The Innocents (13 page)

Then through my leper's squint, so to speak, I looked at Paul, who in turn, his brush momentarily suspended, was very naturally looking at Cecilia.—Of course all portrait painters need now and then so to pause, and study, and perhaps probe their subject; but I doubted whether Paul was doing much probing; he was just looking at Cecilia, I thought, as a man looks at a beautiful woman, while under his gaze Cecilia sat a-basking …

Neither of them noticed me, even when I made my way out past the open doors—(for my age I flatter myself I have a very light step)—and thus had a chance to glimpse the canvas on Paul's easel as well. Alas, just as all his landscapes were daubs, so all too obviously a daub would be his first attempt at portraiture, and all things considered I felt almost as sorry for him as I had to for Bobby Parrish.

3

Poor Bobby Parrish! Jessie looked in as soon as she could, and was greatly relieved to find he'd come out of his turn quite quickly and was resting on the sofa; but then as soon as his mother turned her back he got up, and slipped out, and loaded his pockets with stones and slid feet-first into a dyke.

It was I as usual when any such disagreeable duty has to be performed who was called upon to break the news to Mrs. Parrish. She took it as badly as possible—that is, made no effort to restrain her natural tears and wailings. (As she slobbered on my shoulder I instinctively felt in my pocket for a paper napkin, but it was so long since Antoinette needed one I had stopped carrying them, and was forced to sacrifice an initialed linen handkerchief instead.) Mrs. Parrish sobbed on my shoulder until the other linen of my blouse clung as damply as voile at an Outdoor Fête, before cheering herself up with the infallible consolation of I-told-you-so.

“Didn't I say time and time again,” sniffed Mrs. Parrish, “time and time again didn't I tell 'em, Ipswich was no mortal use? ‘Just leave him quiet at home,' said I, ‘he's only highly strung.' ‘Oh no,' said they, ‘into Ipswich for special treatment!'”

“At least he was home all spring,” I offered.

“Ah, but he'd still to go back,” retorted Mrs. Parrish, “and I saw it weighed on him. I wouldn't say it to anyone but yourself, because you must know it already, but his Uncle Saul was half his life a ticket-of-leave man.”

Of course I knew it. There is very little a Vicar's daughter doesn't know of the underground of her father's parish. The implied analogy struck me very much, and as quite possibly a true one: that Bobby had felt himself but on ticket-of-leave from the hospital. I felt extremely sorry for Mrs. Parrish, and gave her what comfort I could by listening to her weep and wail for an hour and twenty minutes before going home and changing to the skin.

No one blamed poor Bobby, however, and the Coroner sensibly stretched a point to call it Accidental Death.

13

1

June and July are always the country months of sociability. Presently, as a round of cocktail and sherry parties started, and Cecilia enjoyed all the success I'd promised her, Antoinette came to be deposited with me not only in the mornings but between tea and dinner as well—indeed so popular was Cecilia, often after a party was over, instead of returning to Woolmers to eat mince she found herself shanghaied to eat duck at the Crown and Sceptre; so I became licensed to provide Antoinette's supper. In short, after a couple of weeks of being torn between maternal and social duties, and after Antoinette had broken silence to remark “Vermin!” of a chicken casserole, Cecilia generously admitted an error of judgment in taking her daughter to Woolmers at all.

2

“It was just that I so longed to have my babe all to myself!” she told Mrs. Gibson (who told me). “Besides …”

The
besides
was that she felt me a bad influence. Why my friend the Vicar's wife repeated this as well was to explain that Cecilia hadn't been actuated by mere possessiveness; but I suppose I must have looked what I felt.

“Not that I agree,” added Mrs. Gibson hastily. “Certainly not
bad!
And I'm sure Cecilia didn't mean bad either, in any
bad
sense. It was just that she felt you were spoiling the child, by indulging her too much, and letting her have too much her own way. Do you remember how she never came to Sunday School?”

Vicars' wives have long memories. I thought Mrs. Gibson and Cecilia must have passed, as the French say, some very agreeable moments. I was neither surprised nor annoyed: a friend naturally makes a better subject for dissection than an enemy. My only reason for surprise at these revelations in themselves, rose from the fact that only that morning Cecilia had asked me to take Antoinette back—generously recognizing, as I have said, an error of judgment in not having realized how very bad for a child hotel life was. (Not bad in any
bad
sense, of course; as Cecilia elaborated, just too, too unhomey.)

“Yet she seems prepared to trust me with Antoinette again,” I pointed out.

“My dear, where else is the child to go?” asked Mrs. Gibson naïvely. “Until Cecilia takes her back to America, when as she says they'll really be just by themselves together, and Antoinette can have really proper treatment, where else is there for the child to go?”

I replied that I had no idea.—But again I must have looked what I felt, for my friend now hastened to reassure me that everyone in the village knew I'd done quite wonders for the child; only Cecilia hadn't been there to see.

“No,” I agreed, thinking of all the paper napkins I'd so recently gathered up. “She wasn't.”

“So if she perhaps doesn't seem to realize quite how much gratitude she owes you,” persisted Mrs. Gibson—(no one like a Vicar's wife for treading the diplomatic tightrope between a pew-renting parishioner and a potential subscriber to the Church Repairs Fund!)—“mustn't we forgive her?”

“Certainly,” I agreed—mentally adding, if it was one's profession to forgive. Husband and wife are one flesh, and the Vicar preached forgiveness every Sunday, but for myself I often doubt whether I am even a Christian, save for the technicality of having been christened. “But all the rest you do agree with,” I went on, “the speech-therapy and psychoanalysis and all the rest?”

I was really interested to know. Mrs. Gibson had brought up a traditionally clergyman-size family with great success, and I was prepared—or hoped I was—to hear her opinion with respect, and even, if it were favourable, to derive some comfort from it. But like all experts, when it came to the point, she hedged.

“My dear, isn't Cecilia the child's
mother?”
said Mrs. Gibson.

From which I derived no comfort at all. But it was a great comfort that from being allowed to spend the best part of each day with me Antoinette came back to spend the nights as well.

3

Fortunately the Women's Institute still hadn't retrieved her cot, so Mrs. Brewer and I between us slotted and screwed it together again, and saw all safe and steady, and brought back the piano-stool extension, and made it up just as it used to be for Antoinette to climb in.

“See, now you're back in your own bed!” I told her.

Antoinette waited. I guessed at once what words more she wanted to hear: they were “For always.” But how could I pronounce them so that her ear wouldn't detect a falsity?—When I knew us both essentially but reprieved? So after Antoinette had waited a few moments longer, I began the Lord's Prayer.

At the “Amen” I in turn waited, for Antoinette's responsive “Vermin.” She didn't offer it, however, and I thought perhaps she had been scolded after the misunderstanding over the chicken casserole. In any case “vermin” disappeared altogether from Antoinette's vocabulary; having taken five words with her to Woolmers, she came back with four. “Hello! You still have in your rucksack pepper and a tureen?” I took pains to remind her; and punctually “rucksack,” and “pepper” and “tureen” repeated Antoinette back to me. Any new vocable seemed quite beyond her; when for “vermin” I attempted to substitute “pretty,” for instance, she quite obviously closed her ears.

In a way I was glad: it seemed to demonstrate that even though I hadn't been able to say, “For always,” she still felt safe enough to relax from that extreme of docility which had so distressed me.

4

Of course Cecilia fully intended to pop in every day, but at this time we saw less of her. There were her morning sittings to Paul Amory, there were so many parties, and if no official one, usually a little impromptu gathering in the bar of the swimming pool, our American friends and Peter Pennon and the Admiral reciprocally standing rounds. The American swimming pool, thanks to Cecilia, became quite a focus of Anglo-American friendship.—Not that in a sense it hadn't been before; every child in the village, happily splashing each weekend, was fervently pro-American already; but Cecilia somehow polarized it all. On one occasion I was actually drawn there myself, by my new chums the young Pennons, who called me from the garden because they were taking their car and I mustn't let them waste petrol with an empty seat. “Antoinette too,” called Janice, “if she'll sit on your lap!”—I must confess I was touched; the back seat already accommodated both elder Cocker children, who were quite large; I felt it must really be from a liking for me that Janice and Peter had stopped and called out; and so I went.

But I did not take Antoinette. As I have said, I had always had a perhaps irrational fear of water for her; in addition the presence of those same young Cockers inhibited. They had seen Antoinette shamed once; I did not wish them to see her shamed afresh because she couldn't swim. But I had also begun to see danger in keeping her too much in my pocket; so as Mrs. Brewer was still about the house, I went.

The children politely squeezed themselves and their towels together to make room for me. They were in bathing clothes already under sweaters and shorts, as indeed were Peter and Janice. I dare say they'd none of them seen a bathing-box in their lives! Myself in my usual tweeds, I explained that I'd joined them just for the ride.

“Don't you ever swim?” asked Janice curiously.

“No,” I said. “I can't.”

Naturally enough all expressed surprise; but I wasn't going to go into my bronchitis, and left it at that.—Inevitably both young Cockers could do breast-stroke, side-stroke, butterfly-stroke and underwater crawl. They also jumped in, holding their noses, at the deep end. I felt quite thankful to have Peter's backing in forbidding them to scramble over the shingle-ridge into the estuary itself after Cecilia!

For Cecilia was out in the estuary already; and though I reprobated the bad example, couldn't but agree with Sir David as to its being one of the most damn' poetical sights ever seen.

Gracefully, effortlessly as a water lily or mermaid floated Cecilia on the incoming tide. She wore no bathing cap; her beautiful long tawny hair streamed about her like the loveliest seaweed: she looked like a mermaid and the Lorelei and Ophelia as painted by Millais, whilst in her wake and on either side tritons from the U.S. Air Force escorted her back to land …

There was quite a competition among them, to help Cecilia towel herself dry before she too shrugged into sweater and slacks in the lee of the American car.—I may say that Peter and Janice and myself and the young Cockers were rather ignored by Cecilia as at best but extras on the scene. However before being driven off she spared us a few gay words, and particularly thanked the Pennons for giving myself such a treat.

“Only where's my darling, my Tony?” she reproached me. “Why didn't you bring Tony too?”

Sensing the ears of the young Cockers alert for my answer—

“She didn't want to come,” said I. “She was too busy …”

“Busy?”
repeated Cecilia, with a lift of her lovely eyebrows.

“Dissecting a frog,” said I.

So I saved Antoinette's face at least for the moment, at least before her peers. Cecilia laughed—quite well aware, I think, what I was doing, and drew her head back into the car. With her long wet hair toweled in a turban she now looked like Scheherazade. She should have been borne away not in a Cadillac but in a palanquin—or a pumpkin-coach.

14

1

By July all the catmint I had divided (however untimely), was not only rooted but tentatively in bloom—not of course with the bushiness of the parent stock, but exhibiting on each scrawny stem a few identifying blue-grey specks. (Otherwise I might have forgotten where I'd set them!) My sweet peas were abundant as usual, though rather less fragrant, which I attributed to so long a spell of dry weather; however conscientiously watered at the roots, only rain, in my opinion, nurtures the scent of plants; glasshouses banked with carnations, for instance, smell chiefly of potting-mould. The roots I kept specially watered were those of my clematis, Ville de Lyon, late-flowering, but already in plump bud promising such a claret-coloured tapestry as I only hoped my tall white daisies might last long enough to confront; for if there is one moment of all the year in my garden when I would wish to cry halt, it is when my tall white daisies outface like Vestal Virgins the purple hordes of Tarquin (or clematis Ville de Lyon). One can see what sort of an education I had had, and I recommend it.

We were happy enough together, Antoinette and I; not so happy as we had once been, but happy enough. She returned to some of her old ways—retreating to brood under the artichokes indeed rather more often, and for longer periods; but on the other hand scarcely ever invited me, by a certain look I knew so well, to help her pull out her coracle. Her affection seemed rather transferred to the trunk itself, the big, quiet, leather-hided animal that lived on the landing; for I often saw her, especially when she thought herself unobserved, standing beside it stroking it.