"Oh--"
For the first time since Friday week Anne was happy. She loved the
rabbit, she loved little Colin. And more than anybody or anything she
loved Jerrold.
Yet afterwards, in her bed in the night nursery, when she thought of her
dead mother, she lay awake crying; quietly, so that nobody could hear.
v It was Robert Fielding's birthday. Anne was to dine late that evening,
sitting beside him. He said that was his birthday treat.
Anne had made him a penwiper of green cloth with a large blue bead in
the middle for a knob. He was going to keep it for ever. He had no
candles on his birthday cake at tea, because there would have been too
many.
The big hall of the Manor was furnished like a room.
The wide oak staircase came down into it from a gallery that went all
around. They were waiting there for Mrs. Fielding who was always a
little late. That made you keep on thinking about her. They were
thinking about her now.
Up there a door opened and shut. Something moved along the gallery like
a large light, and Mrs. Fielding came down the stairs, slowly,
prolonging her effect. She was dressed in her old pearl-white gown. A
rope of pearls went round her neck and hung between her breasts. Roll
above roll of hair jutted out at the back of her head; across it, the
foremost curl rose like a comb, shining. Her eyes, intensely blue in her
milk-white face, sparkled between two dark wings of hair. Her mouth
smiled its enchanting and enchanted smile. She was aware that her
husband and John watched her from stair to stair; she was aware of their
men's eyes, darkening. Then suddenly she was aware of John's daughter.
Anne was coming towards her across the hall, drawn by the magic, by the
eyes, by the sweet flower smell that drifted (not lavender, not
lavender). She stood at the foot of the staircase looking up. The
heavenly thing swept down to her and she broke into a cry.
"Oh, you're beautiful. You're beautiful."
Mrs. Fielding stopped her progress.
"So are you, you little darling."
She stooped quickly and kissed her, holding her tight to her breast,
crushed down into the bed of the flower scent. Anne gave herself up,
caught by the sweetness and the beauty.
"You rogue," said Adeline. "At last I've got you."
She couldn't bear to be repulsed, to have anything about her, even a cat
or a dog, that had not surrendered.
vi Every evening, soon after Colin's Nanna had tucked Anne up in her bed
and left her, the door of the night nursery would open, letting a light
in. When Anne saw the light coming she shut her eyes and burrowed under
the blankets, she knew it was Auntie Adeline trying to be a mother to
her. (You called them Auntie Adeline and Uncle Robert to please them,
though they weren't relations.) Every night she would hear Aunt Adeline's feet on the floor and her
candle clattering on the chest of drawers, she would feel her hands
drawing back the blankets and her face bending down over her. The mouth
would brush her forehead. And she would lie stiff and still, keeping her
eyes tight shut.