Nightingale Wood (31 page)

Oh, so there were others, she thought, not noticing the slip and the apology. I wonder.

She tried, without success, not to wonder.

‘Well, they weren’t anything, really,’ he went on, smiling at her. ‘Chesterbourne kids, mostly, out for a bit of fun.’

She said nothing. She almost held her breath.

It was at this moment that a loud lip-smacking noise sounded through the peaceful silence, while a voice, apparently from nowhere, announced complacently—

‘Yum-yum! Naughty-naughty! I spy you hiding there!’

Tina and Saxon sprang apart, looking wildly round, but there was no one to be seen. The lane was closed by thick hedges, and on the left, the oak-trees of the little wood began.

‘Peek-abo!’ sang the voice. ‘
Oh, they were enjoying it so! When one of them said, you saucy old crow, now just you be off with your peek-abo!
’

The sound came from above. Saxon looked up, and saw something unnaturally big and dark lodged in one of the oak-trees. It craned forward and gracefully waved. It was the Hermit.

The Hermit was not at all bitter about his defeat at the garden party, because his superb health and his vanity made for him an armour so thick that it did not occur to him that he could be defeated. If people did not like him, that was their loss, and if anyone got so far as hitting him, he hit back, and usually won. When he lost, he forgot that he had. When threatened, he took no notice, and when reproved, he took it for granted that the mentor was mistaken; so there was really not much to be done about the Hermit, except offer him as a mascot to an inferiority complex clinic. He was not so much hard as rubbery, a ball of springy bounce, a tough Victorian individual lingering on into the mass-produced twilight of a softer age. The London slums of the sixties were a merciless breeding-ground; if a spirit and body survived them, it was tough indeed. Also, all the Hermit’s glands worked properly, which gave him an unfair advantage.

He bore no malice towards Saxon, who had helped Colonel Phillips to run him out of the yard, for he had floored Saxon. The Hermit had been drunk, but he remembered flooring Saxon, for whom he felt a large good-humoured contempt, such as any man of the world would feel for a provincial boy.

But though the Hermit was not malicious he had a strong sense of poetic justice; and that sense was satisfied when he beheld Saxon, that nice respectable boy, that interferer with the doings of his elders and betters, that pokenose, that (here the Hermit, fishing in his memories of Seven Dials in 1868, brought up some mammoth bones of Victorian slang) that greenlander and teakettle coachman, with his arm round the waist of his employer’s daughter. The Hermit had shouted to Mr Wither that something of the kind was going on; and lo! he was right. In his triumph, he sang
Peek-abo
.

But when he saw their pale startled faces, he suddenly had a good idea. He looked smilingly down on them between the leaves of the thick bough across which he straddled, and waited for them to speak.

‘Better take no notice,’ muttered Saxon, starting up the car. ‘It’s all right … don’t worry, Miss – please don’t mind, Tina. The old – (sorry), he ought to be shot. If we get off at once—’

But the Hermit, shinning down the tree like a squirrel, was already standing across the narrow lane in front of the car.

‘No ’urry,’ said the Hermit mildly. ‘I can take my time. I ain’t busy this morning.’

‘Get out of the way,’ called Saxon, in a low tone. He had gone white. The car began to move.

‘Saxon! Don’t! Everything’ll have to come out if you hurt him. Stop …
please
.’

He braked just as the car touched the Hermit’s legs.

‘Temper,’ observed the Hermit. ‘Narsty temper. No call for it. Bleshyer, I won’t tell nobody. Why should I? Wot’s it got to do with me if you like to ’ave a bit of slap and tickle on the q.t.? We’re only young once. You le’ me alone, I’ll le’ you alone, see? That’s fair enough, ain’t it?’

Tina nodded with a weak, frightened smile, glancing at Saxon’s angry face.

‘Hadn’t we better be getting on?’ she remarked conversationally. Her knees were trembling.

‘I will when he lets me.’ Saxon raised his voice. ‘Stand clear, will you? We’re late now.’ He tried to speak civilly but his tone only sounded contemptuous.

‘Oh, there’s no ’urry. You ain’t so far from ’ome as all that. What did the young lady say about everything coming out, eh? Wot ’ave you two been up to? Nothin’ old Shak-per-Swaw wouldn’t like, I ’ope? Upsets very easy, old Shak-per-Swaw does. Sensitive as a ’arp, as they say. I’m sure you wouldn’t like to upset ’im, would yer?’

‘Saxon,’ whispered Tina, her head bent, opening her handbag, ‘it’s no use, we’ll have to give him something.’ She was folding up a ten-shilling note.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ Saxon’s sharp whisper came oddly from one side of his mouth, convict-fashion. ‘Give him half a crown – if you like – but much better not. He’ll only come back for more, though. Blast him … he’s got us where he wants us. Here …’ one hand came down on hers, and pushed the note back into her handbag; the other felt in his pocket. He brought out a shilling.

‘Have a drink with us,’ he called, and spun the coin across to the Hermit, who caught it.

The old man’s dirty grin, Saxon’s slight, knowing smile, sickened Tina.
Common men are horrible
flashed through her head. If I’d been with Giles Bellamy he’d have managed things somehow and got me out of it without coming down to the old man’s level and making a joke out of it in that beastly way.

She felt dirtied: and very angry with Saxon. The fact that a shilling meant something to Saxon, and nothing to her, made her angrier still. It did not occur to her that if she had been with Giles Bellamy the situation would never have arisen.

‘That’ll do to get on with,’ shouted the Hermit, crawling through a hole in the hedge. ‘I won’t say nothing, don’t you worry. Course I won’t.’ Then, more faintly as he went down into the wood, ‘You le’ me alone and I’ll le’ you alone, see.’

After his voice had faded, there was a long silence.

Both felt angry, frightened and vaguely miserable, as though they had lost something beautiful, and did not know what was going to happen to them.

Something will have to be done now, I suppose, curse it, they thought.

He had left the car halfway across the lane at an odd angle as though there had been an accident, and though he knew that he must move it because a farm cart might come along at any minute, he felt too irritable, hot and depressed to start.

At last Tina said coldly,

‘We’d better get on, hadn’t we?’

He started up the engine without answering. She needn’t take that tone about it. She’d started it. If they landed in a hell of a muck, whose fault would it be?

He got the car straight and moved quickly down the lane, making for the main road where there was a bit of traffic and he would have to keep his eye on the driving. He got angrier with himself every minute, and cursed his fatal habit of ‘letting go’. Here he was, tangled up with her, not wanting to let her down, likely to be bled by old Falger instead of himself bleeding old Wither, likely to get the sack without a reference – all because he had bloody well been soft.

The path of the Super-Man is even harder than sub-men suppose.

Out on the main road to Bracing Bay dust hung thickly, sent up by lorries and cars on their way to the sea; but the roar of heavy engines was unnoticed by the contented-looking women hanging up wet clothes in the gardens, glowing with flowers, that surrounded hideous bungalows. It is fortunate that such a few people mind ugliness and noise.

‘Hadn’t we better be getting back?’ suggested Tina, coughing.

He took no notice: and she was thrilled (the exact word).

She had read that women were men’s equals and she believed it, although her own experiences had never proved it. Now Saxon was treating her as an inferior. It was exciting to see the books caught out. The car fairly flew along the noisy dusty road! They would be simply frightfully late for lunch!

‘Saxon.’

‘What?’

A gentleman would have said Well? reflected Tina. Saxon was certainly not at his best this morning; he kept doing things that reminded her he was common.

‘Do stop a minute. We must talk.’

He began to slow the car.

‘Down there.’ She pointed to another of those beguiling lanes, greeny-white with meadowsweet, and the car turned and bumped slowly down it. Saxon looked sullen and bored.

‘What did he mean – you leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone?’ she inquired, when the engine had stopped and all was quiet. She knew what the Hermit had meant, but she was still angry with Saxon for not being a gentleman and wanted to hurt him.

He went red. Then he said in a surly voice,

‘He goes with my mother. You know that as well as I do.’

‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

‘What do you want to ask me for, then, if you know already?’

‘I’m sorry, Saxon, really I am. I’m a brute. You see – oh, it’s all so
difficult
,’ ended Tina affectedly, but her eyes filled.

He was staring away down the lane, misty with nodding white lacy plates of flowers on either side, scented with a muzzy-sweet smell. Never had he looked to her so young, sulky, and ill-bred, like a farm boy in a scrape.

There then happened a commonplace miracle. At the same instant that Tina, miserable and angry, leant towards Saxon, angry and alarmed, he turned towards her, put his arms round her and passionately kissed her.

‘Don’t let’s quarrel,’ he muttered, between kisses. ‘I don’t know what the hell’s up with me.’

Pause.

‘Darling, you love me, that’s it. Don’t you? You love me. Do say it. That’s what … say it, darling.’

‘I love you,’ he mumbled bashfully, reddening furiously. Then he suddenly drew away from her, and she caught her breath, inwardly, as she saw him rein in his flying feelings, hold them, and look them over.

‘Count I do love you, too,’ he said, looking full at her. ‘Sweet little thing, you are,’ diving at her again.

‘Saxon,’ holding him off with a small hand spread on his chest, ‘I’m thirty-five. How old are you?’

‘Twenty-three in December.’

‘Then I’m twelve years older than you are,’ forcing out the wretched words, hateful as only truth can be. ‘You knew I was much older than you, didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ tranquilly, studying her delicate face, flushed and pretty, her big shining eyes, ‘but not so old as that. You didn’t look that old. Educated ladies don’t. You’ve never had to work; that’s what makes women like my – ignorant women look old.’

‘Then you don’t mind my being so much older than you?’ she persisted.

‘It’s no good minding,’ he answered, with the harsh working-class common-sense that she would have to get used to. ‘You can’t help your age. I don’t mind if you don’t,’ bending towards her. He did not seem very interested.

‘I do, but it’s no use …’ the words were lost.

When she sat up again, tidying her hair, she said practically,

‘What are we going to do about this?’

‘Plenty more where that came from,’ drawled Saxon, smiling, pushing his cap to the back of his head. The sun beat warmly on their faces, the very leather of the car’s seat where her hand rested was summer hot.

‘No,’ laughing, ‘no, but it’s serious. We can’t go on like this, Saxon, because that horrible old man is bound to come for more money, and the more we give him the more he’ll want, and I’ve only got about seventy pounds.’

‘I’ve got twenty-one. And I’ll see him somewhere before he gets any of it. But I don’t think he’ll do much. It’s just talk. If I leave him alone and don’t say much about him and my mother, he’ll leave us alone, the old bastard.’

This time he did not apologize for the word. He dropped his cap on the seat, leaned back, and took out a cheap cigarette case, staring down the road with half-shut eyes. That was a bit of a shock, hearing seventy pounds was all she’d got. Part of his mind was disappointed, another part of it swore that he would never take a penny of her money, because a man can’t.

‘The point is … do you want to go on seeing me?’

He laughed at her, nodding.

‘Oh well … kissing me, if you like. Yes, well, if you do we must think of some safe place to meet and I must stop having lessons like this, it won’t be safe while that old man’s about.’

‘All right. I’ll think of somewhere.’ He sat up and put on his cap. ‘Time we were getting along.’

He added in an experimental tone ‘Darling,’ then repeated emphatically, ‘Darling. Sounds kind of funny, doesn’t it?’

‘It sounds sweet,’ said Tina absently, leaning back as the car began to move. She was thinking that although the affair had leapt forward that morning into a new warmth, it was as far as ever from being ‘settled’. No plans had been made: yet now they would never be happy unless they were kissing each other.

What would Doctor Hartmüller suggest?

Plainly, too plainly, there rushed into her mind what Doctor Hartmüller would most certainly suggest; but she shrank, shocked, from the thought. Oh no, that’s out of the question, she told herself decidedly. Her education, the traditions by which she ruled her life, her common-sense and her modesty were all agreed that Doctor Hartmüller’s remedy was an impossible one.

But she had forgotten that by her side was a young man, also moved by the morning’s kisses, inexperienced, more fastidious than most youths of his class, and strongly attracted by her.

As they drew near to The Eagles, Saxon said quietly,

‘When are you going away?’

‘Oh!’ She turned, startled. ‘I’d forgotten that. I don’t know; soon, I suppose. It depends on what Doctor Parsham says about my father. A whole month! You won’t stay here all that time, will you? I mean, won’t you go away, too? You went to Bracing Bay last year, for a fortnight, didn’t you?’

He nodded, turning the car into the drive.

‘I haven’t the money to go away for long,’ he said, looking at the road ahead, ‘but I was thinking – it’s a pity you can’t get away somewhere by yourself this time. Without any of them, I mean. Then … I could come too, perhaps.’