they came in, frowned afresh, and then catching Mrs Blount’s appraising rather small grey eyes smiled with his eyebrows and moustache.

  “Well! well! he’s back,” he said glancing at his watch. “I’d begun to think I’d put my shirt on a wrong ’un or that the handicap had been too heavy—and after all of the thirty furlongs, John, did you get the soup?”

  “Yes sir, two tins of oxtail.”

  “Bless my soul, he’s not only a stayer, he knows the course as well—he’s got a memory! I was afraid by this time you might have forgotten what you went for. Still, I’m in your debt Blaydon, my dear boy; thanks to your delay, I still have time for a third pink gin whereas usually I can only fit in two before me lunch.”

  Mrs Blount smiled carefully at him. “George dear! Do you really think you ought to?”

  “Certainly not Enid! that is to say not when I’m alone, a lonely old bachelor-farmer! But with you here, it’s a different matter. What do you think, young lady?” he asked, turning heavily towards Victoria who was perching on the arm of Mrs Blount’s chair. “Don’t you think I should be allowed to celebrate just once a year when your charming mother condescends to visit Nettlebed.”

  “Uncle George,” she retorted, “I won’t answer you.”

  “Tut! tut!” His frown though momentary was disconcertingly real. “Getting into my sere and yellow, always forgetting that you will not be called ‘young lady’, whereas you, my girl, never forget the ‘Uncle George’ when you want to use your whip. But for all that you know you are a young lady, and a very lovely young lady, as lovely as—”

  “As lovely as Mummy,” she slanted at him.

  The frown this time was directed a little greedily at his half-empty glass as though he were vexed by his thirst. Then he straightened his tweed-clad body and stroked the heavy hair at the back of his head. For all his size, the deliberately great scale of his clothing, there was an air of uncertainty about him, a hesitancy which as John had earlier observed quite evidently irritated Mrs Blount. As it was, on this occasion too she was quick to resent his attempt to placate Victoria, and intervened quickly:

  “Victoria dear! Don’t you think you and John ought to go and get washed whilst there is still time?” With her usual exquisite care she rose from the chair on which she had been sitting as Annie Moses sounded the gong for luncheon. “There now! You see?” she went on, her hand placed lightly on George Harkess’s arm, “Now you are going to be late you naughty children.”

  “Shoo!” said George Harkness, “Shoo! Off with you, the pair of you,” and he herded them through the doorway into the hall.

  They raced up the stairs together and into the bathroom.

  “Do they know about our truffle-hunt?” John asked as they shared the basin.

  “Yes, I told them while you were in Corby.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Not much, they didn’t seem very interested.” She looked at herself in the glass over the wash-basin. She tilted her chin up towards the ceiling and through half-closed eyes looked along her horizontal cheeks like a ballet dancer on a bright stage. Then suddenly she dropped the pose and said casually: “I think they’re going to get married this time.”

  “Do you?” He was amazed by the calmness of her tone.

  “Yes. Mummy seems much fonder of him than before and they’ve been talking a lot about money—at least he has.”

  “What’s that got to do with them getting married?”

  “Oh,” she said, throwing him the towel. “You are young! People always talk about money when they’re thinking of getting married.”

  “They don’t!”

  “Of course they do.”

  “You’re thinking of funerals,” he said, “people making wills and so on.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “Well it’s not what David and Prudence talked about before they got married. I don’t think th
ey ever mentioned it once.”

  “Well, what did they talk about?”

  “The sort of things we talked about by the hedge this morning—”

  “What things?”

  “Oh, about how much we loved each other and what we’d do if the other one died.”

  “Silly!” she retorted. “That’s only young people like you and me! If we were older you’d soon find that you’d have to talk about money as well as love; in fact, one day if Enid and George really did get married and you still wanted to marry me, you might find you’d have to talk about money to George.”

  “I won’t! I wouldn’t! I’d never discuss you with him at all. You’re nothing to do with him even if he does marry your Mother.”

  “You don’t like George, do you?”

  “No.”

  “That’s because you’re jealous.” She faced him from the doorway. “But you needn’t worry, because I don’t like him either.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No. I don’t like the way he eats and I don’t like his moustache or his hair and I don’t like his eyes.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “It’s as though he was wearing one of those masks the street-boys wear at the Fair when they want to do things they wouldn’t dare to do without it. You know, hiding behind it and making the eyes move and the moustache waggle and smile, when all the time their real faces are doing something quite different. That’s why I hate George calling me ‘young lady’, I know that it’s only the mask saying it, and that the other face means something quite different.”

  “Yes, that’s it,” he said. “I wonder what it is he really means and why he doesn’t say it?”

  “Oh grown-ups!” she said. “That’s just what I was telling you, they never say what they really mean. When they talk about love they have to talk about it with money. There’s something they’re ashamed of somewhere, but no one’s ever ashamed of money unless they haven’t got it; and so they use it as a cover for everything they do; they make out they’re doing it for money, or that they’re not doing it for money; but, except as a joke, they never like to say they’re doing anything for love.”