In the Time of Greenbloom (3 page)

“And how did you know?”

“Well—”

“Yes, ‘
well
',” she mimicked, “because you were going to cheat yourself; but I knew you would and so I decided to do it first. And besides,” she moved on ahead of him looking at her feet, “besides I wanted to see what you looked like with your eyes shut. My mother says that when a person closes their eyes you can tell all about them by looking at their faces. She said my father had a horrid face when he was asleep.”

“Did she?”

“Yes, she said that if she'd once seen him asleep before they got married then she'd never have married him in the first place.”

“Oh,” they moved on down the ride, walking absurdly on tiptoe and swinging their joined hands.

“But how awful!” His expostulation was sudden.

“What?” she asked blithely.

“To be married to someone whose face you hated when they were asleep.” He felt her hand, her whole arm, tense against him.

“I mean it must rather spoil things; although I suppose that since they'd mostly be asleep at the same time, it doesn't matter all that much.”

“Oh but it
does
—I mean it
did
,” and her hand started to swing again. “But you needn't worry
now
. You see they were divorced ages ago.”

“Oh I see.”

“And the funny thing is he's much nicer now; you know, he's polite to Mummy when we meet in hotels and places: helps her off with her coat and things like that. I go and stay
with him sometimes and he gives me the most wonderful presents: this butterfly brooch for instance.”

“How lovely.” He fingered it.

“You see the eyes?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Those are real rubies.”

“I say!”

They turned a corner.

“Ooh!” she said. “Look! The lake and the swan, no
two
, just as you said. I do love it when things come true don't you?”

“Yes.”

They quickened their pace so that very soon they were trotting without realising it.

“When I was young you know, nearly everything used to come true; but now, even though I'm not awfully old I'm beginning to be surprised when they do. Enid, that's Mummy, says that when I'm older nothing will ever come true at all, and that when I come out I'm to be sure to have as much fun as—”

“
Please
!” he said.

“What?”

“Please don't talk about that any more.”

“Why ever not?”

“I don't know; it just makes me feel uncomfortable. I mean we might as well still be up at the tennis courts, mightn't we?”

She was crestfallen. “I'm sorry! Somehow when I'm with you I can't help saying the things I'm actually thinking about, and I suppose I think an awful lot about Enid and my father, even though I don't really want to think about them.”

“
I
know; I do that too. I keep on wanting and not wanting to think about next term; and today, well I jolly well
won't
. You do the same. Just think about today, about the lake and the swans and the cakes we ate—things like that.”

“All right.” She looked at him carefully. “I'll tell you what! If you promise to be happy about next term, I'll write
to you every week and what's more I'll never even mention you-know-what however much I want to.”

“Oh no, you mustn't do that; letters are different, and if you are thinking about something you must write it so that I can answer, and then it really will be as though we were talking to each other.”

“But it
won't
,” she was laughing, “because you won't
let
me talk about it.”

He was bewildered for a moment and could think of no reply.

“Don't frown,” she said. “It makes you look old.
I
understand; you mean that because we won't be together we can afford to be nearer, more real to each other.”

“Yes that's it. You
are
clever!”

“No I'm not really; it's only that I think I'm a little older than you in some ways—girls are you know.”

They had reached the edge of the lake now: an almost perfect circle with a sagging boat-house on the far side, it lay under the throng of the tall trees in all the stillness and heat of late afternoon. Only a narrow path fringed with rushes and reeds separated its margins from the boles of the trees so that their origins, grey as the legs of elephants, were reflected upon its surface where each vagary of their branches, each fan of their foliage, was darkly contained within its circumference.

Only at the centre where the tops of the trees, blemished with the black nests of the rookery, ended evenly in an enclosed smaller circle was there a glimpse of the high blue medallion of the sky. The rest, the large periphery, was a closer greener forest strewn over with the white heads of water-lilies and swaying slightly from the movements of the two swans by the farther bank.

From the water rose the thin reedy smell of river-mud and water-plants. Here and there ‘water-boatmen' jerked over the reflections, while every now and again a black bubble rose from the depths and broke softly on the surface.

“Isn't it wonderful?” she breathed.

“I knew you'd like it.”

“Oh I do! It's so small—I never thought it would be like this, I imagined it much bigger; but this is like a lake in a story or a peep-show, you almost feel you can hold it between your hands as though it were really yours. Almost,” she went on, “as though it were enchanted; as though at any moment a hand with Arthur's sword in it might rise out of that blue centre and point at the sky.”

“Yes. Come on! Let's go and sit on the boat-house platform; you can wash your fingers there and we might be able to see some fish.”

They walked round the path and climbed carefully on to the lichen-covered planks of the small platform. The swans watched them placidly until they sat down, and then quietly drew away to the farther bank.

“There!” he said. “Now you lie down and dabble your fingers in the water while I hold your ankles.”

Obediently, her hair drooping round her white face, she lay down and lowered her hands into the water. She sat up suddenly.

“That settles it!” she said. “I'm going to.”

“Going to what?”

“I'm going to bathe of course. It's irresistible: feel it.” She patted his cheeks with her dripping fingers. “It's fresh and cool and clean, there must be a stream somewhere. It will be heavenly. Come on! Let's bathe together.”

“But can you swim? It's quite deep you know.”

“Of course I can—I passed the test last term. Why, can't you?”

“Yes, but—”

“But what?” She was undoing her shoes and peeling off her thin cotton socks.

“Well,” he said. “Do you think we ought to—I mean suppose somebody came and saw us?”

“Oh don't be a prude,” she said. “You've got a sister, haven't you?”

“Two.”

“Well then—”

“But someone might come down from the tennis-party looking for us.”

“That's just what they will do if you don't hurry up. But if we're quick, we can be in and out in no time and no one will ever know—except us and the swans.”

“All right,” he said uneasily, “but only on one condition.”

“What,” her question was muffled, coming to him from behind the dress which she was pulling over her head.

“That you undress in there.” His hands on her shoulders he swivelled her round away from him. “In the boat-house.”

“Why?”

“I don't know; but please!”

Her head emerged from the dress again. “You
are
funny!” she said. “You'll see me when I come out so what's the difference?”

She left him then and disappeared inside, and the moment she was gone he stripped off his flannels, shirt, socks and shoes and tiptoeing to the edge of the platform sat with his feet dipping into the cool water.

A moment later he heard the swift pad of her feet behind him and in a sudden flush of fear pushed himself off into the lake.

Down and down he went, the bubbles of his descent frothing up past his ears as he sank swiftly into the ever colder layers of the water. Although his eyes were open he could see nothing but the clouded green-brownness which surrounded him.

All at once he remembered that other moment when they had stood silent and voluntarily blind beneath the green shade of the wood. He had intended then, by opening his eyes to see her unobserved, to steal something from her. In another moment the opportunity would be his once again; the round eye of the lake had closed over him shutting her from his sight; but when he rose, when the green eye opened for him again as it must, he would be able to see and steal even more
from her than he had at first intended. This time it would not be his fault; it would be nobody's fault.

Then, lunging for the surface, he trod the darkness vigorously with his feet and broke into the air and the light.

Thin as the ivory tusk in the hall she was standing on the very edge of the platform; on her slender thighs and the naked curve of her stomach, the shaken water threw green and shifting shadows. Something about the narrow sweep of her waist rising to the early fullness of her breasts hurt him like a pain so that he gasped out loud and then raised his eyes to her face as she leaned over him, dipping her lips and eyes into those reflected greens which were playing over the surfaces of her body.

“What's the matter?” she asked. “Is it very cold?”

Through the ringing of the water in his ears her voice came to him indistinctly like chimes in the wind and he could only look up at her, shaking the water from his hair and plucking at the slippery stem of a water-lily leaf which had twined itself round his shoulders.

“Here!” she said as, kneeling, she put her hands down to him, “let me help you.”

He grasped them and she pulled him in to the platform so that he could grip it and heave himself up quickly beside her.

“All right?” she asked.

“Yes.” He got to his feet and stood before her. “Why?” She said. “What happened? Did you get stuck in the mud or something?”

“No, it wasn't that.”

“Well, what was it? You're so pale—you're paler than me now. What frightened you?”

“I don't know. You wouldn't understand.”

“Yes I would.”

“No.”

“It was
me
, wasn't it? Seeing me when you came up?”

“Yes.”

“You
see
!” She danced briefly. “I told you I knew, didn't I?”

“All the same”—and she was suddenly still beneath her frown—“I don't quite see why—?”

He was shivering and for some reason he felt suddenly angry; he bit hard on his teeth.

“Well, I'll tell you. It may sound stupid but I was frightened because when I first saw you I thought for a moment that you were
me
—and yet I knew you weren't. See if you can understand
that
if you're so clever!”

She looked him up and down intently. “Of course I can; it was I who told you how alike we were in the first place; and yet of course we're completely different—we must be, because I'm a girl and you're—”

“That's just what I mean; we are and we aren't,” he said. “And after being down there where it was dark,” he pointed at the water, “it frightened me; that's all.”

“Well I don't see that it's anything to be frightened about.” She was laughing now. “I think it's exciting and lovely to be the same and yet different.” She took his hand. “Help me in will you? I don't want to get my hair wet because it'll never get dry in time.”

With no pause she had dropped quickly to her knees and lowered her legs over the edge of the platform. Stooping down behind her he put his hands under her shoulders, and as she swung away from him he let her slip gently into the water.

She was silent for a moment as she took the sudden shock of the coldness against her sun-warmed skin. A black streamer of her hair snaked across her cheek, its tail clinging to the corner of her mouth as though it had just emerged. Her eyes laughed up at him.

“Ooh, lovely lovely water,” she said as she started rather unsteadily to swim away towards the middle of the lake. He watched her uneasily for a moment.

“Don't go too far,” he said. “It's very deep—
I
never even reached the bottom.”

“I'm going to that blue bit,” she called. “Right in the very middle where the sun is.”

He sat down and started to pick the little tendrils of water-weed from between his toes. She had laughed at him; that was the funny thing. When people laughed it was usually because they didn't understand; but she had understood, and yet she had laughed. He wondered why. Had she understood more than he had himself, in order to be able to laugh, or had she understood less? And who was right? He, to have been serious and frightened, or Victoria to have been excited and laughing? It was like Melanie over again. She always laughed at his secrets, at his more intimate speculations about the nature of girls. But he was sure that really he was right, that there was something that girls wouldn't and couldn't and never would understand even though there were some things they seemed to know naturally which made no sense to him.

One thing he did know. And that was that he loved, yes
loved
Victoria. He would always love her; even when he was old enough to love people he would love her and go on loving her for ever—

Suddenly, like a knife thrown into his head, he heard her scream; dispassionately, with no engagement of his feelings, he looked across the broken surface of the lake and saw her: noted that her cheeks were round and white as a wind-cherub's, that the water was flooding into her open mouth, and that she was riding raggedly up and down in her attempts to swim out of the net of water-lilies in which she was caught.