A Postillion Struck by Lightning (14 page)

When we got to the cabin she was sitting on the edge of a bunk holding her head, her hat all squint, and her pince-nez, hanging from her lapel by a little gold chain, were glinting in the sun.
“I'm taken bad!” she moaned. “If only it would keep still for a minute f d be all right, I'm sure. It's the floor swaying about so. Oh! What will become of us all if I'm taken queer?” Lally was very brisk indeed and ordered Angelica and Paul and Beth up on the deck, and told Amy to put her feet up and cover her eyes with a handkerchief.

Amy moaned and rolled from side to side and said No. No! Nothing would make her move and the children were to stay within her sight for she was Responsible. Angelica was sitting bolt upright like a white rabbit, and Beth just crouched in a corner holding on to the handle of the little door which led to the lavatory.

“Oh! Make it stop, dear God!” cried Amy, which made my sister and me giggle. Lally hit us sharply and said, “What a silly thing to say, Miss O'Shea! If the good Lord stopped the boat now for you, we'd all be swinging about here for dear knows how long … soon as we get on the sooner we'll be on dry land.”

“I'll never see the land again. God help us all,” moaned Amy O'Shea and gave a dreadful gasp and covered her face with her handkerchief which smelled of lavender water. Suddenly Beth made a strangling sort of noise and Lally spun us both round and sent us up the stairs. We heard a splashing noise and then the door slammed shut.

We had a very nice time looking at all the people lying on the deck with big white enamel bowls beside them. They all looked very green and sad, only the sailors looked cheerful, and they were dashing about the sloping decks laughing and eating big ham rolls and sloshing water everywhere. We called out “Bonjour !” to them all, and they all waved back and said “Bonjour” also. It was a
very
nice feeling, as if we had always been travelling which was very good for you because, as Lally said, it broadened your mind.

In a little while we could see the long flat line of land ahead… and the sunshine sparkling on white sailing boats and the windows of houses in France where we were going to spend four weeks at the Hotel d'Angleterre. Lally joined us by the rail pulling on her gloves and snapping her handbag shut, she tucked a bit of hair under her hat with the ivy leaves on it, and said: “Miss O'Shea's in a poor way, I'm afraid. They've all been sick. But what can you expect all cooped up in that little room with no air and no lemons?”

We felt sorry for them in a vague way, but quite glad about Angelica who was really so prim that a bit of seasick would do her good. Beth, who was two years younger than Angelica, was rather a nice girl and we quite liked her. She had a freckly face and gaps in her teeth but she liked doing nearly all the things we liked doing, so she wasn't a Drawback. Paul was the youngest and Not Very Well because he had something wrong with his chest which made him very pale and quiet and he spent most of his time reading. So we didn't pay any attention to him much except to say “Good morning, Paul,” or “Hello, Paul,” or “Are you having a nice day?” just things like that which he only had to say “Yes” or “No” to, which is what he did. And nothing more.

We watched France get nearer and nearer, and heard the boat make slowing-down noises, and the water thrashing and churning about under the propellers … and then we could see the great clock at Calais swing into view, and all the crooked houses; and cranes striking up into the sky, like schoolteachers' fingers. The gulls wheeled and screeched and scattered over the ginger-beery water like handfuls of rice at a wedding. And the sun glinted on the slimy green seaweedy walls of the piers while men in blue rushed all alongside throwing ropes at us, shouting and whistling. It was very exciting to feel the big ship slide slowly into her place, nudging and bumping gently at the high stone walls, and watching all the ropes growing taut to stretching point as they made us fast.

Then in a flash the gangplanks were up and we all wobbled down to stand on the cobbled road of the docks. We stood there among piles of wooden boxes smelling of fish, and still felt the land swaying a little after the movement of the ship. Lally went off into the crowd of people, looking for Amy and the Chesterfields who wouldn't leave their cabin until the ship had really stopped and everything was quite still. And then they had a terrible job getting down the gangplank because it was steep and Amy's bag, Angelica's books, and the travelling rugs seemed to all get mixed up. But eventually, pale and exhausted, they were all among the fish, and we started to make our way over to the station. It took quite a while to sort out all our luggage, find the tickets, and say “merci” to everyone in sight: Lally said we had to because you never knew who was driving the train.

In the end we all clambered into one compartment together in
the middle, just in case anything hit us in the front, or from the back, and then we were assured by Lally, we'd be completely safe and not get squashed which was often the case On French Railways.

“I do think it's exciting!” said my sister happily, but no one answered her because, with a terrific shriek of the whistle and three big jig-joggy-jerks, the train started to steam out of the station into the sunlit town.

Amy O'Shea sat bolt upright looking fearfully out of the windows to see how fast we were going, and Angelica and Beth just stared ahead. Paul went to sleep.

“He's just like the Dormouse in Alice,” whispered my sister.

Lally took off her gloves and started to count all the bits of luggage on the racks, nodding her head and counting under her breath, and suddenly we roared into a tunnel and everything was black and I heard Amy O'Shea cry out in fright but we were soon through and out into the fields and woods running quietly through lovely flat fields full of streams and little clumps of willows. There were men and women working in the fields with horses, and a girl of our age, with a flock of sheep, waved to us and we waved back like anything. Except the Chesterfields, who just sat.

The Hôtel d'Angleterre was very nice and on the promenade looking straight on to the sea. We had stayed there before so the fat lady in black, with pearls and a rose, knew us right away and kissed my sister who didn't like it much because she always used to shout at her, “O! La belle poupée!” which Lally said meant what a pretty doll; and my sister didn't like the doll part. She didn't look like one so it was a bit silly, but kind, I suppose.

Our room was the same one we always had, tall windows over the sea, with a balcony, a big bed for Lally and two smaller ones for us. In one corner there was a screen, and behind it was a place to wash your face and hands and another, on the floor, which was for washing your feet—which seemed a good idea because ours were always so sandy. The wallpaper was very pretty, covered in roses and lilac and there was a huge wardrobe and an armchair and a little table with three chairs for us to have our meals at.

Looking over the balcony you could see all the people on the
beach, the waves flapping along the sand, and the blinds of the hotel right below. We were only on the first floor in case of a fire happening. Lally said she wasn't going to risk being any higher thank-you-very-much, which is why we always had to book the same room well in advance. If you looked to the right you could see down to the canal bridge and the spire of the church, and if you looked left you could see more hotels and then the lovely big green hump of the cliffs. There were no motors on the promenade, only bicycles, so that you could run out of the hotel down the steps, across the road, and on to the beach. It really was the nicest place in the world. Abroad.

The first thing Lally unpacked, before our suitcases even, or the big trunk, was her little wicker basket. In it she had a titchy teapot, three cups, a little tin kettle, and a very small stove-thing which she stood on a tin tray by the washbowl, with a bottle of milk and a spoon. Then she lit it, and the whole room started to smell of methylated spirits. There was a curious pale blue flame, and in almost no time at all, the tin kettle was boiling and steaming the mirror over the washplace. And then we all had a “good strong cup of tea” on the balcony before we did anything else. Not that my sister and I wanted tea at all: but it was the rule, and we had to stick to it with Lally.

After we had unpacked almost completely, Lally went off to the W.C. across the corridor and emptied the teapot and cups down the lav while we were changing into our summer things. Sandals, shorts, and our rather silly white cotton hats which we both hated. Lally was sure that we would get sunstroke while we were shrimping, so we had to wear these awful white cotton “hates”, we called them, which pulled down right over our ears.

“With all this sun burning down on your heads they'll be boiled like a couple of eggs, sure as sure. You wear them until your mother says not. Then it's out of my hands.”

After a day or two we managed to lose them somewhere, but for the first day it was The Rule.

The Chesterfields seemed better and more cheerful, although Amy was still dressed in her two-piece with a veil round her hat to keep it in place. We all went shrimping and I caught three baby flounders and about a dozen shrimps which we kept in a bucket until we had to go back to the hotel to meet Our Parents. Lally made us throw the shrimps and the flounders back into the sea, because last year we had taken them all back to the room and
filled the thing for washing your feet with sea water, some pretty seaweed, a lot of shrimps and some more baby flounders. One of us left the tap running just a little bit so that they could get oxygen, and during lunch in the big restaurant under our room, quite a large part of the ceiling fell down on some people at a table near us. There was a lot of fuss and water and plaster everywhere and it was all because the rather stupid feet-washing basin thing had overflowed and gone through the floor.

Our room was a bit of a mess too, with sand and seaweed and the flounders all plopping away on the floor gasping, poor things. I got a terrific walloping from our father and lost my Saturday franc for two weeks to help pay for the damage to the floor and the ceiling of the restaurant. Which seemed a bit unfair really, because two francs can't have been nearly enough to pay for
all
the mess. And we had to say we were sorry, in French, to the people who had got wet and covered in plaster, and also to the Lady who owned the hotel in black and pearls and a rose. And she wasn't very smiling either. At least, my sister said, she didn't grab her and call her a “belle poupee” any more for that holiday and that it was almost worth all the punishments we had to have in order not to be frightened out of her wits on the staircase every morning. Anyway. Back we had to throw them under Lally's firm gaze, and back we all trooped to the hotel.

Our parents were very handsome we thought. More handsome than Mr and Mrs Chesterfield by far. Our father was very brown and cheerful in white trousers with a tie round his waist and a very French shirt all stripy like a sailor's, and our mother was looking very beautiful in beach-pyjams with a funny white hat called a Dough-Boy hat because it was what American sailors wore in the war and they were called dough-boys. I don't know why.

Aunt Freda had a pointed nose just like Angelica, and wore a hat with a rose and a huge brim which came so far down that all you could see was her nose sticking out and her pointed chin; she had to hold her head quite high up and backwards to see where she was going. Uncle John was rather jolly with a big belly and a pipe and always laughed a good deal. They weren't really our Aunt and Uncle but we had always known them, ever since before we were born, and so they got to be almost Family.

We all had dinner together at a huge table in one corner of the restaurant, and we were allowed a wine glass of beer or a glass of
red wine with mineral water while we ate. This was a special treat this holiday for it was a sign that we were “growing up” and should be allowed to get accustomed to it. Lally was terribly shocked but kept herself to herself and only said how awful it was when we were getting ready for bed later. “Starting the Rot,” she said.

Our mother said we should have an early night after such a tiring day and that tomorrow we would all go on a lovely trip to the oyster beds outside the town, and that we could go in a real coach with a horse pulling it. Which sounded very interesting.

“I thought that wine was very nice, didn't you?” said my sister from her bed in the corner, and I agreed although I thought that tomorrow I'd probably try the beer instead in spite of what Lally said about it starting the Rot.

“I don't feel a bit homesick yet, do you?” asked my sister.

“We've only been here today … it's too soon. It comes on later.”

“I don't think I'll
ever
be homesick here. I think it's lovely.”

“I wonder if the Chesterfields will be sick in the coach tomorrow?”

“I wonder. Fains we don't sit beside them.”