‘I’d like very much to see them. They must be fascinating.’
‘He paid his labourers a shilling a day and they worked ten hours.’
In the clear sunlight it was not difficult to follow the movements and gestures of the two figures on the lawn. They had turned now towards the piece of sculpture, and were pointing at it in a sort of mocking way, apparently laughing and making jokes about its shape. I recognized it as being one of the Henry Moores, done in wood, a thin smooth object of singular beauty that had two or three holes in it and a number of strange limbs protruding.
‘When Beaumont planted the yew trees for the chess-men and the other things, he knew they wouldn’t amount to much for at least a hundred years. We don’t seem to possess that sort of patience in our planning these days, do we? What do you think?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘We don’t.’
The black object in the man’s hand turned out to be a camera, and now he had stepped back and was taking pictures of the woman beside the Henry Moore. She was striking a number of different poses, all of them, so far as I could see, ludicrous and meant to be amusing. Once she put her arms around one of the protruding wooden limbs and hugged it, and another time she climbed up and sat side-saddle on the thing, holding imaginary reins in her hands. A great wall of yew hid these two people from the house, and indeed from all the rest of the garden except the little hill on which we sat. They had every right to believe that they were not overlooked, and even if they had happened to glance our way – which was into the sun – I doubt whether they would have noticed the two small motionless figures sitting on the bench beside the pond.
‘You know, I love these yews,’ Sir Basil said. ‘The colour of them is so wonderful in a garden because it rests the eye. And in the summer it breaks up the areas of brilliance into little patches and makes them more comfortable to admire. Have you noticed the different shades of green on the planes and facets of each clipped tree?’
‘It’s lovely, isn’t it.’
The man now seemed to be explaining something to the woman, and pointing at the Henry Moore, and I could tell by the way they threw back their heads that they were laughing again. The man continued to point, and then the woman walked around the back of the wood carving, bent down and poked her head through one of its holes. The thing was about the size, shall I say, of a small horse, but thinner than that, and from where I sat I could see both sides of it – to the left, the woman’s body, to the right, her head protruding through. It was very much like one of those jokes at the seaside where you put your head through a hole in a board and get photographed as a fat lady. The man was photographing her now.
‘There’s another thing about yews,’ Sir Basil said, ‘In the early summer when the young shoots come out…’ At that moment he paused and sat up straighter and leaned slightly forward, and I could sense his whole body suddenly stif
fening.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘when the young shoots come out?’
The man had taken the photograph, but the woman still had her head through the hole, and now I saw him put both hands (as well as the camera) behind his back and advance towards her. Then he bent forward so his face was close to hers, touching it, and he held it there while he gave her, I suppose, a few kisses or something like that. In the stillness that followed, I fancied I heard a faint faraway tinkle of female laughter coming to us through the sunlight across the garden.
‘Shall we go back to the house?’ I asked.
‘Back to the house?’
‘Yes, shall we go back and have a drink before lunch?’
‘A drink? Yes, we’ll have a drink.’ But he didn’t move. He sat very still, gone far away from me now, staring intently at the two figures. I also was staring at them. I couldn’t take my eyes away; I had to look. It was like seeing a dangerous little ballet in miniature from a great distance, and you knew the dancers and the music but not the end of the story, not the choreography, nor what they were going to do next, and you were fascinated, and you had to look.
‘Gaudier Brzeska,’ I said. ‘How great do you think he might’ve become if he hadn’t died so young?’
‘Who?’
‘Gaudier Brzeska.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course.’
I noticed now that something queer was happening. The woman still had her head through the hole, but she was beginning to wriggle her body from side to side in a slow unusual manner, and the man was standing motionless, a pace or so away, watching her. He seemed suddenly uneasy the way he stood there, and I could tell by the drop of the head and by the stiff intent set of the body that there was no laughter in him any more. For a while he remained still, then I saw him place his camera on the ground and go forward to the woman, taking her head in his hands; and all at once it was more like a puppet show than a ballet, with tiny wooden figures performing tiny jerky movements, crazy and unreal, on a faraway sunlit stage.
We sat quietly together on the white bench, and we watched while the tiny puppet man began to manipulate the woman’s head with his hands. He was doing it gently, there was no doubt about that, slowly and gently, stepping back every now and then to think about it some more, and several times crouching down to survey the situation from another angle. Whenever he left her alone the woman would again start to wriggle her body, and the peculiar way she did it reminded me of a dog that feels a collar round its neck for the first time.
‘She’s stuck,’ Sir Basil said.
And now the man was walking to the other side of the carving, the side where the woman’s body was, and he put out his hands and began trying to do something with her neck. Then, as though suddenly exasperated, he gave the neck two or three quick jerky pulls, and this time the sound of the woman’s voice, raised high in anger, or pain, or both, came back to us small and clear through the sunlight.
Out of the corner of one eye I could see Sir Basil nodding his head quietly up and down. ‘I got my fist caught in a jar of boiled sweets once,’ he said, ‘and I couldn’t get it out.’
The man had retreated a few yards, and was standing with hands on hips, head up, looking furious and sullen. The woman, from her uncomfortable position, appeared to be talking to him, or rather shouting at him, and although the body itself was pretty firmly fixed and could only wriggle, the legs were free and did a good deal of moving and stamping.
‘I broke the jar with a hammer and told my mother I’d knocked it off the shelf by mistake.’ He seemed calmer now, not tense at all, although his voice was curiously flat. ‘I suppose we’d better go down and see if we can help.’
‘Perhaps we should.’
But still he didn’t move. He took out a cigarette and lit it, putting the used match carefully back in the box.