“Your mother!” cried June, opening her fine, rough eyes. She had never connected Ronny with parents who might come and see him.

Using a stone, Ronny climbed onto his horse (he had never made good his boast about springing onto its back in one bound). “Well, goodbye,” he said, and kicking Gambol’s flanks with his bare heels he was off.

He rode homewards slowly, looking up now and then to see if Shalimar was about. But the hawk was high up and far away. Ronny arrived at the gate just as Grace Villars, with a rather disgruntled air, was being driven up to it in Jeremy’s old Ford. She had hardly expected a car so old nor a place so isolated and run down. She smiled, however, when she saw her son, and with a coquetry natural to her begged Jeremy to let her out. Holding open her slim arms and laughing gaily, she ran towards Ronny who was sitting on Gambol’s back.

“Ronny, aren’t you coming down to say hello? Have you forgotten me?” She spoke in a babyish voice which she used for males of all ages and it made Ronny realize that he did not want her to be here.

He slipped down from his horse so that his back was turned but, in landing, his hips twisted and she caught sight of the dead bird that dangled from his belt. Grace felt a thrill go through her. The desire for possession which is so strong in some women took hold of her; the desire not only to be loved by, but to own, this growing animal who would one day be a man, who had already lusted for blood. In a flash Grace saw herself five years or so hence, with Ronny tall and lithe and worshiping her beyond all others. Then as he straightened up she saw the tattooed heart which palpitated on his bare breast and read underneath the legend: JUNE.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

June, astonished at the news that Ronny’s mother was arriving, hastened homewards. She was troubled to find in herself a sensation of dismay. Yet this sensation withdrew on probing, or, like a down pillow, caved in to hump itself up on all sides of the question.

“Let me think,” she said aloud (she often spoke aloud when alone), “What does Ronny’s mother have to do with me? She will probably be very nice.” But why had she come? Why had Stevens asked Jeremy for the address? Now there would be a stranger on the peninsula, and an interfering one.

June had lately discovered in herself an instinctive fear of other women. It derived perhaps from her fever. She had been isolated from her classmates at a crucial moment and had not been able to observe the changes that had surely come over them. Had she been able to follow these changes step by step, she could have been assured of her own similarity. Now there was no telling where she was, and there was nothing for it but to brazen the matter out. Mrs. Villars must be a first test.

By this time June had reached the house, where she washed and then entered the dining room. Mrs. Grey was already seated before her simple lunch. Catherine left the dishes in front of her mistress and then departed. The dining room table, as all else in the house, showed by its size and by the well polished nicks in its surface that it had been used for a long time and by many people.

June felt far away from her grandmother, as though the rim of the table were the rim of the earth curving, inexorable, between them; the turn of the earth, the turn of those years dividing them, thrown as they were at different times upon the spinning universe. Mrs. Grey in her white dress was cool and pale, but June was flushed. The ridge of a frown between her eyes made her face severe for all its youth.

“Did you met Mrs. Villars?” asked Mrs. Grey.

“Grandmother!” cried June reproachfully, “you didn’t tell me she was coming. Do you know her?”

“No, we have never met,” said Mrs. Grey whose manner implied: ‘Nor are we likely to.’

“I didn’t meet her either,” said June, and after a moment she asked: “What do you think I should do now? I mean, do you think it’s all right to go down there or do you think I should wait?”

“My dear,” replied Mrs. Grey in a voice of mild surprise, “I don’t think it matters.”

But June was impressed by her own question. How was she to behave? Of course the normal thing would be simply to go down there, introduce herself and take her position naturally as Ronny’s companion. But Stevens seemed to find it wrong that she, a grown girl, should be friends with a little boy. Also, how soon should she go? This afternoon would seem terribly hasty. Would tomorrow seem hasty, too? For the first time June became aware of her dependence on Ronny. How, for instance, to spend the rest of the day without him? The idea of waiting before going there filled her with dismay. And this very dismay caused in her an obscure feeling of shame. There was another question in her mind as well: Even if she waited would she be able to act naturally face to face with Ronny’s mother? What was naturally?

In her room after lunch June stood in front of the mirror and practiced a casual air. Her frowning face with its straight mouth displeased her. She parted her lips and relaxed her forehead.

“How do you do, Mrs. Villars? I believe you are Ronny’s mother,” she said, and at the same time extended her hand towards the mirror. At once the old magic of her person blotted out her problem. Her hand was small, but the fingers were rather knobby, with short, pale nails. Did other girls at school have such hands? Were their wrists as delicate as hers? She couldn’t remember, and anyway they were bound to have changed. Leaning forward she kissed the mirror, trying to watch herself closely as she did so. She saw the fluttering quiver of her nostrils and then her eyes crossed and her breath obscured the glass. Also it was well known that when a man kissed a woman, the woman closed her eyes. Thus it was really impossible to tell what one would look like when the great moment arrived. That is, if it did arrive. There were girls who were never married, never loved or anything until they died.

June felt hot and sticky in the attic room. On other days she would already be in the woods, wandering downwards towards the bay. It never occurred to June that Ronny might be riding there as usual. She pictured him only as shut up in the boathouse with the unknown woman who was his mother. Idly she pulled back her hair from her face and lifted it from the nape of her neck. At once the bones of her skull with its delicate, high-set ears put her face out of proportion. With a little twist of the mouth (which she considered attractive although she had never done it in public) June turned away and began listlessly to examine the books on the bedside table.

While she had been sick, many people had given June books and she had read them avidly. She would repeat passages that pleased her aloud in a singsong voice, and sometimes with a beating heart. She had extracted rhythm from prose or verse as one persuades gold from dross, and even the most illusive, harsh or unconscious melody had not escaped her feverish tongue. But today, throwing herself on her bed, she opened her books listlessly one by one and realized that for her their magic was over. They smelt of fever, of the dreadful monotony of illness. And after all, she was no longer interested in the words of unknown people, but rather in the mysterious depths of her own body. Its changes surely were more rhythmical than any poetry. Alone, she was constantly aware of this density that was she; this murmuring flesh between its bones. How it vibrated! How much glistening youthful sap, how much vital blood was thrown out of it as from a gyre. June was afraid of it and yet she loved it and did not want it disturbed.

The stillness of the room, in which the shade was drawn, oppressed her and she jumped up and went down one flight to the bathroom. Here she turned on the taps full force. They were both cold and the tub, surrounded by its wooden platform, was soon full. Yet she did not bathe after all. Halfway undressed, she leaned over and once or twice trailed her fingers in the water. Then, refastening her clothes and tieing the thongs of her sandals, she left the house and entered into the drowsy afternoon.

Mrs. Grey, with straw hat and basket, was on her way to clip the roses. Her heels, curving underneath her shoes, dented the ground less heavily than her cane. It was as though the cane were the crippled one and not she at all. June dragged in her wake and helped trim the bushes and pick the rose bugs off the flowers. McGreggor, still munching the remains of his tea, came out of his house. He could not bear Mrs. Grey to touch the roses but could find no way of preventing her. He walked watchfully in the rear and now and then, with an exasperated motion, straightened a branch as though his mistress had twisted it.

June realized on seeing McGreggor that she had not heard him play his bagpipes that summer, nor during the whole time of her illness either.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Grace Villars certainly had not expected Walsh’s place to be as she found it. Where were luxury and wealth? Where the trained servants and the speed boats he had mentioned? Jeremy, who had fetched her from the station, had given a shrug to her questions and had smiled between his rosy cheeks. She had eaten her first meal in a huge room just above the water, overlooking the bay. Underneath, unless many people were talking, one could hear the waves lapping on the cement quays, and many people were not talking. There were only Ronny and Grace.

The room stretched around them, dwarfing the card table with unsteady legs which had been set for their lunch. Ronny sat opposite Grace, facing the light, since even with one’s son one must be careful. He was sullen and brown as an Indian. A faded shirt was buttoned up to his neck and his hair was watered and combed back in such a way as to show either filial duty or resentment.

“Ronny,” said Grace in her coaxing voice, “are you still mad at me?”

He did not answer but forked his food steadily into his mouth.

“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” continued Grace, and seeing that he still made no reply she added: “But it really is ridiculous, Roddy.”

The name ‘Roddy,’ his baby name, brought a dark patch to each side of Ronny’s face. He looked up, his eyes black beneath the fine ridge of his brows. The light from the window, polished by the sun’s reflection on the water, entered freely into those eyes. It was lost in them as in velvet or as in a well whose depths resist sounding.

Grace could not repress a tremour of uneasiness. What chemical was in those eyes to make the irises so dark? One could not define in them the circle of the pupil. They were heavy-lidded and dense. After her angry ridicule of Ronny’s tattooed heart, the boy had not spoken, but now, seeing that he was about to do so, Grace turned her own eyes to her plate.

“Do we have to stay together all afternoon?” asked Ronny in his pure, high voice, which, coming from his somber face, startled Grace.

“I wish your voice would change,” she said. “It gets on my nerves.” Then as the meaning of his words reached her, she continued: “When you were a little baby, Roddy, you cried if I left the room even for five minutes and you were only happy in my arms.” Actually, and Grace realized it as she spoke, Ronny had had a nurse in those days and she had seldom seen him.

“I don’t remember that,” said Ronny.

“Don’t you want to be with me now?” asked Grace, with a pout.

“Well, I generally ride in the afternoons, and Gambol will wonder.”

“Who is June?” asked Grace, crumbling a piece of bread with her fingers. She observed that her son’s cheek was twitching and that lovely, quivering cheek with its dusk rose, its fine grain, almost softened her brittle heart. “She must be a very silly little girl,” said Grace since Ronny made no reply.

“She’s not a little girl,” said Ronny and smiled as though his mother had tripped over a string.

A flood of unaccountable relief swept over Grace. ‘It must be an animal,’ she thought; ‘But it’s a disfigurement nonetheless.’ Then with one of those irritating flashes of insight she reflected: ‘If my name had been there I would have thought it fine.’

As though he had read her thoughts, Ronny said with eleven-year-old sharpness: “You just wish it had been your name written underneath instead of another lady’s.”

“A lady!” exclaimed Grace.

“Well, a girl really, but she would have been a lady in olden days. A damsel.”

“Are you in love with her?” asked Grace, exactly as she would have spoken to Walsh or any other man.

But Ronny did not answer her question. He thought it foolish. Just what one would expect from a mother.

“What will you do, Ronny, when you grow up and go to a real preparatory school and have to leave fairy tales behind you?”

Ronny grinned. All his sullenness was gone. “Everyone wants to know that!” he cried. “Especially Mr. Stevens.”

Mary came in. “Would you be wanting coffee?” she asked. Mary had a flustered manner because Mrs. Villars intimidated her. Before, when Walsh had kept open house, she and Jeremy had lived above the stables. She had never had anything to do with the guests, whom, in her simple, unresentful way, she imagined to be very wicked. Now, playing with her apron and hunching her back, she thought: ‘She is my age I’m sure, but how different we are. Maybe we even had the same kind of mothers, and I was a pretty girl, too.’ Where had she, Mary, gone wrong, to be old when this sister was still young, this sister who did everything God was supposed to frown on? Could God care so much as he was supposed to, or had he perhaps been on the other side all the time? Mary realized with a start that Grace was speaking to her, asking if Jeremy could drive her to the village.

“I’ll ask him,” said Mary. “What time would it be for?”

“Oh around three will do,” replied Grace and, turning to Ronny, she explained: “I want to have a talk with this Mr. Stevens of yours. I came here for that.” She tried to make these words into a reproach but the stifling afternoon heat entered her lungs and gave to her voice the quality of a sigh. She felt exhausted, drained, almost as though some secret vein in her body were open. This woman who for many years had never known solitude and who had considered the ‘country’ to mean fashionable resorts, now felt the flatness of sudden relaxation. Her dainty, slightly dry limbs were like dead sticks extending from her body, and she thought her cheeks must sag.