Lamb in Love (38 page)

He stands there, quietly watching Manford, who is ambling slowly up and down the pavement, running his hands lightly through the hollyhocks that crowd the top of the wall. But the next moment, as if in answer to some question Norris has been unable to formulate, the double-decker rumbles into view toward its morning stop before the Dolphin; he sees, with a sudden, odd clarity, two glasses from the night before, tilting precariously atop the stone wall before it. And at this moment, it strikes Norris that perhaps what is called for, this afternoon, is a real outing, not just a ramble round the village or out into the fields. They should go into Winchester; they could have tea at the Wessex. Perhaps they'd bring Vida some chocolates.

But suddenly, though he has nearly started forward, Winchester seems too far away, too dangerously far.

The bus rumbles past them. Manford turns around from the hollyhocks to make shooing motions with his arm as it recedes down the road.

Norris stands morosely watching the bus depart, Manford at
his side. What is he afraid of? That Manford will do something peculiar? Yes, that. You can never tell what he might do. Imagine if he wandered off, Norris thinks with a shudder, like the other night at Southend, and got himself lost in Winchester? But there's something else, too, he knows. It's as if leaving Hursley with Manford would break a contract with the world; Manford is safe, Norris senses, as long as he stays in the village. It's even possible for Norris to imagine now a kind of benevolent fate that anticipates a person's needs and then arranges circumstances to suit them. He believes the world understands that for someone like Manford, someone so innocent, so easily lost, there must be a place where his face is known at every door. Then, should he wander off—indeed, should it be his privilege to wander off—he would be recognized, welcomed, gently returned. In a vague way, Norris understands that this is true of him, too.

Through his stamps he has become an eager and gregarious armchair traveler, a man with a spyglass at the window, even a raconteur. But he wouldn't ever really go anywhere, would he? It isn't in him to leave. It's the fact of the village behind him, its Norman stones and ancient mortar, its known quantities—this is what sets
him
free. For him, at least, just imagining the world is quite enough, as much as he can bear, in fact. His stamps alone show such a proliferation of objects and artifacts: animals and fishes, stars and oceans, seeds and grains and wedding cakes, flowers no bigger than a thimble and enormous monuments, flags and white-bearded monarchs, strangely shaped sailing vessels and the earliest biplanes, kites and tapestries, beautiful native women and tiny cubist paintings, autos and locomotives, cities and deserts and shrines, face after face after face after face, all of it—all of
us,
he thinks—crowding the planet like plants in a jungle, jostling for space, men and women on an endless series of embarkations.

He reaches out and takes Manford's arm. “Let's go,” he says, for he feels suddenly stifled; he needs air.

But he feels Manford stiffen slightly in resistance, sees that his face has taken on a look of thoughtful wariness. He stops, looks Manford full in the face; he has only one thing to offer, he knows now: his good intentions.

“I've got something I want to show you,” he says then, kindly. “I think you'll like it. And we'll pick flowers for Vida—a great bouquet.” He smiles. “Come on. It's a secret. My secret. I'm letting you in on it. Let's not waste another moment, or someone else will stop us.”

T
HEY TURN OFF
the Romsey Road onto the lane that leads up toward his grandmother's cottage. The sky has lifted and a breeze ushers the clouds up higher, disarranging the leaves of the trees that sway beside the lane and turning up their pale undersides. Manford glides along beside Norris, wobbling his outstretched hands with a delicate motion.

When they draw near the cottage, set back in its clearing beneath the canopy of towering copper beech trees, Norris stops at the gate. It doesn't look as inviting as it had in the moonlight; neglect seems to have set in overnight, one stone wall listing dangerously out from beneath the thatch, the weeds formidable, as though threatening to engulf the tiny house. When he unlatches the gate, a pheasant blows out from among the brittle white stalks of silkweed, traverses the clearing at a dead run, and disappears into the woods.

“Squatter.” Norris pushes air from his cheeks, making a sound of defeat.

They walk down the path, Norris's gloom growing as they approach the house. He feels uncomfortably hot, too. He pauses to
rummage for his handkerchief and realizes in annoyance for the second time today that he has lost it to Mrs. Billy and her watering eye.

He pulls on the latch to the door of the cottage and swings the door wide. Inside, the kitchen is full of a shadowy calm. Norris kicks aside a cache of beechnuts, the prickly cases burst and tangled with filth and leaves. It all looks beyond repair, seamed with moss and mildew. Behind him, Manford claps his hands over his nose and mouth against the sour odor of damp; Norris looks over his shoulder and sees him.

“What was I thinking?” He turns back to face the room.

Manford comes and stands close to him a moment, twin bands of sunlight striped across his chest. He wipes his hands together gently, one on top of the other.

“It will never do,” Norris whispers, sitting down on one of the chairs by the table. “She would hate this.”

He looks up when he feels Manford approach him. Something about Manford's posture makes Norris think he will be embraced, and he almost begins to adjust himself to receive this kindness, for he can tell, also, that it is kindness Manford intends. But it is much easier than that. For Manford only gazes down at him with a sympathy so full of understanding that Norris is shocked by its intelligence. And then Manford leans down and presses his cheek tenderly to Norris's bowed head, the gesture of a mother to a son.

Under the dense, forgiving, sweet-smelling weight of Manford's head resting against his own—for Manford still smells like a child, Norris realizes, not like a grown man at all—the force of Norris's disappointment and humiliation seems at first to crowd his ribs like a vicious black balloon inflating beside his heart; all of it,
all of it,
his ineptitude, his temerity, his failure to be bold or
brave or successful, threatens to extinguish what remains of his ability to be purposeful in this endeavor, to be hopeful; threatens to overtake him altogether. And yet, as they pause there—mysteriously, generously, a faint heat radiating from Manford's cheek through the top of Norris's head—the sensation disperses, and Norris feels it leave him as if the devil himself has just left by a window. He is, quite suddenly, as grateful as he has ever been in his whole life. He puts his arm up awkwardly and cups his palm around Manford's broad, smooth neck.

After a moment, as if he is restless, Manford stands up and extends his hands before him into the whirling sunlight. Norris sees the light shatter and tremble as Manford juggles the invisible matter of air, the fool bewitching the sun. Manford moves through the room, through the light. At a small door a step off the floor, Manford stops, tries the latch, pulls the door open. A narrow flight of stairs curves up into the darkness.

“That's the bedroom,” Norris tells him. He turns away. He hears the steps protest beneath Manford's weight. Norris can hear Manford's explorative tread above him. His eyes rest on an old calendar, its photograph pale and faded, on the wall by the window; on a green-checked cushion lying crookedly on the opposite chair; on a single spoon, its bowl blackened, on the floor by the Aga; on the aperture of the window crowded with green.

And then he hears it. The cry is sharp, full of anguish and fear, the pitch high and unnatural, like an animal's.

Like a child's, Norris thinks, springing up from his own chair.

A child crying.

N
ORRIS TAKES THE
stairs at a run, crosses the room in two enormous paces, past the gray matter of the bees' nest shattered on the floor, and reaches through the swarm to grab Manford
by the arm and drag him back toward the stairs, swinging wildly. Some bees fly into his mouth; he rears back his head and spits, but not before he feels his tongue begin to swell; the pain is fierce. Manford's face, when Norris pauses for one second on the stairs to look at it, is already so misshapen he cannot discern his expression. The bees have stung him all over his head. He must have put his hand right into the nest. Staring at Manford, Norris wonders for a moment if he'd imagined it, the sound. But no, he could not have imagined that. He'd heard it. Manford had made a sound.

As he drags Manford down the stairs, he thinks, Thank God it was a cool morning—they weren't truly lively, or they'd have killed him.

Norris can feel the venom making his heart race, and under his grasp, Manford shakes terribly.

But he cried out, Norris thinks, running out the door. He cried out.

It was the pain that did it.

O
UTSIDE ON THE
grass, Norris pushes Manford down and tries to roll him, hoping to squash the bees inside his clothes. He feels his own eyelids blossom and swell, feels his lip surge up, stiff and hot. A shuddering pain runs through him. He looks around wildly. A few bees still fly angrily around them, stunned and slowing now in the brighter air. Norris drops to his knees beside Manford, tries to pull his hands from his face. He slaps at the bees at his neck and ears. Hives are funneling up out of his skin, bulbous and hot.

“My God.” Norris holds Manford's hands away from his face, the contorted features. “But Manford,” he says, close by and breathing hard into his face, “you made a sound. You heard it? You made a sound.”

He waits for more, staring at Manford. He is certain that now there will be more, that Manford will open his mouth, and words, rusty and unfamiliar, will fall out.

But Manford says nothing, fights only to free his hands and replace them over his eyes. Norris reaches down and cradles Manford's face, turning it this way and that in disappointment and grief and pity.

“You've been stung,” he says. “It's bees. Never before? Never before been stung? It's all right.” He takes in a long breath. “But you spoke, Manford. You spoke.”

He lets go his hands, and Manford, shaking and cringing, rolls over and draws his knees to his chest.

And then Norris remembers the water.

He drags Manford to the bend in the stream, helps him shuck off his shirt, struggling with the buttons. Manford stands bent over, wagging his head from side to side. Norris, too, hears a singing in his ears, knows it to be the venom. Norris strips off his own shirt as well and takes Manford by the hand. He can hardly speak; his words are thick and furred from the swelling of his mouth and lips. “The water will help,” he says. He squeezes Manford's hand, and they step together into the quick current.

Norris won't let go of Manford's hand for fear he'll lose him. He has to push his head down under the water, and Manford fights him then, rearing up, the water running down him as though down a mountain. Norris feels a stone pierce the soft part of his foot but keeps going, wading out deeper, for he can tell that it is better in the water, cold enough to halt the shock. It occurs to him that Manford does not know how to swim, for though at first he tried to free himself from Norris's grasp, now he clings like a terrified child. Norris tries to soothe him, to show him how to cup his hands to run the water over his head. He
reaches down, his chin level with the current, and scoops mud from the bottom of the stream, plastering it to his face against the swelling. Manford, trembling, allows him finally to touch him, to put the mud on him in dark, heavy poultices. When Norris steps back, he sees how ugly Manford is, his white shoulders dripping with epaulets of mud, his hat of mud, the dirty water running down his face.

Seeing him there like that, ugly and ridiculous, Norris realizes that though he had never thought it would be easy, trying to win Vida Stephen, he had never once imagined that it would be this hard. He could not have imagined this love, he thinks now, his heart pumping madly from the bee venom and the cold of the water and something else, too—a kind of happiness.

For the first time in his life, he thinks, he has something to lose. He's sure of it.

O
N THEIR WAY
back to Norris's house in the village, they encounter no one; even the Romsey Road is empty. Norris is grateful for this minor miracle.

Once safely in the house, Norris fetches them both clean shirts—though his own are ridiculously small on Manford—fixes them some brown bread and cheese, and makes a pot of tea.

Manford sits across from Norris at the little table, cramming bread into his mouth. It occurs to Norris that he has never had a guest before. He takes down a jar of Marmite, spreads some on his bread, and places a slab of cheese over the top. He offers Manford some Marmite, but Manford makes a face at the smell, wrinkling up his nose, and makes as if to push Norris's hand away. Norris shrugs. “Suit yourself.” They sit there, eating meditatively, and when they finish, Norris clears their plates and takes his seat across from Manford again.

“Your face looks a little better.” He gestures across the table. “It's only large still round your eyes.” He touches his own face gingerly, feels the swelling at his lip. He peers at Manford critically. “That was a hive you disturbed,” he says. “You shouldn't ever put your hand to a hive.” He looks down at the table. “Though I don't expect you'll do that ever again.”

Manford looks vaguely around the kitchen, his hands winding quietly in his lap. There are crumbs on his face, and a bit of cheese.

Norris leans forward. “You made a sound back there, Manford, didn't you?”

Manford looks away from Norris, squinting up at the low ceiling.