The Scent of Water (12 page)

“Yes of course. Don’t be in a hurry to make up your minds. Just remember that I’d love to do it if you’d like me to.”

“You would understand Edith,” said Joanna. “I don’t. I’m so hopelessly ordinary.”

“So am I. Perhaps I shan’t get on with her any better than you do.”

“You will. Paul Randall does. He’s good with children. It’s a shame he has none. They couldn’t afford a child. Valerie says it’s broken her heart to have no baby.”

Mary looked at Joanna, but saw no sign in the charming pink face of the dryness of tone she thought she had detected in the voice: nothing to reinforce her own conviction that when people said their hearts were broken they were really entirely indifferent. She said, “May the children come and have tea with me? I’d like Edith to get accustomed to me and the house. Sunday?”

“Yes,” said Joanna. “Thank you very much. I wish there was something we could do for you.”

“I want a cottage tabby cat,” said Mary. “And I want it rather quickly to prevent Mrs. Hepplewhite persuading me into a white poodle.”

“I’ll see to it,” said Joanna. “Mrs. Croft’s Susan is expecting. I’ll see Mrs. Croft at once.”

Roger came back and they talked of the difficulty of circumnavigating Mrs. Hepplewhite’s kindness until Mary rose to go. She walked slowly back toward The Laurels, her thoughts flying ahead of her. This flight of the thoughts, like homing pigeons, was a new experience. The house came into view, low and solid, its thick walls and steep roof and air of having settled down deeply into the earth making it look eternally strong. The white chimney stack in the center of the roof towered like a unicorn’s horn, a magical thing. She had not seen her home before from this angle and she was as excited as though she were an explorer finding a new land.

She went indoors to the parlor and sat for a little while thinking of Mrs. Hepplewhite and her adoration of an indifferent husband, of Edith, and of Paul deprived of children. Living here is like being with the concentration camp people again, she thought, and then was horrified by the idiocy of what she was thinking. That had been fearful and degrading suffering, this was just a few people gathered together in one place with their normal human problems. It was because that had been the most worthwhile period of her life, and so was this, that the two communities had come together in her mind. She stretched out her hand for the diary and sat for a while holding it. But she did not read that night. It was late and she was tired. Presently she put it away and went upstairs to bed.

T
HERE’S no need to take Martha,” said Joanna.

“We are taking Martha,” said Rose. The hamster was already in her arms and she shut her mouth firmly upon the statement.

“Very well,” said Joanna. “But you must take Martha’s traveling basket with you and then if Miss Lindsay doesn’t like Martha she can go in her basket.”

“There’s no need to take the basket,” said Edith.

Jeremy, when united with his sisters against authority, was silent but stood like Napoleon with his hands behind his back.

“Good-bye darlings,” said Joanna hastily. “Be good.”

They smiled at her kindly, dismissed her from their thoughts and ran to the gate. In a moment they were out of sight but she could hear their voices excited as those of chattering starlings. She stood upon her doorstep once more digesting the knowledge that she could not manage her children. Miss Lindsay, she believed, would be more successful. How did these tall, poised women who could command obedience with the lifting of an eyebrow get the way they were? Was it something they ate? But would even these Olympic ones be able to manage their own children if they had any? Joanna doubted it and went back into the house in a more cheerful frame of mind.

The three walked down the lane slowly, savoring the great occasion. They were going inside The Laurels, the house that for years had lain brooding beside their garden like some fabulous golden beast with many eyes and a towering horn sticking out of his forehead like a unicorn. At least that was how Rose thought of the house. It was not impossible to go inside a beast; Jonah had, but it was an unusual thing to do and she had no idea at all what it would be like inside. That was what made the visit so exciting and was why Martha had to come too. She did not like to enjoy things unless Martha could enjoy them also.

Jeremy felt differently about the house. For him it was not a beast but a sailing ship, and the boy in the pond was the boy who kept the lighthouse. From the trusty ship
Mulberry
he looked across the green rolling sea to the golden galleon, fo’c’sle windows blinking in the sunlight and the mainmast towering up into the sky, and his longing to be the captain of that ship was only a little less consuming than his longing for food. The
Mulberry
was a nice old thing but it was not his own, he had to share it with the girls. That other ship would be his own once he could board it. No one, not even his mother, knew about his passion for the sea and ships. There had been a day some while ago when the children had gone to have tea at the manor. Rose and Edith had been out in the garden with Mrs. Hepplewhite, and Mr. Hepplewhite and Jeremy had been in the library. Mr. Hepplewhite had taken him on his knee and shown him pictures of sailing ships, for which he had so fiery a love that Jeremy had caught alight too. From that day onward the garden of The Laurels had been for him no longer a garden but the sea.

Edith, more imaginative than the other two, was less imaginative about the house because for her it had a subordinate value, it was a jewel case lined with dark velvet that held the little things. But she had always been fascinated by the door in the wall and she was longing to walk up the steps and ring the bell and watch the door open. “This is one of the special days,” she said. The others nodded but they did not know what she had seen this morning. She had awakened at dawn to find the full moon still shining and the owls calling, but right up in the dark yet shining sky a lark had been singing. Night and day had been perfectly balanced, greeting each other. She had known then it would be a special day in Appleshaw, the most unlikely people greeting they knew not what and not knowing they’d done it.

The children were now facing the green door and Rose spoke first. “
I’ll
ring the bell,” she said. “No,
I
will,” said Edith. Jeremy said nothing because for him there was no door. The bottom step, upon which he stood, was the pinnace that had brought him alongside. It rocked gently beneath his feet. Presently, from far up, the rope ladder would descend. Edith seized the bellpull quickly and fiercely and pulled it out to its farthest limit. Rose, hampered by Martha, was not able to stop her. She kicked her briefly, and then smiled, for she was not a child to bear malice. The bell, which had now been repaired by Bert Baker, operated smoothly and could be heard ringing far away in the beast’s stomach, the ship’s hold, the velvet depths of quietness. “Don’t come too soon!” Edith called voicelessly to Mary. She need not have done so, for Mary understood these things. She came to the door with measured and mysterious tread, opened it slowly but wide and stood smiling down upon the little group on the steps.

Edith was looking remote and Mary knew instinctively that she must give no sign of recognition. Ignoring Edith she smiled at the two rosy faces and the grave furry countenance looking up at her with such profound consideration that she felt her smile becoming unsteady. Then the sandy freckled boy began to smile too. The right-hand corner of his mouth gave an upward quirk, his button nose wrinkled up and his eyes screwed shut while entrancing creases folded themselves across his fat cheeks. Then the creases smoothed themselves out, the gray eyes flew open and were full of light. Mary saw with pleasure the tousled head, the suit of crumpled green linen stretched rather tightly over the aldermanic front, the scarred knees and scuffed brown sandals. Joanna, she realized, was not a mother who tormented her children with too much tidiness. “It’s Jeremy,” she said. He nodded, accepting and recognizing her, as she had recognized him, as someone without whom he would be the poorer.

And Rose? Being older, her intuition was not so acute and she was not quite sure yet. She was lovely in her faded cotton frock, her warm brown eyes looking gravely into Mary’s. Then her pink face began to glow and a quick smile came and went leaving a dimple in her right cheek. “Rose,” said Mary. Rose nodded briefly and said, looking downward, “This is Martha.”

Mary bent to the hamster, which was now sitting on the top step. It sat up on its hind legs, its front paws folded demurely across its breast like an old lady’s tippet. It had a grave benevolent dignity.

“And Edith,” said Rose, continuing her introduction. Edith’s face was pale and still but her eyes were dancing. She and Mary shook hands with formality and then the children and Martha followed Mary through the tunnel of wistaria into the hall, where now wallflowers glowed in the silver tankard on the bamboo table. Mary was aware of stillness and a sigh behind her and she felt an intruder in her own hall, too large and too old. She wished she could turn into a spider and scurry up to a dark corner of the ceiling and hide there. But all she could do was go into the kitchen without looking at them, saying as she went, “Tea is in here. Come and join me when you feel like it.” They did not join her for a full ten minutes. Where were they?

Rose was in the beast’s magical stomach and it was velvety dark just as she had thought it would be. And the beast was moving, slowly stretching himself, yawning, tossing back his head with the tall white horn. He had only been waiting for her to come to him to go somewhere. Presently he would trot, then canter, then gallop, then leap for the sky, taking her with him. She had a moment of delicious panic and shut her eyes, clasping Martha to her.

Jeremy found the darkness of the hold entirely satisfying. Ahead of him worn stairs sloped away into the shadows. At the top of them was the quarter-deck where he would presently pace up and down with his telescope under his arm. He was moving toward them when he was arrested by the smell of toasting buns, and paused, his nose twitching. The delicious aroma was drifting from a half-open door under an archway at the top of two stone steps. Instantly he forgot about the quarter-deck and ran up the steps and through the door, and Rose followed him.

Edith was left gazing at the wallflowers in the silver tankard, which only she had noticed. It was a few minutes before she followed the others into the kitchen.

“We are having tea in here,” said Mary, “because my dining room is all upside down.”

They had never had tea in a real kitchen before, only in the work area, and they were thrilled by the space and the dresser and the big old table piled with good things to eat, savory things such as they loved, twiglets and paste sandwiches and sausages on sticks. The only sweet things were the buns that Mary was toasting on the Rayburn, but they liked sweet things if they were toasted. The tea was a great success and appetites large, Martha imbibing milk from a saucer and sitting up on her haunches and holding twiglets in her paws in a most enchanting manner. When no one could eat any more Mary showed them the house; the mossy parlor where the little things had been removed from their place in the window, the dining room and spare rooms left by Bert Baker as fascinating scenes of devastation, and her own room filled with light. She let them go where they would for as long as they would, for she saw that all three were playing private games inside their heads. Or at least Rose and Jeremy were. She was not sure about Edith, who whispered something about singing.

“Singing?” asked Mary. “It must be a wireless somewhere.”

“It’s inside the house,” said Edith.

For a moment they were alone together in Mary’s room, for Jeremy was motionless at the landing window, gazing out over vast spaces, and Rose had gone down to the kitchen to find another twiglet for Martha.

“What sort of singing?” asked Mary.

“Chanting,” said Edith. “Like in church but more beautiful. Listen.”

Mary listened but she could hear nothing, not even a thrush. She shook her head. “I can’t hear it,” she said.

“That’s because it’s gone now. It comes and goes.”

“ ‘Where should this music be,’ ” quoted Mary, “ ‘i’ the air, or the earth? It sounds no more.’ ”

“That’s nice,” said Edith, her face lighting up. “Are you saying poetry?”

“Shakespeare’s
Tempest
.”

Edith slipped her hand into Mary’s. “My daddy said poetry like that when he put me to bed.”

Mary knew she was not speaking of Roger and she asked, “Do you remember him?”

“Yes. Could you teach me to say that sort of poetry?”

“Wouldn’t it be too like school?”

“No! I don’t like school. I wish I could do lessons with you.”

“We’ll ask Mummy if you may. We must go down to the parlor now and play games with the others.”

“I’d rather stay here.”

“We must go and play with the others,” said Mary. “Do you know what I found in one of the drawers in the desk in the parlor? Chessmen. They are almost as beautiful as the little things. Look.” She opened one of the doors of her wardrobe and inside were the little things gleaming under the glass shade.

“No one knows they are here but us,” whispered Edith. “I like secrets. Do you?”

“No,” said Mary, “I don’t,” and realized as she spoke that this was one of the differences between youth and maturity. You were adult when you no longer cared for secrets. Then looking at Edith she saw the child’s face had blanched. She had touched some wound. “Let’s go down and find the chessmen,” she said.

In the parlor she set them out on the table and the children gathered around. The chessboard had squares of ebony and mother-of-pearl and the men were red and white, marvelously carved. Mary had never seen chessmen so beautiful and the children had never seen any at all. She explained the moves to them and Edith and Rose were quick to learn, but Jeremy was young for chess and he was soon bored. Out of the tail of her eye Mary saw him disappear over the windowsill, a green figure instantly absorbed in the sea-green of the conservatory. It was as though a small wave had rejoined its element. She let him go, for the outer greenness seemed his milieu just now. And he’d be safe in the garden. The latch of the garden door was difficult and beyond his reach.

He did not even try to reach it, for he was in a sailing boat and for him there was no door. The garden wall was a high wave, curved to break, but his little craft went up it, hovered dangerously at the top for a moment and then slithered down on the other side. The old wall was in need of repointing and there were hollows between the bricks that took his prehensile toes and fingers comfortably, but he was not aware of them, nor of the bruises he sustained on the other side, for one is not bruised by the sea. As he ran through the lychgate and across the churchyard the tang of it was in his nose and there was salt on his lips. The freshening wind filled the white sails and the small ship danced over the waves. He had seen the other ship from
Neptune
’s quarter-deck. He had known at once who she was, the
Victory
, and her captain was his friend. She was home from the West Indies with spices in her hold.

He climbed over the stile in the low wall that divided the churchyard from the bluebell wood and struck uphill to the right, up the hidden path that he and Rose and Edith had discovered last spring. It led from the manor to the church and must have been well trodden in the days when the manor servants, and on fine days the squire and his lady, used it Sunday by Sunday, but now it was so lost beneath brambles and fern that only a child could have found and followed it. Jeremy followed it as unconsciously as a hare or a badger would have followed its path to form or set, and was equally unaware of the westering sunlight and the green-gold mist about the boles of the trees. But he was aware of the blue sea washing about his boat.

The trees thinned and there was a green lawn and bushes of forsythia and cherry. Behind the old house with its array of tall chimneys was banked a splendor of white cumulus cloud, like the sails of a ship. It was this that he had seen from Mary’s landing window. “
Victory
,” he whispered, and set his course for an open window beside a magnolia tree.

Just inside the window Mr. Hepplewhite sat at the writing table in his library. When he had bought the house from the old squire’s distant and indifferent heir he had bought some of the furniture too, the portraits in the dining room and the contents of the library. Except for the laying down of a few Persian rugs and the hanging of sherry-colored velvet curtains he had not allowed his wife to lay a finger on the library. The high molded ceiling was still smoke-dimmed and the paneling that showed between the bookcases was pickled black with smoke and age. The room was steeped in its own unchanging and unchangeable smell; the wood smoke and tobacco smoke of centuries and the smell of old leather. The sunlight in this room was always liquid amber, the shadows strange and soft as the feathers of a vast, ghostly, night-dark bird. The library gave Mrs. Hepplewhite the shivers but Mr. Hepplewhite was satisfied by it.