The Ballad and the Source

by Rosamond Lehmann

  As I listened, I felt more and more stirred. Ever since one childhood summer spent on my maternal grandmother’s farm in the White Mountains of New England, I had known that I loved coloured people. She had a negro cook called Nathan who taught me to play the zither, and on one occasion during the long hours I spent in the kitchen gazing at the plum-dark spheroids that composed his face, the dazzling split of carved ivory that made his smile, at his round astrakhan cap of hair, at his dusky coral palms rolling the dough, had lingeringly given back my gaze and softly drawled that there was music in those eyes. This was the sort of approach to which I responded as the pin to the magnet, and ever since, I had dreamed confusedly of a race whose life still sprang unbroken from archaic roots in darkness and sunlight and exposed itself in eternally simple, incorruptible forms of music and movement.

  “When he was a little boy,” said Maisie, “he used to model animals and figures in mud or clay. The Zulus taught him. He did that before he learned to read and write. When he got older he was sent away to school in Johannesburg, and some rich man or woman, I don’t know which, saw some sculpture he did and got interested in him, and gave him enough money to leave Africa and go to Paris to study. He was only eighteen, but he’d done so much, so many different things already, according to what he’s told us … He wasn’t a schoolboy, he was a man.” She mused again; then said: “That thing he did for Cherry, the memorial—it’s not her. It doesn’t look like her, I mean. It’s a very queer piece of work. It’s a group of two figures.” She put both her hands to her forehead, pushing at it with her fingers till it was all lumps and furrows. Under it, her eyes contracted, tense with the effort to give me the image. “One’s sitting, all weighed downward and stiff and heavy-looking, all shrouded close, its head bowed forward and this sort of shroud covering its face. You can see the moulding of its face and body under the drapery, but it’s not like a human man or woman. It’s—it’s just a being. Its thighs are spread apart, and it looks—done for, somehow, like a broken open shell or husk. And this other figure, which is a child, is rising up between its knees—stretched up, naked, with it might be a smile on its face, and its eyes shut. It’s not a bit what nurses call a bonny child: thin, with a sad sort of body. It’s got a broad, listening sort of face … or waiting. … Oh, I can’t describe it. It’s not an English child—not a child of any country, I shouldn’t think. It’s more like an idea of a child, if you see what I mean. Do you?”

  “Yes,” I said, following her with dumbfounded attention.

  “It gave me a shock when I saw it first. I thought it was hideous. I felt awful about it; I told Sibyl it was a monstrosity. But when she’d talked to me about it, and told me to empty out all my second-hand notions of what statues ought to look like, I began to see the point. And after a bit, whenever I saw it I took it in more. And I can’t forget it. … He certainly is a queer sculptor, but I suppose he’s a pretty good one. Sibyl would be likely to know.”

  I said:

  “Did your mother see it?”

  “She saw it,” said Maisie, short. Silence. “Just imagine,” she said. “Till she came out of that place she didn’t know Cherry was dead.”

  “Good gracious!” I said, inadequate.

  “She wrote to Auntie Mack for news of us, and Auntie Mack had to tell her. Poor old thing, she’s always had all the unrewarding jobs. I saw her afterwards. She said she’d always known it would happen—that Mother would turn up again some day and present her with a problem beyond the fathoming of human reason. It was her fate, she said.”

  Maisie chuckled, and I felt bound to do likewise.

  “What on earth did she mean?” I asked.

  “Oh, whether to reveal our whereabouts to Mother, or conceal it. And whether to tell Sibyl Mother was on our tracks or keep it under her hat. You see she had a pact with Sibyl, it seems, to keep her posted. Oh dearr, dearr, dearr, she was pairfectly distraught.”

  We laughed more and more.

  “What did she do?”

  “She took it to God.” Maisie caught my eye and we doubled up with mirth: we were no longer children. “And God advised her to tell Mother the truth, and to make a vow of secrecy with Mother not to breathe a word to Sibyl. So there she was, with a double noose and plenty of rope to hang herself. She wrote off a letter to Mother, saying where we were and breaking it to her that there was no more Cherry. After all as she said, she felt most strongly that Mother had given us birth and had a right to the information. On the other hand there was this sacred pact with Mrs. Jarrdine. And yet again there was Mother telling her on her life not to sneak to Sibyl. Oh dearr, dearr, dearr! … She showed me Mother’s letter. It was perfectly sensible and to the point.” Maisie stopped short, oddly.

  “So,” I said, after a pause for nut-cracking, “she turned up?”

  “Talk of midsummer madness!” exclaimed Maisie suddenly, tilting herself back with such violence that her chair legs yelped on the floor. “When I think about it now I feel as if the war started then—all roaring armies marching against one another and land mines bursting under everybody. When the real war started and every one else was in a state of chaos, it seemed to me a mere rumble on the horizon. Everything had happened for me.”

  She clasped her hands behind her head and stared absently at her legs, flexing and unflexing the muscles of her calves.

  “Maisie, what did happen?”

  She said slowly—and I knew she had begun at last:

  “Do you know what this place in France is like? It’s very exciting; not like anywhere else. The house itself is a great high plain block built of white stone. It looks somehow ominous, with dozens of long dark windows flat on its face. It’s perched up so high, and it’s a landmark for miles. It’s all very stony and solid, outside and in. It’s called The Tower of the Doves. There’s a big round stone dove house in the courtyard. It’s very old and it’s got a lot of local history attached to it. Sibyl knows it all, of course: I don’t. She’s made it perfect, I must say: she does know how to furnish houses. All round the park is a high wall. The church is the other side of the wall, with a graveyard. … A French graveyard has to be seen to be believed. And there’s a glorious old farmhouse and some barns as well. The grounds go down and down in a long steep slope to the valley, and there’s a little river there, and a weir, and an inn, and boathouses, and an old white mill where they don’t mill any more. Harry owns it all. Oh, that river! Parts of it are so matted up with water lilies you can hardly get a boat through. People row up and down in ridiculous little flat-bottomed boats like water beetles. On Sundays French chaps come out from the town and spend the day fishing for tiddlers. They don’t throw one back. They’re all taken home in the evening and made into a fry. Their wives tippet about on the bank in high heels, crooning sillinesses to naked-looking dyspeptic little pinky-white dogs with black blotches on them and rolls of fat in their necks. And they peep into the chaps’ fishing jars and flute out: “O, Georges, regardes-donc! Quels amours de petits poissons!” They do sound asses. But they’re all so cheerful and polite and pleased with themselves you can’t help feeling drawn to them. When the chaps call out to the women their voices come out so ringing from their chests. … They sound so—so full up with life.”

  This picture of French society impressed me vividly. It was not what I had been led to expect from my studies; yet it could not have been invented. I saw the French now as a connubial nation of aquatic holiday-makers, sonorously hauling up minnows and piping on flutes to unresponsive lapdogs.

  “There’s this ripping inn,” went on Maisie, “with a garden on the water front and a roofed-in sort of summer-house by the landing stage where you can have meals and read or write. Sometimes Sibyl and Harry, or just Sibyl, went down in the evenings and had supper there with Gil and sat by the river till it was dark. A couple called Meunier who were once her cook and butler run the inn, and they adore her, of course. They’re both jolly dece
nt.”

  “Where was it Gil lived?” I asked.

  “Gil lived in the mill, on the other side of the river. You go across by a narrow plank bridge. She’d opened part of the old roof and put in glass for his studio. It was an enormous high room with whacking great oak beams and pillars in it. Oh, the whole of that place was thrilling—I never hope to see a better. Only,” she added slowly, “it was sinister. There never seemed enough air there, down by the river, though you could see the tops of the poplars and willows waving about, and hear the breeze in them. It was so close, with all the trees, it seemed to weigh you down. And the sound of the weir closed you in and made you dizzy. And all those tangling lilies and river weeds. … And the mist ghosting up … and the mill opposite looming at you with a blank white face. … I suppose it’s my imagination, but … You know the look of a photograph of a house where something’s happened—how it looks different—it has a special secret expression, as if it had been built on purpose for that terrible thing to happen? That’s how I think of the mill now. … The inn garden was lit with coloured lights strung in loops along the landing stage and all through the willows. It was so pretty and musical comedy. To think it’s all still there!—but no lights in the garden, I suppose; and the inn and the mill are used for convalescent annexes in summer. I wonder if Sibyl still goes down to sit by the river. … Oh, Rebecca … I can’t help thinking of her there. You know how she sits bolt upright with her head and shoulders wrapped up in pale gauzy stuff, as still as a stone statue. That’s my last memory of her, sitting in the place she always sat, staring, staring across at the mill. She said: ‘Good-bye, Maisie,’ and then nothing more, and I left her alone there and went back to the house; and then Tanya and I went to the station to catch the train for Paris.”

  “Why was she staring at the mill?” I asked, frightened.

  “Because,” said Maisie, unclasping her hands from behind her head and letting them fall loose in her lap, “that’s where everything happened.”

  I drew my chair a little nearer to the fire. Both of us leaned forward so that our bowed heads almost touched.

  “I used to go down to bathe,” she said, “and stay for lunch sometimes at the inn with Madame Meunier. One morning, about eleven, I went down as usual and had a swim. I used to sit on top of the sort of stone parapet where the weir went over into the pool. It was lovely. I liked letting my legs go with the turn-over of the water till they almost began to feel dissolved, as if they were pouring over the edge too. It’s the most extraordinary sensation—your legs curving downwards and waving in the water as if they weren’t attached to you. I specially enjoyed it, because my legs are my heaviest cross. We won’t dwell on that. It was slippery enough to be exciting too, from green weed that grew on the stone—brilliant electric green as if it was lit up from inside. Then I used to slip down and let myself go under into the plunge of the weir and come up again farther along with the drift of the current, and float—float into the calm stream again. Of course it was only a little tame weir, but gosh! it was heaven.”

  “I can’t imagine anything more like heaven,” I said, with sincerity.

  “Yes. I thought of you once or twice and wished you were with me.”

  “Did you honestly?”

  “Mm … Well, I had this bathe, it was a scorching hot morning, and afterwards I went in to the inn for lunch. They have it at twelve in France, you know, and can’t they jolly well make vegetables taste good! After lunch I decided I’d go for a row. It was fun steering through the lilies, they lie like great rugs on the water and all their ropy stalks come gliding up on the oars; and I liked nosing around the midget islands of willows and guelder-rose and stuff, and looking at the freakish little castellated houses perched up on the banks. I came out of the inn; and as I went down to the landing stage I noticed a woman in a queer dress: a dark yellow bodice and a long, bright-coloured skirt, sort of magenta, not an English colour, and edged with a gold band, sitting in the summer-house and having her lunch. I couldn’t see her face. I poked about on the river and came back about four, and had another swim. I gave Gil a shout, and he looked out of the window and waved to me. To my surprise the woman was still there. She had papers spread round her and she was writing. She didn’t look up, but I saw her side-face and I thought she didn’t look French. I looked in on Madame Meunier and asked her if someone had come to stay, and she said yes, an English lady had arrived this morning and taken a room. She’d said she was writing a book and wanted to be undisturbed. Madame Meunier said she was very comme il faut and spoke French like a native. I went back to the house. It was one of Sibyl’s bad days. She couldn’t breathe very well, but she was all serene, lying on the sofa. Gil turned up for supper and afterwards Tanya played.”

  “Is that what she did all the time?—play the piano?”

  “Not all the time, but a good deal. She did things for Sibyl when Sibyl was laid up, and was secretary to them both, and went for walks with Harry. He loved her dearly. He wasn’t drinking nearly so much and he got quite interested in the farm. What’s more, he went riding with her sometimes before breakfast; and a fine sight he looked too on horseback. He’s an absolutely idyllic horseman. Otherwise she practised hours and hours a day. And she went to Paris twice a week for lessons. Her idea was to study and study till she felt she was good enough to give a concert and start being a real professional performer. Harry paid for her lessons, he insisted; and Sibyl—she depended a lot on Sibyl—she always said Sibyl was the ideal person to back anybody in any kind of artistic way. She knew what was first-class and what wasn’t—Gil said this too—and she believed so passionately in going all out for the very best and not sparing oneself every refinement of torture to get to it. She seemed to charge Tanya up again when she got tired. In return, Tanya—well, she’d have drunk prussic acid for her without a murmur. It was a pity all that smashed up. Tanya’s been teaching music to lumps of girlhood at my school, for her living, these last two years. It’s a wicked waste of her. Harry wanted to go on giving her an allowance, but she wouldn’t let him. I’ll come to all that. Wait here a sec.”

  She got up and left the kitchen. When after a few minutes she came back, she said:

  “I took a peep at Jess and Malcolm. He was just winding up the gramophone again, and they looked very innocent and rosy. I told them we were in the kitchen if they wanted to find us. We might cook an omelette later.”

  She sat down again, fished two apples out of her pocket, gave me one and demolished half the other in one bite.

  “Tanya played,” I said.

  “Tanya played. It was a wonderful night with the moon full. I mentioned that there was an English lady author staying at the inn. ‘Yes indeed,’ said Gil. ‘She came to call on me. She wanted to know the way to the Post Office.’ ‘What an excuse!’ I said. ‘She could easily have asked the Meuniers.’ There were some jokes about her having spotted Gil through the window. Sibyl asked what she was like, and I remember Gil said slowly: ‘A ruined beauty.’ Up poked Sibyl’s head at that, and she asked some more questions. ‘Might she be an addition to our circle?’ she asked, smiling. He said, on the whole he thought not. His advice would be to run a mile if we saw her approaching. We teased him some more about wanting to keep her to himself. Then he said quite seriously: ‘She’s got a dreadful great pair of blood-sucking eyes, and caverns in her mouth.’ That’s the sort of way he talks. ‘I don’t know what she’s up to,’ he said, ‘or who’s responsible for her; but I have the impression that her book won’t find a publisher.’

  “Did she tell him what kind of book she was writing?”

  “She told him it was her life story. He said he kept off inquiring into it. She wandered round the studio, he said, looking at things—at some drawings that he’d got pinned up round the walls, and three or four portrait heads in clay that he’d done in his spare time. She came to a new one of Sibyl that he was working on. It was covered with a wet cloth. She a
sked what it was, and he said it was a woman he knew. ‘Beautiful?’ she said. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘May I see it?’ she said. He told her no, it wasn’t finished, would she please leave it alone: because she would fiddle about and twitch at things and she didn’t really seem to take anything in, though she talked, he said, as if she understood something about sculpture. Then she came and stood in front of Cherry’s memorial, in the middle of the room. She stared at it; and she said how beautiful it was. You know it’s carved out of a block of alabaster with marvellous half transparent bits in it. The upper part is like that—so that most of the child’s figure looks shining; and her whole head shines. The block is so beautiful in itself it makes your mouth water to look at it. It took him six months to find it. She asked what it was, and he said it was for a dead child. She went on staring at it, then she asked him: ‘What was her name?’ He said: ‘Her name was Charity Mary Thomson. She was called Cherry.’ Then she did a peculiar thing. She put out her hand and touched the figure; and muttered something.”

  Maisie paused. Watching her, I saw her eyes, fixed on the fire, dilate. After a bit she said reflectively:

  “I think I guessed then. It’s hard to explain. I’m sure I tumbled to the whole thing—such an extraordinary feeling went through me. And then I knew I’d known all along … from the first moment I’d set eyes on that woman in the summer-house. But why, at the time, she’d slipped quite casually on to my sight as if she was nobody in particular—why I didn’t get the slightest conscious shock then—that’s a mystery. … Anyway, while Gil was talking, I got a picture of her standing there in her long, bright-coloured skirt; and I suddenly remembered that stuff. It was some Indian silk, a sari. She brought home lots from India. I used to look at them in her drawer, and that was the one I loved best. I knew it … and yet … it was more like saying to myself: It’s someone wearing Mother’s sari … if you see what I mean.”