Lamb in Love Read Free

sight, was pleased to be the only woman in Hampshire, she imagined, to hold the position of organist. As a consequence of her gender, she had begun offering her abilities free of charge, some vague understanding between her and the church committee that hers was a temporary service until the original organist was returned—safely, they all prayed—from the war. He was not, however. And by the time Norris was sufficiently proficient, the job was thought to be a sort of family office. He’s never had a shilling for all his Sundays, though his repertoire is, he acknowledges, somewhat limited.
    A philatelist and bachelor and collector of obscure reveries, Norris has never in his whole life had what might be described as a love affair. But he still remembers the name—Mary—of the sweet-faced girl who sat in front of him in the third form and whom he tried to kiss one day after school, darting out from behind a monkey puzzle tree and grabbing her to him. He remembers the feel of her upper arms within the circle of his hands, the slight yield of her flesh. But the girl had pulled away from him in horror, wiped her hand across her mouth, and burst inexplicably into tears, a response that mortified Norris so powerfully that the memory of it haunted him forever after, the scene replaying itselfover and over again in excruciating detail, just when it seemed he might be free of it.
    There was that one other time, the sad and mysterious incident with the weeping woman. Why
do
they all always seem to cry?
    This
woman’s father, a postmaster in Winchester and an acquaintance of Norris’s through the stamp league, had asked whether Norris wouldn’t play escort to his daughter at a dance held at the St. Jude Hospital, where she was a nurse; her boyfriend, the father intimated, was a doctor who’d recently given her the brush-off. Norris, though nearly sick with anxiety, had dutifully presented himself to the girl at her flat. They had a cup of Pimm’s at the dance, meanwhile watching other couples go round and round the large, empty room with its green walls and white plumbing. A steady rain beat dark against the window-panes. Norris, his heart racing, had asked the young woman to dance—she was quite pretty, after all. But once in his arms, she had wept so profusely and with such ferocity that she had soaked the shoulder of his suit coat. Eventually, with dismay, he had managed to steer her outside, still pressed to his shirtfront. He had driven her home and there he had left her off, still crying so hard that he could understand nothing of what she said other than, “Do forgive me.”
    Afterward the woman’s father had been oddly nervous around Norris, as though they shared some terrible complicity. So, women—well, until Vida, it all seemed simply too complicated, too important, for words. He has made do without, pushing the idea of the fairer sex, as he refers to them, far, far to the back of his thoughts. He knows other men who seem always to be on their own—Sir Winstead-Harris, for instance.
He’s
done all right, Norris thinks. Pots of money, anyway.
    So. He is just a fifty-five-year-old stick whom his neighborsconsider a confirmed bachelor. Terrified of women, perhaps? Or maybe a queer? (So careful with his appearance, etc.) He strikes some, in fact, as having the vulnerability of certain animals, the dolphin, perhaps, with its high, blunt brow and the dignity of a captive. With his mournful eyes and sometimes distracted manner, he is a fellow to be pitied, in a way, though he seems satisfied enough, always busy at the post office, full of helpful advice about the mails and so forth. Still, one does feel sorry for him; he’s exactly the sort you expect to be taken by surprise by a sudden myocardial infarction. Or to be bitten by a rabid dog. One senses—vaguely—some harm speeding toward him, its target certain, its course unswerving.
    But he is more than