‘Only to say thank you for having rescued me up there on the Rock.’
‘Oh, that . . .’
‘Aren’t we going to shake hands? You saved my life, you know.’ The strange creature was plunging backwards between the shafts of his barrow like an unbroken colt. Reluctantly he lowered his skyward gaze level with her own. ‘Tell you the truth, I never give it another thought once the Doc and young Jim had you safe on the stretcher.’ He might have handed her a lost umbrella or a brown paper parcel instead of her life. ‘You just ought to hear what Mr Michael says about it!’ The brick red features stretched to a near grin. ‘Now there’s a wonderful bloke, if you like!’
‘Exactly what he says about you, Albert.’
‘He does? Well, I’ll be buggered. Excuse my language, Miss – I don’t often get talking to toffs like you. Well, I’d better be getting on with me job. Ta-ta.’ With a decisive flick of powerful wrists the mermaids sprang into action. He was gone, and Irma found herself almost royally dismissed.
It was exactly three o’clock. There is no single instant on this spinning globe that is not, for millions of individuals, immeasurable by ordinary standards of time: a fragment of eternity forever unrelated to the calendar or the striking clock. For Albert Crundall, the brief conversation by the lake would inevitably be expanded, in memory, during his fairly long life, to fill the entire content of a summer afternoon. What Irma had said, and what he had answered, were relatively unimportant. In actual fact, the very sight of the dazzling creature whose star-black eyes his own had sedulously avoided, had almost deprived him of the power of speech. Now ten minutes later in the damp seclusion of the shrubbery he sank down on to the empty barrow and wiped the sweat from his hands and face. He had plenty of time in which to recover his mental and physical equilibrium, since he knew, with absolute certainty, that he would never speak to Irma Leopold again.
Albert had no sooner disappeared through a gap in the laurel hedge when, with the precise timing of three wooden figures on a Swiss clock, Mike came out of the house and Irma – there is always a little wooden lady – appeared at the boathouse door. She stood there watching him hurry towards her, limping a little, over the dappled grass. ‘At last I’ve met your Albert.’ Mike’s honest face brightened as it always did at the mention of Albert. ‘Well? Wasn’t I right?’ Dear Michael! Marvelling that the clumsy brick red youth could command such adoration, Irma stepped into the waiting punt.
The weather continued warm and sunny and there were daily outings on the placid lake, soothed by the musical box tinkle of the mountain stream. In expensive green seclusion, the Fitzhuberts lay on long wicker chairs watching the season fade. The air in the Lake View garden was preternaturally still this summer. They could hear the bees murmuring in the wallflower bed under the drawing-room window and now and then Irma’s light laughter drifting out over the lake. Beyond the oaks and chestnuts one of Hussey’s wagonettes went creaking by on the steep chocolate road, scattering the pigeons on the lawn. The white peacock slept, the two spaniels dozed all day in the shade.
Together Michael and Irma had explored every inch of the Colonel’s rose garden, the vegetable garden, the sunken croquet lawn, the shrubberies whose winding walks ended in delicious little arbours, ideal for the playing of childish games – Halma and Snakes and Ladders – on straight-backed garden chairs composed entirely of cast-iron ferns. There is no need for anything much in the way of conversation, which suits Mike very well. When Mrs Fitzhubert comes upon them holding hands on the rustic bridge she sighs. ‘How happy they look! How young!’ And asks her husband, ‘Whatever do those two find to talk about all day long?’
Sometimes Irma finds herself chattering as she used to do long ago at school, for the sheer delight of tossing out words into the bright air, as children enjoy sending up a kite. Unnecessary for Mike to answer, or even to listen, so long as he is there beside her, leaning over the rail with a lock of thick hair falling over one eye with every turn of his head, and aiming endless pebbles at the gaping mouth of the stone frog in the pool.
Now in the late afternoon the little lake grew cold under the slanting shadows and a few yellowing leaves floated amongst the reeds. ‘Darling Mike – I can’t bear to think that summer is almost over and no more rows on the lake.’
‘Just as well,’ Mike said, expertly nosing the punt through the lily pads. He grinned. ‘Actually, the old punt isn’t safe to take out again.’
‘Oh, Mike! . . . Then it is over.’
‘Oh, well – it’s been good fun while it lasted.’
‘Miranda used to say that everything begins and ends at exactly the right time and place . . .’
Mike must have been leaning too heavily on the pole. Irma could hear the water gurgling under the rotting floor boards as the punt lurched clumsily forward. ‘Sorry . . . did I splash you? Those confounded lily roots . . .’
At the landing stage the lilies were already closed and secret in the half-light. A white swan was rising gracefully out of the reeds ahead. They stood for a moment watching it flapping away over the water until it disappeared amongst the willows on the opposite bank. It was like this that Irma would later remember Michael Fitzhubert most clearly. Quite suddenly he would come to her in the Bois de Boulogne, under the trees in Hyde Park; a lock of fair hair hanging over one eye, his face half turned to follow the flight of a swan.
That night the mountain mist came rolling down from the pine forest and lingered far into the morning. At the Lodge the view of the lake from Irma’s window was blotted out and Mr Cutler went off to see to his glasshouses, predicting an early winter. At Manassa’s store an occasional customer calling in for the morning paper enquired with flagging interest, ‘Anything more about the College Mystery?’ There wasn’t – at least nothing that could be remotely classed as news on Manassa’s verandah. It was generally conceded by the locals that the goings-on at the Rock were over and done with and best forgotten.
A last row on the lake. A last light pressure of a hand . . . Unseen, unrecorded, the pattern of the picnic continued to darken and spread.
11
Mrs Fitzhubert at the breakfast table looked out on to the mist-shrouded garden, and decided to instruct the maids to begin putting away the chintzes preparatory to the move to velvet and lace in Toorak.
‘This ham is distinctly over-cooked,’ said the Colonel. ‘Where the deuce has Mike got to?’
‘He asked for some coffee in his room. You must admit those two are ideally suited.
‘Positively ragged at the knuckle! Who?’
‘Michael and Irma Leopold, of course.’
‘Suited for what? Reproduction of the species?’
‘There’s no need to be vulgar. I saw them going down to the lake yesterday. . . . Have you no heart?’
‘What the devil’s my heart got to do with overdone ham?’
‘Oh, bother the ham! Can’t you understand, I’m trying to tell you that our little heiress is coming to lunch today!’
For the Fitzhuberts, the punctual appearance of the delicious meals borne on enormous trays to the dining-room was a sacred ritual, serving to define and regulate their idle otherwise formless days. Simultaneously with the striking by the parlourmaid of an Indian gong in the hall, a sort of gastronomical timepiece located in the Fitzhubert stomach would inwardly proclaim the hour. ‘I shall take a short nap after lunch my dear. . . . We shall be having tea on the verandah at a quarter past four. . . . Tell Albert to bring round the dog-cart at five.’
Luncheon at Lake View was at one o’clock sharp. Irma, warned by the nephew that unpunctuality was a cardinal sin in a visitor, smoothed out her crimson sash in the porch and glanced at her tiny diamond watch. The mist had cleared at last to a sultry yellow light in which the rambling façade of the villa under its mantle of Virginia creeper seemed strangely unreal. As Mike was nowhere in sight, she made her way to a less forbidding entrance on a side verandah. The bell brought a parlourmaid from a dark tiled passage where a sorrowful moose’s head presided above a miscellany of hats, caps, coats, tennis racquets, umbrellas, fly veils, solar topees and walking sticks. In the drawing-room overlooking the lake the very air seemed pink, heavy with the scent of La France roses in silver vases. Flanked by yesterday’s pink satin cushions, Mrs Fitzhubert rose to greet her guest from a little pink sofa. ‘The men will be here directly. Here comes my husband now, walking straight into the hall with clay from the rose garden all over his boots.’