The Girl in a Swing

What did you say?'

  'I said we'd order them at once by telephone and that

  you'd bring them out to her personally as soon as they

  arrived.'

  'Good girl! Did she ask who you were?'

  'Oh, naturally. We had quite a little chat.'

  She kissed me quickly on the cheek, took off the shopcoat

  and hung it on the back of the door.

  'Now I'm going out to find some lunch and do the shopping.

  You can give me some housekeeping money if you

  like -'

  195

  'Well, that's fine, Mrs Taswell. Thank you very much for

  looking after everything so well. By the way, here's your

  money -'

  'Oh, that doesn't matter, Mr Desland. That's quite immaterial.

  You shouldn't have bothered in the least.' (I knew

  she must have been short.) 'I can perfectly well manage, you

  know -'

  'No, here you are. I've added a little extra -'

  'I've told you before, Mr Desland, I shall only put it in the

  collection -'

  'Well, that's up to you. I suppose Mr Hatchett-'

  'And about the mouse-trap, Mr Desland -'

  'Oh, yes: yes. I'll get one, don't you bother any more

  about it. By the way, my wife's here; she's talking to Deirdre

  at the moment. She very much wants to meet you. I wonder,

  would you care to go down and make her feel at home for a

  few minutes?'

  'Well, if you wish me to, Mr Desland, of course.'

  I proceeded to telephone Mr Hatchett, who was ruffled,

  completely nonplussed by the inexplicable Mrs Taswell but

  finally more or less mollified, and assured him that his cheque

  was in the post. (It wasn't, of course, but it would darned

  well have to be before close of play.) I then descended into

  the depths of Mrs Taswell's 'In' tray, shuddering at every

  step, and soon became so much absorbed that I even forgot

  about Kathe.

  Towards the end of the morning I had dealt with the more

  urgent correspondence, checked the turnover and holdings

  of most of our non-antique stock, given Mrs Taswell a list

  of items for orders to wholesalers and, after a quick glance

  through such catalogues and notices of sales as had arrived

  while I had been away, planned my programme for the next

  three weeks. Shortage of capital was going to be the principal

  problem. Since it was Saturday I could not talk to the bank,

  but I had already worked out that I must be even lower

  than I had feared. I would have to raise a loan (and find the

  interest) or else sell some pieces from my private collection.

  Either prospect was depressing, and I postponed a decision

  194

  until next week. Flick's detached opinion was likely to be

  helpful: it often had been in the past.

  At least I could hear customers coming and going with

  pleasing frequency, and supposed, since she had not come

  to ask for my help or Mrs Taswell's, that Deirdre must be

  coping with them. I was just thinking of knocking off for an

  early lunch when Kathe strolled into the office, wearing a

  'Desland' shop-coat and drying her wet hands on a sheet of

  tissue.

  'Cor, no towel in the loo, Mistralan?' she said happily. 'I

  bet it's different at Bing & Gr0ndahl.'

  'Kathe! Whatever have you been up to?'

  'Working, of course. This coat looks rather professional,

  don't you think? I've sold twelve white plates, two china dogs

  and an ashtray made to look like a bird's nest.'

  'You never?'

  'But of course. Oh, yes, and there's been one person someone

  called Lady Alice - er -'

  'Mendip?'

  'Yes, that's right.'

  'I know her; lives out at Cold Ash. She's hooked on modern

  Copenhagen - I hooked her myself. She knows quite a

  bit about it now. Nice old girl. What did she want?'

  'She wanted us to get her some Danish pieces by Hans

  Tegner - the Blind Man's Buff set. I pretended I knew all

  about it.'

  'Well, we can get them all right, but it's going to cost her.

  What did you say?'

  'I said we'd order them at once by telephone and that

  you'd bring them out to her personally as soon as they

  arrived.'

  'Good girl! Did she ask who you were?'

  'Oh, naturally. We had quite a little chat.'

  She kissed me quickly on the cheek, took off the shopcoat

  and hung it on the back of the door.

  'Now I'm going out to find some lunch and do the shopping.

  You can give me some housekeeping money if you

  like -'

  195

  'Hang on five minutes and I'll come with you.'

  'Oh, no, darling, I think better not. One of us should be

  here, in case of more Lady Alices, don't you think? I won't

  be long, promise.' And she was gone.

  'Well,' I said to Mrs Taswell, 'it looks as though she may

  be going to be quite a help to us, don't you think?'

  'Oh, certainly, Mr Desland; and of course when people get

  married we always hope they're going to be very happy,

  don't we?'

  I took a stroll down the passage to find Deirdre and tell

  her I'd take over in the shop while she went out for lunch.

  'Hope you don't mind me mentionin' it, Mistralan, but I do

  like your young lady - that's to say, your wife. She seems

  ever s' nice. I'm goin' to tell Dad if the Germans are all

  like that I don't see what we was fightin' 'em for.'

  'I shouldn't say that, Deirdre - that'll only annoy him before

  he's met her. But I'm very glad you get on well together.'

  'She bin askin' me questions all mornin' 'bout the china

  - much as I could do to answer some of 'em an' all. Real

  keen, ent she? Oh, and when Lady Mendip come in, you

  could see she was very struck on 'er. "Well," she says to

  'er, "I think Mr Desland's a very lucky man," she says -'

  'Oh, splendid. Well, you'd better pop off for lunch now,

  Deirdre. I'll carry on for an hour till you get back.'

  'She was on tellin' me 'bout that Meissen factory in Germany,

  where they makes all the Dresden porcelain an' that.

  'Twas a king of Poland, she says, as started that, best part

  of three 'undred year ago.'

  'That's right. Augustus the Strong.'

  'Ah, that's what she called 'im.' Deirdre paused, and then

  added with relish, ' 'E seems t'ave bin a bit of a lad, be all

  accounts.'

  'The V. & A. in London have got a porcelain goat that used

  to belong to him. It's life-size, the largest porcelain figure

  ever fired. Rather suitable, I've always thought.'

  At half-past three Kathe collected her parcels together and

  said, 'I'm going home now, Alan, to cook the dinner. Beef

  goulash.'

  196

  'But how, darling, without the car?'

  'There's a bus from the Wharf, that's how - I found out and

  I've got less than fifteen minutes to catch it. When will

  you be back? I'll be all ready to go to Tony Redwood's, if

  you can tell me what time we're going. The goulash'll take

  about two-and-a-half hours, so it can go on simmering by

  itself and be done when we get
back from Tony's. Then I'll

  do Pfannkuchen mil Zitrone. Nice?'

  'Sounds marvellous. Are you sure you want to be bothered

  to go to Tony's? It was only a very casual invitation, you

  know.'

  'Of course I want to!' answered Kathe in a tone of surprise.

  'I like him.' She took a glance into Mrs Taswell's

  looking-glass on the office wall and then said, 'And I believe

  he likes me.'

  17

  IN her arms I was growing, increasing, reaching an inner

  stature I had never known. The canny deliberation, like a

  farmer driving a bargain - the pondering to impose form

  upon or to pluck a meaning from the rainbow or the rose these

  were falling, melting away from me, nightly under the

  simple stars as I rode to sleep, the horses flashing into the

  dark. Kathe seldom or never wasted words by talking in any

  serious way about love-making. Humans have devised ways

  of flying and accordingly discuss the mechanics. With swallows

  it is otherwise. And since swallows know nothing of

  technique, it never shows, never obtrudes upon their intent,

  joyous courses, from the day they leave the nest till their

  brightness falls from the air. For her, though there could be

  variation, there could be no growth.

  Variation - it was a continual astonishment to me. There

  was change like the light throughout a summer day. Not

  talk, I was coming to realize, not clothes, not cooking or

  playing the piano, but making love was the way in which

  197

  Kathe expressed her feelings and reciprocated with the inexhaustible

  world. Sometimes her love-making was grave

  and deliberate - never detached or distant, indeed, but

  passionately majestic - like Hera in the bed of Zeus. The

  world is a great matter, and so is wedlock. Sometimes she

  seemed a milkmaid in the hay. Play is a great matter, the

  rightful complement of work, for if work fills bellies, play

  fills cradles as well. And she could be lewd, a sow in heat

  grunting under the boar. Appetite is the headspring, and 'I

  reckon the One above made pigs an' all' Jack Cain once retorted

  sharply when I, a small boy in gum-boots helping to

  muck out the sty at the bottom of his garden, complained of

  the sucking, viscous mud. It is foolish to say that a wife's

  abilities should include those of a whore, for whores give

  short weight, cold-hearted and rapacious. But mistress she

  comprised, and mare, and the girl chance-met at the shearing;

  and clothed in her flesh they, like any natural and unthinking

  creature - a hovering dragon-fly, or a kitten chasing

  leaves - expressed both dignity and joy.

  For me, there was coming to be the act of creation. A

  true player has an air of authority about his game, sport

  though it may be. I was learning to make love. And as with

  the long swims of my boyhood, when it had been made,

  sometimes it seemed almost tangible; as though, having

  given all, I lay down beside it, fulfilled and spent, like Benvenuto

  Cellini beside the Perseus, household vessels melted,

  furniture burnt and a good job too.

  Tony was delighted to see us and to hear about our wanderings

  in Florida. I had brought him two bottles of a Southern

  Bourbon (called 'Rebel Yell') and we made mint juleps

  and drank them in the garden. Kathe, in her stockinged feet,

  made a valiant effort for twenty minutes to learn singlewicket

  cricket from little torn (who had a terrible cross-bat)

  and then resigned and sat on the grass, talking to Freda

  about shops in Newbury. Later, when Freda had taken torn

  indoors for bath and bed, our conversation turned to travel

  in Europe and the great art galleries. Tony and I spoke of the

  198

  Louvre, the Jeu de Paume and the Uffizi. At length Kathe

  broke in,

  'You mean to say, darling, that when you visited the

  Meissen factory you never went to see the gallery at Dresden?'

  'No, I'm afraid not. My time was so limited, you see.'

  'Have they got some good stuff there?' asked Tony.

  'Oh, yes, wonderful things! Raphael's Madonna - San

  Sisto, I think they call it - and another by Holbein. And oh,

  well - Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens. Oh, and there's a

  simply lovely Mary Magdalene by Correggio.'

  'I bet she's been painted more than any other saint,' I

  said. 'It's pure box-office. They've been sentimentalizing that

  lady any time these five hundred years.'

  'Sentimentalizing?' said Kathe. 'Why, whatever do you

  mean, Alan? Come on, Tony, here's something you and I can

  agree on at last. Stand up and defend Mary Magdalene!'

  'Well, I can see what Alan's getting at,' answered Tony,

  'and I'm deploring it good and hard, but I'm afraid I've got

  to concede him the sentimentalizing, anyway.'

  'I don't see why you're deploring,' I said. 'It's about time

  somebody nailed it. There are two separate inaccuracies,

  really. First of all, the gospels don't say that the woman

  who anointed Christ's feet in Simon's house was Mary Magdalene

  -'

  'Perfectly true.'

  'Not only that, but they don't say or even suggest that the

  sins she felt so sorry for were sexual, or that she'd been of

  loose life, or anything like that at all. St Luke just says "a

  woman which was a sinner". And yet you can see her little

  statue over the College gate at Magdalen, with her pot of

  ointment - been there nearly five centuries now - a beautiful

  young girl with long hair.'

  'Well, you're right, of course,' said Tony, 'though actually

  she'd have to have had long hair to wipe Christ's feet, if you

  come to think of it.'

  'So you are backing him up, Tony,' said Kathe.

  'No-o,' replied Tony reflectively. 'Actually, I'm not at all

  sure that I am. You see, I think the popular legend of Mary

  199

  Magdalene's quite important. It's one of these accretions like

  Joachim and Anna, or the whole Catholic thing about

  the Virgin, who actually gets very little space in the gospels.

  Accretions ought to be taken seriously, because they originate

  from people's spiritual needs; or their spiritual demands,

  anyway. I mean, there's a demand, so it gets supplied

  by a legend, which people come to accept. "If God didn't

  exist, it would be necessary to invent Him," and all that.

  Religion isn't history, though far too many clergymen seem

  to think it is. Spiritual truth's beyond history.'

  'What's the demand with Mary Magdalene, then?' asked

  Kathe.

  'Well, I suppose the idea of Christ offering forgiveness to

  girls who get in a mess sexually. After all, so many always

  have and always will. For the matter of that, the story of

  Christ forgiving the woman taken in adultery - that's now

  widely thought to be an addition to St John. And yet it's

  about the most well-known and popular of all the stories

  about Christ. Same thing - it makes a strong appeal, you

  see.'

  'People who want to destroy th
e past,' said Kathe. 'Oh,

  there must be so many of those! If Christ was alive today,

  d'you think He'd maintain that sex without marriage was

  wrong?'

  'Well,' replied Tony, 'I think His line would be the same

  as it always has been - that it's understandable and forgivable,

  but wrong to the extent that it's less than the best.

  Actually, that follows automatically from acceptance of the

  rest of His doctrine. It's all of a piece. One thing flows from

  another, you know.'

  'Surely,' I said, 'with the Mary Magdalene legend - that is,

  assuming for the sake of argument that she had been a

  prostitute - the question of emotional feeling comes into it.

  Setting aside the sanctity of marriage, it's always been pretty

  generally agreed, even by non-religious people, that it's

  rather grubby and contemptible to use sex for money or

  material gain, without any real warmth or feeling. I suppose

  the point of the story is that when the woman - I won't

  call her Mary Magdalene! - got the message, what she really

  200

  discovered was the difference between the wrong notion of

  sex and the right notion.'

  'Do you think any sin can be forgiven?' asked Kathe suddenly.

  'Sure,' said Tony, 'always provided people can forgive

  themselves. That's what's not generally understood. Selfforgiveness

  is essential, and it can be very hard to forgive

  yourself. Sometimes impossible; like Lady Macbeth.'

  'Oh, that's the trouble with the English; they always start

  bringing in Shakespeare! What's a poor German girl to do?'

  'Sorry. I only meant that forgetting's not forgiving. The

  thing about Lady Macbeth was that she thought she could

  put what she'd done out of her mind, but found she

  couldn't. Her condemnation came entirely from herself - it

  didn't come from anybody else.'

  torn, barefoot, came running out on the lawn in his

  pyjamas, shouting, 'Look, Mrs Desland, look! I can turn a

  cartwheel!' He started, but fell over, narrowly missing a

  flowerbed.

  'You need some more practice, my lad,' said Kathe, picking

  him up.

  ' 'Bet you can't, anyway,' retorted torn cheekily, with a

  touch of mortification.

  Kathe kissed him on both cheeks. 'You shouldn't say

  things like that when I've had two mint juleps. Just for that

  I'm going to show you.'

  Thereupon she kicked off her shoes and turned three perfect

  cartwheels across the grass. Her skirt fell over her head

  and got caught in her hair, and she stood up, putting herself

  to rights and laughing as Torn danced delightedly round her,

  shouting, 'Mummy! Mummy! Mrs Desland can turn cartwheels!

  Come and look!'

  'When you can do a proper one for me, I'll do you another,'

  said Kathe. 'Come on, I'll carry you upstairs if you

  like.'

  Torn hung back. 'Don't want to.'

  'Good heavens, bed's the nicest place in the world,' said

  Kathe, picking him up for the second time. 'You must be

  crazy not to want to go there! Come on, and on the way I'll

  201

  tell you about Fundevogel, right? Well, now, once upon a

  time -'

  That night, after we had made love, she fell asleep in a

  few minutes, her hand, which had been clasping mine, loosing

  its hold and falling on the sheet as gently as a leaf on a

  lawn.

  I lay awake for some time, reflecting. It seemed to me that

  I now had a plain clue to the cause of Kathe's trouble over

  the wedding. Clearly, she was more sensitive and scrupulous

  than one might have supposed; and Tony, in his counsel, had

  been wiser than I had given him credit for. I could only wait

  and see what this extraordinary girl - this marvellous, unpredictable

  mixture of exhibitionism and secrecy - might

  later disclose. It wouldn't affect me, whatever it was. I'd go

  to the farthest shore, turn my life upside down for her.

  'Come on,' I said mentally to God, 'try me! Make it something

  big! My love's equal to anything!' But no doubt, I

  thought, like most things in their past that people feel

  ashamed of, it would turn out to be something perfectly forgivable

  by any right-minded person. Anyway, she'd find me

  ready and waiting as soon as she got around to telling me.

  Then, perhaps, we could be married by Tony.

  Next morning, waking early to the sound of a thrush in

  the silver birch on the lawn, I slipped out of bed without disturbing

  her, left a note on the dressing-table and went to

  seven o'clock Holy Communion. Presumably she wouldn't

  want to go to church later in the day, and I certainly wasn't

  going to suggest it to her. But after these weeks away I myself