The Devil's Making (40 page)

‘Just a hired nag.'

‘Can you hitch her to the back or do you want to ride behind?'

‘I'll hitch her.' I did so. The nag was tranquil enough. Then I climbed up and sat beside Aemilia on the cart seat. She moved over to give me room, but not too far. I could smell her lemon scent mingled with that of fir-resin from the forest, along with the inevitable smell of the horses. We smiled at each other intimately, as the presence in our minds at least, of the destroyed letter, allowed us to. I felt a stir of excitement and a pleasurable relief. ‘Thank you for your invitation.' I said. ‘It'll be so nice to let go of my work and be with you on an afternoon like this.'

‘Good. I'm glad you don't feel I was indiscreet.' That being settled, Aemilia turned her attention to encouraging her horse along the narrow and bumpy road. ‘This leads into what they call Beaver Lake,' she said, ‘a Southern arm of Elk Lake, much less popular with the bathing set. But I've found yet another track to an even nicer part of the lake. I often come here when the strain of Mamma and my sisters becomes too much.'

She now directed the horse down a side track so narrow that the cart wheels brushed through bushes, and after only a hundred yards or so, she stopped. ‘This is as far as we can go,' she said. ‘Since no one comes here, I just leave the cart on the path, and tie the horse to a tree. There's a small stream and I have a bucket, so we should water them.'

Very practical. We both got down and worked together to unhitch the horses, tie them to trees on opposite sides of the path, and water them using a dented bucket hooked on the back of the cart. Aemilia maintained a mood of cheerfulness, but at moments when in the sombre patches of shade, I thought she looked pale and anxious. Then with an eager smile she directed me to take the hamper, while she took a light brown Hudson's Bay blanket and a table cloth.

The hamper was quite heavy, but I could carry it in front of me. I followed Aemilia into the woods. At once the path was only wide enough for walking single file, through the usual rocks and ferns among fir trunks. Then there was light ahead and we came out into a sunny glade of grass and bare smooth rocks which jutted out as a small peninsula into the blue waters of the lake which formed a narrow arm with the same dense forest on the other side. At the end of the little peninsula was a clump of bushes, so that there were two short stretches, one on either side, where the grass ran down to a fringe of bull rushes and lily pads at the edge of the lake.

Aemilia set down the blanket in the shade, still within the embrace of the forest, and showed me where to put the hamper, between the blanket and a rock. This done, we gazed around.

‘It's Paradise,' I said.

‘I think a settler must have cleared this little patch to build a house, but I dare say something went wrong and he gave up.' In spite of the touch of cynicism in this remark, Aemilia looked happy now, radiant in the sun in her lilac dress and broad straw hat with its lilac and white ribbons. She walked forward toward the lake and I followed her. Pairs of sapphire coloured dragon-flies were cavorting in the air over the water, some of them joining in flight, tail to tail, into a tumbling S-shape, then coming apart again. This might have embarrassed Aemilia but apparently did not. ‘They're early this year,' she remarked lightly. ‘Damsel flies. Do you have them in England?'

‘Not like these. I believe all ours are brown and drab. I've never seen anything like these except as jewelled brooches or pins. We do have swallows though.' A couple of swallows were swooping here and there over the lake. I could not see if they were catching the damsel flies or something smaller. There were no midges as there would be in England.

As if attuned to my thoughts, Aemilia remarked that there were not enough insects to support a very large population of swallows. The birds which flourished best at the edges of forests were the crows. Sure enough, some crows, which I would have called ravens, were cawing hoarsely from the fir tops. We continued this naturalistic discussion, then when it became too hot standing in the sun we withdrew into the shade. Aemilia spread out the blanket and we sat down. I half sprawled on one elbow, which was the only comfortable posture, Aemilia demurely sitting, I supposed cross-legged, within the hoops of her dress, like a huge inverted flower.

It was indeed a rather intimate tête à tête, of a sort quite out of bounds for the unmarried or unrelated. It was totally compromising. As if both were thinking of this, the naturalistic conversation flagged, and we looked at each other.

‘I'm glad you forgive me for last Sunday,' Aemilia said.

‘Of course. There's nothing whatsoever to forgive. I appreciate your frankness in expressing your thoughts. Sometimes the truth is painful.' I stopped.

‘But we don't need to discuss it now, do we? I don't want to talk about the Indians, Dr McCrory, or even your work. Do you mind?'

‘Of course not.' For a moment I did mind: I would have to abandon all ideas of questioning Aemilia. But then, why bother? It was agreeable and exciting, to be here with her. I would have willingly discussed the moon …

‘Let's talk about music. Tell me where you learned to sing.'

So we talked about Handel, church music, the songs I had learned from my mother, the execrable quality of the music at Oxford, only slightly improved by the wave of ardent liturgical revivalism. We even discussed the liturgy, then, rather abstractedly, the difference between social and religious morality. Aemilia had obviously done a lot of thinking about this. I was inhibited by her prohibition of discussing police work, and she too, perhaps out of sense of privacy, kept the discussion general.

‘No matter how much we talk,' I said eventually, ‘you're something of a mystery to me.'

‘So I should be.' She smiled and fluttered her eyelids in a coquettish way which was uncharacteristic of her. ‘A woman should always be a mystery to a man. He may try very hard, Mr Hobbes, but a man can never really know a woman – no, not even when he has “known” her in the biblical sense.' She bit her lip, obviously aware that this was too shocking a remark for a young lady to make. ‘Let's begin our picnic.' She said. ‘It's a small one, but quite special. Look.'

Without rising, she moved under the tent of her dress over to the hamper. She reached beside it for the folded tablecloth and passed it to me. As I spread it, she brought out plates and glasses, then a small packet wrapped in cloth which she opened to reveal neatly cut sandwiches. ‘Inside these', she said, ‘is the flesh of a trout I caught myself in the brook this morning. And here is a piece of cake.' She unwrapped another package. She reached into the hamper again and brought out a stone flagon. ‘And this, still cool as it should be, although perhaps we could have put it in the lake for a while, is last year's raspberry and apple wine.'

Ah, that was the weight in the hamper.'

‘Yes, although it's light to the taste.'

Aemilia served the sandwiches and poured the wine, which was straw-coloured. We raised our glasses in a silent toast, and drank. The wine was at least as dry and strong as any French white I had ever tasted, and just as good. The sandwiches were exquisite.

We ate delicately, as manners required, but in the heat it was easy to drink too much of the wine. Although I protested after the second glass, Aemilia insisted on filling a third, and after the third I did not care. She drank a glass for every one of mine. We ate a slice each of the cake, and washed it down with more wine. I was invaded by well being. I sprawled sensually on the blanket near this vision of womanly beauty in her dress like an inverted flower, talking on and off about old times in England, picnics in Oxford on the banks of the Isis – ‘though nothing like as lovely as this.'

‘No? I should like to go to Oxford and have you take me out on the river in a punt. I've read about that in a book for boys –
Tom Brown at Oxford.
It must be delicious.'

‘It is. But do you know, I was lonely at Oxford. I was always longing for … I don't know what.'

‘What young men usually long for, I suppose. It must be such a strain, all that study in those stone cloisters or whatever they are.' Aemilia was losing some of her coherence, but I did not mind, since I was losing some of mine.

We drank more of the wine. ‘We must finish this,' Aemilia remarked. ‘It doesn't keep, once it has been opened.' More obviously emotional, now she sounded sad. ‘My goodness it's hot,' she added. ‘We should get up and walk. I should like to put my feet in the water.'

We finished our glasses. I held out my hand and Aemilia took it to rise to her feet. She did not let go as we walked into the dazzling light and down to the water's edge. I was not really drunk, but the wine had gone enough to my head to make me giddy and carefree. I squeezed Aemilia's hand, and she squeezed back. I felt very happy, just like that, side by side, looking out at the sun playing on the water and the damsel flies dipping and swooping. I was vaguely aware that afternoon was getting on. ‘I'll be sorry to leave this.' I said, ‘which I'm afraid I'll have to shortly.'

‘You can stay a while. Wait.' Aemilia disengaged her hand and stooped to unlace her shoes. She set them on one side – small, of white leather – then to my surprise pulled off her stockings which were short, and of white silk, setting them carefully on the shoes. Her bare feet disappeared back under the dress, but now she held this up and advanced into the water with a slight splash, and stood there. Then, holding the dress up with one hand, she reached with the other and undid the ribbon of her bonnet, which she passed back to me. Her chestnut brown hair was piled in a knot on the top of her head, her neck was slim and white. I stood holding the bonnet, excited. She spoke to me over her shoulder, not turning her head enough to meet my eye.

‘Do you think we've drunk enough wine to forget conventions?'

‘Not all of them, I'm sure.' My heart was pounding.

‘Do you know what I should do if I were here alone? I should take my dress off – it's so infernally hot in these things, you cannot imagine it – and go for a swim in my shift. Perhaps if you could turn your back, I might do it now. Or, I tell you what – I dare you in fact, Mr Chad Hobbes – you go to the other side of that clump of bushes and take
your
overclothes off. You can swim from that side, and I can swim from this. A gentleman's and a lady's beach. Who can quarrel with that?'

‘I certainly shan't,' I said, shocked at her invitation but ready to cast caution to the winds. I turned and placed Aemilia's bonnet on her shoes. Then I walked to the other side of the little peninsula, where I was hidden from her, and in the mindless state induced by the wine, I took off my coat, tie, boots, socks, then trousers. Should I leave on my shirt? No. I took it off, and dropped it on the ground, then set on it the pathetic intertwined burden of Lukswaas's stone and my own signet ring still on its thong. I was now only wearing my cotton summer drawers, which reached to just above the knee. I walked into the water, and felt my way through the lily pads. The lake was cold and very clear. To block my apprehension I breathed outward with a whoosh and threw myself forward with a tremendous splash, then came to the surface and swam out from the shore.

Aemilia had entered the water more quietly from her side. She came swimming slowly towards me, doing a breast-stroke, her head clear of the water, her shoulders with white straps on them, very pink. We smiled at each other rather guiltily. In the freshness of the water the haze of the wine was gone, and we looked clearly into each other's eyes for a moment of truth, fully aware of what we were doing and, at least on my part, happy to be doing it. Yes, I had learned something from Lukswaas, I thought complacently as Aemilia and I swam round each other in slow circles. I would never be so shy with a woman again. But in my heart I felt a pang: I would have given anything to have been swimming happily in this pristine lake with Lukswaas. Then I came back to the pleasure of being with Aemilia. She too had cast caution to the winds, and I was grateful to her. ‘This is lovely!' I called, and rolled over on my back to kick along. I had only swum in fresh water in the Isis, never in a lake. It was glorious.

After a while Aemilia called, ‘I'm going in now.'

‘All right.' Dutifully, I swam over to my side of the little peninsula. I swam a few more circles, breathing easily, then came in to the shore and stepped up onto the grass. My feet were muddy, and water poured off me. I shook myself, and felt exhilarated. I was standing in the shade and began to feel cold. No towel, of course. I thought of drying myself with my shirt, but decided against it. Instead I stepped into the sun, toward the centre of the peninsula. Aemilia had done the same on her side, thirty feet or so away. She looked like a slim white ghost in her shift, which reached from her shoulders to just below her knees but clung wetly to her body. I moved at once back toward the shade but she called out ‘Wait! It's all right. You'll catch cold back there. The sun will dry you in no time.'

I moved back into the sun which was now lower in the sky and shining directly on us from across the lake, its warm rays bathing my skin. Neither of us spoke. After a while, dry on my front, I turned to put my back to the sun, and noticed she had done the same. Still we did not speak, although as my body became warm and dry again I could feel a return of some of the headiness from the raspberry wine, and was becoming aware of an increasing tension between me and Aemilia across the yards of clearing. It was as if the afternoon had permitted my body to uncoil from my state of contraction I had put it into since the débâcle with Lukswaas, a state almost of self-punishment which might have endured for ever if Aemilia had not drawn me out of it. Now, coming back to my full self, I came back to an overwhelming sense of desire. This had, of course, been awakened by Lukswaas. I had struggled for years like any other celibate young man to suppress needs which must be kept for marriage or channelled into the adoration of ethereal young women in their crinolines – to convert, through constant effort, the animal into the spiritual, as I must do with Aemilia, to rise above what Lukswaas had awakened. But now, for reasons I could not understand and in my sensual state could not guess at, even Aemilia had made it clear that she was willing at least to play at the edge of the abyss of sensuality. She did not seem to want to be spiritualized. I did not really believe she wanted to embrace me at the other, animal level either. But there we were, not far away from each other, in a state of half undress, slowly turning and drying in the sun. As I filled again with heat it seemed to pour downward in my body and stirred me. Without looking at Aemilia I turned slightly so that my back was more toward her. Then I heard her: