The Wooden Shepherdess (12 page)

It couldn't be, couldn't be true! When Janis had first come back with the story of how he'd insulted her, Ree was completely incredulous: Janis was lying, the wicked old Potiphar's Wife! For he wasn't that sort of a boy, as who knew better than Ree? But he must have been fully aware of what Janis alleged, yet made no public or even private denial: so doubt had begun to creep in, and every day and in every way got worser and worser....

“
Ree!
Darn the girl, where you got to? Here's Russ!” The high-pitched voice was her mother's, so Ree came out of the darkness at last. All her dazzled eyes saw at first was her mother batting away at the flies as she emptied slops in the soakaway: then out in front she saw Russell's Dodge. He had called to tell her the Pack were off to the lake for a swim: so she ran upstairs to put on her swimsuit, hoping with luck she might drown.

Russell's brother had died a hero's death, fleeing from dry-law cops: so whoever it was might drive to that roadhouse out on the New Milford road to fetch the communal liquor they all agreed that it mustn't be Russell, for one in the family's surely enough. But the rest of the older boys had a rota. Augustine at first had been out of all this as a guest and a stranger; but once he'd discovered about it he told them this just wouldn't do, and after his insult to Janis they'd weakened. To start with he'd gone as a passenger only, showing his face to Micky Muldoon at the Dew Drop Inn and learning the routes: for they rang the changes, and seldom returned by exactly the way they had come. But tomorrow, Sunday (it was to have been today, but today all the cars were wanted because of this trip to the lake), he'd be making the trip on his own in Russell's old Dodge.

He wasn't much worried by thoughts of chases and federal agents, since Micky Muldoon must surely pay through the nose for immunity: no, what worried him most was the risk that the car broke down for his knowledge of wholly reliable Bentleys wouldn't help much with a broken-back Dodge. Or a casual Trooper might ask for the driving license he just hadn't got; and inquiries would start....

But now these worries were all put off till tomorrow: today as he piled into somebody's car already wearing the swimsuit he'd bought at the store they were only off to the lake for a swim.... Russell and Ree and the rest of them—even himself, in all this heavy knitwear and serge! In England that sort of nonsense went out with the War: nowadays upper-class youthful fashion in Britain even decreed both sexes kept their embarrassment under control and swam together in nothing at all when they could, like the Swedes. But here the Law and practice alike forbade you even to swim in cotton, which clings: it had to be wool, full-length and with sleeves, and even the men wore a minimal skirt. As for the girls, they were never seen so completely upholstered as times like these when dressed for a swim.

The lake was a winding reservoir high in the hills, with a wonderful view from the top of the dam (where sometimes they dived) right over the country below. You drove off the New Milford road at a weatherworn board which read: “NO
automobiles
NO
gunning
NO
fishing
NO
swimming
THIS MEANS YOU”—but seemingly nobody minded, and everyone used it. From there the approach was a difficult track through the pines. This presently forked: one prong slid down a steep incline to the dam, while the other meandered along through the trees to the shallower end of the lake a mile further on. Today the car in front turned off for the dam; but the next ones honked so loud on their horns that they stopped, and an argument started from which it emerged the majority wanted to go to “our island.” ...

This faery island they'd found and adopted lay half-way along the lake in a bend of the winding shore. It was tucked in a cove and right out of sight till you got there, and couldn't be reached at all direct from the dam. Since the Pack could never divide the divers gave in, and bumped back along a vestigial cross-trail on to the shallow-end track to rejoin their fellows—though arguing still.

Reaching the end of the lake at last, they stopped their engines and all spilled noisily out on a tiny beach. There they found a family bivouacked: father asleep in the sun with his hat pulled over his eyes, mother busy with cutlery cans and cardboard cups, infants shrieking in inches of water, and twenty yards out the grandmother floating about on a truck-tire. These the Pack—including the family's own boy and girl as completely as everyone else—all ignored, and trod over or through.

The cove with the tiny islet they sought could only be reached from here; and you got there by threading your way for twenty minutes at least from boulder to boulder between the impassable woods and the mere itself. A secret island, with birch trees bowing over the water: an island, they all believed, which nobody knew.

At first they waked the echoes, and splashed through the shallows; but once escaped from the world of men and well out of sight of the family camped on the beach, the Waldenish mood of the place began to take hold and even these boisterous creatures all fell silent. Indeed henceforth they were almost as quiet themselves as the trees: nobody spoke as they crept along, nobody splashed any more: they moved without sound at one with the water, the stones, the woods, the August day, and each other—and almost believing in God. Smelling of pines themselves, they advanced on silent feet that clung to the rocks much more like roots on the move than feet: with leafy fingers, and eyes brimming over with sky (except for Ree, whose eyes were full to the lids with Augustine).

Above them the woods were dense as a wall. Below them the lake was clear and still, with waterlogged boughs on the bottom that laced the vivid reflections like ghosts.... Like—like that something white underneath in a pool, on the Marsh back in Wales; and with almost its earlier pang Augustine's heart mourned again for the ill-starred child he had found.

There was one more jutting of tree-clad rock still to round. In the silence, Augustine's thoughts still dwelt on the loss to the world of the poor little drowned one: he quite forgot where he was. The rest of them too were so quiet that no one could possibly hear them coming, and far too intent on their mood and each other to notice voices themselves. Then at last they turned the corner and reached the cove and looked across to their private island; and saw on it under the birches, under those feathery leaves....

For Ree (and indeed for most of these boys and girls) this was the first time they had seen it although they'd imagined it hundreds of times: the two-backed monster performing.

*

All the way home Russell's old Dodge seemed hardly able to stagger. The valves were sticking, and causing cardiac trouble; and doctor's-orders clearly were that it mustn't hurry up hills. Thus Russell and Ree arrived long after the others. The journey seemed endless, and Ree felt sick all the way. When Russell asked her just to run round to Augustine's shack and tell him the Dodge wasn't fit to drive to the Dew Drop Inn next day, she refused: so, late that night, Russell was forced to go round and tell Augustine himself.

In bed that night Ree couldn't sleep. It was bad by daylight, but worse in the dark: for against the darkness her eyes shut or open couldn't help seeing those coupling bodies. So this was what “lovers” did—though it looked more like murder than loving. But where was that blissful and magical melting-into-each-other she'd always imagined? Instead all this panting, and moans.... In fact it must hurt like hell; and she thrust both hands in between her legs as if to protect herself, taut as a bow-string.

So Janis had hit him!
It seemed past belief that Augustine should secretly want to do this to us girls, her kind and gentle Augustine. True, he'd tried it on Janis not her; but suppose one day those hundreds of times when he'd had her alone in the woods, he'd begun.... As the night wore on her nipples started to ache, and a burning began in the pit of her stomach: she tossed on her bed till the sheet was twisted like rope. If he had, could she conceivable even have let him and not minded how much he hurt her, because this was something he wanted so much and which she had to give?

It was nearly dawn when at last she slept—to dream about windows with red lace curtains, and birds.

Next morning Augustine was lucky. Soon after breakfast that Sunday Bella's big brother Erroll had come on a visit: he drove his Second-Vice-President (Sales)'s shining “Bearcat” Stutz, with a whopping great polished copper exhaust all along one yellow cheek like somebody playing a flute (whether with or without his Second-Vice-President (Sales)'s permission, no one inquired). Erroll had driven all night and ought to be left to sleep in peace; and anyway everyone felt that the less he knew of the errand it went on the better for Erroll, if something went wrong.... Out of sheer niceness of feeling moreover they didn't tell Bella either: one hates to occasion a brotherly-sisterly rift. As for Augustine, they told him no more than that here after all was a car for his use.

Augustine rejoiced: this wasn't his Bentley, but still.... And once ensconced at the wheel of that big yellow Stutz on yesterday's road past the way to the lake he rejoiced even more. The local lanes had been grim with their “thank-you-marms” and outward banking at blind right-angle bends and general absence of surface, but now he was out on the State Road at last he felt with a steed like this his errand should soon be over. That was what everyone thought: he'd be back in a brace of shakes, and long before Erroll could wake.

Micky Muldoon looked always half asleep: his single wandering bloodshot eye was heavily lidded, his paunch was the conical kind which carried a belt like an architect's “swag”— depending below it and purely for ornament. But Micky never forgot a face. The Stutz out front was a stranger, and yet when Augustine came through to the back demanding a gallon of rye it was served—after one quick glance—like a packet of peas. There wasn't a soul in sight as Sadie disposed the couple of half-gallon jars behind in the rumble-seat under a rug (Sadie'd insisted on coming: “Just” she had said “for the buggy-ride”).

Turning the car in the driveway, he started for home at an easy cruising seventy—all this part of the route being free of serious bends and fairly empty. Indeed the Stutz was the fastest thing on the road: there wasn't much, but whatever there was he passed it as if it were standing: even a Jordan Playboy—that open Bearcat went like a bird! Only a Mercer Raceabout gave him a moment of trouble; and that had a driver as young as himself behind its monocle screen who seemed just about to let go of the wheel altogether to have both arms for his girl.

Sadie had started to sing in tune with the engine, as some women always do from the moment the engine starts; and even her adult and rather throaty contralto recalled that time his Bentley and he had driven Polly to Dorset, and Polly's treble throughout had accompanied the Bentley's sonorous bass. Polly was deemed to have caught a cold, so her Nanny had wrapped her in rugs and scarves like a pea in a pod; but her voice was clear as a lark's.... Augustine glanced a little askance at the Sadie singing beside him now, in breeches and open shirt—so open her grimy underwear showed. The painted cupid's-bow on her mouth was at odds with the natural line of her lips: the hairpins were popping out of her greasy hair as the wind of their speed took control and the nearer coil was uncoiling down to her shoulder.

From her he glanced in the mirror. The Mercer had dropped out of sight, but a quarter mile back he descried a car that they certainly hadn't passed: “What's that behind us?” he asked.

Sadie knelt up on the seat to look backwards over the folded top. “Gee!” said Sadie, “That's no market model: a custom-built ‘special,' I guess!” Then she added with bated breath: “It could be a supercharged Dusy....” and almost bowed at the name.

A Duesenberg! Worthier metal—and something which even his Bearcat apparently hadn't the legs of: still, he'd give them a race. What fun! He would set himself to hold them at bay till his New Blandford turning.... Elated, Augustine trod on the gas and started a Christmas carol. The needle crept up the seventies, speed foreshortened the curves in the road and it took all his skill to hold her on bends. Ecstasy sang in his blood: it was nearly a year since he'd sat at the wheel of anything fast.... But the Mystery came on apace. Sadie still knelt on the seat, looking back. As the distance between them lessened, its couple of yards of nose grew larger and clearer: Dusy “special” or not, this wasn't no private citizen's job—its windows were more like embrasures built for machine guns, and only a big-shot gangster would possibly use such a car—or else, if it fell in their hands.... She was sweating right to the roots of her eyebrows even before the siren started and “Christ!” she exclaimed, “
C-c-cops!
”

Like a prick of a pin, her voice and the eerie wail of the siren together punctured Augustine's ballooning elation: the singing blood in his veins turned to lead. Something out of his childhood raised a forgotten head and he even started to pray, but of course unconscious he did so. He glanced at the dashboard again: the needle had grudgingly flickered its way up to nearly eighty and stuck, for this was an uphill road: yet in spite of the extra weight it carried of bullet-proof plating that hotted-up Dusy behind came dreaming along at nearer ninety—and as for reaching the New Blandford turning, he hadn't a hope!

He counted they wouldn't start shooting his wheels until they got close, with the end of the chase so certain; but only a minute at most was left to get off the high-road somehow.... Moreover they mightn't be hunting alone, and suppose he rounded a curve and found they had blocked the road with a truck? With a sudden pang in his heart he thought about Russell's brother and losing the only life he'd got for a nonsense and nearly gave in and drew up.... Indeed perhaps he'd have done so except that there, right ahead, was the back of Tony's old Buick—snailing along with Tony and Russell himself.