The Saturdays (17 page)
Authors: Elizabeth Enright
Randy walked along the rocks exploring. Her knees and elbows were lavender, her teeth chattering, and she was covered with gooseflesh; but as long as Cuffy didn't know it Randy could ignore it. She came to a little pool full of sea water and kneeled down shivering, to examine it. She saw barnacles, and seaweed, and blueblack mussels, and some tiny turreted shells that wobbled decorously across the floor of the pool. When she reached down and picked one up to find out what made it wobble all she could see was the tip end of a minute pink claw. She dropped it back again, and lay down on her stomach to get a better view of this small busy world.
She saw a big crusty old villain of a crab waltzing sideways through the weeds, and some little fish that would hang motionless and nearly invisible in the water for minutes at a time and then dart quickly as if pulled by threads. The longer she looked the larger the world of the pool became, until it was a jungle ravine full of wild beasts and sudden dangers.
Rush was trying to make Isaac come swimming, but he wouldn't for a long time. He ran up and down the pier yapping.
“Come on, boy, come on!” bellowed Rush frantically. “Don't be a sissy!” It would be terrible to have a dog that was a sissy about the sea.
Isaac ran down the pier again and back to the edge. Hamlet ambled along the pier, took one disgusted look at Isaac and dived into the water. That was too much for Isaac. Shamed into it, he gathered himself together and plunged into the hated element which had always meant baths to him.
Oliver was scooped up from his earthworks by Cuffy and carried away to supper in the kitchen with Mrs. Wilkins.
The older ones had supper on the terrace later with Mrs. Oliphant. They looked very clean with their wet hair and salt-scoured faces. A whole flock of freckles had already alighted on Randy's nose, and Rush said he thought he must be sunburned because he could feel his back; usually he hardly knew it was there.
“Gee, Mrs. Wilkins, you're certainly a very fine cook,” Rush said, turning to look at her. “This is the best blueberry pie I ever ate, and I'm kind of a connoisseur.”
“He ought to be; he once ate a whole pie and a half by himself. A whole rhubarb one and half of an apple one. At eleven o'clock in the morning he did it,” said Randy, proud of his achievement.
Afterward they all went and sat in the living room. Cuffy darned, Mrs. Oliphant knitted, and Randy held the wool for her. Hamlet and Isaac lay side by side on the rug, stretched out flat without even the flicker of a paw, in the manner of dogs who are exhausted by the all important barking and running they have done during the day. Mona had found a wonderful new book called
Under Two Flags,
and she was reading it. As for Rush, he cast so many longing glances at the piano that Mrs. Oliphant finally said, “Well, why in the world don't you go and play us something?”
So Rush did. It was a swell piano with a tone like purple velvet. First he played the Bach Chaconne, and then the Brahms Intermezzo, the one that sounds like dancing, and then, because he was showing off, he tore into the Revolutionary Etude, and Randy sat holding her breath waiting for the terrible mistake he always made in the same place. But it never came! She let out her breath in a sigh of relief.
“Bravo!” said Mrs. Oliphant, picking up a stitch. “You'll be a very good pianist someday if you work hard.”
It wasn't Randy's idea of much of a compliment. She privately thought Rush would be able to knock the spots off any pianist from Josef Hofmann down; but Rush seemed pleased.
Now that he had demonstrated how good he was, he played all the simple things they asked for, and then Mrs. Oliphant dug out an old dog-eared book of songs, and they sang “Sweet and Low” (with Cuffy booming a sturdy alto), and “Oh, Susanna,” and “Camptown Races,” and “Funiculi Funicula,” and they finished with “The Star-Spangled Banner.” They all stood up to sing it; and Randy made even the dogs stand up. On this splendid note the evening ended. Mrs. Oliphant stuffed her knitting into a large crimson bag, the dogs were banished to the kitchen and all the good nights said.
“Listen,” whispered Rush, as they entered the lighthouse. “Let's go up to the top and look out.”
Tiptoeing up the corkscrew stair they went through the boys' room, where Oliver lay asleep with the sheet kicked off and his arms and legs flung out like the letter X, and on up through the girls' room to the little room at the top.
“It's the moon room instead of the sunroom now,” Randy said. It was true. The place was flooded with the bluish radiance of moonlight. Out of doors ten thousand glittering icy flames licked at the waves, and in the sky all except the most brilliant stars were drowned in light.
“Well, here we are,” said Rush. “Thanks to you, Randy, and the I.S.A.A.C. You know I think maybe I'm going to like this even better than the valley.”
“That was a swell idea of yours, Randy,” Mona told her. “Just think, if it hadn't been for the I.S.A.A.C. Rush would never have found Isaac, and you wouldn't have made friends with Mrs. Oliphant, and we wouldn't have been here at all!”
“And you would still have been bearing the burden of those pigtails,” Rush told her. “No, but really, it
is
sort of funny when you think about it. Everything important happened on a Saturday. Of course, the coal gas was really Sunday morning⦔
“Well, it
began
on Saturday,” Randy insisted.
“We won't need a club down here,” Mona said.
“Or any allowance,” agreed Rush. “Not with all that ocean and the boats and everything.”
“Let's keep it for fall, and then when we go back we can begin again.”
“We might do good deeds with it,” Randy said. She was so happy that she wanted to do something about it. Perform a noble action or give a present to somebody, or be good for the rest of her life. Of course, when the opportunity came she would go down before temptation as soon as anyone else, but just now she didn't believe it.
They leaned their arms on the windowsill and looked at the world; so changed, so beautiful, in this strange light. The water lapped and purred against the rocks, and the breeze that cooled their faces smelled of honeysuckle and salt marshes.
“Now it's going to be Saturday every day all summer long,” said Randy, and yawned a wide, peaceful, happy yawn.
Elizabeth Enright
(1909â1968) was born in Oak Park, Illinois, but spent most of her life in or around New York City. Originally envisioning a career solely in illustration, she studied art in Paris, France, and at the Parsons School of Design in Manhattan. In 1937, her first book was published, quickly proving her talent for writing as well as for drawing.
Throughout her life,
Elizabeth Enright
wrote and illustrated numerous award-winning children's books. Among those awards were the 1939 John Newbery Medal for
Thimble Summer
and a 1958 Newbery Honor for
Gone-Away Lake.
The first of the Melendy Quartet,
The Saturdays,
was published in 1941. It was followed by T
he Four-Story Mistake, Then There Were Five,
and
Spiderweb for Two: A Melendy Maze.
Ms. Enright was also a highly regarded writer of short stories published in magazines, such as the
New Yorker
and
Harper's.
Her stories are assembled in four collections:
A Moment Before the Rain, Borrowed Summer, The Riddle of the Fly,
and
Doublefields.
Translated into numerous languages throughout the world, Ms. Enright's writings have been loved by many generations, and they continue to find an audience with young and old alike. You can sign up for email updates
here
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Spiderweb for Two: A Melendy Maze
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Contents
An Imprint of Macmillan
THE SATURDAYS. Copyright © 1941 by Elizabeth Enright Gillham. Copyright renewed © 1969 by Robert M. Gillham. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Square Fish, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Square Fish and the Square Fish logo are trademarks of Macmillan and are used by Henry Holt and Company under license from Macmillan.
Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at
[email protected]
.
First published in hardcover in 1941 by Farrar & Rinehart.
Reissued in hardcover in 2002 by Henry Holt and Company, with an introduction by Elizabeth Enright from
The Melendy Family,
copyright © 1947.
First Square Fish Edition: February 2008