Lamb in Love (37 page)

Jeremy takes the papers from her, shamefaced.

She waves him out of the room and follows him, shutting off the lights. She wants a wash, she thinks. She wants to wash every bit of him off her, and then she'll go and fetch Manford, and—take him out to dinner. They'll go to the pub and have fish-and-chips together. They've never done that.

They'll have a new thing, every day from now on, she thinks. Something new, every single day.

Seventeen

A
S THEY LEAVE
Niven's courtyard and turn onto the pavement along the Romsey Road, Norris struggles with his feelings: He discovers he rather likes holding Manford's hand, so large and substantial; through the slight pressure against his fingers he can feel the rhythm of Manford's pace beside him, like the tugging rope of a buoy, something secure and friendly. But the intimacy of their attachment makes Norris uncomfortable, too, and though he is ashamed of his discomfort, he nonetheless looks about nervously to see whether anyone might be watching them.

After a few moments he dislodges Manford's fingers from his own and waves his arms backward and forward in an enthusiastic manner, like a soldier. “Ah, the air does one good,” he says firmly, taking deep, military breaths and hoping to distract Manford from the gesture of separation. It seems to him that he has failed in some way, failed them both, but he simply cannot bring himself to walk down the Romsey Road holding hands with Manford Perry. “Come along,” he says as brightly as he can. He hopes he sounds, at least, as though he had some definite purpose in mind.

But as they draw near the post office, he feels even less sure of his errand.

Fergus is lounging against the doorjamb, tamping his pipe. He looks up as Norris and Manford approach, and his eyebrows rise in his face.

Norris stops. Manford waits beside him, looking at Fergus with interest and sniffing.

There is an awkward silence. Norris notices a bit of sparkling rubbish, a foil chocolate wrapper, lying in the gutter.

Fergus gestures to Manford with his pipe. “Got someone with you,” he says, as if Norris might not have noticed.

“Yes.” Norris puts his hands in his pockets. He cranes round Fergus and looks in the window of the post office as if he, too, were waiting for the shade to be rolled up, for himself to come to the door murmuring apologies and ushering them inside.

“Well? Aren't you going to open up?”

“What?” Norris starts; it feels as though Fergus has pinched him somewhere!

“The post office,” Fergus says slowly, as if to an idiot, removing his pipe. “It's your place, isn't it?”

“I—I have some other business to attend to this morning,” Norris says finally, indicating Manford with a slight jerk of his head.

Fergus looks back and forth between the two of them, a doubtful expression on his face.

“Well, we're off,” Norris says then, with as much resolve as he can summon, and moves around Fergus and down the pavement toward the Dolphin, Manford following behind him.

“Hallo!” Fergus calls after him. “I'm needing tobacco!”

Norris waves his hand behind his head in a vague gesture, as if to brush away a fly. “Yes, well,” he calls faintly. “I'll be back.”

But in truth he cannot imagine how he will ever come back. He seems to be marching off not on some errand with Manford, some pleasant ramble, but on a journey whose destination is yet unknown to him. He feels now that he must marshal his faculties, bring himself under strict control. I'm responsible for him now, he thinks. It's up to me to see that he doesn't come to any harm.

It occurs to him that it would be so helpful, at moments like this, if Manford could speak.

A
DOOR IN
the stone wall before St. Alphage opens, and the vicar backs out. Norris has to come to a sudden stop to avoid ploughing into him.

“Ah! Lamb!” the vicar says, turning round, his eyes widening. “I've just rung you.” But he stops at the sight of Manford.

“We're having a walk,” Norris says stonily, hoping to forestall any questions.

“A walk,” the vicar repeats, his eyebrows permanently arrested, it seems, in an upside-down victory symbol over his nose. “Lovely morning for it.” He stares at Norris and Manford a moment longer and then leans forward and reaches out his hand to Manford's arm, placing his palm over Manford's floury sleeve. “Good morning, Manford,” he says slowly and loudly, nodding and smiling.

“You don't need to
shout,
” Norris says. “He hears you perfectly well.”

The vicar straightens up, embarrassed. “Yes, of course.” He glances back and forth between Norris and Manford. “Are you—in charge of him?”

“Yes, I am,” Norris says shortly, and folds his arms as if to suggest that he will not be answering any further questions.

“Well, that's
fine,
” the vicar says with warmth. Norris thinks how the vicar can revert to enthusiasm at the drop of a hat, as though to be amiable were a sort of clerical duty. Usually he quite likes this about the Reverend Keble, his benign and sympathetic manner. Yet there is a certain air of the dead end about him, too; no matter what befalls you, the vicar always manages to convey a vast tolerance for life's injustices, as if your own fury and frustration were of no consequence when weighed in the enormous context of the hereafter.

As if deciding that it would be too complicated to inquire any
more about how Norris and Manford have come to be in each other's company, the vicar smiles at Norris and resumes briskly. “My dear Lamb,” he says, blinking in the weak light of the sun and gazing about approvingly as though the common sights around them—trees, wall, road—have been arranged specifically for the purpose of looking pleasing. “I've been meaning to ask you whether you wouldn't like to play for the talent show Saturday.”

He reaches into his basket, pulls out a slip of paper, and unfolds it laboriously. “Where
are
my glasses?” he mutters, searching his pockets. “Ah, here they are. Now, let me see. We've a
splendid
program this year. I thought you might fit in beautifully”—he points to the paper—“here, between the Hughes-Onslow sisters' gymnastics and Mr. Niven's “When Delia on the plain appears.” George Lyttelton, that is. Do you know him? Undervalued poet, and Mr. Niven does a spotless job with it. We'd an audition the other night, tea and sherry and whatnot. Ian was just leaving with his terrier—you know, the one that does the tricks? Races round in circles barking, plays dead, walks on his hind legs? You've seen him? No? Well, quite remarkable. Very clever little dog. And Mr. Niven stuck his head in the door and said he'd do a spot of poetry for us! Oh, dear, that's a bit dull, I thought, but he's quite the elocutionist, it turns out! In any case”—he runs his finger down the paper—“there's no other music, other than Mrs. Ramsey, of course—”

Norris rolls his eyes.

“And I thought we could do with something from the organ.” The vicar wrinkles his brow, frowns at the page. “Or perhaps we could put you here, in between Sammy's sword dance and my own poor offering—just a few birdcalls,” he adds modestly, glancing up and then hastily back to his paper as he takes in Norris's
impassive expression. “Well! No, perhaps it's as I first thought; you're better off toward the end of the program, after all, near the raffle. Several ladies will be doing squares of an afghan—I thought I'd have them under the west window, you know, the Wise and Foolish Virgins, but off to the side perhaps, and Mrs. Spooner's very kindly said she'd sew it all together, she's so very speedy.” He pauses. “And there's the bells from the fourth form at Prince's Mead,” he says faintly. “But that's not the same as our splendid new organ.” He looks up hopefully.

“I'll consider it,” Norris says.

“Right!” The vicar waves his arm in a salute as Norris takes Manford's arm and hurries him away down the pavement. “Something uplifting, I thought?”

A
S
N
ORRIS AND
Manford pass Spooner's, Mrs. Spooner comes to the door, her hands deep in the pockets of her cardigan. She cranes her thin neck round the door frame to look up the road, which is temporarily empty of traffic, and stops at the sight of Norris and Manford passing on the opposite side of the street, Manford bouncing along happily. He gives her a delighted wave, as though signaling from an airplane. She raises her hand slowly in reply and then quickly ducks back inside. Norris glances behind him and sees Mr. Spooner join his wife at the door, their faces white like two balloons bobbing over their doorsill.

Well, he thinks, it can't be helped, whatever people want to imagine. What
do
they imagine, though? he wonders. He himself doesn't know what he's doing. He doesn't want Manford to feel uncomfortable, though; he glances at Manford's face and is about to say something reassuring—though Manford seems perfectly contented, even happy—when he has to stop for Dr. Faber, who is backing his car down his drive in front of them. Dr. Faber
drives a Morris Minor, a car far too small for him. He always looks so crowded in it.

Dr. Faber stops the car, rolls down his window, and looks out at them.

“Hallo, Lamb,” he says. He smiles up at Manford. “Good morning, Manford. What have you done with your better half?”

Norris glances surreptitiously at Manford and then leans down toward Dr. Faber. “They had a small—difficulty with him at Niven's,” he says in a whisper. “I'm just helping matters out temporarily.”

Dr. Faber frowns. “What sort of difficulty?”

“Well—” Norris considers how to explain. He leans closer. “He did a spider's web on a cake.”

Dr. Faber stares at him a moment and then throws his head back in surprise and laughs. “A spider's web! I'll bet they didn't care for that,” Dr. Faber says.

“Well, no!”

“He has an odd talent, I'll say that for him,” Dr. Faber concedes, resting an arm on the window of the car, looking fondly at Manford. “Hermione brought home one of the cakes he'd done the other day. Had weeds all over it! In raspberry jam! Absolutely delicious, though. Startlingly good likeness, too, I must say. Good idea of Vida's, to get him that job.” He looks up at Norris. “What are you doing with him?”

But Norris feels that Dr. Faber does not understand the problem properly. It
had
been a very good spider's web; anyone could see that, he thinks. But he wants Dr. Faber to appreciate that he, Norris, has stepped in to rescue Manford at this moment; that he's saving him from disgrace. “Mrs. Blatchford was quite upset,” he says.

Dr. Faber laughs again. “Well, I'm sure she was,” he says. “But
it's a talent anyway, whether you do a spider's web or a lot of little roses. Talent,” he says, “is whatever comes straight and true from the human heart. With Manford here, you see, it's a direct route.” He knocks at his own temple with his knuckles. “Nothing to run interference,” he adds significantly.

Norris steps back a pace. Manford is watching a departing lorry, its kite string of black exhaust. “But don't you think,” he says slowly, turning back to Dr. Faber, “don't you think that, even with all that talent he has, it would be better if—it would be helpful to know what he thinks? In words, I mean?” He looks at Dr. Faber's face, his mild blue eyes, his heavy jowls, his balding head flushed a healthy pink. “Dr. Faber, does Manford have a language? A word language? And”—he finds himself hastening toward the notion—“why
shouldn't
he speak one day? Just out of the blue?”

Norris is humiliated to see Dr. Faber sigh and then turn his gaze to stare out the windshield of the car at the small garden fronting his house, the yews there clipped neatly into regular waves; I must have said something very stupid, Norris thinks, ashamed.

“They always want to know that,” Dr. Faber says, though to Norris it seems as if he weren't speaking to anyone in particular. “It's natural, I suppose.” He turns back to Norris. “Those aren't easy questions,” he says. “And I haven't got any good answers for you, I'm afraid. But I don't know why he would speak—now, after all this time. There's not much precedent for a mute recovering—or discovering—his voice all of a sudden.” And then he squints up at Norris. “You should ask Vida about that, anyway. She claims to know exactly what he's thinking, no words needed at all. Isn't that right, Manford?”

Manford looks up from his interested perusal of the street, meets Dr. Faber's appraisal with a blank look.

Dr. Faber turns his eyes away from Manford and finds Norris's face. “Vida listens with her heart,” he says, clamping his fist to his chest and thumping it once significantly. “We should all try it more often.”

N
ORRIS STANDS UPRIGHT
as Dr. Faber puts the Morris Minor into gear and waves at him out the window. “Must be going,” Dr. Faber calls. “Off to hospital!” He says this last almost gaily, Norris thinks. How does a man who deals so regularly in life and death and the body's terrible betrayals manage to be so unafraid, so blithe? It's all what you're used to, Norris thinks, putting his hands in his pockets. It's whatever is your natural climate.