The Young Desire It (13 page)

The weather was in the south, and only on his side of the grove did the trunks and branches give protection. Looking out from his shelter, rubbing his hands together absent-mindedly as though he had made some good bargain with himself or life, Charles recalled how he had bathed in a blaze of young colour not many hours before, when the day promised to be hot and still. All the bees would be gone from those dark clusters of grapes whose excess of ripeness brewed ambrosia for them; the mirror of the river would tremble in a sheet of grey, dull uneasiness, and the birds, caught in the deep of the morning siesta, would be refuged among the rustling leaves. He watched sheets of fine rain drifting past before his eyes in a long, slow rhythm almost hypnotic to a fixed gaze, closing him in with solitude more surely than stone walls.

To his surprise he realized that there was someone else under the trees with him. There was no solitude. He could hear movements on the crumbling leaves of the floor within the encircling pines. It was dark under the trees, and heavy drops had begun to fall from the branches; but, though from instinct and a constant habit he did not suddenly turn to confront the sound, he knew there was someone there, walking on the leaves like rain.

It was a girl, a stranger. She had evidently not seen him for she was stooping to pull up clothes that had slipped as she ran, and he could see her chest heaving when she straightened herself up again. Her legs were bare, and she had no shoes on; he could see the insteps of her feet in the leaves that sank beneath her. That was why she had been so quiet. When she bent down two plaits of hair, as thick as ropes but softly alive, slid over her shoulders and hung each side of her face which he could not clearly see. His breath was coming more comfortably; he turned himself round, and sat down quietly by his tree trunk to watch, aware of no privacy save his own. It was a wonder who it could be. No one ever came to these far pastures, except sometimes the O'Neills, noisy with shouts and the bark of dogs, to put sheep on, or look at the fences; no one strange ever came. Charles was sorry and at first angered to see a stranger there; but he was interested in this girl because she did not know he was there; and when she moved it gave him pleasure to watch. He sat as still as a rabbit in his squat, not realizing that it might have been kinder to show himself. To him sitting there, the mystery of a human being, particularly a woman, who is unconscious of any watching eyes and has abandoned all protective postures, came as unexpectedly and enchantingly as the telling of some romantic secret.

She was wiping the rain from her pale forehead with the palm of one hand; and when she had done this she dried her hands on the hem of her skirt, which was green and came not below her knees. Charles moved his head and saw her face under the low branches stretched like old men's arms between them. It was a young girl's face, pale, clear-coloured and round; but, above all, expressionless in its unawareness of any regard. To him it did not live as much as those busy hands and white knees lived, clearly in the dimness. He lay low, with one shoulder against the rough tree.

The wind sighed in the darkness of the myriad needles above him. If he had been unconcerned he would have made a fire, just for the pleasure of the flames licking and whispering. His blue cotton shirt was hardly wet, except along the shoulders. He ran his hands over each shoulder and round at the back, feeling the warm dampness. When he looked up his returning gaze came full into the girl's eyes.

She was very white, and her mouth was half-open, as though in a will to speak but without breath. Charles felt a tremor of fear himself, for he did not realize that it was he who frightened her.

‘What are you looking at?' he asked nervously, at last; and the sighing silence, which had strained to be broken, turned its face away, reassured by his voice.

She too was reassured, it seemed. With an uncertain smile not yet lighting the dark pupils of her eyes there came a rush of colour flying delicately back into her white face.

‘I was looking at you. I didn't know there was anybody there. I'm afraid I—I was frightened.'

In an hysteria of growing relief, she laughed, and the silence paused to listen.

Hearing the low laughter catch in her throat, he said sharply, ‘I thought something else had frightened you. You needn't be frightened of me.'

‘Of course not.' He could see she was, and it irritated him. They were speaking with the conscious seriousness of children, like diplomats meeting upon some matter of tremendous issue.

‘I didn't know there was anybody here,' the girl said again.

Charles said: ‘I heard you come in.'

The smile had reached her eyes. She put one hand to her breast.

‘My heart's beating like mad.'

‘You were running from the rain,' Charles explained. ‘You're on the open side over there. Under this tree it's dry.'

She stooped to pick up a box she had put on the floor; and once more he saw the heavy plaits of hair slide over her shoulders and hang beside her face. Then she came across the leaves, bending low to pass under the branches.

‘Your top part is pretty wet,' he said.

She shivered a little. Watching her hands touch the thin blouse, he saw that they trembled.

‘I tell you what,' he said, standing up. ‘I'll make a fire and you can get dry.'

‘Oh no,' she exclaimed, and turned quickly towards him. ‘This belongs to someone, this place. You oughtn't to do that.'

‘It's ours,' Charles cried, laughing with surprise. ‘It belongs to my mother. Anyhow, you couldn't see a dry-wood fire on a day like this. The smoke gets lost in the rain.'

He went about, gathering pine branches. Heavy drops fell round him from the leaves; the rain was drifting on the wind like mist, fine and steady. Higher up the slope there was gloom under the massed branches and among the trunks.

When he came back, dragging long light branches with both hands, she was still standing where he had left her, watching him.

‘I suppose you think I shouldn't be here, then,' she said.

‘No,' he said, ‘it doesn't matter. Wait till I get this going.' In a couple of minutes flames shot up yellow among white smoke from the pile of pine needles and broken twigs. He scraped the ground clear all round.

‘I was hoping to find mushrooms,' she said, still watching him. His silence seemed to embarrass her.

‘Where are you from?' he asked later, when the blaze was merry and had cast off its sheathing smoke.

‘Over there at the farm.' She turned her face towards what they called the new farm. Charles, kneeling by the fire, looked closely at her now.

‘Oh,' he said slowly. ‘I didn't know there was anyone young there.'

‘I don't live there; it's my uncle and aunt; they live there. I just came for Easter.'

‘I'm home for Easter, too.' He was filled with great enthusiasm, all of a sudden. ‘Isn't it lovely. Isn't it lovely being away from School, out here where there's nobody at all.'

‘I don't mind school,' she said. ‘I go to a convent, you see.'

‘Do you live there?'

‘No, at home with my sister.'

‘Well—oh; that must make a difference.'

She said nothing.

‘You sit down by this now,' he told her, ‘and get dry. That blouse is pretty wet, isn't it? Why don't you take it off, and I'll get you a stick to dry it on.'

He jumped up and went to get a straight piece of stick. When he returned to the fire she was sitting with her back firmly against the tree.

‘You haven't taken it off,' he said. ‘And that tree will make you wetter still. Look, there's water going down the trunk.'

She looked up at him slowly under her eyelids.

‘Why do you want me to take it off? I can't, I've—I haven't got enough on underneath.'

‘I don't want you to take it off,' he said. ‘It's not me who'll get a cold.'

‘Well,' she said, ‘I don't think I can.' She looked frightened and defiant, as though she had been trapped into some admission she had not meant to make.

‘Well, move away from that trunk then, or you'll get a wet tail as well. I only made the fire so that you could get dry.'

‘Thank you,' she said vaguely. With her back to the fire and him she appeared to think for a while; Charles looked at the whiteness of her neck, like pearl, up near the long parting in the hair. Her shoulders bent forward stretched the stuff of the blouse against the flames, and the light played upon her. Only a crackle and whisper of dry wood burning broke the silence of the wind up above them.

Charles's mood of joyous content had gone. Now that the fire was made and there was nothing more to do, he felt gloomy within him, and heartily wished he were alone there. Rain was still drifting past, in long falling cadences he could see the sky was set. It might not stop for an hour. The time, he thought, would be late after eleven, and he was feeling hungry. It would have been better if he had brought food; he could have stayed here all day out of the rain and wind. And a book; how well that Shakespeare would have sounded, read aloud to such a loving silence as this.

‘What is your name?' he asked.

‘Margaret,' she said without turning round. Aware of a strange tone in her voice, he looked suspiciously at her back. She was laughing. He became tense; his voice was difficult in the moving silence.

‘What are you laughing at?'

She laughed aloud now, low and helplessly.

‘I'm not. I was just thinking—how funny to be here like this.'

‘I don't think it's funny,' he said coldly.

‘Well—I wonder what they'd say at the convent? We're not supposed to…'

‘I don't think that's funny either,' Charles said loudly.

She began to laugh again. He understood that it was hardly laughter at all; it was a curious stretched sound, too humourless to suggest mirth. It shocked him into speech.

‘What's the matter?' he said. ‘I didn't mean to be angry. I'm sorry. What's the matter?'

There were tears on her cheeks. Charles, completely bewildered, stood up and at once sat down again, because he did not know of anything he could do that words would not do more safely.

‘It's only—that I got a fright—when I saw you first,' she said brokenly, her eyes clinging to his look. ‘I couldn't help it. The silence and everything—and then—you.'

‘I know,' he said to soothe her, for he did not want to look at her tears. ‘It's always like that unless you're used to it.' He cocked his head on one side, meditatively.

‘I've heard of men going mad in this country. Mad, mind you, in those hills, with trains going past every day. If they live up there alone—they used to when people thought there was gold—they come down specially to watch the evening train going in.'

The thought had an unexplored darkness for him.

‘It makes me shiver,' she said. ‘I can understand.'

‘It's terrible,' he declared emphatically. ‘Even here, away from the hills, you can feel it sometimes. I know; I've been up there in the evening after sunset. But it wouldn't get me into that state, I'm sure. But you ought to see it,' he cried, after thinking a moment. ‘All the shadows disappear when the sun's gone. Not a shadow. Just distance.'

He stopped abruptly, aware that the words had burst loudly from his lips.

‘Don't shout,' she said.

‘I'm used to being alone,' he said more quietly. ‘No one will hear. But you ought to see it. You ought to be there alone. It's like magic. You never forget it. Those hills…'

After a time she said, ‘It would frighten me. I should be frightened.'

‘But that's just it,' he said. ‘There's nothing—nothing at all. Not a thing. Only the sound of a waterfall that you can't see.'

‘That's just it,' she repeated. ‘You wouldn't know, when there was absolutely nothing. Would you?'

He pondered in an abstraction of thought.

‘I suppose it's that that used to drive those men silly when they lived there alone. I can't see how, though. It's wonderful. I'm frightened of people sometimes, but never of things…like that.'

The warmth of the scented fire had dried the tears and brought a flush of colour into her delicate cheeks. She was leaning forward, looking closely on him; unexpectedly he saw the serene secrecy of her white breasts revealed unawares, and a flush came into his own face, and his tongue, ready to speak, was stilled. She seemed not to notice; she leaned forward in a pose of thought and unconscious beauty, and it was plain that, whatever her age might be, in her body she was already a woman and sensitively awake.

He, for his part, having looked away from what he had seen, came to think of his own words with surprise. ‘Even here, away from the hills, you can feel it.' The plough made no difference—how had he happened to say things he had not known he knew? The words were forced out of his mouth, as though a weight had crushed him; they were certainly his own words, though he could not find their source in his mind.

‘Margaret,' he said. ‘That's a good name. If you don't change it to silly nonsense like Maggie.'

‘I hate that. And even Meg I don't like. That's what they call me. The Sisters call me Margaret.'

‘Are you a Roman Catholic?' he asked curiously.

With great and innocent scorn she said she was not.

‘No,' he continued, ‘otherwise you'd be at a Mass now. My mother has gone to a service. I wouldn't go; it's better to be out here than in a church listening to what you can't understand.'

‘Why do you speak like that so often?' she asked him. ‘As though you were laying down the law.'

He did not know what she meant, and was confounded by being made to consider his own voice and manner. He had had no dealings with girls and women, except in the laconic relationships within his own home.