The thirteenth tale (10 page)

‘Nice weather for a picnic,“ she said, and her husband, in the
way of husbands, did not see the connection.

The invitation languished for a fortnight on the drawing room
windowsill, and it might have remained there until the sun bleached the color
out of the ink, had it not been for Isabelle. One afternoon, at a loss for
something to do, she came down the stairs, puffed out her cheeks in boredom,
picked the letter up and opened it.

‘What’s that?“ said Charlie.

‘Invitation,“ she said. ”To a picnic.“

A picnic? Charlie’s mind turned it over. It seemed strange. But
he shrugged and forgot it.

Isabelle stood up and went to the door. “Where are you going?”

‘To my room.“

Charlie made to follow her, but she stopped him. “Leave me
alone,” he said. “I’m not in the mood.”

He complained, took a handful of her hair and ran his fingers
over he nape of her neck, finding the bruises he had made last time. But she
twisted away from him, ran upstairs and locked the door.

An hour later, hearing her come down the stairs, he went to the
doorway. “Come to the library with me,” he asked her.

‘No.“

‘Then come to the deer park.“

“No.”

He noticed that she had changed her clothes. “What do you look
like that for?” he said. “You look stupid.”

She was wearing a summer dress that had belonged to their
mother, made of a flimsy white material and trimmed with green. Instead of her
usual tennis shoes with their frayed laces, she had put on a pair of green
satin sandals a size too big—also their mother’s—and had attached a flower in
her hair with a comb. She had lipstick on. His heart darkened. “Where are you
going?” he asked.

‘To the picnic.“

He grabbed her by the arm, dug his fingers in and pulled her
toward the library.

‘No!“

He pulled her harder.

She hissed at him, “Charlie, I said no!”

He let her go. When she said no like that, he knew it meant no.
He had found that out in the past. She could be in a bad temper for days.

She turned her back on him and opened the front door.

Full of anger, Charlie looked for something to hit. But he had
already broken everything that was breakable. The things that were left would
do more harm to his knuckles than he could do to them. His fists slackened; he
followed Isabelle out of the door and to the picnic.

The young people at the lakeside made a pretty picture from a
distance, in their summer frocks and white shirts. The glasses they held were
filled with a liquid that sparkled in the sunlight, and the grass at their feet
looked soft enough to go barefoot. In reality, the picnickers were sweltering
beneath their clothes, the champagne was warm, and if anyone had thought to
take their shoes off they would have had to walk through goose droppings.
Still, they were willing to feign jollity, in the hope that their pretense
would encourage the real thing.

A young man at the edge of the crowd caught sight of movement up
near the house. A girl in a strange outfit accompanied by a lump of a man.
There was something about her.

He failed to respond to his companion’s joke; the companion
looked to see what had caught his attention and fell silent in turn. A group of
young women, eternally alert to the doings of young men even when the young men
are behind their backs, turned to see what had caused the sudden silence. And
there followed a sort of ripple effect, whereby the entire party turned to face
the newcomers, and seeing them, were struck dumb.

Across the wide lawn walked Isabelle.

She neared the group. It parted for her as the sea parted for
Moses, and she walked straight through it to the lake edge. She stood on a flat
rock that jutted out over the water. Someone came toward her with a glass and a
bottle, but she waved them away. The sun was bright, it had been a long walk
and it would take more than champagne to cool her down.

She took off her shoes, hung them in a tree and, arms
outstretched, let herself fall into the water.

The crowd gasped, and when she rose to the surface, water
streaming from her form in ways that recalled the birth of Venus, they gasped
again.

This plunge into the water was another thing people remembered
years later, after she left home for the second time. They remembered, and
shook their heads in a mix of pity and condemnation. The girl had had it in her
all that time. But on the day it was put down to sheer high spirits, and people
were grateful to her. Single-handedly Isabelle brought the whole party to life.

One of the young men, the boldest, with fair hair and a loud
laugh, kicked off his shoes, removed his tie and leapt into the lake with her.
A riot of his friends followed. In no time at all, the young men were all in
the water, diving, calling, shouting and outdoing one another in athleticism
and splash.

Thinking quickly, the girls saw there was only one way to go.
They hung their sandals in the branches, put on their most excited faces and
splashed into the water, uttering cries that they hoped would sound abandoned,
while doing their utmost to prevent any excessive dampening of their hair.

Their efforts were in vain. The men had eyes only for Isabelle.

Charlie did not follow his sister into the water. He stood, a
little farther off, and watched. With his red hair and his pallor, he was a man
made for rain and indoor pursuits. His face had gone pink in the sun, and his
eyes stung as the sweat from his brow ran into them. But he hardly blinked. He
could not bear to take his eyes off Isabelle.

How many hours later was it that he found himself with her
again? It seemed an eternity. Enlivened by Isabelle’s presence the picnic went
on much longer than anybody had expected, and yet it seemed to the other guests
to have passed in a flash, and they would all have stayed longer if they could.
The party broke up with consoling thoughts of other picnics to come, a round of
promised invitations and damp kisses.

When Charlie approached her, Isabelle had a young man’s jacket
arranged around her shoulders and the young man himself in the palm of her
hand. Not far off a girl loitered, uncertain whether her presence was wanted.
Though she was plump, plain and female, the resemblance she nonetheless bore to
the young man made it clear she was his sister.

‘Come on,“ Charlie said roughly to his sister.

‘So soon? I thought we might go for a walk. With Roland and
Sybilla.“ She smiled graciously at Roland’s sister, and Sybilla, surprised at
the unexpected kindness, beamed back.

Charlie could get his own way with Isabelle at home—sometimes—
by hurting her, but in public he didn’t dare, and so he buckled under.

What happened during that walk? There were no witnesses to the
events that took place in the forest. For want of witnesses there was no
gossip. At least not at first. But one does not have to be a genius to deduce
from later events what took place under the canopy of summer foliage that
evening.

It would have been something like this:

Isabelle would have found some pretext for sending the men away.

‘My shoes! I left them in the tree!“ And she’d have sent Roland
to fetch them, and Charlie, too, for a shawl of Sybilla’s or some other item.

The girls settled themselves on a patch of soft ground. In the
men’s absence they waited in the growing darkness, drowsy from champagne,
breathing in the remains of the sun’s heat and with it the beginning of
something darker, the forest and the night. The warmth of their bodies began to
drive the moisture from their dresses, and as the folds of fabric dried, they
detached themselves from the flesh beneath and tickled.

Isabelle knew what she wanted. Time alone with Roland. But to
get it, she had to be rid of her brother.

She began to talk while they lolled back against a tree. “So
which is your beau, then?”

‘I don’t really have a beau,“ Sybilla admitted.

‘But you should.“ Isabelle rolled on her side, took the feathery
leaf of a fern and let it run over her lips. Then she let it run over the lips
of her companion.

‘That tickles,“ Sybilla murmured.

Isabelle did it again. Sybilla smiled, eyes half shut, and did
not stop her when Isabelle ran the soft leaf down her neck and around the
neckline of her dress, paying special attention to the swell of the breasts.
Sybilla emitted a semi-nasal giggle.

When the leaf ran down to her waist and beyond, Sybilla opened
her yes.

‘You’ve stopped,“ she complained.

‘I haven’t,“ said Isabelle. ”It’s just that you can’t feel it through
our dress.“ And she pulled up the hem of Sybilla’s dress and played the fronds
along her ankles. ”Better?“

Sybilla reclosed her eyes.

From the somewhat thick ankle the green plume found its way to a
distinctly chunky knee. An adenoidal murmur escaped from between Sybilla’s
lips, though she did not stir until the fronds came to the very top of her
legs, and she did not sigh until Isabelle replaced the greenery with her own
tender fingers.

Isabelle’s sharp eyes did not once leave the face of the older
girl, and the moment the girl’s eyelids gave the first hint of a flicker, she
drew her hand away.

‘Of course,“ she said, very matter-of-fact, ”it’s a beau you
need really.“

Sybilla, roused unwillingly from her incomplete rapture, was slow
catch on. “For the tickling,” Isabelle had to explain. “It’s much better with a
beau.”

And when Sybilla asked her newfound friend, “How do you know?”
Isabelle had the answer all ready: “Charlie.”

By the time the boys returned, shoes and shawl in hand, Isabelle
had achieved her purpose. Sybilla, a certain dishevelment apparent in her skirt
and petticoat, regarded Charlie with an expression of warm interest.

Charlie, indifferent to the scrutiny, was looking at Isabelle.

‘Have you thought how similar Isabelle and Sybilla are?“
Isabelle said carelessly. Charlie glared. ”The sounds of the names, I mean.
Almost interchangeable, wouldn’t you say?“ She sent a sharp glance at her
brother, forcing him to understand. ”Roland and I are going to walk a bit farther.
But Sybilla’s tired. You stay with her.“ Isabelle took Roland’s arm.

Charlie looked coldly at Sybilla, registered the disarrangement
of her dress. She stared back at him, eyes wide, mouth slightly open.

When he turned back to where Isabelle had been, she was already
gone. Only her laughter came back to him from the darkness, her laughter and
the low rumble of Roland’s voice. He would get his own back later. He would.
Time and time again she would pay for this.

In the meantime he had to vent his feelings somehow.

He turned to Sybilla.

The summer was full of picnics. And for Charlie, it was full of
Sybillas. But for Isabelle there was only one Roland. Every day she slipped out
of Charlie’s sight, escaped his grasp and disappeared on her bicycle. Charlie
could never find out where the pair met, was too slow to follow her as she took
flight, the bicycle wheels spinning beneath her, hair flying behind. Sometimes
she would not return until darkness had fallen, sometimes not even then. When
he scolded her, she laughed at him and turned her back as though he simply
wasn’t there. He tried to hurt her, to maim her, but as she eluded him time
after time, slipping through his fingers like water, he realized how much their
games had been dependent on her willingness. However great his strength, her
quickness and cleverness meant she got away from him every time. Like a boar
enraged by a bee, he was powerless.

Once in a while, placatory, she gave in to his entreaties. For
an hour or two she lent herself to his will, allowing him to enjoy the illusion
that she was back for good and that everything between them was as it always
had been. But it was an illusion, as Charlie soon learned, and her renewed
absence after these interludes was all the more agonizing.

Charlie forgot his pain only momentarily with the Sybillas. For
a time his sister prepared the way for him, then as she became more and more
delighted with Roland, Charlie was left to make his own arrangements. He lacked
his sister’s subtlety; there was an incident that could lave been a scandal,
and a vexed Isabelle told him that if that was how he intended to go about
things then he would have to choose a different sort of woman. He turned from
the daughters of minor aristocrats to those of farriers, farmers and foresters.
Personally he couldn’t tell the difference, yet the world seemed to mind less.

Frequent though they were, these instances of forgetfulness were
fleeting. The shocked eyes, the bruised arms, the bloodied thighs were erased
from memory the moment he turned away from them. Nothing could touch the great
passion in his life: his feelings for Isabelle.

One morning toward the end of the summer, Isabelle turned the
blank pages in her diary and counted the days. She closed the book and replaced
it in the drawer thoughtfully. When she had decided, she went downstairs to her
father’s study.