The Wild Cherry Tree Page 6

  ‘I think they need over-wintering inside. They’re that bit tender.’

  ‘I’ll tell Charles.’

  The flame that had momentarily and dramatically flashed across the table by now was dead, leaving empty ashen air behind.

  ‘I thought I heard the gate,’ Carrie suddenly said. ‘Go and see. It’s perhaps the postman.’

  ‘It could be Charles,’ Elspeth said.

  ‘Oh! no. He won’t be here today.’

  Well that, he thought, was at least considerate. Thank God for that. At least the ordeal of meeting the universal Charles needn’t bother him any more.

  Gilian, he noticed, hadn’t gone to the gate. He helped himself to a third cream-cheese sandwich. She took one too. As she did so he noticed, surprisingly for the first time, that she was wearing two circular badges on the lapel of her blouse: one scarlet and one gold.

  ‘What are your badges for?’

  ‘One’s for good conduct and one’s for the week’s progress.’

  ‘But you’re on holiday.’

  ‘Yes, but I’m just wearing them today.’

  He ought, he supposed, to talk about schools and progress and things like that. On the other hand – He went to drink more tea and found that his cup was empty.

  ‘Let me fill you up. Was it right? Enough sugar?’

  ‘Delicious. Just one lump.’

  Yes, schools. That was important.

  ‘Do you like school?’

  ‘You’ve touched on a sore subject,’ Carrie said. ‘No, she doesn’t.’

  ‘Oh! no, that’s not true. I do and I don’t.’

  ‘Well, we were all like that. I remember –’

  He stopped. He saw that not only was Gilian looking at him, eyes minutely watchful, but that Elspeth was watching too.

  ‘Well, go on. I thought we were going to hear something terribly important –’

  ‘No, no. Just that I – you know how school is.’

  There was a kind of light Madeira sponge cake, with jam filling, on the table. Would he care for some? No, he didn’t think he would, really, he wasn’t for sweet things all that much. Nor, it seemed, was Gilian.

  ‘Strange, that,’ Elspeth said. ‘I notice all children are like that, nowadays. They’re not much for sweet things. They all go for savouries. I’ve got a niece of three who gorges stuffed olives. I think I was twenty before I tried a stuffed olive and then I didn’t like it.’

  ‘Oh! I hate stuffed olives. I hate savouries and fishy things and all that. I hate –’

  ‘Now, now,’ Carrie said. ‘Don’t let’s have a hate day.’

  ‘Hate day?’ he said.

  ‘Oh! yes, we have hate days,’ Carrie said. ‘One day this week it was horses. The day after that, circuses, wasn’t it? Yesterday it was Charles, of all people.’

  ‘Well, I do hate Charles.’

  ‘Now nobody on earth,’ Elspeth said, ‘could hate Charles. Charles is an absolute –’

  ‘I hate him. He never lets me do anything. He’s always mean and snappy and you don’t have to touch things.’

  God, he thought, this was—he sipped slowly at his tea. A leaf from the cherry-tree, prematurely crimson, floated suddenly down in the windless air and settled lightly in the centre of the tea-table, making Elspeth say:

  ‘Oh! leaves falling already. Don’t say it’s going to be an early autumn.’

  ‘I think that’s the one thing that makes Charles really bad-tempered,’ Carrie said. ‘Leaves. Sweeping-up. He hates them. They’re so endless.’

  ‘Well, this year we’ve gone in for one of those patent sweeper-up gadgets. You must borrow it.’

  ‘Ah! that means you’ll monopolize him. I think you’ve got even more leaves than we have.’

  ‘Well, we’ll have to toss up for him again, that’s all.’

  In mystification he sat mute. It struck him as being more than a bit liberal, two women tossing up for the husband of one of them, and again he felt out of it all, a cold intruder in a strange world. Was that the reason, perhaps, for the hatred? It was understandable. He was near enough to hating Charles himself.

  ‘How much do these things cost?’ Carrie said. ‘I might as well get one too. He hates borrowing things.’

  ‘Oh! no don’t go to that expense. After all we share him. Let’s share the gadget.’

  ‘All right, if you say so. By the way, since the days are drawing in, won’t it soon be time we changed the time-table? – you have him in the mornings and me in the afternoons.’

  The mystification on his face evidently turned to astonishment, then stupefaction. He felt positively sullen. The intrusion on peculiar private affairs made him wish to God, once again, that he had never come. A certain warmth he had hitherto felt for Elspeth curled up and died inside himself like a dry worm. It wasn’t any wonder there was hatred.

  ‘Roger, you look terribly thoughtful.’

  Thoughtful? He started to say something about not being a particularly cynical man but of course if sharing Charles gave any satisfaction – then his sentence died too, cut dead by Elspeth and Carrie laughing.

  ‘Roger, you’re a scream – did you really think Carrie and I? –’

  ‘In the mornings too! – God, I’m never any good in the mornings anyway.’

  ‘Oh! me, of course, I’m terrific. Can you see me? – all voluptuous in slacks and a wind-cheater, waiting for Charles in a wheel-barrow.’

  It was not, he thought, funny. He stared at his empty teacup, at the garden and then, quickly and sullenly, at Gilian. She in return hardly looked at him. There was no change in her face even when Carrie and Elspeth burst out laughing again, so loudly and high-spirited that it mocked him. He felt like the victim of some bad, practical joke.

  ‘Roger, what an idea – you didn’t really think –’

  ‘Well, perhaps we should try it some time,’ Elspeth said. She was still laughing, bright tawny eyes quite flashing in their amusement. ‘I never thought of it – hullo, where’s Gilian hopped off to?’

  The joke of Charles died out slowly, in repeated splutters, a damp but irresponsible firework. For him, too, the afternoon died. No, he wouldn’t have more tea, thank you.

  ‘I’m sorry you saw dear old Charles in such a bad light,’ Carrie said. Her voice now had that slight edge to it, fine with acidity. ‘I hope our poor old gardener is now acquitted without a stain on his character.’

  ‘It was a genuine mistake.’

  The aftermath of laughter was cold. He tried to think of an excuse for going very soon, without seeming to be too impossibly stiff, and was very suddenly struck by the thought of the boy playing outside the dog-kennel.

  ‘I suppose I ought to say hullo to Nigel before I go.’

  ‘Oh! you’re not going yet? Go and find him yourself – he’d like that. There’s plenty of time.’

  He got up from the table and walked across the lawn. Behind him he caught the echo of yet one more cackle of laughter, but when it died the afternoon was gripped in quietness.

  The dog-kennel in the yard behind the kitchen was empty, graced by neither boy nor dog. He looked at it for a few moments, feeling empty too. He remembered the yard as a dumping ground for buckets, heaps of sand, bits of iron bedsteads lashed together in grotesque shapes of planes and cars, old bath tins labouring in sordid puddles or beached across the waste of unswept asphalt.

  Now it was all carefully swept; there were even tubs of scarlet and pink geraniums set about it; the asphalt had been replaced by broad flags of paving stone.

  He walked through the yard and out to the kitchen garden beyond. That too was neat and orderly: a barrack square filled with platoons of carrots and onions, beetroot and beans, enough potatoes to feed an army.

  He went out of it by a wooden wicket gate at the far side. Beyond it, in a triangle of holly and briar and laurel, the garden ended, and it was almost a relief to see it end half in neglect, hidden away, in secret disorder.

  In the centre of it sat Gilian.


  ‘This is my garden. Charles won’t let me have it anywhere else.’

  ‘It’s nice here. All on its own.’

  ‘Do you like it?’

  An oblong plot of earth had been scraped out and lined with flints, half bricks and lumps of stone. He stared at it for some time, not speaking.

  ‘I’ve got candytuft in there, but it hasn’t come up yet. And Iceland poppies. They’re really for next year.’

  ‘Are they carrots coming up there?’

  ‘Carrots? No, that’s supposed to be larkspur.’

  ‘It looks like carrots.’

  ‘Oh! no, I don’t think so. I hope not. I sowed Chinese pinks too. That’s what it said on the packet. Chinese. Do you think it’s them coming up?’

  ‘No, I think that’s grass there.’

  She had only just made the garden, she said: only a week or two ago. It really hadn’t got started yet. Everything seemed to be so slow coming up. Should they be so slow?

  ‘It doesn’t get an awful lot of light in here.’

  ‘No, I know. But it will later. In the winter. When the leaves fall.’

  ‘Oh! yes. And in the spring. Plants respond to light as much as anything. You’ll see an awful difference in the spring.’

  He stooped and pulled up a root of groundsel and threw it aside.

  ‘Oh! must you pull that up? I thought it was a flower.’

  ‘Oh! I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think you wanted it.’

  He would send her packets of seeds, he said, as if in compensation, and she said thank you, she would like that. She re-arranged a few stones along the edge of the plot and picked up a piece of broken glass or two and threw them away.

  ‘You thought I was stealing bits from the garden,’ he said. ‘Rather funny.’

  It disturbed him that she didn’t say anything in answer. Perhaps it wasn’t funny. He felt it time to go. Would she come too? He ought to go and say good-bye to her mother.

  ‘No, I’ll stay here. I’ve got quite a bit to do.’

  ‘Well, I’ll say good-bye then.’

  He thought at first, foolishly, that he would shake hands with her. He actually extended his right hand and then dropped it to his side. Then she slightly lifted her face and he kissed it on both cheeks and it was almost, for a moment, as if he were saying good-bye to Elspeth instead.

  ‘I must go now. Good-bye.’

  ‘Good-bye. You won’t forget the seeds?’

  ‘No, I won’t forget the seeds. What seeds would you like?’

  ‘Oh! I don’t know. Not really. Anything.’

  ‘Well, you say and I’ll send them.’

  ‘No, you choose. Anything you like. You choose.’

  ‘All right. I’ll try to send some good things. Good-bye now.’

  ‘Good-bye.’

  For some reason it was the thought of Elspeth, not Gilian, that rode light and uppermost in his mind as he crossed the kitchen garden, then the yard, and came out to the lawn and flower beds beyond. He had been profoundly glad of Elspeth, without really realising it, all afternoon. Elspeth had helped enormously. Of course the misunderstanding about Charles was all perfectly ridiculous; genuine mistake though it was, all his fault. The idea of two women sharing – it was all preposterous but now he could, perhaps, seeing that it was all over, share the joke.

  By the time he reached the lawn there was no one in sight. The tea-table was cleared. The lawn was empty. Then he saw the figure of Carrie, waiting on the steps of the house.

  ‘I’m sorry. It was Gilian. I had to see the garden.’

  ‘You’re very honoured. I told you. Did you see Nigel?’

  ‘No, he wasn’t there.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Oh! and has Elspeth gone? Oh! surely not. I wanted to say good-bye.’

  ‘She suddenly fled. She suddenly remembered she had some cream to pick up in the village. It was nearly half-past five.’

  He once again felt out of it all, cold, a stranger intruding.

  ‘What did she have to rush for?’

  ‘Oh! she’s like that sometimes.’

  ‘I didn’t say good-bye.’

  ‘She said to tell you good-bye. And if you ever had a thought about the name of that plant –’

  ‘Oh! yes. Did you say honoured? Why?’

  ‘Oh! even I haven’t seen the garden yet.’

  He stared across the empty lawn, towards the tawny flame of tiger lilies with their attendant silver sprays, at the purple burning clematis on the wall. It was all splendidly kept, in beautiful order. There was hardly a leaf, a twig, a blade of grass out of place.

  ‘What was the garden like?’ Carrie said.

  He paused before answering. He must go pretty soon. There was nothing to wait for.

  ‘She has great plans for it,’ he said. He remembered suddenly her watching eyes, her long, waiting silences. ‘It should be marvellous in the —’

  ‘In what?’

  ‘Oh! in the spring.’

  Or if not in the spring, he thought, some other time: some other spring.

  The World Upside Down

  The first time Miss Olive Stratton put on odd stockings, one a greenish brown, the other a shade of rusty red, was purely by accident, as she hurriedly dressed herself in the twilight of a winter morning. But when daylight came and she could see better it suddenly struck her how curiously attractive, even striking, the odd stockings were. They might even be a reason, she thought, for making men look at her legs more often, more closely and perhaps with more appreciation. They were not very good legs and the more she could do to improve them, she felt, the better.

  Nor was her face at all an exceptional one. It resembled, as much as anything, a piece of rather coarse yellowish flannel. The grey eyes were dark, as if with bruises, underneath. For this reason she wore tinted spectacles of a smoky-rose colour. Her black hair was also coarse and would in fact have been slightly grey if she hadn’t regularly tinted that too.

  After the discovery of the stockings she began to go to work every morning wearing one stocking of one colour and one of another. Sometimes she chose blue and green; sometimes red and yellow; once purple and brown. On one occasion she even went so far as to wear a green stocking and a red shoe on one leg and a red stocking and a green shoe on the other. On another occasion, a morning of black snowy slush, she wore odd calf-length boots, one white and one black, with a pair of gloves matching them but as it were in opposition.

  In spite of all this the desired effect of making men take more than a momentary interest in her legs never seemed to come about. Her legs continued to produce an effect neither elegant nor exciting. Men merely passed her in the street as if she were some sort of female crank. This went on for several weeks until one perishingly cold rainy morning she was slightly late for her train, found every second class seat filled and was obliged to travel first.

  The only other person in the carriage was a man of about her own age and it immediately struck her that he too had dressed in a hurry. One half of his blue necktie was inside his shirt collar and the other half outside. This aroused in her a strong and growing desire not only to tell him of the fact but also to get up and re-arrange the tie nearer, as it were, to her heart’s desire.

  While this feeling mounted she kept crossing and uncrossing her legs, revealing a blue-stockinged knee for a few minutes and then a green one for a time. All the while she tried reading her Times and then, finding herself unable to concentrate, put it down on the seat beside her.

  About a minute later the man coughed, leaned forward and said with great politeness:

  ‘I wonder if I might borrow your Times? I couldn’t get one myself.’

  ‘Oh! certainly. Certainly. By all means.’

  ‘It’s most awfully kind of you.’

  Miss Stratton gave a polite smile and handed over The Times. In the instant before the man lifted up the paper to begin reading it she caught another glimpse of the blue necktie protruding from under its collar
and she felt she knew, with certainty, that the man was unmarried. No woman would ever have let a man out of the house, she was sure, with collar and tie so painfully dishevelled.

  As she pondered on this thought, at the same time wondering if she dared mention the curious state of the necktie, she stared out of the window, watching the black bare winter landscape slipping past, every field rain-soaked under a sky of driving cloud.

  When she turned her glance to the man again it was to be confronted with an immense surprise. At first she found it impossible to believe what she saw. Then a second, third and finally a prolonged fourth look convinced her that she wasn’t dreaming.

  The man was reading The Times completely upside down.

  The necktie,’ she told herself, ‘I can understand. That’s just a slip in the hurry of getting ready. Like my stockings. Anyone could do a thing like that. But reading the paper upside down – that simply can’t be an accident. That simply can’t be.’

  At once it seemed to her imperative that she must do something about this curious state of affairs and she suddenly leaned forward and said:

  ‘Oh! excuse me.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I hope – I don’t know if you know, but you’re reading The Times upside down.’

  ‘Yes, I do know.’

  Miss Stratton sat open-mouthed, too flabbergasted to speak.

  ‘Yes, I do know. I prefer it that way.’

  ‘You actually – you mean – but isn’t it frightfully difficult?’

  ‘Not at all. I’ve been doing it for years.’

  ‘But isn’t it a strain? Wouldn’t it be easier the right way up?’

  ‘It’s more fun this way. Besides I’ve got used to it.’ He gave a quick shy smile, a gesture that struck her as being rather squirrel-like. ‘I’ve been doing it ever since I was a boy. I got awfully interested in codes and that sort of thing. You know how boys are – turning words round, dropping letters, making X stand for one vowel and Y for another. I started to write sentences backwards and then of course it was only another step to reading things upside down.’

  Again Miss Stratton was too surprised to speak.

  ‘Have a try yourself.’ The man held out The Times to her. ‘It’s extraordinarily easy once you – it’s really a simple matter of concentration.’