Cold Pastoral (29 page)

Dearest Gretel,

I dared write when Mother told me about Lady Fitz Henry. I knew there
would be letters, and this might wander in. We've always had enormous
luck with each other. We may not be star-crossed lovers after all, and all this
winter I've been frightened about you and me. But I did not intend to talk
about ourselves. I was shocked and unhappy when Mother wrote all the
details. Of course, Auntie Minnie had the news about the hospital and how
wintry it was. I can't get her face out of my mind, having seen her so often from
the beech tree. I'm sure she was a grand person because she made you so lovely.
Now that I'm away I can see you better. What a day that was for me when
I piped you up in the tree! Now anything that hurts you hurts me dreadfully.
It has been and always will be. I know about death, dear Gretel, and the
letters that come in full of little verses. I wish I was there to make you feel
how near I am in this.

Things will be different now! I wish I could talk about us, but that will have
to wait, and I know you want it that way.

Can I go on now and talk of something else? I can't stop when the
opportunity has come to write you one letter. One thing about this made me
want to cry like a baby. Mother offered to let me come home for Christmas!
She said she had saved some money and it was ample to take me home and
back. I was desperately tempted to take it, but it was too much. The fact that
she saved it says she feels Uncle's domination over money. If he knew she had
it he'd pester her until she invested it in some bond. They always seem to
promise things in fifty years. I'd like one good bust in the present, before my
fingers stiffen on the keys. Just one loaf round Europe and then I can take it.

That is with you beside me.

I could go on writing forever about life here. Needless to say I have
gravitated to a musical crowd, and it helps the professional subjects. Everybody
talks a lot. Mostly I just sit and listen. What amazes me is the way some
fellows have their minds made up. Their way seems cemented, and they
simply can't get worked up over music, art or literature. It's a crowd to hold
one's tongue with. I can see them as uncles born to plague a fellow like me.

Then there are the playboys and the smart Alecs who like the thing out of
bounds. They have a drunken way of enjoying themselves. The girls all have
coxcombs and curls, and nails like the blood of bullocks. I have only to think
of you to want nothing from them. Nobody could love you more than I do, dear
Gretel, or remember every bit about you. It makes a fellow reel in terror that
it might not go on. Darling, look at the white ship and think of your vassal.
     
TIM

The letter hurt her. She could see him so plainly, with his eyes rich with his feelings. She who liked a good pace found the way too fast. Towards herself Philip and Tim seemed so concentrated. She applauded the latter for his self-denial, consoled him for his unselfishness towards his mother; but she knew it was useless to expect him to press on without her. His mother must love him in some dumb way. Her tentative steps to ease his uncongenial career had been evinced several times. The girl wanted to look at his mother with recognition. She knew her by sight as well as the redoubtable Auntie Minnie. The former was inclined to be square and slow-moving, with a pasty face and Tim's heavy-lidded eyes. She walked past the gates of the Place with uninquisitive eyes. Her clothes were always neat but not smart. Auntie Minnie's were neither. She was inclined to accessories as decorated as a dessert with a cherry and a strip of angelica. Her marcel wave was knife-edged, as if a hairdresser had been challenged to make it everlasting. Always going out with her work, she walked with a bag. Her legs in motion held a hop, while her brown eyes darted inquisitively around. Tim said she read the morning paper from cover to cover, and knew the names of all the incoming and outgoing passengers. Briefly, Auntie Minnie was a nosy parker!

The letter stored in her mind, Mary Immaculate sailed on with her chin up, causing David to remark to his wife:

“Mary's chin has a tilt. I wonder what it means. What is she defiant about?”

“You see too much,”said his wife. “Perhaps some student at the college has been making love to her, and she's slapped his face.”

David was shocked.

“Do you think she has followers?” he asked naively.

“Fool!” said his wife. “You and Philip never see Mary as an ordinary girl. I doubt if she has much opportunity though. I find she takes no part in anything but the academic life. I hear around she's a brilliant student, but never mixes…”

“Why?” said David.

“You'd better ask Philip, Dave dear. He didn't want her to attend the college at all.”

“Well, we'll see it out this winter,” said David with a little shiver.

“I don't relish the thought of the eternal snows, even for Mary.”

The girl was to look back on that winter as a harmonious season. There were four of them, and it was a perfect number for most things. Study became a cram, so as not to interfere with pleasure. They played bridge, went to cinemas, skated, read, enjoyed infinite music and saw whatever there was to see. David occasionally asserted himself, and he definitely refused to put crepe on the doorknob for his mother. After a few deep frowns, Philip went his way. He began to play and enjoy playing, making no attempt to order Mary Immaculate around. She was rock-bound in the ways of the mater, and showed no desire to spill over. Wise enough to bide his time, his conservatism refused to speak of love to a girl who was still going to school. Occasionally the air palpitated with something, quickly eased by David and Felice. If the girl herself saw signs of widening circles, she was adept in evasion. Instead of going with the tide, that winter resembled a comfortable rest on a lee shore.

Episodes made her ponder. An evening skating alone with Philip on the flooded tennis-court. It was a night of rare beauty, white in austerity. The moon was alone in the sky, casting a blue light on the ice. The stars were niggards, withdrawn from the flaunt of the moon. About six or seven stars, thought the girl, skimming over the ice in Philip's arms.

Skating, they achieved perfect harmony, she having grown to a height that made her a faultless partner. To her it was the very ecstasy of motion, a rhythm, intoxicating to the body. She was just under his chin, with yellow eyes fixed on the moon. It looked insolent with aloofness, alone in cold beauty. She would like to be free and take that wide survey.

Philip was keeping the time unmarred, by a careful avoidance of a ridge in the ice, but when he could he stared at her face. She was bareheaded, wearing a brown flared skirt and a leather coat, zipping to the throat. When the music stopped he did not release her, letting the gramophone needle scrape on. She gave a long sigh, standing easily in his arms.

“Nice, Philip!”

“Perfection, my dear, and what a night!”

“Philip, I wish I was the moon up in the sky. Think of seeing everything going on.”

“I haven't that much curiosity, Mary. Come back from the moon. I'm uncomfortable with infinity.”

She laughed, still staring up. Then she knew he was stirred by the sight of her face. In the cold clear night he kissed her rather slowly, surprising her with the feel of warm lips in frosty air. Hot-cold she thought instantly, remembering the morning she had licked the snow in the valley. Philip gave her a gentle shake.

“Come back, Mary. You're so often an enigma. Dave seems to meet you. I believe you would have been much happier if he had adopted you,” Philip's voice needed reassurance. Instantly she came to loyal defence.

“David happens to have done a lot of interesting things. He's had time, you haven't. When you have money you can pick and choose.”

“I'd still be a doctor, Mary, if I had his money. I couldn't be idle. All I know is having a job and doing it and returning to something that's really my own.”

“Nothing is really your own, Philip.”

“I think it is, Mary,” he said, tightening his arms on his possession. “It's the ordained way of living. A job, a roof, a wife, children…”

“But you don't own children, Philip. Their bodies are just about,” she said vaguely. Dare she joke about a bone of contention? “And,” she ventured softly, “they are not all full of directive thinking.”

To her intense relief he laughed, giving her another shake. “You've always had your tongue in your cheek about that, Mary. Even as a small girl when I wanted to slap you.”

“Why didn't you, Philip?” she asked with narrowed eyes.

“Because, my dear, even when you made me mad I loved you. Sometimes I think I started you on the wrong foot, Mary. You know why, don't you?”

“Yes, I think so,” she said blandly. “Because I was full of fantasy.”

“More than that,” he said gravely. “Some of the doctors went as far as to say you were—”

“Dippy, Philip?” she asked, laughing on a high young note with her head back under his face. He could see the moon making gleams on her white, rounded teeth. “Hannah always said I was cracked.”

“Well, thank God,” he said, laughing with her. “I was right and they were not. They said it was impossible to lie out for three days if you were normal.”

Mary Immaculate's eyes narrowed again. “I'm sure they're all very wise, Philip, but could they know what effect it should have?”

“I don't yet,” he said with a frown. “You've forgotten it, haven't you, Mary?”

It was a foolish question. The first twelve years of a life are the sharpest in memory.

“I've forgotten nothing, Philip. Let's skate again. It's a lovely night.”

Frowning a little, he slid towards the gramophone. He was a man in sight of Mecca, and did not know what to concede to other gods.

They waltzed without a word, disharmony withdrawing from their bodies. Silently in the porch they took off their boots and skates.

Before him she ran upstairs to David in her stockinged feet.

“Darling,” he said, reaching out a welcoming hand, “you must be frozen. Where's Phil?”

“On my heels,” she said lightly. “We had a divine skate under the moon. All the witches and cats have been frightened away, and the hocus-pocus doesn't know what to do with itself. It can't even wander in the shadows, because there aren't any shadows.”

Entering, Philip heard her talking with her tongue in her cheek. David looked from one to the other, shaking his head.

“Mary, you sound naughty! I must forgive you because you look like gardenias on ice. Come and sit by the fire.”

“Thanks, I'm going to bed,” she said lightly. “I go to school, you know.”

When Philip had opened the door for her he went himself, without a word.

“M'mmm,” said David expressively. “Was that cold air they brought in?”

‘'I'm afraid so.”

“She looked just as readable as the sphinx. I know that mood. Felice, has she ever told you what Mater—”

“My dear Dave, if she hasn't told you she'll tell no one.”

“Where is she going? I think Phil should give her some time away before he ties her down. If she doesn't love him sheer loyalty will make her accept him.”

“Isn't it better to let her ease into marriage than go where he might lose her? If we take her home with us, very soon she'll be dining and dancing, and rushing from this to that…”

“And men will be trying to kiss her in the backs of cars, and making love to her when they're one over the eight.”

“I wouldn't worry about that. She can be as cold as ice. She's much more likely to see the world as a place than as people.”

“Will Phil be a lover, Felice?” said David, turning off the radio and settling for conversation. “He's very celibate.”

“You married young, dear, somewhat instinctively—and you're his brother.”

“Well, well, well, three holes in the ground! We won't go into that. I was in! France! Somewhere in France there's a lily! We didn't have the luck to meet one—”

“Fool!” said his wife, undisturbed. “Don't you think love like Phil's is bound to get returns, and, after all, dear, he's a doctor.”

“That's a help,” said her husband with a grin. She was skating alone in the glow of the western sky when she saw Hannah looking from a second-storey window. Because the shrubbery was bare she could be seen very plainly. Rufus was sitting on the ledge, baking in the rich orange of the sun. For a second the girl feared for the cat, Hannah looked so like an old witch. Suitably she should have had him hung on the tail of her shift while she danced in the centre of fire. The sun suggested the picture. But Hannah was not dancing. She was silent, fixed and stealthy, as if she might be crouched over a tripod, brooding on an oracle. When it was revealed she would whirl into words. Curtailing a backward three, the girl sat in the shade of the hedge. She did not like the fixity of Hannah. Since Lady Fitz Henry's death she had stopped grumbling and goading her, but that had been better than rancid silence. When her work was done she crouched over the fire, working her old hands. Felice found her very difficult. She refused to take orders, and frequently meals appeared that had not been planned. She was sullen to everyone except David, and she found it impossible to maintain a grudge against him. In more than the others, she rambled to him about the past, perpetually reliving his childhood days. He was kind and sympathetic and, in pity for her loneliness, let her bore him very often. Her lost mistress had stipulated that she should be maintained for the remainder of her life or, if Philip wished, to be kept in comfort at some agreeable home.