In the Time of Greenbloom (16 page)

“If you died,” he said slowly, “it would be like—being blinded.” Searching for words he looked down at her as she lay there with her eyes closed, her lashes resting like crescents of dark pollen on her cheeks; so still and so silent.

“‘
Else a great prince in prison lies
,'” he quoted softly. “My brother David once told me that if you took one flower to a man who had been locked up in prison for a long time and let him look at it he might go mad or die. Well that's how I
used to feel whenever things were beautiful and I was alone. But now I dare to look at them because they can answer me with your voice, look back at me with your eyes, and touch me with your hands. I'm not in prison any more.” He leaned and whispered into her ear, “I'm a great prince and I'm free. But if you died, if you were to die, there'd be just nothing for ever and ever.”

She opened her eyes.

“That was beautiful,” she said. “You
must
love me if you can talk like that. If you like you can kiss me.”

“Not here,” he said.

She got up quickly and picking up the haversack ran on ahead of him towards the rickyard.

“I know someone who would like to kiss me,” she called out, “even if you wouldn't.”

He caught her up by the haystack and held her against its sweet-smelling side.

“Who?” he asked.

“A hiker.”

“A hiker? Where did you see him? What hiker?”

“By the gate when I was waiting for you. He had crinkly golden hair and very smart khaki trousers and a haversack like Daddy's old army one. He said he'd got a big car too up by the Stump Cross. Didn't he pass you on your way back? He was going towards Corby.”

“No, no one passed me that I remember.” He frowned as he recalled the ghost of a noise, the essence of a shadow between himself and the sunlight as he had sat by the holly tree a few minutes earlier. “Unless someone went past without me knowing while I was sitting on the wall.”

“That's it,” she said. “Whatever were you doing sitting on a wall? Oh I know, thinking of your home; and you've got nothing to be sorry about really, because by this time, you'll have another home; and from what your sister Melanie said to me at the wedding it'll be much more exciting and unusual than the Vicarage ever was—come on, let me go now,” she tried to duck beneath his arms but he was too
quick for her and held her shoulders firmly. “We must get this soup back to the house.”

“No. I want to know why you said that this hiker man wanted to kiss you.”

“Well he
did
.”

“How do you know?”

“By the way he looked at me.”

“What way?”

“Oh! Just the way people look at something they like or want. Greedy old women in cafés look at buns in that way sometimes—or the way George Harkess looks at Mummy in the evenings,
that's
really what it's like. Anyway, I always know.”

“Do you?”

“Yes, all women do. Mummy says so.” His fists slackened on her shoulders as he laughed. Swinging the haversack between them they walked across the cobbles towards the kitchen door.

“You're not a woman. You're only a girl.”

“I'll be fourteen on my next birthday; and besides—”

“Besides what?”

“Nothing,” she said.

They pushed open the kitchen door and Victoria dumped the tins of soup on to the table. “It's quite all right,” she told Annie Moses. “It's still five minutes to lunch time and you've only got to heat it up in a pan.”

“That bloomin' clock's ten minutes slow Miss Victoria, and Mr Harkess has been in and out like t'bell-ringer at Ripon this last quarter of an hour. Whatever have the two of you been up to?”

“I got off with a young man at the gate, a golden hiker.”

Annie Moses clucked her lips, “These blessed visitors,” she said. “Danbey'll be as thick with 'em as Scarborough uff ut goes on like this with all these motor-cars and by-cycles. I can't think what they cooms for. Thur's nobbut t'old church and t'Shepwash Cairn an' t'Stump Cross fur 'em ter look at when they does get here.”

They laughed at her and left her there, stooping over her scrubbed white table, as they closed the door behind them and made their way through the hall to the study.

George Harkess was standing by the mantelpiece staring moodily at the aneroid barometer in its glass box. He looked up as they came in, frowned afresh, and then catching Mrs Blount's appraising rather small grey eyes smiled with his eyebrows and moustache.

“Well! well! he's back,” he said glancing at his watch. “I'd begun to think I'd put my shirt on a wrong 'un or that the handicap had been too heavy—and after all of the thirty furlongs, John, did you get the soup?”

“Yes sir, two tins of oxtail.”

“Bless my soul, he's not only a stayer, he knows the course as well—he's got a memory! I was afraid by this time you might have forgotten what you went for. Still, I'm in your debt Blaydon, my dear boy; thanks to your delay, I still have time for a third pink gin whereas usually I can only fit in two before me lunch.”

Mrs Blount smiled carefully at him. “George dear! Do you really think you ought to?”

“Certainly
not
Enid! that is to say not when I'm alone, a lonely old bachelor-farmer! But with
you
here, it's a different matter. What do you think, young lady?” he asked, turning heavily towards Victoria who was perching on the arm of Mrs Blount's chair. “Don't you think I should be allowed to celebrate just once a year when your charming mother condescends to visit Nettlebed.”

“
Uncle
George,” she retorted, “I won't answer you.”

“Tut! tut!” His frown though momentary was disconcertingly real. “Getting into my sere and yellow, always forgetting that you will
not
be called ‘young lady', whereas you, my girl, never forget the ‘
Uncle
George' when you want to use your whip. But for all that you know you
are
a young lady, and a very lovely young lady, as lovely as—”

“As lovely as Mummy,” she slanted at him.

The frown this time was directed a little greedily at his
half-empty glass as though he were vexed by his thirst. Then he straightened his tweed-clad body and stroked the heavy hair at the back of his head. For all his size, the deliberately great scale of his clothing, there was an air of uncertainty about him, a hesitancy which as John had earlier observed quite evidently irritated Mrs Blount. As it was, on this occasion too she was quick to resent his attempt to placate Victoria, and intervened quickly:

“Victoria dear! Don't you think you and John ought to go and get washed whilst there is still time?” With her usual exquisite care she rose from the chair on which she had been sitting as Annie Moses sounded the gong for luncheon. “There now! You see?” she went on, her hand placed lightly on George Harkess's arm, “Now you
are
going to be late you naughty children.”

“Shoo!” said George Harkness, “Shoo! Off with you, the pair of you,” and he herded them through the doorway into the hall.

They raced up the stairs together and into the bathroom.

“Do they know about our truffle-hunt?” John asked as they shared the basin.

“Yes, I told them while you were in Corby.”

“What did they say?”

“Not much, they didn't seem very interested.” She looked at herself in the glass over the wash-basin. She tilted her chin up towards the ceiling and through half-closed eyes looked along her horizontal cheeks like a ballet dancer on a bright stage. Then suddenly she dropped the pose and said casually: “I think they're going to get married this time.”

“
Do
you?” He was amazed by the calmness of her tone.

“Yes. Mummy seems much fonder of him than before and they've been talking a lot about money—at least
he
has.”

“What's that got to do with them getting married?”

“
Oh
,” she said, throwing him the towel. “You are
young
! People always talk about money when they're thinking of getting married.”

“They
don't
!”

“Of course they do.”

“You're thinking of funerals,” he said, “people making wills and so on.”

“No I'm not.”

“Well it's not what David and Prudence talked about before they got married. I don't think they ever mentioned it once.”

“Well, what did they talk about?”

“The sort of things we talked about by the hedge this morning—”

“What things?”

“Oh, about how much we loved each other and what we'd do if the other one died.”

“Silly!” she retorted. “That's only young people like you and me! If we were older you'd soon find that you'd have to talk about money as well as love; in fact, one day if Enid and George really did get married and you still wanted to marry me, you might find you'd have to talk about money to George.”

“I
won't
! I wouldn't! I'd never discuss
you
with him at all. You're nothing to do with him even if he does marry your Mother.”

“You don't like George, do you?”

“No.”

“That's because you're jealous.” She faced him from the doorway. “But you needn't worry, because I don't like him either.”

“Don't you?”

“No. I don't like the way he eats and I don't like his moustache or his hair and I don't like his eyes.”

“Neither do I.”

“It's as though he was wearing one of those masks the street-boys wear at the Fair when they want to do things they wouldn't dare to do without it. You know, hiding behind it and making the eyes move and the moustache waggle and smile, when all the time their real faces are doing something quite different. That's why I hate George calling
me ‘young lady', I know that it's only the mask saying it, and that the other face means something quite different.”

“Yes, that's it,” he said. “I wonder what it is he really means and why he doesn't say it?”

“Oh grown-ups!” she said. “That's just what I was telling you, they never say what they really mean. When they talk about love they have to talk about it with money. There's something they're ashamed of somewhere, but no one's ever ashamed of money unless they haven't got it; and so they use it as a cover for everything they do; they make out they're doing it for money, or that they're
not
doing it for money; but, except as a joke, they never like to say they're doing anything for love.”

“Do you think it's something in love that makes them feel guilty?”

“It must be, mustn't it?” she said. “I'm sure it is with George. He's always either all grinning and awful about it, or else he's like a cat walking on eggs; but he'll talk about money without using his mask.”

“Down with George!” he said.

“Down with George!” she echoed. “If it wasn't for the farm, for Nettlebed, I wouldn't let Mummy see him at all. But I love this place because it's in the moors and because you're here to share it with me. After this holiday I may even
let
her marry him so that we can keep on coming here if we don't go to Anglesey.”

“Could you stop her?”

“Easily—” she took his hand. “Come on, let's go down very quietly—I'll bet you they're talking about money again.”

“How could you stop her?” he whispered as they tiptoed down the thick stair carpet.

“By giving her looks at the right time when she's with him—”

“
Looks
?”

“Yes, nasty ones, amused ones, as though I thought she was looking silly or stagy; and not only that, but I could make little jokes about him when Enid and I are alone. It's
the easiest thing in the world to make her feel old and ridiculous about men.”

They walked quietly over the hall rugs and as they neared the dining-room door heard the clatter of George's knife and fork punctuating the murmur of his conversation.

“Settlement,” they heard. “
Mumble
… Transfer my Canadian holdings…
Clop
… Dollars.”

Victoria glanced brightly at John and then flounced ahead of him into the room. They sat down at the foot of the long refectory table.

Mrs Blount smiled at them briefly and then turned her attention again eagerly, almost deferentially, to George Harkess on whom the gesture was as lost as were all gestures when he was at table. His face remained directed downwards, so that from where John and Victoria sat the full length of his yellow parting was visible between its banks of iron-grey hair: only his moustache and his hands moved as he ravaged busily beneath a chicken bone on his untidy plate. John found himself watching his manoeuvres with a fascination which made him momentarily oblivious of his own appetite. Some people were not safe to watch under such circumstances; but there were others, and George Harkess was one of them, whose senses extended no farther than their skins; and so it was not until Victoria's knee nudged him beneath the table that he was able to take his eyes from the grown-ups at the far end and give her all his attention.

“We'll go up past the Stump Cross,” she was saying quietly, “and then cut directly across to the dingle. I've got the kettle ready-filled for our tea, in case there's no water in the cave, and Annie Moses has been a brick, she's done us a hard-boiled egg each.” And then, as she noticed his attention straying once more to the other conversation at the darker end of the room, “
John
! you're not listening.”

“Yes, I am,” he said. “You said a hard-boiled egg each, and with all the things I bought we'll be able to have the most super meal. Do you know what I vote?”