Lamb in Love (24 page)

For a moment she thinks he will offer her his arm. But he reaches instead for his handkerchief. He touches it to his eyes and turns away, showing her for a moment only the green field of his shoulder.

S
HE HAD ALWAYS
thought that someday she would be in love with someone.

Her friend Charlotte had told her that before she and Tommy were married he would try to coax her round back to the shed behind his parent's house. He had a sofa there and his phonograph, and some posters and whatnot on the walls. “Very dark and
cozy,
” Charlotte had confided to Vida. “We've come this close,” she'd say, squeezing the air between her fingers. “Go on!” she'd squeal, when Vida would look at her skeptically. “Tell me
you
don't want it too, Vida Stephen.”

But it wasn't what Vida had ever imagined for herself—not some nasty old shed with dirt for a floor and a smelly old sofa. Not some small, familiar space with the sounds of the kitchen nearby. She couldn't explain it, exactly—not to Charlotte, certainly,
and not even really to herself. It was all because of Uncle Laurence, she thought, his letters about Corfu. She'd listen to her mother reading them aloud, about the sea and the olive orchards and the little wayside shrines in the middle of nowhere—like lamps in the night, Laurence had written. Wandering the hills once in search of subjects to paint, he had come upon and tasted the water from the Kardaki Spring, a trickle that flowed from the mouth of an ancient Venetian lion, its features nearly worn away by the centuries. The water, he'd written, was said to transform one.

How? she had wondered. How?

And he was eating well, he'd said, better than ever, damsons and wild strawberries for breakfast, and kumquats, a very Corfiote fruit.

He'd told them about swimming through the eel grass at Agios Gordis at night, and the schools of tiny phosphorescent fish there like sparks in the dark.

He'd written about a
panagiros,
when they all walked up to the summit of Mount Pantokrator and danced and danced round the crumbling walls until the sky was thick, blistered with stars. He fell asleep that night, dead drunk on
aspro,
he wrote exultantly, beside a young boy in one of the cells in the monastery there. And when he woke in the morning in his bed of straw, he and the boy were both wearing crowns of flowers, valerian and the narcotic pheasant's-eye, grass of Parnassus and early sternbergia.

Vida had thought then—or not exactly thought; it was as though she could see it, as though a picture had been placed before her eyes while she slept—that one day something like that would happen to her. One day, she thought, she would fall asleep and would be wakened wearing a crown of orchids and the tiny woven bodies of
Orchis italica,
its pink blossoms like the human
form itself. And she thought that she would like to live someplace beautiful. That when she awoke one morning in that beautiful place, she would be beautiful. That she would know how things happened, why they happened.

That it would happen like that.

“A
H
,” M
R
. L
AMB
says, arriving at the door to her little sitting room. He had kept up, the whole walk home, a baffling stream of conversation so circular and incongruous, with references to stamps and the complexities of the new organ, that she could scarcely follow it, much less offer a reply. At one point, when they had passed the Hughes-Onslow's lawn, five mean peacocks had come racing out from round the corner of the low whitewashed house and rushed over the grass, hissing, their fabulous tails fanned out behind them.

“I
so
admire peacocks,” Mr. Lamb had said, completely ignoring the nasty spirit of aggression with which they seemed to be pursuing one another. “Peacocks and butterflies are among the world's loveliest creations. Don't you agree?” He had turned to her, fixed his eyes on her, and Vida had nodded vaguely; a picture of her robe, its Oriental birds and flashing monarchs, had flown up before her, as though two invisible hands held it aloft and invited her to step within the circle of its golden cord.

“So
this
is where you live. I can tell,” Mr. Lamb says now, turning to her, light in his eyes. “This is the room you like best. Isn't it?

“Miss Stephen,” he says. “Vida, if I may? What a very cozy room indeed. I can see exactly why you like it here.

“Ah!” He spies Manford's stamp albums on the table and hurries over to them. “May I?”

He pulls out a chair, sits down, and opens the first book. Then
he spins round. “Oh,” he says, dismayed. “Perhaps I am delaying the meal? Forgive me.”

He stands up again, wipes his hands pointlessly on his trousers.

He's so nervous, Vida thinks. Perhaps he's shy. Perhaps, like me, he hasn't much occasion for company. This is all new to him, as it is to me. I must help us along. Friendship is such a rare thing. “No,” she says. “Not at all. Please. Be comfortable, Mr. Lamb.”

Mr. Lamb turns to look out the window but stiffens suddenly. “There's someone—” He points out the glass, accusing. “There's someone in your garden.”

Vida takes a step forward, follows his finger. “Oh!” A little tremor of excitement has found its way into her voice, surprising her. “That's—Jerome,” she says. “Or—” How can I not remember his name? she thinks desperately. Jason? Jonathan? Justin? “No, no—it's Jeremy,” she says at last in relief. She remembers the curling eyelashes, the spiny rake in his hand, his body laid upon the grass.

Mr. Lamb turns slowly to look at her, and for some reason she cannot bring herself to meet his eyes.

“Jeremy's the new gardener,” she says. There is an awkward pause. And after a moment she adds, although she isn't sure exactly what she means, “He's changing everything.”

Eleven

V
IDA COMES TO
stand beside Norris, and they look together out the window at the figure of the gardener below. After a moment she turns away. “I'll just check the roast,” she says.

Norris, his hand idling along the soft drape of the curtain, turns and blinks at the empty door frame, the place where she had been a moment before. After a second, though, she reappears, her hat still in her hand. “Please, do make yourself at home.” She nods toward one of the yellow silk chairs near the fire. “I'll just see to the potatoes, and then we'll eat,” she says. “Manford, come along and wash up.”

Norris watches Manford rise from the table where he has been working a large puzzle and leave the room. A lump has risen unexpectedly in Norris's throat. An ocean presses behind his eyelids. Why is this so very hard? he thinks. And then, surprising himself: I wish I were home.

Blinking rapidly to clear his eyes of the foolish tears that hover there, he turns back to the window. The gardener is bent over in a Herculean fashion, squatting, his arms around a stone urn on the lower terrace. As Norris watches, the young man stands, the massive urn lifted in his embrace. Even from his distance at the window, Norris can see the man's neck swell perceptibly with effort. He sees his shoulders grow broad and flat, sees the muscles in his thighs flex like rabbits trapped in a bag, sees the black hair, dampened with sweat, curling over the temple, a coiled lash. The man's entire body, concentrated on arriving at the delicate balance between the urn's bulk and his own elastic strength, seems to
Norris a sort of beau ideal, polished and perfect. It occurs to him, not for the first time, that the instrument of the body, especially when it is as young and beautiful as this gardener's, is indeed worthy of idolatry. Norris leans closer to the pane; the young man staggers once, twice, his jaw jutted forward as if to confront an enemy, and moves the urn a foot to one side. Norris feels his own breath leave him in a sympathetic burst.

When the gardener stands upright at last, Norris realizes that he is not a large man, despite his ambitious efforts with the urn. He sees the man's hand come up to clasp his opposing shoulder, as if to discourage some pain there. Norris feels his own head incline sympathetically toward his shoulder.

He jumps when Vida speaks from behind him, for he has been so absorbed in watching the gardener that he has not noticed that she has returned to the sitting room, has come to stand just behind him.

“He's done a great deal of work,” she says quietly, craning round Norris and looking out the window with him. “He says he'll never get it all to rights, not in years. But I think he's made an enormous difference already.” She cocks her head; they both watch as the gardener strolls away. “He's young, anyway,” she says. “He's got years to finish.”

The gardener disappears down the steps by the fountain toward the greenhouses, a rake poised in his hand like a javelin. He vanishes as if he were actually descending into the earth, down a set of endless stairs; it's an odd, disturbing effect. Norris frowns. Yes, a
young
man, he thinks. Young and handsome. But he wants to change the subject now, for something about the young gardener's body, its display of strength, makes him aware of his own extreme and awkward height, the thinness of his shins and arms, the pale color of the skin on his shoulders.

Vida rescues him. “Shall we have wine, Mr. Lamb?” she says, and he looks down to see that she has laid her hand gently on his arm a moment. She withdraws it when she sees him looking at her hand and glances away. “I think there's half a bottle of quite a nice red somewhere,” she says. “Would you care for a glass?”

“Yes, thank you,” Norris says gratefully, and turns to face her fully.

Who cares about a
gardener,
he thinks. Not him.

“Please—Vida,” he says, smiling at her. “Do let me set the table or
something.
This is so kind of you.”

N
ORRIS SMILES DETERMINEDLY
at Manford, who sits across from him at the far end of the long kitchen table. Manford rests his large head on his folded arms, his eyes fixed on Norris.

Striving to maintain a pleasant expression, and forcing himself to keep his eyes on Manford's face in what he hopes is a friendly manner, Norris directs a question at Vida. He's afraid of being a Nosy Parker, but he would rather talk than have silence between them. Silence feels like failure, and there is so much he wants to know.

Her back is to them as she bends into the oven and pulls out a heavy roasting pan, the juices from the roast crackling.

“He can hear all right, can't he?” Norris asks at last, clearing his throat and smiling broadly at Manford.

“Who? Manford?” She glances over her shoulder as she sets the pan down on the counter. “Yes, he hears you perfectly well.”

“But—” Norris scrapes his feet over the tile floor's sandy surface. He glances at Vida. Her blouse has puckered prettily over the strings of her apron.

Norris closes his eyes briefly and struggles with the confusing
notion of Manford's faculties: If he can hear, why can't he understand? Or perhaps he does understand? Norris wasn't sure.

“But—he can't speak.” This isn't exactly a question, he realizes. It's obvious that Manford doesn't speak.

“He's never said a single word,” Vida replies, still with her back to him, sharpening a knife. “Not once.”

Norris looks down at his hands and frowns. He tries to think how he might rephrase his question. Vida's tone suggests that matters should be clear now: He never speaks; can't; won't; though he appears to understand what you say. But Norris, though trying hard, still feels confused. Then he realizes, alighting happily upon the idea, that perhaps it is like being in the presence of a dog—an intelligent and kindly dog, no doubt—who catches the tone of what you are saying but not the actual meaning.

“Well!” He looks up, brightening. “He's rather like a
dog
then, isn't he? I mean, he attends to you as a dog might, but he can't actually participate in the conversation. A very nice dog,” he adds hastily, the word
dog
suddenly conjuring up images of teeth and slobber and hair. Norris nods helpfully at Manford, as if Manford himself has just advanced this theory.

But when Vida says nothing, ceasing her business with the roast, standing still with her back to them, Norris feels sure he has misspoken in some way. It wasn't what he meant exactly, Manford's being like a dog. He tries to think.

“Or perhaps,” he says, and he can hear the suffocated tone that has crept into his voice, “perhaps it's more like a foreigner. You know, someone who doesn't speak the language, and yet it all seems familiar somehow, the hand gestures and whatnot. Have you ever noticed,” he goes on bravely, his voice rising, despite himself, “how one tends to speak more loudly in the presence of
a foreigner? How one tries to enunciate a bit more clearly? As if it would help? It's silly, I know, but—”

He rises abruptly to his feet. Vida's back has begun to quiver, as if she were crying. Or laughing! Oh, which is it? Which would be worse?