Cold Pastoral (35 page)

The shock to his brain was apparent. His speech was unconsciously sexual.

He went on in a brooding tone.

“He called her Gretel, as if he owned her.”

“Heavens!” said Felice despairingly. “Did you ever read your fairytales, Philip? Hansel and Gretel! It's just what you might have expected from her. Have you ever for one second realised the welter of folklore she was brought up in, and have you ever considered the effect her adventure might have had on her mind? Considering her life, she's a miracle of sanity.”

Both men were momentarily speechless. They were not accustomed to Felice in accusation.

“Hansel and Gretel?” muttered her husband. “Brother and sister !”

“And,” continued Felice truly inspired, “it seems that Hannah has supplied the witches' oven. The things that can go on in a man's house! You don't know, do you, Philip, that Hannah has been baiting her for years? Something came up one day and I made her tell me. She said it was too little to bother about, and please not to mention it to the family. Further, Hannah is getting in her dotage and has a grudge against us all because Mater died without her.” Felice could not stop there. The theme seemed to have taken hold of her imagination. “If Mary has been foolish and secret, and gone off on many occasions with that boy, I'd look for sensible reasons. I've been psycho-analysed myself, even though it's a process that produces scorn from some minds.” Her green eyes flashed at Philip, defying him to repudiate psychic derangements of the mind. “She absorbed secrecy from childhood; may have a neurosis about it, arising out of those three days in the forests.”

“Nonsense, Felice,” said Philip, returning to a professional outlook. “She's the healthiest girl I've ever seen. I've never seen the slightest need of a neurologist.”

“She probably needed one tonight,” said Felice cruelly. “And what did you do, Philip? From your own confession you swallowed Hannah's story, glaring at Mary as if she were contamination. Am I right?”

The picture was too true.

Philip sat, growing icy cold. His wild anger was dying, giving way to reason.

“God, what have I done ?” he said heavily.

“Have a drink ?” suggested David anxiously, but his brother turned on him with venom. “Damn you, no! I must go and find her.”

“Yes, you must,” said Felice decisively. “I can't bear to think of Mary, really reckless. At this moment you might have driven her to anything. She's very young, impulsive, and too attractive to be suddenly at the mercy—”

“Stop,” said Philip frantically. “You need not rub it in.”

David had lost his faculty of words. His wife was more severe than he had ever known her. He looked at her, and, if his fine features could assume such an expression, he appeared a trifle sheepish.

“I must go,” said Philip, getting up.

He was not to go. At that moment there was a sound of feet, running with great urgency, rushing up the steps leading to the screened french windows. A body fell against them, while hands fumbled with frenzied inaptitude.

“David, Felice! David, Felice!”

“God Almighty!” said David, starting up. “Phil, get into the sun-parlour. She may bolt if she sees you here.”

To the left they had added a sun-porch, dim with wicker furniture. Had not the girl fallen foul of the doors, she would have been in the room before David had pushed Philip out of sight.

“We don't know anything,” hissed his wife. “Let her talk.”

Now the girl was inside, as if she had attained sanctuary, leaning back with arms outstretched against the curtains.

“Mary dear,” said Felice with normal surprise, “what's the matter?”

“Felice,” she gulped. “David…”

“There, my dear,” he said at her other side. “Something has happened. Take it easy. You're shivering.”

“Yes,” she said with chattering teeth, “it's happened, it's happened. I knew it would. I knew I couldn't stop it as soon as Tim showed me we were growing up. All I could do was to wait, and now, and now—poor Tim, he's left with my tin-whistle side. Oh, David; oh, David! Felice, help me! He's gone tearing up the Shore, driving much too fast, but I couldn't help it.''

Words poured out in supreme agitation. Felice grabbed her hand, pulling her away from the wall.

“Mary dear, David and I are here to listen to everything you've got to say.”

She looked at them as if she saw them for the first time.

“Of course, David and Felice,” she said. “I thought of you both and began to run. We were near here, and I just came.”

“Come, my dear, and sit down,” said Felice firmly. Perhaps the girl divined the recent betrayal of David. It was to Felice she turned, permitting herself to be placed in a chair with its back to the glass porch. She settled as if reaction had claimed her and she needed support.

In silence David and Felice seated themselves opposite, scarcely daring to breathe. Behind, they could see Philip, merely as a dark blur in the sun-parlour. They did not hurry her, as she went inward for elucidation. Her first words rocked them unspeakably.

“Philip turned me out of the Place, and I'm married.”

“What!” said one voice.

“God!” groaned two, but so perfect was the timing that it might have been one.

“My dear,” said Felice recovering. “Begin at the beginning. We're very glad you came to us, aren't we, David?”

“Mary must know that,” said David gravely. “She knows I have no attitudes.”

Does she, indeed? thought his undeniably devoted wife. She should have seen you walk over to the Pharisees a few minutes ago. Out loud she said loyally:

“It's quite true, Mary. David and I will help you if you tell us. Would you like a glass of sherry?”

“No, thank you,” she answered. “Tim ordered beer. I saw him through the window. He didn't drink at the university because he was so happy, waiting to come home to me. As soon as things went wrong, he drank.”

The eyes of husband and wife met, and David's shifted uneasily. It was as if the girl had discovered a male weakness, and wondered over it out loud. She looked at them and blinked. “I'm being foolish, talking backwards. I'll begin at the right place.” Laying her hands along the arms of the chair they stayed supine through her whole tale. They heard her in dead silence, and it seemed as if certain explanations were projectiles, for directed places.

“A long time ago there was a boy who piped me up in the beech tree. It was after Philip was so mad because I went off and picked cuckoo-flowers. I knew I'd have to go again. It was lovely at the Place, but there were so many altering everything about me that I felt crazy sometimes to be as free as I was in the Cove. There, I always played alone. Perhaps that's why I grew to like having things belonging to myself. I used to play and not know where time went. At the Place it was sliced up into little bits. When I was with Tim I forgot the time-table. We had such fun, telling each other the things we never mentioned to anybody else.”

She frowned with the burden of her tale, and the strain of long clarification; then went on to present a lucid picture of Tim's life. It was impossible not to see his mother as a woman afraid of decision undirected by a man, Auntie Minnie as a busybody and Uncle as a genial bully. Tim's music and his uncle's slapstick made two lines that could never meet.

“Because of that I became his music. Almost at once he called me Gretel, because I had been lost in the woods and he said angels had walked down the cloud-stairs to save me. Then the Hansel and Gretel opera seemed to fit in. It was full of the hocus-pocus that we loved, and Hannah was such a perfect old witch. We knew she spied, and every day I expected Mater to call me in and say whether I could go on with Tim, but it never happened. Hannah never tattled, and I'm sure it wasn't for my sake, because she hated me always. Every time we speak of her Tim wants to play the Crust Waltz.”

Felice watched her husband when she told of their identification with romantic pairs, some of the avenues David having opened himself. He was shading his face when she came to the presentation of the ship.

“He was my vassal,” she said softly, “and he gave me a white ship. I think Tim always was afraid of black sails. We went on, and I didn't feel coddled any more, or have to depend on the girls for friends. At five I was peeling potatoes and turnips, and I knew if those twelve-year-old town girls took a knife they'd cut their hands off. It's a wonder the wind didn't blow them away. They were always whispering and asking this and that, and one day, just for fun, I told them I had seen a cow have a calf, and they were as shocked as if it was my fault a cow calved that way. They,” said Mary Immaculate with added clearness, “made me sick.”

There was no room for laughter, reasons being obvious that had compelled her to more full-flavoured companionship. Then the points of honourable conduct were presented for their judgment.

“Except for today when Tim came home—today was marvellous,” she whispered. “Except for that, I only saw Tim three times outside my free time.”

“Mary,'' said Felice suddenly, “is Tim the boy who sent you the flowers, who went to a Canadian university, and who all the town knows is crazy about you, but us?”

The girl opened her eyes in surprise.

“I expect so, Felice,'' she said, answering part of the question. “We always walked home together. Philip saw me once, and I told him it was one of the students. Philip can get so mad that I was always glad he didn't see us again. He was so mad tonight, so ugly. He believed things that were silly. But now Philip seems like the things I have lost, the regularity of meals, the order and being part of a house.”

For a few seconds she went incoherent, talking of bits and pieces that could not be put together.

“Mary,'' said Felice, determined to be sane at all costs. “You're getting away from the subject. Begin at the time when Tim began to change, and you felt he wasn't a boy any more.”

“Yes,” she said, as if glad of a lead. “Last September when he was leaving. I knew he wanted to talk about us, but I was frightened and kept putting him off. He showed me that I never looked ahead, and when he made me say what we were to each other I said we were children. He wasn't satisfied, and I knew it. Perhaps I wasn't, too, but I don't know. I was nearly crazy all winter, especially when Mater died. Then I knew that Philip loved me like a grown up person.”

Felice made a gesture. Her eyes asked her husband if the girl should be permitted to go on. David held her eyes, denying interruption.

“I know I'm very fond of Philip. It would be impossible not to be, when he's so good to me.”

“Philip would not be satisfied with gratitude, dear,'' said David gravely.

For the first time the girl stirred restlessly.

“David,'' she said helplessly, “I don't know about love. I liked it when Philip put his arms round me, but I liked it when you did, too. Tim always put his arms round me since the day we met. I like that awfully, too! Today for the first time there seemed a difference in arms—it was exciting and yet I kept putting Tim off—I don't know about love.” She spoke with more energy “It seems that I can't know, like the girls in college who go dippy about one boy, and cry their eyes out when he sees another girl home or something.” She fell back in the chair in a slump. “What does it matter, anyway, I'm married to Tim.”

David was growing frantic with the slow elucidation of the tale. He opened his mouth several times to urge her to a quicker speech, but there was a lost quality about her, forbidding coercion. He left it to Felice, who was showing infinite patience.

“When did you marry him, dear ?”

“Tonight, of course, Felice, when Philip turned me out, but I don't feel married, so I ran away.”

“Can't you explain, Mary? Help us understand. You've known Tim for years, you love being with him, you found him exciting this afternoon, and yet you ran away?”

“Felice, I ran away because I had to, but I think there were a lot of reasons. I was to blame myself. You need not tell me. Nobody need, but, bad as I've been, I don't think I deserved what Philip did. Then Tim did something wrong, so it seems we're all alike.”

“What did Tim do, Mary ?” asked David with grave concern.

“I didn't realise until after I was married what sort of things Hannah had told Philip. When I talked about lovers, I forgot the people like Mary Magdalen. I was thinking of the games we had played, and Philip wouldn't listen to explanation. Then, I got mad myself, and I didn't care if I ran to the ends of the earth. But,” she said impressively, “that's where Tim let me down. He knew what Philip meant, and he opened his mouth really to convince him, when he remembered that he was coming into some money on his twenty-first birthday, and it was his chance to take me with him. He waited until we were married to tell me what he had done.”

“Young cad,” said David involuntarily.

Mary Immaculate looked him straight in the eye.

“David,” she said with a twist of her mouth, “‘speak of
me
as I am, nothing extenuate'.” David's eyes dropped, hearing the special voice and words she had always reserved for him. “And,” she continued gently, “please don't call Tim a cad.”

“Where did you get married ?” asked Felice, sliding over the intangible.

“We left the Place and he drove very fast. He said to leave it all to him. He knew what to do. There was nothing else. We would drive out to some minister in the country and get married. Then go to a road-house and back to his mother. I felt so flat, flatter than I thought anybody could ever feel, and just very bad taste. Worse than that, Tim looked like a stranger, a boy I'd never seen before. He was excited, the wind blew through his hair, and he was smiling all over his face. The night was so dark and we passed everything on the road. He seemed to know where to go. We stopped at a house in a lane and went in. It was just a little village house, and the minister had on his bedroom slippers. He refused to marry us, but Tim seemed to know what to say. He told me afterwards that often students made runaway marriages, and the way to make the minister marry was to say that you'd go off and sleep together if he didn't. At last he consented, and we went into a small room with a table with a plush cloth. He called in two other people, and Tim and I just stood up while he read something very ordinary from a book. Tim used his father's signet ring.”