I stood opposite the beast and stared at it. I was about fifteen paces away. This time I saw that the beast was a doe. And that it had a loose staggering look to it exhaustion. I saw that it had lately given birth. Then I saw the fawn.
I stood opposite the beast and stared at it. I was about fifteen paces away. This time I saw that the beast was a doe. And that it had a loose staggering look to it exhaustion. I saw that it had lately given birth. Then I saw the fawn.
The little creature lay beside the rocks facing towards the setting sun. Its softly glowing coat was full of health. Over it, as if standing on guard, was a tall plant, with clear bright leaves, that fanned and sprayed out all around the fawn, so that it lay under a fountain. The fawn was perfect, a triumph, too dazzlingly so, as if those vast mountains and forests had elected this baby animal in the sunny glade to represent them, but the scene was overcharged with meaning and with beauty.
Then I saw that on its hide lay some dried threads of the birth liquor, and on its creamy stomach lolled the fat red birth cord, fresh and glistening. Three or four days later, the cord would be withered and gone, the fawns coat licked and clean, the fawn, like a human child, or like the maize plants I had seen that morning, at a crest of promise and perfection. But to witness a birth is to be admitted into Natures workshop, and there life and death work together. The sight of the cord, the still unlicked coat, rescued the creature from pathos, restored it to its real vulnerability, its terrible weakness. Yet its eyes regarded me quietly, without fear. For between it and me stood its mother. I think that the fawn had not yet clambered to its feet. Probably the two soldiers, coming into the glade, had interrupted the birth scene, had in some way upset the mother and baby in the ritual they had to accomplish, had thrown things out of balance. And there stood the deer, and it was only now that I saw it was standing shakily, for its back legs trembled with weakness where they were planted on the soft grass.
I walked at a careful distance around the mother and her baby, keeping my eyes on the exhausted beast who slowly moved about to keep her lowered horns pointing at me. Behind her, the fawn lay presented in the glowing light under the plant, which was probably a fennel, or a dill.
I could only move slowly. I was carrying something like two hundred pounds of food and medicaments. When I reached the bottom of the glade, I looked back and saw that the fawn was in the act of struggling up on to its long slender fragile stalklike legs. The deer still watched me. And so I left the glade with its new grave, where the mother deer had one blood-dulled horn pointed at me, and the little fawn stood upright under its shining green fountain.
DEAR DOCTOR Y,
No, I am very sure that Charles Watkins was not at any time in Yugoslavia. I am unable to account for his insistance that he was there during the war. When I got back from the war, I was in fairly bad shape. This is what Charles and I had in common. We spent some months together in a cottage I had in Cornwall. We both talked a good deal about our experiences. This probably cured us both. Even after this lapse of time I could give you a pretty detailed account of Charles war, which is almost as vivid to me as my war. I find my memories of my two descents into Yugoslavia the most vivid of my life. If I were to forget those months, I would be forgetting events and people who formed me more fundamentally than any other. I suppose I could be regarded as lucky. I know that Charles thinks or thought that I was. My war was very different from his. I couldnt say that I enjoyed my war, but it was certainly like being in a highly coloured dream, whereas I am afraid Charles war must have been like a long tedious nightmare. He had very much more than his fair share of boring repetitious slog, if you can agree that danger can be boring.
If I may intrude a personal note that is probably beyond what you asked for from me, I find the current scene frightening because yet again great numbers of young people, whether for or against war, whether they would welcome conscription or not, dont know that the worst thing about war is that it can be so boring. I would never have believed that such a very short space of time twenty-five years would have again made it possible to see war as glamorous. The point is, you see, that my war was, rather, or for some of the time. Whereas Charles used to say that his wars fortunes were maximum hard routine work, maximum physical discomfort, maximum boredom, and pretty steady doses of danger and death. This wasnt necessarily true for all the men who got dealt his particular hand Dunkirk, North Africa, Italy, Second Front. Some had quite extensive patches of respite and even enjoyment. But Charles luck was different. In fact it was a bit of a joke between us, when we traced his course of events, how he always seemed to have missed out on possible leave, or a lucky transfer to somewhere easier. We used to say that he had been fighting a modern war, for five years I mean, of course, modern for then, he was fighting the Second World War but that I had regressed to a much earlier style of war. Of course that is a pretty unsatisfactory generalisation when you think of the contribution guerrilla fighting made to our winning the war.
If Charles believes that I am dead, perhaps it might help to see that I am not?
Sincerely,
MILES BOVEY
DEAR DOCTOR X,
I am only too happy to come and see Charles any time it will help him. But I dont want to bring James and Philip to see their father. I dont think they ought to have that inflicted on them. I must say that I am surprised you suggest it at all. I know Charles is ill, but other people in the family are as important as he is. Of course it does not matter that it is painful for me to see Charles as he is now, but the boys are fifteen and fourteen years old and should be spared such things at their age. So I am afraid I am refusing to bring them.
Yours sincerely,
FELICITY WATKINS
DEAR DOCTOR Y,
Of course I am ready at any time to have my husband home. It will be very painful for us all, but I would do anything to help him get well again if you think it will help. I am sure that once he is in his own home and with his family and his own things around him he will remember who he is.
Yours sincerely,
FELICITY WATKINS
It was ten in the morning. In a large public room on the first floor, which overlooked a formal pattern of flowerbeds now dug over and left exposed to catch the first frosts, a couple of beeches in their end-of-year colouring, and some late-flowering roses, sat, or lounged, about forty or fifty people. None looked out of the windows. They were of any age, size, type and of both sexes. But the middle-aged predominated, and particularly, middle-aged women. Some watched television, or rather, since the programme had not yet started, were looking at the test picture, of some water rushing down over some rocks, under spring trees in full flower. Some knitted. Some chatted. It would be easy to think that one had walked into the lounge of a second-rate or provincial hotel, except for the characteristic smell of drugs.
There were tables as well as easy chairs dotted about the room, and at a table in full centre, which was spread all over with a particularly complicated game of patience, sat a young girl, all by herself. She was a brunette, of a Mediterranean type. She had smooth dark hair, large black eyes, olive skin. She was slender, but rounded, but not excessively the latter, thus conforming both to current ideas about beauty in women, and that moments fashion. She wore a black crepe dress that fitted her smoothly over her breasts and hips. The sleeves were long and tight. The neck was high and close. The dress had simple white linen cuffs and a round white collar. These were slightly grubby. This dress would have been appropriate for a housekeeper, a perfect secretary, or a Victorian young lady spending a morning with her accounts, if it had not ended four inches below the top of the thigh. In other words, it was a particularly lopped mini-dress. It would be hard to imagine a type of dress more startling as a mini-dress. The contrast between its severity, its formality, and the long naked legs was particularly shocking: it shocked. The girls legs were not quite bare. She wore extremely fine pale grey tights. But she did not wear any panties. She sat with her legs sprawled apart in a way that suggested that she had forgotten about them, or that she had enough to do to control and manage the top half of her, without all the trouble of remembering her legs and her sex as well. Her private parts were evident as a moist dark fuzzy patch, and their exposure gave her a naïve, touching, appealing look.
There were tables as well as easy chairs dotted about the room, and at a table in full centre, which was spread all over with a particularly complicated game of patience, sat a young girl, all by herself. She was a brunette, of a Mediterranean type. She had smooth dark hair, large black eyes, olive skin. She was slender, but rounded, but not excessively the latter, thus conforming both to current ideas about beauty in women, and that moments fashion. She wore a black crepe dress that fitted her smoothly over her breasts and hips. The sleeves were long and tight. The neck was high and close. The dress had simple white linen cuffs and a round white collar. These were slightly grubby. This dress would have been appropriate for a housekeeper, a perfect secretary, or a Victorian young lady spending a morning with her accounts, if it had not ended four inches below the top of the thigh. In other words, it was a particularly lopped mini-dress. It would be hard to imagine a type of dress more startling as a mini-dress. The contrast between its severity, its formality, and the long naked legs was particularly shocking: it shocked. The girls legs were not quite bare. She wore extremely fine pale grey tights. But she did not wear any panties. She sat with her legs sprawled apart in a way that suggested that she had forgotten about them, or that she had enough to do to control and manage the top half of her, without all the trouble of remembering her legs and her sex as well. Her private parts were evident as a moist dark fuzzy patch, and their exposure gave her a naïve, touching, appealing look.