The Little Girls (10 page)

“What does?”

“This does. Doesn’t it to you, ever?” Turning to Clare, Sheila added: “Doesn’t it to you?”

They approached the end of the walk: now, the cave drew near. “Turn left,” their guide said. “Look, I’ll go on ahead.” She did.

But then Clare stopped dead. “Look, Dicey, don’t think us perfectly beastly, but I
don’t
want to go down that thing; nor, I’m sure, does Sheikie!”

“I’m not keen to,” agreed the other.

“Oh?” said the guide, coming slowly round on a heel, hands in her pockets. She took a look at them.
“Oh .
. . But it’s awfully interesting—awfully humanly interesting.”

“Yes, but Sheikie and I don’t know your interesting friends.”

“Neither will archaeologists aeons hence,” Dinah felt it devolvent upon her to point out. “If this interests them, why shouldn’t it interest you?” She added, rather more sternly, “All things considered… .”

“What do you mean?”

“You
know jolly well what I mean—you two.”

You could have heard a petal drop, all but. Clare then said, with noisy bravado: “Ha, yes.
That.
Well—what
about
that?”

Sheila looked trapped.

“There’s no ‘what about?’” said Dinah. She walked right up to them. “Simply, when do we go there, when do we dig? How soon?”

“Dig … ?” asked Sheila.

“Un-bury.”

“We put
that
there for posterity,” Clare said doubtfully.

“We
are posterity—now,” the remorseless one said. “So, what night? Any night—how soon? There’s no moon these nights, but there was no moon then. We shall again need torches. At St. Agatha’s, hadn’t we better meet? Agreed?
”

Sheila said: “It’s not there.”

She was not at once understood.

“Didn’t you know?” she said. “I suppose not.”

A scarf formed part of her suit: she knotted it, first loosely, then drew it slowly tighter under her chin.

“Well, go on,” they said.

“How do I begin? … As you may or may not know, we were shelled at Southstone.” A snobbishness, far from unsympathetic, o’erspread her native countenance. (Anyone could be bombed.) “They lammed away at us, onward from 1940. I don’t say every day; it was on and off. One of those fine days, St. Agatha’s copped it.”

“Sheikie
… not all the girls?”

“Gracious, no. Girls?—they’d been long gone. That old place had not been a school for years. When it was hit it was empty and boarded up.”

Clare said:
”
’
Into thin air.
‘ “

Thick cream glazed blinds were pulled most of the way down. Failing to keep out the marine sunshine, they flopped lazily over the open windows in the hot June breath rather than breeze haunting the garden. St. Agatha’s had been a house, IV-A classroom probably the morning-room. The blinds were lace-bordered. There was a garlanded wallpaper—called to order by having on it a bald, pontifical clock, only a size or two smaller than a station one, a baize board clustered with lists and warnings, and sepia reproductions of inspiriting pictures, among them “Hope,” framed in oak. Of oak were the desks, to which were clamped high-backed seats. An aroma of Plasticine came from the models along the chimneypiece, and from jars of botanical specimens near a window whiffs of water slimy with rotting greenery were fanned in—the girl in charge of the specimens being absent with one of her summer colds. Chalk in the neighbourhood of the blackboard and ink thickening in china wells in the desks were the only other educational smells.

A dozen or so girls, most of them aged eleven, some ten, some twelve, sat at the desks. All wore their summer tunics of butcher-blue. By turning their heads, left, they could have seen strips of garden, parching away, between restless lace and stolid white window sills. Politely, however, most of them faced their teacher; this they could do for Miss Kinmate, if little else. This was the first lesson after mid-morning break with its milk and biscuits—even the slight feast had thrown IV-A into a gorged condition. But this also was the Tuesday poetry hour, to which Miss Kinmate attached hopes. Each girl (the idea was) chose for herself the short poem or portion of longer one which, got by heart, she was to recite.

One more of them had just taken the stand.

“There
was
a time when meadow, grove and stream,

The earth and—”

“Stop!” cried Miss Kinmate. “Before we begin, not
too
much expression. Wordsworth was not as regretful as all that.”

“I thought he was. Like some old, fat person saying, There
was
a time when I could jtaip over a ten-foot wall.’”

“That would be silly.”

“Well, this is silly, in a way.”

“Your old, fat man would not be speaking the truth. Have you any idea how high a ten-foot wall is?”

“Yes.”

“I wonder whether you have. Because, even a Greek athlete could probably not jump over that.” (From a back desk, a hand shot up.) “
Yes
, Olive?”

“How high could a Greek athlete probably jump?”

“That would depend.”

The child Clare, during this intermission, stood stonily contemplating her audience—hands behind her, back to the blackboard, feet planted apart, tongue exploring a cavity in a lower molar. At a moody sign from Miss Kinmate, she went on:

“—and every common sight,

To
me
did seem

Apparell’d in celestial
light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is
not
now as it had been of yore;—

Turn whereso’er I may,

By night
or
day,

The things which—”

“Stop! Oh dear, what are we to do?”

“I thought—”

“Well, don’t—
try
! Otherwise, go and sit down. Ruining that beautiful poem!”

“Yes, Miss Kinmate.”

“And don’t make eyes at the others. Next time, choose a poem you understand.”

“I do know another. Shall I say that?”

Miss Kinmate looked at the clock. The whole class (but for Sheila Beaker, who couldn’t be bothered, and Muriel Borthwick, who having picked at a good big scab on her arm now dabbed blotting-paper at the resultant blood) did likewise, in an awed, considering way. “Very well,” Miss Kinmate conceded. “Go on, Clare—though remember, there are others to come.”

The child, having drawn a breath twice her size, launched with passion into her second choice:

“Last night among his fellow-roughs

He jested, quaff’d and swore:

A drunken private of the Buffs,

Who never look’d before.

Today, beneath the foeman’s frown,

He stands in Elgin’s place,

Ambassador from Britain’s crown,

And type of all her race.

Poor, reckless, rude, low-born, untaught,

Bewilder’d and alone,

A heart, with English instinct fraught,

He yet can call his own.

Ay! tear
his body limb from limb,

Bring cord, or axe, or flamel—

He only knows, that not through him

Shall England come to shame.

Fair Kentish hopfields round him seemed

Like dreams to come and go;

Bright leagues of cherry blossom—”

“Stop! Time’s up, I’m afraid. A pity, because you were doing better.” Miss Kinmate’s eye roved round. “Diana, try and not sit with your mouth open—wake up! What is the name of the poem Clare’s just recited?”

” ‘
The Drunken Private of the Buffs.’ “

“Not exactly.—Well, who and whose poem next? Muriel: you!”

“I think I’m bleeding too much.”

“What, cut yourself?”

“Not exactly.”

“Better go and find Matron.”

Gory Muriel left. Miss Kinmate had to cast round all over again. “
Sheila
, then. Sheila, we’ll hear you now.”

Southstone’s wonder, the child exhibition dancer, rose, tossed back her silver-gold plaits, and habituatedly stepped forward into the limelight. An ornate volume, open at the required page and gildedly looking like a school prize (which it was, though not awarded to her), was bestowed by her upon Miss Kinmate, with what was less a bow than a flowerlike inclination of the head. She then half-turned, with a minor swirl of the tunic, and, facing the footlights, glided three steps sideways into the place of doom left vacant by Clare. Here reality struck the prodigy amidships. Bewitched, since she rose from her desk, by her own performance, she had lost sight for that minute or two of her entrance’s true and hideous purpose. She was to be called upon not to spring about but to give tongue. A badgered hatred of literature filled her features. She did deliver her poem, though in the manner of one voicing, with wonderful moderation, a long-nursed and justifiable complaint

“Up the airy mountain,

Down the rushing glen,

We daren’t
go
a-hunting

For fear of little
men;

Wee folk, good folk,

Trooping all together;

Green jacket, red cap,

And
white owl’s feather!

Down on the rocky
shore

Some make their home;

They
live
on crispy pancakes

Of yellow tide-foam;

Some, in the reeds

Of the black mountain-lake,

With frogs for their watchdogs,

All night awake.

High on the hill-top The old
King
sits.

He
is now so old and grey

He’s nigh lost… ?

… his bridge of white wits?

… his mist of white wits?

… his
bridge?

… his wits… ?”

She ran down, ticked over uncertainly, gave right out, and turned on Miss Kinmate a look as much as to say: “Well, there you are. What else would you expect?”

“Never mind,” Miss Kinmate hastened to say. “It went nicely so far. Though a little mournful—fairies are gay things, aren’t they?”

Sheila had no idea.

“And one word wrong in your second line. It should be ‘rushy,’ not ‘rushing.’ How could a glen rush?”

“I thought it meant they were all rushing about,” said Sheila Beaker, still more deeply aggrieved.

“Sheila chose a delightful poem, at any rate,” Miss Kinmate informed the class—who knew to a girl whose the choice had been: Mrs. Beaker’s.

Most of the St. Agatha’s girls day-boarded. The school, scorning the plateau on which others were crowded, was out of town to the west, downhill. This suited children from the Camp and surrounding military villas; on the Southstone contingent (persistently sent there in spite of much education nearer to hand) it came harder. To cut out to-ing and fro-ing during the day, which was thought tiring, the Southstone children ate meals at school, and the rest had fallen in with this practice—which made, as Miss Ardingfay, foundress-head mistress, said, for girls getting to know each other really well. The school day, though necessarily long, was less arduous than might have been feared: organized games apart, there were times for loafing. The girls were back at their homes at varying times after six o’clock, carrying some prep. They supped, slept, bolted their breakfasts, and tore back to St. Agatha’s. From noon on Saturdays till the St. Agatha’s prayers-bell rounded them up again on Monday mornings, they were on the loose.

The school, though near enough to the sea for its lower garden to be fluffy with tamarisks, was not actually on it. From the far side of the tarred road passing the gates, there was quite a high, steep drop down to the beach. Along that side of the road ran a parapet, not supposed to be sat on. St. Agatha’s being some way above beach level made it less likely, it was generally held, to be swept away during a storm: certainly nothing had happened yet, pleasurable though the excitement would have been.

The grounds, mostly, ran up the hill behind. The due-south aspect was favourable to small, old greenhouses, some now empty; and there were seats and arbours facing the view, which was of the Channel. A croquet lawn, by now rather bald, had at some time or another been terraced forward. There were two overgrown thickets, which to the outer eye looked more impenetrable than they were—between them, “walks” serpentined up; there were also steeper, slippery dog-paths worn into being by impatient girls. The higher you climbed, the more you beheld. At the top of the grounds (which was not the top of the hill) was another terrace: up here, from a stout frame, a swing hung during the summer months. Miss Ardingfay had not had it put up (it had been here) but equally had not had it taken down.
Where
it was, it was possibly a slight worry: each spring she had the gardener make sure that the ropes were sound. As she had not a straight eye, and did not herself swing, it remained unknown to Miss Ardingfay that the swing did not hang as evenly as it should.