“But I’d like to go to the seaside,” said Lucy, halting. “Let’s go to the seaside.”
“No, Lucy. You don’t understand. We couldn’t possibly. It’s much too far.” He pulled her again in the upstream direction.
A ginger-colored puppyish dog had been watching them from one of the gardens on the other side. They noticed him now. He stared and stared at them, then gave a bark. Before Pat could prevent her, Lucy had barked back—rather well and very provocatively.
“Hush!” said Pat, but he was too late, and Lucy had barked again. The dog had cocked his head doubtfully at Lucy’s first bark; at the second, he made up his mind. He began to bark shrilly and continuously and as if he would never stop. He pranced along his section of the bank, shrieking at them as they went.
“Now look what you’ve done!” Pat said crossly. “Somebody will hear and guess something’s up.”
Lucy began to cry.
“Oh, I didn’t mean it,” said Pat. “No one’s come yet. Stop it, do, Lucy. Please.”
She stopped, changing instantly from crying to the happiest smiling. Pat ground his teeth.
The dog continued barking, but soon he could keep level with them no longer, for a garden fence stopped him. He ran up and down the length of it, trying to get through, banging his body against it. He became demented as he saw Lucy and Pat going from him, curving away with the riverbank beyond all possible reach. They heard his barking long after they had lost sight of him.
And now the nettles began. At first only a few, but at the first sting Lucy made a fuss. Then the clumps grew larger and closer together. They might have tried skirting them altogether, by moving in an arc from the riverbank, but in that direction they would have been stopped by another stream, flowing parallel to their own, and not much narrower. They could see that very soon the nettles were filling all the space between the two streams.
Pat considered. He had foreseen the possibility of nettles that afternoon and was wearing a long-sleeved sweater as well as jeans and socks and sandals. Lucy and Lucy’s mother, of course, had foreseen nothing; Lucy was wearing a short-sleeved dress, and her legs were bare. Legs always suffered most among nettles, so Pat took off his sweater and made Lucy put it on like a pair of curiously constructed trousers, with her legs thrust through the sleeves. Then he found himself a stick and began beating a way for them both through the nettle banks.
Whack! and whack! Left and right, he slashed the nettle stems close to the ground, so that they toppled on either side and before him. Then he trampled them right down, first to one side, then to the other. Then again whack! whack! and trample, trample. From behind him Lucy called: “I’d like to do that.”
“Oh, I daresay!” he said scornfully.
“Aren’t you coming back for me?” she asked next, for his beaten path had taken him almost out of sight. So he went back to her and took her pickaback for some way, then decided that didn’t help much and was too tiring, anyway. He put her down, and she waited behind him while he whacked. She kept her sleeved legs close together and hugged her bare arms close around her, against the nettles.
The nettles were always there—whack! whack! and trample, trample—until suddenly they stopped. There was an overflow channel from the river, man-made of brick and stone and cement patchings; it was spanned by a rather unnecessary bridge with a willow weeping over it. Lucy settled at once on the bridge under the willow to serve tea with leaves for plates and cups and scrapings of moss for sandwiches, fancy cakes, and jellies. She was very happy. Pat took off his sandals and socks and trod about in the thin film of water that slid from the upper river down the overflow channel into the lower stream. He climbed about on the stone stairs down which the overflow water ran, spattering and spraying, to its new, lower level. The wateriness of it all delighted him.
Then the barking began again. There, on the other side of the river, stood the gingery dog. By what violence or cunning he had got there, it was impossible to say. It was certain, however, that he would bark at them as long as he could see them. Some loose stones were lying in the overflow, and Pat picked up several and threw them at the dog. Those that did not fall short flew wide. The dog barked steadily. Lucy left her tea party and descended onto a slimy stone to see what was happening, and the sliminess of the stone betrayed her: she slipped and sat down in the inch of water that flowed to the lower stream and began to cry. Pat was annoyed by her crying and because she had sat down wearing—and wetting—his sweater and above all, because of the ceaseless barking on the other bank.
He hauled Lucy to her feet. “Come on!”
Beyond the overflow there were fewer nettles, so that they went faster, but the gingery dog still kept pace with them, barking. But Pat could see something ahead that the dog could not: a tributary that joined the main river on the dog’s side and that would check him, perhaps, more effectively than any garden fence. They drew level with the tributary stream, they passed it, and now they were leaving the gingery dog behind, as well as the nettles.
They entered a plantation of willows, low-lying and neglected. Saplings had been planted here long ago for the making of cricket bats; then something had gone wrong, or perhaps the trees had been forgotten. Cricket was still played, and willow bats used for it, but these particular willows, full-grown and aging, had never been felled for the purpose. So, in time, like the alder downstream, many of them had felled themselves. Ivy, which had made the plantation its own, had crept up the growing trees and shrouded the fallen ones with loose-hanging swaths of gloomy green.
Lucy was charmed with the place and would have liked to resume the tea party interrupted under the weeping willow. Here were tree stumps for tables and—an improvement on the overflow—meadowsweet and figwort on the riverbank that could be picked for table decoration. But she would not be left behind if Pat were going on.
Pat saw his chance. “I won’t leave you behind,” he promised, “but you can play while I just have a look ahead at the way we must go. Then I’ll be back for you.” Lucy accepted that. He left her choosing a tea table.
So, for a very little while, the afternoon became as Pat had planned it: just for himself. He went on through the sad plantation and came to the end of it, a barbed-wire fence beneath which it would not be too difficult to pass. Beyond lay more rough pasture. Far to the right he saw the occasional sun flash of cars on a distant road. But he was interested only in the river. Looking, he caught his breath anxiously, for a punt was drifting downstream. The only occupant, however, was a man who had shipped his pole in order to drift and doze in the sun; his eyes were shut, his mouth open. He would not disturb Pat and Lucy, if they did not disturb him.
Shading his eyes against the sun, Pat looked beyond the punt, as far as he could see upstream. The river appeared very little narrower than at the fallen alder, so probably he was still far from its source. Still, the riverbank tempted him. He could see it curving away, upstream and out of sight. Even then he could mark the course of the river by the willows that grew along it. In the distance he could see the top of a building that seemed to be standing on the river, perhaps a mill of some kind, or the remains of one, perhaps a house. …
Anyway, he would soon see for himself.
He had actually stooped to the barbed-wire fencing when he remembered Lucy. Recollecting her, he had also to admit to himself a sound coming from where he had left her, and that had been going on for some time: a dog’s furious barking. He sighed and turned back.
Back through the sad plantation to the part of the riverbank where he had left Lucy. “Lucy!” he called, and then he saw the dog on the opposite bank. Its gingeriness was darkened by the water and mud it had gone through in order to arrive where it was. For a wonder, it had stopped barking by the time Pat saw it. It sat there staring at Pat.
“Lucy!” Pat called, and looked round for her. There on a tree stump were her leaf plates, with crumbs of bark and heads of flowers, but no Lucy.
His eyes searched among the trees of
the plantation, and he called repeatedly: “Lucy! Lucy! Lucy!”
There was no answer. Even the dog on the opposite bank sat silent, cocking its head at Pat’s calling, as if puzzled.
It was not like Lucy to wander from where he had left her. He looked round for any sign of her beside the tea table. He noticed where she had picked meadowsweet and figwort; stems were freshly broken. A wasp was on the figwort. Lucy was afraid of wasps, but perhaps the wasp had not been there when she had picked what she wanted. The figwort with the wasp on it leaned right over the water.
“Lucy!” Pat called again. He went on calling her name while he slowly swiveled round, scrutinizing each part of the willow plantation as he faced it. He came full circle and was facing the river again.
The river flowed softly, slowly, but it was deep and dark. Every so often, perhaps at distances of many years, somebody drowned in it. Pat knew that.
He looked over the river to the dog and wondered how long he had been there and why he had barked so furiously and then stopped.
He looked at the bank where the figwort grew; it was crumbly, and now he noticed that some of it had been freshly broken away, slipping into the water.
He saw the flowing of the water, its depth and darkness. Speechless and motionless he stood there, staring.
The summer afternoon was still perfect, with sunshine, flowers blooming, birds singing, even to the cuckoo. …
Then suddenly: the cuckoo! He swung around, almost lost his balance on the edge of the riverbank, and with a shout of “Lucy!” started off in quite the wrong direction. Then he saw a hand that lifted a curtain of ivy hanging over a fallen tree trunk. He plunged toward it and found her. She was hiding in a green ivy cave, laughing at him. He pulled her out, into the open, and began smacking her bare arms, so that she screamed with pain and astonishment and anger. The dog began barking again. Pat was shouting, “You stupid little girl—stupid—stupid—stupid!”
And then another voice was added to theirs, in a bellow. The punt Pat saw earlier had come downstream as far as the plantation, and the man who had been dozing was now on his feet and shouting: “Stop that row, for God’s sake! And you ought to be ashamed of yourself—beating your sister like that! Stop it, or I’ll come on land and stop you myself with a vengeance!”
The two children stared, still and silent at once. Then Pat gripped Lucy and began to pull her away from the riverbank and the man and the dog. They blundered through the plantation and reached the barbed wire. They crept under it, and Pat set off again, pulling Lucy after him, across the meadows to the right, toward the distant road.
“We’re going home,” he said shortly when Lucy in tears asked where they were going.
“But why aren’t we going back by the riverbank and over the tree? I liked that.”
“Because we’re not. Because I say so.”
When they reached the road, they turned in the direction of home. There was a long way to go, Pat knew, and Lucy was already whining steadily. She hated to walk when she had to walk. There was not much chance of anyone they knew stopping to give them a lift, and if anyone did, there would be a lot of questions to be answered.
They passed a bus stop and plodded on. Lucy was crying like a toothache. Pat heard a car coming, and it passed them. Later a truck, and it passed them. Then there was a heavier sound behind them on the road, and Pat turned. “Lucy, quick! Back—run back!”
“Back?”
But Pat was already dragging her with him back to the bus stop, signaling as he ran. The bus drew up for them, and they climbed in and sat down. Pat was trembling. Lucy, who had needed a handkerchief for some time now, passed from sobbing to sniffing.
The conductor was standing over them. “Well?” he said.
Pat started. “Two halves to Barley,” he said.
The conductor held out his hand.
Pat felt through all the contents of his trouser pockets, but before he reached the bottoms, he knew, he remembered: “I’ve no money.”
The conductor reached up and twanged the bell of the bus, and the driver slowed to a halt, although there was no bus stop. “I’ve a heart of gold,” said the conductor, “but I’ve met this trick before on a Saturday afternoon.”
Pat could feel the other passengers on the bus were listening intently. Their faces, all turned in his direction, were so many pale blurs to him; almost certainly he was going to cry.
The conductor said, “You’ve some hard-luck story, no doubt, you and your little sister.”
“She’s not my sister,” Pat muttered.
A voice from somewhere in the bus—the voice of Mrs. Bovey, who lived down their road—said: “I know him. He’s Pat Woods. I’ll pay the fare. But what his mother would say…”
“You’re a lucky boy, aren’t you?” the conductor said.
Pat did not look at Mrs. Bovey; he did not thank her; he hated her.
The conductor took Mrs. Bovey’s money and twanged the bell again, so that the bus moved on. He held out two tickets to Pat but did not yet let him take them. “Latest fashion, I suppose?” he said. Pat did not know what he meant until he pointed, and then Pat realized that Lucy was still wearing his sweater as trousers.
“Take that off,” Pat ordered Lucy. As she was slow, he began to drag the sweater off her.
The conductor interrupted to hand him the tickets. “You be gentle with your sister,” he warned Pat, and from somewhere in the bus a passenger tutted.
“She’s not my sister, I tell you.”
“No,” said Mrs. Bovey, “and what her mother will say I don’t like to think.”
“You’ll grant you’re in charge of her this afternoon?” said the conductor. “Speak up, boy.”
In the silence, Lucy said: “You’re making him cry. I hate you. Of course, he looks after me. I’m always safe with him.”
Pat had turned his head away from them—from all of them—as the tears ran down his cheeks.
Return to Air
The Ponds are very big, so that at one end people bathe and at the other end they fish. Old chaps with bald heads sit on folding stools and fish with rods and lines, and little kids squeeze through the railings and wade out into the water to fish with nets. But the water’s much deeper at our end of the Ponds, and that’s where we bathe. You’re not allowed to bathe there unless you can swim, but I’ve always been able to swim. They used to say that was because fat floats—well, I don’t mind. They call me Sausage.
Only, I don’t dive—not from any diving board, thank you. I have to take my glasses off to go into the water, and I can’t see without them, and I’m just not going to dive, even from the lowest diving board, and that’s that, and they stopped nagging about it long ago.
Then, this summer, they were all on to me to learn duck-diving. You’re swimming on the surface of the water, and suddenly you upend yourself just like a duck and dive down deep into the water, and perhaps you swim about a bit underwater and then come up again. I daresay ducks begin doing it soon after they’re born. It’s different for them.
So I was learning to duck-dive—to swim down to the bottom of the Ponds and pick up a brick they’d throw in and bring it up again. You practice that in case you have to rescue anyone from drowning—say, they’d sunk for the third time and gone to the bottom. Of course, they’d be bigger and heavier than a brick, but I suppose you have to begin with bricks and work up gradually to people.
The swimming instructor said, “Sausage, I’m going to throw the brick in.” It was a brick with a bit of old white flannel round it, to make it show up underwater. “Sausage, I’m going to throw it in, and you go after it—go after it, Sausage, and get it before it reaches the bottom and settles in the mud, or you’ll never get it.”
He’d made everyone come out of the water to give me a chance, and they were standing watching. I could see them blurred along the bank, and I could hear them talking and laughing, but there wasn’t a sound in the water except me just treading water gently, waiting. And the
n I saw the brick go over my head as the instructor threw it, and there was a splash as it went into the water ahead of me, and I thought: I can’t do it; my legs won’t upend this time; they feel just flabby; they’ll float, but they won’t upend; they can’t upend; it’s different for ducks. … But while I was thinking all that, I’d taken a deep breath, and then my head really went down and my legs went up into the air. I could feel them there, just air around them, and then there was water around them, because I was going down into the water after all. Right down into the water, straight down …
At first my eyes were shut, although I didn’t know I’d shut them. When I did realize, I forced my eyelids up against the water to see. Because although I can’t see much without my glasses, as I’ve said, I don’t believe anyone could see much underwater in those Ponds, so I could see as much as anyone.
The water was like a thick greeny brown lemonade, with wispy little things moving very slowly about in it, or perhaps they were just movements of the water, not things at all; I couldn’t tell. The brick had a few seconds’ start of me, of course, but I could still see a whitish glimmer that must be the flannel around it; it was ahead of me, fading away into the lower water, as I moved after it.
The funny thing about swimming underwater is its being so still and quiet and shady down there, after all the air and sunlight and splashing and shouting just up above. I was shut right in by the quiet, greeny brown water, just me alone with the brick ahead of me, both of us making toward the bottom.
The Ponds are deep, but I knew they weren’t too deep, and of course, I knew I’d enough air in my lungs from the breath I’d taken. I knew all that.
Down we went, and the lemonade look quite went from the water, and it became just a dark blackish brown, and you’d wonder you could see anything at all. Especially as the bit of white flannel seemed to have come off the brick by the time it reached the bottom and I’d caught up with it. The brick looked different down there, anyway, and it had already settled right into the mud; there was only one corner left sticking up. I dug into the mud with my fingers and got hold of the thing, and then I didn’t think of anything except getting up again with it into the air.
Familiar and Haunting Page 17