“Where?” said Fitzgibbon.
Noodles, looking round like a hunted animal, saw something that Sylvia had seen nearly twenty-four hours ago; the elderly, flat-footed inhabitant still trundling the ancient hand-barrow with the two inclined planes; still endlessly perambulating the streets of his native town with that sprawling invitation to the Pavilion Chalet. As usual, he has managed to impede the other and less obviously superfluous traffic, and he is being addressed with some impatience by a cab-driver from behind and a brewer’s drayman from in front. “Hoy!” they shout, and gesticulate with their arms, and ask where he thinks he is going; and he blinks back at them and butts his barrow into a lamp-post, and reverses it into a bicycle which topples with a metallic clang on to the further pavement. But as well as doing all this—which he has done and is doing without a trace of haste or disturbance—he has also enabled Noodles to deal with a question which she had believed herself incapable of answering. For of course she couldn’t explain to Fitzgibbon what a mess she was in.
“There,” she said, pointing to the hand-painted advertisement. “I’ve got to go there.”
“What? To the concert-party?” said Fitzgibbon. “Why? Who’s taking you?”
“Nobody. At least…”
“Well?”
“Well, I’ve just got to go, I’m afraid. It’s all arranged, you see.”
She looked up at Fitzgibbon, as though begging him not to ask any more questions; and Fitzgibbon looked down at her, as though he were amused but not deceived by her answers.
“Well, that’s all right, Noodles,” he said. “I’ll come along too.”
“Oh, but——”
“I’ll be there. I’ll look out for you. And you’ll look out for me, won’t you, because—— Well, look here; where are you stopping?”
One couldn’t possibly say: “I won’t tell you.”
“There,” said Noodles. “Just round that corner, I mean. It’s called Holmcroft.”
But one wished that one could have thought of a lie.
“Holmcroft,” said Fitzgibbon, nodding. “Right you are. I’ll call for you.”
Bother!
“Oh, but please——”
“Now, don’t make a fuss about nothing. If you don’t want me to come in, I’ll wait outside. But I don’t like little girls going about by themselves, and I’ll be there to look after you. And there might be some supper, if you’re nice to me. Eh?”
“Oh, thanks awfully, but I’d much——”
“There, there. We’ll talk about that later. We’re not going to argue now, are we? Rather not. We’re going to be pals again, eh? Now, don’t forget. Sorry to leave you, an’ all that, but I’ve promised to have a game with a fellow. Fact, I swear. No, don’t look so worried; it’s only billiards, and there’ll be plenty of money left. But round about half-past-seven, what? I’ll be there, and we’ll go to the show together. Eh? Right. That’s a deal. So long!”
Mr. Fitzgibbon raised his hat with a gesture of ineffable familiarity and gallantry; winked; saluted with his stick; swung round on his heels, and marched away.
“Beast!” muttered Noodles, gazing after him. “Oh, why did I speak to him at all? Oh, how on earth am I going to get away from him? Oh, what has happened to all the nice people in the world? Oh, what a fool I’ve been! Oh, bother! Oh, damn!”
She began walking in the other direction, and walked on and on. Presently she was threading her way through the jostling crowds of Whitsun holiday-makers opposite the entrance to the Pier. Then she was above them, where they were spread thickly all over the beach, as she continued her westerly course along the esplanade. She passed the Majestic Hotel at the far end without seeing it or thinking of it, and certainly without dreaming for a moment that some of the nice people had only left it to drive to Pippingfold. She went further still, to where the esplanade stopped, and the main road turned inland, and a chalky track between the very newest or still half-built villas soared up the side of the huge greyish-green down. And somewhere beyond this, and at a height from which, if she had chosen, she could have looked right across Newcliff to the distant red blur which was St. Ethelburga’s School, her fatigue and hunger became so extreme that she untied her handkerchief and spent the whole of her last remaining sevenpence on chocolate and buns at a weatherbeaten, alfresco hutch—after which she had, literally, to beg for a glass of water from the very grasping old woman who lived in it.
Then she lay for a long time on the turf by the edge of the cliff, though without feeling any happier or more hopeful, or seeing any real reason to suppose that her life would ever emerge from this pit of desolation. And then—since there was no avoiding it—she stood up, and pulled on her hat again, and started doggedly retracing her steps.
Now, if ever, you would have thought, was the time for one of those dismal little songs from her large repertoire of cerulean despair. Now, if ever, you might have said, could she have attuned her melancholy to one of those extremely appropriate canticles.
But we can assure you that as poor Noodles struggled back towards Holmcroft, and Mr. Fitzgibbon, and Mr. Lester Vaughan, without a penny in her handkerchief and with something that each moment seemed more and more like a blister on her heel, poor Noodles had never felt less like singing in the whole of her short and innocuous life.
3
“I see,” said Snubs. And Beaky began to amend his version of the terrible interview again. Each time that he had done so, he had represented himself as saying more and more, and Miss Mulberry as saying less and less, and each time he had glossed over the actual climax which had led to his departure by a wilder and more defiant: “What else could I do?”
“Oh, nothing,” said Snubs, as regularly as the question returned. “If she’d known anything, of course she’d have told you.”
“Well, that’s what I mean.”
“And she couldn’t tell you anything?”
“Not a dashed thing.”
“Did you say you’d heard from Noodles?”
“Did I?” Beaky was experiencing the difficulties of all witnesses who repeat themselves, and without the least wish to conceal any really helpful detail was finding his memory more and more untrustworthy.
“No,” he added, frowning and shaking his head. “I don’t think I did.”
“Good,” said Snubs.
“In fact, I’m quite sure I didn’t.”
But Snubs didn’t say “Better still,” as his friend seemed to expect. He merely re-echoed that thoughtful, non-committal phrase of two words and four letters.
“I see,” he said.
“Well, what are you going to do?”
“What are we going to do? Keep on at it, I suppose. I didn’t really expect much from the school.”
“You didn’t, didn’t you? Then why the blank dash——”
“Steady,” said Snubs.
Beaky recalled the important fact that in no version of his scene with Miss Mulberry had he admitted the existence of any strain or impatience. And for this if for no other reason he pulled himself in.
“All right,” he said. “Only where do we go from here?”
The spot referred to was still the flinty roadway outside St. Ethelburga’s front gates, where Gertie—with both members of the Rescue-Party once more on board—was awaiting further instructions.
“Obvious,” said Snubs. “Back to Newcliff. We’ve tried Pippingfold; we’ve tried the school. This is where we start on the pierrots.”
“I suppose so. But I say—how do we find them?”
“Look for them,” said Snubs.
“Where?”
“In their haunts. We’ll see how many gangs there are, and we’ll take them in turn.”
“I see. And if she’s not in Newcliff at all?”
“I’ll deal with that point,” said Snubs, “when it arises. But we needn’t be back in London till Tuesday morning, and Noodles has got to be found. There are ways,” said Snubs, “and means.”
There was mor
e confidence in his voice than in his heart, for if they drew a blank in Newcliff there was as yet no sort of clue to suggest where they should hunt during the rest of the Whitsun holidays, when pierrots would be emerging from hibernation all round the United Kingdom—not to mention the Isles of Wight and Man. But a philosopher deals with his difficulties as they present themselves, and Newcliff was clearly the starting-point.
“We’ll get an Amusement Guide,” said Snubs. “And if there isn’t one, we’ll ask the porter at one of the hotels. He’ll know.”
It was necessary, or at any rate convenient, during the noisy business of turning the two-seater round, to back a short way up St. Ethelburga’s drive. And if he hadn’t been so fully occupied with that very tricky gear-lever, Mr. Tipton might have observed that his companion was very pale during this part of the trip, and that he pulled his hat very far over his eyes, and hunched his shoulders as high as they would go, and kept passing his tongue over his lips, and trembled rather more than was altogether attributable to Gertie’s vibrations. But the basis for these symptoms of terror proved groundless, and no scarlet face or extended forearm protruded from that dreaded bow-window. Gertie roared and rattled, and churned up her own inside and the pebbles on the drive, and shot forth again between the iron gates, and began charging down the hill; and Beaky’s shoulders fell into a normal position, and his tongue disappeared, and his hat-brim left the bridge of his nose.
“After all,” he was thinking, “I did ask her, and she did answer me. And even old Snubs couldn’t have done any more with a woman like that. But, my hat, I’m glad she didn’t spot me just then.”
They re-entered the zone of villas, and the zone of stucco terraces, and the zone of little shops. They rejoined the tram-lines. They swerved with them into Pretoria Avenue, and left them again for Martello Street and the front. They tooted their way through the glutinous crowds that swarmed over the broad asphalt. They edged cautiously past the Coronation Clock Tower and the Y.M.C.A. And at the entrance to the Stupendous Hotel—which, as you may or may not remember, rears its hideous bulk opposite the Pier—Gertie’s brakes emitted a long-drawn squeal, and Snubs switched off the engine.
“I’m going to try the porter here, anyhow,” he said. “I mean, if there is an Amusement Guide, he’s bound to have it; and if there isn’t, then he’s pretty well bound to know. And the time is?”
They both consulted their watches.
“Five to six,” said Beaky.
“Five past,” said Snubs. “You’d better stay here, in case there’s any parking trouble. I don’t suppose I’ll be long.”.
In a couple of minutes he was back again.
“The porter was busy,” he said, simply; “so I took this when he wasn’t looking.” He unfolded a long, printed sheet. “You see? Newcliff Attractions for week ending to-day. The theatres we skip. The movie-shows we also pass over. Likewise the Orchestral horrors and the Symphony muck.” (You may remember how thoroughly Mr. Tipton had failed to appreciate the classical quartette at Lady Framlingham’s party.) “But here’s what we’re after. ‘Concert Parties.’ Now, then.”
The two heads bent together over the bottom of the programme, and Snubs recited it aloud.
“‘The Merry Monarchs,’” he said, “at the Winter Garden. ‘A Feast of Mirth and Melody.’ I wonder. And Horace Pereira’s Musical Masqueraders at—— Oh, no. They don’t kick off till next week. Still, we’d better bear ’em in mind, because they may be lurking about somewhere—curse them. And—I say, shift your thumb, old man.”
Beaky shifted his thumb.
“‘The Diamond Dominoes,’” Snubs continued. “Whatever that means. ‘Lester Vaughan and all-star company at the Pavilion Chalet.’ And that’s the lot.”
“Noodles isn’t a star,” said her brother, decidedly.
“I wouldn’t count on that,” said Snubs. “Have you ever heard of Lester Vaughan?”
“Well, no. Yes, I see what you mean.”
“We’ll have a shot at them all,” said Snubs. “It’s no good, not doing this properly. And we’ll start with the Winter Garden, because I can see it over there. Come on.”
“What?” said Beaky, vaguely.
Of course he had got her on the brain, but the girl in that big car that had just whizzed past them had—for a second—looked extraordinarily like Sylvia. Only it couldn’t be. It was out of the question. Reason and experience both cried out against such a coincidence, just as they told him that the very last place to look for Mrs. Shirley during a Bank-holiday week-end was in the thick of the Bank-holidays crowds. And he’d only seen the back of the girl’s head. And if he’d yelled at her, she wouldn’t have heard him. And it wasn’t Sylvia, anyhow, so thank Heaven he hadn’t yelled. And if it had been Sylvia and he had yelled, then what on earth could he have said if she had stopped?
“I say—did you get my letter?”
Quite impossible.
Besides, once more, it wasn’t Sylvia and it couldn’t be Sylvia. It was just some other horrible girl who had the monstrous impertinence to look rather like her from a long way off. It was just a glimpse of a hat that had set his heart beating and had choked him and had turned his limbs to water.
“I wish I had yelled,” he muttered. “No, I don’t, though.”
“What’s that?” said Snubs. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Are you going to ask here, or am I?”
“Both,” said Snubs. “This way.”
They left Gertie in a whitewashed sanctuary which distinctly said that there was parking space for five private cars, and ducked under the railings, and descended some steps, and walked up to the front entrance of the Winter Garden—which was closed.
“To-night at Eight,” it said. “Tickets from Webster’s Library.”
“Let’s try the back,” said Snubs.
The back was locked and padlocked.
Nevertheless they knocked and hammered on it until they had collected a fair-sized gathering of children and adults, and a chorus of remarkably vocal dogs. Then a good-natured man in a Panama came up and told them that the door was locked, but if it was tickets they wanted——
“It isn’t,” they said, and the good-natured man looked frightened and left them. And the other adults looked suspicious, and began murmuring. So that there was nothing to do but to walk away, trying to appear as if one had never knocked or hammered in one’s life.
“We’ll have to come back later,” said Snubs. “Meanwhile there are the other places.”
The Grotto, where Horace Pereira’s Musical Masqueraders were due on Whit-Monday, was more than half a mile away, and there could be no hurrying through the vast, tired, hot and aimless crowds that surged indefatigably over the roadway. Yet they got there eventually, and they actually found a man who must have had some connection with it, because although he wasn’t exactly doing anything, he was dressed in overalls and had a mop and a screw-driver.
He was, however, one of the most ignorant and ill-informed men that they had ever met. He had been sent here, he said, by the boss, and the boss might know when the place would be open again, but that was the boss’s affair. The boss, he added, on being further pressed, lived somewhere outside the town, but he didn’t rightly know where. He couldn’t say if anybody had been using the ’All. Well, they might ’ave. You never could tell. He remembered that they’d lent it to the Boy Scouts once; during the war, that was. At least, so he’d ’eard.
No, he didn’t know nothing about no Pierrots. But—with a gleam of quite illusory intelligence—if the gentlemen cared to come back on Monday, the boss might be around. Only—the gleam vanishing into a dull glaze—you never could rightly tell.
Here Snubs forced his way past him, and entering the Grotto itself found it in such an indescribable state of dirt, dust, mildew, stuffiness and confusion as made it not only unthinkable that any living creature had occupied it for months, but almost unimaginable that the Musical Masqueraders could hope to open before Boxing-Day
.
“If Noodles is with this lot,” he reported, as he came out again, “then we’ll have to look for them somewhere else. Perhaps I could get a list of lodgings from one of the theatres; but the next move is the Pavilion Chalet.”
So they left the Grotto and the man with the mop—who, needless to say, was quite unable to direct them except by landmarks of which they had never heard. And they took further, and curiously divergent, opinions from a man in a blue jersey and a man with a bath-chair. And they asked a taxi-driver, and an errand-boy, and a postman, and no less then four persons who said that they were strangers themselves. And somehow or other, in spite of all these aids and obstacles, they did at last drive down a narrow lane between a brewery and a bakery, and emerged on a triangular open space which looked like a forgotten village-green. And there, opposite them, were the galvanized-iron walls and roof, and the peeling paintwork, and the tattered bunting of the Pavilion Chalet itself. And it was closed.
Undoubtedly it was closed. But they got out again, and walked round it, and battered on all the doors, and did their best to peer in at the boarded-up windows. Again, also, a good-natured bystander drew their attention to the fact that the place was shut, and reminded them that it was still only just past seven.
“If you want to take tickets——” he said.
But they made it particularly clear that they didn’t, and the good-natured man walked away backwards, looking both mistrustful and huffy.
“I’m for waiting,” said Snubs. “If they start at eight, someone’s bound to be along soon. What do you say?”
Beaky, who had been studying one of the printed bills, said that Noodles’s name was conspicuous by its absence, and that he was hellishly hungry. “If you ask me,” he added, “she isn’t in this rotten town at all.”
Snubs said that this remained to be proved. The bills were obviously old bills, and she might just as well be here as anywhere else.
Beaky submitted the alternative proposition that she might just as well be anywhere else as here, and added, again, that his stomach was caving in.
Another Part of the Wood Page 21