Lamb in Love by Carrie Brown Page B

breathing it in. Now she just wears it herself, lets him hold her arm if he likes. They sit like that sometimes, Manford holding her arm, looking at the gardens, just sitting and looking.
    Sometimes, though, she would try to rouse Manford. She was just bored or impatient. She was young when she started with him, of course, and she can remember wanting to run, wanting to set up a clatter in the halls. On weekend nights, when she’d go to the pub with a friend, she’d be amazed at the commotion of it all, after the quiet of Southend House—the punching laughter in the warm room, the bristled darts flying toward the target hung on the wall, someone’s arm around her waist, teasing, tugging.
    But she hated the way people spoke of Mr. Perry and Manford sometimes, the way they poked fun at him.
    â€œFeed me, Nanny Stephen,” said a big, ugly lad named Simon one night, leaning heavily on her arm, showing her his open mouth, flooding her with his beery breath. “Feed me, Vida, like you do your idiot.”
    She stepped back, revolted. And before she knew what she was doing, she slapped him hard across the face.
    For a second he looked shocked, put his hand to his mouth. “Temper, temper,” he said then, softly, meanly, and turned away.
    â€œHe didn’t mean anything by it, Vida,” her friend Charlotte said, turning around on her stool as Vida gathered her things to leave. “Come on. Don’t be in a huff.”
    But she couldn’t stay there in the pub then, not after that. Walking home alone to her parents’ house, she thought of Manford asleep in his bed, the moonlight falling into his room, his heavy head, his curled hands.
    S HE’D HOPED HE could learn to catch a ball, and she played with him outside by the fountain. She’d work her arms around—“Watch my fantastic windup, Manford!” she’d call, in an American accent—and toss the ball at him. But unless it sailed right up into his face, he wouldn’t catch it. He couldn’t seem to follow it unless it was right in front of him. She would climb up on the fountain’s edge, play that she was going to fall in. “Help! Help!” she’d cry, to make him laugh.
    And Manford would stand there and laugh, that choked and silent laugh, bent over with his hands planted on his thighs like an old man. The joke never seemed to get old for him, the funny idea of her falling in and getting all wet.
    To help improve his balance, his coordination, she would playthe phonograph for him—“Try a mazurka, or a rondo,” Dr. Faber suggested thoughtfully, when she explained her idea to him. “Anything with a strong rhythm. And let me know how you progress. I’d be interested.”
    She started by trying to teach him to clap his hands, kneeling before him, bringing his palms together.
    â€œCome on, Manford,” she’d say, staring at his face, trying to communicate what she meant with her enthusiasm, her smile, her eyebrows lifted high. But he couldn’t seem to catch the rhythm, couldn’t seem to catch on, watching her with a worried look, as she brought his hands together over and over again.
    The night she tried to teach him to dance, he was nearly grown, eighteen or nineteen, with a heaviness to his limbs that came of overeating. She felt guilty about his size; but she hated to deny him anything, and he’d point to the cake tin so pathetically. She’d give him a despairing look. “Oh, only a little piece,” she’d say, laughing when he tried to hug her. “Think of your belly!”
    She tried only once to teach him to dance; even today she doesn’t like to recall the occasion.
    That night, Mr. Perry had been out to dinner in London; he’d said not to expect him until late. The house had felt especially big and quiet to Vida, one whole wing of it unused, unfurnished, the chandeliers hooded with sheets. Vida had laid a fire in the