The Chinese Garden (13 page)

‘Please meet me, next week at this time.'

‘Why are you here, anyway?' asked Rachel, suspiciously, the prefect in her rising up.

‘Oh, I got out of games,' said Margaret evasively.

‘I must go,' said Rachel. Something was threatening the garden. She was no longer at ease there. It became an urgent matter to get out.

‘Look, we can't be seen going back together. You go first,' she said to Margaret, ‘otherwise you'll be late for something.'

Margaret disappeared down the path and Rachel turned her back on her and looked across the green lake. At one corner stood the derelict boathouse and a shallow boat still lay within it, embedded in mud. She had never explored it. She walked slowly over to it, wondering if the boat could by any chance be floated again. When she reached it, she was surprised to see that it was quite clean inside, and that someone had made a bed of dried fern in the bottom of it. But it would never be floated, she thought. The planks were rotten
and one side broken down almost to the duckboards. If the water had not drained away to the lake, leaving it much shallower than its original state, the boat would have been under water. For a moment, Rachel stood looking down at it, wondering at the dried ferns. Then she packed up her books into a leather case and made her way to the fence.

That evening was the weekly house dance. As always, Bisto claimed Rachel for a number. It was the high spot of the week for her, the only moment when she could talk to Rachel and forget that she was a prefect.

‘Margaret cut games today,' she began conversationally, as they waltzed slowly round the room, while the pianist thumped out ‘When you and I were Seventeen'.

‘Yes,' said Rachel, without thinking.

‘Did you know?' asked Bisto quickly.

Rachel recovered herself. ‘I heard the others talking about it. Did she get into a row?'

‘She's got P.D. for it tomorrow.'

‘Poor devil!'

‘I've got it too,' said Bisto miserably.

Rachel looked down at her, moved for a moment with sympathy and some of her old tenderness for the faithful, anxious creature.

‘
You've
got it? Oh, lord, Bisto, I suppose Christian will take it out on you.'

‘I suppose so. And you won't be there. It wasn't so bad when you were there too, or at least free to meet me afterwards.'

‘Ah, that's one of the blessings of being a prefect. No P.D.'

‘Do you enjoy being a prefect?'

Rachel felt slightly uncomfortable. Bisto was too much
like her conscience. She
did
enjoy being a prefect. Alas, she enjoyed all the wrong things. The dance came to an end, and Rachel went off to dance with a fellow prefect, thoughtful and a little depressed, remembering with regret the old days of feeding Willy in the stables, strolling in the shrubbery paths, and smoking in the corn bins in the evening.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

                       
The summer is ended and we are not saved.

J
EREMIAH

R
ACHEL
was beginning to be conscious of a split which ran right across her world, like a brown crack in a plate. The garden now became more and more a necessity to her and she visited it almost with a sense of urgency, as though any message it had for her must be sought now or lost for ever. The garden itself was changed. It was very lush, and overgrown with new shoots. There hung over it a rich, rather sickly smell that came from the many fungi growing in the mossy earth, and between the cracks in the boards of the pagoda and bridges. Something of the corruption of Bampfield itself had soaked down into the red earth and was drawn up again in the vapours which wrapped the shrubbery in the early morning and evening during that hot, damp July, as though veiling it from the world's eyes for some secret and appalling rite.

One afternoon, when Rachel was standing near the boat-house, she noticed that the stern timbers had fallen off the punt, and someone – Margaret presumably – had stacked them neatly against the boat's side. The fern in the bottom had been recently renewed. After a moment's hesitation, she stepped in and lay down on it, propping herself on one elbow to read.

She found it difficult to give her attention to the page. The garden was full of sounds, and her heightened sensibilities
were alive to each one. She stirred restlessly, and for the first time since she had come there, felt herself afraid of intrusion. She had deliberately avoided meeting Margaret again, and assumed that she, like herself, had taken the trouble to find out times when it was impossible for them to meet. Ill at ease, she felt compelled at last to leave the boathouse.

It was then that she saw Margaret sitting on the steps of the pagoda.

‘I've been watching you for some time,' said Margaret.

‘Why didn't you say something?'

‘You were reading. I didn't want to interrupt. The boat's comfortable, isn't it?'

‘Very. I suppose you often lie in it.'

‘Not often. But sometimes. We haven't met for ages, Rachel. Have you tried to avoid me?'

Rachel said nothing.

‘I want to talk to you badly sometimes. And this is the only place one can escape to.'

Helplessly, Rachel saw the indefinable magic of the garden being reduced to the mere status of an escape from school. Was it no more than this to Margaret?

‘Have you read this yet?' asked Margaret suddenly, and held out a book. Rachel looked at the title. It was Radclyffe Hall's
The Well of Loneliness
.

‘No,' she said. ‘I haven't.'

‘I've nearly finished it. I bought it in the holidays. I keep it in the pagoda, in a box.'

A series of images began slowly to draw together in a pattern, incomprehensible as yet – the fern-strewn boat, the book in the pagoda, the picture of Cleopatra, the green snake.

‘Will you read it if I leave it here?'

‘I don't know,' said Rachel.

‘You ought to read it. It's a marvellous book.'

‘It's getting near the end of the term. I've a lot of reading to do. I don't think I'll have time.'

‘Well, I'll leave it there,' said Margaret. ‘Please read it.'

‘I can't promise,' said Rachel uncomfortably. ‘I've got such a hell of a lot to do.'

She rose, anxious to prevent Margaret from saying anything further. When she looked back from the edge of the pool, Margaret was walking slowly over towards the boathouse, reading as she went.

Rachel did not go to the garden again that summer term. She threw herself into her work and her prefect's duties with immense energy. She tried to see Bisto whenever she could, for it was her last term. She was leaving early to finish her education abroad. Rachel realized with a pang that she was going to miss her. So many of her contemporaries were going either that term or next. She herself would shortly be a house captain, and most of the prefects would be younger than her. There was the staff, of course, with some of whom, by virtue of her age and her special university work, she was on fairly intimate terms, but there were few that she liked really well.

The prospect of eight weeks away from Bampfield endeared the place to her, and brought her back on to old, familiar terms with it. She made two or three surreptitious expeditions with Bisto to various haunts, especially to Willy, who was left enough food (at the expense of almost a total dinner) to last him, it was hoped, for at least three weeks.

‘Then he will have to fend for himself,' said Bisto sorrowfully.

‘We must all learn to be independent,' said Rachel. ‘Even rats.' And, feeling more like her old self, she adopted Chief's manner and continued: ‘Gud has put into our hands – into our paws – the priceless power to make our own way in this weary wicked world of ours. Gud will help us if we ask Him, but – do we want to ask Him? A thousand times, no! Rats, let us stand on our own four feet – paws – and battle our way on, secure in the knowledge that underneath are the everlasting paws, and recognizing bravely that our weakness is His strength – or the other way round, I really can't remember.

                
‘“Make strong in me a heart too brave

                
To ask Thee anything.”

‘D'you hear that, Willy?' And Bisto joining in with her, the two girls chanted to the wondering rat:

                
‘“Make strong in me a heart too bravea

                
To ask Thee anything.”'

‘Oh, he is greedy,' cried Bisto ruefully. ‘He's taken the bit of meat now that was intended to be saved up for the feast at the end. And I tucked it right away at the bottom of the pile.'

‘Trust Willy,' said Rachel. ‘He knows when he's on to a good thing. No Bampfield self-control for him. I don't suppose Gud will mind. He probably has a different law for rats.'

It was a melancholy end of term. Being the summer, there were no special religious festivities, nothing to shed a ritual light over the breaking-up, only Chief's voice intoning mellifluously the usual end of term lesson:

‘“Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days. Give a portion to seven, and also to eight.”'

Bisto heard it with tears in her eyes. It reminded her of Willy. Hateful though Bampfield was to her, her leaving it was painful. She said goodbye to Rachel as though she would never see her again. And Rachel, too, left in deepest dejection. Only Margaret, whispering and laughing with Rena, seemed glad to go, and jumped into the school bus, suitcase in hand, without even saying goodbye to Rachel.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

                
Why have I blabb'd? Who shall be true to us

                
When we are so unsecret to ourselves?

S
HAKESPEARE

I
T
was a golden October that year. A St Luke's summer. I was now house captain, and enjoyed the responsibility. My work was enthralling to me. I was discovering the delights of Horace, and translating him into English verse for the appreciative eye of Miss Burnett. I had also embarked on the
Georgics
and was entirely (and for ever) charmed by them, recognizing in them something of my own delight in the cycle of the seasons. It seemed as I read them that I looked out on Virgil's landscape from my windows. My parody-making was put aside permanently. I was now on the side of the angels. Bisto was gone, and of Margaret I saw nothing.

My position threw me more than ever into the company of my housemistress, Georgie Murrill. There were long pleasant evenings spent in her room, and it was to her, on one expansive occasion, that I spoke of the Chinese garden.

‘I was looking for you everywhere this afternoon,' said Georgie, ‘to talk to you about the house team. I felt we ought to draw it up or they won't have sufficient time to practise. You weren't playing games, were you? You were crossed off the list. Where had you got to? Up the centre path?'

‘No, I didn't play games,' said Rachel. ‘I was reading Byron.'

The white, gilt Adam fireplace was stacked with logs and the lights were turned out except for a reading lamp. Rachel sat opposite Georgie, her legs stretched out to the blaze, drinking coffee. To talk of teams bored her. She wanted to talk about herself. Now Bisto was gone, and Margaret inaccessible, she relied more and more on Georgie's company. The two became intimate. Georgie treated her as a privileged friend and discussed with her her private affairs. In this dangerous game, there were no known rules. Georgie allowed herself to invest Rachel with the discrimination and experience of an adult, while Rachel accorded to her the honest and faithful dealing of a contemporary. Younger than most of the staff, Georgie found in Rachel a touchstone which renewed in herself the qualities she had not quite lost, the curiosity, the ardour and the unexpectedness of youth. The poetry and music which were Rachel's passions, restored in Georgie pleasure in things which after years of teaching she had half forgotten. She reread Keats in order that she could understand Rachel's eager discussion of his poetry and his letters. She played Beethoven and Mozart duets with her and learnt the accompaniments of Schubert songs in order that Rachel could sing them.

‘Don't let's talk about hockey teams,' said Rachel lazily. ‘Let's play the “Jupiter”.'

‘It's too late. We should get into trouble.' (Thus were they subtly drawn into alliance against Bampfield.)

‘Just the slow movement,' said Rachel, putting down her coffee cup, and moving towards the piano. ‘Just the slow movement, played softly.'

But Georgie was irritated. She had wanted Rachel that
afternoon, and had not been able to find her. Possessive, she did not like to feel that Rachel was playing a game of which she knew nothing.

‘You weren't in the prefects' room, or the library. Where
were
you?'

‘Oh, I have my secret hide-outs,' said Rachel, with arrogant indifference.

There was a moment's silence. The firelight played on their faces and neither understood the other's expression, and it was now that Rachel, always a bad judge of the moment, chose to entrust to Georgie the one secret she should never have given up.

‘As a matter of fact I
was
out,' she said.

Instinct told Georgie to make no comment. She sensed a coming confidence and waited for it.

‘You know the shrubbery near the stables,' said Rachel slowly. Even as she spoke she was aware of an acute pain, like the extraction of a tooth. But it was too late to go back now. The roots were shifting. They would never take hold again.

‘Yes.'

‘There's a garden in there. A Chinese garden.'

‘What do you mean exactly?'

‘There are lakes, and it was once laid out as a Chinese garden, like a willow-pattern plate, with a pagoda and bridges and a boat and everything.'

‘How did you get in? It's always been kept securely locked. Chief has never let anyone in there, because the bridges were so rotten. We explored it when we first came here from Somerset, and it's been locked ever since for safety.'

‘Yes, the bridges
are
rotten.'

Into Rachel's mind came a picture of the scene. Almost she could visualize round it the blue rim of a plate.

‘Go on, Rachel. Do tell me more. How did you get in?'

Rachel was silent.

‘Do tell me.'

‘I … oh, well, I just go in there and read poetry,' said Rachel lamely, evading the question.

‘In the middle of October?'

‘Yes. It's warm in the boat. There are dried ferns and moss.'

‘It sounds very romantic. You must take me to see it.'

‘Oh, I don't think you'd want to go,' said Rachel quickly. ‘It would mean scrambling through the fence and undergrowth, and…'

‘You climb through the fence, do you?' asked Georgie, with amusement. ‘How resourceful. Does anyone else know of this?'

‘No,' answered Rachel. ‘No. Nobody else knows about it.'

‘Well, you know I shall keep it dark.'

‘Please, Georgie, yes. You will, won't you?'

It was the first time that Rachel had used her nickname, and Georgie was touched and flattered. She did not understand the depth or the nature of the emotion that prompted it.

‘Of course, I'll keep it quite secret,' she said. ‘Cross my heart. It's time you went to bed.'

Rachel looked at her uncertainly. ‘Is it a promise?' she asked.

The air was full of unacknowledged and unrecognized emotions.

‘A sacred promise,' said Georgie, and Rachel left the firelit room for the dark gallery.

She walked slowly to the balustrade and looked down. The stairs were faintly visible in the distant light of a bulb burning in the hall. A smell of wood-smoke still hung about her clothes and its natural, associated smell, uncovering memories of leaf mould and wet branches, sent a slow thrusting pain into her heart. The garden was no longer her own. It had, in a sense, never been wholly hers, since Margaret and Rena used it – Rena? Yes, of course, she suddenly realized, Rena must know it, too. But their knowledge was as secret as her own, and a bond between themselves and the garden, even if of a different nature from her bond with it. And now she had voluntarily let a stranger in.