The Nature of Love (7 page)

‘What made you do that?' he said. ‘Makes you look different – I like it, it makes you look different. It looks nice. I like it – what made you have it done?'

‘I had it done with that money you give me,' she said.

The excited notion flew down through his stupefied brain that, since she had done it with the money he had given her, she had also done it for himself.

‘Dulcie, Dulcie,' he said. He began to grope for her neck and shoulders with excited, trembling hands. His nostrils gave a quivering upward start as he caught the extraordinary dusky smell of her hair. ‘Dulcie, Dulcie,' he said, ‘you thought any more about what I said – you know, about us, about what I said –?'

‘No,' she said. ‘No. Not yet – I want to wait a bit – I want to wait.'

She stood rigid while he began to pour wet kisses on her neck and cheeks and soft exposed ears.

‘I can't wait much longer,' he said. ‘Dulcie, I can't wait much longer –'

‘I want to wait,' she said.

‘Wait what for?' he said. ‘What for? You know me, don't you? You bin here all summer – you know the place, don't you? You know what I got. I got plenty – I got more'n I know what to do with, Dulcie. I bin fly – I got plenty –'

‘I want to wait,' she said.

He staggered about the table, reaching for his hat, picking up notes, laughing as he tried to give her the money.

‘I got plenty – you only got to say –'

‘I don't want it. I want to wait,' she said.

‘Here,' he said. ‘Here –'

He suddenly seized her by the shoulders, laughing again, dragging her out of the room and upstairs. She let herself be drawn rigidly, without a word. ‘You come with me, Dulcie – you come with me. I got summat to show you –' Trying to find his keys, he stumbled, fell on all fours and crawled the last few steps to the attic door on hands and knees.

‘There y'are, Dulcie,' he said. ‘What about that, eh? You never seen nothing like that afore.'

She stood in the attic staring at the rows of biscuit tins. She had no surprise about them and her hands were stiff by her sides.

‘That's money for you, ain't it?' he said.

‘I don't want it,' she said.

She found herself staring out of the window, her mind wandering, all her vision expanding out of the narrowness of the little room, out of the world of Parker, the money and the biscuit tins, to the valley lying below in the late October sunshine. In the sharp autumn air its distances seemed to be heightened and enlarged, taking her farther away than ever.

‘There y'are,' Parker said. In a stupefied ecstasy of secret-sharing he fingered the money with one hand and then herself, in clumsy excitement, with the other. ‘You don't want no more'n that, do you?'

She stared out of the window into a world whose distances seemed not only amazingly enlarged. They seemed to be pulsating, out as far as the quivering edges of horizon, bluish-copper from approaching sunset, with the deep discharge of her own emotions. She thought of the things she had bought herself: the shoes, the silk stockings, the underwear, the tight sleek corsets, the dress, and even, at last, the pair of white gloves that would hide her big coarse hands. She wanted suddenly to find them all and rush out with them, away from the ugly rat of her repugnance about Parker, and never come back.

‘I want to wait,' she said.

‘All right, you wait,' Parker said. ‘Here – take a pound or two now. Buy yourself something nice.' He began to thrust notes into her hands and then, when her hands were too rigid to take them, into the neck of her dress. ‘You take 'em – buy something – just for yourself.'

She was hardly aware of what he did to her.

‘How long d'ye want to wait?' he said.

‘Not long now,' she said. ‘Not long.'

She lay awake for a long time in the night, thinking again of the clothes she had bought, coming slowly to a decision. She felt she could not wait even another day before she wore them for the first time. She came to a decision, too, about another thing.

‘I got to go. I got to get out,' she thought. ‘I don't know where I'll end up. I don't know where I am.'

Parker had a small orchard of late apples at the lower end of the farm and after dinner he took a horse and trolley and a long picking ladder and went down to gather them. He said what a nice day it was and how nice it would be if she
came down, later, to give him a hand, and she saw him look with uneasy fondness at her hair.

‘I'll see how I get on,' she said. ‘I got to run down to the shop.'

For some minutes she watched the truck bump down the stony track that led beyond the oast-houses and the bullock-yard to the field and the orchard beyond. Then she found herself wondering what it would be like to be seeing him for the last time, and the thought exulted her. She found herself trembling as she went upstairs. She took a jug of hot water with her and in her bedroom she stripped herself and began to wash her face and body. She could still smell the dusky, clove-deep odour of her hair, fading a little now but still strong, and she longed for it to remain like that for at least that afternoon.

When she got into the new corset she stood for some time staring at herself in the glass. Then she put on her stockings and she stood up and stared at them too. It was the corset and the stockings, she thought, so sheer and smooth and shining, that did so much to alter all the tone and appearance of her body. The big bulges of her hips and stomach were carved down and held in a shell, and the veins of her legs, always like stiff blue worms, were hidden away. There was a division, too, between her breasts, instead of the sagging blown pillow that had always been there.

She was ready by three o'clock. As she went out of her bedroom she felt a sudden urge to make quite sure where Parker was. She climbed the stairs to the little balcony on the roof and looked down across the fields. She could see the tip of the ladder pointing up through the old red trees of apple and on the top of it the squat grey head of Parker, under the greasy hat, staring emptily like an owl. And once again she felt that she might be seeing him, that day, for the last time, and again the thought exulted her.

She walked up through the wood very slowly. Her body felt stiff in the unaccustomed corsets. She did not know quite what to do with her hands in the new white gloves and
the heels of her shoes seemed to make her taller than she had expected.

It seemed like a strange accident when she saw the young keeper coming down the path to meet her. She felt nervous at the sight of him. The afternoon sun, low under masses of smouldering beeches, was dazzling in his eyes. She saw the blue fierce sparkle of them under ruckled brows.

He seemed suddenly unable to believe in the reality of her as she came up the path. He stopped and held his head sideways and squinted. Then he walked slowly towards her, imprisoned for a few moments longer in disbelief about herself, her new clothes, her new identity.

‘It is you,' he said. ‘I couldn't believe it. It is you.'

She felt herself trembling violently and could only say: ‘It's my day off. You never saw me on my day off before.'

‘I thought it was some stranger. I thought your day was Sunday.'

‘It used to be,' she said. ‘But now –' She hesitated as if she did not know quite how to frame what she had to say. She had lied so readily in the past that now it was not easy to tell the truth in a simple way.

‘Will you walk part of the way with me?' she said.

‘Which way?'

‘I want to walk down to the village – I got to go down there for something –'

‘I'll walk part of the way,' he said. ‘I'd like to. You want to go by the bottom path? – it's nice in the sun.'

They walked for some distance on the dry chalk path, carved white into the hillside at the edge of the beeches, before she spoke again.

‘I'm glad I saw you. I got something to tell you,' she said.

She looked down at her new black shoes. The toes of them were already dusty with the dry chalk of the path.

‘That wasn't quite right what I said. It wasn't exactly right about my day off. That wasn't quite right.'

‘No?'

‘No,' she said.

‘Is that what you wanted to tell me?'

‘No,' she said. ‘I wanted to tell you I was leaving there.'

He stopped on the path. His hands jerked across the front of his body as if for a moment he wanted to take hold of her.

‘Is that true?' he said.

‘Yes, it's true,' she said. Now when she told the truth she desired passionately to be believed. ‘Why? – don't you believe me? Don't you believe it's true?'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘Only I wanted to be sure – I been waiting to hear you say that for a long time.'

Suddenly she knew that there was a change in him; she felt that they were drawing closer together. She did not speak for a long time as they walked along the path. She could only look down at her new shoes and see them growing cloudier every moment with the dust she raised from the chalk, and it was the shoes that made her speak at last.

‘Look at my shoes – whatever do they look like? They look like nothing on earth.'

‘I can dust them,' he said.

He began to take out his handkerchief.

‘Not now. They'll be as bad again if you do,' she said. ‘You could do them at the gate, couldn't you? Before I go down the road?'

‘Are you coming back to-day?' he said.

‘Yes.'

‘How long before you come back?'

‘I don't know,' she said. ‘About hour. About that. I just got to go somewhere – I got to go down to see after that job I told you about. The one in the café.'

‘Can I wait and take you back?'

‘If you want to,' she said. ‘Do you want to?'

They had reached the gate at the end of the path and in answer he pulled out his handkerchief and began to dust her shoes. She felt the touch of the handkerchief as it flicked against the silk of her stockings. She could feel his nervousness in the quick, too delicate movements of his hands, the nervousness exaggerating her own until suddenly she felt slightly giddy and put her hands on his shoulders.

For a few moments this first touch of him made her blind with excitement. She felt the beeches tremble about her like great orange breakers in the act of plunging downhill towards the sun.

When she could see clearly again she saw that he was standing upright. He was putting his handkerchief away in his pocket and speaking of how long she would be and how he hoped she would get the job and how he would meet her when she came back.

‘Where will you meet me?' she said.

‘Here,' he said. ‘I'll watch for you coming up the road.'

She walked down to the café and ordered tea and sat drinking it slowly. She felt the flush of it heating her body, pounding through her blood and drugging her mind until there was no coherence in her thought. She felt mystified and wondering and slightly frightened of the change in her feelings exactly as she had been filled with wonder at the change in her body when she had first seen it, in its silky shell of corsets and stockings, in the glass.

When her thoughts at last began to come back to her, as she walked up the hill, they were very simple. In the night she would pack her things. In the morning she would be honest with Parker. In the afternoon she could go. In that simple way, she thought, there would be the end of Parker.

‘I know where I am now,' she thought. ‘I got to go while I can.'

She wanted to run the last hundred yards up the hill to where the young keeper was waiting under the long smouldering arch of beeches. Instead she plodded heavily forward, her big legs striking back to gain their power from the slope of the hill exactly as they had done in the days when she pushed the pram.

‘Well here you are,' she said. ‘Did you think I was never coming? Did you get tired of waiting?'

‘Did you get the job?' he said.

‘I got to go back another day.'

They walked for some distance along the path without speaking. Chalk dust rose again in small white puffs and
gradually sprinkled its bloom on her shoes. He looked once or twice at her shoes before saying nervously at last:

‘They're getting whiter and whiter. Shall I dust them?'

‘In a minute,' she said. ‘I'll find somewhere to sit down in a minute. It'll be easier like that.'

They were three or four hundred yards from the farm when she sat down on a beech-stump and put her feet and legs together so that he could dust her shoes. In the strong flat sunshine she was dazzled and could see nothing of the valley beyond his head. Half blind again, she was aware only of the movements, for the second time too quick and too delicate, of his hands about her shoes and ankles.

A moment later he was touching her legs. He was trying to say with coherence that he thought how beautiful she looked in the new shoes and the new stockings but the words, were too clumsy and too eager and suddenly the incredible stumbling fact of someone touching her legs and finding them beautiful was too much for her.

She got up and stood against him. As he held her she felt the entire front of her body turn molten and quivering. She shut her eyes against the strong gold glare of the sun and felt suddenly an extraordinary sensation of nakedness as she stood there on the open path and let him kiss her for the first time.

‘I don't know what it is,' he said, ‘but you're all different to-day. You look all different. Somehow it don't seem like you –'

‘It's me all right,' she said. ‘It's only the things I got on – the new things.'

She put her big awkward mouth up to him again, standing on the toes of her new shoes so that she could reach his face.

‘Be here to-morrow,' she said. ‘I got my things to bring. You'll be here, won't you?'