‘And afterwards we laid there and held each other, and I felt so quiet, so good, and some cows came up and looked at us and went away. And I could feel his hand going right slow from my shoulder along my side so far as he could reach and then back again, slow, slow. We didn’t talk at all, just his hand going up and down my side, so smooth and quiet. And after a while I was asleep.
‘Then I waked up. It was getting dawn and I was cramped and wet and cold, and he was gone. . . . But I knew he would come back. And so he did, with some blackberries. We ate ’em and watched it getting light in the east. Then when the blackberries were gone I could feel the cold, wet grass under me again and see the sky all yellow and chilly behind his head.
‘After a while we went back by the swimming hole and he put on his clothes and we got my nightie and I put it on. It was getting light fast and he wanted to go all the way home with me, only I wouldn’t let him: I didn’t care what happened to me now. And when I went through the gate there was pappy standing on the porch.’
She was silent. Her story seemed to be finished. She breathed regularly as a child against the other’s shoulder.
‘And what then, Emmy?’ Mrs Powers prompted again.
‘Well, when I came to the porch I stopped and he said, “Where have you been?” and I said, “None of your business,” and he said, “You whore, I’ll beat you to death,” and I said, “Touch me.” But he didn’t. I think I would have killed him if he had. He went into the house and I went in and dressed and bundled up my clothes and left. And I haven’t been back since, either.’
‘What did you do then?’
‘I got a job sewing for a dressmaker named Mrs Miller, and she let me sleep in her shop until I could earn some money. I hadn’t been there but three days when one day Mr Mahon walked in. He said that Donald had told him about us and that Donald had gone to the war, and that he had come for me. So I have been here ever since. So I didn’t see Donald any more, and now he don’t know me at all.’
‘You poor child,’ Mrs Powers said. She raised Emmy’s face: it was calm, purged. She no longer felt superior to the girl. Suddenly Emmy sprang to her feet and gathered up the mended clothes. ‘Wait, Emmy,’ she called. But Emmy was gone.
She lit a cigarette and sat smoking slowly in her great dim room with its heterogeneous collection of furniture. After a while she rose to draw the curtains; the rain had ceased and long lances of sunlight piercing the washed immaculate air struck sparks amid the dripping trees.
She crushed out her cigarette, and descending the stairs she saw a strange retreating back, and the rector, turning from the door, said hopelessly, staring at her:
‘He doesn’t give us much hope for Donald’s sight.’
‘But he’s only a general practitioner. We’ll get a specialist from Atlanta,’ she encouraged him, touching his sleeve.
And here was Miss Cecily Saunders tapping her delicate way up the fast-drying path, between the fresh-sparkled grass.
8
Cecily sat in her room in pale satin knickers and a thin orange-coloured sweater, with her slim legs elevated to the arm of another chair, reading a book. Her father, opening the door without knocking, stared at her in silent disapproval. She met his gaze for a time, then lowered her legs.
‘Do nice girls sit around half-naked like this?’ he asked coldly. She laid her book aside and rose.
‘Maybe I’m not a nice girl,’ she answered flippantly. He watched her as she enveloped her narrow body in a flimsy diaphanous robe.
‘I suppose you consider that an improvement, do you?’
‘You shouldn’t come in my room without knocking, daddy,’ she told him fretfully.
‘No more I will, if that’s the way you sit in it.’ He knew he was creating an unfortunate atmosphere in which to say what he wished, but he felt compelled to continue. ‘Can you imagine your mother sitting in her room half undressed like this?’
‘I hadn’t thought about it’ She leaned against the mantel, combatively respectful. ‘But I can if she wanted to.’
He sat down. ‘I want to talk to you, Sis.’ His tone was changed and she sank on to the foot of the bed, curling her legs under her, regarding him hostilely. How clumsy I am, he thought, clearing his throat. ‘It’s about young Mahon.’
She looked at him.
‘I saw him this noon, you know.’
She was forcing him to do all the talking. Dammit, what an amazing ability children have for making parental admonition hard to achieve. Even Bob was developing it.
Cecily’s eyes were green and fathomless. She extended her arm, taking a nail file from her dressing-table. The downpour had ceased and the rain was only a whisper in the wet leaves. Cecily bent her face above the graceful slender gesturing of her hands.
‘I say, I saw young Mahon today,’ her father repeated with rising choler.
‘You did? How did he look, daddy?’ Her tone was so soft, so innocent that he sighed with relief. He glanced at her sharply, but her face was lowered sweetly and demurely; he could see only her hair filled with warm reddish lights and the shallow plane of her cheek and her soft unemphatic chin.
‘That boy’s in bad shape, Sis.’
‘His poor father,’ she commiserated above her busy hands. ‘It is so hard on him, isn’t it?’
‘His father doesn’t know.’
She looked quickly up and her eyes became grey and dark, darker still. He saw that she didn’t know, either. ‘Doesn’t know?’ she repeated, ‘How can he help seeing that scar?’ Her face blanched and her hand touched her breast delicately. ‘Do you mean—’
‘No, no,’ he said hastily. ‘I mean his father thinks — that he — his father doesn’t think — I mean his father forgets that his journey has tired him, you see,’ he finished awkwardly. He continued swiftly: ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’
‘About being engaged to him? How can I, with that scar? How can I?’
‘No, no, not engaged to him, if you don’t want to be. We won’t think about the engagement at all now. But just keep on seeing him until he gets well, you see.’
‘But, daddy, I can’t. I just can’t.’
‘Why, Sis?’
‘Oh, his face. I can’t bear it any more.’ Her own face was wrung with the recollection of a passed anguish. ‘Don’t you see I can’t? I would if I could.’
‘But you’ll get used to it. And I expect a good doctor can patch him up and hide it. Doctors can do anything these days. Why, Sis, you are the one who can do more for him right now than any doctor.’
She lowered her head to her arms folded upon the foot-tail of the bed and her father stood beside her, putting his arm about her slim, nervous body.
‘Can’t you do that much, Sis? Just drop in and see him occasionally?’
‘I just can’t,’ she moaned, ‘I just can’t.’
‘Well, then, I guess you can’t see that Farr boy any more, either.’
She raised her head quickly and her body became taut beneath his arm. ‘Who says I can’t?’
‘I say so, Sis,’ he replied gently and firmly.
Her eyes became blue with anger, almost black.
‘You can’t prevent it. You know you can’t.’ She thrust herself back against his arm, trying to evade it. He held her and she twisted her head aside, straining from him.
‘Look at me,’ he said quietly, putting his other hand under her cheek. She resisted, he felt her warm breath on his hand, but he forced her face around. Her eyes blazed at him. ‘If you can’t occasionally see the man you are engaged to, and a sick man to boot, I’m damned if I’ll have you running around with anybody else.’
There were red prints of his fingers on her cheek, and her eyes slowly filled. ‘You are hurting me,’ she said, and feeling her soft, vague chin in his palm and her fragile body against his arm, he knew a sudden access of contrition. He picked her up bodily and sat again in a chair, holding her on his lap.
‘Now, then,’ he whispered, rocking, holding her face against his shoulder, ‘I didn’t mean to be so rough about it.’
She lay against him limply, weeping, and the rain filled the interval, whispering across the roof among the leaves of trees. After a long space in which they could hear dripping eaves and the happy sound of gutters and a small ivory clock in the room, she moved and still holding her face against his coat, she clasped her father about the neck.
‘We won’t think about it any more,’ he told her, kissing her cheek. She clasped him again tightly, then slipping from his lap, she stood at the dressing-table, dabbing powder upon her face. He rose, and in the mirror across her shoulder he saw her blurred face and the deft nervousness of her hands.
‘We won’t think of it anymore,’ he repeated, opening the door. The orange sweater was a hushed incandescence under the formal illusion of her robe, moulding her narrow back, as he closed the door after him.
As he passed his wife’s room she called to him.
‘What were you scolding Cecily for, Robert?’ she asked.
But he stumped on down the stairs, ignoring her, and soon she
