Cold Pastoral (25 page)

Lilas was married and another maid waited on them at table. The boy she hooked up to had been shamefully discarded when she was courted by a policeman. Much testifying and a stout heart in enduring second-rate kisses had brought rewards. Her husband was tall, broad-shouldered, with a plump face supported by a pink neck. From their first walking-out the end was inevitable. No male could resist such adoration. She made him feel godlike and a runner-up for Chief of Police. When he showed he meant marriage she could not believe her luck. A little blinded, she got glasses to see him better. Always avid for destiny, procreation pulsed in the whinny of her voice. Once convinced of the legal wonder of sleeping with him, she lost her instinct to testify. The policeman may or may not have dragged her down. She discarded the bonnet and poured his bottle of beer with a loving look. Periodically she appeared at the back door of the Place and babbled of conjugal felicity. Mary Immaculate was interested to hear she would not know she lived until she slept with a policeman. Then Lilas came again with young; proudly pushed in a perambulator. Philip offered to attend the confinements, but Lilas did not think it delicate, as she had passed him so many dishes.

The Place stood in perfect order, with the drawing-room redecorated and its doors wide open. In spite of the invitation and enchantment of crystals they did no more than wink conspiringly as the family passed. Comfortable habitation was never earned and the iceberg mantelpiece was left to feel an affinity with winter. Sufficient to Philip that it stood like a museum-piece. After its restoration his next expenditure went into a modern room for his child. Sunshine-yellow lay on the walls, repeated in chair, bed and curtain draperies, patterned with orange flowers and autumn leaves. A limed-oak suite looked very tailored, with a miraculously flat bed. Mary Immaculate exulted in a kneehole dressing-table with a triple mirror. It was astonishing to see herself so many ways. Everyone approved but Hannah, and she went so far as to speak before them all.

“It's a fool of a room, Mr. Philip, all corners and flatness. In my young days beds were soft and chairs hard. Now it's the other way round. No Christian could grow up in a room like this.”

Philip looked a little crushed. He thought the criticism was for him, but Mary Immaculate knew better.

Philip seemed to grow perpetually younger. His mouth curved more and his chin looked less flat. Strain had eased out of him. Neither did he work so hard or strive to answer every call. More selective, he waited for the right moment to go to Vienna. Three times he took short holidays in Canada and once he went to England with David and Felice. His departures left the girl with a curious feeling. As the gap of water widened between his ship and the wharf she felt defrauded. She wondered if she was getting spoiled like Betty Wilson. When Philip had a treat it seemed like a design for her special enjoyment. The many miles he travelled by himself were questioned when she remained to solace his mother. The trips made her oddly defiant. His quite definite absence bequeathed infinite hours to Tim.

Her slip into conventionality had earned her permission to walk abroad. Philip could see her go knowing she would not be the fleeing dryad. She no longer offered St. Anthony ten cents for the poor if he would find her lead pencil. She did not pray fervently when she saw a funeral.

It was easy and accidental for Tim to know the direction of her walks. There was enough wooded country to hide a million couples like themselves. Without arrangement he was frequently by the river where she had taken her first offending walk. They could talk, idle, dream and sometimes spit in the water. The rush and froth was a direct invitation, urging them to add more spots. Very particular about the performance of indoor music, Tim could produce a mouth-organ and play popular airs with gay abandon. There was a convenient bridge offering a nice surface for a bit of hotcha. Sometimes he would stop stone dead and be swamped by the mines of the world. He would lose his aptitude and feel crossed with the eternal veinings of the Andes. By-products confused him and he swore no metal lived by itself. Mary Immaculate tried to soothe him, but he would look past her face as if he was seeing the dark pits of the earth.

He had taken a three years pre-engineering course at a local college. Concentration from himself and push from his uncle had won him a pass, without distinction. During that time he talked vaguely of isometric and oblique projections and wallowed in space problems. He gloomed when he had to go to a survey-camp every summer, but came back with a temporary enthusiasm. Again she felt it was the effect of summer. and the sun on annoying space problems. But he achieved and stood ready for a start of professional subjects at a Canadian university.

Having outgrown her own school, choice lay between England or entrance into the same place as Tim. It was not the maidenly cloister to which she was accustomed, and for that reason it gained favour in her eyes. Her body yearned for the academic dress of cap and gown and the rubbing of shoulders at lectures and assemblies. Reluctantly Philip permitted her to start first year Arts. Examinations had been passed with distinction and there was no obstacle towards further learning. He gave her the choice of suspending school for a period, but her dismay was stupendous.

The college was a big bare structure with its back to open country. In winter, spindrift snow and wind whirled round, trying to shake its solidity. Then the students ran up frozen steps bent in a double. On wild days Tim made Mary Immaculate walk behind him with her face bent to his back. It was a gesture of gallantry accepted by his wish, but she would have preferred to walk by his side. Her face did not flinch from snow-slaps and the wild smack of the wind.

Philip, driving a protesting car, saw her walking with Tim. At least he saw her with a boy. At lunch she waited the immediate question.

“Who was your companion today, Mary? I was sorry I could not pick you up but I had a late call.”

“I like to walk, Philip. It was one of the students who lives near here. Do you mind if I walk with them when they're coming my way?”

“Of course not,” said the mater's deciding voice. “You must be part of your school; I'm afraid we've been selfish about companions of your own age.”

That evening Philip read through a prospectus. But it was as if she had taken a hurdle and Tim had been normally claimed. He could continue to walk home with her. Easy of accomplishment, it was easier because Philip's hours did not coincide with hers. He thought Tim was an incident and not a habit.

It was late September, with a blue sky domed over gardens plump with bloom. A ship rested its sides against a wharf, waiting to take Tim away.

Mary Immaculate was watching the river flowing between granite rock. It looked busy, eddying through flats and hurling itself over falls in a headlong desire for the sea. Nothing weary about that river she thought. Behind her rose a grassy bank stuck with spruce and granite boulders. Some distance from the town the river held two steep paths of approach. Tim was coming up the one on her side. Lost in the spruce, he was seen again in sudden appearance at her feet.

Half-reclining, it was some time before he spoke. When he did his words came slowly while he plucked at blades of grass.

“Gretel, I sail tomorrow at twelve.”

“Yes, Tim, I know. I read the shipping news at breakfast.”

So familiar that he could be seen without acknowledgement, she examined him anew. He was someone important, who would not be seen for ten months or more. It gave him large significance. He was neatly dressed in grey flannel and a blue shirt with enough cuff for his wrists. The suit did not have the impeccable cut of the Place, but it was good enough for a boy.

Boy? He was in his twenty-first year and looked mature. Mines and by-products had aged his face. The height which made her tall for a girl made him only average for a man. It was right that their eyes should be on a level. She would have been irked if he looked over her head. His hair still curled over his deep head, with too much recession at the temples. Sun-bleach after summer and a survey-camp had edged his brow with baby fairness. In his suddenly short face his lips were parted and a trifle petulant, showing the two crooked teeth. Dentists had tried to straighten them, but they stayed hard and white in their little jut. His eyes were tired, heavier than usual, as if a lot of things anchored his lids. He looked dreamy, imaginative, brooding, although his skin held the look of outdoor activity and his hand the callus of field work. Her eyes accepted him for what he was.

“It will be next June before I see you again. Funny, what we talked of is here. I never expected it to arrive,”she said.

“You never look ahead, Gretel.”

“Because, Tim, tomorrow might not be as nice as today. Give me today and take tomorrow. Who said that?”

“Dunno, one of them I suppose.”

She knew he felt pitch black with going. His voice held the heaviness of weighted things.

“Will you write, Gretel?”he asked, prepared for her instantaneous refusal.

“No, Tim dear, that would be arrangement, and they would ask a lot of questions at the Place.”

“I could buy you a box at the post-office, and address them there. You could pick them up on mail-days.”

“Oh no, Tim, I couldn't do that. That would be very deceitful.”

“Have we been deceitful?”

It was the first question weighing their careless years. She was startled, hearing a voice of consequence.

“I don't feel deceitful, Tim. We were like Annabel Lee. I was a child and you were a child….”

“I'm beginning to wonder. …We've never met in a room outside of college. There must be rooms for you and me. It's all right about the letters. I knew you wouldn't write when I asked. I don't need them really. I don't lose you when I go away. I can talk to you as if you were there.”

“And I to you, Tim.”

“Perhaps I'll be able to get in an orchestra.”

She shook a long admonitory finger.

“Tim, dear, you will remember that you're going to university to be a mining engineer. You've gone so far, so it's just as well to finish and take advantage of it. You're committed.”

“O.K.,” he said with more obedience than enthusiasm. Then he grinned, clearing his throat with hearty male assertion. His tone materialised his uncle. “Best years of your life, my boy. Opportunities such as I never enjoyed. Nurtured your father's estate to give you this chance. Make the most of your time, only young once. Try and pass with distinction—then work and a man's life—”

She laughed out loud. She had never heard his uncle talk, but Tim must do him very well. He presented such a bossy man.

“I don't think I'd like Uncle,”she mused.

“Like him?” said Tim emphatically. “He's a tyrant, a regular home-Hitler. Last night we had a family spread, last meal together and all that! It was awful. We had all the things Uncle liked, not what I liked. Then we went to the pictures. It was one of those weeping pictures that make you hate the lights when they come on. He heaved round like a porpoise and made Mother miserable. She's the sort who can't be happy unless the men are. Selfish brute! There was a deathbed scene and he rolled round in his chair as if the producer had invented death. When we got out—”

“I know, Tim,” she interrupted. She cleared her throat in a big male way. “My boy, there's enough unhappiness in the world without taking it into our amusements. Give me Laurel and Hardy—”

Tim was quoting with her. Her knowledge of what Uncle would say made her so exact. Years of hearing about him had made her familiar with his loves and hates.

“Pity it wasn't slapstick, Tim. Then the evening would have been quite a success.”

Tim laughed in sudden high humour. “How he loves it! A pie in the face—”

“And his best laugh goes to a kick in the seat,” she said with happy inelegance. Uncle always uplifted them, though he was presented first in exasperation.

“Well, we all take our pleasures differently,” she said bromidically. “He'd think we were mad unless we played Laurel and Hardy. He'd never understand Tristan. Think of all the pairs we've played!”

“I've just discovered that Romeo and Juliet are an opera, too.”

“They were a pair of star-crossed lovers,”she said dreamily.

Tim stared into her face with intense blue eyes.

“Are we lovers, Gretel?”

“We're as we always were,'' she said a little uneasily.

“What is that?” he asked, looking away to the river.

“Children,” she said at once, “having fun away from school.”

“We're not children any more, Gretel, and soon we'll be the grownups looking back at other children who maybe will do as we did.”

Now she inquired of him:

“What did we do, Tim?”

“I'm beginning to ask myself. Do other boys and girls do as we do?”

“I don't know any other boys.”

“Your doctor isn't old,” he said slowly.

“Isn't he?” she asked in surprise.

“Apparently not,” he shrugged. “Auntie Minnie knows everything that happens in the town and the age of everyone. She says—”

“Never mind what Auntie Minnie says,” she interrupted hastily.

“What are we going to do, Gretel?”

She stirred restlessly, looking ahead. The very core of the present she did not want to look at the future.

“Do, Tim, do? Don't be foolish! We'll do what we've always done. Keep to ourselves and remember we love Hansel and Gretel and hocus-pocus.”

“And our witches' oven,” hemurmured. “We'll be foolish to other people.”

“Have we been fools, Tim?” she whispered. “I've grown so used to Hannah calling me a fool that sometimes I feel, is it or am I? Usually I don't hear Hannah, but the other day I was playing with Rufus. He was so wild that I laughed and laughed. Hannah came out of the dining-room and just looked at me. I couldn't go on playing any more. Then she said in an awful voice, ‘The laughter of fools is like the crackling of thorns under a pot.' I felt queer, menaced, as if—”