Joy and Josephine (22 page)

Mrs Abinger tried a domestic subject, the sort of thing she talked about with her own friends, but Mrs Gray, for the same reason that she would not answer the front door in an apron, would not talk about cooking, or the price of vegetables, or the way the High School blouses shrank. Like bodily functions, these things had to be, but one did not dwell on them.

Ordinarily, Mrs Abinger did not feel the need to talk if she had nothing to say, but the Grays put her on her mettle. They were perfectly friendly, but somehow, without being superior, they managed to make her feel inferior and uneducated in a way the Moores never had. Jo was all right. She was at home with them. She and Pauline sat with their bare arms touching, talking about botany, and Jo had just said a Latin word. George was all right. He could talk to anyone if he chose, and he was now actually discussing economics with Mr Gray. The nerve of George, and Mr Gray a banker!

Mrs Abinger wanted desperately to be in the swim for Josephine’s sake. She racked her brains, but hot days always made her head a bit hectic. Ever since that day when she had been shut too long in the kitchen with a boiling ham and had found herself pronouncing words funnily, she had been terrified of her head letting her down. She shifted her hot body on the seat, and saw to her horror that she had cracked the mica window with her arm. She held on to a looped strap, leaning forward to hide the crack, as if interested in the scenery.

Mr Gray drove very slowly, tootling along the crown of the
road, so that cars behind had to sound their horns, when he would wave them on with elaborate circlings of his right arm. He made scrupulous hand signs for the slightest deviation of course, and turning to the right was a major operation, with Peter looking behind from his perch on his mother’s lap to see if anything was coming.

They passed some double gates with a board saying:

Seacombe Golf Club. Members Only

‘That’s the Golf Club,’ the Grays told the Abingcrs.

‘Play golf?’ Mr Gray asked George, who answered: ‘Not these days,’ as if he ever had. Mrs Abinger marvelled anew at the nerve of him.

‘Pity,’ said Mr Gray. ‘It’s a spifflicating course. I go in for the competition every year; got through my first heat yesterday. I got a three over bogey as a matter of fact. Sheer fluke, of course.’ He laughed, affecting modesty.

‘I daresay I could pick it up again,’ said Mr Abinger, in specting his hands. ‘One ball game’s much like another, and no one can say I don’t keep my eye in. Bowls is my game, sir.’ The subtlety of the ‘Sir’ pleased him, and he used it throughout the day. He never called a customer Sir, but he knew the word could be used in a different sense when men were men together.

They were driving parallel with one of the fairways. ‘Eleventh hole,’ the Grays told the Abingers, and Mr Gray said: ‘I was lucky enough to get a birdie there yesterday.’

‘Indeed?’ said Mr Abinger, and his wife was very proud of him, for she was sure he no more knew what that meant than she. Or did he? There was no telling what George did not know. Only the other day, he had surprised her by coming out with a knowledgeable remark about horse racing.

The sea road along which they gently bowled was open to the blazing sun. It pierced in concentrated shafts through the openwork of Mrs Abinger’s straw hat. Holding on to the strap, she leaned across Pauline to look at Jo. The child must not get one of her Heads to-day.

‘I think you should put your hat on, dear,’ she said. Jo’s face
was bright pink, and even after a few days at Seacombe, her nose was peeling. Mrs Abinger had read somewhere that people with red in their hair were more sensitive to sunburn.

‘Oh
Mum,’
Josephine said, and frowned.

‘I said put your hat on.’ Mrs Abinger was terrified that Jo would disobey and show her up in front of Mrs Gray, whose children always did what they were told.

‘I’m all
right’
shrugged Jo. She wanted to be left alone to watch the sea, and to imagine little houses in the banked-up hedges, and picture herself living in one of these white cottages with a monkey puzzle or a palm tree in the garden.

‘You know what you are with your Heads,’ said her mother. ‘Your nerves will play you up if you take too much of the sun.’

It was no use trying to impress Mrs Gray with this. At Wimbledon, nerves were not as grand as they were in the Portobello Road. Children like the Grays did not have nerves and headaches and giddy turns. They had juvenile things like coughs or rashes or tonsils. Only grown-ups had headaches and lay down with aspirin in a darkened room.

Mrs Abinger thought Mrs Gray was trying to score off her, when she said, soon enough for the two orders to be connected:

‘Don’t lean out, Peter, you’ll get dust in your eyes,’ knowing that he would pull in his head at once, with a smug ‘Yes, Mummee’.

Mrs Gray, however, had no desire to score off her. She neither liked nor disliked her. She did not mind Mrs Abinger sitting in the corner of her car, melting sideways like a jelly as she got hotter. She did not mind taking the Abingers on a picnic, any more than she would mind if she never saw them again. She would never wonder what had become of them, any more than she had wondered, before she met them, what Jo’s parents would be like.

They were going to a famous cove. A side road ran right down to the sands, so Mr Gray parked his car at the end and they unpacked their picnic nearby. When they were away from ‘Sheringham’, the car was their home. They stayed as near to it as possible. Driving down to Devonshire, they had picnicked by the side of the main road, sitting on the running board
stolidly munching, watching the cars go by with the swivel eyes they took to the Wimbledon tennis championships.

As Mrs Abinger had feared, there was not nearly enough to eat. The sandwiches of overdone beef were small and dry and buttered on one side. She prayed that George would not remark on there being no mustard. Her heart came into her mouth as she saw him help himself to three at once, and she tried feverishly to count how many were left before she took one herself. The Grays ate politely, waiting until food was passed to them. Mrs Abinger was surprised to see that Jo, who usually pounced on sandwiches and tore them apart to see what was inside, did the same.

There was a fossilized sponge cake apiece, and a woolly apple. Mrs Abinger pretended that she did not want hers, and gave them to Jo. Her family’s stomachs were of the greatest concern to her. She would have starved herself to death to keep them fed, and if she thought they were going hungry, her own distress was as gnawing as any hunger pain. They had enormous appetites. She had stretched their stomachs by always feeding them enormously. Mrs Gray, perhaps, had shrunk the stomachs of her family by feeding them sparingly. They seemed quite satisfied, but where was the pleasure of eating out of doors? The Grays never ate just for the sheer joy of eating. They ate dutifully, to sustain life.

Seeing George sounding an empty paper bag, Mrs Abinger tried to convey by nods and smiles that as soon as they got back they would go and have a really good tea at the café.

Mrs Gray took beatle-ware cups out of the fitted picnic case from which nothing was missing. There was tea for the ladies, lemonade for the children, and – oh dear – only cider for George and Mr Gray. George had wanted to bring some beer, but Mrs Abinger had thought that Mr Gray, being a man who played golf and drove a car, would be sure to have a man’s thirst.

If only she dared to suggest that George should go back to the little inn which they had passed about half a mile down the road. She knew what beer meant to him on a hot day. His constitution needed it. He did not need her to tell him this, however. He stood up, looking all wrong in that beach setting, with
his cap on quite straight, like a lid. He could not take off his waistcoat, because of his watch and chain, but he had removed his jacket, showing the pieces she had let into his shirt sleeves, because shirts that fitted him round the chest were never long enough for his arms.

‘I fancy,’ he said, and Mrs Abinger knew that he felt a little awkward, because he put on his stagey voice, ‘that I shall betake me to Ye Olde Pig and Whistle for a little light refreshment. How about you, sir?’

Mrs Abinger watched Mr Gray’s smile for any hint of superiority. ‘No, I thank you,’ he replied, suiting his language to George’s. ‘This is my tipple.’ He waved a cider bottle as if it were an Indian club.

‘You astound me, sir,’ said Mr Abinger. ‘You don’t know what you miss.’

‘What you’ve never had, you never miss,’ said Mr Gray, preparing himself for sleep. Daddy always had a little nap after a picnic lunch. When it was time for him to wake up, one of the children would bury him with sand, as if he were a father in a book.

‘You mean you’ve never even tried the stuff?’ Mr Abinger stared down at him with bulging eyes.

‘Never,’ said Mr Gray contentedly.

Josephine spoke up suddenly. ‘Oh Dad,’ she said, ‘you don’t want to go off there. You don’t want to go off after beer when we’re having a picnic’

‘Here, here, here, what’s all this? You’ve gone very Band of Hope all of a sudden.’ Mrs Abinger knew that George was trying to get at Mr Gray, who however had his eyes shut and was buried in beatitude as presently he would be in sand. ‘Many’s the time,’ went on George, ‘you’ve begged me to take you to the Sun. Deny that if you can.’

‘Oh stop it, Dad. Don’t be silly.’ Josephine scuffled a trough in the sand with her bare toes.

‘Is that how you talk to your father? You’d better come along with me now, young lady, and keep me company.’ He was annoyed with her for siding against him, but she did not care. She had the Grays to back her up.

‘I’m not coming,’ she said ungraciously. ‘I’m going to bathe.’

‘Not until half an hour after food,’ said Mrs Gray. Mrs Abinger was now also annoyed, not only by her interference, but by the implication that Jo had eaten enough to give her cramp.

‘You go along with Dad,’ she said.

‘No,’ said Josephine. ‘Me and Pauline are going to get botany specimens.’

‘Me and Pauline!’ exclaimed her father. ‘Is that what they teach you at your grand school? Talk about money thrown away – ’

Oh stop, George, stop, prayed Mrs Abinger in her heart. Stop, before they realize, not for your sake nor for mine, but for Jo’s, that there’s anything unusual in her going to the High School.

He was all out to be troublesome now. ‘If you ask me,’ he told the unconcerned Gray family, ‘it’s daylight robbery. Twelve guineas a term and they don’t even teach them how to use the first person singular. Twelve guineas a term for collecting botany specimens! That’s nearly forty pounds a year, with extras.’

He must not talk about money. People like the Grays no more talked about money than they talked about food. ‘Come along then,’ said Mrs Abinger hastily. ‘I’ll come with you.’ She began to get herself up from her uncomfortable perch on the narrow running board, where she had sat because it was nearer than the ground.

‘I don’t require company,’ George said with dignity. ‘I shall find liquid solace. You don’t want to come, Ellie. I thought you were so hot.’

‘I’d like to, dear.’ It was only half-past one. She was afraid that if he went alone, he might, now being disgruntled with the party, stay in the bar until closing time and come back even more aggressive. The idea of a half-mile walk in the sun nearly killed her, but she knew that she must go.

She was right; it did nearly kill her. When they got back to the cove, the Grays and Josephine were far away in the sea.

‘Let’s go down and watch them play,’ said George, who felt mellower now.

‘You go,’ she panted. ‘The walk has rather taken it out of
me. I’ll just rest here.’ She flopped down on the sand in the shade of the car.

‘You do look rough,’ he said, noticing her distressed appearance for the first time. ‘You stay there then, and have a sit down.’

She wished he would stay, because she felt giddy, but having said: ‘Anything you want, old girl?’ he thought he had done his bit. She watched him ambling away over the ridged sand, hopping over pools and little rocks as if he liked the athletic feel of his black rubber soles. His figure shimmered in the heat haze. He wavered and receded as if she were looking through the wrong end of a telescope. Her head swam. The smell of hot leather and petrol was nauseating.

Suddenly, she did not know whose car it was. Oh God, she did not know. This had happened once before, when, for a moment, she had terrified herself by not knowing her own name. Who am I? Ellie Abinger. Mrs Abinger, of the Corner Stores, Portobello Road, London, W.II.

That was all right then. To steady herself, she tried to say it aloud, but her tongue seemed to have thickened, and when she tried to move her mouth, it would only open sideways. She panicked, a black panic that overwhelmed her like the wing of Death and blotted everything out; sun, heat, sea, smell, sand, everything.

When she opened her eyes, there was a white mountain before them with stiff peaks and ridges. She looked at it dreamily for a while without worrying, and then she blinked and everything was clear again. She had heeled over, and was lying with her head in the sand, some crumpled sandwich paper half an inch away from her eyes. She struggled upright, and groping behind her, felt the wheel of the car and leaned against it with her legs stuck out in front of her like inanimate bolsters.

Mr Gray’s car. She knew it was Mr Gray’s car. Thank God, she was all right now. But where were they all? How long had she been queer? Why had they gone away without the car and left her all alone? Her exhausted brain could not cope with these problems. It had been through a taxing ordeal and wanted only to rest now, like a body that has been running. Dimly, through
half-closed eyes, she became aware of George’s distant figure hopping and skipping towards the black specks in the sea.

So it had all happened in a second or two. No one knew. In slow motion, she crawled her fingers over the sand towards her bag, drew it to her as if it were a ton weight, and fumbled in it for her comb. With a great effort, she raised her arms to draw out the pins which were holding her hat askew and began to comb the sand out of her hair.