“Who cares?”
“Listen, Meredith. Let’s make yours out of those pink and lavender flowers and the white ones. They’re best for your eyes.”
“I’m not a child.”
“Maybe I’ll wear one too, who knows.”
“What are you doing now?”
“Just sitting down, Meredith. Do you mind?”
Cyril descending among the children. Cyril reclining on the floor of the fig tree bower. Fiona’s husband reposing within arm’s length of Catherine’s two smaller girls who appeared to have been dropped like heavy seeds into our dark-eyed glen. Amuse them, I told myself, control them, don’t frighten them, don’t awe them with effusion or excessive magnificence. And how easy it was to avoid boredom, repugnance, or exceptional condescension. Of course Meredith was watching me, ready to pounce on my first slip, and of course the twins were watching me, waiting for what chance to erupt into private persecution or unpredictable rebellion I could not be sure. If they fled, if they pummeled each other, if they began to shriek — what then? Above all I expected serenity from all three of them, was determined to see for myself that even these three were capable of charm and of conforming to my own concepts of playful sport that would entertain not only them but me. And yet it turned out that I had only to incline my back, extend one leg, seize the upraised knee of the other and smile, first at Dolores and then at Eveline, to cause both children to blink, to roll apart, to come to me.
“Look what you’re doing. You’re kicking my pile of blues to pieces.”
“Sorry. Just gather them up again.”
Supine, I was lying partially supine and wondering whether it was Dolores or Eveline who had flopped belly down on my heavy thigh, Eveline or Dolores who was attempting to perch herself on my upraised knee. But of course one name was as good as the other, I told myself, and for a moment longer tolerated the inertness of the little stomach flat on my thigh and the slow persistent movements of the short legs against my massive calf. But at least there was no tugging on Cyril’s hair, no poking at spectacles, no bouncing. Only the polka dots, the two fat bodies, the two sets of large brown eyes brooding impossibly on mine. The little stomach was sighing, the fat legs were searching for a grip. All this I tolerated for the sake of the apparent depth of feeling with which they were clambering upon the bemused figure of the man who kissed their mother and knew the way to the glen.
“Now we’re going to help Meredith pick the flowers. I’ll show you how.”
They understood, they disengaged legs and stomach from my knee and thigh, they stepped aside and waited (plump, somber, square-faced, bright of eye), and without hesitation they followed my example as I descended to all fours and moved through the speckled sunlight and between the dusty trunks of the fig trees appraising, selecting, admiring, but picking (endlessly picking) the flowers that most caught my attention or most appealed to little Eveline or little Eveline’s twin.
“You like this one. Take it to Meredith.”
“Don’t bother. We’ve got plenty of those.”
“Never mind, Meredith. Eveline likes this kind.”
“God …”
Like my small white purely artificial sheep with its stifled cry and faint accusing expression on the small face that was neither human nor animal but something of each, they drifted about in the fig tree bower together, all three of them, clumsy industrious children engrossed in gathering armfuls of goatsbeard, ghostly asphodel, and the heavy lidded Anemone coronaria. I led the way. My industry, though of a different sort, matched theirs. Eveline, I noted, remained at my side while her twin preferred more independence and was given to nibbling certain prime specimens of the Cistus salviaefolius.
“She’s eating them. Make her stop.”
“Dolores is enjoying herself, Meredith. Let’s leave her alone.”
“She’s ruining everything. You want her to.”
“Not at all, Meredith. Not at all. But look, it’s easy to make the crowns. You simply take a few flowers from each pile and a few green leaves and bind them together with these slender stems until you get a chain long enough to fit around your head. Then you fasten the ends, of course, into a beautiful circlet of all kinds of flowers. These little milky stems are like string. Think you can do it?”
“God, what a question.”
“You and I will have to help your sisters. But I’m sure that you can make a beautiful crown without any help from Cyril.”
“Why don’t you just stop talking?”
“I don’t suppose your mother ever told you that Theophrastus was the father of botany. Well, Meredith, he was.”
She scowled. I cajoled the two smaller girls until they were finally seated in a row with Meredith facing what I thought of immediately as the feast of the flowers. Bent heads, sounds of dismay, hands tangling, tears of innocence stuck between chubby fingers or falling onto their little immobile legs. Their silence made mine the more melodious as I watched all of them struggling with tissued gems, their peaceful though unsuccessful employment heightened the serenity of my own involvement in what was, for me, an easy and, as it were, poetic task. I worked swiftly and my progress kept pace with their frustrations. Meredith was not as clever or dexterous as I had at first assumed, her sisters could do no more than mangle my prized flowers in helpless palms. Yes, I thought, their ineptitude was certainly my skill, their strain my relaxation, their dubious fun my pleasure.
“Having trouble?”
“No.”
“Some of those stems are a little short for weaving. But that looks pretty nice, Meredith. Good choice of colors.”
“It’s falling apart.”
The occasion was mine, and I was determined that each child should have her luxurious and perfectly executed crown. It was up to me, and so I wove all three of them, though not before I created a great thick yellow wreath of Laurus nobilis and Genista cinerea that was heavy, majestic, sweetly scented and much too large for the head of a child.
“Like it?”
“God, you’re selfish.”
“I simply knew it would take longer, Meredith, so I made it first. Now we’ll fix up yours and your little sisters’.”
“I thought we were making them just for us.”
“Who’s being selfish now?”
“You don’t need one. Why do you have to have one too? They’re only for children.”
“If you want me to make you a flower crown as nice as mine, how about a little politeness? Shall we finish the game or stop right here?”
“It has to be as good as yours. Promise?”
“Promise.”
Yes, all three children wanted wreaths like mine, and so I wove them — tossing aside my splendid yellow concoction, adjusting the spectacles, smiling into those three little expectant faces. Meredith put an arm around Eveline’s shoulder, through their eyes I saw the familiar and freshly turned-out man become the flower god at play. Why not? Sentimentality was hardly a problem, my estimation of the circumference of each of those three small heads was more accurate, say, than Hugh’s. And if despite this good judgment of mine I erred somewhat in the size of Meredith’s little queenly crown so that it sat low on her slender brow and obscured her eyes? And if the other two were hastily made and were identically composed of nothing more than leftovers from the bed of Odontospermum maritimum? Could such trivialities detract from the eagerness of those cross-legged children or from my own composure? Not at all. The satisfaction of adjusting each delicate crown on each little bowed waiting head was mine. The satisfaction of seeing their self-consciousness was mine. The transference was actual, the flowers of the glen leapt from their hair, drooped over their ears, with a few good natural strokes I paid my debt to Iris and to all the other imaginary nudes of a more distant time.