Nicholas Mosley - A Garden of Trees

“That’s what I don’t know,” I said.

“Don’t you?”

“No.” I remembered what had been said at the hospital, and the shadows rustled across the hills like fingers. “Why do you suppose Marius took me to see her?” I said.

“Perhaps because nothing would surprise you and you could be what she would like.”

“Is that what I am then?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Or because I am curious and dramatic and like putting my finger into other people’s pies?”

“People’s pies need a finger to lift them.”

“Do they? I never know what will lift and what will break the pie to pieces.”

“Don’t you?”

“No. For instance, when you should say what you are thinking and when you should not.”

“It depends on what is important,” she said.

“It is very important,” I said.

She came over to fill my glass and she looked at me with her green and grey cat’s eyes and as she leaned over me there were circles like hills, and then she seemed to draw herself inwards as if she were ashamed.

“I am in love with you,” I said.

“Are you?” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

She walked away from me and stood beside the door of a cupboard and all the time it was as if she were trying physically to withdraw herself, to hide behind squares what was circles and light.

“Where is Peter?” I said.

“He is at a party,” she said.

“Why is he at a party?”

“I don’t know,” she said. She looked as if she wanted to disappear into the cupboard.

“Let’s go to the party,” I said. “Are you invited?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Would you like it then? Or am I too drunk? I am so sorry, I am making excuses, you see.”

“No,” she said; “you are not too drunk.”

She came away from the cupboard and for a moment there was the violence within her that I had seen the first time at the pub, the uncontrollable spasm of amusement and energy that this time made her clutch at her skirt with one hand while the other was curved up sharply behind her back, her feet set apart with one ankle overturned on the carpet awkwardly, her green and grey cat’s eyes laughing into mine and her smile caught up all over her body as if she were being tickled. “I should love to go to the party,” she said.

“I must change,” I said.

“What about Marius?” she said.

“Marius, apparently, is none of our responsibility.”

“You must wear Peter’s tails,” she said. “He is wearing his dinner jacket.”

“Marius is God’s responsibility.”

“Do you want a bath?” she said.

“Do you?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t. That is your responsibility.”

She led me through to Peter’s room. “These are his shirts and his ties,” she said. “Is there anything else that you want?”

“Love,” I said. “But that is my responsibility.”

“You’ll have to do the best you can,” she said.

“I am,” I said.

“I mean, I hope his collars fit.”

“That is his stud’s responsibility.”

“Hurry then.”

“This is where it all started,” I said. “In a garden of trees.” She went out and closed the bedroom door behind her.

At the party we had some difficulty in finding Peter. He was in the kitchen playing French cricket with the cook. We got him back to where they were dancing. “Why on earth are you wearing tails?” he said.

“I had to borrow them,” I said.

“They look rather moth-eaten.”

“Yes.”

“Is there anything interesting in the pockets?”

“There are some very peculiar things,” I said.

“Do let’s see. Why, those are my things!” he said.

“Yes.”

“I say, that is a peculiar thing.”

We followed Annabelle into a gilded room where glasses reflected the tops of bodies and feet were shuffling in a wedged parade. A group of men detached themselves from a pillar like clothes being taken off a hook in the wall, and clustered round Annabelle. She was leaning away from them, quietly. “Annabelle looks so precarious,” Peter said.

She was turning from one to another of them, cautiously, and every now and then they touched her, and she was holding her hands in front of her, holding a handkerchief, holding herself in, looking exposed and fragile in her dress with her eyes flickering and her mouth half failing and her arms and shoulders outrageous in the light. “Annabelle is like a lamp-post,” Peter said.

“Is everyone in love with her?”

“They are all dogs,” Peter said.

“I am in love with her.”

“And I am the dog in the manger,” Peter said.

She went to dance with a wooden-faced man in his uniform. She danced with her hand entwined in the folds of her skirt and her head turned sideways looking down towards the floor. There was the rustle of silk and the smell of lavender. The man was stiff and Annabelle seemed caught up to him like a child in the arms of a wicked uncle. “They are all leg-lifters and tail-waggers,” Peter said: “and Annabelle is a tree.”

At the end of the dance she came back to us and the man rejoined the group and they were talking about Peter and Peter was restless. Annabelle looked anxious pushing her hair behind her ears. When the music began again I asked her to dance and we waltzed away narrowly between obstacles of knees.

A smell of lavender, the memory of bundled bags that hang in dressers, her movements exaggerated, the curve of her back steady but herself circling with no ordinary grace, the violence and energy always there from the downlooking eyes, the lashes enormous, the mouth open to teeth and tongue and the neck parted in down-hanging curls which were soft and fair, the unseen movements beneath my hand revolving determinedly, the body always bending away from me, swaying as if eager to swing from control. I laughed.

She stopped. “Why do you laugh?” she said.

“You waltz like a boxer,” I said.

She straightened herself and we began again and she let her skirt go so that it swung out and away from us and she held herself so that I saw beyond her and we made huge circles on the floor like a tide. We became balanced like a top with her uprightness clutched by my hand at her waist and her ribs not breathing, controlled and spinning; and then it happened as one always wants it to happen, we became quite still while the room was revolving round us, we became quite alone while the crowd was only colours, we became quite together while the huge skirt enfolded us on the top of the turning earth.

“You waltz very well,” I said.

“I always do,” she said.

We were standing then, and Peter came up to us surreptitiously. “There is a ridiculous man here who wants to fight me,” he said.

“Where?” I said.

“Yes where?” Peter said, looking round.

“He’s gone to take off his glasses,” someone said.

“But he doesn’t wear glasses,” Peter said.

“He wears them in his eyes.”

“It gets more and more like Oedipus,” Peter whispered. He was prowling round laughing craftily to himself.

“Why does he want to fight you?” I said.

“He says it’s not good enough. I don’t know what he means. He’s a huge man.”

“He heard you calling him a dog lifting its leg at a lamp-post,” someone said; “You really can’t blame him.”

“I don’t,” Peter said.

“I mean you can’t blame him for getting angry.” The someone turned out to be Freddie Naylor. He looked rather angry himself.

It did not seem to be important. The gilded room was emptying as people wandered to the bar. I wanted to go on dancing with Annabelle, but the patterns of the evening had become indistinct and it was no use objecting to the inconsequence of dreams. We had come to a party and now we had to go and fight a man in the street and it all seemed the same. I did not want to think. Annabelle was unperturbed and Peter was muttering in a language that appeared to be Greek. “Do you know Greek?” I said.