The Great Lover Page 19

  I try to steady my voice. ‘Well. Despite everything I’ve taught you it’s clear you have no love for the bees as I have,’ I mutter…I’m surprised that the girls have fallen silent. So I glance up and it is Kittie’s face that tells me he’s arrived–the way her eyes widen suddenly and her cheeks turn scarlet. I wheel round, and there he is in his cream flannels, a blaze of sunlight, his eyes the colour of the brightest morning glory.

  ‘Ah, to find the prettiest maids in England washing up a storm in a garden full of blossom and–what’s this? Extolling the virtues of service, too! Am I in Heaven? Or merely dreaming?’

  Did he hear me defend him? Lord, how long was he standing there?

  ‘Mr Brooke, sir—’

  ‘Nellie Golightly. Lovely to see you again. Good morning to you all! Nell–a word, my dear.’

  His hand is on my arm and I know the others are watching. He flashes each a smile but speaks quietly to me, steering me away from the garden and towards the kitchen at the Orchard, then towards the bottom of the stairs leading to his old room. Here he pauses. I am fiercely conscious of his hand, brushing the bare skin of my arm.

  ‘I left some things here. A small diary–buff-coloured? Some papers, part of my Webster essay, which I must finish this year to be considered for the Fellowship. And…the other matter is…letters, I wonder if any letters have arrived here from a very strange lady? You would notice the stamp, Belgian, and the return address–a Miss van Rysselberghe? I’ve never seen her handwriting but no doubt it has all the distinguishing features of a madwoman’s…’

  ‘I can look for you, sir—’

  ‘Sir? Nellie! Have you forgotten me so soon?’ In a pretend whisper, he says, ‘Did our swim mean nothing to you?’

  When he teases I have no idea how to respond. After a second’s pause I become as serious as he is flippant, and try to explain. ‘Sorry. It is hard for me to call you–Rupert. Surely you don’t want me to–not when there are–when Kittie and Lottie are about? I haven’t found any of your things. But I shall certainly check for you. There’s a new gentleman in there now, so it will have to be later.’

  ‘I know. Dratted fellow. Sleeping in my friendly sheets! Why does nothing ever stay the same?’

  I have no reply to this. My sleeves, I notice for the first time, are becoming unrolled and, being wet from the washing, are dripping on to the red-tiled floor. I stare down at them and then up again at Rupert’s enquiring face. A little thought goes through me that he looks tired, that his brows are lighter than ever, his hair a little longer. As if he could read my thoughts he suddenly runs a hand up through his parting, letting his hair fall between his fingers. Then he nods, as if I had spoken, pursing his mouth and looking closely at me. A tiny petal of blossom that had been caught in his hair floats to the floor. I think for a moment he wants to say something more but he merely swipes at the white petal with his foot as if it were a cigarette to extinguish, and strides out of the kitchen.

  It is only when he has left that I notice how vividly I remember his smell, the smell of him, and how I have missed it. It’s a clean green river smell, the smell of warm flannel and Wrights Coal Tar Soap, and the smell of my childhood, my brothers playing in the river, or stripping bark to make a pipe: something fresh mixing with something older, something male and a little sour, too. The smell reminds me of the other things he left here in his room at the Orchard that I didn’t tell him about: a half-empty tin of Cherry Blossom boot polish, one black leather-bound notebook, some strands of sandy-gold hair wound round a masculine kind of no-handled comb, one old dark green woollen sock, the melting lather on his razor.

  I’m weak suddenly, with his remembered smell, and sink down a while on the kitchen chair, my face in my hands. He might just as well be in another country.

  When I rejoin Kittie and Lottie they’ve stopped staring after Rupert and are eagerly discussing the Great Procession of Suffragists planned for next month, which Kittie says she intends to sneak away to and join.

  ‘Why did you come back, then, if you’re still keen to be in the thick of it with your Suffragist friends?’ I ask her, surprising myself with the spite in my voice.

  ‘To educate you, my dear!’ she says, flipping a bubble of soapsuds at my ear with the wooden dolly-peg. ‘The Lord knows, someone must!’

  I know this can’t be true. And when she says it her eyes slip away, as if there is something she doesn’t want me to see. Lottie doesn’t notice–the girl is a simpleton. So he is back, I’m thinking, and sweet torture must begin once more.

  The worst has happened. A letter from Elisabeth. Clever Nellie intercepted it. (Of course Mademoiselle van Rysselberghe believes me to be still living at the Orchard, and has guessed at my address–she must have heard me mention it.) On the pretext of checking on her hives, Nellie comes over to deliver it to me in the Old Vicarage garden. I open it in front of her, read it, turn green and then pale and then green again, smoke pouring out of my ears. And then I calm down and stuff it into my pocket.

  Elisabeth’s purple prose dances wildly round my brain. I know not what I will do but ending my life appeals to me as the only true course… My God! She’s madder than I thought. I give a huge, drawn-out sigh, and turn to Nell with my hands in my pockets. ‘Do all women want to be raped, Nell?’

  Of course the sentence shocks her, but it is interesting, watching her stiffen, rally, recover, and then determine to meet my eyes. She has spark, that girl! Oh, yes, she is–magnificent! Whenever she is here I find myself searching for conversational gambits to detain her. This one is a corker.

  ‘I don’t believe so, sir. Rupert. No.’

  ‘That is…’ I take a step towards her, and she takes a tiny step back ‘…do they wish to act chaste, and pass the blame for all lustful feelings on to us?’

  Here Nellie permits herself a smile, a very small smile, with only the corners of her eyes crinkling to show she means it. Sometimes she has a way of looking at me as if I were a very silly child. A naughty way of looking at me, indeed.

  ‘Well, it certainly would be–would be hard for a girl to act anything other than chaste…’ she says uncertainly.

  ‘I imagine you can guess that my Flemish acquaintance–Flemish? Belgian, I think–is rather…What can I say?…taken with me, and has an understanding of our relations that I did not intend.’

  Nellie, tactful girl, says nothing, but I am filled with a desire to confide in her, in any case. ‘Ah…I have been foolish, Nell.’

  ‘You have?’

  She stands a little way from the hives. I know she does this because the bees recognise her, and will agitate if they smell her presence. I have a notebook on my knee and my poem, ‘Lust’, in front of me.

  ‘Let me read you a few lines of this–did I tell you that the Ranee is paying Frank Sidgwick nine pounds to publish my poetry? I’m having the devil of a job putting my collection together but, well, I know that this one is going to make Eddie spitting mad and Sidgwick too, no doubt! Not decent…I actually mention a person’s “remembered smell”. But people do smell, don’t they?’

  She looks startled, as if I read her mind, but nods and lifts her eyebrows, and I carry on. I stand up, cough, sweep a low bow with one arm and pretend not to be serious. Then I read from my notebook:

  Love wakens love! I felt your hot wrist shiver

  And suddenly the mad victory I planned

  Flashed real, in your burning bending head…

  My conqueror’s blood was cool as a deep river

  In shadow; and my heart beneath your hand

  Quieter than a dead man on a bed.

  When I finish, I have the oddest sensation. I do not want to raise my eyes from the page. The line ‘my heart beneath your hand’ suddenly suggests something else entirely that had lain limp beneath Elisabeth’s hand. Might Nell guess this? Oh, Lord, why did I try this out on her? What devil makes me long for the maid’s approval so?

  But she is smiling. I finally meet her eyes and cease blushing, a
nd the girl is smiling, properly, her deliriously desirable mouth a little open. She nods, saying eagerly, ‘I like it very much. I–I don’t see why it isn’t a fit subject for poetry. After what you said last time, I’ve been thinking. About what is a fit subject and what might not be. And I decided–it came to me–that all feelings should be equal. The good ones and the–the ones we are ashamed of.’

  ‘Ah, Nell–my only true convert! Would that everyone was as broad-minded as you! So my “Channel Passage” poem worked on you, did it, to loosen up your thoughts on the matter? And you don’t feel certain that my first collection should be entitled A Flowery Book of Flowery Florets by a Mr Flowery Brooke?’

  She laughs and then nods again, now looking a little doubtful, as if wanting to be serious again. But I suddenly long to tease her, for the sincerity of a moment ago is such that I’m quite drained. (I find such self-revelation can only be done comfortably in the most minuscule of packages.) Why is it that I want to unpeel another layer when I’m with Nell? There’s such loveliness and wisdom in her. And she has feeling, real feeling, without ever being sentimental or squashy. Unfortunately, as I am standing beside her, contemplating this admirable aspect of her nature, one who is not immune to squashiness appears in the Old Vicarage dining room and I see she is about to stride out towards us.

  Ka Cox is staying here. Sleeping in a little bed across the corridor from me, in the Neeves’ side of the Old Vicarage. Following the direction of my eyes Nell turns silently back to the bees. I feel a stab of sorriness, but there is no chance to say more. I return to my deckchair and sit down in it, picking up my Webster essay, which nicely covers the letter I was writing to Noel Olivier.

  I’ve such a passion to see you again, and talk, having kissed you. We’ve denied ourselves so much…We deserve something …Oh, Noel, remember Grantchester! I want to sit and talk and talk and talk, and see you, in every light and mood and position…my dearest dear…I love you. Rupert.

  My God, sometimes I write well. Better than almost anybody in England!

  As I’m writing, and dwelling on all this, Ka wanders over towards the hives. Without looking up I hear the humming bees intensify–a warning sound, like the waves of the sea gathering towards a storm. ‘I say, Ka, don’t go too close!’

  ‘Oh, I saw the maid there just now,’ Ka replies. ‘She brushed them away with her hands…’

  ‘That’s the maid, though. She has a way with them. She’s a bee-keeper’s daughter. I wouldn’t risk it.’

  Ka looks a trifle piqued at being told not to do something, but seems to take my advice and strides towards me. With her hair wrapped in some sort of emerald green scarf and those rather loose, full skirts she wears, I do see it, just for a moment. What Jacques means when he describes her as looking like one of the peasants in Augustus John’s paintings. But, then, Jacques is in love with her.

  ‘How’s it coming along?’ she says, in that deep, hot voice she has.

  She means the Webster essay, I suppose. Or perhaps my poems. I cast around for a line to try on her to persuade her that this is indeed what I’m writing, meanwhile closing the notebook (Noel’s letter inside it), and standing up to stretch, hoping the sight of my manly torso elongating in miraculous fashion might temporarily distract her.

  A timely shriek from the Old Vicarage rescues me. It’s a shriek so piercing and frightened that we both run at once towards the sound–coming from the kitchen. Billows of black smoke greet us and the sight of Mrs Neeve in a panic, face smeared with soot, shrieking, ‘Help, help!’, smoke everywhere in black clouds–the beam in the kitchen is on fire. It is difficult to get at, being in part the chimneypiece, but I dash for a bucket and Ka runs to the garden tap to fill it, while I flap at the beam with a rug, meaning to smother it, but succeeding only in fanning the flames.

  Tommy–the butcher’s boy–has dashed for the Brigade, borrowing someone’s motorbike. Good, practical, bear-like Ka attacks the beam, sloshing water at it and then running to the mill stream at the bottom of the garden again to fill another bucket, until with a foul, sizzling smell the flames start to die down and the kitchen is full of maids from next door (Nellie silent and–could it be?–amused) and Mrs Stevenson saying, ‘Oh, these old houses!’ and Florence Neeve answering her, ‘There can be no doubt we were all Lying in Danger last night!’ (She means that the chimney beam has been smouldering all night long, which is patently not true.) And all the time Ka and Nellie appraising one another in that way women have and Tommy arriving back to announce, with glorious cheer, ‘The Brigade is on its way!’

  I don’t like the way he looks at Nell, that young man.

  I feel, of course, faintly ridiculous and undoubtedly irrelevant. (There is something particularly galling about the British Working Man that makes one feel this way when one is attempting to do something male and heroic around the ladies.) Tommy wears no shirt, and one cannot help observing that his chest is golden and glazed like a good apple pie. And that he and Nell giggle together and she seems to be very well acquainted with him.

  Infuriating. I am still smarting from my recent brush with Tommy’s equivalent in Dorset–men who made no mystery of their contempt for Dudley and me, whatever our intentions. My eyes keep returning to Nell. How well does she know this fellow?

  My nose is covered with smuts, my shirt is blackened and hanging out from my trousers, and my besocked feet are grey and soaking wet. I catch sight of Mrs Neeve glancing at me and nudging her son, Cyril, and with a dignified sniff, I decide I can be most useful by returning outside to my writing.

  As I go I hear Mrs Neeve say firmly, ‘Ooh. That was a Danger Closely Avoided.’

  Sheepishly, I pick up the notebook from the grass and sit back down in the deckchair. And there suddenly is Nellie, hurrying, scurrying, with blackened beams and detritus to a bonfire near the sundial.

  ‘I trust you weren’t hurt, child?’ I ask her, leaping up and offering to help.

  ‘I’m fine, thank you.’

  She doesn’t look at me but wipes at her sooty hands with dock leaves and tries to rub the soot from her dress. I move to help her, taking my handkerchief from my pocket, but from the corner of my eye once again I see Ka approaching–God, does the woman have clairvoyant powers?–with her unmistakable swinging stride.

  ‘Ehm–when you’ve a moment, Nellie, would you be so kind as to bring us some apple cider? We’ll take it in the Orchard gardens rather than here, if you prefer.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Brooke,’ Nellie says simply, and if she feels offended, there is no sign of it.

  Ka, recovered from her exertions, comes to join me under the apple trees, selecting a tree furthest from the house and pulling out a deckchair after thoughtfully doing the same for me. Absently I brush some of the white crust of bird droppings from the wooden frame with my handkerchief.

  ‘She’s pretty, isn’t she?’ Ka says.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The maid, of course. Nellie. The one you said was a bee-keeper’s daughter.’

  ‘Is she? I hadn’t noticed.’

  Ka plumps herself down in the deckchair, leaning her head back and stretching her legs beneath her skirt, while I search for something to change the subject.

  ‘You didn’t turn up to Gwen and Jacques’ supper party, Ka. I was relying on you. More of our circle joining up and abandoning us single folk…Didn’t we pledge never to do it? Married people make me sick. They suddenly have secrets–it’s like being a child outside one’s parents’ bedroom!’

  Her face tells me that I have departed the frying-pan and plunged into the fire.

  Hurriedly I carry on, ‘Ah, well, they will be safely on their honeymoon by now…Virginia Stephen is coming to stay here next week. How do you rate my chances at getting Virginia to swim naked in Byron’s Pool?’

  To my horror, a large tear rolls down Ka’s face and she succumbs to a gulp and then a full-blown sob. She lifts her pince-nez to wipe at it with her fingers but another soon follows and she can only close her eyes an
d cover her face with her hands.

  ‘Ka, Ka–what have I said? I’m sorry, what is it? Don’t you like Virginia? But you know she and I are practically cousins, have been friends since childhood…’

  Ka shakes her head, giving me to understand that this is not the source of her pain at all. I feel for my handkerchief again as Nellie arrives, puts the tall glasses of cider in front of us with a napkin for each, and turns soundlessly away. I know she has seen Ka’s tears. I wonder at the light she will cast them in, but there is nothing I can do about it. When Nell is out of earshot I leap from my chair and hurry to Ka’s side.

  Ka shoots one glance at the bird-stained handkerchief and, with a wet laugh, pushes it away. ‘No,’ she says, sniffing. ‘No, not Virginia, nothing about that…’

  ‘What then, dear Ka? It’s surely not Jacques and Gwen…I can’t understand it! You turned Jacques down…’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know. I’m foolish and–and it makes no sense! But when you mentioned their honeymoon, and I thought of them in Churchfield House, in Lulworth–the very place he proposed to me!–it was only then that I minded…not the marriage, no, not that. But more–well, what you said about feeling excluded. That’s the part that hurts. Being excluded from a friendship with both of them. And then Jacques’ suggestion to me, his marvellous solution…You heard, I suppose?’

  I am listening, I swear I am. But there is something else going through my mind, as Ka leans forward, the large green baubles round her neck glinting in the sun and tinkling like a mountain goat’s bells…I see the deep place between her breasts, and the tear-streaked cheek suddenly appears downy and young. And my attention is diverted by a wood-pigeon cooing away incessantly in one of the trees and the departing figure of Nell disappearing between them; so that I miss a little of what she is saying…