It was on a spring day, some twenty months before, that Hugo and Daisy had first met. The pavements were wet after the night’s heavy rain, and flowers of cherry blossom, shaken down by the storm, lay stuck to them like pink paper rosettes. Now the morning was calm and fresh. Along the St. John’s Wood terrace pear blossom, cherry blossom, prunus sent up their coloured spray, and white clouds bloomed in the sky. A country-bred girl, who had only come to London the previous autumn, Daisy Bland sniffed the Maytime air, feeling a waft of excitement stronger than the home-sickness which such a scene might have been expected to provoke. In the country, one hardly noticed the flowers and the decorated branches. It was only a few minutes’ walk from the bus stop to Mrs. Chetwynd-Smythe’s house, and Daisy had no complaint against Madame Ramon for not sending her by taxi, urgent though her errand was. The other girls at the milliner’s shop would have nattered about Madame’s notorious meanness. Daisy swung along, with her free country stride, dangling the hat-box by its ribbon and enjoying the fresh smells, the exhilarated colour of trees and gardens.
A blackbird whistled a phrase overhead; as she turned the corner, Daisy was looking up into a tree, from which the crystal notes came, and collided heavily with a man walking fast the other way. The hat-box was knocked out of her hand, its ribbon slipped, and as the box rolled away, the lid came off and the hat slid out on to the wet pavement.
“Oh lor’,” said Daisy, clapping her fingers to her mouth.
“I’m terribly sorry.”
“You’ve done it properly.”
The young man was already retrieving the hat with one hand—even at this disastrous moment she was able to notice how fast he moved—and had thrust out a foot to stop the hat-box rolling into the gutter.
“Just a speck or two of mud,” he said, brushing Madame Ramon’s fancy creation vigorously on his sleeve. Daisy snatched it from him before he could do any more damage.
“Oh, it’s ruined. What will she say?”
“Ruined? But surely—”
The young man broke off. In the flurry, he had not looked at her properly till now, not taken her in. Daisy was conscious of his eyes upon her. The consternation went out of her as she returned his gaze. Something flashed between them, like magnesium, and in that instant he was printed on her memory for ever—the thin, swarthy face, the mouth arrested in a half smile, the eyes brown, alert, ready to dance, with a sort of wildness asleep behind their steady gaze. A poacher’s face, she said to herself. She might as well have said an angel’s, the way she was transfixed in a pure passion of astonishment: an angel’s, or a fallen angel’s—she was never to care which.
They stood, facing each other over the ridiculous hat for a few seconds, for long enough to form their destiny.
“Oh dear,” he said at last, “your new hat. Is it really—?”
“It’s not mine. It’s—I was bringing it to Mrs. Chetwynd-Smythe.”
“Mrs. Chetwynd-Smythe? What an appalling name! It’s an outrage that anyone called Mrs. Chetwynd-Smythe should wear a hat like this. I shall certainly not permit it.”
“But—”
“What’s your name?”
“Daisy Bland.”
“Ah, that’s better. Daisy. It would suit you.” And the astonishing young man removed the hat from her grasp, placed it on her head, and stood back to study the effect.
“No,” he said, “I was wrong. Not with all that lovely hair. It looks like a tatty old bird’s-nest perched on a waterfall.”
He removed it, and stood contemplating her, twirling the hat on the point of his middle finger. Between tears and laughter, she exclaimed:
“Do be careful. I’ll get into such trouble—”
“I’ll buy Mrs. Chetwynd-Smythe another one like it.”
“Oh, you don’t understand. It’s a model—Madame made it specially for her. And she’ll be wild if she doesn’t get it this morning.”
The young man sucked in his lower lip, then cocked his head at her with a glance of pure mischief.
“Well, let’s deliver this object to the repulsive Mrs. Chetwynd-Smythe. Where does she live?”
“Number 39. A few doors away.”
He replaced the hat in the box, and secured the ribbon.
“Come along, Daisy Bland. You’re from Gloucestershire, aren’t you? My father used to—” He broke off, frowning a little. “My name’s Hugo Chesterman, of no fixed address. Now we’ve got all the relevant facts.”
It was, perhaps, Daisy’s capacity for accepting things, for not fussing or deprecating or playing coy, which, after her vernal beauty, won Hugo’s heart. She, for her part, followed his lead as if in a trance: she had not begun to think about him yet: she just, fatalistically and with a sensation of utter felicity, let him take command.
They rang the bell, they were admitted into the hall, and presently Mrs. Chetwynd-Smythe, a plump, overdressed woman with a discontented face, waddled towards them.
“Miss Bland, isn’t it? You’re very late. I was promised my hat an hour ago.”
Daisy began to explain that a slight accident had befallen it. The woman cut her short and, throwing open the hat-box, took out its contents. Her face went red and she began to gobble, shaking the flimsy hat in Daisy’s face.
“It’s insufferable. The thing’s ruined. Look at it, you clumsy girl. Do you expect me to wear this?”
Hugo gave one glance at Daisy’s flushed cheek, then, turning to the woman, said:
“Certainly not, Madam. It is too young for you.”
“How dare you!” Mrs. Chetwynd-Smythe rounded upon Daisy, panting with outrage. “Who is this—this creature? You ruin my hat with your bloody carelessness, and not content with that you bring your—bring this insolent person into my house—”
“Madam, the misadventure to your hat was entirely my fault,” cut in Hugo imperturbably, “and I came with Miss Bland to explain it. May I introduce myself? I am the Reverend Chesterman, Rural Dean of Amberley; and I must ask you to moderate your language out of respect for my cloth.”
“You don’t look like a clergyman to me.”
“I am in, ah, mufti. A brief surcease from my pastoral labours, Mrs. Smith.”
At this point Daisy gave vent to a lamentable giggle. The woman turned upon her, jowls quivering.
“I shall telephone instantly to your employer, and demand your dismissal. And now,” her voice rose to a scream, “get out! Get out!”
Hugo was replacing the hat in the box and tying the ribbon again.
“I take it you don’t want the article of apparel?”
“Put it down instantly, and GET OUT! And take this sniggering little bitch with you!”
Mrs. Chetwynd-Smythe had the front door open, and was trying simultaneously to push them out and to wrest the hat-box from Hugo. At her last words, he went quite rigid, and a look came into his face so dangerous that Daisy shrank back for a moment, torn between fear and a delicious excitement.
“I wouldn’t use that word, if I were you,” said Hugo. Then, turning his back contemptuously, he took five quick, short, running steps, and punted the hat-box high into the air. It landed among the branches of a big laburnum. Before Mrs. Chetwynd-Smythe could find her voice, he called out:
“Go climb a tree, Madam. Take off some of that superfluous fat.”
Grasping Daisy’s elbow, he walked her quickly but not hurriedly down the street.
For Daisy, that was the beginning of a period when her life moved with the automatism of a dream. After such an opening, nothing could greatly surprise her any more. Once you had accepted as a fact a young man with a poacher’s face, who came upon you out of the blue of a May morning and kicked hat-boxes into laburnum trees—once you accepted this extraordinary proposition, everything else followed with the inevitability of dream logic. So it was almost as a matter of course that Daisy found herself, an hour later, lunching with Hugo Chesterman at the Berkeley.
When he had chosen her lunch for her, he left her with a martini while he went out to telephone Madame Ramon. Daisy watched him thread his way past the tables, an alert; compact figure little taller than herself, with something wary, self-sufficient, ambiguous in the way he moved. He is like a cat, was how she put it to herself: but not a tame cat: more like one of those in the zoo, except he hasn’t got bars round him—one of those greater cats, ready poised to pounce or to streak away into the jungle darkness. Absently, she rubbed her elbow where-Hugo had gripped it, walking her away from Mrs. Chetwynd-Smythe’s house. It felt bruised. How strong he must be. With a furtive, blushing delight, Daisy thought to herself, I’m glad I bruise easily.
“A penny for your thoughts.”
It was his voice; he was back already. Daisy selected her last thought but one.
“I was thinking you walk like a cat.”
An enigmatic look came into his eyes. Was he displeased at the idea? Was he going to streak away? She added quickly:
“A tiger, I mean. Or a leopard. I’ve seen them at the pictures.”
“We must go to Whipsnade one day, and I’ll introduce you to my brothers and sisters.”
“They wander about there, don’t they? Not in cages, I mean. Sort of prison without bars.”
He was looking at her very strangely. “There’s no such thing as a prison without bars,” he said: then, abruptly changing the subject, “Your Madame, is not to be appeased. You’ve got your cards, old girl. I’m sorry.”
“Oh dear.”
“You don’t sound so terribly put out.”
“Well, I expect I can get another job.”
“Without references from old Ramon?”
“My auntie got me that job. I expect she could find me another. I’m good with my hands.”
Daisy knew, and knew that he knew, that all this meant nothing. Nothing mattered to her now, except him and her. Without anxiety or misgiving, she awaited what, sooner or later, was bound to happen. In the meantime, there was this lovely feed.
“I do like to see a girl eating hearty,” he said. “How old are you, Daisy.”
“Nearly eighteen,” she replied, with a smile so radiant that a higher Civil Servant lunching two tables away, who caught the overflow of it, made a mental note to read again A l’Ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs.
That afternoon they went to Kew. Summer had arrived overnight: everything bloomed, and the air was warm as lovers’ whispers. Lying on the grass, her limbs heavy with indolence, Daisy—a healthy girl who had never had an illness since childhood—felt like a convalescent, weak, passive, dazzled by the vivid sounds and colours of life returning. The stuffy, scented hat-shop, its ritual and frivolity, the mirrored slow-motion of its salon and the tension behind the scenes, might have been years away, faint memories of a delirium she had passed through. But this new world into which she had moved was unreal too as yet—a truant’s world, delicious, yet disquieting and precarious. Its axis was the young man sitting beside her, with arms clasped round his knees; and she felt at times that her slightest-movement might cause him to vanish as abruptly, miraculously, as he had appeared. She wanted to stay here for ever like this, not even touching him. She wanted to run away into the trees, and be pursued, and caught. The sense of deferring what would happen lay heavily upon her, like the scent of white lilac from the bush beside them, making her breathless. She knew she should be considering plans, deciding how to break to her aunt the news of her dismissal, how to set about finding another job, how to face Madame Ramon and demand her week’s pay. Yet she knew none of this was important: it will all straighten itself out, she thought vaguely, and rolled over on her side to look at Hugo.
He was threading a daisy-chain. His fingers were often restless—she had noticed that already: they seemed to have a life of their own. Now, although they still worked deftly, they were trembling; and this gave her a sharp, novel sensation which she was too artless to understand as the sensation of power. After all, he had hardly touched her yet, and had not spoken a word of love. The notion that so confident, self-sufficient a man could be shy did not occur to her. She accepted him, without any desire as yet to explain him. He, for his part, had shown the liveliest interest in her background and her past. She had told him about her childhood, as the oldest of a large family, in the Cotswold village. Her father, a small-owner, had suddenly pulled up his stakes and left them when Daisy was twelve, so she had looked after her younger brothers and sisters while her mother went out to work. The local lady of the manor discovered in the girl a flair for millinery; and last year she had come to London as an assistant in Madame Ramon’s shop, at the recommendation of an aunt, her mother’s sister, who worked for a fashionable dressmaker in the same street.
Daisy told him about her room in Pimlico, the money she sent home every week, the feuds and foibles of the assistants in the shop. She talked without self-consciousness; yet as she talked, she became gradually aware how lonely she had been in London till now. She had no idea, though, of the way her beauty had contributed to her isolation, creating a barrier between herself and the other girls at Madame Ramon’s. As for men, she had been no more touched by their hot glances than Daniel by the fiery furnace. Lacking the nervous vitality of town-bred girls, she was too tired at the end of the day for dancing or gallivanting.
“No young men?” Hugo had said. “Well, well, you amaze me.”
He was piqued, though she did not realise it, by her incuriosity about himself. She seemed to take it for granted that a well-dressed young gentleman—for that was how she must see him—should come round a corner into her life, lose her job for her, and carry her off to Kew via the Berkeley. Hugo had never met a girl like this. One couldn’t think of her in terms of pick-up and bed-sitting-room. The usual veiled sex-banter, the perky, pathetically thin self-assurance of the girls he had stalked from time to time, when more interesting prey was not available—these were utterly foreign to her. She attracted him all the more because he was a little frightened of her—frightened by the potential of passion which he felt in her.
Now, reaching up, he placed the daisy-chain round her neck. His hand brushed her neck, and she shivered a little, but never took her eyes off his face. The chain hung down over her simple, cornflower-blue dress. The sounds of children, playing nearby, seemed infinitely remote.
“I’m a bad hat, Daisy.” Hugo’s voice was not quite under control.
“Are you?” Her tone was like a slow caress. “You’ve been very kind to me.”
“And you’re the Queen of the May.” Hugo felt half relieved, half troubled, as one does when an issue has been deferred which is bound to become more loaded with difficulty the longer one defers it.
“That’s a poem,” Daisy was saying. “She died, didn’t she?”
“I won’t call you that, then.” Hugo gazed down at her where she lay on her back, open to the sun, the sweet smell of grass coming up as if it was an emanation from her innocence. “I’ll call you Demeter.”
She smiled vaguely. “Who’s Demeter?”
“Mother Earth. A goddess. That’s one of the things I learnt before I was sacked.”
“Sacked?”
“From my expensive public school.”
“So we’ve both been sacked. Goody.”
Hugo twisted a tress of her corn-coloured hair round his finger; “The point is, what are we going to do about you?”
“Oh, it’s such a lovely afternoon. Don’t let’s spoil it.” Seeing his expression, uneasy and overcast, she added, “You mustn’t worry about me. Really. I shall be all right.”
There was a silence between them, and the sounds of children, birds, distant traffic, came back again. He wants to kiss me, thought Daisy: why doesn’t he? Presently she heard him say, with a note almost of desperation, “You don’t know anything about me.”
“You’ll tell me some time.”
He looked at the blue veins on her eyelids, the dreamy smile of her half-opened lips, and tenderness shook him like an agony.
“Come, live with me and be my love.”
He hardly knew he had said it aloud. But her eyes opened, shining up at him like dew-ponds, like gems of midsummer blue.
“Do you want me to?” she murmured, stirring, arms wide, her fingers twining round tufts of long grass. She was his for the taking, and she exulted in it.
They lay, kissing. Past and future mercifully withdrew for a while, leaving them alone with the consuming present.