White Sand and Grey Sand

by Stella Gibbons

  But Nora was now reading Toynbee without any intellectual concepts reaching her brain at all. It simply wasn’t possible that he could be getting a crush on Ydette?

  But that would be too extraordinary. She was only a child.

  Or was she? She was taller than Nora, she went about with a soldier who must be at least twenty, and, let it be remembered, she was a foundling and no-one knew exactly what her age was. She might be seventeen—from a distance she looked it—and in that case there wasn’t any case why a distastefully furtive and unsuitable affaire shouldn’t develop between her and Chris.

  Not if I can help it, thought Nora, with eyes flying sternly backwards and forwards across Toynbee’s closely-filled and informative lines. Oh, Ydette was nice enough, she supposed; she had seen, while Ydette thought herself unobserved, how carefully she had made Dogfight sit beside a small and gentle French child, whose legs and arms of stem-like thinness instinctively inspired the protective instinct, rather than beside the large and aggressive Tarmy (who seemed bent on carrying out the original mission of the Occupying Forces to which he belonged, in his own well-nourished but shambling person); such niceties might be wasted upon Dogfight, who was more than capable of taking her place, in Nora’s opinion, in this world, and who rather enjoyed the shoving-contests which sitting next to Tarmy involved—but it did show a sensitive and kind nature on the part of Ydette.

  Yes, but a flirtation with Chris would be in the last degree unsuitable and extraordinary and a bore, and if Nora could prevent one, she was going to.

  How very tiresome sex was. And sisterly jealousy didn’t come into it; it was a case of sheer—sheer suitability and duty, and she would begin at once by assuming an even cooler manner towards Ydette.

  They happened to meet late that evening, when the Ruddlins were on their way back from the restaurant in Zandeburghe where they always had their evening meal, and Ydette was about to mount her bicycle for the ride home with the aunts.

  The three were assembled with their machines at the top of the yellow ladder leading down to the sands, which bore the name “Jan”, painted on it in bright pink letters. (There had been a good deal of family argument before this apparently simple effect had been brought about, some people pointing out that ‘Marie and Jakoba’ was a bit of a mouthful, while others said that tourists—who, inexplicably, like that kind of thing—would be pleased by the unusual name Jakoba. However, Mevrouw Maes had asserted her maternal authority by announcing that her husband’s name should be used—if the new bathing tents must be advertised in this outlandish fashion—and “Jan” was also an easy name for the tourists to remember. So “Jan” it was.)

  As Ydette saw the Ruddlins approaching, an expression of pleasure came over her face, warming to a dreamy beam of welcome as they drew level with the Maes party—then, as Nora passed her without a word or a smile, it was replaced by a humble expression which seemed to ask, what is it? what have I done?

  The lady members of the party had not even noticed her; even the little Ida had been absorbed by something her father was saying as she hung on his hand; the tall young mijnheer did smile, and even bow, but that brought its own disadvantages; and Ydette’s soreness of heart was increased by a lecture from sharp-eyed Aunt Marie, who noticed most that went on, about the imprudence of smiling at the tourists before they smiled at you; followed by the dismal and well-known story of some bathing-tent keepers out at Le Zoute who had become very thick with a party of Dutch tourists that had ended up by buying the pitch just next to them and taking all their trade.

  “And the young mijnheer was talking to you this morning,” Aunt Marie went on, “I saw him myself. You want to be careful about such things.”

  “What things?” Ydette’s voice was sulky, as she fastened a scarf round her head to keep out the evening wind.

  “You know quite well what I mean. We don’t want any more goings-on like that Lyntje and Mijnheer Adriaan—and look at her now, twenty-six and not married, and stuck in that “Priba” all day selling red stuff to put on your mouth … see what it leads to, talking to young mijnheeren …”

  “I’ll do that for you, Auntie,” Ydette interrupted, and deftly tied the side of the basket that had worked loose from the handle-bars of her aunt’s machine, to the accompaniment of not entirely grateful remarks about strength, young wrists, unrheumatic fingers and so on.

  Ydette’s heart was sore as they rode away into the dusk. She decided that after supper she would go over to the big house and help Marieke.

  The old woman’s eyes were beginning to find difficulty in detecting the dust, and the maggots in the peas, and the wrinkles in the sheets, which they had inexorably pursued for more than sixty years in the service of Adèle van Roeslaere’s family, and she was glad, now, of a young pair to help her.

  “Is Sophie still here?” Ydette asked of her, as she followed her across the black-and white tiles of the wide, lofty, silent hall towards the kitchen premises at the back of the house.

  “How did you know she was here?” demanded Marieke, without turning round.

  “I saw her come in. About nine, it was.”

  “Then if you was keeping such a sharp eye on us, you can tell me if she’s gone out again,” retorted Marieke crushingly, and Ydette’s spirits, which had lifted as they always did as soon as she felt the atmosphere of the big house around her, went down again. This was certainly not being a good day—what with snubs and scoldings—and there were also certain memories aroused by the question of the young mijnheer that morning—was she going with a boy? No—and heaven forbid that she should—after last Sunday: she could still feel the disagreeable warmth of Antoine Jonckheere’s face pushed against her own, and his great arms squeezing her waist—and just as she wanted the aunts to look round in the dimness of Our Lady’s porch, where they were still gossiping with his mother and elder sister, of course nothing would make them—and everyone else at Mass had gone home—and she had really had to fight him to get away. A great boy of going on eighteen, he ought to know better, and she had been feeling so cool and fresh and good inside her clean dress.

  Sophie was still there; she was sitting at the table shelling peas (four pounds of them, company expected for lunch tomorrow), and opposite her sat young Moritz, now a great thing of nine, poring over an American comic. They greeted Ydette; she settled down at the corner of the table where she usually sat, and applied herself to what was now recognized as one of her tasks—the scraping of salt from a large block into a jar from which it would be taken to flavour the day’s cooking. Marieke disappeared completely into a cupboard in a far corner, where she became noiselessly absorbed in something to do with the table-glasses, and quiet settled over the kitchen.

  It was a very large room, but the massiveness of the thick, straight wooden beams separated at intervals of about a foot and crossed transversely in the centre by a truly enormous one, which formed the ceiling; and the size of the red-and-brown tiles faded by age which covered the floor, so detracted from its proportions as to make it seem almost cosy. Ydette’s eyes wandered comfortably from time to time while she diligently scraped the salt, taking pleasure in the small bricks of a dark rose colour lining the immensely wide recessed fireplace, where a modern stove for cooking and heating water now silently burned; and the row of plates, gaily coloured in coarse blues and yellows, that were ranged along the carved wooden shelf above it—a fad of Madame van Roeslaere’s, this, which Marieke had only learned to take for granted (never to like) over the years. There was a window of small panes of white and coloured glass, divided by leaden strips, above the door that led into the rest of the house, and another of the same type which overlooked the small garden paved in stone, its flowers wreathing the large terra-cotta urns, now hidden by the darkness; from where she sat, Ydette could see the moths flitting past outside in the blackness and the lamp faintly shining in its place on the brick wall across the canal.

  Presently Sophie, who had been glancing irritably from time to time a
t the pensive face opposite, said, without raising her eyes from her diligently moving fingers:

  “You been seeing a lot of young Jooris these last weeks?” and, as Ydette, after a pause, slowly nodded, “He got a regular girl yet?”

  This time Ydette—again after the pause which usually followed on any question put to her while she was in one of her dreaming fits—doubtfully shook her head. She followed this up with “I don’t know”.

  “Don’t know,” Sophie (who was out for blood this evening) scornfully mimicked; “you go out there every Saturday, don’t you? Don’t you see him with anyone or hear him saying he’s got anybody?”

  After a third pause—during which a rather hopeless expression began to descend, like the falling of a wettish cloud over a peaceful landscape, on Ydette’s face (why must people always …?)—she answered, “I don’t know,” again, and, the salt crock being filled, got up and went over to Moritz, and rested her chin on his shoulder while she began to look at his comic. He, solid as a sack of cement, moved about quarter of an inch with the intention of making her more comfortable, and the red face and the pale one rested side by side, absorbed.

  Sophie did not want people to be absorbed, this evening. In a moment she began again.

  “I s’pose you and he’ll be thinking about sweethearting, next thing, then”.

  “Who?” said Ydette slowly, looking up.

  “You and Jooris. Sweethearting. Go on, Yddy, don’t be so green, you must be going on fifteen, you know what sweethearting is, or you ought to by now, with your Aunt Jakoba …” her voice went off into a mutter, which ended “and Klaas.”

  “Klaas?” said Ydette, and this time she looked a very little cross.

  “Yes, KLAAS.” Sophie got up from the table and crossed the kitchen and hurled the colanderful of empty pea-shucks into a capacious receptacle standing in a corner. “You’re dopey this evening. She and him used to be sweethearts.”

  “Aunt Jakoba and Klaas used?” said Ydette; she was wide awake now, and staring at Sophie with her mouth open. A rare and unexpected sound now broke the tranquil silence of the kitchen; it was Moritz laughing, but as he continued to keep his broad red face bent over his comic, it was not possible to tell whether he was laughing at that or at what his mother had just said. However, as Ydette usually liked to join in when anyone happened to be laughing, and as the notion just suggested by Sophie really was very funny, she began to laugh too.

  “Oh, you can laugh,” persisted Sophie, meaning to go on being irritable and spiteful but feeling herself being won, by the sight of other people laughing, towards cheerfulness and good nature, “but they was. Years ago, before I was born and you was even thought of. Everybody says so.”

  “It’s so funny …” giggled Ydette, making a silvery, silly, helpless sound; “they’re both so old …”

  “Oh, and I s’pose me and Albert’s old, too?” Sophie sat down again, leant her arms on the table and permitted a great sigh to come up through her substantial bosom.

  “He’s sixty, isn’t he?” asked Ydette, pleased at an opportunity to change the subject and speaking in a respectful voice.

  “No he isn’t sixty, he’s fifty-three, and I don’t know who puts all these lies about … very nice age, fifty-three is, for someone thirty-four … but I can’t make up my mind. Wish I could.”

  Ydette returned to studying the comic paper, having grown accustomed to hearing Sophie express this wish during the past three years, and Sophie, becoming irritated again by this seeming lack of interest in her affairs, resumed: “And there’s just a nice difference with you and Jooris … and a very good thing it wouldn’t half be for you, too, him going to get the farm when his grandad dies and everything and you a foundling and not having nothing … if I was to give you a bit of advice it would be go on and get him.”

  “Get him?” said Ydette, coming up slowly from the pages spread before her on the table—whose coarse lines and jejeune words presented to her eyes colourings and impressions far more delicate than those which she actually saw, because they were passed through the filter of her imagination; she looked at Sophie—the big face, once pink and now a blotched brownish red, the scars that years had faded to faint white and purplish marks on her forehead—and heard, echoing in her mind’s ear, the booming voice that was beginning to grow a little hoarse. That face and that voice were amongst the earliest things Ydette remembered.

  “I s’pose you think you’re going to pull it off with him, don’t you?” Sophie continued.

  “What?”

  “Catch him—get him—tie him up—marry him, girl,” Sophie said with increasing impatience.

  But at that moment there came a clink, faint but distinct, from the cupboard. It sounded as if someone had accidentally tapped one glass against another. It was only a tiny sound, but it caused Sophie to wink at Ydette and pull down her mouth. Her next remark came in a lower voice.

  “No—but don’t he always take you out when he gets a bit of time off from that place where they’re making them into soldiers—weren’t you out with him on the sands at Zandeburghe, other evening? Someone I know saw you, so don’t try and say you wasn’t. Holding hands!” She wagged a great finger.

  Ydette neither coloured nor looked down, but stared rather blankly in silence.

  “I s’pose you know what sweethearting is?” said Sophie, really exasperated by the sight of so much obtuseness, and Ydette silently nodded.

  Yes, she knew; no one could live for thirteen years in the Sint Katelijnstraat and not know; and you couldn’t live there for six years with the Germans in Brugge and not know how babies came—and a lot of other things as well that sometimes you wished you didn’t know. (But you hardly ever thought of them nowadays; they seemed to be going away.) And those things about babies—she also knew things about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; the two sets of facts were lodged together in her mind—quite comfortably, except that she rather preferred the facts about Snow White.

  “Don’t you?” suddenly roared Sophie, and immediately there came a rather more decided clink from the cupboard, followed by a loudish cough.

  “Yes, but——” Ydette found difficulty, as so often when asked a direct question, in bringing the words forward into her mouth, “Jooris isn’t … Jooris and me … we don’t … he … we aren’t like that,” she ended, on a triumphant note and with a smile that, nevertheless, did conceal a slight feeling of trouble and doubt. Holding hands? But they always caught hold of each other’s hands; he helped her up and down places.

  Sophie contented herself with muttering (one eye on the distant cupboard) that if they wasn’t now they soon would be, and shortly afterwards heaved herself up, collected Moritz with the kind of gesture between a scoop and a cuff that might have served a mother-bear and took herself off. Marieke emerged from the cupboard to utter a word of warning to her about being on time tomorrow because there was going to be plenty to do, and, after they had gone, sat down at the table with a bit of lace. Ydette, full of relief now that the troublemaker had departed, took out her own bit from her apron pocket and settled herself opposite, and they worked in silence.

  Yet she could not sink deeply, this evening, into the peace of the big-house kitchen. The words ‘going with’ continued to drift through her mind.

  She had been accustomed to hearing them, ever since she could remember. But tonight, now, she was thinking about them; she did not like them … never had … and it was funny that twice today someone should have asked her if she and Jooris were gaan met… first the young mijnheer down on the sands, whom she liked because he was kind, as well as because he was a friend of them here at the big house, and brother to the little Ida … and now Sophie … and then there was that lump Antoine last Sunday after Mass … and Aunt Marie, telling her not to talk too much to the young Englishman because they didn’t want any more of that Lyntje-Mijnheer Adriaan business … the entire day seemed to have been filled, in one way and another, with gaan met, and if Nora Ruddlin and Yde
tte had been able to confer on the subject that evening, there was no doubt that they would have agreed on their verdict: sex is a nuisance.

  Ydette was not the kind of young girl who decides to put a disagreeable matter out of her head and then does so; she could only wait, passively as the meadow under the hail, until gradually the disagreeable sensation connected with the words, and with what had been said, drifted away. They did not drift away entirely, but gradually, as she wove the thread about the pattern and dreamed of the life that was going on in the rooms beyond the kitchen door and its leaded panes the colour of golden syrup—she became at peace. The clock that was set in the middle of a big blue-and-white plate ticked quickly, Marieke straightened her shoulders now and then and looked up as if she ought to have sighed, but did not—everything was just as it always had been in the kitchen of the big house. Ydette began to think about next Sunday, when she would go for a walk to the mill with Jooris, and about the ice-cream he had promised to buy for her.

  And even a long nose in a red face can look agreeable when you have known the owner since before you could talk, and have laughed for years and years at the same jokes with him.

  Ydette had heard with dreamy dismay and fear the gloomy prophecies of the aunts when Jooris had gone off to do his Military Service a year ago; they’d got him now; that was the last anyone would see of him; he’d come back so changed you wouldn’t know him; no more going to Mass; the kind of floozy that hung round those camps wasn’t the sort that a respectable woman could talk about—and so forth.

  But he had come back looking and talking and behaving exactly as he had gone away: presenting himself, on the afternoons when he had to pass through Zandeburghe on his way back from leave spent at the farm, at the foot of the ladder with “Jan” painted on it, with trimly poised feet, a smart salute and a flash of beautiful teeth, to the admiring eyes of Ydette and the aunts. Ydette remembered with a happiness that always made her smile, the strolls they contrived on these occasions to take across the sands; particularly the evening ones, when the wind off the sea swept across the grey reaches that reflected, in a dim goldy glitter, the rising moon. Their feet sank deep, and with every step, there shone out in a green glow the light of the sand-worms they were disturbing; the smell and sound of the waves blew over them as they walked—the waves, spreading like dim white lace across the dark grey shore. Jooris always told her such funny things about Sergeant Lebrun—saying he would buy some stuff for the Sergeant to make himself an apron like Ydette was wearing … and that kind of thing … and when they at last turned homewards, in obedience to that imperious bellowing from the aunts within range of which they were moderately careful to remain, he always helped Aunt Marie onto her bicycle (Aunt Jakoba would never let him) and stood there at the salute when they all three rode away. No one was so … so good as Jooris; it was good, too, that by the time Sunday afternoon arrived, all thoughts about gaan met drifted away.