The Little Girls (20 page)

They watched. The withdrawing sea washed over less of the sand each time. Its retreat made land seem itself to be an advancing tide, hard sleek wet sand-ripples dulled only by clottings of dead form. From across the shrinking watery miles came an expiring sigh—not like the sound of wind, a sigh in itself.

Or, desultorily, the mother and daughters stepped here or there picking up shells, which by being wet seemed more rare than they were. Dicey from time to time took a look back, up the long stretch, at the far-away picnic— which though in view, in miniature, was in hearing only in gusts and starts.

“They’re at the lemonade, now.
And
eating something.”

“I’m sure there’ll be some lemonade left, darling.”

“I don’t care. I would like a sandwich, though—if they’re ham? I mean, sometime.”

“There are hundreds of sandwiches: I saw them.”

Next time the child happened to look, there was being a disturbance—
not
, anybody could see, of a catastrophic kind, nothing like a wasp. No, what was occurring was a surprise, by the look of it a complete one, delightful in particular to the grown-ups, though no children showed signs of objecting to it. Yes, there was being an arrival—had been one (for there was an extra figure) but was in a way still being one, insofar as nothing had yet subsided. The extra figure stood out not only for the reason that it was standing (as for that matter were several others) but because it was, from here even, unmistakable. Fair, tall, and with that carriage of the head, this could be no one but Major Burkin-Jones—into mufti and with his usual air of unconcern.

The child said nothing, merely went back diligently to amassing shells. Mrs. Piggott roused herself from her thoughts to ask: “They’re not packing up yet, are they?”

“No. I think somebody else has come.”

“Poor Clare, I wish it was her father.”

“I
think
it is.”

Mrs. Piggott, indicating a fresh wet patch of uncovered sand, said: “There are more there.” (The two of them were about to start on making a shell box: this would be something to do if it rained in Cumberland.)

Sand deadens steps till they are near. Not till Mrs. Piggott saw Dicey waving did she also, not startled, see Major Burkin-Jones. She let her veil go that they might shake hands. He said: “You’re off tomorrow, Clare tells me?”

“Yes. We—”

The child hastened up, to tell the beautiful man: “This is our last day!”

“Rather windy,” smiled Mrs. Piggott, in extenuation of the behaviour of her veil, whose flyings and flutterings round her he watched intently. “But it has been, is being, a lovely picnic!”

“
Mumbo
said you couldn’t possibly come!”

“Nothing like being unexpected, is there?—No,” he told them, in justice to his daughter, “at one time this morning it didn’t look like it. Then I found I could, for a few minutes. That seemed better than nothing. So—”

The child asked, somewhat austerely: “You wanted very much to come to this picnic?”

“Didn’t you?” he parried.

“Oh, yes. But I’m not sure whether I have enjoyed it. It’s been too long.”

“Pity we can’t change places—times, I mean. Mine’s too short.”

“Why did you waste time changing your clothes?”

“I don’t know. Habit, I suppose?”

“You could have come in your medals.”

“I don’t think I have any.”

“I suppose you will.” “I thought,” he said, deserting the daughter for the mother, “I’d like to wish Olive luck, see how you were all getting on, pick up Clare while I was about it, and so on.— Cumberland’s where you’re off to, tomorrow?”

“We’re going to be there till the end of August.”

“End of August. Some wonderful country up there, I’ve always heard.”

“Yes, I believe there’s the most beautiful scenery.”

“You’ll like that, I know,” he told her, looking at the eyes which would see the scenery. “So you’ll be happy there. So it will be something to know you’re there. To think of you there. You—” He stopped.

“Mother, will there be caves?”

“I don’t know, darling.” She turned to him as though to ask: now they were looking each other in the face. “I don’t know,” she repeated. “I don’t know. Do you?”

“No. It’s beyond me. Altogether beyond me. And always will be, as long as I live.”

Folding her arms she pressed them against herself, over the light coat.

“You’re cold!” he cried out.

The child looked up.

“No,” said Mrs. Piggott, “but I think Dicey and I ought to walk about again. And you go back to the others, to the picnic. There can’t be many more of your minutes left, are there?”

“No.”

“Well, then.” She held out her hand. “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.” Her hand had been ice-cold.

“Goodbye, Major Burkin-Jones!”

“Goodbye, Dicey.”

But the child held him in that lost-looking stare which may mean nothing. “Be good,” he said, for something to say—and this time did smile.

Mrs. Piggott looked away to the west, along the ink-clear line of the wide bay, from one to another of the martello towers, some whole, some broken. Her daughter came and hooked herself to her elbow, while the long, few steps they had heard coming towards them were to be heard going away. They ceased to be heard—the child twisted her head over her shoulder, to see. She jerked the elbow. “Mother, he’s not gone, yet!”

Still not far away from them he had stopped, turned and was standing. They saw him. He saw them, calmly and with great clarity.—Was there more he wanted, could there be anything else? Mrs. Piggott, though moving no more than he did, may have sent some wordless inquiry. He said: “Just goodbye.” His eyes rested on their alike faces. “God bless you,” he said to them—turned, and this time was gone.

“Mother?”

“Yes?”

“Why did he say that? He said—”

“I know, darling.”

“What made him? He—”

“I don’t know, darling.”

“He never—”

“Oh, Dicey—
Dicey
!”

So the child fell silent, sometimes rubbing her cheek slowly against the tussore of the coat sleeve, sometimes rolling her face round against it and breathing into it, with a low loving continuous snuffling sound. Where the warmth of the breath made its way through the stuff moisture remained. Mrs. Piggott asked: “Have you said goodbye to Clare?”

“Say goodbye to
Mumbo
.”

“Haven’t you?—Aren’t you going to? Wish her happy holidays.”

“She’s not going away.”

“But you won’t be seeing her, don’t you see, for some time: it will seem quite a long time.”

“She’ll be gone now, won’t she?”

“Go and see. Go and try—run, darling!”

Off went Dicey. Alone, her mother began to walk again. A pile of shells earlier built up no longer was where she last saw it. Even since he had gone there was more land.

Clare would have been gone (her father, expecting to have been gone, waited for her at the car) had she not been called back. The reckoning following on a picnic had laid bare not only her mackintosh, name-taped as St. Agatha’s demanded, but what by elimination only could be the Burkin-Jones rug: all others had been by now claimed. Now on the trudge to the car for the second time, she dragged the belongings behind her like a fallen tent. Her blouse, all of it untucked from her skirt, ballooned in the wind, making her skinnier by contrast. Her shock of hair waged its individual battle with the wind. She was plodding her way over and through the loose sand under the sea wall to the first place where the wall could be climbed up.

Could the runner’s course, diagonally up from the sea, intersect that other? Dicey had started late.

The sobbing runner, desperate, could not shout. Too great the wind, too little her breath. Wasting seconds by halting, she tangled her arms up into signals and pointings —might not somebody see her from the encampment? Might not somebody see her and shout to Mumbo? Somebody saw, did shout—but did Mumbo hear? Not she. Nor was she seeing anything: on, on pigheadedly she was pegging. Now she was nearing the place where you climbed up.

“
Mu-u-u-umb-O
!”

Now she was at it. Now she was climbing up, scornfully hauling the tent-things after her. Now, on to her feet, she dragged the unfortunates across the grass of the wall’s top, to hurt them (as though to perdition) ahead of her. And now?

Alone in the middle of the empty sands wailed Dicey.

“Mum-BO-O-O!”

The rough child, up there against the unkind sky, on the rough grass, glanced at and over the sands once. She threw a hand up into a rough, general wave. Then she leaped down on the land side of the sea wall. She had disappeared.

“Is Miss Burkin-Jones here?” asked Dinah, walking into the Mopsie Pye shop.

She addressed herself to the younger of two women who, alike in aubergine jerseys, each lightly exhibiting some sports jewellery, stood about to meet customers’ any needs. The shop held nothing so formal as a counter: more inspired use had been made of space—wide shelves, with receding others above them, ran along both side walls; narrow tables only, not many, were in the middle. The length no less than the glitter of the prospective made the shop surprising to enter, after the smallness (stylish though that had been rendered) of the street-frontage. Probably, a back yard had been taken in: whether or not, the extension was for the greater part roofed by glass— through which, this morning, misty October sunshine came wandering in, to be met by lit though seductively shaded lamps throwing glow on the wares on shelves and tables. The newcomer blinked, as anyone might. The wares were some grouped, some spread, in measured profusion. Some dangled, even a little above the eye—and were a-twirl, at the moment, in the current of air from the door. Nor was any of this in vain. When Dinah entered, five or six gazing persons were moving about in a tranced state which looked like culminating in buying.

The shop’s far end was cut off by a partition, in which was an archway partly masked by a curtain. “Or is she busy?” added the tall visitor, subdued.

“Well, she’s checking in stock. But she’s expecting you, isn’t she? Mrs. Delacroix?”

“Mrs. Delacroix. Yes.”

Clare appeared in the archway, shoving aside the curtain. She filled the archway. Over her top part she wore a light cotton jacket (half-length overall) unbuttoned. Beneath it she was encased, decisively as ever, in something dark. The amount there had come to be of her, not in bulk only, had to be reckoned with.—The other day, had the dazzle up on the uplands dissolved her somewhat? Here, on her own ground, the owner was out of proportion to her shop. In it, she threw everything out of scale. “Hullo,” she said. “You’re early.”

“Am I?”

“Never mind. Come in.”

She stepped back, to let Dinah through.

Shelves, at this other side of the archway, multiplied. The glass roof continued. This back room was partly store, partly office. Much
was
being unpacked, and all space seemed taken? On a stout table stood a crate-sized carton, top flaps open: yet to be tackled, another waited below. Progress so far made could be estimated by the number of the empties stacked in a corner. From under a bottom shelf protruded a major packing-case, metal-cornered, formidably intact. These shelves were more, and more inchoately, crowded than had been those on the showroom side of the arch: floods of checked-in stock, requiring dusting, had as islands among them a saturnine-looking telephone and a box lid serving as tray for carpenter’s tools. Deep litter hid most of the floor from view.

“Well, you found your way here.”

“Yes,” agreed Dinah. “Nice to see me, is it?” she tendered hopefully—then, not waiting, knocked back her hair and rather wildly burst out: “Oh my heavens, though!”

“I don’t wonder. Whatever time did you start?”

“I don’t know. It was still rather dark.”

“And drove like blazes. Any breakfast, had you?”

“Oh, yes. Francis was wide awake.”

“Stop for coffee anywhere on the way?”

“I hate stopping.”

“You hate coffee?”

“I said, I hate stopping!”

“That
one can see. Eyes starting out of your head.”

Dinah instantly, in a quoting voice, said: “‘Oh, dear, am I a shock? It’s been such years, hasn’t it!’ (No, you missed that one: try another.) ‘Any objection?’—Not a squeak out of
her
, by the way, since. Or have you had? Nn-nn?”

Clare said merely: “Better have coffee now, then.” She turned her head to the arch and bawled: “Phyllida!” The younger aubergine, eager, came into view. “When there’s a minute, be a very kind girl, will you, and nip along to La Poup
e
e? Coffee for two.”

“Surely!”

“Need money, or we do we have tick there?”

“Tick there, Miss Burkin-Jones.”

“Good—Oh, and Phyllida, buns!”

“Mumbo, I don’t
want
buns!”

“Well, I do, or shall.” The sprite having vanished, Clare rolled round her heavy eyes in their heavy pouches. “What are you,” she demanded to know, “in a state about?”

“I’m not in a state—state yourself! I just don’t want buns: surely that’s not abnormal?”

To show, Dinah lighted a cigarette and drew on it at some length, abnormally calmly. She then looked back through the arch—from where she stood, she saw the shop in reverse. In reverse, it confounded her still more. As minutely as could be possible from a distance, she examined all things (twice over, those which hung in the air) with a blend of ignorant wonder, deference, some suspicion, though not mockery. Clare seized the occasion to finish unpacking the opened carton: anything in it, now, being near the bottom, her arms plunged in up to the shoulders. Shavings gave out a deprived rustle as, one by one, wrapped objects were mined from their bedded depths, to wait on the table—from which, all being done, Clare deposed the carton. “Well?” she then asked, brushing her hands together.