The Wild Cherry Tree Page 8

  After the strawberries and cream Miss Stratton lay back on the grass, legs carelessly exposed, the slightest curve of her bosom faintly revealed. Now and then she gave a replete, indulgent sigh, breathing in the scent of limes with a sound that expressed a sleepy, dreamy, ecstasy. All Mr Fletcher did in response was to read his newspaper upside down.

  ‘Must you read your newspaper?’

  ‘Well, I always do. There isn’t much point in having one if one doesn’t read it.’

  ‘This heavenly day and all you can think of is to bury your head in a lot of stocks and shares or something.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry. Of course if it offends you –’

  ‘I didn’t say it offended me. I said this heavenly day and all you can do is to turn into a book-worm – a newspaper-worm – or something.’

  ‘I don’t think I care for the word worm. Whatever’s come over you?’

  ‘Nothing has come over me, as you fondly put it.’

  ‘You shock me. I’ve never heard you speak like this.’

  For some minutes Miss Stratton lay grimly, resolutely silent. Then she suddenly uttered a peremptory, whispered ‘My God!’

  ‘And what, pray, was that in aid of?’ Mr Fletcher said.

  ‘Oh! read your wretched newspaper!’

  ‘Really.’

  Miss Stratton, silent and impotent, stared up through the great canopy of leaves and keys of lime flower above her head. Only the minutest fragments of sky, like segments of bright blue broken glass, were visible beyond.

  ‘What am I expected to do?’ Mr Fletcher said.

  ‘Do? Well, you could admire my new dress, for one thing. Or even notice it.’

  ‘I have noticed it. I like it.’

  ‘Like it! My friend went into raptures about it.’

  ‘Am I to take it that you’d rather be with your friend?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. All I said was – Oh! never mind.’

  For more than another half hour they were completely silent. Once Miss Stratton, as if half-suffocated by the drenching heat of afternoon, loosened still further the neck of her dress and wiped the damp upper curves of her neck and bosom with a handkerchief.

  At last Mr Fletcher said in a flat, almost morbid monotone:

  ‘We seem to have wasted a whole afternoon.’

  ‘We!’ Miss Stratton could bear it no longer and suddenly sprang to her feet. ‘We, for Heaven’s sake! Include me out, as they say.’

  ‘Oh! my dear, I never thought we’d come to this.’

  ‘Don’t “my dear” me!’

  To Mr Fletcher’s utter astonishment Miss Stratton was already walking away.

  ‘Where on earth are you going?’

  ‘Going? Where do you think I’m going? I’m going to see my friend. Note the word. Friend – friend!’

  Head high in the air, under the blazing July sun, Miss Stratton stormed away across the park.

  For nearly two months after this she never saw Mr Fletcher on the train. Nor did she ever see him in the wine bar, where she sometimes lingered in the evenings, sipping sherry and hoping that by some sort of miracle he might appear.

  Finally, unable to bear it any longer, she went over to Mr Fletcher’s flat, his little place. She climbed the long flights of stairs, knocked several times on the door and also rang the bell, without getting an answer. As she then came down again a woman appeared from a flat below and said:

  ‘Was there something I could do to help you?’

  ‘I was looking for Mr Fletcher.’

  ‘Oh! Mr Fletcher doesn’t live here now.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘He took a flat in London. Said he found the train journey every day very tiresome.’

  ‘You don’t know the address?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. He went off awfully suddenly. We all thought he looked ill. The stairs seemed to be too much for him. You’d hear him positively fighting for breath. In the way asthmatics do.’

  ‘Was he asthmatic?’

  ‘Oh! pitifully. I thought he’d die once or twice. In fact I’m ashamed to say it but I watch the obituary columns every day – it’s a dreadful thought, I know, but I wouldn’t want to miss it.’

  Miss Stratton started to watch the obituary columns too. Almost a year later she read that Mr Fletcher, who always read his newspaper upside down and could only express himself to her in such simple things as aconites, a bunch of primroses, a glass of sherry or a rose or two, had died.

  Miss Stratton is now married to a man named Rawlinson, who has a wholesale business in paints, emulsions and materials of that sort. They live in a villa furnished down to the smallest, correctest detail by a firm of decorators; the garden too has been landscaped for them and has a professional, orderly, impeccable, shorn and bloodless air.

  Rawlinson is a man of intensely scrupulous habits who gets up at half past six every morning in order to complete a holy ritual of shaving, clipping his moustache, oiling his hair, anointing himself with after-shave lotions, brushing his teeth and manicuring his neat shell-like nails in order to be at his desk punctually on the stroke of nine. Every day he lunches at his office. Every evening he goes home at nine o’clock to find the former Miss Stratton playing patience or knitting or reading or watching television, waiting for supper. When he is away from home, however far away, his office telephones him twice a day with the day’s figures, orders and events in minutest detail. When he dines out he peruses, rather than reads, the menu with the same fine incisive attention to every single item, as if it were as sacred as holy writ.

  His behaviour to the former Miss Stratton is equally scrupulous, impeccable, orderly and correct. He flatters himself that she has everything she could possibly wish for. There is nothing she lacks.

  Sometimes, in the middle of this secure and well-ordered world, Miss Stratton thinks of Mr Fletcher and such small things as his aconites, his primroses and his sherry; and sometimes, when alone or when Rawlinson isn’t looking, she also reads her newspaper upside down.

  It is only then that the world seems to her to be right way up and she can view it with a better understanding.

  How Vainly Men Themselves Amaze

  The sand on the seaward side of the dunes glittered like fine white sugar in the sun. A plastic ball, in white and yellow stripes, rolled softly and with deceptive slowness from one dry tuft of dune-grass to another, not at all unlike a big bored snail, until suddenly a sharper gust of breeze caught it and tossed it bouncing high across the shore.

  For the third time that morning young Franklin raced after it, retrieved it and took it back to the auburn-haired woman in the two piece emerald swim-suit sitting at the foot of the dunes. For the third time too she waved her orange-pink nails in the air in protest, smiling with lips of the same colour at the same time.

  ‘Oh! this is becoming an awful bore for you. It really is. Thank you all the same – it’s awfully sweet of you – but next time just let it go.’

  ‘That’s all right – I’m not doing anything –’

  ‘Can you see those children of mine anywhere or that wretched German girl? She’s supposed to look after the ball.’

  ‘I think I saw them going that way, towards the pines. I think they were gathering shells.’

  ‘Anything useless, of course. That’s these girls all over. Anything useless.’

  He stood looking down at her, feeling slightly awkward, still holding the ball in his hands. She was a beautifully boned woman, about forty, evenly tanned to a deep gold, her stomach flat, her navel a delicate shadowy shell. Beside her on the sand stood a straw basket stuffed with a pink towel, a pair of yellow beach shoes and a yellow scarf, together with a second flatter basket of bananas, peaches and pears. With her long orange-pink finger tips she patted the sand beside her and said:

  ‘May I offer you some fruit? I feel I somehow ought to reward you for all your tiresome dashing up and down. Anyway, sit down, won’t you?’

  He hesitated, awkward again, not knowing what to
do with the ball.

  ‘Oh! let the wretched ball go. It’s a confounded nuisance. I feel I never want to see it again.’

  He looked up and down the dunes and then said:

  ‘I’ll drop it in this hollow here. It probably won’t blow out of there –’

  ‘Oh! let it go.’

  He laid the ball in a deep nest of grass, tossing sand round it. She waited for him to finish and then, as he was about to sit down, said:

  ‘Oh! before you sit down would you be an absolute dear and do something for me?’

  ‘Of course, if I can.’

  ‘Go as far as the kiosk and get me a bottle of milk, would you? It’s all I ever have for lunch, just milk and fruit.’

  Like an over-obedient servant he turned swiftly on his heels, ready to run.

  ‘No, no, wait. Here’s some francs. And wouldn’t you like to get yourself something too? A beer or something? or would it spoil your lunch?’

  ‘Oh! I never go back to the hotel for lunch. I always grab a sandwich or something down here.’

  ‘Well, bring yourself something anyway. Just what you like. I never go back either. The children and Heidi go back, thank God. That gets them out of my sight.’

  When he came back, five minutes later, carrying a bottle of milk, two bottles of beer and four ham rolls, she was lying flat on her stomach, her long beautifully shaped legs stretched straight out, the soles of her feet flat. Something about the pure crinkled whiteness of the underside of her feet stirred him sharply and held him for some moments almost hypnotized.

  Suddenly she turned over and saw him staring down at them. For an instant he half flushed as if she had caught him in the act of doing something indiscreet and then she sat up and said:

  ‘Oh! that was awfully quick. I didn’t expect you back for ages.’

  ‘I bought myself some beer and ham rolls. I hope that’s all right?’

  ‘Of course. I expect you’re ravenous.’

  Innumerable small sugary grains of sand clung to her arms and thighs, the two pieces of her swim-suit and the upper part of her breasts. As she brushed them away with her hands and even, once, dipped a hand down between her breasts she said that that was the worst of sand. It got into everything. He must be careful it didn’t get into his sandwiches.

  He sat down, putting the bottle of milk and the two beer bottles on the sand.

  ‘Oh! damn, I forgot about an opener.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m well equipped. I’ve got everything.’

  By now it was midday and with a miraculous swiftness the shore began to empty itself of people. Everywhere French families were hastily drying bodies, packing up belongings, drifting away.

  ‘You don’t see that wretched girl and the children coming back, do you? No, they’ve probably gone the other way. We’re at the Angleterre. Where are you?’

  ‘Les Salles d’Or.’

  ‘By yourself?’

  ‘With my parents.’

  Suddenly she waved her long fingers and asked him to look at the beach. The French were really extraordinary creatures of habit. Dead on the stroke of twelve the beach emptied every day. You’d think a plague had struck it or something. It was all nonsense about the French being so slap-happy and fast and loose and so on. They were really immensely conventional. Didn’t he think so? Did he like France anyway?

  ‘It bores me a bit.’

  For the first time she looked at him with absolute directness and for the first time he became acutely aware of the peculiar nature of her eyes. The pupils of them were like bright birds’ eggs, mottled and stencilled green and orange-brown. For fully a quarter of a minute she held him in a gaze without the flicker of an eyelid and then at last said:

  ‘Good. That makes two of us.’

  Sharply disturbed, he lowered his own gaze and too hastily started to open a bottle of beer. It frothed violently, spilling down his thighs.

  ‘Here. Here’s a tissue,’ she said and before he could take it wiped the beer away herself with long smooth strokes.

  His body gave a quick central stir. His blood seemed to curdle in the hot bristling Atlantic air and he took a swift drink of beer. As if totally unaware that anything had remotely disturbed him she took a red plastic beaker from her basket and poured it full of milk. The sight of the milk shining pinkly through the plastic and then of her orange-pink mouth held against the lip of the beaker convulsed his body still more sharply, for the second time.

  ‘You haven’t told me your name.’

  ‘Franklin. Everybody calls me Frankie.’

  ‘Why does France bore you?’

  He drank at the beer again and said he didn’t really know. He supposed it might be his parents. They were rather elderly and mad keen on gastronomique excursions, trying new places to eat, new dishes and that sort of thing. That bored him; well, anyway, too much of it. He was perfectly happy with a beer and a sandwich and plenty of swimming.

  ‘You’ve got magnificently brown, I must say.’

  ‘You too. You’re a marvellous colour.’

  ‘Well, it’s an art. I take it gently. Not too long at a time. I shall lie in the shade this afternoon.’

  He started to eat a ham roll, washing it down with an occasional drink of beer. She, using a small silver knife, began to peel a peach, taking off the thin rose downy skin with delicate strokes and then carefully, almost meticulously, laying the fragments on another paper tissue. When finally she bit into the ripe flesh of the peach he saw for the first time how full her lips were. In contrast to the fine whiteness of her teeth and the green creaminess of the peach they shone richly and as peach-juice ran over them and she licked it away the slow curl of her tongue was voluptuous.

  ‘I adore these peaches,’ she started to say and then suddenly broke off, a look of stiff annoyance on her face. At the same time he caught the sound of children’s voices and looked round to see, thirty yards away, a small boy and a girl and a blonde tall young woman in a plain white swimsuit and carrying a blue wrap, coming across the shore. Even at that distance he thought the girl had an aloof aristocratic, even supercilious air.

  The boy, in nothing but a pair of short blue swim-trunks, came running in great excitement.

  ‘We had smashing fun. We found an old anchor – it had barnacles stuck all over it – and an old rope and a big crab. I wanted to bring the crab but Heidi and June said it was too dead –’

  ‘All right, darling, all right. Off you go now to lunch.’ She turned sharply to the tall German girl. The mottled green-brown eyes held the pale blue almost transparent eyes of the girl in a stare of tense and unconcealed dislike. In return the frigid blue eyes were motionless, calm and equally hostile. ‘I thought I always told you to get the children back by twelve. It’s long past that now. You know how those French wolves raid the salle à manger.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Palgrave. But sometimes there is a moment when children are too happy to be –’

  ‘Oh! buzz along. And take that silly ball with you. It’s been plaguing us to death all morning.’

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Franklin said and leapt to his feet, beer bottle in hand, and ran to get the ball.

  When he eventually brought it to the German girl she looked first at him and then at the beer, at the same time smiling with totally unexpected friendliness. It at once struck him that her hair was almost identical in colour with the sand, so incredibly fine and sun-bleached that it was almost white.

  She took the ball from him and said: ‘Thank you. Your beer looks good. It makes me thirsty.’

  ‘Oh! wouldn’t you have some? There’s another bottle –’

  ‘Oh! don’t start pampering her. Run along, Heidi. June’s already half way there.’

  The German girl gave him a final quick, almost confidential smile, and then walked away. The boy called ‘Au revoir! Good-bye!’ and ran ahead of her in jumping spirals of excitement and then suddenly, remembering his duty, came running back to kiss his mother.

  ‘Oh! Go away. You
r hands are simply filthy. You’d better wash well before you go into lunch. You smell of that beastly crab. Heidi! – see that he washes! –’

  In ten seconds the harshness of this episode had melted away. With an amazement touched by embarrassment he saw the expression on her face miraculously transformed, all tension gone. She resumed the business of sucking at the peach as if nothing had happened, the mottled eyes warm with reflected sea-light.

  ‘These girls are an awful responsibility,’ she said, but quietly and without rancour. ‘I sometimes wonder what she does on her days off. It quite scares me. She looks cold-blooded enough, but you never know, underneath. How did she strike you? – I mean, as a man?’

  He laughed quickly. ‘Man – well, eighteen. Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Eighteen? Good gracious, you look twenty-three or more.’ She gave him a bland, unequivocal stare of admiration, eyes immobile and precisely focussed. ‘Well, how did she strike you? or are you not one of those who size people up very quickly?’

  ‘No, I don’t think I do. At first I thought she looked terribly supercilious and then – I don’t know –’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m the impetuous sort. Sum people up at first sight – twinkling of an eye sort of thing. I’m not often wrong either. You, for instance –’

  ‘How do you mean, me?’

  By now she had finished the peach and was engaged in peeling, with the same delicacy, a long gold-green pear. Before answering she peeled off a long curl of skin and took a slow drink of milk.

  ‘Well, now, tell me if I’m wrong. Generous – sensitive – not malicious, not in the least – perhaps a bit impetuous, like me, or anyway eager to please. And, what’s getting rare these days, nice manners.’

  ‘Gosh, I’d never measure up to that lot.’

  ‘Oh! don’t be modest.’ She smiled at him once again with such fixed and candid warmth that he felt his body convulse almost violently. ‘Of course you do.’

  He gnawed at his third ham roll and drank more beer, not knowing what to say.

  ‘I suppose you’ve left school? or have you?’