‘Here, here, here, what’s all this? You’ve gone very Band of Hope all of a sudden.’ Mrs Abinger knew that George was trying to get at Mr Gray, who however had his eyes shut and was buried in beatitude as presently he would be in sand. ‘Many’s the time,’ went on George, ‘you’ve begged me to take you to the Sun. Deny that if you can.’
‘Oh stop it, Dad. Don’t be silly.’ Josephine scuffled a trough in the sand with her bare toes.
‘Is that how you talk to your father? You’d better come along with me now, young lady, and keep me company.’ He was annoyed with her for siding against him, but she did not care. She had the Grays to back her up.
‘I’m not coming,’ she said ungraciously. ‘I’m going to bathe.’
‘Not until half an hour after food,’ said Mrs Gray. Mrs Abinger was now also annoyed, not only by her interference, but by the implication that Jo had eaten enough to give her cramp.
‘You go along with Dad,’ she said.
‘No,’ said Josephine. ‘Me and Pauline are going to get botany specimens.’
‘Me and Pauline!’ exclaimed her father. ‘Is that what they teach you at your grand school? Talk about money thrown away – ’
Oh stop, George, stop, prayed Mrs Abinger in her heart. Stop, before they realize, not for your sake nor for mine, but for Jo’s, that there’s anything unusual in her going to the High School.
He was all out to be troublesome now. ‘If you ask me,’ he told the unconcerned Gray family, ‘it’s daylight robbery. Twelve guineas a term and they don’t even teach them how to use the first person singular. Twelve guineas a term for collecting botany specimens! That’s nearly forty pounds a year, with extras.’
He must not talk about money. People like the Grays no more talked about money than they talked about food. ‘Come along then,’ said Mrs Abinger hastily. ‘I’ll come with you.’ She began to get herself up from her uncomfortable perch on the narrow running board, where she had sat because it was nearer than the ground.
‘I don’t require company,’ George said with dignity. ‘I shall find liquid solace. You don’t want to come, Ellie. I thought you were so hot.’
‘I’d like to, dear.’ It was only half-past one. She was afraid that if he went alone, he might, now being disgruntled with the party, stay in the bar until closing time and come back even more aggressive. The idea of a half-mile walk in the sun nearly killed her, but she knew that she must go.
She was right; it did nearly kill her. When they got back to the cove, the Grays and Josephine were far away in the sea.
‘Let’s go down and watch them play,’ said George, who felt mellower now.
‘You go,’ she panted. ‘The walk has rather taken it out of me. I’ll just rest here.’ She flopped down on the sand in the shade of the car.
‘You do look rough,’ he said, noticing her distressed appearance for the first time. ‘You stay there then, and have a sit down.’
She wished he would stay, because she felt giddy, but having said: ‘Anything you want, old girl?’ he thought he had done his bit. She watched him ambling away over the ridged sand, hopping over pools and little rocks as if he liked the athletic feel of his black rubber soles. His figure shimmered in the heat haze. He wavered and receded as if she were looking through the wrong end of a telescope. Her head swam. The smell of hot leather and petrol was nauseating.
Suddenly, she did not know whose car it was. Oh God, she did not know. This had happened once before, when, for a moment, she had terrified herself by not knowing her own name. Who am I? Ellie Abinger. Mrs Abinger, of the Corner Stores, Portobello Road, London, W.II.
That was all right then. To steady herself, she tried to say it aloud, but her tongue seemed to have thickened, and when she tried to move her mouth, it would only open sideways. She panicked, a black panic that overwhelmed her like the wing of Death and blotted everything out; sun, heat, sea, smell, sand, everything.
When she opened her eyes, there was a white mountain before them with stiff peaks and ridges. She looked at it dreamily for a while without worrying, and then she blinked and everything was clear again. She had heeled over, and was lying with her head in the sand, some crumpled sandwich paper half an inch away from her eyes. She struggled upright, and groping behind her, felt the wheel of the car and leaned against it with her legs stuck out in front of her like inanimate bolsters.
Mr Gray’s car. She knew it was Mr Gray’s car. Thank God, she was all right now. But where were they all? How long had she been queer? Why had they gone away without the car and left her all alone? Her exhausted brain could not cope with these problems. It had been through a taxing ordeal and wanted only to rest now, like a body that has been running. Dimly, through half-closed eyes, she became aware of George’s distant figure hopping and skipping towards the black specks in the sea.
So it had all happened in a second or two. No one knew. In slow motion, she crawled her fingers over the sand towards her bag, drew it to her as if it were a ton weight, and fumbled in it for her comb. With a great effort, she raised her arms to draw out the pins which were holding her hat askew and began to comb the sand out of her hair.
The final rounds of the golf championship made the big day of the season at Seacombe. Josephine, who did not have to be long in a place to find out all about it, knew this. She knew that it was an honour for the Grays to ask the Abingers to walk round with Mr Gray’s match. Mr Abinger was quite willing to go. He knew a thing or two about golf, but he wanted to see these birdies and bogies. He wanted to see for himself if there was as much skill in it as they made out.
‘Might take it up myself one day,’ he said airily.
‘Well, you go then dear, and pick up a few tips,’ said Mrs Abinger, ‘but I don’t think I’ll come. That hot day at the picnic tired me. I really don’t feel up to it.’
‘Oh Mum you must,’ Jo insisted. ‘Don’t always spoil everything. They’ve asked all of us, and we’re all going to have tea at the clubhouse afterwards.’
‘I hope it’s better than the lunch they provided the other day,’ said George, who had had two welsh rarebits at the café afterwards, as well as supper at Clarence Lodge.
‘I thought it was a lovely lunch,’ said Jo loyally, although she too had been glad of welsh rarebit.
‘I’ll give you some chocolate to take,’ said Mrs Abinger. ‘I had taken some for you the other day, but then I – I forgot.’
‘You’ve got to come,’ Jo said. They’ll think it so funny.’ She wanted her mother to see Mr Gray playing golf. She wanted her there to keep her father under control, in case he said some of his vexing things. She just wanted her there. She had fits of affection, in which she clung to her mother, suddenly dependent. She put out a hand now across the lunch table. ‘Do come,’ she wheedled. ‘I shan’t go else.’
‘Pardon me’ said the slovenly girl, trying to put down a plate of Irish stew.
‘Sorry, Mais.’ Jo drew back her arm and grinned. She liked Maisie, who told ribald stories in the pantry behind the baize door where guests were not supposed to go. She also liked her because she waited on her. Jo loved to be waited on. She attacked the stew eagerly.
‘Jo, Jo, wait till everyone is served. Your father hasn’t got his portion yet.’ Mrs Abinger could not help adding: ‘Those aren’t the manners you use with the Grays, I know.’
‘Oh well, it doesn’t matter with you,’ Jo said carelessly.
‘It does matter,’ began her father, leaning forward as Maisie came along again with her: ‘Pardon me’
‘Hush George, not now.’ Mrs Abinger made a face at him. Jo must be corrected when she spoke like that, but not here, in this small room with the tables so close. Miss Lorrimer was straining her ears as usual, and that sharp little Lucas boy was nudging his sister and sniggering. It looked bad always to be correcting Jo. Other parents did not have to. The Grays never did. The Grays …
‘No dear,’ she said decisively. ‘I shan’t come to the golf.’ She had seen the go
lf course. The eleventh hole alone was farther than she would care to walk in this weather, and figures seemed to be dotted about miles away among the gorse.
‘If we go off and leave you, you’ll be sorry for yourself,’ said Mr Abinger, preparing to be martyred. ‘I shan’t go either then.’
‘Nor will I,’ said Jo. ‘You are a spoilsport, Mum.’ ‘Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,’ said George, who sometimes quoted the abhorred Bible without realizing it. ‘You’re spoiling all the fun, Ellie. Where’s the good of coming on holiday if you won’t do things? You were bad enough not going on the switchbacks when I took you to Wembley, and look how you wasted that charabanc trip the other day because you wouldn’t climb up to the castle.’
Didn’t he realize the anguish of not being able to do things? That there was nothing she wanted more than to hold her own, to fend off this terror of declining strength?
She was stung into saying: ‘Very well, I’ llcome perhaps if it’s not a very hot day.’
‘Oh it won’t be,’ said Jo quickly. ‘Pauline says it’s going to blow cool. She’s got a bit of seaweed hung outside her window. I’m going to take a bit home, Mum, to hang out of mine.’
‘Not in my flat, you aren’t,’ said her father.
‘Shall if I want to,’ Jo answered pertly. She had been drinking cider. ‘It’s my room; you needn’t come into it. I won’t let you anyway.’
‘How dare you talk to your father like that?’ Mr Abinger raised his voice and several people in the dining-room raised their heads. Miss Lorrimer’s left ear seemed to grow visibly and open out like a blown rose.
‘Dare?’ said Jo. ‘It’s easy.’
‘Now, Josephine.’ He put down his knife and fork. Seeing that he was going to deliver a lecture, Mrs Abinger butted in with: ‘I’ll come to the golf then. I daresay I shall be all right.’
She was touched that Jo should want her so much to come. It would be unkind to disappoint her. She would die sooner than admit that she was afraid to be left alone, but what if she had another turn like at the picnic? Anything might happen. The thought terrified her; she did not know whether she would ever dare to be alone again.
Pauline’s seaweed was mistaken. When she woke, Josephine went straight to the window and saw that it was going to be a fine day. Even at that early hour, you could feel that heat hovering up in the blue, ready to pounce on the waking town and stifle it back into sleepiness. By craning her neck, she could just see a bit of sea between two roofs. There was a mast in the harbour that had not been there last night. She would go down and see what it was before breakfast. She dressed hurriedly without washing or doing her hair, and crept through her parents’ room, where Mrs Abinger was a precarious mound and her father an outflung octopus.
Maisie was on her knees in the hall. ‘Hullo, Mais,’ said Jo. ‘Pardon me’ She stepped over her. Maisie sat back on her heels. She had not washed or done her hair either.
‘Going to meet your boy?’ She winked. Josephine giggled. ‘Can’t fool me,’ said Maisie. ‘Give him my love and tell ‘im yes.’
‘Don’t be soppy,’ said Jo. ‘Undo the top bolt for me, there’s a love.’
‘You bleedin’ kids,’ Maisie grumbled, but she stood to the tiptoe of her lanky height and let Jo out into the delirious morning air, where everything sparkled, even the asphalt and the broken glass on top of the garden wall.
There was a sailing boat in the harbour, a broad, stubby old thing, with rounded sides like a cart mare. Her crew were bathing from the cob. They were boys. Picking her way over the rusty rails on the coal wharf, Jo could hear them shouting. Two of them ran up the slimy steps from the sea, and scuffled at the top. One pushed the other back into the water and stood cockily, arms akimbo, flinging back his wet forelock and shouting with laughter.
Shyly, Jo loitered by a shed, watching unseen. There was a man in the sea with the boys. He called out: ‘Come on in, young Moore, before I come up and chuck you in!’
Young Moore laughed again and tossed his head. ‘Come and try, sir!’ he yelled back.
Young Moore! The name smote across Jo’s memory with the same pang which still racked her whenever she heard anyone called Billy. It might so easily have been him: that challenging stance with straddled calves braced, that fling of the head, that voice breaking on a laugh of very joy at himself. It might have been Billy Moore in the hut on Wormwood Scrubs five years ago, giving out orders which ended in a shriek as he was pulled by the leg into the hole, just as he was now pulled into the sea.
She stepped away from the shed, and looking over the edge of the cob, saw him bob up to the surface, bouncing right out of the water with a sea lion fling of his head that might have been – oh, it might have been Billy.
It was Billy. He looked straight at her, and she thought he knew her too. But he plunged his head into the water and swam away among the other boys.
She went back to the coal wharf and sat on a bollard to wait until he should come out. She was cold with a scared excitement, but she could not possibly have gone away.
The boys came along the wharf in a chattering mob, invigorated by the swim, scuffling round the tall young man like puppies. In shorts and white sweaters, they were making for the town. They took no more notice of Jo than if she were a lonely seagull perched on the bollard. But Billy noticed, and although he looked away at once, he looked back again, and at last dropped behind and let the others go on.
He had not grown tall like his parents, but he wrinkled his forehead in his father’s way as he came towards her. ‘I know you, don’t I?’ he said almost defiantly.
Josephine nodded, and managed to speak at the second attempt. ‘I know you too,’ she said huskily. ‘You’re Billy Moore.’
‘Tell me another,’ he said, ‘who are you?’
‘I’m Jo Abinger,’ she said. ‘Don’t you remember – at the Corner Stores?’
‘Good Lord,’ he said slowly. ‘Josie.’
She nearly fell off her perch in her emotion. No one had called her Josie since she had lost him five years ago, for ever. He must remember what she had done, but he did not look angry. He was grinning.
‘Gosh,’ he said. ‘You’ve grown.’
‘So have you,’ she said, looking away from him and sliding her eyes round sideways. At seventeen, he was chunky and tanned and as bouncible as ever. His sweater had red and blue lines round the bottom.
One of the boys called to him. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Holiday,’ she murmured. She wished now that she had not stayed. She must know whether he still remembered her treachery, but she did not know how to find out.
‘So am I,’ he said. ‘With our term officer in the ketch. We’ve come up the coast from Dartmouth – I’m at the College, you know – put in here for some grub.’
He was not going to remember about her. He was not thinking about her. ‘I’ve got to catch the others up,’ he said. ‘’Bye, Josie.’
Josie! She could not lose him yet. She slipped to the ground and walked beside him whether he wanted her or not. He was hurrying. She must make him take proper notice of her.
‘I got to tell you, Billy,’ she said. ‘I’m ever so sorry for what I done – did.’
‘What did you did?’ He laughed down at her.
‘Well, you know. Sneaking on you. I never meant no harm, honest.’
‘Good Lord,’ he said airily, ‘that was years ago. I’d forgotten.’
Light with relief, she skipped to keep up. ‘Don’t you remember what fun we had?’ she bubbled. ‘It was a proper adventure, wasn’t it? Digging the tunnel and that?’ Carried back to Goldner days, she dropped into slight cockney.
‘Fool kids we were,’ he said. ‘Nearly got jugged for our trouble. My father played hell. He beat me.’
‘I was beaten too,’ she lied boastfully, ‘but I didn’t care. It was worth it, wasn’t it? We done our best to get Art and Norm’s father out, didn’t we?’ One of the boys
was calling again, waving Billy on. She must re-establish the bond of adventure that they had once shared.
‘Worth it?’ he laughed. ‘No bally fear. Didn’t you ever know? The old man wasn’t there at all. All us silly kids digging away and he’d been taken to Pentonville long ago. Look, Josie, I must run.’
She trotted beside him. She was terribly dashed. He made the great adventure sound just a futile kids’ game. She was going to lose him. She had lost his attention already. He was hopping over the railway lines, with his eyes towards the other boys and his breakfast.
‘I go to High School now,’ she panted, ‘and we do just like you do at Dartmouth. We run everywhere.’
He slowed down for a moment to say: ‘What bally cheek–girls copying us.’
They were nearly at the promenade. The other boys had started up the hill into the town. ‘Bill,’ Josephine said, ‘I wish I could go on your boat.’
‘Well you can’t. We’re going on to Falmouth to-day, anyway. I’m going to sail the dinghy in the regatta. That’s her, lashed astern of the ketch.’ He stopped to point.
Some inspiration made her scoff: ‘Sail it on your own? I bet you can’t then.’
‘Bet I can. I’d show you, only you wouldn’t have the guts to come out in her. She lies right over. Sheet’s wet nearly all the time.’
‘I’d come.’ She gazed at him. She could hardly speak. ‘When? To-day?’
‘No kid. I told you, we’re going out after brekky.’ He looked down and suddenly responded to the worship in her bright pretty face. ‘Tell you what, Josie,’ he said. ‘We’ll be back in a few days’ time. Take you out then, if you like.’
‘Oh Billy! When?’
‘Oh some time. You stay around. Must go now. ‘Bye kid!’ He sped lightly away in his shorts and chunky white sweater, agonizing her with that masculine refusal to be pinned down that was to keep his girl friends chewing their nails by the telephone in later years.
‘But Billy, where?’ she called. ‘When?’ But he was gone, swallowed up in the little crowd of his own kind, half-way up the street.
Joy and Josephine Page 18