The Little Girls (11 page)

Today, in spite of (indeed, because of) the heat, Miss Ardingfay strolled outdoors after lunch. She wished to be sure that the girls now all in the garden were resting quietly, not running about. Out here everything shimmered: a heat-haze hung over the Channel. No France, today. The girls were not running about. Everywhere was dotted with butcher-blue, but it kept still. Having had it rubbed into them about sunstroke, they kept in the shade, or what shade there was—some lay flat, some were propped against banks, trees, or each other, some leaned back on their hands, some sat on their heels. A few read; the rest were doing nothing particular. That they had been talking could be gathered from the hushes that fell. She, in her large rush hat and Florentine-belted green garb, was observed by them. Shy in her own way, she passed on like the Imperial Votaress.

“For ever on the go,” commented Sheila, on the whole approvingly, to Diana, with whom she shared such inches of shade as were cast by a short escallonia hedge.

“Has to be, do you suppose?”

“Oh, she has to be. Makes her red in the face though.”

Yet they envied Miss Ardingfay her free gait. What would kill them if it continued was inactivity. With sharp, clean thumbnails Sheila split blades of grass—she sat up. Diana lay on her back, now and then drumming with her heels. As Sheila bent frowning over her task, the immaculate shell-pink of her skull showed along the division of her hair. So dead straight was the parting—back from the centre-forehead, over the top and on down behind, where it served to allot each hair to one or another of the flawless pigtails—that her head looked as though it had been slightly split. Should it fall apart, it would do so in two perfectly even halves…. Cravingly, the addicted children thought about movement—when again could it start, how most could it be? Pure vision was Sheila’s.—Flinging away the last bit of grass, she asked: “After tea, coming to the rink?”

(That was, the open-air roller-skating rink, at the more popular end of Southstone.)

“Oo,
yes!”

“All very well saying ‘Oo, yes,’ but have you got any money? You know what happened.”

“Oh, no; I haven’t got any money.”

“Well, there you are. Why d’you never have any? Or why don’t
you
have a season ticket?”

“I don’t know. Oh, I want to
go
to the rink!”

“Well, you can’t, can you? Till you do go more, you’ll never be any good.”

“You show off at that rink.”

“So you would, if you were any good.—Try and see if Mumbo’s got any money.”

“No.”

“No harm seeing.”

“It’s too hot,” said Diana, putting on airs.

“Oh, all right,” Sheila said, unconcernedly (though not quite, since she was not supposed to go to the rink alone) tossing the plaits back. “You’ll never be any good.—What shall you do, then? Just go home?”

“Unless,” sighed Diana, unhopefully,
“you
had any?” “I don’t need any.”

That was true, though not fair. Sheila was allowed a bike, which she skimmed about everywhere on, like anything. And anything she had not got a season ticket for, she could get tick to get into or on to, such as the pier. She’d once got all three of them on to the pier free, to show she could—alas, never again! The fact was the Beakers were important: not only had they met the Member of Parliament, they hob-nobbed with the Mayor. And on top of that, their daughter was a celebrity. Dejected, Diana rolled over on to her stomach, which gave a spiteful gurgle. Sheila mimicked the sound lewdly but absently—she was elsewhere. She announced: “I’m going to dance ‘The Spirit of Winter.’”

“Oh—why can’t you dance ‘The Spirit of Summer’?”

“Because I’m dancing ‘The Spirit of Winter,’ stupid. Any lump could dance ‘The Spirit of Summer.’ I shall wear frost.”

“Where?”

“The Metropole ballroom.”

“When?”

“The Gala, for prevention of cruelty, animals or children or something—I don’t care; I don’t know.”

“But
when?
Soon, or after the holidays?”

“After the holidays. October.”

Diana thought. She said: “October’s not winter.”

“I shall
make
it winter. And they’re festooning the stage with silver.”

“Sheikie, do
you
ever think it’s extraordinary to be you?”

“No,” said the other, flatly and unregretfully. She transferred her gaze to the middle-distance. “Do look at Mumbo scratching her head. Go over and ask if she’s got nits.”

Diana, too, took a look. She explained. “Thinking.”

“I know she’s thinking; and I jolly well know what she’s thinking
about,
and so you should. Go over and ask if she’s got—”

“What are nits?”

“Oo-er.
What awful people have in their heads.”

“Oh, bother. You go over and ask.” Diana, pressed flat to the breast of Earth, one cheek down on it, nonetheless watched Sheila sideways, out of one eye. In return, that prettiest, coolest little Sheila dealt out one of her most supernatural stares. “I DARE you to.”

Doomed Diana got up, behind first. She rambled across and off their section of lawn, crossed the path, and mounted to where, on the other side, Clare sat in an insolent solitude. Clare occupied, in the manner of Alexander Selkirk, a small, unaccountable grassy mound. She was—as Miss Ardingfay had noted but, not feeling up to a duel at that moment, had let pass, having reason to hope that the child might be pickled by foreign climes—full in the sun. Her back was turned to the path, which obliged Diana to ramble round: she ventured, even, a step or two up the slope. Clare was not sunk in thought but positively blown up with it, like a bullfrog. Her shortish, thick stiff hair sprang about, nohow. The glower she turned on Diana was not encouraging.

“I say, Mumbo, have you got—”

“No I haven’t. So go away.”

“What have I done?” asked Diana, taking offence. “And what were you making those awful faces at me at lunch for?”

” ‘
Faces
’
? I didn’t know you were there.”

“You did,” contradicted Diana, emboldened by balancing on one leg, in spite of the slope. “If you didn’t, you
have
got nits in your brain, crawling round and round.” She added, in a more social tone: “After tea, Sheikie’s going to the rink, she says. Are you?”

“Rink?” Clare examined the idiot from top to toe. “No.”

“I would
like
to go. I don’t get on very fast, when I never do.”

“You like falling down, attracting attention.”

“No, I don’t. It hurts. And I don’t knock other people down. You bang round knocking people down. They won’t let you back on that rink, if you barge about.”

“Who says?” Clare wanted to know, jibingly.

Diana hurriedly put on airs again. “Oo, it’s hot. Is this the same as India?”

“Ho,
yes,
like anything!”

“Sheikie and I know what you’re thinking about. Where we are, we see you scratching your head.”

“Then go back to wherever you think you are.—I
would,”
Clare said ominously, “if I were you.”

That fascinated Diana. She could not but advance further up the mound. Re-establishing balance, she stood on the other leg. “Why, if you were me, would you go away?

If you were
me,
you’d know what you’re thinking about— is that why?”

“Oh—do—just go—AWAY.”

“Oh—all—right—then—I—WILL. Anyway, you never answer anything I ask, so I think I’d rather. You never answer anything I say.”

“You bleat. How can anyone answer? You just bleat.”

“
I,
”
said the other, “don’t go and ruin beautiful poems.”

Clare banged shut her dark, rather prominent and now furious eyes. “Baa-lamb!” she shouted.

“
Touche
?” At once, Diana broke out into a shrill, happy, attacking chant. “
Ru
-ining
that beauti-
ful
po-
em
.
Ru
-ining that beautiful po-
em
.
Ru
-ining
that beauti-
ful
po-
em
. Roo-ining that—”

Clare snatched at the leg and expertly jerked it away from under. Down came Diana, without even a shriek. Not doubting she now was dead and in Heaven, she stayed as and where she had fallen, placidly wide-eyed. Clare, for her part, got up. She aimed a kick not at but over the bright-blue upside-down tangle, tunic and bloomers, then walked off. Diana arose, still looking surprised.

From the cool dark inside an open window, Mademoiselle, Miss Brace (the geography mistress), and Matron, holding their coffee cups, looked on. They had seen much the same thing happen before. The victim was plump, and the lawn though hard-baked not as hard as the asphalt from which the same child had rebounded the other day. Nevertheless they melted back from the window: Matron, whose afternoon peace could be most imperilled, the first to do so. Better have witnessed nothing.

Sheila, from under the escallonia, enjoyed the spectacle and took note of its audience. Turning, she selected a leaf from the hedge behind her, then set about splitting that. But the glossed thick leaf with its saw-edges proved to be more of a job than a blade of grass—green got into her thumbnails, and pretty soon.

The Feverel Cottage drawing-room was—as Mrs. Piggott, asking for its exemption from any but guessing or the quieter card games, herself said—rather full of china. This was reputed to be or have been priceless. Precious it must be—why else should it have been mended with such care? Delicate metal stitchery underran dishes and saucers and held lids together; tiny alloy claws enabled handles to keep their grip on cups; cemented cracks formed networks cradling fine bowls, and where hatted and curled heads of shepherdesses or braceleted forearms of court ladies had been fitted back again on to throats or elbows, healed wounds were to be pointed out. And so on… . These ingenuities had for the children more merit than had the pieces themselves. Still “perfect” pieces seemed deficient— of those, however, the Piggott collection contained few.

Having no special cabinet, the china overflowed from the chimneypiece on to two and a half tables and a three-tiered whatnot, and, not content with those, rambled along the top of a low bookcase, whose doors dared not be opened lest the china be jarred. The piano only could count on being immune. The selfish china was borne with by the children, to whom its brighter-than-gold golds and unearthly colourings endeared it when in the mood. Also, some of the china had a secret lien with at least one of them: the scenery motifs spoke in particular to Clare. Their miniature vastness was of a size for her; their look of eternity could be taken in in less than a minute. She had lived within them. That she knew each landscape, to her a planet, to be linked in destructibility with the cup, bowl, or plate upon which it was, added peril to love. One saw, here, how china could break. One foresaw also how, one day or another, it must do so beyond repair.

Nor was china all. To the Army child, there was something mystic about this world of possessions. The Burkin-Joneses, in their austere, ordered movements from place to place, took with them little—brass bowls, framed photographs, trophies. Oriental rugs acquired along their course and, it might be, a scarf or two wherewith to deck yet another provided sofa or drape yet another hired piano. Round such existences, nothing but intangibles can accumulate: they do. Mrs. Piggott and Dicey had, by contrast, spun round themselves tangible webs, through whose transparency, layers deep, one glimpsed some fixed, perhaps haunted, other dimension. Feverel Cottage, from what one knew of their history, had not been their abode for long: yet who now could picture them anywhere but here? Their drawing-room bay window was tangled with muslin curtains—which, having come from some larger home, were too long and somewhat over-voluminous. Though bloused out liberally over tied-back sashes, the muslin found itself still with some yards to flow: it disposed of itself therefore in swirls and pools inside the bay and on the neighbouring floor. Muslin did not, however, entirely fill the bay, into which a delightful table had been inserted, with, at each end, space for one each of a pair of needlework stools. Further into the room, chairs dressed loosely in leafy stuff sat about in a state of sylvan indifference, sat upon or not. The walls wore a pearl-grey paper, faintly lustrous: through one of them, near a corner, had been cut what the Piggotts stigmatized as “a silly window”: a casement sentimentally diamond-paned. Despised though it might be, it had its use. It supplied with daylight the head-end of the sofa on which novels were read.

Clare, this late afternoon, came in on her own. She wound her way silently into the muslin window-cave, slid open a drawer of the table and extracted a puzzle, and sat down with it. To disturb Mrs. Piggott once she was in a novel was known to be more or less impossible; nevertheless the child, for these first minutes, worked away at the clickety puzzle with some caution. It was her favourite of several: Chinese ivory. Only a roving bluebottle, which from time to time seemed to divide and become two, stirred in the air of the room. But for the periodic flicker as she turned a page, Mrs. Piggott, diagonal on the sofa, might have been a waxwork—Clare, at a halt with the puzzle, took a contemplative look at her through the curtains. The scarlet, brand-new novel, held up, masked its wholly-commanded reader’s face. Though nominally she was “lying” on the sofa, the upper part of the body of Mrs. Piggott was all but vertical, thanks to cushions—her attitude being one of startled attention, sustained rapture, and, in a way, devotion to duty. The more flowing remainder of her was horizontal: feet, crossed at the ankles, pointing up at the end. She was as oblivious of all parts of her person as she was of herself. As for her surroundings, they were nowhere. Feverel Cottage, the sofa, the time of day not merely did not exist for Mrs. Piggott, they did not exist. This began to give Clare, as part of them, an annihilated feeling. She burned with envy of anything’s having the power to make
this
happen. Oh, to be as destructive as a story! … She tossed the interlocked puzzle into the air, muffed the return catch, and heard it fall.