Rosamund Lehmann

“ All the blossoming things of earth were hidden, and the fragrances abroad seemed shaken from the stars that flowered and clustered profusely in the arching bows of the sky. They were back at her garden-gate. Above it rose a faint broken shadow where, by day, lilac and laburnum poured over in a wild maze to the lane. But when they came to the cherry-tree they found it still glimmering faintly,—a cloud, a ghost.
Judith stretched up a hand and picked a scrap of cherry and held it out to Martin.
‘That’s the secret of it all, I do think. Cherry blossom grows from the seeds of enchantment. ”

“ Judith cried out inwardly: ‘Tell me all your life!’ All about herself, where she had come from, why she was alone and mysterious, why she wore such clothes, such pearls, how she and Jennifer had met, what knowledge her expression half-hid, half-revealed. Time had swept her down one moment out of space, portentously, and now was sweeping her away again, unknown. And now, in the end, you wanted to implore her to stay, to let herself be known, to let you love her. Yes, to let you love her. It was not true that you must hate your enemies. ”

“ But it would not do: it was the taste of being old and past wanting people,—past wanting Roddy who already tasted so sharply and sweetly that she must have more of him and more of him; and whose presence in the circle made collective indifference a pretence too bleak to strive for.
The sun flooded the meadow all at once in a tide of pallid light; and the earth ceased to struggle and brood in the dark coil of itself, and spread itself smiling and released. The spell within the clouded crystal of the afternoon broke; they stretched and stirred. Judith looked up at the big elm. ”

“ The long days of May stretched out before Judith and Jennifer. Each day was a fresh adventure in the open air, and work an unimportant and neglected nuisance. For weeks the weather remained flawless. Life narrowed to a wandering in a green canoe up small river-channels far from the town, with Jennifer paddling in wild bursts between long periods of inaction. To all Judith’s offers of help she answered firmly that a woman should never depart from her type. ”

“ Her cigarette end hit the water a few inches from Judith. Her whitish form grew dim and was gone.
‘What a night!’ said Julian, after a silence. ‘The moon is a most theatrical designer.’
The two strolled on,—none too soon, for the water was glacial to her cramped body, her fingers were rigid upon the willow-roots, and her teeth were rattling in her head.
She heard from Martin:
‘When I was in Paris with Roddy——’
And then after a long pause, Julian’s voice suddenly raised: ‘But what if you bored yourself ... day after day ... to myself: Christ! ”

“ Judith tried to think of Roddy. A little while ago he had been stooping over her as Jennifer stooped now, with eyes that were different and yet the same. But he had disappeared; she could not now remember what he looked like.
Nothing was altered then, no order was reversed or even shaken. There were these moments; but all around and about the extravagant incongruous brilliances, the divine crudities, the breath-taking magnificences of their pattern, life went on weaving uninterruptedly: weaving uncoloured trivial things into secure fabric. ”

“ My harmless Julian, you would not dog a fly—let alone young women in lonely lanes. I do like you very much and I have the greatest respect for the high quality of your morals, and if I die a widow with lots of children I shall bequeath them all to you to bring up. You will have so many of your own that a few more will make no difference. Think how happy you’ll be instructing, admonishing and advising them.
What of Peter and of Mariella?—sad, strange, lovable Mariella and her child? Their pathos weighs upon me; but I can do nothing. Only you can, Julian. ”

“ In another few moments it would be possible to say gently: ‘Mariella, why did you marry him?’
She leaned her cheek on her elbow and continued:
‘I don’t really understand children.’
‘But later on, Mariella, when he’s older you’ll be so happy with him,—doing things together. You’ll be such a marvellously young mother for him.’
‘Oh, later on!’ was all she said; and added: ‘I don’t believe boys care much anyway about their mothers being young.’
If Julian had heard her say that, so shrewdly, would he not have been disconcerted?
Judith turned to her, opened her mouth to speak. ”

“ The suddenness, thought Judith—the sureness, the excitement!... glorious, glorious creature of warmth and colour! Her blue eyes had a wild brilliance between their thick lashes: they flew and paused, stared, flew again.... Oh, Jennifer!...
‘Isn’t it awful,’ said Jennifer, ‘to have enlightened parents? They never ask you whether you care to be enlightened too, but offer you up from the age of ten onwards as a living sacrifice to examiners. And then they expect you to be grateful. Hmm!’ She glowered at the photographs of a pleasant-looking couple on the mantelpiece. ‘God! I’m tired. ”

“ Tony would have him all to himself now: no Martin, no Judith to interfere. He would be happy. They would come closer to each other; and never again would Judith be able to step in between them; for there was no more Judith. What were they talking of so earnestly—what, what? The old yearning to know, to understand, returned for a moment, and was followed by an utter blankness; and she knew that she had never known Roddy. He had never been for her. He had not once, for a single hour, become a part of real life. ”

“ Jennifer’s shining head, curved cheek, lifted white throat lay against the blue curtain, just beyond the lamplight. Very late she sat there and said nothing, did nothing; made you lift eyes from the page, watch her, dream, wait for her smile to answer yours.
The garden, the river, the children next door were far away. Sometimes when you listened, there was nothing to be heard, not even Roddy; sometimes the bird-calls, the wet green scatters of buds, the flowering cherry-tree; sometimes the sunny mown lawn in stripes, the red rambler clouds heavy on the hot wall ”

“ I go straight for it in spite of my path’s apparent twists and deviations; and indeed, indeed, Judith, I wanted you. I say to myself: ‘Fool! There are plenty of others worth the wanting;’ and yet—and yet it does not seem so. No! Despite a life’s endeavours, I am not proof yet against the slings and arrows. And when at last they do cease to assail me, it will, I begin to fear, be merely because I have become moribund, not philosophical.
God, I raged!—against Martin for dying, against you for being so foolish as to care, against myself for being made uncomfortable and ridiculous ”

“ It altered the character of the friendly and familiar room, and gave to the lonely-looking figure of Roddy an unreal significance and remoteness; gave it terror, almost, and strangeness. The living light seemed to make the blood beat in time with its own dark-blooded feverish pulse.
‘Nice of you to come, Judy.’ His voice made him utterly unapproachable. ‘How cool you look. Did you enjoy your picnic? I should have thought it was much too hot to be comfortable anywhere.’
‘It was horrid without you, Roddy.’
‘Nonsense. You didn’t miss me at all.’ His smile was bland and cold. ”

“ Yes, the spectacle of other people’s pain had always affected him unpleasantly.
‘It’s all right, Roddy,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll get on without you.’
‘I’m not worth wasting one moment’s regret on,’ he said, almost earnestly. ‘Believe me, Judith. It’s true.’ He looked at her for the last time. ‘I can only say again I’m very sorry and ask you to forget all about it.’
She took a deep breath.
‘One thing more,’ she said. ‘I’m not ashamed of anything I’ve done. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in loving a person and saying so.’
It was not true. ”

“ When the blinds went up and the familiar oval mirror-backs once more stared from the bedroom windows it seemed as if the long time of emptiness had never been, and that the next-door children must still be there with their grandmother,—mysterious and thrilling children who came and went, and were all cousins except two who were brothers, and all boys except one, who was a girl; and who dropped over the peach-tree wall into Judith’s garden with invitations to tea and hide-and-seek. ”

“ Trinity Great Court grieved in the sun for Martin. It had not yet quite forgotten him. It did not like its handsome young men to die.
If only Jennifer would come soon she could clasp her hand and feel a strange voluptuous stir at the heart of her sorrow; but to flit and pause alone like this, obliterating herself with a sort of shame, looking out for a chance familiar face and yet fearing to see one—this was appalling. It happened to people revisiting their university with twenty years between them and youth.
Tony must still be in Cambridge. ”

“ Jennifer was no longer the same. Somewhere she had turned aside without a word, and set her face to a new road. She did not want to be followed. She had given Judith the slip, in the dark; and now, when she still pretended to be there, her voice had the false shrillness of a voice coming from far away.{173}
She remembered Jennifer saying once, suddenly: “There’s one thing certain in my life: that is, that I shall always love you.” And afterwards her eyes had shone as if with tears and laughter. She remembered the surprise and joy, the flooding confidence of that moment ”

“ People only behaved like that in your unbalanced imagination.
Mariella would never have wept, never have gone to Julian, never dreamed of being in love with him,—him or Charlie or any one else you would have thought, childless, sexless creature that she had always seemed, years behind you in development. How she must have changed to be now liable to passion! All at once she had to be thought of as a woman, the gulf of marriage fixed between you and her. ”

“ She followed Mariella almost light-heartedly. After all, she was the sort of girl who could talk to people, even amuse them. She had proved it with Julian; and success with the others might reasonably be expected to follow.
A child was playing on a rug under the cedar tree, and his nurse sat sewing beside him. Judith recognized her as a figure out of the old days, a dragon called Pinkie, Mariella’s nurse who had become her maid. Wrinkled, stern, with the fresh cheeks and clear innocent expression of an old nurse, she sat guarding Mariella’s son. ”

“ Judith laughed at Mamma’s epigrammatic dictums and was a social success. She motored, chattered, danced and played tennis, at first with effort—with Roddy rising up now and again to make all dark and crumbling; then gradually with a kind of enjoyment, snapping her fingers at the past, plunging full into the comedy, forgetting to stand aside and watch: silly all through—stupid even: stupider every day. ”

“ Roddy whispered:
‘Shall we escape?’
‘Oh....’
It was too late.
‘Hullo! Hullo!’ called the cheerful voice of Martin. ‘Did you enjoy my fireworks?’
All at once there was much laughter and talk and greeting, and she was drawn out of their exquisite aloofness into the voluble every-day circle. Martin stretched an eager hand and out she stepped from the canoe among them all. Half-dazed, she saw shadows of men standing round, appearing and fading as in a dream, felt dream-like touches of men’s hands; heard unreal voices bidding good-evening to Judith ”

“ Mabel little by little relinquishing the effort to draw Judith into her life and desperately endeavoring to fit herself into Judith’s: chattering to other girls, trying to be amused by their jokes, to share their enthusiasms and illusions; pretending to have a gay home-life, full of interesting friends and fun; pretending to laugh at the thought of work and to treat lightly that nightmare of the Tripos which crushed her to the earth. ”

“ Mariella, naked, with her childish curly head and her unself-conscious body looked much the same now as she had looked that evening long ago when Judith had stayed the night with her, and they had had their evening bath together. And yet, a little while ago, it had seemed so certain that Mariella was profoundly changed: in the set of her face especially,—in the grown-up expression of reserve and sadness,—the whole look of a woman whose countenance has started to assume the cast it will wear in middle age. ”

“ I thought I had lost you as well as everybody else. You have done something for me, Julian: the thing I thought no one and nothing could do. You have made my imagination stop shrieking like a fiend in hell about Martin. It’s not only what you so wisely say about a young man’s death: it’s the knowing that he was found again, and buried in the earth as he wanted to be: that he isn’t a derelict, our beloved Martin, in the unfriendly sea. It has all stopped being monstrous to me; it is a natural grief and now I can bear to live again. ”