Ripeness is All

by Eric Linklater

  ‘Go and find some,’ said Bolivia.

  ‘It would be rather fun to see what we could make of it,’ said Stephen agreeably, and went on his errand.

  Bolivia threw down the velvet. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in a mirror; her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were shining. ‘It’s the last chance, it’s my only hope,’ she muttered, and began to unfasten her frock. She undressed rapidly and pulled a big easy chair in front of the fire. When she sat in it she was hidden from all the rest of the room. Stephen returned.

  ‘I’ve got lots of them,’ he said, closing the door behind him. ‘I found a whole packet in Wilfrid’s room. Are you feeling cold, Bolivia?’

  ‘No, I’m very comfortable,’ she answered from her hiding-place.

  Stephen carne towards the fire. ‘Bolivia!’ he exclaimed, and stood with trembling knees and misty eyes. For one terrible moment he had thought she was naked, and even now, after perceiving that she still wore a garment of some sort, he was so horror-struck that he could not move. Bolivia, despite her tall and muscular frame, suffered from defective circulation and consequently the cold, and in winter she always wore good sensible combinations. Her resolution had fallen short of taking these off, and she was, to be accurate, more fully clothed than young women who go bathing from a public beach. But a costume that calls for no comment on a beach may excite considerable surprise in a drawing-room, and Stephen’s constitution, being less robust than some, received a shock more staggering than that administered by the story of the libertine Smith.

  ‘Have you gone mad?’ he asked in a strained and husky voice.

  Bolivia looked surprised. ‘You want to drape that velvet on me, don’t you?’ she asked. ‘You couldn’t do it on top of my dress, so I took it off.’

  ‘There was no need to make an indecent exhibition of yourself,’ cried Stephen.

  ‘Silly Stephen!’ said Bolivia. ‘I’m not indecent. I look rather nice, I think.’

  She stood up smiling, and put her hands behind her. She was, indeed, a very handsome young woman.

  ‘Sit down,’ begged Stephen. ‘Sit down, Bolivia. No, don’t come near me. I won’t have it. I don’t want you to come near me. Go away!’

  He retreated towards the window, and Bolivia, picking up the loosened roll of velvet, followed him.

  ‘Come and show me how to wear it,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll do nothing of the sort till you put more clothes on,’ said Stephen, and nervously bit his lips, and clutched his hands together, and still retreated to the window.

  ‘Silly Stephen!’ Bolivia repeated. ‘Nobody’s going to hurt you!’ And with a quick swirl of the yellow velvet she threw it over him in a great loop, and began to pull him towards her. Stephen gibbered with fright, and Bolivia made little soothing noises to him.

  He was saved from whatever fate awaited him by a sudden catcall, a piercing sound muted only by the thickness of the window-panes. Startled, they turned towards it and saw for a second two jeering faces pressed against the glass. Then the faces disappeared, and Stephen realized that the situation, horrible enough before, had now acquired a new and far-reaching element of horror.

  ‘You’ve ruined me!’ he cried. ‘They’ll tell everyone in Lammiter what they’ve seen, and my reputation will be ruined, irretrievably ruined. They may blackmail me, they’ll write beastly letters to me, they’ll make my life a misery!’

  Bolivia wrapped herself in the lovely velvet. ‘You’d better go and see if they’re still in the garden,’ she said.

  Stephen hesitated only for a moment, and hurried to the door. He took a heavy walking-stick and searched the moonlit garden, but found no one there. The Peeping Toms had fled.

  When he came back Bolivia was dressing herself, and Stephen shuddered again, for the casual intimacy of her movements menaced his security. She stepped into her knickers without embarrassment, with the demeanour indeed of being well used to his presence at her toilet. She put her head into a silk slip, she thrust up her arms, she patted and pulled and wriggled it into place with an air of appalling familiarity. She put on the dress, and pulled it, and smoothed it, and stroked it till it hung properly. She took a comb from her bag, and turning to the mirror she leisurely arranged her hair. There was in her activity a careless acceptance of the situation. She seemed to be at home and at ease. They might have been married for years.

  ‘Did you see anybody?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ said Stephen dully. His spirit was bruised and beaten. The inertia of defeat lay upon him. He sank into a chair and felt for his bottle of bismuth tablets.

  ‘I suppose you recognized them,’ said Bolivia.

  ‘No,’ said Stephen again.

  ‘I did,’ said Bolivia. ‘One of them was Ling, and the other was Hopkins. Ling works at the garage we use, and father thinks a lot of him because he’s in the Territorials. And Hopkins does odd jobs in the garden for Miss Montgomery. If they dare to talk, they can tell their story to a lot of people who’ll be interested in it.’

  ‘O my God,’ said Stephen with a groan. ‘I’ll be ruined, utterly ruined.’

  ‘That will be my privilege,’ said Bolivia. ‘I’ll suffer more than you will.’

  ‘But it was your fault! It was all due to your beastly behaviour. Good heavens, you come to dinner with me, and then you insist on undressing, and …’

  ‘Nonsense. It was you who asked me to dinner, knowing we should be alone, and then gave me too much to drink…’

  ‘I didn’t! I wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing!’

  ‘No, but that’s the story that’ll be told. And God only knows what my father will say to it.’

  Stephen bowed his head and groaned again.

  ‘There’s only one thing to be done!’ said Bolivia.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘If you want to prevent scandal, if you want to protect my name as well as your own, if you want to avoid trouble of a different kind – well, father has a terribly hasty temper …’

  ‘Oh, I’ll do anything I can!’

  ‘Then you must announce our engagement immediately, and we can get married next month.’

  ‘B-b-b-but, but – but,’ stammered Stephen.

  ‘It’s the only way,’ said Bolivia deliberately, and came to his chair and sat upon the arm of it. She smoothed his hair and kissed his forehead and held him when he tried to escape. ‘It won’t be so bad as you think,’ she said. ‘I’m very fond of you, Stephen, and I’ll do everything I can to make you happy. I’ll tell father as soon as I get home, and I know he’ll be pleased, because he’s had a very high opinion of you ever since you talked to him about the next war. He’ll be on our side, Stephen, so don’t worry about that. And now I must get my coat and go home. Don’t bother, I know where it is.’

  Stephen sat inert and stunned. When Bolivia returned he looked at her with meek beseeching. She bent and kissed him good night. ‘I’ll be a good wife to you,’ she promised, and went briskly out to her car. Stephen sat motionless in his chair.

  He was still there when Wilfrid came home. ‘Bolivia’s gone, has she?’ asked Wilfrid happily.

  ‘Yes,’ said Stephen.

  ‘Oh, I’m so glad! I was afraid she would still be here, and I’ve got the most marvellous story to tell you, about Arthur. He talked so nicely to me for a long time, about all sorts of things, and then, my dear, he started to yodel! We were sitting by the rockery, and suddenly he pretended to be in the Alps and yodelled! – Why, Stephen, what’s the matter?’

  Wilfrid’s light-hearted chattering came to a halt, and he looked with dismay at Stephen’s face of silent misery.

  ‘Oh, what’s the matter?’ he cried again. ‘Aren’t you feeling well?’

  ‘I’m all right,’ said Stephen.

  ‘You’re not, you’re looking dreadful. Stephen! Is it anything to do with Bolivia?’

  There was a short and heavy silence. ‘We’re going to be married,’ said Stephen.

  ‘Oh, Stephen!’ cried
Wilfrid, and fell on his knees before him. ‘What a dreadful thing to have happened!’

  Chapter 10

  The news of Bolivia’s engagement was warmly welcomed by the busybodies and amiable gossips of Lammiter. Not all approved of her exploit, which was generally understood to have been Amazonian work, or a Sabine rape gone topsyturvy, but none would have wished her campaign to end otherwise, for its successful conclusion gave their conversation a lot of fine lush pasture. There was a great deal of speculation as to the part that love had played in the making of the match, and more debate about the influence exerted by hopes of gain: the sentimentalists were staunch but few, the cynics were numerous and dogmatic. It was generally agreed that Stephen and Bolivia were, on the surface at least, ill-suited to each other: but everyone knew of a dozen matrimonial alliances in which apparent antipathies – he the chalk, and she the cheese – had succeeded in living together for a long period of years in seeming contentment: so by the majority their contrariety was discounted. Flippant young women would wonder, with a smirk and a titter, how Stephen had phrased his declaration, while their elders excogitated with wise instance the problems of how and in what state and comfort the young couple might expect to live. Many old ladies were preoccupied with Wilfrid’s future, and thought a grave injustice had been done to him.

  Fortunately for everybody the Peeping Toms, Hopkins and Ling, had been dissuaded from describing their garden view except to a few vulgar friends in their own walk of life, by whom it was received with improper pleasure but not wholly believed. Bolivia had confronted Ling in the garage where he worked, Hopkins in Miss Montgomery’s garden, and said to each in turn, ‘I’m half-inclined to give you a damned good horse-whipping, and if I hear of your making yourself a nuisance again, I shall!’s So menacing had been her aspect, and her size and strength so obviously sufficient to fulfil such a threat, that Ling and Hopkins had been effectively frightened, and they had not spread their story in circles where it could do any damage. Gossip, therefore, was happily not complicated by scandal.

  The effect of the news on Stephen’s relations was comparatively simple: Arthur was amazed, Daisy was angry in a lofty and acidulous way, Katherine was contemptuous, Jane was delighted, and Hilary was minded to laugh, and disposed to be worried, and inclined to hope that marriage would do Stephen good. Jane, having heard the news on the morning after Stephen’s fall, brought it to Rumneys in time for lunch, and Hilary, far as she was from being spiteful, could not resist the temptation to bait Katherine about this unexpected extension, or presumptive extension, of competitive progeniture.

  ‘This changes the whole situation,’ she said. ‘And what a joke if it turns out to be Stephen who inherits John’s money!’

  ‘I don’t see the joke,’ said Katherine coldly, ‘and in any case he hasn’t a chance.’

  ‘One can never tell,’ said Hilary. ‘There are two years to go.’

  Katherine corrected her: ‘A year and ten months.’

  ‘Well, a year and ten months. A lot can happen in that time.’

  ‘He can’t possibly have more than two, and I’ll have two by May.’

  ‘Bolivia comes of very prolific stock,’ said Hilary. ‘Her father had seven brothers and three sisters.’

  ‘That makes no difference,’ said Katherine. ‘She can’t have more than two children in less than two years.’

  ‘The General was a twin, wasn’t he?’ asked Jane.

  Katherine put down her fork. ‘I don’t believe you!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘It’s perfectly true,’ said Hilary. ‘His brother, the other twin, died of dysentery in South Africa. John met him there.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Katherine defiantly, ‘a casual twin means nothing at all. But in Oliver’s family they’re a regular occurrence. The Clementses expect to have twins: it’s the normal thing for them to do.’

  ‘Butter, please,’ said Jane, and looked at Katherine with a wicked smile. ‘Don’t you think there’s something suspicious about the suddenness of their engagement?’ she asked. ‘Nobody expected it. It was announced without any warning, and Bolivia says they’re going to get married next month.’

  ‘They don’t want to lose time,’ said Katherine.

  ‘Perhaps they can’t afford to.’

  Hilary and Katherine protested together, Hilary because she disliked the suggestion, Katherine because she was startled by it.

  ‘All right,’ said Jane, lavishly cutting cheese, ‘I may be wrong, but personally I think there’s something fishy about the whole business. And if I’m right, you haven’t such a long start as you imagine.’

  For ten minutes after the throwing of this mayfly of innuendo, the spreading of this birdlime for suspicion, there was argument that would have been meat and drink to a moralist. For Katherine showed, too clearly, her share of mankind’s credulity of evil, that betokens not so much a kindred evil in the listener as a fearful cognizance of the frailty of our barricades of virtue; and Jane, fabricating details, displayed a feature, a nose as it were, of the antisocial nature of art that has troubled all clear thinkers from Plato to Lenin; but Hilary, after reproving Jane for improper invention, and Katherine for believing it, left them at the table and went about her household business so calmly and happily intent upon immediate tasks that the moralist, dubious before of humanity’s sufficient ballast, would have recognized in her such a bottom of decency and good sense as would restore, for an hour at least, his failing confidence: for moralists before all others require constant reassurance.

  Katherine, however, was worried for several days. Her reason bade her disbelieve Jane’s suggestion, but something below reason, something base but more largely basic, repeatedly whispered that you never knew, you never could tell; even a man so latently caprine as Stephen, a respectable golfer like Bolivia, had the power to surprise and to shock. Obsessed by this anxiety she refrained, for several days, from talking about her prospective children, and spent a lot of time in dividing, upon small pieces of paper, a varying number of calendar months by the normal period of gestation.

  The probable effect of Stephen’s engagement upon what had come to be known as the Nursery Stakes was, of course, its principal claim to interest. The tea-parties in Lammiter West might, and did, discuss its minor aspects with relish: what did the General say? – Bolivia was a little older than Stephen, wasn’t she? – the ring was plain but good – matters of that sort: but all this was preliminary to a concluding movement whose theme, ever the same though infinitely varied, was the Ganders’ ability to reproduce their kind with profitable speed. All winter that was the dominating topic. Wherever ladies met in twos or threes, at their morning coffee, in Lammiter High Street, on the golf-course, in tram-cars, at the hairdresser’s, at the dressmaker’s, at a wedding, at the Brackenshire Ladies’ Club, at a bridge-party, at the florist’s in Green Street, at the theatre, at the new picture-house, at a popular lecture, or a political rally, conversation turned inevitably to the Nursery Stakes, to stable gossip and the question of form: nor was it ladies only who were interested, for the qualities of the several runners were discussed with almost equal knowledge and regularity by gentlemen over their morning sherry, in the golf-club, in the Conservative Club, in the Yeomanry Club, at the hairdresser’s, at the Turkish baths, at the Racquets Club, in tram-cars and in motor-cars, at the tobacconist’s, at the Green Dragon and the Red Lion, and in many other places. In the winter of that year was April indeed astir, and beneath skies that bore grey galleons of snow, and trundled athwart the zenith Aquarius’ slopping water-carts, all Lammiter was ceaselessly aware of the germination of green buds and counted on curious fingers their possible distribution.

  But though the topic was debated in many localities and divers situations, it was at tea-parties that its plenitude was properly honoured. There, with a clear fire to warm the air, and Miss Montgomery’s baton to order the statement, the enlargement, the variations, and the conclusion of the theme, the theme was fully orchestrated. The muted violi
n of a spinster’s tone most delicately revolved the proem, and out of consciousness cried a faint trumpet ‘Spring! Spring! Spring!’ Talk spread rapidly, fiddles and second fiddles argued backwards and forwards, and on the branches of their bows a bird called ‘Spring!’ Now with a broad chuckle laughed a bassoon, ‘Who, who who?’ and ‘When, oh, when?’ Swift counterpoint debated Arthur and Katherine, Daisy and Stephen, and a faint far-off drum, with hollow mockery, asked where was George, who drank and was driven from home. ‘Boom!’ said the drums, ‘in Africa! Bang!’ said the drums, ‘in India! Bump!’ said the drums, ‘in America! and it’s not very like’, said the drums, ‘that he’ll come back in time for a christening now, from India, Africa, or even from America. Bang-bang!’ said the drums. And the silver chattering of spoons on porcelain, tuned like a xylophone, prattled of twins and tattled of triplets, and an aged instrument, whose name no one could remember, solemnly chanted:

  ‘No thyng ys to man so dere

  As wommanys love in gode manere.’

  But a flute, wheezing a little, like Juliet’s nurse, whispered, ‘Susan and she – God rest all Christian souls! – were of an age’; and then took heart, and turned merry as a blackbird, and cried ‘I cannot choose but laugh!’ So laughter called to the woodwinds and the brass, and they puffed a dozen jests into the air of skirts too short in front, and cuckoos in the nest, and horns for husbands, and the like. But the silver trumpets sang:

  ‘Blow, northern wind,

  Send thou me my sweeting,’

  and a pizzicato, like the pin-prick pattern of April rain, softened all hearts and all desired that Daisy and Katherine and Bolivia should have twenty pink-bottomed babies apiece, a festoon of them, wreaths of them, troops of them, with no thought of prizes but simply to match May and fulfil the turning of the year. The triumph of all who’d begotten, and the travail of all who’d borne, were as warp and weft in their lot, and flute and fiddle, brass and drum, would join in a great cry, ‘Ripeness is all!’