Long Summer Day (75 page)
And yet, although exquisitely self-contained, there were moments in the spring of the year when Hazel was vaguely conscious of her isolation, when it made itself known to her by a curious sensation, a faint and remote pricking, located somewhere between her breasts, as though, without leaving a puncture, a sliver of gorse had got under the skin and was trying to work its way out.
At first she paid little attention to it but as the warm April days succeeded one another, and the murmur of the woods swelled so that it reached her rock like the wash of the sea, the pricking became more insistent and sometimes converted itself into a choking feeling in the base of the throat that made her eyes smart, so that she could no longer lay inactive staring down at the green umbrellas and would spring up, pull on her dress and plunge down the pine-studded slope to the rhododendrons and through the green tunnels to the mere and here, if she was lucky, she would see Sam, or Joannie, or old Aaron the osier cutter, and would forget what had brought her here in such a hurry.
It was during one of these brief melancholy spells, on a warm April day, that she saw something break the calm surface of the mere on her side of the islet. She was lying naked on her rock, screened from above and below by gorse and bracken and the landscape, usually so alive, was listless under the noonday sun. At first she thought the wide ripple was caused by the pike that Sam said had lived there since Old Tamer was a boy but soon she saw a swimmer moving slowly across the mere to the western shore. As she watched, surprised and a little alarmed, she saw the figure make a landing near the spot where Smut had hidden from the Heronslea keepers. She recognised him at once, even at this distance, and her heart gave a great leap of pleasure, as a tear, after hovering for a half a minute, splashed down her cheek and beaded a hart’s tongue fern growing on the edge of the rock. She jumped down into her cave, pulled on her ragged dress and without knowing why held up the shining lid to study her reflection, noting that she had a string of bird’s foot trefoil braided into her hair and also that she was smiling and that her eyes were moist. She stood still for a moment, pulling faces at herself and tossing her hair this way and that and said with deliberation, ‘I’ll bring un yer! I’ll show un the house, an’ mebbe he’d stay on a bit to watch things!’
It was not a light-hearted decision. No one, not even her brother Sam who tramped the rabbit run below three or four times a week, knew of the existence of her house for her instinct had always been to guard the secret against the time when they would come looking for her to put her to work or send her back to that stuffy schoolroom at Deepdene. But The Boy could be trusted, for The Boy was different, half-way to being wild like herself, for if not why should he swim naked across the mere as if the old pike, the underwater bogies and the clutching weeds were not lying in wait to drag him where he would never be seen again? She went swiftly down the slope and through the rhododendron tunnels to a rift in the lakeside foliage, moving cautiously until she could see him towelling himself under a Douglas fir, and as he rubbed he whistled softly through his teeth, flapping his arms as though he was cold. She would have called out to him but at that moment, still flapping, he turned away and reached up to take his shirt and trousers from the lowest branch and she had to smother her giggles for he looked so funny standing there with the filtered sun playing on his long, pale back, lean legs and small, chubby behind. She remembered then that men were ashamed of their bodies and with good reason it seemed, so she waited until he had struggled into his trousers, shirt and sweater before crackling twigs underfoot and calling, ‘Boy! Boy! Dornee know the ole pike’ll get ’ee swimmin’ in there?’
He looked startled for the moment but when she stepped down to the shore to meet him he smiled and flicked back his dark hair, saying that he had crossed to the islet twice without landing. He seemed to her much broader and taller in his clothes, no longer a boy but a man nearly as broad-shouldered as her brother Sam.
‘It’s years since I set eyes on you,’ he said, ‘where have you been? They said you were still about but I never saw you, not once!’
‘I’ve seen ’ee many times,’ she said gravely and he remembered then that she sometimes took it into her head to watch the yard from the meadow behind the house.
‘But you’re never at the Dell,’ he said and the truculence in his voice pleased her so that she shook out her hair and twirled her body, saying, ‘I’ve got a house o’ me orn and I’ll tak’ ’ee there if you mind to! No one knows it, not even Sam, nor Smut! Tiz mine, fer ’twas I as found un and vurnished un and there I bides as long as I likes.’
It was evident that he did not take her very seriously for he said, carelessly, ‘Oh, you mean one of those gun hides? Well, there’s a dozen of them in the woods. Which is yours?’
She said, pouting, ‘You follow along, like you did time you was lost an’ I’ll show ’ee but I’ll kill ’ee if ’ee tells, mind!’
He followed her up through the green tunnels and the long, pine-studded slope to the outcrop of rock where she disappeared as completely as if the ground had opened under her feet. A moment later he heard her mocking laughter and looked all round but still could not see her until she climbed half-way out of the cave and showed him where he should enter the wicker screen and scramble over the loose rocks to the overhang. She had her small reward for once inside he looked round in astonishment, noting everything, the fire-blackened stones, the utensils and the flour sacks neatly folded in the corner.
‘You actually live here? Sleep here?’ he said unbelievingly.
‘On’y when tiz warm,’ she said carelessly, ‘other times I go downalong. Do ’ee like my li’l home, Boy?’
He scratched his head looking very puzzled but finally smiled, sat down with his back against her wicker screen and said, ‘Don’t keep calling me “Boy”, Hazel. I’ve got a name and anyway I’m not a boy any longer, I’m seventeen and I shall be shaving next term!’
‘Will ’ee now?’ It was information that interested her, so that she tilted her head and searched his chin for evidence. Presumably she found some for she went on, eagerly, ‘Will ’ee grow a beard then? Like ole Varmer Willoughby’s. A bushy one?’
‘No,’ he said laughing, ‘just a moustache. I’ll see how it looks anyway and if I don’t fancy it I’ll shave it off!’
Suddenly he dismissed the subject of problematic whiskers. ‘What do you do up here? I mean, aren’t you ever lonely? Don’t you get sick of your own company?’
‘Yiss,’ she admitted slowly, ‘but if I’m lonesome I go and have a talk with Sam or the girls; other times, when the wires baint hooked me a coney, I go to the varms and they gives me skimmed milk and home-baked bread!’
‘Are they all kind to you?’
‘Mrs Pitts dorn let me go hungry,’ she said, and then, tiring of so dull a subject, ‘Do ’ee like it up yer, Boy?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think it’s a wonderful place to be in summer but my name is Ikey. Call me Ikey, “Boy” sounds soppy!’
‘Ikey!’ she repeated slowly, ‘that’s a daft name for gentry, baint it?’
‘I’m not gentry,’ said Ikey firmly but she said, ‘Oh, but you be! Youm Squire’s boy and you live along o’ Squire, dornee?’
‘I live with him when I’m home from school,’ Ikey said, patiently, ‘but I’m not related to him. In fact, I’m no more “gentry” than you are. Squire Craddock gave me a job years ago and then sent me to school. But surely you knew that, didn’t you?’
‘Yess,’ she said carelessly, ‘but I forgot. I most always forget. Truth is I forgot about you ’till I zeed ’ee tempting the old pike in the mere!’
He knew then that she must have watched him dry and dress but it did not bother him for in most ways she seemed no older than little Simon or the twins. He was piqued, however, that she had forgotten him so readily for he had never forgotten her or the pleasant days he had spent in her company. Now that he looked more closely at her he saw that she had changed a great deal in the last two years. He had continued to think of her as a child, the rural equivalent of urchins with whom he had run and fought in his scrapyard days but he could now see that she was a woman, moreover the kind of woman his townbred study partner, Tovey Major, would jest about, might even boast that he had kissed and cuddled and perhaps, in Tovey’s own phrase, ‘run up and down the scales, don’t you know?’ The thought set his heart pounding, for surely a Blood like Tovey would never miss an opportunity like this, and because of this sudden awareness of her sex he found it difficult to continue to talk to her as though she was a cottager’s child and he was duty-visiting. He made the effort, however, saying kindly, ‘You’re quite grown up, Hazel. Is anyone courting you?’
She smiled and by no means innocently. She was familiar with the routine of courting, having watched the antics of her sisters over the years and knew that ‘courting’ implied squeaks, protests, gusts of laughter and stealthy movements in the long grass. She had even had an encounter of her own when the youngest Timberlake boy had cornered her in the barn and run his hands over her before she kicked him in the shins and fled. She said, mildly, ‘No, I baint courtin’. I keeps to meself mostly’, which did not help him very much, for the answer at once relieved and disappointed him. He had gathered from the books and magazines Tovey had introduced into the study that a girl as pretty as Hazel Potter might have a great deal to offer a man of the world, although he did not understand precisely what, or how to begin seeking it. At the same time, he felt under a moral restraint, reflecting that she was, after all, the daughter of Squire’s lowliest tenant and perhaps even Tovey would classify a flirtation with Hazel as ‘infradig-old-man’. Then, noticing that she was still watching him intently, he blushed and had a mind to get up at once and leave her absurd ‘little house’ but he found that he lacked the resolution to do anything so final and not solely because he seemed to hear the sound of Tovey’s derisive laughter echo in the Valley below. The wonder she had always stirred in him was working its magic again but this time it was not based on an objective admiration of her independence or envy of her way of life. Her mouth, he thought, looked like a rosebud in the early morning and her thick chestnut hair, starred with tiny blue flowers, reminded him of the hair of a goddess in a painting. He said, in a low voice, ‘You’re beautiful, Hazel. You’re the prettiest girl in the Valley!’
‘Yiss,’ she said blandly, ‘more beautiful than Cis an’ Vi an’ Pansy.’ She had watched and absorbed the courting techniques of animals and birds from the rock above. Pride, caprice and ferocity she had seen but never humility on the part of the female. ‘Woulden ’ee like to kiss me?’ she added with shattering directness and at once he was immensely grateful to her for it seemed, by taking the initiative so fearlessly, she had resolved his doubts and also, to some extent, accepted the responsibility. He put his arms round her and turned her warm cheek, kissing her gently but with an air of decision and then, to his dismay, the situation complicated itself again, for the bravado of the act evaporated the moment their lips met and his heart pounded so insistently that he thought he must be ill. For all that, contact with her mouth was the most delightful sensation he had ever experienced, making nonsense of all his triumphs on the playing field. He put up his hand and let it run smoothly down over her hair so that it crackled, as though protesting against the liberty. As he stroked her hair she gave a tiny shudder that somehow increased his delight and there seemed absolutely nothing to say or nothing that would make the least sense. When he had turned her head to begin this extraordinary adventure he had been very conscious of marching forward in step with Tovey Major but now Tovey and all his kind were left behind along the road that led back to his childhood. He was acutely aware of the awful solemnity of the moment and notwithstanding its sweetness and poignancy, he recognised its implications. There would never be another moment quite like this, never another mouth and cheek as soft and sweet as these, and it was this, and his characteristic caution, that caused his hand to stop half-way in its instinctive move towards her breast and to fall to the bracken floor, for he knew very well what would happen if he touched and caressed that soft roundness; within minutes this beautiful, half-wild creature would be reduced to the status of one of the simpering, broad-hipped blondes in Tovey Major’s magazines and that would be to convert a symphony into a discordant jangle. Instead he sought and took her hand and their fingers interlocked, and as the kiss ended his lips brushed her cheek and found her hair wherein was the scent of everything growing in the Valley.
They sat quite still for a long time, only half aware of the sunplay on the floor of the cave and the restless twitter of birds outside. It crossed his mind that they should make some kind of pledge, a promise that would ensure repetition of this unspoken declaration but he had no idea how to convert his feelings into words and in the end, after kissing her softly once more, he gently removed his arm, saying, ‘I’ll have to be going now, Hazel. I told them at the house I was trying to swim the mere and Chivers will worry if I don’t show up.’
She said, unemotionally, ‘You’ll come yer agaain? Zoon, mebbe?’, and he said he would, at about the same time tomorrow and went out through the tall bracken screen and down the long slope hardly aware of his direction, for every thought that entered his head disappeared at once into a maelstrom of guilt and joy.
She gave him time to pass the rhododendrons before she climbed out of the cave and on to her flat rock, where she could catch occasional glimpses of him as he moved along the northern margin of the lake. In her mind there was no confusion, only the satisfied relish of his lips and the light touch of his hand on her hair. The pricking sensation under her breast had gone and it was some time before it returned to gall her but in its place was a glow that demanded release in words, so that seeing the old mad cat on a stump partway down the slope, she called, ‘Did ’ee zee un, Tibb? Did ’ee zee my man, then?’ but the cat only turned his head and gave a long, supercilious glance. He had just disposed of a shrew and the sun was very warm. He had seen Ikey pass but he was not interested in a man without a gun.
