Bilgewater (14 page)

To the side was a rickety spiral of metal, a sort of staircase or companionway twisting down towards the water—a place perhaps for boarding a boat long ago, a rescue point—somewhere they had set out to look for the poor men in the zeppelins—a place for descent to big boats that need deep water and for the disentanglement of lines. When I reached the head of this staircase that ended in the water I stopped.

Terrapin came up behind me in the dark and said, “Go down.”

“I can't.”

“Go on down.”

He gave me a bit of a push and I found myself going down.

Each little narrow iron step had a pattern of holes in it with the gleam of the sea coming through them. He followed and when we were well down, far below the pier, we came to a little iron platform and stopped. He came up behind me on the platform and held me steady, like a gangster, his arms down over mine and we stood together with the deep water underneath us and the top of my head beneath his chin. He was all bones. “Watch,” he said.

In a minute, beyond the end of the broken pier, the sea rose up in a wall and began to move towards us in a great black slippery curve with lines of spittle down its back, very fast. It approached, it reached us, it plunged under us, it passed by. The iron staircase swung and groaned. Cold water covered our feet and spray soaked into us. The wave passed on and we heard it break far behind us under the pier where the music played. I shouted out, “Where did you go? I saw something horrible. I saw you dancing with—”

He said, “Hush. Watch again.”

Again the sea raised itself up and charged. Again it went for us, snarled, grabbed, passed by. Again it broke behind us.

“Terrapin—why—?”

“It's wonderful,” he said. “I love it.”

“Terrapin. I'm frightened.”

“Frightened. Frightened. Always frightened. Go on then.”

He let me go and I fled up the stairs and crawled up on to the swinging metal floor of the pier above. He followed and stood beside me. “Bilge,” he said, “Marigold.

“Marigold, you really must move on. Grow up.”

I was crying I think. I don't know what I was doing. I was waiting for him to hold out his hand.

He held out his hand. “Oh Marigold, Marigold.”

“Hullo,” called a voice, “who's there?” Jack Rose approached. “Keep quite still,” he boomed. “All right. Don't move. Nothing to be afraid of.”

“My God,” said Terrapin and made off. Rose came up and heaved me to my feet. “Bilge? All right now. Don't panic. Hold on to me.” His large form towered and he sounded very admirable and assured. I smelled the beer again as he heaved me up on to my feet, fastening my hands on to the rail of the pier. “Look over there, old thing—over towards the land. Don't panic. Bear up. However d'you get out here? Too much booze? It's a great party—great night.”

“It's not
that
,” I said.

“And look at this step-ladder, spiral staircase what have you? God, how dangerous! Look it's held on by two screws. Hundred years old. Have some fool going down there next. Look—”

There were two big raised round screws holding the staircase to the side of the damaged pier. The holes they were in were rusted, the threads beneath—huge and rusty, too—were nearly worn away. “By God,” said Rose, “This could be
lifted
off. Look.” He gave a crazy sort of shake and shove and the whole staircase fell sideways held by one screw only. “Look at this then,” said Rose with another shake.

“No don't,” I cried, “no don't. It's nice. Don't.”

But he gave a great tug at the bolt on the second screw and there was a creaking, squealing noise like faulty brakes on a very big lorry. “A-hey!” he called, triumphant and happy, authorised to command and destroy. A fine and happy fellow whatever befell.

“Watch this!” and the whole staircase suddenly loosened itself and fell sideways, heavily into the sea, quite slowly. Its splash was swallowed in the next great wall of oncoming wave. Where the stairs had been was only a space in the railings opening on nothing. “What do you know!” he cried and bending down he got hold of me in his arms, jubilant. He hugged me, enraptured with himself and all his cleverness. His face was very smooth and large as he kissed me and I thought, This is Jack Rose and this is I, Bilgewater, but all I wanted to do was look back at the space where the lovely metal steps had led down into the water.

T
he great discussion on how to get me there was over in the end only when Paula stood waving me off at the Playing Fields bus stop. The whole of the previous Thursday evening soirée had been given over to resolution of the difficulties of the undertaking which had at first seemed insurmountable. Half Term began on Saturday morning, but Jack Rose, who had at first said that I was to travel with him, was playing a badly-arranged away match that afternoon and would be approaching his home for the holiday from another direction. It had not been suggested that I go with the team to watch the match, which was at least something to be thankful for. “Doesn't Boakes or someone live in that direction? There must be someone she could travel with?” But Boakes and everyone not in the Rugger team wanted to be off early on the Saturday morning.

Jack's home was over twenty miles away beyond Teesside, north of Middlesbrough and involved changes on the bus at unknown and seedy-sounding halts. For years and years boarders of St. Wilfrid's had been arriving at no more than thirteen or fourteen and getting themselves off home again at end of term and half term with phlegm and confidence. Yet here was I at nearly eighteen causing everybody the keenest anxiety.

On Thursday morning Puffy Coleman had been over to Scarborough Public Library and the bus station for timetables. Uncle Edmund had spoken of getting his car on to the road again—he had been planning to do this at Half Term, he said. He could make a trial run. Father said that since Rose was not available I had perhaps better not go at all. He said that in his opinion it was usually a mistake to go away and that I had always been perfectly content at home at Half Term before. I agreed with him at once, and with wonderful relief and gratitude. It now seemed incredible that I had turned to water when Rose had first invited me, that I had boasted to Terrapin about it and been so overcome with joy by it all that I had been unable to mention it to Grace. I settled down to finding the Roses' telephone number in the House files and planning to get Paula to ring up and say I had got bubonic plague. It would be rude of course, especially as, between the lot of us, we had only just got round to answering Mrs. Rose's invitation and then only on the telephone when she had rung up to see what was happening.

I had answered the phone to a vibrant and not altogether sympathetic voice that said it wanted to speak to me and, remembering my moronic efforts at managing Mrs. Gathering, I had replied with a sart of feeble bleat that implied that I would put the call through to father. “For what we are about to receive,” he said to Mrs. Rose, “let us be truly thankful,” for he had been about to take Boys' Supper and the extension had rung on the sideboard behind him. He had picked it up thoughtlessly imagining it to be the Lord. The vibrant noises emerged from the earpiece and all the boys stood poised wondering whether they should get down to the mince and beans.

“Sit. Sit,” said father.

Squawks of celestial surprise came out of the phone.

“How lovely,” said father. “Yes, I'm sure she'd love to come. Invitation? No, I don't think so. Three weeks ago? Oh dear.” With the hand not holding the telephone he began to beat at the outside of all his pockets, and then, as the squawks gathered pace slowly to empty the contents of the more accessible ones onto the table cloth.

“The post is so uncertain,” he said as pieces of chalk, biros, paper clips, confiscated Mars bars, and several pairs of spectacles mounted beside the cooling mince. “She has been doing the first of her Cambridge entrance papers. It
may
have been delivered of course. Things get put on my desk and I am not told of them. Then they put piles of exercise books down—” (he was scrammelling in the bottom of a remote pocket somewhere under an armpit and now brought out a very exhausted-looking envelope), “I really am so very sorry—” (opening the envelope and looking stricken), “My dear Mrs. Rose I shall see to it at once and of course she may come. How very kind of you to ask her!”

But now, Friday night, he and I had both lost our nerve. The weather outside the study window was particularly vile—sweeps of grass had become mud, gaunt rugger posts stood up to a pitiless gale with ferocious, flying clouds and black firewood trees straining inland against it. Father's fire shone bright, three cats sat at angles to one another on the hearth-rug and the chessmen looked very inviting, an oasis of promise in the warm muddle of the room.

But, “Now she's to go!” said Paula. “If I take her myzelf she's to go. Whatever d'you think could befall her, dear Lord!” After Thursday's arbitration she had whirled in, seized Puffy's timetable, extracted the Saturday bus service, telephoned the Roses and pressed a very dreadful dress of olive green wool with ginger zigzags and laid it on the end of my bed.

“Wherever did that come from?”

“It's one I've had by me.”

“Well I'm not wearing that. I'm going in my jeans.”

“Jeans! You can't go in jeans. It's a doctor's house. They'll change their clothes for supper.”

“Perhaps they'll change into jeans. I don't see why they should change though at all. Doctors don't get all that filthy. Is it a slum or something? I thought it was a country house.”

“I've no notion what it is except that it's beyond Marston Bungalow. There's some very good houses out beyond Marston Bungalow. All doctors have to change for dinner on account of the germs.”

“Paula,” I said, “where on earth do you get your ideas from?”

“I've lived a long time. I'm a middle-aged woman. In Dorzet—”

“Dorset must be a fairly funny place—all the doctors taking their clothes off—”

“That'll do. Anyway, if you wear this nice patterned wool you won't need to change at all. You can wear it the whole weekend. It's a dress,” she said, “that will take you anywhere.”

She harangued on and I felt in the end whatever anyway does it matter? I felt it simultaneously with the memory of Jack Rose's large, smooth face, the eyes that would never see what anyone was wearing anyway. Some breath of uneasiness stirred. I had had the same feeling when he had laughed at the falling iron stairs; and there was something else. I turned my mind away.

“O.K.,” I said. “Forget it. I'll wear it I suppose,” and on Saturday morning I put it on, slowly, masochistically and regarding myself in the glass. I hadn't bothered to go to the pink hairdresser again and the hair-cut was now certainly growing out. I hadn't bothered to go and see Grace again since the dance either, and she hadn't bothered to come and see me. I hadn't bothered to buy the Revlon Touch and Glow I had passed in the chemist on my way to a long meditation on the sands. I hadn't de-haired my legs like Aileen and Beryl did so disgustingly but with good effect in the cloakrooms when they were off gym. I had been working pretty steadily at the Oxbridge and reading in the intervals for extra agony the book Terrapin had left in my room the night of the dance (called
Prometheus Unbound
by Aeschylus).

I was in a funny mood altogether. I put on my shoes—I could not quite bring myself to leave the shoes—pushed some washing things and pyjamas in a small suitcase Paula lent me and said, “All right then. I'm dressed.”

“I will have to do,” I said waving Paula goodbye. She stood looking very fine and fearless at the bus-stop, plumed like a war horse. She has narrow shoulders and hips and long long legs as well as a fantastic neck. She could have been a real goddess, a figure of justice, empress or Boadicea. Her wave was very assured and grand, telling me that there was nothing to fear. Why then, I wondered did I feel so awful? Why were my eyes hot and tears running down the back of my nose all the time, and why was I turning and blowing more steam on to the window and not caring who sat next to me or what happened to the landscape nor about anything in the world?

Soon however I was aware that something very large and heavy was sitting beside me, or rather spilling and swelling all over me, creaking and heaving about on the rattling double seat. I tried to think of important matters. I tried for instance to think what it would have been like if it had been my mother waving me off on the bus. I imagined her, little and sweet in a sort of cape with a hood, bits of silvery, silky blonde hair blowing out under it, both small hands pressed up against her mouth, tears in her eyes.

“Oh Marigold, it'll seem such
ages
till you're back. You're sure you'll be all right?”

“Of course I will. Really, Ma!”

“I know it's silly but you do
hear
such things. You're so pretty. Some awful man might try and pick you up. Look you do know about—well, I just don't know what to say about these new ideas about—well sex and so forth, but—”

“For goodness sake mother! I'm not a baby. It's not even Jack Rose who's asked me—it's his
mother
.”

“Oh Marigold I'm
dying
to know all about it. Do write. I know it's only three days.”

 

Or—No. It wouldn't be like that. Mother would be in an Aston Martin. She'd have that marvellous long, turned-under, young-looking white hair, and lipstick, and she'd be wearing a heavenly suit with a fur collar and hat to match. Mink. Her hands on the wheel would have pink nails. No they wouldn't. At least they would but you wouldn't see them. They'd be under a pair of those lovely sexy string driving gloves with holes on the back. I'd be sitting beside her, my long hair blowing. I'd be in very expensive faded jeans with patches in them and a slinky tee shirt and over the top a great big leathery coat with floating tattery sheepskin down the seams and inside. Our profiles, identical as we sped along, would be very fine.