The Bell

CHAPTER 5

IT was the following morning. A rising bell had been rung soon after six, but Dora had learnt that it did not concern her, only those who were going to Mass. Paul had risen early, for work, not devotion. Feigning sleep, she had seen him writing at the trestle table which he had pulled up to the window. The pale sunny light of the early summer morning filled the room and from where she lay Dora could see the cloudless sky, almost without colour, the promise of another hot day. She remembered with distress that her summer frocks were lost with the suitcase and she must put on her heavy coat and skirt again.

Urged by Paul she got up just in time for breakfast at seven-thirty. The refectory of the community was the big room on the ground floor between the two stone staircases, with its doors opening on to the gravel terrace. Meals were taken in silence at Imber. At lunch and high tea one of the community read aloud during the meal, but this was not the custom at breakfast. Dora was pleased with the silence, which excused her from effort, except for such as was involved in the gesturing, pointing, and smiling, a certain amount of which went on, initiated especially by Mrs Mark and James. She consumed a good deal of tea and toast, looking out across the already baking terrace to where the lake could be seen fiercely glinting in the sun.

After breakfast Mrs Mark told Dora that she would find time during the morning to show her round the house and the estate. She would fetch Dora from her room soon after ten. Paul, who had meanwhile been at the telephone, came back with the good news that the suitcase had been found and was being returned to the railway station. Someone in the carriage had observed Dora’s forgetfulness. The sun hat, however, was not to be traced. Dora promised that she would go to the station before lunch and fetch the case. This seemed to Paul an appropriate arrangement, and he disappeared in the direction of the Abbey to get on with his work. Mrs Mark would be sure to bring Dora to see him, he said, in the course of her tour. Paul was gentle this morning, and Dora became more positively aware that he was very glad indeed that she had come back. Quite simply and immediately she was pleased to have pleased him, and that and the sunshine and some indomitable vitality in her made her feel almost gay. She picked a few wild flowers in the grass near the lake and went back up to her room to wait for Mrs Mark.

As Dora looked round the room it occurred to her how nice it was to live once more in a confined space which one was free to organize, with small resources, as one pleased. The bare room brought back to her nostalgic memories of the various digs she had lived in in London before she met Paul, shabby bed-sitting rooms in Bayswater and Pimlico and Notting Hill, which it had given her so much pleasure to embellish with posters and more or less crazy items of interior decoration created at small cost by herself or her friends. Paul’s flat in Knightsbridge, which at first had so much dazzled her, seemed later by contrast as lifeless as a museum. But on this room at Imber, Paul had made no mark. He had informed Dora that all rooms were to be swept daily and he now delegated this function to her. She had already discovered the place on the landing where the brushes were kept and had swept the room meticulously. She made the beds and tidied Paul’s things, with caution, into neat piles. She arranged the wild flowers into a careful bouquet and put them into a tooth mug which she had filched from the bathroom. They looked charming. She wondered what else she could do to make the room look nice.

There was a knock on the door and Mrs Mark came in. Dora jumped, having forgotten all about her.

“So sorry to have kept you waiting,” said Mrs Mark.“Ready for our little tour?”

“Oh yes, thank you!” said Dora, seizing her jacket which she threw loosely round her shoulders.

“I hope you don’t mind my saying so,” said Mrs Mark,“but we never have flowers in the house.” She looked censoriously at Dora’s nosegay. “We keep everything here as plain as possible. It’s a little austerity we practise.”

“Oh dear!” said Dora, blushing. “I’ll throw them out. I didn’t know.”

“Don’t do that,” said Mrs Mark magnanimously. “Keep those ones. I thought I should tell you, though, for next time. I feel sure you’d rather be treated like one of us, wouldn’t you, and keep the rules of the house? It’s not like a hotel and we do expect our guests to fit in – and I think that’s what they like best too.”

“Of course,” said Dora, still extremely confused,“I’m so sorry!”

“You see, we don’t normally allow any son of personal decoration in the rooms,” said Mrs Mark. “We try to imitate the monastic life in certain ways as closely as we can. We believe it’s a sound discipline to give up that particular sort of self-expression. It’s a small sacrifice, after all, isn’t it?”

“Yes, indeed!” said Dora.

“You’ll soon get used to our little ways,” said Mrs Mark. “I do hope you’ll enjoy it here. Paul has fitted in so well-we all quite love him. Shall we go along? I’m afraid I haven’t a great deal of time.”

She led the way out of the door. “I expect you know the geography of the house roughly by now,” said Mrs Mark. “The members of the community sleep right at the top of the house in this wing, in what used to be servants’ bedrooms. The main rooms on your floor are all kept as guest bedrooms. We act, you know, as a sort of unofficial guest house for the Abbey. We hope to develop that side of our activities very much in the future. At present there are still a lot of rooms which we haven’t even been able to furnish. The other wing is completely empty. Directly below us on the ground floor are the kitchen quarters at the back of the house, and the big ground-floor room on the corner in the front of the house is the general estate office. Then in the middle, as you know, there’s the refectory underneath the balcony, and two little rooms up above, set back behind the portico, which act as offices for James and Michael. And at the back there’s the historic Long Room, a great feature of the house, which is two stories high. We’ve made that into our chapel.”

As she talked Mrs Mark led Dora along a corridor, past the dark well of a back stairway, into a larger corridor and threw open a large door. They entered the chapel, this time from the end opposite the altar. In the bright daylight the room looked, Dora thought, even more derelict, like an aftermath of amateur theatricals. Though scrupulously clean, it appeared dusty and as if the walls were dissolving into powder. The hessian cloth reminded Dora of school.

“It’s not a proper chapel, of course,” said Mrs Mark, not lowering her voice. “That is, it’s not consecrated. But we have our own little regular services here. We go over to the Abbey chapel for Mass, and those who wish to can attend at certain other hours as well. And we have a special Sunday morning service here at which an address is given by a member of the community.”

They went out by the other door and emerged a moment later into the stone-flagged entrance hall. Mrs Mark threw open the door of the common-room. Modern upholstered chairs with arms of light-varnished wood stood in a neat circle, incongruous against the dark panelling.

“This is the only room we’ve really furnished,” said Mrs Mark.”We come here in our recreation time and we like to be comfy. The oak panelling isn’t original, of course. It was put in in the late nineteenth century when this was the smoking-room.

They emerged on to the balcony and began to descend the right-hand stone staircase.

“There’s the general office,” said Mrs Mark, indicating the windows of the large corner room. “You’ll see my husband working inside.”

They approached one of the windows and looked into the light room, which was furnished with trestle tables and unpainted deal cupboards, and seemed to be full of papers, all neatly stacked. Behind one of the tables sat Mark Straf-ford, his head bowed.

“He does the accounts,” said Mrs Mark. She watched him for a moment with a sort of curiosity which struck Dora as being devoid of tenderness. She did not tap on the window, but turned away. “Now we’ll cross to the Abbey”, she said, “and call on Paul.”

Seeing Mrs Mark watching her husband, and seeing her now a little stout and perspiring in her faded girlish summer dress, Dora felt a first flicker of liking and interest, and asked,“What did you and your husband do before you came here?” Dora, when she thought of it, never minded asking questions.

“You’ll think me an awful wet blanket,” said Mrs Mark, “but, do you know, we never discuss our past lives here. That’s another little religious rule that we try to follow. No gossip. And when you come to think of it, when people ask each other questions about their lives, their motives are rarely pure, are they? I’m sure mine never are! Curiosity that is idle soon degenerates into malice. I do hope you understand. Mind the steps here, they’re a bit overgrown.”

They had crossed to the Abbey side of the terrace and were going down some stone steps, much riddled by long dry grasses, which descended to a path leading to the causeway. Dora, exasperated, kept silent.

The lake water was very quiet, achieving a luminous brilliant pale blue in the centre and stained at the edges by motionless reflections. Dora looked across at the great stone wall and the curtain of elm trees behind it. Above the trees rose the Abbey tower, which she saw in daylight to be a square Norman tower. It was an inspiring thing, without pinnacles or crenellations, squarely built of grey and yellowish stone, and decorated on each face by two pairs of round-topped windows, placed one above the other, edged with zigzag carving which at a distance gave a pearly embroidered appearance, and divided by a line of interlacing arches.

“A fine example of Norman work,” said Mrs Mark, following Dora’s gaze.

They went on down to the causeway. This crossed the lake in a series of shallow arches built of old brick which had weathered to a rich blackish red. Each arch with its reflection made a dark ellipse. Dora noticed that the centre of the causeway was missing and had been replaced by a wooden section standing on piles.

“There was trouble here at the time of the dissolution, the dissolution of the monasteries, you know,” said Mrs Mark, “and that piece was destroyed by order of the nuns themselves. It didn’t help them, however. Most of the Abbey was burnt down. After the Reformation it became derelict and when Imber Court was built the Abbey was a deserted ruin, a sort of romantic feature of the grounds. Then in the late nineteenth century, after the Oxford movement, you know, the place was taken over by the Anglican Benedictines – it was formerly a Benedictine Abbey, of course – and was rebuilt about nineteen hundred. They acquired the manuscripts that interest your husband at about the same time. There’s very little of the old building left now except for the refectory and the gateway and of course the tower.”

They stepped onto the causeway. Dora felt a tremor of excitement. “Will we be able to go to the top of the tower?” she asked.

“Well, you know, we’re not going inside,”said Mrs Mark, slightly scandalized. “This is an enclosedorder of nuns. No one goes in or comes out.”

Dora was stunned by this information. She stopped.“Do you mean”, she said, “that they’re completely imprisoned in there?”

Mrs Mark laughed. “Not imprisoned, my dear,” she said. “They are there of their own free will. This is not a prison. It is on the contrary a place which it is very hard to get into, and only the strongest achieve it. Like Mary in the parable, they have chosen the better part.” They walked on.

“Don’t they ever come out?” asked Dora.

“No,” said Mrs Mark. “Being Benedictines, they take a vow of stability, that is they remain all their lives in the house where they take their first vows. They die and are buried inside in the nuns’ cemetery.”

“How absolutely appalling!” said Dora.

“Quiet now, please,” said Mrs Mark in a lowered voice. They were reaching the end of the causeway.

Dora saw now that the high wall, which had seemed to rise directly out of the lake, was in fact set back more than fifty yards from the edge of the water. From the lake shore there ran two roughly pebbled paths, one up to the great gateway, whose immense wooden door stood firmly shut, and the other away to the left alongside the Abbey wall.

“This door”, said Mrs Mark, pointing to the gateway and still speaking softly, “is never opened except for the admission of a postulant: a rather impressive ceremony that always takes place in the early morning. Well, yes, it will also be opened in a week or two. When the new bell comes it will be taken in this way, as if it were a postulant.”

They turned to the left along the path which ran midway between the wall and the water. Dora saw a long rectangular brick building with a flat roof which seemed to be attached as an excrescence to the outside of the wall.

“Not a thing of beauty, I’m afraid,” said Mrs Mark.“Here are the parlours where the nuns occasionally come to speak to people from outside. And at the end is the visitors’ chapel where we are privileged to participate in the devotional life of the Abbey. The nuns’ chapel is the large building just here on the other side of the wall. You can see a bit of the tiled roof there through the trees.”

They went in through a green door at the end of the brick building. A long corridor stretched ahead with a row of doors leading off it.

“I’ll show you one of the parlours,” said Mrs Mark, almost whispering now. “We won’t disturb your husband just yet. He’s down at the far end.”

They entered the first door. Dora found herself in a small square room which was completely bare except for two chairs and the shiny linoleum upon the floor. The chairs were drawn up at the other side of the room against a great screen of white gauze which covered the upper half of the far wall.

Mrs Mark went forward. “The other half of the room,”she said, “on the other side, is within the enclosure.” She pulled at the wooden edge of the gauze screen and it opened as a door, revealing behind it a grille of iron bars set about nine inches apart. Behind the grille and close up against it was a second gauze screen, obscuring the view into the room beyond.

“You see,” said Mrs Mark, “the nun opens the screen on the other side, and then you can talk through the grille.” She closed the screen to again. It all seemed to Dora quite unbelievably eerie.

“I wonder if you’d like to talk to one of the nuns?”said Mrs Mark. “I’m afraid the Abbess is certain to be too busy. Even James and Michael only manage to see her now and then. But I’m sure Mother Clare would be very glad to see you and have a little talk.”

Dora could feel her bristles rising with alarm and indignation. “I don’t think I would have anything to talk to the nuns about,” she said, trying to prevent her voice from sounding aggressive.

“Well, you know,” said Mrs Mark, “I thought it might be nice for you to talk things over. The nuns are wise folk and you’d be surprised at what they know of how the world goes on. Nothing shocks them. People often come here to make a clean breast of their troubles and get themselves sorted out.”

“I have no troubles which I care to discuss,” said Dora. She was rigid with hostility, shuddering at these phrases. She’d see the place in hell before she’d let a nun meddle with her mind and heart. They retreated into the corridor.

“Think it over anyway,” said Mrs Mark. “Perhaps it’s the sort of idea that takes some getting used to. Now we’ll call on Paul. He works down there in the last parlour.”

Mrs Mark knocked and opened the door revealing a room similar to the first one, only furnished with a large table at which Paul was working. The gauze screen was closed.

Paul and Dora were glad to see each other. Paul looked up from the table and fixed a beaming smile upon his wife. His delight whenever she found him at his studies had always struck Dora as childish and touching. She was pleased now to see him so importantly at work, and immediately felt proud of him, regaining her vision of him as a distinguished man, how obviously superior, she felt, to Mark Strafford and those other drearies. Dora’s capacity to forget and to live in the moment, while it more frequently landed her in grave trouble, made her also responsive without calculation to the returning glow of kindness. That she had no memory made her generous. She was unrevengeful and did not brood; and in the instant as she crossed the room it was as if there had never been any trouble between them.

“These are some of the manuscripts I’m working on,”Paul was saying in a low voice. “They’re very precious and I’m not allowed to take them away.” He was leaning over the table and opening several large leather-bound volumes with thick and brightly illuminated pages for Dora to see. “Here are the early chronicles of the nunnery. They’re unique of their kind. This is called a‘chartulary’, which contains copies of charters and legal documents. And here is the famous Imber Psalter. See these fantastic initial letters, and the animals running up the side of the page? And this is a picture of the Abbey as it was in 1400.”

Dora saw a complex of white castellated buildings against a background of very leafy green trees and blue sky. “I suppose it wasn’t really so white,” she said. “It looks more like Italy. However does all that gold stuff stay on? Why, there’s the old tower!”

“Sssh!” said Paul. “Yes, that’s the tower that still exists. It’s a very formalized picture, of course. And here’s the Bishop who founded the place holding a model of the Abbey in his hand. You get a better idea of the lay-out from that. The modern Abbey follows the ground-plan of the old one, though of course they haven’t attempted to reproduce the medieval buildings. That section still survives as well as the tower. In this old Book of Evidences you can see -”

“We mustn’t keep you too long,” said Mrs Mark. “And I must show Dora the chapel and buzz her round the market-garden and get back to my own jobs.”

Paul was disappointed. “I’ll show you more tomorrow,” he said, and squeezed Dora’s arm as she turned away.

Dora, who would like to have stayed, gave him a rueful smile behind Mrs Mark’s retreating back. She was already determining how she would mock that lady when she was once more alone with Paul. Mockery did not come easily to Dora, and had to be thought out beforehand. Her jests at other people’s expense were often a trifle laboured. She followed Mrs Mark now, smiling to herself, and cheered too by the ease of her complicity with Paul.

Mrs Mark took the last few steps along the corridor and entered a little vestibule with two doors, one opening into the garden and the other into the chapel. She opened the inner door and propelled Dora through it into an almost complete blackness. As she strained her eyes to see, Dora was conscious of Mrs Mark vigorously genuflecting beside her. Then she began to be aware that she was in a small box-like room with a highly polished parquet floor, some religious prints on the walls, and a number of chairs and hassocks. A strong smell of incense pervaded the place. The room faced inwards towards an enormous grille which this time stretched from floor to ceiling for the whole width of the room. Some of the bars had been severed to make a door, which was closed. There was a low rail, set a few feet back on the near side of the grille, and behind the bars could be dimly seen, at a higher level upon a dais, an altar set sideways on to the room. Two long white curtains, drawn back now to reveal the scene, hung from a brass rail which traversed the grille. Near the altar a small red light was burning. An annihilating silence came from within.

“This is the visitors’ chapel,” said Mrs Mark, speaking now in such a low whisper that Dora could hardly hear her.“What you see through the bars is the high altar of the nuns’chapel. The main body of the chapel faces the altar and can’t be seen from here. By this arrangement we can participate in the services without ever seeing the nuns, which of course would be forbidden. There is a mass at seven every morning which visitors may attend. That’s the gate the priest comes through to give communion to anyone who is in this chapel. When the nuns are receiving the sacrament these curtains are closed to cut this chapel off from the main one. This is the place where outsiders like us can come nearest to the spiritual life of the Abbey.”

A soft rustle came from somewhere in the distance, round the corner beyond the bars, and then the sound of a footstep.

“Is someone -?” whispered Dora.

“There is always a nun in the chapel,” murmured Mrs Mark. “It is a place of continual prayer.”

Dora felt stifled and suddenly frightened and began to retreat towards the door. The rich exotic smell of the incense roused some ancestral terror in her Protestant blood. Mrs Mark genuflected, crossing herself, and followed. In a moment they were out in the bright sunlight. The tall grasses moved, mingling with the reeds at the water’s edge, and the lake flickered quietly in the sun. The wide scene, with a slanting view of Imber Court and a hazy distance of parkland elms, was laid out under a cloudless sky. There was something incredible about the proximity of that dark hole and that silence. Dora shook her head violently.

“Yes, it is impressive, isn’t it?” said Mrs Mark.“There is a wonderful spiritual life here. One just can’t help being affected by it.”

They began to walk back across the causeway.

“We’ll take that little path to the left,” said Mrs Mark, “and cut through behind the house to the market-garden.”

The path led them from the end of the causeway a little way along the shore, and then turned away to the right, skirting a thick wood. A glint of greenhouses was to be seen ahead. As they turned by the wood, leaving the edge of the lake, the thin tinkling of the hand bell followed them from across the water.

Dora burst out, “It’s terrible to think of them being shut up like that!”

“It is true”, said Mrs Mark, “that these women lay upon themselves austerities from which you and I would shrink in terror. But just as we think the sinner better than he is when we imagine that suffering ennobles him, so we do less than justice to the saint when we think that his sacrifices grieve him in the way they would grieve us. Indian file here, I think.”

Mrs Mark led the way along the narrow track which could still just be found in the middle of the encroaching grass, tall and bleached to a faded yellow. Long feathery plumes, brittle with dryness, leaned from either side, touching the shoulders of the two women as they passed. Still stirred and affected by what she had seen, Dora blundered on in her uncomfortable shoes, watching where she stepped, and seeing ahead of her through the undergrowth the intermittent flash of Mrs Mark’s well-developed calves, healthily shining, burnished by the sun to a glowing golden brown. The back view of the Court could be seen on the right, from this side a long unbroken façade, with pillars set close into the wall to frame the impressive round-topped windows of the Long Room. They emerged into an open space where the grass had been cut and stacked. The path faded away here and Dora’s high heels sank into sharp stubble.

“This is where the market-garden begins,” said Mrs Mark. “It’s still very small, you know. This nearer part is what used to be the flower garden of the Court. We’re cultivating that in strips with lettuce mainly, and some carrots and onions and young leeks. Beyond is what used to be the fruit garden of the Court. That’s enclosed by the high walls you see straight ahead. We’ve kept that very much as it was. It’s well stocked with apples and pears and plenty of soft fruit. There are some greenhouses in there, and we’ve added the more modern ones you see on the left. They’re all full of tomatoes at present. The wire thing beside them is a chicken house. Just one or two birds, you know. Then we’ve just started to cultivate a piece of the pastureland beyond the ha-ha. We’ve got cabbage there, and a good area of potatoes and brussels sprouts. We’re only growing the safer vegetables at present till we’ve gained experience. We shall dig up more of the pastureland in the autumn.”

They came to a concrete path which led between glass frames in the direction of the walled garden. Some figures came into view. A little distance away James Tayper Pace could be seen instructing Toby how to hoe between the rows of plants. A figure, probably Peter Topglass, was moving to and fro in one of the greenhouses.

“Hoeing is an unromantic activity,” said Mrs Mark with a certain satisfaction, “but it’s one’s daily bread in a market garden.”

Patchway approached them along the path, pushing a wheelbarrow. His hat looked as if it had not moved since last night.

“Still no rain I’m afraid,” said Mrs Mark to Patchway.

“Won’t see no life in them leeks before the autumn if it don’t rain buckets pretty soon,” said Patchway.

They stood aside to let him pass.

“He’s going to lift some lettuces,” said Mrs Mark.“Such a nice simple man. What you see on the right is the back of the stable block, said to have been designed by Kent. Part of it was damaged by fire about fifty years ago, but as you see it’s still very pretty. It figured a lot in old prints. We’ve made some of the loose boxes into garages, and some into packing sheds where we weigh and pack the vegetables to go to Pendelcote and Cirencester. I supervise that part of the work as well as all the indoor things and the catering. We believe that women should stick to their traditional tasks. No point in making a change just to make a change, is there? We’d be so glad if you ever felt like joining in any time. I expect you’re handy with your needle?”

Dora, who was not, was feeling the sun extremely. The reflections of heat and light from the concrete path and the line of glass frames were giving her a headache. She put her hand to her head.

“Poor thing!” said Mrs Mark. “I’ve walked you off your feet. We’ll just take a quick look at the fruit garden and then I’m sure you should go inside and rest, and I must get on with my jobs.” She pushed open a heavy wooden gate in the wall and they came into the fruit garden.

The old stone walls, dry and crumbling with the long summer, covered over with brittle stonecrop and fading valerian, enclosed a large space crammed and tangled with fruit bushes. A wire cage covered an area in the far corner, and there was a glint of glass. A haze hung over the luxuriant scene, and it seemed hotter than ever within the garden. Disciplined fruit trees were spread-eagled along every wall, their leaves curling in the heat. Dora and Mrs Mark began to walk along one of the paths, the dried up spiky fingers of raspberry canes catching at their clothes.

“Why there’s Catherine,” said Mrs Mark. “She’s picking the apricots.”

They came towards her. A large string net of small mesh had teen thrown over a section of the wall to protect the fruit from the birds. Behind the net Catherine was to be seen, almost lost in the foliage of the tree, dropping the golden fruit into a wide basket at her feet. She wore a floppy white sun hat under which her dark hair straggled in a long knot, hazy with wisps and tendrils, which hung down between her shoulder-blades. She was intent on her labour and did not see Dora and Mrs Mark until they had come very close. Her dark head, thrown back beneath the powdery glow of the hanging apricots, looked to Dora Spanish, and again beautiful. Her averted face, without the nervous self-protective look which it wore in company, seemed stronger, more dignified, and more sad. Dora felt that strange misgiving once more at the sight.

“Hello, Catherine!” said Mrs Mark loudly. “I’ve brought Dora to see you.”

Catherine jumped and turned about, looking startled. What a jittery creature she is, Dora thought. She smiled and Catherine smiled back at her through the net.

“You must get terribly hot doing that,” said Dora.

Catherine wore an open-necked summer frock with pale washed-out flowers upon it. Her throat was burnt to a dark brown by the sun, but a sallowness in her face had seemed to resist the sunlight and gave her the pale look which Dora had remarked the night before. She pushed the hat back off her head as she spoke to Dora until it rested, held by its strings, upon the great bunch of hair on her shoulders, and she swept the ragged dark fringe back from her brow. She wiped a brown hand wet with perspiration upon her dress, while they exchanged a remark or two about the weather. Dora and Mrs Mark passed on.

“Catherine’s so excited about going in, bless her heart,” said Mrs Mark. “This is such a thrilling time for her.”

“Going in?” said Dora.

“Oh, you didn’t know,” said Mrs Mark, as she led Dora back towards the gate. “Catherine is going to be a nun. She is going to enter the Abbey in October.”

They went out of the gate. Dora turned to take one last look at the figure under the net. At the news which she had just heard she felt a horrified surprise, a curious sort of relief, and a more obscure pain, compounded perhaps of pity and of some terror, as if something within herself were menaced with destruction.

“It’s time now please,” said the man behind the counter.

Dora jumped guiltily to her feet and returned her glass. She was the only remaining inhabitant of the darkly varnished bar parlour of the White Lion. She went out into the sunshine and heard the sad sound of the inn door being closed and bolted behind her. It was half past two.

After taking leave of Mrs Mark in the morning Dora had rested for about twenty minutes, and then had walked to the village by a footpath which Mrs Mark had indicated to her, to inquire at the station about the suitcase. The walk took longer than she expected, but when she arrived, sweating and exhausted, she was told that the case was due to be returned by a train which came through in about half an hour. Wandering out again into the village Dora was transported with delight to discover that the pubs were open. She patronized in turn the White Lion and the Volunteer, and sat dreaming in the dim light of the bars, enjoying that atmosphere of a quiet pub which was connected with her pleasanter memories of being in church. She went back to the station and found the train was late. Eventually it appeared and the suitcase was unloaded and given to Dora. Her first action was to retire with it to the Ladies’ Cloakroom and change into a summer dress and sandals. Feeling much better, she emerged and was about to start out, laden with the suitcase, on the walk back which it had not occurred to Paul, or indeed to herself, to think of as likely to be peculiarly wearisome, when she happened to look at the time. It was a quarter past one. Dora then remembered that lunch at Imber was at twelve-thirty. It was then that she entered for the second time into the White Lion.

Ejected, she trailed off through the village and found the stile and the little footpath which led through two wheat-fields and a wood to the main road. The wheat, tawny with ripeness, had been cut and stood in tented stooks about the fields, while a few ghostly poppies lingered at the edge of the path. Dora reached the road, walked a little way along it following the wall of the Imber domain, and went in through a small door. From here a path led diagonally across two of the streams that fed the lake, to join the drive at the third bridge. This was a very beautiful part of the walk, and was mainly in the shade, and although very hungry now and somewhat confused at being so late, Dora felt momentarily quite delighted with the soft air and with the green arches of the wood as she reached the plank bridge over the first stream. She was cooled by the shade and her emptiness gave her a sense of energy.

The estate was thickly wooded here and the stream found its way along under a leafy cavern of elder and ash saplings beneath the higher roof of the trees. Grasses leaned into the stream and were spread out in long lines of vivid green, but it was clear in the centre, running over a bed of sand and pebbles. Dora stood for a moment, looking down into the trembling speckled water, and found herself thinking about Catherine. She pictured her, attired as a bride, going through the great Abbey door in October, never to emerge again. Then it was in imagination as if she, Dora, were crossing the causeway, her eyes fixed steadily upon the opening door. She woke shivering from the vision, and descending quickly by the side of the bridge walked sandals and all into the bed of the stream. Thank God she was not Catherine.

She climbed scratched and dripping up the farther bank and continued her way. It was a few minutes later that two alarming thoughts struck her almost simultaneously. The first thought was that she must have lost her way, since she had reached the second stream, which was broader and overgrown with brambles, but found no bridge, and was now following a path going uphill parallel to the stream. The second thought was that she had left the suitcase behind in the White Lion. At this second thought Dora gave a wail of despair. It was bad enough to have missed lunch. This second imbecility would make Paul cross for days, even provided the suitcase had not meanwhile been stolen. She turned about, meaning to run back to the village and try to get it at once. But she felt so hot and so tired and so hungry, and it was such a long way and there were so many nettles suddenly all around and anyway she was lost. I am a perfect idiot, thought Dora.

At that moment she heard a rustling of leaves from further down the path, in the direction from which she had come, and a figure emerged from the wood, parting the tangled greenery in front of him. It was Michael Meade.

He seemed surprised to see Dora there and came towards her with a smiling questioning look.

“Oh, Mr Meade,” said Dora, “I think I’m lost.” She felt shy at finding herself alone with the leader of the community.

“I saw the colour of your dress through the trees,”said Michael, “and I couldn’t think what it was. I thought at first it was one of Peter’s rare birds! Yes, if you’re making for the house, you’ve come up the wrong path. I was just visiting the watercress beds. We grow cress on a section of the other stream. It’s out of season now, of course, but one has to keep it cleared out. It’s pretty up here, isn’t it?”

“Oh, lovely,” said Dora, and then to her dismay found that she was starting to cry. She felt a little faint from hunger and the intense heat, more breathless than ever under the canopy of the wood.

“You’re feeling the heat, you know,” said Michael.“Sit down here for a moment on this tree trunk. Put your head well forward, that’s right. You’ll feel better in a moment.” His hand touched her neck.

“It’s not that,” said Dora. Finding she had no handkerchief she wiped her eyes with the hem of her dress, and then rubbed her face with the back of a muddy and perspiring hand. “I went to fetch the suitcase, you know, the one I left on the train, and I got it, and now I’ve left it behind again in the White Lion!”Her voice ended in a wail.

Michael looked at her for a moment. Then he began to laugh too, rather ruefully.

“I’m so sorry,” said Michael, “but it did sound comic, the way you said it! Cheer up, there’s no tragedy. I have to go to the village this evening in the Land-Rover and I’ll fetch it back then. It’ll be quite safe at the White Lion. Did you have any lunch, by the way? We were wondering about you.”

“Well, no,” said Dora. “I had a drink. But they hadn’t got any sandwiches.”

“Let’s go straight back to the house,” said Michael,“and Mrs Mark will find you something to eat. Then you ought to lie down. You’ve given yourself a strenuous morning. We’ll go this way, up the hill, and cross by the stepping stones. It’s just as quick from here and rather cooler. Up you get and follow me. I won’t go fast.”

He helped Dora to her feet. She smiled at him, pushed the damp hair back from her brow, feeling a little better now, and followed him as he set off along the path. She felt no more anxiety about the suitcase, as if everything had been made simple and settled by Michael’s laughter. She was grateful to him for that. Last night he had seemed just a thin pale man, over-tired and inattentive. But today she saw him as a decisive and gentle person, and even his narrow face seemed browner and his hair more golden. With eyes so close together he would always look anxious, but how blue the eyes were after all.

So for a minute or two Dora followed Michael along the path, feeling calm again, looking at her guide’s sunburnt and bony neck, revealed above the sagging collar of a rather dirty white shirt. Then she saw that he had stopped abruptly and was staring at something ahead. Without saying anything Dora came quietly up to him to see what it was that had made him stop. She looked over his shoulder.

There was a little clearing in the wood, and the stream had made itself a pool, with mossy rocks and close grass at the edge. In the centre it seemed deep and the water was a cool dark brown. Dora looked, and did not at first see anything except the circle of water and the moving chequers of the foliage behind, unevenly penetrated by the sun. Then she saw a pale figure standing quite still on the far side of the pool. It took her another moment, after the first shock of surprise, to see who it was. It was Toby, dressed in a sun hat and holding a long stick, which he had thrust into the water and with which he was stirring up the mud from the bottom. Dora saw at once, saw sooner than her recognition, that except for his sun hat Toby was quite naked. His very pale and slim body was caressed by the sun and shadow as the willow tree under which he stood shifted slightly in the breeze. He bent over his stick, intent upon the water, not knowing he was observed, and looked in the moment like one to whom nakedness is customary, moving with a lanky bony slightly awkward grace. The sight of him filled Dora with an immediate tremor of delight, and a memory came back to her from her Italian journey, the young David of Donatello, casual, powerful, superbly naked, and charmingly immature.

If Dora had been alone she would have called out at once to Toby, so little was she embarrassed and so much amused and pleased by what she saw. But the proximity of Michael, which she had for a moment forgotten, made her pause, and turning to him she had a sense of embarrassment, not so much because of his presence as on his behalf, since he would perhaps imagine some embarrassment in her. Michael’s face, as she now saw, was indeed troubled as he still looked upon the boy. Then he turned quietly about, and touching Dora’s arm led her noiselessly back along the path by which they had come. Toby was not disturbed. All this seemed to Dora to show a foolish delicacy, but she followed, stepping softly.

When they had gone a little way Michael said, “We gave him the afternoon off. I was wondering where he had got to. I thought we’d better leave him to have his swim in peace. We’ll go back the other way.”

“Yes, of course,” said Dora. She looked boldly now at Michael, feeling a complicity between them because of the pastoral vision which they had enjoyed together. Michael seemed to her all at once to have become delightfully shy. She remembered the touch of his hand upon her neck. Their strange experience had created between them a tremulous beam of physical desire which had not been present before. This secret homage was tender and welcome to Dora, and as they descended the path together she smiled to herself over her theory, apprehending in her companion a new consciousness of herself as incarnate, a potentially desirable, potentially naked woman, very close beside him in the warmth of the afternoon.