The Little Girls (13 page)

Clare was blowed, as things were, if she would rush to the window—still less (as by nature one would) the door. She stayed studying extraordinary Mrs. Piggott, till asked: “Well—aren’t you going to meet him?” She then did set out, though at slow march, for what at least was an observation post. Having re-tented herself in curtains, she stood stock-still, bristling, while you might count ten. She then let out a loud and most bitter snor. “I say, Mrs. Piggott, only do look—come here!”

Mrs. Piggott came forward, though not the whole way. Standing behind Clare, she looked through the muslin.

Major Burkin-Jones came up the garden, which was at a slight incline—white-clad, erect at his full height, bareheaded. Unheedingly carrying a racquet, he had with him a Panama hat. All the more in the early dusk of the garden stood out the sun-saturated and noble beauty of this man.

Everywhere was breathless, heavy syringa bushes increasing the look of hush. The look of evening, caused by the high walls over which rose many and close trees, was premature: the tops of the trees still netted the brightness of day. Along or above this coast, one could not both be sheltered and have a view—there now, though, was a view from Feverel Cottage: Major Burkin-Jones. The neglected grass of the lawn, already growing up into seed, created a sort of pallor round his feet: nothing splashed anywhere with colour, except where a meagre delphinium leaned through ferns or ungirt cabbage roses burned purple-pink. This came to be a garden like none other—or was it always, perhaps? The moment could, at least, never be again. Or, could it—who knew? Happy this garden would be to have such a revenant, were he ever dead. Though who would be there to see, were they all gone? … Nearing the house, Major Burkin-Jones gave it a smile, also raising and moving a hand in vague salute—vague because, so far, he could see no one.

As the sounds had proclaimed, he was not alone. At his heels capered Dicey, as pleased as Punch.

Wednesdays went better than Tuesdays, always—if they had a fault, it was a tendency to be uneventful. Today, the heat was a little less, which insofar as it was to blame for the disturbances of yesterday was as well. The weather continued to be set fair: Tuesday’s nervy little hot breeze or breath having died at sunset, Wednesday’s blue warmth was extremely still. And yesterday’s sun had, in spite of all, ended by going down on nobody’s wrath—the Burkin-Joneses had heard nothing from the Beakers about the gelignite; Mrs. Piggott (inferring this to be so from Major Burkin-Jones’s uncloudedness) had not given Dicey really much of a wigging; and the two girls, having buried the hatchet while waiting about in the Feverel Cottage garden for Clare’s father to say goodbye to Diana’s mother and take Clare home, had parted, before the end of the evening, on the good terms on which they quite often were, Sheikie had been deflected from the rink, and possible trouble, by happening as she was biking thither to sight the Sissens (non-St. Agatha’s friends) accompanied by the elder Artworth boy, so going bathing with them instead.

She, as she mentioned to all and sundry, still felt, in spite of a bath between, encrusted with yesterday evening’s brine when she re-entered the sea on Wednesday morning.

She did so with the school bathing party, which comprised all St. Agatha’s girls other than those afflicted by summer colds and, more strangely, some of the bigger ones, who were for some mystic reason debarred. The dedicated smugness with which they bore their exclusion made such girls as ludicrous to their juniors as did, already, their bulging forms. The rest oozed through the gap in the parapet, and poured, zigzag, down the cement steps to the orange beach and glassily waiting sea. That the beach was private made the sea seem so. Over bathing suits, wriggled into up at the school, flapped wraps to be worn for crossing the road. Rub-down towels awaited them in the school cloakroom. They wore, to the sea’s brink, sandshoes, against the hurtful pebbles. Some wore frilly bathing caps, others not. Those first in shrieked and beat at the sea, bobbing. Watchful, Miss Brace and Miss Kinmate paced to and fro, the steep shelving drops of the shingle, under the surface, being one of the few perils of this beach—of treacherous off-shore currents there were none. A non-swimming girl, taking one step too many, could find herself, in an instant, out of her depth. Both Miss Brace and Miss Kinmate were, therefore, armed with deterrent whistles. Miss Brace dreaded the role of life-saver, and Miss Kinmate, herself unwell today, had not the slightest intention of going in.

Dicey was, rather surprisingly, not a bobber. Swim well was one of the few things she could do—Cousin Roland, who was almost a merman, having taught her to when she was five or six. She could swim faster than Sheikie, farther than Mumbo. Her disappearances in the direction of France had caused flattering outbursts of whistle-blowing. This minute, though, she was liking simply to float—some way out, seaweed-like hair awash.

“Muriel’s stung by a jellyfish,” she sang out, though dreamily, to Olive, who, working away at a breast-stroke, came thrashing by.

“Kick up a fuss?—
Ouch!
”
said Olive, swallowing sea water.

“Jellyfish!
”
bawled Clare from some way off.

“I
know.
”

St. Agatha’s stared denudedly out to sea: alien became its dead-still tamarisks, cream-cheese gables, and garden patterning up behind. Sheikie, nosing that way in a long, swift, sleek streak like a surfaced shark, with scorn sighted two of the left-behinds teenily framed in a french window.
She
wore a scarlet bathing cap. She made a turn, submerged, came up again not far from Dicey. “Race you, lazy?” Thus showing how good was her mood, since she lost always. For a minute more Dicey let herself he, the not even plaything of the indifferent, not even swelling sea, aimless as she, whose strength cjould only be felt in that it would not let her sink. Then they did race. There being no goal—no buoy, raft, boat, rock, nothing in sight —it was racing for speed’s sake.

Voices across the water.

“
’
The further out from Eng-e-land the nearer is to France—then turn not pale, beloved snail
…
’
”
chanted one of the bobbers, watching another swim four strokes after making a depth-test with her toe. Miss Kinmate half-blew her whistle, looked at her watch again, saw she was wrong, there were still five minutes to go, let the whistle swing away on its cord. And, “It is a cornelian!” shouted a girl ashore, holding a pebble up to the eye. “I see red light through it—I do!” Those coming out picked their way up the beach to look for their sandshoes, amid brittle-dried starfish, pod seaweed, razor shells. The coarse, clean smell of the beach met those coming out of the scentless sea. Shoes being higher up than they’d been left was the one sign that there was a tide at all—it was going out.

When some half of the girls were already on to or up the cement steps, wraps plastering on to their sea-wetness, Miss Kinmate really did blow her whistle. Miss Brace, not to be outdone, blew hers.

The sole school incident, that Wednesday, was a visit from an aunt. Thanks to being a day school (though one day-boarded there) St. Agatha’s was not much plagued by relatives—the girls, should that be wished, were on view at home. But this, it seemed, was an aunt “down for the day,” who had sworn an oath not to return to London without a glimpse of her niece. She had also said she’d like a glimpse of the school. Miss Ardingfay had been warned by telephone on no account to let Elfreda escape —which, this being a games afternoon, she might have done. The displeased Elfreda (fond of rounders, and good at them) was kept hanging about.

When the aunt came, the more athletic girls were indeed gone. Three afternoons a week, St. Agatha’s used the playing-field of its one neighbour, St. Swithin’s, a preparatory school abounding in horrible little boys—no little boys, happily, were at those times anywhere to be found. The field was large enough for cricket and rounders to be, in summer, played on it simultaneously, provided each game kept out of the other’s way. There were also available two tennis courts. Even so, that left girls unaccounted for, there being sixty-eight at St. Agatha’s in all. Miss Ardingfay strongly held that everyone should play something, or at least try to—therefore efforts were made to see that the same girls were not left out of games afternoons too often. Those most rarely left out were the keener ones (those, that was to say, who were any good).

Those left behind, within St. Agatha’s grounds, met their fate with a varying resignation. They played pat-ball on the old croquet lawn, or poked about looking for lost balls, which were many, the lawn having no net round it, and hard to locate, age having turned them a dark green. Dead-seeming when hit, the balls could nevertheless bound away downhill with great velocity; some, it was thought, had ended up in the sea. Or, struck upward with anything like force, some plopped, for ever, into the dense thickets. A girl purporting to look for a lost ball could fade from view for the rest of the afternoon. When all balls were lost and most of the girls, the pat-ball came to an end.

More green balls being supplied, unfailingly, each games afternoon, had made it come to be held that Miss Ardingfay bought them in by the ton, third-hand.

Dicey, suffering from pique, sat on the-garden roller kept up here that it might from time to time fruitlessly roll the croquet lawn. She was still wondering whether to look for tennis balls when Elfreda placed her aunt on a close-by seat, muttered something, and hurriedly went away. Dicey perceived why. To the aunt’s look of avidity and intentness was added the aimful glitter of pince-nez. Worse, the woman, though clad as far as the neck in a way which seemed neither here nor there, had topped herself off with a largish black straw hat which, by the sticky look and still more smell of it, had been lately touched up with hat-dye, known to be poison, and had upon it what could only be magpie’s wings. The effect was not of poverty or bravura but, far more, that of both hat’s and wearer’s having been chemically reconstituted, and of that’s having so acted on her as to send her out robbing a charnel hedge. For the wings were not sporty hat-ornament but sheer dead bird— of which the child on the roller was subject to an overmastering horror. And living, even, one magpie is of ill omen.

Having been rushed uphill, the aunt could have been hoped to be out of breath. She was not. Lean, she was active-looking. She cast around, then marked down her prey. “And what’s
your
name?
”
she keenly asked.

“Diana. But I’m afraid I have to look for tennis balls.”

“Oh, no, nonsense—there are plenty of others!” (Balls, or girls?) “Why not come over and talk to we?” The hat-woman patted the seat beside her. To the outer (only the outer) eye, Dicey came across like a bidden dog. “This game,” the captor went on, slighting the pat-ball, “I expect is rather for duifers only?” Evidently she saw through Elfreda’s plan, which had been to deposit her—for how long?—somewhere where there would be something to watch. The child batted her lashes and said nothing. “However, you’re all very happy, Elfreda tells me, here at this school of yours, in your various ways? Plenty of freedom?”

“Where has Elfreda gone?”

“Oh,
Elfreda’
ll
be back to her old aunt! Meanwhile, there’s plenty more you can tell me.—For instance, isn’t this near where the Romans landed?”

“I don’t know. I think somebody said so.”

“Now that is
very
exciting, isn’t it!”

Dicey, though shrinking back from the hat, reflectively peered at the speaker under it. Anybody more truly sharp than the aunt could have noted her to be hoarding something away. At the moment, however, she said nothing. The aunt, nonplussed, altered her tactics. “Are you, I wonder, the little girl who dances?”

“No,” said Dicey regretfully. “She’s my friend, though.”

“And will she be a famous dancer when she grows up?”

“I don’t know. She’s very famous now.”

“And what do
you
mean to be when you grow up?”

“I don’t know.”

Weighed on by witless negatives, the poor aunt attempted to inspirit by an upward toss of the head. She succeeded only in making the magpie quiver. Dicey, shutting her eyes, quite ill, backed further away. The jerk to the hat also had stirred up poison-fumes—it was out of a nimbus of those that the aunt declared: “Well, now, we shall have to think about that, shan’t we? So let’s see … What are you interested in?” “Interested in?”

“Interested in, dear. Yes.”

“I was in tadpoles, but something happened to mine. I’ve got kittens now.”

“Ah! You like looking after them, I expect?”

“No, our cook does.”

“So what
do
you like to do?”

“I like to play tennis, but everyone bags the courts—I mean, proper ones.” Dicey sadly stared at the croquet lawn. “I like looking for things,” she added, “or hiding things, wondering who’ll find them. Or doing anything I can do, like getting on people’s nerves or swimming.”

“Ah … ?” said the aunt. She made back on to firmer ground.
“Elfreda’s
going to be a doctor.”

Dicey conveyed, by silence, that she did not believe that for a single moment, and anyway could not have thought it a good plan. “Did you ask her,” she questioned, “or did she say?”