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The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume I

Friday — October 17, 1919

page 256
Friday
October 17, 1919

I had just given your letter to L. M. to post, I had put on my cape, and after walking through the rooms and thinking how delicious apples and pot au feu smelt when they were cooking ensemble, I went to the door to see the sunset. Up our steps came Caterina with a gardener in tow. (Caterina has established herself a kind of guardian here. She it was who brought me the eggs in cotton wool and the pink flowers and who tells L. M. where to get things.) Alors, she has found me this gardener; she talked as though she had just picked him up somewhere on the path. He was very nice—a big grey kind old dog in a cap. Caterina was very cold. She had her hands tucked in the cuffs of a small grey woollen jacket; her nose was pink, charmingly pink, and her eyes sparkled. “Do you mind work on Sundays? He can come on Sundays?” Not at all. “And he will bring you plants. Would you like quelques geraniums?” At that I held up my hands, and I saw Caterina was having a joke, too. So I asked for violets, and he said he would bring them, both savage and mild—little blue growling darlings and white meek as milk ones. He says they poussent comme rien here.

All roses flower in le mois de noël. It is just time for jonquils, narcissi, tulips,—rather late in fact. He will also bring roses. But when he asked me if I wouldn't like some little palms, and I said No, I loved plants with flowers, I saw by his shrug and his ‘moue’ that he rather despised me. “Ah, ces femmes avec ces fleurs!” was what I felt. Then he asked if I'd like a lily that grew about the size of the villa—enormous. By the time you came you would have had to hunt for me and the house among the lily leaves and the big white flowers. You would have said, “There they are!” and then “No, that's a snail!” because on such pasture the snails would grow large too.

This rather frightened me. I said if he had a smaller one, I'd have it please, but not “those of the Lar-gest page 257 size.” Then in the late pale light with Caterina and the gardener outlined against the olive, the deep blue sea and the red sky, we had a little talk. The gardener meanwhile spat very splendidly over the olive boughs. I was greatly impressed by his performance.

(Enter L. M.: “Katie, do you mind if I put the pot au feu through the sieve?”

Me: “Terribly.”

She: “Oh, I am so sorry. I was only thinking how beautifully it would have gone through. It was just an idea. Do you mind? I won't interrupt again.”)

Now it's dark. The big daisies in the vase on the table have shut their pretty eyes. The shadows are wonderfully quiet. The sea sounds as though it were sweeping up through hollow caves. A dog is barking, a bell tinkles on the road. Through the window I see an olive tree growing in a room just like this one and girl sits at a table under its branches writing to her love.