Loving - Green Henry - Страница 25

On this there came a kind of faint mewing from the back. Albert started but stayed where he was while those others went hand in hand to see. Away in the depths, out from behind a group of robed men kneeling with heads and arms raised to heaven something small minced out into half light. It was a peacock which had come in to get out of the wet. 'You see her off these premises,' Edith told Albert, 'we don't aim to catch her when we're blindfolded. We don't want another death, the sauce,' she explained. But it took Albert some time to get the creature out. He had to make it hop over that turnstile which caused it to squawk spinsterish. 'You'll have Paddy after you,' Edith called to him at the noise.

When he came back he found Miss Moira had been chosen, had had her eyes bound with the sopping 'I love you.' She stumbled about in flat spirals under a half-dressed lady that held a wreath at the end of her two long arms. Stifled with giggling Edith and Evelyn moved quiet on the outside circle while Albert stood numb. So that it was he was caught.

'Mr Raunce's Albert,' Miss Moira announced without hesitation, her short arms round his thighs. 'Kiss me,' she commanded. 'Kiss me,' the walls said back.

He bent down. His bang of yellow hair fell at right angles to his nose. He kissed her wet forhead over the scarf. Her child's skin was electric hot under a film of water.

Then it was his turn. There was only Edith tall enough to tie him and as 'I love you I love you' was knotted over his eyes he quietly drew a great breath perhaps to find out if Edith had left anything on this piece of stuff. He drew and drew again cautious as if he might be after a deep draught of her, of her skin, of herself. He was puffed already when his arms went out to go round and round and round her. But she was not there and for answer he had a storm of giggles which he could not tell one from the other and which went ricochet-ting from stone cold bosoms to damp streaming marble bellies, to and from huge oyster niches in the walls in which boys fought giant boas or idled with a flute, and which volleyed under green skylights empty in the ceiling. He went slow. He could hear feet slither. Then he turned in a flash. He had Edith. He stood awkward one hand on her stomach the other on the small of her back.

'Guess then,' he heard Miss Evelyn tell him out of sudden silence. 'Edith,' he said low.

'Kiss her then,' they shrieked disinterested, 'kiss her,' they shrieked again. In a tumult of these words re-echoed over and over from above from below and from all sides his hands began to grope awkward, not feeling at her body but more as if he wished to find his distance. 'Kiss her.'

'Come on then,' she said brisk. She stepped for the first time into his arms. Blinded as he was by those words knotted wet on his eyes he must have more than witnessed her as his head without direction went nuzzling to where hers came at him in a short contact, and in spite of being so short more brilliant more soft and warm perhaps than his thousand dreams.

'Crikey,' he said and took the scarf off in one piece. He seemed absolutely dazzled although it had become almost too dark to see his face.

'You tie it dear,' she said kneeling down to Miss Moira. 'He's that awkward,' she said in a cold voice.

But there was an interruption. As Edith knelt before the child a door in the wall opened with a grinding shriek of rusty hinge and Raunce entered upon a scene which this noise and perhaps also his presence had instantly turned to more stone.

'I figured this was where you could be found,' he said advancing smooth on Edith. She had raised a hand to her eyes as though to lift the scarf but she let her arm drop and faced him when he spoke, blind as any statue.

'Yes?' she said. 'What is it?'

'Won't you play Mr Raunce?' Miss Evelyn asked.

'Playin' eh?' he remarked to Albert.

'It's Thursday isn't it?' Edith enquired sharp. 'That's his half day off or always was. What's up?'

'Nothin',' he replied, 'only I just wondered how you might be. getting along.'

'Is that all?' was her comment. At which Albert spoke for himself.

'We was havin' a game of blind man's buff,' he said.

'So I perceive Albert,' the butler remarked.

'Oh do come on do,' one of the little girls pleaded but Edith chose this moment to take that scarf off her eyes.

'You surely didn't pass through all that old part alone?' she asked.

'And why not?'

'Oh Charley I never could not in a month of Sundays. Not on my own.'

'Is that so?'

'You are pleasant I must say aren't you?' she said.

"Thanking you,' Raunce answered.

'Oh please come on Mr Raunce please,' the child entreated. 'Edith'11 give you up her turn.'

'I'm past the age and that's a fact Miss Evelyn,' Raunce said almost nasty. 'For the matter of that I chucked this blind man's buff before I'd lived as many years as my lad here. In my time if we had nothing better to do than lark about on a half day we got on with our work.'

'Here,' Edith said, 'just a minute.' She led him aside. 'What's up Charley?'

'Nothing's up. What makes you ask?'

'You act so strange. Whatever's the matter then?

'Oh honey,' he suddenly said low and urgent, 'I never seem to see you these days.'

'That's not a reason,' she objected. 'You know I've got to look after them with Miss Swift sick as she is.'

'Yes,' he said. There's always something or other in the way each time.'

'How's your neck dear?' she asked as she strolled away. She gradually led him nearer and nearer the door he had come in by.

'Oh it's bad,' he said. 'It hurts so Edith.'

'Well you shouldn't stand about in a damp place like here,' she replied. 'For land's sake I don't know how you managed those passages alone. They give me the creeps. And what's become of Badger with the peacock?'

'I gave that dog the slip. All the brains he's got is in his jaw. Once he's dropped anything 'e's lost that dog is. I put it away where they'll find it in the outside larder.'

She slapped a hand across her mouth. 'You hung it in the outside larder?'

He smiled for the first time. 'That's right,' he said.

'Lord,' she remarked, 'what'll old Mother Welch say when Jane or Mary tells 'er?' She began to giggle.

'Don't call 'er cook she don't like it,' Raunce replied broadly smiling.

'Now look you mustn't stay here Charley with that neck of yours. You get back out of this damp. I'll see if I can't manage to slip down after tea.'

'O. K. ducks. Give us a kiss.'

'Don't be daft,' she said, 'what in front of all of them?'

'O. K. then,' he ended, 'I'll be seeing you.' And he shut that door soft although the hinges shrieked and groaned. Then he came in once more, stared at the mechanism. 'Wants a drop of oil that does,' he remarked, winked and was gone again. As he walked off into grey dust-sheeted twilight he said two or three times to himself, 'How she has come on. You'd never know it was the same girlie,' he repeated.

'At last,' Miss Moira called out back in the Gallery, 'I thought we'd never get rid of him. Kneel Edith,' she said pulling that scarf out of Edith's pocket.

Once Edith was blinded the little girls let out piercing shrieks and dodged as in laughter she moved her arms as though swimming towards them. Their cries reverberated round the Gallery. Miss Evelyn hopped on one leg pressing her snub nose upwards with the palm of a hand. When Edith came near, Miss Moira would turn and slip by Edith's blind wrists looking round over a shoulder ready to dodge again after Miss Evelyn had ducked under. But Albert stood like a statue and must have hoped he would be found. As he was. Yet when her fingers knew him which they did at once she murmured 'I don't want you,' and to shrieks from the others of 'You'll never catch us,' this immemorial game went on before witnesses in bronze in marble and plaster, echoed up and down over and over again.