In the Time of Greenbloom (2 page)

They turned and began to walk slowly down to the far end of the court where the trees stood darkly over the shadowed fronts of the stables, the golden weather-cock on its turret pinned like a brooch against their still green foliage.

There was something a little old-fashioned about her clothes. Was it perhaps that they reminded him of pictures in the Encyclopaedia? Girls with long hair standing selfconsciously on the tops of horse-drawn buses? Or was it
Alice in Wonderland
? He could not be sure; but he saw that the skirt was heavily pleated and rather long, that the cotton socks were a little thin and that there were carefully stitched darns showing over each heel of her tennis shoes.

There was no time for him to observe more or to think about her more specifically, because the Dormains were obviously anxious to start the game and to win it; but he was glad to discover almost from the first ball that she was if anything even less accomplished than himself, and that their normally aggressive opponents of the summer-house-end became steadily more courteous and sporting as game succeeded game.

“Oh bad luck!” they called as John or Victoria muffed an easy return; or “Jolly good shot!” on the rare occasions when one of John's rather flamboyant serves landed explosively in the correct court.

But they were not discomfited; after an initial attempt to improve their play with much marshalling of forces and hasty conferences between games, they threw their endeavours to the sun, and without any clowning or self-consciousness proceeded quietly to enjoy their frustration, gradually building up out of the ruin of their ambitions a secret and unspoken pleasure in the magnitude of their defeat. It became almost the thing to lose, so that they were on the verge of apologising when by some ineptitude on the part of Richard or Pat a straight shot curved serenely and successfully over the net.

And then, at the end of their set, as they made their way to the lemonade table, standing tinkling and frosty under its orange umbrella between the two busy courts, she looked at him delightedly and said:

“The trouble is, you know, that you're too like me. You don't
think
about it, do you?”

“About the tennis, you mean?”

“Yes. You think about it for a time; but just when the ball reaches you, when you should be thinking about it hard, you forget about it completely, don't you?”

He wanted to take her hand.

“Of course!” he said, “that's exactly what happens: how on earth did you guess?”

“Oh it was easy! I was watching the pigeons over the
Stables, waiting for that white one to tumble again, and then when the others called out ‘
Service
' for the umpteenth time I looked at you and saw that you were watching them too.” She touched his hand. “Things like that you know; it was easy.”

“Yes; but all the same I don't think anyone else would have known that except possibly Melanie.”

“Who's Melanie? Your sister?”

“Yes.”

“Oh!”

“Why? Don't you like her?”

“I don't know; but I don't think I've ever been awfully keen on red-haired people, and I noticed that hers is very red; it looks angry. But it's not really that. It's just that I don't think she would have known even though she is your sister.” She paused and then added hastily, “Of course I don't really know anything about her, because I haven't got any sisters, or brothers for that matter; I'm an ‘only', but I just don't think she would have known; not like I did anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Because she doesn't
look
like you! I look much more like you. You might have been
my
brother: we're both pale and thin and tall, aren't we? and if you let your hair grow, why, some people might even think you were me, mightn't they?”

He looked at her searchingly. It had not occurred to him, but of course she was right; they were alike; dreadfully, excitingly alike.

“Are people always telling you that you look ill?” he asked suddenly.

“Oh isn't it
maddening
?” all at once she was very grown-up; so that momentarily he could feel he was talking to her mother. “Does that happen to you too?”

“Yes.”

“But it's so silly, isn't it? We're just pale people, that's all. There are red people, yellow people—”

He laughed, “Like Tim you mean?”

“Yes—and there are pale people, like us.
We
don't go about telling the red people they look ill, do we? They should leave us alone. It's so—
common
to be ill isn't it?”

“Yes,” he said, “I suppose it is.” They laughed, and taking her arm he led her over towards the refreshment table.

“Let's have some lemonade and then explore together.”

It was lovely lemonade in great sparkling jugs with dew clinging to the sides. A whole bushel of lemons had drowned themselves in it, leaving only a few wisps of rind, a wizened pip or two and a floating debris of particles like transparent grains of corn.

Beside the jug on the limp white cloth there were plates of iced cakes melting in the slow blaze of the sun so that the cherries with which they were studded had slipped out of place and projected like drunken jockeys from their sides.

They drank two or three glasses of the lemonade each and gorged themselves on the cakes. There were pink ones, yellow ones, and white ones, and half-way through his second a sudden idea occurred to him.

“Let's eat only the white ones!” he said, his mouth full, “they're obviously ours and we'll leave the others for the pink pigs and the yellow bellies.”

She giggled delightedly. “Aren't they delicious? I always think iced cakes are at their best in summer: sticky and sweet like real Turkish delight. Oooh, this one's loaded with cream! Like a bite?”

He opened his mouth and she popped it in. “There! and now you can lick my fingers for me, they're covered in white icing.”

“No. I've got a better idea; come close and I'll tell you.”

Tossing her hair away from the whiteness of her ear she leaned towards him.

“There's a lake,” he whispered, “a secret one in the depths of the wood. We could slip away and wash our hands in it and see the swans.”

“Is it far?”

“No; but what does it matter? No one would mind, and anyway we did so badly against the Dormains that I don't suppose that we'll be playing again for ages.”

“What about your sister?”

“Oh, she'll be all right.” He searched the courts. “Look! She's playing with Tim and he's pretty good so she'll be pleased with herself. Do let's! If you go first, as though you were going to the house to wash, no one will think anything at all and then I could meet you in the Rose Garden in five minutes' time.”

“All right. But don't be longer or I shall get nervous: I'm a dreadful coward about grown-ups—other people's I mean.”

“No,” he said, “only five minutes.”

She was drooping over the sundial in the centre of the Rose Garden when he got there.

“Did it seem very long?” he asked.

“No, as a matter of fact I wouldn't have minded if you'd been even longer.” She waved an arm. “All these roses,” she said.

He looked round at them as they hung in their fullness dropping slow white petals on to the weedless soil.

“And the scent,” she went on. “It must be the heat of the sun—do you know what I was imagining?”

“That you were the Sleeping Beauty?”

“No, not that! You know those little insects you find in roses; the ones with the wavy tails?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I was shutting my eyes and breathing in the sweetness deeply and pretending that I was one of those little things sitting quite still in the centre of a huge, an enormous, rose.”

“What a lovely idea!”

“Have you ever wanted to be one? A rose-insect, I mean?”

“Yes, d'you know, I think I have—when I was younger. It's funny how one forgets isn't it?”

“It's awful. I keep on saying to myself, ‘I must never forget, I must never forget,' about
everything
! I tried to keep a diary once; but it was no good, the words weren't the same, or if they were I couldn't think of them.”

“I know! I've tried that too. But I'll tell you what, let's pick a rose and then you can smuggle it home and you'll always have it. You'll never forget what it was like—this afternoon I mean,
today
.”

“Do you think they'd mind?”

“Of course not. They've got hundreds. Look! they're dying all over the place; but I'll pick you a young one that you can keep in your bedroom for a bit and then press and take back to school with you.”

“Do you hate school?”

“Yes—Look, here's a beauty.” Leaning out awkwardly from the grass verge he snatched it quickly. “Dash, I've scratched myself.”

“Let me look,” she took his hand. “Oh, your poor thumb.” And suddenly she stooped and laid her lips against it nipping at it expertly with her teeth and sucking hard.

“There! It will be all right now, I've got the thorn out for you.” She laughed, “I saw a film once: Rudolph Valentino I think it was, and he picked a rose for a girl in a garden, and as they were pinning it to her dress, it scratched him, and do you know what she said?”

“No.”

“She said, ‘You gave me a rose and you drew my blood.' I think that's rather romantic don't you?”

“What did
he
say?”

“I can't remember that bit very well. I think he didn't say anything, he just folded her in his arms and kissed her passionately. It was in the evening you see and they were in Morocco or somewhere—he was an Arabian Sheikh.”

“Oh.”

“Will you pin on mine for me? My brooch would do.”

“All right; but we'll have to be quick you know. I do so want you to see the lake and the swans.”

Carefully and with much heavy breathing he impaled the stem of the rose on her brooch and then pinned it to her dress, a little to one side of the neckline, just below her collarbone. He knew that this was the right place because he had seen Robin Clifton, one of his elder sister Mary's young men, do the same thing for her when they were going to a dance.

“Thank you.” She sniffed it appreciatively. “Now I feel that you really gave it to me and I'll always keep it,
always
. Which way do we go to get to the lake?”

“There's a gate into the wood at the back of the stables.”

“Come on then, I'll race you.”

She ran quickly over the grass towards the stable yard, hesitated a moment and then fled straight on through the archway to the wicket gate. She was through it before he himself was half-way across the yard, and he did not catch her up until they were deep under the trees.

“By Jove! You
can
run,” he said as they slowed to a walk.

She was pleased.

“Yes, not much to carry and long legs to carry it. At school the games-mistress calls me Atalanta.”

“Who's she?”

“Oh I don't know—some classical person, ‘
renowned for her fleetness of foot
' I think—I say! Isn't it different in here?”

He nodded and then put his fingers to his lips. “Let's listen; don't make a sound, and then we'll see who can hear the most.”

They were silent for a moment.

“It's no good,” she said. “I'm puffing so much I can't hear anything but my own noises.”

“Well, take a few deep breaths—we both will.”

They inhaled conscientiously a few times.

“Now then,” he said. “Let's try again with our eyes shut this time.”

The silence dropped round them like a curtain, a green curtain: and then, gradually, as their ears became attuned, innumerable little noises became apparent to them weaving themselves into the background like flowers into a tapestry.

From the distance they could hear the sieved laughter and shouts from the tennis courts; and nearer at hand, the rattle of crockery and cutlery, the high backchat of servants from the kitchen of the house; above them, all about them, were the still dry sounds of the woods: the cooing and clapping of grey pigeons, the fall of seed or twigs, and the papery sounds of last year's leaves disturbed by the passing of tiny animals.

His eyes tight shut, he waited; he could picture her standing there in front of him, sharing in her private darkness each identical sound as it came to them through the dim greenness beyond. He wondered how she would look with her eyes closed and tried hard to visualise the sleeping secrecy of her face with the lids drawn down over the large eyes.

Atalanta! Such places as these, he thought,
ought
to have girls in every tree: nymphs and dryads in willows and oaks, and the printless flashing of white feet through sphagnum and fern and the hint of laughter at the stream's edge. Always, on the moors, by rivers, in woodland; in the sudden moments of the inward sun, he had had this feeling that somehow in the corner of the twinkling of an eye the place was feminine; that if only he were quick enough he would catch the bright gleam of a mouth or the whiteness of a hand before they merged tantalizingly into a flower or a stone. And now here she was alone with him sharing it all; he had only to open his eyes and he would see her, not through the slow syntax of his Latin or Greek lessons at the Abbey—though he decided he would take more interest in them next term—but in actuality, and with her eyes closed. He would steal something from her and yet she would never know.

He opened his eyes. At once, mysteriously, even before
the light broke in on him afresh, he realised that he was too late; knew that he would see what in fact he was seeing: the grave and unabashed inspection which confronted him in the greyness of her own.

“
Oh
!” he said, “you cheated—you were looking all the time!”