Lamb in Love (16 page)

I
N THE POST
office she has to ring the bell for Mr. Lamb, who comes out immediately, as if he's been waiting for someone behind his curtain. He is wearing a suit—a rather old suit, with narrow lapels and a greenish cast to it. A white rosebud is pinned to his lapel, and his hair has been freshly dampened and combed.

Perhaps he's going to a funeral, she thinks.

“Good morning, Mr. Lamb—” She stops, for she finds herself suddenly shy in the presence of his unusually formal appearance.

He utters not a word but turns around to get her mail for her.

Perhaps it's the grief, she thinks, disconcerted, looking away. Perhaps it's a sort of observation of respect, not to speak. She notices, however, despite herself, a thin, glistening line of sweat running from his temple down into his shirt collar and thinks that, after all, he must be rather hot in his suit. She sniffs, detecting an odd odor. It's Mr. Lamb himself, she realizes, smelling of something old-fashioned and medicinal, though she can't exactly place it.

He turns back around and hands her her mail. His expression is strange, she thinks, glancing up briefly into his face and then away again. He appears to be—
holding something in his mouth!
Oh! She reconsiders, trying to think, trying not to look at him. He
can't
be. Why would he have something in his mouth? No, no. Perhaps he is trying not to cry? She steals another glance at him and then looks away in horror. For it is not grief he is suppressing, she sees now. It is mirth! He isn't trying not to
cry
. He is trying not to
laugh!

Well!
Not
very suitable for a funeral, she thinks, her forehead creasing.

She turns away from him and begins to sift through the envelopes. But as she does so, she thinks to ask Mr. Lamb whether he's got any more stamps for Manford.

She looks up, her mouth open. But he has disappeared. The black curtain to his rear rooms billows slightly. Not a sound comes from the corridor.

“Mr. Lamb?” she says hesitantly after a moment to the empty room. But her voice seems to echo queerly in the silence.

She frowns, shrugs a little, returns to her letters.

A weak light falls across the floor, threading through the window's many tiny panes between mullions thick and ridged with years of paint. She does not see the sunlight advancing toward her but feels the unexpected heat across the back of her neck, like a warm, possessive hand resting there.

Among the usual sorts of things in the daily post is an overseas envelope addressed to her in an unfamiliar handwriting, postmarked from Corfu. She frowns again. It doesn't look like Laurence's script.

She fits the other letters and catalogs under her elbow, lifts the flaps of the air letter with her fingernail, tearing the paper slightly and biting her lip. She unfolds the sheet and begins to read.

And then she feels her face grow bright red. She almost drops her bundle of mail. She folds over the sheet again quickly, looks up hastily as though whoever has sent her this must be standing right there, watching her. And postmarked from Corfu? Who did she know in Corfu except Laurence? No one!

And no one, no one has
ever
said such things to her.

She couldn't even have imagined them, not if she tried for days and days and days.

She peeks at the letter again.

Vida Stephen. The sun may rise and fall, but nothing shall ever eclipse your beauty. You are the moon and the stars and everything in the world to me. You are a beacon in the dark night, an eternal flame. I crawl along the rays of the sun and they lead a path to your feet. I am your servant, your knight. One day you will know me.

The black curtain twitches, but Mr. Lamb does not emerge.

Her face scarlet with embarrassment, Vida gathers up her things
hurriedly and rushes out of the post office, the bell clanging loudly behind her. She walks quickly along the Romsey Road back toward home, the letter held tightly in her sweating hand, her heart beating so wildly that she feels deafened by the sound of her own racing pulse.

Turning onto the lane on shaking legs, she thinks that she must calm herself. She actually finds that she wants a nip of something for her nerves! And she never wants a drink.

At the bench in the lane she feels so weak she has to sit down. She takes out the letter again, opening it with shaking fingers.
Moon and stars, eternal flame, beacon in the dark, beauty
. . . My! she thinks. My, my!

Tears have begun to fall mysteriously down her cheeks.

But she is smiling.

Oh, such a mystery! Such excitement! Such strangeness!

But then—oh, why is she to be forever embarrassed by this! It almost makes her angry!—she finds herself remembering the night of the moon landing, the night of her escapade on the fountain.

She jumps up from the bench, crumpling the letter into her pocket, gathers up the other letters and her handbag, and hurries down the lane toward Southend House.

In the silent, shadowy library she pours herself a small amount of brandy from one of the crystal decanters in Mr. Perry's bar, takes the glass to a chair, and sits down heavily in it. She puts her hand over her heart a moment.

It was the fountain itself, she thinks now. It was hearing it again after so many years. It was only the fountain that was to blame. But why should this letter—she leans down and picks it up from the floor near her feet, where she had dumped her belongings, and unfolds it more calmly now—
why should this letter make her think of that night?

She takes another sip of brandy.

It was that she'd heard something, she thinks now. She'd remembered suddenly the new gardener in his apartment above the stables; she had fled in shame.

And this letter—it too exposes her somehow, in exactly the same way she'd felt exposed that night in the garden.
One day you will know me
—that was what made her think of it.

She leans her head back against the chair. She does not understand it at all. It is wonderful and awful and disturbing and exciting, all mixed together. She cannot exactly separate the feelings it produces in her, a sort of twin column of fear and desire at once.

Who would love
her,
Vida Stephen?

She takes another tiny sip of the brandy, holds it in her cheeks, grimaces as she swallows, and then wipes the back of her hand across her mouth. Setting the glass on the table beside her, she stands and moves to the window.

She is surprised to find the gardener there, dragging the large dead limb of a tree toward a bonfire he has built down near the greenhouses, a greasy smoke issuing from it in a thin curl. She watches him a moment as he wrestles with the wood, levering it into the pile. When it falls, an explosion of sparks flies up into the air.

Stepping outside through the French doors onto the terrace, she takes in the sharp scent of the smoke, the raked and emptied condition of the beds. It didn't look very pretty, she considers, but you could see how it was the right thing to do, clearing it all out, how the spines and arms of the garden had begun to stand out again what with all the rubbish being pruned away. You couldn't really tell what the garden had once been like, whether it had ever been grand, so overgrown had it become after years of neglect. But now, now you could see how fine it was, how fine it
could be again. She admires the sweeping terraces, the graceful stone walls and balustrades now released from their burden of overgrowth.

You could see that it only wanted some attention to be beautiful again.

T
HE FIRST THING
she says to him is, “It looks much better.”

He turns round, holds his arm up before his face as a billow of smoke engulfs him in black.

Vida takes a step back, away from the smoke.

He coughs as the smoke swerves in a sudden breeze, sweeping toward him. He glances at her, his eyes red, then grinds a handkerchief to his face with his fist, rubbing. He coughs.

Vida waits a moment and then gestures behind her uncertainly.

“You've made tremendous progress,” she says, starting again. “I'd almost forgotten—” She indicates the garden beds.

He stuffs the cloth back into his pocket, regards her. “You must have been here awhile then, for this to seem an improvement.” He turns his head and spits to the side.

Vida jumps. “Oh, yes.” She laughs uncomfortably. She looks around. “Well, it used to be very grand.”

“It shouldn't have been let go like this,” the man says. “It'll take years to clear it out.”

“Oh, but I think you've made wonderful progress,” she repeats stubbornly. It seems important to her suddenly that the garden be nearly restored, that this gardener feel utterly committed to it, that the era of its flowering be near at hand again. She feels strangely defensive about it.

“You're the cook?” he asks, squinting at her through the smoke.

Vida is taken aback a moment. She does cook, she considers,
of course she does. They have to eat, don't they? But that isn't how she thinks of herself. She thinks to say she is the nanny, but it occurs to her, as if for the first time, that for a twenty-year-old man, a nanny seems a strange necessity. She hardly ever has to explain things to people. Everyone knows her, knows Manford.

“I look after the son,” she says, carefully choosing her words from the small store of appropriate phrases. “Mr. Perry's son. Manford.”

The man coughs again and then turns to throw more brush on the bonfire. Sparks fly and collide.

“That's the idiot?” he asks over his shoulder.

Vida flares. No one ever says such a thing! She is sorry now that she came down here to speak to him. How stupid he is! “Why do you call him that?” she says angrily.

He shrugs. “Someone told me. He's the big one? I've seen him wandering about.”

Vida waits, though she's not sure for what. She thinks of Manford sitting on the edge of the fountain, birds pecking at his feet. “He's not an
idiot,
” she says finally, though less forcefully, she discovers, than she intends. “He's handicapped.”

The man kicks the fire with his boot, jabs a pitchfork into the fragile tent of branches. “Like a golfer?” he says, laughing. “Is that it?”

But Vida withdraws as if she has been slapped. For the second time that day, a fierce blush rises to her cheeks. She stares at the man's grimy shirt a moment, then turns to walk away. She will just go home, she thinks. He's awful!

“Hey!” he calls after her, laughing. “I didn't mean anything.”

Vida stops, spins toward him, and takes a deep breath. “You don't know what you're talking about,” she says furiously. “You haven't any idea what it's like to be Manford.”

“No, I suppose not,” he says affably, and flashes his teeth at her in a smile. Vida looks back at him stonily. He kicks the fire again. “Look, I'm sorry,” he says. “I didn't mean anything.”

Vida waits, staring at the fire. She takes a step toward it, holds out her hands as if to warm them, though it is hot enough already, a surprising late-summer heat, muggy and still. “He's very sweet,” she says at last. “He wouldn't harm a single living creature.”

“He's a big oaf, though, isn't he?” the man says then. “I should put him to work around here, give me a hand. Twenty men couldn't put this place to rights in a year. Don't tell his lordship I said so, though,” he adds, jerking his thumb toward the house. “I need the job.” He steps back and surveys the garden. “It's a crime, really, isn't it?” he goes on, shaking his head. “It'll cost him a small fortune. He's got pots though, I suppose?”

Vida feels faintly affronted by this question. “I wouldn't know,” she says delicately. “I suppose there's enough.”

“Well, there'd better be, or I'll be off for greener pastures, as they say.” The man laughs again. He looks at Vida. “I'm Jeremy Martin,” he says, sticking out his hand.

“Vida Stephen,” she says, and for a moment their hands touch, but not before Vida sees how filthy his are.

S
HE STAYS WITH
him that morning, though she's not sure why. After all, he's so unpleasant at first. But then he asks her to give him a hand with a broken window in the greenhouse, holding the frame while he putties in the new pane.

“You need three hands for this job,” he says, and she thinks it's charming the way he says it, so friendly.

And then he asks if she would have a look at the roses with him, advise him about the shapes and all. She tells him she
doesn't know the first thing about it, but they go up there, and then suddenly Vida finds herself feeling exhilarated by the fresh air, feels that she wants to work, to “really put my back into it,” she says, looking up eagerly at Jeremy. “Don't you have another spade?” she asks, looking around.

He laughs but fetches one for her, and they dig awhile together. Vida thinks she has never seen such big worms as those they discover in the rose beds. Jeremy holds one out on his palm for her to see, a giant one with a bulbous gray ring around its middle. And then suddenly, brutally, he splits it in half with his knife.

“That's it,” he says, dropping the pieces on the ground. “Like Christ dividing the endless loaf. You can chop them into a hundred pieces, and each one will grow a whole new worm. Did you know that?”

She doesn't think this is exactly right, but she doesn't say anything. The worm's divided selves disappear into the grass. A queer chill runs over her arms.

He's nice, though, she thinks.

He has pretty eyes.

A
T NOON
, V
IDA
makes tomato sandwiches, brings them out to the garden on a tray with a jelly roll and some iced tea and some figs.

“That hit the spot,” Jeremy says afterward. He shifts from his elbows and lies back down on the grass, hooking his arms beneath his head.