Bilgewater (9 page)

“'Bye,” she said with a flouncing shoulder, disappearing through her father's wrought-iron gates all hung with shields.

“What a gigantic great creature,” said Rose.

“She's terribly romantic-looking though,” I said. “Sort of pre-Raphaelite, don't you think?”

“How old are you, Bilgie?”

“Seventeen. Why?”

“Sometimes you seem seven.”

I dashed off towards home and my glasses steamed over and I fell over my feet. I made for the first door I could—I don't know which. It might have led anywhere. In my father's House are many mansions. I was beyond caring—but Jack Rose came up behind me and spun me round, “Hey,” he said. “Let me finish. Sometimes you seem seven and sometimes you seem twenty-seven. Listen. D'you know my mother?”

“Know your
mother
?”

“Yes. She knows you. She's seen you at Sports Days and things for ages. She knew yours a bit apparently. They were at school together or something.”

“I don't know her.”

“Well she wants you to. She's written to your father. D'you think you could just get him to answer?”

“He hasn't told me. I expect it's got a bit buried. He's just a bit—well, vaguish—”

“Yes.”

“I'll try and find it.”

“It's just about you coming over.”

I stood in a lump.

“She rather wants you to come over. To us. At half term. Would you come? It's only three days.”

“I don't know where it is.” I could feel myself turning from head to foot a fiery, beating, blood-red.

“It's in the country. Well nearly. The far side of Middlesbrough. You could travel with me. Would you come?”

“Yes,” I said, “All right.” I staggered away and got myself into the boys' underground, changing rooms, heaven knows how. There is no mansion in my father's House or any other where I would less choose to be. There were empty rows and rows of pegs, rows and rows of crumpled whitish garments, a few gym shoes, like dead fish, awash among puddles from the odd overflow tap, the smell of boy and disinfectant, all windows shut against the golden autumn aftenoon—too cool for cricket, too hot for rugger where everybody must nevertheless be for the rooms were empty.

“I have been invited to stay with Jack Rose,” I informed the latrines. “I have been invited beneath the very nose of Grace Gathering, the most marvellous-looking girl there's ever been in this town and whom he
ABSOLUTELY IGNORED
.”

I walked up the back stairs and came out in the boys' common room and had a moment of terror in case Jack Rose should be there again and think that I was following him. But only Terrapin was there, off games because of the alleged concussion, over in the far corner. He was shredding a blind cord and the sun shone in on his long fingers. He has beautiful hands, Terrapin.

And I did the most inexplicable thing. I walked all the way across the huge common room and sat down with Terrapin and watched his lovely clown's hands moving about. He didn't look at me. I said, “I'm going to stay with Jack Rose,” and took my broken glasses off.

“For half term,” I said.

He stopped shredding and looked at me.

“His mother's asked me,” I said. “She was a friend of my mother. Well—it will be nice to stay in a country house.”

Terrapin looked out of the window.

“They're pretty grand the Roses aren't they?” I said. “Such a bore.” (And I think I may have yawned like Aileen Sykes.) “It'll mean new clothes.”

He answered not a word.

And I had such a longing—so queer. I wanted suddenly to take Terrapin in my arms. There was something in his funny face, his ancient sorrowful look—I even put out my hand a little way and then I thought, “But it's Terrapin” and got up and got myself out and walked back through the changing rooms and through the garden. I passed the common room again from outside and saw his thoughtful face and the decimated blind cord hanging limply on the evening air.

S
o you've really done it now you soft tweddle!”

Paula stood at the top of the stairs as I reached home and she looked wild.

“What have I done?”

I thought, Oh the fuss! Whatever is it now?

“You've not deigned to turn up at a party? Not
deigned
!”

“Me?” I said, “Who'd ask me to a party? I've never been to a party since I was five.”

There's a mirror in the hall and I caught sight of myself in it as I turned to shut the door. The hall door has old red and blue glass in it and was shining on me. I put my specs back on and gooped in the mirror. I looked like a bilious owl, in a violent sunset after the explosion of the final bomb. Who'd want me at a party? I pulled a face at my face and a waft of autumn breeze round the door made the mirror tap tap like a troubled heart about to have a stroke. “The mirror
CRACKED
from side to side,” I cried and pulled a worse face.

“Now look you 'ere,” said Paula advancing down the stairs. “Jes' you koindly let me know how ould you are?”

“Funny,” I said, “That's the second time I've been asked that this afternoon.”

“
And
I'm not surprised. I'm getting tired of you Marigold Green scumfishing about this world, scatty as Him. There's shoes and toights and dear-knows about the landing. And whatever clothes you went to school in—Dear Lord in Murzy! (She had seen my nether regions) Where did you get them zockz? I put them in the Oxfam in 1970.”

“There's someone been a long time with cold feet then,” I said, rudely I suppose. Oh how she fumes! “Poor old things. Sitting there in the desert without any ankle socks. And starving, too.”

“Now then,” said Paula with a snort which would have been a laugh in other circumstances. “Let's just forger Oxfam shall we? And ankle zockz shall we? And hear about Mrs. Gathering's sherry party at six-thirty last Saturday evening?”

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

“I forgot. Well I never really knew.”

“What do you mean—never really knew? She telephoned Thursday—says you accepted. She didn't ask your father but
you
, personally (burzonally) on account of this Grace. You said you'd be there.”

“Oh heck.”

“And that'll do swearing.”

“Oh Paula. I did forget. I utterly forgot. It was the chess. Oh heavens. That's why she's gone so nasty—Grace. What shall I do?”

“You'll apologoize. At once.”

“Oh help—I couldn't.”

“You'll bath. You'll remove they zockz and shoes, you'll put on your brown and you'll eat your tea. Then across the road to that Gatherin's front door and apologoize.”

“Couldn't I write? Or ring up. And talking of age, Paula, I
am
seventeen. It's my affair.”

“You don't know 'em. You don't know 'em well enough for telephones. You go in humble apology. Dear Lord!”

“Perhaps I'd better go to the back door. Perhaps I'd better put no shoes on and go bare foot. Perhaps you could kindly get me some fire ash to scatter in my hair.”

“Now don't you shout at me. You'll disturb your father.” She was away twirling taps in the bathroom, scattering bathsalts in volcanoes of steam. I hadn't a hope.

 

And whatever was I going to say, anyway? In the brown suit with the padded shoulders and box pleats which had been Paula's and had still, so she said, some years of wear in it, and a hat she'd bought me last year in Binn's sale (felt, with a brim and a little bird's feather) I set forth across the road, through the great gates and across the noisy gravel. “I ought to be doing some work,” I grumbled and lifted the great knocker. “If I'm really supposed to be trying for Oxbridge.”

The School House is the best bit of architecture in the town. It is eighteenth century and benign and it has all the original eighteenth century glass in the windows which gives it (Boakes once told me—he's mad on this sort of thing) a particular light. There is a fluted fanlight over the door and lovely curving steps leading up to it.

Donk
went the knocker.

What could I say? I had work to do. Why was I wasting time here? “I'm terribly sorry that I forgot—” “I am Marigold Green from Green's House. Please could I speak to Mrs. Gathering.” “I'm so terribly sorry—”

Who would come to the door? Perhaps Grace. She'd say, “Oh you again. Are you following me around or something?” What if the Headmaster came to the door himself? He didn't know me from Adam. He'd think I was selling things. What if Jack Rose came to the door?

This idea filled me with such horror—it shows what a state I was in—that I began to shake. If I'd thought ahout it I am sure I would have seen how unlikely it was. Jack Rose is in father's House, even though he's head boy of the whole school and Dr. Gathering thinks he's the Angel Gabriel. He wouldn't be over in the school house now. He'd be taking Prep. at home or resting his bad arm in his study or talking to father. What made me think he was here?

Yet I was so sure that he was here that I almost saw the door open and his dignified face come round it. “Oh—Bilgewater again! Are you following me about?”

I began to blush and tremble and turned away and set off back down the gravel before I realised that I had been wasting all this misery on a completely hypothetical situation for in fact nobody was going to open the door at all. My donk had not been heard. I was a little off my head. Academic but barmy.

Then as I turned away and made off the door did open. I heard it behind me, and running feet and Uncle Edmund HB went tearing past me wild of eye and dragging his shooting stick. He passed me, reached the noble gateway, slithered to a stop, slewed round and said, “Oh. Yes. Ha.” There was an all-too-familiar light in his eye.

“Ha, Bilge. Have you seen your father?”

“No. He'll be coaching.”

“Long?”

“Oh yes—hours on Mondays.”

“Must have a word. Are you coming or going?”

I tried to remember. Looking back at the door which he had left wide open I saw someone cross the hall inside and my heart sank. There was someone in and I would have to try again.

“Well going. Going in there. I have to.”

“Ah. Aha, Calling on the new friend?” He turned salmon pink. “Grace?” he breathed.

“No. Mrs.,” I said sternly and turned back.

 

There are times when my environment appears to me as very much less than educative and the rational element in man to be so miniscule that you wonder what creation is all about and turn to chess or cats or mathematics as to straws upon the sea.

The idiocy of it. Uncle Hastings B. rising eighty. I, Bilgewater, rising seventeen, and he ready to reveal to anyone, in a moment even to me, the flutterings of his worn old heart over a girl of my own age—ready to discuss such things with me as if I were a comrade of the Somme. How old are you? How old are you? How old are you? Oh Bilgewater. Oh Uncle Pen how old are you?

I began to reflect on the nature of experience and particularly of experience not advancing maturity. Experience. Experio. Experire. So many levels encompassing one definition. x = a + b + c + d+ e + f + g + h + i + j + k + l + m + n + o + p + q + r + s + t + u + v + w + x + y + z: but yet possibly equalling only some of these or different combinations of them. But x can also = 0. Can some people experience and remain unchanged?

No.

Experire.

In the nature of the word—

But some people can experience, and retain innocence. Some people can experience on a queer, shallow level in order only to recount. For some, experience is only a vehicle, a pipe, a jug. Experience to such people is given only to be handed on. The creative artist I supposed was such a person, seeing, stretching for pen or brush or MS paper or a stage, shouting, “Here is my experience,
COMPREHEND,
” and having shouted forgetting and surviving.

But Uncle HB—he'll never be all right. This agony and unfulfilment, each time exactly as before. Woman after woman after woman. My mother down to Mrs. Bellchamber and now Grace. Next—someone else no doubt. What, will the line stretch to the crack of doom?

And I, Bilgewater. I seem to experience and experience, I thought. On I go, experiencing. I ought to be quite worn out. Yet I don't seem to change either. I don't seem to get wiser or find anything easier.

“I don't feel any better at all,” I said to myself looking down at Paula's brown herringbone tweed and a queer pair of blue high-heeled shoes I'd found under the stairs. Under the shoes there seemed to be grass which was odd as a moment before there had been gravel. Looking to left and right of the shoes there was a lot more of it, with some white metal hoops about. Whatever—oh my goodness! I looked up and behind me and, yes, it was true! I was on the Headmaster's lawn at the back of the School House. The door behind me was a garden door and led back into a hall and at the end of it I could see the back of the front door open on to the front drive. While I had heen considering the elements of experience I had walked right through the Gatherings' house and out into their garden.

What was worse, there on the croquet lawn, at some little distance were some graceful, laughing people. They were moving over the lawn towards me in a way that was confident and amused and which scared me to death. They came on. They swung mallets, one wore a great romantic hat. They moved easily inside their clothes, cheerful, languid.

Experienced.

Older than me, younger than Hastings-Benson, but filled with blessed self-respect. On they came, four or five of them across the lawn, laughing like what Paula calls County, smiling, enjoying themselves.

Water-snakes, I suddenly thought. Like Coleridge's water-snakes. “Slimy things that crawled with legs”—but phosphorescent, adapted, cheerful. I envied them. “I blessed them unaware.” They scared me stiff but I blessed them unaware.