The Diamond Waterfall (76 page)

Of course Teddy had taken over afterward. Just as, two years ago, she had rushed to Sinaia.
The time of Corina.
He didn't often think of Corina now, or of Romania at all. There was too much guilt.

And the happiness, fulfillment, he had known with her, what was he to do with that? Sometimes he felt it had happened to someone else. He could give, had given, very great pleasure to a woman. It seemed here and now useless knowledge. From their talk he knew that his friends would be incredulous,
doubting, or plain surprised. He had changed, too. Dirty jokes, the hearty, nervous laughter that went with them, he couldn't take part in. Sometimes when they'd all been drinking, one of his friends would say, “We've shocked Mike. Make sure it's all good clean fun when Mike's around.”

All the time, too, this feeling of uncertainty. The air heavy with it, making him question the point of being here at all. Why bother with exams? Is it worth going on? From there, a short step to the whole misery. Did anything matter, if war was coming?

He drank with others at the Mill. Some people had their own tankards there. The water rushed through the millrace. He stood and watched. Smelling the river smell. It didn't matter whether he sat his exams, passed or failed. War would come, he felt it in his bones. Old bones.
My father's bones.
Rotting, manuring the earth somewhere in France, in Belgium, where soon there would be a battlefield again.

Memories from the cinema: men living like troglodytes, waiting their turns, rushing out now over the top, falling like ninepins. Lying across the wire. Lying in no-man's-land.

Since January he had been having flying lessons with the University Aero Club, flying a Gypsy Moth. When it all happens, I shall go up in the sky, he thought. I shall rise above it. Then came that familiar sinking of the heart, a sudden wave of terror, never really lost since the accident—
something is going to happen.

He had a dream about Corina. She was on a train waiting in the station, where he also waited. For what? She leaned out, elbows on the sash window. When she saw him she laughed and chatted as if nothing had happened. “It's Mikki, isn't it?” He asked her was she all right? So much unrest in Europe, in Romania. “But of
course,
Mikki.” She was smoking, talking to a man in uniform—someone he'd never seen before, who was thirtyish, very good-looking. “Mikki promised me
diamonds,
” she told him, “a whole waterfall of them.… Mikki, you won't forget, will you?
Where are they,
Mikki?” It was all lighthearted, though—he had only to explain that they weren't for her after all. She said, “I make a joke only, Mikki.” And then they were all laughing. She leaned out farther as the train began to move. He could see it for a long time—almost as if he moved with it. Running effortlessly, floating. He was so happy.

“You fly from Croydon. Dutch airlines. Berlin by lunchtime, Budapest by tea.”

The man talking leaned back on his heels, swayed pompously, adjusted his collar and tie—caused Michael to fiddle with his. It was infectious.

He had been at the party only ten minutes and already he was bored. He
wasn't sure what he was drinking: it had floating fruit and a lot of greenery, and an indefinite taste. Like this party, he thought.

“What about Bucharest?” someone asked. “Isn't that vaguely in that direction?”

Awed by his own wit, the man said, “Yes, well, Bucharest for
cocktails.”

“And Ruritanian nights, I suppose,” said someone else.

Ruritania.
Romania.
He thought Chas was about to say something:

“This chap …” Chas began (oh dear God,
no):
“This chap here, Firth, knows something about flying. Up in all weathers. He's really keen.”

The party was being given by some friends of Chas's family. Chas went there occasionally to Sunday lunch. The house was at the Barton end of Grange Road. In the long downstairs room the french windows were open: the garden was lawn, fruit trees, a gazebo. It was still light. Amid the clinking glass and the chatter, he could hear birdsong.

“Exams,” the pompous man said. “Half the young chaps here this evening are Gown, not Town—aren't you meant to be living on black coffee with wet towels round the head?”

Chas said, “I've made quite enough sacrifices. No flicks, a moratorium on boozing at the Mill. Roll on May Week, maidens, madrigals. I shall really hit the burg—”

“Now if you were a
rowing
man—”

“Which-thank-the-Lord-I'm-not-sir. Dancing's more my line. I'm on the committee for our College Ball.”

Michael said, “Chas's feet really flash.”

“The Big Apple, the Dance You Dare not Do, that's old hat. I'm learning something called the Camel Stomp. I—”

Michael turned, looked about him. He seemed to have been here years. And there was supper to come yet.

In another group, two girls were talking to a man with glasses and a bald head. One of them, dressed in coffee-colored silk, had her back to Michael. Blond hair, caught with a slide. Line of neck. Tilt of head. He caught his breath. For a single absurd second:
Corina is here.

“You weren't listening,” Chas said. “Our friend here, he can get one at cost. We ought really to tell the ball committee.”

“Excuse me a moment,” he said. “I see someone …”

He felt sick with fear, anticipation. He moved purposefully to where she stood. Perhaps sensing his gaze, she turned, caught his eye, smiled.

How could he have ever thought it was Corina? Such an ordinary
quiet
face, not even very pretty. Gentle lips tinged with pink where the slash of red had been. Her smile, slow and friendly.

The balding man put out a hand. “Look, can you settle an argument? The seven dwarfs, Snow White. We've got stuck. The name of the seventh one—”

“Which do you have already?”

“DopeySleepyDocBashfulHappyGrumpy …”

“Sneezy?”

“Well done! It's unbelievable how irritating—on the tip of the tongue.” He turned to the girl. “Now, Jilly, Someday Your Prince Will Come …”

“I'm Wishing …” she said, smiling again. The talk moved via Donald Duck and Goofy to Hollywood. A tall bustling man joined the group, and after a few moments the other two moved away with him. Michael was left with this girl who wasn't Corina.

He said, “Some people are out in the garden—would you like to go there?” He saw an iron seat empty near some rose bushes. The light was going now.

“I'm Michael Firth, and you're …?”

“Jilly Russell.”

“Are you sure you're warm enough?” he asked.

A moment later she said, “Have you a cousin, an American, at Peterhouse?” When he said yes, she said, “I thought I recognized the name. I was meant to come to a party of yours in the winter.”

“You're Jill, then, of
Jay
and Jill?”

“Yes. He'd have been here tonight—but his ears are glued to the wireless. A transatlantic broadcast, improvised swing from New York. Lionel Hampton and other gods of his.”

She came from London, she told him, but was living in Cambridge working as secretary to a professor at Emmanuel. “He's a friend of Daddy's, and promised to employ me even before I could do twenty words a minute. Actually a lot of the work's not shorthand at all. Some of it's terribly interesting.

Jay, she had met in Miller's shop, buying records on her afternoon off. They'd both wanted the same one, the last in stock.

“Who got it?”

“Oh, Jay of course. His arguments for keeping it were so impressive. I couldn't … So I agreed to come back to his rooms and listen to it.”

She smiled and he thought, How easily we could have met before, if …

“He's a good chap, my cousin,” he said bravely.

“Yes, he is. Tell me something about
you,
though.”

The wonderful thing was that she really seemed to want to hear. Sitting there, in the fading light, he talked easily. His only worry was that someone would come over and take her away.

They went in together for supper. He fetched her chicken and then chocolate mousse, a plate piled high.

“I can't eat all that.”

He thought if he gave her enough, she would have to stay with him until it was finished.

Some couples had begun to dance. “Shall we?” The tune was a quickstep; he managed well enough. He would have preferred to glide languorously to a slow waltz. There was a vocal:
“The future's looking bright … and now she's in love with me, the girl in the upstairs flat …”

He wanted to say, You reminded me of somebody. Otherwise I might never have seen you, I might have passed you by, or talked to someone else.
Wasted my evening.
How important was chance. With a dry outsider's eye he saw how many better-looking girls were there.

“Jay's taking you to a May Ball?”

She shook her head. “He's tied up playing the cornet—Quinq Stompers or something. So I expect not.”

Then just when he felt the evening was really beginning, right in the middle of a deep conversation, Jay came to collect her.

“Jilly, your carriage is at the door,” someone said.

He couldn't bear it. Seeing Jay standing there, looking in his sports jacket momentarily quite English. He remembered how he'd once described him as “electric.” Now when he went out with Jilly into the hall, he thought it again. Electric.

“Look what the wind's blown in,” he said, half joking. He thought afterward, I meant to be rude.

Jay only said, “Mike, I haven't seen you in ages. Of all the … have you two just met this evening?”

Michael nodded, feeling suddenly flat, drained. Seeing her go a few moments later, he thought, I can't bear the empty night.

Chas said,
“You
did well. Who's that you got off with? Not that I did badly myself, of course.”

He thought at first he had a fever. Over the next few days he could not eat, could not work. From desk to servants' room and back to the sitting room, where he would stare out of the window, and find half an hour gone.

Earlier, he'd questioned the value of going on with the exams at all. But now that he was actually interfering with his chances, he panicked. Once when the mood to work came on him, unheralded and almost too late, he began straight after dinner in the evening and continued all night. Strangely enough, the following day he felt better than at any time since he'd met Jilly. Eleven days ago now. His first exam was tomorrow. He went to a kiosk and rang Emmanuel College. But when she came to the phone, he couldn't think what to say.

“I just wondered how you were.”

Her voice, gentle, easy, unsurprised.
“Very
well. How nice to hear you. And you?”

“I've got my first exam tomorrow morning.”

She wished him good luck, and he said, “I remembered you have an
afternoon off tomorrow. Would you like to come up to tea? And records? I've quite a few.”

“I'll bring some,” she said. “Jay just gave me a lot.”

His preparations were elaborate. He put flowers in three places, early roses, yellow and pink-tinged, on the desk near the window. The afternoon sun would come through.

Anyone would think I'm mad, I know. I must tell myself I'm asking Jay's girl to have tea with me.
And that is all
Yet he couldn't rid himself of an image of some great whirlpool, of which she was the still center. In her is my peace.

It went well from the start. All that agonizing about what he would say to her, and there it was—easy.

He had bought two sorts of cake from Fitzbillie's Café, and a big selection of biscuits, as well as Chelsea buns. “What are you trying to do?” she asked, laughing. “That great plate at the party and now all this. Do I
look
so greedy?”

She wore a navy-blue spotted dress with a round collar and short puff sleeves. It didn't look fussy on her. He could see that she might easily become plump, but that would be lovely, it would suit her.

The records she'd brought, about a dozen, were mostly Ella Fitzgerald, some Benny Goodman, and several Al Bowlly, including the tune they'd danced to at the party. She had quite a collection of Al Bowlly. “Jay says he's Bing Crosby with sex.”

But he didn't want to hear what Jay said.

They sat together on the window seat. Outside, it looked as if it might rain. He told her about Willow hiding out up here. She'd heard something of it from Jay. That was the only thing wrong—Jay in the room too.

“Jay says …”

“Are you going to marry him?” He was horrified when he'd said it. The words coming out abruptly, intrusive, personal.

“What a question! He hasn't asked me, Michael.”
“Would you
if he did?”

She hesitated. “I'm not in love with him. But he knows that. I'm
very,
very fond. No one could not like Jay.”

“I could,” he said. “Easily.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Relations,” she said, smiling. “Family. It's not a fair comparison.”

He thought of some answer to that, then was distracted, seeing her look at her watch:

“Don't go till we've played through all the records. Please.”

He wondered how soon and when and where he could kiss her (the same man who had lain long afternoons in Corina's bed; how
could
it be so different?). The best now would be if they could sit forever on that window seat,
looking through the small-paned window, out onto the gateway to the Backs, and the gray summer sky.

“How much time do you get at lunch? I'm often at the Mill. In the evening what time do you finish? Do you like the river? We could take a punt up to Grantchester.”

And that was how it was, for about ten days. Hurrying after his morning exam, waiting leaning over the bridge at the Mill, watching the water rush and then looking up and seeing her. Evenings, tap-tap of her heeled sandals, hurrying to meet him. “Jay says … Jay says …” But he never listened now.