“Come on, Evie! Let’s go down there!”
She shook her head.
“Come on, young Babbacombe!”
The sodium light exploded.
“Don’t call me that!”
She stood up quickly.
“Robert does.”
“He can call me what he likes!”
“Temper!”
She seemed about to speak, but changed her mind. She squinted over her shoulder, beating any possible stone dust off her seat. I exploded like the sodium light.
“Why the hell did you come down to the bridge, then?”
She stopped beating her seat and looked at me, eyes and mouth open.
“Why? Where else is there to go?”
She wiped one hand on the other, smiled briefly and turned away towards the street.
“Evie—”
She did not answer, but went on walking. At the bottom of the Bridge where the street began she glinted back over her left shoulder, lifting her hand by it and wiggling the fingers. I stood, my walking stick across my thighs, and watched her. She was doing her walk again, our local phenomenon, nothing moving but legs below the knee, on the invisible line patrolled daily by Sergeant or Mrs. Babbacombe. She moved from light to light; and with my new craving, my new wickedness, I saw and understood how the moneyless shapes of men outside each pub watched her, their heads turning with a silent and hopeless avidity. She would be fifty yards past them, when the burst of jeering, libidinous laughter came. I knew that I should never be able to endure it myself, my feet swollen, face rigid; but Evie never faltered. I went home by way of side alleys to avoid running that gauntlet.
Next morning, shaving sullenly, I had an idea that stopped the razor on my cheek. There, in the Ewans’s stable was Robert’s bike. I looked out quickly and saw that nothing had been done about it at all. I finished shaving and hurried down to breakfast, telling myself I must be careful and diplomatic. Lead the conversation round, bit by bit.
I was so quick that both my father and mother were still eating. My mother broke off to fetch my breakfast from the pan. This was fortunate.
“Young Robert’s bike is still in the stable, I see.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. It is.”
My father glanced up under his eyebrows through his pebble glasses.
“Best place for it.”
I nodded, and kept the ball in play.
“It’s out of the rain, anyway.”
“Ha!”
My mother came back and put my plate down with the kind of firmness that always indicated further communication.
“Don’t think you’re going to have that bike, Oliver, either to borrow or buy!”
My mouth fell open. She sat down again.
“Besides,” said my father, “We couldn’t afford it.”
“I’ve got—”
“And you’ll need it,” said my mother, “every penny of it.”
“If Robert—”
“I do wish you’d clear your mouth before speaking, dear,” said my mother. She swallowed. “He will want it again anyway. If his father lets him ride it again, which I doubt. Ewan’s not a fool.”
“How can he want it again if he’s a cripple?”
“Cripple!” said my mother. “Who gave you that idea?”
“He was badly bruised,” said my father. “He’s broken some ribs too. But he’ll be all right.”
“I thought—I saw the bike—it was so badly damaged—”
“Just a few weeks,” said my father. “Young Ewan’s all right. Teach him a lesson, silly ass!”
“Every week you see something in the Stilbourne Advertiser. Killed, like as not. Oh! Which reminds me, Father—Imogen Grantley’s getting married in Barchester Cathedral!”
“That’ll be a big do,” said my father as he pushed away his plate. “When?”
“July the twenty-seventh. Only gives her a few weeks. But of course with money to spend—”
“Lot of nonsense,” said my father. “Dressing up.”
“After all, Father, her great-uncle was Dean. He married a Totterfield. Then—I wonder who she’ll have for bride’s maids?”
“Not me, at any rate,” said my father. He twinkled through his pebbles and stood up. “I’ve got work to do.”
“Oliver, dear, eat your other egg!”
“Put the bike out of your head, old son. When you’re as old as I am, you’ll understand.”
“Eat it up.”
“Leave me alone!”
“Don’t speak to your mother like that!”
“Leave me alone! Leave me alone! I—don’t want it!”
My father sat down and looked at me gravely.
“He’s up and down all the time,” said my mother looking at him. He looked back. She nodded meaningly. “I always wondered if it was a good idea.”
They began to weave a web across the table of care and attention.
“Routine,” said my father. “That’s what he needs again.”
“Oh I don’t know, you know. He’s always been up and down you know. I was the same.”
“A steady, calming routine. He ought to go back to school for the last three weeks or whatever it is.”
“I won’t. I’m not a schoolboy any more!”
“Show us your tongue, old son.”
“For God’s sake!”
“Don’t speak to your father like that!”
“I want to go away.”
“Now, Oliver—!”
“I do. Anywhere.”
“Well,” said my mother kindly. “You’re going to Oxford, aren’t you? Only a few weeks’ time—”
“Storm in a teacup,” said my father gruffly. “Needs a good clear-out, that’s what the boy needs.”
“He was always up and down. Even as a baby.”
My father stood up again, and plodded towards the dispensary. His mutter was cut off by the door.
“I’ll just go and get him a—”
I stood up too, my legs trembling.
“Where are you going, dear?”
I slammed the dining room door brutally. I stood, still trembling, looking at our battered piano with the worn music stool before it. I swung my left fist with all my force into the shining walnut panel between the two brass candle-holders and it cracked from top to bottom.
“Oliver!”
I was wrestling with the chains and locks and bolts of the front door.
“Oliver—come back! I want to speak to you! All because we won’t buy you a—”
I slammed the front door too, and heard its immediate replication from the church tower. I got our iron gate open, and stood on the cobbles by the chain rails round the grass. I saw Mrs. Babbacombe carrying her inclined smile at me along in front of the railing before Miss Dawlish’s house.
*
I only came to myself a little when I was sitting on the coping stone of the Old Bridge. My throat was drier than it had ever been and my left hand looked like a boxing glove.
I began to wander aimlessly round the town. I saw, from far off, Evie leave the Ewans’s house after surgery and hurry back to Chandler’s Close; and sneered to myself. But then I saw her come back, past the vicarage, and vanish down an alley that led to Chandler’s Lane behind our garden. Still jeering and sneering at myself I went another way round, to see where she had got to, but Chandler’s Lane was empty. I began to search it, without hope; but searching was something to do.
So strong is habit, even in as small a place as Stilbourne, that the last time I had been to the farther end was when I had been pushed in a chair as a small child. There was a wooden hut at the dead end on a piece of waste land, huddled under the slope up to the escarpment. I examined it curiously for I had never seen anything like it before. It was a Roman Catholic Church, and the notice outside said that Mass would be celebrated there whenever possible. This made me smile, despite my storm, for I had never met the Roman Catholic Church outside a history book. To come across it living, so
to speak, was like finding a diplodocus. I began to laugh. Evie came out of the hut. She had a duster in one hand and began to flap it vigorously.
“Hullo, Evie!”
She glanced round, saw me, and caught her breath.
“I’m busy.”
I laughed again, jeeringly.
“I can wait. Got nothing to do.”
“Oh go away, Olly! Unless—”
“Unless what?”
“Nothing.”
She went back inside. I stood, examining the notice, the carved figure and sneered. I was fixed in a sneer.
After about twenty minutes, Evie came out again, brushing the front of her skirt down. I noticed that she had tied her silk square over her hair. The celebrated, the notorious cross hung outside her cotton dress. She paid very little attention to me but locked the door behind her and set off to walk back to Chandler’s Close as if I were no more than a bush.
“You been having a Mass or something, Evie?”
She gave a little laugh and walked on.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Come for a walk, then.”
“No.”
“Ha! No motor bike.”
“I been helping him as much as I can!”
“You can’t help him! What d’you think you are? A nurse?”
Evie said nothing but smiled a secret smile. She dropped the cross down inside her dress. I watched it disappear, with a sudden feeling of absolute determination and certainty.
“You don’t need to help him, anyway. He’s all right. Only bruised and a few ribs broken.”
Evie stopped, turned and faced me. I stopped too.
“What d’you mean, Olly? You mean he’s better?”
Bitterly, I felt the unfairness of it all—Robert getting a reputation for daring and all this sympathy and paying nothing for it. Evie was looking at me, through me, with a face of heavenly delight.
I spoke out of my certainty.
“Help me, then.”
I glanced at the bushy track that led winding up the face of the escarpment. I turned back to her, and nodded solemnly.
“Yes. He’s all right. I’m not.”
“And he won’t be—”
“I’m not.”
Evie moved to go home. I caught her wrist as Sergeant Babbacombe had caught it and bore down on it, so that she stopped, staggered, then stood looking up at me.
“I’m not. You think you can do what you like, don’t you?” I walked to the beginning of the track, towing her.
“Olly! What you doing?”
I went on towing. The bushes and scrubby trees closed round us. I towed her up the steep path, not looking round.
“Little Olly isn’t a sucker any more. Little Olly is in charge from now on. And if Bobby gets better and starts anything, little Olly will break his neck.”
“Let me go, Olly!”
“And little Evie’s neck.”
She laughed her scandalized laugh and pawed at my swollen knuckles with her free hand. I shook it irritably. The path got narrower and the trees closed in over it. Evie’s hand relaxed and hung limp from mine. She no longer pulled back, but followed obediently. I laughed aloud.
“That’s better!”
“Listen, Olly. I got to explain.”
I answered her elaborately.
“No explanation is necessary, my dear young lady!”
“What I’m trying to say is, everything’s different—see—if you could only—”
“Here we are.”
I looked round me at the clump of trees, hardly hearing Evie’s voice as she went on talking. The edge of the escarpment concealed us from the town; and beneath the trees was a tangle of undergrowth, sown thick with flowers. I drew Evie round from behind me, and we were facing each other.
“You haven’t been listening!”
I put my arms round her and squeezed with that strange feeling of certainty. Her eyes closed, her head went back. I lowered my own and kissed her. She resisted me for a moment but for a moment only. Then she pulled her mouth away with a shocked giggle and tried to escape. To my surprise, that strength for carrying coal and chopping wood now seemed wholly inadequate.
“Let me go, Olly! I got to help Mum!”
I squeezed again, bore her back against a tree. She was solid and female and I did not know how to go on. Then, with primitive inspiration I took out the rigid and burning root of the matter and laid her unresisting hands on it. Evie’s eyes opened and she looked down. Her mouth went lopsided and instead of a smile there appeared a sneering grin, that was at once knowing and avid and contemptuous. Her voice was a hoarse and breathy mutter. Her chest started to go in and out.
“Should I have all that?”
Yes, I assured her, breathy and hoarse as she, so that the wood swung with it and jumped with heart-thump, yes, she should, she should. Her legs began to give, she was sliding down me. And through all the turmoil I heard her breathe at me.
“Get on with it, then.”
*
The clump settled back into place as my heart settled. I was lying flat, eyes half-open, and the leafy tops of the trees were out of focus. Each heart-thump shattered them like an image in suddenly disturbed water. I was aware of nothing but peace; peace in my blood and nerves, my bones, peace in my head and my deep breath and in my slowing heart. It was a good peace, that spread. Those were good leaves up there, with a good, bright sky beyond them. This was a good earth beneath my back, soft as a bed and all its unexamined depths was a good darkness. I let my head fall sideways and saw a white sock and brown sandal. The other was a yard away. I turned over and got on one elbow, and examined her feet and legs inch by inch in a deep, calm peace. My eye searched them, parted and slack, white, soft, gentle with wandering veins of faintest blue. It searched further, calmly past her thighs to her almost hairless body, where the evidence of my perilous onanism was scattered round her pink petals. It moved along, taking in the white arms on either side, hands open, to the shiver of pulse over her heart; inspected where she breathed, more quickly than I, so that the two smooth segments of spheres with their pink tips, bounced and quivered minutely, for all their firmness.
Triumph and delight began to burgeon and spread in me. I looked, smiling at the cotton dress, rucked, jammed up in a bundle from armpit to armpit. I lifted my chin and stared, laughing into her face. Her head was propped up a bit, eyes dark and deep and slitted between the shivering paintbrushes. Her lips were everted still more, her mouth breathing quickly as if it were the only way she could rid herself of her body’s heat. I sat upright and she gave a quick glance at me from far back in her head, then looked away again.
She muttered.
“That’s all I s’pose.”
Her dark hair lay strewn among the smashed and scattered bluebells. I bent quickly, and kissed the nearer pink tip and she shivered from head to foot. I kissed the other, laughing, then sat back and put the hair out of my eyes. As I did it I felt some discomfort, so lifted my left hand again and examined it. The knuckles were a mess, the whole thing puffed and ungainly. When I tried to flex my fingers, the pain stabbed up my arm.
“My God. I wonder why it’s begun to ache like this? It wasn’t aching before!”
Evie lifted her head and examined herself.
“Got what you want now, haven’t you?”
“Here. Have my handkerchief.”
“Ta.”
Possessively I reached to her breast, but she smacked my hand away.
“Leave me alone!”
She jumped up, and pulled at her dress so that it stretched down like a concertina.
“Look at all these creases—how am I—Oh!”
She stamped in the brown leaves, snatched her head square and her knickers from where I had thrown them.
“You’ve got some leaves in your hair. And a twig.”
“Look at these creases!”
They certainly told the story explicitly enough. I had a passing thought that Evie must su
rely have met this particular difficulty before, at least with Robert. I tried to help her, passing my hand heavily down her back, but she jerked away.
“Don’t think I belong to you, young Oliver!”
“I’m older than you are!”
She looked at me, not glinting or provocatively, but as a human being might look at an object. It was odd, I thought, how dark grey eyes can seem to be. She opened her mouth to speak, but shut it again and went on, smoothing and beating. Nevertheless, I thought—and the triumph that had been burgeoning, burst into sudden scarlet blossom—I had had this sulky, feminine, gorgeous creature!
“Hold still a moment, Evie. I’ll get the twig out.”
I untwisted her hair, smelt it, and the scent of the earth, and the faint, thin smell of the smashed flowers. I threw the twig away and hugged her. She was a sullen and passive lump in my arms.
Evie pulled away and picked among the trees towards the path. I followed. She began to walk faster, hurrying out of the trees, down between the bushes, broke into an uneven trot that she only interrupted where the brambles were too close together for anything but delicate negotiation. A few yards from Chandler’s Lane I stopped her.
“Evie—”
She looked up at me, smouldering.
“When shall we—”
“Don’t know.”
“Meet you here this evening.”
She smiled at that, a little of the lop-sided grimace I had seen once before.
“No fear.”
“Tomorrow then.”
“How should I know?”
“Tomorrow—after surgery. In the evening.”
“Want to bet, Mr. Clever?”
I took her firmly by the shoulders.
“Tomorrow evening after surgery. I’ll be waiting for you. We’ll have some more—”
She said nothing but stared darkly through my chest.
“Shan’t we, Evie? I said ‘Shan’t we?’”
Evie drooped a little between my hands.
I watched her slide, at her accustomed pace, past the vicarage and the cottages, down towards Chandler’s Close. I stood there, in the pride of possession, enjoying her bob, the swell of her seat and the little motion of her delicate arms. I went home and faced the music. There was plenty of it and all the more powerful for being muted. My father treated me with a serious concern that was as fearsome as open anger. Nobody mentioned the split panel of the piano. My mother thought I ought to be ashamed; but with such a desperately concealed fear for my sanity that it was very obvious to me. My father examined my hand, painted the cuts with iodine, and gave me some opening medicine. I apologized all round of course, saying I had not known what came over me. I would mend the piano or pay for it to be mended somehow when I could. I would not offend again; and yes, I felt perfectly calm. And once more, I was desperately sorry. But really, nothing touched me, not the smashed panel, nor my father’s deep anxiety. Not even my mother’s tears.