WHEN VIDA COMES in the door to the kitchen, Jeremy’s bloody shirt rolled in her arms, Mr. Lamb turns in surprise and then smiles at her beatifically, waving the wooden spoon vaguely in the air above his head—a sort of salute, she thinks, taken aback. And then he steps near to Manford to lay a hand on his head.
She knows something has happened between them.
But they appear so peaceful, it seems to her, that she thinks it must be nothing to worry about, their air of conspiracy; they’ve only hit it off. She smiles shyly at Mr. Lamb and then goes to put Jeremy’s shirt to soak in a basin in the larder.
When she comes back into the kitchen, she allows Mr. Lamb to help her to the table and pull out her chair. He shakes out her napkin and lays it over her lap.
“Put your stamp books aside, Manford,” she says, disconcerted by Mr. Lamb’s attentions. “You don’t want to spill on them.”
But Mr. Lamb picks them up himself and then brings the plates to the table, the roast in its pool of ruby-colored juices. “Here we are,” he says, and smiles all around.
THERE’D BEEN A great deal of blood, Vida had noticed, and from a rather small gash, after all. Dr. Faber, working away over Jeremy’s wrist, had said it was the placement, where the glass had caught the vein, that made it bleed so much.
After he was done sewing Jeremy up, Dr. Faber had taken them into his private office. Manford always liked Dr. Faber’s office; there was so much to look at. He especially liked the skeleton lurking in the corner, each of its bones numbered with a tiny carved black numeral. Manford often went to stand in front of it, cocking his head. Vida has thought that it’s as if he recognizes it in some way—as a person.
“That’s old Percy there,” Dr. Faber once said to him. “Say hello, Manford.”
Dr. Faber’s office was really horribly crowded, though. Vida always felt she’d better not touch anything for fear a stack of papers would topple onto her. There were cases of books, too, and boxes still in their brown paper wrapping. It was known that Dr. Faber was a great reader, and indeed he had books piled everywhere. The office and attached surgery had belonged to his father before him; Vida suspected he’d never cleared out a thing.
But he managed to sweep aside some papers and find a place for Jeremy to sit, motioning for him to relax. Vida lingered in the doorway behind Jeremy’s chair while Dr. Faber fetched the decanter from the cupboard and poured brandies for the three of them.
“Bolster your blood,” he said jovially, raising his glass to Jeremy.
Vida watched Jeremy’s Adam’s apple bob twice, and then the glass was empty.
“Well then,” Dr. Faber said, smacking his lips and holding the glass critically up to the light. “All in a Sunday’s work. I’ll have a look at you in ten days. Come back then and we’ll take the stitches out. Try to keep it clean, though. Got a long glove? That’ll do, if you want to work meanwhile. Don’t go lifting any circus elephants, though.”
He winked and set his glass down on the papers on his desk, put his hand to Vida’s back, and steered her toward the coatrack. He helped her into her coat, laid a broad palm briefly on Jeremy’s shoulder, and saw them firmly to the door.
How nice, Vida thought, as they went away down the path, to be Dr. Faber. In they come bleeding to death, and you just sew them up and send them on their way and go home to your dinner.
SHE HAD HELPED Jeremy up the walk to Dr. Faber’s, holding his arm in case he should feel faint, but it didn’t seem right, their touching again when they left, he being all right then and sewn up. Still, she had turned a deep, mortifying red, first when she realized that she had been about to reach for his arm, and then realizing that she was disappointed to see how awkward it would be.
When Dr. Faber’d had him take off his shirt, she had opened her eyes wide at the perfect shape of the man beneath the bloody cloth. He was made of marble, she’d thought, marble run through with color—the blue veins of his neck, the flat, plum-colored nipples, the tiny curl of black hair like seaweed low on his belly. Her awareness of her own appreciation had embarrassed her. She had looked away helplessly; and there were Dr. Faber’s surgical instruments, all lined up on the towel, including the thing she called privately to herself the duck’s bill.
What does he need that for? she had thought, aghast.
“Sit down, Vida,” Dr. Faber had said, glancing over at her, the needle flashing through his fingers. “Can’t have you going over on me. Put your head down.”
And then, to Jeremy, “Such a worrywart, our Vida! Always rushing Manford in here as though he were at death’s door. That fellow will outlive us all, mark my words. He’s a giant among men.” But he had winked at Vida when she’d raised her head at last, everything swimming; it was the blood, she thought. All that blood.
“She’s a good sort, Vida,” she heard Dr. Faber say. “You could have a worse nursemaid than Vida here, my friend,” he added to Jeremy. “She’ll see you through.”
Jeremy had raised his eyes then to meet hers with a look so direct she had put her hand to her throat in a kind of weak defense. And it went through her mind suddenly that perhaps he had written the letters; perhaps he had sent the robe and the flowers. Perhaps it wasn’t Mr. Niven at all!
For though she hadn’t really been thinking about it deliberately, the notion of her mysterious lover had been there in the back of her head all day. And though she’d made herself settle on Mr. Niven, she recognized that it was a conclusion reached only by default. She’d even had, for a flash, the unpleasant suspicion that it might be Mr. Spooner in love with her, for the way he was always trying to pinch her bottom. He’d come round after her in the store, down the dark aisle in his musty socks. “Can I help you?” he’d say, breathing hard behind her. But of course she understood he wasn’t interested in helping her find anything! Once he’d put his hand right on her bottom, as though she were a loaf of bread. “Hallo, hallo,” he’d said then softly, as if he were surprised to find her flesh beneath his palm. And she had never liked to say anything back, with Mrs. Spooner at the front of the store doing her sums with a little stub of a pencil, eating handfuls of bran from the sack on the floor, following Vida and the other women of the village with her worried eyes. Everybody knew Mr. Spooner was an affliction and a trial.
But she couldn’t imagine Mr. Spooner would have such lovely things to say as were in the letters, anyway; “Hallo, hallo” was all he could manage, she thought, his hand on your bottom, as if his hand suddenly recognized you. And you just had to move away then quickly, Vida knew, as though it hadn’t happened. You’d fetch whatever it was you’d come for and hurry out, wishing there were another grocery. Vida thought that her mother would be horrified, seeing him in their old grocery with his terrible socks and groping hands.
Glancing surreptitiously at Jeremy beside her as they left Dr. Faber’s and walked down the path to her car, she thought he would have something more to say than “Hallo, hallo,” anyway.
Something more like poetry, she supposed. It was something about him, she thought, the way he—well, the way he looked, she decided. He looked like a man who might write poetry.
“I’LL DRIVE, SHALL I?” she’d asked when they got to the car.
She’d expected to take him back to Southend House, but as they drove off, he said, “You can just drop me in the village, if you don’t mind. I don’t think I’ll do any more today.”
“No, of course not,” she said quickly. “You shouldn’t do another thing.”
“It’s round by the dairy,” he said. “One of the bungalows back there.”
Vida drove down the muddy lane toward the dairy. It was always muddy in the lane, with the cows going up and down for milking twice a day. Yet it was overgrown with hawthorn, as well, so the scents of sweet flowers and rank milk and lime warred in the air. Jeremy rolled down the window and stuck his head out. Vida glanced to her right. The houses were a poor, sad lot, one-story bungalows with brown tile roofs and a lot of mud for gardens, except where someone had a tiny plot, stitched over now with thick lines of green and a tangle of tomato plants. The bungalows were dreary, with sheets up at the windows for curtains and washing on the lines.
“Here,” he said suddenly, and she was so surprised by the sound of his voice that she stepped on the brake too hard, jolting them in their seats. Jeremy caught himself with his good hand. “Steady!”
She dropped her chin, a fierce blush rising into her cheeks again. She felt so stupid around him!
The house they had stopped before was dark and quiet. It looked as if no one lived there. Certainly no one was at home, she thought.
Jeremy put one leg out, as though he might be stiff. But then he seemed to think of something and turned back. And Vida saw his eyes close in on her own, felt his mouth come up against her cheek, felt the brush of his unshaven chin rough against her face.
“You’re a love,” he said. “Thanks for everything.”
And then he was gone.
“YOU KNOW,” MR. Lamb says at last, wiping his lips and pushing back from the table. “He’s really astonishing, isn’t he?”
He leans toward Vida and lowers his voice as if to prevent Manford from hearing, though he’s sitting right there between them at the kitchen table. “You’ve seen that, I’m sure, what he does with his hands? The shadows?”
Vida looks up from her plate, the tired-looking purple beef and the shrunken potatoes. Dinner had sat too long in the oven.
“Pardon?” she says. And then, as if she were coming to after having been asleep, she manages, “Oh, yes. His shadow play?” She is surprised that there’d been an occasion for Manford to demonstrate this talent to Mr. Lamb while she’d been at Dr. Faber’s. What could have caused it? She lifts her fork, hesitating a moment. “Did he do the birds?” She can’t help feeling oddly disoriented—one moment she’s with Jeremy, she thinks, and there’s all that blood and Dr. Faber’s needle, and the next she’s here, with Mr. Lamb, who is still sawing away at his meat with vigor.
“Oh, yes,” Mr. Lamb says, with the faintly superior air of an expert impatient with a novice. “Yes, he did the birds. And a lot of others as well!”
Vida puts down her fork and knife. Manford must like him, to have shown Mr. Lamb his shadows. She sees Mr. Lamb glance over at her plate and notice that she’s left most of her roast. He looks away, and she feels guilty that she hasn’t more of an appetite. It was lovely of him to have taken over with the dinner. She feels slightly ashamed that she doesn’t seem able to manage a greater display of gratitude. And now he won’t even look at her, she sees with regret, but busies himself with his meat.
When she stands to take her plate to the sink, Mr. Lamb leaps up, overturning a glass of water. “Please!” he cries. “Please! Let me do the washing up.”
They collide in the front of the sink, both of them reaching for a cloth to mop up the spilled water, and for a moment, when she feels his shoulder against her own, Vida wants suddenly to wrap her arms around him, the two of them somehow shoring each other up the way two trees that have collapsed together will each prevent the other from falling to the ground. He’s so desperately awkward. She feels she’d do anything to soothe him, to make him happy. She only wants to make him happy now!
“Thank you,” she says, as earnestly as she can, so that he will believe her gratitude. “Thank you, Mr. Lamb. That would be lovely.” She finds she is breathing hard; with an air of desperation she hands him a tea towel. “I’m afraid I asked you to supper and then I—”
He raises his hand to halt her. His confidence seems restored and his eyes have a grateful look.
“Not a bit of it,” he says warningly. “None of that, now. I’m an expert washer-upper.”
Manford has gone to stand by the door. Vida notices him there, waiting expectantly, and smiles. “It’s getting on late,” she says to him, handing Mr. Lamb a plate from the table and then going over to take Manford’s napkin from under his chin. “You don’t want to walk tonight, do you?” But Manford turns around and opens the door, then glances back at Vida.
“He wants to take a walk?”
Vida turns around again; she had forgotten Mr. Lamb for a moment.
“I like to walk as well,” Mr. Lamb offers, and he looks amazed, as if it were such a coincidence. “I walk all the time.”
“We go through the village sometimes in the evening,” Vida says, smiling at him. “Manford likes that. He likes looking in the windows, I’m afraid,” she adds, lowering her voice in mock seriousness, but Mr. Lamb laughs rather too loudly, and she suspects for a moment she has caught him at something.
“It’s funny,” he says after a moment, staring at her. “I’ve never seen you walking in the evenings.”
And then—she doesn’t know what prompts her to say such a thing—she tells him, “Well, that’s because we’re invisible, Manford and I.”
She expects him to laugh, but his face has grown quiet, and she sees that he understands the truth of this, that people in a bright room at night can’t see out the windows. In fact, what you see if you look out is only your own face staring back at you. It’s not a fiction, not a fancy, she realizes. They are invisible, she and Manford, passing along the street in the darkness. No one ever sees them. It’s as if they weren’t there.
“Come on, Mr. Lamb,” she says then, and reaches for his hand across the long space of the air between them. “Come along with us. Perhaps you’ll be invisible, too.”
THE IDEA STAYS with her, that they can’t be seen.
Manford leads the way, walking fast, his arms riding the air. Vida sees Mr. Lamb glance at her, smile, raise his own arms in a pantomime of Manford, bouncing high on his feet. He dips around her like a long-legged insect, like that silly woodcock he’d told her about in church that time. She laughs.
She brushes the hair from her eyes as they descend to the dark tunnel of the lane, its soft air, the pretty lace of the shadows like a veil drawn behind them, obscuring them from the world. Glancing from side to side as they walk, she feels as though she has eyes like a bat, rays of light beaming, streaming into the dusk. Beneath her shoes, she feels the turf and cobble of the lane. A fine sweat rises on her upper lip. She loosens her collar; moisture prickles her temples.
They pass from the lane onto the Romsey Road, the high hedgerows and open fields of its passage through the countryside giving way to the stretch of buildings close upon its curbs, the butcher’s and the blacksmith’s, Niven’s Bakery behind its high courtyard walls, the post office and Dr. Faber’s brick house with its annexed office. They pass small houses with curtains drawn at the windows, St. Alphage with its ancient cemetery and gardens, the stones there bathed in green moss. They pass the playing field and Prince’s Mead with its wide steps, the basin garden beside it with its sloping, slumbering border of high yews, its postage stamp of grass. They pass before Vida’s parents’ old grocery, now managed by the Spooners. Vida recalls the dark rooms tilting away within it, the low ceilings and freezers with their crusts of bitter frost, the smooth floorboards worn in gentle waves. Strange, breathless Nigel Spooner, when he is not pursuing ladies down the aisles, has smartened things up a bit, cleared the window of its dusty collection of tins and boxes with faded labels. His wife has built clever tiers of cans there instead, their labels turned carefully to the street. She’s even hung a bit of curtain up high, white and lacy. Vida notices a new sign, propped in the window: SPOONER’S CONVENIENCE.
Mr. Lamb walks quietly at her side. How strange it is to be walking with someone she can talk with, who can answer her back, and yet to whom she suddenly has nothing to say. She wonders about him—she’s never known him to be sociable, exactly. He takes her parcels and her letters at the post office, usually without remark except to say something about the weather perhaps, or some bit of news from the village. He’s been very kind and helpful about stamps for Manford over the years, though appearing a bit surprised that he’d be interested in such things. He has always seemed to her to be lost in thought. She often feels, as the bell above her head rings when she opens the door to the post office, that she has interrupted him. And yet, he’s rather sweet, she realizes. He’s been rather sweet.
Now having him beside her, trudging along, she feels she ought to say something.
“I really must thank you, Mr. Lamb—”
“Norris,” he says quickly. “Please.”
“Norris—” Vida pauses. “Well, Norris, I do want to thank you—for watching Manford while I went with Jeremy.” She takes a little breath and goes on. “He’s going to be quite all right, Dr. Faber said. A nasty cut, but clean. There was quite a lot of blood, though. He took it very well, I thought. He was very brave . . .” She trails off, disappointed. It seems to her that Mr. Lamb hasn’t heard her, for he makes no reply.
After a moment, though, he asks abruptly, “Does he always walk that way?”
Manford’s dark shape wavers ahead of them. From time to time he raises his arms, billows them on air.
“Ever since he was little,” Vida says, trying to adjust to this turn in the conversation. “I used to think it was for balance. He’s clumsy, you know. Such children often are. It has to do with the brain damage. But now I think it’s to—” She pauses, searching for the right words. “To feel the air. I think he feels it in a way we don’t. I think he feels it around him, on his skin.”
“Yes,” Norris says quietly.
Vida’s eyes follow Manford, his hands plying the invisible undulations of air. “It’s as though something’s beside him, walks beside him,” she continues, and she realizes, as she speaks, that this really is what she believes—that in his mind Manford keeps company with, oh, not spirits of the air, but the air itself, its scaffolding and frescoes of light and shadow and moisture. He keeps company, she thinks, with the unseen.
As they near the end of the village, where the oak trees overshadow the road, Vida feels the shift into darkness, something cold and dead upon her arms. She shivers. The chill recalls for her the ominous hours of Manford’s sleepwalking. And then she feels strangely angry at the presumption of that dark span of time—how frightened she becomes at night. She does not like having to be afraid. Her mind makes a little leap; that someone could enter her bedroom, for instance, could be always on the periphery of her life, unseen and yet all-seeing—this is equally horrifying, she thinks. A fierce righteousness grows in her. Suddenly she wants to tell someone that there is a secret in her life, a person who comes and goes without being seen. She wants to be rid of the secret of it. What is wrong with this man, whoever he is? she thinks now—Mr. Niven or Mr. Perry or Mr. Spooner or Jeremy—what is wrong with him that he can’t simply come to her, declare his love? There must be something wrong with him.
And now the whole weight of her day and the night before crashes down around her—finding Manford in the greenhouse, Jeremy’s injury, worrying about Mr. Lamb. She is tired of this, so tired. She wants to be done with the weight of it. She wants whoever it is to show himself.
“Mr. Lamb,” she says suddenly. “I haven’t been hospitable. I haven’t been friendly to you. I’m sorry for that.” She stops, sets her mouth.
Why does she feel so angry at him? He’s only been nice; he’s lonely himself. Still, she is angry, she finds, especially at him just now, because he knows nothing about her, cannot be complicitous with her, cannot know all that has befallen her. She has had no one to talk to, she thinks. She has to tell someone.
“It’s just that I’ve been—I’m being stalked, you see.” She stops abruptly and turns to face Mr. Lamb. “I’m afraid that sounds melodramatic. But it’s quite true.” She looks aggressively at him, as if he has challenged her. “You wouldn’t think such a thing could happen here in Hursley,” she goes on in a high tone, and suddenly it really does seem too bad then, too cruel!
She keeps her eyes on Mr. Lamb’s face. She wants him to say something, but he looks absolutely stricken, as though he’s swallowed poison. She glances down the road impatiently and sighs. Manford is far ahead of them, almost disappearing into the darkness.
“We’ll lose him,” she says, and begins walking again, more swiftly.
“Miss Stephen. Vida,” Mr. Lamb says, hurrying up behind her. “I cannot understand—I’m afraid I—”
“Oh, you mustn’t bother yourself, Mr. Lamb,” she says then, airily at first, and then her foolish anger abates and she is embarrassed. Oh, he isn’t to blame. And what did it all matter, anyway? “It’s just—” She sighs. “It’s only that—you see, someone’s been writing me letters. And leaving me things. On my bed.” She stops walking as if the ability has suddenly left her.
“On your bed—” his voice echoes faintly.
“Yes! Actually,” she goes on, “it was beautiful, really—a lovely robe and nightgown. I never thought I’d have anything so fine. But I don’t feel right taking them, you see. Keeping them or wearing them or even enjoying them.” She stares off vaguely into the dark leaves of the trees around them. “I know it seems impossible to imagine, Mr. Lamb, but apparently I’ve got an admirer. Only, he’s a very strange sort. You see, I haven’t any idea who it is. And now I’m afraid that—well, there must be something wrong with him, that he can’t declare himself.”
Turning back to Mr. Lamb, she sees that he looks utterly undone. No doubt she has shocked him with such a confession. She sighs again. All the happiness of the mystery has drained away from her. It wasn’t going to be wonderful. It wasn’t anything at all. And to make it worse, she’s been wretched company for Mr. Lamb. “Now, I’ve told you my secret,” she says, and takes a deep breath, meaning to try to cheer him up. “And I’ve upset you. I didn’t mean to do that. I only wanted to explain why I’ve been so—why I’m so—distracted.” She pauses. “Actually, I know who it is, anyhow. Or, at least, I think I do. I—”
“You do?” He seems startled.
“Yes.” She looks ahead into the darkness for Manford. He has stopped by a tree, has placed his hands on the bark and leans there as if he and the tree had engaged in a struggle but were resting now, forgiven, in each other’s arms. She sighs.
“I’m afraid,” she says, taking a deep breath, “that it’s Mr. Niven—”
“Oh! Oh, I don’t think so!” Mr. Lamb speaks quickly. “I think that’s completely the wrong conclusion.”
She turns to him, surprised.
“No, no indeed,” he goes on, rather wildly. “Niven’s not—not imaginative enough.”
“Well, that’s what I thought, at first,” Vida says, surprised again. She feels a little better now, just talking about it. And Mr. Lamb is taking it so very seriously, not laughing at her at all. Some of the deliciousness of it, the sweetness of it, creeps back. “I thought so, too,” she goes on, “but there couldn’t be any other explanation for it. You see, the robe came just last night, while I was at the book circle. And he was there minding Manford for me. There wasn’t anyone else there.”
Mr. Lamb seems to be searching rapidly over his thoughts. She feels pleased, grateful for his interest. “But couldn’t—” he says, “couldn’t someone have eluded him? I mean, come into the house without his knowing? Someone very—clever?” He stops her, his hand on her arm. “And it must be someone—you say he’s writing letters?”
“Yes.” Vida looks up at him. “They’re quite—they’re wonderful, really. Poetic.”
“But then—he couldn’t mean any harm? If he writes letters? Poetry,” he adds significantly.
She sees that he is trying to comfort her. And she does want to be comforted.
“No one who writes letters is—well, there couldn’t be anything so wrong with him. He must just be shy. And very sincere, I should think. To write letters.” Mr. Lamb stops. “Are they—all right? He hasn’t done anything”—he lowers his voice—“crude?”
“Oh, no!” she says quickly, embarrassed. “It’s all been—no, I—oh, Mr. Lamb, do you think someone could really be in love? With me?” She is almost whispering. “Do you believe that, Mr. Lamb?”
“Oh, yes. Yes,” he says. “I do believe that, Miss Stephen. I do absolutely. He must be—terribly in love. Not to want to show himself. He thinks he isn’t worthy. Worthy of you. I think he just wants to make you happy.”
Vida glances at him, shy. “I see you understand him, man to man,” she says thoughtfully. Perhaps, being a man himself, Mr. Lamb understands this better than she herself could hope to. There’s no need for her to feel so—violated. She just has to be patient, perhaps, and then—“It’s just that women,” she bursts out, “—we always have to wait for something to happen to us.”
Mr. Lamb looks up into the dark canopy of leaves overhead. His high forehead makes him seem so innocent, she thinks, and so vulnerable. He looks down after a minute, studying his shoes. “I think you are perfectly free, Miss Stephen,” he says urgently. “You must feel that you can do anything you like. You will be perfectly safe.”
“Yes,” she says faintly, though not exactly taking his meaning. “I will.”
She looks down the road behind them, the way they have come. The moon has vanished entirely, buried behind cloud, a marble rolled into the cup of a hand and concealed.
When they reach Manford, he is waiting impatiently for them, shaggy-headed, rocking from side to side.
“He wants to get on,” she says to Mr. Lamb. “He hates to wait.” She turns around. “We should be starting back anyway.”
So she takes a step to go back, a neat step over the curb, and then she hears Mr. Lamb stumble behind her—rather, she just feels him brushing past her shoulder, then hears the sound of his voice, and when she spins around, he is on his knees in a puddle.
“Oh, God,” she hears him say. “My God, how bloody stupid.”
Vida claps her hand over her mouth but cannot contain the explosion of laughter that leaves her then. She tries to compose herself; she is horrified to find herself so inappropriately doubled over at the sight of Mr. Lamb in the puddle. She reaches down to help him up. “I’m so sorry!” she says through her laughter. “What happened? Are you all right?”
Mr. Lamb has his hands over his face. “Only my bloody nose,” he says. She is relieved to hear that he is not crying. He is only sitting up now in the puddle, laughing. “Just my bloody nose,” he repeats. “My stupid, ugly nose.”
“Oh, do get up,” Vida manages at last through tears of laughter, reaching for him again.
But Mr. Lamb laughs even harder. “I’m all wet!” he says, as if it were the greatest joke in the world. “I’m completely sopped!”
Vida makes a final effort to quiet herself, taking deep breaths. “Oh, you’re a fright,” she says as she helps him to stand and hands him a tissue from her coat pocket. “I am sorry—for laughing, Mr. Lamb. Completely uncalled for, I know—”
“No, no, it’s all right. I—” He takes the tissue she hands him, applies it to his nose, which is bleeding slightly. He is covered with mud. He stands before her, brushing at himself hopelessly. She feels her heart expand with pity, expand to such a degree that for a moment she thinks she will lift from the earth itself. He looks into her eyes. She smiles back at him.
“I—” He puts out a hand toward her. “I’m a fool,” he whispers.
But Vida catches him hard by both arms, shakes him a little, and then, embarrassed at having taken such a liberty, lets him go. But she is still smiling. “Mr. Lamb,” she says. “I haven’t laughed that hard in years.”
VIDA AND MANFORD see him to his house. At the door he turns and gives her a little wave, holding his coat open in the unfortunate posture of a man exposing himself, Vida notices, but she understands that his gesture is meant to remind her of how wet he is, of how funny it all was, of how she laughed. “Good night!” she calls.
She takes Manford by the arm. “Let’s hurry,” she says, for now it seems she must be away from him, cannot bear to look at him so cheerful and filthy and hopeful. “Let’s run home.”
They run together all the way to Fergus’s before Vida has to stop and catch her breath. Manford won’t stop, though. “Up the lane, Manford,” she calls to him as he pushes past her. “Time to go home.” She sees him disappear round the corner to the lane.
And who had seen them, after all, she thinks. Who had seen Vida Stephen and Manford Perry, running hand in hand down the streets of Hursley in the night? No one. No one had seen Mr. Lamb trip and fall in the street. No one had seen the look on his face. No one had seen anything at all.
LATER THAT NIGHT, Vida stands at the door to Manford’s room, listening to the steady sound of his breathing. Then, from down the hall, she fetches a chair and wedges it under the knob. It wouldn’t exactly prevent him from getting out if he started to sleepwalk again, but it might dissuade him. Perhaps he would, rattling the knob and finding the door stuck, just turn round and get back into bed. Vida closes her eyes and tries to imagine Manford getting back into bed, getting safely back into bed. At least, she thinks, she’ll hear the chair fall and can stop him before he gets to the stairs. She worries so about the stairs.
She finishes clearing up in the kitchen and then goes to the library to fetch her book. The moon bobs at the window, full and bright, and she is drawn to the French doors to look out upon the sight. It still seems unfathomable to her that American astronauts have now set their feet on the moon, though she is struck by how quickly something that was once considered impossible can pass over into the realm of the accomplished.
She steps out onto the terrace to walk behind the row of Mercuries, a shadow behind the solid figures. Staring out over the dark velvet of the lawns, she remembers dancing on those same lawns as a girl in Miss Ferry’s pageants, Miss Ferry with her wobbling jowls and deeply hooded eyes and velvet waistcoat, the silver serpent with the ruby eye coiled around her upper arm. She remembers as if it were yesterday Miss Ferry clapping loudly in measure, tra-la tra-la tra-la, neatly smacking the girls’ backsides as they flowed past her in their circling skirts out from between the wings of boxwood. Leaping and curtsying over the grass, bangles on her ankles, a scarf in her hair, Vida had felt then that she might have been anybody, anybody else, a wild girl with Gypsy blood, capable of a kind of ecstasy ordinary life seemed to dampen like a blanket thrown over a fire.
A small breeze flutters the leaves of the trees below her, moving like the surface of a lake. Vida wraps her arms around herself and shivers slightly. The Prince’s Mead dance performances had always been preceded, for her, by such excitement that she was nearly sick from it, as though another body, another person, were struggling up from within her, that girl’s exotic spirit rising up within her like a body from a grave, subduing her own nature by means of flashing looks and snapping castanets. She had loved those ritualized performances, yet afterward she had felt such grief, such disappointment that it was over, that she would not feel so inhabited again for another year.
Finished with their dancing, the girls would come back out on the lawn at Southend, receive their parents’ embraces, take a glass of orangeade, and stand demurely and quietly amid the adults’ chatter, smiling politely. And yet Vida would feel exhausted, ashamed, that other self within her scornful and proud, gradually parting from her as if in disgust, as if Vida herself had failed to seize some opportunity, had shown herself a traitor. She stands now motionless between two Mercuries, the dark garden before her full of the fading echoes of her past.
Where are all those other girls? she wonders. What has happened to them? Would their lives, held side by side, resemble her own in any way?
Once, she believed that she was only waiting for something to happen to her. And yet now it seems that something has begun around her. The thing she has been waiting for—though she cannot say what it is—has started making itself felt in the very air around her. She does not know how to behave, she realizes, nor what to expect.
She does not even know anymore what to hope for.