Dance and Skylark (9 page)

“Leave it to me!” said Robin sharply, as Virginia stretched out her hand towards it and the cat rose up, a spitting, snarling fury, tugging at its torn leg held between the trap's steel jaws.

Robin said uncomfortably:

“Do go away, Virginia. I'll deal with it. I'll get a stick.”

“No,” she said quite calmly. “No. Take off your coat.”

The extraordinary thing was that her tone had a sort of authority; and Robin took off his coat.

“Now,” she said; and as he threw it over the cat and drew it tight about the struggling body, the astonishing girl knelt down and tried to open the trap with her fingers. It was too strong for her, but Robin with his free hand pulled the jaws apart, and Virginia lifted out the mangled leg and ran her thumb and forefinger gently along it.

“No fracture,” she said, confident and authoritative;
and then Robin noticed that a whole tuft of bracken had caught in the trap as it closed, so that the jaws had not quite met. But the skin was ragged from the cat's elbow to its paw, and there were the two ends of a severed tendon sticking out from the wound.

“Tear up a handkerchief,” Virginia commanded. Robin did so, holding the wriggling coat between his knees, and watched Virginia as she deftly bound up the cat's leg, dividing the end of the bandage to make a small neat knot where it ended.

Her utterly unexpected competence bewildered him; it didn't fit in with anything he knew about her. She was ineffably silly, her bead was full of film-stars, she was frightened of harmless little caterpillars, and yet in this business she was more capable than he was; for Robin could kill but he couldn't succour, he could maim but he couldn't mend.

“Where did you learn to do that?” he asked her; and tucking in the loose ends of the knot, she said: “V.A.D. Just at the end of the war. I rather liked it.” And indeed there were times still when the film-dream for a moment faded and she looked back upon that year in hospital as the happiest of her life. She'd never go back to it, of course; to dictatorial matrons and emptying slops and turning heavy mattresses, not she. But it was something she was glad to have done, though if anyone had asked her why she couldn't have told them; she didn't understand that she had liked it because when she was doing things for other people she forgot about herself.

“Now lift the coat off it and let it go,” she said. “With
luck it'll run home on three legs and its owner will look after it.”

Robin wasn't so sure; for the tabby, he suspected, was a poacher like himself, a rabbiter, a hedgerow-hunter, perhaps a chicken-stealer. Good luck to it, he thought, as it streaked away.

He was sorry he had caught it, of course, but he didn't trouble himself for long with uncomfortable reflections about its fear and its pain. What teased his mind at the moment was the puzzle of Virginia. Her metamorphosis had been so sudden and complete that it almost startled him.

She gave the trap a little kick with her high-heeled shoe.

“Horrid thing! Chuck it away, Robin, so that the beast who put it there can't find it.”

Robin pulled up the peg and heaved the trap into a clump of bushes; taking good care to mark where it fell.

“And now let's go home, please.”

They left the twilight behind them and walked back through the ride. Between the trees the night was black velvet, the still air seemed heavier somehow, Virginia had a strange fancy that she had to
push
her way through it. The silence was heavy too, now that the nightingales had stopped singing. The dew on the bracken soaked through Virginia's shoes and there were queer damp smells everywhere, some sweet, some sharp. Virginia walked close to Robin, for she didn't like woods even in daylight and dreaded them in the dark, erroneously imagining them to be populated by adders.

Nevertheless, she felt pleased with herself. It had been
nice to be able to save the cat (although as a matter of fact, she wasn't very fond of cats) and she was glad that she had tied up its leg so swiftly and neatly. She was rather good at that sort of thing; and she remembered with pleasure the grudging praise of a horse-faced old matron when she had completed a difficult dressing: “You may be a fool, Smith, but you've got quick fingers.” Nurse Smith! It sounded funny now. It might come in useful for publicity, she thought; the kind of publicity they gave to starlets when they were building them up into stars. “At the age of seventeen Virginia Vance, undreaming of her bright future, was making beds in a military hospital. …”

They walked arm-in-arm, and Robin, feeling her so close to him, wondered whether he'd been wrong about her after all. She'd been so sensible about that cat, so competent and yet quite unsentimental, she hadn't cried about it and made a fuss as some girls would—perhaps, then, she wasn't such a silly floosie as he'd thought? And if so, perhaps he'd been wrong about other things too. Perhaps she wasn't, as he'd imagined, one of those Take-your-hand-away-or-I'll-scream girls.

He put his arm about her tentatively, and she made no protest. Indeed for a moment a little flicker of warmth was engendered between them. Virginia saw the last of the sunset breaking through the tracery of branches at the end of the ride, and felt quite safe at last. She even dared to lean her head on Robin's shoulder as lovers sometimes did on the pictures: a position, she discovered, of acute discomfort when one is walking.

Perhaps at that moment Robin's little seedling of
affection might have taken root; perhaps the fading plant did quicken—but not for long. She said suddenly:

“Do you like Virginia Vance?”

“I don't know her,” said Robin, genuinely surprised.

“I mean the name, silly.”

“Well, who is she?”

“Me. I thought of Virginia Valley,” she explained patiently, with her head at an angle of forty-five degrees, “and Verity and Virtue and Vane. If I get that film-test, you see, I can't be just Smith. Virginia what?”

“Stock,” said Robin automatically; “or creeper.” But she didn't see the joke. “Stock? Creeper?” she repeated, puzzled. “I think those are very ugly names. Honestly, Robin, don't you think ‘Virginia Vance' sounds pretty?”

So it had only been a flash in the pan after all, he said to himself; she really was as dumb as she seemed, as dumb as he had dismally anticipated, after that silly fight with Lance when they had got drunk and quarrelled so absurdly over the Beauty Queens. …

Robin vaulted the gate and Virginia climbed over it clumsily, getting her shoe as usual caught in the bar. The dying sunset lay before them, a long streak of orange low in the dark sky. The lights of the town were beginning to stipple the pewter-coloured river.

“Thenk you for the natingales,” said Virginia primly, coming up to his side. “And Robin—”

“Yes?”

“It was awfully naughty of you and Lance but it was nace of you to—to fate for me.”

Robin didn't say anything. She couldn't guess, the silly
little floosie, that they had fought about Edna; and that when they had made it up afterwards, solemnly shaking hands in a ridiculous welter of English sportsmanship, they had decided to toss up for the Beauty Queens; and that Lance, alas, had won.

Less than two hundred yards away, as it happened, Lance and Edna had made for themselves a couch among the bracken, which had begun as a very small one, a mere dimple on the hillside just big enough for two, but had unaccountably extended itself to cover an area of many square yards. They had been much too preoccupied with each other to notice the nightingales; but within their private battlefield, hidden from the world, they now lay at peace.

“You know when Joe dips the balloons in the paint?” said Edna; and indeed Lance did know, for he had called for her just before seven at the factory and had been not a little embarrassed to find himself in the company of nearly a dozen young men who were also waiting for their girls: a lengthening queue. It had occurred to him that it would be extremely awkward if his father came along, on his way perhaps from visiting the sick; so he had made the excuse to John Handiman that he would like to see over the factory and had taken refuge there until the day-shift came off duty. Thus he had watched Edna putting the squeals into a score of pigs and inflating them until they swelled like uberous sows, deep-bellied, huge-hammed, luxuriantly fecund. Ripeness is all.

“And you know how the balloons come out all the
colours of the rainbow?” she went on. “Red and yellow and green all mixed up together?” She giggled delightfully. “Your eye's rather like that.”

Lance watched the stars coming out, and heard a little breeze sigh through the ferns, and smelt the queer bruised-bracken smell, thinking that he would remember it for the rest of his life. His head was full of tenuous rhymes, and words came from nowhere like the wind in the bracken and whispered through it. Violet-weaving, shimmering-throned Aphrodite, he said to himself. (He had been reading Sappho.) He felt so happy that he was sure, if only he had a pencil and paper, he could have written the saddest poem in the world.

Edna stretched herself like a contented kitten, and let the tip of her finger rest lightly on Lance's swollen temple.

“Poor eye,” she said. “And I'm sorry for Robin too. But I'm
glad
you beat him, Lance.”

Faith Pargetter, the farmer's daughter, had been properly brought up in one of those big, gracious farmhouses “where all's accustomed, ceremonious.” In the spotless kitchen with its stone-flagged floor there were never less than two sides of bacon slung high above the chimney-piece, and two treacle-cured hams, spiced with juniper berries, in pickle for Christmas. The shining pots
and pans and the dull-gleaming coppers which hung upon the walls were of a size which spoke of generous hospitality. The scrubbed table was laid as a matter of course for twelve people because the household consisted of ten and “You never knew who'd drop in for a bite.” To this table in their appointed seasons came Aylesbury ducklings, turkeys, geese, fat capons, rook-pie, pigs'-fry and faggots, lambs'-tails, and such time-honoured delicacies as frumenty, biffins, lardy-cakes, sparrib-pie, love-in-disguise, fairings and gingerbread-husbands. There was always a bowl of cream big enough to drown a cat in, and a Double Gloucester cheese the size and shape of a grindstone, and without fail on Michaelmas Day Mrs. Pargetter made three dozen Christmas puddings just as her mother and her grandmother had done before her: never one more nor one less.

Miss Pargetter was therefore very shocked indeed when she discovered that it was Stephen's habit to nibble a couple of small sandwiches for his lunch. She had an agricultural contempt for sandwiches; they were all right for the gentry who went picnicking for fun, but you wouldn't think of sending your own men out with sandwiches for their mid-morning bait. You would cut them inch-thick slices of bread, well daubed with butter and accompanied by slabs of cold meat or fat bacon plastered with mustard; and if you forgot to add a quarter of a pound of Double Gloucester the men would come home grumbling at dinner-time. Sandwiches were therefore anathema to Miss Pargetter,

She dealt with the situation in her own way. Without a word to Stephen she brought in four brown eggs and four slices of ham. At lunch-time, which she called dinner-time,
she locked the front door of the shop and went up uninvited into Stephen's little flat, where she spent rather a long time scrubbing the frying-pan with wire-wool, having fore-sightedly provided herself with this necessity. She then cooked the ham and eggs and called “Dinner's ready.”

Stephen, in his office, was on the telephone. The voice of Sir Almeric Jukes was drawling contemptuously into his ear:

“And if you think I'm goin' to risk my valuable cattle in the company of diseased ridin'-school hosses you're wrong, Mr. Stephen Tasker, you're wrong.”

“I'm sorry,” said Stephen patiently. “I didn't quite gather what you thought the horse was suffering from?”

“Strangles,” shouted Sir Almeric. “D'ye hear, strangles? I felt the brute's neck and there were lumps on it. So unless you get the vet and he gives it a clean bill of health you'll have none of my horses for your Pageant. And that's flat, Mr. Stephen Tasker,” he added offensively.

Stephen wearily put down the telephone. It had been his worst morning so far. Everybody was in a muddle, from the Wardrobe Mistress to the lighting man, and they had all brought their muddles in succession to the small back room. The knitters of chainmail had run out of wool; the painters of chainmail had run out of silver paint. The carpenters, admittedly, had settled their strike, but the electricians were just starting one. The printers had lost the block which was to go on the cover of the programme. Robin had declared he could design no more dresses unless he was provided with an expensive and unobtainable book on heraldry. The Cricket Club had failed to agree about
who should represent W. G. Grace: a part which required not simply a beard from Clarkson's but the ability to hit sixes which Clarkson's couldn't provide. The Rowing Club, with nobody's authority, had spent twenty pounds on decorating a barge for Bloody Mary more elaborate than Cleopatra's. The Bank Manager was concerned about the increasing overdraft and had rung up to ask who was going to guarantee it. Finally, just before one, the Vicar had arrived with a bundle of nineteenth-century
Punches
for which he had practically demanded twenty-five shillings. Outside it was mizzling with cold rain, water poured in runnels off the Vicar's bald head and the silvery drops furred his old cassock, which he shook all over the shop like a dog which has been in the river. “The pride of the morning, my boy,” beamed the Vicar, pocketing a pound note and two half-crowns. “Just the pride of the morning. The glass is going up; there's an anticyclone on the way. You mark my words, it'll be fine this afternoon.”

Although the telephone was ringing (with Sir Almeric raging at the other end) the Vicar showed no inclination to leave.