Complete Short Stories (18 page)

Meanwhile Brunhilda and Carmen Carabel the flamenco teacher had made a sort of alliance against the Ballet School. Carmen teaches American lady tourists to manage castanets and stamp their heels and chew roses and make proud gipsy faces full of hate, so as to win fancy-dress prizes when they get home. And her father, who owns a night club, is a great friend of the Millionairess, whose
husband owns the
Prensa.
That was why the
Prensa
had printed Brunhilda’s ‘interviu’. The Millionaire allows the Millionairess to censor the art and music and literature pages, to keep her out of mischief. He censors the news and the sports, to keep himself out of mischief.

Anyhow, two days before the show the Dolorous Nuns and the Little Flowers and my own Sacred Tunics said that all the girls
over twelve years old would be expelled if they danced bare-legged on the stage. That was when we telegraphed you for the tights, which can’t be bought here. You were splendid, Aunt May! They arrived five hours before the performance, but it was a public holiday with the customs office shut. The chief customs man happened to be the father of one of our Rain Fairies and a very kind man. He opened
the office and wrote something in the book. Then he handed Olga the tights and said: ‘This is now tomorrow; the duty is fifty-four pesetas sixty céntimos. Pay me when you like.’

It was simply a marvellous show. Olga danced herself, and Bill borrowed a dress suit and conducted wildly and we all got encores and flowers and everyone said nobody would have believed Palma could produce anything so
memorable and artistic. But of course there wasn’t a single word about it in the
Prensa Palmesana
next day, although their photographer had been photographing like mad and Señor Colom the music critic congratulated Olga afterwards on our great and genial display. Luckily the Admiral’s niece, who is also the Governor’s goddaughter, was one of our Dead-Leaf fairies. She went crying to the
Governor
– you can guess the rest – and next day we found a whole page of photographs in the
Prensa
.

That’s all, really, except for Brunhilda’s show ten days later. It wasn’t Glasnov’s
Four Seasons
at all, but a lot of potty little dances, done to German music, with Snowflakes and Bunnies jumping about to a gramophone which had a loudspeaker in front of it. And then these
Bailes Creativos
by the bigger
girls! And the shepherdesses and fauns! And the joke was, their legs were as bare as on the beach!

Olga took us all to watch and we clapped until our hands were sore, it was so terrible. And now a cathedral canon has written a long article in the
Semana Católica,
about the proclivious immorality of dancing; which means Brunhilda too. I don’t know how this serial will continue.

Much love and
thanks,
Margaret.

D
EAR
U
NCLE
G
EORGE
,

Don’t ask me whether Spanish is easy to learn; because Spain is where I live and I can’t remember when I couldn’t talk it. And I don’t know if it’s as like Latin as you think, because I haven’t done much Latin yet. But Father says that when the Roman soldiers came here to fight Aníbal and taught Latin to their allies the Ibéricos, they used an awful dog-Latin
like the dog-English our sailors talk to Chinese men and undiscovered tribes who sell them coconuts. So I don’t suppose the Latin you learned at Winchester will get you very far. But as you say you don’t know a word of Spanish, except
fiesta
and
siesta
and
Tío Pepe
and
mañana
, I thought I’d give you an idea of what it’s like, by using a letter from my friend Anita Fons y Pons. I’ve made two translations
with Father’s help: first what you’d think it means, and then what it does mean.

Most desired little friend Margarita:

I write this little card with the motive of rendering thee graces in respect of thy most attentive target which fills me with gaiety, since the same informs me that thou rejoicest in perfect health. Thus the same I lament that thou canst not make us grateful by visiting our
house the other week for a pair of days at least, as I was hoping, for the fifteen days beginning after the Easters of the Nativity.

[Dearest Margaret,

This is to thank you for your kind card. I am so pleased to hear you’re well, though disappointed that you can’t stay with us for a bit. I’d been hoping that you’d come next week, as soon as Christmas is over, for at least a fortnight.]

But
look, man, I am estranged by this that in it thou so unconsciously depreciatest the mothers, above all our own little sisters. I consider it almost as grave as to mock your fathers. I encounter them goodest
(bonísimas)
persons, and my mamma opinionates that it is convenient always to treat them as intimate parents, even if one or other of them has a genius.

[But, darling, I’m surprised that you
say such impolite and wild things about the nuns, especially our own Sisters. In my opinion that’s almost as bad as being rude to your father and mother. I find them awfully kind people and mother says we should always treat them like our own relations
even if one or two of them do have bad tempers.]

Actually I suffer from a grain on my little beard, which holds pus, owed to a disgrace which
I suffered while Ricardito, who is a veritable uncle, was pulling my dietary at me; which, when the people’s medical, who is only a practitioner and very donkey, examined, he declared that it wasn’t nothing of importance, but that at the best a little pomade of penicillin might not go badly.

[At present, I have a rather nasty spot on my chin, due to an accident: Dickie, who’s a very nasty boy,
threw my diary at me. The village doctor, who isn’t really qualified and very stupid, looked at it and said it was nothing really, though perhaps it might be a good idea to use a little penicillin ointment.]

Precisely at the hour of his arrival, it passed that thy servant had commenced practising the paces in her dietary class of ballet, utilizing the tablet of the ancient hennery to stamp upon
with more commodity than the little responsive portland of the cave; and he gave me a good hour, affirming that much dance had rendered my legs curious, and counselled me not to inflame my little bottom with the small candles. He always goes with seeming groceries to give fear.

[When he came along I was just beginning to practise my daily ballet steps. I had borrowed some boards from the old
chicken house to make a better dancing floor than the terribly hard cement in the cellar. He congratulated me on the improvement which all this dancing has made in the shape of my legs and warned me not to let my ballet skirt catch fire from the footlights. He always teases me in this frightfully rude way.]

In exchange, the Chief of the Library who, since then, is a very formal cavalier, said
when I entered his tent to buy a head-breaker of those that join themselves and form infantile caprices, that in the theatrical function to which he had given his presence, I had merited in an imposing manner the homage which the respectable obsequiated me, and for this he most charmingly regaled me with an imposing coloured gum.

[On the other hand, when I went to the bookshop to buy one of those
‘Children’s Fun’ jigsaw puzzles, the manager, who’s a very polite man of course, said that I had thoroughly earned my applause at the last show he watched; so he very nicely gave me a wonderful red india-rubber.]

In these moments I come from touching my instrumental duty and from concluding the Apology which touched me to write of the much-spoken-of Don Quijote. In brief, I go to play with my
little companions of the vicinity, passing the corner, the ‘wheel of the potatoes’, which is very diverted and holds much grace.

[I have just been doing a piano exercise, and finishing the Eulogy which I had to write about that dreary Don Quixote. I’m off soon to play ‘Potato Ring’ with the girls round the corner; it’s great fun and pretty to watch.]

I was very content to assure myself of the
reality of the leaping out of thy ingress. To me also they accorded a diploma for the holy writings, and with that a bend azure, and a precious rosary of variously formed accounts. But I lament
to inform thee that from my cosmological sciences I sacked no more than a regular.

[I was so pleased to see that you really did get ‘outstanding’ in your entrance exam. I was given a diploma too, in Scripture,
also a blue sash and a lovely rosary of different shaped beads. But I’m sorry to say that I got only a ‘fair’ in general science.]

Good, I haven’t nothing more to communicate to thee. Salute thy papas affectionately, give a little kiss to Hieronimito, and do thou accept, my most desired Margarita, a most strong embrace from the best of all thy little friends, desiring for thee that thou wilt
learn much Latin in these vacations and utilize the good time to take many baths. Good-bye until another.

Anita, Thy servant and God’s.

[Well, that’s all. My love to your father and mother, a kiss for little Jeremy, and a big hug for yourself from your best friend. I hope you’ll learn plenty of Latin these holidays and swim a good deal while the weather holds. Good-bye till next time.

Ever
your Anita.]

I expect you think that Anita is silly and affected and old-fashioned. She isn’t, Uncle George, I promise. She’s my best friend, and very modern and rather naughty, and I write to her in just the same correct style as this. You have to, in Spanish; otherwise it doesn’t make sense.

Lots of love to you and Aunt May, from

Margaret.

P.S. ‘Lots of love’
would
sound silly in Spanish!

Y
OUR CORRESPONDENT, TELEPHONING
from ‘The Twelve Commandments’, a charming little public house not a hundred yards from the gates of Lambeth Palace, reports that deep concern has been caused in that edifice by an examination of the quarterly report of the Archbishops’ Standing Committee on Matrimony. This highly technical and still secret report, signed by Prebendary Palk,
D.D., the biggest troublemaker in the whole Anglican Confession, emphasizes certain deficiencies in the
Table of Kindred and Affinity:
a legal document which your correspondent in his childhood used to study attentively during sermon time as a relaxation from the ardours of the Litany, and on which he is still something of an expert.

Half an hour ago, the bald and booming Prebendary unbosomed
himself to your correspondent, who had invited him to a double gin-and-lime in the discreet bar-parlour. ‘The Church,’ he said, ‘has hitherto been content to accept Genesis i, 27: “male and female created he them” as definitive; to believe that every human being is predestined before birth to one sex or the other. Insufficient credit has been given, however, to the mystery and evolutionary wonder
of the Divine Scheme, and the remarkable skill with which, ahem, Providence has been pleased to endow certain outstanding surgeons and physicians. It has now been proved that a man or woman, even after consummating his or her marriage by an act of procreation, may experience a partial change of sex which these physicians and surgeons are empowered to make total.’

Pressed tactfully by your correspondent,
the Prebendary enlarged on this theme: ‘The Standing Committee,’ he allowed himself to be quoted as saying, ‘are by no means satisfied that the prohibited degrees listed in the
Table of Kindred and Affinity
have been defined with sufficient exactitude to prevent what may seem – I must emphasize,
seem –
scandalous marriages from taking place: unions which are,
prima facie,
incestuous in spirit,
if not in letter. It is, for instance, a law of almost platitudinous force that a man may not marry his deceased wife’s grandmother, nor (as he may more readily be tempted to do, if his grandfather has married a young girl and left her all the family cash) his deceased grandfather’s wife. Yet since a certificate, signed by two or three qualified doctors and approved
by a magistrate, now enables
a man legally to register himself at Somerset House as a woman, what – pray, tell me that? – prevents him, as the Law stands, from marrying his deceased wife’s grandfather, or his own grandmother’s husband who may well be in his vigorous sixties?’

‘Provided always that there is no consanguinity, and the spouses evince a genuine desire for the procreation of children,’ your correspondent put in,
sympathetically but doubtfully, from behind a pink gin.

‘Quite, quite,’ agreed the Prebendary, who is, by the way, a confirmed bachelor. ‘Though in a civil marriage, you know, the registrar does not insist on the moral safeguard you very properly mention. But the question arises: should such a marriage, even between Christians of the highest principles and the deepest devotion for each other,
be solemnized in a church? What troubles us committee-men is that, if such a man, now legally a woman, has been christened as a man, and if, worse – or I should say “better”, I suppose – he has solemnized a Church marriage and begotten children on his wife now deceased, he must necessarily remain a male in the Church’s sight, since these sacraments cannot be annulled or disregarded, even if the subject
becomes a declared renegade to the faith. This consideration implies that in accordance with I Corinthians xi, 4, he would be obliged to appear in church with his head uncovered, not covered as in verse 5.’

‘Don’t let a little thing like that trouble you, Prebendary. In these days of empty pews, parsons admit women bareheaded, barefooted, and even in two-piece bathing suits. Besides, ritualistic
changes of sex among physically normal women are already legalized in this country.’

‘Ha! How’s that?’ he asked sharply.

‘Well,’ explained your ingenious correspondent. ‘One Sunday, Jane Doe, a Bishop’s daughter, greets the Queen with a low curtsy when, as Head of the Church, she lays the foundation stone of a new cathedral. On the following Sunday, the same Jane Doe, a sergeant-major in the
W.R.A.C., assists at a Church Parade and salutes the Queen, as her Colonel-in-Chief. The salute is, in theory, a removal of the hat, which Jane Doe performs as an honorary man, but which would have been forbidden her, as a Bishop’s daughter, on the previous Sunday.’