Nightingale Wood (16 page)

Probably when I start the actual driving it’ll be such fun that I’ll stop being thrilled (deliberately she used the cheapened word, because she wanted to cheapen her emotion) about Saxon, and turn into a car-maniac.

She got energetically out of bed, ignoring the little voice inside her head that suddenly, with the driest possible intonation, observed,
But I think not
.

CHAPTER IX

What a scene of unharnessed
libido
there was in the courtyard of The Eagles about eleven o’clock that morning! Tina, sauntering out to have her little talk with Saxon, met Madge coming back from Colonel Phillips’s, followed by a fat, big-pawed, panting lump with a fondant-pink tongue; the Sealyham puppy. Madge’s face was shining with pleasure and excitement, but she was trying to look severe because the dog must be made to realize, from her first hour as its owner, that she meant what she said; and she was now trying to make him follow her across the yard.

‘Is that him? What a pet!’ exclaimed Tina, her own eyes bright with happiness. It was such an exquisite morning! She wanted to be off, away, flying through the thin blue air: and round at the side of the car, cleaning it after a dismal expedition yesterday with Mr Wither into Chesterbourne, was Saxon, smiling at the puppy and trying to look correct and get on with his work all at once.

‘Don’t talk to him now, please,’ said Madge quickly, as Tina stopped and held out a finger which the puppy was only too delighted to bite. ‘It’s frightfully important to begin training them from the very first moment you have them, and I do want him to be decently trained; a badly behaved dog is ghastly, I think.’

She rammed her fists deeper into her tweed pockets and, standing with her legs slightly apart, called in a low, carefully controlled voice: ‘Come here.’

The puppy lumbered off and smelled Saxon.

‘Come here,’ repeated Madge. The puppy lumbered off and smelled Tina.

‘Come here.’

‘Bless him! He’s nothing but a wuzzer,’ protested Tina, laughing. ‘Come and kiss your Aunt Tina, then.’ She lifted him up.

‘Oh, don’t do that, please, Tina,’ said her sister urgently, ‘he
must
learn to come when I call, and he’ll never get the idea if you keep on distracting his attention. Put him down, please.’

Tina put him down.

‘Come here,’ said Madge, in the same quiet, firm tone, and this time the puppy strolled over to her and smelled her brogues.

‘There!’ radiantly. ‘He’ll soon learn. It does pay to persevere with them.’ She bent and gave the puppy one short, controlled pat. ‘Good dog.’

‘What are you going to call him?’

‘Polo.’

‘What?’

‘Polo.’

‘Polo the Game, or just Polo?’

‘Don’t be an ass, Tina,’ laughed Madge good-naturedly, ‘you couldn’t call a dog Polo the Game. Just Polo, of course. I think it’s rather neat myself. One gets so sick of Jerrys and Whiskys and Pats.’

She went off to Polo’s large new kennel, standing as near to the back door as she could put it, and began to instruct him how to get into it, in what Tina foresaw was going to be her Polo-voice.

Nice to see poor old Madge so happy, thought Tina, strolling over to the car. It’s pathetic, of course, that a puppy can make her look ten years younger and as pleased as a child, but she doesn’t know it’s pathetic, so that doesn’t matter.

She herself felt easy and cheerful; her intense mood of the early morning had vanished. When Saxon stopped polishing as she approached, and stood upright, respectful and inquiring, she looked at him without even the faintest shock of emotion and said pleasantly,

‘Oh, good morning, Saxon. I want you to teach me to drive. Can you fit that in, do you think, with your work and the garden and everything?’

‘Oh yes, Madam,’ said he, looking nothing but correct. His voice was pleasing; he neither spoke Essex nor tried to talk like gentry. It was just a naturally nice voice that would have been attractive in any young man, and Tina did not realize how anxiously she had been waiting to see if it really were as nice as she, in one or two humiliating reveries, had believed it to be.

‘Good. Well, can we have the first lesson soon, please? It’s such lovely weather now, and later on it may get hot and dusty and I hate motoring in the dust.’

How true all this was, how sensible and practical! Things were going quite normally; they could not be going better.
My true love hath my heart and I have his
, suddenly said that little voice in her head, as she looked calmly into Saxon’s calm grey eyes.
Shut up
, Tina told it fiercely,
that’s pure hysteria and doesn’t mean a thing
.

‘Yes, Madam, it does get dusty later on. Would you like a lesson this morning, Madam? I’ve nearly finished cleaning the car, and perhaps I could just show you how it works.’

His respectful but easy voice was quietly taking charge of the situation, and Tina did not like that much, because she wanted to feel that
she
was managing the affair, but she could not bear, after this little talk with him, to re-enter the chilly quiet house and watch the cloud shadows for the rest of the day while she buffed her nails and wondered what in heaven she should do about that little voice in her head, so she answered:

‘Yes, that’s a good idea. I’ll come back in fifteen minutes, then.’

‘Very good, Madam.’

Tina walked competently across the yard and into the house, feeling efficient and briskly serious. It would be useful to know how to drive, one never knew when a knowledge of driving might come in handy. It’s high time I did learn, really, she thought as she went upstairs to her room. I ought to have learned years ago, only somehow – (no … her thoughts sheered away like a flock of frightened sheep) I was just lazy, I suppose.

Downstairs, dawdling through the sunlight and looking only half-awake came another lazy one, her silly but rather sweet sister-in-law, with an open novel in her hand. A pang went through Tina; dawdle, idle, be silly as she might, how young she was!

‘Where are you flying off to?’ inquired Viola, rather sulkily; few sights are more annoying when we feel lazy than that of somebody bounding upstairs.

‘Just going to have a driving lesson,’ over her shoulder as she went into her room.

‘Oh, who with? Saxon?’ Viola followed her in and plomped on the bed, a habit of hers that Tina disliked. She nodded. She knew, in a fury of impatience and dismay, that Viola would say, ‘Oo, can I come too?’

‘Oo, can I come, too?’ said Viola.

‘No, you can’t,’ pronounced her sister-in-law lightly, summoning her extra fifteen years of experience and firmly grasping the situation. ‘I’m serious about it; I really do want to learn, and if you’re at the back, breathing down my neck and giving me advice, I shan’t be able to concentrate.’

Pause. Tina put on her beret.

‘Oh, all right,’ said Viola amiably, getting up. She added, going slap into the heart of the situation with devastating simplicity, ‘I don’t want to butt in.’

‘Butt in?’ repeated Tina, pulling on her gloves, and trying to be haughty. ‘My dear child, it isn’t a question of—’

But the mildly inquiring look on Viola’s face, with just the hint of a laugh in the eyes, defeated her. She giggled angrily, shook her fist, and went quickly out of the room,

It was delightful to be teased about Saxon! She ran downstairs singing. How easy life was if you took it lightly!

Viola stood by the bed, a little forlornly.

It did not occur to her primitive mind that Tina could want to learn to drive the car for any other reason than to be near Saxon. No one had taught Viola that ladies did not fall in love with chauffeurs. Had she asked Miss Cattyman, Miss Cattyman would have said that some ladies did; there was that awful case in the papers; and the aunts would have said that of course ladies, real ladies, didn’t. But her father, that romantic whose irritable yet rose-coloured view of life had coloured her own childish outlook, would have pointed out what a lot of ladies in Shakespeare’s plays had fallen in love, quite uninvited, with the most unsuitable and surprising people: and Viola went by what her father would have said. It seemed to her quite funny, natural and exciting that Tina should be keen on Saxon.

She had felt, for weeks, Tina’s interest in Saxon floating between herself and her sister-in-law every time his name was mentioned. Her feeling was vague but strong: when Tina admitted, by her laugh and her shaken fist, that she wanted to be alone with Saxon, Viola experienced no surprise; she felt that she had known for weeks how Tina felt.

But Tina’s happiness made her feel both lonely and sad.

After all, she thought, going slowly downstairs, she has got Saxon on the spot, and she can see him and be with him and that’s something; it isn’t like having absolutely
no one
, and the only person you’re at all keen on being frightfully rich and having a gorgeous time and engaged, I expect, to someone simply marvellous, like a film star.

She stopped at the back staircase that led down into the yard.

‘Come here,’ floated up a low, controlled voice. ‘Polo. Polo, come here.’

This glided off Viola’s mind without interesting her: she was not inquisitive. I’ll go out the front way, she thought, in case Tina’s down there with him. I don’t want to make her laugh.

Love, in Viola’s opinion, was a matter for giggles. Her practical experience of it had never made her want to giggle, but it made Shirley giggle, and The Crowd (in public, at least), and here was Tina, giggling like the rest. It was a matter of pride to giggle. Don’t let it Get You Down, The Crowd earnestly advised any one of its members who might be in love – rather as though Love were an allin wrestler with a lot of patent holds which it was the victim’s job to dodge.

But Viola herself did not feel like giggling.

‘I’ll go for a walk in the wood,’ she decided, and tiptoed past Mr Wither’s den and out through the front door.

She saw the car’s glossy backside just dwindling down the road, and waited until it was out of sight; then she wandered off into the wood with her hands in her pockets, thinking that she only had five pounds of her money left and wondering if, when that should be gone, she dare ask Mr Wither for some more.

Tina sat beside Saxon in silence. She was having her desire. On either side the blossoming trees went by, and the road ran ahead, and she breathed the air of late spring, while she saw, without looking, his hands on the wheel and his profile against the green woods. She felt so peaceful and content that she did not want to begin the driving lesson; she wanted to move like this for ever, as though he and she were two lovers in a gondola. I’m glad I’ve known him for such a long time; it’s not like being with a stranger; after all, it’s only little Saxon who I used to see swinging on gates and forgetting to shut them on purpose; and I’ve lived here for so long, too … that’s why everything’s so peaceful. I’m sure love is calm, not violent and frightening. Like a dove there sailed into her mind:

And with the morn those Angel faces smile
,

That I have loved long since, and lost awhile
.

Doctor Irene would have a lot to say about that, I’m sure.

People are so clever.

Saxon slowed the car, braked, and turned respectfully to her. The lane was very quiet, as the nasty noise of the engine died away.

‘Would you like me to explain how it works, Madam?’

‘Please.’ Tina leaned back comfortably and turned upon him an alert, intelligent expression, but he was not looking at her. If there was the dimmest feeling at the back of his mind that Miss Tina did not seriously want to learn how the Austin worked, he repressed that feeling and set himself to show her; for he might be mistaken, and that would be a nice letting-go, that would, getting fresh with Miss Tina. The Push with no reference, that’s what that would mean.

All the same, he was flattered that she wanted him to teach her. The Old Boy could have done it just as well, really … only no one in their right mind ’ud want to learn anything off – from – him.

So he began to explain very clearly how the Austin worked, beginning with the bit about the gears, for he took it for granted that his pupil only wanted to know how to make the thing move, not how it was that it moved at all. When he said, ‘How it works,’ he meant ‘How you work it.’ He decided that she could be told about the engine later on.

‘There’s a lot to remember, isn’t there?’ said Tina, presently, but more for something to say than because she meant it.

‘There is at first, Madam, but you’ll find it comes suddenly. They say learning the piano’s just the same, and the typewriter.’

In fact, she found little difficulty in concentrating on what he was saying and remembering it, so that when he mentioned third gear she knew, without stopping to think, what he meant. Her brain as a young woman had been quick and intelligent and a good memory had helped it. She was not a fuzzy person like Viola; had she been, she might have married, for the distressing truth is that the fuzzies usually do; men like them. She had kept her brain exercised by reading heavyish books, which might not always be truly wise but at least were not those meringues of the intellect, those mental brandies-and-sodas –
novels
.

And she tried hard now to concentrate upon what he said, because she was frightened by the mood of dreamy contentment that had fallen over her like the rays of the sun, shining high, so high that it was lost in its own light above the summer landscape of Essex. She could feel magic in the quiet spring day, like a sorcerer’s far-off voice, and lines of poetry floated over her mind as if they were strands of spider-web.

‘Now,’ she suddenly interrupted him, ‘I want to go through what you’ve told me and see how much I remember before I actually take the wheel.’