“Hope Misses Moby know there’s war on, use gas, water, patriotically.”
“You will remember not to use too much hot water, to light the gas in your room only when necessary, won’t you, dears,” explained Miss Agnes anxiously.
“Yes,” said Charlotte, and “Yes,” muttered Emily.
“Mean, yes, Miss Agnes Chisel-Brown,” boomed Mr. Chisel-Brown.
“Yes, Miss Agnes Chisel-Brown, you ought to say,” Miss Agnes whispered across to them.
“Yes, Miss Agnes Chisel-Brown,” whispered Charlotte back, but Emily said no more.
“Young ladies these days, hunnish manners seemingly,” observed Mr. Chisel-Brown, wiping his moustache. “Arthur, a lad, behaved quite differently.”
•
In Charlotte and Emily’s bedroom hung a picture called “Mark of the German Beast,” which showed a huge, glowering face drawn in brown pencil. But the eyes were gun holes for shooting at unarmed men; the ears were crouched women with murdered babies in their arms; the nose, mouth, and chin each had similar horrors. This was what Charlotte saw first when she opened her eyes the next day. Therefore, she was not surprised to see, next, the perverse, irritating shape of the monkey puzzle tree outside the window and not, as she had hoped, the blaring brick of the new school annex in her own time, which would have looked to her quite beautiful today.
“Oh, you’re still here, are you?” said Emily casually, leaning over her. “I told you you would be, didn’t I? I said it was that bed that made you change with Clare. I told you so.”
She leaped back onto her own bed, which was very high but deep, like a sofa, with no room for even a child to crawl between it and the floor beneath.
“It’s much comfier than school beds,” she cried, bouncing vigorously. She might not have been gloomy yesterday at all, to Charlotte’s surprise and also her relief.
“Mind, Emily, don’t bust the springs,” she said.
It was raining today. But the rain had stopped by lunchtime, and after lunch Charlotte and Emily were ordered by Mr. Chisel-Brown through Miss Agnes to take the dog out into the garden, where dead brown flowers still stood on rhododendron bushes, which must have first flowered in June, and where they could scarcely move without banging into some dripping shrub, so showering themselves uncomfortably. The dog seemed to dislike it quite as much as Charlotte and Emily, lifting his feet disconsolately from the muddy paths. He looked like a millipede, Emily said. The mat of hair hanging down on either side of him was like little myriad legs.
Before them the monkey puzzle tree sprang up and out.
“I bet I could climb it,” said Emily. Charlotte surveyed it doubtfully.
“Well, if you could get up the first part where there aren’t any branches.”
“Oh, you’d need a ladder, of course. After that it’s like stairs. I bet it’s awfully easy if you’re good at climbing trees.”
“If the leaves or whatever you call those spiky green things are as prickly as they look, they’d hurt your hands like anything.”
“Yes, but some of the branches haven’t any at all; they’re bare, you see. You could miss the prickly ones, couldn’t you?”
It was odd the way the dark green spikes seemed to spring straight out from the wood. The trunk, too, had its own curious construction, small horizontal ridges at uneven intervals that would be rough, Charlotte thought, on knees and shins.
“I will climb it one day. I will anyway, you’ll see,” said Emily. She was bored now. She kicked the path or threw a stick for the dog to chase, but he continued as droopy at their heels.
“He’s such a boring dog. It’s all boring. I think it’s the most boring place I’ve ever known. The Chisel-Browns are the most boring people.”
“They’re just old. That’s all, I think,” said Charlotte.
“Aunt Dolly says it isn’t polite to talk about the food and stare at it like Mrs. Chisel-Brown does all the time,” said Emily righteously. “She calls it pig talk, pig behavior.”
“Well, you and Bunty talk about the food all the time at school.”
“That’s different, we’re children. Mrs. Chisel-Brown’s a grown-up lady.”
“It’s no different. If you know better, you shouldn’t do it.”
“Well, Mrs. Chisel-Brown must know better, and she still does it. That silly Miss Agnes should tell her not to. Don’t you think Miss Agnes is silly?”
“Not especially,” said Charlotte primly.
“Well, I do. I think she’s one of the silliest people I’ve ever met. And she’s ugly, too, uglier even than Elsie Brand.”
“I think you’re being horrid, Emily,” said Charlotte.
“I think I shall call her Ugly Aggie. Yes, Ugly Aggie, that’s a good name.”
Emily laughed loudly and for a long time. Afterwards came a long silence. She was looking at Charlotte. Eventually she said, “Clare would say it wasn’t good or Christian to talk like that. She’d say I ought to say sorry in my prayers.”
“I said you were horrid, didn’t I? Anyway, I’m not Clare. You know I’m not.” Charlotte picked up a dried rhododendron leaf, brown and tough looking and curled at the edges, like a boat she thought, balancing it across her hand.
“I know you’re not Clare,” said Emily loudly. “But you’ve got to be her anyway, haven’t you? You should just try harder, that’s all.”
“Emily, you’re being horrid.”
“I feel horrid. I feel horrid. I wish . . . I wish . . .” Emily stopped; scowled; as suddenly laughed and ran away across the lawn and back again.
“We were just talking about your monkey puzzle tree,” Charlotte said, for Miss Agnes came out then to call them in.
“Isn’t it funny, dear? You can see it would puzzle monkeys,” cried Miss Agnes with a bright giggle. She had large teeth and giggling, showed them all.
Charlotte did not dare look at Emily, saying rather hurriedly, “Emily thought you could climb it if you had a ladder first.”
“My brother climbed it once as a lad. He borrowed a ladder from the gardener.”
“Didn’t you climb it, too?” asked Emily.
“Oh no, dear, that would have been most unladylike.”
“I don’t care about being ladylike. Is that your brother in the photograph in the dining room?”
“Yes, that is Arthur,” replied Miss Agnes.
“Is he younger than you?”
“Oh yes, by several years. Was younger, I should say.”
“Why, is he dead then?” asked Emily, though Charlotte was hinting with a little kick that she should ask no more questions. It was rude.
“He was killed, dear, in this terrible war in France.”
“My father’s in France, too,” said Emily, more subdued again. The dog shook itself and sniffed. The trees and bushes dripped quite noisily.
Charlotte was looking at the ground, at the wet scattered leaves, but after a moment she felt Miss Agnes seem to shake herself, saw her unwind her knitted fingers. She heard her say quickly, almost defiantly, as she turned to lead them indoors again, “We had such a nice letter from the colonel to say how bravely dear Arthur had died. Of course we knew he had been brave—we’d never doubted it—but it was very kind of him to write and tell us so.”
They went to the dining room, where Charlotte and Emily had been told they might sit each day. Rather awkward seeming and embarrassed still, Miss Agnes knelt on the floor beside the big black cupboard and opened the lower doors. Out fell, tumbling, some books and boxes, some packages wrapped in tissue paper, out onto the shadowy floor.
“These were ours,” she said. “Mine and Arthur’s. You may play with them, if you like. There’s no one else to play with them now.” Then she went away at once, quite hurriedly.
Chapter 9
HOW STRANGE it was to crouch in the half-dark between heavy table and heavy cupboard, exploring the toys of a generation back, by feel and smell as much as sight. It was absorbing, too, and exciting, also sad, because of the f
aded worn look they had, but perhaps even more because of their smell, sour and musty, the smell of things left long unused.
Charlotte examined a package first, one wrapped in tissue paper, which had none of the crispness and whiteness of new paper. It was yellowed, soft as muslin, barely hissing as Charlotte unfolded it carefully, layer on layer, both she and Emily growing more curious toward the parcel’s core, in which, at last, they found a doll. It had a china face, rather chilly to touch, with fat white cheeks and huge, fringed eyes. It had arms and legs of china, too, but the body was soft, covered in thin leather, colder than cloth yet less cold than china for fingers to explore. It wore a blue silk dress, short to the knee and humped a little behind, tied by a pink silk sash, also a hat with a feather in it. It had laced high-heeled boots painted on its legs, and impossibly tiny feet.
“Only a doll, a silly doll. She would have played with dolls, of course, Miss Agnes would, I mean,” said Emily in a disappointed voice.
“Well, what’s wrong with that then? I used to play with dolls, too. And this is such a lovely one.” Charlotte was examining it delightedly, peering to see each tiny perfect detail of stitching and ornament. “We never had any as beautiful as this.”
“Clare did,” said Emily unexpectedly. “She had a doll just like this, only nicer, that belonged to our mother when she was a little girl. It was the only thing we had of hers. She died when I was three, you know, and our father was so sad that he sold everything else, all the furniture and all her old toys and books and things. But he let Clare keep the doll.”
“Didn’t you have anything yourself?” said Charlotte, looking at her, horrified. She could think of nothing more sad than to have nothing at all to remind you of your mother.
“I had my father’s soldiers. He gave them to me specially. He wanted me to play with them. He’d really wanted me to be a boy, you see.”
In spite of this, after a moment Emily held out her hand for the doll, examining it as carefully as Charlotte had done. She began to undress it even, and when Charlotte, opening another box, found an array of soldiers, once bright blue and red but now very rubbed and dented looking, she gave them, at first, only a casual glance while continuing to fiddle with the tiny hooks and buttons on the doll.
Charlotte explored the other boxes, finding all kinds of games: elaborate jigsaw puzzles, a Halma set, checkers in a box made to look like a leather-covered book. Best of all—or so Charlotte thought—in a plain wooden box with a lid that slid in and out, she found a pile of small white sticks most delicately carved.
Emily, by now, had left the doll and was ranging and then rearranging the ranks of scarred tin soldiers on the table beneath the light. She jumped as Miss Agnes’s hands fell gently, tentatively, on her shoulders.
“These were dear Arthur’s soldiers, of course,” she said, making Charlotte jump in her turn. She had not heard Miss Agnes entering because she was so occupied with the small white sticks.
“I didn’t think they were your soldiers,” said Emily cheekily.
“I wasn’t allowed to touch them, of course. Arthur said girls should play with dolls instead. But he played with them all the time, you know. They were his favorite toy.”
“I don’t like dolls, though I’m a girl. I like playing with soldiers best, too, like him.” Emily wriggled a little for Miss Agnes’s hands still rested on her back.
“Whatever are those sticks?” she asked Charlotte. “They look like little baby bones.”
“They’re spillikins. It’s a sort of game.”
“The spillikins! Why, fancy, the spillikins.” Miss Agnes bent forward excitedly. “They’re made of ivory, of course, and that is bone, Emily.”
Charlotte lifted the box of spillikins and poured them out onto the table. They looked less fragile when defined against the dark wood, but just as delicate, barely thicker than little strips of paper. She arranged them as if she was laying a fire, crisscrossing them, save only for one, with a shallow hook on it, that she kept out separately.
“You get the spillikins out with this,” she told Emily. “If you move two by mistake, then someone else has a turn.” She was pleased, warm, off her guard, for they had played spillikins at Aviary Hall, she and Emma and sometimes even their Grandfather Elijah. She was still more pleased when Miss Agnes insisted that they all play spillikins now.
To Emily’s surprise and indignation Miss Agnes won almost every time. She grew quite pleased and fluttery. Pink spots planted themselves in the center of each cheek.
“Of course, dears, I always was good at this,” she said. “I used to beat Arthur every time, and he got so cross sometimes that he’d throw them all on the ground, the naughty boy.”
“Well, I’m good at checkers. I can always beat Clare.” Emily looked at Charlotte pointedly and giggled. She was much too impatient to be good at spillikins, moving them too fast, not wheedling them out by delicate degrees. Charlotte, on the other hand, became absorbed, concentrating wholly on her fingers’ easing, on the slow, light levering of the little strips of bone. There was the moment of suspense when success was near, the relief as she safely flicked a spillikin away, the frustration, contrariwise, when at the last minute fingers lost their control or when one that had seemed an easy win proved so delicately balanced that it set the whole heap twitching at a single touch.
•
The game contracted, expanded seconds, contracted, expanded minutes; made an illusion of no time that lulled Charlotte and comforted her. They might, she thought, have been playing at any time, their minds moving easily from one present to another, from 1918, here, now, to Arthur in the past, to Emma in the future, and also to Clare. This room, she thought, must have looked much the same when Miss Agnes and her brother Arthur were children—the same toys and games were spread about. It might equally have been Aviary Hall as Charlotte knew it, for that had just such dark wood surfaces, just such dowdy light and dim reflections, and saw just such games of spillikins.
Charlotte watched Miss Agnes play, her worn fingers moving patiently, her black brows contracted to a still thicker, blacker line. She felt as if she were suspended between these times, the past, this present, that future of her own, belonging to all and none of them. She looked up half expecting to see Emma there, beside Miss Agnes, or Arthur the boy in the tinted photograph. It surprised her even to find only Emily.
•
That night Miss Agnes said they were to go to the drawing room, where Mr. and Mrs. Chisel-Brown stayed all the day as far as Charlotte and Emily could see, though Miss Agnes worked continually, cooking and organizing the house. On one side of its empty fireplace sat Mr. Chisel-Brown behind his newspaper; on the other, like a fat, white Buddha, sat Mrs. Chisel-Brown behind nothing but her face, which glimmered a little, palely, in the surrounding gloom. The fat, hairy dog lay on her lap; the fat black cat was curled up at her feet. On a table beside her stood a forest of photographs. All were of Arthur, Charlotte thought. At least all seemed to be of a boy or man, though she could not see very well, and it would have been rude to peer.
“Good night,” Charlotte whispered tentatively, for that was what they had come to say.
“Good night,” growled Emily.
“My young day,” observed Mr. Chisel-Brown to his newspaper, “my young day, young people bade good night each company in turn. Of course, have hunnish manners now.”
“That’s right, dear Emily,” Miss Agnes hinted at their backs. “Say good night, Mr. Chisel-Brown, Mrs. Chisel-Brown. Good night (and here she giggled a little), good night, Miss Agnes.”
“Miss Agnes Chisel-Brown,” observed her father fiercely.
“Good night,” said Charlotte, obedient, confused, and suddenly very, very tired. “Good night, Mr. Chisel-Brown, good night, Mrs. Chisel-Brown, good night, Miss Agnes Chisel-Brown.”
Emily said nothing but looked defiantly at Mr. Chisel-Brown, who rose to his feet and took a soldierly stance, fiddling with his moustache.
“Say good night, E
mily dear.” Miss Agnes was hinting still.
“Oh please, Emily,” said Charlotte, “say good night.” “Oh please, Emily,” she was thinking, “please say it; it’s so much easier, and I’m so tired.”
Mr. Chisel-Brown stared at them, puffing himself out, swaying a little on his feet, as if to let the wind carry him away. No balloon could have been fuller of air than he.
Emily gave a little smile.
“Good night, Mr. Chisel-Brown,” she said with almost a curtsy. “Good night, Mrs. Chisel-Brown, good night, Miss Agnes Chisel-Brown. Good night, cat. Good night, dog,” she said, and then at once, giggling, fled, out of the drawing room and up the stairs.
Charlotte waited, terrified, her eyes fast to the floor. But nothing happened. Mr. Chisel-Brown deflated himself and returned to his newspaper. Mrs. Chisel-Brown continued to sit as she had sat before. Charlotte, beckoned by Miss Agnes, departed at last to her bed. And when she went to breakfast the next morning, dreading repercussions, Mr. Chisel-Brown just glanced over his newspaper with a kind of a growl, and nothing more was said that morning or any morning.
“Anyone would think,” said Emily triumphantly, “anyone would think he was frightened to tell me off.”
Chapter 10
THE FOLLOWING Saturday Emily climbed the monkey puzzle tree. It had been an odd sort of week for them before Saturday, as day girls going back and forth to school each day. It even smelled different, Charlotte thought, from earlier weeks. Perhaps chiefly it was the curiously medical and disinfectant smell of the day-girls’ cloakroom, where they spent quite a lot of their day, changing and gossiping; the boarders’ cloakroom, more rarely visited, had smelled of grease and dust and rubber and wet wool. But there was also the musty, sad smell of the cupboard in the Chisel-Brown dining room, which each evening that week, their homework done, Charlotte and Emily continued to explore.
Charlotte Sometimes Page 7