Mr Saunders added a complement of expected laughter. ‘As soon as she is herself again we, her mother and I, expect it to be the other way: we expect to be asking you to lend us Cecily occasionally.’
‘Well, that might be arranged, I imagine — especially with a friend.’ The rector laughed in turn and Mrs Powers, listening, exulted. Then she knew a brief misgiving. They are so much alike! Will they change his mind for him, those women? She said:
‘I think I’ll walk as far as the gate with Mr Saunders, if he doesn’t mind.’
‘Not at all, ma’am. I’ll be delighted.’
The rector stood in the door and beamed upon them as they descended the steps. ‘Sorry you cannot remain to dinner,’ he said.
‘Some other time, Doctor. My missus is waiting for me today.’
‘Yes, some other time,’ the rector agreed. He entered the house again, and they crossed grass beneath the imminent heavens. Mr Saunders looked at her sharply. ‘I don’t like this,’ he stated. ‘Why doesn’t someone tell him the truth about that boy?’
‘Neither do I,’ she answered. ‘But if they did, would he believe it? Did anyone have to tell you about him!’
‘My God, no! Anybody could look at him. It made me sick. But, then, I’m chicken-livered, anyway,’ he added with mirthless apology. ‘What did the doctor say about him?’
‘Nothing definite, except that he remembers nothing that happened before he was hurt. The man that was wounded is dead and this is another person, a grown child. It’s his apathy, his detachment, that’s so terrible. He doesn’t seem to care where he is nor what he does. He must have been passed from hand to hand, like a child.’
‘I mean, about his recovery.’
She shrugged. ‘Who can tell? There is nothing physically wrong with him that surgeons can remedy, if that’s what you mean.’
He walked on in silence. ‘His father should be told though,’ he said at last.
‘I know, but who is to do it? Besides, he is bound to know some day, so why not let him believe as he wishes as long as he can? The shock will be no greater at one time than at another. And he is old, and so big and happy now. And Donald may recover, you know,’ she lied.
‘Yes, that’s right. But do you think he will?’
‘Why not? He can’t remain forever as he is now.’ They had reached the gate. The iron was rough and hot with sun under her hand, but there was no blue anywhere in the sky.
Mr Saunders, fumbling with his hat, said: ‘But suppose he — he does not recover?’
She gave him a direct look. ‘Dies, you mean?’ she asked brutally.
‘Well, yes. Since you put it that way.’
‘Now that’s what I want to discuss with you. It is a question of strengthening his morale, of giving him some reason to — well, buck up. And who could do that better than Miss Saunders?’
‘But, ma’am, ain’t you asking a lot, asking me to risk my daughter’s happiness on such a poor bet as that?’
‘You don’t understand. I am not asking that the engagement be insisted upon. I mean, why not let Cecily — Miss Saunders — see him as often as she will, let her be sweethearts with him if necessary until he gets to know her again and will make an effort for himself. Time enough then to talk of engagements. Think, Mr Saunders: suppose he were your son. That wouldn’t be very much to ask of a friend, would it?’
He looked at her again in admiration, keenly, ‘You’ve got a level head on your shoulders, young lady. So what I’m to do is to prevail on her to come and see him, is it?’
‘You must do more than that: you must see that she does come, that she acts just as she acted towards him before.’ She gripped his arm. ‘You must not let her mother dissuade her. You most not. Remember, he might have been your son.’
‘What makes you think her mother might object?’ he asked in amazement.
She smiled faintly. ‘You forget I’m a woman, too,’ she said. Then her face became serious, imminent. ‘But you mustn’t let that happen, do you hear?’ Her eyes compelled him. ‘Is that a promise?’
‘Yes,’ he agreed, meeting her level glance. He took her firm proffered hand and felt her clean, muscular clasp.
‘A promise, then,’ she said as warm great drops of rain dissolving from the fat, dull sky splashed heavily. She said good-bye and fled, running across the lawn towards the house before assaulting grey battalions of rain. Her long legs swept her up and on to the veranda as the pursuing rain, foiled, whirled like cavalry with silver lances across the lawn.
4
Mr Saunders, casting an uneasy look at the dissolving sky, let himself out the gate and here, returning from school, was his son, saying: ‘Did you see his scar, daddy? Did you see his scar?’
The man stared at this troublesome small miniature of himself, and then he knelt suddenly, taking his son into his arms, holding him close.
‘You seen his scar,’ young Robert Saunders accused, trying to release himself as the rain galloped over them, through the trees.
5
Emmy’s eyes were black and shallow as a toy animal’s and her hair was a sun-burned shock of no particular colour. There was something wild in Emmy’s face: you knew that she out-ran, out-fought, out-climbed her brothers: you could imagine her developing like a small but sturdy greenness on a dunghill. Not a flower. But not dung, either.
Her father was a house painter, with the house painter’s inevitable penchant for alcohol, and he used to beat his wife. She, fortunately, failed to survive the birth of Emmy’s fourth brother, whereupon her father desisted from the bottle long enough to woo and wed an angular shrew who, serving as an instrument of retribution, beat him soundly with stove wood in her lighter moments.
‘Don’t never marry a woman, Emmy,’ her father, maudlin and affectionate, advised her. ‘If I had it to do all over again I’d take a man every time.’
‘I won’t never marry nobody,’ Emmy had promised herself passionately, especially after Donald had gone to war and her laboriously worded letters to him had gone unanswered. (And now he don’t even know me, she thought dully.)
‘I won’t never marry nobody,’ she repeated, putting dinner on the table. ‘I think I’ll just die,’ she said, staring through a streaming window into the rain, watching the gusty rain surge by like a grey yet silver ship crossing her vision, nursing a final plate between her hands.
She broke her reverie, and putting the plate on the table she went and stood without the study door where they were sitting watching the streaming window panes, hearing the grey rain like a million little feet across the roof and in the trees.
‘All right, Uncle Joe,’ she said, fleeing kitchenward.
Before they were half-way through lunch the downpour had ceased, the ships of rain had surged onward, drawing before the wind, leaving only a whisper in the wet green waves of leaves, with an occasional gust running in long white lines like elves holding hands across the grass. But Emmy did not appear with dessert.
‘Emmy!’ called the rector again.
Mrs Powers rose. ‘I’ll go see,’ she said.
The kitchen was empty. ‘Emmy?’ she called quietly. There was no reply, and she was on the point of leaving when an impulse bade her look behind the open door. She swung it away from the wall and Emmy stared at her dumbly.
‘Emmy, what is it?’ she asked.
But Emmy marched wordless from her hiding place, and taking a tray she placed the prepared dessert on it and handed it to Mrs Powers.
‘This is silly, Emmy, acting this way. You must give him time to get used to us again.’
But Emmy only looked at her from beyond the frontiers of her inarticulate despair, and the other woman carried the tray in to the table. ‘Emmy’s not feeling well,’ she explained.
‘I am afraid Emmy works too hard,’ the rector said. ‘She was always a hard worker, don’t you remember, Donald?’
Mahon raised his puzzled gaze to his father’s face. ‘Emmy?’ he repeated.
‘Don’t you remember Emmy?’
‘Yes, sir,’ he repeated tonelessly.
6
The window panes had cleared, though it yet rained. She sat after the men had left the table and at last Emmy peered through the door, then entered. She rose and together the two of them cleared the table, over Emmy’s mild protest, and carried the broken meal to the kitchen. Mrs Powers turned back her sleeves briskly.
‘No, no, lemme do it,’ Emmy objected. ‘You’ll spoil your dress.’
‘It’s an old one: no matter if I do.’
‘It don’t look old to me. I think it’s right pretty. But this is my work. You go on and lemme do it.’
‘I know, but I’ve got to do something or I’ll go wild. Don’t you worry about this dress: I don’t.’
‘You are rich, you don’t have to, I guess,’ Emmy answered coldly, examining the dress.
‘Do you like it?’ Emmy made no reply. ‘I think clothes of this sort suit people of your and my type, don’t you?’
‘I dunno. I never thought about it,’ splashing water in the sink.
‘I tell you what,’ said Mrs Powers, watching Emmy’s firm, sturdy back, ‘I have a new dress up in my trunk that doesn’t suit me, for some reason. When we get through, suppose you come up with me and we’ll try it on you. I can sew a little, and we can make it fit you exactly. What about it?’
Emmy thawed imperceptibly. ‘What use would I have for
