White Sand and Grey Sand

by Stella Gibbons

  She had intended to be half an hour early at the statue of Koenig Albert in the park near the station, where they were to meet, so that she could sit for a little while enjoying the sight of the strolling Sunday crowds before he arrived, but she had twice been delayed; first, by Aunt Marie, who had caught her just as she was coming out of her bedroom and demanded why, in the name of everything that was decent and respectable, was she going to walk about the streets with her hair done in that extraordinary fashion?

  Ydette, assuming that blend of inward obstinacy and an outwardly soothing manner which she instinctively kept for such contests of will, explained that she had seen a girl with her hair done like that last Sunday at Mass. This silenced Aunt Marie, except for a few receding grumbles like the tide going out about it making her look nearer eighteen than fifteen, but then Aunt Jakoba, sitting in the doorway enjoying the afternoon sun in company with granny, had laughed so loudly and with such an expression that Ydette, fearing something about ‘going with’, had given a hasty kiss to the old woman and hurried away.

  Crossing the plaats, something much better had happened; the little Ida had come running to her across the cobblestones from a group standing round the white car outside the big house, and demanded to know where she was going. Ydette had told her: to the molen; for a walk with a friend, but, on Ida’s asking what the molen was, and being apparently prepared to settle down for a long explanation, Ydette had gently sent her back to her family (they were all there, the father and mother, the tall, kind, young mijnheer and the cross girl, and just then Madame and Mijnheer van Roeslaere and Mijnheer Adriaan came out of the house to join them).

  Ydette had gone on her way, happy because Adèle had given her the smile for which she had been looking; enjoying the feeling of the thick, tidy plume of her hair confined by its broad black velvet ribbon, and falling in a pony-tail to nod gently against the thinly-veiled skin of her back; enjoying the feeling of the familiar streets and towers and roofs lying all about her, smiling dimly and anciently in the sun. She heard the little Ida asking questions of her brother in her loud voice, but she was too far away now to follow the sound of the quick English.

  How dark the shadows were round Mijnheer Adriaan’s eyes! How he had stared! But she did not care; he was part of the happiness of being recognized by the big house, and by its friends.

  She had not been sitting near the statue of Koenig Albert for more than a few minutes, before up came Jooris, his trousers creased as sharply as the blade of a knife and his beret set at such an angle that it was miraculous it did not fall off his head, and she was pleased to be greeted by a very smart salute; she was unaware, as they walked away—with him already talking at a great rate about the health and progress of every animal on the farm, whence he had just come—of the benign glances that followed them. But Jooris did notice (his clear, light blue eyes did not miss much), and the wooden stare with which he met such unspoken comments concealed some amusement; Ydette looked so much older than she was, and he, being now fairly describable as a young man, was of course associated in the public mind with sweethearting. It was a joke, the idea of being sweethearts with Ydette.

  But as they went through the cool green shadows of the chestnut trees which are planted all along the rampart walks, he began to feel a little differently about the joke. It must be the way she had done her hair. He wanted to glance sideways at it as they went along; he couldn’t keep his eyes away for more than a few minutes from the demure, dark, glossy waterfall, bound with that broad ribbon of a different kind of black, and although she was walking beside him in silence, staring ahead into the patterns of leaves and sunshine with the look on her face that she always had when they went for a walk, she seemed almost like another person.

  At last he said: “You’ve done your hair differently today.”

  “Yes,” she answered, turning to him with a little placid surprise, for they were not in the habit of making remarks to one another about their appearance, “I saw a girl at Mass with it done like this, so I bought a quarter of a yard of ribbon at ‘Priba’—you know, that shop in the Steen. Aunt Marie doesn’t like it; she says it’s extraordinary.”

  “I like it,” he said quickly, and before he knew he was saying it, then seemed about to say something more. But he did not; he went straight on to an account of a recent crisis in the short life of one Soldat, a pig at the farm, to which Ydette, who knew all the animals there and the life-history of every one of them, listened with a rather conscious interest.

  Indeed, they both turned to the recital with something not unlike relief: Jooris because he did not like feeling himself compelled to say to Ydette the kind of thing that he said to the girls he and his military friends talked to in cafés in Brussels and in Oostende; and Ydette because, for one incredible and dismaying instant, she had thought that she detected in his stare, in the tone of his voice, and what he had said—the unwelcome and surprising presence of—gaan met. But when he went on to tell her about poor Soldat, she gradually became certain, or almost certain, that everything was all right.

  It took them nearly three-quarters of an hour, at a comfortable pace, to walk round the wide quarter-circle of the southern ramparts from the Sint Janshospital almost to the Kruispoort, and then they made their way towards the First Mill, with the object of taking a look, from the modest eminence on which it is situated, across the city.

  The mill that stands, idle now but famous, on that part of the ramparts called the Kruisvest is one of two survivors, all that remain out of twenty-four that once stood round about the city and ground the grain for its bread. From beside it, the greater part of the roofs of Bruges can be seen, and as there are but few shops in the ancient quarter of the town which is situated immediately beneath it, the long, silent, cobbled streets that wind away into the maze of softly-coloured old houses seem to extend into the heart of a city concerned only with beautiful, ancient and useless ceremonies; such as the sounding every now and again of some bell with sides worn thin and note made tremulous by the passing of centuries, and the passive spreading out of red, grey or silvery corroded roofs to the great face of the sky.

  While Jooris was helping Ydette to climb the mound where the mill stands, from one side, another party was hastening up it from the other.

  “Will you stop bellowing, Dogfight?” Christopher Ruddlin was saying exasperatedly. “I’ve told you why I want to catch them; I want to film Ydette, and if she hears you roaring about it she mayn’t want me to. She and the boy-friend are only just on the other side there; it’s the greatest luck we’ve managed to get here at the same time as they have, and now will you kindly shut up?”

  “Look, Dogfight,” Nora put in soothingly (the prospects for the afternoon were quite bad enough, without bickering being added), “you asked me what med-iæ-val meant the other day—I can’t explain it to you now——”

  “Why can’t you ex-plain it to me now?”

  “Because I can’t, I tell you, there isn’t time—but there’s a mediæval city for you. It must have looked just like that,” nodding towards the view becoming ever more panoramic as they climbed the mound, “in the Middle Ages. Mustn’t it?” to her brother.

  “I expect so. Oh good, there are some other people up there as well; I shall want them.”

  “Oh damn, I should say,” observed Nora, holding down the skirts of her new yellow dress from the assaults of the wind.

  “I am not you, and I’ve told you hundreds of times that places in films are only backgrounds for people.”

  “But I should have thought that as you’re making a film about Bruges, the places were at least as important as the people in this case, because, speaking architecturally——”

  “It isn’t a film about Bruges, that’s only an excuse to get some shots of Ydette, and if Adriaan doesn’t turn bloody-minded and refuse to let me use his projector, I shall show them to you before we go home—I’ve suggested to him that we give the van R.s a film show one evening just before we do g
o—and then you’ll see.”

  “I know who you mean when you say the van R.s, you mean the van Roeslaeres,” Ida said coldly, and went on, “It was me—I found out she was—she was—coming to the molen, I know you knew she was going, too, but if I hadn’t asked her this after noon where she was going—I mean, we shouldn’t have—I mean, because you wouldn’t have known this afternoon, I mean, at that very minute, she was going, I mean——”

  Christopher’s gesture, as they reached the summit of the slope and came face to face with the pair they were trailing, was so furious that she stopped abruptly.

  “Hullo,” said he heartily, smiling at Ydette, then looked at once at Jooris with a friendly, open glance, “you having a Sunday afternoon walk? So are we. Lovely day, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Monsieur,” she answered softly. But her face was alight with pleasure, and Ida went over to her and took her hand.

  After she had spoken, there was a silence in the group lasting for perhaps half a minute. No-one seemed to know what to say next; the wind blew with a kind of boisterous playfulness into the young faces, and the ancient roofs glowed in the light of the sun or darkened beneath the passing shadows of the clouds. Nora was looking at Ydette: for an instant a feeling which was unfamiliar came over her as she met that soft stare; a kind of desire to protect, to share something … an odd feeling. Then it had gone; she felt nothing but impatience, and distaste with the situation.

  She avoided looking directly at Jooris, partly because of her disapproval of Ydette’s going about with him, but even more because his air of youthful manliness, his look of confidence and health, embarrassed her: she was not accustomed to the society of youths whose masculine qualities were more noticeable than their intellectual and social ones. But for an instant or so she felt his eyes resting upon her face and, when they left it again, she was glowing with irritation.

  “You’re just the people we wanted to see,” Christopher was saying lightly; “I’m making a film about Bruges”—he held up his cine-camera—“and I want you to be in it—with some other people, of course—perhaps those ladies”—lowering his voice and nodding slightly towards two stout parties wearing top-heavy hats who had paused and were staring idly at the group—“would let me film them. You’ll be in it, won’t you?” winningly, to Ydette.

  She did not answer at once, and Nora and Ida were just wondering whether they were to witness the unprecedented sight of Chris having to ask somebody twice to do something for him, when Jooris demanded, “What’s he saying?” in the Flemish in which he was most at home, and she explained. Shyness and excitement (the friends, the friends of Madame van Roeslaere!) had made her incapable of answering, and she was glad to have a moment to recover.

  “All right, if you want to. I don’t mind,” said Jooris, when he understood what was being proposed, “but I mustn’t miss my train, mind.”

  “No, no, of course not. But you won’t miss it … it won’t take long, I’ve seen the American tourists making films like this, it isn’t big ones, you know, it’s only the little ones, that rich people show in their houses.” She turned to Christopher and nodded, smiling with pleasure—and, just for a moment, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Jooris was also looking at her, and oddly enough, as Nora’s eyes moved from her brother’s face to the other boy’s, she experienced no conviction that her fears about Christopher were justified. The two young men were not wearing the same expression; Nora’s only experience of the love-look in action was on the faces of Juniors suffering from a ‘rave’ at Claregates, but there was nothing like that on Chris’ face. About the young soldier, she was, however, not quite so sure.

  Nevertheless, when Christopher turned briskly to Nora asking if she would try her French on the two Mrs Noahs in the top-heavy hats, with a request to be allowed to include them in the film, her mouth was sufficiently down at the corners to make him file away, in that corner of his mind not at work on the filming of Ydette, a note that there was a ticking-off coming up for Mistress Nora.

  “Can I be in it, can I, please?”

  “No, Dogfight, I can take you whenever I like, I’ve got hundreds of you already, and I’ve told you,” lowering his voice, “it’s Ydette I really want; the others are just an excuse. Now go right over there and stand in that corner out of the way and stay put and,” in a burst of generosity because his own wish was about to be gratified, “I’ll buy you a really smashing cake for tea.”

  “Are we going to have tea? Oh, super! But Mummy says tea isn’t ne-ces-sary when you’re abroad; it’s ter-ri-fy-ing-ly expensive, she says.”

  “Never mind all that now—and don’t come out with it when you hear me suggest tea later—this is my affair and I’m paying. Now”—slightly raising his voice—“are you ready? All I want you to do is just to stand over there and look out at the city. That’s all. Don’t,” he added hastily, “for heaven’s sake try to act or anything, will you? Well?” turning enquiringly to his sister, who had been haughtily speaking exquisite French to the two Mrs Noahs, “No luck?”

  “None at all,” she said, indicating the slow departure of the two, with heads lowered as if they were cows retreating from a terrier; “I think they’re like savages, they probably think that if you make a film-image of them it’ll cause them to withah away … haven’t you got enough without them?”

  “I want some contrast and I don’t want Ydette to feel self-conscious—oh, splendid, she’s got someone. All right, off you go.”

  While he was speaking, Ydette had gathered in three small girls who had wandered up to the summit of the hillock, all with fair plaits twisted round their heads and all wearing short check dresses, accompanied by their little white dog, and was explaining to them what they were wanted to do. Then, followed by Jooris, who had his hands in his pockets and seemed rather amused, she went with a serious, obedient expression on her face over to the corner which Christopher had indicated. While the little girls made their dog dance, and Jooris stared very hard at the distant tower of the Jerusalem Church as if warning it to behave itself, she looked steadfastly away across the roofs of the city.

  There was no sound but the soft whirring of the camera; the wind blew across the gulf filled with spires and clouds and light, bringing its hint of the distant sea, and Ydette forgot that she was being put into a film, as she looked steadfastly at the distant, severe and watchful face of the Person in the peaked hat. Nora, lounging bored and yet reluctantly interested in her distant corner, looked across at her as she stood quietly in the brilliant light, and the thought went idling through her mind that she reminded her of someone. But she could not think whom.

  The curiously intent little moment, which seemed to mean something for the Ruddlins and for Ydette, was suddenly broken by a mutter from Jooris: “How about that ice-cream? it’ll be getting cold.” Ydette turned quickly at this and laughed out loud, and Nora heard Christopher, who had moved nearer for a close-up, give a kind of surprised little grunt of satisfaction.

  “Thank you very much,” he said, turning to them both with a bow and a smile, when the little girls had been told very firmly by Ydette, on his instructions, that there was absolutely no chance of their ever seeing the film and had gone giggling away down the slope. “I think that ought to come out quite well. Now how about some tea?” He looked at his watch. “It’s just four. I ‘feel like a cuppa’; how about you?” to Nora, who wagged a listless head in fulfilment of a promise to ‘back him up’ in anything that he might suggest, which he had extracted from her earlier that afternoon, and——

  “Oh yes!” cried Ida, acting innocence like mad. Ydette turned to Jooris and explained what was now proposed, then looked at him in eager enquiry.

  “Do you want to go with them?” he asked. He felt rather disappointed, because he liked to have her to himself when they went for a walk, but if she wanted to go with these English people—and they seemed all right, as tourists went—then he would go, to please her.

  She said nothing, but her nod
expressed how much she did want to. All right, then, said Jooris very quickly in Flemish, they would go, but he was going to pay for their tea and he would see to it that she got her ice-cream and he would pay for that, too. He wasn’t a beggar, and Belgium wasn’t a nation of beggars either, though she had had to take goods from the Americans, and he wasn’t taking any money from the English, not he, and so on … and while he was talking, his eyes, with their expression of honesty and hardness so characteristic that it might have been shining up from the very bedrock of his character, rested with a slight decline of amiability upon the face of the hopefully waiting Christopher. Yes, oh yes, thank you, Jooris, that would be all right, said Ydette, and turned smiling to the young Englishman. Yes, they would be pleased to come.