She kept away from the village all day, but next morning her mother sent her up to the pub for cigarettes and there was Rosie outside the lounge door, watching the men play pitch-and-toss. (Rosie laughed at their cheek, knew how to give back as good as she got.) She waved at Madge:
‘Howaya doin’?’
‘Fine,’ said Madge and fled. She had to pass Rosie’s house where three younger sisters sat scrabbling in the dust – there was no real floor, just earth – and Joe, the father, neither drunk nor sober, hands on knees, stared before him with eyes like wet pebbles. He called something but Madge pretended not to hear.
She rushed down the street for fear of being hailed and maybe questioned about what she had said to Rosie by one of ‘the village’. (‘The village’ were people who lived in houses like Rosie’s; others were what Madge’s mother called ‘people like ourselves’.) They would think her stuck up. ‘I’m not really stuck-up at all,’ thought Madge. ‘Not really. Not inside.’ But felt branded.
She moped for weeks after that; read a school book in the bus for fear someone might talk to her and, in the end, struck up with Bernie O’Toole whose father owned the village pub and who, like herself, attended the private convent school in the nearest town. They were the only two kids from round about who did. (‘Kids’ was Rosie’s word who liked Americanese. ‘You’, the class nun told Madge when she heard her use it, ‘may like to fancy yourself as related to goats! We prefer to believe our charges are at least human!’)
Bernie was a bit of a stick. She was from the country and shy, but there was a free flow of raspberryade from the pub to the O’Toole kitchen so Madge took to doing her homework there.
The O’Tooles weren’t quite ‘people like ourselves’ either. They didn’t visit Madge’s parents or their friends. (‘Though they could buy and sell us,’ said Madge’s mother.) Mrs O’Toole flapped about her dark kitchen like a downcast bird in flowered aprons, made cakes and chatted endlessly with her skivvy – none other than Rosie’s elder sister, Bridie, whom Madge, of course, knew well. She and Madge eyed each other and talked over-politely for a week after Madge had started coming to the O’Tooles’, then one evening Bridie – she had been handing Madge a glass of lemonade – bounded backwards and shouted in a very grand voice:
‘Eugh! Deugh excuse me! I wouldn’t want you to catch anything!’
Madge went red – she could feel herself – to the tips of her ears. After that it was war to the knife between her and Bridie. Which was more comfortable really. You knew where you were.
‘Here’s Miss Madge,’ Bridie would yell when Madge arrived. ‘Her ladyship has come!’
‘Bridie’s got a tootsie,’ said Bernie slyly, being on Madge’s side, and giggled till her pale eyes watered. They were like raw eggs at the best of times. Wettish. Slightly loose. ‘The milkman’s her fella!’
‘A tootsie! A tootsie! Hee, hee, hee!’ The little girls giggled while Bridie banged saucepans about. Bernie’s brother, Pat, giggled too and clattered his spoon on the tray of his high chair. He was strapped into it though he was too big and his thighs bulged against the sides. ‘Gloughgh!’ he howled, and slobber fell on his bib. ‘Gluggle!’ He had a pale, plump face so peppered with freckles that they formed a small saddle on the bridge of his round-nostrilled nose. His eyes were slanted and he had a puffy look like a stuffed cloth doll. He might have been eight or nine.
‘What is it, Pat? Now what set him off?’ Mrs O’Toole ran in to wipe off the slobber. ‘Tell Mummy, pet! Gluggle,’ she said too for she claimed to be able to make out what the child said, and talked back to it with the same noises. ‘Pat’s my boy,’ said she and wiped off his saliva.
‘Can she really make out what he says?’ Madge asked Bernie when her mother had gone.
‘Seems.’
‘Listen, what’s he like – the tootsie?’
‘Hee, hee,’ said Bernie. ‘You jealous?’
‘Silly galoot! What I mean is: what do they do anyway?’
Bernie shrugged. ‘Go for walks on the beach. Ma saw them go into the cave.’
‘Jeez, that’s dangerous. Did you know that was an old copper mine? My Daddy says they had to stop working it because of earth slides. There are passages going right under our hill and …’
‘Well they don’t explore any passages you may be sure!’ Bernie was contemptuous. ‘They just neck!’
And then – being unavowably inquisitive – the girls said no more.
Bridie was a fattish girl with an enormous bosom that shook like clotted milk inside her overall. She wore no bra and, from standing over the O’Tooles’ cooking stove, gave off a stew of heavy odours. There was, Madge remembered, only a yard tap for her and Rosie to wash at.
‘’S a wonder she hasn’t creepiecrawlies!’
‘She had! Ma combed them out with a finecomb!’
‘Phew!’ said Madge. Then – for hadn’t she caught them herself from Rosie? – ‘Poor thing!’
‘That Bob Cronin didn’t mind!’ Bernie sniggered. ‘Nor the milkman. Ma says she’s man-mad!’
‘Seven o’clock! Jeepers, I’ve got to fly!’
‘See you tomorrow.’
‘Bye.’
Rump uppermost in the O’Toole yard, Bridie was washing clothes in a bucket. Her thick thighs and glossy pink knickers struck Madge as offensive.
‘I’m off,’ she told the rump.
‘Eugh, Madam Madge! Good-bye!’ came from the bucket.
A group of ratty-looking youths held up the pub wall, sharing a cigarette butt and staring, it seemed to Madge, with foolish insolence before them. She sprayed them all with her imaginary water-pistol, containing, she decided, sour milk. But felt unassuaged. Like a volley of spittle from her mouth, the one word ‘BOYS!’ crackled with sudden ringing scorn.
They gaped and the next thing she was racing down the macadam, ears burning, eyes blurred with shame.
‘Cretin!’ she scolded herself. ‘Half-wit! Dope!’ Inside her own gate, she flopped against the post. ‘Jeez,’ she gasped. ‘You’re a real loony! They’ll have to tie you up, Madge Heron!’
*
Saturday was Bridie’s half-day and Mrs O’Toole said the girls would have to take Pat for a walk. She had things to do. Madge was fed up the minute she saw him. He was pinned into an enormous scarf, snotty as per usual and looking like – well like what he was. By now, however, she’d accepted too much O’Toole raspberryade to protest. Still she promised herself, they could at least avoid the main roads. She wasn’t going to let anyone she knew see her walking out with that!
‘What about going to the beach?’ she proposed to Bernie.
‘Bet Bridie’s there with her heart-throb! We might see sights!’
‘You’ve a dirty mind, Bernie O’Toole!’
‘Go on! Pretend that wasn’t what you were thinking of yourself!’
Madge scrabbled at the loose plaster in the O’Toole yard wall. A colony of albino insects raced. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t.’
Flies patrolled the veil Mrs O’Toole had thrown on her meatsafe. Who else used outdoor meatsafes any more? The O’Tooles were that stolid! Bernie had the same round nostrils as her brother: punctures in a boneless nose. ‘Her whole face is like his,’ Madge noticed, ‘all puffs!’ In school the nuns never had a thing on her. Slyboots! ‘If she giggles now,’ Madge thought, ‘I’ll hit her.’
‘I’m fed up with double-meaning talk!’ she told Bernie.
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yeah! What’s it to us if Bridie smooches or runs after fellows? If you want to know why we’re going to the beach, it’s’ – Madge, on impulse, dredged up a half-shelved dream – ‘to explore that cave! No boys have done it. Nobody. How many kids our age have a chance like that? All those passages. Empty for years! Centuries maybe. Anything could be hidden there. We’ll need’, she recalled, ‘a bicycle lamp and candles to test the oxygen.’
‘What about Pat?’
‘He can wait outside.’
‘You can wait outside if you want. That way if I get into some scrape you can give the alert.’
This echo from the Girls’ Crystal began to work on Bernie.
‘I don’t mind cadging lamps and stuff,’ she wavered. ‘Though if anything happens to you I’ll be the one to be blemt!’
‘Pooh! They’ll all know it couldn’ta been your idea!’
All the way downhill they discussed the cave, astonished suddenly that they had never tackled it before. Madge said she wouldn’t be surprised if the Germans – who were known to have landed money and radio equipment along this coast – hadn’t hidden stuff there during the war. Most had been caught the minute they landed but you never knew.
‘There might be unexploded dynamite,’ said Bernie.
*
The cave, hidden by a curve in the cliff, had to be reached by scrambling past rocks and rock-pools where slime and algae covered dormant crabs. The girls took turns carrying Pat and were puffed by the time they reached the great cleft itself. It was fringed by a growth of greyish marine vegetation and its base was moist with rivulets of reddish ooze.
‘I’m going no further!’ Bernie, an image of country caution, plonked herself on a rock.
‘You can look in, can’t you? Jeez, you might come to the opening!’
‘That’s the stinky part!’
‘Not now it isn’t! The tides wash right in at this time of year!’
Placing their feet on dry spots among the issuing scum, the two approached.
‘Pat,’ his sister told him, ‘you stay where you are!’
He had settled on an apron of dry pebbles between two rocks. Crooning to himself, his blunt, starfish fingers clutched, dropped and again clutched at smooth pastel stones. Sandy-haired, freckled and pale, he was almost invisible among the mica glints of the brownish-whitish rock: a dappled animal returned to its own habitat.
The girls stepped some way into the cave. Its upper vaulting was lost in darkness; the black gullet, piercing the interior of the hill they had just descended, presented no contour. Under the beam of Madge’s lamp, a stretch of inner wall sweated a red liquid which gathered in darker trickles.
‘Blood!’ Bernie whispered.
‘Copper!’ Madge reminded her. ‘It’s a copper mine!’
Growing used to the dark, they were able to make out boulders and, in the far end, a slit of richer, velvety black.
‘The passage!’
‘Shshsh! There’s someone there!’
To one side of the passage were two shapes. On a spread macintosh, a man and a woman lay with their heads tilted towards the interior of the cave. Madge was astonished that she should have missed them before for they were pitching and surging in a repetitious undulation, disagreably similar to the agony of grounded fish. The woman lay uppermost and her skirt, rucked up to her waist, showed a patch of shiny pink.
Madge felt a rush of nausea. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
‘What do you bet it’s Bridie and the milkman! The dirty things! I’m telling Ma!’
‘Come out, willya!’ Madge began to back away.
Bernie caught her arm. ‘Half a mo’! Look at Pat!’ she whispered. ‘Jeepers look at him! Pat!’ she whispered urgently. ‘Come here!’
The child had crept in behind and around them. Now he was half-way across the cave, making for the still jouncing couple.
‘Blawchlee!’ he gurgled happily. ‘Blawdee!’
‘Leave him,’ Madge whispered. ‘They’ll have fits if they think we saw them! Bridie’s fond of him,’ she reassured Bernie when they were outside. ‘We’ll pretend we didn’t see him mooching off.’
‘We could call him!’
‘OK!’
‘Pa-a-at!’
‘Now give them time to send him out.’
The girls sat on a rock. ‘Pa-a-at!’ Bernie yelled again.
Madge found a linty twist of paper in her pocket with a bull’s-eye and acid drop welded together. She tried to prise them apart but they fell, bounced off the rock and rolled into a scummy pool. ‘Hell’ she cried. ‘Everything’s the same today! Spoilt! Everything!’ Biting her nails, she stared into the water where a sea anemone waved delicate fretted tendrils, enfolding its flower-like heart against the danger. ‘Stupid slow thing!’ said Madge. ‘If those sweets had been something dangerous it would be dead by now!’
‘Don’t they shoot poison?’ Bernie wondered. ‘Pat!’ she began to call again. ‘Pa-a-at!’
With a yelp and a scutter of pebbles, Pat appeared at the mouth of the cave; he stumbled on the scum, picked himself up, collected his clumsy body for a last rush and threw himself on Bernie, hugging her knees and gobbling.
She stroked his large, cropped head. ‘Whatsa matter, Pat? It’s OK now. It’s all OK!’
There was a man behind him. Madge stared at him and he stopped to stare back. He had a muddled aghast look. His mouth was like a hole burnt in cloth: unformed, struggling as she had often seen Pat’s. Indeed he had a look of Pat: clumsy, bulbous-faced and as if, when he made a noise, it too might be a meaningless gobble. One hand held up his trousers while the other groped inside them to tuck in the tail of his shirt. He was making a poor fist of it and was not, it occurred to Madge to notice, the milkman. At last he managed to bring out some words: ‘Tan his arse for him!’ he shouted in an English accent. A tripper. ‘Little Peeping Tom….’ But he looked uncertainly around.
‘He’s afraid’, Madge guessed, ‘that we’ve got grown-ups with us!’ She was enraged by the man’s language and appearance. Her throat was knotted with anger and it was some seconds before she managed to yell: ‘Mister, you leave that kid alone! He’s not right! He gets fits!’
‘Shsh! Madge!’ Bernie begged.
‘I’ll say he’s not right!’ the man muttered. ‘My God!’ He began to button his pants and glanced at Pat whose face was buried in Bernie’s lap. ‘You don’t know what he was doing …’
‘And what were you doing, Mister? We could get the guards after you!’
‘Dickie!’ a woman’s voice called from the cave. Another English voice. Not Bridie’s. ‘They’re only kids. No need to get your dander up.’
‘Oh hell!’ The man turned back. ‘Delights of Nature!’ He was muttering as he went into the cave. ‘Have to run into the blooming village idiot….’
‘Dickie!’ the woman’s voice called.
‘The guards!’ Madge yelled after him. ‘Cheek!’ She was boiling with disgust and fury. ‘Chasing Pat like that! Who does he think …’
‘Shut up, will you!’ Bernie whispered. ‘I’m going! Come on, Pat, I’ll give you a piggyback!’
Madge followed them. Half-way up the hill she took Pat from Bernie. He was heavy. ‘Gee,’ she gasped. ‘That fellow was worried!’
Bernie pondered. ‘I wonder what Pat saw? Sights I’ll bet! The English are terrible dirty!’
When they reached the end of the grassy slope, Madge eased Pat off her back and flopped down between two bushes. ‘Got to rest!’ she groaned. ‘I’m puffed!’ She found another bull’s-eye and gave it to Pat. He sat sucking it, his round face further distent by its bulge, his eyes inflamed. The girls looked at him with interest. The afternoon had been a washout. They felt cheated.
‘Think he saw everything?’
‘Must have!’
‘Well, there’s no getting it out of him!’ Madge spoke with a mixture of relief and regret.
Bernie began to giggle. ‘I dunno about that! He might do it for us!’
Madge stood up. ‘Now you’re talking!’ She began to unbuckle Pat’s belt. ‘Pat,’ she soothed, ‘show the game the man was playing! Show us, Pat!’ She gurgled encouragingly. ‘Let’s play, Pat!’ She peeled down the stiff, stained short trousers until she was confronted by his little boy’s body: yellowish, smelling of pee, with bits of fluff tucked under the loose skin.
&nbs
p; ‘Madge! He’ll tell! My Ma understands him! Madge!’
Madge ignored her. ‘Whose idea was it anyway? Spoilsport!’ She whispered to Pat: ‘Come on! Show us! What were they doing? Show!’
Bernie smirked. ‘OK then. I’ll show you something!’ She began tickling the loose flesh between the little boy’s legs.
The child let out a wail, pushed her violently from him and began to shiver again.
‘OK,’ his sister told him. ‘OK! So you don’t want to today! Hold your hair on!’
But Pat was down on his back now kicking with frenzy. Bernie stared at him with wet eye orbs. ‘Oh Madge! He’s having a fit!’ She began to cry. ‘He’ll tell, Madge!’ she moaned. ‘My Ma understands what he says and my Da’ll crease me! It’s all your fault. It’s a mortal sin.’
Madge was indignant. ‘It’s not my fault!’
‘It is so!’
‘Oh for Pete’s sake! There’s a pair of you!’ Madge tried to seize Pat who was writhing. Maybe it was a fit? His face was crab-red and there was spittle on his lips. ‘Pat,’ she begged. ‘Can’t you do anything?’ she shouted to Bernie. ‘At least shut up crying yourself! You’re only encouraging him!’
But Bernie just wept. ‘He’ll go off his head for good!’ she sobbed. ‘The doctor told Ma. If he’s excited. And it’ll be your fault, Madge Heron! All your fault! And what’ll me mother do? Uuughhuu!’ She joined her high shrill wail to Pat’s.
‘SHUT UP!’ Madge was distracted. ‘Both of you! Pat!’ His mouth was more than ever like a black hole burnt in his face. He was slobbering but had stopped howling. She picked him up. ‘Quiet,’ she told him. He peed on her. He must have felt it happening for he began to wail once more. She put him down. ‘Oh God, the filthy thing….’ She felt like crying herself. ‘WILL YOU AT LEAST QUIT CRYING!’ she roared. ‘If anyone comes they’ll think we’re killing the little beast! STOP!’ He wouldn’t. She smacked his face. For a moment he did stop and stared at her, wall-eyed, too much white showing. Then he began to yell worse than ever. She picked up his belt – a proper man’s leather one cut down – and gave him a lash across the legs with it. ‘Now will you stop? Will you, will you?’ She was staring in horror at the pink welt on his poor pale idiot’s body before Bernie got to her. ‘What a beast I am,’ she thought. ‘All beasts!’ Bernie was upon her.
Under the Rose Page 34