In a steamer chair, under a manuka tree that grew in the middle of the
front grass patch, Linda Burnell dreamed the morning away. She did
nothing. She looked up at the dark, close, dry leaves of the manuka, at
the chinks of blue between, and now and again a tiny yellowish flower
dropped on her. Pretty—yes, if you held one of those flowers on the
palm of your hand and looked at it closely, it was an exquisite small
thing. Each pale yellow petal shone as if each was the careful work of
a loving hand. The tiny tongue in the centre gave it the shape of a
bell. And when you turned it over the outside was a deep bronze colour.
But as soon as they flowered, they fell and were scattered. You brushed
them off your frock as you talked; the horrid little things got caught
in one’s hair. Why, then, flower at all? Who takes the trouble—or the
joy—to make all these things that are wasted, wasted.... It was
uncanny.
On the grass beside her, lying between two pillows, was the boy. Sound
asleep he lay, his head turned away from his mother. His fine dark hair
looked more like a shadow than like real hair, but his ear was a
bright, deep coral. Linda clasped her hands above her head and crossed
her feet. It was very pleasant to know that all these bungalows were
empty, that everybody was down on the beach, out of sight, out of
hearing. She had the garden to herself; she was alone.
Dazzling white the picotees shone; the golden-eyed marigold glittered;
the nasturtiums wreathed the veranda poles in green and gold flame. If
only one had time to look at these flowers long enough, time to get
over the sense of novelty and strangeness, time to know them! But as
soon as one paused to part the petals, to discover the under-side of
the leaf, along came Life and one was swept away. And, lying in her
cane chair, Linda felt so light; she felt like a leaf. Along came Life
like a wind and she was seized and shaken; she had to go. Oh dear,
would it always be so? Was there no escape?
... Now she sat on the veranda of their Tasmanian home, leaning against
her father’s knee. And he promised, “As soon as you and I are old
enough, Linny, we’ll cut off somewhere, we’ll escape. Two boys
together. I have a fancy I’d like to sail up a river in China.” Linda
saw that river, very wide, covered with little rafts and boats. She saw
the yellow hats of the boatmen and she heard their high, thin voices as
they called....
“Yes, papa.”
But just then a very broad young man with bright ginger hair walked
slowly past their house, and slowly, solemnly even, uncovered. Linda’s
father pulled her ear teasingly, in the way he had.
“Linny’s beau,” he whispered.
“Oh, papa, fancy being married to Stanley Burnell!”
Well, she was married to him. And what was more she loved him. Not the
Stanley whom every one saw, not the everyday one; but a timid,
sensitive, innocent Stanley who knelt down every night to say his
prayers, and who longed to be good. Stanley was simple. If he believed
in people—as he believed in her, for instance—it was with his whole
heart. He could not be disloyal; he could not tell a lie. And how
terribly he suffered if he thought anyone—she—was not being dead
straight, dead sincere with him! “This is too subtle for me!” He flung
out the words, but his open, quivering, distraught look was like the
look of a trapped beast.
But the trouble was—here Linda felt almost inclined to laugh, though
Heaven knows it was no laughing matter—she saw _her_ Stanley so seldom.
There were glimpses, moments, breathing spaces of calm, but all the
rest of the time it was like living in a house that couldn’t be cured
of the habit of catching on fire, on a ship that got wrecked every day.
And it was always Stanley who was in the thick of the danger. Her whole
time was spent in rescuing him, and restoring him, and calming him
down, and listening to his story. And what was left of her time was
spent in the dread of having children.
Linda frowned; she sat up quickly in her steamer chair and clasped her
ankles. Yes, that was her real grudge against life; that was what she
could not understand. That was the question she asked and asked, and
listened in vain for the answer. It was all very well to say it was the
common lot of women to bear children. It wasn’t true. She, for one,
could prove that wrong. She was broken, made weak, her courage was
gone, through child-bearing. And what made it doubly hard to bear was,
she did not love her children. It was useless pretending. Even if she
had had the strength she never would have nursed and played with the
little girls. No, it was as though a cold breath had chilled her
through and through on each of those awful journeys; she had no warmth
left to give them. As to the boy—well, thank Heaven, mother had taken
him; he was mother’s, or Beryl’s, or anybody’s who wanted him. She had
hardly held him in her arms. She was so indifferent about him that as
he lay there... Linda glanced down.
The boy had turned over. He lay facing her, and he was no longer
asleep. His dark-blue, baby eyes were open; he looked as though he was
peeping at his mother. And suddenly his face dimpled; it broke into a
wide, toothless smile, a perfect beam, no less.
“I’m here!” that happy smile seemed to say. “Why don’t you like me?”
There was something so quaint, so unexpected about that smile that
Linda smiled herself. But she checked herself and said to the boy
coldly, “I don’t like babies.”
“Don’t like babies?” The boy couldn’t believe her. “Don’t like _me_?”
He waved his arms foolishly at his mother.
Linda dropped off her chair on to the grass.
“Why do you keep on smiling?” she said severely. “If you knew what I
was thinking about, you wouldn’t.”
But he only squeezed up his eyes, slyly, and rolled his head on the
pillow. He didn’t believe a word she said.
“We know all about that!” smiled the boy.
Linda was so astonished at the confidence of this little creature....
Ah no, be sincere. That was not what she felt; it was something far
different, it was something so new, so.... The tears danced in her
eyes; she breathed in a small whisper to the boy, “Hallo, my funny!”
But by now the boy had forgotten his mother. He was serious again.
Something pink, something soft waved in front of him. He made a grab at
it and it immediately disappeared. But when he lay back, another, like
the first, appeared. This time he determined to catch it. He made a
tremendous effort and rolled right over.