The Wild Cherry Tree Page 3

  ‘Your husband farm?’

  Yes, she said, her husband farmed.

  ‘You used to be able to see the sea from here,’ he suddenly said. He stopped, turned and looked back down the hill, across the pig-sties, pig-yards and the splintered strip of copse to where, far off, south-westwards, a fine thin lip of sea horizon blurred the sky. ‘Ah! yes, there it is. My God, what a stunning view.’

  He stood enraptured. For longer than he realised he stood in entrancement at the great pastoral expanse below him, the distant sea line, the white spire of cherry bloom. In taking it all in he tried at the same time to shut out the vile carcasses of pigs and all that pigs had done to plunder the once pure country. The impossibility of doing this suddenly made him so angry that he actually burst into a swift tirade against the blasted vandals, the scum, the oafs, who had done it all. It was utterly monstrous, foul, a sort of public sin. Didn’t she agree?

  Turning to her for an answer he was confronted with the most delayed of all her strange, delayed responses. She wasn’t there. For a few further moments he felt himself to be the victim of some sort of trick, an April-fool illusion, the idea that she was a myth, always baffling and now evaporated.

  Then suddenly he caught sight of the apricot dress, thirty yards or so farther up the hill, at a point where, at last, a new-leaved unplundered stretch of copse began. She seemed actually to be walking as if in fact she were a myth, lost, unaware of him, wanting neither to hear nor know him. He called:

  ‘Oh! there you are. Wait!’ He laughed. ‘You had me fooled for a minute. I thought you’d gone –’

  She neither turned nor halted. He called again and then, to his intense stupefaction, she began running, not really fast but in a disconcerting sort of flutter, at the same time pulling on her gloves.

  He also started to run, then slowed himself down and finally stopped. It was the act of pulling on her gloves, he at last realized, that gave finality to her painful, curious departure.

  And suddenly, painfully too, he was overcome by a curious longing and knew that he had to see her again.

  She invariably, at this stage of her life, slept alone. Boorman had an almost equally invariable habit of coming home somewhere between eleven and midnight, not necessarily drunk but merely beer clumsy, to flop down on an ancient horse-hair sofa, by the kitchen stove, and snore the night away. The early, quite handsome nature of the man – as a youth he had been immensely strong, able to wield an axe with a precision that would have cut a straw within a given centimetre – had grown calloused over with a sort of muddy scab, much as a pig rolls and wallows in its own filth. The man she had at one time loved no longer existed. Nor did his departed existence even matter.

  The reason for it all went back some five or six years. For the first twenty years of her married life five births and three miscarriages had kept her completely enslaved. Her bondage was so remorselessly complete that she hardly ever went out anywhere. As each child was delivered she determined it should be her last, only to discover, before wrenching herself free, that she was again imprisoned. By the time she was forty she was so fearful of life slipping away from her completely that she came to a desperate decision to break the lock of pregnancy altogether. By this time too her successive litters of pigs had given her a four-figure bank balance and it was then that she decided, for the first time, to go out and buy for herself a piece of life: a new, impossible, expensive dress. And because of it she also started to sleep alone.

  After her first meeting with the man in the Cortina she lay awake for a long time, in a curious restless state that was a sort of brilliant exhaustion. Everything that had happened on the hillside, above and about the cherry tree, was etched on her mind with strokes powerful, fierce and accusatory. She convinced herself that she had done something highly foolish and wrong, that she was guilty of an act of great stupidity and even greater falsity, and that she must never do it again. The person who had walked and talked in the serene and captivating calm of the April evening was not herself. It was almost as if she had been caught in some act of great personal intimacy, naked.

  In this mood of self-chastisement she fell asleep at last, slept heavily and woke two hours later than usual to the strong smell of bacon being cooked. As the sharp greasy odour of bacon floated upstairs she was increasingly aware of not feeling well. A curious nausea, causing a partial stoppage in her throat, gripped her even after she had gone downstairs, made herself a strong pot of tea and taken it back to bed with her.

  It was only after some long time that she realized with any kind of accuracy what was the matter. It came to her suddenly that she was terrified of going out. She dreaded the simple exposure of daylight. The more she thought of this the stronger the grip of nausea became across her upper throat.

  It was nearly midday before she forced herself to dress. When she did so she realized that April, in its treachery, had turned overnight from a fragile evening idyll into day flecked with dark rain that now and then had in it a steely bite of sleet.

  For this reason she not only put on the flabby trilby, the scarf, the sackcloth apron and the gum-boots but a big old overcoat of Boorman’s, something like a dark blue seaman’s jacket with an enormous collar that, when upturned, buttoned close across the front, so that only her eyes, when at last she went out into the yard, were exposed to the rain.

  ‘Feelin’ bad?’ Boorman said.

  It was the weather, she said. She fancied she’d got a chill.

  ‘Take aspirin,’ Boorman said.

  After this brief, intimate communication she groped her way across the yard. A sharp cold wind blew intermittently up the hill. Hail now and then spurted steel for a few dark minutes and then the sun stabbed with brilliance across the pig-mucked yard.

  For some time she wandered aimlessly about, between sun and showers, before at last remembering that in one of the sties she had a new weakling pig, a dillin, an odd-one-out, that needed milk and care. She then went back into the house, boiled a saucepan of milk, filled a teated bottle with it and went back to the sties and the task of suckling the pig.

  A stronger, brighter interval of sunshine drew her out into the yard, where she stood with the small pig cradled in her arms, half under the big greatcoat, as if she were actually suckling a baby at her breast.

  In this huddled maternal attitude she again looked like a figure from some remote and ancient saga. She also felt soothed, the pain in her throat lessened. Then, as suddenly as the sun had blazed out, rain whipped down again, followed by a white battery of hail. Almost at the same moment she heard a car coming up the hill.

  Standing at the door of one of the sties, still suckling the pig, she suddenly saw the car stopped in front of her, twenty yards away, on the road: the same dark green Cortina as on the evening before.

  ‘Excuse me,’ the voice from the window said again. ‘Excuse me –’

  A fresh white spray of hail drove the sound of the voice away and she had no word of answer. Instead she turned sharply and went behind the sty to where George, the third of her sons, was mending a pig trough.

  ‘George, there’s a man out there – wants something – see what he wants – commercial traveller I shouldn’t wonder –’

  George, hammer and nails in hand, wandered off. While he had gone she remained behind the sty, still clutching the piglet and its bottle, in a state very near to fright. Taut, with teeth actually clenched, the nausea in her throat gripping her more rigidly than ever, she listened for the sound of voices between squalls of hail and then at last, after a long agonizing frozen interval, heard the car turn and drive away.

  When George came back he said:

  ‘Burbling on about some woman he’d seen up here. Couldn’t make head n’ tail of him. Folks should mind their own bloody business – nosing round –’

  After that, for some days, she went about feeling not ill but suspended between a state of brittle nausea and actual sickness. Even the nightly secret act of dressing herself up now failed
for once to give the old customary pleasure. The sensuous feeling of soft garments against her body no longer excited her.

  About a week later the weather, in its miraculous April fashion, abruptly improved again. An evening of serene pure light and warmth set every blackbird singing across the hillside and illuminated the black branches of the wild cherry tree as if with crystal.

  In a supreme effort to shake herself out of the constriction of her inexplicable nausea she put on a plain light tweed costume, of a pale grey-blue shade, with a woollen jumper to match, and flat grey shoes. She wore no hat but tied a scarf patterned with dark blue and white roses over her head. The scarf seemed to draw out the blue of her eyes, while at the same time deepening their withdrawn intensity.

  She started to walk up the hillside. She had no definite object in view. She merely walked in a state of suspended anticipation about something, her mind blank. But now and then she stopped and turned, listening for the sound of a car coming up the hill behind her.

  She had been walking for a quarter of a mile or so, between deep untouched thickets of hazels and steep roadside banks yellow with primroses, when the sight of the driver of the Cortina sitting on the top of a five-barred gate brought her to a shocked halt.

  Before even he could speak all her pained fright came back. Once again she felt herself to be poised on the edge of some dreadful cliff face, in the grip of a white and violent vertigo.

  A moment later he jumped down from the gate, smiling, and came towards her.

  ‘Oh! It is you. For a minute I wasn’t sure. I suppose I was looking for that apricot dress.’

  In speechless surprise she could do nothing but stare and this seemed to make him slightly embarrassed too. It was a marvellous evening, he said and then repeated it and then said something about how wonderful the primroses were and how the air was full of the scent of them.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes.’

  ‘The other night the Williamsons had bowls of them on the dinner table, pink ones and blue ones as well as the yellow. And bowls of blue and white violets too. They were wonderful under candlelight.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I’m not sure about blue primroses. Do you care for them? Somehow they’re not quite right.’

  Hesitantly she said she thought she preferred the wild ones.

  ‘Me too. But I like the white violets. I suppose it sounds awfully sentimental and so on but you tend to make an awful lot of little things like that when you’re abroad.’

  She had never in her entire life been spoken to by anyone in this fashion and it brought to her face and her whole attitude something touchingly childlike. The silence between them crystallized into fresh embarrassment and even he for several moments could apparently think of nothing to say.

  Finally he said:

  ‘Were you going anywhere in particular? I mean –’

  No, she said, no. She wasn’t going anywhere in particular.

  ‘I thought of going as far as the top. The Williamsons say there’s an enormous wood of bluebells up there. Fantastic –’

  They started to walk up the hill. Every now and then he half turned and looked furtively at her face and once he had a sudden explosive confession to make:

  ‘I hope you won’t think me rude but I was actually a bit disappointed when I first saw you – I mean this evening.’

  ‘You were?’

  ‘I mean I was looking for that apricot dress. It was so much you. So absolutely right.’

  She was so touched by this that she was simply unable to trust herself to speak. Almost on the verge of tears she heard him say:

  ‘Anyway you’re here. That’s the great thing.’

  She found herself wanting to question him about all this, to wonder why he should speak to her on terms of such unheard-of intimacy, even to say something about his wife, but the words were impossible to frame and his next remark made her more than ever mute:

  ‘I must say I’ve thought an awful lot about you.’

  He suddenly stopped, turned and looked her full in the face.

  ‘Do you mind my saying that?’

  ‘I suppose I don’t. No.’

  She failed to hold his gaze and he said:

  ‘Do you mind if I ask you your name?’

  She said did it matter?

  ‘Well, your Christian name. I can’t just go on calling you the Girl in the Apricot Dress.’

  ‘Girl?’ She actually managed a light involuntary laugh at this and he was manifestly delighted and laughed too.

  ‘All right. Lady – Lady in the Apricot Dress –’

  That was even sillier, she said.

  ‘Well then, what’s your name?’

  ‘Margaret.’

  ‘Names don’t always suit people. But that’s right – that’s you.’

  By this time her tension had broken down a little. Suddenly it tightened again as he stopped to pick a dozen primroses from the steep roadside bank and then said, holding them out in a little bunch:

  ‘May I? Small present for you. My name’s Jack. Jack Gilbert.’ He made a slight joke of it. ‘The Man in Oil.’

  She took the primroses and held them to her face. The touch of the extraordinarily soft petals, together with their exquisitely light perfume, had much the same effect on her as the touch of silken dresses, of lace and fur and sheer light stockings against her flesh. Instantly a start of sharp, recaptured excitement ran through her and she said, hardly able to believe her own voice:

  ‘And what will your wife think? Talking to a strange woman? Giving her flowers –’

  ‘We’re not actually living together. I’m afraid I fibbed a bit the other evening. She came abroad with me for a time but then couldn’t stand it –’

  ‘So you think I’ll fill in the gap.’

  ‘Please don’t say that.’

  Suddenly she was stunned by her own effrontery and withdrew into herself, so that for the next few minutes she again spoke with nothing but those delayed responses which always so fascinated and baffled him.

  ‘I suppose this is the beginning of the bluebell wood.’ They had come by now to a chestnut wicket-gate set in a long new chestnut fence. A notice said ‘Trespassers will be Prosecuted’ and he said: ‘They’re not quite out yet. I suppose it’s a trifle early.’

  He leaned against the wicket-gate, facing her. Behind him the many dark young buds of a million bluebells receded into shadow under great arches of chestnut, oak and hazel. A faint, already too exquisite foretaste of their full blossoming lay with taunting lightness on the air, the tenderest breath of approaching summer.

  He reached out and put his hands lightly on her shoulders. She reacted as she did when she drew on soft fresh underclothes or felt the touch of animal fur against her throat. It caused her also to breathe more deeply and quickly and suddenly her throat, completely free at last of its nausea and restriction, was full of perfume.

  When he kissed her she responded thoughtlessly, mind a serene vacuum, offering neither mental nor physical resistance. His hands, first on her shoulders, then with great lightness against her thoat and then with unexplorative tenderness inside the jacket of her costume, holding her breasts, seemed to be as much part of a world of sensuous fantasy as all her evenings of secret indulgence alone with her clothes in her bedroom.

  ‘You kiss very beautifully.’

  ‘You shouldn’t say things like that to me.’

  ‘All right. What should I say?’

  ‘You’re also doing something else you shouldn’t do.’

  ‘Am I? Shall I take my hands away then?’

  ‘Oh! God,’ she said. ‘Please –’

  Suddenly a great need to be very close to him made her fold herself deeply into his arms. Obliviously, for some minutes, she made a complete surrender of herself, actually at one moment helping him lift the fringe of her jumper and draw down the straps of her slip, so that he could touch one naked breast.

  ‘Would you make love?’

  ‘Don
’t torment me like that. Please.’

  ‘Give me one good reason why not.’

  ‘Don’t talk about reason. You meet me twice. You don’t even know me. I’m practically a stranger to you and you talk like this –’

  ‘All right, whatever you wish.’ He suddenly withdrew his hands from her breasts, at the same time kissing her dispassionately, and slightly mockingly, on the centre of the forehead. ‘I withdraw –’

  ‘Oh! no, don’t go away from me now.’

  Some time later a great convulsive shudder went through her and she became blissfully, amazingly quiet. After that he continued to hold her with a withdrawn response of his own until she finally gave a profound breath of relief, her head half-asleep on his shoulder.

  ‘Would you see me again tomorrow night?’

  She merely nodded and gave a low murmur.

  ‘And would you make love?’

  ‘I already asked you – don’t torment me like that.’

  ‘Tomorrow then.’

  All this time she had been clutching, utterly unaware of it, the few frail stalks of primroses. Now she suddenly became aware of them and stared at the bruised, crushed petals, giving a short bright laugh.

  ‘Look what I’ve done to my flowers.’

  ‘We’ll gather more going down the hill.’

  ‘I don’t go that way. That’s not my way home.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. I go up the hill. There round the wood. That way. You don’t see the house from here.’

  He laughed shortly too and said she surely must be grateful for that wood. It surely sweetened the air between herself and the pig-sties. At least she was cut off from her neighbours.

  ‘I hardly know them,’ she said.

  After that, every evening, they met in the wood; and now at last, every evening, she had something real, beyond fantasy, to dress for.

  She tried too to wear something different every night. In this way she presented herself to him on successive waves of surprise. She seemed a different woman every time he met her. This constantly changing image of her identity inevitably gave her some air of mystery. As with her repetitive, delayed responses there was always some part of her, he felt, held back.