Meet the Austins (18 page)

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Authors: Madeleine L'engle

BOOK: Meet the Austins
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There's a kind of loft in the stable with six camp beds in it, and all of us children were to sleep there. Mother and Daddy
were to have the room where Grandfather usually sleeps. It isn't a very big room, and it has an enormous four-poster bed, seven feet wide by seven and a half feet long, which takes up almost all the space. There's just room to walk around the bed to make it. One side of the room is all a big window, which Grandfather had put in. It has shutters you can close, but when they're open you look down the steep bluffs to the ocean and the only thing that's farther out on the bluff than Grandfather's stable is the lighthouse. Mother and Daddy always look forward to sleeping in the enormous bed, but Mother says that the first couple of nights, even if they close the shutters, she always stays awake for a long time to see the lighthouse light as it swings around. There are no pictures in the room; Grandfather says you can't ask any picture to compete with that view. But on one wall he painted in soft gray Gothic letters: “God is over all things, under all things; outside all; within, but not enclosed; without, but not excluded; above, but not raised up; below, but not depressed; wholly above, presiding; wholly without, embracing; wholly within, filling.”
That has always been one of Grandfather's favorite things, so we knew that it was by Hildevert of Lavardin, who wrote it sometime around 1125.
We didn't even go up to our loft to get settled, but went tearing down to the beach with the dogs, leaving Mother and Daddy to sit and talk with Grandfather. It takes quite a while to get down to the beach if you want to go by car, because the road winds around on long hairpin bends and you have to go terribly slowly. But there's a narrow, steep path going right down the bluff. Part of it is steps, and part of it is slippy-slidy
path, and you have to hold on to bushes as you go down. Mother and Daddy told John to take care of Rob, and Suzy to take care of Maggy, and Maggy said, “I'm older,” and Suzy said, “But I've been down the cliff and you haven't,” and Mother told me to take care of my arm and not fall and bump my teeth, and Daddy said we were to be back in an hour and a half and we were not to go wading.
The tide was out and Colette ran tearing up and down the half-moon of beach in the little cove. And then as a wave retreated she would dash after it, barking furiously, and then when a new wave would come lapping into shore she would retreat in terror, squealing, and we all laughed and laughed at her. Rochester behaved just like a puppy and lay down in the shallow water and rolled in the waves and then in the sand and made himself a perfect mess. He always does whenever we go to Grandfather's, but he's shorthaired so it isn't as bad as if it were Colette getting all full of saltwater and sand.
The little ones all wanted to wade, but John said, very firmly, “You all heard Daddy. You'll spoil everything if you disobey him the first thing. And you know it's still too cold. We'd be frozen if we didn't have on our winter jackets. Let's play leapfrog.”
So we played leapfrog, and statues, and then we gathered shells, and then the little ones started to build a sand castle for the tide to come into, and John and I wanted to help, but I guess we were all kind of tired because they said it was their castle and they didn't want John and me messing with it any old how, and John and I said we didn't want to mess around with it, we were much too old for boring old sand castles, so there. Of
course, we aren't too old for them. I don't think anybody's ever too old for sand castles—Daddy and Mother seem to love to build them. Anyhow, John and I walked down to the edge of the cove and stood looking out over the ocean. If you stand and look where the ocean laps over the curve of the earth and gets lost in the sky, you can't stay cross or tired for very long. John and I stood there, not talking to each other, but feeling very close and somehow very separate at the same time, because the sky and ocean were so vast and we were so small; and John didn't even seem to mind when I reached out and took his hand. John has never been one for holding hands with anybody, even when he was little, but he didn't jerk away, and we stood there together for a long time, hardly hearing the voices of the little ones behind us. Some gulls were waddling around in the next cove. They seem so clumsy when they are on land compared to the way they look when they fly. Rob let out a shout about something, and they took to the air, and then, suddenly, the one I was watching especially swooped down to the water and came up with a fish in its mouth.
John said, “I'm absolutely starved, and by the time we get back to Grandfather's we'll have been gone an hour and a half. Sometimes I wish we had to climb up to get to the beach so we could climb down to get home.”
It
was
a hard climb back up. Suzy and Maggy began complaining when we'd hardly even started, and, of course, that set Rob off. John and I practically had to carry him up, and Suzy and Maggy were whining before we got to the top. John took out his handkerchief and wiped their faces and said, “Now, smile.”
When we got back to the stable there was a good smell of cooking. Mother had brought a big canned ham and all kinds of other things, and she and Daddy and Grandfather were in the kitchen and it seemed as though all three of them were talking at once. Mother got a pile of sheets and gave them to John and me and told us to go up to the loft and make up five beds, and she told the little ones to set the table.
You get up to the loft by a ladder, so John climbed first and I handed him the sheets, and then I climbed after him. Rochester doesn't approve of the loft at all, because he can't climb the ladder. He has an old red rug that Grandfather always saves to put at the foot of the ladder for him to sleep on, so he can feel close to us all. Colette can climb the ladder, and she's terribly snooty about it, and that makes poor old Rochester feel even worse about having to stay on the ground.
The loft is a lovely, big, bare room that smells of the ocean. It's always filled with light that moves, because it's reflected from the water. There's a line of windows across the ocean side, so there're no pictures there, either. But on the opposite wall Grandfather had painted a poem which we all love. It's by Thomas Browne, another of Grandfather's favorites, and this is what it is:
If thou could'st empty all thyself of self,
Like to a shell dishabited,
Then might He find thee on the ocean shelf,
And say, “This is not dead,”
And fill thee with Himself instead.
But thou art all replete with very thou
And hast such shrewd activity,
That when He comes He says, “This is enow
Unto itself—'twere better let it be,
It is so small and full, there is no room for Me.”
I think that poem must have a good influence on us. We always seem more thoughtful of other people when we're at Grandfather's than we are anywhere else. Or maybe it's Grandfather himself. He's always thinking about what will make other people happy, and I don't think anyone could be unhappy around him for very long. Mother said no one could, and that was why he was such a wonderful minister. And he's beautiful to look at, too. He's very tall, like all our family, and thin, not skinny, and he has very white hair, lots of it, and white eyebrows, not wiry and curly like Daddy's and Uncle Douglas's and John's, but soft and thick, and little children love to sit in his lap and smooth them. When he smiles he has wonderful crinkles at the corners of his eyes, and his eyes sort of glint as though the sun were shining through them. And when he is angry it is terrible. John is very much like him, both as a person and in looks.
We finished putting the sheets on the beds, and got the gray army blankets out of the sea chest. We put two on each bed, one folded double-thickness, and the one on top to tuck in. We would be sleeping without pillows. Maggy had wanted to bring her pillow, but Mother said we couldn't bring five pillows, and if one brought a pillow everybody would want to, so Maggy
would have to rough it for a change. Maggy loves her creature comforts.
When we were through with the beds John sat down on his. “Vicky,” he said solemnly, “have you ever thought how lucky we are?”
I nodded.
“All our family … Grandfather … and Mother and Daddy. Sometimes I get so mad at you I'd like to hit you—”
“You used to,” I interrupted.
But he went on. “But that night when you fell off your bike and came staggering home all bloody, I don't think I've ever felt so awful. And then we get mad at Maggy so often, and we aren't always tactful, like Suzy saying it always makes the grapefruit come out wrong to have five children instead of four. But we have Mother and Daddy, and we have each other, no matter how much we get in each other's hair. Think how lucky that makes us. Think of all the people who get divorces and everything. And even people we know. Not just Dave's parents getting a divorce, but the way Mac and Judy Harris's parents shout at each other. I know it bothers Mac and Jude.”
“It bothers me, too, when I'm over there,” I said.
“Of course, Mother and Daddy shout some, too,” John said, “but it's different. I can't explain why it's different, but it is.”
“It certainly is!” I said.
“Mother says she can never stay mad at Daddy, no matter how hard she tries. And Daddy says, ‘
Stay
mad! You won't even let me
get
mad at you,' and then they laugh. Aren't you sorry for people who don't laugh, Vicky?”
“Yes. And people who don't love music and books.”
“And people,” John said.
Mother called up from downstairs then. “John! Vicky! Are you asleep up there? Come on down to dinner!”
When Grandfather's alone he eats in the kitchen when it's cold, and out on the porch when it's warm enough. But when we're there Grandfather has a wonderful table. As I've explained, what with the horses' stalls and the books it's an odd sort of house, without the kind of rooms people are used to. And in one of the stalls there's a very long narrow table that goes up against the wall all the way up to the ceiling when it's not being used. But when you want it, it lets down, and there's an old whaling lamp that hangs above it. It hasn't been electrified because there wasn't any electricity on the island at all till about ten years ago, and the island electricity goes off quite often, so Grandfather still keeps a lot of old lamps. Oh, on the underside of the table, which, of course, is what shows when it's up against the wall, is a big long map of the islands. Propped up against the books on one of the shelves is a Hokusai picture of some people crossing a curved bridge in the rain.
The little ones had set the table and we all hurried to it, and said grace, and then we ate as though we'd never seen food before.
 
When we were just about finished eating, Rob said sleepily, “Grandfather, there was something I've been saving up to ask you, but I've forgotten what it was.”
“Well, if you think of it in the middle of the night come and get in bed with me and tell me,” Grandfather said.
Daddy laughed. “That was very unwise of you, Father. Rob
will probably take you up on it. If he can't think of what he was going to ask you, he'll think of something else.”
“Rob asks silly questions,” Maggy said.
“But when you're Rob's age that's how you find out about things,” Grandfather told her.
“We picked shells and made a sand castle this afternoon,” Rob said. “Grandfather, when you look out over the ocean you can't see where the sky stops. Does the sky have any end, Grandfather?”
“Well, the clouds and our atmosphere have an end. Then there's space.”
“But that's still sky, too, really, isn't it?” Suzy asked.
“In a way.”
“But it must have
some
end,” Rob said.
“It's a bit of a question, Rob,” Grandfather said. “People used to think space went on and on forever, but now they think it's curved, and that it's finite. That means space
does
have an end.”
“Grandfather,” Rob said, “if it ends, what's beyond that?”
“Even Einstein couldn't give the answer to that one,” Grandfather said.
“My father knows,” Maggy said. “His airplane exploded and he went out into space and he's living on another star now and he knows everything. John explained it all to me.”
John looked rather defensive and opened his mouth as though to speak, but Grandfather said quietly, “John knows that God has taken care of your father.”
Suzy said, “I'd like to know everything in the world.”
“It's more than everything in the world, though, Suzy,” Grandfather said. “It's become much bigger than that. The
search for knowledge and truth can be the most exciting thing there is as long as it takes you toward God instead of away from Him.”
“Einstein didn't believe in God,” John said.
“Oh, didn't he! Excuse me, Victoria, Wallace,” and Grandfather got up from the table and we could hear him hurrying into another of the stalls. He came back in just a moment with a book and he almost glared at John as he said, “Now, listen here, young John, to Einstein's own words,” and he read:

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