Cold Pastoral (17 page)

The English boat steered through the harbour in the late afternoon. The water was still, reflecting the iridescence of sun. Men stood by gang-planks and moorings as the ship eased broadside to the wharf.

Searching the rows of passengers, Mary Immaculate found David at once. The hand that was flung in the air for an impetuous wave was a hand that she knew. So was the beautiful nose, high up against the sky. The face seemed almost the same, a little fuller, with the addition of horn-rimmed glasses and a small moustache above lips that smiled unreservedly. Moving her eyes to Philip to confirm similarity, she knew he was moved by the sight of his brother. His thinner lips were uncurled in a smile, and his face looked boyish and eager. It was inevitable that his nostrils should contribute to emotion. She was sure that the brothers loved each other when they met. Despite the warm day David wore a thick overcoat. Beyond the hills lay the toss of the North Atlantic and the pinch of its winds. Passengers retained a look of mid-ocean. As David put his foot on the gang-plank, Philip found his way to its base. She sensed his expectancy in the drag on her hand. David might be eager, but he was leisured. He limped down as if no one was before or behind.

“Philip!”

“David!”

The hard clasp of hands lasted until her turn came. With a laugh of more abandon than she had ever heard from him, Philip put his hand on her shoulder.

“David, the last of us all, Mary Fitz Henry.”

“Gracious,” said David, taking her hands, “what a tall lovely person! I thought we had a little girl round the house. You're the baby sister I always asked for at inconvenient times.”

“Yes,” she said gravely. “Philip found me in the woods.”

David bent and kissed her.

“I know where, Mary,” he said. “Curled up under the bushes. Where's Mater, Phil?”

She had not come. She was waiting at the Place. Somehow it seemed more suitable to think of her surrounded by flowers from her garden. Some unconscious sense of good manners made Mary Immaculate drop into the background. During the fret of baggage and customs she walked very mutely, and during the drive up the tall hills she listened quietly. David's voice was a pleasure to hear. It was low and infinitely leisured, the voice of a man who had rarely gone from here to there without inclination.

In the square hall David's affectionate greeting of his mother and the reception of her arms exemplified one of the greatest contrasts between her old life and her new. The grace of touch continually sent her mind back to an examination of relationships in the Cove. There, flesh was frequently bleak and unresponsive. Try as she would, she could not recall any picture of her father kissing her mother. Benedict left often for a day and a night to another Cove, to a river for salmon, to the woods in the autumn for shooting. Mary Immaculate could recall him quite clearly walking away and returning with no visible sign that he had been farther than the beach. Clop-hoppering into the kitchen, he would pick up where he left off. Josephine's questions were answered with inarticulate grunts. Here, people came and went with gracious gestures. Such things lay warmly on her heart. The old way had made her chary of touch. Response was one of the things she had needed to learn. It came easily with the natural goodwill of her heart.

Another thing was noticeable in David's return.

Hannah!

She was behind the mater as if she had a place. While David was kissing his mother Hannah's hands were hovering with a strong reminder of Molly Conway. It was puzzling to see the tall impressive man turn and kiss the old woman's cheek.

“Why, Hannah, bless you, you don't age a day! I believe you're a dear old evergreen.”

The folds of Hannah's face actually smiled, and though her voice responded in its same grumble, it was a loving grumble.

“And, Mr. David, isn't it a good thing that I am? With you in the house not a few seconds and me stooping to pick up after you. There now, don't mess up the hall. I'll take his things, Mr. Philip, and set him to rights. And there's a fire in your room, Mr. David, because you're such a frosty cat.”

Mary Immaculate was allowed to honour David with a yellow dress, leaving her arms bare under a collar encroaching to the shoulders. Looking at herself in the mirror, she tried to find the child in the Cove. She was less apparent on the outside than she was in. It was impossible not to have moods of disbelief in her luck. Moments came when she waited for the pinch that would nip her joy and return her to the narrow world of the Cove.

Dinner was gala, served on china and glass resting for a long time on top shelves. There were extra courses that made Mary Immaculate think she'd feel very full, but they came in small moulds making a fork seem like violation. Accompanying the food was sherry, and pale yellow wine, and port waiting on the sideboard.

Hannah was in the dining-room, and Mary Immaculate noticed that Lilas was made to pour the wine. Hannah was a tyrant! Knowing that the Salvation maid had signed the pledge to touch no wines or spirituous liquors, Hannah pushed her as close to them as she could.

Lilas poured wine with her mouth down at the corners and her top lip curled away from her teeth. She held the decanters like a saint cupping contamination. As the dinner progressed, her expression modified. None of the wine-bibbers would get to glory, but as yet neither of the men had fallen dead drunk at her feet! When the dinner was on the wane her face grew yearning and she circled the table gazing at David. Her expression seemed to say she wished he was saved.

Mary lmmaculate watched and listened. Conversation flowed about people abroad, relations and places that they all seemed to know. She learned that David and Felice had been in the South of France, motoring on a coast they called the Corniche Road. How could a coast be a road? She thought of the granite indentations of her own shore and pondered. Felice was arriving during the first week in August, bringing Rufus. For a moment she held her breath. Would Rufus take the time she gave to Tim? Ensuing explanations made her smile. Venturing one small question, they turned in a body to tell her Rufus was a cat with a white shirt-front and socks, and on his back legs David gave him frilly Victorian drawers. She thought if David could mention drawers in front of his mother, she should be allowed to say guts.

In her black dress with sheer sleeves the mater looked animated. Her eyes had lost their dull look and she smiled a great deal. In spite of their absorption none of them forgot their new relative. The mater smiled at her, Philip leaned over and patted her shoulder, and at the end of the meal David looked at her with great interest.

“I'll have time for you tomorrow, darling, but when I come home I always wonder what makes me leave Mater. It takes quite a time to get used to her again. I've never been able to behave as badly as I'd like to, because she keeps cropping up.”

“I know,” said Mary Immaculate sympathetically. “Without saying anything she makes you want to be and do.”

An appreciative laugh came from the brothers and a slight flush touched Lady Fitz Henry's cheeks.

“Mater,” said David gravely, “have you ever had a finer compliment?”

“I think not,” she admitted.

David broke other rules that she thought were set. She was not allowed to talk to Lilas at table, but he spoke quite frequently to Hannah. Once the old woman stood by his side laughing over some story of his childhood, and another time she almost cackled.

“Don't talk, Mr. David, I'll never know what makes you so untidy, with your mother so neat when her house was burning. Never will I forget her saying to the men carrying her stretcher, ‘Be careful of the wallpaper, please.'”

The small jokes of the family! Those were the things she had wanted Hannah to tell her, but they were all withheld until David arrived. He broke many other rules. For two days the Place was in confusion adjusting him. He needed so many things. The wireless was antique and a modern one had to be installed; he had to hire a car for himself because Philip's was always in use; he had to have a perpetual supply of books and papers. He strewed as he went, and Hannah followed, evicting his possessions to his own quarters. Then he spent a whole day with his mother in the car, and Philip and she were left alone. It gave her the opportunity of seeing Tim.

At five in the afternoon he was sitting in the shaded corner of the privet hedge. Sinking down beside him she drew blades across her face while she told him all the Fitz Henry news. Tim sat with his arms round his grey-flannel knees with his wrists too far out of his blazer.

“Gretel,” he said with gloom in his voice, “Mother knows about us.”

“Oh,” she said, nonplussed. “We're not quite alone any more.”

“That's what I thought. She came to call me the last time for something and heard our voices. She went away, but she questioned me when I got home. Thank God she didn't tell Auntie Minnie.”

“Would that be worse?”

“Much,” he said almost viciously. “I don't like her. She laughs at the quartet and says it's just like the cats on the back fence. If she knew that we met nearly every day she'd put on her white gloves and call. That wouldn't do, would it?”

“No,” she said. “I don't think so. Mater is—well, she couldn't laugh at the quartet.”

“I know,” he said moodily. “Aunt Minnie is awful. She howls over the sextette, too. Sometimes I wish she'd be like Kundry in
Parsifal
, condemned to eternal laughter, couldn't stop, had to go on—”

“Oh no!” she interrupted practically. “It would be such a lot of noise. What did your mother say, Tim?”

“She was decent,” he said with careful justice. “She said she wondered why I seemed more contented lately. Didn't know I was discontented before, but she said I was.”

He gave her his brooding smile from lids grown suddenly heavier.

“Then,” he said musingly, “she gave me a little talk on how to behave to a young girl.”

“People are queer, aren't they?” she said for him.

Next morning David was dressing near a window, inhaling his natal air. From the gravel path came a voice accompanied by the thud of a ball.

“Charlie Chaplin went to France

To teach the children how to dance,

And this is how he taught them:

Heel toe, over you go,

Salute the King,

Bow to the Queen…”

“What's this?” he questioned, leaning out. “The decadence of the folk-spirit?”

Mary Immaculate backed a few paces to see him more comfortably.

“David,” she said, shaking her head, “everyone makes me folky? Am I folky?”

“It sounds so from what I hear. I made Phil sit up last night telling me about you, but he's so full of charts. On the twelve-thirty train the child was admitted, etc… Stupid fellow, isn't he?”

“Philip is...” she began defensively. Then she saw David sitting on the sill, with smiling lips under a savouring nose. “David, you're fooling,” she told him with supreme equality. “Philip is like St. Joseph.”

“Is he?” he said, roaring with laughter. “Personally I feel like a lily in the field. How do you feel?”

“Grand,” she said expansively. “I nearly stepped from the window because I felt I could fly, and maybe if I was near I could try to walk on the water if it had that level look.”

“Well, well,” he said with great interest. “I'm glad you didn't come to this house before. We'd be in jail together. I feel I should say something about waxen wings but I won't. I always hated the moral.”

“I don't listen,” she said blandly.”I sign off when the interesting bit is over.”

“M'mm,” he said expressively. “There's a lot of things I've got to know, Mary? Phil gave me a case-history when I wanted—”

“What?” she asked warily, as he paused.

“To know how you felt,” he said beguilingly. “Mary, you and I are going to have a day together. I'm going to the cottage to see the caretaker—”

“Oh!” she squealed. “I wish I could go but I can't—”

“Yes, you can,” he said with a grin. “It's so near the holidays that another day can't possibly matter. Come in to breakfast and watch my high hand with dear Mater.”

Opposition died in the mater's leniency to David.

As she went she wished Tim could pipe the children out of the Cove to see her high estate. It was a triumphal day. Sitting up with a regal back, David drove her through invisible arches while open-mouthed fisher-folk stood tranced on the side of the road. The grey sedan was a golden coach, and David's tailored suit robes of church purple.

In open country they passed through quiet farmland. Blue ponds were frequent, holding the strong colour of the sky. Cows grazed in fields or ambled on the roads. In massive maternity a hen escorted a brood of chicks. A pair of white ducks emerged from a ditch, making David brake quickly. Undisturbed they waddled away, intent on some aquatic pleasure. Self-forgetfulness took Mary Immaculate. Time-tables were routed, and hours that held no rhythm.

Wind was in the air. She could feel it between her fingers as she trailed a hand out of the window. Dabbling it up and down, she felt volume, giving a sense of immersion in dry water. Talking to David, she pondered on the difference between the brothers. If she could have expressed herself at that moment she would have said David was interested in how she felt and Philip was concerned with her conduct. In a further separation she made another deduction. David remembered days that were foolish and loitering and Philip was not so sure.

She could have driven miles looking at the country, but she had to share her interest with David. Knowing all her story, he said he knew nothing.

“Your adventure fascinates me, Mary. You must have a unity with nature or else it would have killed you. Did you people the trees with benign spirits to watch over you?”

“No,” she said, frowning over his elaboration. “I didn't do anything grand. With the slice of bread under my feet I could let the Little People be company.”