A Wreath Of Roses by Elizabeth Taylor Page B

shrunk down under the canopy of leaves.
    But the Saxon earthworks, which, seen from the bedroom windows of the Griffin, had so exactly crowned the hill-top, were now, at this closer range, merely an unevenness in the chalk, a great wavering ridge of broken hillside, too large for any shape to be discerned.
    Out of breath from their climb, Richard and Camilla sat down on the rim of this saucer-like hill-top, looking back towards the town. The fine grass was studded with flat round thistles, rosetted, set deep in the turf like buttons in upholstery. The tiny hovering moths were the same colour as the harebells, and of the same transparency.
    ‘You came here once before?’ Camilla asked, turning over to lie on her belly on the grass, half-propped up on her elbows.
    He sat looking down at her. He looked so steadily that her glance faltered and she turned awkwardly away, putting up a hand to her carefully-done but loosening hair, which shenever could forget, and touched continually as if to reassure herself.
    ‘I was a boy then,’ he said jerkily.
    ‘I know.’
    ‘I came late one night, later than this. I sat down just about here and looked at the town.’
    ‘Why did you come?’
    ‘I was lonely,’ he said crossly.
    ‘But this would have made you lonelier.’ She turned to look at the great wavering line of chalk against the sky, the wide, empty landscape.
    ‘I don’t think so.’
    The colour was drawn out of the day. They had taken a long time to walk here, had been drinking before that. She shivered now, lying against the turf which had less warmth than her body.
    ‘And when
you
came?’ he said, leaning a little towards her.
    ‘Oh, it was many times. With Liz. With books and breadand-cheese.’ She said this flatly and hurriedly as if those happy days had no meaning. She blew a strand of hair out of her eyes and he leaned closer to her and smoothed it back from her forehead. She closed her eyes. Her heart beat against the ground; it was as if the sound of it went deep into the earth. She felt thistles pressing through her dress. He took some of the pins from the top of her head and a wing of hair dropped against her cheek.
    ‘Please don’t!’ she said quickly, putting out her hand.
    He leant right over her and loosened all her hair. She turned under him, her hands pressing his shoulders. Her hair had sprung out of its pins, as if it came down willingly. ‘Now forget it,’ he said. ‘I’ll think about it. Not you.’ He leaned back, still looking at her, and then suddenly laughed.
    She felt flustered and upset, tremulous with vexation. Hisbehaviour toward her was intimate yet unadmiring, an easy kindness, which she had noticed in young men who are interested, not in women, but in other young men, and who imply that although the feminine secrets are laid bare to them, they will keep them and sustain them, but remain unmoved.
    In the midst of her annoyance, he sighed sharply and turned his head restlessly to look at the sweep of the hillside, as if he were all at once overflowing with impatience.
    ‘What is it?’ she asked him.
    His glance came back to her.
    ‘I don’t know. I suddenly feel I can’t
stand
anything any more … the boredom – hopelessness. I miss the war.’
    Aghast, she said: ‘You were happier in the war?’
    ‘Men always are.’
    ‘Oh, no!’ Her denial was an entreaty, he thought.
    ‘My sort of men are.’
    ‘But you said …’
    ‘I said what?’ he asked quickly.
    ‘The first time I ever saw you, you told me that you’d had enough, that it stopped just in time, your nerve was going.’
    ‘My nerve has gone,’ he said quietly.
    ‘You need to be quiet and to rest,’ she suggested.
    ‘No. I need excitement, I need …’ he lifted his head, shut his eyes as if to concentrate, ‘things crashing against me, violence; the quiet will kill me.’
    ‘Why do you fear to be alone?’
    ‘The war. The war made it impossible.’
    ‘But even in war you were alone, in your sort of