The Scent of Water (15 page)

I had escaped. I was so overwhelmed with thankfulness that I nearly fell. I sank down on the ground and sat back on my heels, as children do sometimes when they are saying their prayers and are tired. It was ground, not stone, it was a floor of trodden earth. The stone walls were still there but the light had hollowed them out into a cave and they no longer frightened me. There was a lantern in the cave and people were moving about, a man and woman caring for a girl who lay on a pile of hay. And for a newborn child. As I watched, the woman stooped and put Him into His mother’s arms. An ox and ass and a tired donkey were tethered to the wall of the cave, and their breath was like smoke. I was not surprised, for the strange changes of a dream never surprise me. It was like one of the nativity scenes that the old masters painted, only not tidy and pretty like those. The girl was exhausted, her clothes were crumpled, and the sweat on her face gleamed in the lantern light. The man was dusty and tired and not yet free of the anxiety that had been racking him for hours past. The woman was one of those kindly bodies who turn up from somewhere to lend a hand in times of human crises. She made soft clucking noises as she gave the baby to His mother, and the two women gave each other a long look of triumph before the girl bent over her baby. He was like all newborn babies. He looked old and wizened, and so frail that my heart nearly stopped in fear, as it always does when I see a newborn child. How could anything so weak survive? His thin wail echoed in the stony place and then was stifled as He sought His mother.

They’ve not come yet, I thought. All the prettiness the artists painted isn’t here. No angels, no shepherds, no children with their lambs. It’s stripped down to the bare bones of the rock and the child. There’s no one here. And then I thought, I am here, and I asked, who am I, Lord? And then I knew that I was everyone. I wasn’t solitary. Everyone was me and I was everyone. We were all here, every sinner whose evil had built up those dark walls that held Him like a trap. For looking around I saw that the cave of the nativity was very small. The walls were pressing in upon Him close and hard and dark the way they pressed in on me. And the old claustrophobic terror was back on me again, but not for myself. I remembered the rocks of the wilderness and the multitude of sinners surging in, selfish and clamorous, sick and sweaty, clawing with their hot hands, giving Him no time so much as to eat. I remembered the mocking crowd about the cross and the thick darkness. I remembered the second cave, the dark and stifling tomb. Two stony caves, forming as it were the two clasps of the circle of His life on earth. And I remembered Saint Augustine saying, “He looked us through the lattice of our flesh and He spake us fair.” Shut up in that prison of aching flesh and torn nerves, trapped in it . . . The Lord of glory . . . I remembered the sword of light that had split the rock of sin, making for me the way of escape to where He was at the heart of it. At my heart. At the heart of everything that happened to me, everything I did, everything I endured. He was not the weakness that He seemed, for He had a sword in His hand and all evil at last would go reeling back before it. He had entered the prison house of His own will. And so He was not trapped, nor was I. There was always the way of escape so long as it was to the heart of it, whatever it was, that one went to find Him.

The shepherds were coming. I could hear them singing, a homely rough singing and a little out of tune. And the high sweet piping of a shepherd’s pipe. I shut my eyes and listened and it came nearer and I woke up.

But the singing continued. It was carol singers not far from my window. There was the bass rumble of a few men’s voices and the piping of small boys. It was the choir. They were singing one of the oldest of the carols, “The Holly and the Ivy,” the old folk tune that has been part of the English Christmas for so many centuries. I listened to it and I was at peace, and knew I would soon be well again. In the pause between this carol and the next I got out of bed and went to the landing and called out to Jenny to find my purse in my escritoire and give the boys their Christmas tips. Then I went back to bed again and listened to “While Shepherds Watched,” and then to the music dying away in the distance as they moved off to other houses around the green. And then I began to think. I remembered how rebellious I had been, and how I had told the old man that I had done nothing that called for dust and ashes, and he had replied, “No?” I hadn’t realized then just how vile my own sin is and that every sinner must bear the pressing in of my sin, as I bear his, in penitence. And I thought that the dust and ashes of the suffering that results from sin is purging if offered as prayer for each other. It may take me my lifetime to know the vileness of my own sin, and perhaps not even then, perhaps not till later, but until I do know I will not know God. Oh yes, I will know His goodness, it will come to me now and then like a touch, like a breath of fragrance, and I will find His presence at the heart, but not Himself entirely. Not heaven.

I slept well that night, no longer aware of the pressure of the walls, for they had vanished, but of the very different pressure of protection. Not pressure at all really but shelter. And the next day the old Vicar, Mr. Carroway, came to see me. I’d refused to see anyone while I was ill except Doctor Partridge, who has a bristling ginger mustache and rides to hounds but doesn’t seem to know much about sick people, but I was glad to see Mr. Carroway. I don’t think he knows much about sick people either, and if I’d asked him to say a prayer with me I am sure he would have been much embarrassed, but his kindness and courtesy, his rosy face and white whiskers seemed very much in place in my beautiful room.

“My house is old, isn’t it?” I said to him. “Especially the hall and the archway leading to the kitchen. That bit seems to me to be older than the rest.”

His face lit up and he sat forward with his fingertips placed together, which is his habit when he is pleased about something, and I remembered that his hobbies are church history and bees. “Part of the Cistercian monastery,” he said. “Alas, there’s nothing left now but the abbey church, our church, and a few walls and doorways built into the old houses around the green, and the bees and mulberry trees. The monks were famous for their apiary. I’ve never known a patch of country that had so many bees as Appleshaw. The lime blossoms and the orchards bring them. That lime avenue led to the abbey gateway. This house, my dear young lady, was once the infirmary. Your hall, so far as I can make out from the plans, was the infirmary chapel.”

“Then that explains it,” I said.

“What does it explain, my dear?” he asked.

“The fact that Appleshaw is a place enclosed. And monks take vows of obedience, don’t they? This is a very obedient place, close-knit in love.” Mr. Carroway became even pinker in the face than is natural to him and looked on the floor for his top hat, which he had left downstairs. “And one feels in this house the shelter of God’s hand. No wonder, if it sheltered the sick.”

Mr. Carroway rose to go, with courteous murmurs, and I told him he’d done me a lot of good, which was quite true. My hall had been the infirmary chapel. I made up my mind I would buy an old table or chest, altar-shaped, to have in the hall, and I would always have flowers on it. And if that was a sentimental idea I didn’t care. Being ill makes you feel what well people call sentimental, but what you feel is nonetheless genuine whatever they call it.

Christmas in this place was so familiar, as though I’d always lived here. What is it that makes one place more than another home to one? Not length of stay. I think it is compatibility. I want God and so did the monks. The unseen spirit of a place has its deep desire and if it’s the same as yours then your small desire goes down like an anchor into the depths.

Mary closed the diary and murmured to herself, “Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks.” She put out the lamp and lay waiting for sleep. The owls were calling greetings to each other. Probably hunting calls really, for nature was never as agreeable down below as it seemed on top, it had been the two strands, but they sounded like greetings. This had been a very special day.

M
ARY had not realized until now the importance in the life of countrywomen of small social occasions. Going out to tea, to lunch, to sherry, to the Women’s Institute, varied their routine and gave them the illusion that they lived at the hub of things. But we don’t, thought Mary. The Bennetts and the Elliots visited just like this. If it wasn’t for the wireless and television and our cars there’d be no difference at all. Who would have thought that the lime avenue carried one back to this archaic leisure? But that’s England still. Just a few miles away from the main road, down this lane or that, you come to another world, and I expect all the worlds at the lanes’ endings are quite different from each other. When they are not I hope I’ll be dead.

The bell rang and she took off the apron she was wearing to sweep out her reconstituted spare room and went down to open the door. It was half-past three, so it was going to be a social occasion.

The moment she saw them she knew who they were. The walk had been too much for them. Colonel Adams was trembling on his sticks and Mrs. Adams was short of breath. Mary thanked heaven that the two little armchairs were in place. She brought them into the parlor and installed them there and after a moment or two left them to recover while she got the tea. It grieved her that they had bothered to call on her. Why could they not have asked her to come to them? But she realized, when she was back in the parlor with them, that it would not have occurred to them to summon others to their presence, as though they were people of importance, and they wished to honor her at whatever cost to themselves. They had taken a most exhausting amount of trouble, for their misshapen old shoes shone with polishing and the Colonel’s shirt and Mrs. Adams’s white silk blouse, thin as a cobweb with much laundering, were snowily clean. Their neatness and exquisite manners, their sincere kindness as they asked her gently of her welfare and desired that she should be happy here brought her so near to tears that she could scarcely answer them. They had brought with them into her room the atmosphere of their particular brand of courage. Cousin Mary’s tough valiance, the courage of a fighter, was alive in the house already, but theirs was different. It was a delicate thing, the distillation of suffering that was never mentioned because courtesy forbade such a thing, and not even interiorly dwelt upon because again their bone-deep courtesy kept their interest and attention moving outward. Paul had asked her to love them. It would not be difficult.

Mary had been practicing her cooking and there were scones for tea. And she had sent to London for her favorite brand of China tea which she fancied had given pleasure to the Staffordshire teapot, for it seemed lovelier than ever. The old people were delighted as children and now and again they looked at each other that each might delight in the pleasure of the other. And they looked at Mary, the eyes of each gently thanking her for giving such pleasure to the other one. The vine leaves rustled in the breeze that blew through the open door of the conservatory, and the faint scent of the blossoms was shaken into the room. Mary had a fancy that the apple tree outside the west window was leaning its elbows on the sill. The little things sparkled and glowed under their glass case at the south window and they talked, among other gentle topics, of them.

“Miss Lindsay was so fond of them,” said Mrs. Adams. “Always when I came to see her she would show them to me. She would forget she had shown them to me before and show them all over again. But I was never tired of seeing them.”

“You weren’t afraid of her?” asked Mary.

Mrs. Adams was surprised by the question. “Not at all. She was always gentle with us. In her good times she and my husband used to play chess together.”

“She could play quite a good game,” said Colonel Adams. “She’d rap me over the knuckles with her fan if a move of mine annoyed her, yet there was always a gentleness. She had a special costume for chess playing, two black velvet skirts one over the other, a red knitted shawl, mittens and of course the fan. She felt the cold I think. She always kept a poor fire.”

Mary’s heart lurched. Had Cousin Mary kept a poor fire that she might have more money to leave to little Mary? And how was it that she had been so gentle with Colonel and Mrs. Adams and yet had so frightened Jean Anderson? When the time came for them to go she would not let them walk back. Her car was outside the house and they gratefully accepted her offer to drive them home. As they were crossing the hall Colonel Adams stopped and, propped on his two sticks, asked, “Do you play bridge, Miss Lindsay?” There was wistfulness in his tone and Mrs. Adams was looking at her with anxiety. Mary replied, “Yes, I do. I enjoy it. But when Mrs. Hepplewhite asked me to play the other night I told a barefaced lie. I said I did not play.”

Colonel Adams chuckled. “I think you were wise. Had you said yes you would have had time for little else. But if you would occasionally do us the honor of joining the Vicar and ourselves in a game we would keep your secret. The Vicar plays a tolerably good hand. A little hasty, but he is a hasty man. Excellent but hasty. One’s character tends to affect one’s bridge.”

“I shall be afraid to play with you, Colonel Adams, if you can deduce my character from my bridge.”

He had set himself in motion again. “I think you need not fear. You are very like your cousin.”

“Tom!” ejaculated his wife in dismay.

“I did not refer to the slight occasional mental aberration,” said Colonel Adams calmly. “That was a passing thing, of no consequence as regards essential character, though to her, poor lady, doubtless a sore trial.”

“We have one of the bungalows in Abbey Fields,” said Mrs. Adams as the car circled the green.

“Abbey Fields!” said Mary with delight. “I’ve only just found out about the abbey.”

“Oh, yes. A Cistercian abbey. The Vicar knows a lot about it. It was destroyed at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries but the church has always remained. This is our bungalow, Miss Lindsay. Holly Cottage. Oh, Tom, look! It’s Charles!” She turned to Mary with her small face alight with joy. “It’s Charles, our son. He does sometimes turn up to see us unexpectedly. And there was no tea for him and the door locked. Did you lock the door, Tom?”

“No,” said Colonel Adams. “Not worthwhile. Nothing to steal. He could get in.”

His reaction to the presence of his son was different from that of his wife. She was irradiated with pure pleasure but he was weighted down with apprehensive sorrow. Yet when Charles came out of the gate of Holly Cottage to help him out of the car his face was creased with a tenderness almost more maternal than his wife’s. “Hello, Charles, how are you? This is Miss Lindsay. She’s been kind enough to bring us home after a most delightful afternoon. Miss Lindsay, my son.”

They smiled at each other but regardless of them Mrs. Adams was out of the car in a flash, and reaching up to kiss her tall son. “Are you well, dear?” she asked him. “Can you stay?”

“Emily,” said her husband, “you have not thanked Miss Lindsay for that excellent tea.”

She turned around, her face pink with happiness. “Thank you, Miss Lindsay,” she said like a child. “Thank you.”

Mary smiled and drove straight up the hill to avoid the backing and turning that would have kept her longer with them. She drove to the lime avenue and parked her car on the grass at the side of the road. She got out and went through the trees to a gate that looked out on a field full of moon daisies and vetch and feathery swaying grass. But leaning with her arms on the gate she saw none of it. How had they come to have a son like that? Magnificently good-looking, and rotten.

Gradually she became aware of the moon daisies and the scent of the lime flowers that were just beginning to blossom. Today’s sunshine, after rain in the night, was bringing it out. She turned around and looked up at the bunches of pale green, not unlike her vine flowers. The scent too was not unlike, though the scent of the vine flowers was delicate and this was strong and powerful as the vibrating hum of the bees who were gathering the honey. The sunshine, striking down in rods of light through the ceiling of green leaves, was gold as that honey. There was goodness here, in scent and sound and splendor of light, and if it gave no explanation of man’s tragedy it gave reassurance. At least it gave reassurance to her at this moment, when it was not her own suffering that oppressed her. The thing had not got its fangs into her own flesh, darkened her own mind or twisted her own nerves. If it had would it have been possible for her to know anything of this reassurance? Did Colonel Adams know it, or that son of his, or Paul? She would have to be of their company before she would know.

She drove slowly homeward. She understood now the possessiveness of the trees. The visible walls of the abbey had been destroyed but their foundations, unseen beneath the meadows and orchards and gardens of Appleshaw, still encircled a plot of ground that had been accounted holy and had been intensely loved. How many human root ends, she wondered, were now pinned down beneath those stones, like the old Vicar’s beneath the walls of Oxford? Cousin Mary’s, without doubt, to be joined one day by her own. She saw them in her mind’s eye, white and wormy but tough as ivy, holding the old stones firmly down in the earth, never to be moved.

She was passing the second cottage on the green, Honeysuckle Cottage, trim and brightly painted but less sophisticated than Orchard Cottage, when the door flew open and a stout little woman shot out of it gripping a kitten by the scruff of its neck. As she ran down the path of her minute garden she gave her head a skillful jerk that shot her spectacles down on her nose, and looked at Mary with smiling but burning interest over the top of them. When she reached the car she jerked them back again, for they were intended for close inspection. For more distant curiosity she gathered more information without them. It was Mrs. Croft, the district nurse whose friendliness as she bicycled past in the lime avenue had so delighted Mary on the day of her arrival.

She reached her arm through the open window of the car and dropped the kitten in Mary’s lap. “Tiger. I’m pleased you should have him. Susan, my cat, is a tortoiseshell but that old rake of a tom at the Dog and Duck, that Percy, he’s tabby. Fathers all the kittens for miles around. You getting settled? It’s a nice old house. I spent a lot of time in it, looking after the old lady. She didn’t want to go to a home and the doctor didn’t force her. Wants a lot doing to it. I see you’ve Bert Baker there most days. Find him satisfactory?”

Mrs. Croft had sparkling brown eyes behind her glasses, an infectious merry smile and a flow of conversation that was almost equal to Mrs. Hepplewhite’s. But her talk did not submerge the victim, for it was like herself, brisk and cheerful with a dancing rather than an adhering quality. She had small broad capable hands and footsteps that were wonderfully quick and light. Her head was permanently cocked slightly to one side, like a listening bird, so interested was she in the human species and all it did and said. Not, Mary imagined, in what it thought. Those who possessed that type of curiosity, she believed, carried the head straight but thrust a little forward. Those with no curiosity at all sagged badly.

“He’s very satisfactory. When he’s got the house in order for me I hope you’ll come and see it. I’m settling in well but there are a lot of mice, so thank you very much for Tiger. Isn’t he rather young to leave Susan?” Tiger had swarmed up her and was now spread-eagled on her chest, screaming wildly.

“Not at all,” said Mrs. Croft briskly. “He can feed himself and knows what to do with a box of earth. Boiled fish and bread and milk at present. Better unhook him or he’ll pull the threads of your jumper.”

Unhooking Tiger was no easy matter, for his minute claws were curved like scimitars and as sharp as needles. Having disentangled him Mary held him up to look at him. His soft round body was tabby but the absurd tail had a bright orange tip and the small triangular face was snow white, with a pink nose, surmounted by large batlike ears. The saucer-eyes were blue. Though there had been dogs and cats in the family when she was young, it so happened that Mary had never owned an animal of her own before and a ridiculous thrill went through her. “No other cat was ever quite like this,” she said.

“You get some queer mixtures,” agreed Mrs. Croft. “Now don’t spoil him. No sharpening his claws on the cushions, now, or sleeping on your bed. And don’t overfeed him or he’ll grow to the size of his father, and if he should be poorly at any time let me know.”

They parted with mutual appreciation and Mary went home with her little cat, feeling suddenly more cheerful. That ruined man, and Tiger. The same world held them both. The tragic capacity of the human race for going off course was a little balanced by the integrity of the animals who were always obedient to the law of their being. We were meant to love like that, thought Mary, simply because that’s our law and we were told to obey it.

“I’m on to a good thing this time, Dad,” said Charles.

Mrs. Adams had gone to bed directly after supper, tired by her outing, and Colonel Adams and his son sat together in the little sitting room. Only one small shaded lamp burned on a bookcase and Colonel Adams was glad that in the dim light he could not see his son’s face clearly. He could see the outline of his finely shaped head and strong shoulders, and the play of light and shadow that the perfect bone structure of the face made into a mask of beauty, but that was all. The mask made him feel that he was sitting here with the small boy whom Charles once had been, the most beautiful and charming of his children, a wonder child whom everyone had adored, himself not least. Charles had been born just after the First World War, the result of his profound joy in his reunion with Emily, for he had been serving abroad and had not seen her for two years. But he himself had been a very sick man at the time and Emily had been worn out by the war years. They’d hardly given the boy a good start and they’d spoiled him abominably. He could see that now but at the time the marvelous charm of the little boy, his abnormal sensitiveness and physical delicacy that had caused him to weep heartbrokenly at the least breath of criticism, and shriek when punished, had made it difficult to be severe with him. Charles lit another cigarette and the spurt of flame illumined cruelly the sly weariness of his face. His father’s grief went through him like a sharp physical pain and he shifted in his chair. Parsons when they preached did not stress sufficiently the weariness of sin. That was its chief punishment, he believed, for sensitive temperaments like that of his son. You could be a cheerful sinner if you were tough, but you had to be tough.