‘Remember what?’ enquired Lotus.
‘I’ve been on a picnic with Geoffrey before. I enjoyed it.’
‘Shall we go back to the lake?’ suggested Florence being constructive.
‘It’s true that you’re never actually lost so long as you can find the way back,’ observed Kynaston, hoping, like many greater men to preserve his leadership by retreat.
‘Surely we shouldn’t admit defeat?’ said Guillaume. He wished to keep Florence from the boats.
‘Besides,’ enquired Lena, ‘can you find the way back?’
‘Naturally, I can find the way back.’ The implication that he would rather they went forward contrasted so much with the attitude of his previous remark that it was obvious to Griselda that he could not find the way back, and had suddenly realized the fact. She wondered what he would do, thus totally trapped.
‘For heaven’s sake, let’s go somewhere,’ cried Peggy. Her outburst made Monica drop a stitch.
‘Shall we toss for it?’ suggested Florence, still patiently seeking to advance the general well-being. It struck Griselda that Florence would make a wonderful mother, though possibly her hips were too small for easy childbirth.
‘Geoffrey!’ said Lotus. ‘Tell us what to do and we’ll do it. You can be so self-confident.’
‘This is the moment,’ said Lena.
Suddenly Kynaston resumed the leaderhsip. ‘Let’s have lunch. It’s just the place.’
Kynaston got very little. Peggy had at first said to Griselda that she had not walked far enough to acquire any appetite at all; but managed none the less to eat most of her share. Lotus, seated on a small mat, ate nothing but a little hothouse fruit (although it was summer) and some walnuts. Guillaume was on a diet which involved him in eating several times the normal amount of the few things he was permitted to eat at all. Barney almost surreptitiously unrapped some unusual but not unappetising comestibles approved by his community. He insinuated himself alongside a tree which Peggy was occupying, somewhat in the background; and, glancing from time to time at Peggy’s bust, began to cheer up.
At the end of the meal, the situation had once more to be faced.
After various desultory and generally unrealistic suggestions from the others, Lotus said ‘Why move from here? Are we not quite comfortable as we are?’ She sank her left hand into Kynaston’s hair as he lay on the ground beside her.
‘Perfectly comfortable,’ said Guillaume, yawning as his diet disagreed with him.
Monica began to knit at a different angle. Perhaps she was turning the heel. But the rapidly increasing product of her labours seemed without any such precise points of reference.
‘There’s the difficulty that we don’t know the way back,’ pointed out Florence.
‘We’ll be all right when the time comes.’ This was Barney.
‘I,’ said Lena, ‘want a walk. Anyone join me?’
‘I’ll join you,’ said Griselda, rising. ‘What about you, Peggy?’
‘It’s too hot.’ To her surprise, Griselda, now that she was on her feet, could see that Peggy’s ankles were tightly clasped in the crook of one of Barney’s arms.
‘Anyone else?’ enquired Griselda. She had not expected to have to walk alone with Lena.
‘I’d love to some other time,’ said Freddy regretfully. By this he meant that he would love to accompany Griselda, but he was frightened of Lena, whom he thought unsexed and a bluestocking.
‘Florence?’
Florence looked lovingly at Guillaume, who was begining to fall asleep. ‘I don’t think so, Griselda.’ There was something charmingly tender about her; something unusual and precious which Griselda felt was going to waste.
‘Come on, Florence. I’d like you to.’
Florence smiled and shook her head. Then she laid a handkerchief over Guillaume’s brow, and settled down to watch over him.
Lena meanwhile was slouching up and down impatiently. Griselda walked across to her through the recumbent group.
‘Which way?’
‘Not again!’
‘This way then.’ Griselda indicated the turn to the left.
‘Thank God you know your own mind.’
They set off along the track. Griselda’s last recollection of the group was the look of agony in Kynaston’s eyes as she vanished from his sight and a lock of Lotus’s splendid red-gold hair touched his cheek.
XXIV
‘Pity Florence wouldn’t come.’
‘She’s better where she is.’
‘Isn’t Guillaume rather selfish?’
‘That’s why Florence loves him.’
They walked some way in silence. It was almost too hot to talk. Also Griselda divined that Lena, although a little alarming, was one of the favoured people with whom silence is possible even on short acquaintance. Soon the track turned into a sunken glade.
‘What are your books called?’
‘Inhumation is the one I like.’
‘I should like to read it.’
‘It’s not based on experience.’
‘I’m sure that doesn’t matter.’
‘It matters to me. Inhumation is based on frustration. I’ve never succeeded with men; although I’ve tried very hard from time to time. I’m too cerebral for the dear dolts. Not clinging and dependent. Florence is what they like. Or you.’
‘I’m not clinging and dependent.’
‘Aren’t you? Sorry. I don’t really know you, of course.’
Again they walked for some time in silence. The glade was full of dragonflies, with their quaint air of impossibility.
‘The only proposal I ever received,’ remarked Griselda after a while, ‘was on the grounds that I was not clinging and dependent. Proposal of marriage, that is to say.’
‘Geoffrey Kynaston is unlike the ordinary male. I should accept him. You’ll be lost otherwise if you’re the type you say you are. I’d take him myself if he’d have me.’
Griselda had wondered why Lena had been so rude to Kynaston.
‘How did you know?’
‘Barney.’
‘Is Barney a good painter?’
‘He’s not a Rubens or George Goss. He can only paint Mothers. He has a fixation.’
‘I knew he painted Mothers.’
‘Udders, you know.’
Griselda nodded.
After another silence, Lena said ‘Is love important to you, Griselda?’
‘Yes, Lena,’ replied Griselda. ‘Love is very important to me.’
‘We’re in a minority.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘I meant what I said in the train. I should like a man now.’
‘It’s the main thing about beautiful places.’
Suddenly they turned a corner and came to a high wrought-iron gate. It was surmounted by a painted though discoloured coat of arms, consisting simply of a mailed fist. It was apparent that the truck had been constructed as a subsidiary drive to a house; and that the glade was an artificial excavation designed to keep the drive on a level.
‘We can’t go back,’ said Lena. ‘We shall rejoin the others, and I’m not ready for that yet.’
‘The gate’s open,’ said Griselda.
Lena pushed it. It ground on its hinges, but opened wide at a touch. They passed through, and Griselda closed the gate behind them.
The drive stretched on among beeches which, though presumably in private ownership, were indistinguishable from the publicly owned beeches in the forest outside.
‘Do you know who lives round here?’ asked Griselda.
‘I’m afraid not. I’m a stranger in these parts.’ Lena’s tone had lost its previous habitual colouring of sarcasm. She had become entirely friendly. Griselda surmised that this might be a privilege, and that Lena might be a good friend to have.
‘I suggest,’ continued Lena, ‘that we find our way out the other side of the Park, cast round in a circle, and rejoin the others from the opposite direction.’