The Promise Ese (45) “Why won’t Potts have you? Would you let him?’ She looked annoyed. He invariably broached the question of Potts desires, whenever they were together, like pigeon-holing correspondence according to type. Did he seriously wish the swoon to evaporate? After they had made love in a very run-of- the- mill no-nonsense fashion, the first time like some harried but needy married pair she lay on her sleeping-bag on the floor in his arm, perfectly satisfied. She gazed at the sky through the skylight over their ‘camp’, and assessed the weather as if weather was a critical factor in their romance. The roof was prone to leak. He then elaborated on the subject of ‘anemomaniacs’, weather obsessives. On marches, when all memories and arguments had been disgorged into the bottomless gut of inactivity, the weather, God and food alone used to wend among the tee-pee and dome tents, inhabit the groans of men like topics in a mind-game. It was almost like that at ‘Pooks Hill’, just planks and tins and sleeping-bags and the overhanging, shaky branch-arms waving semaphore and the simple combination of woman and man immersed in the paradigm of footsie, carnival loving. Something frivolous and feckless. Perhaps Emmy had taken his dedicated heart and fun love was all he was capable of. He asked Rabbit how he ‘stacked’ up in the lover stakes. Inadvertently Katherine dropped Jansens name. Hector raised his eyebrows and exhaled loudly. Jansens danced poorly but that wasn’t the reason for their brisk parting. Hector was a better dancer. She supposed he wanted her to sing his praises insanely, for a man in questionable health but nevertheless up to it. Mooney always congratulated him upon his virility as if anyone over the age of forty-five who could copulate without wheezing deserved some commendation. “Hector, why did you omit the heart issue in the letter under my door?” Katherine rolled onto her stomach and leant on her elbows gaining a rather unflattering impression of the inside of his nose as she waited for an answer. “Pride.” he said folding one arm behind his head, peering from beneath lowered eyelids. Leather sofa cushions did for head-rests. Apparently Potts curled up like a cat in any comfy corner. The cottage had no bedroom, just two levels and two rooms. “ Are you pleased to have the original returned to you, its rightful owner? It must have been mixed up in some scientific gear that found its way…’ He stopped short of the ‘where’. “I sold a lot, you know, gave some away…’ she explained. “All the people who donated, the paraphernalia is really theirs. But after the horror of the whole thing everyone mercifully turned soft on me and I sold some. Some also went to museums, private collectors.” “Well everyone returns with debts to account for. It forces them to run away again.” She saw his eyes were very blood-shot. He saw her freckles, yet her hair, a glorious, riotous tangle like crushed grass framed her face into youth. She wore the post-coital glow. He frowned when she told him unashamedly that she had burned the letter whilst feverish, almost out of her mind. ‘I’m disappointed,” he said dryly, “it cost me a great deal of money. It’s paid off now…have a school-friend who builds bridges. Gave me up over that to-do but the evidence of Hunts coercion, yes I could almost call it that has swung him my way again. I tried to straighten it out in my book. Hunt had done his work though all those letters of protest to the papers. He really was an old woman, I hate to add, Rabbit. Anyway the other chap is my dear friend again and you know what that means in the exploring business. It means the good ship ‘Destiny’.” Katherine had her mind elsewhere. “Why did you give it me, anyway? Shall I reimburse you,” she said vaguely. “It was so as you could take back what he said about me.” “Me,” she started, “What do you think I am my husband in another skin? Must I absolve you or something? The quarrel is not mine.” He continued, ignoring the interjection. “The boy-scouts are given this model to follow; one boy-scout littering orange-peel in the street just so another boy-scout may have the honour of picking it up again. I therefore composed that document myself, to see if your future husband might make it his good deed. He could have said, gallantly...No, no, my ol’chum Carps, no need to put it in writing. Take it upon my word…I prefer you not to make your base in the Sound but if the conditions are not what one would expect, elsewhere, feel free...must look after your men, number one priority. Billy actually suggested we formalize some kind of understanding because he felt only ink and carbon would satisfy Hunt. Mean, don’t you think, his making a row about it?” “Yes,” said Katherine thoughtfully, “but he was so scared of under achieving. Maybe there’s a separate reason for his disliking you. It seems such a little thing.” Hector sat up and felt about for cigarettes. “What do we drink here,” he asked, patting every pocket. “I’ve brought some pink gin.” “Aha, the neighbour’ll have it I assure you. Best drink it all while we are in residence.’ He licked his lips thirstily before cupping his hands around a match. Habit. Not a puff of breeze. She followed his cue and in her petticoat whilst curling her tongue into talk, she crawled towards her haversack and the grog; heavily conscious of her body all of a sudden. Its true but she was finding it impossible to ‘queen’ it in the cottage where Potts reigned. Lately she had grown reliant on ‘things’ to cosset her. One good thing about sex, no accessories required, well except one, one which Hector had fetched with him, in abundance. The french-letter. “Is this your pay-back - having me, like a revenge-play of Shakespeare’s? Do you consider that when we make love? Do you sort of snigger at poor Richard, like a school snitch behind his dead back? This is the first time I have asked, may not be the only one. Tell me what you think when we do it.” She rummaged in her bag – a notebook fell out. ‘You have the spark of mischief, Rabbit, like I have, that’s all. Can’t imagine what else has swayed you in my direction, however. You see beyond Hunts slanders.’ “Mischief as you say, curiosity. We can be alright as long as we acknowledge the falsity of what the other says. My secrets are secret and you are never going to know them, so there. I warn you, though, I had a young Greek last year as playfellow, very brawny and bronzed…but listen to this, Pink-Potts wrote it, you called him that once.” She opened the notebook and read out: “I loved you so I drew these tides of men into my hands and wrote my will across the sky in stars.” Neither Carpenter or Browning could ever top that, never.” He clapped with mock sarcasm. “But d’you know midear the Service poem, aptly suited to the occasion, about a lady called ‘Sunshine’ who perishes for want of it.” He lay back, puffing and ruminating. “But not today, the weather is beautiful, in fact I long to be out in it again.” She stood-up, raced to the window, hung out and called “Well, here I am, Sun” and the light revealed all her contours through the next to nothing sliver of underclothes. “Precisely. But that is not the point. Come back next to me” He smiled intriguingly, his voice whisking the air like a catkin, tantalizing. She rested her head against his chest. And so we dreamed and drifted, she and I; And how she loved that free, unfathomed life There in that peach-bloom of the midnight sky, The silence welded us, true man and wife. Then North and North invincibly we pressed Beyond the Circle, to the worlds white crest. ‘Do you fancy living at the Pole with me in a cabin, trading furs, remote and silent and free, hmm? There’s prodigious sunlight South. I don’t know why ‘Sunshine’ had trouble. Maybe up North its different” * * * Shimmering, scintillating, glittering the shallow water of the Frome’s ford at Melton made a perfect paddling site. Hector and Katherine slithered their bare feet across the broad flat rock shelves where strange flat fish wove and ducked, nuzzled grit. Some children with ponies had tethered their charges to the bridge rail and were poking about with sticks in the clear river sand. One of them ran up to his friends with some velvety strands of liquorice from the village shop. Hectors agility over the glassy rocks became evident as Katherine readily slipping, forced herself to reach for his arm. “Let me try this one out on you,” he began, his arm rock- solid, his trouser legs rolled up comically, his cap jaunty, his forearms speckled with spray from Katherine’s promiscuous teasing. “Its for my little boy, part of an intermittent serial,” he qualified. She said: “Oh very well,” as if she required cajoling. The glare from the water was beginning to stress her eyes. “So far there are two boys, opposites, one fair and one dark, one good and the other bad I suppose…like those two”. A blonde- headed boy had draped his liquorice under his nose like a Fumanchu moustache and was bowing to his curly haired companion. “Yee.. es,” she said drolly, stifled by the children but what did they care for her bare legs? He dragged her off to the shade of a willow and resumed the story. ‘Well one is in a cave and one outside of it and the one inside is tapping morse-code to the one outside.” “Is this how you tell it to your son?” she queried with her wet feet itching in the plush grass. She dried them with her summery dress tight over her drawn-up knees. “No, I try to be more poetic.” So took her hand and held it like a swain passing time with his sweetheart. “Now the dark boy doesn’t know morse-code but he assumes it is a distress message because there is very little air in the cave, its dank and depressing. He doesn’t know that for certain, though. But as it turns out the fair boy is really the dastardly one and is trying to lure the boy down by pretending he wants to come out. ‘I want to share the beauty of this cave with you’. What do you think could happen next? Can he break down the wall of the cave to effect a rescue? Well, he finds a way in, the fair boy grabs him then climbs out and runs away. In the process a rock is nudged aside, divulging a vein of gemstones so the dark one is unexpectedly made rich. The fair one was planning to block the entrance but changed his mind, he’s gone.” “Faulty story, Hector because you have confused the fair with the dark. The dark should have been in the cave to start off, the fair walking by.” How could he convince her it was a deliberate reversal? * * * On the Sunday GE returned to do some work on his cottage, reshingle a portion of roof to be exact. Hector filled a circular wicker basket with shingles which G.E hauled up onto the roof. This was how they had lifted ice onto the ship to melt for water. Katherine had walked to the village for milk. For pure indulgence she liked milky, liberally sugared tea and rich cocoa. When she was sculpting, however, black strong thin spiced and toxic things kept her going. She had at last finished her-‘unknown soldier’. After a while, Hector ascended the ladder to see the treetops, to view the incline of the roof, to check if Potts might fall – not that the height was life-threatening. Hector was a just a cautious man. He passed wedges and tools to Potts who worked cleanly and efficiently. All his time at the cottage was stolen R.A.F. time but he thought a week of rain was on the cards and he didn’t want his Syrian carpet spoiled. He asked Hector how things were going. ‘Think she misses Hunt, her one and only love. I’m too ordinary. Do you know many arty folk – the Sorley- Sharpes of the world? Katherine seems to know them all. Makes me feel as small as a flea. Oh now I can see her coming back down, the road. Asked her to buy sausages.’ “My neighbour can supply anything. By the way, I shouldn’t worry about being ordinary. Jansens, highly intelligent but not artistic in any way.” He felt like saying ‘served to amuse her’. G.E., however, raised his head to glance at Hector who had his elbows on the spouting, whose eyes deeply in shade under Katherine’s floppy hat could have been staring or not staring. G.E saw he was attending so continued man to man – a position not usual to him, the ‘shy bod’, at all.
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