The Bell - Iris Murdoch [34]
'Well, no,' said Dora. 'I had a drink. But they hadn't got any sandwiches.'
'Let's go straight back to the house,' said Michael, 'and Mrs Mark will find you something to eat. Then you ought to lie down. You've given yourself a strenuous morning. We'll go this way, up the hill, and cross by the stepping stones. It's just as quick from here and rather cooler. Up you get and follow me. I won't go fast.'
He helped Dora to her feet. She smiled at him, pushed the damp hair back from her brow, feeling a little better now, and followed him as he set off along the path. She felt no more anxiety about the suitcase, as if everything had been made simple and settled by Michael's laughter. She was grateful to him for that. Last night he had seemed just a thin pale man, over-tired and inattentive. But today she saw him as a decisive and gentle person, and even his narrow face seemed browner and his hair more golden. With eyes so close together he would always look anxious, but how blue the eyes were after all.
So for a minute or two Dora followed Michael along the path, feeling calm again, looking at her guide's sunburnt and bony neck, revealed above the sagging collar of a rather dirty white shirt. Then she saw that he had stopped abruptly and was staring at something ahead. Without saying anything Dora came quietly up to him to see what it was that had made him stop. She looked over his shoulder.
There was a little clearing in the wood, and the stream had made itself a pool, with mossy rocks and close grass at the edge. In the centre it seemed deep and the water was a cool dark brown. Dora looked, and did not at first see anything except the circle of water and the moving chequers of the foliage behind, unevenly penetrated by the sun. Then she saw a pale figure standing quite still on the far side of the pool. It took her another moment, after the first shock of surprise, to see who it was. It was Toby, dressed in a sun hat and holding a long stick, which he had thrust into the water and with which he was stirring up the mud from the bottom. Dora saw at once, saw sooner than her recognition, that except for his sun hat
Toby was quite naked. His very pale and slim body was caressed by the sun and shadow as the willow tree under which he stood shifted slightly in the breeze. He bent over his stick, intent upon the water, not knowing he was observed, and looked in the moment like one to whom nakedness is customary, moving with a lanky bony slightly awkward grace. The sight of him filled Dora with an immediate tremor of delight, and a memory came back to her from her Italian journey, the young David of Donatello, casual, powerful, superbly naked, and charmingly immature.
If Dora had been alone she would have called out at once to Toby, so little was she embarrassed and so much amused and pleased by what she saw. But the proximity of Michael, which she had for a moment forgotten, made her pause, and turning to him she had a sense of embarrassment, not so much because of his presence as on his behalf, since he would perhaps imagine some embarrassment in her. Michael's face, as she now saw, was indeed troubled as he still looked upon the boy. Then he turned quietly about, and touching Dora's arm led her noiselessly back along the path by which they had come. Toby was not disturbed. All this seemed to Dora to show a foolish delicacy, but she followed, stepping softly.
When they had gone a little way Michael said, 'We gave him the afternoon off. I was wondering where he had got to. I thought we'd better leave him to have his swim in peace. We'll go back the other way.'
'Yes, of course,' said Dora. She looked boldly now at Michael, feeling a complicity between them because of the pastoral vision which they had enjoyed together. Michael seemed to her all at once to have become delightfully shy. She remembered