Complete Short Stories (VMC) (81 page)

‘My name is Laura,’ she said. She stooped and clasped them to her in terror, and kissed their cheeks. Sep’s in particular was extraordinarily soft, like the petal of a poppy. His big eyes stared up at her, without expression. He wore a dark, long-trousered suit, so that he was all over sombre and unchildlike. Benny had a mock-suède coat with a nylon-fur collar and a trilby hat with a feather. They did not speak. Not only was she, Laura, strange to them, but they were strange to one another. There had only been a short train-journey in which to sum up their chances of becoming friends.

She put them both into the back of the car, so that there should be no favouritism, and drove off, pointing out – to utter silence – places on the way. ‘That’s a café where we’ll go for tea one day.’ The silence was dreadful. ‘A caff,’ she amended. ‘And there’s the little cinema. Not very grand, I’m afraid. Not like London ones.’

They did not even glance about them.

‘Are you going to be good friends to one another?’ she asked.

After a pause, Sep said in a slow grave voice, ‘Yeah, I’m going to be a good friend.’

‘Is this the country?’ Benny asked. He had a chirpy, perky Cockney voice and accent.

‘Yeah, this is the countryside,’ said Sep, in his rolling drawl, glancing indifferently at some trees.

Then he began to talk. It was in an aggrieved sing-song. ‘I don’t go on
that train no more. I don’t like that train, and I don’t go on that again over my dead body. Some boy he say to me, “You don’t sit in that corner seat. I sit there.” I say, “You don’t sit here. I sit here.” “Yeah,” I say, “you don’t own this train, so I don’t budge from here.” Then he dash my comic down and tore it.’

‘Yep, he tore his comic,’ Benny said.

‘“You tear my comic, you buy me another comic,” I said. “Or else. Or
else
,” I said.’ He suddenly broke off and looked at a wood they were passing. ‘I don’t go near those tall bushes. They full of snakes what sting you.’

‘No, they ain’t,’ said Benny.

‘My mam said so. I don’t go.’

‘There aren’t any snakes,’ said Laura, in a light voice. She, too, had a terror of them, and was afraid to walk through bracken. ‘Or only little harmless ones,’ she added.

‘I don’t go,’ Sep murmured to himself. Then, in a louder voice, he went on. ‘He said, “I don’t buy no comic for you, you nigger,” he said.’

‘He never said that,’ Benny protested.

‘Yes, “You dirty nigger,” he said.’

‘He never.’

There was something so puzzled in Benny’s voice that Laura immediately believed him. The expression on his little monkey-face was open and impartial.

‘I don’t go on that train no more.’

‘You’ve got to. When you go home,’ Benny said.

‘Maybe I don’t go home.’

‘We’ll think about that later. You’ve only just arrived,’ said Laura, smiling.

‘No, I think about that right now.’

Along the narrow lane to the house, they were held up by the cows from the farm. A boy drove them along, whacking their messed rumps with a stick. Cow-pats plopped on to the road and steamed there, zizzing with flies. Benny held his nose and Sep, glancing at him, at once did the same. ‘I don’t care for this smell of the countryside,’ he complained in a pinched tone.

‘No, the countryside stinks,’ said Benny.

‘Cows frighten me.’

‘They don’t frighten me.’

Sep cringed against the back of the seat, whimpering; but Benny wound his window right down, put his head a little out of it, and shouted, ‘Get on, you dirty old sods, or else I’ll show you.’

‘Hush,’ said Laura gently.

‘He swore,’ Sep pointed out.

They turned into Laura’s gateway, up the short drive. In front of the house was a lawn and a cedar tree. From one of its lower branches hung the old swing, on chains, waiting for Laura’s grandchildren.

The boys clambered out of the car and followed her into the hall, where they stood looking about them critically; then Benny dropped his case and shot like an arrow towards Harold’s golf-bag and pulled out a club. His face was suddenly bright with excitement and Laura, darting forward to him, felt a stab of misery at having to begin the ‘No’s so soon. ‘I’m afraid Harold wouldn’t like you to touch them,’ she said. Benny stared her out, but after a moment or two gave up the club with all the unwillingness in the world. Meanwhile, Sep had taken an antique coaching-horn and was blowing a bubbly, uneven blast on it, his eyes stretched wide and his cheeks blown out. ‘Nor that,’ said Laura faintly, taking it away. ‘Let’s go upstairs and unpack.’

They appeared not at all overawed by the size of this fairly large house; in fact, rather unimpressed by it.

In the room where once, as little girls, Imogen and Lalage had slept together, they opened their cases. Sep put his clothes neatly and carefully into his drawer; and Benny tipped the case into his – comics, clothes and shoes, and a scattering of peanuts. ‘I’ll tidy it later,’ Laura thought.

‘Shall we toss up for who sleeps by the window?’ she suggested.

‘I don’t sleep by no window,’ said Sep. ‘I sleep in
this
bed; with
him
.’

‘I want to sleep by myself,’ said Benny.

Sep began a babyish whimpering, which increased into an anguished keening. ‘I don’t like to sleep in the bed by myself. I’m scared to. I’m real scared to. I’m scared.’

This was entirely theatrical, Laura decided, and Benny seemed to think so, too; for he took no notice.

‘A fortnight!’ Laura thought. This day alone stretched endlessly before her, and she dared not think of any following ones. Already she felt ineffectual and had an inkling that they were going to despise her. And her brightness was false and not infectious. She longed for Harold to come home, as she had never longed before.

‘I reckon I go and clean my teeth,’ said Sep, who had broken off his dirge.

‘Lunch is ready. Afterwards would be more sensible, surely?’ Laura suggested.

But they paid no heed to her. Both took their toothbrushes, their new tubes of paste, and rushed to find the bathroom. ‘I’m going to bathe myself,’ said Sep. ‘I’m going to bathe all my skin, and wash my head.’

‘Not
before
lunch,’ Laura called out, hastening after them; but they did
not hear her. Taps were running and steam clouding the window, and Sep was tearing off his clothes.

‘He’s bathed three times already,’ Laura told Harold.

She had just come downstairs, and had done so as soon as she heard him slamming the front door.

Upstairs, Sep was sitting in the bath. She had made him a lacy vest of soap-froth, as once she had made them for Imogen and Lalage. It showed up much better on his grape-dark skin. He sat there, like a tribal warrior done up in war-paint.

Benny would not go near the bath. He washed at the basin, his sleeves rolled up: and he turned the cake of soap over and over uncertainly in his hands.

‘It’s probably a novelty,’ Harold said, referring to Sep’s bathing. ‘Would you like a drink?’

‘Later perhaps. I daren’t sit down, for I’d never get up again.’

‘I’ll finish them off. I’ll go and see to them. You just sit there and drink this.’

‘Oh, Harold, how wonderfully good of you.’

She sank down on the arm of a chair, and sipped her drink, feeling stunned. From the echoing bathroom came shouts of laughter, and it was very good to hear them, especially from a distance. Harold was being a great success, and relief and gratitude filled her.

After a little rest, she got up and went weakly about the room, putting things back in their places. When this was done, the room still looked wrong. An unfamiliar dust seemed to have settled all over it, yet, running a finger over the piano, she found none. All the same, it was not the usual scene she set for Harold’s home-coming in the evenings. It had taken a shaking-up.

Scampering footsteps now thundered along the landing. She waited a moment or two, then went upstairs. They were in bed, in separate beds; Benny by the window. Harold was pacing about the room, telling them a story: his hands flapped like huge ears at either side of his face; then he made an elephant’s trunk with his arm. From the beds, the children’s eyes stared unblinkingly at him. As Laura came into the room, only Benny’s flickered in her direction, then back at once to the magic of Harold’s performance. She blew a vague, unheeded kiss, and crept away.

‘It’s like seeing snow begin to fall,’ Harold said at dinner. ‘You know it’s going to be a damned nuisance, but it makes a change.’

He sounded exhilarated; clashed the knife against the steel with vigour, and started to carve. He kept popping little titbits into his mouth. Carver’s perks, he called them.

‘Not much for me,’ Laura said.

‘What did they have for lunch?’

‘Fish-cakes.’

‘Enjoy them?’

‘Sep said, “I don’t like that.” He’s very suspicious, and that makes Benny all the braver. Then he eats too much, showing off.’

‘They’ll settle down,’ Harold said, settling down himself to his dinner. After a while, he said, ‘The little Cockney one asked me just now if this were a private house. When I said “Yes”, he said, “I thought it was, because you’ve got the sleeping upstairs and the talking downstairs.” Didn’t quite get the drift.’

‘Pathetic,’ Laura murmured.

‘I suppose where they come from, it’s all done in the same room.’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Pathetic,’ Harold said in his turn.

‘It makes me feel ashamed.’

‘Oh, come now.’

‘And wonder if we’re doing the right thing – perhaps unsettling them for what they have to go back to.’

‘My dear girl,’ he said. ‘Damn it, those people who organise these things know what they’re doing.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘They’ve been doing it for years.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Well, then …’

Suddenly she put down her knife and fork and rested her forehead in her hands.

‘What’s up, old thing?’ Harold asked, with his mouth full.

‘Only tired.’

‘Well, they’ve dropped off all right. You can have a quiet evening.’

‘I’m too tired to sit up straight any longer.’ After a silence, lifting her face from her hands, she said, ‘Thirteen more days! What shall I do with them all that time?’

‘Take them for scrambles in the woods,’ he began, sure that he had endless ideas.

‘I tried. They won’t walk a step. They both groaned and moaned so much that we turned back.’

‘Well, they can play on the swing.’

‘For how long, how
long
? They soon got tired of that. Anyhow, they quarrel about one having a longer turn than the other. In the end, I gave them the egg-timer.’

‘That was a good idea.’

‘They broke it.’

‘Oh.’

‘Please God, don’t let it rain,’ she said earnestly, staring out of the window. ‘Not for the next fortnight, anyway.’

The next day, it rained from early morning. After breakfast, when Harold had gone off, Laura settled the boys at the dining-room table with a snakes-and-ladders board. As they had never played it, she had to draw up a chair herself, and join in. By some freakish chance, Benny threw one six after another, would, it seemed, never stop; and Sep’s frustration and fury rose. He kept snatching the dice-cup away from Benny, peering into it, convinced of trickery. The game went badly for him and Laura, counting rapidly ahead, saw that he was due for the longest snake of all. His face was agonised, his dark hand, with its pale scars and scratches, hovered above the board; but he could not bring himself to draw the counter down the snake’s horrid speckled length.

‘I’ll do it for you,’ Laura said. He shuddered, and turned aside. Then he pushed his chair back from the table and lay, face-down on the floor, silent with grief.

‘And it’s not yet ten o’clock,’ thought Laura, and was relieved to see Mrs Milner, the help, coming up the path under her umbrella. It was a mercy that it was her morning.

She finished off the game with Benny, and he won; but the true glory of victory had been taken from him by the vanquished, lying still and wounded on the hearth-rug. Laura was bright and cheerful about being beaten, trying to set an example; but she made no impression.

Presently, in exasperation, she asked, ‘Don’t you play games at school?’

There was no answer for a time, then Benny, knowing the question wasn’t addressed to him, said, ‘Yep, sometimes.’

‘And what do you do if you lose?’ Laura asked, glancing down at the hearth-rug. ‘You can’t win all the time.’

In a muffled voice, Sep at last said, ‘I don’t win any time. They won’t let me win any time.’

‘It’s only luck.’

‘No, they don’t
let
me win. I just go and lie down and shut my eyes.’

‘And are these our young visitors?’ asked Mrs Milner, coming in with the vacuum-cleaner. Benny stared at her; Sep lifted his head from his sleeve for a brief look, and then returned to his sulking.

‘What a nasty morning I’ve brought with me,’ Mrs Milner said, after Laura had introduced them.

‘You brought a nasty old morning all right,’ Sep agreed, mumbling into his jersey.

‘But,’ she went on brightly, putting her hands into her overall pockets, ‘I’ve also brought some lollies.’

Benny straightened his back in anticipation. Sep, peeping with one eye, stretched out an arm.

‘That’s if Madam says you may.’

‘They call me “Laura”.’ It had been Harold’s idea and Laura had foreseen this very difficulty.

Mrs Milner could not bring herself to say the name and she, too, could foresee awkwardnesses.

‘No, Sep,’ said Laura firmly. ‘Either you get up properly and take it politely, or you go without.’

She wished that Benny hadn’t at once scrambled to his feet and stood there at attention. Sep buried his head again and moaned. All the sufferings of his race were upon him at this moment.

Benny took his sweet and made a great appreciative fuss about it.

All the china had gone up a shelf or two, out of reach, Mrs Milner noted. It was like the old days, when Imogen’s and Lalage’s friends had come to tea.

‘Now, there’s a good lad,’ she said, stepping over Sep, and plugging in the vacuum-cleaner.

‘Is that your sister?’ Benny asked Laura, when Mrs Milner had brought in the pudding, gone out again, and closed the door.