Now she sat immobile in her arbour, and her bosom ached. She was seeing herself as a girl. She was remembering the gallant days. The days when the young men longed for her: risking their leaping lives for her: daring one another to swing among the high cedar branches in the dark grove near her home, and others to swim the barbarous bay when the lightning flashed above it. And those who were not so young, but whose wit and suavity beguiled her … the gentlemen in their forties, hiding their love away from public view, nursing it like a wound or a bruise, only to burst the stronger out of darkness.
And the elderly for whom she was the unobtainable, a will-o’-the-wisp, a marsh-light, waking their lust to life, or waking something rarer, a chaos of poetry, the scent of a rose.
Before her, through the vine leaves was a daisy’d slope that led down to a high box hedge, clipped into peacocks, heraldic against the sky. And the sky itself to which she now lifted her gaze, was filled with little clouds.
It was a favourite place of Juno’s, this tangled arbour, and she had many a time found solace in its seclusion. But today was different from all other times, for a remote sense of being imprisoned by the interwoven branches began to trouble her, though she had no idea what it was that she was feeling.
Nor did she ever know for her body, working independently from the brain, rose and moved out of the arbour like a ship leaving harbour.
Now she was on the daisy’d lawn: now she was leaving the shear’d box behind: now she was meandering into pastures where dragonflies hovered and darted.
On and on she wandered, hardly taking in her surroundings, until she came to the dark cedar grove. She had not noticed it approaching for her eyes were all but sightless as she moved. But when she was within a short distance of the dark grove she found the verge of a wide glaze of dew.
Now fully awake, she stared into the depths and saw, inverted, a haunt of her girlhood – the almost legendary cedar grove.
Her first sensation was that she was upside down: but this belief was shattered when she raised her head. But before she raised it she saw someone lounging, upside down on the underside of a great cedar-bough and defying, as he did so, the law of gravity. But when Juno raised her head and tried to locate the man on his branch, it was not so easy. At first she could see nothing but the green terraces of foliage, but suddenly she saw the man again. He was nearer to where she stood than she had expected.
Directly the man realized he had been noticed he dropped to the ground and bowed, his dark red hair falling over his eyes like a mop.
‘What are you doing in my cedar grove?’ she said.
‘Trespassing,’ said the man.
Juno shielded her eyes and gazed steadily at the man – with his dark red hair and his boxer’s nose.
‘Well, “trespasser”: what do you want?’ she said at last. ‘Is this a favourite haunt of yours or am I being ambushed?’
‘You are being ambushed. If I have startled you, I am profoundly sorry. I would not have you startled. No, not by so much as an ant on your wrist, or the buzz of a bee.’
‘I see,’ said Juno.
‘But I have waited for the devil of a long while,’ said the man, screwing up his forehead, ‘Great Heaven, I have indeed.’
‘Who have you waited for?’ said Juno.
‘For this moment,’ said the man.
Juno lifted an eyebrow.
‘I have waited for you to be deserted. And alone. As you are now.’
‘What has my life to do with you?’ said Juno.
‘Everything and nothing,’ said the tousled man. ‘It is your own of course. So is your unhappiness. Titus is gone. Muzzlehatch is gone. Not for ever perhaps, but for a long while. Your house by the river, fine as it is, is now a place of echoes and of shades.’
Juno joined her hands together at her breast. There was something in his voice that belied his mop of dark red hair and general air of brigandage. It was deep, husky – and unbelievably gentle.
‘Who are you?’ she said at last, ‘and what do you know of Titus?’
‘My name is of no account. As for Titus, I know very little. Very little. But enough. Enough to know that he left the city out of hunger.’
‘Hunger?’
‘The hunger to be always somewhere else. This and the pull of his home, or what he thinks of as his ancestral home (if he ever had one). I have seen him in this cedar grove, alone. Beating the great branches with his fists. Beating the boughs as though to let his soul out.’
The Trespasser stepped forward for the first time, his feet breaking the mirror of green dew.
‘You cannot sit and wait for either of them. Neither for Titus nor for Muzzlehatch. You have a life of your own, lady. Something that starts from now. I have watched you long before this Titus ever came upon the scene, I watched you from the shadows. Were it not that “Muzzle” whipped your heart away, I would have trailed you to the ends of the earth. But you loved him. And you loved Titus. As for me, now, you can see I’m no ladies’ man – I’m a rough and ready one – but give me half a hint and I’ll companion you. Companion you until the doors swing open – door after door from dawn till dusk and each fresh day will be a new invention!
‘If you want me I will be here, somewhere among these cedars.’
He turned upon his heel, walked quickly away, and a few moments later he was lost in the forest and all that was left of him by way of proof were his footsteps like black smudges in the dazzling dew.
SIXTY-SIX
So Juno returned to her home, and it
