The Diamond Waterfall (43 page)

She met his eyes. They were blue. She had not noticed, not caring to look at him before.

“The windows,” she said, “all that. A glazier will be sent for at once. I shall arrange the cleaning up.”

Damaged books, wrecked violin—what should, could, she say? She went on, “A room will be arranged for you at once. You must rest. The shock. Everything will be seen to.”

“Yes,” he said. “That would be most kind.”

She put out her hand. “If you would accept—I wish to apologize on behalf of—if you can forgive …”

Afterward, afterward. In years to come, going over and over again the moment when their hands touched (but we must have
shaken hands
before?), she found he, they, had lost forever those next few seconds.

She would ask, “Did I throw myself in your arms? Which of us …” And he would say, “But of course it
is you
who seduce me, how can you think I would be so wicked?” Then
she
would say, “What a likely story. Telling it to me too, who would believe anything you say.”

But this was not, she knew already, the casual coming together she had so feared, for its predictability, for what it told her about herself—but something quite different.

Her face cupped in warm hands. Then his head, pressed against the heavy wool of her coat. Locked in an embrace. How long, how long, oh let it be forever.

The bedroom upstairs. Berthe and her mother had shared it. She remembered walking first up the narrow staircase. The stripped bed, so neat. She was crying and trembling, touching, clinging. It
was
me, she thought afterward.

And yet who had wept (shock and fright at the night's happenings)? Who was it said over and over, that never, never, never …

“Never,” he said. “From the first—when you disliked me so much. From the first moment—when I saw you—a lonely person. You are so lonely. I also of course. But
you—”

Lonely. A son, two daughters, a distinguished husband, a full household, a responsible post. Scarcely a free moment. Yes, it is possible to be very lonely.

Stifled cries—his hand, her hand, over her mouth. Icy winter sunlight through half-drawn curtains, shattered window panes. Floor scattered with glass fragments. And never so happy, since, since—but today I say good-bye, and thank you to Valentin.

“You are partly to blame,” she told a visibly shaken Robert. “It is, was, your attitudes. People are not deaf—they notice. Rumor and misunderstanding. These are ugly matters.”

He had taken to humming tunelessly when he did not wish to answer. He did so now.

At midday she went down to the village, to the inn, the Fox and Grapes. All talking stopped as she came in.

“Some of you here,” she said, “some of you will certainly know what I mean when I say—
are you not ashamed?”

Several of those drinking looked away. The landlord, a man she knew and respected, murmured something. One of the farmers said, “I told them as they shouldn't.”

Later she told Erik, “There was that sort of trouble in Leeds last year, against Jews. And of course, conscientious objectors have suffered also. But you …”

Gradually, eagerly, because they talked now, she learned more about him. He had a married daughter, living in Esjbo, and a son at Copenhagen University. His wife, who had died in 1909, had been half Danish, brought up in England because of her mother's second marriage to an Englishman. Erik had worked in her family business for some twelve or fifteen years, beginning at the bottom. In the early days of the war he had worked as a censor in London. Later, through friends and connections, he had become involved with hospital administration.

As the days passed—grim with their lack of news about Gib, and constant, draining worry for Hal—she asked how it could be that she had so much emotion left. We are so much in love.

She wondered sometimes if anyone guessed, if Robert knew.
How little I care,
she thought. The man who had beaten her before Teddy's birth, who had draped her with jewelry, before whom she'd stood, dressed only in the Waterfall …

Such matters did not concern him these days. Robert had aged remarkably. And the Diamond Waterfall—all that talk of donating it for the war effort (perhaps that would earn him a further title—who knew?). The man who if he could not love Teddy gave instead double love to Sylvia.

But this solace, this wonder, among all the cares, anxieties, despairs. She thought too afterward, I never believed it was just for the moment. I always knew it would be for nearly forever.

Nearly forever. For who speaks of forever, now? Not because of broken faith, but because of death.

Hal started up falsetto (he hadn't much of a singing voice, but they always liked his falsetto):

“Oh they've called them up from Flaxthorpe and they've called them up from Penn, and they'll call up all the women when they've fucked up all the men …” It was a parody of the verse from “Keep the Home Fires Burning.” You could use anyone's home town. He said:

“They're the lines Ivor Novello didn't write—he thought of them too late.”

“Jolly good song, jolly well sung, give the poor bugger some beer.”

“
… Keep the home fires burning, till the boys come home
…” And when might that be? Hal felt they'd been over here forever. A long time anyway since the leave he'd had last August, and the time in hospital after for his wound. A cushy time, that, all too short—and not truly appreciated because all he had wanted was to get back, if only for a week or two, to see Olive.

Now it was April, and the fourth spring of the war. It was all going badly again. Hurrying backward, as far as he could make out. Rumor and counterrumor—the worst one, that soon the Germans might be over the Channel. (“See a Kraut before May's out …”) On April 11, Field Marshal Haig's Order of the Day. It was read out to them: “… there is no other course open to us but to fight it out … with our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause … the safety of our homes and the freedom of mankind alike depend on the conduct of each one of us at this critical moment …”

Tired. He was so tired. As if he were falling, falling. What price his murmuring heart, as they had once called it? He supposed it had been either a mistake in the first place, or else something he'd grown out of. No time here for hearts to murmur, or thump—except with fear. And he was used to fear. Snowy managed the best. Gus had grown jumpy—his color a yellowy white, his eyes dull. Lighting cigarettes one after the other, when he could get them, or pulling at the skin on his cheek with a nervous angry gesture. He told Hal, “I don't rightly know—I can't take it like. Not much more I can't—I'd never thought, you see …”

A fine spring evening. Stopping on the march, they lay by the roadside to
sleep. Twice in the night motor trucks, mule-drawn limbers, rattled by. Gus said afterward, “I never—I couldn't shoot me finger off. Nothing like that. But I'd thought—a foot stuck out accidental like—when the wheels come by. That'd do it.”

Hal told him, “You'll be needing both feet, Gus, to run from all those girls you made promises to.”

He hadn't felt at all like joking. Then a few days later, after an action when a number of wounded were lying out on stretchers, a limber rushed by, its drivers killed, the bloodstained horses bolting: wheels rolling over the first of the stretchers. Gus, with Hal at the time, white and sick. Sick all that day.

A letter came from Olive in the evening. Letters came often from Olive. No one teased Hal about her now.

One bit of news is that I'm off to Devon to Aunt Nellie. Dad'll be staying with Uncle Walter, that lives Skipton way. They were always good pals. Granny Willans will go too. Altogether it seems for the best. Tom reckons to wed at Easter—he'll look after the place well enough. It's a right shake-up and no mistake. I'm homesick before I've even left. Only that's no way to look at things—thinking of all you boys that really have something to be homesick about. Tom'll be fetching up his own collie dog here. Tess is past it.

News from a foreign country. Far, faraway places. Yet to think, eight months ago … It had been terrible, his jealousy, his fears about Tom last summer.

When she'd let him kiss her, he'd thought the worrying would go. Only he couldn't forget her admission: “Tom
has
courted me …” Suppose?

His father hadn't seemed very fit—heavy cough, tired, irascible, critical. Impatient with Hal, still in the ranks.

“Can't see what you've got against it—becoming an officer. They'd bring you home, allow you time here. You might even get to India—somewhere quiet. Who knows?” Shaking his head sadly: “A ranker, Henry. Really. For a Firth to be Tommy Atkins still.”

“I could put in for a lance corporal. They've—”

“Are you deliberately misunderstanding me?”

“Probably. Sir.” Then because that hardly seemed fair, he added, “I'm best where I am. One star one stunt, they say. You've seen the casualty lists in
The Times.
You can't want …”

No, of course his father didn't wish to lose him. But as he had long ago discovered, attitudes, emotions were not so simple as that. And it was no better with his mother. He couldn't think in the past when they had ever had a
conversation.
Now, the springs dried up within seconds. (For him, ghost of Stephen hovering always. For her too?)

Yet his father had the confidence to speak of Cambridge, planned for him years ago, in the days of Gib.

“A little coaching for six months or so to rest you, get you up to standard. Perhaps Nicolson himself. Then I really can't see why not.”

What fairy-tale world did he inhabit, this father of his? To speak like that when all around him at The Towers was visible proof of what happened in war.

A fairy-tale world. But then, Hal thought, these few summer days I too have chosen to inhabit one. Perhaps it was going back to when everything had seemed safe. Those well-loved Fairy Books, with their different-colored covers, arriving every Christmas, Red, Green, Orange, Crimson …

In the evenings, when he couldn't be with Olive, he sat in the window seat of his room. Removed, in another world. The best was that he seemed to have forgotten the stories: he would read on, breath held, to see what happened next. Yet I must have known once. And how could there be surprises, real surprises? The prince always married the princess, the monster was slain, the villains died a horrible death.

He came upon the tale of the King of Goldland. He did not want to remember it, and could do so only with pain. Stephen trespassing in the copse. Stephen walking along the walls with Tess, rabbiting. The stranger— Stephen, white with anger, cutting him at Settstone market. Stephen enlisting.

All long ago, and long ago forgiven, certainly by Olive. If anyone could heal it would be Olive. Olive, whom he had kissed on Tuesday and again today.

His leave was so short. It wasn't possible to tell her what he hadn't been able to write in his letters. He was shy of many of his innermost thoughts. But if they were not said, if he went back to France without—if she
never knew
I loved her …

He opened the Yellow Fairy Book.
The Lovely Ilonka—An Hungarian Tale.
He turned the page and read:

“There was once a King's son who told his father that he wished to marry…. “No, no!” said the King, “you must not be in such a hurry. Wait till you have done some great deed. My father did not let me marry till I had won the golden sword you see me wear.”

He had closed the book, his hands shaking. For what seemed half the night he'd paced his room. Why not? he asked himself.
Why not?
Then the sturdy reliable mature face of Tom would come before his eyes, and he'd think— perhaps it is already too late. Wasn't Tom the sensible choice? There on the spot, wanting to take over the farm. A
good
man.

He remembered then, suddenly, the Diamond Waterfall. Hated jewelry,
hated stones. But the Waterfall—that was different. It was beautiful, and one day would be his.

Tom. A sensible choice. But I—
I
could make her a princess.

“No, no!” said the King, “you must not be in such a hurry.”

He could barely wait for it to be morning. They had arranged an expedition to Aysgarth Falls. She'd managed her work somehow so that she'd be free. They went on bicycles—hers was secondhand and very heavy and they had to stop frequently to rest. She had brought the food—he did not like asking for anything at his hospital-home.

The weather was disappointing, more autumn than summer. They watched anxiously the banked clouds which waited behind the fells. As they cycled through open moorland, the purple stretched around them, dark-shadowed. Sheep clustered, restless, or called to each other.

They reached the falls before lunch. She wanted to stand and look before they ate, going from one waterfall to the other in wonder:

“I'd quite forgot. When we were bairns, they brought me. And I'd always meant … It's daft when you don't live far. There's even places in Devon I know better.”

As she stood there in her light brown jacket and skirt, her hair all wispy from the wind on the moor, he lifted up in his mind the cascade of diamonds that was the Waterfall—fastened it about her neck, her waist. He thought how the dazzling of the diamonds would make her skin vibrate almost, set alight the brown flecks in her hazel eyes.

She turned to him. “A penny for them, Hal. They look so deep. Not summer outing thoughts.”

He said awkwardly, “Don't they call that a brown study?”

“What?”

“The sort of daydream I was having.” They were by the largest of the falls. He leaned a little over the bridge, gazing at the water—yellow white, frothing, foaming outward, upward. Boiling, churning waters.