“Why me?” asked Walsh with quick suspicion.

Grace soothed him. “It’s just because he’s in your house and I thought you might have heard from one of the servants or something.”

“As a matter of fact I did hear from my hired man,” Walsh admitted, “but only to say that all was well.” He fingered his lip thoughtfully. “I know, Grace, why don’t you run up there for the week-end? I’ll write that you’re coming if you like.”

“What is this Stevens like?” asked Grace. “You engaged him, Jim, didn’t you?”

“No, not really, not directly. You see when I lived in that house there, after I built it, I got to know my only neighbour and landlady, Mrs. Grey, a widow.”

“A merry one?” asked Grace, her blue eyes bright, tilting her head like one of those insolent little birds who pick up crumbs off the streets.

“Exactly the opposite,” said Jim. “On the contrary, she’s a severe old woman. One of the few of her sex one can respect and not buy.”

“Is that so important, not to have a price?” asked Grace rather wistfully. The sweet gin drink, the sun through the awning, and the abrupt shifting of the waves were making her feel sick.

Walsh was not paying attention any more. “My God, what a crowd I used to have down there. Seven speed-boats shooting in and out of that damn boathouse, roaring away across the water and roaring back like so many water bugs, and the champagne and the whisky and all those naked legs in shorts and high heels. That was my Indian summer, Grace, before I bought the ‘High Kick’ here and had to take my pleasures one by one.”

Forgetting Grace was there, or else forsaking vanity, Jim took off his captain’s cap and passed his hand over his scalp. The skin on his head was notched and bumpy as though the various bones that held his brain together were buckling. It was mottled, too, and far paler than his face. Over it back and forth passed his hand, like a big hairy spider.

“I tell you,” he continued, “I used to get sick sometimes of the whole bunch and then I’d go up and see old Mrs. Grey.” It was true that Mrs. Grey had refreshed him. She had seemed rather to like him too, and in her dim, cool house he had drunk port and sherry and talked of many things unrelated to blonds. He recalled with a half smile that she had even read him poetry. It sounded silly. Grace would laugh if she knew, but the words had had a ring that had made him think strange thoughts, or rather, that had brought a kind of rhythm into his body, a rhythm like the dreams a boy has before he starts to care if he is rich.

“What are you smiling at?” asked Grace in her light, coquettish voice that had slightly dried out in the last ten years just as her skin had dried out, and her small, flexible muscles.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Walsh as though she had not spoken. “You go down, Grace, and see your boy. I’ll sail around at the end of the week and be there for the Fourth of July.”

“Why don’t we go together?” asked Grace.

“Because I’m otherwise engaged,” he said dryly.

“And will your—guest—be gone by then?” Grace tried to make her question casual but failed to keep the curiosity from her tone.

Walsh waved his hand impatiently, dismissing the subject from their conversation. “You see, Grace,” he said seriously, “I’m getting old. Sex is pleasant but it’s not enough. No, don’t look hopeful yet. I don’t want a companion either. Still, I know what you’ve been hinting about. Perhaps it’s true. I don’t say yes or no, and you can’t prove it either way after all this time. In court, I mean. Anyway I’m willing to give him the once over. I’ve no other children that I know about. Maybe he will be a consolation, or, as they say, a flower of my old age. I’ve always agreed to pay for my pleasures.” He rose carefully and rang for his steward. “We’d better be getting you ashore,” he said. “I must dress for dinner.”

As Grace stepped neatly over the side, he reminded her in a kindly way: “Take it easy and I’ll see you on the Fourth.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The day that Grace arrived at Star Harbour was the day that Shalimar brought down his first bird. True, he had killed others, but their bones lay in the woods or on the floor of the sea. This time he brought down his catch and dropped it at Ronny’s feet.

“There,” he seemed to say disdainfully and proudly, “if that’s your desire I can fulfill it.” Then he settled, not on the boy’s wrist but on a branch nearby, and looked out fiercely from either side of his beak.

When Ronny saw the tattered thing on the ground, a breathless feeling swelled his lungs. The red, wet feathers gleamed as brightly as jewels and upon the small, open beak a great liquid ruby gathered and grew. Ronny trembled. He was standing near the spring, holding Gambol by the halter. The horse, having finished his drink, now turned curiously towards Shalimar’s prey. Then, smelling the blood, Gambol jerked up his head and opened his soft, wide nostrils. He was an eater of leaves, oats and wild grass, and on his gentle breath there was no taint of meat.

Ronny, putting his hand against his side to control the sudden beating of his heart, withdrew it at once as though his palm were burned. He fancied that the dying bird made his tattooed heart leap with joy, drawing the other sorrowful one along behind it, as heroes once drew along their foes at the wheels of their chariots. Shrugging off his shirt, Ronny examined the mark, clear and perfect now, on his tanned skin. He looked up at Shalimar with despair and thought he heard the falcon say:

“What about the crab? You killed him.”

“Yes,” cried Ronny, “that’s true.” And he thought confusedly: ‘But then all my feelings were not divided as they are now.’ So as not to be put to shame before his falcon, Ronny stooped, picked up the bird by its claws and with a little string attached it to his belt. After this he mounted quickly. He rode on, forgetting his shirt which lay on the ground, warmed by the sun.

June was having her lesson that morning and her usual wish to be done with it seemed to be matched by that of Stevens. He looked constantly at the time. He wore his watch on the inside of his wrist, where it fretted the protruding veins, and to see it, hitched his hand forward out of his sleeve, closing his fingers convulsively. June was torn between desire to find out the time herself and repulsion at those thin, tendinous knuckles. Once or twice Stevens gave her a look which she could not understand; a sort of triumphant menace shone in his grey eyes as though to imply: ‘Just wait my girl and you’ll see!’

For Stevens knew, as June did not, that Mrs. Villars was coming.

Finally the hour was over. June leapt to her feet and with a parting mumble of farewell hurried out of the room. As her grandmother hated disorder, she gathered her books pell-mell in her arms and then, once in the dark hall, threw them into an empty chest. Stevens, from his car window, caught a glimpse of her on the lawn as she stooped to re-bind her sandal. The habit of maturity was still so new to her that, when alone, she fell into childish attitudes. Such poses, combined with the new softness of her line, were either ugly or intoxicating, according to temperament. Stevens stepped on his accelerator and the engine roared. June, startled, straightened up hurriedly and disappeared around the corner of the house, while Mrs. Grey turned from her desk with an expression of intense displeasure.

June made her way through the pasture, plucking the long grasses and chewing their stems. She crushed the resin against her lips and tongue and then spat them out and chose new ones. In front of her a swarm of insects was like an escort and her body prickled with the heat. She found Ronny on the edge of the woods, riding towards her, half nude, with the small, bloody carcass at his belt.

“How sad!” she cried. “The poor little bird.”

Ronny was biting the inside of his mouth to govern his twitch, but he would not give in to her. “It’s not sad. Shalimar is a hunting falcon.”

“I think you’re stupid and mean,” said June coldly, irritated at his opposition. “It was doing no one any harm, singing and flying about. Grandmother says hunting is a sickness of the mind that men get when there’s no war and they can’t kill people.”

“If it’s a sickness and men have it,” retorted Ronny, “boys have it too, I suppose, so why shouldn’t I?”

“Have it if you like,” said June, dropping back into her mocking tone and giving a shrug. “Perhaps it makes you feel heroic to kill a tiny animal.” She paused and added slyly: “It’s not the first time, is it?”

Ronny jumped off his horse and drew near with clenched fists. “Shalimar has a right to kill!” he shouted. “He’s like a god. His beak is like the nose of God.” Turning, he walked off down the path, kicking at the undergrowth with his bare feet.

June ran and caught up to him, leading Gambol. They were silent for a few minutes and then in a halting voice as though explaining something to himself Ronny began:

“I like things to be real. If Shalimar is a hunting falcon and wears a hood and isn’t a free bird, then he must hunt.”

“But it’s not perfectly real to hunt with a falcon here and now,” objected June.

“Don’t you see,” he said, frowning with the effort to explain, “knights do it, and if I am to be a knight—even only now, this summer—” His voice trailed off. He really did not know how to continue.

“I guess I do see,” June answered softly, giving him a caressing touch on his bare shoulder. “It’s like false button holes or flowers put into old-fashioned coffee grinders. It makes everything thin.”

Ronny was not any too pleased at having his ideas brought to such a low level. June, however, continued talking, struck perhaps by what she was saying. “I think you are right to want to do things the real way. For good, I mean, for life and death. They are always saying we should not let our pastimes run away with us and become too important in our lives. But why do they say that? That would make them only hobbies. How I hate hobbies!”

“When you say ‘they’,” said Ronny, “you mean grownups,” and he laughed because it sounded funny for her to be talking that way and he could not connect what she was saying with his own romantic thoughts.

“Yes of course. I do mean grownups,” said June, stung a little by his laugh. “I know I’m almost grownup myself but I shan’t be like them. I shall be something real, too.”

She looked at him to see if he believed that she would be different from all the others and saw with a pang that it did not matter to him in the least. ‘But why do I care what he believes of me?’ she wondered with a feeling of pain. ‘He is only a child still who does not have to think of the future.’ Surely he thought of it just as she had once done: as a lump of time, somewhere long ahead, ‘when I am big,’ already moulded to the desired shape, perfect and complete. Now that this lump was upon June, she no longer recognized it. It had no more shape or perfection than the present.

They were passing at that moment a stagnant pond upon whose surface grew a brilliant fungus scum and in which the roots of a dead tree formed an island. The rotting, exposed roots made a soil for ferns and for red flowers, and from the bank it looked like a little paradise. June remembered how once she had begged her eldest brother to make a bridge to it out of logs thrown in the water. He had done so and she had stepped eagerly across, armed with sandwiches and a book, prepared to spend the day. But it had not been a paradise at all. The moulding earth had been damp and full of slugs, and the growth, so lovely from a distance, was coarse and harsh. There had been, as well, innumerable flies and mosquitoes. The stench of the pond had seemed alive in her nostrils. June had beat a hasty retreat and eaten her sandwiches on the lawn near the house.

Looking at the pond today, June, although she recalled her deception, was almost tempted to believe in the island once again. Where in all the world was a fulfillment of what that little island promised? Where were the virgin forests whose mossy floors invited rest? Where were the crystal fountains, the soft air in which no poisonous insect hummed? And if they did not really exist, why write about them in music and words, and paint them, too? Or perhaps they had existed only in antiquity. She had a sudden desire to go away; to leave these tangled woods with their marshes, and to quit as well this little boy who was their prisoner.

“What is your school like, Ronny?” she asked.

“Oh, stupid of course. Anyway I’m through with it.”

She was impatient with the childishness of his reply. “Well I’m nearer being through with mine,” she said, “but I can tell you I dread going back. I haven’t seen any of them for ages and I can’t imagine—I just can’t picture, how they talk and how I’m going to talk to them.”

Ronny had been disturbed by her mention of school; all those voices in his ears, those conflicting orders which he could never obey, those friends and enemies so indistinguishable from one another. “It’s late,” he said, “and I must go home because my mother’s coming for lunch.”