The Innocent Moon (46 page)

“Don’t tell me you have finished the book you went away to write!”

“Well, as a fact, I went on a walking tour, Sophy. I don’t think it’s quite the time to write such a book.”

“Ah, I thought you would find that out! ‘Emotion recollected in tranquillity,’ isn’t that the condition for all good writing?”

“I suppose so.”

“You need feeding up, my dear. At any rate I can promise you regular meals! Your old room is yours for as long as you like, and you’re free to come and go as you please. There are fast trains to London if at any time you want to see your agent.”

“Where’s Queenie?” he asked after luncheon, meaning Annabelle.

“Both the girls are away, Queenie and Roger are staying with ‘Woppy’s’ people in County Galway, and Annabelle’s in Leicestershire with the Talbots. You met Brian, didn’t you? So you’ll find the place fairly quiet, old man.”

Sophy, a woman of forty-two years, of whom hitherto he had been as cautious as he had been of Queenie, seemed in the days and weeks that followed to be gentle and meditative like the Annabelle of those rare moments in the past which had impressed her image upon his imagination. Sophy, he came to believe, was a genuine friend. She seemed, too, in some ways, to be younger than Annabelle. Sophy picking violets from the cold frame in the kitchen garden looked like a happy young girl, shy as she spoke to him in a voice low and musical with happiness. He was content, in a quiet sort of negative way. Sophy repeated something she had said in the summer gone by, in a soft voice saying, “One day you will meet someone you will love and want to marry; until then,” and she flushed slightly, “I will look after you, if you would like me to.” Then as she held a bunch of warm wet violets for him to smell, she said, “I think I understand you better now.” Tenderly her fingers worked the violets into his button-hole. “‘Them stinkin’ violets’, as Jorrocks says,” she murmured. “Well, it’s just about the end of the hunting now.”

There were threads of grey in Sophy’s dark hair. He saw Annabelle in her eyes, but eyes that were soft and so kind.

“Will you help me feed the ducks, child?”

“Does the General help you feed the ducks?”

“Sometimes. Why do you ask?”

He was ashamed of his question and giving a dissembling answer, was further humiliated when she replied quietly, “Bay is a gentleman.”

“He’s also very lonely, Sophy.”

“He’s not the only one.” She held the grain measure in her hand, standing still, a sad look on her face. Then she had recovered, and was smiling at him.

It was his turn to be quiet. And when she asked what was the matter he said, “Do you really want to know what I am thinking?”

“If you know yourself, why then, yes!”

“I think you should marry Bay.”

She flushed; she said, “Aren’t you being rather impertinent?”

“I didn’t mean to be. But I am concerned about you, Sophy; as you have been about me. Isn’t that being friends?”

He felt himself to be twangy, and sought the idea of an excuse to leave. When she spoke again she looked less shaky, and, obviously trying to recover herself, said, “Has the story of the
mouse appeared in the
Royal
Magazine
yet? I’ve been looking out for it. It’s one of your best.”

He told her of the two letters Anders Norse had shown him in the basement office in Adelphi Terrace.

“How absurd! Why are you being ‘selfish’ by writing such stories? That one about the mouse is real, about a true countryman! But I suppose it is the commercial attitude that demands sentimentality writ large. Then you haven’t sold any more to the American magazines?”

“No. I’ve written about twenty in all, and they don’t want them. My book of essays hasn’t sold, either—about a hundred and twenty copies.”

“I lent it to Bay. He likes your country writing.”

“But ‘not the novels’?”

“Well, I suppose like most normal people, he reads seldom, and when he does, he wants to read only about what one calls ‘our class’.”

“Bay told me the other day that his favourite author was Edgar Wallace, who writes almost exclusively of the class of people known as lags, screws, bogies and squealers.”

Sophy measured out kibbled grain for the ducks from the bin.

“Don’t be perverse, child,” she said, winningly. “You’re just being all the time a very naughty little thing! What you need is a good spanking!”

Annabelle’s riding saddle and bridle were hanging, neat, soaped, and burnished, on the third peg from the door. What delight if in that little room it had been Annabelle beside him, asking him to kiss her! Did Annabelle see his lips quiver, his eyes fearful of rebuff, as Sophy’s now?

“Don’t be unkind to me, I can’t bear it,” said Sophy. She looked most unhappy. He forced himself to kiss her on the cheek, she turned her mouth to his; and that night she went into his room.

*

One afternoon he was sitting in the Blue Room, with its tester bed, tapestries, Aubusson carpet, white-tiled bathroom leading off through one door, and dressing-room through another. A decanter of whisky with a syphon of soda stood on his bedhead table, with four books. In the past month he had not opened the books nor removed the stopper of the decanter.

Every morning he had gone up to his room, to sit at the leather-topped table by the wall. Day after day he had tried to get on with his new novel, which now had a dozen and more opening chapters, each a variation of the one before it. He paced the room, lit cigarettes, stared through the window with its unmoving view of willow trees and swans on the lake. Peacocks sometimes walked on the nearer lawns, or flew into the great cedar below the terrace.

He was putting the book in the drawer of the writing table when there came a slight knock on the door. He went to open it. Annabelle stood there.

“Hullo,” she said softly. “Am I disturbing the Brain?”

“Where did you spring from? I thought you were coming back——”

“I came back early.”

Annabelle hesitated. Her hair was plaited and tied up in two door-knockers, with red ribbon, as when he had first seen her.

“Care for a knock up?” asked Annabelle, raising her eyebrows slightly. She stood still, her heels together. She wore a new white dress, and white silk stockings. She held a racquet and red string-bag of tennis balls in her hand.

“I’ll change, and be down in a minute,” Phillip said, adding, “I’m not much good on a hard court.”

“The grass court is all right. They cut it and rolled it this morning. It’s quite dry now, I’ve just been to look,” said Annabelle, a little breathlessly.

*

The grass was beginning to grow in the worn-out turf of the park, and the fallow deer among the oaks and chestnuts were grazing with the ponies and hunters. They played a fast hard set, and then another set, and now they were resting on the grass. He felt the sun warm on his face, on all his body. He stroked a daisy growing at the corner of the tennis court, which the knives of the mower had spared. He lay on his elbow on the grass, not looking at Annabelle as she sat cross-legged, white skirt stretched over knees, hands in lap, looking at him.

To Phillip it seemed that the tender sunshine was floating him in its happiness, flowing into him and buoying his heart with a joy that was almost unbearable in its dreamlike quality. As in a dream he heard his voice speaking of the daisy, which was himself, quiveringly strong and happy in the sunshine of love.

“I’ll pick it,” said Annabelle, challenging him with her eyes.

“No, no,” his voice pleaded. “It is so happy. Think, Annabelle—the winter—and now it has risen—to the sun-god——”

Annabelle was no longer mocking; Annabelle felt as he was feeling, the sunshine and he and the daisy and Annabelle were one now. Her eyes were tender, her face was glowing with an inner light. Her lips were parted, she was smiling without knowing she smiled, she was looking at him and he was looking at her, and they were both breathing quickly in the warm sunshine. He dared not speak. He dared not move. He dared not look at Annabelle’s eyes now.

Annabelle had been one of the champion players at her school, and he had beaten her. She had challenged him to another set. His back-hand top-spin drives had whipped an inch over the net, and zipped an inch or two inside the back line; his cannon-ball service had been even faster, making her grin and skip out of the way. He had leapt into the air, and smashed most of her returns at the volley. Usually he was an erratic player. Annabelle had laughed much during this performance.

“Do you usually pull your shirt-tails right out of your trousers, Phil?”

They sat on the grass, in the sunshine, while a nightingale, one of the first to arrive, sang by the lake.

“I promised Mummie I’d feed the ducks for her. Come and help me.”

Annabelle said it sleepily, while continuing to stare at the grass. Then she was looking at him, smiling, her teeth so even and white; and suddenly she was caught up in a wild tomboy mood. She ruffled his hair. He caught her and they wrestled, she very strong, he not wishing to withstand her. He chased her until she begged for mercy. A gardener appeared, and sedately they walked to the feeding of the ducks. In the harness room, standing under peg No. 3, where her polished gear was hanging, he watched her mixing the feed for the ducklings which called
weep-weep-weep
in yellow strings issuing from or going into three coops wherein anxious hens peered and clucked. He kept still: silence was divine. She came to him and, as he stood looking on the red-tiled floor, she remained still beside him, a strangely subdued Annabelle. She put her hand through his arm, as though appealing for protection, a home for her troubled spirit. He said, “Do you dampen the feed before giving it to the ducklings?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll do it—I know where that rusty old tap is,” and taking the pail, he went to the tap under the yew-tree round the corner of the coach-house. When he came back she was standing inside the harness room, and called out,

“Phil! Please come here.”

“I must feed the ducklings! See how hungry they are.”

“I haven’t mixed it right.”

“Oh, yes, you have, I watched your mother doing it many times.”

“Come here, I want to tell you something. Oh, very well, go and be damned to you!”

Carefully he fed the ducklings, feeling a wild elation within his pain when she came and stood abstractedly beside him. “Help me wash out the bowl.”

“I’ll do it, don’t you bother. You mustn’t get your frock spoiled,” and he moved away, pretending to be anxious to help all he could. Round the corner, out of sight by the tap, he hopped, and cracked his fingers; then a stillness came upon him, for Annabelle’s love, if it was love, and surely, surely she was now love itself, had come too late.

Back on the grass again, they played another set, another wild and merry game of tennis. Sophy and the General had gone to London for the day. It was sweet to sit again on the lawn, Annabelle in her white tennis frock, to see her lustrous dark hair uncoiling softly, rich with life, as his fingers took off the ribbons and pulled apart the plaits. Annabelle shook her hair free, and then she was looking at him, Beauty itself in her face and eyes. He thought of Blake’s poem:

and bowed his head before Annabelle’s love, beside the daisy quivering and glowing with brilliant life.

“Phillip!”

He dared not look at Annabelle, so strangely and softly had his name floated on the air to him. She moved beside him, and he could see the quick movement of breathing in her throat and breast. He touched the daisy.

“You seem to prefer it to me,” said Annabelle, very softly.

“Ah, it is so happy, Annabelle. It is you—it is me.”

“Pick it for me!”

He shook his head.

“Then I’ll pull the damned thing off its roots.”

She did not move. Her hand touched his. Her fingers took his hand. A kingfisher flashed by, crying a sharp note. He got up, saying, “I must try and find its nest in the steep bank of gravel, over there.”

“Please Phillip——” said Annabelle, sitting on the grass beside the daisy. He went back to her.

“I want you to talk to me.”

“I’ll only bore you.”

“You won’t, Phillip. Come here.”

He walked away, sad with a piercing joy. By the lake the ripples burned with broken sun-reflections. Through lashes of eyes nearly closed they were swans flying there, phoenix-swans flighting beyond the song and glory of life. Poetry was the ultimate triumph of life over death, the ultimate justification for life. He looked back: Annabelle was walking slowly towards the terrace of the house.

By the lake it was calm and he lay in the sun while the shadow of the weeping willow tree shifted and lengthened on the grass. Moorhens croaked, and paddled in the wavelets; swallows flew low in the late afternoon, dipping and hovering over the water. He felt forlorn.