Flowers Stained With Moonlight (28 page)

‘If he kisses her, I’ll strangle him.’

The thought flashes through her mind so quickly she has no time to note it. Already the young man has straightened up. He is shaking Sylvia’s hand cordially, he seems to be taking his leave. He is walking away, he is gone. Camilla feels suddenly safe and yet fustigates herself for such ridiculousness.

Camilla is walking alone under the trees, on the lane which runs along the little, sparkling stream. The place is absurdly right for lovers, and indeed, all the other occupants of the lane seem to be grouped in pairs; gloved hands linked under arms, parasols hanging from wrists. Only Camilla is alone. She has given herself a task: she will walk a mile up the stream, and a mile back down, and she will count the minutes it takes her, walking slowly. As slowly as possible, for the goal of the game is to cheat time, to make it move along, to push it faster than its present crawl. She advances slowly, and crosses couples passing in the other direction. Look at this young girl coming towards her now. Slender and pale, she could be Sylvia, but is not; she is with a young man, she is hanging on his arm, her face is turned up to his. He looks down at her patronisingly.

‘You’ll see then, sweet,’ he is saying as they pass Camilla, ‘by this time next year we’ll be married and you’ll be the mistress of your own home.’ The girl simpers, and Camilla wants to scream. Look at him – all the charm of feminine youth clinging to his arm, and he talks to her as though to some tame pet. Ah, if Camilla were in his place, she could tear through clothes and flesh with her breath, with her eyes, and there would be no room for idle talk within the flame of her passion. She would not speak in words, she would speak in kisses. And her body feels tense with the strain of passing, turning her head away, and continuing her walk, slowly, in rhythm, one step after another, under the arching willow branches which dangle their tips, loose and abandoned, into the endless lapping caresses of the water.

Or they are walking together, arm in arm, during one of those moments stolen from the duties imposed upon them; those duties which consist, essentially, in displaying the self like merchandise for sale, to best advantage. They have slipped out, as they quite often manage to do, sometimes for just a few minutes, sometimes for the better part of the evening. They are strolling across the garden tinged with moonlight, and everything seems abnormally beautiful to Camilla, as grass and trees, sky and stars breathe their magic headily forth. Sylvia’s face glows softly in the darkness, a pale dim vision, yet its warm life radiates and Camilla knows that she is going to stop everything, stop the world in its tracks, seize that face between her hands and drown it in the kisses
that have been restrained for so long – she knows she will do it, except for this one obstacle: she knows she will not do it. The fear of frightening away forever something as wild and uncontrollable as a fawn, of sending it scampering back eternally into the shadows of outer darkness – is stronger than even such desire.

Or so she tells herself, as the days slip by, until, without her being at first aware of it, new little thoughts begin to emerge, like droplets forming on a cold surface. For she sees Sylvia differently now, sees more deeply into her nature, begins to understand the ineffable femininity of her. She is the slender creature for whom great stags battle in duels, crashing their antlers together until one of them lopes away, defeated. She is the Sabine seized by the desperate Roman in his thirst for woman, the trophy awarded to the conquering hero, seated unresisting within the circle of his arm. Sylvia need not be conquered nor persuaded nor convinced. She is there for the taking, like a glass of sweet wine.

If I don’t take her, someone else will.

And the evening comes when Camilla prepares her mind, her dress, her words, her gestures, reflects for hours on the very nature of what she is about to do, hesitates between the endless languor of something infinitely long and warm, or a lightning stroke, brutal and blinding.

And in the end it is so simple.

Sylvia melts in her arms with a small, secret smile. She is not angry, not shocked, not even surprised, yet neither is she worldly-wise, nor had she expected anything. She is just flower-like Sylvia, preserving her quiet mystery intact in spite of the snatching and seizing and plucking and bruising. The ultimate possession, ultimately unpossessable.

And now, just as she thought she had reached the haven of security, Camilla finds herself more storm-tossed than ever. Mad with desire, obsessed with discoveries renewed every day, seeking endlessly to penetrate Sylvia’s secret, leaving no stone unturned, no place untouched, like a drinker of vinegar, never quenched, only inflamed.

And she is invaded by nameless doubts. Sylvia is like a landscape of shifting sands, she thinks, and tries to tear reassurance from her with words. Her light-heartedness is torture.

‘I wish I could marry you, Sylvia.’

‘What for?’

‘Because I want you for myself for ever and ever.’

‘Marriage has nothing to do with that.’

‘If I married you I would keep you prisoner and tie you up and lock you in and visit you every night.’

‘Do it anyway.’

But Camilla can’t. It has something to do with the eyes of the world.

Marriage looms thick in the air that Mrs Clemming breathes.

‘Sylvia, they’re trying to marry you off!’

‘Of course. They’re trying to marry you off, too.’

‘I’ll never marry.’

‘It’s easy for you. You’ve a castle of your own and something to live on. I don’t.’

Camilla doesn’t dare to tell her that she doesn’t have a castle, not really. Not forever.

‘But you don’t want to marry, do you?’

‘I don’t want to, but what I want doesn’t matter at all, it never has.’

‘It matters to me! I want you to do what you want.’

‘I don’t know what I want.’

‘Ah, because you haven’t lived yet. Come – let me show you, and then you’ll know what you want forever and ever.’

It is hopeless. Nothing will bind Sylvia, not even her own desires. Abandoned in Camilla’s arms, a secret little half-smile on her lips, she says as though the previous conversation had never been interrupted,

‘Yes, but Mother won’t agree. If I don’t marry, we’ll have nothing to live on, and Mother will have to give up the house.’

‘You traitress – you want to get married, don’t you?’

‘No, I don’t. I don’t care.’

‘Sylvia, don’t you understand – if you had a husband, he would want to take – what’s mine,
only mine.
’

She merely shrugs.

‘I’d never let a husband do anything I didn’t want to.’

‘Oh, heavens,’ Camilla says, staring up at the sky.

The branches of the trees are darker grey against the grey sky, and the new leaves tremble colourlessly. Camilla sits on the tow
path staring at them, counting the passing seconds, the passing minutes, the slowly shifting and passing clouds.

Sylvia has left London. She had enough of parties, enough of balls, enough of coming out, enough of Helen, so she went home. Quite simply went home, Mrs Clemming said, with mingled resentment and satisfaction.

Elle n’en fait qu’à sa tête,
Camilla says. She is right, and I am wrong. If she wants to do a thing, she does it. If she doesn’t like it, she drops it. She can no more force herself than a plant – and why should she?

Her mind wanders over the subject, trying to dull pain by curiosity. Why do we insist, labour, struggle, so stupidly? We want the end and dislike the means – is that it? Yet no. Camilla does not desire the end which looms before her.

Then what do I want?

She wants Sylvia, nothing else. Her arms ache with absence, with emptiness. And if it were just the secret union of their souls, of their lips, of their hands … But she knows already that it would not be enough. Ah, she wants more, she wants to walk in the streets, her head high, Sylvia on her arm – she wants a banner to proclaim her possession, a burning brand to mark her publicly.

Why? It’s stupid, she thinks. Why offend everyone? Why not
be satisfied with the sweetness of clandestinity? Why long for public recognition? She grinds her teeth.

I don’t know what I want, and when I do know, I don’t know why I want it.

It should be so simple, as it is for Sylvia. If I want her, then I should go and find her. And why don’t I do it? What keeps me from her, when she is separated from me by nothing more than a few hours in the train?

Now we come to the heart of the matter, the bitter syllogism.

Sylvia has gone.

Sylvia does what she wants.

Therefore, she wanted to go. And not to stay, not here, where I am. She fled from me, not from the rest. I will not pursue her.

The world with its gay ribbons winds and tangles around Camilla from morning till night, and she feels fixed in the central point of the milling throng; she feels unmoving, rigid, stuck. And after a while, nausea and fever. She lies in bed without moving and stares out the window at the buildings across the way. Like a tiny, tiny fresh breeze, she glimpses a vision of trees and fields and sky, but it is only in her memory. Camilla decides, like Sylvia, to go home.

When Camilla was a little girl, she used to think that the walk from her bedroom to the breakfast room was immensely long.

When she was still tiny, she had to follow her governess there, and it seemed a long time before she actually knew the way. When she was a little older, she went by herself. Down the corridor past ten doors. Around the corner, up the stone stairs. The shortcut across the roof to the other turret, back down. Halfway down the main stairway leading to the ground floor with its ballrooms and dining rooms. Around the balcony overhanging the foyer. Here is the breakfast room, inundated with the morning light. Here is Mother, standing at the sideboard to cut the child’s bread herself, a little thinner, as she likes it. There is Father, grumbling because he has already poured out the last drop of coffee, looking around for the maid. The sun shines in and the groom is walking Camilla’s pony outside: after breakfast, she will ride. Camilla’s riding habit has already been the subject of a number of quarrels.

She opens her eyes suddenly, stares hard at the sideboard. That was fifteen years ago. Miss Winston is gone, Mother is dead, the pony also. Father is sitting at the table as of old, if greyer, but he does not speak more now than he did then. She pours out the coffee for him without being asked, gives him the last drops.

‘I’ll go riding after breakfast,’ she says. And she rides, canters madly all over the grounds, hears her voice laughing as she leaps the muddy stream; you can never be sure.

One hour, two hours. What shall I do this afternoon? I’ll read over all my old books, garden maybe. What is my life for? Just surviving. Can I snatch a little comfort from this, the cradle of the time when I was carefree? The trouble is, it’s difficult to stop thinking, stop the burning images from rushing through the mind. I’ll talk with Father. I wonder whom he talks to nowadays?

The sun is high and Camilla brings her horse around to the stables.

‘No, I’ll brush him,’ she tells the boy, lifting the saddle off and hanging it on a nail.

‘Hoo, where’ve you been with ’im?’ he says, looking at the muddy hooves. Camilla takes a scraper, lifts the front leg and holding the hoof firmly against her thigh, digs it into the clotted mud. Clump! It drops down into the hay. She drops the hoof, slaps the horse gently, and takes another. Four hooves to scrape, and then brush, brush the dusty coat. The horse looks at her lazily, gleaming and pleased.

Luncheon will soon be served. Camilla goes into the house, past all the doors and corridors, up to her room, and takes off her riding habit – the one she made for herself specially,
to ride at home with, for real, not side-saddle. The sense of freedom she had only just begun to achieve slips away as she binds herself into blouse and skirt. The walk down to the dining room is slower and wearier than the way in. She opens the door. Father is already seated at the table.

‘The mail has come in, dear,’ he says in his voice grown a little peevish from monotony and loneliness. ‘You’ve got a letter.’

There is a letter by Camilla’s dish. Blank side up.

She sits at the table and stares at the white square until it grows and fills up the whole room, the horizon. She has no strength to pick it up and turn it over, and face the abyss. The room seems to whirl.

‘What’s yours?’ says her father with interest. His life is so empty now.

Like a machine. Say nothing, show nothing. Reach out and take it. Turn it over. Sit tight, don’t move.

The letter is from Sylvia.

This is ridiculous, thinks Camilla to herself. Stop it at once. She rips the envelope quietly, lifts her eyes from it to smile at her father, takes out the little sheet and unfolds it.

A mere glance suffices to read it. It speaks with Sylvia’s voice.

Quite quietly, the world stops spinning. Camilla turns to her father.

‘It’s just a note from a friend I got to know in London,’ she says. ‘Perhaps I’ll go visit her.’

‘So soon? You only just came,’ he says softly.

‘I shan’t leave right away,’ she answers, holding the letter.

It is like a shield, protecting her. What more does one need? Now she can sleep at night, and occupy herself during the day. Tend the flowers, play cards with her father, canter around the property – see friends, even, perhaps. The prison doors have opened in front of her, and they will remain open. She need not rush to leave, now. The joy of expectant waiting is one of the most intense.

Like a flow of water into an empty place, meaning has returned to the rhythm of the days.