5

At some untraceable point she had fallen in love with him. Her curiosity and his fascination had brought her to the brink of it, she knew, but she had fancied that love needed two people, as if it were a lake they had to dive in simultaneously. Now she found she had gone into it alone, while he remained undismayed.

Because Katherine was so young she had hitherto thought love a pleasant thing; a state that put order into her life, directing her thoughts and efforts towards one end, and because she found it pleasant she thought it could not be real love, which by all accounts caused suffering and was to be feared. Perhaps because she had lived always in her parents’ house, making no effort to have a life of her own, she had not stirred up any but the surface of the passionate emotions—sentimentality; devotion; perhaps too it was because she had so far loved only women and girls. So she would have thought that to love Robin would have done no more than set a seal on her visit, to frame it, to enclose it in a glass sphere. Here, where he could not leave her, they would spend the long days in each other’s company, with every romantic background ready to hand, deep cornfields, the burning-glass of the sky, the willows by the river, the white lanes.

But this was not what she felt. Being so far from home, it was natural for her to assume at one blow what was due to her sixteen years, that before she had shunned a little. When he had touched her, every nerve in her body had snapped as if with electricity, and the desire she felt for him was cloudy and shameful. It put a curious constraint upon her; at first she thought it might be the heat that made her flesh tingle at the touch of her clothes, and her ears alert to every sound in the house; it might be due to the weather, that she could not eat, and felt as if she had just left her bed after a convalescence. And to be with him was no pleasure, for she could not be satisfied with words, and the sultriness put such a hunger upon her body that sometimes she was driven almost to desperation to know that there would be nothing easier than to lay her hand on his bare arm, and yet also to know that this was a thing she could never do.

It was a strange, disturbing time, lasting a few days. It made her bitter and miserable. She was frightened to think that this feeling was something she would meet again, that love would henceforward have something of this manner, for it was not a sensation she rejoiced in. If this was love—even this tiny shudder caused by his holding her waist for a second—it made her feel guilty, for it did not change him in her eyes: he did not grow admirable, more noble, not even more likeable, as the girls had that she had loved. Simply she thought him beautiful, against her will, and nothing would have excited her more than to kiss him and to make him love her too. But then she would have had to be different, and he would have had to be different also, and it would not happen. Knowing this, she drew her curtains back and opened each window as far as it would go, hoping as she lay bitterly among the hot bedclothes that whatever stillness there was in the summer night would come to her and still her restlessness.

One morning she could not sleep after five o’clock, so got up and went out quietly into the clouded daybreak. The fields were wet, so she kept to the lanes: rain during the night had freshened up the bracken and pale wild-flowers until, with an over-reaching sky logically ribbed with clouds, they made a landscape of half-tones such as she had not seen before. There was a tang of damp wood from the fences. After a time she leant on a stile and watched a tiny stream running along a ditch, over a bed of white sand; she stooped and flicked her hand in it, finding it very cold. She noticed a small frog in the grass, struck to immobility by her presence; when she tickled it with a straw it crawled away. There was watercress growing under the hedge. She dried her fingers on her skirt.

It was little use troubling. She could not pretend to herself that he felt towards her one-tenth of the interest she felt in him, or that the house held her more securely than a pair of cupped hands may hold a moth for a few seconds before releasing it again. She could only hope that the burden of this new love would be taken off her before it betrayed her into actions she would regret.

“We thought you’d run away,” said Robin.

He sat watching her eat. She had stayed out longer than she meant to, and come in a little late for breakfast. A cup of cold tea had been waiting for her in her bedroom, and she drank it guiltily. When she went down Robin and Jane had nearly finished, and now Robin remained in his place while Jane inspected the flowers in a bored way, picking out any dead blooms before changing the water.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. His tie was knotted carelessly round his throat, his shirt-collar not fastened.

“Bad luck,” he said, pouring her some more coffee. She needed plenty to drink to force down these impossible breakfasts. He watched her, lightly bouncing a knife-blade on his plate, then suddenly laughed and said in her own language:

—And so you rose up to see the dawn.

—I did, she answered, surprised. But there was nothing to see.

Outside it was raining. He pushed back his chair and got up with his hands in his pockets. “Yes, that’s rather a good idea,” he said. “Why should Katherine talk English all the time? Let’s return the compliment a bit. Two hours every morning, say.”

“Rubbish,” said Jane. She peered into the flowers. In short sleeves her elbows were very sharp.

“Why rubbish? It would be a graceful act. From ten to twelve every morning.”

“She came here for a holiday,” Jane said rudely, “not to give you lessons.”

“But think what a strain it must be, talking English all the time.”

“Robin’s the perfect Englishman,” said Jane to Katherine. “Everything is for somebody else’s benefit.”

“Well, if it’s unpopular, I won’t press it,” said Robin. He regarded the point of a pencil and began to sharpen it onto a newspaper. “I just thought it would be rather fun. What do you think, Katherine?”

That question again. And Katherine was just about to temporize when she guessed the important point, which was, of course, that Jane spoke nothing but English. She nearly choked.

“I don’t mind,” she said faintly.

“There you are, Katherine doesn’t mind,” said Robin. He shook the paperful of sharpenings into the empty grate. “It would be rather a lark. Even you might learn something.”

Katherine was alarmed. Jane could do three things. She could throw up her task of chaperon and leave them together, or she could give in and stick it out. Or, if she got angry (and Robin seemed careless of that), she could sail in and smash this younger-brother impertinence, so that no more would be heard of it. Katherine looked at her.

“Well, that’s very kind of you,” Jane said. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to make a small charge?”

“Well, you needn’t listen if you don’t want to—you needn’t come if you don’t want to,” said Robin reasonably, tapping the end of his pencil on his teeth.

No, don’t say that, Katherine was shouting, you’ll spoil it all. She took the thinnest piece of toast and a spoonful of marmalade.

“I didn’t know we were going anywhere,” said Jane. She collected up the dead wet stalks, and from the sound of her voice, once again listless, Katherine knew she was giving in once more. “You’ll pretty soon get sick of it. You say, Katherine, when you’ve had enough. You’ll be teaching him irregular verbs before you know where you are.” She dropped the dead flowers in the wastepaper-basket.

Where they were going was no more exciting than into the village. Yet Katherine was more expectant than she had been for a week—since she had first arrived, in fact. Apart from this bold attempt by Robin to get Jane out of the way, she had not foreseen how it changed her position. Hitherto Robin had been in command, with Jane second and Katherine herself third. Now she led, and Robin and Jane followed. When the rain stopped they walked down the drive, and she gave way to a silly impulse to quote a verse of romantic poetry that she had once admired, with no prefacing explanation. They gaped at her.

“Here, hold on,” said Robin. “Let’s all start level.”

“I reserve the right to talk English,” said Jane obstinately. She was wearing sandals that showed her small, perfectly-formed feet and was thereby the smallest of the three. “And if I ask what you’re talking about, you’ve got to tell me.”

“Then you must ask properly,” said Katherine, and sweeping ahead under Robin’s eye she told Jane how to ask for a sentence to be repeated or translated. Jane repeated the sentences dubiously.

“Well, shall we start?” said Robin. “Katherine had better begin.”

There was a pause. It was hard to know what to say first. Finally she asked Robin why he was going to the village. He replied solemnly that he was going to buy some postage stamps and a packet of envelopes.

Did he write many letters, then?

No, but he had no more postage stamps or envelopes.

Whom did he write to?

School friends, relations.

And did she write nice letters back?

Where did she live?

Robin repeated Katherine’s address, and they burst out laughing. Katherine could not help blushing. It was really too easy. Jane gave a suspicious and unconvinced smile.

“Are you talking about writers?”

“Yes, about writers,” said Katherine.

Jane, after much warning and preliminary inquiries, managed to ask what English writers Katherine liked the best. Obviously she was doing her level best to stand her ground.

She had read very little. Shakespeare. Byron.

—What about Dickens, asked Robin.

She had read no Dickens.

That was a pity. Many English people liked Dickens.

But he was, perhaps of all writers, the most English.

Katherine turned out of a sort of distorted kindness to Jane and asked her if she liked Dickens. “Eh? Was that something about Dickens? Do I read Dickens?”

“Do I like Dickens? No, I don’t. He’s too dull.”

Robin observed that Dickens made a great deal of money by his writings.

—And you? Are you a writer?

—Have you ever written anything?

—No, of course not.

—One might think you had the artistic nature.

Robin’s face wore a baffled expression, centred round a small frown similar to the one he had worn when she had started to win at tennis. Then he laughed, not at all put out.

—You’re always very sarcastic.

—Think so if you like.

—What is an artistic nature then?

—One that cares nothing for other people.

—Cares nothing for other people, he repeated, as if to fix the precise meaning. And I care nothing for other people?

“This seems a very important point,” said Jane. “What’s it all about?”

“Katherine says I have something of the artistic nature,” said Robin. “I’m trying to decide if it’s a compliment or not.” There was even a suspicion of guilt in his voice.

“She’s pulling your leg,” said Jane, as if relieved it was no worse.

At this point they arrived at the small post office, and Katherine unwarily entering with them, was formally presented to the old woman who kept it, who had of course heard that the Fennels had a foreign lady staying. Katherine was quite at a loss with the Oxfordshire dialect, and could only say “oh yes” and smile. The Fennels had been on the whole very considerate with her, but they had not been able to avoid some such introductions, which made Katherine feel like some rare animal in captivity.

When they were out once more in the puddled road, Robin said in a lingering, thoughtful tone:

—But I care for other people.

“Oh, don’t start that again,” said Jane irritably. “It’s stopped being amusing. For heaven’s sake let’s talk English.”

Katherine saw the corners of Robin’s mouth draw slightly back “We’re still walking,” he pointed out. “Is it boring you, Katherine?”

“Oh, no. I like it.”

—My sister is not a scholar, Robin said with faint contempt. She did not learn very much. I have the brains of the family.

—Oh, obviously, said Katherine warily.

—It is a question of application. If she could learn by wishing, she would know everything by now. But she is incapable of sitting down and starting in real earnest. A pity, because——

“What are you drivelling about?” said Jane angrily.

—Although she is lazy she is not completely stupid.

—Whereas you are stupid though not completely lazy, retorted Katherine in a desperate attempt to finish the conversation.

—She wastes her time thinking about what she might do one day if she tried. But she knows she never will try, and that makes her silly and irritable. I don’t know what we are going to do with her.

“What is this?” said Jane sharply, and immediately, “Tell me! What are you talking about?”

“A mutual friend.” Robin’s voice had never sounded more courteous, more placid and exact than at that moment.

Jane went very red, and before Katherine could find enough words to speak, had broken into:

“I see. Well, don’t let me stop you. I should hate to interrupt. I’ll leave you to get on with it.”

With that she turned and went off.

“My dear Jane,” Robin said, as a complete sentence. Small and almost ridiculous in her sandals, she disappeared along the narrow lane lined with hedges, in which the autumn berries had begun to appear and were now beaded with rain.

“Shall I fetch her back?” Katherine burst out desperately.

Robin shrugged his shoulders. “She’ll be all right, she’s just got one of her moods on. I must apologize for her.”

“But she thinks——”

“No, I tell you, don’t trouble. There’s nothing the matter. She often flies off the handle like this——” And because Katherine could not understand that phrase her mind was free to come upon the appalling success of Robin’s manœuvre, staring her in the face. For a moment she felt almost frightened, as if although this was what she thought an impossible hope, it had turned, when realized, into something she did not altogether like.

But there was nothing to say. Robin, with an abstracted air, broke off a cornflower growing through a gate and drew it deliberately into his buttonhole. They continued their walk.

There was no more bother from Jane. During the rest of that day, they only saw her at mealtimes, when she was as uncommunicative as usual. Otherwise she avoided them as a singed cat avoids the hearth.

But Katherine had returned from the walk puzzled. Nothing notable had happened after Jane left them. If she had expected an onset of personalities, she was disappointed: he did not as much as refer to the fact that they were at last alone, alone without merely awaiting a meal, or a bus, or Jane herself. They had certainly kept up a sort of bi-lingual banter, but it had got them nowhere. Robin would ride boldly up to a subject, like one of the entries in the gymkhana, and then stop dead in front of it; nothing she could say would bring him a step further forward. She was bewildered. What was he playing at? He had invited her. She had come. For two weeks out of the three he had submitted to the uneasy threesome. Now he had got rid of Jane, so that they could be alone. She had consented, at the risk of seeming unpardonably rude; she laid herself open, ready to follow any pace he made. What was he waiting for, then; why the aimlessness, the tentative explorations of the already-known, the advances that weren’t worth making, the sudden full stops?

As it happened, they were not alone much the rest of that day. Some visitors called and they were required to meet them; Robin played whist in the evening. Katherine was pinned for a time by a woman belonging to something called the League of Nations’ Union, which gave her enough to think about. In the intervals she looked at Robin longingly, even while annoyed admiring his flexible company manners, that never for a moment, not even when handing round sandwiches, degenerated into servility. Occasionally she smiled at him ruefully, and he smiled back at her, only with a certain lack of edge that suggested he did not quite take her meaning.

But when the visitors had gone, and the noise of their car died away, he strolled back into the lounge where Katherine was shuffling the cards together and studying the unfamiliar patterns, the knaves, queens, and kings. The room was littered with glasses and ash-trays, and there was plenty of smoke in the air.

“What a fug,” he said, looking round. He unlocked the french window and opened it onto the still night, so that a mild coolness drifted in, and a faint weedy smell of the river. There was still a streak of yellow in the west. She sat on the sofa watching him.

“Look,” he said, with a small toss of the head that suggested his collar was too tight. “We’ve never taken you to Oxford yet. After all, that’s the real show-spot. Shall we go, tomorrow?”

“Yes, I want to go very much.”

She remembered how Jane had mentioned this on her first morning—Jane, who would not now come with them. As he stood against the open window, Katherine felt a moment of delighted thankfulness that he was accepting her love. For a second or two she had been puzzled, uneasy. But it seemed to her now that his odd behaviour was no less than the working-out of some pre-arranged plan, in which this last visit had a ceremonious place, depending on a chain of emotions she had not detected in him. She should not regard him as insensitive: there might be much she had not noticed. And because he was too shy to say he liked her, he was letting his actions speak for him till he should have the courage to do so himself.

She went to bed feeling satisfied for once.

There was a bus at ten to nine the next morning, and another at ten to eleven. They decided to get up rather earlier and catch the first one, and in consequence breakfasted with Mr. and Mrs. Fennel. She did not see Jane till she was on her way downstairs ready to go, and then Jane came out of the breakfast room dressed oddly in a white high-necked sweater, a freshly-lighted cigarette between her lips. She slightly resembled a doll. They eyed each other silently. Then Katherine said “Good morning” and Jane nodded.

She was glad to get away from the house: it was a relief to take her seat by Robin on the upper deck of the bus. He was dressed in an open-necked shirt, and a biscuit-coloured jacket; a light canvas haversack hung from his shoulder, as if he were bringing their lunch with them, although there was no need for it. Diffused sunlight gleamed on the outhouses and farmyard walls built of local stone; it was just another week-day morning, with shoppers travelling with them, and shirt-sleeved men working in the yards, building ricks.

She had resolved that morning to let Robin handle the outing as he pleased, and to attend not to her own wishes but to his suggestions. For now there was no hurry. They had all the day to themselves, and for the moment she was content just with his company. She would let him arrange things. The bus ran on.

Mainly to make conversation, she said:

“Jane is rather a strange person, isn’t she?”

“Sometimes,” he answered, briefly and lightly.

“Is she much older than you are?”

“She’s twenty-five.”

“As old as that!” Twenty-five was practically middle-aged. “No!”

“She’s nine years older than I am, yes,” said Robin. “I know she looks younger.”

“What does she do?”

“Do? Nothing much. At one time she used to help Father, but I fancy she was more trouble than she was worth. She went to evening classes for a bit.”

The bus swooped along, branches scraping on the windows.

“There is nothing she wants to do, then?”

“There may be, I don’t know.” He struggled into a more upright position. “She is strange, as you say. I don’t know much about her. If you watch carefully, we ought to be seeing some of the spires from here.”

She obeyed. But the one or two visionary glimpses she caught over the tree-tops were swiftly rubbed away by their eventual approach through very matter-of-fact streets. They were set down on a wide pavement by an antique-dealer’s shop, whose freshly-scrubbed step had not yet dried. The pale sun was just warming the fronts of buildings, and there was plenty of traffic; the air smelt fresh and clean. Katherine, who was by upbringing a town dweller, felt her spirits rise.

“And where is the university?” she said.

Robin laughed. “Everywhere. Everything you see or touch.”

She stared. They strolled slowly up the street while he explained the collegiate system, and then as they automatically began the rounds of the graceful triangles, squares and circles of the college buildings, he began to tell of what she saw. Though he knew probably no more than one-fiftieth of what a standard guidebook contained, it was enough to keep up a continuous quiet chatting that she found restful. Actually she was disappointed with the city, for what she had heard about it led her to believe that to enter it would be like stepping back into the Middle Ages: as it was, she found so many shops and taxicabs that she thought there were more medieval towns in her own country. But, as he continued to recite the litany of monasteries, kings, noblemen and prelates, she realized that every century had left accretions, and though she did not trouble to follow his details, she was impressed by the uniqueness of the place, where such variety was controlled within a single atmosphere. In the intervals he allowed her she did a little unpremeditated shopping, buying a small bowl with a map of ancient Oxford in the centre, a handbag, a cigarette-case, and an elaborate ring from an antique shop that was reassuringly expensive. Since coming to England she had spent hardly any money. The other things she would take back as presents, but she decided to keep the ring herself.

Robin was in the best of humours. She could feel that he was as proud of Oxford as if it belonged to him. It was almost irritating, the way he kept informing her that this or that building was three or four or five hundred years old, from the reign of James or Henry or Edward, as if extracting whole plums from an over-rich cake. The very public-houses, where old men held curling matches to their pipes, had stood for centuries: this dated from Tudor times, here Shakespeare had often slept on his way from Stratford to London. He was not simply trying to impress a foreign visitor: he was more like a millionaire who cannot refrain from saying how much everything that he owns has cost him, with a certain fascinated awe. For his sake she tried to feel as he did. But she found that when they were walking down a broad, tree-shaded avenue, lined with hurdles, she did not much care that these meadows had been given to the cathedral to maintain a chantry by a noblewoman whose tomb he had pointed out to her. It pleased her more that they could walk together in such a pleasant place, going towards the river and hearing the cattle tearing up grass nearby, and when they sat down eventually to rest at the side of the water, she leaned back and thought that as far as age was concerned, sheer age that was almost timelessness, the sound of the trees was more impressive. The surrounding tree-tops settling and unsettling with an endless sifting of leaves reminded her as she lay with closed eyes of the unceasing wash of waves round the shingle of an island. They filled the air with whispering of eternity, or as near eternity as made no matter, making this place, famous as it was, like all other places. Like all other places, it was both temporal and eternal, and she found that degrees of temporality did not interest her—while in eternity, of course, there were no such measurements.

She sat up and looked at Robin. He had relapsed beside her with his head on the haversack, eyes closed; his face wore an expression of patience. She leaned over and stroked a lock of his hair into place, at which his eyes, in the shadow of her arm, opened wide.

“Wake up,” she said.

“I wasn’t asleep.” He sat up quickly as if it had begun to rain. For a moment they sat side by side, then he scrambled to his feet. “If you’ve rested, we might perhaps be getting on.”

Katherine realized at once—though too late—that she had made an advance he would not receive, and she scrambled up blushing—blushing and bewildered. He had behaved almost as if she had scared him, and it had shaken the whole day off its course. What was the matter with him? Was she doing any more than she had done, showing him that she loved him? And if at that moment he didn’t want her to, hadn’t he enough poise to treat her better than this? Almost she was pushed back on the fear that he was indifferent to her, but then, why ask her, why manœuvre so that they were alone?

She followed him sulkily on their solemn pilgrimage. The whole day was being spoiled.

But there was worse to come. They finished their tour just before lunch by climbing to the top of the Radcliffe Camera. They climbed in silence, coming out onto the balcony from which they could see the whole elaborately chiselled and buttressed panorama of Oxford spread out beneath them, like the decorations on an enormous iced cake. Robin said something vague about James Gibbs, and leaned on the balustrade. Together they looked at the slate roofs, the spires, and the hills in the distance, backed with clouds.

The sun had gone in, and a light rain began to fall in the wind. Robin straightened up regretfully, and, looking round the sky with a knowledgeable air, said: “I half expected this.” He swung the haversack to his hand, and drew out a thin mackintosh, folded small, which he held while she put it on. “Lucky I did. Shall we go and have lunch, and give it a chance to blow over?”

“All right.”

She was fumbling in the pockets: there were gloves. When they emerged at the bottom of the dark stairway, she pulled one out and inspected it casually. It was old and wrinkled, and one of the fingers had become unstitched. Looking inside, she found the neat red-and-white tab “Jane R. Fennel”.

It was silly to mind. But she could have thrown it at him.

For there seemed something supremely callous in the situation. Robin was quite indifferent to both of them, showing that he had no notion of the battle he had contrived and won. This showed that he was not alert to every stir of emotion around him, as she was; showed in fact that she had been constructing an elaborate pagoda out of nothing, and the shame she now felt was a punishment for this. In fact she could not have made a bigger fool of herself if she had tried carefully. At that moment she hated England and everybody in it—this would never have happened if she could have understood all the foreign inflexions and shades of meaning. The idea of the afternoon still untouched made her sick, and the conversation at lunch she could anticipate so well: Robin, composed and unconcerned, was turning up his collar against the rain, to reveal a strip of plain lining under the lapels. All she could think of that she would welcome doing would be to make some sort of apology to Jane, who had offered far more friendship and had been treated very poorly. Otherwise she would have been glad to go home. The rest of the week did not bear thinking about.