The Scent of Water (7 page)

“Do please come in,” said Mary. She had just been thinking of Cousin Mary, and now for a strange moment this woman seemed to be her. Yet there was not the slightest resemblance. She took her visitor’s arm and they walked together up the paved path. At the front door Jean recoiled, as though at the mouth of the pit, and Mrs. Baker made encouraging noises behind her. “It
is
dark,” said Mary, “but it’s light in the parlor, and I’ve a fire there.” She thought briefly that it had never occurred to her to call the paneled room the drawing room or the sitting room. It was the parlor and nothing else.

She installed Jean by the fire in one of the little gilt chairs, mentally adding two small armchairs of suitable period and the repairing of the doorbell to her list of priorities, and Mrs. Baker fetched fresh tea. This seemed to revive Jean, though she had to hold her cup with both hands, and presently, while Mary talked about the beauty of Appleshaw, she set her cup down and removed her dark glasses. She sat facing the light and Mary could see her face, the most vulnerable face she had ever seen, with a taut look of suffering about the mouth. The eyes, blue and beautiful, were not the eyes of the woman whom Jean appeared to be, and looking into them Mary was aware of intelligence and courage. She realized with deep respect that this woman had always done what she had to do and faced what she had to face. If many of her fears and burdens would have seemed unreal to another woman, there was nothing unreal about her courage. The dark glasses, Mary felt, were more of a psychological protection than a physical one. The lack of coordination between what she was in herself, and the jarred mechanism of body and nerves, had so deeply shamed her that she must hide. But with Mary she had taken her glasses off. Had she known that she had done it? Mary was afraid to speak lest she frighten them on again.

“My brother,” said Jean, “wanted me to bid you welcome. He’s the Vicar here, you know. He’ll be coming to see you soon. He wanted to know if there’s anything we can do.” Her face was suffused with crimson but she had got it out.

“That’s kind of you,” said Mary, “but I’m settling down well and loving this house.”

“Loving it?” whispered Jean.

“Did you know my cousin Miss Lindsay?” asked Mary, and was instantly aware that she had said the wrong thing, for Jean had begun to tremble again and was groping for her glasses. She was terrified of Cousin Mary, she thought, and she’s still terrified of the house. “Let’s go out into the garden,” she said. “We can go out through the conservatory. We won’t have to go back to the hall. The window opens almost down to the floor. Look, I’ll help you.”

But Jean resisted her helping hand for a moment while she groped in the basket for the pot of blackberry jelly. “For you,” she said, holding it out. “I made it myself. Gladys helped me.”

“Now I really feel I’ve come to live in the country,” said Mary gratefully, as she put it on the mantelpiece. “There are trees and birds in London but not blackberries. I can’t wait for the autumn in Appleshaw. Blackberries and the smell of bonfires, and the cherry trees scarlet along the edge of the woods.”

“No, no!” cried Jean. “You must not hurry like that. I mean, it’s spring. Each year, I mean—I want—but I can’t do it!” She ended on a note of despair.

“You mean each year not to let the spring go racing by while you think of something else. You form your resolution and having formed it you look up and it’s summer.”

Jean nodded in astonishment and relief, as Mary helped her through the window. Mary had expressed it for her and the relief was physical as well as mental.

“The vine grows up through the floor!” cried Mary. This was the first time she had been in the conservatory. The trunk of the old vine grew straight up through the center of the tessellated pavement of dim blue and green and spread out like an umbrella beneath the low domed glass roof. There was nothing else in the conservatory, though a shelf ran around it, waiting for flowers. Scented geraniums, thought Mary, and chrysanthemums in the winter.

The conservatory door was open and they passed out into the garden, breathless for a moment while the scents and sounds of spring broke over their heads like a wave. Jean was visited by one of her rare moments of happiness, one of those moments when the goodness of God was so real to her that it was like a taste and scent; the rough strong taste of honey in the comb and the scent of water. Her thoughts of God had a homeliness that at times seemed shocking, in spite of their power, which could rescue her from terror or evil with an ease that astonished her. This morning, for instance, putting on her outdoor shoes in her bedroom to call on the new Miss Lindsay, terror had come upon her. The dread of meeting someone who did not know about her was one of her worst fears. They would try to talk to her, and she would not know what they were talking about, or if she did know, and she knew more often than people realized, and the answers were lucid in her mind, she would not be able to find the words to give them form. She would see the surprise in the face of the newcomer, the embarrassment, and then the relief with which he effected his escape. And to that fear had been added her terror of The Laurels, and the thing that had happened to her there. She had fumbled helplessly with the knotted laces of her shoes and got in a panic because she could not tie them. Because of course she had known she must go. She always did the thing because in obedience lay the integrity that God asked of her. If anyone had asked her what she meant by integrity she would not have been able to tell them but she had seen it once like a picture in her mind, a root going down into the earth and drinking deeply there. No one was really alive without that root. And meanwhile she had not been able to get her shoes laced. She had stopped struggling, her hands sticky with fear and anxiety, and taking her shoes right off had turned back with blind trust to the beginning again, to the beginning of the action of obedience that always had a wholesome sweetness in it, though it was hard, a foretaste of the end with its humble thankfulness. And then, just as she had bent to pick up her left shoe, it had happened, and she had sat with the shoe in her hand and laughed. Just the sense of her own ridiculous predicament, only she had not been laughing alone. He had laughed with her. After that the knots had come out of the laces quite easily, she had put on her hat and gone. The fear had gone with her, of course, but it had become bearable. And now look how easy it had all been and how He had helped her.

Mary’s next remark was another mistake. “Isn’t that a lovely willow tree?” she said. “Like a waterfall.”

“There’s someone inside it!” gasped Jean, trembling with a new terror.

“Just a bird,” said Mary, and stretched out a hand to pull aside the green-gold curtain and show it was all right. But her hand dropped again. Ridiculous ideas are catching and she too now had the feeling that there was someone there, someone hostile to them. They would go and look at the beautiful boy in the pond, she thought, but when she turned and glanced toward him some trick of the sunlight, rippling down his smooth limbs, caused the illusion that he moved. “Come and see the rose garden,” she said hastily. The rose garden, basking in warmth, was normal enough, but the curtain of wistaria hid the path beyond and anyone could have been there, pacing up and down, shabby silk skirts dragging on the paving stones, and Mary had to acknowledge that the atmosphere of her home, at present at any rate, was undeniably queer. She did not resist Jean’s edging movement around the roses, her quick anguished glance toward the garden door. Indeed with her hand within her arm she helped her there.

At the door Jean, with her hand in Mary’s, tried to remember what the other thing was that James expected her to say. “My brother and I—my brother—we hope you will be very happy here.”

“Thank you,” said Mary, and then, because she already loved this woman and must see her again, but not in a house which terrified her, “Will you come out with me in my car sometimes? I don’t drive fast and with you I shall be driving just to look at the beauty around us, not to get anywhere.”

Jean’s face lit up with a joy out of all proportion to the normality of the suggestion. They had no car at the vicarage. James, with his great physical strength, preferred his bike and his long legs; and in any case his brilliant classical mind was curiously inept when it came to machinery. Even had they had a car it would have been a torment to drive with him. But with this wonderful gladiolus woman it would be heaven. She had not seen the beautiful country around Appleshaw because her physical weakness was too great for walking, and she had often thought that if she could see it she might feel better. “Thank you!” she ejaculated, and she was so happy that as she turned away she seemed almost steady on her feet.

Mary waved to her and went back to the garden. She walked slowly along the moss-grown path beside the jungle that had once been a herbaceous border, her thoughts busy with Michaelmas daisies, goldenrod and peonies. In the shrubbery on the other side, when she crossed over to it, she found among the weeds japonica, guelder rose, escallonia and actually a couple of laurels, all of them grown into trees. She was afraid that the pruning and digging and replanting that were necessary were beyond Mr. Baker but he must choose his own helper. It would not be everyone who could work with him.

She went down to the end of the lawn and sat on the edge of the empty pond, close to the pink and white blossoms of the crab apple trees, and looked up at the boy with the bow and arrow, remembering the glimpse of him she had had as a child. He had waited for her a long time. She sat by him lulled almost to sleep by the birdsong and the bee hum and the warmth and scents of spring. Then twelve o’clock struck from the church tower. Twelve already? Mrs. Baker would be wanting to leave, and she got up and went toward the house. As she passed the willow tree she paused. She still had the odd feeling that there was someone there and again she put out her hand to part the branches. Then it flashed through her mind: not yet.

When she reached the kitchen Mrs. Baker was already putting on her coat and tying her scarf over her head. “I’ve prepared the veg, dear,” she said. “And I’ve stewed a few apples and made a custard. Should last you over Sunday. The fowl will be ready come one o’clock. If I were you I’d just slip along with your car to the Dog and Duck. It’ll be quiet now and suitable for a lady. In the evening it’s more noisy. Down Starling Lane, that turn by Orchard Cottage, the Randalls’ place, the cottage with the blue door. You can’t miss it.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Baker,” said Mary gratefully. “The apples and custard look good and the fowl smells wonderful. I’ll do as you say about the car.”

“That’s right, dear,” said Mrs. Baker. “See you Monday. Bye-bye.”

She went out through the back door and down the path through the kitchen garden to the door in the wall leading to some lane that Mary had not discovered yet. The thought of discovery gave her a thrill of excitement.

She got into her car and followed Mrs. Baker’s directions. Between the Randalls’ kitchen garden and the inn there was an orchard, with beehives under the trees. The Dog and Duck was old with deep thatch and a painted sign. The lane went on beyond it, through gilded meadows toward the green-roofed splendor of a vast beech wood. She got out of her car and went into the bar, fearful lest it should have been modernized. But it was still much as it had always been, with an old black settle beside the wide fireplace, hunting prints on the walls and a huge cat heaped on the counter. Only this counter was modern, with rows of glasses on shelves behind it and leather-topped high stools in front.

She had expected to find the bar empty but it was full of a pleasant blue haze of tobacco smoke and two men, one of middle height, stocky and strong, the other tall and broad-shouldered, were smoking their pipes and talking to Jack Beckett behind the counter. A wonderful Labrador lay on the floor beside the tall man. The talk was of country things and Mary would have liked to stay unseen for a minute or two and listen to it, but though she moved quietly she was not a woman who could hope to enter a room unobserved and Jack Beckett at once stared at her in frank and delighted admiration. His three last remaining teeth, two top and one bottom, gave as much charm to his wide smile as the first three of a baby. The other two men were instantly on their feet. The one with the dog stepped back, his dog moving with him as though they were all of a piece, but the other turned toward her with a half-smile and a glance that took her in very efficiently indeed. He fetched a stool and placed it for her with an air. He had gray eyes, sandy hair and a broad pleasant snub-nosed face. She could not place him at all. His clothes were those of a well-to-do farmer but not his well-kept hands or his sophistication.

“I did not mean to disturb you,” she said in her unusually deep, cool and beautiful voice. “I came to thank Mr. Beckett for saying I may garage my car here.”

“Ah, it’s Miss Lindsay!” roared Jack Beckett. He had a very gentle and sucking-dove roar and Mary instantly liked him. “I thought as how it might be you, ma’am. What will you take, ma’am?”

Mary had not meant to take anything but she felt at home with these men, even with the one who moved all of a piece with his dog and whom she had not looked at yet, though she was very conscious of him. He seemed to have a gift of stillness. She sat on her stool and said, “A gin and lime, please.”

“Paul and I are practically your next-door neighbors, Miss Lindsay,” said the stocky man.

“If The Laurels can be said to have neighbors,” said the tall man. “It’s a place apart. A deep sort of place.”

He had come back to his stool beside her, with his dog, and for the first time she turned to look at him. His face was disfigured with burns. Plastic surgery had done what it could for him but even so the marring of his face was grievous, and he was blind. She felt no sense of shock, rather of familiarity, as though she turned back, or forward, she did not know which, to John. Yet this tall untidy man with his short rough graying hair and bowed shoulders was physically not in the least like John, always so immaculate and straight and easy on the eye. Nevertheless he was like him in some way that she could not define yet, and her sympathy and liking went out to him. And he was right about The Laurels being a place apart.