The Little Girls (23 page)

“Yes, this afternoon.”

“At the first glance, I thought I’d been here before, but I think I can’t have. And the thing is, I’ll never be here again. Next time I see you, it will be some other place? I—”

In the archway, though tentatively, stood Mrs. Stokes. The senior aubergine carried a loose-leaf jotting-pad and a
gold-banded pen (present from her late husband?). “Sorry,” she said.

“No, come in.”

“I could come back, Miss Burkin-Jones.” “No. Mrs. Delacroix’s just going.”

Rutland Gate.

Evening.

Dear Mumbo,

This morning when I was in your shop, I saw something I did very much want. A butter knife, suitable for a breakfast tray. Blade quite short, 2 to
2
1/2
inches, I should say, but handle huge (quite out of proportion), gnarled and dark and with a knuckle bend in the middle. The more I think about it, the more I want it.

Unfortunately this butter knife was in the wrong part of the shop (yours, I mean). Otherwise nothing could have been simpler. Sheikie told me she took a beating trying to buy a brooch you had on your chest at that secret tea. If I may not buy it, will you give it to me? I know that giving anybody a knife is supposed to cut a friendship, but that is made all right if you give the giver 6d or even a penny in return. You need not worry that you would be giving me a dangerous thing: that knife (I tried it) would cut nothing
but
butter, and very rightly. And you need not worry if it is a symbol, as practically everything is, as we now know. Certainly everything is in your witch’s kitchen, as your customers know?

Could you (or would that be a great bother?) telephone to Mrs. Stokes or Phyllida, probably the former? What I am so hoping you won’t reply is, that that butter knife belongs in part to your Board of Directors. I know how complicated business can be. But I do want it. Only when I am able to look at it every morning, first thing, shall I be able to tell you why. And with a handle that size, it can never get lost.

The Grand (Southstone) would be the best place for us to meet, as with where we are going to so changed we might miss each other. We had better be there while there is still some daylight, to get our bearings, but then wait in the car till it gets dark. So be at the Grand at 5, or as soon as you can. I will bring everything necessary in my car. The end of next week would be best, as I am rather busy before then and expect you are. So, that Thursday. Unless I hear from you that you prefer Friday, I shall be waiting for you in the Grand on Thursday. I shall be in the Grand, come what may.

I did not after all sleep this afternoon, as I took the children out in a boat while Annie was at the osteopath’s, so am looking forward to doing so tonight, in fact now. I wonder how you got on with that packing-case. I could have opened it for you in half a jiffy.

Yours affectionately,

D.    

“Still very grand,” maintained the Grand’s former
habitu
e
e.
She and her friend, making their way out of the carpeted catacomb, passed entrances to two or three bars and a cocktail lounge, alike in being dark and unechoing: nothing open yet. “Not its finest hour,” Clare had cause to remark. But the other was making a heel ring on each white step of the shallow flight they were going down, exclaiming: “Marble!” She added: “There’s a flask in my car.”

Few people were about on the Promenade. The early marine evening was clear and sunless, the sea autumnal. “Places evaporate, don’t they?” Dinah said, looking about her emptily. “The poor harmless things.”

“This
never said much to me, at the best of times,” Clare said, looking at the Promenade with the more curiosity. They went round the Grand to its car park, which was not crowded. “Now,” Dinah asked, “what about your Mini? Come by here and pick it up afterwards, on the way to Sheikie’s?”

Both got into the Hillman, which trickled clear of the plateau then swooped downhill. The passenger, looking orthodox, pulled on one then the other of her good hogskin gloves. “Let’s be clear,” she began, “as to why
I’m
here—”

“Oh no, don’t let’s analyze anything!”

“Last hope of keeping you out of jug.”

The car took a sharpish bend of the hill; a slithering clank was heard from the boot. “There go the spades, again,” said the driver. “They’ve been keeping that up, on and off, all the way from Applegate. Francis can’t have stowed them in very firmly.—Quick,
which
turn left? Look how many there are!”

There is seldom anything convulsive about change. What is there is there; there comes to be something fictitious about what is not. At a first glance, what had been the site of St. Agatha’s, grounds and building, looked like being impossible to determine—the coast road had somewhat altered in course: the coast had somewhat altered in shape. The drop from the road to the beach had become less, though a balustrade guarded it. A white concrete-and-glass pavilion, deserted, half-closed for winter, interrupted the balustrade for some way along. And for some way along, opposite, the base of the hill had been embanked, strongly, with rusticated stone. There was no way up till the embankment had cornered itself off: then, a steep road did begin its ascent. Well kept, the road was no longer new-looking: the impression it gave of reserve and privacy was confirmed by a notice at its foot, saying: “No Through Way.”

To see up the hill, it was necessary to get out of the car. The revenants stood back, backs to the balustrade—above them, ten or a dozen nice-looking houses, spaced out over the hill’s face, harmlessly contemplated the Channel: garages, their doors painted pastel colours, sat on ledges surrounded by landscape gardening. More land than St. Agatha’s could account for had evidently been taken in.
(
Where
, indeed, now that one came to think of it, was St. Swithin’s?) In general the gardens were veiled in the thinly dusky yellows and coppers and bronzy purples of mid-autumn: however (to the left of the roadway), darker and more opaque patches of growth were to be discerned. Husky vestigial remnants of former planting
had
been incorporated into the more diaphanous later scheme. Once located, the two ex-thickets were unmistakable. One above the other, modified out of being groves into being strips, they stood out like two conspiratorial dark moustaches.

Dinah said instantly: “The lower one.”

“Yes, I believe you’re right.”

“I know I am. There was nothing below it but the croquet lawn; then below that those banks with those seats and things.—Now we must dash up there, while the light lasts, and make out
which
of those houses’ gardens it’s got itself into.”

“That’s going to be all?”

“Wait a minute.” The owner locked the Hillman. “We don’t want anybody getting at our drinks—when we’ve come down again, we can have those while we wait for it to get dark. And I’ve brought sandwiches.”

Trimmed escallonia hedges topped boundary walls on either side of the private road. Gates, opening on drives of varying lengths, each announced the name given to the home within and had by it a post with a lantern lamp, not of course yet lit. Trees which doubtless flowered in spring here or there overhung the hedges—and at a point there projected also a Beaker & Artworth “For Sale” board. “Trevor won’t have that on his hands for long. A very desirable property, I should say?” The escallonia being too high to see over and dense to see through, the prospectors had the bother of turning in at one after another of the left-hand gates. “
There
it is—see?—down therel Dinah cried at last. On their way out, she memorized the gate. “It says, ‘Blue Grotto’… Blue Grotto.”

“They honeymooned there?”

“They couldn’t have
in
there. That was Tiberius.”

“Don’t know whether you noticed,” remarked Clare, as they neared the bottom of the road, “but the greater part of Blue Grotto consists of glass.”

“Then they can’t throw stones. Who do they think they are, anyway?”

“Who do we think we are?”

“Don’t caw.” Dinah, opening the car, asked: “
You
don’t know whether we put a curse? I’m not certain.”

“I bled like a pig writing that out.”

“I expect you did—but really this is important!
We
could be receiving the full blast.”

“I shouldn’t let that worry you.”

“Well, it does rather.”

“Then lay off—couldn’t you? You’ve had a nice look round; now leave it at that. Don’t
tamper,
as everybody has told you! Sheikie’s got twice your sense.”

“Oh, yes.” They settled into the Hillman, to be stationary during the watch ahead. “And four times yours.”

Dark took long to come. Dinah heaved the provisions out of the back seat into the front. “You spoke of a flask; I’d call this a bar,” Clare said.

“I’d call it a choice,” said the host. “One thing I don’t yet know is, what you really like.”

They drank with coat collars up, one window down on the sea side. Colourless glass dusk was like a glass dome over a stopped clock. The sea was out of action. Here on the coast road unlit cars slid by with cargoes of ghosts— observant ghosts, however, who turned their heads. “They wonder what we are up to.”

“What are we up to?” wondered Clare, refilling her Perspex glass. Behind the Hillman, a door banging (caretaker coming out?) must have started echoes in the empty pavilion. “Did you say there were sandwiches?”

“Oh, here!… Any news of the butter knife?”

“I am negotiating.”

“Mumbo, what became of the Unknown Language?”

“Gone.”

“Back into your head?”

“An attic, if so. And the key’s lost.”

“It sounded awful,” Dinah said, still with awe. “Nobody ever heard it again?”

“No. I wrote a letter in it.”

“I don’t understand—someone else understood? Was there an answer?”

“It got there too late.—Aren’t
you
eating anything?”

“In a minute.” Dinah looked out of each of the car windows, hoping that at least one might bring better news -but no. Not so much as a shred of darkness! “I don’t see why a watched pot should
never
boil,” she complained. “What’s the matter with it? We haven’t
come here at sunrise by mistake, have we?”

“Getting darker in here,” Clare said. “I can hardly see you.”

“I can hardly see you; but what’s the good of that? Outside, no. No, not nearly enough. Waiting’s like a curse in itself, isn’t it? At the bottom of one road one can’t see up, on another horrible road one can’t bear to see. This is a dream doom.”

“Then drive on.”

“Where to?”

“Then walk about.”

“Here?”

“Then don’t get so tensed
up!
”

“Knocking me about, like you always did.”

“Can you wonder?”

“No. But you did knock me about.”

“What we need,” said Clare, “is a pack of cards. Or a band.—What are you flinging yourself about for, now?”

“Oh, I am only hunting for my transistor… . Here we are. What’s on on the Light?”

She obtained a conceit. Throughout it and some part of its successor, which was Variety, the listeners, arms folded, sat with their eyes shut. When at length they opened them, darkness had truly fallen—with, indeed, the thoroughness of a collapsed wall. Dinah jumped and put on her parking lights. She then turned to Clare. “Now’s the hour—come on, Posterity!” She took two torches out of the glove compartment, got out, went round to the back of the car, and unstowed the other necessities from the boot. “I brought this pick-axe—save blisters, this time. Carry it, will you?” Clare, like an automaton, took the pick-axe. Nothing did she say, so they set off.

Up the hill, shallows of electric lantern-light alternated with gulfs where the black road surface blotted into blackness of shadowed walls. Seen or unseen, the close escallonia sent out its humid, varnishy smell. Between the lamps, trees had beneath them caverns—out of one of which stepped a figure still webbed like a black cobweb to the shades out of which it had taken form. It waited, waiting to be neared—then said: “Well, you two?”

“Sheikiel”

“Don’t scream the place down. Lost yourselves, did you? —Hullo, Mumbo.”

“Aha.”

“How did you get here, Sheikie, though? Did you pass the car?”

“I came down from the top.”

“It says, ‘No Through Way.’ “

“No through way my eye,” said the local girl. As Mrs. Artworth, she had made herself both striking and, in intention at least, invisible. She wore a black mackintosh, had swathed head and throat tightly in black chiffon, wore black gloves—but should have been masked, for her makeup was phosphorescent.

Clare said: “This is very sporting of you, Mrs. Dracula.”

“I intend to be there if that box
is.
What did you suppose? Leave you two to root about in the bottom?”

‘The secrets of the tomb …”

“That was what it was intended to be, Clare.”