Backwater · Chapter 3 (1/3)

III

Miriam propped The Story of Adèle open against the three Bibles on the dressing-table. It would be wasteful to read it upstairs. It was the only storybook amongst the rows of volumes which filled the shelves in the big schoolroom and would have to last her for teatime reading the whole term. The Fleurs de l’Eloquence? Shiny brown leather covered with little gold buds and tendrils, fresh and new although the parchment pages were yellow with age. The Fleurs were so short⁠ ⁠… that curious page signed “Froissart” with long s’s, coming to an end just as the picture of the French court was getting clear and interesting. That other thing, The Anatomy of Melancholy. Fascinating. But it would take so much reading, on and on forgetting everything; all the ordinary things, seeing things in some new way, some way that fascinated people for a moment if you tried to talk about it and then made them very angry, made them hate and suspect you. Impossible to take it out and have it on the schoolroom table for teatime reading. What had made the Pernes begin allowing teatime reading? Being shy and finding it difficult to keep conversation going with the girls for so long? They never did talk to the girls. Perhaps because they did not see through them and understand them. North London girls. So different from the Fairchild family and the sort of girls they had been accustomed to when they were young. Anyhow, they hardly ever had to talk to them. Not at breakfast or dinnertime when they were all three there; and at teatime when there was only one of them, there were always the books. How sensible. On Sunday afternoons, coming smiling into the schoolroom, one of them each Sunday⁠—perhaps the others were asleep⁠—reading aloud; the Fairchild family, smooth and good and happy, everyone in the book surrounded with a sort of light, going on and on and on towards heaven, teatime seeming so nice and mean and ordinary afterwards⁠—or a book about a place in the north of England called Saltcoats, brine, and a vicarage and miners; the people in the book horrible, not lit up, talking about things and being gloomy and not always knowing what to do, never really sure about Heaven like the Fairchild family, black brackish book. The Fairchild Family was golden and gleaming.

The Anatomy of Melancholy would not be golden like The Fairchild Family⁠ ⁠… “the cart was now come alongside a wood which was exceedingly shady and beautiful”; “good manners and civility make everybody lovely”; but it would be round and real, not just chilly and moaning like Saltcoats. The title would be enough to keep one going at teatime. Anat‑omy of Mel‑ancholy, and the look of the close-printed pages and a sentence here and there. The Pernes would not believe she really wanted it there on the table. The girls would stare. When The Story of Adèle was finished she would have to find some other book; or borrow one. Nancie Wilkie, sitting at tea with her back to the closed piano facing the great bay of dark green-blinded window, reading Nicholas Nickleby. Just the very one of all the Dickens volumes that would be likely to come into her hands. Impossible to borrow it when Nancie had finished with it. Impossible to read a book with such a title. David Copperfield was all right; and The Pickwick Papers. Little Dorritt⁠—A Tale of Two Cities⁠—The Old Curiosity Shop. There was something suspicious about these, too.

Adèle⁠—the story of Adèle. The book had hard, unpleasant covers with some thin cottony material⁠—bright lobelia blue⁠—strained over them and fraying out at the corners. Over the front of the cover were little garlands and festoons of faded gold, and in the centre framed by an oval band of brighter gold was the word Adèle, with little strong tendrils on the lettering. There was some secret charm about the book. The strong sunlight striking the window just above the coarse lace curtains that obscured its lower half, made the gilding shine and seem to move⁠—a whole wild woodland. The coarse white toilet-cover on the chest of drawers, the three Bibles, the little cheap mahogany-framed looking-glass, Nancie Wilkie’s folding hand-glass, the ugly gas bracket sticking out above the mirror, her own bed in the corner with its coarse fringed coverlet, the two alien beds behind her in the room, and the repellant washstand in the far corner became friendly as the sun shone on the decorated cover of the blue and gold book.

She propped it open again and began tidying her hair. It must be nearly teatime. A phrase caught her eye. “The old château where the first years of Adèle’s life were spent was situated in the midst of a high-walled garden. Along one side of the château ran a terrace looking out over a lovely expanse of flowerbeds. Beyond was a little pleasaunce surrounded by a miniature wall and threaded by little pathways lined with rose trees. Almost hidden in the high wall was a little doorway. When the doorway was open you could see through into a deep orchard.” The first tea-bell rang. The figure of Adèle flitting about in an endless summer became again lines of black print. In a moment the girls would come rushing up. Miriam closed the book and turned to the dazzling window. The sun blazed just above the gap in the avenue of poplars. A bright yellow pathway led up through the green of the public cricket ground, pierced the avenue of poplars and disappeared through the further greenery in a curve that was the beginning of its encirclement of the park lake. Coming slowly along the pathway was a little figure dressed bunchily in black. It looked pathetically small and dingy in the bright scene. The afternoon blazed round it. It was something left over. What was the explanation of it? As it came near it seemed to change. It grew real. It was hurrying eagerly along, quite indifferent to the afternoon glory, with little rolling steps that were like the uneven toddling of a child, and carrying a large newspaper whose great sheets, although there was no wind, balled out scarcely controlled by the small hands. Its feathered hat had a windblown rakish air. On such a still afternoon. It was thinking and coming along, thinking and thinking and a little angry. What a rum little party, murmured Miriam, despising her words and admiring the wild thought-filled little bundle of dingy clothes. Beastly, to be picking up that low kind of slang⁠—not real slang. Just North London sneering. Goo⁠—what a rum little party, she declared aloud, flattening herself against the window. Hotly flushing, she recognised that she had been staring at Miss Jenny Perne hurrying in to preside at tea.

“We’ve been to Jones’s this afternoon, Miss Jenny.”

Each plate held a slice of bread and butter cut thickly all the way across a household loaf, and the three-pound jar of homemade plum jam belonging to Nancie Wilkie was going the round of the table. It had begun with Miriam, who sat on Miss Jenny’s right hand, and had Nancie for neighbour. She had helped herself sparingly, unable quite to resist the enhancement of the solid fare, but fearing that there would be no possibility of getting anything from home to make a return in kind. Things were so bad, the dance had cost so much. One of Mary’s cakes, big enough for five people, would cost so much. And there would be the postage.

Piling a generous spoonful on to her own thick slice, Nancie coughed facetiously and repeated her remark which had produced no result but a giggle from Charlotte Stubbs who sat opposite to her.

“Eh? Eh? What?”

Miss Jenny looked down the table over the top of her newspaper without raising her head. Her pince-nez were perched so that one eye appeared looking through its proper circle, the other glared unprotected just above a rim of glass.

“Miss Haddie took us to Jones’s this afternoon,” said Nancie almost voicelessly. Miriam glanced at the too familiar sight of Nancie’s small eyes vanishing to malicious points. She was sitting as usual very solid and upright in her chair, with her long cheeks pink flushed and her fine nose white and cool and twitching, her yellow hair standing strongly back from her large white brow. She stabbed keenly in her direction as Miriam glanced, and Miriam turned and applied herself to her bread and jam. If she did not eat she would not get more than two slices from the piled dishes before the others had consumed four and five apiece and brought tea to an end.

“Eh? What for? Why are ye laughing, Nancie?”

“I’m not laughing, Miss Jenny.” Nancie’s firm lips curved away from her large faultless teeth. “I’m only smiling and telling you about our visit to Jones’s.”

Miss Jenny’s newspaper was lowered and her pince-nez removed.

“Eh? What d’ye say? Nonsense, Nancie, you know you were laughing. Why do you say you weren’t? What do you mean? Eh?”

“I’m sorry, Miss Jennie. Something tickled me.”

“Yes. Don’t be nonsensical. D’ye see? It’s nonsensical to say no when you mean yes. D’ye understand what I mean, Nancie? It’s bad manners.” Hitching on her pince-nez, Miss Jenny returned to her paper.

Miriam gave herself up to the luxury of reading Adèle to the accompaniment of bread and jam. She would not hurry over her bread and jam. As well not have it. She would sacrifice her chance of a third slice. She reflected that it would be a good thing if she could decide never to have more than two slices, and have them in peace. Then she could thoroughly enjoy her reading. But she was always so hungry. At home she could not have eaten thick bread and butter. But here every slice seemed better than the last. When she began at the hard thick edge there always seemed to be tender places on her gums, her three hollow teeth were uneasy and she had to get through worrying thoughts about them⁠—they would get worse as the years went by, and the little places in the front would grow big and painful and disfiguring. After the first few mouthfuls of solid bread a sort of padding seemed to take place and she could go on forgetful.

“They’d got,” said Trixie Sanderson in a velvety tone, “they’d got some of their Christmas things out, Miss Jenny.” She cleared her throat shrilly on the last word and toned off the sound with a sigh. Inaudible laughter went round the table, stopping at Miriam, who glanced fascinated across at Trixie. Trixie sat in her best dress, a loosely made brown velveteen with a deep lace collar round her soft brown neck. Her neck and her delicate pale face were shaded by lively silky brown curls. She held her small head sideways from her book with a questioning air. One of her wicked swift brown eyes was covered serenely with its thin lid.

She uttered a second gentle sigh and once more cleared her throat, accompanying the sound with a rapid fluttering of the lowered lid.

Miriam condemned her, flouting the single eye which tried to search her, hating the sudden, sharp dimpling which came high up almost under Trixie’s cheek bones in answer to her own expression.

“Miss Jenny,” breathed Trixie in a high tone, twirling one end of the bow of black ribbon crowning her head.

Beadie Fetherwell, at the far end of the table opposite the tea-tray, giggled aloud.

“Eh? What? Did somebody speak?” said Miss Jenny, looking up with a smile. “Are ye getting on with yer teas? Are ye ready for second cups?”

“Beadie spoke,” murmured Trixie, glancing at Beadie whose neat china doll’s face was half hidden between her cup and the protruding edge of her thatch of tight gold curls.

Miriam disgustedly watched Beadie prolong the irritating comedy by choking over her tea.

It was some minutes before the whole incident was made clear to Miss Jenny. Reading was suspended. Everyone watched while Charlotte Stubbs, going carefully backwards, came to the end at last of Miss Jenny’s questions, and when Miss Jenny rapidly adjudicating⁠—well! you’re all very naughty children. I can’t think what’s the matter with you? Eh? Ye shouldn’t do it. I can’t think what possesses you. What is it, eh? Ye shouldn’t do it. D’you see?⁠—and having dispensed the second allowance of tea with small hesitating preoccupied hands returned finally to her newspaper, it was Charlotte who sat looking guilty. Miriam stole a glance at the breadth of her broad flushed face, at its broadest as she hung over her book. Her broad flat nose shone with her tea-drinking, and her shock of coarse brown-gold hair, flatly brushed on the top, stuck out bushily on either side, its edges lit by the afternoon glow from the garden behind her. The others were unmoved. Trixie sat reading, the muscles controlling her high dimples still faintly active. She and Nancie and Beadie, whose opaque blue eyes fixed the table just ahead of her book with their usual half-squinting stare, had entered on their final competition for the last few slices.

Miriam returned to her book. The story of Adèle had moved on through several unassimilated pages. “My child,” she read, “it is important to remember”⁠—she glanced on gathering a picture of a woman walking with Adèle along the magic terrace, talking⁠—words and phrases that fretted dismally at the beauty of the scene. Examining later chapters she found conversations, discussions, situations, arguments, “fusses”⁠—all about nothing. She turned back to the early passage of description and caught the glow once more. But this time it was overshadowed by the promise of those talking women. That was all there was. She had finished the story of Adèle.

A resounding slam came up from the kitchen.

“Poor cook⁠—another tooth,” sighed Trixie.

Smothering a convulsion, Miriam sat dumb. Her thwarted expectations ranged forth beyond control, feeling swiftly and cruelly about for succour where she had learned there was none.⁠ ⁠… Nancie, her parents abroad, her aunt’s house at Cromer, with a shrubbery, the cousin from South Africa coming home to Cromer, taking her out in a dogcart, telling her she was his guiding star, going back to South Africa; everything Nancie said and did, even her careful hair-brushing and her energetic upright walk, her positive brave way of entering a room, coming out through those malicious pinpoints⁠—things she said about the Misses Perne and the girls, things she whispered and laughed, little rhymes she sang with her unbearable laugh.

… Beadie still shaking at intervals in silent servile glancing laughter, her stepmother, her little half-brother who had fits, her holidays at Margate, “you’d look neat, on the seat, of a bicyka made for two”⁠—Beadie brought Miriam the utmost sense of imprisonment within the strange influence that had threatened her when she first came to Banbury Park. Beadie was in it, was an unquestioning part of it. She felt that she could in some way, in some one tint or tone, realise the whole fabric of Beadie’s life on and on to the end, no matter what should happen to her. But she turned from the attempt⁠—any effort at full realisation threatened complete despair. Trixie too, with a home just opposite the Banbury Empire.⁠ ⁠… Miriam slid over this link in her rapid reflections⁠—a brother named Julian who took instantaneous photographs of girls, numbers and numbers of girls, and was sometimes “tight.”⁠ ⁠…