Lamb in Love (4 page)

“We should have a sign installed,” Mrs. Blatchford offered. “They have them for blind children, I think.”

“That's deaf, you twit.” Mr. Niven snorted. “What would a blind child be doing crossing the road?”

“You know what I meant!” Mrs. Blatchford looked offended. “It's the notion of it.”

“Yes, but what would it say? Idiot crossing? With a little silhouette of Manford on it?”

“Oh. Really.” Mrs. Blatchford shook her apron at him. “What a thought.”

Mr. Niven shrugged. “Well, I can't be seeing to him every minute, can I?”

N
ORRIS WAS UNSETTLED
by this conversation but grasped quickly the opportunity it presented. He now closes the post office just before four and walks down the road to see Manford (as unobtrusively as he can—he doesn't wish to excite scrutiny) safely to the entrance to the lane.

It is fortunate that he has done so, for twice now he has saved Manford from some possibly terrible fate, favors of which Vida is unaware.

Once, having safely crossed the Romsey Road, Manford became distracted by a rare commotion at the blacksmith's, which stands almost directly across the street from Niven's Bakery. The two institutions—along with the church and the pub and a few of the older houses—fall into the category Mr. Niven refers to as Hursley's historic jewels. It is true that few English villages still have a working blacksmith in 1969, though Norris sometimes thinks people continue to bring their horses and broken tools to Fergus simply because they are afraid not to, so foul is Fergus's temper. On the first occasion of Norris's acting as Manford's anonymous protector, Fergus had been busy shoeing a difficult mare, and sparks flew from the fire. Manford ambled slowly toward
the flame. Fergus, busy with the struggling horse, his own implements, and the glowing shoe, which had fallen with a clatter to the floor, failed to notice Manford sidling toward the fire; but Norris, loitering a ways down the pavement and trying not to appear unduly attentive, suddenly realized the danger. Who knew whether Manford understood fire at all?

Though Norris hurried forward, he felt unsure about how to approach Manford, how to divert him. But as soon as Norris cried his name in alarm, Manford turned toward him. Thinking quickly—he was proud of himself later, for this—Norris fished a butterscotch from his pocket. Holding Manford's eyes in his own with what he hoped was a conjurer's hypnotic trance, he stepped slowly backward, proffering the butterscotch and urging Manford along with his beckoning hand. “Come,” he said slowly, in a low, commanding tone. “Come this way, Manford.” And Manford followed Norris obediently out the door of the blacksmith's. He took, when Norris jiggled it in his palm, the sticky sweet. And then, apparently recalling what he was about, he trotted off in the right direction.

Norris, who is not really a religious man despite his weekly employment at St. Alphage, closed his eyes briefly and made the sign of the cross over his heart. Then he went back to the post office, only to find several annoyed customers there in a queue outside, trying to look under the black shade pulled down at the window.

The second occasion when he managed to make himself useful to Manford and therefore to Vida, Norris again had to move just in time—more swiftly than a man of his years, and with such a bad back, might be expected to move—to take Manford's strong arm and yank him up from the gutter where he had stepped
down into the street to retrieve a sixpence. A lorry sped by, spraying them with gravel, honking madly.

“Go along, Manford,” Norris said then, as quietly as he could, trying to smile reassuringly. He didn't wish to alarm Manford, though he was shaking all over at their near escape. “Don't keep Vida—Miss Stephen—waiting.” He resettled his glasses on his nose.

Manford, who didn't appear much perturbed by the incident, moved as if to leave, but as he turned away, Norris reached out and caught his sleeve. It was the first time he'd ever looked closely into Manford's face, though he had seen him hundreds of times. But suddenly Norris wanted to have a better look at Manford, wanted to understand what resided there, what intelligence struggled up from within him. Norris took his handkerchief, with which he had already mopped his own sopping brow, and wiped Manford's fingers clean.

“Put the sixpence in your pocket now,” he said, but had to help him with it.

It was a strange feeling to touch Manford, to address this tall man as though he were a child. But Manford smiled pleasantly enough, a great wide smile so much like his handsome father's.

“Here,” Norris said, fishing in his pocket. “Do you fancy these?” He put a peppermint in Manford's hand and turned him gently then to face down the road and the entrance to the lane. “Go on,” he said. “There's the way home. Hurry along now.” And Manford did.

At that moment, Norris was struck by what he might feel if Manford were his son—were
their
son. He noticed that Manford's shirt had come untucked. Such untidiness looked odd in a grown man. If Manford were his son, he thought, he could just
trot up behind him now and fix him up. Instead, of course, he had to let him go.

I
N GENERAL
, N
ORRIS
tries not to be too obvious about his interest in Manford's safety. He wants it to be a surprise, for Vida and for everyone, the realization of his tender care, how he's helped protect Manford. To that end he has purchased more than his share of doughnuts from Niven's lately, just to have the opportunity to say a kind word to Manford. He believes he knows how much such gestures would mean to Vida.

“Lovely doughnut, Manford,” Norris often calls out to him at Niven's, craning round to catch sight of him where he sits at his high stool in the bakery's annex. Norris then gives Manford a wave, too, showing him the doughnut clearly in his hand and smiling encouragingly.

But he cannot resist tempting curiosity a little bit. Part of him, he knows, desperately wants to confide his secret to someone.

“I've a terrible sweet tooth of late, Mrs. Blatchford,” he says impulsively one day, leaning over the glass counter and giving a great sigh.

She glances up at him. “Well, that explains the number of doughnuts I've sold you lately, Norris Lamb,” she says. “You ought to have your sugar checked.” She studies him from under her queer set of eyebrows, thatched gray and running right across her forehead in a straight line, with hardly any gap in between. Norris finds her rather marvelous looking, like a circus performer. Mrs. Blatchford looks away to replace the tray of iced buns on its shelf. She wipes her hands on a cloth. “It's not
natural,
a sudden appetite for jam doughnuts,” she adds. “And the sugar
can
be a problem for those of us getting on, you know.”

Those of
you,
you mean, Norris thinks gaily. But not much can
insult him anymore. He just feeds the doughnuts to the sparrows, anyway, a bit at a time crumbled off between his fingers as he walks back to the post office, the birds hopping along beside him. (He brings an empty envelope for the jam; you wouldn't want
that
under your heel!)

He worries that the birds draw attention to him, though perhaps no more so than the shades pulled down now over the windows at the post office rather more frequently and at odd times, in order for him to conduct what he refers to as his mysterious errands of love. Though so far, he has to admit, he hasn't actually executed any of these errands, other than saving Manford's life on those two occasions, of course. He's still in what he thinks of as the planning stages.

He knows Vida would die should anything happen to Manford.

He does what he can.

E
VERY DAY NOW,
since Manford started at Niven's, Vida comes out the gates of Southend House and walks down the lane and seats herself on the bench in the alcove of boxwoods, the bench with the pair of broody doves carved into the backrest. If he is quick, Norris can see Manford safely to the corner of the lane before hurrying down the path that winds through the cow-slips and nettles and over the cattle guards and by Mrs. Patrick's well and round all the cow paddies to his spot behind the horse chestnut tree. From there he can catch Vida emerging from Southend House and, a moment later, Manford's shambling progress toward her down the lane.

Often as not she has a hat on her head—a small gray hat, with a black ribbon around the brim and forking over the back like a duck's tail. She's lovely, Norris thinks, so lovely he wonders again
that he never saw it before, her pale face like a cameo, and her long hands, and her chestnut hair. It perplexes Norris that he went so many years apparently insensitive to Vida's charms. It seems to him that until he fell in love with her he must have been trapped in ice, like a mastodon.

He made sure to mention to Mrs. Billy when she stopped in the post office last week what a lovely job she's been doing with Vida's hair. It's a pleasure for Norris to hear Vida's name spoken aloud, to feel it pass from between his own lips as though it—she—were something with which he was intimately familiar.

“Doesn't Vida Stephen look smashing lately,” he'd said casually as he wrapped up Mrs. Billy's chocolates, took her parcel, and weighed it on the scales. “I caught sight of her just the other day and thought to myself—well, Millicent Billy's not lost her touch, has she? You're a wonder, you are, Mrs. Billy. You've a true talent for hairstyling, indeed.”

“Oh, she's got lovely hair,” Mrs. Billy confided. (Privately, Norris calls her the Milly-Billy, or the Silly-Billy, or just the Billy. She has long, comical ears, with a chip of some dull stone affixed to the lobes, a turned-up nose, eyes a bit red at the rims, a kindly demeanor. Her husband is Mr. William Billy—to Norris, the Billy-Billy, or the Willy-Billy. With his bloodstained apron, as he peers out from between the skinned carcasses of pigs twirling dreamily on their meat hooks, Mr. Billy looks like a fox, Norris thinks, with a long brown flank and toothsome expression.)

Mrs. Billy leaned toward Norris, the chocolates he'd just sold her melting already in her damp hands.

“So thick, Mr. Lamb,” she said. She was wide eyed, Norris saw with satisfaction.

“And all that natural wave to it,” Mrs. Billy went on. “Of course, I've been dying to give her a stylish cut, but she never
would let me. And then, right out of the blue she says to me the other day, ‘Not just the usual today, I think, Mrs. Billy. Time for—' And then, don't you know, she just stopped! Well, we exchanged our looks between us then, you know, Moira and myself. ‘Is it a man then, Vida?' I teased her, taking up her hair in my hands, all that lovely hair. ‘Have you a boyfriend now?' But she wouldn't say a word more, and I gave her the same cut as usual. Such a pity.”

Mrs. Billy shook her head and sighed. “All those years, trapped with that poor dear boy in that empty house. She's needed a husband, that's what, but never had a moment to look and find one.” She leaned forward, regarded Norris carefully, as if to assess how he might respond to her next admission. “But do you know, Mr. Lamb? She's a bit of a treat in store. We've invited her to join our book circle. We're newly formed,” she went on, straightening her back and jutting out her chin. “We were saying amongst ourselves just the other day how we'd been neglecting the life of the mind. And then it came to us that we might do a book circle at the vicarage of an evening. I'm quite a reader myself, you know. And we've our first novel already chosen. Oh, don't let's start small, I said, with
Pride and Prejudice
or
Emma.
I'm so
sick
of
Emma.
Just because Miss Austen's buried at Winchester cathedral, everyone thinks we must always read her and nothing else, just to be loyal! Let's begin with a challenge, shall we, I said. Boldly forth, I said, into the avenues of learning. And Moira's daughter has recommended us
Lady Chatterley's Lover,
instead.” She lowered her voice. “It's a bit
racy
in parts.”

But Norris was not listening. He had closed his eyes a moment against the imagined feel of Vida's head in his hands, the rich and violent fall of her brown hair. “Yes, a scorcher,” he said dreamily.

“Oooo! No! Not
that
bad, Mr. Lamb. We're not quite ready
for that in Hursley, I think!” Mrs. Billy clasped her handbag, twitched at the wrists of her cardigan. “But we've asked her to join and she's said yes. So that will be something for her, won't it? And—well, you never know what may happen. A little change in our appearance, a little social activity, a little loitering amongst the great works of literature . . . Why, I've a feeling our Vida may be in for a bit of a wake-up. Hold on to your hat, I say, Mr. Lamb. I believe our Vida may be on the mark.”

She paused then. “Haven't you ever thought, Mr. Lamb,” she said slowly, “that it would be the most romantic thing if they fell in love after all this time? She's a bit young for him, I know. But wouldn't it be just like—oh, like Jane Eyre! Mr. Rochester and the governess? And he is so
very handsome
.” This last she uttered sotto voce, peculiarly husky.

Norris stared at her. “What? Who?”

Mrs. Billy then gave him a great wink.

Norris continued staring at her a moment longer until her meaning became clear to him. Oh! How awful! “Mr.
Perry?
” he sputtered. He had to restrain himself from reaching across the counter and shaking Mrs. Billy, wringing the abominable notion from her. He'd never had
any
such thought, indeed. Given the circumstances, it seemed positively—
heinous.
“No, Mrs. Billy,” he managed at last, with as much force as he could muster. “I think that would be most—improper!”

“Oh, you
men.
” Mrs. Billy leaned over and patted his hand comfortingly. “You've no imagination,” she said airily. “None at all. I recommend a dose of literature for you as well, Mr. Lamb.”