Unexpected Magic (2 page)

But my charges were not happy about this. “It's wet there. We'll get all muddy. My mum told me to keep my clothes clean,” they said from all around me.

“You won't get muddy with me,” I told them firmly. “We're only going as far as the elephants.” There was a man who built life-sized mechanical elephants in a shed in Water Lane. These fascinated everyone. The children gave up objecting at once. Ellen actually put her hand trustingly in mine and we crossed the main road like a great liner escorted by coracles.

Water Lane was indeed muddy. Wetness oozed up from its sandy surface and ran in dozens of streams across it. Mr. Hinkston's herd of cows had added their contributions. The children minced and yelled. “Walk along the very edge,” I commanded them. “Be adventurous. If we're lucky, we'll get inside the yard and look at the elephants in the sheds.”

Most of them obeyed me except Ursula. But she was my sister and I had charge of her shoes along with the rest of her. Although I was determined from the outset to treat her exactly like the other children, as if this was truly a class from a nursery school, or the Pied Piper leading the children of Hamlin Town, I decided to let her be. Ursula had times when she bit you if you crossed her. Besides, what were shoes? So, to cries of, “Ooh! Your sister's getting in all the pancakes!” we arrived outside the big black fence where the elephants were, to find it all locked and bolted. As this was a Saturday, the man who made the elephants had gone to make money with them at a fête or a fair somewhere.

There were loud cries of disappointment and derision at this, particularly from Terry, who was a very outspoken child. I looked up at the tall fence—it had barbed wire along the top—and contemplated boosting them all over it for an adventure inside. But there were their clothes to consider, it would be hard work, and it was not really what I had come down Water Lane to do.

“This means we have to go on,” I told them, “to the really adventurous thing. We are going to the very end of Water Lane to see what's at the end of it.”

“That's ever so far!” one of them whined.

“No, it's not,” I said, not having the least idea. I had never had time to go much beyond the river. “Or we'll get to the river and then walk along it to see where it goes to.”

“Rivers don't go anywhere,” someone pronounced.

“Yes, they do,” I asserted. “There's a bubbling fountain somewhere where it runs out of the ground. We're going to find it.” I had been reading books about the source of the Nile, I think.

They liked the idea of the fountain. We went on. The cows had not been on this further part, but it was still wet. I encouraged them to step from sandy strip to sandy island and they liked that. They were all beginning to think of themselves as true adventurers. But Ursula, no doubt wanting to preserve her special status, walked straight through everything and got her shoes all wet and crusty. A number of the children drew my attention to this.

“She's not good like you are,” I said.

We went on in fine style for a good quarter of a mile until we came to the place where the river broke out of the hedge and swilled across the lane in a ford. Here the expedition broke down utterly.

“It's water! I'll get wet! It's all muddy!”

“I'm
tired
!” said someone. Ellen stood by the river and grizzled, reflecting the general mood.

“This is where we can leave the lane and go up along the river,” I said. But this found no favor. The banks would be muddy. We would have to get through the hedge. They would tear their clothes.

I was shocked and disgusted at their lack of spirit. The ford across the road had always struck me as the nearest and most romantic thing to a proper adventure. I loved the way the bright brown water ran so continuously there—in the mysterious way of rivers—in the shallow sandy dip.

“We're going on,” I announced. “Take your shoes off and walk through in your bare feet.”

This, for some reason, struck them all as highly adventurous. Shoes and socks were carefully removed. The quickest splashed into the water. “Ooh! Innit
cold
!”

“I'm paddling!” shouted Terry. “I'm going for a paddle.” His feet, I was interested to see, were perfect. He must have felt rather left out in Eva's family.

I lost control of the expedition in this moment of inattention. Suddenly everyone was going in for a paddle. “All right,” I said hastily. “We'll stay here and paddle.”

Ursula, always fiercely loyal in her own way, walked out of the river and sat down to take her shoes off too. The rest splashed and screamed. Terry began throwing water about. Quite a number of them squatted down at the edge of the water and scooped up muddy sand. Brown stains began climbing up crisp cotton frocks, the seats of beautifully ironed shorts quickly acquired a black splotch. Even before this was pointed out to me, I saw this would not do. These were the “clean children.” I made all the little girls come out of the water and spent some time trying to get the edges of their frocks tucked upwards into their knickers. “The boys can take their trousers off,” I announced.

But this did no good. The frocks just came tumbling down again and the boys' little white pants were no longer really white. No one paid any attention to my suggestion that it was time to go home now. The urge to paddle was upon them all.

“All right,” I said, yielding to the inevitable. “Then you all have to take all your clothes off.”

This caused a startled pause. “That ain't right,” someone said uncertainly.

“Yes it is,” I told them, somewhat pompously. “There is nothing whatsoever wrong with the sight of the naked human body.” I had read that somewhere and found it quite convincing. “Besides,” I added, more pragmatically, “you'll all get into trouble if you come home with dirty clothes.”

That all but convinced them. The thought of what their mums would say was a powerful aid to nudity. “But won't we catch cold?” someone asked.

“Cavemen never wore clothes and they never caught cold,” I informed them. “Besides, it's quite warm now.” A mild and misty sunlight suddenly arrived and helped my cause. The brown river was flecked with sun and looked truly inviting. Without a word, everybody began undressing, even Ellen, who was quite good at it, considering how young she was. Back to nursery teacher mode again, I made folded piles of every person's clothing, shoes underneath, and put them in a long row along the bank under the hedge. True to my earlier resolve, I made no exception for Ursula's clothes, although her dress was an awful one my mother had made out of old curtains, and thoroughly wet anyway.

There was a happy scramble into the water, mostly to the slightly deeper end by the hedge. Terry was throwing water instantly. But then there was another pause.

“
You
undress too.” They were all saying it.

“I'm too big,” I said.

“You
said
that didn't matter,” Ursula pointed out. “You undress too, or it isn't
fair.
”

“Yeah,” the rest chorused. “It ain't
fair
!”

I prided myself on my fairness, and on my rational, intellectual approach to life, but …

“Or we'll all get dressed again,” added Ursula.

The thought of all that trouble wasted was too much. “All right,” I said. I went over to the hedge and took off my battered gray shorts and my old, pulled jersey and put them in a heap at the end of the row. I knew as I did so why the rest had been so doubtful. I had never been naked out of doors before. In those days, nobody ever was. I felt shamed and rather wicked. And I was so big, compared with the others. The fact that we all now had no clothes on seemed to make my size much more obvious. I felt like one of the man's mechanical elephants, and sinful with it. But I told myself sternly that we were having a rational adventurous experience and joined the rest in the river.

The water was cold, but not too cold, and the sun was just strong enough. Just.

Ellen, for some reason, would not join the others over by the hedge. She sat on the other side of the road, on the opposite bank of the river where it sloped up to the road again, and diligently scraped river mud up into a long mountain between her legs. When the mountain was made, she smacked it heavily. It sounded like a wet child being hit.

She made me nervous. I decided to keep an eye on her and sat facing her, squatting in the water, scooping up piles of mud to form islands. From there, I could look across the road and make sure Terry did not get too wild. They were, I thought, somewhat artificially, a most romantic and angelic sight, a picture an artist might paint if he wanted to depict young angels (except Terry was not being angelic and I told him to
stop throwing mud).
They were all tubular and white and in energetic attitudes, and the only one not quite right for the picture was Ursula with her chalk white skin and wild black hair. The others all had smooth fair heads, ranging from near white in the young ones, through straw yellow, to honey in the older ones. My own hair had gone beyond the honey, since I was so much older, into dull brown.

Here I noticed how
big
I was again. My torso was thick, more like an oil drum than a tube, and my legs looked
fat
beside their skinny little limbs. I began to feel sinful again. I had to force myself to attend to the islands I was making. I gave them landscapes and invented people for them.

“What you doing?” asked Ellen.

“Making islands.” I was feeling back-to-nature and at ease again.

“Stupid,” she said.

More or less as she spoke, a tractor came up the lane behind her, going toward the village. The man driving it stopped it just in front of the water and stared. He had one of those oval narrow faces that always went with people who went to Chapel in the village. I know I thought he was Chapel. He was the sort of age you might expect someone to be who was a father of small children. He looked as if he had children. And he was deeply and utterly shocked. He looked at the brawling, naked little ones, he looked at Ellen, and he looked at me. Then he leaned down and said, quite mildly, “You didn't ought to do that.”

“Their clothes were getting wet, you see,” I said.

He just gave me another, mild, shocked look and started the tractor and went through the river, making it all muddy. I never, ever saw him again.

“Told you so,” said Ellen.

That was the end of the adventure. I felt deeply sinful. The little ones were suddenly not having fun any more. Without making much fuss about it, we all quietly got our clothes and got dressed again. We retraced our steps to the village. It was just about lunchtime anyway.

As I said, word gets round in a village with amazing speed. “You know the girl Jones? She took thirty kids down Water Lane and encouraged them to do wrong there. They was all there, naked as the day they was born, sitting in the river there, and her along with them, as bold as brass. A big girl like the girl Jones did ought to know better! Whatever next!”

My parents interrogated me about it the next day. Isobel was there, backward hovering, wanting to check that her instinct had been right, I think, and fearful of the outcome. She looked relieved when the questions were mild and puzzled. I think my mother did not believe I had done anything so bizarre.

“There is nothing shameful about the naked human body,” I reiterated.

Since my mother had given me the book that said so, there was very little she could reply. She turned to Ursula. But Ursula was stoically and fiercely loyal. She said nothing at all.

The only result of this adventure was that nobody ever suggested I should look after any children except my own sisters (who were strange anyway). Jean kept her promise to be my friend. The next year, when the Americans came to England, Jean and I spent many happy hours sitting on the church wall watching young GIs stagger out of the pub to be sick. But Jean never brought her sisters with her. I think her mother had forbidden it.

When I look back, I rather admire my nine-year-old self. I had been handed the baby several times over that morning. I took the most harmless possible way to disqualify myself as a child-minder. Nobody got hurt. Everyone had fun. And I never had to do it again.