The Greengage Summer (6 page)

“And what are you doing, Cecil?”

“Nothing.”

“But you are looking after the Littles?”

“Yes,” I said grudgingly. I had to. Joss was as good an elder sister as any, but, when she was painting, Vicky or Willmouse could have fallen into the Marne and she would not have
known.

“Only they wouldn’t,” said Hester.

“No, but Willmouse goes off every evening alone and he shouldn’t.”

Every evening when he had finished his work Willmouse put his things away: his box of scraps, his sewing-box, Miss Dawn and Dolores, and their new confections; then he tidied himself, which was
only a form because he was always tidy—even his scarecrows managed to be neat; he would wash his face and hands, sleek down his hair with his private bottle of eau-de-Cologne and, like any
old gentleman, go for a little walk. A new barge, the
Marie France
47, had anchored above the cove; he liked to walk up and look at that.

“Why don’t you go when we go?”

“I like to go by myself.”

“You can’t always do what you like.”

“I can,” said Willmouse.

I let him. It was too hot, everything was too strained, to bother.

Before Eliot. We were back to that time, yet we were not back. It was the same, and it was not the same. A curious tenseness was in the house. Eliot when he came from Paris looked bone tired and
haggard, and he was so curt with Mademoiselle Zizi that her eyes looked bigger than ever with perpetual tears. She was very silly. She kept searching his face, beseeching him with those big eyes
instead of leaving him alone; we scurried out of his way as soon as we saw that tiredness in his face.

For three days he did not come at all. Mademoiselle Zizi went to the telephone four or five times. We heard her ask for the same Paris number, then wait, listening, while that far-off bell rang
and rang. There was never any answer. If the office telephone went she would leap out of her chair; then she would sink back again as she heard Madame Corbet’s, “Hôtel des
Oeillets. Oui, madame. Oui. Certainement.”

Then there was Paul. I could bear his having tried to make Joss come to him, that was to be expected of Paul; if he had hit me that night, as I think he meant to with the bottle, I could have
expected that too; but he had sneaked out and left me. In our code that was mean.

“Mauricette says you were drunk,” said Hester.

“So that was what was the matter with you,” said Willmouse.

“She says you shouldn’t be with Paul.” Hester was troubled.

“He is a horrid boy,” said Vicky. “He gave me a bit of frog to eat and said it was chicken.”

“Did you eat it?”

“You
can
eat them,” said Vicky, as if that settled it.

Neither of the Littles liked Paul. Hester, of course, took a more lenient view. “But you were not there,” I said. “You don’t know how awful he was,” I said.

“More awful than you and Joss?”

“Yes,” and then, thinking of what Paul had been through, the camps and the Hôtel-Dieu, the half-negro sister, I had to say, “I don’t know.”

I did not want to see all these things in Paul, but since coming to Les Oeillets I seemed to see a long way into people, even when I did not wish it. “You think of no one but
yourselves,” Mother had said on that long-ago day on the beach, and how much more comfortable that had been. I seemed to see into everyone and, “There isn’t anybody good,” I
said in misery.

“Yes, there is,” said Hester; “Monsieur Joubert.”

Perhaps even he was not completely good but he was . . . kept good, I thought; we could see him now, with Joss faithfully behind him, both of them busy. “I wish I had painting or dressage
or something,” I said, and asked, “How can you be good if you are just lying about?”

“Mother says not everyone can have things.”

“Then they can’t be good,” I said firmly.

Hester was looking at the river, at the water eddying down. There was a long silence, then, “Cecil, is Eliot good?” she asked.

The question seemed to fall with a plop into the peaceful water.

“We love him,” I said uncertainly. Can one love someone who is not good? That was as much a reversal of our ideas as that the Black Virgin was beautiful.

Is Eliot good? It was a question I would rather not have answered and I was glad when the water-whirls took it away.

CHAPTER 12

I
T WAS
the third week of August, and the same high summer weather; even in the cove it was hot; hardly a breeze disturbed the willows so that they hung
dustily green, not showing their silver; the grass was dusty and untidy, filled with the litter left by Sunday walkers and picnickers; the bulrushes were untidy too; they were ripe and powdering,
and if we accidentally brushed a spear-rod a stain of brown was left on our skin and clothes. In the orchard the greengages were almost over and at dinner small white grapes appeared on the table.
“Are they champagne grapes?” we asked—we had become most conscious of champagne—but Mauricette shook her head. “These are from the Midi. Ours are not ripe till the end
of September,” and she said, “But you will be here for the vintage, of course.”

We did not dispute that. It seemed to us we were here for ever. Mother was better but still not out of bed, not even sitting up. Next month the holidays would be over, but there were still three
and a half weeks to go and at Les Oeillets each day was like a year. Twenty-three days; twenty-three years. Who bothers what will happen in twenty-three years?

I remember thinking that as I was lying on my stomach in the sun at the edge of the cove, looking down into the water where hundreds of tiny fish were nibbling at nothing that I could see. If I
threw in a crumb they would all dart round it, taking bites, as something sensational would divert us. I supposed a fish’s only sensation was food . . . food and death, I thought, watching a
big fish hovering over them. Sometimes someone from the town or the hotel would bring a fine net and scoop these little fish up, a hundred or so of them, to fry crisp and season with salt and
lemon, and eat with slices of brown bread and butter. I had eaten dozens; now I, part of their fate, hung over them and they did not even see me. Ugh! I thought.

My back seemed to be melting with heat, but suddenly I felt cold as if my blood had chilled. There was nothing one could do; at any moment the big fish, the net, might come to any of us, to me.
I looked at the nibbling shoal again. If there were a crumb they darted, but even if the shadow of a very big fish went over them they did not move from the crumb. They were too busy living.

Well then, I thought; and slowly the cold ebbed away and again I could feel the heat beating through my dress on to my skin, but I could not forget that cold. “Funny, I was never afraid of
death before,” I told Hester.

“You never thought about it,” said Hester and she comforted me. “It was only the fish.” I had put death firmly out of my mind when she said thoughtfully, “I
don’t know why but I don’t like these days.”

I did not like them either, but there seemed nothing wrong; in fact there was a new friendliness in the house. We had put Paul out of bounds so that we heard no scandal; Mademoiselle Zizi and
Joss kept truce under Monsieur Joubert; Madame Corbet, perhaps because she wished she had not slapped me, was less sharp; and for us it was as if we had taken a step or two backwards; we were
children again, and that was a relief.

Joss finished her first painting and took it to Mother. Vicky had her fifth birthday; Monsieur Armand made her a cake and we had a French birthday party. We were to remember it always.
“Because it was from then,” said Hester afterwards. “That was the day,” she said, “when Eliot began to be where he wasn’t.”

“And wasn’t where he was.”

It was a queer birthday party. A table was carried out in the garden, Mauricette covered it with a white cloth and decorated it with vine leaves from the arbour. In the middle was the cake,
covered with cream icing and nuts, and round it Mauricette put a ring of wine-glasses filled with grenadine. “No tea?” asked Vicky puzzled, but there was no tea. Mademoiselle Zizi came
and Madame Corbet, Mauricette, Monsieur Armand, Toinette and Nicole, Robert the gardener and his wife and baby; Monsieur Joubert and Joss left their painting, Willmouse his sewing. Paul curtly
refused to come out of the kitchen, and Eliot, though he had known about the party, had gone to Paris. That made it more amiable but less exciting.

It did not last long; there were no presents, Mother could not be reminded and we could not buy them without any money, but Vicky, with so few birthdays behind her, was not in the habit of
presents and did not know what she was missing. We drank her health, cut the cake, and after eating and drinking, broke up. Joss, Hester and I went to the hospital, Willmouse took his walk, and
Vicky had more cake in the kitchen.

When Willmouse came in he said, “Who told you Eliot was in Paris?”

“He is.”

“He isn’t. He’s here.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw him,” but Willmouse seemed perplexed.

“What’s the matter?” I asked him.

“It was Eliot, not in Eliot’s clothes.”

“You must have made a mistake.”

“I don’t make mistakes about clothes,” said Willmouse.

He had been walking home along the bank—“You know the bit along the path where the cove is hidden in the bulrushes?”—when Eliot had appeared, walking in front of him.
“And he was wearing blue, like the overalls here but trousers and one of those striped jersey shirts.”

“Eliot doesn’t wear those sort of clothes,” said Hester.

“I
know
,” said Willmouse exasperated. “That’s why.”

“Why?”

“Why it seems funny when he does.”

“Are you
sure
?” asked Hester.

“Don’t I know about clothes?” said Willmouse in a terrible voice, and Hester subsided.

“He went off the path just above the bulrushes where it has a side path into the wood.” Willmouse wrinkled his forehead again. “Do you know, it looked—I thought—but
he couldn’t have . . .”

“Couldn’t have what?”

“Come off the new barge.” Willmouse sounded oddly positive, but what would Eliot have been doing on the
Marie France
?

We liked barges with their black hulls and clean scrubbed decks, and had all been up to look at this one. We often looked into barge cabins to see their shining brass, their curtains and pots of
flowers; often there was a cat or a bird in a cage, a mother and lots of children, but the
Marie France
did not seem to have a woman aboard. Her brass was not polished, there were no
curtains or flowers. She was a dingy barge and we saw only two men, in the cotton trousers Willmouse had described, but they did not wear jerseys, even cotton ones; they were naked above the waist,
with black sailor caps.

“It wasn’t Eliot,” I said, and that seemed positive when Eliot came back at nine o’clock that night.

“Did you have a good day?” Mademoiselle Zizi asked anxiously.

“Damnably hot,” said Eliot. He looked exhausted.

He had brought Vicky a box of chocolates such as we had never seen or imagined; it was a pink satin box painted with roses and tied with wide velvet ribbon, and inside, where most boxes have
paper-lace edgings, it had real lace. It was marked Dorat. “One of the most expensive chocolate shops in Paris,” exclaimed Madame Corbet.

“You see he was in Paris,” I told Willmouse.

“Yes,” said Willmouse, but he did not sound convinced.

Eliot stayed at Les Oeillets next day, but he did not sit, as he usually did, reading in the garden. First he took the Littles to see Mother; when he came back he asked Hester and me if we would
like to go with him into the town. We passed Joss on the river bank, but she did not turn her head, nor did Eliot say anything. In the town he bought postcards, giving them to us, and then some
grapes for Mother, which we took to the hospital, calling on Monsieur le Directeur, who called out, “Á ce soir,” when we left.

“Why à ce soir?” I asked.

“He is coming tonight. There’s a big dinner,” said Eliot. “Didn’t you know?”

“We are not told things,” I said.

As soon as we got in Eliot coaxed Mademoiselle Zizi out to the Giraffe. “That’s three times,” said Hester.

“That Eliot has gone into the town?”

“Yes. Isn’t he fidgety?” said Hester.

He could not have had very much lunch, for just after twelve he came to the cove where Hester and I had taken our picnics and turned us out. “Keep away,” he said. “I want to
sleep.”

“But we haven’t eaten our picnics.”

“Well, go and eat them somewhere else.”

There was no one about. Monsieur Joubert had gone in, he lunched at twelve. Joss could not accompany him; she ate her picnic humbly in the orchard; after that they both went to their rooms to
sleep. Willmouse too, after his picnic, would take a nap under his cherry tree; like the little old gentleman he was he would cover his face with his handkerchief. Vicky was still at the age when
she was put to rest and was collected by Joss on her own way up. Monsieur Armand, when the luncheons were over, would read the newspaper on the kitchen table, Mauricette lazed in the kitchen or
garden, Mademoiselle Zizi lay in a long chair on the terrace, and I think even Madame Corbet nodded in the office. Hester and I had meant to bathe, immersing ourselves, coming out now and again in
the sun, going back; the water would have been cool, but now we could not bathe.

Eliot must have divined this, for he asked, “Did you want to bathe?” and he suggested, “Go to the Plage for once.”

“We should have to pay,” said Hester.

Eliot laughed. “You little skinflints.”

That hurt us. “Ever since we have been here,” I said in a muffled voice, “we haven’t had any money.”

“Why not?” asked Eliot.

“Nobody has given us any.” Hester’s voice was muffled too. It was from the remembrance of the times we had looked over at the Plage, read the list of ices, gazed in at the
sweetshops in the town, at those wonderfully coloured sucettes and, in l’Eglantine, at the gladioli we had wanted for Mother; it was the remembrance of Vicky not having any birthday presents,
of wanting to buy ‘Moi et Toi’ and something for Uncle William that made us sound choked.