Lamb in Love (35 page)

Perhaps he should propose an outing, something that might be taken not as a rebuke but as a reward. After all, to take him
straight home—well, that's like being in disgrace. And that won't do. That isn't what should be conveyed here. No, Manford is doing his very best, and he should never be discouraged. Vida would hate that.

So instead Norris makes a great show of being impressed by the cake. “Well done, Manford!” he says, clapping Manford strongly on the back. “You've certainly earned your shilling today!”

Too loud, he thinks nervously; he'll have to lower his voice. He leans forward and gently takes the sticky pastry cone from Manford's hands, lays it gingerly on the table. “Manford,” he says, “I've an idea. How would you like to have a walk with your old friend Norris, here? You love a good walk, don't you?”

Manford looks up at Norris.

“Well, come on then!” Norris says, making an enthusiastic rising motion with his arms, like a conductor. “Up you go. Let's have our walk. You've done splendidly here,” he adds hastily.

Manford stands. Norris looks him over, points to his shoes. “You've a lace undone.” He shakes a finger in the direction of Manford's shoe. Manford cranes over and looks at his lace. When he sits back down heavily on his stool and inclines his foot, Norris looks at him and searches his face in confusion.

“Can't you do it yourself?” he asks in surprise.

But Manford continues to hold his foot out in the air. He raises his leg a little and looks off vacantly into the distance somewhere beyond Norris's right shoulder.

After a moment, Norris kneels awkwardly and laces Manford's shoe. “Fine,” he says, standing back up, breathing hard.

But the tail of Manford's shirt hangs loose; his hair is flyaway, unkempt. Norris gestures awkwardly at him. “You might want to tidy yourself up a bit,” he begins.

Manford licks his fingers slowly then, tucks his curled fingers
under his fringe, and pushes the hair slowly to one side, his eyes rolling upward strangely, following the motion of his hand.

Norris regards him. Manford still looks as though he's had an encounter with a lot of bats, the creatures sweeping into him, tangling his hair in their sticky wings.

And so Norris reaches out with his own hands to smooth Manford's hair. Manford drops his head, submits to Norris like a small child. Under his fingers, Norris feels the solid bone of Manford's skull, the rigid substance of it. He keeps his hands there, smoothing and smoothing, and realizes then that he has never touched another person like this. And as Norris stands there holding Manford's head, Manford reaches forward suddenly to clasp Norris by the lapels, burying his face briefly against his shirtfront, inhaling. When Manford raises his face, it wears the sweetest smile.

Norris smiles back, a smile he knows isn't half so good as Manford's; he deserves so much more.

And when they pass together through the bakery hand in hand, Mrs. Blatchford raises her eyebrows at them. “Well, Mr. Lamb,” she says. “Turns out you've quite a way with him, doesn't it?”

Sixteen

V
IDA TWISTS AWAY
from Jeremy. “You haven't seen the library yet.”

She hears the frightened battery of her own footsteps, the fussy clicking of her heels as she hurries out of the ballroom away from him, the dead air of the room cool against her flushed cheeks. For a moment she thinks she hears him laugh, but she is not certain of this. Certainly, as she pulls away, she hears his breath escape in an expression of—disgust, she thinks. But she won't wait for him now. It's better not to wait, she thinks. It's best just to go on, pretend nothing's happened. And perhaps nothing has.

“Close the doors after you?” She hurries ahead down the hall. Her own voice sounds to her high and alarmed. Oh, what is there to be so frightened of? She is annoyed at herself. But, “I like to keep them shut in case of birds,” she hears herself call over her shoulder. “So many seem to find their way in.”

He is close at her heels now, having followed her toward the library, and she feels a slick of perspiration break out over her skin.

“You know what they say about that, don't you?” he asks.

“What?” She does not turn to answer him but hurries away down the hall.

“Birds in the house,” she hears him say. “It's a sign of bad luck. Evil omen.”

She waits an instant at the door to the library, her back still to him, before replying. “Well, I don't believe in any of that,” she says firmly. “They're just a nuisance.”

But she does believe it. An aching feeling of dread comes over her whenever she discovers a bird trapped in one of Southend's airless rooms, the creature flapping away wildly and scaring her half to death when she opens the door. They come in through the chimneys, she believes. She has found several over the years, starlings usually; their oily black bodies leave smudges against the walls and on the heavy draperies at the windows. It is as if they became suddenly blind, as if they couldn't see the walls around them; they fly at the plaster or the mullioned panes, falling stunned to the floor in collision after pointless collision. It's the stupidity of it she hates. That they can't see where they are. That they can't see how they'd got in, such a simple thing, and so can't get out, either.

“All the same, it
is
a bad omen. Whether you believe in it or not,” Jeremy says now from behind her. His tone is oddly companionable, agreeable; Vida finds herself annoyed by it. She turns to him. “You've certainly a morbid turn of mind today,” she says sharply. He just shrugs. “After you,” he says as she turns away again to open the door to the library.

She hears it then, no mistaking it—the sarcasm in his voice.

She had averted something, there in the ballroom. She understands that. And she had been frightened, she knows, recognizing it. He would have kissed her! When had she last been kissed? She'd been—she was—unprepared! Any other man—a
good
man, she thinks fiercely—would have seen that! He wouldn't have come at her so—suddenly! But thinking of Jeremy, of his dark good looks, she feels a tidal surge of embarrassment. What would this man want with
her,
anyway?

Something's wrong, she thinks. Or something's wrong with him to be frightening her in this way.

She crosses the shadowy library to pull aside the heavy drapes,
but as the chalky light of midday falls into the room, she hears the words from the letter, the love letter, as if they had been spoken aloud.
I fall at your knees in worship,
the letter had said.

But who had almost fallen there in the ballroom? Not Jeremy, she realizes. Someone else. She herself.

She takes a deep breath and switches on the light by the drawing table. In one of the wide, shallow drawers Mr. Perry uses to store his work, she finds the garden drawings. Several of Mr. Perry's own sketches are laid on top of the yellowed sheets that detail the original diagrams, a complicated crosshatching of underground pipes and foundations for the fountain.

She stiffens as Jeremy leans in close over her shoulder.

“Did he do those?”

She nods.

He reaches past her for them. “Let's have a look.”

He takes several sheets from her hand, walks to the window, and holds them to the light, where she can see black lines reversed through the transparent paper, Jeremy's glove a dark blossom against the white. She doesn't like the way he holds the drawings, as if he might damage them, crumple them suddenly in his hands.

“He's an architect, for churches. Someone told me,” he says, still looking at the drawings.

“Yes.”

Jeremy seems transfixed by the drawings, tilting them this way and that to the light. He holds one up for her. “Where's this?”

“Oh, that's St. Nevin's,” she says after a moment, pleased to recognize the little church with its circular window over the front door, like a brilliant eye. She remembers driving there with Mr. Perry and Manford, when Manford was just a boy. Mr. Perry had taken them along when he went to sketch the church the first time, and she and Manford played in the tiny close, setting fragments
of twigs afloat in the pencil-thin stream of water that ran down the cobbled gutter. There hadn't been anyone about except a char, a scarf knotted over her head and a pail and rag in her hand, who hurried through the gray courtyard, her glance pausing at Manford's awkward antics.

They had remained there in the high-walled enclosure for the whole afternoon, racing a flotilla of seeds and twigs, watching them vanish through the gutter's low aperture in the stone wall. Wondering what became of them, Vida had wandered to the gate, seen the gutter's stream empty into a brook that wound, low in its bed, through a field waving prettily with poppies and Queen Anne's lace. She would have liked to follow the stream, but Manford could not be persuaded away from the activity, tugging on her hand and drawing her to her knees on the hard stone, where they gathered more detritus to send down the quick channel. She had thought, in the end, that it was a penitent's work, that between them they had cleared the whole close of anything the wind might lift. Still, Manford had loved it, the sensation of excitement as their little craft sped away and vanished. I know where they go, she'd thought, but to him it is like a magic trick.

She had hoped they would stop somewhere for tea on the way home, as it was late in the day when Mr. Perry finally finished and came to fetch them. But he pulled up outside a shop in Southampton and brought fish-and-chips out to the car for them instead. She had understood, at the time, that he didn't want to bring Manford into a pub, where he could be closely observed, a silence falling among the patrons as the child's strange, silent animation excited notice. So the three of them had sat in the car in silence, licking their fingers over the rumple of newspaper, Vida and Manford in the backseat together so she could help him. It began to rain, she remembers, and she looked out the window,
which was beaded and streaked with water, the world gradually disappearing into the rain and early dark, an occasional car driving by and sending a spray of dirty gray water up from its tires. She sat beside Manford, reaching over to wipe his chin gently as he ate, the sweet fish hot and delicious.

Once, feeling eyes upon her, she had looked up and seen Mr. Perry watching her through the mirror. But he had turned his gaze away quickly, and she had felt embarrassed. He is thinking about his wife, she had thought, how he wishes she were still alive. And she had felt ashamed then to be herself, to be who she was.

Now, though, she is happy to recognize the church. “See, there's the window,” she says, pointing. “The round one. That's how I know it. It's quite unusual, apparently.”

Jeremy nods his head. “It's a talent, isn't it?” he says. “To draw like this.”

His tone is so serious that Vida finds suddenly that she feels sorry for him. He's young, after all. She softens, taking in his clear skin and shiny hair. He's too young to have any accomplishments of his own, perhaps, and being a gardener, while very fine work, well, it isn't nearly as grand as being a builder of churches, is it? It occurs to her that perhaps he envies Mr. Perry, and she thinks she understands that, that envy of
class.
Poor boy. She relents; why had she been afraid of him? Wasn't it silly? They were alike, both of them. Servants, in the end.

She feels a prick of disloyalty then but goes on, wanting him to feel better. “Well, we
all
have our talents,” she says stoutly. “You've got your talent in the garden,” she adds.

He laughs, and she feels puzzled by this—hurt, really.

“And what's yours?” he asks, looking over at her. “What's
your
talent, Vida?”

The question so startles her that she thinks for a minute she might have imagined it. But the words ring there in the air between them, an echoing accusation.

How is it that I have no answer? she thinks wildly. How is it I have no answer to that question?

She has a talent for Manford, she wants to shout then. That's not
nothing.
She has loved him.

She used to worry so, she thinks distractedly, over Manford's not having any friends. She'd wanted him to go to school, but Mr. Perry had discouraged it. “What's the point?” he'd asked, but not as if it were a discussion. “It'll just be hard for him.”

He was wrong, she'd thought, but she hadn't had any choice. He was the father, and she was nothing but the nanny.

Instead, when Manford was a little boy, she'd have other boys over, organize games for them, cricket and so on. But they grew up, those boys, and Manford didn't. And that he couldn't speak to them—they didn't have the patience for him.

They had no imagination, she thinks now, staring over Jeremy's shoulder toward the window. Perhaps, she thinks, you have to have imagination to love anybody.