Lamb in Love (18 page)

N
ORRIS AWAKENS SO
early Saturday morning that it is still dark. His sheets are hot and disheveled; he knows he has been dreaming.

But yesterday was no dream. He emerges into full wakefulness with the rising joy of one who has won a victory and is now realizing the full extent of the splendid consequences.

Vida has read his first letter. He has sent her flowers. She knows someone—a mysterious someone—loves her.

Norris rolls over in his narrow bed. A thin crease of gray light shows beyond the sill.

Mr. Calfo was wonderfully prompt about returning his letter, Norris thinks, and with a very pretty stamp, too. He must send him something by way of thanks—perhaps Mr. Calfo would like one of his stamps from those tiny little Faeroe Islands? A friend had put Norris onto these stamps—they were pretty, sunsets over the Baltic and so forth, and might one day be valuable. Norris had bought two at the time and thinks now that he might be willing to give one to Mr. Calfo for his expediency and cooperation.

But what could have happened to old Nesser, he ponders, rolling over again with restless happiness. Well, he supposes it will be along.

And the flowers, too—wasn't that a bit of luck?

“Won't you come along and dig up some of my lavender, Mr. Lamb?” Dr. Faber's wife had said, stopping in the post office Friday morning shortly after Vida had left with his letter. “Or at least come and cut yourself a bunch. It's a profusion!” And then she
had stopped and sniffed, looking round the post office as if she couldn't quite locate the source of some scent that had suddenly filled her nose.

So he'd gone round to the Fabers' when he'd run home for lunch. Hermione Faber had been out in the garden herself—she was a spirited, handsome woman, with red cheeks and a high forehead and a cultivated accent, generally thought to do Dr. Faber credit, though he was well liked on his own. And she had the prettiest garden in Hursley, thought Norris, who prided himself on the performance of his own modest borders round the side of his cottage. Along with the lavender—she'd kindly put up three big pots for him; “Making room for these infernal hollyhocks,” she'd said—she'd also pressed on him an armload of pink roses. “Simplicity, this one's called,” she'd said, laying the bundle in his arms, “but I told Dr. Faber they ought to call it Multiplicity! Have you ever seen so many flowers? Mind the thorns.”

But now, he thinks, rolling over to face the window again, pulling the sheet up over his shoulder—now he wants to do something more, something really clever. Nesser will send along his other letter, and won't she be surprised when that one comes? But Norris must think of something else for the meanwhile.

He wants to buy her a gift. He stares out the window, where the slice of light has thickened to a slab. He can hear birds now. There's no place in Hursley to go shopping, he knows, and everything will be closed if he waits until tomorrow. And this afternoon is the Sadie Hawkins races; he doesn't want to miss those, as he might see Vida there.

Well, there's no hope for it. He'll have to close up shop.

It is still very early when he steps out onto the Romsey Road. The wide white paper shades are rolled down at the butcher's, and the blacksmith's is quiet as death, Fergus upstairs in his foul
bedchamber sleeping off his habitual Friday night affair with gin. Norris hurries down the Romsey Road and lets himself furtively into the dark, damp-smelling post office, where he writes out a sign, which he props in the window with a box of Crunchie bars.

CLOSED FOR THE MORNING. SORRY.

Locking the door again behind him, he walks down the road and stands anxiously in front of the shuttered windows of the Dolphin, looking up and down the street, breathing in the cloudy odor of the stale bitters and ale spilled on the flagstones beneath his feet and examining his watch until the bus comes into view, like a large prehistoric animal insinuating itself through the old houses tilting close by the road. A historian who'd once done a study of Hursley dated parts of the village—based on various ornamented stones, including one that now formed part of the wall of Mrs. Patrick's sheep pen—to 1138, when Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester, built a castle whose vast ruins stood inside an Iron Age fort two miles north of the village. The vicar himself, though an acknowledged amateur in such matters, believed that St. Alphage, particularly its tower, had undeniable roots in the fourteenth century. But in any case, it seemed to Norris that regardless of exactly how old Hursley was—Saxon, Norman, whatever—the modern contrivances of buses and autos would always seem out of place there. He would have liked to have seen the village when there was nothing but horse traffic on the Romsey Road, when Fergus, whose business was now mostly given over to repairing tools and the occasional length of wrought iron fence, still shod twenty horses a day right at his forge. Now only the occasional mare was brought in, usually one of Winstead-Harris's. He rode them down into the village himself. Just like a lord, Norris thought. He'd always rather admired the man's doomed and anachronistic flair.

Excited by the sense of freedom from his own life (and its novel undercurrent of disobedience, for he always opens the post office Saturday mornings), he climbs aboard the bus, when it grinds to a halt before him, and heads immediately for the upper deck, the last seat in the rear, where he can turn and watch the village disappear as the bus rocks round the last of the Romsey Road's serpentine curves and gathers speed down the long slope through yellow and mint-colored fields toward Winchester. He blinks as the warm air of the compartment and the gritty stink of exhaust from the bus are replaced in a moment with the slightly sour, damp smell of a summer morning, riding the breeze through the windows.

He is pleased to have his seat. There are usually children who claim it, a row of squirming little boys in caps and high socks, and who appreciate the exaggerated bounce to be had at the back of the bus. But Norris, too, secretly likes the faintly thrilling quality of the ride in the last seat and the unobstructed view of what he is leaving behind, the trees swallowing the village behind him. In a shocking instant, Hursley is gone as completely as if it never existed, even the tower of St. Alphage and the silvery roof of Southend, and Norris experiences again the strange, empowering sensation of one feeling's canceling out the other, of being able instantly to ameliorate his grief at seeing his place on earth disappear—for of course Hursley couldn't just vanish. It will be there when he returns, rising up as they round the corner as magically as it has just now disappeared from view.

In Winchester a half hour later, the bus stops by the cathedral to let off a few passengers. Norris had gone by once to have a look-round after the archeological dig started there. But he had been vaguely disturbed by the sight of the underground civilization breaking through the terra firma beneath his feet, as if the
ground he stood upon were not wholly stable. It had made him feel sad to imagine that his world, too, with all its lively industry, might one day be nothing but a layer of pottery shards and crude tools baked in the hot and dusty oven of the underground, the familiar rites of his own civilization rendered strange and somehow pathetic—for being lost and buried—by the passage of time.

Now, though, with his errand to consider, his mission firmly in his mind, he puts his cap on his lap and gazes quietly out the window at the inviting caverns of shade under awnings, the mysterious and interesting passages between buildings, the reassuring traffic of pedestrians going about their Saturday morning errands.

H
E CONSIDERS WHETHER
underthings might be appropriate. That's a romantic gift, isn't it? A catalog had come for Sam Saxon at the post office the other day, and Norris had taken the opportunity to glance over it. Saxon must have ordered something once for his wife, for Christmas perhaps. But, of course, she's left him now, gone to London, Norris had heard, with a second cousin. So perhaps it had been a last-ditch thing that had failed, he thinks now, Sam's ordering something from the catalog. How sad. Still, Saxon is rather an unappealing sort. Very bad teeth, Norris thinks.

But they'd had some lovely things in that catalog, nighties and so forth. He had admired one called the Hollywood, all in red, with a little jacket to it. But he had thought that red was not exactly Vida's color; he'd only admired the Hollywood and its blond occupant objectively. Actually, he thinks he has in mind something trimmed with fur—he doesn't know why, exactly. He likes the thought of little ermine cuffs. Or maybe something with feathers—pink feathers, such as an American woman might wear.
But Vida's not a schoolgirl, after all, and should have something that suits her level of maturity. No Little Bo-Peep bows and so on, he decides. No peekaboo.

H
E PASSES THE
women's lingerie shop, which is just off the close, once, twice, three times, without being able exactly to walk in through the door; there always seem to be a great many customers inside. And then he thinks that he will just go and have a cup of tea in the lobby of the Wessex first. He feels in need of refreshment.

At the Wessex he is brought a pot of tea and some rather charred toast in a rack, and he sits by a window, almost hidden by the long gold-colored drapes. Outside, across the lawn stretching up to the cathedral, the young workers with their colorful head scarves and striped jerseys begin to arrive at the dig. The sky is cloudy; Norris stares up into its utterly flat surface. When a single raindrop slaps against the glass before him, he jumps as if a plate has been dropped.

On his way out of the hotel, he pauses by the fountain in the lobby and fishes in his pocket for a penny.

He stands there for some time, the penny in his hand, thinking, and while he is standing there, a little boy comes and stands beside him. The child glances up at Norris through spectacles so thick that Norris cannot see the child's eyes, but only a rapid, blurring motion, like a hand waving from behind streaked glass.

“What will you wish for?” the boy asks.

Norris, who has been almost submerged by a wave of generalized, inchoate longing as he stands watching the water splash into the fountain, is speechless for a moment. The child waits and then glances away. “I always throw two, in any case,” he offers generously, as if letting Norris in on a trick.

Norris looks over at him. “Two?” he says. “In case of what?”

“In case I've made a bad wish,” the child says.

Norris considers this. “What's a bad wish?”

The boy glances at Norris, as if to see whether he's to be trusted. “Something I shouldn't wish for,” he answers at last. He appears to be thinking. “Like—all the chocolate in the world,” he says finally.

“Oh!” Norris is vaguely relieved. “Well, that doesn't seem
such
a bad wish,” he says jovially, as if to cheer up this serious little fellow.

The boy shrugs. “It's never come true, anyway,” he says. “They don't ever, do they?”

And now he is looking up at Norris, his eyes a blue, watery blur. Norris is stricken. He feels as if he had thrown the boy a life ring, but the child had missed it and was now vanishing under the waves.

“I think,” Norris says quickly, more heatedly than he intends, “that perhaps we only get one wish. One in the whole of our lifetime. But you never know when it's going to be granted, you see. It might be anytime. So you might as well just keep on wishing. In fact, you'd better wish every chance you get, because if you don't”—he looks down at the boy standing beside him—“if you don't keep wishing, you might just miss your chance.”

T
HE SALESWOMAN IN
the boutique is young. Norris is relieved by this. Addressing his needs to a woman more his age would be somehow embarrassing, he thinks.

There are three mannequins clustered near the door to the shop, and Norris negotiates their delicately dressed, immobile selves carefully, making his way to the center of the room. The carpet under his feet is a weary green; the walls, by contrast, are a
fresh white, and the various gowns and nightdresses stand out like the occupants of a crowded and colorful aviary. The salesgirl, a plain young woman—with her pale blue shirt misbuttoned, giving her a somewhat lopsided appearance, Norris notes immediately—has looked up at him inquiringly.

“I'm looking—” He pauses, glancing around and feeling distracted by the fluttering racks of gauzy material. “I'm looking for a—gift.”

“For yourself?” The young woman smiles a tiny, almost sorrowful smile, revealing two long front teeth, slightly crossed one over the other.

Norris stares at her teeth in confusion. “No,” he says. “Not for myself. For someone
else.
I should like to buy something—for a female,” he adds, hoping to clarify matters. “But—I'll be the one paying, if that's what you mean.”

The girl smiles again. She has quite a pretty smile, Norris thinks, despite her teeth. He wishes she had got her shirt right. She stands there very patiently, as if she feels Norris is trying to remember something and she doesn't want to interrupt his train of thought.

Norris feels frozen to the spot. This has been a bad idea, he thinks.

At last, somewhat shyly, the girl raises her eyelashes and asks, “Your age, is she?”

“A bit younger,” he manages to reply.

“Robe and nightie, or undergarments?”

Norris cannot completely believe that the word
undergarments
has come out of this nice young woman's mouth. He manages to say, “Robe.”

Slow as a sleepwalker, the girl begins to move out from behind the counter. Norris closes his eyes, as if she might come out with
no skirt on.

“We've several lovely matching sets.” He hears her voice and opens his eyes quickly to avoid being ambushed. But the girl is on the other side of the room, indicating a rack. She has on a thickly woven tweed skirt, knee-length.