Free To the North by Elizabeth Bowen Page B

couldn’t,” said Gerda, “you see, my ideas are upset.” Sitting down on a step of the sundial she looked up at Emmeline so appealingly that Emmeline had to sit down also. Tufts of aubretia hung over the stones; the frank tawny faces of pansies surrounded them; a dewy fresh exhalation came up from the matted roots of the plants. The sun streamed over the rock-garden. Gerda glanced at her small feet in high-heeled green sandals, at Emmeline’s, longer and narrower in snake-skin shoes. “I used to love church,” she said, sighing. “Still, you could join in the hymns.”
    “They upset me frightfully. Fine weather makes me feel awful, too.”
    “Perhaps we shall have a wet summer,” said Emmeline.
    “You look so happy,” said Gerda, fixing on Emmeline her dark, morbid eyes.
    “I ate such a large breakfast,” said Emmeline.
    “Still, you are happy, aren’t you?”
    “Oh, yes,” said Emmeline. She was so happy that she could have kissed the sundial; everything seemed to be painted on glass with a light behind. She smiled at the glint of sun on poor Gerda’s hair: grief was a language she did not know. “Something smells nice,” she said, “is it thyme or rosemary?”
    “Catmint,” said Gerda, whose mother was a keen gardener. “Do you think one’s relations with men are always impossible? I sometimes think women were born solitary.”
    “My sister-in-law thinks that.”
    “How I should like to meet your sister-in-law! You know, Emmeline, I should really never have married. One cannot abide by an emotional decision one’s whole life.”
    “Does Georgina say so?”
    “It’s what I’ve always felt.”
    “Still, it might be dull not to marry.”
    “Oh, Emmeline, if you only knew!”
    “I don’t,” said Emmeline, placidly shredding a leaf. Flowers grew, and on this fine morning chorused with scent and colour: she thought idly, free will was a mistake, but did not know what this meant. Gerda went on to say it would have been sad to have missed motherhood. Emmeline could not remember how many children she had, and asked her: Gerda said she had two.
    “How nice. Do you want any more?”
    “Not now,” Gerda said gloomily.
    “One of each?” said Emmeline, the excellence of the arrangement making her smile.
    “Not one of each: two daughters. Emmeline, what shall I tell them? Am I to watch them grow up and make the same frightful mistakes? Suppose they come to me and say they wish they had never been born?”
    “I don’t expect they would mean it: people so often say that.”
    “But one never knows.”
    “How old are they?”
    “Four and two. But they won’t be that always.”
    “No— But what is the matter, Gerda? Are you wanting to run away with somebody else?”
    “I don’t think I could,” said Gerda—this was her great subject. “I seem to be quite used up; I seem to have no energy. Besides, it may sound extraordinary, Emmeline, but I’m not interested in men any more. You and I are the same age, and you have so much before you; it seems extraordinary. Perhaps I don’t meet anyone who appeals to my mind. Besides, I really am fond of Gilbert, and there would be such a fuss. Besides, no one has asked me to.”
    At this point Tim Farquharson appeared in the rock-garden, picking his way down the curly paths. He was in better spirits this morning and would have liked a chat. He stood still and stroked the top of his head nervously, as though the sun were too hot, for he had put himself wrong with Gerda the night before. Too much preoccupied to be aware how things went with the Blighs, he had remarked to Gerda that unhappy couples were boring… . Gerda and Emmeline with their two pretty bare heads, sitting shoulder to shoulder under the sundial were just what Tim wanted, but he did not know how to approach.
    “So that’s where you are,” he said.
    “Yes,” replied Emmeline—but Gerda, still smouldering, lowered her eyelashes.
    “Did I hear you say. you were going to