White Sand and Grey Sand

by Stella Gibbons

  He thought how much more graceful were her manners than those of the average Belgian peasant girl, and reflected with complacency that this might be due to some strain of the finer blood suspect in the mystery of her origins; that unknown heredity which was responsible for the close grain of her skin and the length of her limbs and the delicacy of her features. He also thought, with something like glee, how well all this would sound in the advance publicity some years hence … except that it was rather too like something cooked up by Publicity anyway; it was perhaps a little too typical of a new film-star’s origins. But everything was going beautifully, so far, and as he gathered his party under his wing and led them down the steps in the direction of ‘a decent place’ which he said he knew, his charming face was alight with satisfaction and goodwill towards all the world.

  But in a moment the expression became a little modified. There was Nolly, at it again, pumping and patronizing Ydette; do you go to a Church School or a State one? what class are you in? dear me; how much longer are you going to stay at school? indeed; what are you going to take up when you leave? … Take up … good God, thought Christopher, wasn’t there enough talked and thought about Education in the Ruddlin household all the year round, without carrying it over into the Long Vac? … and couldn’t Nolly see that Ydette was the one kind of girl for whom education, in Nolly’s sense, would never have the faintest importance?

  But Nolly would never believe that such a girl could exist (thanks to that new-fashioned feminist type, Hilary Perowne, whose friendship was having such a painful influence on his sister), and the clearly enunciated words in the superior young voice continued to echo back from the old, quiet houses on either side of the cobbled street, which seemed to have fallen asleep from sheer boredom while listening to it. As the party marched on through the quiet quarter near the Jerusalem Church, Christopher could see the young soldier looking at Nora as if she were some kind of a curiosity—and God knew that she would be, unless Oxford knocked the nonsense out of her and that wasn’t very likely. And in spite of that dress having cost quite a lot (he had heard his mother saying so) in a smart shop in Bruges, it looked somehow all wrong on Nolly. But then her clothes always did.

  His irritation was increased by her behaviour while they were all choosing their cakes in the tea-shop. “What a very ‘elaborate confection’ you’ve chosen,” to Ydette, “are you in the happy position of not having to worry about dieting; alas”—(alas, fathead!)—“everything that I eat goes straight to fat, so I’m just going to choose this very modest and meagre little portion,” with two ill-kept fingers hovering over the dreary biscuit which she finally selected. He was so irritated by all this that he said to his younger sister, who was carrying away a magnificent mound of pastry and cream, “Take two, Dogfight; yes, go on, I mean it,” and met her awed “Oh, thank you, Chris-to-pher, super,” with a smile of approval.

  Ydette was in such a state of dreamy pleasure—caused almost as much by the pretty surroundings as by the company she was in—that she had not understood what Mejuffrouw Nora had been saying, in those long words she always used. But she was meekly pleased to be taken back into favour again. She did not wonder why this had happened, but, if she had, she would have concluded that it was because Mijnheer Christopher had been taking the film. He would not have done that if he had not liked her, and of course the sister would do as her brother did.

  “This is better than Fortes,” announced Ida suddenly. She had been taking a long stare, while making the most of her enormous baba au rhum, round the light lilac-coloured walls of the shop, the white woodwork and the floor tiled in black and white, and enjoying the coolness and shade in which the customers sat while being comfortably aware of sunlight and radiance outside, “I like it better than Fortes.”

  “What, better than your beloved Fortes at Brighton, that you said was the best place you’d ever been to? Oh Dogfight, Dogfight!” and Nora shook her head at her sister reproachfully.

  “What’s the mat-ter? What have I done?” demanded Ida, ceasing to eat, and beginning to turn red, while she stared indignantly.

  “Nothing, nothing, it’s all right,” Christopher said impatiently.

  “Is Nora cross because I said I liked it better than Fortes? I do like it better. I shall like it better if——”

  “Yes, yes, all right; for heaven’s sake shut up; Nolly didn’t mean it. Ydette,” Christopher turned to her authoritatively, “I’m probably going to show this film at Madame van Roeslaere’s house before we go home on the thirteenth. Would she let you come and see it, do you think? I’d like you to come.” He paused, for just a fraction of a second; the eyes of everyone, even Ida, were fixed upon him with considerably more interest than any of the previous conversation—which had been confined to a few grinning remarks about Army-life exchanged between Jooris and Christopher, and comments upon the cakes and the weather—had evoked, and he was wondering just how much he must watch his step—“I’m very keen for you to see it, you see, because I think you’re the kind of—well, I think you’ll probably film very well.” (That was clumsy; but all the eyes were beginning to make him nervous.)

  She was leaning forward a little, looking at him with that gentle, bright, soft stare that he already could see described by critics all over the world as her ‘characteristic look’; setting a new type for girls to follow in Mexico City and Birmingham and Durban. But it was quite plain that she did not understand what he had said.

  “I mean you’re very photogenic,” he said, conscious now of the young soldier’s eyes fixed upon him very keenly and using a word, out of nervousness, which she certainly would not understand, “you’ve got the kind of face that can be photographed perfectly for the films—the very best kind of face for—a film actress,” he ended up, with an excited laugh that did not, he felt, make his remark sound any the less surprising. But he couldn’t help that: he was excited, and, he believed, with excellent reason.

  “My brother thinks that you could become a star—a vedette—on the films,” said Nora suddenly in French, wanting to fulfil her promise about ‘backing him up’, and she leant towards Ydette, “He thinks you could become a very great star indeed; one of the greatest. Would you like that?” She tried to make her voice soft, alluring and winning.

  But the effect, if there was one, was spoiled. Jooris laughed a loud and disbelieving laugh, got smartly up from the table, looked at his wrist-watch and said something to Ydette. She looked at him slowly, as if she did not see him, and did not answer. He spoke again in an impatient tone, still laughing, and Ydette turned to Christopher.

  “He must go,” she said, “he has to be back—with the other soldiers.” She got up from her chair, with an air of taking her own departure for granted that silenced Christopher’s protest, and Jooris began to make stiff little bows round the company as he spoke his farewells.

  “Will you be able to come and see the film, Ydette?” Christopher was determined that the party should not break up without getting from her a definite promise.

  “I do not know, Monsieur.” She looked tranquilly at him, and he could not be sure whether she wanted to see herself in the film or not—much less whether Nora’s remarks about being a star had sunk in.

  “Well, you can ask Madame van Roeslaere, can’t you?” he went on, really brusquely, “or shall I?”

  “I will ask her, Ydette,” said Nora soothingly; “I’m sure she’ll say ‘yes’, so don’t worry about it any more … and as soon as we know which evening, we’ll let you know. There, that’s quite clear, isn’t it?” (It is indeed, she thought as she finished her sentence, and now have I “backed him up” enough, for one afternoon?)

  Ydette only said “Thank you, mademoiselle”, and then everybody became taken up with an argument in broken English with Jooris, about paying for the Belgian guests’ tea; it did not last long, and both the young men were perfectly polite about it, but Christopher was quite surprised and not pleased to find, at the end of it, that he had accepted
a little pile of coins.

  “So far, so good—I suppose,” he said, leaning back in his chair to watch the two walking quickly away across the cobblestones, between the houses now softly reddened and gilt by the light of the declining sun, “They’re nice children.”

  “She is. I thought him rather a lout,” Nora said; whatever private world those two might be walking away into—and it did look as if they were walking into one, and as if they shared it—she was certain of one thing—that it was a world both crude and narrow.

  “Oh lord, Nolly,” her brother said impatiently.

  “Well, I did think he was one. He laughed when I said you thought she could be a star—he probably understands quite a lot of English, they all do here, it seems—and that will put her off even considering the idea, if she’s—keen on him.”

  “Oh well, I shall have to deal with quite a lot of family opposition, I expect, in three or four years’ time. But I shall simply play up to the old girls’ greed. They’re bound to be money-mad; peasants always are, and if they think Ydette’s going to make a lot, they won’t be so set against the idea.”

  “Have you got it all planned out?” she asked casually; she thought that, having backed him up, he might at least take her a little more into his confidence about the scheme, which seemed to her (and she had some difficulty in concealing the fact) as wild as it was unlikely ever to take shape in action.

  “Of course I haven’t ‘got it all planned out’. How could I? when I don’t even know yet whether I’ll get my degree, and that’s going to have such a big effect on what sort of job I’m going to get. But I do know that if Ydette were handed over to the right people, and had the right grooming and production, she could be made into a very big star indeed. I’m certain she could. I’ve got a hunch about it—and you know that my hunches are usually right.” Nora nodded reluctantly. “And I’m absolutely determined to keep in touch with her for the next year or so. I’m not going to lose sight of her. Adriaan can write and tell me how she’s getting on (of course, being Adriaan, he’ll probably think I’m interested for just the obvious reason, but I can’t help that). And one of us ought to write to her, too, fairly frequently.”

  He turned to Ida, who, ignoring the conversation, had been carefully scraping her fork round and round the surface of a plate from which every trace of cream had disappeared some moments since, and silently sucking it, “You can do that, Dogfight. You’d like to write to Ydette, wouldn’t you? Well, wouldn’t you?” impatiently, as she stared at him in bilious silence, and at last she vaguely nodded.

  “It seems a pity …” Nora began slowly, looking down the length of the quiet street where the two had disappeared, “… to think of her leaving school, and spending the rest of her life between helping at that dreary little shop and with those touristy bathing-tents, or perhaps stifling away packing orchids for old van Roeslaere for about two pounds ten a week … she ought to be trained for something … get a really good job … perhaps go abroad …”

  “She is abroad; what do you mean?” demanded Ida loudly, coming suddenly to life.

  “That’s a very old joke, Dogfight (no, I can not explain it now, I want to talk to Chris) … but perhaps she’ll marry. She might marry Adriaan,” she ended, with an uncharacteristic giggle; the picture was irresistible.

  “Marry Adriaan? What on earth are you getting at? There isn’t anything going on there, is there, for God’s sake? That would just about … besides, it would be …” Christopher checked himself on the verge of the out-dated expression a damned shame.

  “I don’t think there is anything ‘going on’ … now. I did at first, because of the very peculiar way they looked at each other, but …”

  “How do you mean, peculiar? The usual thing?”

  “I don’t know anything about the usual thing,” coldly, “but she looked singularly ‘soppy’ when she saw him, that first day down at the excursion, and he really does stare at her, his eyes nearly pop out of his head.”

  “They do that anyway; they always have—so you don’t think he’s up to anything, now?”

  “I don’t know, Chris. I only don’t think so. She …” Nora hesitated … “she really is rather nice, you know. Sweet, like a kitten or a pup … I can’t imagine her ‘carrying on’ with him.”

  “It’s a bit hard to imagine anyone doing it, who wasn’t very hard up for someone or else crackers, but I understand from him that people do—and quite a lot.” Again Christopher checked himself; he had no intention of directing his sisters’ attention towards Adriaan’s grimy little love affairs.

  “There was a—there was a girl in Ashbourne who got married,” said Ida suddenly, “I saw her do it, she had a super white dress and an en-or-mous bunch of flowers and—oh, super,” waving her arms about; “you could do it, Nolly, if a young man asked you to—I could, anyone could, Mummy says. It’s a thing girls do—can do in England.”

  “So they can in Belgium, half-wit,” said Nora, “but,” returning obstinately to her original point, “it does seem a pity about Ydette and her education—and she may not want to marry … some people do prefer spinster’s delights …”

  “What?” said Christopher, very rudely. Something in the elaborate, drawling, superior manner irritated him suddenly beyond his powers of control—and here was as good a place as any to launch the ticking-off.

  “Spinster’s delights.” She glanced at him in surprise, then (oh, fatal! … but the sheer injustice of talking to her ‘in that tone’ when she had been backing him up so nobly … and in front of Dogfight …), “What’s the matter?”

  “You are.” He hesitated for an instant. “I may as well tell you here and now that if you don’t drop that frightful affected way of talking, you’re likely to be one—a spinster—yourself.”

  “Well. Is that such an appalling fate?”

  “Not necessarily. But even a girl with a brain needs at least the opportunity of leading a different kind of life from a woman don’s. We all think they’re rather frightful.”

  “How frightful for the women dons. Dear me. I wonder how they can manage to get through their work, under the appalling disability of—of—being thought ‘pretty frightful’ by——”

  “Oh leave it, Nora. I’m serious. It’s you who are silly,” as she repeated something about ‘silly little boys’. “I didn’t mean to tell you this but—Ashton thought you were the absolute end.”

  She was quiet, and did not move.

  Ida’s head was moving backwards and forwards, as she glanced from one face to another, like that of a spectator at Wimbledon. That had shaken Nora, Christopher thought. Ashton, whom no-one could possibly call a silly little boy, Ashton, with whom Nora had had such long arguments, and against whom she had held her own so well.

  In a moment she said, “I didn’t like him much, you know,” which surprised him into exclaiming, “Didn’t you?”

  She shook her head, looking down at the table. “Not very much. But then——”

  “Then what?” He still kept his tone full of asperity, but he was not unfair; he would listen, if she said anything that was not mere haughty nonsense.

  “I never do like men much,” she said.

  “Why on earth not?” demanded he, with a hearty amazement which the next instant he regretted; “you can’t not like us, we’re half the human race. You like me, don’t you?” (That slipped out, too, but somehow the whole conversation was beginning to move away from the lines which he had originally laid down for it.)

  “That’s different. I mean men who aren’t relations.”

  “That’s part of what I mean, Nolly. Men can always tell when women don’t like them, and they resent it. If you really didn’t like Ashton (and I must admit that I’m surprised, I thought you did, you were always playing tennis with him and talking to him), naturally he thought you were the end.”

  “Did he say I was the end?”

  “Of course not. Can you imagine him? It got back to me through someone else.”<
br />
  “How?”

  “Oh, some old washerwoman or other—I can’t remember, if I ever knew—but why did you hang round him so much, if you didn’t like him?”

  “If I did ‘hang round him’, as you elegantly put it——”

  “There you go again, Nolly, that way of talking—it sets people’s teeth on edge; don’t do it, you don’t know how grisly it sounds. Why can’t you be natural?” And he added, causing her heart to sink even further, “You take a superior attitude towards Ydette, I’ve noticed—if your manner was like hers, it would be—a damned sight more graceful,” he ended vaguely, but with energy.

  The bite seemed to have gone out of the contest; he had a feeling that he hadn’t quite succeeded in what he set out to do, and now Dogfight, confound her, was looking scared. He got up and went across to pay the bill, feeling slightly ashamed of himself.

  Nora sat quietly at the table, continuing to stare down at the check cloth. Oh, she could have told him of ‘spinsters’ delights’ that were satisfying enough; the long, quiet afternoons when she and Hilary and Evelyn were sitting at work in the gallery above Hall, with sunlight falling across the pages of their books; the peaceful hours as like to one another as were the Georgian stone slabs in the paved garden, yet each, like the stones, with its own slight and enjoyable divergence from the pattern—the joke of that particular afternoon, the faces that broke into exactly the right sort of shared smile, the voices of girls and women—creatures who lived in the same kind of body as oneself and about whom one knew instinctively, without doubt or fear—sounding orderly and controlled and yet fresh—in the distance; and the atmosphere of the great, calm, sober place!—brimmed with learning, filled with idealism—oh yes, she could have told him.

  But what was the use? when, although he was her brother, he was also a male, and therefore would never understand?