by Francis King
The sounds became less frequent and less easy to distinguish; then they ceased altogether. He straightened, aware all at once of the ache in his back, the scraping tick of the clock on the mantelpiece, the sudden revolver-shot of a last fragment of green laurel at the edge of the grate, and the incessant shudder of the loose window against the wind and snow. He went back to his room and stood looking out of its single window, one hand raising the tattered, dusty blind, while with the friction of the other against the diamond panes he slowly thawed out the frost-flowers on them. He could make out little. Square and dense, a holly bush gleamed; the wire netting that shut in the small, extinguished garden sagged as if beneath the weight of some vast, grey blanket; and always out of the stiflingly close sky the snow fluttered down and down.
Suddenly, in this desolation, he felt wholly at peace. I could be happy here, at least here I could be happy, he thought in self-deluding amazement. At that, he returned to the hard, icy bed, drew the covers up to this chin, and fell into a dreamless sleep from which not even the screaming of the baby an hour later could jerk him back to consciousness.
Chapter Twenty Five
‘I can find my own way. Please don’t bother.’
‘No, I’d like the walk. Mrs Avon can keep an eye on Tim. Fortunately they get on well together. He always enjoys her weekly visit. I’ve a bit of a headache and the fresh air will do me good. Since I came to live in the country I’ve had not one of those awful migraines.’ Christine yawned with no attempt at concealment, as she pulled on a rubber boot. ‘Oh, by the way, Thomas asked me to say goodbye to you from him. He forgot that he wouldn’t be seeing you before he left for work.’
Michael was frowning down at a crack in her boot. ‘Won’t the water get into that boot?’
‘Yes, it will.’ She straightened up, brushing the loose strands of hair away from her flushed, shiny face. ‘ I keep meaning to have it mended. I’ve put in a permit to the Min of Ag for a new pair. Being on a farm, I’m apparently entitled.’
‘Ludicrous,’ Michael muttered. ‘So much red tape.’
‘Oh, the fire!’ Kneeling now to make it up, she revealed a ladder that stretched up the back of her woollen stocking. Unlike many beautiful women, she had never worried about her appearance, Michael thought. If she were not careful, she would soon be a slut.
He went across to the ancient piano and touched the warped keys, running up the pentatonic scale again and yet again. Those five notes always induced in him a mood of sadness. ‘ I have enjoyed being here.’
She staggered to her feet. ‘ Have you? I’m glad. I wasn’t sure.’ She had begun to prowl the room, as though looking for something. ‘It’s been lovely having you. But too short.’
‘I love this little cottage. You know, when I was a boy and we used to come to stay at the manor –’
‘Damn!’ She had come to an abrupt halt in the middle of the room. ‘I know what I’ve forgotten. What an idiot I am! I meant to ask Thomas to pick up a loaf from the store. Oh, well, I suppose I can make a detour on my way back … What were you saying?’
‘Oh, nothing important. I’ve forgotten.’
Emerging from the cottage, they both momentarily screwed up their eyes against the glare that bounced up to greet them. They felt breathless, as at a sudden change of altitude; the blood thumped in their ears. Slowly they began to trudge up the slope until, after several long, silent minutes, Michael stopped and Christine stopped beside him. They both gazed back. One of the windows of the cottage flashed a semaphore at them as Mrs Avon opened it. Michael clutched his umbrella horizontally in both gloved hands, as though he were about to attempt to snap it in two. ‘Yes, I feel sad at going. Tomorrow I’ll be back at Oxford. I’ve come to hate the place.’
‘Yes, I’m glad to have got away. And, as I’ve so often said before, I’m awfully grateful to you for having arranged things for us. It’s marvellous that Thomas is allowed to work like this – away from a camp.’
‘He looks so different, healthier and happier. And I’m so pleased that his English has improved so much. Thanks to you, I should guess. Oh, but do try to rid him of that Shropshire accent.’
She laughed. ‘I like it.’
He turned to her. ‘ I do envy you both. I feel so strongly, it’s the life, isn’t it?’
‘The life? What do you mean?’
‘Well, the sort of life that everyone should be living.’
She stared at him for a moment, eyes narrowed. Then she laughed derisively. ‘ Don’t be so silly. You know you’d loathe it.’
‘Would I?’
‘Of course you would. I can’t imagine you stoking up the boiler – or doing the sort of jobs that Thomas has to do in this freezing weather. No, it’s not ‘‘the life”’ – she put the two words into mocking inverted commas – ‘as you so romantically call it. It’s far, far from being that. It’s the sort of life we have to lead for want of a better one.’
‘Then – then aren’t you happy here?’
‘Oh, I don’t know! She got out the words between breathless gasps from the effort of their ascent. ‘I suppose I am in a way. But, frankly, it’s so silly for people like you to romanticise country life. Margaret’s the same. She was here the weekend before last and she went on saying how much she envied me. Envied me – I ask you! What on earth for? It’s all right hving in the country if you’re up at the manor. There, if you want anything done, someone does it for you. Whereas all that we can afford is three hours each week of Mrs Avon’s time for the rough. You just try running an isolated cottage with a baby – and no main drainage, only a cesspit – and wiring so antiquated that the power keeps fusing if one uses the Hoover or the iron. And of course that long trudge to the village and a boiler that … Oh, you’ve no idea, Michael. Being a visitor for a night or a weekend is hardly the same thing.’
Michael stopped to stare at her in astonishment. Her cheeks were flushed and there were tears – whether of cold or anger, he could not be sure – in her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. It’s not that I … Oh, I merely meant …’ He swung his umbrella, handle downwards, like a golf club, so that it scattered snow in the wind. ‘Well, all I thought was that surely all those material inconveniences don’t really matter all that much. Do they? You both seem to be wonderfully – enviably – happy together, still so much in love.’ Again he scattered snow with the inverted umbrella, but this time the veering wind blew it back, in minute, stinging granules, into his face. ‘Damn!’
‘You’re talking as I talked after we first came here for the interview. Thomas knew better. It’s not as easy as all that, you know.’ She began to walk on, without looking back at him. Slowly, effortfully he trudged after her. She swung round. ‘Sometimes I wonder if I’d have gone through with it if I’d realised all that it would mean.’
Panting, he hastened his pace to catch up with her. ‘Then – you’re not happy?’ His voice was forlorn.
‘Oh, I don’t know.’
‘Have you stopped loving him?’
The question seemed to amuse her. She gave a small laugh, her eyes always on him. ‘No – no, I don’t think I’ve done that. But this idea that you’ve only got to be with someone you love in order to be happy – it’s rubbish, absolute rubbish.’
‘I’d have thought that to love and be loved is the most important thing of all in life. I’ve never had that myself. I’ve longed for it. Are your outside circumstances really so awful? Isn’t there anything I could do? We could start with the cottage …’
‘Oh, you’re very kind, dear Michael – as I’m constantly telling you.’ Then she softened, slipping an arm through his and linking their gloved fingers. ‘When Thomas is allowed to do something other than farm work, I think life should be easier. You see, he has to work such long hours up at the farm, and then there are all the jobs at the cottage when he gets back. And Tim disturbs him, so that he’s more or less given up on the music. And of course that makes him feel frustrated and irritable – one can’t blame him.’ A few
seconds later she went on: ‘There’s another problem. The head cowman. If it weren’t for him, the work might not be so bad. The man’s a bastard. He and Thomas are constantly at loggerheads. Thomas wants to introduce more modern methods, milking machines, that sort of thing. But the man wants things to go on just as they’ve always gone on, for generations and generations. And since Thomas is a Jerry that makes things only worse.’
‘Perhaps if I spoke to Jack or Lucy … I know they have little interest in the farm and leave it all to that lazy slug of a bailiff. But I could put in a word. Who knows, they might even have Thomas moved to a different job.’
‘No, no, please don’t do that!’ She laughed. ‘We’d become even less popular than we are now. As it is, the other labourers grumble about our having been given the cottage. They seem to regard it as a prize. And though – thanks to you – Jack and Lucy go out of their way to be kind to us, I think that for them we’re really little more than a nuisance.’
‘Oh, I don’t honestly believe that.’
‘Yes, Michael. They’ve given Thomas the job and us the cottage for only one reason. Jack was once your student and they’re fond of you. But socially we’re an embarrassment to them. They know that I’m your cousin and that our family is – let’s not be modest about it – quite as distinguished as theirs. But Thomas is one of their labourers and he and I are not even married. In a country village these things take on an exaggerated importance.’
‘I thought you were not going to say anything about not being married.’
‘That was the plan. But like so many plans … Secrets have a disconcerting way of getting out.’
‘How did this particular secret –?’
‘How?’ She laughed. ‘Oh, Jack and Lucy told that silly old vicar – and the vicar told his wife – and his wife told old Miss Pendlebury, who runs that tea room – The Muffin Man – with her simple-minded brother. Something like that. We’d always planned that Jack and Lucy should never learn the dreadful truth …’
Michael halted, hand to mouth as though he were about to chew on its glove. ‘Oh, lord! That was my fault. I told them – and you’d asked me not to. I told them, didn’t I? Oh, I am sorry. Will you ever forgive me?’
‘Oh, forget it! It doesn’t really matter. Someone would have found out anyway. You’re not to blame.’
‘I am, I am!’
A silence followed, as they trudged on.
‘Any news of Klaus?’
‘Nothing for months and months. After they sent him back, we wrote to each other for a while. But his letters were barely literate. An effort for him to write, I’m certain. I sent him parcels of food and clothes. Sometimes I also sent him money. Then silence. I went on sending things. Still silence. So – eventually – I gave up. I’ve thought of somehow getting to Germany on a lecture tour or something like that. But then I decided – what was the point? Perhaps he no longer wants the contact. Perhaps – one has to face it – he has died. When I last spoke to that fierce woman doctor at the sanatorium, she told me that it was likely that – as she put it – he was ‘‘on the way out”’. He grimaced, his eyes staring fixedly ahead of him.
They were nearing the top of the hill, where the path joined the drive to the manor. ‘ We’re all but there,’ Christine said.
‘Yes, all but there. Would you like to come in for a moment to say hello?’
She shook her head. ‘ I must get back to Tim. And in any case I don’t imagine they …’ She broke off.
‘Before we say goodbye – I want to get this straight. Has it – has it all really been a mistake? Is that what you feel – what you’ve been trying to tell me?’
She pondered for a moment. ‘Oh, I don’t know, I just don’t know. I suppose I’d do it all again, in spite of everything. I just don’t know.’
The words were not reassuring. He stared into her face. Then he turned his head and looked back down the hill to the far-off cottage.
‘Goodbye, Michael.’ His head remained averted, so that she had to stand on tiptoe to kiss his cold cheek. ‘ Don’t take what I’ve said too seriously. It’s been a bad day. I’m really very happy.’
‘I’d like to think you were. Well … That’s it then. That’s it. Thank you again.’
‘Give Jack and Lucy my greetings. I’m so sorry about Klaus. I hope that some day you’ll get some good news of him.’
He shrugged, pulling the collar of his raincoat up over his chin. He said nothing more.
She watched him as he set off down the drive at first slowly and then at a brisker and brisker pace. Eventually she turned and began to retrace her steps.
At the bottom of the first field, suddenly overcome by an unaccountable weariness, she halted and leaned against the stile. The ice-coated bar froze her through her woollen jacket and frayed woollen gloves. In the late sunlight the snow was pink as flesh, bruised here and there by the long, purple shadows of the trees. Globes of melted water slipped from time to time from the hedge by which the stile stood and, in doing so, bored holes into the otherwise smooth surface of the snow. She wanted to cry but could not, as if the ice had frozen the tears at their source. Far away, above her, she could see the manor house, three of its chimneys wreathed in smoke. There was always malicious gossip in the village about the amount of fuel used there. Eventually she clambered over the stile and walked on, her shadow, as rigid as the shadows of the trees, stalking across the snow ahead of her.
When she neared the cottage, she could hear the sound of sawing from their small shed. Thomas must be back early. She hesitated whether to go to him or to Tim and Mrs Avon indoors. In the end she walked across to the open door of the shed and stood there, watching him in silence, as he severed one aromatic and mildewed branch after another, to be thrown on to a heap. His greatcoat and sweater festooned a vast limb of oak on which the dead leaves still rustled with each gust of wind. There was sawdust in his hair, and drops of sweat glistened along his eyebrows and among the hairs at the opening of his khaki shirt. For a long time he remained unaware of her scrutiny. Then at last he glanced up.
‘How long have you been there?’
She shrugged,
‘Michael gone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’ He grinned at her.
‘You don’t like him anymore, do you?’
He threw another log on to the heap. ‘You know how I hate being so much in his debt. It’s unreasonable of me, I suppose.’
‘Why aren’t you working?’
‘The old man said I could go when I’d finished with the cowsheds.’
‘Why bother with this? Why not get on with your music?’
‘We have to have wood.’
‘I’ll help you.’ Now, for the first time during this conversation, she entered the shed. Pulling off her gloves and jacket, she reached for the double saw.
‘You’re tired. I can manage alone.’
‘No. I’ll help you.’
‘But it’s not –’
‘I’ll help you.’
At each stroke she dragged the saw towards her with a ferocious, yet always precise, movement. Log after log she threw on the heap; nothing could tire her. When she glanced up, she saw that Thomas’s face, bare arms and throat were all shiny with sweat and that his breath came in rapid gulps. She herself showed no such signs of fatigue; nor did she feel any.
‘You’re sawing as if for your life.’ In the brief interval between one log and another, he took out his handkerchief and began to mop his forehead. He was staring at her. Then he asked: ‘What’s the matter? What’s happened?’
‘Oh, Thomas!’ As she went to him, she attempted to balance the saw across the block; but she performed this action so clumsily that it at once slid to the floor with a clatter, followed by a high, metallic ping. ‘I feel so ashamed. I’ve been so mean and disloyal.’
‘What on earth about?’
‘Michael – he was asking about our life here … And I said things – oh, horrible things – that w
ere not really true.’
‘If Michael’s been upsetting you –’
‘Oh, don’t be silly! It wasn’t Michael.’
He came over to her and put an arm round her waist. ‘Well, tell me about it.’
‘There’s really nothing to tell. It’s just that I – I made him think that our life here together had been some kind of failure. As if we were making the best of a bad job, because that was all that we could do … But it’s not really like that? It isn’t, is it?’
‘Of course not.’ He put his lips to her temple. ‘I’ve never had regrets. None. None at all.’
‘It’s just that things are difficult. And sometimes I think it might be better if you were free, without having to think of Tim and me. We’re such a burden and a tie.’
‘You mustn’t say such things.’
‘But aren’t they true?’
‘No.’ His voice was emphatic. He released her. ‘We must get a move on if we’re to finish this before the light fails.’
In silence they pulled the saw back and forth between them for several minutes on end. Then, as though by mutual consent, they both stopped, released the saw, still embedded in a branch, and looked across at each other at first with a surprised satisfaction and then with a no less surprised joy.
