Jane, moaning, righted herself. “Mind, you’re kneeling in it. You’d better take the pillow-case off—this thing, I mean.” She shook it limply. “Give it me, I’ll put it in water.”
She took it away to the bathroom, and came back with a cloth to mop the table.
“Lord, that was funny.”
“Funny?”
“Well, it seemed funny to me.” She gave a subdued snort. “I like that kind of thing—do you know what I mean? Something really outrageous——”
“I apologize,” said Katherine carefully. “I will apologize to your mother.” She put on her own dressing-gown and shuffled her bare feet into slippers.
“Oh, nonsense,” said Jane. “Don’t you worry. Nobody will mind at all. There, that’s got the worst off.” She shied the cloth across the room into the washbowl, where it fell with a limp smack. “It’s the kind of thing that makes life worth living.”
“What do you mean?”
“Something that really upsets——” Jane made a gesture, which finished with her drawing a small enamelled cigarette-case from her pocket. “Here, you do smoke, don’t you?”
In the circumstances Katherine thought it better to accept one. A box of matches lay in a candlestick on the mantelpiece, which was put there in case the lights fused.
“There.” Jane lay back on her elbows and blew smoke at the ceiling. Her gaiety still seethed quietly within her. “Beautifully funny … I remember Robin once taking a photograph of us on a beach one holiday. He kept backing away to get us into focus. Very serious over the whole business. Back he went—didn’t notice”—Jane began to wheeze—“didn’t notice a little rock behind him. Over he went. Legs in the air! I nearly died. Can’t you just see it?”
“I can, yes,” said Katherine with guarded laughter.
“Lord, it was … Look here.” Jane rolled onto one elbow, flicking ash impatiently onto the carpet with her other hand. “What do you think of him?”
“Robin?”
“Yes, do you like him?”
The cigarette was making Katherine feel a bit sick. She laid it aside, composing herself to answer.
“Yes.”
“You do.” Jane rolled back again, considering this. “Why?”
“Why?” Katherine attempted to laugh, wondering if she ought to take offence. “Is he so bad?”
“Is he as you’d expected him to be?”
“Oh, no.” This truth was out before Katherine thought to stop it. “At least——”
“How had you imagined him, then?” Jane rolled back again, the cigarette in her mouth: Katherine surreptitiously rubbed the ash into the carpet. Jane’s questions had the bright quality of a child interrogating an adult—or (though Katherine did not think of it) an adult questioning a child. There was nothing personal in her curiosity.
“Well, I suppose I thought he would be …” Katherine searched for the English that would approximately express her feelings. “Rather ordinary.”
“And so you think he isn’t ordinary?” Amusement was bubbling again not far off. “Why not?”
She thought it better to be firm at this point, and said: “Because I have never met anyone like him before. I can’t understand him.”
“Robin is ordinary, down to the last button.”
Katherine looked up at this. There was an emphatic note in Jane’s voice that solicited belief, but she was not prepared to take it on trust. There was something behind all this.
“You think so.”
“I know so. It’s no good thinking you’re twin souls, or anything like that. You’re absolutely different.” Jane yawned, and yawning, went to the dressing-table where she sat looking critical and fingering her hair.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it’s true, and you don’t know it.” She said this without any interest whatever, glancing along Katherine’s dressing-table. Picking up Katherine’s hairbrush, she said:
“This is very heavy.”
“It’s made of silver.”
“And what is this pattern—a tree, is it?”
“Two trees,” Katherine said deprecatingly. “It is meant to be the tree of knowledge and the tree of life. And on the comb one finds the serpent.”
“So it is. That’s most original.”
“My grandfather was a silversmith,” said Katherine, watching the former subject receding with only partial regret. “He made them for my grandmother.”
“But they look almost new.”
“Well, they have hardly been used. My mother kept them until I was fourteen. Then she gave them to me, and said I could keep them or use them, as I pleased.”
“And you’re using them.”
“I use them at special times. But I think when I leave school I shall use them always. They were meant to be used.”
*
Even so slight a conversation marked a step forward. To have broken personal ground with one of the Fennels was something she had begun to think impossible; now it had happened she became much easier in her manner, not only with Jane but with Robin and the others too. It had been just such a hint that she immediately warmed towards; a gesture of friendship she paid back tenfold.
She could be grateful and friendly to Jane, though, without necessarily believing what she said. The remark about Robin’s being ordinary she distrusted on two counts: one, Jane was simply doing her job in squashing any incipient romantic feelings she might have towards him; two, from her own observation she thought it false. Katherine had not known many sixteen-year-old boys, and the ones she had known had not been English, but she had heard the kind of letters their English counterparts wrote, and was certain that Robin was exceptional. In five years’ time it was quite possible he would no longer be remarkable, but at sixteen his almost supernatural maturity suggested that he drew on some inner spiritual calm. Looking at him one evening when he happened to be fingering the piano, she was overwhelmed by a sense of barren perfection. He had reached, it seemed to her, a state when he no longer needed to do anything.
On their outings, since Robin remained unconcerned, she and Jane drew together more, and out of their good humour a sort of bantering front arose against Robin. One afternoon they went to a local gymkhana in a large field on the outskirts of the next village; this was Robin’s suggestion, and Jane as usual was against it. She blinked crossly around in the strong sunlight and developed a game with Katherine, which consisted in pointing at people whose faces indicated a horse somewhere in their ancestry, along with other rudeness. Katherine laughed, but on the whole enjoyed the scene. A large inner square had been roped off for the parades and jumping, and the crowd mingled round the sides along with the horses and ponies, cars, a few traps, and a hastily-erected refreshment stall. Most of the spectators were local people and Robin was frequently drawn off in conversation with young men and girls in shirts and riding breeches. She was glad he did not introduce her to any of them. They would have nothing in common. Yet watching him talking to a tall, slender girl standing up in one of the cars, she could not help reflecting on the kind of life he led when she was not there.
She watched the jumping, only moving when one of the large hunters edged near her through the crowd. The event in progress was for children under sixteen, and the fences were proportionately low. Each entrant went round the field, over a hurdle, a double-hedge, another fence, a mock-wall, and finally a low gate. At the moment a girl was having an awkward time with a roan: already it had swerved at one of the fences, broken through the supports, and thrown her. A loudspeaker kept up intermittent encouragement as the roan refused at the wall and the girl lurched perilously. Katherine felt sorry for her. It was a slow business to manoeuvre the horse back again for the second attempt: then again it refused. Once more she turned and made another attempt: this time the horse scrambled over in a very ungainly way, and after clinging on a few seconds she slid once more to the grass. At this point she gave in and led the horse off without tackling the last gate.
She was followed by a little biscuit-coloured horse, with a white mane, ridden by a small, solemn girl, that was much more successful. It trotted docilely at the obstacles and suddenly hopped over them like a cat. This was done with such unexpected ease that the onlookers giggled slightly, but this did not disconcert the small girl or the horse, who together cleared each jump without displacing a single bar, and trotted off imperturbably. Katherine studied the programme. The entry was called “Cream Cracker”, and under the heading “description”—bay, grey, chestnut gelding—the compiler had failed to put anything more imaginative than “cream horse”. To her delight the judges announced that Cream Cracker and another competitor had tied for third place, and asked them both to jump again: therefore Cream Cracker came out once more. By this time it had interested most of the audience—particularly those who knew nothing about horses—and the loudspeaker tried to be funny about it. It circled the field again, picking up its heels impeccably behind it, and left the ring to a loud ripple of applause.
“Sweet little thing,” said a woman nearby.
The loudspeaker announced that Cream Cracker had been awarded third prize, and the three winners came out again to receive their rosettes. There was a curious custom, she noticed, whereby the riders held the rosettes in their teeth while they cantered round in order; when they did this there was another roar of laughter, for whether accidentally or not Cream Cracker led the parade. After circling the field twice they went out among renewed applause. The little girl in the saddle had never given the slightest indication that she was not playing on a rocking-horse in her nursery.
“This is an English crowd,” said Jane. “They’re quite unique. Their lowest common multiple is very low indeed.”
Katherine smiled, but she was enjoying herself. The warm air was filled with the smell of grass and horses. Occasionally a whiff of pipe-tobacco sharpened it by contrast. A great good-humour filled the crowd, which was a local one from the surrounding villages. Every class of person wandered aimlessly about: village women, looking older than they were; knowledgeable farmers, who knew what neighbours had left at home in their stables as well as what they had brought to show; a tramp dressed in a long overcoat fastened with a safety-pin and with a wisp of grass drooping from his mouth, who stumped painfully round three sides of the field in order to buy a bottle of beer from the refreshment tent, and then retired to the foot of a five-barred gate to unwrap a large cheese sandwich. There were young men with raw, red necks and closely-tailored suits, young farmers’ sons who pushed through the crowd on their horses, groomed and braided for the occasion; unplaceable men who stared from the open sunshine-roofs of their cars; the fantastic older gentry, hardly to be taken seriously, in archaic tweeds, with old sticks and fobs and hat pins that had been worn through season after season of this same company and pursuit; and then there were the young gentry, on holiday from school, rarely one in twenty with a face that was beautiful, but all having the fine texture of skin that good food and exercise automatically gave. A bevy of them was helping in the refreshment tent, charging extortionate prices for lettuce sandwiches and home-made cakes, and muddling the change that was kept in an upturned trilby hat. Katherine and Jane went there and bought a bottle of cherry cider each, very gassy, which they held as they strolled round, swigging occasionally. It was all very free and easy. Finally, there were village children, the elder ones minding the younger, busy with anything but what was going on in the roped-off arena. Little ones strayed about almost under the feet of the horses. Small groups of bullet-headed boys, who a hundred years ago would have been scaring crows for a few pence a week, lifted their bottles to the sun to see who could drink the most without stopping. It was strange that, islanded in the half-attentive, slovenly crowd, the horses seemed more highly strung, as if belonging to a higher breed altogether. Also many of them were reluctant to jump, as if resenting doing so before so many people.
As time went on they lost Robin, and Jane, by now tired even of being offensive, suggested they should go home and have tea in peace. “Or haven’t you had enough yet? They’ll probably go on all night: they’re hours behind time already.”
“I don’t mind. We’ll go if you like.”
She was willing to leave before she became bored, and they crossed the littered grass to the entrance gate. As they walked off down the road the deep quacking of the loudspeaker followed them, along with the noise from sideshows. There had been a few stalls of amusements, traditional games with backcloths grown shabby from being hawked year after year round such village entertainments. Eventually the sound died away.
“I enjoyed that,” said Katherine.
“Did you really? I shouldn’t have thought you would.” Jane kicked at the dust piled by the edge of the road as she walked. “I should have thought you’d find it insufferable. I do.”
“But why? I liked it.”
“I thought you were too clever for it.”
Katherine chuckled. By now she was finding it easy to understand English, and less difficult to speak it.
“Well, I don’t know, but the sight of people enjoying themselves in the mass always depresses me,” Jane went on. “Some people may take a pleasure in it.”
“It’s strange to me,” said Katherine. “That’s the reason. It was very English and interesting.”
“It’s English all right,” said Jane. “But then I am English, more’s the pity. And I know a lot of those people, rot them, and they aren’t at all interesting.”
“Of course, I don’t go to—horse-shows?—at home.”
“No.” Jane suggested they should take a shorter path across some fields, and they climbed a stile. “What do you do at home?”
“What do you mean?” Katherine was surprised.
“How do you spend your time?”
“I go to school. There’s always work to do in the evenings. But I read, go to friends’ houses, sometimes go to the theatre.”
“Of course, you live in a town. There’s always so much more to do in a town,” Jane said ruminatively. “Whereabouts in it do you live? I mean, what does your house look like?”
Katherine recollected her home with difficulty.
“I live in a wide street with trees and seats … The houses are much alike. High, white … fairly big.”
“Have you a garden?”
“No. No, it is not like England, you know. There are gardens near—the—I don’t know what you call them. Gardens—a park—with a café and a band.”
Jane pondered on this. After a pause she remarked that it was raining. Large white clouds had hung about during the day, but had not interfered with the sunshine. Now they had coagulated for the time being, and a determined shower was falling, though another part of the sky was quite blue and the sun continued to shine. They went into a barn to shelter.
“Beware of the bull,” said Jane, peering inside.
The barn was empty, and they stood in the broad open doorway and watched the glistening rain fall. Behind them the barn was like a whispering hollow shell as rain beat on the roof. Jane leaned at the side of the doorway, folded her arms, and stared out across the veiled meadow. The small shoulders of her check shirt were wet.
“What are you going to do?” she said. “When you grow up.” She inflected the last two words sardonically.
“I haven’t thought,” said Katherine. “I hope I shall go to the university.”
“Robin has his career all planned out, down to the Order of the British Empire,” said Jane. “He wants to go into the Diplomatic Service. Haven’t you really any ideas?”
“Not many.”
“What does your father want you to do?”
“Oh, he doesn’t mind,” said Katherine, laughing. “I don’t think he has ever thought of the question.” She considered. “There is always being a schoolteacher. I thought once I should like to work on a newspaper.”
“Yes, that would suit you.”
“But I hope privately that something more exciting will
turn up.”
“Something more exciting,” Jane echoed, and the rain echoed behind her. It was falling now with astonishing vehemence, making the grass dance, whirling across the field in sudden silver ghosts. “Do you mean you want to get married?”
“Oh no!” Katherine was truthfully surprised. “No, I meant some work I had never thought of—I might meet somebody at the university who would offer me a really good job—to be a secretary, perhaps——”
“Well, but you might get married,” said Jane. “Hadn’t you thought of that?”
Katherine had indeed discussed it for hours on end, and so had her answer ready. “One should act as if one was not likely to,” she said. “Though as you say there’s always the possibility.”
“I didn’t say that exactly,” Jane murmured. “It isn’t a thing one can include in any plans, though Robin does. He will marry at thirty—I can’t remember for the moment what post he’ll be holding then.”
Katherine did not quite follow this, so remained silent. After a time she said curiously:
“What about you?”
“Nothing about me,” said Jane. The hiss of the rain slackened abruptly, and it fell gently in front of the open doorway, running in tiny rivulets in over the stone flags, that were dusty with chaff. The clouds had huddled over onto one side of the sky and separate rays of sun forked obliquely down, making the distant tree-tops shine; from somewhere nearby they heard the liquid croaking of a full stream. Jane stepped out and looked about her.
“We can get home in this, though our shoes will be soaked,” she said. “There ought to be a rainbow somewhere about.” She squinted upwards. “I can’t see it.”
4
Katherine realized one morning that half her holiday had gone. This surprised her, for so far her visit had been unremarkable, as if the three of them had been wandering in a green maze, getting no nearer the centre. How had it passed? Most of the mornings they spent at the house, setting the afternoons aside for excursions; these were slow and leisurely bicycle rides around the many south Oxfordshire villages, to Nuneham Courtenay, to Dorchester to see the church and its windows, and round a dozen smaller places, Toot Baldon, Marsh Baldon, Berwick Salome, Ewelme, Benson—names Katherine never remembered, that remained in her memory as a composite picture of cottages built of Cotswold stone, church porches, oaks and beeches, and the river, with its locks and bridges, always close at hand or just out of sight among the trees. It was August and the reapers were out, saying cautiously that it had been a middling year. Also they had made two longer excursions—one to London, where Katherine had been exhausted by sight-seeing and would have preferred to look at the shops; and one northwards to the Midlands, to see Banbury, Warwick, and Stratford-on-Avon. She reported all this to her friend, who had been very sceptical about her first letter. “I don’t understand cream cakes, but I eat them.”
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