“I’VE BROUGHT YOU,” he says abruptly when she opens the door, “your mail.”
She cannot understand any more of what he is saying at first, for he speaks so low and so quickly.
“This is not how I imagined it,” he is saying frantically, standing at the door under the light. “Coming to this. I had thought better of myself, you see.”
And all she can think of, looking out at him, is the time, all the time that’s passed—the years they’ve known each other.
But his face is so—so sorrowful! This is not what she expects. She had thought, when she opened the door to find him standing there at this peculiar hour, that it was as if he had read her mind. Then—why does he look so miserable? She tries to smile at him.
“Mr. Lamb,” she begins, holding the rose he has given her.
“I know it’s horrible of me. I know it’s late. I’m sorry about that,” he says. “But I had to see you. Please.”
She leads him to the sitting room off the kitchen.
“Please sit down,” he says, and she finds a chair. But she can hardly bear it, the look on his face. He hangs his head.
This is all about the gardener, she thinks wildly. It’s all about Jeremy. He thinks I’m in love with Jeremy! “Mr. Lamb!” she begins desperately. “Mr. Lamb!”
But he sighs so deeply she cannot go on; she feels suddenly mortified, as though she does not understand anything at all.
He presses his hands to his eyes. “I’ve done a terrible thing,” he says. “I’ve broken a sacred trust.”
A deep silence falls between them. Vida feels as though hands were closing around her throat, squeezing the breath from her. It is as she suspected; it has been a joke, a prank. An awful, awful prank. She starts to stand up unsteadily; the room tilts. Her eyes fill with tears.
And then he puts an aerogramme on the table. “You mustn’t think I’ve a habit of doing this,” he says in a dull voice. “This is the first time. And the last, I assure you. I shan’t have another opportunity.” He pushes the paper toward her and looks away.
She looks at it, dazed.
“It’s for you,” he says fiercely then. “I’ve read your mail.”
Read her mail? She does not understand, but he waves a hand at her. “Read it,” he says. Bewildered, she takes the letter over to her desk and sits down. And then, after just a few lines, she starts to laugh.
But when she hears the legs of his chair scrape against the floor, she turns around. “Oh, no, Mr. Lamb!” she cries. “No! I wasn’t laughing at you.”
And isn’t he, she thinks now, seeing him standing there, so fierce and so righteous and so brave, everything in the world worth loving? Isn’t he the most wonderful man you ever knew? There’s not another one like him, not in the whole world.
She crosses the room to stand near him, to stand facing him. She sees his face fall with emotion.
“I had my reasons,” he says. “They were very good reasons. The best. I want you to know that.”
“But I already do!” she says. “Yes,” she says. “Yes, I do.”
And she steps up close to him then, so close she can feel his heart beating against her own, just like that day at St. Alphage when he asked her to dinner.
He is warm, and she can feel the heat coming from him. It is what she thought she would feel in Corfu, everything so strange and unfamiliar yet exactly as she’d pictured it in her mind’s eye. Exactly as she’d imagined it, the horizon perfectly and gloriously endless, and yet everything still yet to happen.
“Mr. Lamb,” she says, and bends her forehead to his lips. “Mr. Lamb.”
THE NEXT SATURDAY afternoon, the Saturday of the talent show, Vida ushers Manford up to his bedroom, catches him by the shoulder, and steadies him in front of her. “Manford, do stand still.” She fetches him a clean shirt from the wardrobe, helps him into it. She fits a tie round his neck, adjusts the lengths before her, winds a quick knot, and pushes it up neatly into his collar. She takes a pace back from him.
“There,” she says in satisfaction. “You look very handsome indeed. You’ll cut a very impressive figure.” She turns to the bed, smooths the coverlet. Stepping to the window, she pulls aside the curtain, looks out into the garden. Jeremy is there, kneeling in one of the far beds under the sun’s last rays. She sniffs. Making up for lost time, she thinks.
She turns back to Manford, who stands with his big hands upon his tie, gazing down at it where it flows over his shirt.
“Don’t be fussing with your tie now, or I’ll have to do it again,” she says, taking his hands in hers and holding them tightly. She looks into his eyes.
“Come on,” she says, letting his hands drop at last. “I’ll make us tea while we wait for Mr. Lamb.”
In the kitchen she lights the burner under the kettle, then slices an apple for Manford and sets it on a plate before him. “Cheese and a biscuit, too?” she asks. “You’ll want something in your stomach against the excitement.”
Manford lifts a slice of apple gingerly, glances up at her as he takes a tiny, delicate bite.
“Oh, well done, Manford. That was lovely,” she says warmly. “Your manners are really lovely now. Fit for the queen—” But quite suddenly she cannot continue. She tries to recover herself, comes and kneels beside him. “You’ll remember—” she begins urgently. Manford, munching stolidly, looks at her. She closes her eyes. Of course you will, she thinks. I mustn’t be silly.
The bell rings and Vida jumps. “Oh, there’s Mr. Lamb!” she cries, winding her hands. “He’s early! But he’ll have tea with us, perhaps. You don’t need to go just yet.”
Norris is standing on the stoop in his suit, a plug of violets in his lapel, his hair combed back from his forehead. He looks elegant, and Vida is touched at how handsome he is.
Norris holds in his hand a bottle of champagne, which he thrusts toward her now. “For cracking against the rail,” he says.
She takes the bottle from him, holds it close to her breast, her eyes as wide as if she’d slept for days and were now drinking in the light.
He clears his throat. “Well? All ready, is he?”
“Yes, but I thought—” She hesitates. Oh, it is too soon! “Come in and have a cup of tea first, will you? You don’t need to go just yet, do you?”
Norris extracts his watch, inspects it with a show of purposefulness. “The vicar wants all the performers there early, for a run-through,” he says. “But we’ve time, I think.”
She leads him back through the house, into the kitchen. Manford looks up and smiles at Norris, who places a hand on his shoulder and gives it a squeeze. “He’s not nervous, is he?” he asks Vida.
“I don’t think so,” she says. “I don’t know as he understands.”
She puts the tea on the table, draws out a chair, and sits down. “Manford,” she says, looking at him and leaning forward. “You know what tonight is, don’t you? You’re to go with Mr. Lamb to the church for the talent show. You’ll do your shadows there? I’ll follow behind and watch from the audience? And then—”
Manford takes up another slice of cheese. Vida looks over at Mr. Lamb. He makes a motion with his hand as if to say, That’s enough for now.
She offers Norris a cup of tea.
“Well,” he says after a moment, clearing his throat. “Here we are.”
“Yes.” She looks down into her cup.
“All set then, are you?”
She nods.
“Remembered everything?”
She nods again, starts to say something, but he interrupts her.
“I’d mind the water, if I were you,” he says, looking away from her. “You can’t be too careful about foreign water.”
“No.”
“I’ve got us two chops, for after the show,” he says brightly then. “He likes a good chop?”
“Oh, yes. Yes. That was kind.”
She looks up to meet his eyes. She does not want to go now; she does not want to be parted from him, from either of them.
“It’s only a look-see,” she hears him say then, gently. “Just to have a look. But you must at least see it, Vida. You can’t just turn away from an opportunity like that. You’ve got to—”
“Yes, I know,” she says, cutting him off. She does know. She knows he’s right—of course, it’s what she always thought she wanted. It will be a holiday! But now—well, when Mr. Lamb proposed it that night a week ago, she’d been so touched, almost speechless. And all week he’d been making the arrangements for her, cabling Mr. Perry and explaining it all for her, arranging about the boat, writing Laurence, as if he were an expert traveler! As if he couldn’t wait for her to be gone!
Now here it is, the eve of her departure. She will take the train to London this very night! And she doesn’t feel sure of anything now. “You’re sure you’ll be—” she begins.
“Absolutely. In any eventuality. I’ve said so, haven’t I?”
“Yes. But I can’t—”
She sees him bite his lip.
His voice cracks. “Should be lovely, this time of year.”
She bows her head over her cup.
THOUGH HE HAS not admitted it to himself, Norris fears this may be the last time he sees her. He’d told her that night, when it came to him, how she must go, how she could at least just go and have a holiday. You’ve never had a holiday, Vida, he’d said. You really must go and stay awhile with him.
And he understands how he’s needed here, now, and what he needs, as well. He understands that he can look after Manford as well as anyone besides Vida.
You must go, he’d told her. You absolutely must. But he had not appreciated his own vehemence, not until later, when he understood that if she came back, then it would be for certain. Then she would have no doubts.
There’s not a minute to spare, he’d told her, and it had felt that urgent. After all this time being so indecisive, he found he could push her away with more force than he’d ever been capable of using to draw her near.
But he had reached out and taken her hands.
It will be everything you’ve always dreamed of, he’d said. And he had shut his eyes and known it to be true, that he could make her this gift, this most important gift. Not just of a holiday, a trip to Corfu. But this chance to choose for herself her own destiny.
But perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps she would never come back. After all, what does he know about the world? It’s all in small pictures, what he knows—his little stamps. He could look at them for hours, but they aren’t the same as the real thing.
He could look at her for hours, too. He has so many pictures of her in his head.
SHE WETS HER fingers and smooths Manford’s hair, but he twitches away from her.
How like a boy, she thinks as he slips from her hands.
“Never mind,” says Mr. Lamb hurriedly, drawing Manford away.
She sees that he wants to be gone. “I’ve a comb with me,” he says. “We’ll touch him up right before.”
She waits, puts her hand to her neck, an odd pain there. “Norris—” she says. “Norris—”
But he turns to her then, puts a finger to his lips. “Wish us luck,” he whispers.
And then they are gone.
“Good luck!” she cries after them. “Manford! Be watching for me, Manford!”
She sees them pass through the gate. They go down the lane together, Manford’s heavy frame cumbersome beside Mr. Lamb’s narrow one, the two side by side in their unfamiliar suits. At the bench, she sees Manford reach for Mr. Lamb’s arm, sees Mr. Lamb take Manford’s hand and tuck it under his elbow.
The light in the lane is so beautiful, she thinks, watching how the shadows of the leaves ripple over the two men, the light so gentle and fine. Disappearing into it would be the easiest thing in the world, the sweetest passage, the gentlest vanishing.
And she thinks of the church then, the parish gathered there, the little children leaning over their mothers’ laps, the men with their hair dampened, their hands clean, the nails white and sharp from trimming, all their features, family to family, bearing traces of the familiar. There will be flowers, she knows, gathered from every garden. The vicar will be smiling, rubbing his hands, his bald head shining. Lamartine Ramsey, breathless, will have finished her solo, the people grown restless and irritable before the piercing reach of her voice, the ladies of the village crocheting madly beneath the window of the virgins. And Norris and Manford will step forward then, Norris adjusting the light so that Manford’s shadow looms up suddenly, huge and dark, against the wall behind the altar, the congregants drawing a collective breath as he pauses there, shifting, his dark shape hunched, unresolved. He will turn to Norris then, she knows, for reassurance. And Norris will steer him, will show him what is to be done.
One by one the shapes will rise up against the wall, the children’s mouths opened to tiny Os in delight at the crouching cat, the tattered birds, the arching mongoose, the begging dog. From Manford’s hands the fish will swim, the birds soar forth in pairs, the elephant incline his delicate trunk, the giraffe step lightly forward. A low murmur will pass through the people as they raise their eyes, smile, point, motioning to their children to look, look and see! So clever! Who’d have thought it? Isn’t it grand!
It will be something to remember always, the night Manford Perry made his shadow shapes in church, all the creatures of the world in stately procession through the vaulted nave of St. Alphage, the children’s eyes wide in wonder, Manford become a benevolent Pied Piper, beloved and adored.
It is what she has always wanted for him.
SHE GOES UPSTAIRS then and fetches her cases and Manford’s valise. He will stay at Mr. Lamb’s; she’s already sent over most of his things.
It had been all Mr. Lamb’s idea, to have Manford stay with him. “I have in mind to teach him the organ,” he’d said. “I think he might just catch on to it.”
Stopping round for Manford’s belongings the day before, he’d shown her a book he’d been reading, The Language of the Idiot Savant. He’d been very excited. “I think he may be one of these,” he’d said to her, waving the book at her, flipping the pages. “We shall do some experiments, with mathematics and so forth.”
He had sat down in the sitting room, his finger on one of the pages, reading bits aloud to her. After a while, she had ceased to hear him, exactly. She had sat very quietly, her hands in her lap, gazing at him, the bright, hot light from the window falling upon his head. Already, it seemed to her, her place in the world was widening, growing brighter and brighter.
She had come to only when his voice had stopped. She’d found him again, her inward gaze sweeping away from the blue, humpbacked promontories of the Albanian coast across the water, the greenish sheen of the shags darting a meter above the sea.
He’d been looking at her.
She’d met his eyes. “‘The sun may rise and fall, but nothing shall ever eclipse your beauty,’” she’d said abruptly.
He’d blushed, looked down at his feet. “It’s true.”
“I never guessed you, you know,” she said. “Not till the end.”
“I know.”
“It’s that you were right there, all the while,” she said. “I thought it was someone—I couldn’t see.”
“You don’t have to explain,” he said. “You don’t have to promise.”
“I know. You’ve said so. But I will—”
“No, don’t.” His face had been pleading. “I’d rather you didn’t. I’d rather I could just—hope.”
And she’d had to accept this. She loved him for that, especially for that. That he was willing. She felt the absolute freedom of her heart to choose. And she would be changed, she knew, but not as much as she might once have expected.
She had stood, walked to him where he sat in her sitting room, his head bowed. She had dropped to her knees, placed her forehead against his thigh. After a moment he had lifted his hand, rested his palm against her cheek.
“I shall always know where to find you,” she’d said, not looking up. “Beacon in the dark.”
And he had smiled.
“READY, MANFORD?”
Norris touches his shoulder, waits until Manford looks up and meets his eyes, the immense kindness there.
Norris smiles. “Now. The animals,” he says, and raises his hands, sees the strange long shape of his own fingers pour over the stones, his reach miraculously long, as if he could caress each head in every pew, graze each figure in each stained-glass window, Adam with his spade for cultivation, Melchizedek with his offering of bread and wine, Joseph bearing a sheaf of corn, Elijah surrounded by the ravens, David with his crown and scepter, Ezra poised with quill and book, King Solomon with the model of the temple offered on his outstretched palm, doubting Thomas recoiling from the wound of Christ.
How full the world, Norris thinks, touching Manford’s hands, making them rise. How old the stories. How miraculous the ending.
And then he climbs the narrow stairs to the organ, breathes in deep, and begins to play.