It was horrible. In the old days, she would have confided in David, and they could have laughed about it together, but somehow now that was impossible.
From this situation she was rescued, oddly enough, by none other than Tom. Tom, uncharacteristically, all at once elected to throw a party in his barn. It was on Boxing Night, and he hired a disco and asked everybody in the neighborhood under the age of twenty-five. The dancing and merriment went on until five in the morning and caused such a stir that people stopped speculating about Antonia and David and discussed the party instead. With the pressure off, things were easier, and at the end of the holiday she and David returned to London together.
Nothing had changed; nothing was settled; nothing had even been discussed, but she wanted it no other way. She wanted, simply, not to lose him. He had been part of her life for so long that losing him would be like losing part of herself, and the prospect filled her with such desolation that it didn’t bear imagining. Shamingly, she pretended to herself that it would never happen.
But David was stronger than she. One evening, soon after Christmas, he called and suggested coming round to her flat for a meal. Antonia’s flat-mate tactfully took herself off, and Antonia made a spaghetti bolognese and went around the corner to the off-licence for an affordable bottle of wine. When the doorbell sounded, she ran down the stairs to let him in, but as soon as she saw the expression on his handsome face, all self-deception and reasonless hope seeped away and she knew that he was going to tell her something terrible.
* * *
David.
I thought that David might have been here too.
Antonia began to tear at the breast feathers of the cock pheasant.
“No … he’s staying in London this weekend.”
“Oh, well,” said her mother calmly. “There probably wouldn’t have been enough for us all anyway.” She smiled. “You know,” she went on, “being like this, without electricity, and forced onto our own resources, reminds me so much of when I was little. I’ve been sitting here wallowing in memories, and all of them so vivid and clear.”
Mrs. Ramsay had been brought up, one of five children, in a remote area of Wales. Her mother, Antonia’s grandmother, lived there yet, independent and wiry, keeping hens, preserving fruit, digging in her vegetable garden, and, when forced by darkness or inclement weather to retreat indoors, knitting large knobbly sweaters for all her grandchildren. Going to stay with her had always been a treat and something of an adventure. You never knew what was going to happen next, and the old lady had passed on much of her enthusiasm and energy for life to her daughter.
“Tell me,” said Antonia, partly because she wanted to hear, but mostly because she hoped to get off the subject of David.
Mrs. Ramsay shook her head. “Oh, I don’t know. Just being without any appliances or labour-saving devices. The smell of a coal-fire, and the iciness of bedrooms. We had a range in the kitchen, and that heated the bath-water, but all the washing had to be done, once a week, in a huge boiler in the scullery. We all used to help, pegging out lines of sheets, and then, when they were dry, turning the handle of the old mangle. And in winter it was so cold that we all used to dress ourselves in the airing cupboard, because that was the only spot that was remotely warm.”
“But Granny has electricity now.”
“Yes, but it was a long time coming to the village. The main street was lit by lamps, but once you’d passed the last house, that was it. I had a great friend, the vicar’s daughter, and if I had tea with her, I always had to walk home by myself. Most times I didn’t mind, but sometimes it was dark and windy and wet, and then I used to imagine every sort of spook, and by the time I reached home I’d be running as though there were monsters at my heels. Mother knew that I was frightened, but she said I must learn to be self-reliant. And when I complained about the spooks and monsters she said the thing to do was to walk slowly, looking up at the trees and the infinity of the sky. Then, she said, I would realize how infinitesimal I was, how pointless and puny my tiny fears. And the funny thing was, it really worked.”
As she spoke, she had concentrated on the task in hand, but now she looked up and across the littered, feathery table, and her eyes met Antonia’s. She said, “I still do it. If I’m miserable or worried. I take myself out and go somewhere peaceful and quiet and look up at the trees and the sky. And after a bit, things do get better. I suppose it’s a question of getting your values straight. Keeping a sense of proportion.”
A sense of proportion. Antonia knew then that her mother knew that there was something horribly wrong between herself and David. She knew, and was offering no form of comfort. Simply advice. Face up to the spooks of loneliness, the monsters of jealousy and hurt. Be self-reliant. And don’t run away.
* * *
By afternoon, the electric power still had not come on. When the lunch dishes were tidied away, Antonia pulled on boots and a sheepskin coat and persuaded her father’s old spaniel to come out for a walk. The dog, having already been exercised, was reluctant to leave the fire, but once out of doors, forgot his misgivings and behaved like a puppy, bounding through the snow and chasing interesting rabbit smells.
The snow was deep, the sky low and grey as ever; the air still, the countryside blanketed and soundless. Antonia followed the track that climbed the hill behind the house. Every now and then there came the clatter of wings in the still air as a pheasant, disturbed, shouted warning, got up and sailed away through the trees. As she climbed, she stopped feeling cold, and by the time she reached the top of the hill was warm enough to clear the snow from a tree-stump and sit there, looking at the great spread of the familiar view.
The valley wound away into the hills. She saw the white fields, the stark trees, the silver river. Far below, the village, darkened by the power cut, lay clustered around the single street; smoke from chimneys rose straight into the motionless air. The silence was immense, broken only now and then by the whine of the chain-saw slicing the crystal quiet, and she guessed that Tom Dixon and one of the farm workers were still dealing with the fallen beech.
The hill sloped gently down towards the wood. On this hill, she and David had sledged as children; in the wood, they had, one summer, built a camp, and baked potatoes in the ashes of their fire. Where the river curved into the Dixons’ land, they had fished for trout, and on hot days bathed in the clear shallows. It seemed that the whole of this small world was littered with memories of David.
David. That last evening. “You’re saying that you don’t want to see me any more.” Angry, and hurt, she had finally blurted it out.
“Oh, Antonia, I’m being honest. Without meaning to hurt you. I can’t go on pretending. I can’t lie to you. We can’t go on like this. It’s not fair for either of us, and it’s not fair to our families.”
“I suppose you’re in love with Samantha.”
“I’m not in love with anybody. I don’t want to be. I don’t want to settle down. I don’t want to commit myself. I’m twenty-two and you’re twenty. Let’s learn to live without each other, and be ourselves.”
“I am myself.”
“No, you’re not. You’re part of me. Somehow, you’re all entangled with me. It’s a good thing, but it’s a bad thing, too, because we’ve neither of us ever been free.”
Free. He called it being free, but for Antonia, it meant being alone. On the other hand, as her mother had said, you couldn’t be self-reliant until you’d learned to live with yourself. She tipped back her head and looked up through the black winter branches of the overhead trees, to grey and comfortless sky beyond.
You hold most fast to the people you love by gently letting them go. Long ago, some person had said this to her—or she had read it. The source of wisdom was forgotten, but the words suddenly, out of nowhere, resurfaced. If she loved David enough to let him go, then, that way, he would never be wholly lost to her. And she had already had so much of him … it was greedy to yearn for more.
Besides—and this w
as a surprising, cool-headed revelation, and something of a shock—she didn’t want to get married any more that he did. She didn’t want to get engaged, have a wedding, settle down forever. The world spread far beyond this valley, beyond London, beyond the bounds of her own imagination. Out there, it waited for her, filled with people she had yet to meet and things that she had yet to do. David had known this. This was what he had been trying to tell her.
A sense of proportion. Relative values. Once you had got these worked out, things didn’t look so bleak after all. In fact, a number of interesting possibilities began to present themselves. Perhaps she had worked for too long in the bookshop. Perhaps it was time to move on—go abroad, even. She could be a cook on a Mediterranean yacht, or look after some Parisian child and learn to speak really good French; or …
A cold nose nuzzled her hand. She looked down and the old dog stared plaintively up at her, telling her, with large brown eyes, that he was sick of sitting there in the snow, and wanted to get on with his walk, chase some more rabbits. Antonia realized that she too had grown chill. She got up off the stump and they started for home, not retracing their steps, but setting off down the snow-deep fields towards the wood. After a little, she began to run, not simply because she was cold, but with something of the high spirits of childhood.
She came to the wood, and then to the track that led through the trees to the Dixons’ farm. She came to the clearing where the beech had fallen. Already its immense trunk had been sliced into lengths by the chain-saw, and a way cleared, but devastation lay all about, along with the smell of newly sawn timber, and the fragrance of wood-smoke from a smouldering fire. There was nobody about, but as she stood there, mourning the demise of the noble tree, she heard a tractor coming down the road from the farm, and the next moment it appeared around the bend of the lane, with Tom at the wheel. Reaching the clearing, he killed the engine and climbed down out of the cab. He wore dungarees and an old sweater and a donkey jacket, but, despite the cold, was bareheaded.
“Antonia.”
“Hello, Tom.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Just out for a walk. I heard the saw going.”
“We’ve been at it most of the afternoon.”
He was older than David and neither so tall nor so handsome. His weather-beaten face did not often smile, but this seriousness was belied by his amused pale eyes, which always seemed to brim with incipient laughter. “Got rid of the worst of it now.” He went to the smouldering bonfire and kicked the grey ashes into life. “At least we won’t need to worry about firewood for a month or two. And how are things with you?”
“All right.”
He looked up, and across the little flames and the sweet plume of smoke, their eyes met. “How’s David?”
“He’s all right, too.”
“He didn’t come with you?”
“No, he stayed in London.” She buried her hands deep into the pockets of the sheepskin coat, and said, as she had not been able to say to her mother, “He’s going skiing next week with the Crawstons. Didn’t you know that?”
“I think my mother said something about it.”
“They’ve taken a villa in Val d’Isère. They asked him to go with them.”
“Didn’t they ask you?”
“No. Nigel Crawston’s got a girl of his own.”
“Is Samantha Crawston David’s girl now?”
Antonia met his steady gaze. She said, “Yes. For the moment.”
Tom stooped, gathered up another branch and threw it onto the fire. “Does that worry you?” he asked her.
“It did, but not any more.”
“When did all this happen?”
“It’s been happening for some time, only I didn’t want to admit it.”
“Are you unhappy?”
“I was. But not any longer. David says we each have to live our own lives. And he’s right. We’ve been close for too long.”
“Were you hurt?”
“A bit,” she admitted. “But I don’t own David. I don’t possess him.”
Tom was silent for a moment. “That’s a pretty grown-up thing to say,” he observed then.
“But it’s true, isn’t it, Tom. And at least now we know where we stand. Not just David and me, but all of us.”
“I know what you mean. It certainly makes things easier.” He tossed another armful of branches onto the flames, and there was the sizzling sound of melting snow. “There was, without any doubt, a certain amount of covert expectation at Christmas about what the pair of you were up to.”
Antonia was surprised. “You felt that too? I thought I was the only one. I kept telling myself I was over-reacting.”
“Even my mother, who’s the most sensible of women, caught the bug, and started hinting at Christmas engagements and June weddings.”
“It was awful.”
“I guessed it was awful.” He grinned. “I was very sorry for you.”
Watching him, a thought occurred to Antonia. “Was it because of that … that you threw your party?”
“Well, anything was better than having everybody sitting around speculating. Waiting for you and David to come prancing in, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, saying, ‘Listen, listen to our news; we have an announcement to make.” He said this in a ridiculous voice, and Antonia began to laugh, filled with grateful affection.
“Oh, Tom, you are marvellous. You really took the pressure off. You saved my life.”
“Well, I don’t know. I’ve been mending your bicycles and building you tree-houses for long enough. I thought it was time I did something a bit more constructive.”
“You’ve never been anything else. Always. I can’t thank you enough.”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
He went on working. “I’ve got to get the worst of this cleared before dark.”
She remembered something. “You’re coming to dinner tonight. Did you know that?”
“Am I?”
“Well, you’ve been invited. You must come. I’ve been plucking pheasants all morning, and if you aren’t there to eat them, I’ll feel the entire effort’s been wasted.”
“In that case,” said Tom, “I’ll be there.”
* * *
She stayed with him for a little, helping with his task, and then, as the midwinter afternoon slipped into dusk, she left him, still at it, and set off for home. Walking, she realized that the air had gentled and a soft westerly wind was stirring in the trees. Branches that had been frozen in snow were starting to drip. Overhead, the clouds were parting, revealing glimpses of a pale evening sky the colour of aquamarines. As she came through the gate that stood at the end of the Dixons’ lane, she looked up the hill towards home and saw the lights shining out from the uncurtained windows.
So things were looking up. The power failure was over. And living without David was not going to be impossible after all. She decided that when she got home, she would ring him up and tell him this, putting his mind at rest, and leaving him free to make his plans for Val d’Isère without any guilty backward glances over his shoulder.
And it had started to thaw. Tomorrow it might even be a beautiful day.
And Tom was coming for dinner.
COUSIN DOROTHY
Mary Burn awoke early on a fine bright morning in May. She was in her own deliciously comfortable bed, in her own flower-sprigged room, and with all her pretty and personal possessions about her. The sun was shining and the birds were singing, but even before she opened her eyes, she knew that something was wrong. The black anxiety, the worry that she had taken to bed with her, had not retreated. It had probably spent the entire night sitting on her pillow.
She turned over, shut her eyes, and longed for Harry to be there; to say, “It’s all right, it doesn’t matter. I’ll see to it.” But Harry wasn’t there, because he was dead. He had died five years ago, and their daughter Vicky was getting married in a week’s time, and Mary was at her wit’s end, because the wedding d
ress still had not materialized.
She didn’t know what to do, and Harry would have. For, with his going, Mary had lost not only lover and dearest friend, but a competent and kindly husband who dealt with every problem.
Mary, happily content with the day-to-day demands of house, garden, and one small child, had been delighted to let him. Organization, she was the first to admit, was not her strong point. She was useless on committees, and frequently forgot when it was her Sunday for doing the flowers in church. It was Harry who arranged holidays, ordered coal, interviewed headmistresses, coped with horrible things like Income Tax, filled the cars with petrol, and when door handles fell off, was there with a screwdriver to screw them on again.
As well, he handled the problem of Vicky. As a small girl, she had been loving and warm-hearted, a delightful little female companion, happy with her mother, content to make doll’s clothes and bake gingerbread men and dig her own private patch of garden. But, at around age twelve, she had changed. Overnight, it seemed, she was no longer the biddable and responsive little girl, but a prickly adolescent, stubborn and contrary. And everything, from the wrong sort of shoes to bad marks for her homework, was her mother’s fault.
Mary was both hurt and baffled by this hateful metamorphosis. “What on earth is wrong with her?” she whispered furiously to Harry after a particularly painful exchange with Vicky, concluding with a furiously slammed door. “I don’t think she even likes me any more. Nobody could behave like that to someone they liked.”
Flowers in the Rain & Other Stories Page 22
