by Anne Piper
“Well, well, well,” I said. “Dr. Livingstone and Mrs. Stanley, I presume.”
Prue said, “I’m so glad you found us, Liz. We looked everywhere for you.” She was putting her glasses on again as she spoke. I bet you did, I thought to myself. I was surprised to find myself so bitter.
“I was revising in the summer-house,” I said.
“I wonder you didn’t hear your mother, then. She shouted on that side of the house.”
“I had my fingers in my ears to keep out the lambs.”
“Anyway have a sandwich now you’ve come,” said Brian.
“I have my own, thank you,” I said. Soppy things, honestly, I didn’t know which to be most furious with, but I camouflaged my feelings so well that in five minutes I had the Table in a Roar.
That night in bed though, I thought I’d better be honest with Prue, so some time after we’d put the light out I said, “Prue, you awake?”
“Yes, Liz, why?”
“Prue — I saw you and Brian in the woods today.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I came before you saw me and you were holding hands.”
“Oh, Liz,” I could hear her turning over eagerly towards me. “I’m so glad you saw. I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t think it would be fair on Brian, but if you ‘saw’ I’m not telling, am I?”
“No, I shouldn’t think so. What happened anyway?”
“Well honestly, Liz, I don’t know what came over him. He’s always been nice before, but perfectly ordinary, and even when we were walking there nothing happened, and we were just kneeling down putting out our lunch when my glasses fell off my nose, (luckily on to the hankie, which was soft,) and we both put out our hands to pick them up, and our hands touched and he took my hand, and held it very tight. I thought he might be going to say something, but he didn’t, he only went red as beetroot, but couldn’t seem to let go. And then we heard you coming and he dropped my hand again, but if you hadn’t come then I can’t think what would have happened.”
Poor Prue, trust her to get in a mess.
“I believe boys do feel very funny sometimes,” I said. “I’m not sure, not having brothers, but I expect he was having one of those funny turns. I shouldn’t worry about it any more,”
“Oh, Liz, you are a comfort. I’ve been feeling awful all day. He looked so odd. His eyes popping out of his head — as if he might go mad.”
“I expect it hurts,” I said.
April 14th. Another long gap not written about. Thank goodness Brian has gone away to stay with an aunt, so that is that. I don’t know what Prue thinks about it, we haven’t mentioned him again, but she must be glad not to have to play the piano every morning. She is going to stay another week and we have divided it up into days and subjects for revising. I sometimes wonder if I know anything at all. I suppose I’ll pass in French from sheer fright.
Tom is very hearty with us, and took us to the Cinema too. Afterwards he said, “I expect you little pigs want a big tuck-in,” and marched us off to Pansy’s Pantry again. I ate a very small tea. I know I do eat an awful lot as a rule, but I don’t like to be told I’m a pig all the same. I think my brother-in-law is rather tactless. Mary couldn’t come because of feeding Caroline. We tried to make Tom tell us exciting stories about fighting but he didn’t seem to know any.
“It’s much the same as anything else when you get the hang of it,” he said, which was a particularly stupid thing to say. I don’t see how killing people could be the same as anything else. I asked Tom how many people he’d killed, and he said he didn’t really know as he was inside a tank most of the time and couldn’t see, but he thought they must have run over a lot of chickens!
Mary was feeding Caroline again when we came back at 6 p.m., the same as she’d been doing when we went out, so it felt just like “this is where we came in.” Prue said the film had given her a headache and she went to bed, so I sat and talked to Mary for a bit while she was changing Caroline, and folding the heap of the day’s clean nappies to go in the airing cupboard.
“Do you find it all very dull?” I asked her.
“No,” she said. “Dull isn’t exactly the word. It’s different, and yet it seems surprisingly familiar, as if I’d done it all before.”
“What, in a dream?”
“No — in another life.”
“I’m sure I should never feel familiar with a baby. They’re so dirty.”
Mary looked at Caroline, bundled up clean and white and already asleep on her side and said, “You get very quickly not to mind that. Caroline isn’t always dirty. Anyway I shouldn’t worry, I’m sure you’ll feel all right when the time comes.”
“You don’t think I’m hopelessly unnatural? That I just haven’t got a maternal instinct?”
“Heavens no, look how you fuss round after Prue.”
“Gosh, Mary, what an awful word, ‘fuss,’ you make me sound like an old hen.”
“Well you are sometimes, where Prue’s concerned: I think you really spend too much time nagging the poor child. She’ll grow out of a lot of things later.”
So I went to bed very thoughtful. Prue was already asleep with her long eyelashes falling down her face. I wonder they don’t get all rubbed away by her glasses, but whenever she takes her glasses off her lashes spring out fierce as ever. Poor Prue, I suppose I do bully her trying to improve her, but really I’m sure it must be good for her and she’ll be grateful to me later. Resolved, before I fell asleep, to nag her more subtly so that other people don’t notice.
April 15th. Tom gave us a tennis coaching this morning. He’s very good but rather erratic. He does smashing backhands. He took a lot of trouble trying to teach Prue to do a backhand. He put his arm right round her to show her how to get the feel of it, but she still wasn’t any good. In the end he told her to umpire while he and I played a proper game. Mary came out to watch and she umpired much better than Prue who couldn’t even seem to see the service faults. Then Mary dragged Tom off for a walk, which was rather annoying of her as I had to play against Prue. However we soon gave that up because Prue can only get one ball in ten over the net! So we took Browning and went into the woods.
April 21st. Prue went back to London today. The last week has been very busy. Mother suddenly made us the village salvage collectors. We weren’t much good, because the poor village had been collected over so many times before, but when they saw it was us they were sorry for us and mostly coughed up a saucepan lid or two. Then Mummy made us come out in the dark to be wardens with her, and see if we could see any lights, and of course we could see dozens. It was all rather hopeless because when Mummy knocked and told them, they only twitched their curtains a bit so that a light came the other end instead.
Tom went away being very gallant. He thinks he is going overseas again. Mary was a pond for some hours after he’d gone. She hugged Caroline as if she was quite sure she’d be a poor fatherless girl, which was rather silly as Tom is far from dead yet, and not a dying type I should say. Mummy gave Prue and I a lecture on being “very kind to poor Mary.” We seem to have spent the whole holidays considering poor Mary. She never considers me.
I find I quite miss Prue, now she isn’t here. She nearly always listens when I talk to her, for one thing, and she’s very good at picking out vital Questions for revising.
April 23rd. No more sun, I suppose it was too good to last, and now all the fruit blossom will freeze. Mummy lit the fire in the drawing-room again.
Brian came in while I was sitting there this morning working. “Hullo,” he said. “How are you?”
“Very well thank you,” I said. “And how was your Aunt?”
“Very well thank you,” he said, and then carelessly, “Your friend still here?”
“Who, Prue?” I asked.
“That’s right.”
“No, she went back to London the day before yesterday.”
“Oh, just as well I didn’t bring my clarinet then.”
�
��Just as well,” I said. Then I remembered and asked him to sit down.
“I don’t think I will, thanks,” he said. “I just looked in for a minute on my way to the Post Office for my mother. What about a game of tennis tomorrow morning?”
“All right,” I said. “That is if it’s not snowing.”
Thank goodness Mummy came in just then and said, “Liz, I’ve got a little job for you. Good morning, Brian, I didn’t hear you arrive.”
“I rang,” Brian said, “but no one answered.”
“No,” Mummy said. “I was hanging out the nappies. Now you’re here perhaps you would give Liz and me a hand with a cupboard I want moved upstairs.”
“Of course, Mrs. Williams,” said Brian politely, but I thought it was rather awful of her to ask him.
It was a stinker of a cupboard too. Mummy wanted to move it from the back scullery along the narrow passage and up the curving stairs and along the upstairs passage to Caroline’s room. The doors kept banging open and pinching us, and Mary didn’t do anything to help but just jumped about at the top of the stairs saying, “Oh, do mind the paint.” The sweat was pouring down Brian’s manly spots by the time we’d finished, and Mummy hardly spared the time to be properly grateful.
“Would you like some coffee?” I asked him, when we’d left her and Mary moving Caroline’s extensive trousseau into the shelves of the blasted cupboard.
“It would be nice,” Brian said, so I took him into the kitchen and warmed up some, left from breakfast.
“Does Prue live anywhere near Hyde Park?” Brian suddenly asked.
“Camden Hill,” I said. “Why?”
“I’ve got to be in London next week on my way back to school, and I rather think she’s gone off with a sonata of mine. Perhaps you’d give me her address and I could pop round for it, and save her posting it; that is if I have time.”
So I told him where she lived, and added, “But she’ll be gone by May 3rd, because that’s when our term begins again. I suppose you didn’t leave it here?”
He didn’t think he had, but we went back to the drawing-room and looked among our music and it wasn’t there.
“Ah well,” Brian said, “never mind. As long as I have it before I get back to school, because it doesn’t belong to me.”
CHAPTER III
May 3rd. The last week of the holidays was so dull I couldn’t be bothered to write about it. Mummy drove me back to school today. I find I’m sleeping in a two-room with only Prue. Honestly this might be a convent the way Miss A. thinks up mortifications for me. Luckily Prue wasn’t there when I arrived so I stamped round the room a bit letting off my feelings to Mummy who was most surprised.
“But, darling,” she said. “I thought she was your best friend?”
“Well she is, in a way, but I see quite enough of her by day, without having her all night as well.”
“I expect you’ll both be asleep most of the night.”
“Oh, Mummy, don’t be stupid,” I said rudely.
And then Prue came in so delighted I hadn’t the heart to be cross any more. Also she had brought two salamanders with her in her pocket.
May 4th. Spent the morning having our clothes checked and trying to hide the salamanders without suffocating them. Prue got them in a pet shop the day before yesterday and she forgot to ask what they eat. Tried tempting them with bread and milk.
In the afternoon went for a walk with Snoop. “We’ll let the woods lead us,” she said.
It wasn’t much of a success as the woods only seemed to want to lead us in circles. After a time I said, “Aren’t we rather amateurs at this?” And Snoop threw her head back and inhaled deeply, saying, “The woods are kind to amateurs.”
I’m not sure I like her after all. We tried to get the poor hungry salamanders to eat grass, and they escaped. It was so sad. We ran after them, but they camouflaged themselves in no time. Prue was almost in tears.
“Perhaps it’s for The Best,” I pointed out. “They’d have starved otherwise, and I expect they’ll like it here much better than a cage in London.”
“They’ll be waiting to welcome you to the woods,” intoned Snoop. So we left it at that.
May 6th. Made rather a collapsed cake in Cooking, and took notes for shepherd’s pie. Everything has more or less settled down now. It seems silly to do cooking at all this term, with so many more vital subjects, but Miss A. is adamant.
“The least you can do for the war,” she says. I’m sorry for any soldier that ever has to eat my shepherd’s-pie.
We can’t be in the parents day play because of School Certificate, but we are going to go on with our private acting on Sundays.
May 10th. Edith sent Prue a wonderful parcel of lilies of the valley from her garden. We have a big bowl in our bedroom and another in the form room. There is so much lily smell in our room that we have to put them outside the door at night like a hospital. Prue is only worried that Edith has sent her all the ones that should go on the grave.
“Don’t be a cuckoo,” I said. “Even if she has, you’ll enjoy them more than your poor Mother could.”
“Oh, Liz,” she said, “how can you be so heartless?”
“Not heartless,” I said, “just commonsense. It’s no good being morbid. You’ve got a long time to live in this world and you ought to be looking forward — even if only to your own grave — instead of backwards all the time at someone else’s. You can’t have roots under a slab of marble at your age.
“Where can I have roots then?” she said in a choking voice, and she rushed out of the room and shut herself in the bathroom for half an hour. I was too cross to go and get her out until I found a queue of six battering on the bathroom door with sponge bags. Then I saw it was a Public Duty to do a bit of winkling, so I extracted her and put her to bed and gave her a toffee that had fallen out of my mending bag. She had stopped crying now, but was still hiccoughing.
“Too much self-pity, Prue,” I said, “will soften your character.”
May 14th. Snowed at lunch and hailed after, so went for a freezing walk. Got warm in dancing after tea which was all exercises and running. Found a pigeon’s nest in a drain pipe.
May 16th. Mlle. had a cold and sniffed all the time in a way that would be most rude if done by somebody English. She was very chatty about the stiffness of the exam. Lost my pencil down the radiator in drawing. Did something in black and white of a little girl in a wood. I’m reading Mr. Kipps and The Good Companions both at once.
May 24th. The sun is suddenly out again. Lovely airy Latin with all the windows open and bluebells drooping on the table, stuffed into a jam jar.
May 26th. Got permission to take our tea into the woods which were green and gold and bluebells everywhere. Ran down all the hills, and luckily nobody young with us that we had to be dignified in front of. Phil pretended to be a centipede with a wooden leg and kept going “99 bump, 99 bump … “ till we were all in hysterics.
Browney started an even better one, bashing into us saying, “I’m a lunatic and you’re a padded cell.”
But after tea Prue managed to spoil everything by shouting out, “I’m Ludwig Earwig,” and falling into a rabbit hole and spraining her ankle. Nobody else could possibly have sprained her ankle in such a small hole.
So then we had to take it in turns to make a chair to carry her home in, and she’s jolly heavy when it comes to carrying, even if she does look thin; so we only just got back in time for chapel and nearly sprained all our ankles dashing down the cloisters after we’d dumped Prue in surgery.
May 27th. Did some terrific acting after supper. Prue was Elizabeth Barrett Browning lying on a sofa, and Phil was Robert. I doubled the parts of Flush and the maid who helped them to escape, and Browney was a marvellous fierce Mr. Barrett. She found an old top hat in the Green room.
Prue’s ankle was convincing for an invalid, particularly when it came to the Flight across the Channel and she had to hobble down on my arm to the hansom, muttering, “Robert, my dar
ling, the pain; my love alone is giving me strength.”
Really it quite brought Tears to the Eyes. I sometimes wonder whether she and Phil oughtn’t to go on the Stage. They are much better than me when I consider it honestly.
June 1st. Strawberries! I wish I couldn’t remember quite how good they used to be with cream.
June 10th. It is getting more and more difficult to keep up to date with this diary. I feel I should be working all the spare time that there is. I have given up reading novels now. I should like to give up mending, but I expect somebody would make a fuss. Prue and I wake at half-past six and ask each other French verbs. If I can only pass I don’t mind how badly — only so that I don’t have to go on doing it all over again, for the rest of my life.
Prue borrowed my pale blue cardigan yesterday and got ink on it. She didn’t ask me before taking it. I just suddenly saw her walk into History rather late, and wearing it. I was speechless with fury and quite unable to think about Charles II. I made her take it off after tea, but by then it was too late. She had already managed to lean against her ink pot.
“Really, Prue,” I said. “You might have asked me first.”
“I knew you’d say no,” she said. “And I was cold.” My speechlessness came on again and I just tore it from her back and put it away. If she had any clothes I might even want to borrow, I wouldn’t mind so much, but hers are all awful. Her aunt buys them and sends them without letting her try them on, and they are all browns and beiges and sensible colours. Now I come to think of it, I suppose I ought to be glad to bring a little colour into her life by lending her my things. But I can’t if she inks them all up.
June 11th. Prue was so sorry about the cardigan that she suddenly gave me a copy of Donne’s poems that belonged to her Mother. It made me feel awful all over again, only in a different way because of course the ink will wash out (most of it anyway), and I’d stopped being cross by then, and the Donne is much too nice and she has a Thing about her Mother’s things. Oh dear, I don’t know what to do. She won’t take it back now, although she must be longing to. I’ll have to try again, later on in the term, when she’s not feeling so repentant.