The Centre of the Green (19 page)

“Quieter?”

“Smaller. Some friends of mine once stayed at quite a tiny village further up the coast. They said they preferred it to the city. It was very quiet.”

“Think I’d like that. I don’t know about Julian.”

“A bus runs twice a week. It’s running tomorrow.”

“I could ask him.”

“Please do,” Miss Plumstead said. “I should be so pleased if we could go together.”

*

The bus left Palma early in the afternoon, and travelled north and west along a flat road, bordered sometimes
with wheat, sometimes with the blue of flax. The interior of the bus was crowded with people and with baggage and clutter, yet the carrier on the roof was full of baggage also, and the Colonel was driven to conclude that Majorcans when they move even for the shortest visits take most of their personal effects with them. The Colonel and Miss Plumstead sat together, with Miss Plumstead on the window side, and Julian sat behind next to a woman with two live ducks on her lap. The bus bowled along through the afternoon heat and glare, and dust from the road permeated the interior, and formed a thin paste on the moist faces of the passengers.

After a while, the road began to climb, and the countryside became more rocky. The wheat and flax were replaced by almond and by olive trees, grey-green, bent and twisted. “They look like Chelsea pensioners in their underwear,” Myra Plumstead said, “all twisted up with arthritis.” The road grew steeper, the bends sharper. The Colonel told Miss Plumstead that it reminded him of driving from Siliguri to Darjeeling in India, and that he hoped nobody would be sick. The driver sounded his horn almost continuously, and sometimes from above them another horn would be heard like the answering call of an animal, and a little later some car or coach would appear from the opposite direction, and (again like animals) the two would meet, and sniff, and
cautiously
pass each other, and part.

Suddenly stone houses crowded in together, so that there was even less room to negotiate the corners. Cobbled side streets ran into the road. To the left rose the tower of a monastery. The bus stopped. The woman with ducks left the bus, and a woman with hens took her place. There was a shouting and bumping as luggage was shifted from the roof. The Colonel tried to ask how long the bus would be here, because he wanted to get out
and stretch his legs, but could find nobody to understand him. Miss Plumstead explained to Julian that this was Valledemosa, where Chopin and Georges Sand had come to stay, but none of the inhabitants would have anything to do with them, poor things, because they were living in sin and Chopin had T.B. Julian showed Miss Plumstead a poster, on which there was an announcement in English, French and German that there would be exhibitions of folk-dancing during the season. The Colonel finally decided to get out anyway. The bus started. The Colonel got back in.

Now it was only a short distance to the coast, and soon they could see the sea and the rocks far below them on the left, and salt sea air blew in through the windows
instead
of dust. Miss Plumstead perked up and looked proud, because it was she who had brought them, and the road ran on in broad sweeping curves that followed the shape of the coast, and it seemed that at every second curve there was a notice calling attention to the view. There were coniferous trees here, and the occasional houses were white, and every now and then one caught a glimpse of a small round watch-tower like a
chessboard
castle perched on the headland. The Colonel, feeling happily that this was more his line of country, kept turning to Julian behind him to see if it were also his. But Julian said nothing.

Bend after bend. Then a grey stone church,
dominating
a village which seemed to be little more than a border of houses above and below the road. The bus stopped outside a café. “Is this Deya?” the Colonel said. It was. They disembarked. Miss Plumstead produced a piece of paper on which the name of a
pension
was written, and showed it to the man behind the bar in the café. A small boy was found who took them there. “What happens if there isn’t room?” the Colonel said, and Miss
Plumstead
,
who was on her own ground in matters of
accommodation
, replied, “Don’t fuss so, Colonel. They always have friends in the village who can produce a bed.
Getting
somewhere to stay in small places is never difficult, because everybody knows everyone else. It’s only in big cities that you have to spend the night in the police station.”

So began a happy period for the Colonel. Deya was his kind of place—a small kind of place. It had three shops, one of which was licensed to sell stamps, and two cafés. One of these, the Café Nuevo, had a wide concrete veranda overlooking the road and a game of table
football
by the bar; here the visitors and many of the local people gathered. The other café was behind a shop and had a much smaller veranda overlooking the lower village; most of its customers seemed to be expatriate Americans, some of whom were writing novels, and some of whom were not. Above Deya, the land rose to the mountains; below it, the land dropped to the sea. Every day Miss Plumstead and the Bakers, after breakfast in the open air under the vine at their blue and white
pension
, would walk down the rocky track to the little fishing harbour, an hour’s journey below the village. They walked at an easy pace in rope-soled sandals bought at the post office, and carried with them the beach bags, books and bathing costumes which were their impedimenta for the day. At the beach they would meet some of the other “international” guests of the
pension
—the French engineer and his wife, who seemed to spend most of the day under water, taking photographs of fish; Betty and Anne, the two stenographers from the City; the young architect from Reading who had come on holiday with his mother; Milton and Doris, the Canadian dentist and his sister; Mrs. Gamage, the Scots widow with two pallid, faddy children, who had insisted on porridge for
breakfast but could persuade no one else to eat it. Myra, the Colonel and Julian would change into bathing costumes and settle down near or with these people to read, and sunbathe, chat and (after a while) swim, for the Colonel had no objection to lying on the beach in company of this kind, and a dip twice a day came quickly to have the same ritual significance for him as his afternoon walk at home.

So the morning would pass, and lunch would be taken on the beach, where again there was a choice of two cafés, both run by fishing people. One stood on the rock above the beach, and specialized in a kind of fish soup with rice; the proportion of fish to rice depended on how good the catch had been that morning. The other café was smaller, and served
omelettes
, or simply provided wine or soda to drink with the packed lunch put up by the
pension
. Chaps remained perhaps in the shade of the café during the worst of the afternoon heat, or strolled in the shade of the woods that rose above one side of the harbour, or returned to the beach, and the afternoon passed much as the morning had passed, and then it was time to stroll slowly back again to Deya itself for an apéritif before dinner. And after dinner one sat on the veranda of the Café Nuevo or played table football until, at midnight, all the lights went out, because there is no electricity in Deya after midnight. Then chaps would walk back to the
pension
through the night and the warm air, and go to bed by candle-light.

*

On the fourth morning of their stay, the Colonel and Myra Plumstead sat on the beach in the shade of a rock. Miss Plumstead wore a woollen bathing costume and a wide white hat, and was writing a letter; she often wrote letters or postcards in the morning. The Colonel, in khaki shorts and an open-necked shirt, was reading a
very long five-generation family chronicle set in a
Yorkshire
woollen town; Vivian Waters, the young architect from Reading, had bought it in a paper-covered edition to read on the plane, but had given up at chapter six. The Colonel did not intend to be defeated by a work of fiction, and, having begun, persevered with it. “Going to take me a long time to get through, though,” he said. “All this detail! What imaginations these chaps have, eh?”

“How far have you got?”

“Nineteen hundred and ten.”

“Cheer up. You’re bound to lose a lot of characters in the war.”

“More chaps’ll get born though,” the Colonel said. “You see if they don’t.”

Miss Plumstead said, “Justin”.

“Mmmmm?”

“We’re very lazy, you know. We just sit on the beach all day, soaking up the sun. We never see any of the sights.”

“What sights?”

“I thought we might go to Valledemosa, and look at the monastery.”

“Good idea. We can take the bus.”

“I thought we might try walking. It’s very picturesque, you know. I mean, we wouldn’t be in any hurry. We could stop whenever we wanted to, and look at the view.”

“You’re not going to drag an old man like me all those miles in the heat? What’ll you do if I pass out on you, eh? Leave me by the road, and press on, I suppose.”

Miss Plumstead smiled. “You’re not old, Justin,” she said. “I’ve known a lot of people in my life—too many, I sometimes think, because of course you never get to know anybody well——But I don’t think I’ve ever known——”

“A younger man? Surely one or two?” The Golonel put down his book for a moment, and savoured his pleasure like sunlight.

“Don’t be silly. You know what I mean. There’s a sort of quality in you.”

The Colonel said, “Dash it; I’m blushing. Only you can’t tell it, because I look like a lobster already.”

Miss Plumstead went doggedly on, keeping her gaze on her writing pad. “Sometimes people pretend to be older than they are as a sort of defence,” she said. “Like ugly people pretending to be uglier than they are. One of my students has ears which stick right out. He’s always calling attention to them. He has an Australian accent too.”

The Colonel said, “I’d like to walk to Valledemosa very much. Maybe they’ll put on a show for us. Some of that folk-dancing, eh?”

“And Julian?”

“We’ll ask him. Where is he?”

“Swimming, I think. I saw him a moment ago. He was on that rock with a girl.”

“With a girl?” Anxiety begins in the stomach, and unless you master it, it can spread all over you, stimulating all those bloody chemicals, and making your pretence of age an earnest. Besides, there was no need to worry; there had been no trouble of that sort. The whole purpose of this holiday was that Julian should make a fresh start, take up a normal life again. He couldn’t be insulated from women, and shouldn’t be.

“Well, I say ‘with’. All I really mean is that they were both on the rock. You know the one. There’s always
someone
there.”

The Colonel knew the rock. It was a kind of resting place for swimmers, making an under-water shelf to stand on when one felt tired. None of the rock itself
showed above the water, but whenever you looked in that direction you would see heads, bobbing gently like water-lilies in the swell.

“He’s not there now,” Miss Plumstead said. “I can’t see him anywhere.”

“I expect he’s swum out a bit. It doesn’t matter. We’ll ask him when he gets back. Except that——”

“Yes?”

“It might be a bit dull for him, dragging him along with us.”

“Of course. I hadn’t thought of that. How easy it is to be selfish in that way! One forgets that younger people have their own interests. There’s no reason why they should bother with us, or we with them, except in rather a superficial way. I think one ought to move forward through life with one’s own generation, not trying to ape the old or live off the young—I’ve seen so much of that; the first is suicide, and the second is cannibalism.”

“To move through life?”

“With dignity, and at one’s own pace. Not hurrying and not resisting. And then, when it all gets too much, to leave with dignity.”

“What a—what a
strong
woman you are, Myra,” the Colonel said thoughtfully.

“It’s just bossiness really, I’m afraid. I get into the habit of it with the students. But I’ll try to control it. Here’s Julian now.”

“Hullo,” the Colonel said. “Where have you been?”

“Swimming.”

“We looked for you, but we couldn’t see you anywhere.”

“I swam round the point. Any objections?” Julian picked up his towel, and draped it round his neck. He rummaged in the pocket of his shorts for some money, and walked up the beach to the
omelette
café. When he
returned, he was carrying six postcards which he gave to his father. “Here you are,” he said. “Miss Plumstead’s been doing so much letter writing, I thought it might stir your conscience. You haven’t sent a card to mother since we got here.”

*

The cottage was so silent. Silence filled the rooms, and lapped at the top of the stairs. As you walked about, you made your way through silence, which closed again
behind
you, and if you turned on the radio it was no more penetrating than a flashlight in fog; the silence closed in all around it, insulating it to a glow of sound.

There was no longer any reason for doing anything. The pattern of meals, shopping. and housework, which had made a frame for living, fell in, and everything was shapeless. There was no reason
to
get out of bed, no reason to eat, no reason to clean the house. There was no reason to go out into the garden, no reason to stay indoors.

But this is ridiculous
, Mrs. Baker thought;
I was alone before. Whether Justin is here or not makes no difference
. Perhaps. But Justin had been an occupation, sometimes an antagonist, always a shield against the outside world of friends and neighbours and social obligations with which (since she wanted only her sons) she would not be involved. Against Justin also, she had raised barriers—her household duties by day and the television set at night. But now that Justin was gone her occupation had gone with him; there was no longer any reason for
running
the house, and the television set was not a sufficiently powerful drug.