The Song of the Wren Page 4

  ‘This hatred,’ he said once, ‘if it’s so strong why do you go back to Germany?’

  ‘I go to see my grandmother. She is one of the old school, before the poison set in. She makes me an allowance. In fact it was she who sent me to England to be educated. She is the sweetest person – she lives in the Black Forest. It’s very beautiful there. We go often to pick wild raspberries together. Oh! yes, I am capable of love too.’

  ‘Did you think I doubted it? Did I ever say otherwise?’

  ‘Please do, if you feel like it.’ She laughed happily over the rim of her wine-glass, eyes sparkling like the cold white-green wine itself. ‘Then I can give you a demonstration.’

  ‘I shall put that in my notebook.’

  She laughed again and the sound seemed to skip across the tranquil surface of the lake like a light stone playing at ducks-and-drakes.

  On the way back, in the cool of the evening, they drank red wine, eating big fat ham rolls at the same time. No talk of hatred, love, jealousy or the past interrupted for a single moment the deepening gold of sunset, underneath which the lake turned from purest blue to dreaming opalescence and then at last to a calm dove grey.

  ‘It will be dark,’ he said once, ‘by the time we get back.’

  ‘Quite dark.’

  ‘Too late for dinner.’

  ‘Who cares? Let’s have more wine. And more sandwiches. I’m still famished.’

  As the day had dissolved into sunset his mind, and he thought perhaps hers too, gradually dissolved itself into a sort of after-bliss of wine. In due course he ordered another carafe of wine and, tasting it, said:

  ‘My God, it’s good. After a little while you get that marvellous feeling of what day is it and who cares?’

  ‘Who cares? You’re not sleepy?’

  ‘Not really. Pleasantly soothed.’

  She laughed again and he told himself, with some excitement, how much he liked her gay, wine-like laugh, the new expression of herself.

  ‘I feel a tiny bit sleepy myself,’ she said, ‘I must confess.’ She laughed yet again. ‘Wouldn’t that be funny – if we both dropped off. If we slept together on a steamer?’

  The words made him reach out and touch her bare shoulder. The flesh was warm in the deepening darkness and he let his fingers move caressingly down from her shoulders. Gently she removed his hand.

  ‘Not here. Not in public. There’s a time and place for everything.’

  It was very late when they finally got back to the hotel. In the card-room several groups of Germans were earnestly, sonorously playing bridge, devouring each other with suspicious, covert glances. On the terrace outside a few others were still drinking coffee. The night was still warm and the air full of the sweetness of hidden blossoms from some nearby tree.

  ‘Like to walk by the lake tonight?’ he said.

  ‘Not tonight. Would it be greedy to ask for more wine?’

  ‘Isn’t greed one of the seven deadly sins? I can’t imagine you guilty of any of those.’

  She laughed again as he rang the wall-bell on the terrace for a waiter.

  ‘You hear a lot about the seven deadly sins,’ she said, ‘what about the undeadly ones?’

  ‘I didn’t know there were any.’

  ‘Perhaps there aren’t. Let’s have fun and invent some.’

  ‘Fair enough. You start.’

  ‘Love.’

  ‘Yes. Love. I agree.’

  ‘Sleep.’

  ‘Sleep, yes, that’s all right. I’m all for love and sleep. That’s four.’

  ‘Four? But you’re doubling everything.’

  ‘Perhaps I’m slightly tight. Any more?’

  ‘The eternal triangle.’

  ‘That, I think, is cheating.’

  She laughed again and as she did so the waiter arrived with yet another carafe of wine, red again. The waiter poured the wine, George Graham tasted it and passed it as good. Then he laughed again, infectiously.

  ‘Cheers. I said I considered that cheating.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you can’t divide a triangle into two, even an eternal one.’

  ‘No? Perhaps we are not thinking of the same eternal triangle?’

  She raised her glass to him, gazing at him over the red globe of it, with slow, soft, deliberate provocation. Then she sipped at it. The red moisture of wine lingered on her lips until she licked it away with her tongue and then he sipped too.

  ‘Or are we?’

  Her eyes, as she gazed at him once more over the rim of her glass, were extraordinarily limpid but crystalline in the lamplight of the terrace.

  ‘Yes, I think perhaps, after all, we are.’

  She suddenly stood up, at the same time picking up her glass and drinking.

  ‘Well, here’s to the first of the seven undeadly sins.’

  ‘Love?’

  ‘Yes, love.’

  She gave him a long soft look and then picked up the carafe of wine.

  ‘I’ll take the carafe upstairs with me,’ she said. ‘Room 247. Tread softly.’

  His dilemma next day was one of acutest agony. Daylight was breaking when at last he left Trüdi in her room and it was past eleven o’clock before he wandered into the garden. To his infinite relief no Mrs Hauptman sat sketching under the vines and then to his equally infinite dismay he found, as he was about to order himself coffee on the terrace, that she was sitting there, stiff and upright, as it might have been on sentry duty, waiting to challenge him for a pass word.

  ‘You are very late this morning.’

  The grass in the garden was wet. ‘It must have rained in the night,’ he said. ‘I see there’s a little snow on the mountains.’

  ‘I hadn’t noticed it.’

  Drinking his coffee, he sat watching the fine high dusting of snow. Already the sun was shining and he knew that the snow would be gone by noon.

  ‘You think it will be fine today?’ she said.

  ‘Oh! yes. The wind is right.’

  ‘You haven’t forgotten our trip?’

  ‘I always keep my promises. It’s my last chance to take you anyway.’

  ‘Oh? And why is that?’

  ‘I am leaving tomorrow.’

  She stirred her coffee slowly for some time and in silence, her mouth thin.

  ‘And where are you going? Back to England?’

  ‘To Venice.’

  Now he was silent too, aware that the moment of dilemma had come, was inexorable and couldn’t be escaped.

  ‘We are going together, Trüdi and I.’

  She made a sound like an irate small dog snapping, perhaps, at a passing fly.

  ‘I warned you against that girl. She started telling lies in her cradle.’

  He paused and drew breath, heavily and with great deliberation.

  ‘I happen to be in love with her.’

  ‘Love? I warned you that she hasn’t the vaguest idea of the meaning of the word.’

  ‘I am in love with her.’

  Again she made the aggressive sound, almost a snarl, of a snapping dog.

  ‘In any case you are a good deal older than her.’

  ‘You might also say that I am a good deal younger than you.’

  ‘I despise that remark.’

  For almost all of the remaining ten minutes of their being together on the terrace, toying with coffee, they hardly spoke a word. For her part there was no need. All evidence of her thoughts and emotions were magnified in her face: the excruciatingly tightened lips, the rigid chin, the opaque sightless eyes.

  It was he who spoke at last.

  ‘I hope this won’t make you change your mind this afternoon? I am looking forward to seeing the dam myself again. It’s the last chance I have.’

  ‘Please say if you would rather go alone,’

  ‘I am not going alone in any case. Trüdi is coming too.’

  In a long pause he sat looking at the white fringes of snow on the mountains. Just perceptibly, he thought, the edges of them
had begun to recede against the warmth of mid-morning sun. It was more than could be said of her voice, which when it came seemed to come from as far away as the mountain tops, and with equal frigidity.

  ‘I will come. Shall I say I will be ready at half past two?’

  Whether by accident or design he never knew, but it was almost three o’clock before she joined Trüdi and himself in the car. Her habitual regimental stiffness seemed to have increased since morning and she moved stiffly into the back seat of the car almost as if, he thought, she were a mourner at a funeral. In an attempt to counteract this he made what turned out to be a sad attempt at fabricating a jovial air.

  ‘I thought the lunch was lousy today. Not fit for a cat. I hardly touched it. Mince and that disgusting polenta. I suggest we go straight to the top of the valley and gorge on that excellent local cheese. And wine. What do you say to wine, Trüdi?’

  ‘I’m always ready for wine.’

  He drove slowly up the steep curves and hairpins of the valley, past the burning chestnut woods, the dam, the stone bow-shaped bridge, an angler or two casting into the green-white waters of the stream.

  ‘More water coming over the dam today. Must have rained or snowed more than I thought. We’ll stop and look anyway as we come back. Are you afraid of heights, Trüdi?’

  ‘Not in the least.’

  ‘Your mother is.’

  The remark, unanswered by either the girl or her mother, was as clear a signal for a newer, harder antagoism between them as if he had actually fired a rocket.

  When they finally reached the head of the valley, neither woman having spoken a word, Trüdi shuddered as she left the car. At a height of only a thousand feet or more the air was suddenly chilled as ice.

  ‘I’m sorry. I should have told you to bring a coat,’ he said. ‘Here, have my cardigan. I’m all right.’

  He took off his green woollen cardigan and draped it round her shoulders. It might have been, from the distant tautness of the mother’s face, that he had given her a bunch of roses.

  In the trattoria Mrs Hauptman uttered only a single cryptic word in answer to his question as to what would she have?

  ‘Coffee.’

  ‘No need to ask Trüdi. Wine. And you must try the cheese, Trüdi. Marvellous. Will you have cheese, Mrs Hauptman?’

  ‘Coffee.’

  Soon it was clear that the air in the trattoria was as chilled as that outside. He made the bravest of attempts to thaw it, all unsuccessful.

  ‘Have you ever been to Venice, Mrs Hauptman?’

  ‘I have never been.’

  ‘Trüdi has never been either. I’ve been once. It’s magic. Pure magic. It was very hot when I was there and one day I was so overcome by the heat and the magic and all the rest of it that I almost fainted in the Accademia. An attendant had to bring me a chair.’ He laughed in a further attempt to cheer things up. ‘The weaker sex.’

  There was, however, no weakness in the stone-like silence with which Mrs Hauptman greeted his brief attempt at cheerfulness. It was Trüdi who made a deliberately uplifting remark.

  ‘Take care you don’t faint on me. Unless it’s in a gondola. Then I won’t mind.’

  ‘Ah! the gondolas. The peace of it. You glide round dark narrow canals and then you hear parties in other gondolas – singing, playing guitars, gaiety, sheer romance. No, that sounds wrong, romance. Ethereal, that’s better. Can’t really describe it, though. Anyway, you’ll feel it when you get there. There’s nothing like it in the world.’

  It never once occurred to him that these attempts to lighten the atmosphere were having on Mrs Hauptman an utterly opposite effect. It did not once strike him that raptures could constitute taunts, or romance a dark acidity.

  Finally they were in the car again, driving back down the valley.

  ‘We must stop at that funny little stone bridge. I want to get a picture of it. And then the dam. I want to get one or two of that as well.’

  At the stone, bow-shaped bridge he stopped the car.

  ‘I’d like to get a shot of the two of you on the bridge. Would you mind, Mrs Hauptman?’

  ‘I am perfectly content to stay here.’

  ‘But I’d like the two of you. You know – a sort of memento.’

  There was no mistaking the peremptory bitterness of her laugh.

  ‘Memento. You choose the strangest words. No: I am sure you will find Trüdi adequate.’

  Presently he took a picture of Trüdi standing in the centre of the curved ancient stone bridge, alone.

  ‘Funny. I felt a tiny bit dizzy as you were taking that. First time ever. Perhaps it’s the wine.’

  ‘Perhaps. Very strong, that wine.’ He was in the centre of the bridge himself now and looked swiftly about him. ‘I haven’t kissed you today. Did you know?’

  ‘I knew.’

  ‘It was very beautiful last night.’

  ‘Very beautiful. Very, very beautiful.’

  ‘I’ll kiss you now. Quickly.’

  He kissed her quickly but softly, tremulously, and with great feeling.

  ‘That was very beautiful too,’ she said.

  Back at the car it suddenly struck him that Mrs Hauptman had the appearance of an animal behind the bars of a cage at a zoo, a frustrated tigress, imprisoned, negative of eye, held in a bondage not of her own making.

  ‘Ah! well,’ he said, ‘now for a look at the dam. Quite an engineering feat, the dam. Quite beautiful too, in its way.’

  Twenty minutes later they were at the dam and he was renewing the request he had made at the ancient stone bridge: he wanted a picture of the two of them standing at the wall high above the dam. This time, to his surprise, Mrs Hauptman agreed. It was rather stuffy in the car, she said; she would welcome a little air.

  ‘The two of you walk along. I want to get half a dozen distant shots first. I think I’m running out of film, though. Anyway I’ll finish this one on the long shots – it’s in black and white anyway. I’ve got a colour one for you two.’

  The girl and her mother walked along the high wall above the dam while George Graham walked the other way. A great white spume of water, much heavier than he had seen before, was pouring over the dam, creating its dancing mist of spray.

  He finished the last of his black and white film and then, at the edge of the dam, as he walked back, paused to change it for a colour one. There was marvellous colour, he told himself, in the afternoon: a sky of purest limpid September blue, the faintest hint of lingering snow on the highest mountain tips, the burning chestnuts, the black cypresses, Mrs Hauptman in a plum-red costume, Trüdi in a yellow skirt with his dark green cardigan over her shoulders, the electrifying spume of whitest water falling from the dam. It was all perfect; it would all come out so beautifully.

  A shriek like that of a hungry screaming gull cut through the air. He had a sudden impression of a salmon leaping halfway through the falling spume of water before realising, a stunned moment later, that it was the falling body of the girl.

  Mrs Hauptman stood rigid, regimented, alone on the bridge. Somewhere far below, the body of the girl was already lost from view and nothing remained now but the thundering falling waters, foaming onwards in their white frightening power.

  The Man Who Loved Squirrels

  Everybody called him Spile Jackson: perhaps because he spent most days of the year stripping and pointing chestnut poles for spiles and fences in a small triangular piece of woodland at the foot of a chalk gully halfway up a hillside. The hard road ended there.

  He was a big man, bony-faced, a man of few words, fortyish, rather swarthy, with a mat of wiry uncombed black hair and massive arms hardened to the appearance of tree roots by long exposure to sun and wind and rain.

  He moved for the most part in a slow cumbersome way, except when he was using bill-hook or axe. Then his touch was precise and delicate: as neat as a man trimming a matchstick with a razor blade.

  Thirty or forty yards inside the wood he had built himself a shelter of chestn
ut poles roofed over with boughs and shavings of bark and floored a foot deep with chips and sawdust and curls of chestnut bark. This shelter was completely open on the south side and in winter and spring, before the boughs of oak and ash and hazel and chestnut thickened with leaf, he could work inside it and watch the sunlight, twenty yards or so away, flashing on the waters of a little stream.

  In summer everything darkened over; he was shut away. The little shelter became swallowed up, a tattered hovel, unseen from the end of the road. Sunlight no longer penetrated to the open front of it. In the permanent summer shadow every fresh shaving of chestnut bark was a startling white curl, bleached as bone, as it fell from the pole.

  It was perhaps this brooding shadow that gave the whites of his eyes a peculiarly bare and incisive brightness, so that they too looked as if made of bone.

  Every day at noon his mother, a small, crisp, ferrety woman with hair like tangled sheep wool who always wore a pair of black old-fashioned high buttoned boots, brought his dinner up to him in a square brown wicker basket.

  It was the same basket his father had used, in the same way and in the same place, thirty or forty years before. Nothing had changed about it except the slip of osier cane that held the lid in place. Time had simply worn it down to the thinness of a knitting-needle and it had been replaced with another.

  As soon as Spile saw her coming up the road he laid down his tools, put a match to an old-fashioned paraffin burner that stood on his bench and then went to wash his hands in the stream.

  By the time he got back she was already in the shelter. She had by now turned up the paraffin wick to full and his stew of meat, onions, potatoes and carrots was heating on top of it. While she watched this, not speaking and sometimes giving it a sudden prod with a spoon, he opened a bottle of beer. The habit of having a glass to drink it from was one he had never got into and he simply encircled the neck of the bottle with his mouth, sucking at it as at a large dribbling brown teat.

  In summer she always brought him a couple of extra bottles of beer; sometimes three or four if the weather was very hot. Men with big frames like his needed plenty of solid food that would wear well, plenty of bread and potatoes and plenty of good beer to put their sweat back.