The Flowering Thorn (25 page)

“You make love very … undignifying.”

“Possessive love, yes. They say women can stomach it sometimes, but I know no man can. He just wants to bolt. And daren't, for fear of the consequences. My God!”

Lesley kept her eyes on the picture. The words were bitter: did he wish them unspoken, he might imagine them unheard. She thought: ‘I've known him now nearly four years, and in all that time he's never once mentioned his wife. Surely he hasn't forgotten her altogether!' There were no children, of course; no kinsfolk, hardly, for the War had played havoc with the succeeding generation; the name would die out and the Hall itself go to some remote middle-aged connection whom Sir Philip had ferreted out on his return from Greece. He was a man named Brooke, at that time in the Navy, and the nephew, by a first marriage, of a cousin of Lady Kerr's. The connection was thus extremely distant—so distant, in fact, that Charles Brooke himself was probably not aware of it, and Sir Philip, after thus having satisfied the deep-rooted instinct to leave property in the family, had resolutely refused either to make his heir's acquaintance or to have him informed. The lad (for so, during fifteen years, Sir Philip had continued to think of him) would only go on borrowing on post-obits; for the rest, he was presumably a gentleman, had a wife and two boys, and could count his chickens at leisure as soon as they were hatched.…

“… And if he isn't grateful, he ought to be,” said Sir Philip.

With a start Lesley recollected herself. It was not Charles Brooke they were talking of, it was Patrick.…

“… No,” she said slowly, as though that had been her thought too; “no I don't adore him. I'm not even sure that I love him. I'm not a bit maternal, really.”

Sir Philip looked at her thoughtfully.

“You know, it's a curious thing, but I believe that's true. That good woman, Mrs. Pomfret, for instance, keeps saying how you've devoted yourself to him: but she isn't right. You've devoted yourself much more to me. You've devoted yourself to the cottage, and quite a good deal to her own Henry. And as a result of all this non-devotion you've brought Pat up damned well.” The faunish yellow eyes were suddenly steady. “A child should be—how can I put it?—not too much concentrated on. That's the real advantage of a large family. An only child supporting the whole weight of the mother's emotions—and sometimes the father's as well—he leads the most exhausting life on earth. It's what might very well have happened to Pat, if you'd been another kind of woman. My dear Lesley—you know all this better than I do, of course—a child doesn't want to absorb a life, he wants to inhabit one. Make a happy life for him to inhabit, and you make your child happy too.—I've never tried it myself,” admitted Sir Philip, “but that's the theory.”

‘And you had it all ready for them!' thought Lesley. She got up from her chair and walked over to the window. It was an abrupt breaking-off; but if she would hide her compassion, what else was there to do?

3

Walking pensively home, she encountered Denis Cotton.

“By the way,” he said carelessly, “weren't you saying you liked truffles? My aunt's just sent me a box on her way through Town.…”

Lesley gazed at it hopelessly. How impossible he was, how touching; above all, what a nuisance! And with a shiver of dismay she felt stir within her something that might very well develop (only she sincerely hoped it wouldn't) into the uneasy emotion of feeling responsible for him too.

CHAPTER FOUR

About five nights later her instinct was confirmed.

It was warm but showery, and Patrick having been put to bed, Lesley settled down to one of her rare evenings alone at the cottage. She was knitting a cream and dark-blue sweater (design by Chanel) from printed instructions, and though now reasonably expert felt the need for concentration. The fact that eight ounces of wool cost no more than five shillings, whereas the finished article (at any rate as worn by herself) cost three to four guineas, had been one of the outstanding discoveries of the previous year. With extreme perseverance, she learnt first to knit, then to knit well; and as a consequence was habitually to be seen about the orchard in the last word of woollen elegance. The one at present in hand had broad diagonal stripes and a stitch like string gloves, and with a cream tailored skirt—she still got skirts from Bradley's—would probably be unrivalled even in the by no means unmodish county of Bucks.

So for two hours Lesley knitted steadily on, with no more accompaniment than the click of her needles; and at the end of that time reaching a certain previously-fixed point, folded wool and needles together and lit a cigarette. It had long stopped raining: the night was warm, for she had let the fire out, and with possibly a moon above the apple-tree, if she cared to go and look for it. But Lesley smoked her cigarette and stayed where she was: a proper countrywoman! It was twenty past ten, and already quiet as midnight: when the cuckoo cried the half she would dout lights and go to bed. And suddenly, in that perfect stillness, her ear was caught by the faintest possible sound from the path under the window. It was a tiny dull jar—no more than that: as though someone in rubber shoes, moving cautiously up the path, had knocked against the iron scraper. Lesley held her breath.

There was someone outside.

There was someone outside the window, trying to see in. How she knew she could not have told; unless a will to enter, a yearning to see, could be stronger to penetrate than walls to exclude.

“Who is there?” said Lesley.

But her voice scarcely carried the length of the room: of course there was no answer. She thought, ‘If I wait another moment, I shall be too frightened to move.' And suppressing the first prescient tremor, she got up and opened the door. It was Denis Cotton, not daring to knock.

For an instant they stood motionless, ridiculously staring. Then she put up her cigarette again and drew a long breath.

“Don't be angry with me.”

His voice disarmed her. It was husky, low, beaten. Instead of rating him, she said,

“I thought you were burglars. I've been shivering with fright.”

Instantly his whole being was a vessel of contrition. He loathed, he cursed himself; he wanted to die for having alarmed her. The usual sunburn no longer coloured his cheek: health, strength and life seemed to be visibly departing. And Lesley, who had once or twice observed the same phenomenon in Pat, sat down by the hearth again and asked for another cigarette.

He gave it to her with a slight return to normality; took one himself and burned his fingers with the match. Carefully avoiding all reference to the object of his visit, Lesley asked if he would like coffee.

He shook his head. He had not again spoken. But speech was rising within him, and an instinctive desire for tranquillity prompted Lesley to get in first. She began to talk about Pat, about Pincher, about her plans for the garden: related, with a wealth of amusing detail, the latest sally of Mr. Povey's and his repulse by Mrs. Sprigg. When she had finished, Denis told her that he loved her.

He told her extremely badly. With a naïve astonishment, as though at something rare and strange, he described the classic symptoms. He thought of her constantly, and was unable to sleep: revolted from all customary occupation, and had discovered new beauties in the works of the poets. In the silence of the room, in the greater silence of the night, the words fell now one by one, now in a sudden burst, but always with the same inevitability. In his longer pauses, Lesley could have prompted him. She could have prompted him—twenty-one and romantic—even to the end, when he employed the last cliché of all to ask her to marry him.

With the strangest mixture of emotions—pity and affection, a touch of amusement—Lesley sat and looked at him. ‘How young!' she thought. ‘How charming! How young and charming, and what a nuisance!'

“Say something, Lesley.”

She said the only thing that seemed at all apposite.

“My dear—I was thirty-one last birthday.”

He regarded her with ingenuous surprise. He had been telling himself, thought Lesley, that she was perhaps twenty-five.… She followed up her advantage.

“So you see how absurd it would be. You've made me very proud, my dear”—he hadn't really, of course, because given the circumstances his falling in love with her was practically inevitable; but she lied out of kindness—“and I hate you to be unhappy.” She looked at him again: he was miserable! And as though to show how seriously she was taking him, Lesley frowned hard, wrinkling her brow into unaccustomed lines. “Absurd!” she repeated severely.

“Tragic.”

She accepted the correction.

“But only from your point of view, you understand. Not from mine. I should simply hate to be twenty again, or even twenty-five. One has a good time, of course, but it's still the good time of a children's party. Lots of ice-cream méringues, and a bilious attack afterwards.”

He wasn't listening to her. He was watching the movement of her lips. When they were still again, he became conscious of a silence.

“Lesley.”

She looked at him kindly. The next moment he was on his knees at her side, his face buried in her lap.

2

Just as she would have done for Pat, she smoothed back his thick short hair and promised that he would soon be better. She told him a beautiful fairy tale about the glories of the Levant Consular Service. She invented an uncle, an uncle in the Foreign Office, who had always maintained that of all Government services the Levant Consular was the most important. She drew a rapid word-picture of Athens and the Golden Horn, lavishing roses and marble against an azure sea.…

The head in her lap stirred convulsively.

“Don't.”

Lesley broke off. But her fingers continued to move, and under them the head stirred again.

“Don't you know that anything beautiful always makes me want you more?” He looked up: his face, no more than six inches from her own, was twisted with distress. “Even here, seeing you every day, I can only just manage. As soon as I wake up, I think, ‘When shall I see her?' And until I do see you I feel as if—as if I hadn't had any breakfast.” The words were coming more easily, so fast indeed that once or twice he stumbled and mis-pronounced: attitude and all, he might have been at prayer.…

“Lesley, darling, you—you don't know how beautiful you are. Beautiful and good, and everything you say.… With Pat and in the orchard … always with your head bare.… Your lovely hair.… When you say that about being older, you don't know how silly it sounds. I—I want you so much I can't sleep.”

A deep compassion troubled her heart. She said gently,

“My dear, I can only tell you what you won't believe.”

“That I'll get over it when I go away?”

“Yes. Or … even without going away … if you stay long enough.”

“The last part … is what
you
don't believe,” said Denis slowly.

And suddenly, with denial on her lips, she could not utter it. For deep in her being, in her body and in her heart and in her subtle brain, she knew that if she wanted him, he was hers to have.

But she didn't want him, poor Denis!

She thought, ‘I must be careful. To him this is all real and terrible.' And like some expert craftsman before an important and delicate piece of work, she gathered all her resources of skill and experience.

She thought, ‘I must not belittle myself. Before the ultimate virtues (which he obviously believes me to possess) one may bow down and worship without loss of self-respect. And as for beauty—since, after these two months we shall never meet again, it is perfectly possible that he may die happy in the belief that I resembled Lady Hamilton. And to have loved and lost, in early youth, a mixture of Lady Hamilton and Florence Nightingale—that is no misfortune for any man.' The conjunction of these names did not intimidate her: for the boy was in love. ‘I must be very good, and very beautiful,' thought Lesley quite calmly; ‘and then however hard it is now, there will be no bitterness afterwards.”

“What are you thinking of, Lesley?”

She knew what to say.

“I am thinking how selfish I am.”

“You!”

“Because I take happiness from you without giving any back.”

“Lesley!” A returning flicker of life brightened in his eye. “You mean—you mean it really does make you happy, my loving you?”

She nodded.

“It would make any woman happy, my dear. As I say, we're selfish. But then when I see you being hurt like this, I feel I want to do anything on earth to stop it. Even to pretending love in return. Only that … that's the one thing I can't pretend, and I don't think you'd have me try.”

Denis shook his head violently; and in this was unwise, for the tears, which he had hitherto managed to conceal, now ran free. But he was getting better, he was almost brave; he said gruffly,

“I'm not crying. Those have been there some time. I wish you'd tell me to die for you or something.”

“I'd much rather you learnt Turkish,” said Lesley.

“Well, I'd rather die,” said Denis. He paused as though to consider the matter. “I've been thinking about it so long,” he said.

Instinctively, as though she had seen him reach for a weapon, Lesley put out her hand and caught his arm.

“Denis!”

He stared at her with a sort of wonder.

“You look quite frightened.…”

“Of course I'm frightened!” cried Lesley. And it was frightening, it was terrifying, that this boy of twenty-one should for a month and more have walked and talked and played with the children, and always in his mind the familiar image of death. Terrifying in its incongruity, more terrifying still in all that it implied of the soul's isolation.…

“It's all right,” said Denis gruffly, “I won't now, not now that I know you do care a little. I promise I won't.” He soothed, he nursed, he comforted her! “And I'll learn my God-awful Turkish and pass my exams, and get into the Consular and uphold British prestige—anything you want, darling, so long as you'll just write to me sometimes.… You will, won't you?”