Lamb in Love (6 page)

During their practice sessions, which she has begun since he started at Niven's—as he takes both lunch and his tea there now—she holds the cup to his lips, touches his mouth with her finger, speaks softly to him. His eyes watch her face. He tries.

“Gently, Manford,” she says. “As though kissing a flower.”

She spills a bit of tea into the saucer and he practices holding it, watching the tea lap the edge.

“Little bites,” she says, passing him a triangle of toast spread with jam. He tries.

“Your napkin goes here,” she says, spreading it on his lap where he pats it. She doesn't like it tied around his neck anymore. Makes him look the baby.

A
T
N
IVEN'S THEY
have elevenses and lunch and tea, and after each meal Manford goes back to the dairy to work. Now they have him icing the cakes as well. This he does surprisingly
well, Mr. Niven says to Vida, the tiny garlands and miniature roses each set in their place, sometimes a fantastically shaped leaf or cluster of petals that the others come gradually to recognize as a likeness—a good likeness, in fact—of some native plant, nettle or cowslip.

Mr. Niven, who isn't usually one to appear surprised by much of anything, likes to stop his work and look over Manford's efforts from time to time. “It's quite remarkable,” he tells Vida. “It's as if he's—memorized things. The way they look.”

“He does have a talent for it, doesn't he?” Mrs. Blatchford agrees. She cocks her head and looks over a tray of cakes. “Though they're not what you would call traditional looking, are they?”

Mr. Niven frowns at a particular cake, iced with a tapestry of rampant, though lovely, green weeds. “Shall we have trouble selling it, do you think?”

“Well, we mustn't discourage him,” Mrs. Blatchford says with conviction. “No one wants it, we'll just give it to the vicarage. They slice all their cakes aforehand.”

T
HE IDEA OF
the job at Niven's came to Vida so suddenly one day that she couldn't quite believe it hadn't ever occurred to her before. It wasn't that she hadn't wanted to see him feeling useful. One time, in fact, she'd explored the possibility of the Spastic Society's workshop, where people like Manford could have a job. She and Manford had gone on the bus one day into Winchester, and they'd had a look at the place.

The workshop was in an old garage, converted into a hall so brightly lit that Vida found herself squinting as she introduced herself to the woman who bustled over to greet them and introduced herself as
Matron,
of all things! As if Dickens or Trollope or someone might have invented her, Vida thought.

The employees—the clients, as Matron referred to them—some of them tied up in wheelchairs with twisted sheets so they wouldn't slump over, sat at long tables, nodding off over their work. As far as Vida was able to tell—Matron was Indian and had such a pronounced accent, full of wobbles, that Vida could hardly make out her trebled inflections—the employees were assembling luncheon trays for prison inmates. A plastic cup, plastic cutlery (no knife) wrapped in cellophane, and a paper serviette were put on each tray, and then the whole thing was sealed in more sticky cellophane by three young, overweight chaps stationed at the end of the table.

Occasionally clients would look up at Vida and Manford as they passed with Matron. Their expressions—desperate and defeated, as though their tongues had been cut out—had made Vida feel frantic with sympathy. On a table by the door, an urn for hot water sputtered steam; a collection of mossy mugs and tea things were arranged on a tray on an old desk under the one window, its glass still greased over with streaks of whitewash. A box with half a tired-looking cake in it sat nearby on a folding chair. Someone had rather inexpertly painted a rainbow and several disproportionately large flowers on the wall near a hand-lettered sign that read:
WE WORK QUIETLY. WE KEEP OUR HANDS TO OURSELVES. WE NEVER, NEVER BITE OURSELVES OR ANYONE ELSE.

Manford had been positively ashen when they'd left, as if he'd been breathing in tiny, shallow breaths the whole while.

Riding home on the bus that afternoon, after a comfortingly large lunch in a cheerful, busy tearoom, Vida had held Manford's hand between her own and squeezed it often. He'd seemed subdued, and she had worried that she'd done the wrong thing by bringing him with her, though she didn't know who else she would have left him with.

That evening, Mr. Perry, who had been in London, had come home unexpectedly. Knocking at the door of his study that night, she had entered at the sound of his voice and stood before his desk, rigid with determination, to relate the events of the morning.

“And under no circumstances,” she had said, finishing up, “will I remain in your employment any longer if you will be recommending that Manford attend such a facility.”

Mr. Perry had looked up at her, surprised and faintly amused. “Why, Vida,” he said. “I never said
I
was in favor of it.”

She had stopped. “No,” she said, hesitating. “No, I know you didn't. I'm just saying—it was
awful.
I just thought you should—know that.”

“Well, thanks.” Mr. Perry had smiled up at her. “Thanks for letting me know.”

And after that, she'd put the matter of Manford's occupation out of her mind—until just this summer, passing the bakery with Manford, the thought of it suddenly came to her again. She had stopped and stared in through the window at the glass cases with the cakes and buns, the loaves of bread stacked like bricks. She'd heard the bell jangle, heard Mrs. Blatchford laugh. A customer, leaving, tipped his hat to Vida and Manford, looked over Manford the way people who don't know him do, taking a secretive second look as if they might have been mistaken about what they'd seen and were fearful of being rude. Manford looked back and then up at the sky, squinting. Vida patted his arm and then opened the door.

“Well, good morning to you, Vida,” Mrs. Blatchford had said.

“Good morning, Mrs. Blatchford,” Vida replied. Vida saw Manford look the buns over hungrily, though he'd just had egg-in-a-hole at home. He
is
a bottomless pit, Vida thought, always after something to eat.

She asked Mrs. Blatchford for a loaf of wheat bread and looked around with what she imagined to be casual interest. “It's a busy job you have here, Mrs. Blatchford,” she said. “Do you still do all the baking yourself?”

“Oh, yes. Myself and Mr. Niven,” Mrs. Blatchford said, sighing. “We can hardly keep up with it some days.”

“You've enough help, though, I suppose?” Vida asked.

“Oh, we've never enough help. Can't keep them, you know. They're all off to London, the young nowadays. Don't want to stay in the village.”

“Manford, here—he loves the bakery,” Vida said then.

“Well, we'll have to give him something special then, today,” Mrs. Blatchford said. “A jam doughnut in the bag for you, Manford.” And she turned, a bit of tissue in her hand, to lift one from a tray, put it in the paper sack.

“Oh, Manford,” Vida said. “Look at what Mrs. Blatchford's given you. Such a kind thing. A jam doughnut. You know,” she went on after a moment, “Manford is a steady soul. Completely tireless, in fact. Not like myself. I'm getting on now, Mrs. Blatchford. I can hardly keep up with him anymore.” She laughed a little.

“Oh, Vida. Now, how old are you?” Mrs. Blatchford looked her up and down. “What is it? Thirty-five? Thirty-six?”

“Oh, no! Forty-one, Mrs. Blatchford! I'm forty-one now!” Vida said. And then she brightened, deliberately. “But isn't it fortunate,” she said, “our having this conversation this morning?” She waited a moment, allowing her gaze to travel over the place, its sweet smell of bread rising, the sugared buns, the iced cakes. “For I've been looking for a place of employment for Manford, Mrs. Blatchford. Something useful for him to do during the day. We all need to feel useful in the world.”

“We do,” Mrs. Blatchford said, standing still, staring at Manford.

“He could be most useful to you,” Vida said.

“Could he,” Mrs. Blatchford said slowly.

And it was done.

H
E STARTED THE
next Monday. And once they saw that he could take care of himself all right, spend a penny on his own, come out buttoned up properly, not bother anyone, they took him in as if they'd been waiting for an opportunity like this all along. Vida could have told them this, if they'd asked, how he would make them feel happy.

But once he'd begun at Niven's, in that first week, when the days without him seemed so long and empty, she had time on her hands, time in great quantity.

During one of those empty mornings, she'd set about going through her mother's things. She'd been putting it off for a long time. It made her feel sad to look at the boxes; she missed her mother, whose last months had been painful and unhappy. Nursing her own mother, along with looking after Manford, had been a strain on her. While it was going on, she stopped by Dr. Faber's one day to have him look at a funny toenail of Manford's for her. But Dr. Faber had instead looked
her
over with studious concern, noting the tired shadows on her face. He'd wanted to give her something to help her relax, sleep better at night. But she'd worried about not being wholly alert—one might be needed at any moment, she'd pointed out to him—and so had declined.

She had, though, decided she could wait to go through her mother's things until she felt recovered. So three days into Manford's first week at Niven's, after doing as much housecleaning as she could contrive for herself, she carried the boxes with her mother's belongings from a spare room into the sitting room off
the kitchen, where she and Manford spent most of their time. And among the papers and mementos, she found her uncle Laurence's letters to the family from over the years.

Vida had been nineteen when Laurence left, just after the end of the war. Over time, he'd become in her mind a figure so improved in stature that she could scarcely feel her relation to him. She'd seen him only three or four times since his move to Corfu, most recently at her mother's funeral, but he had always written regularly, and he was good about remembering important occasions such as her birthday. Vida's parents, who'd run the small grocery in Hursley now managed by the Spooners, thought he'd felt guilty, abandoning them. He'd always been different, though, Vida remembered, wanting nothing more than to wander around the downs, painting pictures. One day he'd abruptly sold them his share in the grocery, and a week later he had left for Corfu, surprising them all. He was a bit mysterious about his life on Corfu, but he'd never asked for money, and his letters were always happy.

He'd written almost weekly in the first years he was gone, describing Corfu and his days there, how he spent them painting landscapes or arrangements on tables; he always employed the Greek words for what he saw: the bottles of
kokkino,
the spiny mauve heads of
anginares
and tempting shapes of
kolokithia,
the salads of dandelion leaves. Sometimes he sent a painting by parcel post, a dense little landscape carved out with a palette knife on a block of wood with canvas stretched across it. Once he'd sent a lovely figure of a young man, nude, bent over the rocks by the sea. Vida's mother had hung the paintings on the wall behind the counter at the grocery and would point them out to customers.

“Laurence is coming along splendidly over there in Greece,” she'd say. “He's sent us another canvas. Isn't it grand?”

To Vida, who imagined Laurence's life in brilliant, cinematic detail, the presence of this relation in her life felt sometimes like its most important, most precious aspect.

V
IDA IS IN
the habit of saying to Manford every little thing that comes into her head, though he can't say a word in return. But she runs on, asking a question and answering it herself, amusing them both. She knows that people have a laugh at her, seeing her walking along with Manford, chattering away to him. The other day she saw deaf old Patrick Farley, sitting on the wall by the blacksmith's, point her out to Fergus. Patrick always spoke much louder than was necessary. “There they are,” she heard him shout, ducking his head and spitting a caramel-colored wad into the street. “
Two
Daffy Ducks.”

But Vida
likes
to talk, loves the whole
idea
of conversation—people pushing what she sees as a little boat of goodwill back and forth across a pond; she watches people in tearooms, at church, studying the way their mouths work, their expressions as they talk. So she talks to Manford, talks to the violent-tempered green budgerigar in his cage in the kitchen, talks to herself.

One evening, Vida read aloud to Manford a bit of one of Laurence's earliest aerogrammes, the paper fine as tissue between her fingers. Laurence's script was massive and gorgeous, the ascendant strokes like mountain peaks.

“This week I have been painting the olive orchards,” she read to Manford, settling herself in her chair. “The trees are monumental, fifty feet tall some of them, and as old as five hundred years. The Greeks rig up white netting beneath them to catch the fruit when it falls and spare them the tedious job of picking. It looks like a shroud drifting among the trees, or a mist. It is very beautiful, and very green, here. Much like the countryside round
Hampshire, in an odd way.”

“Oh, think of it, Manford,” Vida said, sinking back against the pillows of her chair, looking out the window into the darkening gardens at Southend House. Manford lay on the rug before her, pushing his toy lorries back and forth over the carpet, his head resting on his arm, his heels showing through the holes in his socks. “Old Uncle Laurence,” Vida went on, “sitting at the base of Mount Pantokrator, watching the schools of dolphins, painting the olive orchards. Wouldn't you like to see that for yourself?”