Bilgewater

by Jane Gardam

  Aileen went into hysterics and Grace turned her head aside for a minute. “Honestly,” she said, “Bilgewater—honestly!”

  “I don’t see anyone going, that’s all,” I said. “It’s smelly and cold there. The Old Boys are getting on—some of them.”

  “Never met any meself,” said Beryl. “I’m only going since it’s the pier. I go every Saturday.”

  “You’re going!”

  I couldn’t help it. She’s so huge and greasy. You can tell she never washes her tights. “My father’s going,” I said.

  It nearly gave them apoplexy.

  “Thank goodness anyway,” I said, “that I am not,” and I stuck to this through the next couple of weeks with unshakeable firmness. “Oh go on, Bilgewater,” they said—almost half the form. It was the big joke. Hair, shoes, orange cardigan, I was still the big joke. Everybody far and near had decided to go to the St. Wilfrid’s Dance since it was at the pier and not in the ancient cloisters.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t dance. I hate the pier.”

  “Go on. It’s great.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s—sad,” I said.

  “Go on—cheer it up then.” They were all on about it, morning, noon and night. Dinner time. On the bus. Whom they were going with. They had even stopped talking about the exams.

  “And that shows something,” said Paula. “It’s a wise idea to have it now. Gets their minds cleared.”

  “I’ll keep mine cluttered then,” I said. “I’m not going.”

  “Well I am,” said Paula. “I love a dance.”

  “At the pier!”

  “Snob,” she said. “Watch your motives. For all the world a Victorian aunt now. Like your mother. She’d never have gone to the pier.”

  I thought of the hat brim, the delicate chin, the string of amber beads in the photograph. Ladies in amber beads used to organise the fancy dress balls when I sat on the tip-up velvet seats. I all at once remembered. I remembered the way they used to sail about, these ladies holding glass ice-dishes, poising their tea spoons high. The picture was graceful and pleased me.

  “I don’t know, Marigold. I don’t know,” said Paula in a voice all earthy and tired. “I don’t know what to make of you.”

  On the day, she ran into my room about five where I was doing some Applied at my table and said, “You are going to come, my lover, aren’t you?”

  “I told you. No thanks.”

  “Oh Marigold.”

  “It’s no good. I’d loathe it.”

  “How do you—That Grace is going. And your hair’s lovely just now.”

  “Very interesring,” I said. “The sudden revelation to Paula of the loveliness of Bilgewater’s hair.”

  “I always told you it would be—”

  “Oh, shut up,” I said. “It’s back nearly where it was anyway. The fringe is grown out. I’m not going.”

  At eight the phone rang and after they’d all bellowed and yelled I answered it. “Are you ready yet?” asked Grace.

  “I’m not going. I told you.”

  “Oh don’t be silly.” Her voice went up high and Dartington and I could see her grand and noble profile in my mind, the excellent, easy, well-bred sort of way she crossed her legs and leaned back holding the phone, “I’ll call for you.”

  “I’m working.”

  “Jack Rose was asking if you—”

  “I AM WORKING.”

  “We’ll both call for you.”

  I put down the phone and sat down at the desk. I couldn’t concentrate one bit. There was a knock at the door and in came father.

  “Well now.”

  “Hullo.”

  “Aha.”

  Silence.

  “Well now, Marigold, what about this dance?”

  I turned and it was a fearful sight—a bow tie. Hair smoothed down. Dinner jacket brought over with the zeppelins. A sort of cheery grin.

  “Save us and help us—”

  “Now now my dear.”

  “We humbly beseech Thee Good Lord.”

  “Marigold—it seems a pity. Just as you’re beginning to have a few friends and looking so nice.”

  “I’ve a lot to do.”

  “You don’t need to,” he said. “There is time yet. You have covered the ground. You can over-prepare for Oxbridge you know. Cambridge espedally doesn’t just rely on the papers. It’s the interview that counts.”

  “If the papers aren’t right you don’t get an interview. If you’re a girl anyway.”

  “Ah—I shouldn’t worry. You know—” he screwed up his face and bent over my work. “Greek to me,” he said after a bit and then laughed. “I wonder why you didn’t choose Classics. I could have helped then. But you will be all right. That nice Miss Box—”

  “Bex.”

  “Bex. It’s an unusual name. Charming woman though.”

  “Bex!!”

  “Jack Rose asked me this evening if you were coming,” he tried once more, at the door. “It’ll be very quiet all alone here.”

  “Go.”

  He went.

  “Why couldn’t he have asked me himself then?” I said out loud five minutes later. Asking Grace about me. Asking Father. When Paula’s trumpet calls had ceased and the front door of the House slammed to, I got up and went and looked out of the window. All the dormitory windows of the Boys’ Side were dark and silent. The winter garden, rose bushes like barbed wire, was empty under the moon.

  “Not as though he found handing out invitations exactly difficult. He’s pretty good at forgetting them afterwards.” I dropped the curtain and went and looked at the grate for a while.

  “‘My mother used to know your mother.’ Oh splendid. Likely story.”

  I went on with the Applied for a while and ate an apple and some bread I had around and pulled open a tin of Coca Cola and sloshed it about, listening to it inside. I did a bit more work. Then I walked around and went to the piano and played a few bars of Bach and stopped. It was intensely, eerily quiet, the great House, so used to the noise of boys and Paula, was still as something undiscovered in the Valley of the Kings.

  Good night for a burglar, I thought, and then I heard a noise outside the door on the landing. It was the noise of slow and rather thoughtful breathing.

  We haven’t a dog. It certainly wasn’t one of the cats. The cook and housekeeper were away and all the junior boys, too young for the Old Boys’ Dance, had been sent over to School House where the young boarders of the whole school were being hoarded together playing billiards and horsing about with an old School House matron who was about a hundred and twelve and her dancing days well done.

  “Hullo?” I called.

  There was no reply but the breathing went on and there was a creak outside as of someone easing their feet. I went over to the door and locked it and stood by it, gazing at the panels as if they would turn to glass in a minute and I would see through.

  I said, “Hullo?” again and thought I heard someone say “Bilge,” quietly.

  Then I went all hot up the back of my neck and tears came into my eyes and my hands began to shake. I leaned my forehead on the door panel and unlocked it again. I thought, He hasn’t forgotten. He hasn’t. It’s him. He’s come to fetch me. “Jack?” I said.

  But it was Terrapin standing outside my room, very solemn in the shadows.

  “Why’re you here?”

  “Why’re you?”

  “I’m working.”

  “Oh.”

  We stood in the great silent building looking into each other’s eyes. His round blue ones were blank and rather frightening. How he had changed from long ago.

  “D’you want to come in?”

  “I just came to see you.�
��

  “The Boys’ Side’s all dark.”

  “I was—I wasn’t there. I saw your light.”

  “My father—” I said, and surprised myself as when I had told him about Rose’s queer invitation to stay, “my father, of all people has gone to the dance. At the pier!”

  “The pier,” he said again. He said it slowly. “A dance on the pier.” I knew he had the same feeling about it as I had.

  “D’you not want to go? With him there?”

  “No,” I said. “Yes.”

  “Come with me.”

  “D’you want to go?”

  “No.”

  “Then—?”

  “You should. You should.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because it is damaging for you to be so much alone.”

  “And you?”

  “I—” he said. He looked round my room over my shoulder. “This is a dull place,” he said. “And I’m not alone really. Or at any rate it doesn’t matter.” He pushed me aside and walked all round my room, touched the piano keys, touched a box, the picture of my father, looked without enthusiasm at Winston Churchill. At the window he lifted the curtain and looked across at the Boys’ Side. “I see it,” he said, “I suppose as you do.” He looked over at the row of tall Georgian windows for a long time, then down at the stark garden. “Oh Bilge, Bilge,” he said.

  I watched him—every spare bone of him and almost wept because I was longing so much for someone else—someone confident and rounded and cheery. When Terrapin turned, his cheek bones seemed to stick out like set-squares.

  “Let’s go to the pier.”

  “I couldn’t. I couldn’t.”

  “I don’t mean to the dance, fool. Let’s go to the pier. Get a coat.”

  I was in the orange cardigan, skirt and the shoes.

  “You haven’t a coat.”

  “I never feel cold. Get a coat.”

  There was one of Paula’s or someone’s just inside the front door and I slung it on and we set off. He loped and swooped ahead through the garden and down the quiet High Street, past the Town Clock and along me promenade. The pier was at the far end of it, a mile away. The cliffs of the treacherous coast lifted their heads beyond but unseen here behind the blue glare of the Bingo parlours and fruit machines and bumpum shops. After some distance Terrapin striding ahead of me stopped and pounced across the road, through the fishing boats, down a stone slope and on to the sands and became at once invisible in the darkness. I followed but he had quite disappeared.

  “Terrapin,” I called, “Terrapin.”

  The sands—great white sands beneath the moon and breathtaking blue sky with bluer clouds sliding fast over the stars—the sands were firm and brilliant under my feet. They were wide and empty and I trudged over them until after ages—they are famous sands, enormously wide and hard—I reached the edge of the whitening sea.

  I watched it. Now and then again it approached and became transformed into curled white foam, ceased at my feet and withdrew. Far, far away towards Norway was the long dark blue line of the horizon.

  “Terrapin.”

  At an angle far across the sands his or someone’s figure slid away and in the bright moonlight I scurried after it. We drew nearer to the promenade again and after a time the jagged and unlikely slope of the pier rose up before us—or rather before me because Terrapin’s figure had gone again somewhere under the black geometry of spars. I went in after him and stood among the big crossed metal rafters—the rush of the sea on my left and the landsounds on my right. I looked up and saw that I was under the pier floor—long gold lines of light stretched like pencil strokes above my head, and I could hear the beat of the band. There was an occasional shriek and laugh but otherwise the silence under the pier was the silence of the dungeon. And Terrapin was gone.

  I walked under the pier and then up the steps to the sea-wall and round to the entrance. There were two turnstiles, the fish and chip papers aforementioned and in abundance, and a little ticket office in the middle with a light on, but not a bright one, and a firmly shut door. I looked in at the ticket office and wondered whatever to do next. Terrapin must be somewhere.

  The office was minute—so small that it looked like an upright coffin or a box a doll might arrive in for a birthday, if one were given such things. One looked for strings to hold the doll upright. It was a mummy-case but there was no mummy inside it. Instead there was a cup of tea on the little shelf where one slid one’s ticket or money across—old-looking tea with a thickish surface. There was a young woman in the box but she was turned away and bent over and she was turned away because she was heaving at a huge fat woman who had fallen on the floor.

  Not even on the floor. She had no opportunity to fall even satisfyingly upon the floor. She had fallen half way to it by stooping, perhaps by trying to reach her sandwiches from a bag, perhaps by trying to ease off her shoes. Like a great, stuffed draught-excluder or bolster she was bent over with her face turned up to me with a stupid and yet cunning look, and the younger woman had her arms round the poor thing’s waist and was giving vigorous and rather desperate heaves. “Mother’s stuck,” she said. “Eeeh dear!”

  “Er—can I do anything?”

  “Put it on the shelf.”

  “I beg your—”

  “Put the ticket money on the shelf. I’Il get her up directly.”

  “Can’t I come round and—if I could get the door open—”

  The older woman gave a huge wheeze at this point and still turned her great face up towards me. The sound was like air escaping from a rubber ring. One waited for her to flatten.

  “Git on,” said the woman, “I’ll manage. She’s had a fall. Fifty p. if you’re not a ticket-holder.”

  “Pfffffffffffffffffff,” said the bolster woman and suddenly collapsed out of sight. “Eeeh dear,” said the other, “father said don’t tek ’er. She’ll not be comfortable he said. She said it was just for company, but eeh dear she’s gettin’ dreadful. It’s a funny thing but wherever she goes, things happen!”

  I flung down some money by the cup of tea and rushed through the swing doors and round the side of the kiosk into the great battery of the band. There were people all around me all dressed up with glasses in their hands, laughing and leaning against each other. There was no one I knew—no Terrapin.

  “Terrapin!” I shrieked and looked round for some way of getting at the back door of the ticket office. If I could find it, if I could only fling it open and let the fat woman roll out! I was terrified, shocked by the great person, doubled up, wheezing, watching me with such a curious, animal eye, like the eye of fate.

  “Bilgie!”

  “Oh please, please—” It was of course, and thank God, Jack Rose.

  “Rose, Rose—” I said. “Oh something horrible—”

  “Why, Bilgie.”

  “Oh horrible—in the kiosk. There’s a woman ill. Suffocating. Oh, help her.”

  “Kiosk, Bilgie?”

  “The ticket office. Oh quick. Quick.” I began to pull at doors here and there—a cloakroom, a W.C., a rather dreary kitchen where people were arranging lettuce on plates. “Oh Rose there’s something horrible.”

  With me running behind he began to clear a path through the couples in the foyer and out again on to the promenade. “Where?” he asked.

  “The ticket office. The kiosk.”

  We looked in. The younger woman was sitting with her knitting. The great bolster with the sideways face was gone.

  “Your mother!” I cried. “Is she all right?”

  “Fifty p.,” said the knitter, “if you’ve not got tickets.”

  “But where’s your mother? She was stuck on the floor.”

  The woman gawped.

  “You said she was having an attack—”

  “Eh?”

  “Now come
along back, Bilgie,” said Jack Rose, “come along now.”

  “But she was. She was terrible.”

  “Imagination Bilgie. Come on.”

  “She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move.”

  “Come on in and join Grace and everyone. Your father’s here. Marvellous evening.” I noticed how small his eyes were again and how confident his face. There was a beer glass in his hand at a bit of a tilt.

  “She was suffocating.”

  “Come on Bilge.” He staggered a bit at the door and his hand—great big hand—fell heavily across the back of my hips. It was pretty hot.

  “You don’t understand,” I wept (and nor did I) and I fled through the wooden paintless foyer of the pier and out on to the dance floor where the world had run mad. I saw Paula with her hair bobbing like Africa and Mrs. Gathering in a great deal of dark silk, Uncle HB at arm’s length and in ecstasy with Grace, faces, faces—Miss Bex—Miss Bex—revolving in a long red pinafore—and Aileen Sykes pressed cheek to cheek against—oh no! oh no! Cheek to skin against Terrapin.

  There was a door half way down the ballroom labelled FIRE EXIT with two great bars across it saying push. I stretched out my hands like a sleep-walker and made for it, running, reached it, pushed and exploded into the night, on to the deck of the pier out of the bedlam and into peace. I leaned back as the doors clattered shut behind me, clutched the anonymous coat round myself and wept.

  But why? I thought after a bit, why am I so unhappy? An old fat nasty woman stuck in a box and Terrapin dancing with Aileen Sykes. What’s it got to do with me? It doesn’t matter. I drifted along the pier, down to the warning chain. After a bit I heard footsteps behind me on the narrow white boards so I dipped under the chain and went on down the pier on to the dangerous part and to where the wood ended and the broken spars began.

  The footsteps came on and so I went on, too, until the pier ended in the two spiked horns of metal that ended in muddle and devastation where the ship had snapped them to pieces. The bars underfoot here were wide apart and the sea below was silken, swelling and very near.

  To the side was a rickety spiral of metal, a sort of staircase or companionway twisting down towards the water—a place perhaps for boarding a boat long ago, a rescue point—somewhere they had set out to look for the poor men in the zeppelins—a place for descent to big boats that need deep water and for the disentanglement of lines. When I reached the head of this staircase that ended in the water I stopped.