Bilgewater (8 page)

“Cor luv a duck,” I said to father, “you're a blummin' genius!” (I talked North.)

“William,” said HB, “I wish you'd stop this.”

“Hmmm?” said father.

“This vulgarity. Bilge's vulgarity.”

“I'm
not
vulgar.”

“My dear child, you are now and then.
Very
vulgar. As an old friend, a
privileged
friend who has known you since you were—”

“Hey!” I said, picking up a horse.

“—she would not have cared for it.”

“Who wouldn't?” said father, blinking.

“Daisy,” said HB, meaning mother and dropping his eyes. “Daisy would not have cared for Bilge saying ‘blummin' genius.'”

“No,” said father, slowly watching the squares. My hand hovered, my hand rose, my hand slowly fell. I donked down the horse and we both sat still for a very long time. Only Old Price's dead-leaf voice whispered on. Then the air grew electric and my father cried, “My word! My word though! Ha ha!”

“Ha ha,” he cried and he got up and came over to me and sort of biffed me over the back, “but bless me, Edmund if she's not one.
She's
the blummin' genius! My goodness gracious me!”

I had done something pretty nice. The game was far from over but what I'd done was pretty nice. I don't suppose I will ever make a better move than I made that evening. I wagged my head about and grinned at everyone. So did father. We were well pleased with each other.

“Can't get the hang of chess,” said Puffy.

“Where's the wine gone?” asked HB and father began looking about for the corkscrew.

 

Paula had gone off to some crisis in the dormitories when I got back and I took my dinner out of the oven which had been on at number 10 by the look of the pork chop, and I sat very happy thinking of the rook and the horse. Looking back I realise that I was feeling happier than I had been since Grace had appeared. Also perhaps it was the first rime I had really stopped thinking about her. Or perhaps I had not
thought
, not
thought
at all about anything since Monday, only felt; and the bit of thought or what Paula calls headwork that had occurred down in the study had restored me to myself again or at least to some sort of inner self-respect.

Difficult.

Gnawing the chop bone I thought of the rook. I thought of the mess and the muddle in father's study and the order and truth that nevertheless emerged from it. I reflected on my father's character, his vague face that hides a multitude of virtues.

Paula came in, red as a fox, red as a rose, wild as a foxglove and I smiled at her over the chop.

“There now,” she cried, “So there we are! Bloind down. On his head. Concussed.”

“Who?”

“Terrapin of course, who else? Poor Jack Rose tried to field it off him and puts his head right through the window. Boakes was there thank God. Tourniquet. Saved the day! Might have been the main artery.”

“In his head?”

“I told you. You were
witness
. I told your father. Those bloinds. Last week. You heard me tell your father.” She was running about for Elastoplast and Savlon, then to the phone for the doctor.

“Life's difficult,” I said, feeling still that it was getting better really.

“Beware of self pity. You have to expect difficulties. Is that the doctor? Expect it, I say and it'll be all right. Hello? Well you'd better get over here quick-as-whats-thiz for there's disaster!”

The astounding thing about Paula is that she looks like Tess of the D'Urbervilles and she sounds like Tess of the D'Urbervilles and she thinks like Tess of the D'Urbervilles and yet she's so different from Tess of the D'Urbervilles. I expect she comes from a different part of Dorset. Life is awful for her all right, fate and doom are in control, yet she's all for doing something about it—not praying or accepting. Doing. You wouldn't catch Paula lying down on Stonehenge and waiting for the police. She'd be getting down to the headwork, packing suitcases, buying a single ticket into the heart of the madding crowd.

“Is this world a
blighted
star?”

“It is so. Now then let's see about new bloinds.”

“Fool Terrapin,” I said. “Brave Jack Rose.”

And in this tremendous activity of the evening I clean forgot the telephone call.

G
race Gathering was there at school all right on the following Monday. She was the first thing to be seen in prayers. The great gold head towered above the wide sea of ordinary heads some rows in front of me. It was, I saw, in a row of fifth formers. She must have been put down in the O level lot. Funny not to have got O levels at that age but perhaps she was younger than she seemed.

There were a few other large, older girls in that form as it happened and Grace Gathering was standing beside a curvaceous brown-skinned one called Beryl Something who had a bad reputation and didn't do much in the way of washing. She had long slit eyes. The distinguishing feature of Beryl Something was that for more years than you could count, probably from the moment she had arrived at the school there had been boys on motor bikes hanging round the school gates to take her home.

On the other side of Grace there was another girl I couldn't stand either called Aileen Sykes. “Aileen” just suited her. Fancy a parent choosing Aileen when there was no law against Eileen! Most names ending in leen are pretty (not Maureen or Doreen) but
Ail
een! She had a terribly old, wizened face and was undersized, neatly proportioned and dimity and terribly self-possessed. Ten times an hour she would yawn and look out of the window as if everything were too much for her. To look at her you would think that the minute she was out of school she passed into a sort of boudoir existence of levées and minuets and dishes of tay and a bit of fingering on the harpsichord. I don't think she can have done really as she lived in Pearson Street where all our Mrs. Things came from and one of our Mrs. Things had known her mother and said there were blacklocks in the Sykses' cake tins. There was the odd motor bike at the gate for Aileen Sykes too, and sometimes quite a cluster of quite presentable objets d'art astride them. Aileen spoke authoritatively about the lavender walk in the park and the phases of the moon. One Thursday evening I heard dear Uncle HB say “Who is Aileen Sykes?” and I thought, Oh heavens no! Not
her
now! but it turned out that someone in his extra English set had carved
AILEEN SYKES
an inch deep in a new teak desk and filled it up with indelible ink. “Quite a sensible sort of feller usually, too.”

Grace stood between these sirens and I watched what happened all around. Nudging, whispering, “Hey—there she is. That girl last week in Hamlet,” etc. I thought, goodness, I'd better tell her to keep away from those two. She'll get a terrible reputation, and as we all began to file out after the notices I tried to catch her eye. Her form filed past before mine and had to pass the end of the row where I was standing.

She looked at me. She had a sleepy, cat-like half smile on her face. She stared right through me and drifted on.

Funny, I thought.

At Break I went looking for her.

 

“Hullo,” I said. She was with the other two and had taken some finding. It was past the end of the lovely warm summer but there was still a second crop of hay on the playing fields scratched up into mounds along the far end of them. The playing fields ended in cliff, and the haycocks were outlined against the sky, a cold, windy place, extremely dangerous and there must have been more hockey balls than stones rotting away on the sands below. To keep depressives and the victims of Miss Bex's sense of humour from leaping over the haycocks into space there was a droop of wire nailed to a few posts before you actually reached the edge. The haycocks were in front of it and it was from between the haycocks and the wire that I heard laughing as I trailed about the field as a last resort, looking for Grace.

“Hullo,” I said.

Grace, Beryl, and Aileen were reclining about behind the hay smoking cigarettes. Grace was painting her fingernails and the three figures looked very much at home, like old marbles on a mountain, Grace particularly though she can't have seen the place in her life before that morning. Perhaps because of the meagre amount of hay or the very narrow slip of cliff-top she looked gigantic, titanico. Big dirty brown Beryl looked impressive, too, and Aileen, less abandoned, had arranged herself to best advantage, cross-legged with a twirling toe. She was tapping ash and as usual yawning but the yawn when she saw me appearing round the haycock turned into a sort of disgusted grimace.

“What on earth are
you
doing?”

“Good heavens!” said Beryl and began to laugh. Although they are in a lower form they are as I say old—perhaps even eighteen—and have always found me noxiously beneath them. What I think of them has never been made manifest because I have always tried to keep the same blank, dotty expression on my face for everyone. Being thought dippy until I came out top in the A levels had been muddling for people, and it was an idea that died hard. “Well she's
academic
,” they said. There was a fashion at the time for people being “not academic.” “Very clever you know, but not
academic
.” I was academic—but barmy just the same.

“Whatever do
you
want?”

“I came out to have a word with Grace.”

“With
Grace
!”

“Yes. I wanted to see her.”

Grace carefully painted a little fingernail, smiling at it.

“Well, here she is,” Beryl laughed and leaned on Grace with a languid shove. They all went off into hysterics.

“Watch out,” said Grace, “I've smudged it.”

“You can't wear nail varnish at school.” I said and heard my voice sounding just like Bex.

“My, my,” said Aileen.

“Well come on then,” said smelly Beryl, “let's hear what you've got to say.”

“Nothing,” I said. “Well, just to see how she's getting on.”

I noticed that we were all talking about Grace as if she were a queen of some sort, someone you couldn't speak to direct.

“
Really
!” they said. They were nearly weeping with laughter. I suppose I was looking worse than usual. I was wearing tennis ankle socks and sort of slippers as I hadn't been able to find any tights that moming, Paula being too busy with both Terrapin and Rose in the sick room to bother about my clothes. Jack Rose's parents were never off the phone about the severed artery in his head. My new winter gym slip was about seven sizes too big for me, too, and I'd dropped my glasses that morning and one of the joints was all done up with a clutch of Elastoplast. The glasses seemed to have grown loose all over as a result and kept sliding down my nose.

“I think she fancies you,” said Beryl. “She's a bit foony.”

“Like her uncle Puffy Coleman,” squeaked Aileen.

“Or her uncle Hastings-Benson. Bendson. Nobody's safe with him.”

Beryl tittered and Grace extended her hand over the cliff edge after screwing the brush slowly into the nail-varnish bottle. She held the hand to dry above the creeping sea.

“Don't step back,” said Aileen.

I didn't. But I went away.

 

Yet to my surprise as I got off the bus and began to walk home along Madeira, Grace was standing waiting for me, swinging a sort of knitted orange bag—a lovely one. She had a lovely orange scarf on, too. Like a dog I found myself trotting up.

She was alone and as I drew alongside she turned away and began to saunter along ahead of me without a word. “Hullo,” I said jogging up. “How are you?” I couldn't believe in my voice. Awful. Ingratiating.

Then I saw Jack Rose just ahead of us. He seemed remarkably recovered though his hand (not head!) was all done up in bandages and a sling. “Oh, Rose!” I called and then cursed myself. I don't seem to be able to get anything right. Boys hate being called by their surnames unless by masters or masters' wives and then not often. A girl doing it is just the end. It is hard for me to remember this though, because at home in the House with Paula and father it's surnames for boys all the time. I didn't even know for instance what Terrapin's first name
was
though no more I suspect did even father. Terrapin was just Terrapin to everyone. Perhaps for all I knew he was Terra Pin. Or Terry Pin. But no he wasn't. I felt sure. He was Terrapin full stop. Rather like a lord, I thought, (ridiculous) Melbourne, Salisbury, El Cid. Or a clown, I thought, Grock, Cantinflas, “Terrapin”: and I saw a vision before me of Terrapin's head upon the air, his round brilliant eyes, his long old face, his peculiar yellow hair. Yes, a clown.

We came up to Jack Rose at whom I had yelled “Rose” committing idiocy number one and having yelled, committed idiocies number two and three as I had (2) sounded vulgar as Uncle HB had said, and (3) had shown off to Grace that I was on yelling terms with The Most Desirable Boy at our Fathers' School. And there were no flies on Grace—she knew exactly what I had been up to. The very blankness of her face showed that she knew that I knew that she knew that I was proud of knowing Jack Rose. It also showed me quite decisively that she knew that I knew that she knew that Jack Rose was the Most Desirable Boy in the School and that she was quite unmoved by it.

Jack Rose stopped and waited and we came up with him, and, adding idiocy to idiocy I did it again. “Oh Rose,” I said again with a dreadful smirk at the bandages, “thou art sick.” Paula had read it to me years ago. Blake. “Oh Rose thou art sick.” I hadn't understood it at all.

“Hullo Marigold,” he said and looked carefully at Grace, “Hullo Grace.”

“D'you know her?” I asked, surprised.

“Yes, we've met.” The two of them half looked at each other. “And how are you poor Marigold ‘Bilgewater' with your glasses all awry?” He plunged into the dear-old-elder-brother act with me, towering high above my head, not taking a blind bit of notice of Grace.