Lamb in Love (26 page)

And there he finds Manford.

Down below in the grotto, seated on the curving bowl of the fountain's rim, he looks exactly, Norris thinks, like a portrait of Melancholy.

And now that he can see him, now that the high pulse of his fear has begun to steady, Norris waits, staring at Manford. He feels a profound and painful surge of sympathy—how sad Manford must be, so alone in whatever world he lives in. For there can be no other like him in that place, Norris supposes, no other with exactly the same disarranged features and mind. How does it all arrange itself for Manford, Norris wonders, the complicated universe flattened out to suit his understanding of it? As he stands there, staring at Manford, an image of Manford's mind rises before Norris—he imagines it held aloft in some strange light, like an image from a dream. It revolves slowly, some torch's beam trained on it, its surface mottled like a planet, run through with the branching streams of capillaries, the dark lakes of desire, of yearning.

Norris shakes his head, puts out a hand against Mercury's calf as if to steady himself. What do we know of ourselves except as through a prism, he wonders, the endless refractions of our mind turning back on itself like a dog chasing its own tail? And Manford? What does he think when he thinks of himself? Does he think a word, or a picture that tells him who he is?

And what about the heart, the heart as the seat of the soul?

What about Manford's heart?

N
ORRIS DESCENDS THE
steps from the terrace, advances across the newly clipped lawns. Shadows fall over the grass, the elongated shapes of the topiary urns spreading over the green. Norris's own shadow wavers and bleeds at the edges, shivering and contracting around him, spinning under his feet as he passes from west to north and at last enters the grotto through its twisting stair, the parapet around it bristling with the pruned canes of roses.

He steps out onto the flagstones at last, breathing hard. “Here you are!” he says, as if just discovering Manford. “Gave me quite a start when you disappeared like that.” He tries to smile.

But Manford does not look up at him. It's as if he isn't interested, Norris thinks, his relief ceding briefly to annoyance at what seems like Manford's obstinate silence. He tries to check this feeling in himself—it doesn't seem right to be irritated. And then his own attention is diverted anyway by the fountain, the glassy surface in the basin pebbled with droplets of water, the rising obelisk in the center bearing, at its crest, a bronze froth of statuary, a bouquet of erect female forms, arrows threaded through their bows. They are all Dianas, Norris recognizes, marveling; their bows aimed into the darkening wood beyond. From the feet of the grave and slender figures, from the massed
and tangled bodies of swans, their beaks open, crests of bright water rise into the sky. For a moment the image of Vida on the basin's rim flashes before Norris—her white feet, the dark patch.

“It's lovely, isn't it,” Norris says quietly at last, “to have the fountain turned on again?”

He glances at Manford, sitting oddly on the rim of the fountain with his feet splayed wide apart, his arms outstretched, his hands held before him, his interlocking fingers twisting and writhing.

And then Norris sees what is happening, how the flagstones beneath their feet grow lively and tremble with the dancing shapes of Manford's hands, the shadows thrown from the descending sun through his webbed fingers. Norris draws a step closer.

Manford works his hands with a puppeteer's concentration, the imbroglio of his fingers spreading a pantomime across the stones, a lavish tapestry of animals melting one into the next: A delicate swan pedals through water, giving way to some hooked and horned beast, and then to an amusing crouched cat, its back lithe, its ears two pointed knuckles. They come so fast, a carnival of creatures both known and fantastic, that Norris cannot catch them all. He leans forward, his mouth gaping.

And then at last Manford stops. He drops his head. His hands, like the hands of a musician or a conductor—like his own hands fallen from the organ's keys, Norris recognizes—come to rest slowly in his lap.

“Oh! Don't stop!” Norris lurches forward in dismay, flutters his hands. “Don't stop! That's—marvelous! That's the most marvelous thing I've ever seen! How do you do it?”

He flickers his own long fingers. The shadows lengthen like
flares and then contract, extinguished. He makes a fist, sees it bleed huge and menacing across the stones. He raises his arm, sees the tower of it loom. He snaps his ankles together, flattens his arms to his side, rocks like a penguin, and laughs to see his bouncing shape roll. He laughs again, flaps his arms, and sees the cloak of his shadow unfold, immense and piratelike, dashing and iconoclastic.

He turns to Manford, panting. “
How do you do it?
” He is beaming, breathing hard. “All those clever shapes! It's stunning, Manford! It's perfectly wonderful!”

But Manford makes no reply, looking away from Norris at the ground as if trying to divine himself how those shadow figures appeared, as if they might have struggled up from the earth itself, parting the flagstones with their mortar of ancient moss, raising the roof of the globe.

Norris feels vaguely rebuked, as though his own enthusiasm has been ridiculous beside the exact sophistication of Manford's creations—the turkey with its quivering wattle, the dog begging a bone, the alert rabbit, twin birds in flight. He pulls out his handkerchief and mops at his brow. And then he takes a seat beside Manford on the fountain's rim, turns his face toward the cooling spray, and closes his eyes.

“You don't want to talk about it. You don't want to do any more of it. That's all right. I understand,” he says quietly, not opening his eyes. “I'm just glad to have found you. I was worried, you see. Vida's entrusted you to me for this little while, and when you wandered off, I thought I'd failed her in the blink of an eye. She cares terribly for you, you know. She—”

He opens his eyes, stares at the back of Manford's heavy head framed against the sky. “I wish,” he says after a moment, “that you could tell me what I might do for her. How I might make her
love me. I know—I know I'm a poor sort of suitor in some ways. Many ways, perhaps. I know
you
amuse her in all sorts of ways, that she's chosen you, after a fashion, chosen to live her life here with you. I must tell you—I wouldn't want to change any of that. I understand how it is. But—”

He stops then, for Manford has raised his hands.

A swirl like smoke floats at first over the flagstones, a face materializing from the darkness, a tantalizing flash of profiles like inkblots.

Norris stares, transfixed.

The image steadies, stills.

And Norris sees the face then—the clown's peaked hat, crumpled at the top, the white wink of an eye, Punch's great hooked nose and hinged jaw working slowly, up and down, the mirthless jester berating his audience.

They stare together, Manford and Norris, at the famous fool; the bent proboscis, the snapping jaw, the inaudible stream of exhortation. Silence is all around them.

F
ROM THAT MOMENT
on, Norris feels he wants to stay near Manford. It is as if in Manford's presence something might happen—Norris might see something, he thinks, witness it as he witnessed those shadows that came out of nothing, out of nowhere, with the agility of air itself.

By the time Vida returns from having tended to Jeremy, Norris and Manford have come back up to the house. Norris had wept, surprising himself, though the tears had been threatening all day, he knew. He had taken Manford's arm in his own, walked back up to the house, no longer worried that he might try to run off. He knew he wouldn't, somehow; he understood that Manford had made him a gift, had linked the two of them together in
that final shadow of Punch.

Manford sat quietly at the table, looking over his stamp books, while Norris sliced the roast and put the potatoes in a pan to warm. He set the table, too, noting with pleasure how everything in the pantry was labeled so neatly and clearly.

When Vida comes in and hangs up her coat, Norris doesn't say anything at first; he just feels happy to have her there, the three of them now together. He wants it to last, the moment to last, is happy to have the meal all ready for her. He wants her to see that, to have time to take it all in.

She looks from one to the other of them.

And then Norris steps forward and touches Manford's head with his palm, resting it there and smiling at her, the long spoon in his hand, her apron tied round his waist.

“Welcome home,” he says. “We've been getting to know one another.”

Twelve

W
HEN
V
IDA COMES
in the door to the kitchen, Jeremy's bloody shirt rolled in her arms, Mr. Lamb turns in surprise and then smiles at her beatifically, waving the wooden spoon vaguely in the air above his head—a sort of salute, she thinks, taken aback. And then he steps near to Manford to lay a hand on his head.

She knows something has happened between them.

But they appear so peaceful, it seems to her, that she thinks it must be nothing to worry about, their air of conspiracy; they've only hit it off. She smiles shyly at Mr. Lamb and then goes to put Jeremy's shirt to soak in a basin in the larder.

When she comes back into the kitchen, she allows Mr. Lamb to help her to the table and pull out her chair. He shakes out her napkin and lays it over her lap.

“Put your stamp books aside, Manford,” she says, disconcerted by Mr. Lamb's attentions. “You don't want to spill on them.”

But Mr. Lamb picks them up himself and then brings the plates to the table, the roast in its pool of ruby-colored juices. “Here we
are,
” he says, and smiles all around.

T
HERE'D BEEN A
great deal of blood, Vida had noticed, and from a rather small gash, after all. Dr. Faber, working away over Jeremy's wrist, had said it was the placement, where the glass had caught the vein, that made it bleed so much.

After he was done sewing Jeremy up, Dr. Faber had taken them into his private office. Manford always liked Dr. Faber's office; there was so much to look at. He especially liked the skeleton
lurking in the corner, each of its bones numbered with a tiny carved black numeral. Manford often went to stand in front of it, cocking his head. Vida has thought that it's as if he recognizes it in some way—as a person.

“That's old Percy there,” Dr. Faber once said to him. “Say hello, Manford.”

Dr. Faber's office was really horribly crowded, though. Vida always felt she'd better not touch anything for fear a stack of papers would topple onto her. There were cases of books, too, and boxes still in their brown paper wrapping. It was known that Dr. Faber was a great reader, and indeed he had books piled everywhere. The office and attached surgery had belonged to his father before him; Vida suspected he'd never cleared out a thing.

But he managed to sweep aside some papers and find a place for Jeremy to sit, motioning for him to relax. Vida lingered in the doorway behind Jeremy's chair while Dr. Faber fetched the decanter from the cupboard and poured brandies for the three of them.

“Bolster your blood,” he said jovially, raising his glass to Jeremy.

Vida watched Jeremy's Adam's apple bob twice, and then the glass was empty.

“Well then,” Dr. Faber said, smacking his lips and holding the glass critically up to the light. “All in a Sunday's work. I'll have a look at you in ten days. Come back then and we'll take the stitches out. Try to keep it clean, though. Got a long glove? That'll do, if you want to work meanwhile. Don't go lifting any circus elephants, though.”

He winked and set his glass down on the papers on his desk, put his hand to Vida's back, and steered her toward the coatrack. He helped her into her coat, laid a broad palm briefly on Jeremy's shoulder, and saw them firmly to the door.

How nice, Vida thought, as they went away down the path, to be Dr. Faber. In they come bleeding to death, and you just sew them up and send them on their way and go home to your dinner.

S
HE HAD HELPED
Jeremy up the walk to Dr. Faber's, holding his arm in case he should feel faint, but it didn't seem right, their touching again when they left, he being all right then and sewn up. Still, she had turned a deep, mortifying red, first when she realized that she had been about to reach for his arm, and then realizing that she was disappointed to see how awkward it would be.

When Dr. Faber'd had him take off his shirt, she had opened her eyes wide at the perfect shape of the man beneath the bloody cloth. He was made of marble, she'd thought, marble run through with color—the blue veins of his neck, the flat, plum-colored nipples, the tiny curl of black hair like seaweed low on his belly. Her awareness of her own appreciation had embarrassed her. She had looked away helplessly; and there were Dr. Faber's surgical instruments, all lined up on the towel, including the thing she called privately to herself the duck's bill.