by Rumer Godden
He was soon to learn his mistake. Lovejoy was a tyrant.
“I only came to tell you I can’t come,” he would begin. “We’re meeting down by the river.” But mysteriously he stayed, and missed the meeting. “Come straight after school,” begged Lovejoy. Her begging was almost as compelling as her silence.
On the second day the patch was cleared, and now began the work of finding the stone. Schooled by Vincent, Lovejoy was meticulous. “That doesn’t match,” she said to most of Tip’s efforts.
“Why does it have to have a stone edging?” asked Tip rebelliously. “Other gardens don’t.”
“This is an Italian garden,” said Lovejoy, “a real Italian garden.” Words could not describe how she loved the smooth pale stone and the little broken column.
Tip began to be infected. It was oddly exciting. There was the excitement of stealing up the Street and into the church, of listening, clinging like limpets to the wall to hear if the way were clear before they came out. “Never come out without listening,” Tip impressed on Lovejoy. “You can always hear; the stone makes footsteps sound loud if anybody comes.” Lovejoy knew that, from when she herself had listened as she stole from the candle box. They worked, speaking in whispers, careful to keep their heads down in case they were seen from the church-hut windows. If either of them was there alone and heard someone coming, even though he was sure it was the other, they arranged that they should immediately freeze into stillness behind a big tombstone that was laid against the hut wall; they could glide there in an instant from the garden, and it was big enough to hide them. If either of them was trailed or saw the other in danger, he was to give three deep hoots that they thought were like an owl’s. “Sparkey can do that too,” said Tip.
“He won’t be able to,” said Lovejoy with scorn.
“I will,” said Sparkey at once when Tip told him, but his hoots sounded more like a bat’s squeak than an owl’s.
Tip had had to tell Sparkey, though Lovejoy objected. “He’ll tell if you tell him,” she said.
“He’ll tell if I don’t,” said Tip. “He’s seen us. He sees everything in the Street. He doesn’t stay on his step. Now he’s our spy, he patrols.”
A friendship had grown up between Tip and Sparkey, made of worship on Sparkey’s side, kindness on Tip’s; Tip had taken him one Saturday to the park across the river and let him watch a game of baseball, and Sparkey’s mother had even let him go to the Malones’ to spend the night; now Sparkey was in a quandary. He would have loved to expose Lovejoy—to torture her, he thought, his eyes glittering—but he would have cut his throat sooner than disobey Tip. “It’s top secret,” said Tip.
“Kin I see it?” asked Sparkey.
“Nope,” said Tip, which was hard on a little boy. “You couldn’t get down the wall, but we’ve let you into it. None of the other boys know,” he said to take out the sting.
Lovejoy had been fearful of Father Lambert. “He lives next door in the Priest’s House. He’ll catch us,” she said.
“Not he,” said Tip. “He never knows anything. He’s half asleep.”
They did not see Father Lambert, up above them, carefully draw back his head from the wall and go on down the steps into the church. Every now and then he stepped up to the windows and glanced down at them as, absorbed, they carefully fitted in their pieces of stone to make the garden edges. They were well hidden. On the church side the windows were high up, only someone as tall as the Father could have looked through them. “He won’t know,” said Tip. “Besides, I can always pretend I’m going into the church to pray.”
“But I can’t,” said Lovejoy.
Perhaps it was this conversation that made her think of the church; before she had not raised her head to look at it at all. The windows ran all along the back, and from the graveyard the ceiling, the lamps, the top of the altar, and the statues’ heads could be seen. Lovejoy had been happily setting two bits of stone into the edging, which was now almost finished; as she looked up and into the church Tip saw her face change; for a moment she was still, then, forgetting, she stood upright. “Get down,” hissed Tip, but Lovejoy said, in a strange polite voice, “Thank you very much, Tip, but I don’t think I’ll make the garden here.”
Tip followed her eyes. He could see the ceiling, two hanging lights, and the top of a blue screen; that’s the top of the altar, thought Tip, the altar in the Lady Chapel. He could see the statue of Our Lady, she stood on a high pedestal that made her higher than the other statues; Tip could see her head and white veil, the breast of her blue robe, her hand, and the Holy Child’s gilt halo. Through the glass she looked quite close, as if she were watching them, but what was there startling in that? But Lovejoy was still standing up, her eyes wide open, not concealed as they usually were, and, as Tip watched, tears of consternation ran out of them.
In the church Father Lambert dropped a pile of books; Tip seized Lovejoy, dragged her down, and pulled her behind the tombstone. She crouched, weeping, beside him. Do girls do nothing but cry? thought Tip. “What’s the matter?” he said impatiently, then more patiently, “What’s the matter? Go on, tell,” he said, resigned. After a moment he put his arm round her.
“Well, no wonder,” said Tip when Lovejoy had finished telling. “No wonder!”
That was not very comforting and Lovejoy’s hairs lifted again. “You mean, no wonder the garden was smashed?”
Tip had not meant anything of the kind; he meant it was no wonder Lovejoy was frightened, but he was suddenly filled with an irresistible desire to torment this tormenting little creature. He nodded solemnly and Lovejoy quailed.
“Will she smash this one?”
“You couldn’t be surprised,” said Tip solemnly, and was gratified when the last of Lovejoy’s control broke to smithereens. “But what am I to do?” she wailed. “What can I do?”
They had come out from the tombstone, and she knelt down beside the garden while the tears ran down her face. Tip began to feel uncomfortable. He did not know what she could do.
“You could tell Father Lambert,” he said at last.
“Tell Father Lambert?” That seemed to Lovejoy a really idiotic thing to do.
“He’d forgive you and give you a penance.”
“What’s a penance?”
“A penance is—a penance,” said Tip. Then he tried to make it clearer. “It’s a sort of punishment that makes things all right again. It would have to be a dreadful one for this. That was holy money!” said Tip, shocked.
Lovejoy thought deeply, her tears drying. Then she looked up at Tip. “You give me one,” she said.
When Lovejoy looked at him in that trustful way, Tip felt a heady bigness. He said, “I don’t know if it would work,” but more in duty bound than anything else. The thought of punishing Lovejoy was so delicious that he had to look at his toes to keep from smiling.
“All right, I’ll give you a penance,” he said, and then pronounced, “You’ll put all those twopences back.”
There was a silence; then: “I don’t like that punishment,” said Lovejoy. “Give me another.”
“The less you like it the better it is,” said Tip glibly. That had often been said to him, but she did not take this view of it at all.
“I haven’t any twopences,” she said.
“You must get them,” said the inexorable Tip. “Get them, not steal them,” he said quickly.
Lovejoy’s face fell. “How am I to get them, then?” she said, going back to tears. “Even with stealing, I took weeks to get the fork.”
“You didn’t—you took three days, you told me so,” retorted Tip, but Lovejoy had already a woman’s power of shrinking and expanding time. “Weeks!” she wailed, and in a way that was true. She was a child as well as a small woman. “They did it all so quickly,” Angela was to say when she knew the whole story. “How could it happen like that? It was so quick!” But Olivia made one of her rare contradictions.
“It wasn’t quick,” said Olivia. “At least not to them
. A month can go on forever to a child. To wait five minutes can be an agony. You’ve forgotten what it was like.” And she said again, “It wasn’t quick.”
Now to get the three-and-eightpence seemed an impossible task. “I’ll never get it. Never,” sobbed Lovejoy, and soon, weakly, Tip found himself promising to help. “I’ll help you earn it but you must put the money back yourself—in candles,” said Tip, feeling his power. “And you’ll pay twice as much for each candle, to make up,” he said.
“Children are half-price,” said Lovejoy, fighting, but Tip did not waver.
“You’ll pay fourpence each and you’ll light them one by one, each time we get a fourpence, and that’ll be your penance. Three-and-eightpence is eleven candles. You’ll go into the church eleven times. And,” he added, seeing a respite for himself, “you’re not to touch the garden till the penance is done.”
Lovejoy looked at the garden and then up through the window at the statue. “I don’t like her. I don’t want to look at her,” she said bitterly.
“That’s because you’re wicked,” said Tip cheerfully; then he relented. “It’ll get better with each candle. Each time you’ll mind it less.”
CHAPTER XIV
“HERE’S sixpence for you,” said Tip to Lovejoy. It sounded lordly but that sixpence had taken a week to get. Even to Tip it had seemed an interminable time. “The Malones must be well off with all they earn,” Angela had said when Clara Malone had got into the Dame Una Fanshawe secondary school—Angela was a governor—and Mrs. Malone had appealed for a grant towards the uniform. “There must be plenty of money.” With Mr. Malone and the three eldest Malones in work, and Mrs. Malone doing night shift twice a week in the kitchens at the Corner House, it was indeed surprising the way money flowed into the house; the only thing more surprising was the way it flowed out. “Nine children, for food and clothes, and the price of food!” Mrs. Malone said. “Food and drink,” she added, for she was an honest woman.
“Are they all at home?” Angela had asked.
“All at home,” said Mrs. Malone with pride and pleasure.
Tip had only been able to get sixpence, and now Lovejoy looked at it with an absence of opinion that stung him.
“It’s not much,” said Tip defensively, and Lovejoy agreed, which stung him still more. “I’m going with Sid and Lucy on his round on Saturdays,” he said, “soon’s the boy he’s got now goes to work proper. Summertime he sells ice. That’ll be half a crown a Saturday,” he boasted.
“Half a crown!” said Lovejoy. She was interested now. “We can buy lots of things with that!”
Tip could have pointed out that it would not be her half-crown, but as it was only in the future—Sid still had his boy—he did not think it was worth it. Meanwhile, he had decided the penance was too hard. I was too tough, he thought with the same kind of pleasure with which he had punished her, and he said gruffly, “You needn’t do your penance. It’s too difficult.”
“But I’ve done it,” said Lovejoy.
“You couldn’t have.”
“I have.”
“Three-and-eightpence!” Tip could not believe it.
“I have.”
He looked hard at Lovejoy. “You stole it.”
Lovejoy was not offended; she knew it was only too likely, but, “I didn’t. Honest,” said Lovejoy, and it was honest.
“But how, then?” said Tip, bewildered. “How?”
“Ssh,” said Lovejoy with a look at the statue. “Ssh, I’ll tell you. I had sixpence to begin with,” whispered Lovejoy, “left over from the first candle money—”
“You shouldn’t have used that,” said Tip.
“The penance was to put back the money,” argued Lovejoy, “and that was the money.” He supposed it was.
“Then I sold my shoes.”
“You what?”
In the Malone family shoes were not owned by anyone; they were a child’s for the brief period in which he, or she, could wear them, and then were handed down and down as valuable treasures.
“You sold shoes?” Tip could not believe it, but Lovejoy went on as if this were nothing strange. “My red shoes to Mr. Dwight for one-and-six.” She had taken twopence from the telephone kiosks. I went round pressing Button Bs four times a day every bloomin’ day; it should have been threepence but it was two.” She had let down the hem of one of Cassie’s dresses. “She said she’d give me threepence, but then when I’d done it she said I had nicked the stuff and she only gave me two. Dirty cat!” said Lovejoy with venom. “Vincent gave me one for darning his socks—” She broke off there. She had a feeling she had not darned them very well, while for Cassie she had tried hard. How strange that one should be mean to the nice people, thought Lovejoy; her conscience was getting tender but only in places; she had not scrupled, for instance, to do an old trick of hers, getting on the bus and pretending she had lost her fare; some kind lady or gentleman would give the money to her, and, “Then I jump off and run away,” she said.
“They’re always doing that,” Angela told Olivia, who had been fooled several times. Nor did Tip approve. “But it’s hard work,” said Lovejoy virtuously. “I had to try four times before I got anything.” And she said, annoyed, “They will pay the conductor ‘stead of giving the money to me. They have to give it to you before you can jump.”
“I think that’s stealing,” said Tip. “It oughtn’t to count.”
“It’s not stealin’, it’s actin’,” said Lovejoy stoutly.
“And the other shilling?” asked Tip.
Lovejoy came closer to him and jerked her head towards the statue. “Tip,” she said, “I’m frightened. She does things.”
“Does things?”
“Twice,” said Lovejoy, “and so quick.” Her eyes were wide open, alarmed yet gratified. “Twice, like that,” and she brought one palm down with a clap on the other to make a clap of thunder.
“But what did she do? What happened?” said Tip, exasperated.
Lovejoy came even closer.
It had happened on the evening of the day when she had gained her eighth candle; if the time seemed short to Tip, to Lovejoy it had been endless. “Days and days and days,” she said.
“Only a week,” said Tip.
“Ages,” said Lovejoy. “Ages—wasted.” April was gone, May more than half through, and the garden hardly touched. “That—penance!” said Lovejoy through her teeth. She had been going into the church with the eighth fourpence—a penny from one of the bus victims, the twopence from Cassie, and the penny from Vincent—when she saw a big car coming down Catford Street.
The engine did not sound like any other car Lovejoy had heard; it was a low, powerful purring between the houses; that made Lovejoy think it was, among other cars, what Istanbul was among other cats, a kind of king. All the people in the Street turned their heads to look; they looked still more when the car drew to the curb and stopped. There were two people in it, and the gentleman got out; Lovejoy, rooted on the curb, noticed how he went round to the car’s other door and helped the lady out; before he did it he threw his cigarette into the gutter. A whole cigarette! thought Lovejoy. She watched while they looked for a moment at the Street and the broken steps. They’re Real People, thought Lovejoy. Somebodies.
“But what were they like?” Tip was to ask.
“He’s dark and she’s fair,” said Lovejoy glibly, then paused. She, who photographed every detail about everybody she met, instantly and certainly, was uncertain about these two. “He’s dark with dark eyes, and she’s fair with blue.” But was she, Lovejoy, just saying what she made up?
“They’re both brown,” said Tip disgustedly when at last he saw them. “Mousy brown, and he has brown eyes, she has grey.”
Lovejoy was not even accurate about their clothes, which was extraordinary for her; she saw their clothes, of course, every detail of them, but oddly haloed. The gentleman had a dark grey suit—worsted, thought Lovejoy—a cream shirt—pure silk, thought Lovejoy—and a striped tie—his
old school tie; this was, as a matter of fact, correct. He was hatless, his shoes shone, and in his breast pocket was a folded white handkerchief—fine Irish linen, thought Lovejoy; it would have a white embroidered monogram on it, like the ones she and Vincent had studied in the Piccadilly shops. On the little finger of his right hand he wore a ring, a signet ring—the family crest, thought Lovejoy, to whom Vincent had talked about crests. Perhaps he’s a nearl, thought Lovejoy, to whom Vincent had talked about earls.
The lady was even better than the gentleman; she wore a plain grey suit—a soft suit, thought Lovejoy, what they call a dressmaker suit, she thought, which she knew was not at all the same thing as a suit made by a dressmaker. The blouse was shell-pink—and it’s hand-made, thought Lovejoy—with it were slim, plain, high-heeled dark brown shoes—because it’s a town suit, quite correct, thought Lovejoy—long, dark brown gloves wrinkled over the wrists, a brown bag, and a small brown hat, all to match her long bright brown fur stole. Mink! thought Lovejoy, transfixed; her very bones knew it was mink.
She followed at a respectful distance behind them as they went up the steps to the landing beside the rusty bell. They were talking about the church. “I have to decide if they can have some money,” said the gentleman, and he touched the broken netting where the cage had been torn round the bell. “They look as if they needed it.”
“But why you?” asked the lady.
When the Catford Street children went to the pantomime—and almost the whole Street went each Christmas—none of them would have been pleased if Prince Charming and Cinderella, or Dick Whittington and Alice, or Jack and Jill, had declared themselves flesh and blood; Lovejoy, who was a stage child, knew drearily that pantomime people were people who blew their noses, washed their underclothes, ate sausages, drank beer, like anyone else. For the other children it was the Principal Boys and Girls who moved in a circle of glamour; now Lovejoy knew that for her it was Vincent’s people, the earls, the Somebodies. When she heard the lady and gentleman talking, though she was fascinated, she did not want to hear. Their voices were too real. If she had been asked how she expected them to talk, she could not have said. But not like that, she thought; she would have approved of the old court languages.