Anne Severn and the Fieldings | Page 2

of the pond. And every now and then the fat goldfish
came nosing along, orange, with silver patches, shining, making the
water light round them, stiff mouths wide open. When they bobbed up,
small bubbles broke from them and sparkled and went out.
Anne remembered the goldfish; but somehow they were not so
fascinating as they used to be.
A queer plant grew on the rock border of the pond. Green fleshy stems,
with blunt spikes all over them. Each carried a tiny gold star at its tip.
Thick, cold juice would come out of it if you squeezed it. She thought it
would smell like lavender.
It had a name. She tried to think of it.
Stonecrop. Stonecrop. Suddenly she remembered.
Her mother stood with her by the pond, dark and white and slender.

Anne held out her hands smeared with the crushed flesh of the
stonecrop; her mother stooped and wiped them with her
pockethandkerchief, and there was a smell of lavender. The goldfish
went swimming by in the olive-green water.
Anne's sadness came over her again; sadness so heavy that it kept her
from crying; sadness that crushed her breast and made her throat ache.
They went back up the lawn, quietly, and the day felt more and more
like Sunday, or like--like a funeral day.
"She's very silent, this small daughter of yours," Mr. Fielding said.
"Yes," said Mr. Severn.
His voice came with a stiff jerk, as if it choked him. He remembered,
too.
ii
The grey and yellow flagstones of the terrace were hot under your feet.
Jerrold's mother lay out there on a pile of cushions, in the sun. She was
very large and very beautiful. She lay on her side, heaved up on one
elbow. Under her thin white gown you could see the big lines of her
shoulder and hip, and of her long full thigh, tapering to the knee.
Anne crouched beside her, uncomfortably, holding her little body away
from the great warm mass among the cushions.
Mrs. Fielding was aware of this shrinking. She put out her arm and
drew Anne to her side again.
"Lean back," she said. "Close. Closer."
And Anne would lean close, politely, for a minute, and then stiffen and
shrink away again when the soft arm slackened.
Eliot Fielding (the clever one) lay on his stomach, stretched out across

the terrace. He leaned over a book: Animal Biology. He was absorbed
in a diagram of a rabbit's heart and took no notice of his mother or of
Anne.
Anne had been at the Manor five days, and she had got used to Jerrold's
mother's caresses. All but one. Every now and then Mrs. Fielding's
hand would stray to the back of Anne's neck, where the short curls,
black as her frock, sprang out in a thick bunch. The fingers stirred
among the roots of Anne's hair, stroking, stroking, lifting the bunch and
letting it fall again. And whenever they did this Anne jerked her head
away and held it stiffly out of their reach.
She remembered how her mother's fingers, slender and silk-skinned
and loving, had done just that, and how their touch went thrilling
through the back of her neck, how it made her heart beat. Mrs.
Fielding's fingers didn't thrill you, they were blunt and fumbling. Anne
thought: "She's no business to touch me like that. No business to think
she can do what mother did."
She was always doing it, always trying to be a mother to her. Her father
had told her she was going to try. And Anne wouldn't let her. She
would not let her.
"Why do you move your head away, darling?"
Anne didn't answer.
"You used to love it. You used to come bending your funny little neck
and turning first one ear and than the other. Like a little cat. And now
you won't let me touch you."
"No. No. Not--like that."
"Yes. Yes. Like this. You don't remember."
"I do remember."
She felt the blunt fingers on her neck again and started up. The

beautiful, wilful woman lay back on her cushions, smiling to herself.
"You're a funny little thing, aren't you?" she said.
Anne's eyes were glassed. She shook her head fiercely and spilled tears.
Jerrold had come up on to the terrace. Colin trotted after him. They
were looking at her. Eliot had raised his head from his book and was
looking at her.
"It is rotten of you, mater," he said, "to tease that kid."
"I'm not teasing her. Really, Eliot, you do say things--as if nobody but
yourself had any sense. You can run away now, Anne darling."
Anne stood staring, with wild animal eyes that saw no place to run to.
It was Jerrold who saved her.
"I say, would you like