Bilgewater (24 page)

I worked all day, that day the Thursday, at home, and a nurse appeared and an assistant master's wife. Father said he'd do the night duty but I said I would. Posy was better now and in with the others in the San. and the Sick Room beds were empty. I couId sleep in there and hear through the door, I said. Nobody was bad now, though Posy still groggy and called out a bit.

“No, no,” said father, “I've found an old bird—Mother Gamp woman—who says she'll night nurse and I am free, too, and Boakes is in charge on the Boys' Side.”

“What about Rose?”

“Oh he's gone over to School House. He's needed there, Captain of the School and all that, while the Headmaster is away.”

“Headmaster
away
?”

“Yes—this bad business.”

“What bad business?”

“Oh—” he looked uncomfortable, “don't bother about it now. We'll talk after your Oxbridge.”

“For goodness sake father, what bad business?”

“Well, Terrapin.”

“Terrapin? But he's in our House!”

“Yes but—”

“What?”

“Well, he's run off with Grace Gathering.”

As he said it the phone rang and he answered it thankfully and I stood there with everything in the room looking at once sharp and watchful and unforgettable. I knew that whenever I saw the study curtains pulled back like that in a loop or the Botticelli Primavera with invitations stuck in the frame to the end-of-term concert, or the cat stretching pin-point on all four toes, its red, fiddle mouth, its white point teeth, they would say to me only this: Terrapin has run off with Grace Gathering.

“But he hardly knew her!”

Father said, “Of course. I'll come across at once. Yes.”

“And it's his Oxbridge.”

“I must go, Marigold. There's—”

“And he hated her. She hated him. You could tell. She couldn't get him. That's why she hated him.”

“There's some more trouble. Worse,” said father. “We'll talk later.” His face looked greenish, bewildered, beyond help as he wound himself into his mufflers. He looked at me for a minute as if he might say something, and then he went out.

I
met Boakes in the hall outside but I walked right past him and he only caught up with me right over in the Boys' Side by Paula's stairs. He had looked through the study door as I left and seeing no father had turned hack.

“Bilge, there's no need.”

I stopped and began to trace over the drawing pins with my finger on Paula's green baize door. “There's an old woman here to night nurse. There's no need for us tonight. We're off duty. She's a bit peculiar but—”

“I want to do it,” I said. “Send her home.”

“Don't be silly. It's the first exam tomorrow afternoon. You need a sleep.”

“I want to be in Paula's.”

I went up to Paula's sitting room to tell the night nurse she could go. “The doctor recommended—” said Boakes. “Your father was very insistent. You—”

I went in and said to the broad, rusty back spreading itself over Paula's rocking chair, “I'm so sorry. There has heen a change of plan. I shall be on duty here tonight. There's a mistake,” and the old bird turned and smiled and was Mrs. Deering.

“EEEh dear,” she said. “It's 'er of the bus. Well I never. What's this about changes?”

There was a sort of smell in the room of unwashed clothes.

Her face had bristles on it and the creases in it very deeply and greasily marked. Her hair was greasy too and as usual she was eating—this time sucking a sweet.

“Have you heard the news?” she said. “He's gone off with her.”

“Who's this?” said Boakes. “D'you know each other?”

“We keep on—sort of running across each other,” I said.

“Bilge,” one of the measles shouted and Mrs. Deering smiled. She looked as if once seated she would take very careful thought about disturbing herself.

“All right,” said Boakes, “I'll go.”

I saw Paula's suitcase on the floor beside her. “I brought it back,” she said and closed one eye.

“What d'you mean?”

“The—things—you left in the tower. Your—clothes.”

“I didn't know—”

“Not very grand pyjamas. Still, I don't suppose you were—?”

“Shut up.”

“He's gone off with another one now. Oh you're well out of it dear. He has a nasty streak. Mind, he did come after you next morning.”

“Be quiet.”

“He got the bike out again in the morning and went off to that Jack Rose's. She said—the new one—she told me you'd just left with your uncle and some old vicars when he got there. He stayed on there a bit. Then he brought her—this other one to t'Hall back.”

“I don't want to hear.”

“Back in to t'tower.”

Boakes came in and there must have been something in my face because he said, “Whatever is it? D'you really want her to go?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Then she shall. Do you mind too much,” he asked Mrs. Deering, “can you tell us what we owe you? We think we can manage now. It was really the last couple of nights we needed someone.”

“Well, well,” she said, “and I'm usually timely. Eight pounds.”

“Yes. All right. Where's Paula's petty cash, Bilge?” He went out to find the money and Mrs. Deering leaned down in the rocking chair and flung open Paula's case with all my awful clothes in—the ginger zig-zags, the old winceyette pyjamas. “There,” she said, sitting back. I scooped them out and ran out of the room and came back with the heap of black clothes and bundled them into the suitcase.

“I've seen that coat many a time,” she said. “You looked a treat. Climbing on that bike in it in the middle of the night.”

I thought I was going to cry, but Boakes came back and gave her the money and saw her and the suitcase to the door. I don't think I moved one eyelash until he came back.

“Of all the creepy old horrors. Wherever did you pick her up? She's like Sycorax. The Furies. She's terrible. She could really mess anyone up. She's
wicked
.”

I said then “I must go a minute,” and without stopping for a coat I picked up two of Paula's carrier bags and ran as fast as ever I could out of the sick room, through the Private Side, out and down the steps through the drive and caught up with Mrs. Deering as she approached her bus stop.

I called, “Hey.” The broad black figure stopped. “It's our suitcase. The Matron's suitcase. Can I have it back? I've brought some carriers.”

At first I thought she wasn't going to take any notice. A bus was coming up and she was smiling. “Going to me daughter's,” she said. “Well it makes a change.”

“Please!”

“Well fancy you bothering! I'd have thought you'd be only thinking of what's happened. They've gone off together you know. London, likely. They won't find neither of them in a hurry there. Mind his family's always been a bit funny. The father being a medium and Swedish. Lovely looking though. And the mother.”

The bus had stopped. I grabbed the suitcase, shovelled the clothes into the paper bags and flung them under the stairs on the bus as she heaved herself aboard. I saw the sweet, soft folds of the sable coat sticking out of the top of one of them beside somebody's sticky child's push-chair.

“
She
were a lovely girl, now. The new one,” said Mrs. Deering. “Well you can't blame him can you?” There was some delay in the bus getting started for quite a lot of people were getting off and Mrs. Deering was blocking up the door, As they tried to get past her she leaned over to me and said, “There's not much
I
don't know, dear.”

I turned away and carried the empty case back home, thinking about what she had said and sat down in Paula's sitting room looking straight in front of me. The housekeeper had been in with the supper for the Sick Room and there was a bit of conversation going on in there, even some laughs. They were all much better, Boakes was nowhere to be seen, and there was no sign of supper for me. In a while, I thought, I'll go and heat up some baked beans or something on Paula's stove, but I didn't. I sat on until how long after I don't know, the phone rang.

It was Pen for father. Was he with me?

No.

Later it rang again. It was Puffy Coleman to send good wishes to Posy Robinson—also to see if father was with me.

No.

Still I sat on. The sounds from the San. ceased. I went in and tidied up and put the lights out and sat on. At half-past ten father rang. He was over at the Headmaster's taking charge of School House. Could Boakes and I manage?

“Of course.”

“You've got that old bird?”

“We're fine.”

“Darling,” he said (the first time ever), “I know it's your Oxbridge tomorrow.”

“I'd forgotten.”

“Don't sit up. Don't work late. Forget the sick room.”

“They're all all right,” I said. “All asleep. Couldn't Jack Rose come back over here now? It's Boakes's Oxbridge, too tomorrow. I know it's Rose's as well, but Boakes is tired. He's done such a lot.”

There was a silence, then he said. “Jack Rose isn't here, dear. He's, he's gone off.”

“But it was
Terrapin
who went off.”

“Jack Rose has gone off too.”

“But they can't
both
have gone off with Grace Gathering?”

“Marigold,” said father, “I think you'll have to know something. Rose has gone off with Grace's mother.”

 

“Hullo?” he said after ages, “Marigold? Are you still there? I suppose you're a bit—shocked. I know that I—”

I didn't say anything at all.

He suddenly shouted at the top of his voice, “Oh Marigold—for God's sake find Paula.”

 

I set about systematically taking every single thing of Paula's to pieces. I began with the top left-hand drawer of her desk and worked downwards to the bottom—across the middle knee drawer, then down the right-hand side. I found nothing but House stuff—medical records, notes, handbooks, bits and pieces like sealing wax and safety pins and paper clips. In one drawer I found a folder and a box held together with elastic and I opened them without a qualm and found inside all kinds of things of mine: my first red dancing slipper when I was four (that hadn't lasted long, I was like an elephant), a lock of hair stuck on a card and labelled “Marigold's curl. First hair cut” and the date. There was my weight card from when I was born to three months. In the folder were all my really pathetic efforts at writing and colouring from about four to ten—all just about unreadable, and some feeble drawings. She'd labelled them Marigold's Progress—also all dated. Then there were my music certificates and my O level certificate (I'd been wondering where that was) and two letters I'd written to her years ago when father and I had had four days in Scarborough. There was another box with a few letters in it and I grabbed it thinking that here at last there would be an address, but they appeared to be only from father ages ago when he had had to go to some Classics conference at Oxford. They seemed to be all about House matters but they were carefully tied up with pale pink ribbon.

After the desk I looked everywhere—all through her dressing table, her wardrobe, her bookcase, her table drawers. I looked in old handbags, the box she keeps her stiff nursing collars in. There was not one hint of where she had come from in all the collection. It struck me that for the seventeen years of her life here there was very little to see at all—no records, few books, my mother's old detested sewing machine. She appeared to have taken with her all her clothes. It was like going through the belongings of some old soldier, someone perpetually on duty, someone with no chance and no desire to do anything but serve a cause.

What cause?

I went and lay on one of the now-empty sick room beds—the one that Posy had had, but I'd had the measles so I wasn't worried. At about midnight Boakes looked in. I was lying on top of the blankets with my hands behind my head staring at the ceiling.

“Bilge?” he said. “You all right? You ought to be asleep. Exams tomorrow.”

“So have you.”

He lay down on the other bed.

“Father's over at School House.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Have you heard the latest?”

“Yes.”

“All this passion,” I said, “I suppose I'm pretty blind. Pretty immature for my age. I never guessed.”

He got off his bed and came over and lay beside me on mine putting his arm round me and dropping
The Comparative Method
on to the floor with his other hand. “The school is foundering,” he said, “I don't know what young people are coming to.”

“
Young
people!”

“Bilge,” he said, “were you terribly in love with Terrapin?”

“Eh?”

“Well—he always seemed to be so taken up with you. You could hardly have helped being. Good-looking and all that.”

I put both arms round him and thought this is the second time I've been in bed with a boy. There now!—though goodness knows whom I thought I was challenging. I said, “It was Jack Rose really. Till I saw him at home. Terrapin—I'd known him too long.”

“Too long?”

“He was ghastly when he was twelve. He was ugly as me.”

“You ugly? You're mad. If you want to know,” he said, “I've never seen anything more marvellous than you.”

“Marvellous?”

“In that black dress in the Gothic tea shop in Durham. And marching through the Galilee chapel through the arcading under the crepuscular arches.”

I said, “Oh Boakes! Oh Boakes!” laughing and crying at the same time. Boakes tightened his arm and solemnly took off his glasses.