4

Katherine realized one morning that half her holiday had gone. This surprised her, for so far her visit had been unremarkable, as if the three of them had been wandering in a green maze, getting no nearer the centre. How had it passed? Most of the mornings they spent at the house, setting the afternoons aside for excursions; these were slow and leisurely bicycle rides around the many south Oxfordshire villages, to Nuneham Courtenay, to Dorchester to see the church and its windows, and round a dozen smaller places, Toot Baldon, Marsh Baldon, Berwick Salome, Ewelme, Benson—names Katherine never remembered, that remained in her memory as a composite picture of cottages built of Cotswold stone, church porches, oaks and beeches, and the river, with its locks and bridges, always close at hand or just out of sight among the trees. It was August and the reapers were out, saying cautiously that it had been a middling year. Also they had made two longer excursions—one to London, where Katherine had been exhausted by sight-seeing and would have preferred to look at the shops; and one northwards to the Midlands, to see Banbury, Warwick, and Stratford-on-Avon. She reported all this to her friend, who had been very sceptical about her first letter. “I don’t understand cream cakes, but I eat them.”

Indeed, she had grown rather sceptical about it herself. The time passed so easily, with cycling and tennis, cutting sandwiches and eating them under trees, or simply lounging about, that she no longer felt aggrieved that Jane was always with them. It seemed simply that she had nothing else to do. Mrs. Fennel and a maid took care of the house, and the few duties that Jane undertook were more to keep her amused than anything else. Katherine wondered if all English girls did as little as she did. As she seemed to have no proper work to do, Katherine half-expected her to lavish unnecessary attention on something else—needlework, her clothes, perhaps even work in the village. She did not. Except for her cigarettes, she was like a discontented schoolgirl on perpetual holiday. No-one suggested that it was her place to do anything; in fact, the subject was never mentioned; and in consequence she had all the time in the world to tag along with them, sometimes silent, sometimes argumentative. The only times she paid willing attention were when Katherine said anything about her own home, how it differed from theirs, and so on.

Robin’s manner did not alter. They were friends, but he was the host, and she was the guest. He treated her as he might a boy of his own age whom he wanted to impress. Her assent was asked for everything they did: he never left her alone without making sure she had something nominally to amuse her. And this began to exasperate her. She was used to striking a quick response from people, to jumping from track to track of intimacy until either she tired of it or they reached a stable relationship. With him she simply could not get going. And this annoyed her, because he was attractive. If he had—well, if he had only laughed and paid her openly-insincere compliments, which was the lightest kind of flirtation she knew, that would have satisfied her. It would have shown he was human, at all events, and having exacted such tribute she would probably have forgotten the matter. But when he held her chair for her at meals, when he sketched out excursions on a map with the point of his pencil, when he met one of Jane’s sarcasms by pushing back his hair slowly and looking at her with faint surprise, when he was unexpectedly flippant, as if he had flicked a new halfpenny into the air, when he talked about Norman lead fonts or suddenly announced he was tired and would not leave the grass where they were lying—these and a dozen other things he did so composedly that he might only have been rehearsing them in his room. When she spoke to him he listened seriously to what she was saying; as it was often incoherent and usually trite she would rather he had looked at her while she was saying it. She became confused and embarrassed. It kept her attention on him too much: she brooded on what he might be thinking, or how she should meet a strangled avowal of love if he made it. A score of such fancies would occupy her mind, usually in the early afternoon or in the early evening, for the air in the river valley was so soft that there were times when it slackened all her muscles and she could only lie by an open window or out on the veranda, her mind suspended sensually above herself and the people round her.

But most of the time it seemed less important than at first. One morning a letter from home was waiting for her on the breakfast table, and this so delighted her that she paid little attention to what the others said. When they went into the lounge afterwards she realized Jane and Robin had been having a mild quarrel, something about Robin’s swimming before breakfast in the river, which Jane seemed to resent. Or perhaps there had been another reason that Katherine had missed. It had not fully died down when Jane listlessly opened a small blue portable gramophone and put on a record. She sometimes did this when she was alone, for Katherine had heard it; there was a small pile of records on one of the window-ledges. They were all about eight years old and Katherine wondered how they had come to be bought. All of them were ten-inch dance records.

Robin shifted irritably when the music started. “Can’t you put in a new needle?” he said with some self-control, as if the very fact of a gramophone fitted with a used needle annoyed him.

“There aren’t any,” said Jane. He grunted, and sat down. His hair had dried brittly on his head, and he wore a blazer and rubber shoes. Jane had on a grubby white dress.

The record was old-fashioned, and had a tinny quality only partly due to the needle. The tune it played had been popular for perhaps a week or two, or perhaps for even as long as a musical comedy had run in London, but was now quite forgotten. The orchestra that played it did so in what had been the fashion of the moment, with little empty tricks of syncopation that recalled the outmoded dresses of the girls that had danced to it. It was strange to think it had once sounded modern. Now it was like an awning propped in the sun, nearly white, that years ago had been striped bright red and yellow.

As if to prevent Jane playing any more, Robin got up when it finished.

“Let’s go on the river,” he said.

“Always the river,” said Jane. “First you swim in it, then you want to float on it. You’ll turn into a water-rat.” She turned over some other records wearily.

“Coming?” said Robin, more or less to Katherine.

Jane shut the lid of the gramophone.

“Why do we always do what you want?” she inquired.

Robin stared at her as if he thought her rather ill-bred.

“I’d hoped we were always doing what Katherine wanted.”

Katherine, who had taken out her letter again, looked up when her name was spoken.

“Are we?” said Jane. She looked out of the window moodily at the sunlight. A milkman was going round to the side of the house.

Robin turned almost elaborately to Katherine.

“Would you like to go on the river?” he said. “You haven’t been yet, you know.”

“I should,” said Katherine.

This was the first time she had had the chance to show him whom she was prepared to side with. She had only just realized that the quarrel might result in their being alone. It depended on whether Jane took up the challenge.

She did not. When they went down to the boathouse, she was with them, carrying cushions, a book, and dark sunglasses. Robin led the punt out of the boathouse by the painter, as if unstabling a patient beast, and Katherine settled in the seat facing the way they would go. He dexterously swung the boat round, and they started off against the slow current, with the water drifting past Katherine at shoulder-level, covered with dead may-flies, twigs, and fallen tree-blossoms: here and there water-beetles sped on the bright surface. The morning had an almost-mocking quality of peace. On either side of them stretched the fields, with sometimes a garden coming to the water’s edge where a house stood, and once they passed a row of riverside cottages, and a bare-armed woman came out with a pail. She set it down with a clang and stared at them.

Robin addressed his remarks to Katherine, who sat with her back to him. “I’m not splashing you, am I?”

“Not at all.” She glanced round. He had dropped his blazer and rolled up his sleeves. At every thrust he made at the riverbed, the satisfying impulse forward lilted inside her. Some drops did sprinkle her occasionally, but this was more pleasant than otherwise. “I’ve never been in a boat like this one before.”

“Haven’t you really? They’re great fun. Plenty of room, and you can’t upset them. Slowish, of course, but they’re not built for speed.”

“There’s no other boat you push along like that, is there?”

“I don’t think there is. A gondolier has an oar, I believe. There are people who can pole canoes. Jack can.”

“Who?”

Jane muttered something, and turned on her side.

“Jack Stormalong, a friend of ours. He’s coming next week. But it’s a mad thing to do, unless you’re wearing a bathing costume.”

It looked a very easy thing to do. After each stroke Robin threw the twelve-foot pole carelessly upwards before negligently slipping it back into the water. It whistled through his hands. He stood easily but quite still, not seeming to shift his stance in the slightest.

Katherine trailed a hand in the water which, to her surprise, was quite warm. There had been a mist in the early morning, but this had now disappeared, and the sun was climbing unhindered. The heat-wave during which she had arrived had broken up, but not disastrously; each day was now a mixture of sunlight and cloud, and the air remained humid. At present the landscape stretched luminous and detailed.

As they passed under a bridge, Jane, who had been lying with her eyes shut behind the sun-spectacles and her rough-skinned ankles close to Katherine’s right hand, stirred in the cold bar of shadow and looked up.

“Where are we going?”

Robin whisked the pole in and out of the water a few times before saying: “Just up the river.”

“What do you mean by just up the river?”

“What do you think I mean?”

“Well, I know you,” said Jane. “You’ll probably make us late for lunch.”

“I thought we might go up to the Rose for lunch,” said Robin, with an indifferent air. “It’s a good place.”

“Have you said we shall be out?”

“We can ring up once we get there.”

“I don’t know about that. It’ll be too late then. We shan’t get there till half-past twelve.”

“We shall get there long before half-past twelve,” said Robin with an edge of contempt in his voice. “I can put on a bit of speed.” He gave an extra-hard push as illustration.

“If you wanted to go to the Rose you should have let them know beforehand,” said Jane.

“I didn’t think of it beforehand.”

“Well, then, you’d better leave it till another time. You can’t go messing all the arrangements up like this. Have some thought for others,” said Jane, rather angrily. Robin poled on without altering their speed or his expression. Katherine awkwardly studied the scenery. She could understand most of what they had said, and their tone of voice told her the rest. It was as if Robin was trying to push Jane down from the place she had assumed during the last few days, and Jane was refusing to be pushed.

He poled on, but gradually diminished speed. When he spoke it was lightly once more.

“I thought you’d appreciate the idea. Aren’t you always saying we never do anything on the spur of the moment?”

Jane did not say anything, but looked red. She had taken off the dark glasses, but now replaced them.

“But if you don’t really mean it, you ought to explain that first.”

She threw down her book. “All right, go to the Rose if you want to. Only I’ve warned you, that’s all.”

“What do you think, Katherine?”

“Me?” Katherine had been afraid they would draw her into this. “I don’t know where the place is.” She struggled between supporting him and being sensible. “But if we had given your mother trouble—it would rather spoil it, wouldn’t it? We can go another day.” And she added, leaning backwards to smile at him: “Won’t you teach me how to do this? You said you would.”

As he stood against the sun, she could not see how he took the question, but she thought he was pleased. Jane glared indifferently out of the boat, and Katherine felt balanced between the two conflicting wills. So far she had given one vote to each. She hoped he would see whose side she was on: there had been a curious note in the way he had asked his last question.

“Well,” he said at last, “perhaps Jane’s got some objection to that, too.” He could say these things in a level way, that sounded far removed from any bickering. Jane defiantly crossed her ankles.

“As long as I don’t have to do anything,” she said. “And as long as you don’t want more than one admiring spectator.”

Robin let this pass. “Well, if you’re prepared to risk it,” he said to Katherine. She stood up uncertainly. “The point is, you might fall in.”

“Oh, but I can swim.”

“Yes, but we should get into a row for not taking care of you. It’s tricky till you get your balance.” He brought up the pole again. “Stand where you are till you get the feel of it, and watch what I do.”

“Till you get sick of it,” said Jane. She was watching them sharply, as if expecting entertainment. Katherine stood self-consciously in the middle, lurching occasionally, and watched while Robin poled with text-book correctness for some distance. “I can see what you do,” she said eventually. “But I don’t know whether I could do it.”

“Come and try,” said Robin.

She picked her way cautiously to the end of the boat, and joined him, it seemed in perilous isolation, above the surrounding river. Edging away to allow her room, he laid the pole in her hands. Taken unawares by its weight she dropped it, with a fearful clatter and splashing, and an exclamation from Jane. Robin picked it up, and gave it back to her. It was very cold and wet. The punt slowly came to a halt against the sluggish current.

“Now,” said Robin, briskly. “Stand facing the way you’re going.”

“If you’re lucky,” said Jane. Her mouth tightened contemptuously.

“Feet about a foot apart, so that you won’t fall in. Strictly speaking, a good punter never moves his feet at all, you see. You’ll soon be more surefooted.”

Katherine doubted that. The punt had stopped and had now begun to turn round in a slow circle. She prodded ineffectually at the water, nearly overbalancing.

“Wait a minute, I’ll turn her round,” said Robin, reclaiming the pole and standing on the very end, while Katherine watched him uselessly. “We’ll turn back, since we’re not going anywhere, it seems.”

“How beautiful to watch you,” said Jane.

When the punt was once more pointing straight down the empty river, Katherine tried again. She positioned her feet and on Robin’s instructions lifted the pole vertically, so that water dripped down her arm. It would take very little to send her into the water.

“Now, point it slightly towards the way you want to go, and drop it in. Drop it, don’t push it down. As soon as it touches the bottom, grip it as high as you can reach and haul on it. Fairly hard, of course, but don’t fall over backwards. Now, try it.”

Katherine tried it. She tried to drop the pole in slantwise, and only sent it diagonally under the boat. When she hauled on it, the punt surged forward in a crablike way, and ended up travelling towards the bank. Her next stroke was really not too bad, and sent the bow crashing into the rushes. As she dragged the pole up, it became entangled with the alders overhead, and she staggered as if in a nightmare.

Jane, shaken by the bump and showered with leaves and twigs, began to laugh. “End of Act One,” she said.

Katherine furiously did not look at her.

After Robin had restored the boat to midstream, she tried again. This time she forgot to slant the pole, so that when she was ready to haul there was nothing to haul on, and she could only give the river-bed a frantic poke to justify the stroke at all, and this did not contribute to their progress.

Robin explained how to straighten a boat by wagging the pole in the water behind it, and as the punt was again drifting as if by instinct towards the bank, she at once tried this out. To her surprise it was successful.

“That’s right,” said Robin. “You’re doing very well.”

She looked at him with dislike, and as she brought round the pole for the next stroke nearly knocked him in the water. He saved himself by catching it with one hand, and this sudden interruption nearly upset Katherine. Jane was heaving quietly with laughter. Katherine viciously dropped the pole into the river again, and felt the splash swamp her right shoe.

“It’s a good thing the current is with us,” said Jane.

Having to keep her feet still made Katherine feel as insecure as if she were carrying a long plank along high scaffolding. Somehow she had imagined punting to be a gentle pastime, rather resembling croquet. She could not remember feeling so silly since her early schooldays.

“I can’t do this,” she said.

“It’ll come to you all at once,” Robin assured her. “Try again.”

Their voices sounded flat on the water. Katherine, summoning all her determination, poised the pole and slid it (the hardest part, she decided) down into the river at exactly the right angle. Cheered, she hauled on it with all her might. It grew suddenly rigid in her hands. Carried on by the impetus of the stroke, she tugged wildly for a second, then at the last moment overbalanced by trying to improve her grip. Robin (who must have been watching her closely, she decided later) took a step forward, caught her neatly round the waist, and pulled her upright again. She stumbled and put her hands on his shoulders. A cow standing with its forelegs in the water lifted its head and gave a long bellow.

“End of Act Two,” said Jane. “Love will find a way.” She leant back and fished out a couple of old paddles from the front of the boat. The pole, stuck in the mud, drew away from them.

Katherine sank down on the cushions, trembling from rage, fright, and embarrassment. The bright, almost metallic contact when he had gripped her sharply wiped away all traces of self-deception. She knew she wanted to lie with her head in his lap, to have him comfort her: she knew equally that this was not going to happen partly because he had no interest in her, and because Jane was specifically there to prevent it. She sat blushing.

When they reached the pole again, Robin stood up and with a smart double twist drew it, dripping, from the water: he swished it in the river a few times to clean off the wet black mud, then with a slight smile offered it to her again.

“No,” she said. Her voice shook. “No, I won’t try again. I can’t do it. I only make a fool of myself.”

“You don’t.” Robin sounded surprised. “Not at all. You were doing well.”

“I tell you I don’t want to.”

She stared down at the cushions.

“Well, of course, you can’t do it,” cut in Jane coolly, “if you try Robin’s idiotic way. Nobody could, first shot. I wonder you didn’t go into the water as soon as you started. Look here, try again. Go on, take the pole and try again.” Katherine obeyed, seeing no alternative but an open quarrel. “Now forget all about your feet and doing it with one hand and all the rest of it; the important thing is that you want to drive the boat along by pushing the pole on the river-bed.”

“I thought,” said Robin, drying his hands on a handkerchief, “one might as well do a thing properly.”

No-one answered him. Katherine worked off her fury by poling as best she could. Jane was right. Once she felt that her feet were no longer glued down and she could turn about as she pleased, it became much easier, and she drove them along in an ungainly but decided way. Robin, who had thus been defeated twice that morning, watched her with a subdued expression on his face which suggested to her when she once happened to catch sight of it that he would not be content to leave it at that.