Cold Pastoral (34 page)

“Stop,” he said like a bite. “She'll speak for herself. Bring her in.”

Hannah got up with stiff alacrity, leaving the master of the Place holding on to a chair like a stifling man.

She had stage-managed well. At the back porch she did something to a switch, cackling to herself in dirty delight.

At the end of the garden Tim and Mary Immaculate were suddenly illumined in cold white light. Dazed in each other's arms, they blinked quickly. Instantly the girl knew. There was a wire from the house for skating in winter. Hannah had replaced the bulbs. Tim and she were stripped of their secrecy.

“We're for it, Gretel,” said Tim instantly. He stood up, dragging her to her feet. Adjusting her hair, she said quickly:

“Tim, do I look as if I'd been crying ?”

“No, Gretel!” He took her by the shoulders, as if pressed for time. “This is the end of this! Kiss me once, for what's gone.”

The same height as himself the girl went into his arms, meeting lips on a level with her own.

“Tim,” she said, “you can go, and let me face it alone.”

He laughed in scorn.

“It's what I want. Gretel, keep your chin up. The last thing we can be is Jakin and Lew—I'll pipe you across the garden.”

At that moment Hannah turned the corner of the hedge. Her voice held harsh unction, like one who had scored with good effect.

“You're to come in and see Mr. Philip.”

The girl flashed by like a blade of scorn. Tim followed more slowly, pulling at the sleeves of his pinstripe suit. Then he sprinted after her, following through the back door.

“This way, Tim,”she said, reaching for his hand.

Inside the library they stood motionless. They did not have to blink with a guilty return from night. Hannah had helped by her illumination. They were a tableau in an old mellow room, with an anachronism of fresh trout. The girl identified a Rainbow and a German Brown.

They stood bravely, more than a little defiant with the tossing heads of youth. Tim's lips trembled sensitively as if his responsibility was greater, but he took refuge in the typical male squirm inside his collar. The girl looked overwhelmingly innocent, giving her eyes instantly to Philip, and for a while she simmered in a gaze like live coals. Withdrawing his eyes he glared at the boy. There was a long search over Tim, a rude investigation of eyes lost to manners. He looked as if he were searching for other counts on which to condemn her. Tim took it well, and his own sleepy eyes gave back some appraisement. Unequal height was compensated by the exact level of his shoulder with the girl's. Philip's head was down, lowered to their level to see them as he thought they were. What he saw did not reassure him. Yet there was no humility or shame. What they saw did not help them. Savagery induced a defensive armour, an extenuation of themselves, making them belittle their own deceits. Had they been summoned to a detached judgment their lives might have been aired in convention, and returned to await a seasoned decision. Detachment was in tatters, jolted from a mind seeing a degraded altar. Philip's exacting virtue made him blind and pitiless, and neither his mother nor David were there to temper him.

It was so short and so sharp when speech came; a rain of words without sense. The girl spoke first. She was ready to stand up to consequences, but not to scorch in the heat of prolonged silence.

“You wanted me, Philip?” she said, and her voice was cool and then faint, as she tried to endure his eyes. “This is Tim Vincent,” was all she could say.

“Why did you bring him in? You've kept him to yourself for a long time. Did you want to exhibit your lover?”

“No, sir,” called Tim.

“Shut up,” ordered Philip with concentrated insult. A flush ran up Tim's fair cheeks, and his sleepy eyes opened wide.

“I will
not
shut up,” he said, making a step forward. “
I'm
Tim Vincent, and I live in the little house next door.”

“I don't know you. Apparently Mary does, only too well.”

The words held a subtle insult, making Tim flush deeper red.

“You're all wrong, sir. I'm in love with Gretel—”

“Her name is Mary,” barked Philip. “And I thought she was too young—had to go to school again—God, this deceit, this rottenness…!”

He loomed over Tim like a menace, and because he was so tall he looked dangerous. Mary Immaculate threw an arm between them in a silent plea for separation. Both men pushed it down. They were primitive, glaring at each other with flaming eyes. Tim stammered a little.

“You're m-making a mistake.”

“Philip, I'll tell you,” said the girl. “Stop being so angry and listen to us. We're friends, Tim and I, we've been friends for a long time. We started by playing pairs, all the lovers in the world—and now—”

“Now you're lovers,” said Philip viciously. “An advance, indeed!”

The girl stamped her foot at his jeering tone.

“There's nothing to be ashamed of in love, Philip. It's natural—”

“Gretel, let me talk,” said Tim, laying his hand on her shoulder. The gesture infuriated Philip.

“Damn you,” he said, “have the decency to own up when she admits it herself.” His eyes ran over the girl, standing like a white vestal.

“Bah,” he said from some frustration defying coherency. “Get out, get out, the both of you, or I'll not be responsible for my hands.”

“I'm not afraid of your hands, Philip,” she said, now in high temper herself. “You're crazy, as you always are when you're mad. When you're like that I don't want to explain. I
will
go, until you come to your senses.”

“You'll go and you'll stay.” His voice was a merciless expulsion, freezing the heat in her veins. Wheeling on her feet, she faced him again.

“Do you mean,” she asked in a flat voice of incredulity, “that you're sending me away ?”

“That's what I mean,” he barked; “and take your lover with you.”

Tim threw out his arm. “It's all wrong.” Staring from Gretel to Philip, he went mute, losing all inclination towards explanation. He looked like a person seeing solution.

“Come, Gretel,” he commanded, “I know what to do.”

“Yes,” she said, “I'll go. Look after Rufus, will you, Philip? It's all I own in this house.”

The childish speech bombed some words from Philip's lips.

“Damn you,” he exploded. “You need not remind me you own my mother's things.”

Without a word she took Tim's arm, going out through the hall, past the big drawing-room, and into the summer night. As they went down the steps Hannah crept after them, locking the door. Then her hands clasped each other as she sidled towards the stairs, with eyes shifting away from the library. She might have disposed of her enemies, but she did not want to see. She scuttled upstairs, afraid to look out or back at her master.

She was driving again with her hair streaming behind her. Tim was going much too fast, giving the illusion of a ship cutting through black water. To retain a contact he let his hand rest on her knee. He needed it for the wheel, but protest had run out of her. She was flat, drained, both scuttled and scuttling, going ignominiously away with a boy who looked like a stranger. His head was back, and his face made a white oval in the darkness. His mouth was a little open, not quite smiling, but drawn back from his teeth. He looked more faunish than usual, and in some way recklessly triumphant. The expression was not one that she knew. This was the strangest event of all. As the mater's daughter she felt violated, a creature of bad taste, prostituting convention. She had brought it on herself, she had betrayed her adoption. This consequence was full of mental and spiritual wounds. Other consequences had fallen on her body, showing results which hospital could speedily restore. This afternoon, this early evening, she thought she must have Tim, regardless of loyalties. Now she knew neither him nor herself. Useless to protest. There was no way out! Her philosophy would have to suffice. Go with it, when it was as stupendous as this.

She sat up adjusting her coat. Then she saw they were rushing past David's cottage. Her hand crept to the door to jump out. Fear did not restrain her. It was the mental picture of herself, appearing a little soiled and bedraggled. No, she would never crawl. Tim and she would set out. Philip, the mater, the Place? The rooted loyalties of five years? It did not bear thinking of. She was the proven fool, the lightweight, the dog with the bone who had dropped it for its shadow. Substance was drowning. Knowing what drowning was like, she thought no physical sensation could equal this black sink of the mind. Mental suffering was new. She sat in the car with Tim, silent and writhing with savage regret.

They turned off the main road with a hideous screech of tires. There was a lane and a little square house, lying in lilac bushes.

“Now,” said Tim.

Giving him her hand, she let him draw her towards a green door with an iron knocker.

“TOO LATE TO CAST ANCHOR
WHEN THE SHIP'S ON THE ROCKS.”

A
t David's cottage the sounds of the day were reduced to an evening hush. Dew lay on the grass, and the garden was cool fromthe mist of the sea. Far down on the beach, little waves spent themselves like swishing sighs. From the highway came the mechanical din of the world. Cars screamed by, carrying the shrillness of youth. It needed tempered spirits to savour the modulation of the evening. David and Felice had been part of it until Philip rushed in with his story.

Striding up and down, he talked for a long time, flicking ash from a cigarette before it had time to gather. His nose was like a prow, cutting tempestuously through shadows. Watching him, Felice felt he was inhaling the darkness. David and she were paralysed, each in a pool of light. Her hands had dropped from the piano, while her husband sat with his fingers between a book, with his legs far out in the room. As his brother barely avoided them, he sat up with sudden energy.

“Do you mean to say,” he asked with weighted words, “that you turned her out like a heavy Victorian? Never darken my doors again sort of thing! No conduct could justify such an action. Think of the Place.”

Felice heard her husband sting his brother on two counts. It had the effect of making him flick his cigarette harder.

“God Almighty!” he said, “don't I know it? I was beside myself. It
was so sudden, such an incredible jolt. For a moment I could have
murdered her. I'd built up so much. Even now I think it's a filthy
dream, until I remember the boy. The one I suppose who sent her
the flowers. If he hadn't gone I would have been in the courts for
assault.” He gave a short laugh, ending in a staccato bark. “As for
her, she stood there looking so God-damn clean. The things that
go on in a man's house without his knowledge! The awful things
Hannah suggested! Things a man could not think himself. To do that
to me—to Mater—to you and when I told her to go she went like a
young queen! That unashamed walk! God—God!…”

Collapsing in a chair, he dropped his head in his hands. David
regarded him impersonally, withdrawn to stupefaction. His mind
reviewed Philip's story, threw it away, recalled it again, until he jerked
protestingly.

“There must be some mistake,” he insisted. “It's fantastic.”

The word was unfortunate. Philip leaped up, striding towards the
mantelpiece.

“Fantastic,” he clipped, gesturing with a long hand, “hasn't she
always been fantastic?”

Then they argued backwards and forwards over the incredible,
David supplying vindications, and Philip recalling her crimes. True,
thought Felice dryly, but those are far cries from a lover at seventeen.
She had lied to her mother! philip was arguing David to a cohesion of
thought, driving him to shocked acceptance. In cold reason Mary
Immaculate seemed convicted. Confronted by the illicit taint in
their home, modernity dropped from them. Dismayed at her
husband, Felice saw him assume the ancestral aura of a man thwarted
in the control of women. True, he was deeply shocked, and Philip
was being most impressive because of the outrage to his own idealisation.
At the very word lover, bitter jealousy had accepted the worst
imputation. A growing irritation in Felice questioned whether
David should not have more balance. Both were sure she should trail
chastity like a banner. Both were now blind to judgment. They
were smirching her themselves, jerking her from her pedestal, and
distorting her reckless escapades. She hated them both, despised them with her mind. With an effort she dismissed them, calling the girl to her own tribunal.

Two widely divergent girls appeared, difficult to dovetail. Mary running to the woods, striking the harebells to make the fairies leap out. Mary nearly losing her life through her own foolishness, Mary lying to her mother because it was the most comfortable way out. Then there was Mary, the most docile of girls, waiting on the mater hand and foot, never needing to be jogged to perform the most exacting routine. That girl was always good-tempered, laughing and gay, making life tolerable in a sombre winter at the Place. Fundamentally she was as sound as a good nut. It seemed an insult to their mother and Josephine to doubt her. The men were looking at her through a film of jealousy, the leaning side of love.

Felice was on the side of the weak. This time she felt she was on the side of the wronged. Her voice startled them like the vindication of womanhood.

“I'm ashamed of you both. I don't believe a tenth of that story. I'm not condoning her, but I think you're both blinded by common male jealousy. Snap out of it, and use your brains.”

“My dear,” said David, sitting bolt upright.

“She admitted it herself,” Philip almost snarled.

“Admitted what ?”

“That she and the boy were lovers and had known each other for a long time.”