Bryant nodded foolishly, feeling acutely again that he and his friend were overmatched by these women.
An insect thin as a pencil point lighted on his lap. On its back were aqua and scarlet bands as brilliant as fresh paint. An immense white cat perched atop the stone man-hole in the corner of the garden, Cardinal Newman’s hideout. Robin made birdlike squeaks with her pursed lips. “That’s Puff,” she said. “Here, Puff.”
He asked if she’d been doing any more painting.
“Haven’t had much time,” she said. “I’d like to go to art college after the war, I think. I was told by a friend I’d be certain to be offered a place.” She opened her eyes and turned to face him. “Probably end up doing adverts.” Her complexion remained beautifully smooth in the direct sunlight. She seemed pleased by the colors on her arm. She smiled. “What about you, mysterious Bobby? What will you be doing after the war?”
Bryant shrugged. The war had imposed a way of thinking on him, an ability to conceive only in terms of the present. His past was receding, so that calling it forward required ever more effort, and his future was a white wall, bland and abstract enough to discourage speculation.
They had a late dinner, relaxing around a splintery wooden table in the garden with cold meat and pickles. The windows of the cottage filled with the orange and violet of the sunset.
“This is really a beautiful place,” Snowberry said.
“I’d like to have you for two weeks,” Robin murmured.
Jean gave her eye a delicate rub. “Six would do nicely,” she suggested. She crunched a pickle.
Bryant and Snowberry nodded politely.
“You don’t seem particularly enthused,” Robin noted.
They were awkward momentarily, uncertain what she wanted. “This is great, too,” Snowberry said.
“Aren’t you always wishing the war would go away?” Jean said.
They were silent. Snowberry looked to Bryant. “I can’t say that, exactly,” Snowberry said. “There’s a lot I hate about it, a lot that’s terrible. But in some ways I’m happier than I’ve ever been.”
The girls looked at them.
“I guess it’s hard to talk about,” Snowberry further volunteered. Bryant felt angry and impatient with the question: they were outside looking in. How could they know?
“I know it sounds terrible,” Snowberry said. “I don’t mean it to.”
After a pause Robin shifted her gaze from Snowberry to Bryant. “And you?” she asked.
“It’s bad. It’s the worst thing in the world,” he said. He wanted to reassure her. He felt the way he had when his mother had discovered him doing something childish and destructive, like vandalizing street signs. He didn’t have the words. “But you know. I met you. I got to know good pals I can depend on. It teaches you stuff like that.”
She sighed. “I suppose we shouldn’t browbeat you so. I suppose we’re just trying to understand.”
The comment let everyone off the hook, and in celebration Snowberry attempted Crosby speaking: “Well now, little miss, that’s the kind of spirit that’ll Back the Attack.”
“Oh you,” Jean said. “It’s like having a boy with a drinking problem.”
“Now the boys ‘n’ me would like to bring you a little ditty—”
Bryant slid a pickle in his mouth. Snowberry did a passable Crosby Choking. The girls applauded.
When it was fully dark, they moved the table inside and Jean and Snowberry played cards while Elizabeth listened to the radio. Robin led him out to Cardinal Newman’s hideout, claiming there was a phosphorescent glow of some sort emanating from deep within which was visible on certain nights. When they had reached the corner of the garden, they walked forward slowly hand in hand, Bryant setting his feet down with edgy heel-to-toe caution. The ground and the air felt damp. Robin said, “Here,” and lowered herself to a crouch and he followed. The earth clearly gave way to a different value of darkness and he could feel and smell the cold cellar air below. His fingertips touched rough stone.
“Do you see it?” Robin whispered.
He considered equivocating and said no.
She leaned back and sighed. “Sometimes it doesn’t light up for visitors.” Her voice was pleasantly sexual in the darkness. “I can’t say I know why.”
He settled onto his knees, and judged by the angle of her silhouette that she was gazing at him. He could smell rich earth, rotting leaves.
“Bobby,” she said.
He leaned forward and kissed her, in the darkness softly catching the corner of her lips and her cheek.
“I don’t seem to like that many boys,” she said. “Mother says I seem to think I’m too good for them.”
He thought, God, I’m some Romeo. She does everything first. She arranged herself so that his chest formed a kind of a chair back for her. “I think often of my grandmother Janie,” she said. “My mother’s stepmother. She grew up on a croft, Laghie, in the north of Scotland. I have a photograph of her, windswept and frightened, on top of a carthorse. She kept illustrations of all the birds in the area, and Mother says my artistic ability came from her.” She rubbed her eye once, carefully, with a fingertip, reminding him of Jean. “She was always said to be very vain, and sad.” Bryant tried to imagine this woman, and saw Robin with her arms folded in a tartan skirt standing in a wagon. “At sixteen she left home and went to Glasgow to train as a nurse. Mother has another snap of her at a cottage hospital. She became engaged to a young man who farmed another croft. Everyone in the family called it a miracle she’d found someone good enough for her. Naturally, he was killed. She never really recovered.” She scraped the edges of the man-hole stone with her fingernail, the tiny scratching audible.
“Eventually, she married my mother’s father, but Mother says she spoke about that farmer to her dying day as though he were just out of town for a bit, as though he’d just stepped out to the pub. In the cottage hospital photo she’s still happy, standing in her stiff white uniform, with such a sad, shy smile. Mother always says, Robin, that’s your picture, Robin, that’s your smile, until I’m so frightened I can’t bear to look at it and have to put it away. The last time I got so cross Mother swore she wouldn’t bring Janie up again.” She shivered, and patted her arms. “I’m frightened for you, Bobby. I’m frightened for me, as well.”
“Don’t be scared,” he said.
“That’s fatuous advice, isn’t it?” she said.
He reached his hand down into the hole. The rock wall was cold and lined with water.
Her face was very near his. “You can’t separate out the fear,” she said. The seriousness of her expression made the possibility of disaster erotic. She kissed him, holding his chin up to hers, with the draft from the hole cooling his legs and feet.
Inside, they curled together into a big wingbacked chair facing the quiet hearth. The arms were doilied where they had gone threadbare. She was wedged in beside him and had her fingers on his throat and her thumb on his collar.
“I was working with the village children,” she said. “Did I tell you? A drawing class. One day as something special I brought in a banana. A friend of a friend of Mother’s had gotten two from a Yank serviceman. You should have seen their eyes. We all said it together: ba-na-na. As if that were a little bit of possessing it. And we all drew it.” He touched the fine hairs on her neck, and she took his hand lightly and sniffed his fingertips. “I knew they all entertained the vague hope that it would be shared, or go to the best drawing. I suddenly had this unpleasant feeling of power. I had intended to take it home, but you should have seen their faces. We cut it into sixteen pieces and ate them in tiny nibbles, as I’ve always imagined one ate caviar.”