The Little Girls (19 page)

Something about the destruction (for so it seemed) of the moment of the candles let loose not exactly disorder but an element of scrimmage about the party. Outcasts upon an outlying rug, the St. Swithin’s boys started punching each other cautiously but repeatedly. A Marsh girl by sticking a foot out suddenly kicked in the kidneys Muriel, seated in front of her. Diana Piggott, singled out by a sand flea, bumped down her cup and began to scratch— the cup heeled over, partially scalding Trevor, who made away on all fours to a safer rug. The uncle incurred the scorn of Clare Burkin-Jones—in vain he trailed cheery choruses: not a voice took up. “Fool,” snorted the child.

“If you call anybody a fool, you go to Hell, I may as well tell you,” said Sheila Beaker crisply, over her shoulder.

“Where did you pick up
that
information?”

“Sunday school.”

“
You
never went to—”

“
Oh
yes I did. Till I took up toe-dancing.”

The birthday cake made its rounds as something to eat. Shattered pink writing clung to the icing tops of the slices. This was a cherry cake, very rich in fruit.— “Olive,” quoth one of the fathers, helping himself, “this is a day we shall long remember.”

“It’s very kind of you to say so,” Olive returned, with her usual composure. Stillness fell, for an instant, on the grown-ups (who resting from their duties sat in a group), transforming them into figures in a
tableau
—once animated again, they were never more so. Mrs. Piggott was busy rescuing the spoon from the deep jam jar into which it had sunk. The spoon came out sticky all the way up: with a candid stealth like her daughter’s she licked her fingers, then wiping them on her handkerchief. “We shall most of us be going away,” she remarked, “now.” This was true of many. August stood for dispersal. The Pococks were known to be going to Switzerland, D.V.; Mrs. Piggott and Dicey were off (as soon as tomorrow) to Cumberland, where a delightful old rectory had been taken by Cousin Roland for these holidays, for them and himself. Sheikie was off, shortly, to grace Heme Bay for as long as Daddy would spare her to Irene. The West Highlands were the bourne of one family, the Lorna Doone Devon moors of another. Muriel owned a grandmother on the Isle of Wight. And so on. The Burkin-Joneses only spoke of no plans.

Mr. Pocock took out his half-hunter watch. “Three-legged races, next?” he said to his wife.

“Oh, Mortimer, do you think so?—Just after tea?”

“Those make them fight, you know,” said a mother. “They fight one another if they don’t win. Freddie came back from some sports with his ear bitten. Not badly, of course.”

“Who by?” asked Mrs. Piggott, gazing out of the triangle formed by the brim of her hat and her mauve veil.

“As I was saying, his partner—some little girl. ‘Don’t be a baby, another time,’ I said to him, so I don’t think he will.”

“Even at egg-and-spoon races,” said another mother, “they knock each other down.”

“I don’t believe we have brought eggs,” said Mrs. Pocock. “Or did we, Mortimer?”

“We decided not to.”

“Prisoner’s base? French and English? Follow my leader?”

“Most of them are too big, I’m afraid.”

“What we have brought,” said resolute Mr. Pocock, “is an excellent rope for a tug-of-war.” He walked away to the hampers, to look about for it.

Too late. The children were singing. It was a terrible wolf-like ululation, with a spectre of tune in it. Some, heads back, simply droned aloud to the sky. Any true voice, so far as it ever led, was once more drowned. Singers astray in a verse for a line or two boomed back again into the chorus with the greater vigour. Liked, the song seemed on whole known. Overwrought by what he had brought about, the uncle cantered behind them with the accompaniment: some few notes twanged, lunatic, on the air.

“Wa-ay
down upon the Swan-eeee River,

Fa-ar
, far away,

The-ere’s
where my heart is turning ever,

The-ere’s
where the old folks stay.

All up and down the who-ole creation

Sa-adly
I roam,

Still longing for the o-old plantation,

A
-and for the old fo-olks at home.

“A-ALL the world is SA-AD and drear-
eeeee
,

EV’RY-where I roam,

O darkies, how my HEART grows WE-E-EARY

FA-A-AR from the old folks at home!

“
A-all
ro-
ound
the little farm I wander’d.

Wh-en I was
young
;

Then any happy
da-a-ays
I squander’d,

Ma-any
the songs I sung.

When I was playing
wi-ith m-y
brother,

Ha-a-appy
was I.

O-o-oh
, take me to my kind O-O-OLD moth-er,

The-ere
let me live a-a-and die!

“A-all the WO-O-ORLD is sad A-AND drear-ee,

Ev’ry-WHERE I roam,

O darkies, HOW my heart GRO-OWS wear-ee,

Fa-a-ar
from the old FO-O-OLKS at home!

“O-one little hut
amo-o-ong
the bushes,

O-o-one that I love,

Sti-ill
sadly to my
mem’ry
rashes,

No-o-o
matter where I rove.

When sha-all I see the
bees
a-humming

All
ro-o-ound
the comb?

When
sha-all
I hear the
ban
-JO strumming

Do-own in my
go-o-ood
old home?

“A-ALL the WO-O-ORLD is sad and DREAR-ee,

EV’RY-where I…”

“How they enjoy it,” said Mrs. Piggott, to nobody in particular. The grown-up group was smaller by two fathers, who had paced away from it frowningly locked in talk, smoking cigarettes. The mother of Freddie scooped up a palmful of loose sand and absorbedly watched it run from between her lingers in slow skeins, as sand runs through an hour-glass. Two others murmured to one another with tense rapidity—caught at it, they moved apart. A remaining father reclined with hat tipped forward: his moustache beneath it was inexpressive. “Not a cheerful song,” Mrs. Pocock laughed, “for a birthday, is it!”

“But there is not going to be a war, is there?” asked Mrs. Piggott.

Mrs. Pocock stood up. Signalling to her husband, who was making his way back with the coil of rope, she cried: “Races
would
be better—you were quite right! They had better run.”

Everyone started moving outward from the encampment on to the firmer sands, which were growing larger. The few breakwaters, sticking out far apart like teeth left in an otherwise broken comb, ended, high and dry, so far short of the sea that seaweed here and there clinging to them like dead ivy was the one sign that they had ever been anything but alone. Also, considerably to the west of the encampment (for no one cared to picnic in its vicinity) a vast iron drainpipe, flaking with rust, issued out of the base of the sea wall. Though not carrying, probably, anything more noxious than overflow from the dykes draining the Marsh, the thing had the look of being a sewer: its mouth was slimed on the lower lip by a constant trickle which, on its way seaward, grooved for itself a miniature river valley before exhaustedly losing itself in the sand. This had to be crossed, for the sports ground, demarcated by the fathers and uncle, lay beyond.

Everything from now onward was a matter of distance—distance from what? The organized running or staggering or hopping or crawling of the children (for the races now being put afoot without intermission and like clockwork were of all kinds, relay, three-legged, one-legged, wheelbarrow) dazzled away out of the view of watchers in the sharp light coming, level, between the accentuated clouds. Nor were sands and sky resounding with shouts and laughter: over the contests reigned a demonic silence, punctuated only by whistle-blowing or words of command. No part of the picture was for an instant still—each athletic event took place in a nimbus of scuffle in which few onlookers failed to be taking part. Exactly what was going on was hard to discern.

The mothers, having been piling cups together in the encampment, were the last to leave it. Soon after they’d crossed the trickle, on their way to the sports ground, Trevor came tearing zigzig towards and past them, in the direction of the drain-pipe. In pursuit was Dicey, abetted by Muriel. Sand not only caked his knees but was round his mouth. His spectacles were, it was to be seen, gone: he ran all but blindedly. His pursuer incarnated most of the cast of
Struwwelpeter
, most strikingly Cruel Frederick, “the great, long, red-legg’d scissor man,” and Harriet-and-the-Matches—she brandished a matchbox (Olive’s?) from which flew many of the contents.

“Dicey!” expostulated her mother.

“A little over-excited,” said their hostess.

Both looked back. Trevor ducked, doubled, and disappeared up the drain-pipe, Dicey after him like a terrier. Muriel stuck her head in, but thought better of it: “Stinks,” she said, making a moue at the grown-ups. Dicey came shunting out of the drain-pipe, behind first. Her mother, retracing a step to be better heard, asked: “What are you doing?”

“Playing,” explained the child, knocking back her hair.

“Suppose he gets typhoid in there, poor little boy?”

“
Whoosh!
” cried Dicey, flailing her arms at Muriel—who in turn fled. She was given chase to. Mrs. Pocock, having taken this opportunity to appraise her friend’s little girl, said, with a spontaneity the greater for having surprise in it: “She’s going to be pretty, you know, when she grows up!”

“Oh, I do hope so,” breathed Mrs. Piggott.

“She moves well.”

Mrs. Piggott went to the mouth of the drain-pipe and, bending down, said pleasantly: “Trevor?”

His voice, coming whonging along from some way up, answered—with a frigidity one could understand: “Yes, Mrs. Piggott?”

“Won’t you come out?”

“I like it in here, thank you.”

So they walked on. Mr. Pocock, coming to meet them, said: “I thought we might soon finish up with the tug-of-war. Where did I put the rope?”

“It is near the rugs.” Mrs. Pocock went back with her husband to the encampment, to begin to make ready the lemonade for the athletes and further sandwiches, ham this time, with which the picnic was to conclude. Mrs. Piggott, left to herself, decided that Dicey had better not take part in the tug-of-war—it would be better for her to calm down. She then went away into other thoughts as (other mothers being some way ahead) she advanced solitary towards the
melee
, searching for her child.

Children had collected along a breakwater—some leaning, some climbing about on the iron stanchions, some sitting along the blunted top. Among them was Clare. She had taken off one sandshoe, in order to pick from the thin black sole glass particles of Trevor’s trodden-on spectacles. She was working away at this with listless intentness: her wiry hair fell forward, darkness encompassed her—she neither looked up nor spoke. Dicey came flumping against the breakwater, close by. “
That
,” mused Dicey, contentedly sticking her nose over Clare’s task, “will teach him not to be so superior another time.—
And
, look!” she commanded, thrusting her rust-reddened hands into Clare’s view. Little notice was taken. “Oh, stop picking away at that old shoe!”

“I don’t want glass to work through and cut my foot.”

Dicey took back her hands, to admire them herself. “This is out of the inside of that pipe. What do you think I did? I struck matches at him.”

“Couldn’t have, in this wind.”

“Oo, but he doesn’t like the
noise
, even! So he rushes away from that, even. … So what I did’s going to teach him not to be so superior another time, too, isn’t it?”

Not another particle glittered on the black rubber. Clare tugged the shoe on again, pulled the lace tight, knotted it with a jerk. “I don’t care who is superior another time.”

“I don’t know what you want. You won two races.”

“Three.—Well?”

Dicey resignedly heaved round and hung herself on her stomach over the breakwater, head down. She plucked about in some ancient seaweed. “There are some shells,” she reported, “caught in this, but they’re no good.—I say, Mumbo?”

“Well?”

“Who did kill that Australian duke?”

Confounded the minute she had spoken, the fool child hung for a minute longer upside down, as she was, in shame. Then she righted herself and got off the breakwater. Had the skies fallen? Every one of the children was staring her way.—No, though, not at her but beyond Mumbo at Sheikie, who was executing a tightrope two-step. This was going on further up the breakwater, where the structure heightened as it approached the wall. To and fro, backward then forward along the wood-bone, bone-dry, dry-slippery edge of the top-most board jaunted the airily balanced dancer—going away, returning, turning each turn into a nonchalant pirouette. She danced her music.

Her hair, in honour of Olive, wore four bows: one behind each ear, one at the end of each plait. She wore an American new-style little girl’s dress: chequered gingham. Her sandshoes, from whose points she never descended, were not only sandless but snow white. The clean fine pink line dividing her skull in two was to be seen when she turned her back, as was the line of big black American buttons. She was distinct as a paper doll.

Wind came in a gust at her, bending her over. She wobbled once—once was enough! Off she sprang from the breakwater, of her own volition. Away she strolled.

Clare had turned her head away, heavily, towards the dance. Why not? It remained away, though the dance was over. “What are you still looking at?” Dicey wanted to know, uneasy. “Or what?”

Better have let Clare be: she came back doomfully into profile. “Austrian,” she enunciated, “Archduke. Get that into your head.”

“Oh, all right, Mumbo,” said the willing learner.

“It’s not all rightl
”

Mrs. Piggott’s little girl recoiled, as though hit at. “It’s not my fault….”

Clare said: “Nobody said it was.”

“Oh, look—there’s Mother!”

Mrs. Piggott and Dicey, all by themselves, walked calm-ingly along the edge of the sea. But it receded, slithering back, stealing away. So they came to a stop, side by side, to watch. A chill had begun. Mrs. Piggott was carrying Dicey’s jersey, so she pulled it on over the child’s head; then, when the arms had angled their way into the sleeves, on down. She then buttoned her own dust-coat, which for this evening as it had turned out to be was a little light. The masterful wind again and again tugged untied the bow of her veil, so she gave up and with her right hand held the chiffon gathered together under her chin. The child’s hair blew into briny rat’s-tails.