Flowers on the Grass

by Monica Dickens

  Camp announcements were read out at the end of meals, when the fury of knives and forks had abated and tea drinking had set in. It was Dickie’s turn at the microphone today. Leaving his pudding, for rhubarb was the only thing about the camp he didn’t like, he went to the middle of the room, grasped the stand of the microphone and said into it at the right strength for coming out a yell: “Hey, hey, campers!”

  “Hey, hey, Dickie!” they yelled back at him and his heart glowed. He felt that the whole vast room was with him.

  The list of announcements had a few suggestions for jokes pencilled in the margin, for no notice, except the times of Divine Service, was ever read out straight and seriously. Adding a few of his own, Dickie followed up most of the suggestions, for Captain Gallagher liked you to use his jokes. He was listening now from the corner of the room, for, whoever you were at Gaydays, you took your soup, joint and sweet with the mob. “The dreams of Democracy,” said another notice in the Captain’s office, “have here become flesh and blood.”

  When Dickie made a pun, or put a whistle in the middle of a long word, or made one of the deliberate Spoonerisms suggested in the margin, cries of “Good old Dickie!” rose at him from all sides like the surge of waves to the shore. At the end he got them all singing the chorus of the camp song, “Gaydays are playdays for you and for me,” dragging it a little, because they were full of food.

  When he went back to his table, Mr. Brett, who was frowning as if the noise hurt his head, asked: “Do you have to do that at every meal?”

  “Mm-hm,” said Dickie cheerfully. “Someone does.”

  “Breakfast, too?”

  “Mm-hm.”

  Brett groaned. “What time does the bar shut in the afternoon?” he asked.

  “Not till three,” Barney said. “We’ve got a club licence.”

  “Thank God,” said Brett, looking at his watch. “Please may I get down?”

  Although the day-by-day organisation of Gaydays Camp was tightly planned and enforced, the Blue Boys were cunning enough to rearrange things among themselves behind Captain Gallagher’s back. If Pete, for instance, wanted to sneak a day off to see his girl-friend, the others would cover up for him, taking over his jobs and saying he had “Just gone down to the other end of the camp” or was “Here a minute ago”, if the Captain was looking for him. If damp weather made Barney’s leg disinclined to lead the Boomps-a-Daisy or the Hokey-Cokey round the ballroom, he would swap it for the spelling bee with John, who in turn would swap with Pete, who had a cold, for a netball game on the windswept sports field.

  Dickie never wanted to unload any of his jobs, but was always happy to take on someone else’s. There was not a job in the camp he did not enjoy, except seeing people off at the end of their holiday, and on to him was unloaded all the things that no one else wanted to do. It was always Dickie who had to take the indefatigables for cross-country hikes in the rain, Dickie who conducted the various denominations to their temples of worship in Northport, Dickie who had to organise the Old Folks’ whist drive. He did not mind. He liked the older campers, because they were fond of him.

  “You ought to be married, dear,” they told him. “When are you going to find yourself a nice girl?”

  He hedged, joking that there was safety in numbers. He had not been interested in any particular girl since the chip-fryer had gone out of his life. He was adept enough at the flirtatious quips and banter which the Blue Boys were required to bandy with the girls at the camp, but he did not want any of them for his own if they expected you to treat them like that all the time. The strain would be too great. Besides, marriage would mean chucking the camp, and that he would never do until it chucked him. How long could one go on being a Blue Boy? Old Charley was only forty when they unfrocked him, but he looked more, and was getting rheumatic, which did not do. A Blue Boy had to bounce. Nora was forty-five, but she did not have a bounce. She was the babies’ guardian angel and the kiddies’ Auntie Nora. Perhaps when Dickie lost his bounce he could make a niche for himself as Uncle Dickie. His fondness for children was the only thing that might persuade him to marry, if ever he could find a girl who was beautiful without being smart and quick at repartee. It was always Dickie who dressed up as a clown at the children’s parties, Dickie who was an unseasonable Father Christmas when there was a present-giving.

  It was also always Dickie who had to be pushed into the swimming pool with all his clothes on. This little ceremony took place every Saturday whatever the weather, and those who had seen it before enjoyed it just as much for being flavoured with anticipation instead of surprise. It was the most popular joke in the whole of the camp repertoire, working on the infallible principle of the banana skin or custard pie.

  It started after lunch on Saturday with a mass parade round the camp, led by the band. Ronnie Cucciara’s band deserved their respectable, restful position in a Torquay hotel during the winter, for they led a chequered career at Gaydays. In the morning, wearing lounge suits, they played light music in the lounge, or, if fine, put on uniforms like commissionaires and played marches in the bandstand. In the afternoon, wearing Tzigane costumes in which they looked as silly as they felt, they played for the tea dance in the ballroom, or, if warm enough, in the outdoor Viennese café, which meant lugging their instruments right across the camp. This was all right for some, grumbled the double bass, but he didn’t see why he couldn’t have several instruments at strategic points, like the pianist. After supper, the band were in the orchestra pit of the theatre in evening dress, and then at last in the ballroom, coming into their own as Ronnie Cucciara’s All-star Melody Band, “bringing it to you hot and strong and sweet to urge your dancing feet”, with Ronnie’s wife Mara, in a too-youthful chiffon dress, to sing the numbers.

  For the Saturday parade through the camp the band were dressed as the Seven Dwarfs, with Mara in a kind of nightgown as Snow White. All the Blue Boys turned out for this. Kenny with his accordion and a string of children trailing him, so that it was a safe bet that at least fifty per cent of the campers would tell each other he looked like the Pied Piper. Johnny doing cartwheels and flip-flaps, finishing with a handstand on the edge of the pool, bending his legs back and back until everyone thought he must fall in, for they knew someone had to; but no, it was not him, and he just flipped himself upright on to dry land again at the last split second of balance.

  Larry walking arm in arm with as many girls as could hang on to him. Pete chivvying the stragglers along in the rear. Finally, when everyone was round the pool and the Seven Dwarfs struck up, “I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside”, Barney chasing Dickie up the ladder to the high diving-board, where they struggled together on the edge until Barney said: “You’ve had it,” and pushed him off to turn a double somersault twenty feet to the water, while the crowd went mad with joy. One day, Dickie would manage to pull Barney in with him. Then they would go madder still.

  The water was icy cold today. As Dickie turned in the air with one fleeting upside-down glimpse of pink gaping faces, he could feel the coldness rushing up to meet him, then—Bang! he was in, and thought his heart had stopped. But when he broke surface again, flinging back his hair, he was grinning and waving and shouting “Hey, hey!” to the crowd, the centre of attraction in bis big moment of the week.

  When he swam to the side, showing off his crawl, and climbed out, everyone gathered round him, touching him in surprise to see how wet he was. There were always one or two dear ladies who thought it was cruel and a shame, and he must go straight in for a change and a hot cup of tea.

  In hot weather he usually let his clothes dry on him, enjoying the vitality of generating enough heat to evaporate cold and wet. Today, however, he made for his cabin, sneezing.

  “Hey, hey!” said a voice calmly, and he turned to see Brett with his sketch-book, grinning. “Got a swell one of you doing your act,” he said, “though I doubt if anyone will believe it; and if they do, they’ll think this place must be a madhouse.”

  “Which it
is,” said Dickie happily. “Let’s see.”

  “No, get away!” cried Brett as if he were a dog. “Don’t drip on it. You’re wet. I’ll show you later—if you’re still alive.”

  “Never killed me yet.” Dickie felt warm now, and very well. He walked jauntily, knowing that people were looking at him, pointing him out.

  “Do you have to do this every week—in this climate?” Brett asked. “There must be easier ways of earning a living.”

  “I don’t mind, honestly,” said Dickie. “Really I quite like it.”

  “Who are you kidding?” They parted at the end of the line of staff cabins, and Dickie went whistling away to change and fling his wet clothes at Dillie, who was good to him, and would dry them in one of her private corners where hot pipes ran.

  At the concert after supper Brett was in the audience with his sketch-book. Dickie, on the stage in the opening tableau of Blue Boys and Green Girls, hoped that he would be recognisable in some of the pictures. It would be fun in the doldrums of winter to get the publicity book and cheer himself up with his summer self. He would take it to the Ideal Home Exhibition and show it to the boys and girls of whatever stand he was on. He was going to try for the lime-juice stand next year. They had a bar behind the scenes, where they kept gin, to show trade buyers how good the lime juice tasted.

  Brett was looking full at him. He must be drawing him. Dickie gave him a big wink. In spite of his still unconverted attitude, Dickie could not help liking him. He felt that he knew him quite well, even just meeting him on and off during this one day. He would win him round yet, if only for the sake of the camp, for what was the good of an advertising man who did not like the product he was boosting?

  Les Cowan, the entertainments manager who compered the show, was tall, thin and bald, with trenches of surprise across his never-ending forehead. He had two stock tricks. One was to outline himself with his hands in a kind of Mae West figure that wasn’t there. The other was to sweep a hand over his shining dome and shake back the illusion of glorious locks. He frequently alluded to himself as a gorgeous beast. He was not very funny, but he was a north-country man, which helped. In winter he toured in pantomime, as a broker’s man or an ugly sister, or Tweedledum (or dee), pitting gents against ladies to sing the words of a song on a screen let down from the flies, and making the children shout “Hello, Les!” every time he came on to the stage. If they did not shout loudly enough, he went off and came on again with his hat turned back to front. It never failed.

  He did that tonight, and the campers, sorry to have disappointed him, greeted his second appearance as the Nazis used to greet Hitler.

  The concert was an informal, haphazard show, with laughs as easy to get as water from a tap and the willing unselective applause of a B.B.C. studio audience. The campers were encouraged to perform. The trouble was to stop them. Tonight Mr. Reg Barber of Darlington had been trying for five minutes to turn a ping-pong ball into a hard-boiled egg. Every time he whisked away his handkerchief and said “Oh, darn it!” with a fallen face, the audience clapped hopefully, not sure if that was meant to be the trick.

  Reg Barber tried again. He seemed prepared to go on trying all night. Dickie in the wings saw that Brett was asleep with his sketch-book fallen from his knees. The clapping threatened to become ironical. There were cries of “Wot, no eggs?” and a bunch of youths at the back began to stamp, when the loudspeaker suddenly crackled into the announcement: “Will Mr. Barber of cabin A.43 please go there at once as his children are crying!”

  Genuine applause now, for Mr. Barber was a sympathetic character again, having children.

  “But look here-” he protested, but Les Cowan was saying: “Come on, Pa,” and hustling him off, handkerchief, ping-pong ball, egg and all, and out through a side door like a popular murderer being snaked out of the Old Bailey.

  “Only way to get him off,” said Les returning, mopping his forehead.

  “No wonder he didn’t want to go. He hasn’t got any kids,” said Nora, who always miraculously knew the life history of all the campers. “His wife had an operation when she was only twenty-five.”

  “Ee,” said Les. “Poor soul.”

  On the stage, the inevitable solemn, wrongly taught child was dancing, hopping backwards as if she had a stone in her shoe, with a basket clutched before her like a bowl held out for free soup. After her, the inevitable man with a troublesome Adam’s apple swallowed half of “Who is Sylvia?” and let the rest out in uncertain baritone bubbles. Loud applause from the third row showed where his family was sitting. Mr. Brett woke with a start and seemed surprised to find himself where he was.

  Two girls in identical cotton dresses crooned a duet, bothered by their hands. For a while it was questionable whether they were singing the same song, but Kenny at the piano sorted them out, and they finished more or less at the same time, if not in the same key.

  A small boy with adenoids recited, his eyes on his mother, who was performing a kind of mime in the front row, so that his prompted gestures did not always synchronise. A pretty girl in shorts did a tap dance, and a young man took his girl on a very slow boat to China indeed. No one minded how bad the concert was. They were here to enjoy themselves and sing any choruses that might be going. Les kept the thing together with patter, the girl in shorts won the prize and was kissed by all the Blue Boys, and everyone was happy.

  Dickie found Mr. Brett in the bar. “Better have a drink,” he said, “after all you’ve been through.”

  “I’m O.K.,” said Dickie. “I enjoyed it. Wasn’t so bad tonight, I thought. The campers liked it, anyway.”

  “Mass hypnotism,” said Brett hollowly into the bottom of his glass.

  “Bilge,” said Dickie. “They like it. We wouldn’t do it if they didn’t. That’s the whole principle of the camp. They love it.”

  “That’s what you keep saying, but really it’s you who like making them like what you think they ought to like.” If that meant what Dickie thought it did, he did not want to hear it.

  “I must go,” he said. “Got to do my stuff in the balk room.”

  “Dancing with all the wallflowers, I hope?” “Of course,” said Dickie. “That’s one of the things we’re here for.”

  “You’re a marvel.” Brett laughed. “A bit smug at times,, but I like you. I wish I had half your enthusiasm.”

  Dickie grinned at him. “Come and dance then. Do you a, power of good.” He wanted everyone to be happy.

  “When the bar closes I might,” said Brett.

  Ronnie Cucciara’s band was giving of its best, and the vast painted ballroom, which was the pride of the camp, was a kaleidoscope of coloured lights whirling over the heads of the shifting, shuffling dancers. You saw good dancing at Gaydays, better than Dickie ever saw in London. There were solemn couples, making an art of it with complex steps; lively young ones, laughing at each other; romantic ones, jammed very close, with moony faces; jitterbuggers who had to be curbed by the Blue Boys, for Captain Gallagher black-balled jive.

  Dickie was a good dancer himself—all the Boys had to be— but most of the girls he plucked from the walls were not. He pushed them gently round, making jokes for them, blaming the congestion when they missed his steps, and saying: “Whoops! My fault, lady,” when they fell over his feet. There were comic community dances, and Dickie, doing “Knees up, Mother Brown” with an energetic matron, whose dress was going under the arms, saw Brett’s face as he came in at the door and viewed the hilarity.

  “What I can’t get over,” he said afterwards, “is that everyone is sober”

  “Well, of course-” began Dickie, but having been called smug once he did not like to expand on the Gaydays spirit. Brett had better meet the Old Man tomorrow and get the benefit of some of his slogans. Dickie was going to introduce him to some girls, but when Ronnie and the boys picked it up sweet and hot again, with Mara in apple-green organdie sobbing into the mike, he saw that Brett had found one for himself. The best-looking girl in the camp, of
course, Shirley Ann, who had won the beauty contest last year and been given the job of a Green Girl as part of her prize. She should not be dancing with Brett. She was supposed to be doing for shy men what Dickie was doing for shy girls. When the Paul Jones started, Brett would not let her break away from him to join the ring in the middle of the room, but kept her dancing in a corner while everyone else changed partners.

  Shirley Ann came up to Dickie later at the soda fountain and asked him who Brett was. “He’s all right,” she said. “He’s going to get a car tomorrow and take me for a drive.”

  “The hell he’s not,” said Barney raising his head from a glass of ginger beer with foam on his moustache. “You’re on the job tomorrow. What d’you think this place is anyway— a holiday camp?”

  “Oh, darling Barney,” said Shirley Ann in her soft pouting voice, “you are a hard man.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed the foam off his moustache. Bystanders whistled and cheered, some youths made the sucking noises they were wont to do at the cinema, Barney raised clenched hands above his head in a prize-fighter’s victory gesture, and everyone was happy.

  At midnight the camp song was followed by “God Save the King”, which Ronnie pitched too high, so that it sounded a little thin after the rousing, roared rhythm of “Gaydays are Playdays”. The crowd dispersed, and Dickie called hundreds of good nights and responded to hundreds of jokes about not being late in the morning for his Easter egg.

  A few children who had escaped bed were collected asleep from corners where they had finally succumbed. Dickie was carrying one away pick-a-back when Brett caught up with him on the brightly lit path where campers were loitering along to their cabins with the lazy, easy air of people going home after a good party.

  “When you’ve parked that,” he said, “come along to my cell and tell me what you think of the sketches.” He lifted the tangled hair that flopped over Dickie’s shoulder.