The Cone Gatherers by Robin Jenkins Page B

generations had allowed his family to enjoy position and wealth. Therefore he had grumbled at his wife’s conscientiousness, and was fond of pointing out, with affection but without sympathy, the contradiction between her emulation of Christ and her eminence as a baronet’s wife.
    She would have given the cone-gatherers the use of the beach hut, if Duror had not dissuaded her; and shehad not forgotten to ask him afterwards what their hut was like. He had had to lie.
    Now when he was going to lie again, this time knowing it would implicate her in his chosen evil, he felt that he was about to commit before her eyes an obscene gesture, such as he had falsely accused the dwarf of making. In the sunny scented room therefore, where the happy voices of the cricket players on the lawn could be heard, he suddenly saw himself standing up to the neck in a black filth, like a stags’ wallowing pool deep in the wood. High above the trees shone the sun, and everywhere birds sang; but this filth, as he watched, crept up until it entered his mouth, covered his ears, blinded his eyes, and so annihilated him. So would he perish, he knew; and somewhere in the vision, as a presence, exciting him so that his heart beat fast, but never visible, was a hand outstretched to help him out of that mire, if he wished to be helped.
    He saw her hand with its glittering rings held out to invite him to sit down.
    â€˜Good morning, Duror,’ she said, with a smile. ‘Isn’t it just splendid?’
    â€˜Yes, my lady.’
    She looked at him frankly and sympathetically: it was obvious she attributed his subdued tone to sorrow over his wife. If at the same time she noticed with surprise that he hadn’t shaved, it did not diminish her sympathy, as it would have her husband’s.
    â€˜How is Mrs Duror?’ she asked gently.
    â€˜Not too well, I’m sorry to say, my lady. This spell of fine weather has upset her. She asked me to thank you for the flowers.’
    She was so slim, golden-haired, and vital, that her solicitude for Peggy gripped him like a fierce cramp in his belly.
    She noticed how pale he had turned, how ill he looked.
    â€˜I often think of your poor wife, Duror,’ she said.
    She glanced at her husband’s portrait in uniform on the desk in front of her.
    Duror could not see the photograph from where hesat, but he could see clearly enough in his imagination the original, as gawky as she was beautiful, as glum as she was gay, and as matter-of-fact as she was compassionate.
    â€˜This war,’ she went on quickly, ‘with its dreadful separations has shown me at least what she has missed all these years. Something has come between us and the things we love, the things on which our faith depends: flowers and dogs and trees and friends. She’s been cut off so much longer.’
    She glanced again at Sir Colin as if expecting to find him glummer than ever at this condescension. She was  not mistaken. With a sigh she turned to business.
    â€˜Mrs Lochie would explain what I wanted to see you about?’ she asked.
    â€˜Yes, my lady. I’ve been out having a look through the wood.’
    â€˜You think we can manage all right?’
    â€˜I think so, my lady.’
    â€˜Good. Captain Forgan seems to have set his heart on it. He has a belief that nothing impresses the scenery on one’s mind like taking part in a deer shoot, especially if you get a kill.’
    â€˜I understand what the captain means, my lady.’
    She laughed. ‘I’m not sure I do, Duror. Often it’s a long cold wait for nothing. And if you’re lucky and shoot a deer, well, I suppose it is sentimental of me to think that a living deer is much handsomer than a dead one.’
    He remembered that her son, as an infant of four, also a sentimentalist, had seen him with a dead roe deer, and for years afterwards had disliked him. Perhaps she too was remembering that.
    â€˜They’re classified as