“I’m simply going to bedeck their daughters with flowers, Meredith. It’s a nice idea.”
“It’s dumb.”
“That’s enough. I want you to gather all the flowers you can. Understand?”
“God, you’re mean.”
“To work, Meredith, to work.”
She turned, she hiked up her baggy shorts, she tried to shake some kind of curl into the chopped-off hair now wet and dark and stuck midway to her ears, she attempted to appear undaunted. But she knew I was watching her, had once more felt the weight of my interested wisdom bearing down on the brittle sticks of her suspicion, and as if my gentle insistence on obedience were not enough, had already begun to respond reluctantly to my idea of the crowns. Even Meredith was not above the idea of a little self-beautification, not exempt from the hope of one day becoming glamorized, idealized, in the eyes of preoccupied parents. Already the green shoots were popping up in that small dark brain of hers, she was trapped in my smile.
“Come on,” I said. “Dolores and Eveline and I are waiting.”
She glanced at me over her shoulder and then muttered something, stopped, and yanked up a fistful of Cyclamen persicum without regard for the pink petals scattering, bleeding, or the soft heads clutched in her hand.
“Not so hard,” I murmured. “And leave longer stems.”
“I want my mother. I don’t like your silly games.”
“Put the flowers over here. We’ll make a lot of piles and then we’ll start weaving.”
Without turning she flung her poor crushed offering toward my feet. But she had heard my voice, she was drenched in my patience, she could not deny the laughter of Dolores (or was it Eveline?), and her fingers were stained with the juice of the torn Cyclamen persicum. She could hardly help but see that our glen, our golden glen, was filled with clumps of pink flowers, and red and yellow and white flowers, and already she must have envisioned all those helpless buds entwined in little Eveline’s hair and in her own. She could not resist. She squatted. She began to pick.
But Cyril among the children? Alone, absolutely alone, with Catherine’s two identical female twins and one hostile girl? And only the old black sleeping dog to share my guardianship? It was not a typical situation for me. To serve as liaison between the adults and children, now and again to break off from the four-pointed constellation of our adulthood and sail away, as it were, in order to intercept the small three-pointed heavenly figure of the children and stall its approach, contributing to the freedom of the adults I left behind and creating unenthusiastic coherence among the children I took in hand — all this was one thing and understandable. But to propose separation at the outset and before it was necessary, to make the suggestion casually yet willingly that it might be fun for the children were I to lead them on ahead to the glen — this was quite another thing, and had prompted surprise from Fiona and Catherine, scorn from Hugh, sullenness from Meredith, and mere acquiescence from the little twins. Then why the halfhearted magnanimity, the atypical gesture? Why this minor sacrifice, this exposure to boredom? Meredith was partially right, of course, but I was a better judge of motives than Meredith, and perhaps there was something more to my plan than deception, selfishness, showmanship. Perhaps I wanted to spare Catherine a moment or two, perhaps I wanted to ensure Hugh some time alone with my wife and his, perhaps I was simply inclined to amuse the twins for once and to appease Meredith in the process, show her my other side, give her a half-hour of my attention. Perhaps I wanted to share my capacity for different games, for love on another plane. Who knows?
“I thought you were going to help.”
“I am, I am.”
“Then why are you just standing there like that?”
“You need more of the Echium diffusum.”
“Huh?”
“Those little red flowers, Meredith. Over there.”
The boredom was not exactly boredom, the distance between myself and the children was not intolerable. I was enjoying myself. The soft green dusty tumors were hanging from the branches of the fig trees just above my head and within easy reach, the infinitely soft and idle grass pillowed the sitting twins and the sleeping dog, a denser species of brushy pine ringed our glen, the fragile flowers were embedded in remarkable variety in the tissue of the ash-blond grass, the sunlight was descending through the green leaves and speckling all four of us. I heard Meredith crawling about this gentle place intent on my work, I saw the polka dots dancing, so to speak, on the ruffled jumpers of the two smaller girls seated side by side in the warm grass and holding hands, blowing chubby laughter in my direction as if they had never seen me before. And the peace, the warmth, the stasis, the smell of it — in such circumstances how could I help but enjoy my own immensity of size or the range of my interests, how help but appreciate the adaptibility of certain natural scenes which, like this one, allow for the play of children one minute and the seclusion of adults the next? I felt a coolness between my porous thin white shirt and the skin of my chest. In linen slacks and alligator belt and hard low-cut shoes the color of amber, I sensed the consciousness of someone carefully dressed for taking care of children. The children themselves were decked out for the occasion in ruffled jumpers, and in baggy but laundered shorts and sleeveless top.
“It’s hard to tell your little sisters apart, Meredith. Very hard.”
“It’s easy.”
“At least your mother could dress them differently. Blue polka dots for one, say, and red for the other.”
“She likes them the same.”
“I see.”
“Eveline has bigger teeth.”
“I don’t think they understand our game. Let’s teach them.”
No answer. No effort to show me anything except her back. Was she engaged at last? Lost in the scent of the flowers and distracted in the dream I had offered her? Or was she eluding kindness, going through motions, feigning preoccupation, reminding herself that she disliked the sound of my voice and disdained my game? Was I dealing with Meredith the spy, who was filled with duplicity and fear of what she took to be my own duplicity, or was I now in charge of Meredith the harmless child, as I had first assumed? Engaged, I decided, and only the harmless child, because now her small white haunches were frozen where she had just been crawling in the still grass, her head was turned, one hand was raised, in poignant shyness and feminine delicacy she was holding up to her small pointed nose a single bud of Tolpis barbata and sniffing in pleasure unmistakably her own. The thin hand quivered. I was sure that her eyes were closed.
“Well,” I murmured, “if you won’t help your sisters, I guess I’ll have to.”
“Go ahead.”
“I’d prefer that we work together, Meredith.”
And pausing, thinking, and then deciding to relent: “Dolores,” she said, “Eveline, pick the flowers.”
I rubbed the patina of soft dust from one green pendant fig, I watched as Meredith broke a few more stems and abruptly propelled herself toward a clump of Cistus ladaniferus worthy, I thought, of any young girl’s breathlessness. But obviously Meredith was more attentive to the situation than to the flowers, was listening for some remark from me or some sound from the twins. She waited, she shrugged, until conscience and impatience overcame the lure to beauty and elicited a brief example of the pre-emptory maternal tone she always adopted when addressing the twins. “Come on, come on,” she muttered, “just pick them. Pick a lot of them.”
“That’s fine, Meredith. But Dolores and Eveline don’t understand. Let’s help them.”
“They won’t be able to make crowns anyway.”
“Of course they will. But if we’re going to surprise Fiona and Hugh and Catherine, we’ll have to hurry. There isn’t much time.”