Sometimes, as they wandered on their plundering expedition among the ruined cities, they would meet two boys, survivors from the other side of the world; but the game was never quite the same when that happened. The boys were so dim, and faint, and characterless compared with Sandra and Helen; they contributed nothing. When they spoke, they spoke as Sandra or Helen would have spoken; they thought of nothing that Sandra and Helen had not already thought of; altogether, they might just as well not have been there at all. Only once had such a meeting been any real fun, and that was when they had come across two Chinese boys sitting on the ruins of the British Museum, piecing together the lost literature of their land by reciting to each other the bits they each remembered by heart. This set Helen and Sandra doing the same thing for the English speaking world, and soon they had restored the complete texts of Shakespeare, the Bible and the William books. They had been just about to revive the entire history and geography of their country by a similar method when Granny had called them in to tea, and it all had to stop. It was impossible to continue the talk over tea, because Granny always hated them playing Blow up the World in her presence. “It’s a dreadful game!” she used to remonstrate with them, “Really dreadful! ‘Blow up the World,’ indeed! What about all the rest of us, I’d like to know? And what do you suppose anybody would think if they were to hear you? They’d think you were a dreadful pair of little girls, quite horrid. Of course they would! Now, you just stop it, and come along and play something sensible …” and she would shoo them along into her room, and play ludo with them, or snakes and ladders … and somehow even these games were lovely too, in their way, especially with Granny playing as well, with such zest to win: clutching frantically at her grey curls when one of her counters was sent back to base, and murmuring magic spells into the dice box to make it give her a six.
So Helen and Sandra did not usually resent these arbitrary interruptions to their favourite pastime; particularly as they knew, and Granny knew, that as soon as they were on their own once more they would start Blowing up the World all over again, just as if nothing had happened. And so it had gone on for years—or could it actually have been only months? —until the dreadful afternoon—even now, Helen could hardly bear to recall it—when Mummy had found out about it all.
Not about the game itself; that wouldn’t have mattered at all, because Mummy wouldn’t have minded a bit, and anyway it was against her principles to interfere with children at play. No, what Mummy discovered was far more shattering; she discovered that Granny disapproved of the game: she actually caught Granny in the very act of telling them they were a pair of naughty little girls, and couldn’t they think of a nice game to play for once?
Mummy hadn’t said very much at the time; she had even smiled, and made some chilling little joke; but Helen had seen, with terror, that she had gone white and pinched round the lips, as she did only when she was very, very angry. And a few minutes later she had called Helen down to the drawing-room.
“Helen, darling,” she had said gravely, putting her arm round the child’s shoulders, “I don’t want you to be upset by what Granny said just now. It’s not naughty to play that game, you mustn’t ever think it is. Granny should never, never have told you that it was, but you must remember that she’s an old lady now, and has rather old-fashioned ideas. We musn’t blame her, but I’m more sorry than I can say that she should have put it into your head that such a game could be naughty. It isn’t naughty; it’s right and healthy that you should sometimes feel hate and aggression towards us all, that you should wish us all dead at times, and that you should act out your hostility in play. It’s right and natural; it’s what play is for. You must never, ever, feel guilty about having such feelings, or about expressing them….”
Even now, all these years later, Helen could still remember the sick, soiled feeling that had enveloped her as her mother finished speaking. Never, till that moment, had it occurred to her that one could feel guilty in this sort of way. Granny’s reprimands had conveyed nothing more than that grown-ups didn’t like the game, just as they didn’t like you dropping cups or walking mud into the sitting-room. Of course they didn’t like it—they shouldn’t like it—it wasn’t a grown-up’s game. Mummy oughtn’t to like it either—there was something weird, and sickly, and awful, about her elaborate approval of it.
And she was wrong—wrong—wrong! Wrong in her approval and also in all this about hate and hostility—of these, Helen knew instinctively, even then, the game contained nothing. It had needed no hatred, no aggression, to destroy the world, just its it had needed no strength to lift the Marble Arch on to their shoulders while the soft wind played among the leaves of the old apple tree. Nothing, nothing of these real-life qualities had been needed for their golden, fragile game, light as gossamer, and innocent as the summer air.
“You can’t expect Granny to understand as I understand,” Mummy was explaining benignly, “but I mean to have a little talk with her, and I can promise you that from now on you will be allowed to play your game as much as ever you like, anywhere, at any time, and no matter who’s listening! No one is going to say it is naughty, or try to stop you playing it. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mummy. Thank you.”
Helen hung her head, so that her mother should not see the slow, painful tears. The permission just granted was futile, useless, relevant to nothing; for Helen knew already that they would never play their game again. Never again, through all the long summers that were to come, through all the vista of the years, with leaves, and fruit, and blossom coming and going on the old apple tree, would she and Sandra sit together among the benign old boughs and Blow up the World.
A stirring of sound, a swish of footsteps through the long grass, roused Helen from her reverie. Sandra must have located her without the usual exchange of whistles; eagerly she rolled over and raised her head with a welcoming, conspiratorial grin.
But it was Maurice who was looking down at her, his eyes like blue slits against the bright afternoon. The smile that had been for Sandra was suddenly shocking, like wearing a bathing dress for an interview with the head-mistress. Appalled, Helen swiftly changed her expression to one of distant politeness.
“Hullo,” she said cautiously. “I thought you were Sandra.” Let him at least understand that that appalling unguarded smile hadn’t been meant for him.
But now she realised that he had never noticed it; was listening to nothing of what she was saying. He was staring down at her with an obsessed, unseeing look which somehow wiped out all her feelings of embarrassment; they were replaced, instead, by a tiny flicker of fear.
His first words took her utterly by surprise.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he burst out. “Why are you hiding here—spying on me?”
“I’m not! I didn’t—! What on earth are you talking about?” Helen sat bolt upright, scared and indignant: and now, to her inexpressible relief, she saw the grey and white zigzags of Sandra’s new summer dress flashing between the currant bushes in the garden just beyond the gate.
“Sandra!” she cried joyously “Sandra! I’m here! I’m in the field! Here!”
She kept up the shouting and waving far more assiduously than was necessary partly in order to make her friend hurry, and partly to avert the necessity for further conversation with Maurice until Sandra had joined them and made everything seem all right and ordinary again.
Always Sandra could do this. It was a gift, Helen often felt, greater than wit, or beauty, or brains; and it did not fail them now. Within less than a minute of her arrival, the three of them were sitting in a companionable little circle, talking about food. The food they liked, and the food they didn’t like, and in particular the mince that had appeared for school dinner practically every Monday this term.
“I’m sure it’s worse than anything you ever had in prison, Maurice,” declared Sandra provocatively. “Bread and water would be nectar in comparison!”
Helen had often envied Sandra h
er ability to talk so easily and unselfconsciously to Maurice about his criminal past. She was almost as good at it as Claudia herself, and it was certainly an unfailing recipe for putting him in a good mood. His strange, sombre look had vanished completely, and he answered Sandra with boyish zest:
“Bread and water?” He laughed at her good-humouredly. “That’s not what you get in modern prisons! At least, only in Punishment Block, and, believe me, I wasn’t daft enough to get myself in there very often. Only once, in fact, and then it wasn’t really my own doing. There was this chap, you see, and he’d got himself mixed up with a couple of other blokes who were smuggling cigarettes; and so when he and another fellow, this first fellow’s pal—”
“Maurice! You make my head go round, you really do, with all these chaps and fellows and blokes! Can’t you give them their names? We can never make out who was which, can we, Helen, in half your stories!”
“O.K.,” said Maurice obligingly. “Tom, Dick and Harry, then. Dick and Harry were—”
“No, what were they really called?” persisted Sandra. “And”—a new idea suddenly occured to her—“what did they call you? Don’t tell me they called you ‘Maurice’!” Her shrill cackle of schoolgirl laughter brought a sudden frown to his face.
“Well? And why not? What’s wrong with it?” he asked sharply: and Sandra hastened to quell her merriment and explain.
“Oh—I don’t know. It’s just funny, that’s all, it’s not like a criminal’s name, now is it? Criminals are called things like Jake, or Pete, or Dodger…. Not Maurice …!” and again she relapsed into helpless giggles. “It’s all wrong, Maurice, it really is,” she resumed her teasing. “You don’t look like a criminal either, if you don’t mind my saying so. The way you talk, too—the way you say things like ‘O.K.’ and ‘Righty Oh’. Whoever heard of a murderer saying ‘Righty Oh’! I don’t believe you’re a murderer at all, Maurice! I think you’re just pretending!”
Maurice had gone deathly white. The blue slits of eyes fastened themselves on Sandra until the teasing words faltered on her lips, and all the giggling drained out of her.
“And why the hell else would they have shut me up for seven years?” he lashed back at her, the words darting from his lips like a whiplash, like a striking snake: and before the startled girls could say another word, he was on his feet, he had left them, an undersized, somehow venomous figure striding, stumbling, and finally running out of the field and out of their sight.
For nearly a minute Helen would not look at her friend. She stared down at the crushed grass praying to herself: let Sandra not be as frightened as I am: everything will be all right, so long as Sandra isn’t frightened too.
And sure enough, Sandra wasn’t.
“Well, gosh, he’s a proper nut-case, isn’t he!” she observed respectfully; and somehow, within a minute, they were both blessedly giggling about Maurice and his weirdities. And about Mavis, too, and about all the other Poor Things, the whole hilarious procession of them, past, present, and to come. The whole silly, comical world seemed at this moment to be spread out before them in the golden afternoon sunshine like an amusing story book, for the exclusive delectation of Sandra and of Helen.
CHAPTER XIX
“WHY DON’T YOU ever use that egg-separator I bought you?”
Margaret was just cracking her second egg as Claudia spoke, expertly running the white through her fingers into the basin while retaining the yolk in her hand; and whether it was the irritation she felt at the interruption, or whether it was sheer, devilish bad luck—it had to be this yolk that suddenly broke in her hand. Faint but irrevocable streaks of yellow slid through with the egg-white into the bowl awaiting whisking; and Margaret could have flung the whole thing across the room, so great was her annoyance and humiliation. A hundred times—a thousand—had she separated eggs by this old and trusty method, and it had to be now, under her daughter’s censorious gaze, that it should fail her.
“There you are, you see!” moralised Claudia “If only you wouldn’t be so prejudiced, Mother—if only you’d try these labour-saving devices sometimes—”
“The only labour-saving device I’d welcome would be one that prevented people hanging about in my kitchen, distracting me, when I’m trying to cook!” snapped Margaret. “What’s the matter with you, Claudia? Anyone would think you were five years old, hanging about pestering like this. Do you want to lick the basin, or something?”
“Now, now, Mother. Relax! There’s nothing to get so hot and bothered about! Why all these elaborate preparations, anyway, just for one schoolboy? Anyone would think you were preparing a dinner party for royalty!”
“I’m only making a meringue top for the tarts,” retorted Margaret. “There couldn’t be anything simpler than meringue—or cheaper, either, since we have unlimited supplies of our own eggs.”
Margaret could never resist these little opportunities for harmless boasting about her well-managed flock; but on this occasion it was a mistake. Ever since the still-unresolved dispute about the fate of the field, Claudia had become as sensitised to this sort of topic as an asthmatic to cats or horsehair.
“Cheaper!” she jeered “Do you realise those eggs are costing us roughly nine shillings each? Twelve hens, occupying a field worth eight thousand pounds, and each laying say a hundred eggs a year—”
“Rubbish! You know as well as I do that you can’t calculate things that way. If you did, you’d never be able to afford to get dressed in the morning, with your time worth fifteen shillings an hour! Twenty minutes every morning at that price —think what it would come to by the end of the year! And in any case, the hens lay far more than a hundred eggs each in a year—even my poorest layers produce nearly two hundred. Those birds have paid for themselves over and over again. If you like, I’ll show you my egg-books—”
“Please, Mother! At least spare us that!” groaned Claudia. “If there’s one thing more awful than arguing with you, Mother, about this poultry-complex of yours, it’s going over your egg-books. And if anything was needed to prove that the whole thing is just an obsessional neurosis, those books of yours would do the trick! All set out in red and black ink, and lines ruled with a ruler, and never a mistake in the addition during twenty-five years! If a school-child turned in a piece of work as obsessionally correct as that, he’d find himself in a child-guidance clinic!”
“I should hope so!” retorted Margaret. “Still at school after twenty-five years, there’d certainly be something the matter with him! Now, do, please, Claudia, take yourself off out of my kitchen and let me get on. Anybody would think it was your young man coming tonight, not Helen’s. She’s not hanging about fussing and bothering me like this.”
“No.” For a moment Claudia seemed almost nervous, and Margaret suddenly realised that her daughter’s uneasy presence in the kitchen had not been fortuitous; she had come there with a purpose, and was even now nerving herself to accomplish it.
Margaret waited; meanwhile she separated and whisked up a fresh bowl of egg-white—the first lot and their yolks she set on one side for scrambled egg in the morning.
“Listen, Mother,” Claudia blurted out at last. “You won’t—will you—do anything to spoil this evening for Helen? We want her to make friends, don’t we, like other girls of her age. Real friends. Remember, things are different from when you were young …”
“If you’re trying to soften me up, Claudia,” interrupted Margaret tartly, “so as to get me to promise to go to bed and leave Helen and this young man alone downstairs for just as long as ever they please, then the answer is no. It isn’t even what Helen wants, I happen to know—”
“Does it never occur to you that Helen mightn’t tell you everything that’s in her mind?” retorted Claudia. “Even I, her mother, don’t expect her to tell me everything. Her feelings about Clive are very special, private feelings.”
They were indeed: Margaret could almost feel them herself, pulse for pulse, as her granddaughter suffered them right now, sitt
ing all dressed and ready up there at her bedroom window. First the fear that perhaps, after all this preparation, he wouldn’t come: then the fear that perhaps he would. Then the fear that the family wouldn’t like him—it was all right for Helen not to like him, but that was quite different. Then suppose he should stay too late, and she wouldn’t know what to do with him? Or suppose he should go too early, and her mother would be shocked? And lastly, worse than all the rest, there was the fear that it would be discovered that Clive had never, so far, attempted to kiss her goodnight. Tonight he would actually be seen not attempting it, by the whole household—perhaps even by Claudia herself! Better by far that it should seem that he had been deterred only by the stern presence of the grandmother….
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