The Little Girls (7 page)

“No, me, now, madam. The desk has closed.”

“Oh? How peculiar.—What
is
the matter, Clare?”

“Dropped a glove,” grunted Mumbo, dropping the other.

Ten days after Frank had become a grandfather, Dinah pulled up her car at a lonely crossroads. She lit a cigarette, then unfurled a map. This should be the place she had said, but was it? Places on maps are unlike what they are in reality. Space causes the same anxiety as time, when one is at sea with regard to it. Here, though, all but on top of her, was an excellent signpost—and better still, what she learned from it was encouraging. It appeared that the roads intersecting here were the roads she’d hoped. If this was not the place, it ought to be. She could do no more.

She and the car were up on a hill, in miraculous early-October air, which shone, making dazzling the emptiness of the country. It was noon. Few were trees, far or near; of those that there were each stood out in tinted and lonely beauty, a smoky flame; while in distances a watery shimmer was given off by roads whose surfaces caught the sun— roads whose wide verges were bounded only by low stone walls. Morning filled the Hillman, its windows open—she, who thought she hated to wait, sat tranced, becalmed in stillness as one only otherwise is in the midst of speed. She had with her her transistor, a flash,
In Memoriam
bound in once-violet suede, and
The Midwich Cuckoos
, but had resort to none of them: while this lasted, everything was enough… . But now traffic, having for some time been sealed away out of sight and hearing behind the skylines, began to come by in gushes—vans, lorries, a bubble car, two or three great snooty ones, a tractor, motor bikes. She began to wonder. Soon she was watching, searching the road coming up on her left. Along that the taxi must come. Why did it not?

Sitting turned left, arm hanging over the seat-back, Dinah had in mind no other direction. It was, however, from straight ahead that a Mini-Minor came bounding towards the Hillman. Checking its eagerness as it neared the crossroads, it, once across them, slowed down to a crawl. In passing, sidling close to the Hillman, the driver took stock of Dinah’s turned-away head. The Mini-Minor then came to a stop, correctly, on its side of the road, the requisite number of yards further along. Clare, encased in dogtooth tweed and wearing a claret variant of the turban, got out and walked back briskly towards the Hillman.

Distracted, at last, from her vigil by these manoeuvres and the plaguey sense of now having a neighbour, Dinah looked behind her to see what was going on. Seeing at once who it was, she flew into a rage. “What on earth—?” she stormed, leaning out of a window. “I told you to take a
taxi!
”

“I know, I know!” Buoyant, Clare came alongside.

“I
told
you the train!”

“Never take trains—what’s the matter with this? I am on the dot.”

“You have ruined everything.”

“Boohoo!” said Clare, with veteran unconcern. Here they were back where they had left off—how long ago? Not a day might have passed! “Are you,” she asked, putting a hogskin-gloved hand on the frame of the window, “getting out, or do I get in?”

“What are we to do with that car of yours?”

‘Tail you home in it, I suppose, don’t I?”

“But we shan’t, like that,” Dinah mourned, “be able to
talk.
Don’t you see, that was the entire point—the whole point of this entire plan?”

“What I don’t see is, why gallivant out here? Why not you simply have met the train?”

“Fat lot of good that would have been, when you weren’t on it! But anyway, meet in a
station
?—No, really, Mumbo!”

“For your feelings, I was supposed to take an expensive taxi?”

“You old meanie, with that enormous shop of yours!”

Dinah’s tone changed to one of dovelike complaint. “Yes, I know we do have the day, and there’s my house—
there,
though, I’m so constantly overrun: wait till you see! So if you knew with what care I’d devised this plan—you and me, in my car, for the whole drive home. That’s what I’ve looked forward to! As it is, we shall be a ghastly procession.”

“Hum-ha, yes: could have been nice. Anyway, let’s have a breather?”

“Budge, then—let me out. Let’s sit in the sun.”

Clare, watching Dinah’s length snake out of the Hillman, remarked: “Fancy
you
growing into a daddylonglegs!”

Dinah looked down at herself, brushed ash from her slacks. “Yes, haven’t I!” In accord, facing towards the signposts, they walked a pace or two, mounted the grass verge, and sat themselves on a wall. From above, around, poured on to them the not wholly untender or hostile noon. The rumpus, during whose course they had truly met, left its benevolent influence behind. Dinah crossed her knees and, clasping the top one, rocked some way back and looked up at the sky; then, with much the same pensive idleness, round at Clare—who, bolt upright, unbuttoned her fitted coat. If Dinah’s regard more rested upon than considered the newfound Clare, Clare’s in return (out of habit?) was inventorial. “Yes, improved,” she admitted, in an as-though-grudging tone.

“Haven’t
I!
Apparently I was a most hideous child, so that’s just as well. It’s nice to look nice.”

“Must be.”

“But you look splendid, Mumbo!” Dinah cried, surprised that anything else could be thought for a moment. She rocked further back on the wall, then sat up with a beatific sigh. “You’re glad, after all, we did gallivant out here?” she began to wheedle—but then broke off. “Look, oh do look, at those hundreds of birds! Off to Africa, can’t make up their minds to start. All that organization, and all for nothing. What a dither they’re in!—No, over there!”

In movement the birds were like shaken silk. At them, Clare did consent to stare: of the universe they transparently shadowed she would have nothing. Her known objection to scenery had been hardened by years which had shown her how sound it was. By now, she resisted many things; or, should she fail to, acted as though she did by affecting an extra nonchalance or jocosity. To be sardonic could be a refuge also. Count on Dicey, she thought, to lay on no scene without towering stage-effects. Meet in a railway station? Oh no, never. Or on a doorstep, or in a room, or even a bar. Nor might one merely meet, one had to converge—and in the middle of what? This great aching landscape. And what had she lifted this out of? Thomas Hardy … No, though: wait a minute—was not an older nigger in this woodpile? “This,” Clare remarked, in what Mrs. Artworth would have called a distinctly peculiar tone, “could be quite a Macbeth meeting-place, could it not?”

“Bubble-bubble,” Dinah said instantaneously. “Not quite a heath, this, or exactly the weather, but near enough. The
main
thing wrong is, being one short. First Witch, Hail. Second Witch, Hail. Third Witch … ? I can’t understand her letting us down like this. When one thinks, I went to a lot of trouble!”

“And made it.”

Dinah went on, unheeding: “No, it’s been most mysterious about Sheikie: she never answered. You saw her— how did she seem?”

“Sore.”

“Said so?”

“You’ve made her life hell.”

“What absolute nonsense!”

“Come off it, Dicey! She has her life, and she has to live.”

“Then why marry that house agent?”

“She more or less was one.”

“Sheikie?—Dust to dust, I suppose, then, ashes to ashes: that’s not my fault!—She didn’t sound sore when she wrote, though. The way she wrote, butter wouldn’t melt.”

“Wrote?”

“What’s up?—don’t fall off the wall! Yes, she naturally wrote, why shouldn’t she? You did. Hers came three-four days after yours. Rather slow off the mark, I thought, but then so had you been.”

“Just this minute, you told me you’d never heard from her.”

“Don’t be dense: I told you she’d never answered. Never answered the one I wrote in answer to hers. As I say, the letter I had from her was quite merry. Said, to think of
me
being still around, what fun. Asked what my name is nowadays, and where I’m perching—meaning, living? Told me what hers now is, and where she perches—pretty permanently, I thought it sounded. Only two doors, apparently, from the old Beaker mansion in What-d’you-callums Gardens. Geographically she hasn’t got far, has she! Something a bit wrong about that, surely? What became of her dancing, I do wonder. What she chiefly wanted to know was, whether I’d heard from you, whether you and I had made any plan and, if so, what, and for what day. I naturally told her.”

“Damn Sheikie! Sly is her second name.”

“Why?” queried Dinah. “Why shouldn’t she? Three it was meant to be—I thought. Anyway, as I say, I jolly well told her. Told her the day (today), the train, and where to get off. Told her to keep an eye out for you on the train, as you’d have the further secret instructions—couldn’t be fagged to go writing everything out all over again. You, I thought, could scoop her into the taxi. … I did, though, particularly ask her to let me know whether she would be coming along, or not. Not simply because of how many chops; more, because I have to picture a thing. I have to picture everything in advance. It’s by picturing things that one lives, I completely think. Which,” added Dinah— turning on Clare a not so much reproachful as exploratory glance (should reproach be risked, how far dare it go?) — “is, I expect, probably just as well. Because when, usually owing to someone else, something one’s pictured does not, after all, work out, one has at least had one tremendous pleasure.”

“True, I’m sure.”

“Oh, but you sound so glum!—Anyway, as I began by telling you, not another squeak out of her, from that day to this. Gone to ground again, as though she had never been. That I do call mysterious: wouldn’t you?”

“No. To me, her motives are clear as glass.”

“Mumbo,
I
don’t see why she wouldn’t come. Or couldn’t. Or why she shouldn’t come, least of all.”

Clare snorted. “Nor did I, at the start. (
Listen
, Dicey,
will you!) On the contrary, what could be jollier, thought I. If you want to know, in the first place I put it up to her, over that scrumptious tea she and I had. ‘You come along too,’ I said, ‘why not?’ She was not on to.”

“Not keen to?”

“Since you ask, she said she would rather die.”

“Oh!” The wound made-the crier-out not know where to be. She blinked at and beyond Clare, then turned in the other direction, to blink alone. “Then why did she ever write to me?” she asked miserably. “What made her?”

“Second thoughts.”

“I don’t see—I don’t understand!”

‘Thought again. That should be clear, should it not?”

“No. What’s she
up
to?”

“Sabotage. Who’s being dense now?”

One way and another, this was not to be borne. Dinah’s scream rose. “Oh, bother,
bother
you two!
Cawing
away at each other—you beastly bothers!”

“Boohoo, boohoo.—And if we’re going to ask who’s been up to what,” went on Clare, with cannibalistic glee, “I’ve got various questions to ask
you.”

“I say, Mumbo, let’s go home and have lunch!” In a flash, Dinah was off the wall. Whistling, she walked ahead, back to the cars, the prospect of a processional drive home less distasteful to her, apparently, than it had been. Clare was the one thwarted. And back Clare had to dart, to recover a dropped good glove.

Waiting, Dinah held open the Mini’s door. “Hop in. I’ll just go ahead and turn.”

“At lunch, then?”

“Except for Francis.”

“Francis?”

“You’ll soon see.—One thing there won’t be,” Dinah said, walking away again, “is Frank.”

“Who
won’t be?” shouted Clare, through the Mini’s window.

“Not today: he’s in London,” called back Dinah, getting into the Hillman. She and it executed a lightning turn, then slid past Clare (ready in gear) at gathering speed. They were off. Clare drove with great intensity. Her ferocious image was never for long gone from the Hillman’s mirror, many as were the turns and twists of the lovely roads. She seemed to be less tailing the car ahead than hunting it. The run to Applegate, cross-country, was about fifteen miles.

Dinah, turning in at her gate, saw Francis framed in the porch, in his whitest coat. He stepped out to meet her— clearly, bearer of tidings. “Chops not come?” she asked, getting out of the car.

“The lady you are expecting is here, madam.”

“I’m not expecting a lady; I have one with me.” (Clare, entangled with cattle back in the lane, could be heard banging on her horn.) “So whoever this one is, she will have to go. Who did she say she was?”

“She appeared to know her own business, so I did not…”

“Never mind—where is she?”

“I put her into the drawing-room with the Major.”

“Now you
are
seeing things, Francis: he’s in Londonl Went by the early train.”

“All I know is,” Francis said in a hard-tried tone, “he walked in this morning, shortly after you’d left, saying he’d changed his mind. Said he considered today too fine for London. Not finding you anywhere, he asked where you’d gone. I could give him no information, beyond the fact that you were expecting a guest for luncheon. He appeared dissatisfied and put out, but took himself off for a prowl round the potager.
He re-entered the house and rang for a drink shortly before the lady’s taxi arrived. Having brought the tray in, I left it to the Major to do the honours.”