Playing Beatie Bow

by Ruth Park

  ‘Oh, Mudda, what’s that, what can it be?’

  ‘The wind in the chimney, that’s all, that’s all.’

  There was a clatter of stones being dropped. Some of the younger children squawked, and were hushed.

  ‘Oh, Mudda, what’s that, what’s that, can you see?’

  ‘It’s the cow in the byre, the horse in the stall.’

  Natalie held on tightly and put her hands over her eyes.

  ‘Don’t look, Abigail, it’s worse than awful things on TV!’

  At this point Mudda pointed dramatically beyond the circle of children. A girl covered in a white sheet or tablecloth was creeping towards them, waving her arms and wailing.

  ‘It’s Beatie Bow,’ shrieked Mudda in a voice of horror, ‘risen from the dead!’

  At this the circle broke and the children ran shrieking hysterically to fling themselves in a chaotic huddle of arms and legs in the sandpit at the other end.

  ‘What on earth was all that about?’ asked Abigail. She felt cold and grumpy and made gestures at Vince to rejoin them.

  ‘The person who is Beatie Bow is a ghost, you see,’ explained Natalie, ‘and she rises from her grave, and everyone runs and pretends to be afraid. If she catches someone, that one has to be the next Beatie Bow. But mostly the children are frightened, because they play it and play it till it’s dark. Vincent gets in a state and that’s why he’s so mean afterwards. But the little furry girl doesn’t get scared,’ she added inconsequentially. ‘I think she’d like to join in, she smiles so much. Look, Abigail, see her watching over there?’

  Before the older girl could look, Vincent panted up, scowling.

  ‘We’re going to play it again! I want to! I want to!’

  ‘No way,’ said Abigail firmly. ‘It’s getting dark and it’s too cold for Natalie already.’

  The boy said bitterly, ‘I hate you!’

  ‘Big deal,’ said Abigail.

  Vincent pinched Natalie cruelly. Tears filled her eyes. ‘You see? Just like I told you,’ she said without rancour.

  ‘What a creep you are, Vincent,’ said Abigail scornfully.

  Vincent made a rude gesture and ran on before them into the lobby. As they waited for the lift, Abigail saw that his whole body was trembling. She made up her mind to have a word with Justine about the too-exciting game.

  ‘I saw the little furry girl, Vince,’ said Natalie. ‘She was watching you all again.’

  He ignored her, barged past them into the Crown unit, and flung himself down before the TV.

  ‘I’ll stay a little while if you like, Justine,’ offered Abigail. ‘Mum won’t be home till nearly seven. She had to go and look at some old furniture at St Mary’s near Penrith.’

  Justine was delighted at the prospect of concluding dinner preparations without the usual civil war between her young. She suggested that Abigail help Natty make new clothes for her teddy-bear.

  Abigail enjoyed sewing, and made some of her own clothes. She did not do a professional job, but she did her best; and somehow she loved her clothes more because of the sleeves that wouldn’t quite fit, the seams she had unpicked over and over again. At the moment she was fond of long dresses and shawls and hooded sweaters. Her favourite belt was a piece of old harness strap, polished deep brown and fastened with the original brass buckles. It had a phantom smell of horse which her grandmother said was disgusting.

  ‘You look like a gipsy or a street Arab,’ she said.

  ‘The Arabs own all the streets nowadays, Grandmother.’ Abigail smiled. ‘You’re not up with things.’

  ‘Don’t be impertinent!’ snapped Grandmother. She appealed to her perm. ‘Katherine, are you going to stand there and permit this child to speak to me like that?’

  ‘You criticised her clothes, Mother,’ answered Kathy, flushing. ‘She didn’t say a word about yours.’

  ‘About mine?’ gasped Grandmother, as though it had never occurred to her that she was not wearing the only type of garment in the world. She swept out – she really did sweep in some extraordinary way – and Kathy looked rueful and fidgety, for she hated to be at outs with anyone.

  ‘All right, don’t be sarky,’ she said to her daughter. ‘You can dress any way you like. But please try not to aggravate her deliberately. She’s old and …’

  ‘Oh, Mum,’ said Abigail impatiently, ‘she enjoys a little set-to. It improves her circulation or something. That’s why she always used to pick on Dad. Don’t you remember how her eyes used to sparkle …’ She stopped dead. Why had she brought Dad into it? She sneaked a sidelong glance at her mother, and saw that Kathy’s eyes were full of tears.

  ‘I was pretty dumb in those days,’ said Kathy. Then she laughed, and began to peel vegetables for dinner. But she was still flushed.

  Now as they rummaged in the ragbag, trying that piece and this against Teddy’s stubby form, Abigail told the little girl that she had almost finished making herself a long dress from an Edwardian curtain that her mother had found in a box of old fabrics bought at an auction. The curtain was still unperished, a heavy cotton with strong striped selvages, which Abigail had wangled around to use as borders for sleeves and skirt.

  ‘It’s a very funny colour,’ she told Natalie. ‘A mucky brownish-green, like pea soup.’

  ‘It wouldn’t suit Teddy,’ observed Natalie.

  ‘And Teddy is not going to get it either,’ said Abigail.

  They cut out a pair of red shorts, and Abigail tacked them up for Justine to sew. Then they upended the ragbag to find something spotted for a waistcoat. Tangled amongst all the scraps and remnants and outgrown garments was a strangely shaped piece of yellowed crochet. Abigail smoothed it out, trying to distinguish the pattern. It was very fine work, almost like lace.

  Justine came in, battled with Vincent about his bath before dinner, and dragged him away. She came back.

  ‘What have you got there? Oh, that old rag! It’s been around for ever. Give it to me, Abigail, and I’ll use it for a dishcloth or something.’

  ‘If you don’t want it,’ said the girl, ‘I’d really like to have it.’

  She spread the crumpled fabric. ‘See, it’s a yoke for a high-necked dress. Just right for my new greeny one.’

  ‘It’s yours,’ said Justine cheerfully. ‘Probably fall to bits the first time you wash it.’

  The children were quiet and, since Mr Crown was due home, Abigail said good-bye and went. She was very taken with Justine’s gift. She decided against bleaching the crochet piece, for the chemical might be too harsh for the old thread. Besides, she liked the creamy colour against the murky green of the dress. She carefully washed the yoke and dried it with a hair-dryer, stretching the fabric as she went. The pattern showed itself at last as a recurrent design of a delicate plant with a flower like a buttercup rising out of five heart-shaped leaves.

  With a cry of pleasure, Abigail saw that each flower had been over-embroidered with yellowish green tiny knots which seemed to indicate stamens or hairs. But the coloured thread had so faded that it was almost indiscernible.

  About seven, her mother telephoned. She sounded tired, said she had been delayed, and told Abigail to go ahead and eat something. The girl agreed and went back to her work.

  The border of the crochet was a curious twist, almost like a rope, done in a coarser thread, and at the edge of each shoulder Abigail saw, between the leaves of a flower, the tiny initials A.T.

  As she worked, she found herself singing, ‘The cow in the byre, the horse in the stall.’ She broke off. ‘Now where did those kids hear a funny word like byre?’

  By the time Kathy had tottered in and collapsed in a chair, Abigail already had the crochet tacked to the dress. Weary as she was, her mother exclaimed at it.

  ‘It’s a Victorian piece, I think, although the pattern is unfamiliar. What superb work! I could sell it like a shot if you want me to.’

  ‘No,’ said Abigail.

  ‘Don’t blame you. Heavens, I’m bushed. No, I don’t wa
nt anything to eat. Had a bite in town. Sorry, love. Have to fall into bed.’

  She limped off, yawning like a lion. Abigail stitched the yoke to her dress with the smallest stitches she could achieve: the fineness of her new treasure seemed to demand it. The yoke fitted the bodice as though it had been made for it, and when she tried on the dress it was as if the two pieces of fabric had never been separate. The girl had an extraordinary sense of pleasure. She felt that she would wear this perfect dress until it fell to bits. Even now she knew that this was one of those mysterious garments in which she always felt happy.

  Just before she went to sleep she thought, ‘I’ve seen that flower somewhere. Not real though. A picture.’

  At the same moment she recalled the old Herbal in the bookcase. She squeezed her eyes tight and tried to go to sleep, but it was no use. She had to get out of bed and look. She riffled through the thick fox-marked pages to the wild-flowers, and there it was: not a buttercup at all, but a peat bog plant called Grass of Parnassus.

  Parnassus! Was the plant Greek then? She knew that Parnassus was where the Muses lived, the goddesses of poetry and dance and art and whatever the rest of them were. Parnassus was a lovely word, and perhaps the original Parnassus had grass that was not ordinary grass but blossomed with little hairy flowers of green and faded yellow.

  Suddenly she felt intensely happy, almost as blissfully happy as she had been before she was ten, knowing nothing of the world but warmth and sunshine, and loving parents and birthdays and Christmas presents.

  She floated off to sleep. She did not dream of an enchanted mountain where goddesses danced and sang, but of a smell of burning sugar, and a closed door with an iron fist for a knocker, and tied to the fist a bit of yellow rag.

  Chapter 2

  At breakfast next morning her mother was fully recovered, talkative and bright-cheeked. She admired the new dress, puzzled over the crochet pattern, and voted for Agnes Timms as the owner of the initials A.T. But Abigail said that, since the design seemed to be of a Greek plant, A.T. probably stood for Anastasia Tassiopolis, or something similar.

  Kathy chattered on until at last her daughter said teasingly, ‘What are you excited about, Apple Annie? Did you find something extra special at St Mary’s?’

  Kathy’s eyes twinkled. ‘I might as well tell you. I had dinner with your father last night.’

  Weyland Kirk and his wife had never been divorced. Their relations were friendly, and two or three times a year they met to discuss business matters or Abigail’s future. Abigail was occasionally taken out by her father to some entertainment; and although they both behaved with careful courtesy it was always an awkward and hateful experience for Abigail. Something lay between them, an ineradicable memory of rejection of love, and Abigail could not pretend it was not there.

  He asked her polite questions about her friends, even the ones he could remember from her childhood and she had almost forgotten.

  ‘You seem to be a bit of a loner, pet,’ he said, almost apologetically.

  She answered coolly, ‘I really don’t care for people much.’

  He had the same quickness of uptake as she, and he shot her a blue glance that laid her thoughts bare. Then he said gently, ‘Well, you can always trust your mother, anyway.’

  She knew how much she had hurt him. She tried to be glad. He deserved it. But she was not glad; she was sorry and ashamed.

  Now she looked without concern at her mother and said ‘Oh, yes? Did you just run into him?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I’ve seen him quite a few times lately,’ Kathy said. ‘Oh, darling, don’t be cross. I know it was deceitful of me, but I thought I wouldn’t mention it in case it all fell through.’

  Abigail felt a sudden chill. ‘Whatever are you talking about, Mum?’

  ‘Oh, Abigail, I don’t know how to put it without sounding silly. Dad – well, he wants us to become a family again.’

  ‘You’re joking,’ said Abigail.

  Kathy’s face was almost pleading. ‘No, I’m not.’

  Abigail felt much as she had felt that morning her father had said good-bye. A burning wave of dismay, anger and fright swept up from her feet. But before it reached her face and turned it scarlet she managed to say, ‘And what about Miss Thingo? Is she going to join the party?’

  Kathy said stiffly, ‘You know very well Jan went off to Canada a year ago. She has a name. Use it, and don’t be vulgar. What do you think I’m talking about, last Saturday’s TV movie? This is a serious matter for me and your father, so please don’t fool about with it.’

  Abigail could hardly believe what she heard. ‘You’re really considering it! After what he did four years ago?’

  Kathy smiled nervously. She used a cool tone, but it did not go well with her restless hands. ‘Next thing you’ll be saying he tossed me aside like a worn-out glove.’

  ‘He dumped you and me for a scheming little creep on his secretarial staff, that’s what he did, after being married twelve years.’

  ‘Hold on,’ said Kathy. ‘Fair’s fair. Jan wasn’t like that at all. And besides that, he fell in love with her. You don’t even know what that means yet.’

  ‘Oh, Mum, now you’re being wet!’

  ‘Oh, I know all you schoolgirls think you know every last word in the book about the relationships between a man and a woman; but love is a thing you have to experience before you know –’ she hesitated, and then blurted out – ‘how powerful it can be.’

  ‘Oh, come on!’

  ‘I’m only thirty-six,’ said Kathy. ‘I’ve missed being married.’

  Abigail leapt up and began to pile the dishes noisily in the sink.

  ‘You’ve no self-respect!’

  ‘Okay, okay!’ cried Kathy. ‘It’s awful, it’s shameful, it isn’t liberated in the slightest – but I happen to love Weyland. I always have, and I always wanted him to come back. And now it’s happened and I want to go with him.’

  Abigail was so outraged, so disgusted that anyone as capable and independent and courageous as her mother could be so… so – female was the word that sprang to her mind – that for a moment the significance of what she had said did not strike her.

  ‘What do you mean, go?’ she said, aghast.

  ‘He has to go to Norway for three years of architectural study, and he wants us to go with him and … and be together again as we used to.’

  Abigail felt as if her mother had risen and hit her with the teapot. ‘Norway! Why Norway?’

  ‘Well, he’s always had this strong feeling for Scandinavian design, because of his family, I expect. But he wouldn’t be in Norway all the time. He has to take some seminars in the University of Oslo, and of course we could often go to Denmark … and England sometimes.’ Her voice trailed away.

  ‘Mother,’ said Abigail, ‘don’t you realise that he could easily leave you again?’

  ‘Yes,’ admitted Kathy. ‘I have to take the risk, you see.’

  Flushing, she looked at her daughter, and the innocence and frankness of that gaze was such that Abigail thought, amazed, ‘She really is in love with him; she has been all along.’

  Such jealousy fired up in her heart that she felt dizzy.

  ‘Then you can take it by yourself.’

  Her mother looked as if she had been slapped. ‘You can’t mean that, darling.’

  ‘You forget that he dumped me, too,’ said Abigail tartly. ‘That’s not going to happen to me again. I can’t stop you doing something idiotic if that’s what you want, but you can’t make me do it, too.’

  ‘But, Abigail, how can I … I can’t leave you here at your age!’

  The shock of realisation hit Abigail. ‘She’d really leave me, if there had to be a choice.’

  Pride forced the hurt into the back of her mind. With an effort she composed her face. She even smiled.

  ‘Oh, well, let’s be practical, Mum. I can easily change over to boarding-school until I’m ready for university, and then I’ll go and flat with someone, or
live in college.’

  ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘Don’t try to wheedle me out of it, Mum. I’m not going. No way.’

  Her exit was spoiled because the door slipped out of her fingers and slammed. She couldn’t very well open it again and explain to her mother that she wasn’t so childish as to go around slamming doors. She stood in the middle of her bedroom feeling sick with fury and shock and a horrible kind of triumph, because she knew how much she had wounded her mother.

  ‘She’s hurt because she knows I’m right. How could she, how could she be like that, with all she’s got – me, and the shop, and her friends and… ?’ Here a burst of anger made her feel sickish. ‘And Dad! The nerve of …’

  Her mother tapped on the door. ‘Abigail, I’d like you to come and help me unpack and catalogue some things today. I got so many items from St Mary’s.’

  ‘Thanks, but I don’t want to,’ answered Abigail curtly.

  ‘But,’ wailed Kathy, ‘if you go to boarding-school where will you spend the holidays? You’d loathe it with Grandmother and we haven’t anyone else. Oh, please, darling, I know it’s been a surprise. I suppose I told you all the wrong way. But please come with me and let’s talk it out down at Magpies.’

  Abigail did not reply. After a while her mother gave the door a ferocious kick. The girl could not help grinning; Kathy was such a child.

  After her mother had gone she washed up, and put on her green dress, which made her feel better. But not much better.

  She had a terrible feeling that her mother would go to Norway, regardless. She could not mistake that look on her face. It was happiness and hope. All these years, then, she had longed and hankered for Weyland Kirk to come back to where she felt he belonged. It was like some late-late-show movie – brave little wife making the best of desertion and loneliness, and then one rainy night, gaunt and pale, in comes Gene Kelly. Oh, Kathy, can you ever forgive me? I made such a mistake. I ruined my life, but oh, how can I forgive myself for ruining yours? It’s always been you, Kathy, always.