The Bazaar and Other Stories (8 page)

 

he could not fathom.
The Pink Biscuit
S
ibella spent her Easter holidays at Folkestone, with her
aunt by marriage, Mrs. Willyard-Lester. Her aunt lived in a
maisonette on the Leas, with balconies, and Sibella occupied a spare
bedroom overlooking the sea. When, waking up in the mornings,
she saw this blue or grey line drawn across her window, saw the
dipping wings and heard the cries of sea-birds, Sibella was always
glad that she had come, and though sometimes during the day this
gladness might be clouded over a little, it never entirely left her.
When one’s mother is dead, one’s father in India, the laying-out of
holidays becomes a problem seriously to be considered. School
friends’ homes are not always open; two days after the end of term
Nancy wrote with the staggering pen of desolation that her mother
had asked, after all, two dreadful women to stay. Sibella, likely to be
stranded at school, was forced to accept Mrs. Willyard-Lester’s longproffered hospitality. This was the least disagreeable of several
alternatives; there are aunts and aunts.

She had not seen Aunt Marjory for eight years, since an
afternoon when she slipped a finger up Sibella’s ringlets and said
she was charmingly pretty. Mrs. Willyard-Lester was one of those
childless people with no idea at what years of a child’s age these
irreticences should be avoided. The alert child of seven, un
accustomed to comment, had glowered at

¹
her aunt, despised her,
and followed her round, with gratitude. Possibly it was remem
brance of this that led Sibella to honour, on this occasion, Mrs.
Willyard-Lester: her instinct had not been at fault. Mrs. WillyardLester treated her like a bride; praised her hair, gave her early tea in
the morning and coffee at night, and exclaimed that this was real,
real
pleasure. Sibella wore her Sunday blouses every day and her two
school dance frocks turn-abouts for dinner. The food was delicious,
though perhaps there was not quite enough; Aunt Marjory even
offered Sibella burgundy, a nasty-smelling drink which made Aunt
Marjory flush.

Certainly it was not exciting, though she had been taken twice to
matinees and several times to concerts on the Leas. Her aunt
deplored the absence of young folk – young men, she meant, she
never thought of girls. “Those

nice
Jefferson boys,” she said, “in
Westcliffe Gardens; one’s always away and the other’s just gone back
to Woolwich. Then there was a young Captain Somerly I used to
meet at bridge;
he
would have admired you, but he’s gone too. Even
Jacob Laurence is away, though he does squint rather: it’s too bad.”
²

Sibella said, “Oh, thanks very much, but I really don’t care for
men,” in the tone in which she would have refused oysters.

 

Aunt Marjory did her hair elaborately, wore remarkable rings, and
seemed to have been poured into her tailor-mades. She played
bridge every afternoon and most evenings, and was an
irreproachable mother to her little dog, Boniface. In the mornings,
the three would stroll up and down the Leas; every second morning
one went to the library to renew Aunt Marjory’s novels. Sometimes
she took Sibella to tea where she went for bridge; Sibella sat by the
windows of the tight, hushed rooms, not liking to turn the pages of
papers she had been given. At tea, everyone would be charming to
her and say they feared it must be dull; ask her whether she liked
her school, when she went back there, and whether she often
danced. A colonel once said he would teach her to play bridge; an
even older colonel promised to take her on the pier; but she never
saw either of them again. The disappearance of the colonels was a
relief to Sibella who, much as she disliked women, disliked men
more.

 

She went for longer walks alone with Boniface, though her aunt
complained that there were funny people about, and that Boniface,
though so brave, had a small bite. A girl of Sibella’s appearance . . .
Once she went to Hythe in a charabanc with Elizabeth Eldon, the
middle-aged maid who saw to the maisonette, Aunt Marjory’s
clothes and the household shopping. Elizabeth, decent and
invincibly unsmiling, went most reluctantly into Hythe Crypt with
Sibella to be grinned upon by the skulls. She cried, “Good Lord,
have mercy!” as the verger clanked the door shut; and declared,
throughout tea at the Oriental Café, that she could not eat
anything, she felt that queer. She did relent to the extent of one
plain cake. Sibella decided in future to go less far but alone. Alone
she was very happy.

 

She was always happy alone; her thoughts were like an orchestra.
She peeped at life this way and that way, down all the queer
perspectives. She was glad she had fifty-five more years of it to live.
She had read several novels since she came to Folkestone and didn’t
think they were so bad. She supposed they must be calculated to
make one take an interest in men, and were perhaps necessary.
Though she and Nancy were not anxious to marry, their lives were
to be romantic. They would have two or three tragedies each.
Husbands, they thought, were so permanent. As for keeping house

 

– but too soon was Sibella to suffer the cares of a house, for
Elizabeth Eldon fell ill.

 

Elizabeth lay in bed, her head wrapped up in a wan pink shawl,
moaning; Aunt Marjory, tapping her penholder on her teeth,
frowned at the sea. She said that it was most annoying. Nobody
could be sorrier for Elizabeth, but really this did make things
difficult. “If one were only not such a busy woman oneself . . . First,
you see, there are all my letters to answer, generally cheques to sign;
then I have to exercise my little Bonnie. No, it’s so sweet of you,
Sibella, but nothing is quite the same as going out with his Mummy;
I couldn’t look him in his little face. Then one must keep up one’s
reading; that means the library almost every day. That’s the morning
gone. Then lunch and one’s lie-down, then before you know where
you are it’s time for bridge. Don’t you notice, it is always the busy
people who are still further put upon? I’ve got that dreadful
‘temporary’ woman to come in, though I feel sure she’s a Socialist.
But it’s the
shopping
, Sibella. You see, Markham doesn’t send for
orders every day for my small custom, and even the butcher only
three days a week. Elizabeth goes down town and brings up the
things herself. Now I do wonder . . . ”

 

Sibella, who had drawn a large breath for this purpose, brought
out with a burst: “But, Aunt Marjory,
I
could shop!”

 

Mrs. Willyard-Lester had thought of this, but the suggestion
distracted her. She twisted her rings round and sighed; it was too
bad, it was really. If Sibella
would
. . . She should take Aunt Marjory’s
stamped suede satchel, used for the library books, so as not to be
seen with that nasty basket; also she must be
sure
to make them send
anything at all heavy. And she must really have coffee and a biscuit
before going out – here Mrs. Willyard-Lester boldly rang for the
temporary who had obliged her. The temporary glared at them from
the doorway, very unofficial and large in a flowered blouse; Boniface
fled shivering to his mistress.

 

One
blessing was, Aunt Marjory said, they did nearly all the
shopping at one good grocer’s, Markham. It was universally
conceded to be the best grocer’s; except for things like veal and
cauliflowers, and, of course, bread. To Markham’s, therefore, Sibella,
half an hour later, made an awed approach.

 

On her left arm, carefully crooked, she carried Aunt Marjory’s
stamped suede satchel; she would have preferred, secretly, the nasty
basket. Into her right glove were slipped Aunt Marjory’s card and a
list of requisites dictated between the groans of Elizabeth. She did
not ever remember having bought much at a shop except sweets,
stamps, postcards, diaries – and hair-ribbon in the days when one
had hair; she stood for some time in the mosaic entrance-porch, feet
sunk deep in a resilient mat. China’s self must have laboured to
perfect those dragoned crocks of ginger, white and blue, of which a
pyramid on her left tottered up to singleness. In glittering films of
crystal the citrons, oranges of Italy and Spain were staked as for a
banquet, triumphant from their syrupy ordeal. There was a
something of triumph, too, in the repose of that whole side of a split
pig, reclined voluptuously on a bank of moss; a stuffed Oriental
bowed above a lacquer bowl of tea.

 

Sibella placed one finger on the plate-glass door; the door
receded cavernously, drawing Sibella after it by the finger. She
advanced quite soundlessly as after death over the soft cork floor;
one must be silent here though one might stamp and stamp. The
shop was full; at once Sibella felt herself a magnet to all eyes –
sensation not uncommon to Sibella. “So young a girl” – perhaps they
thought – “entering so large a shop with such complete assurance!”
or “What a capable-looking girl; what lovely hair!” Or did they
perhaps think she was married; married very, very young? Sibella
drew the list out of her glove to study it, all eyebrows, as she had
seen them study hands at bridge. Then she crossed the shop
diagonally to the furthest counter, leant her stomach against it,
propped the satchel upon a chair, and looked to left and right,
drawing a long breath. A white young man in an apron looked at her
through an archway of potted meat, crackled towards her, arranged
the tips of his fingers on the counter, and bowed across it.

 

“Madam?” She still saw the crown of his head, and it smelt
delicious. The air smelt also of apricots, rind and sugar. He had an
austere male beauty; the shop rose over them, very high and pure:
marble. “
What
may we – ?” he began.

 

“Small packet curry powder one two and threepenny bottled
anchovies quarter of a pound almonds best quality large packet
Quaker oats quarter of a pound coffee fresh roasted half a dozen
matches usual make – ” Sibella herself was surprised at all this; the
young man’s pencil flew.

 

She resumed: “Large size galantine chicken Poulton and Noels or
other good make small pot Yarmouth bloater pound and a half two
and threepenny bacon – ”

 

The young man, pencil arrested, looked up in reproach. “That
would be at the Cheese and Bacon, Madam. If I might direct you?”
He looked inspiringly into the eyes of Sibella; she looked back at
him trustfully. He let himself out by lifting a kind of portcullis, and
she followed him across the shop.

 

The young men at the Cheese and Bacon were very, very deft.
They set whirling great steel wheels; knives rushed and rashers
curled away from the knives as delicately as petals. They bowled
great cheeses along the marble, and tossed them to one another in
titan frolic. They went effortlessly through great waxen slabs with a
taut wire. Ladies, apparently fascinated, thronged before the
counter; Sibella had to stand on tip-toe to see what was going on.
There was a hum of conversation; the young men were prepared to
talk to you – disengagedly – and the ladies seemed to like talking;
they lingered, comparing the streaks on different bits of bacon,
while anxious others murmured and surged behind them.

 

It did not take long to choose Sibella’s bacon, because her young
man, though gentle, was quite inexorable. He said that all the twoand-threepenny was of the same quality, similar in streak and of
superlative excellence. He remarked with a shade of reproof, when
Sibella implored him to cut the rashers fine, that they
always
cut
rashers fine unless requested not to.

 

He took Mrs. Willyard-Lester’s name perfunctorily; he did not
seem to wonder who Sibella could be, or how so young a girl came
to be buying bacon so efficiently. Sibella went gratefully back to the
other young man. On the way she came to the fancy biscuits.

 

The fancy biscuits, occupying a table like an altar, vomited
opulently out on to plates from a cornucopia. They first became
³
noticeable to Sibella by their fragrance, sweet and nutty. They
seemed a whole mint of sugar coinage, lemon, chocolate, mauve and
pink, auburn scalloped edges of the biscuit showed around the
margin of the sugar. Sibella was hungry: the breakfast provided by
the temporary had been slighter and less appetising than Elizabeth’s.
As she approached, some vibration made a pink biscuit, balanced at
the apex, clear a plate’s rim and quiver to stillness at the very edge
of the table. Sibella, scarcely pausing, brushed the biscuit into her
jersey pocket.

 

The first young man, throughout so sympathetic, helped her pack
parcels into her satchel: they just fitted. She was so much overcome,
she forgot to give him the account address: he asked for it with
infinite delicacy. He bowed even lower as he said “Good morning,”
and when she turned again and caught his eye, he bowed again. She
passed out; the plate-glass door sighed gently as it swung behind
her. Her feet were sucked once more into the mat. Sibella, detaching
herself, came to a full stop of contemplation before the swooning
pig. Here, shifting the now weighty satchel, she ate the biscuit. She
alternately licked the sugar and nibbled the biscuity part under
neath. The surface was delectable to the tongue; its glaze was
dimming; it became gradually moist and porous. The biscuity part
had a flavour caramels missed. Sibella had never found a biscuit half
so good; she only wished she had been able to take another.

 

Suddenly Conscience woke, flinched, stared and veered gigan
tically round upon Sibella . . .
How
had Sibella come by the biscuit?
It was STOLEN.

 

Sibella had never met a thief; Nancy had once spoken to a
housemaid who had been later arrested. A captured thief was
dragged off, horribly resistant. A thief was less outrageous than a
murderer, but more dowdy; a person quite unclean and scabrous, like
a rat. One had only to cry “Stop, thief!” and the jolly world was after
him. He wasn’t killed, he didn’t die – he ended. And people,
munching over morning papers, said “How dreadful!” Sibella stared
at the split pig in Markham’s window with eyes that might have
scorched a brand upon its flank. Then she thought that she must fly