Flowers on the Grass (16 page)

“Let’s see.” Geoffrey stretched out a hand for the paper. His mother gave it to him, then got up and went out of the room, weeping.

Reggie’s
In Memoriam
notice covered twice as much space as anyone else’s and included the last two lines of a poem that would make you weep even if you had never known Reggie, or lost anyone in the war.

Mr. Marple stood dangling his napkin, looking after his wife. This was the one day in the year when he behaved like a husband. “Should I go after her?”

“I’ll go, Daddy,” said Eileen, who was wearing a black dress in which she already looked hot although the sun was not yet high. “You stay and finish your breakfast.”

Mr. Marple did not want his breakfast. It was a waste to cook eggs on Reggie’s death day. It was a waste to cook for any meal, for no one but Geoffrey felt like eating. Nobody spoke much, and when they did it was in a cautious, considerate way, as if they were strangers. Meals were quickly over. Nellie removed the dishes less noisily, out of deference to the day, and the family wandered out of the dining-room and went about the house as if they were wearing carpet slippers.

Daniel stayed away for lunch, saying he wanted to finish a sketch, so Geoffrey had no one to talk to. He wanted to swim, but neither Eileen nor Aunt Florence would swim with him. No one would do anything. It was as if Reggie had died yesterday instead of five years ago.

All his photographs had flowers before them, or ivy twined round the frames, and the framed telegram from the War Office, announcing his death, was propped on the drawing-room mantelpiece. When Geoffrey went into the study his father was taking out of the desk drawer the German revolver that Reggie had brought on his last visit home. For a moment Geoffrey thought he was contemplating suicide, but it was just that he wanted to sit and handle it with a faraway face.

He wanted to talk to Geoffrey about his brother, but Geoffrey would not stay. He had seen his father cry once, and he did not want that embarrassment again.

In the afternoon he went down to the beach. Even the voice of the sea seemed to be turned into sighs for Reggie, and above the smuggler’s pool where he had loved to swim water dripped from a rock as if it wept for him. The gulls were not screaming round the little island. They were settled on it, disconsolate as penguins, hunched in the heat, piping thin echoes of their usual turbulent cry.

The oars had been removed from the dinghy and the plug from its outboard motor. Geoffrey had read a book about an asylum where even quite rational patients were not allowed to have knives or forks or matches, and he knew how they felt, impotent and belittled. He sat down on the pearly sand with his feet drawn up and his arms round his knees, too depressed to make himself more comfortable.

“Where the hell have you been?” he asked, when Daniel came round the Point, looking objectionably healthy and cheerful, with his hair wet and a rucksack on his back.

“In the cove. The boats are all in, and I think I’ve done quite a good one this time. Want to see?”

Geoffrey shook his head. “I’ve had the hell of a day,” he said, without being asked.

“Sorry, old boy.” Daniel took off the rucksack and sat down by him. “I knew it was a bad day for all of you. That’s why I kept away.”

“Sensible chap,” gloomed Geoffrey. “I wish/had. I told you how it would be, didn’t I? They’ve been positively wallowing.” He unwrapped his long body from its hunched position and lay face down on the sand, digging vehement little holes with his hands. “It’s always been like this,” he said. “It was always Reggie, Reggie, Reggie while he was alive, and it still is now he’s dead.
You
know. I heard Aunt Flo telling you last night: Reggie was so brilliant, so handsome, so gay—oh yes, I’ve heard it often enough—so loving and popular, so everything, in fact, that I’m not. Do you believe all that, Daniel?”

Daniel did not answer. He sat looking down at Geoffrey, waiting to see what he was going to say.

“Because he wasn’t.” Geoffrey began to speak rapidly, almost gabbling. “He was mean. You’ve seen his photographs.
Look at that head, how narrow it was, and his eyes were much closer together than mine. You know that I had to leave Rugby after a year because the boys jeered about my fits and made them worse? Well, Reggie was one of the ones who jeered. He
did
! No one believes it, but he did, because he was afraid people would class him with his lunatic brother.”

“Rot,” Daniel said.

“It’s true, 1 tell you. All my life, ever since I can remember, he made it harder for me by being better at everything. People compared us. I was the runt. I still am. The prize boy is taken and the runt is left—that’s supposed to be always the way in war, isn’t it? They wouldn’t say it, of course, but I know what they think. They wish it had been me in the prison camp instead of him. But I wouldn’t have got myself shot. I wouldn’t have been ass enough to try and escape. Trust Reggie to do the spectacular thing.”

“There’s nothing very spectacular about escaping from camp,” Daniel said. “I had a shot at it once.”

Geoffrey shrugged this away as being irrelevant to the theme he was developing with increasing enthusiasm. He never had a chance to voice all these thoughts that rankled within him. No one let him talk like this. They hushed him or walked reproachfully away, but Daniel sat quiet, looking at the sea.

“Reggie had a car,” Geoffrey went on. “He had a horse, a gun, a sailing dinghy of his own, everything he wanted. You should have seen this house when he was alive! People and parties all the time. I used to go away. I couldn’t stand Reggie’s gang. Then they used to talk about me, I know. Reggie was always laughing about me to his friends. He
was
, I tell you! Don’t contradict me, Daniel. What do you know about it? You don’t know what it was like when Reggie went to war and the maids left and we had to get rid of the car. 1 was in the way, a disgrace to the family because I couldn’t go and die for my country, even when I was old enough.”

He ruminated, remembering his father sticking pins into maps and listening to every reiterated news bulletin, his mother harrying Geoffrey about the blackout, as if he were a German spy, and Eileen eternally knitting things for other people, never for him. He remembered the gang of soldiers who had passed him in a lorry, jeering as he pushed his bicycle up the
hill, and the grocer’s wife, who had said: “Never mind, Mr. Geoffrey. We can’t all be heroes.”

“As if it were my fault!” he burst out, sitting up to gesticulate. “I didn’t ask to get this plague. That was Reggie’s christening gift to me, his
chef-d’æuvre
you might say, of brotherly love. He never equalled that afterwards with anything he did.”

“Oh, come off it,” said Daniel. “You can’t blame him for what you inherited from your great-grandmother.”

“But I didn’t! That’s just the point. Listen, I’ll tell you something.” Geoffrey lowered his voice and gabbled like an incanting witch. “At my christening party Reggie picked me up and dropped me on my head. Oh, they say, of course, that there wasn’t enough injury to make me epileptic, and they got the doctors to say so, too. They’re all in league against me; but I know. I’ve read books. I’ve got more insight than they think.”

“You’ve got a more bizarre imagination, certainly.”

“But it’s true! I don’t imagine things. My memory may slip for a moment here and there, but I don’t get big blackouts. Some people, you know, sleep-walk after fits and do all sorts of things, even murders, without knowing it. I daresay they’d like me to be as bad as that, so they could shut me up like the man in the iron mask and not have me hanging about embarrassing people.”

A sickening thought struck him. If he did go into automatism, he would never know. They would keep it hushed as the facts of life. “You’d tell me, wouldn’t you,” he said, “if I ever did anything like that?
They
wouldn’t. They’re all against me, but you’re on my side.”

“Oh, don’t talk like a schoolgirl,” said Daniel impatiently. “I’m going in. I won’t listen to any more of your horrible, vindictive lies.”

“But it’s true!” Geoffrey’s voice was shrill. He clutched Daniel’s bare ankle to stop him getting up.

“None of it is true.” Daniel hit his hand. “And you’re not to say these things to anyone.”

“Oh, I don’t. They won’t listen. That’s why I like you, because you’re the only one I can talk to.”

“Well, you can’t any more”—Daniel wrenched his ankle free and got up—“because I don’t like you.”

“Oh, you
do
!” Geoffrey could not believe this. He threw
sand at Daniel, thinking it was a joke. “You must, because no one else does.”

By now he had talked himself into believing that this was true. It was quite a surprise, therefore, when on the next morning his sister brought him his breakfast in bed unasked, his mother came to kiss him very tenderly, his father gave him a book he had long wanted and even Aunt Florence asked him if he would like to go with her to Penzance for lunch and a film.

As the end of Daniel’s time at Mara Rocks approached, Geoffrey grew disgruntled. He did not want Daniel to leave, and he resented it that Daniel wanted to go.

“Where to, anyway?” he grumbled. “You’ve got nowhere to go to.”

“That’s the beauty of it. There’s nowhere I
need
go. I can go anywhere.”

“It must be wonderful to be free,” sighed Geoifrey, putting on a cage-bird act of pathos. Thinking he had captured Daniel’s sympathy, he said: “Stay here and keep me company.”

“No fear. I’d die here in winter.”

“It is a bit bleak,” Geoffrey admitted. “I love it. The wind tears at the house and roars in the chimneys. Storms excite me. They make me want to stand on the rocks and wave my arms and scream like a gull. I have more fits in winter.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“But I wouldn’t if you were here. Do you realise I’m two weeks overdue for one? You must be good for me. Stay a bit longer, Daniel.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Daniel, “don’t cling. You make me quite ill sometimes.”

Geoifrey was not offended. “I suppose you couldn’t marry Eileen?” he suggested. “You could live here free then.”

“Why don’t you think about getting married yourself?” Daniel changed the subject. “You’re a big boy now. I saw you the other night with that girl from the village.”

“Oh, did you?” Geoffrey was unabashed, although what Daniel must have seen was not creditable. “What did you think of her?”

“Too fat.”

“I like them fat. And squashy. We had a maid once called Ruby … but they got rid of her. I shan’t marry, you know. They wouldn’t let me. I had a girl once. She was fun. Then she saw me have a fit one, day. I know what I look like when I’m having one, I’ve read about it. No wonder she never came near me again. Poor Jane.”

“Who?” Daniel looked up.

“The girl I was telling you about,” said Geoffrey irritably. “Half the time I believe you don’t listen to me.”

It began to be an obsession with him that Daniel should not go. He prayed to his own particular God, a Being seated exactly above Geoffrey’s head, occupied exclusively with his welfare, that Daniel might get ill or hurt in some way—anything to keep him here a prisoner. He could not bear people to escape him. He had not even wanted Woodie to go to the Isle of Wight. It was disturbing to think of anyone going to any place where Geoffrey did not exist and did not count.

However, the days ran out and nothing happened to Daniel. He was to leave two days after Woodie returned, to give Woodie time to recover from his inevitable train sickness. He would probably even be sick crossing the Solent in the paddle steamer.

Geoffrey always swore that it was seeing Woodie that gave him a fit. On Tuesday evening, as he watched Woodie get out of the car teeth first, he suddenly felt that he had seen it all before. It had all happened exactly like this: the green taxi, Woodie’s narrow hat, a bird harping on a phrase of song, all together in this same combination of hidden meanings that were just beyond his grasp.

Here we go—o— “Daniel!” he yelled, not aware of Woodie any more. “Daniel!”

His mother woke him, coming in to draw the curtains. It was morning. “What’s the time?” he asked suspiciously, for she was not in the overall she wore in the early mornings.

“Nearly half-past twelve.”

“Why did you let me oversleep? I’ve got things to do.” He could not remember what, but he had a feeling there was something. Or was that yesterday, and he had done it?

“Well, dear, you know you-” She had on her screwed-up “fit” face, a bogus smile struggling with unease.

“No, I didn’t. Don’t tell me that. I expect I shall have one today, though, when Woodie comes back.”

“But he is back! He came yesterday. Never mind, dear. Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worrying.” He rejected her balm. “Of course I remember.” But he did not, so she must be right. He had had a fit. That was why he was so hungry.

“Get Daniel to make me some sandwiches,” he said. “He’s the only one who knows how I like them.”

“Oh dear. Now, Geoff, I must tell you—no, later perhaps. Eileen shall make the sandwiches for you. She does it very nicely.”

“Where’s Daniel?” he asked Eileen, as soon as she came in with the tray.

“I don’t know. He didn’t tell us where he was going.”

“You mean he’s gone? But it’s not Thursday. Here—what day is it? How long have I been asleep? Why did he go too soon, without saying goodbye?” His feverish questions brought confusion to Eileen’s freckled face.

“Didn’t you know? Oh no, it was while you were asleep. It was quite a bad wound. No, I must begin where he hurt himself. Well, before that he was in the garden.” Eileen always told stories with the minimum of dramatic effect. “There was an accident, you see, though I can’t think how it could have happened. Nor could anyone, but Daniel said—I
am
telling you, Geoff. Don’t shout at me like that. Yesterday evening, apparently, he took Reggie’s German revolver down to the end of the garden to shoot rooks, he said. I can’t think how he had the nerve to take it, but still. Anyway, he shot himself in the ankle. Wasn’t that silly? I can’t think how he did it. Yes, quite nasty. I had to tie it up, though I’m afraid I didn’t do it very well, but Aunt Florence came in and did the bandage all over again. Mummy wanted to keep him in bed, but he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t stay here at all. I can’t think why, unless he was afraid that Daddy would be angry about the gun. He left a note for you.”