The Darling Buds of May (3 page)

‘I'm awfully sorry, Mr Charlton. I didn't offer you any pineapple. Would you like some?'

‘No thanks. I'm not allowed it. I find it too acid.'

‘What a shame. Won't you change your mind? They're nice ripe ones.'

‘Ought to be,' Ma said. ‘Cost enough.'

‘I'm afraid I'm simply not allowed it,' Mr Charlton said. ‘I have to go very carefully. I have to manage mostly on eggs and that sort of thing.'

‘Eggs?' Pop said. ‘Eggs? Why didn't you say so? Got plenty of eggs, Ma, haven't we? Give Mister Charlton a boiled egg or two wiv his tea.'

‘How would you like that?' Ma said. ‘A couple o' boiled eggs, Mister Charlton? What do you say?'

To the delight of Ma, Mr Charlton confessed that that was what he really wanted.

‘I'll do them,' Mariette said. ‘Three minutes? Four? How long?'

‘Very light,' Mr Charlton said. ‘Three.'

‘Nice big 'uns! – brown!' Pop called to Mariette as she went into the kitchen, where the geese presently followed her, brushing past Mr Charlton's legs again as they passed, once more to give him that shimmering, shocking moment of unnerving ecstasy.

‘About this income,' Mr Charlton said. ‘Can you give me an estimate? Just an estimate.'

‘Estimate it'll be an' all, old man,' Pop said. ‘Lucky if we clear a fiver a week, ain't we, Ma?'

‘Fiver? I'd like to see one,' Ma said.

‘We want boiled eggs, too!' the twins said, as in one voice, ‘Can we have boiled eggs?'

‘Give over. Can't you see I'm cutting the pineapple?' Ma said.

Everybody except Mr Charlton had large second helpings of pineapple, with more cream. When Ma had finished ladling out the cream she poured the remainder of it into a tablespoon and then licked the spoon with her big red tongue. After two or three spoonfuls she cleaned the spoon with her finger and fed one of
the white kittens with cream. On the television screen a posse of cowboys fired thirty revolvers into a mountainside and Mr Charlton said:

‘I'm afraid we have to know what your income is, Mr Larkin. Supposing –'

‘All right,' Pop said, ‘that's a fair question, old man. Fair for me, fair for another. How much do
you
get?'

‘Oh! well, me, not all that much. Civil servant, you know –'

‘Nice safe job, though.'

‘Nice safe job, yes. I suppose so.'

‘Nothing like a nice safe job,' Pop said. ‘As long as you're happy. Do you reckon you're happy?'

Mr Charlton, who did not look at all happy, said quickly:

‘Supposing I put down a provisional five hundred?'

‘Hundred weeks in a year now, Ma,' Pop said, laughing again. ‘Well, put it down, old man, put it down. No harm in putting it down.'

‘Now the names of children,' Mr Charlton said.

While Pop was reciting, with customary pride, the full names of the children, beginning with the youngest, Zinnia Florence and Petunia Mary, the twins, Mariette came back with two large brown boiled eggs in violet plastic eggcups to hear Pop say:

‘Nightingales in them woods up there behind the house, Mr Charlton. Singing all day.'

‘Do nightingales sing all day?' Mr Charlton said. ‘I wasn't aware –'

‘All day, all night,' Pop said. ‘Like everything else in the mating season they go hell for leather.'

The plate holding the two eggs was embroidered with slices of the thinnest white bread-and-butter. Mariette had cut them herself. And now Mr Charlton looked at them, as he looked at the eggs, with reluctance and trepidation, as if not wanting to tamper with their fresh, neat virginity.

‘I've been looking at you,' Ma said. ‘I don't think you get enough to eat by half.'

‘I live in lodgings,' Mr Charlton said. ‘It's not always –'

‘We want to have some of your egg!' the twins said. ‘Give us some of your egg!'

‘Now you've started summat,' Pop said.

A moment later Mr Charlton announced the startling discovery that the twins were just alike; he simply couldn't tell one from the other.

‘You're quick,' Pop said. ‘You're quick.'

‘It's gone dark again,' Ma said. ‘Turn up the contrast. And Montgomery, fetch me my Guinness. There's a good boy.'

Soon, while Ma drank Guinness and Pop spoke passionately again of nightingales, bluebells that clothed the copses, ‘fick as carpets, ficker in fact', and how soon it would be the great time of the year, the time he loved most, the time of strawberry fields and cherries everywhere, Mr Charlton found himself with a twin on each knee, dipping white fingers of bread and butter into delicious craters of warm golden egg yolk.

‘I hope the eggs are done right?' Mariette said.

‘Perfect.'

‘Perfick they will be an' all if she does 'em, you can bet you,' Pop said. ‘Perfick!'

Mr Charlton had given up, for the time being, all thought of the buff-yellow form. A goose brushed his legs again. Outside, somewhere in the yard, a dog barked and the drove of turkeys seemed to respond in bubbling chorus. Far beyond them, in broken, throaty tones, a cuckoo called, almost in its June voice, and when it was silent the entire afternoon simmered in a single marvellous moment of quietness, breathlessly.

‘If you don't mind me saying so,' Ma said, ‘a few days in the country'd do you a world of good.'

‘What are we having Sunday, Ma?' Pop said. ‘Turkey?'

‘What you like. Just what you fancy.'

‘Roast pork,' Montgomery said. ‘I like roast pork. With them brown onions.'

‘Or goose,' Pop said. ‘How about goose? We ain't had goose since Easter.'

In enthusiastic tones Pop went on to ask Mr Charlton whether he preferred goose, turkey, or roast pork but Mr Charlton, bewildered, trying to clean his misty spectacles and at the same time cut into thin fingers the last of his bread-and-butter, confessed he hardly knew.

‘Well, I tell you what,' Ma said, ‘we'll have goose
and
roast pork. Then I can do apple sauce for the two.'

‘Perfick,' Pop said. ‘Perfick. Primrose, pass me the tomato ketchup. I've got a bit of iced bun to finish up.'

‘Dinner on Sunday then,' Ma said. ‘About two o'clock.'

Mr Charlton, who was unable to decide from this whether he had been invited to dinner or not, felt fate softly brush his legs again in the shape of a goose-neck. At the same time he saw Mariette smile at him with intensely dark, glowing eyes, almost as if she had in fact brushed his leg with her own, and he felt his limbs again begin melting.

Across the fields a cuckoo called again and Pop echoed it with a belch that seemed to surprise him not only by its length and richness but by the fact that it was a belch at all.

‘Manners,' he said. ‘Pardon,' and beat his chest in stern, suppressive apology. ‘Wind all of a sudden.'

‘What's on now?' Ma said. On the television screen all shooting had died and two men on horses, one a piebald, were riding up the valley, waving farewell hands.

‘Nobody's birthday, Sunday, is it?' Pop said.

‘Nobody's birthday before August,' Ma said.

‘Then it's mine,' Mariette said. ‘I'll be eighteen.'

‘Pity it ain't nobody's birthday,' Pop said. ‘We might have had a few fireworks.'

Suddenly all the geese were gone from the kitchen and Ma, marvelling at this fact, started laughing like a jelly again and said:

‘They did that once before. They heard us talking!'

‘Tell you what,' Pop said, ‘if you've had enough, Mister Charlton, why don't you get Mariette to take you as far as the wood and hear them nightingales? I don't think you believe they sing all day, do you?'

‘Oh! yes, I –'

‘Shall we ride or walk?' Mariette said. ‘I don't mind the pony if you want to ride.'

‘I think I'd rather walk.'

‘In that case I'll run and change into a dress,' she said. ‘It's getting a bit warm for jodhpurs.'

While Mariette had gone upstairs the twins abandoned Mr Charlton's eggless plate and fetched jam jars from the kitchen.

‘Going to the stall,' they said. ‘Think we'll put honeysuckle on today instead of bluebells.'

As they ran off Pop said:

‘That's the flower-stall they keep at the corner of the road down there. Wild flowers. Tuppence a bunch for motorists. Everybody works here, y'know.'

‘I think I passed it,' Mr Charlton said, ‘as I walked up from the bus.'

‘That's the one,' Pop said. ‘Everybody's got to work here so's we can scratch a living. Montgomery, you'd better get off to your goats and start milking 'em.'

Presently Ma, concerned at Mr Charlton's air of retreat, uncertainty, and fatigue, spread hands like lardy legs of pork across her salmon jumper and said with earnest kindness:

‘Taking your holiday soon, Mr Charlton? Where do you usually go?'

‘I hadn't –'

‘You should come strawberry picking with us,' Ma said. ‘Do you the world of good. Else cherry picking. Best holiday in the world if the weather's nice. Make yourself a lot o' money too.'

‘Perfick,' Pop said. ‘Don't cost nothing either. Here's Mariette. Perfick, I tell you.'

Mr Charlton rose from the table to find himself stunned by
a new astral body, now in a lime green dress with broad black belt, a flouncing skirt, loose neck, and short scalloped sleeves. Her beautiful dark eyes were smiling at him splendidly.

‘Is that your shantung?' Ma said. ‘You'll be warm enough in that, dear, will you?'

‘Oh! it's hot,' Mariette said. ‘It's nice to feel the breeze blowing round my legs again. You ready, Mr Charlton?'

Mr Charlton, the buff-yellow form forgotten, turned and followed Mariette, who actually stretched out a friendly hand. As they crossed a yard noisy with hawking geese, mumbling turkeys, and braying goats being led to milking by Montgomery Pop called:

‘Remember about Sunday, Mr Charlton, won't you? Don't forget about Sunday.'

‘You really mean it?' Mr Charlton halted and turned back, amazed. ‘Are you quite sure?'

‘Sure?' Pop said. ‘Blimey, old man, I'm going to kill the geese any minute now.'

‘Thank you, Thank you very much.'

‘One goose or two, Ma?' Pop called. ‘Two geese be enough? Or shall we have three?'

Mr Charlton, still stunned and amazed, turned to face the waiting figure of Mariette and saw it miraculously framed against piles of junk, rampant nettles and, in the near distance, deep strips of bluebells fenced away, in the strip of woodland, from flocks of brown marauding hens. Her legs, in pale beige silk stockings, were surprisingly shapely and slender. Her breasts protruded with grace from the soft lime shantung.

He could not believe in this figure. Nor, five minutes later, could he believe that the yard of nettles and junk, Pop's beautiful, incredible paradise, lay only a hundred yards away, screened by thickets of hornbeam and hazel, oaks in olive flower and may trees carrying blossom as rich and thick as Ma's lavish Jersey cream.

‘You didn't really believe about the nightingales, did you?'

‘No.'

‘Listen,' she said. ‘You will.'

Walking along the woodland path, Mr Charlton could hear only a single untangled chorus of evening birdsong, unseparated into species, confusing as the tuning of orchestra strings.

‘Let's stand here by the gate and listen,' Mariette said. ‘Let's stand and listen here.'

Mr Charlton, transfixed, utterly bemused, stood by the gate and listened. Patches of evening sunlight, broken gold, sprinkled down through oak-branches, like delicate quivering translations in light of the bird-notes themselves.

‘No, not that one,' Mariette said. ‘That's a blackbird. Not the one over there, either. That's a wren. Now – that one. The one in the chestnut up there. The one with the long notes and then the long pause. Can you hear it now? That's a nightingale.'

Mr Charlton listened, hardly breathing, and heard for the first time in his life, in a conscious moment, the voice of a nightingale singing against a May evening sky.

Enthralled, still hardly believing it, he turned to see the deep black eyes holding him in utter captivation and heard her say again:

‘You really didn't believe it, did you?'

‘I must say I didn't.'

‘I tell you something else you didn't believe either.'

‘What was that?'

‘You didn't believe about me, did you?' she said. ‘You didn't believe I was the same girl you saw riding at Easter, did you?'

‘No,' he said. ‘How did you know?'

‘I guessed,' she said. ‘I could see it in your eyes. I was watching you.'

She lifted her hands and held them suddenly against his cheeks without either boldness or hesitation but with a lightness of touch that woke in Mr Charlton's legs exactly the same melting, unnerving sensation as when the geese had brushed against him under the table. A moment later he saw her lips upraised.

‘Who did you think I was?'

Mr Charlton made a startling, embarrassed confession.

‘I thought – well, I was actually told you were someone else in point of fact – that you were a niece of Lady Planson-Forbes – you know, at Carrington Hall –'

Mariette began laughing, in ringing tones, very much like her father.

‘Now you've just found I wasn't.'

‘Well, yes –'

‘You feel it makes any difference?'

‘Well, in point of fact –'

‘I'm just the same, aren't I?' She smiled and he found his eyes level with her bare, olive shoulder. ‘I'm just me. The same girl. Just me. Just the same.'

Again she touched his face with her hands and Mr Charlton took hurried refuge in a sudden recollection of the buff-yellow form.