The Little Girls (21 page)

“We-ell …My Weird Sister, you
have
got a kitchen here! I mean honestly, haven’t you? Trade terms for your weirder sister, I do hope? Anything in my line, have you this morning? Any wombats’ wombs or anything—powdered, naturally?”

“
Tcha!
”

The frivolous one, making use of some shelves by standing leaning against them, was in good spirits. Whether or not she had been funny, she thought she had; in any event, she had quite revived. Contentedly simmering with mirth, there she was. Clare’s reaction was to remark, grumblingly: “First time I’ve seen you properly dressed.” This referred to the suit worn today, to the burnish given to the hatless head, and to well-behaved though supple long narrow shoes: Italian, extremely probably. On them, Clare concentrated for so long that the wearer ended by drawing one foot up, to take a look herself—meanwhile seeing no harm in pointing out, mildly, though in her tone of withheld reproach: “This is only the second time you have seen me—since the gap.” She went on in her mother’s voice: “I’m sorry, though, if I was untidy the other day. I was in a hurry to get to the blasted heath. And I’d no idea we were going to be so grand: you, Sheikie, Francis. Frank in a tie, even, as though for London.—You never saw him.”

“No, never saw him.”

“He half-saw you.”

“Better than nothing,” said Clare affably—her attention, however, was on the move away. She directed a calculating scowl at her last (it might have been lifelong) enemy, the impregnable-looking packing-case. She side-longed a glance at her armoury, chisels, hammer, etc., as though fingers itched in her mind. She confined herself (for the time being) to moving in on the packing-case, laying hands on it, and giving it a tug, haul, or attempted heave.
How
heavy? Ton weight: budge it did not. “What about him?” she asked.

“Frank? He’s a neighbour.”

“I see. Nice neighbours on the whole, have you, down there?”

“Oh,
yes!
”
said Dinah, with vague fervour. She asked: “How have you been?”

“Since when?”

“Last week, was all I was meaning.”

“Much the same. And you?”

“Oh, Mumbo—anything
but!
”

In came Phyllida, with the La Poupee coffee tray. Sanely, with her ministrant smile, she brushed
debris
from their end of the table. “You’ll need
chairs
,” she went on to say, discerningly: two were found, cleared, given a flick with a duster, placed face-to-face.

‘Thank you so much!”

“Not at all, Mrs. Delacroix. (Rock cakes looked nice this morning, Miss Burkin-Jones!)”

Round these cups, indeed around all this china, dolls danced ring-a-ring. All were brightly got up—amongst them danced teddy bears. “I thought
those
were over?” blinked Dinah, suddenly, closely gazing. No bear wore a bow. She shaded her eyes from the top glare.

“Traditional, by now, aren’t they?” Clare poured coffee. “Don’t your grandchildren have any?”

“I don’t know,” admitted the other, looking distracted.

‘Too much light?”

“We-ell…”

The proprietor rose, rather harshly pushed back her chair, and unwound a cord: down from its roller rolled a taut dark overhead green blind. Their end of the table entered a thought-dark arbour. Clare remarked: “You didn’t mind all that sky.”

“Where—when?”

“Up on that hill of yours.”

“No.—Oh, you were too bad, you
did
run out!”

“When are we talking about?”

“Last time. The
end
of the other day! All of a sudden, gone. Off, in a flash. No warning, barely goodbye. Running jump into that car of yours, door banged, whizz, pouf— out of Applegate gate!” The complainer paused, took a gulp of coffee. She then stared at Clare, straight across the table. “Could
you
not bear it a minute longer?”

Clare put her nose in the air. She went into profile.
Mopsie Pye stated: “Had to be off. Was already late on the road. Am pretty busy, you know. Time’s money.”

“Oh, yes… But there she and I were left, you see. Two strange women. Totally disconnected, from that moment. And on top of that, poor Sheikie could hardly stand; she drooped like—”

“Nonsense. Strong as a horse.”

“Anyway, her nose began to go blue. She had had rather a day, if one comes to think. Bleary was not the word, though I couldn’t blame her. So what did we then do? Oh yes, I gave her tea.”

“That cannot have cost you much: one lemon?”

“On the contrary, she got outside lashions of buttered toast, I was glad to see. She may simply not like eating when you’re about, like some animals won’t eat in front of their captors,

Clare all but blew up. “
That
comes nicely from you!— as she’d say herself.”

“Not at all. I just gave a whiff of the bait, you rounded her up. Yes you did, too, Mumbo! Unilaterally whatnot-ing in that Harrods teashop.”

“Not Harrods. However. Go on.”

“You’re staring at me, aren’t you?” asked Dinah, stopping.

“You’re coming on, you know.”

“Mentally? That you could have noticed the other day, I should have thought.”

“Was in a riot of impressions,” said Clare rudely.

“Well, when the toast was gone I had an idea. I put her into the car and we went to Frank’s. ‘We’ll have drinks with him,’ I said to her, very slowly and clear, on the way over. ‘Then, what he’ll love—though sad that you have to go—will be, to take you in his car to your train.’”

“That brighten her up?”

“She faintly opened one eye. Anyway, there I left her.— What I never shall know is, how I got the car home. Even that short way, Mumbo, that short way. (No, not drink: anyone knows about that.) When I had, I looked at my bed and thought, ‘Soon, sleep’—lay down, to see how sleep was going to feel, and never got up. I slept, slept, slept, slept. I was pole-axed.”

Clare let slip: “So was I.”

“You
slept, slept, slept?—Even,” Dinah was not to be kept from saying, “though time’s money?”

“Even though.”

“Where were we both, I wonder?”

Clare said: “More coffee?”

The visitor, receiving her cup back, ground out one cigarette in its saucer, then lit another. “Mind where you chuck that match away!” Clare said sharply. The smoker looked appreciatively at the floor—which, still more since the emission from the late carton, was awash with shavings, flammable-looking wadding, thin twists and untwists of flame-hungry paper. “Yes, we
could
blaze up, couldn’t we! All the same, what do you take me for?” She got up, crossed to one of the shelves, and extinguished the match into a dish. Not content with that, she immolated her cigarette, grinding it out into the dish also. She then went back and looked into the dish again. “Who’s ‘Paul’?”

Clare, who’d been gazing up at the dark-green blind, asked: “Who?”

“Written at the bottom of a dish.”

“Oh, a dog, then. Yes, we do line in those.”

Dinah, pacing, clicking a thumb and finger, called: “Paul! Paul! Paul!—Sounds out all right,” she had to admit, “but could a dog not be a prig, with a name like that?”

“I saw no dog in your country home?”

“Francis could never feel for one, he says. So what would become of the dog when I went away?”

“You go away often?”

“Now and then. Here or there. Frank has a Labrador, but it bites, so it mostly stays at his cottage
… Mumbo!
Not a squeak out of Sheikie one can just bear; but…?”

“Sorry, sorry. Busy.”

“Oh, yes. You said.”

“Rude? Should have written a bread-and-butter?”

“Even that,” said the sad one, “would have been better than nothing. I wondered whether you’d telephone.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

“No.—Last night, when I rang up, you sounded so cross.”

“You made me jump, suddenly coming through like that.”

“That’s the worst of telephones. What were you doing?”

“Well, I was in my flat.”

“Of course you were, else you couldn’t have answered. What were you doing?”

“Thinking about you,” said Clare crossly.

“And why not?—What’s your flat like?”

“Well, it’s a flat.”

“Can’t I come and see it?”

“If you like. If
I
‘m there.”

“Oh, you’re so genial!”

Clare looked into the coffee pot: not a drop more coffee. Dinah’s forgotten cupful the more annoyed her. Reclaiming the cup, she stacked it with other La Poupee items on the gay tray, then walked off and poked the tray through the arch. “Phyllida! Can we get this out of the way?”

“Miss Burkin-Jones,
nobody’s
touched the rock cakes!”

“Oh? Take ‘em back, eat ‘em. Do as you think.”

“Are you terribly tired this morning, Miss Burkin-Jones?”

“No.”

“Shall I
shut
the curtain?”

“Do as you like.”

During the colloquy, Dinah’d remained in mid-air, mouth open. Coming back, Clare sighted a look of perplexity, dereliction, in the beautiful face. “Sorry,” she said —going nevertheless to the other, working end of the table, where she set about unwrapping the things from the carton: veined milk glass cereal bowls or saucers, greenish, heavy enough in cut to seem alabaster, all alike, one by one came to light. Dinah came nearer, saying: “Couldn’t I help? Couldn’t I put those somewhere?”

“Nn-nn, thank you. I know where they go.”

“You could tell me. They’re pretty, aren’t they—rather? What are they for, though?”

“What they are for!”

“You never answer. I sometimes don’t think you hear me.”

“Oh, I hear you all right, when I like. I heard you just now. Now look
here,
Dinah—”

“Don’t call
me
‘Dinah’!”

“You are Dinah. One becomes—you’ve become. So look here,
Dinah,
try and have sense! Sad though it was that we lost touch, you and I have got on perfectly well without one another for going on fifty years—”

“Oh, no!”

“I said, ‘going on.
’ ”

“I didn’t mean that. I meant, have we?”

“Well, look at you. Look at me.”

“Look at Sheikie.”

Clare raised her voice.  
“ ‘
For the greater part of a lifetime,’ as Sheikie put it.
”

“Oh yes, at Harrods. What does one mean by the ‘greater’ part?”

“Don’t argue: listen! To have met again has been very nice. But we cannot keep in-ing and out-ing every two days. We have lives to live.”

“That sounds like Sheikie, too.—This has been a week.”

“And so?” asked Clare, forbiddingly staring.

“If you meant to
go
again, why did you come back?”

“My heavens,
you
ask that! Practically blackmailed?”

“I’d thought it was more Sheikie who’d felt that.”

“You’re right: I take that back.
I
was glad enough.”

Idly drawing a finger round the rim of a mock-alabaster bowl, Dinah said: “Oh, I’ve had a nice time—I agree com
pletely. In most of my life, I mean. I mean, as things go. But one can miss without knowing what one misses. Miss —can’t one?—without even knowing one
is
missing?”

“I have no idea.”

“I don’t want to make you angry. I didn’t see I was going to be a bother. You mean, you haven’t got time for me—now? Or,” she added, looking round the restricted, encumbered space,
“room
for me, really? Phyllida thinks,” she went on in a lowered voice, with a glance at the area, “I can see, that I’m wasting your time. Mumbo, is she right?”

“No.”

“What must I not do, then?”

“Rock the boat. Unsettle me.” Clare piled bowls on each other and, without warning, thrust them at Dinah. “Here,” she said, “put these up on the shelf (one from the end, two from the top) where the others are, will you?”

“Oh yes. I saw the others—they’re yellow, though?”

“Yellow, yes. Then come back for the rest. When they’re all up there, count them.”

Dinah was good at that. She then roved the shelves. “If I could dust some of this …” she said cravingly. “No good, though, till the floor’s swept. I
couldn’t—?”

“No. There is still the packing-case.”

“I see a broom—not a small patch? We should be less inflammable.”

“Keep your talents for home.”

“You didn’t see much of it the other day. Applegate. Only the bath and that dull dining-room. Then, till you left, no-cave, so nothing but pottering.”