A Girl in Winter (9 page)

She refused, eager to see how he played. For she knew that in playing a game a person can display much of their character. To oppose her, even on the tennis-court, would force into action the personality he was concealing so well. Jane, for instance, had been quite different from what Katherine expected: not at all petulant or flashy. Instead, she had been timid and incapable of pressing an
advantage
until it was too late.

So on the dark red tennis court, sunk below the garden and surrounded by high, rustling trees that glowed and rippled in the sun, Robin and Katherine faced each other
and began to play, Jane sitting with hands clasped at her knees and calling the score in a clear voice, and using the family tennis-balls marked with a purple F. Katherine determined to do her best. Clearly Robin was a better player than Jane: he hit hard and confidently, and the game was fast, for he swung the ball to and fro with long cross-shots. These kept her continually on the run and breathless. She began to panic. Robin won the first game, and the second, and also the third.

The fourth he allowed palpably though without
comment
to go to her, presumably to avoid the embarrassment of a love-set. This annoyed her, and she determined to make him regret it: she had been studying his play, and now began to see where it was lacking. There was
something
mechanical about it. The first thing she noticed was that he invariably returned her serve to her backhand, even after she had demonstrated that it was not weak. Then she saw that he rarely looked at her before placing his shot, and that his cross-drives were largely a matter of habit. Finally, his game was limited. He never chopped or made piratical excursions to the net. His style was fast, neat, open, and unvarying.

Once she had grasped this, it was easy to take the
initiative
and break up the pattern he imposed by soft
centre-line
serves, short returns, high lobs. This unsettled him, and he was soon rushing about as Katherine had done. After taking the score to five all she won seven-five. Jane clapped theatrically from her deckchair, a small sound in the afternoon.

“Splendid,” she cried.

“Here, I say,” said Robin. “What happened?” Coming up to him Katherine saw the disarrangement of his hair, his forehead wet with perspiration, and it pleased her to think she had caused it. Once more, as at the duckpond, she felt the opacity he presented to her was wearing
somewhat
thinner; she could sense his interest turned towards
her, as a blind person might sense the switching-on of an electric fire.

“She used her head,” said Jane.

“You see,” said Katherine, “if I play as you play, I lose. So I play differently.”

“Smart of you,” said Robin. “It makes all the
difference
. But I never could bother to think: I just swipe about.”

“Swipe?”

Jane explained, throwing a blazer over her shoulders, while Robin slackened the net. They went up onto the terrace where there were basket-chairs round a circular iron table. “Robin can still have his fresh air if we sit here,” she said. “I’ll fetch some lemonade. What a joke, your beating him like that.”

“Will he be annoyed?”

“Oh no, that would be bad manners.”

Katherine sat down. The three weeks of her holiday, still almost untouched, receded like brilliant water. Here with the Fennels, time had a different quality from when she was at home. She could almost feel it passing slowly, luxuriously, like thick cream pouring from a silver jug. As she wasted it, it added to her. She watched Robin loop the net, and come out of the gate of the court, carrying his racquet and a box of balls; it was typical of him, she thought, to clear up after the game. In some respects he resembled the perfect butler. Oh, but he was hopelessly muddled in her mind, for as he gave a bound up the steps towards her, his delicate, wary face struck again deeply in her, and his dark half-tousled head carried itself with such simultaneous independence and attention—attention, what was more, to her—that she herself felt like a servant.

“Staying here, are we?” he said, beginning to screw his racquet into its press. Her heart sank. She did not want to talk trivialities with him. She felt, as she had felt ever
since she had first seen his photograph, that he could, if he wished, say something that would be more important to her than anything she had ever heard. What it would be she had no idea.

“The court is very good,” she said.

“Not too bad, is it? It’s wearing nicely.”

Jane reappeared from the lounge, bearing on a tray the jug and glasses they had used when Katherine first arrived. “There’s still no ice,” she said. “And this is the last of the lemonade. There’s a certain amount of pith and pips and what-not settled to the bottom, but it can’t be helped. All comes from pure lemons.”

“You didn’t strain it properly,” said Robin, holding up a glassful critically and then passing it to Katherine. “Why didn’t you use muslin?”

“Couldn’t find any.” Jane brought a third chair to the table and sat on the other side of Katherine. “It won’t kill us. You can make the next lot, if you’re so fussy.”

Robin smiled inattentively.

The house was surrounded by trees, and gradually she became accustomed to their continual whispering, and to many other things that had at first seemed strange. She came to know which rooms were behind which doors: Robin’s room, Jane’s room, Mr. Fennel’s study, filled with shelves of files, a set of the Stud Book and other similar volumes. These were nearly the only books in the house: the bookshelves in the lounge held only cheap novels, picked up on summer holidays, while Robin kept what few he had in his room, and Jane seemed to possess none. Katherine had glanced furtively into Robin’s room one
afternoon, and noticed a small set of shelves, holding a dull assortment of accumulated birthday presents, school prizes, and books presumably self-chosen—the stories of great operas, a few paper-covered political works.

She grew accustomed to the early morning sounds, when she was lying awake: soft treadings to and from the
bathroom
, Mr. Fennel’s car starting up outside. No longer was she shy of the housemaid, who usually passed some
unintelligible
remark to her in uncouth English when they met. She learned to be hungry enough by nine in the morning to face her breakfast.

“Everything is very solid and comfortable,” she wrote in a letter to her best school friend. “In fact, rather like staying in a hotel. And one always feels on one’s best behaviour. There are four of them—the father and mother, whom I only see at mealtimes, but they’re very nice—and Robin and Jane. Robin is much better-looking than we’d imagined. I have a photograph I’ll show you when I come back. I wish I could describe him, but at the moment he rather mystifies me. I can’t understand why he asked me to come, because he doesn’t take any interest in me at all. Of course, he’s very polite and kind, and spends all his time with me, but you know the feeling. Like being conducted round a museum. He gives the impression of being miles away—not in a poetical sense, either. Jane is different. She must be twenty or so. She hangs about with us
all
the
time
—and does seem prepared to be friendly, but doesn’t know how to go about it. Sometimes she’s almost rude—as far as I can tell—but that’s probably just nerves. I don’t think I care much for her—and in any case I wish she’d find something better to do. If Robin and I were alone more, I might be able to find out more about him. There’s not too much time, because there’s someone else coming in my last week—a man this time. Some friend of the family.”

Jane was a puzzle. Whatever they were doing—
walking
, cycling, playing tennis—she was with them, and she always seemed out of temper, but without the strength of character to propose any alteration in their plans. Robin made no comment on her presence. Gradually Katherine evolved an explanation, which was that Robin had definitely enlisted her help to deal with the visitor. It was hard to imagine him saying openly: “This girl is coming on Saturday for three weeks; will you help keep her amused, because I shall be bored stiff.” But no doubt he did make the request in more equivocal language; Katherine felt sure there was another side to Robin’s nature that might prompt such an appeal. And Jane had listlessly agreed.

This was not a flattering solution. One day when they came in from a walk on which Jane had developed a blister and a bad temper, Katherine thought of another one: in England it would not be proper for Robin and herself to go about alone together, and Mrs. Fennel had asked her daughter discreetly to act as a chaperon. This evaded the weak point of her other idea, which was that in her opinion Jane would not give two hoots for anything Robin asked her to do. And it was much more flattering. It made her feel warm inside, even though it was
probably
only a meaningless English convention; the English were, after all, very formal, she remembered, having once laboriously read half a novel by Jane Austen.

But Jane was still a puzzle.

One morning she brought Katherine her cup of tea. Up till then the maid had brought it regularly, and the taste of it on a clean palate had decided Katherine finally that she did not like the stuff. In fact, she had contracted the habit of pouring most of it down her washbowl when the maid had gone. Also it embarrassed her to be waited on. She tried to cover her confusion by looking as if she had just woken up.

“Good morning, and how are you this morning?” said Jane with mechanical sarcasm. She had a dressing-gown drawn shapelessly round her, not a smart one: it looked like a relic of childhood. She put the pale blue cup and saucer on a small bedside table.

“Oh, very well,” said Katherine, struggling up dazedly into a sitting position. As she did so a disconcerting thing happened. The corner of her pillow pressed down on the rim of the cup and neatly overturned it, flooding the
table-cloth
and part of the pillow and sheets with tea.

She was speechless.

Jane, who had turned away, looked round at the noise. “What—” she began. “Oh, glory.” She started to laugh, and once she had started seemed unable to stop. When she laughed, she resembled Robin much more and was, therefore, better-looking: the irritable expression vanished from her face and she looked attractive and carefree.

Crimson, Katherine floundered about in an effort to kneel up. “But it’s awful—I’m so sorry. Everything is ruined——”

Jane sat on the eiderdown, gripping the end of the bed in order to laugh better. “That’s funny,” she gurgled. “Too funny. Forgive my manners. How did you do it?”

“But really I couldn’t help it——” Katherine stared incredulously at Jane; then, convinced of the sincerity of her laughter, calmed down. “I don’t know! First the cup was there—then it was—everywhere… But there’s nothing to laugh at!” Jane had gone off again. “The bed all ruined——”

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.