Page 18 of Mr Collins in Love
Beside me, he turned, and let his face rest under the water for a moment.He lifted it, opened his eyes.“Ho, that’s good!That’ll wash away the heat.”
“Yes.”
“Glad you got in now, ain’t you?”
I nodded.
“You always hemmed and hawed and you was always glad.Remember?”
“I suppose I did.”
“Not as big as that old eel pond though, is it?”
“This is better.It’sours.”
He smiled.“Yours.”
“You found it.”
“Ours, then,” he conceded, for it had always been our fancy as boys that discovery led to some private understanding of ownership, though only between the two of us, for we had known well that nothing was truly ours.
Presently, in some silent accord, we left the water.I put on my still-warm shirt and drawers and breeches and we sat at the side of the pond to let ourselves dry.My skin felt smooth and clean and the air so warm it was a caress upon my brow and my bare calves and feet.
I felt languid, but at the same time as if I could walk twenty miles and still have heart for twenty more.It was a sensation I had not experienced for many years.In fact, the last time I had felt this way had also been with Jem.
“I missed you,” I said, “When I came home from school and you were gone.”
“Aye.Sorry.Missed you too.”
“Couldn’t you have waited?To say goodbye?”
“Don’t know as how I could.”
“Oh.”I picked at my stockings, crestfallen.
It had been such an awful homecoming.I had paid my respects to my father and acquitted myself as best I could at the interview that followed, in which his unhappiness at how much money I had spent had featured greatly, though I had paid only for those services that had been absolutely necessary and I had tried to assure him of that fact.
Once he had dismissed me, I had run out of the house to find Jem, and the gardener had told me, with a shrug, that the poor fellow had run away to sea.I had been so bereft that I had felt that Jem had died.Or perhaps thatIhad.I had wept for days.
“It were like this,” he said, and then fell silent for so long I thought he had decided not to speak further.The dead leaves in the pool that had been stirred up by our bathing gradually sank or were carried away by the current.He said, “Look, you were gone off to school.And I thought you’d come back and…and…realise.And I couldn’t have that.So, I thought, you’d gone off to be a man so I should do the same.So, I went.And that’s how it was.”
“But, Jem, what should I realise?”
He glanced at me and looked down.“About me.”
“I don’t…”
“You’regentry.Your Pa was the parson.And me…” he gave a short laugh.“I were nothing.Gardener’s boy.No prospects.Didn’t know my letters.Still don’t.Ain’t brave.Face all anyhow.”He touched his lip.
“I like your face.”I frowned, thinking of a hundred times he had shown courage when we were boys.I had seen him wading in to break up dog fights and calming frightened horses and all manner of other feats.He had not even been afraid of the gander who had belonged to the landlord at the Ship.“How can you say you’re not brave?”
He shook his head, as if to dismiss my words.“I thought things would change when you got back.Thought you’d have learned not to want to go about with the likes of me.And if you didn’t learn it at school, I thought you’d learn it at university, or after you took orders.”
I shook my head.“I learned the opposite.I learned I like no one so well as I like you.”
“Ah.”He glanced at me again.“You know, at sea, I saw some wonders.Fish what could fly and sharks with swords on their noses, but that there beats those things hollow.Still don’t understand it.”
“But we’re friends,” I protested, for I did not like his line of thinking.“It was one of the first things you said to me.Don’t you remember?”
