The Greengage Summer

by Rumer Godden

  The Plage was the Plage des Saules between Les Oeillets and the bridge where another island made a narrow reach of water that was almost a canal. A white wooden bridge crossed it to the Plage, which was shut off by a railing on which a notice said: ‘Interdit aux enfants de moins de dix ans qui ne sont pas accompagnés par une grande personne.’

  The Plage had three swimming enclosures, divided from the main river by painted wooden rods; the green water looked cool and inviting, and there were diving-boards and chutes; red and white cabins were let for dressing-rooms, and there was a kiosk that sold ices and sirops. On hot thirsty days we could read the painted letters on its boards: ‘Glaces—Fraise, Vanille, Citron, Moka et Chocolat.’ “Oh well!” said Hester.

  There was nowhere else to bathe except the Plage and the cove. The Marne had dangerous currents, and at the cove a notice said: ‘Interdit aux baigneurs qui ne sont pas forts nageurs.’ Neither of us were the strong swimmers required and all we dared do was to undress in the hotel bathing hut, put on our old salt-stained bathing dresses and lie in the shallows.

  When the clock on the Hôtel de Ville struck one we would come out and open our food. It was a moment to wait for. Paul put up our picnics, and he, being on the side of the downtrodden, would filch things we were not supposed to have.

  Monsieur Armand told him to put aside yesterday’s dinner rolls for us, last night’s meat, now cold, sardines and eggs put of the hors-d’œuvres, but Paul would switch the rolls with fresh ones just carried into the kitchen in the baker’s wooden trays, and steal chicken legs, éclairs or jam tarts and, in the kindness of his heart, pâté, even caviare, which Hester would throw in the river. To us who were used to picnics of hard-boiled eggs, potted-meat sandwiches, apples and milk chocolate, Les Oeillets picnics were banquets; to add to their wonder we were always given bottles of wine and water to drink.

  Every day I asked Hester, “Where shall we go?”

  “Nowhere,” Hester would say, and we would lie in the cove or on the bank and watch the fish, the sun on our backs and heads; in this short time our hair had begun to look bleached, our scarecrows more faded. We watched the fish, or a barge, or a distant peasant family bending and raking, as we listened to the willow leaves or dozed, scarcely talking; there was nothing to listen to but these simple things, no one to look at, no one who was anyone, no questions, and the time would pass until at last from the Hôtel de Ville the clock would strike four and we would sit up and sigh.

  The odd part was that, though we chafed at being sent out, when the time came we did not want to go in. Seen at a distance and in perspective, I flinched from it. Mademoiselle Zizi, Madame Corbet, Eliot, Paul, they seemed too much, but at least, I thought comfortably, they are nothing to do with us. We are just watching.

  Then on the eighth day—it might have been the seventh or the ninth, I had lost count—when we went in and upstairs to see Joss, her shutters were open and she was sitting by her window dressed in a respectable cotton; she had washed her hair and was drying and brushing it over a towel in the sun.

  “Are you better?”

  “Quite better,” said Joss. “Mauricette brought me up some lunch.”

  “Mauricette!”

  “She is the maid, isn’t she?”

  We did not now think of that haughty queen, Mauricette, as a maid.

  “Did you ask her?”

  “I rang,” said Joss simply.

  We stared at our sister. Even Vicky seemed to come out of her private shell to take in Joss’s unperturbed face with its cool paleness.

  “You have washed your hair,” I said.

  “Yes.” She looked at us. “You must wash yours.” She did not say what she thought of our dirt and we were silent. At Les Oeillets washing seemed left out of calculations for children, and beside us Joss looked as delicate and fresh as a flower.

  Vicky said suddenly, “Mademoiselle Zizi’s hair isn’t red. They make it red in a shop.”

  “I know,” said Joss.

  “You know?” Hester and I said that together.

  “I knew the first time I saw her,” said Joss, leaning forward to look at herself in the looking-glass; she had moved to the dressing-table.

  “How did you know?”

  “Because it was a little bit black at the roots.”

  “It looks like a bundle,” said Vicky. I knew what she meant. Mademoiselle Zizi’s hair looked dry and heavy.

  Joss did not answer. Watching herself, she picked up her brush and began to brush out her own hair that was soft and impeccably its own black.

  CHAPTER 7

  THAT WAS one of the evenings when Eliot came home.

  “He likes to get out of the heat and dust of Paris,” said Mademoiselle Zizi.

  “Ninety kilometres!” said Paul caustically. Ninety kilometres. Eliot had taught us to put them into miles: “Divide by eight, multiply by five.” Fifty-five miles was as near as I could get and that certainly seemed a long way to come, but, “He comes for her,” I said.

  “Quatre-vingt-dix kilomètres!” said Paul and spat.

  When Eliot came the house was completely changed. Every evening, towards five o’clock, Mademoiselle Zizi dressed herself in one of her pretty dresses; “Not pretty, elegant,” corrected Willmouse. She redid her hair, rouged and powdered, put her eyelashes in and blue-shadowed her eyes. “Then she takes a pencil and draws her eyebrows.” said Hester. “How funny to pull them out and have pencil ones instead.” Mademoiselle Zizi put scent on her upper lip and behind her ears and—Hester sank her voice to a whisper—even Hester was learning that some things should not be openly spoken of—“she puts scent between her bosoms.”

  If the telephone rang Mademoiselle Zizi would fly into the office but usually she would go and wait in the little salon, which was behind the bar. It too was elegant. We were not allowed to go into it but could look through the glass panels of its door; we admired the little room with its pale carpet that had loops of flowers, its walls that were inlaid with panels of blue brocade, its table in the middle with paintings in the wood, and the gilt chairs with backs and seats of yellow satin that were arranged stiffly round the walls.

  Mademoiselle Zizi should have been working in the bar, but she sat in the little salon, we knew, because from it she could watch the courtyard gates and the drive for the first glimpse of Eliot’s car.

  No one else had a car like Eliot’s. It was a Rolls-Royce, old, a little battered, but its blue and silver length always looked handsome among the French and American cars. “Why choose one that stood out?” Uncle William asked that. “Unless he wanted to stand out,” said Uncle William.

  Eliot sometimes changed his plans. Then towards dinnertime—and dinner was late at Les Oeillets, often not till ten o’clock—the waiting would begin to end. Mademoiselle Zizi would leave the little salon and come slowly back to the bar, and presently she would follow Madame Corbet into the dining-room and to their table by the private screen. Mademoiselle Zizi wilted in her chair, crumbling bread in her fingers, while Madame Corbet sat upright. On the nights when Eliot was there he often sat at their table, and then, we noticed, Madame Corbet always ate very quickly, cutting sharply with her knife—as if she would like to cut Eliot, we thought—not speaking. She would have dark spots of colour in her sallow cheeks, and she would always finish and get up while they were still at the second course. Eliot stood up for her as she went, but she never gave him a glance, and in a minute we would hear the typewriter keys rattling in the office as if she were typing very fast.

  When she and Mademoiselle Zizi were alone, Madame Corbet stayed in the dining-room until after everyone had finished. A quiet would be over everything. Monsieur Armand, unless special visitors were there, left the cooking to Paul. Mauricette waited on the tables in her slippers; even the dogs stayed out in the hall, their heads on their paws; no one but Eliot dared give them scraps.

  We, of course, had finished long ago; we had our dinner when the staff had theirs, but we stayed on at our ta
ble, playing cards with old packs from the bar, Racing Demon or Pelmanism or Snap, and we would watch Mademoiselle Zizi’s head with its coils of red hair sink lower and lower as she listened to Madame Corbet; then she would go into the bar and begin to drink.

  “Oh well, we might as well go out,” said Hester.

  Out meant hanging about in the orchard and the garden eating greengages, until Paul was free to come out on the steps. Then we sat and smoked with him—even Hester would have a puff. Once Eliot had come home unexpectedly and found us there. We were afraid he might be cross, but he only ruffled Hester’s hair and said, “You little gossips.”

  Usually he came for dinner. The dogs would hear his car; they knew long before we did that he was coming and they would stand up, shaking themselves and wagging their great tails. I think we did much the same thing. Hester and Vicky would rush to clasp his legs, while Willmouse stood and smiled, which for him was the equivalent of rushing. “You see,” Mademoiselle Zizi said once to Madame Corbet. “See how children and dogs love him. That is the test of a good man.” Madame Corbet sniffed.

  With a flounce of her apron Mauricette would take Eliot’s cap and gloves; Monsieur Armand would peer through the kitchen door and start something sizzling on the spit or stove; Paul, if he were there, would mutter under his breath about the extra washing-up, and in the office, Madame Corbet would be still, her topknot craned to watch Mademoiselle Zizi meet Eliot.

  On his side there was nothing that anyone might not see. Because of the visitors, if there were any, or for us, he would say something quiet, ‘Bonjour, mademoiselle’ or ‘Ça va?’, but she seemed not to care for anyone, the visitors, or us, or Madame Corbet; she would run to him and hang on his arm; it was as if she could not help it, even though, I thought, it annoyed him; when she looked at him, after he had been away, her eyes were so alight with happiness that even I, silly and romantic as I was, thought it would have been better not to let us all see she loved him as much as that. Sometimes Eliot seemed extraordinarily tired; then he had a strained look on his face, a nerve twitching by his mouth. “Well, I expect,” said Hester afterwards, “he had often been up all night.” Then Mademoiselle Zizi fussed. “You must have a drink,” she would say, her eyes searching his face. “I will get you a drink. Have a comfortable chair, not that one. Let Mauricette get you some other shoes.” Until he would say, ‘For God’s sake, Zizi!’ Then those wide, constantly hurt eyes would fill with tears and her face would quiver. It was surprising a grown person could be so stupid; even I knew that the best thing was to leave him alone until he had been quiet for a while, had one or two drinks, and then say something casual, even rude. That would make him smile and say, ‘You little tyke!’

  That night of Joss’s being better there were visitors: a young American with a red sunburned face, three American ladies, and a French colonel with his wife and child; before dinner we all sat at different tables in the bar.

  When anyone was speaking French directly to me I could understand, but when they spoke to one another I could not be sure. Now I knew the French family were talking about us, I saw the wife gesticulate admiringly at Willmouse—women always found Willmouse charming while men were doubtful—at Vicky’s fall of flaxen hair, at Hester’s eyes and curls. These were the family good points and we were used to them being noticed, but I thought I heard Eliot say something that surprised me. “Soeur is sister, isn’t it?” I asked Joss afterwards. “It couldn’t be anything else?”

  “How could it?” asked Joss.

  “Then Eliot said Mother was his sister.”

  “He couldn’t have because she isn’t.”

  “No, but . . . He said he was our guardian.”

  “I suppose for the moment he is.”

  “Yes, but . . . He said he always took us to the seaside, but this year he had left it too late. He could not get away to see us in England and so he brought us here.”

  “Was this in French?” asked Joss.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you got muddled.”

  I was sure I had not. Those sentences kept coming back in my mind and, “They were lies,” I said.

  Eliot talked from our table to the French people, he did not join them. We were all round him; Hester and I were playing Racing Demon at the next table with automatic silent swiftness, our eyes and ears really on him; Willmouse was hunched up in the chair beside him, his nose in his big book. “That boy needs spectacles,” Uncle William often said, but, “If you get them I won’t wear them,” Willmouse told Mother. Vicky was on the floor by Eliot’s feet, where Nebuchadnezzar was grazing in a field fenced with Eliot’s matches.

  We did not usually cluster round him when he came home but kept a respectful distance, but this evening we were on a different plane. “What is the matter with you?” he had said, looking at us. He looked more carefully and then said, “You are clean.”

  With Joss up we had changed for dinner. The scarecrows were on our chairs upstairs, we were in our respectable cottons. That was not all. Usually at this time we went into the dining-room to dine before the visitors came in; Paul would get up from the staff table to serve us, probably from a saucepan or a pan, his mouth still full. This evening we waited for Joss. Mademoiselle Zizi was not there; she was in the office with Madame Corbet waiting for a telephone call from Marseilles.

  At Les Oeillets we had adopted certain places for our own; each one of us had chosen one or two. Willmouse had the bank under the cherry tree, of course, but he also owned the little salon; though he had never been in it, it was his. Hester liked the conservatory and a certain small bed of picotees because its warm clove smell reminded her of the carnation Eliot had worn on our first night that seemed now ages ago. Vicky had the vine arbour, perhaps because it was near the kitchen, and she said she liked the bidets—“They are like dear little baths for dolls,” said Vicky. I loved the wilderness; it was poetical with its white statues and the white jessamine, and, for some reason, I loved the staircase, which was why I so much resented the machine-gun holes.

  At that time of day the sun sinking behind the trees struck through the landing window and turned the staircase into a funnel of light; even the treads of the stairs seemed barred with gold and, through the round window, came the sound of trills and flutings, the birds singing their evening song in the garden, before it dropped to silence. The staircase might have been Jacob’s ladder, stairs to heaven.

  I had been looking at it, no, not looking, almost melting into it, Racing Demon forgotten, and had turned my eyes away because of the brightness when I became aware of Eliot’s stillness.

  “Go on,” said Hester, a card ready to slam down, but I did not move.

  Eliot had been going to drink, but his glass was quite still in his hand; the Colonel was wrinkling up his eyes, the young American leaning forward. They were all looking.

  They were looking at my staircase. Then I saw they were not, or not exactly. They were looking at Joss coming down.

  As if those days of sickness and shock had made her clean and delicate, she looked pale and . . . pure, I thought, as a snowflake or white blossom, while I was my ordinary brown and pink. She had on the twin of the cotton dress I wore, but it was graceful on her; she was wearing the sandals she had bought with her birthday money, white, open-toed, while I wore our clumsy brown school sandals. She seemed to have grown more dignified, taller, and her dress was a little too tight; the shape of her bosoms—for ever after I was to think of them as bosoms—showed and the sun gave points of light to the darkness of her newly washed hair.

  When I was jealous of Joss, Mother used to say, ‘Jealousy is ugly. It hurts no one but yourself. Don’t be jealous’, but if one is, how does one help it? It is wrong to be jealous, but . . .

  “It isn’t wrong,” said Eliot when afterwards I asked him this in despair.

  “Not wrong to be jealous?” That was against everything I had heard.

  “No,” said Eliot firmly. “It’s what you do with jealousy that can b
e wrong.”

  I think I knew that for myself. That night I could have said cruel, unkind things to Joss, wished her any harm; the cards seemed to swim in front of my eyes and I felt bitter and angry as she came quite naturally up to us.

  Willmouse went on reading, Hester piled cards on my aces, Vicky grazed Nebuchadnezzar, but Eliot stood up.

  That surprised me and made me more bitter than ever. It’s only Joss’, I wanted to cry. There was a pause and it dawned upon me that Eliot did not know who she was. “It’s only Joss.” This time I said it aloud and, as he still looked puzzled, “Joss, the one who was ill.”

  “One of you?” It was an unflattering disbelief. I had to remember he had only seen her before as a schoolgirl with a big forehead in an ugly hat and, in bed, as a tousled sick child; it was mysterious that these were Joss as well.

  “Et c’est votre nièce, cette ravissante jeune personne?” said the Colonel from the next table, “Adorable! Adorable!” Eliot’s face looked hot with embarrassment. Did Joss know, I wondered, that she had been called his niece? And ravishing, adorable, I thought, smarting, but she did not seem to have heard and took the chair Eliot pulled out for her and sat down. As he did not speak she said, “I’m better, but you must think we are a most unhealthy family.”

  She spoke so calmly that, unwilling though I was, admiration filled me. I knew she was shy, for there was pink now in her cheeks, and that telltale front of her dress moved quickly up and down. Eliot did not answer, which was difficult for Joss. The pink deepened and she tried again, “I hope the children haven’t been bothering you.”

  That was too much. I said loudly, “We don’t bother,” and Eliot started as if I had . . . wakened him up, I thought.

  “Will you have a drink?” he asked Joss.

  “Could I have a still lemon?” she said with that false calm.