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.”
“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.”
