Lamb in Love (19 page)

She turns to him with a swirl, surprisingly graceful, and holds up a floor-length gown in Oriental silk, printed with pale blue waterfalls, peacocks, and yellow-and-red butterflies against a trelliswork of Chinese Chippendale in soft chestnut. A swarm of birds the color of indigo buntings flies across the cream-colored breast. The lapels are of brushed green silk, fringed with golden tassels. The girl shakes it slightly, and it rises and falls, a woman swaying, the world tilting. “This is for underneath,” she says quietly, and slips a cord to reveal a black silk nightdress, cut deeply across the shoulders in a ballerina neckline, smaller versions of the same butterflies and birds twinkling against the black.

“Isn't it pretty?” she asks. “I thought we should put it in the window, all by itself. Just like a princess standing there. You wouldn't need anything else, if you had this.”

And Norris is reminded then of his stamps of eighteenth-century costumes. They're oversize, printed on the occasion of an exhibit of ladies' dress mounted at the British Museum in Cairo. Norris had thought the stamps were curious, the elaborate gowns standing out in solemn relief against black backgrounds as if, as soon as the photographer aimed his camera, the women themselves had vanished, leaving only their clothing behind. He had thought there was something tragic about the empty dresses, like fallen film idols, or princesses taken hostage in a coup.

Norris feels it best just to stay where is he is, but he gestures toward the robe. “It's very—” He pauses. “How much—”

The girl inspects the tags. “Fifty pounds. For the set.”

“
Fifty pounds!
” Norris reaches for his handkerchief, dabs at his neck.

“We've got them cheaper.” But she looks disappointed, begins to turn away with the gown folded over her arm, a discarded partner.

“No, no!” Norris's heart contracts with shame. “No, I'll take it.”

She brightens, like a child. “Oh! You
do
love her, don't you?”

Norris stares at her, her thin neck inside the crooked collar of her blouse like the stem of a flower held in a rough hand. She's used rather too much eyeliner, he notices. Her eyes, rimmed heavily in kohl, look like a baby owl's.

“I can tell you do,” she goes on happily. “It's in your face.”

She smiles again, her lips coming together over her teeth like a stage curtain, and moves back to the counter, where she begins to fold the robe and nightgown into elaborate pleats. “I knew you were the right sort,” she goes on shyly. “Not like the others. I saw it the moment you came in. You're the real thing, aren't you?”

She stops her folding for a moment and gazes up at Norris with eyes full of tears. “God,” she says, blinking up at him. “I wish
I
were old.”

T
HAT AFTERNOON
, N
ORRIS
sets his umbrella, rug, and hamper down on a weathered gray bench at the edge of the cemetery, looks through the trees to the lawns sloping down to the Tyre. The bridge over the gray water is woven with streamers and flowers, unnaturally bright in the greenish light that filters through the clouds. In a few minutes the young men will gather on the bridge, laughing and jostling one another. And then at a
signal the girls will race down the grass and across the bridge, streaming over it in pursuit of the boys, who will take off over the far bank.

Norris sits down on the bench. He's packed a lunch—hard-boiled eggs, meat sandwiches, a jelly roll—but he doesn't think he will get to eat it here now, much less with Vida. He feels vaguely depressed after his morning of shopping, lonely and deflated. A few people have spread rugs across the grass, but a great many more stand by the road near their cars, where they can keep their luncheons safely dry should the rain begin.

This evening a dance will be held at Prince's Mead. Norris's grandmother used to play the piano for village dances, but over time, with the influence of the young, who prefer a different sort of music, real musicians had yielded to a phonograph and records. Norris could remember standing at his grandmother's shoulder turning pages for her before she lost her sight, the couples spinning past him. “Go on and ask someone, Norrie,” his mother had whispered, coming up close behind him. “Go and ask Lucinda Horsey there. She's sitting all by herself. Go on.”

But no one had caught Norris at the races earlier in the day, and he was grateful for the duty of organizing the sheet music, of appearing busily occupied. He'd said nothing to his mother, had nodded vaguely and failed to move. He didn't know why he had not been pursued by anybody at the race. He had tried not to run too fast, glancing over his shoulder. But the girls had flown past him, almost veering away deliberately, he'd thought in shame and agony. And he would have been so tender with any one of them, plaiting flowers for a crown, or kissing the sweet-smelling napes of their necks! He had stopped still at last, hopeless and stiff in his new shirt, and looked down at his feet. But that had been his fatal move, he'd thought. You mustn't look as though you wanted to
be caught. He had glanced around, seen that a few other young men had drifted away as if they were bored with the game, when it was plain to Norris that they, too, were among the unselected. He had understood suddenly the cruelty of the contest. Why do such rites exist? he'd thought. And also, It doesn't matter what I think. I've no power to stop it.

Now, sitting on the bench watching the crowds assemble in a hesitant fashion on the lawns below, he hesitates. If it rains, Vida certainly won't come. He had taken out the nightdress for her when he'd arrived home from Winchester, spread it across his bed, and stared at it a long while. The way it lay there, empty and lifeless, had left him feeling peculiarly sad and hopeless, like a man who has been abandoned by his wife. Like Sam Saxon, he'd thought in distaste.

“Oh, there you are, Mr. Lamb. Where've you been all morning? What little mystery are you up to?”

Norris startles at the voice of Mrs. Billy, who is approaching through the cemetery, a brightly patterned shawl round her shoulders. Mr. Billy walks placidly behind her, toting a large hamper. “Come and have a sausage pie with us, won't you?” she invites Norris. “I've just made them.”

He looks up at her glumly. “Don't you think they'll cancel?”

“Oh, pish, I shouldn't think so. The young don't mind a bit of rain. Don't tip the hamper, Mr. Billy. The cake will slide.” She directs her attention back to Norris. “You're such a worrier, Mr. Lamb! Stay here under the trees like this and it will surely rain. You'll be bad luck!”

But Norris shakes his head.

Mrs. Billy puts her hands on her hips. “Now Mr. Lamb. You're a bachelor. You ought to be down there on the bridge, some pretty girl chasing you. You might find you enjoy it! You don't
think you're too old now, do you?”

“It's not a question of age,” he replies stiffly, looking away.

“Well, I've plenty of pies. Suit yourself,” she calls.

He's offended her now. Mr. Billy marches past, nods impassively to Norris, his pipe clenched between his teeth.

Norris stares out through the trees. After a while, with a kind of grim relief, he hears the first of several large drops of rain smack the leaves overhead. The organizers of the festivities are running about under their umbrellas. Now they'll just move things inside, Norris thinks, though he can see a group of young men, their white shirts already plastered to their backs with rain, still idling by the bridge. He stands up and turns to lift his hamper from the bench. And then he hears her voice, thin and high and sourceless among the tall monuments of the cemetery.

“Come on, Manford,” she is calling. “Hurry.”

H
E LIFTS HIS
head and sees her, in a white dress, running awkwardly with her basket, Manford lumbering along behind her, through the vicarage garden toward the west end of St. Alphage.

When he pulls open the door behind them a moment later, panting and drenched, Vida has set her basket down inside and is wiping her face, lifting her wet hair away from her cheeks strand by strand, her fingers delicately extended as though operated by an invisible puppeteer.

“Oh! Mr. Lamb! You were caught as well.” She turns to him, and her face glows in the dimness of the church, her white dress a sanctuary of shadows. “It came on very suddenly, didn't it? We're sopped.”

Manford crosses his arms in front of him and shivers, slaps at his chest, making a bright, hard smacking sound. Norris sees
Vida glance at Manford and then vaguely around the vestibule. “Have they got a towel somewhere, do you think?” She holds out her arms hopelessly, her sleeves clinging.

Norris sets his hamper down. A violent shiver of fear and excitement runs through him. “There's the choir robes. I'll fetch them.”

He comes back into the shadowy vestibule with three robes over his arm. He hands one to Vida. “Would
he
like one?” he asks, gesturing with his head in Manford's direction.

She helps Manford into the crimson robe. He looks heartbreaking in it, Norris thinks, the solemn and dignified cloth exaggerating his idiocy in a painful way. Manford lifts his arms experimentally and the sleeves billow. Vida smiles at him. “You look like an angel,” she says fondly.

She steps away from them to the door, the hem of the robe dragging on the floor. “It's really raining hard now,” she says, speaking into the vicar's garden through the open doors. “It's a shame. It's not nearly so much sport for them indoors.”

Norris watches her, framed in the doorway. She looks both important and childlike. Gusts of rain blow across the cemetery like the sails of phantom ships.

“Did you ever go to one indoors?” he asks. “The races?”

“I didn't go to one
ever,
” she says lightly. “I thought they were awful.”

She turns around, apparently in search of Manford, who has moved off down the aisle, his arms wrapped round himself so that he appears, from behind, to be straitjacketed. He is looking up at the stained-glass windows. The light falls, faded and streaked, into the dim church. Manford stops below the repentance window, St. Peter with his keys and a cockerel.

Norris looks down at his feet, back up at her. “You never went
to the races? I thought—”

“Oh, I went,” she says. “I just didn't
run.
” She hesitates. “There weren't enough girls. Didn't you ever notice that? And it was all prearranged.”

“Prearranged?” Norris is baffled.

“Everyone knew who everyone else was going for. It was all set already.” She glances over at him and gives a small laugh. “But you ran. I remember.” Then she cocks her head. “Didn't you know how it would be? Didn't you know if someone was all set for you?”

“No. I—” Norris puts his hand to the back of his neck, drops of water trickling from his hair into his collar. “I only did it once. I wasn't caught.”

“Oh. Well, that's what I mean.” She speaks quietly. “Some were left out. I couldn't bear that.”

“You're so kind!” The words rush from him, and he has to stop himself from throwing open his arms. He is filled even more with admiration for her. So young, he thinks irrationally, and yet she had understood.

She laughs, surprised. “I don't know. I think I was afraid of it, actually. Isn't that silly? Now, I—” She pauses. “I think perhaps I was afraid to chase the one I wanted.”

The one she wanted? Norris can feel his face seize. Did she still harbor feelings for someone? Some chap now grown and married perhaps? Was that why she'd never married?

“Was there one?” His voice is very small.

“Oh, yes.” She laughs lightly. “There was always one or another, wasn't there?”

Norris is stricken. Yet he senses something—some bravado—in her words.

She turns away from him, puts her hands to her face, brushes the wet hair away again. The wind pants just outside the door. The sky darkens purposefully. “I can't think why I didn't bring an umbrella,” she says. “I knew it would rain.”

Manford is standing now on the south side of the sanctuary beneath St. Stephen, his death by stoning. His own head thrown back and his mouth gaping open, Manford stares at the picture, St. Stephen's broken and anguished form, the staff he'd held to protect himself. Norris glances around the church and then back to Vida, feeling that he has something more to say. How amazing, he thinks, to be having this conversation with her. He wants to say something important, about what those years had been like for him.

“I didn't like it either,” he offers suddenly, “but I always wanted to dance, you know. I felt rather shy, I suppose. It's funny—” He considers, and then looks up as if surprised. “I always thought I'd be quite a good dancer.”

She turns round from the door to look at him. “Didn't you ever dance? Never once?”

He shakes his head. “You did, though?”

She looks at him. Norris is suddenly aware of how his hair must look, wet and disarranged oddly over the top of his head. He begins to raise his hand but stops when she starts to speak again.

“I loved to dance.” She pauses. “Sometimes I still think about it. But there isn't any occasion for older people, is there? To dance, I mean.” She looks at him; it's as if she has held out her hand.

“Are we older?” He smiles, grateful.

“Yes!” She laughs. “
I
am. And you certainly are, Mr. Lamb. You're older than me!”

He takes a step toward her. “I am,” he says. “I
am
old, perhaps. But we're not too old, are we? It's not too late?” It seems to him that she will steer them away. “I believe,” he says, taking a deep breath, “I believe I would dance—like a gazelle!”

“A gazelle!” Her eyes are round.

“And you—” He takes another step, almost involuntarily, toward her. “And you'd be a—a—oh, what is it called?” He laughs. “One of those birds that leaps up from the ground, twisting and turning? A woodcock! That's what it is! It's their mating dance. Haven't you ever seen it?”