The Little Girls (28 page)

The bells were long in letting their prey go.

“Phew!” said Dinah, shaking the last off by giving a violent shake to her head.

“Well…”

“Always running you into
something,
aren’t I!”

“Chance, no doubt?”

“It’s handsome of you to say so, Mumbo.”

“I didn’t say so.”

“Still, you did like the masks?”

“Yes. But this is the finish, you know, Dicey.”

“To what?”

‘To dashing about like this.”

“Oh, no—you don’t mean that? ‘The Last Ride Together’? No, you mustn’t say that. I’m, I’m not feeling well.”

“You’re looking perfectly well.”

“Frank, though, says I have had a shock.”

“Surely
you
should know?”

“Yes, but he sees me every day. And those are the people who know, aren’t they?”

“I’ve no idea. Nobody sees me every day.”

“Then I don’t know, Mumbo, how you can have any idea what you are like.”

“Your mother had some idea what I am like.”

“Why?—I mean, how did you know?”

“Your mother told me not to be bad for you.”

“Did
she?—Mustn’t she, more, have been thinking of us all three?—Nothing’s ever really got going when there wasn’t Sheikie too. Look at the other night.”

“That is true,” Clare said. “And that she knew. But I was the one she gave the wigging to.—Dicey, what happened to her in Cumberland?”

“She didn’t go vapouring over a crag while gazing at the moon.”

“Not she!”

“Some thought her dreamy. No, she went down in that plague at the end of the war. That Spanish Flu, that was like a war more. Why had people to live through that, then die then? Anyway, they had to. That, like war was, was the common lot. And the common lot’s good enough for anybody who’s any good, isn’t it? Good enough for her. It was very bad up there where we were, in those isolated places. Everywhere such awful dismay. There she was with nobody but me, doing what she could—so often, in vain. You can nurse sickness, but what can you do against dismay? She never turned a hair—he would have been proud of her.”

“Who?”

“Your father.”

Clare said first nothing, then only: “You didn’t get it?”

“Some children didn’t—did you? … Mumbo, it all was rather confused, confusing, the other evening? I mean, at Southstone.”

“I should stop thinking about that.”

“All right.—What
did
you think of the masks?”

The car smelled of masks inside. Clare sat with three on her knee, samples—only lightly wrapped, in view of their fragility, in thin paper. Another, bought by Dinah outright, grimaced all by itself on the back seat. Taking her three out, Clare re-examined them, more by touch than sight. “They’re good,” she said. “You were right.”

“I’m glad. Glad not to have brought you down here for nothing; also for her—you
are
taking them?”

“She’ll have to keep at it. No good me creating a demand if she can’t supply: bad for the shop.”

“She looked puzzled but pleased, I thought.”

Clare, absently, held up one of the masks to her own face. The driver waited till she had negotiated the Hillman past a party of bicycles—the road was seeming to narrow; their reflectors, caught in the Hillman’s side lights, strung out into a series of scarlet warnings—to more than half turn round, crying: “Don’t do that!”

“What are masks for, then?”

“To hang on walls.”

“Dicey … I am not now hearing
more
bells, am I?”

“Only my church’s; they wouldn’t hurt a fly.—We’re back, all but. I thought we’d go round by Frank’s.”

Clare re-swathed the three in their tissue paper. “Oh? Just as you like.”

“He’ll
be
at Applegate, probably.”

“What’s the point, then?” (Frank, who had made an exception of this Sunday by going over to lunch at the other side of the county, had yet to be met. Clare, Sabbath or not, had polished off one or two pieces of Mopsie Pye business along her road from London, so had not got to Applegate till about two o’clock; not too late, however, for an excellent pheasant. Francis had been active during the meal.) “See the cottage?” she said, more pleasantly.

“What I want to do there is, tack up this mask.”

“Ah. A surprise?”

They came to a stop at Frank’s neat gate. Clare took a look up the short path. In this late light, the face of the cottage was dark-engraved against trees behind it—seen by a newcomer, and through no veil other than that of evening, it had the somehow sinister sentimentality of an illustration to one of those books of tales over which bygone children wore out their eyes. Two top windows were squeezed under heavy eaves; two below looked out over clumps of box. Care and time, by all signs, had gone to the upkeep—not a weed sprouted between the cobbles of the path; the porch, the door, and the water butt at the side had lately been painted a scarab-blue which kept sheen even in deep dusk. Yet the cottage, like others on promotion, had about it a look of askew destiny. A television aerial, over the dipping roof-line, showed that the owner had at least one resource. Only the aerial seemed of normal size.

“Should fit the man like a glove, I should imagine?” Clare said.

“There was keen competition for it, I can only tell you.”

“Ever get any sun?”

“Oh, dazzlingly in the early mornings! It faces east.”

“Where is a car put?”

“Yes, that
is
a bore for him. Somebody else’s barn.”

“Looks locked up?” said Clare, sounding optimistic.

“Oh,
no.” Dinah, advancing upon the drop door-handle (which was an example of village ironwork), gave it a practiced wrench. As the door yielded, horrible growls and snarls were heard from within—entrance being directly into the living-room, the Labrador came at them round an oaken settle, teeth bared. Dinah pushed past the dog. “And don’t try anything on with your Aunt Mumbo!”

“It had better not!”

The black beast, having run out of snarls, went off and became
couchant
under a side table: it continued to watch them disagreeably. “One oughtn’t to talk about it,” Dinah said, “because it listens. But I sometimes think that by having such a horrible character it draws off any bad out of Frank. He has a very nice character, as you’ll see.” She held her hand, experimentally, near to the white ashes powdering the hearth. “Dead cold. Out since last night, I should think. So he probably only looked in just now, just for a minute, to leave the dog back, so didn’t bother.” She looked round for somewhere to hang the mask.

“It
has
been out, then, the poor brute?”

“Oh yes, he took it to Shepton Mallett. Most people will stand for anything once. Better have the top light on for this job, I think?” Click went the switch. With no less certainty, Dinah unearthed a hammer and a tobacco tin of assorted nails.

Top-lit, the room made a clean breast of it. Little to declare, nothing to conceal—exactly what
was
the nature of the reading-matter stuffed back into a recess deep enough to be still shadowy was the only mystery to remain. The walls’ plaster bulged over ancient stonework; the low ceiling was kept where it was by two hoary cross-beams. The settle, out at a right angle from the hearth, was the only quite unamenable piece of furniture—a rather concave large chesterfield in a garment of Jacobean linen looked comfortable, as did the saddlebag chairs upholstered either in hide or a good substitute. Apart from the pearwood table having under it at the minute the Labrador, there were other, smaller ones, on which were many ash trays, each looking as though it might have a history. There were two shaded table lamps, though it might be suspected that Frank when left to himself lived with the top light on, as it now was. Any disorder was on the floor: Sunday papers, dishevelled, lay where they had been impatiently dropped, and more than one of the rugs had been kicked up at the corners or rucked across by some frenetic movement— surely only the dog’s?

Dinah, though already holding the point of a nail in position against a place on the wall, turned when she felt Clare to be examining the room. Her eyes, slow and soon left behind, followed Clare’s earnestly on their tour. “Nice?” she wanted to know.

“You
choose that?” asked Clare, reverting to the Jacobean linen.

“Oh, no. Why should I? But I like it.”

Yet another recess was crammed with dinted black japanned tin boxes. “I don’t think he’s ever unpacked, properly,” said Dinah, seing them being studied. “How he came by those lawyer’s boxes, I’ve often wondered.”

“Never asked?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What would be in them?”

“That I have no idea.”

Clare bit a yawn off. She sat herself on the uncushioned settle.

Dinah seemed disappointed by the choice. “I don’t care much, ever, for that settle. But his wife liked it, as far as I can make out. She apparently believed it came out of a Welsh farmhouse—and it does keep draughts out; that I must say it does. Unfortunately, you see, this room has that other door at the other end, straight into the yard. It used to be two rooms. However, one learns to put cushions against that.”

“Where is Mrs. Wilkins?”

“Oh, she’s been for years in Heaven!—at least I should think so; I hope so. Frank’s a widower.”

“How does he like that?”

“How could anybody possibly? It’s a hardship. Still, it’s another thing he and I have in common.—You’re not sneezing?
Not
in a draught, are you?”

“No harm in a little through ventilation, as my mother would have said.”

“May I tell you one thing I have often wondered?”

“Well, what?”

“Why did he marry her?”

Clare’s back stiffened against the settle’s. She outstared Dinah, but nonetheless consented to take thought, ending by coming out with: “I asked her that once, one day. She thought honestly, then gave a tremendous laugh, saying, ‘D’you know, I don’t think he’s ever told me!’—As a marriage, you know, Dinah, that was all right. She was born Army. We make dynastic marriages.”

“You didn’t.”

“No, but then I’m a muddle. No.”

“Did you ever wish she was not there?”

“Well—”

“Did you ever hate her?”

“My mother? No, never,” Clare said. That was that.

“I liked her,” said Dinah. “She was nice to me, and friendly to Mother.”

Clare said vaguely: “Went out of her way to be.”

“Does it ever seem to you that the non-sins of our fathers—and mothers—have been visited upon us?”

Clare said: “I thought you were going to hang that mask?”

“Indeed I am!”

Easier said than done. A well-worn cottage comedy ran its course—outbursts of hammering, each in a fresh place, each ending with the rebounding nail falling to the floor. “Bother! …
oh
, bother! … bother all ancient walls! As you can see, poor Frank only could hang his pictures where he could.” Now she said so, that was to be seen. But as they were all bird pictures (Peter Scott) and birds are often at different altitudes, it might not matter.—”Don’t breathe; I
think
this one’s staying in!” Dinah hastily hung the mask on it, stood back. The mask looked well.

“So now, I suppose—”

The mask fell to the floor.

“Perhaps,” said Dinah, picking it up, “it was not MEANT to hang here?” She moved a pottery jug with some twigs in it on to the table with the Labrador under it and propped the mask against the jug.
“Here,
it hardly can fail to catch his eye?”

“Hardly, I should imagine.”

“I wish,” said Dinah, looking about her once more when they were leaving, “we
had
lit the fire in here, even for a short time. And in a way I wish I hadn’t brought in that mask—however, there it is. You see, I love this cottage. I wish it was mine. Directly I am in here I feel safe again— it’s a long, long time since anywhere else has given me the same feeling. Feverel Cottage
was only called a cottage; I suppose it was not one really—but there were many times when it felt like one.
This
cottage has got some syringa bushes in the back garden, and the smell is the same. And also here there is a pane of glass in the roof, upstairs, which one can hear the rain pattering on. I am sure the people who lived here before Frank must have kept kittens, because there occasionally still is a smell of them.—I, I don’t suppose you see what I mean, Mumbo?”

Clare did her best—she shut her eyes. But club chairs and ash trays remained imprinted.

“You don’t?” said Dinah.

“Dicey, this is not
like
Feverel Cottage!”

“Oh, no. No. No, of course it isn’t.—Come on!”

“Now, where?”