by Dirk Bogarde
“You don’t swallow them like your Uncle,” said our father. “You just chump them up … that’s the right way!”
Uncle John winked at me across the table. “All a matter of personal taste, my boy … you swaller them or you chew them up. Aren’t any rules, just personal taste!” He quickly swallowed another one. “Food of the Gods!” he said. “Food of the Gods!”
Lally took her fork and speared an oyster from its shell which she politely offered to my horrified sister who shook her head from side to side and covered her mouth with both her hands, watching, with wide eyes, as Lally put it into her mouth and chewed it up happily.
Seeing Lally looking so cheerful I said, “It’s the same as winkles, that’s all.”
“Winkles are boiled.”
“Well, even if they are … they don’t feel anything.”
“No, but I will! All crawling about inside me alive.”
“You just chew them up and then they won’t.”
“Poor little things … that would be killing them then.”
“If our father does it it can’t possibly hurt them.” She really was very silly. She stuck her fork hard into the wooden table and said:
“You haven’t even tried one yet so how can you possibly know?”
I grabbed a fork from the pile beside me, took an oyster, put it in my mouth and ate it. Her face fell open like an old cupboard door.
“There!” I said.
“Oh, poor little thing … poor little thing,” she wailed; but it was the most lovely taste I had ever had. Salt, sea, slippery, sweet and cool. I chewed it with pleasure so that she would see and also so that it really would not flop about inside me. Because she had put me off a bit with that. But not off enough.
“It’s lovely!” I cried to everyone as if they didn’t know. “It’s lovely … you must eat them, it’s easy and they are beautiful.”
Our father was very pleased and raised his glass to me and so did our mother who was laughing and looking pretty and happy. I could have eaten the whole plate but Lally counted out five more and that was that, but I ate them as slowly as possible to make them last, and sipped my glass of wine just like our father.
I felt it was a very important day.
Later there was a big fish and then cheese and fruit, and after it was all over the Parents all got into the O.M. with many waves and kisses and drove away and we were to follow, when we felt like it, in the carriage after we had had a “bit of a paddle” on the long sandy beach beyond the farm.
The Chesterfields went off shrimping along the edge of the sea which seemed to be feeling as lazy as we were because it just nudged the sand gently and hardly moved at all, but far away out where it ended against the sky, some big white clouds started growing into the hot blue like enormous cauliflowers. Lally was helping us with our sand castle which had a tower at each corner and a moat all round and a very big tower in the middle which we were decorating with razor-shells and little round pink ones. She stood up and dusted the sand off her hands against her skirt and looked out to sea.
“Shouldn’t wonder we had a bit of a storm presently. Those clouds don’t look too good to me,” and she tramped slowly up the beach to where Amy was sitting on her folding stool, which she always carried with her everywhere, reading her phrase book under a parasol.
“Did you really like those dreadful oysters?” said my sister.
“They were marvellous.”
“But I mean what did they taste like, all alive and squirmy?”
“It wasn’t a bit squirmy.”
“Well… you know what I mean. All alive.”
“It tasted just like the smell of rock-pools.”
“How could it? Silly. You can’t taste a smell!”
“You can. And they did. Exactly.”
“Tasting like a smell. I’ve never heard of anything so soppy.” She started to dig out a bit more of the moat under the drawbridge and a lump of wall fell down and we had to splash more water on it to hold it up, and she said: “Well, perhaps next time I’ll try one and see for myself… just to try, that’s all, and if I don’t like it I can always just spit it out, can’t I?” and Lally called us to come on and start getting ready to go back, because the carriage was waiting and the clouds were getting a bit big.
“We don’t want to get stuck in a storm here,” she called. “So make haste all of you and get ready or we shall have the Prince of Wales waiting about in the hotel, and we don’t want that, do we?”
While we were all drying ourselves and putting on sandals and shorts and things, and pushing each other over on the sand while we stood on one leg, Lally picked up Amy’s little brown book and was rifling through it interestedly. “Humph!” she cried “I don’t think that this is going to be much good to us, Amy … whatever would I want muslin for, I ask you?”
Amy was combing Paul’s hair and looked rather cross. “I don’t know, I’m sure,” she said. “My father, God rest his soul, said it was a very useful book to have with you when you were Abroad.” Lally went on rifling through the pages.
“I’ve no doubt it was when he came, but this is 1898 and what would I be doing in a draper’s shop saying, ‘This muslin is too thin, have you something thicker?’ … Goodness me! What would I be wanting muslin for, I ask you?”
Amy started to look rather red in the face and huffy and she pulled Paul’s hair so hard that he yelled and fell over in the sand, and she had to say she was sorry and try to find the parting again. “Oh! do hold still!” she cried. “You really are a flibbertigibbet and no mistake.” But really she knew it was her fault because Lally had flustered her. “You might want to use it for jelly-bags,” she said, tucking Paul’s shirt into his shorts and trying to fix his snake-belt which had got stuck.
“I might,” agreed Lally. “And then I might not. But I grant you that… although I can’t for the life of me see why.”
Amy fixed the belt and told Paul to get on his sandals and sat down rather heavily on her stool. “There are a lot of very useful things if you look under ‘Travelling’ and ‘Hospital’ and ‘At The Station’,” she said, trying to close her parasol, because a hot wind was beginning to blow and the sand was scattering all over the place and stinging our faces.
“At The Hospital,” read Lally in a laughing voice, “my leg, arm, foot, head, elbow, nose, finger is broken! It doesn’t say anything about neck, I notice, so where would that get you?”
“If your neck was broken, the dear God knows, you’d not be able to speak so that’s why they left the word out… it stands to reason surely.”
The big clouds were starting to cover the sun, and the sands were growing dark, the sea was flat and grey looking in spite of the hot wind which was now really starting, tumbling the folded towels across the beach so that we had to run after them while Lally was still holding the book open and reading bits from it while the pages blew and flapped in her hands. “Travelling! ‘The Postillion Has Been Struck By Lightning’—well!” she cried laughing. “That wouldn’t get us far today, would it?”
Amy got up off her stool and started to fold it.
“It might, my dear,” she said, “considering the weather. We had all better be off before the Heavens open and it’s a long journey back.” And she called about like an old hen for the Chesterfields and they started wandering up to the farm. We followed behind with towels and baskets and buckets and spades and a knotted handkerchief full of shells which my sister had collected, and a long wet strip of bobbly seaweed which was a present for our mother.
As we plodded up through the hot, sliding sand, I said, “What’s a postillion?” and Lally said it was a man who sat on top of the coaches in the olden days and blew a horn to tell people it was coming. “I’m afraid we’ll have to find something a bit newer for the cemetery or the dear knows where we’ll all end up.”
At the farm the old lady who drove the coach was waving her arms and holding a big black umbrella and pointing to the sky. It was getting darker an
d darker, and the big cauliflower clouds were almost right over our heads, and were heavy and purple-coloured with golden edges. As we started clambering into the coach the first plip-plops of rain fell, as big as threepenny pieces, splattering into the dusty road and pattering on the windows.
“Surely we can squeeze poor Angelica inside with us!” cried Amy; but there wasn’t an inch of room with all the baskets, and buckets, and towels, and shrimping nets, so we both had to climb on to the top of the coach with the old lady, who was covering herself with bits of macintosh and shoved the umbrella at me to hold over us while she pulled the reins and started off down the long dyke, through the oyster beds now all potted and spotted with fat raindrops.
It wasn’t a very comfortable journey, and when we got to the rutted lane which led to the main road, the coach rolled about like a fishing boat, and everyone screamed out from inside. But the old lady was not going to wait for anyone, and she hit the horse quite hard so that we rattled and rumbled and swayed along like anything, and Angelica called out and hung on to the iron rails and the rain came pouring down, so that I couldn’t hold the umbrella and hold on at the same time, what with the wind roaring and jiggling everything. When we reached the main road and turned on to it, the old lady slowed down a bit and the wheels went a bit smoother, and she started to try and put the old bits of macintosh round Angelica and myself, while I tried to hold the umbrella over all our heads. But it wasn’t much use because I kept sticking the spokes in her eyes or hitting her on the head with the thing, so she was getting wetter and wetter and looking very cross. Suddenly there was a flash and a zig-zag of forked lightning which stabbed into the fields beside us. Angelica flung herself into the old lady’s lap and I threw the umbrella on to the floor and held on to her as well; she just walloped the horse a bit harder and on we went, splashing through the rain and the great crash of thunder which roared down over us and which so frightened the horse that he galloped down the road with his ears flat to his head and the old lady waving her whip in the air.
On we rattled, with the wheels all going wobbly so that I feared one of them would presently fall off and go winging out into the ditches on either side. There was another great zig-zag of lightning just behind us and then a terrific crash of thunder. The rain was streaming down so hard that I could hardly see, but I clung on to the old lady and just hoped that if I didn’t hold the iron rail I wouldn’t get struck the next time there was a flash. All I could see of Angelica was one arm and a flying pigtail with a ragged red ribbon streaming in the wind. I wondered if she had been struck and was dead. But she wasn’t.
And then the first houses came, and a bus, and the road got smoother and the rain became gentler and in a short time we rumbled down the Promenade towards the hotel. There was no one about. And the beaches were quite empty except for lots of tumbled deck-chairs and tents which had blown down in the storm, and now the sea was really rough and swirling and crashing round the wooden breakwaters.
In front of the hotel, under the big glass blind, we all got off the dripping coach, the horse was steaming as if he had been boiled, and Angelica didn’t bother about whether I could see her knickers or not, she just scrambled down off the top looking like a drowned rat, her hair all straggly and the red ribbons untied and squiggling like red worms. Lally got out first and pulled my sister from inside, looking very red and rather cross.
“Beth and Paul have been sick,” she said flatly. “And all over my floral. And Amy’s in a bad way, too, I’m afraid. Run inside and get the keys and open the rooms, there’s a good boy. We’ll be up directly, just take your own things with you,” she added, shoving towels and shrimping nets and seaweed into my arms.
“A fine postillion you made,” she said, “You didn’t blow your horn once!”
“And I didn’t get struck by lightning either,” I said.
“You get on up there,” said Lally, “or you’ll get struck by lightning from another direction!”
And as I hurried off up the steps with my sister hard behind me, she called out to put on the kettle and to ask the maid for an extra cup for Amy who would need it.
It was quite a long climb up the white, chalky road to the cemetery. On either side there were fields full of standing corn, green as green, and rolling away into the distance. The sky was clear and blue, with one or two little fat clouds gently drifting towards the sea which sparkled in the brilliant sunlight. A lark went whirling up like a spinning top as we passed, singing very loudly to keep us away from his nest somewhere, but there was no other sound except the whispers in the corn and Lally puffing a bit behind us.
“Don’t scuff your feet!” she called out between puffs. “There’s enough dust without you making more. I’m white as Lot’s wife as it is.”
Amy was walking behind with her veil pulled down all round her straw man’s hat to keep off the flies, she said, and the dust of the road. She had her stool, and her big bag and a small bunch of flowers which we had stopped to buy outside the hotel when we left for the bus to the town where the cemetery was. My sister and I were a bit worried that we hadn’t got any flowers to put on Amy’s Brother’s Grave—if we found him—but we picked quite a big bunch of poppies which were growing all along the road, to put on the grave of the Miss Cavell.
“She’ll like that,” said Lally with assurance. “She’d think it very nice of two English children to remember her and pick her some flowers.”
The gates of the cemetery were very white and tall, and made of stone. There was a big cross over them and a wall all the way round. Amy was rather pale and nervous, and we were quiet so as not to disturb her because it was a very sad thing she was doing and we did not want to get in the way. When we got inside the cemetery we all stopped. It was the biggest one we had ever seen, much bigger than the one at Teddington or even the one in our own village where we used to have the fair. It was huge. Miles and miles of little white crosses, and long green-grassy paths between them all with little black pointed trees every now and then. There weren’t any flowers on many of the graves. Some had little jam jars with a few wilting daisies which looked very sad. And some had rose bushes growing beside them—which was rather nice. Here and there we could see little groups of people in black walking down the grassy paths, or a single person kneeling by a grave all alone.
“Oh dear!” said Lally, in a very low voice. “So many; so many poor souls.” She took us both by a hand and we started to walk slowly among the white crosses looking at the names; just things like F.J. Jones, and a number and the name of the regiment and sometimes the date. But what was awful was just where it had Unknown written. Just one word. And we all wondered who they were and of course no one would ever come to see them, because they were unknown, and no one put flowers there.
Amy had a handkerchief to her face but she was peering about her and for once she looked quite nice and not irritating.
“I wonder what to do?” she said worriedly. “There are so many, so many, and I don’t know where I’d begin.”
Lally said: “You go over to that fellow who’s weeding there, I expect he belongs to the place and he’ll tell you. I imagine you have to look under the O’s”, she said, giving Amy a little push.
Amy looked doubtful, but she opened her bag and took out her phrase book where she had marked some pages for “Asking Directions”, which she had shown us in the bus, and nervously walked up to the man who was busy weeding and when he looked up at her we all got quite a start because he only had half a face. She started to read from her book and then we heard him speak to her in real Cockney and he laughed and said he was English and what could he do for her? Well, it was a big relief, and presently, scratching his head, he took her off up one of the long grassy paths far away from us. My sister was very silent. The bunch of poppies was getting a bit droopy, and we both felt rather miserable in that quiet place with so many white crosses shining in the sun.
Lally cleared her throat and told us to cheer up. “Goodness me! You look
a couple of miseries I must say! You ought to be very happy that you’re both here on such a lovely day as this, because all these poor men here died just so that you could be walking about in the sun without a care in the world. They wouldn’t think you were very grateful if they could see your miserable faces, now would they? You see what it says on top of that big stone cross there? Their Sacrifice Was Not In Vain. So just you remember that. And show your manners.” She was really quite bossy, but it was only because she was feeling sad too, and didn’t want to show it.
“What shall we do about Amy?” said my sister for something to say, and Lally said we were to leave her be so that she could find her brother in peace. “It’s a private thing,” she said firmly. “So now let’s go and see if we can find Miss Cavell.”
Just then, another wounded man came along and was very nice and said that he came from Herne Bay, where Lally had once spent a holiday, but he shook his head and said he didn’t know a Miss Cavell. She wasn’t here, he said, not as far as he knew, which was a bit disappointing. He took us all over the place and we saw some quite big graves with weeping angels and stone pots on them, but there was no one called Miss Cavell. So Lally suggested that my sister should put her flowers on one of the “unknown” graves, just as a sign of respect for the dead. And before they died themselves.
“Amy must have got it all a bit muddled,” said Lally. “And no one could really blame her because this was a very Trying Day for her.”
My sister put the poppies on the grave rather nervously as if someone would tell her not to, but the man from Herne Bay was very nice and said that quite a lot of people came and did that and that later on he’d try and find a little jar to put them in; he said there was probably one in his shed. Then he asked me if I would like to see something very fine, and when I said I would, he limped away up a long grassy path to a big box thing. Well, it looked like a box. It was standing at the head of a very tidy grave, and it had a glass cover. Inside the box was a beautiful uniform jacket and a cap with gold braid all over it, and the jacket had a lot of medals and buttons. It was all a bit faded by the sun, but even so it sparkled. But it looked sadder even than the crosses, all empty, and the man from Herne Bay said that it belonged to a French General or someone and that his wife had asked for it to be like this.