White Sand and Grey Sand

by Stella Gibbons

  Inside Klaas, the thundering of his heart had become confused with the thundering of the sea. He could feel it dashing against his breast and shaking him from head to foot, as its waves had done so often in the past; part of him knew what was happening, but another part was the sea, the violent, grey, cold sea, salt and stinging and strong in each drop of spray, that was the earliest thing he could remember. Crash! the great waves burst and spread through him in circles of icy foam, crash! it strove against his sides, that were old, old, old—couldn’t do what he used to—and now he felt against his body the strength and warmth of Jakoba’s, and under his feet the grit of the damp sand at evening, and then just for an instant of time he saw, as clearly as if it had been in a picture-book, Jakoba, naked, downy with the coarse strength of her youth, like in a picture book or a woman in one of the paintings in the city’s art museum … the picture faded. He was alone again, and when he opened his eyes there was that brown, wrinkled, distorted face bending over him with the others … Jakoba … but not the big white woman whom the sea was drowning, even as it was drowning him. And Margarith Brandt’s brat …

  “You …” he said again, struggling to say something to the dark young face above him, the stuck-up chit, the reminder of Margarith’s fear of him … the bastard-brat … but the waves were bursting on the long, grey, twilit shore, the waves were breaking, and thundering inside him, bursting and breaking and carrying him away. He thrust something angrily aside that they were holding out over him, something he could just dimly see, and then he felt the cold foam, rolling over him and turning him round and round and round, driving him down like a piece of sodden drift-wood into the deeps of the icy sea …

  The doctor only glanced towards the nun, but at once she unhurriedly placed on the breast covered by the blue jersey the crucifix which the old man’s last movement had been to push aside, and, clasping her hands, began to say aloud the prayers for the passing soul. The doctor stood upright. “I’ll go back to my house and telephone for the ambulance,” he said. “Will you stay here with him?” to Marie, who was more shocked by the sight of Jakoba sobbing in public than by the death of Klaas, and she nodded. The nun, too, was now kneeling on the cobblestones and calmly praying aloud, saying the prescribed words, above the deathbed spread on cobble-stones in the open air.

  Ydette, stiff from prolonged crouching, stumbled when she tried to stand up, and had to be caught by Christopher and lean for a minute against him. She was still feeling shocked and sick.

  “Bear up,” he said to her almost in a whisper; “he was very old, you know, and it’s all over now. Better to die than live on, a sick old man.”

  She glanced at him piteously. The dreadful thing was that she could not be quite sure what Klaas had said to her just before he had died.

  “He said—he said …” she muttered, trembling.

  “Oh, I shouldn’t take any notice—people often get queer in the head before they die, especially when they’re as old as he was. I don’t expect he knew what he was saying. Don’t let it worry you, anyway, Ydette dear.”

  The brotherly pressure of the arm about her waist was comforting and she rested there for a moment, feeling strength and calmness coming into her, as it always did when she was with anyone connected with the big house. But in a minute she gently withdrew herself from the embrace and stood upright, because his father was looking at them with an expression that showed displeasure.

  “Christopher, I think we ought to go back,” Everard said suddenly.

  “I couldn’t agree more.” Christopher knew quite well what turn his father’s thoughts had taken, and it annoyed him. “But I do think we ought to just—are you quite sure you can manage now?” he said gently in French to Marie, who had knelt down beside the nun and was telling her rosary. In response she only nodded, and he, seeing that the other sister, the rougher type who had seemed so much more ‘upset’, had got up, and gone back into the little house and was apparently in no more need of consolation, turned again to Ydette.

  “Now it’s going to be quite all right,” he said. “I mean, you haven’t got to worry about anything now except comforting your aunts. If I were you, I’d try to persuade them to have—a—a glass of wine. It’s good for shock.” (If he had been at home he would have suggested tea, but presumably in Belgium wine was the more natural thing.) “And do try not to feel too sad, you know.”

  Then she surprised him. “I am not sad,” she said, nevertheless keeping her eyes fixed on his face and away from the bluish, calm, infinitely far-off and unreal one lying at their feet, “I—I did not like him.”

  “Oh,” was all Christopher found to say; he more than understood; in fact if she had liked the poor old guy it would have been surprising. But of course, you could mind about not minding … “Do you think I might take my jacket now?” he said.

  “But of course, monsieur. I will ask Aunt Marie for her shawl.”

  “Here’s the ambulance,” said Chris. He was feeling rather like a glass of wine himself; this was his first sight of a dead body outside the cinema screen, and for some reason his reactions to the spectacle had been different.

  When the black shawl had been rolled and arranged by the nun with tender yet detached care under the ugly old head, and the ambulance men were approaching, Christopher, as he put on his jacket, glanced for the first time at Adriaan, and was surprised to see his pallor.

  “Come on—let’s get out of this—I’ve had enough of it,” Adriaan muttered, loudly enough to cause Christopher to frown at him, and then without further speech they withdrew themselves from the little group. Christopher, taking a last look at Ydette, felt no more fears for her. Now, as the ambulance men expertly lifted the body of Klaas into the vehicle, an atmosphere of orderliness, even of peace, had descended upon the little group left standing there that was soothing to Christopher’s jarred young nerves; he was confident that it must also soothe Ydette.

  “How hideous he looked,” said Adriaan suddenly and violently, as they walked away across the square. “It was an outrage.”

  “Well, really, Adriaan. Poor old bastard—he couldn’t help it.”

  “I’m not saying he could. I’m saying he looked so hideous that it was an outrage.”

  “On what? Your exquisite sensibility?”

  “People oughtn’t to be allowed to look so ugly.”

  A very unkind retort occurred to Christopher, which only his feeling for the situation compelled him to suppress.

  “So he is dead? I’m not surprised; I’ve thought he was looking very ill for months now,” said Adèle van Roeslaere, meeting them in the hall.

  “And he was drinking heavily, of course,” her husband added.

  “He was drunk when he died,” Adriaan said, “he was muttering rubbish to himself.”

  “I wish you’d tell that to Ydette,” Chris said, “she seemed upset by something he said.”

  “I will leave the delightful task of consoling the greengrocer’s foundling to you, my dear Christopher.”

  “Oh, do for pity’s sake stop being such a b.f.,” muttered Christopher, and then Madame van Roeslaere earned everybody’s gratitude by suggesting that they should have a drink.

  It arrived on a silver tray carried by Marieke, who showed no tendency to look either grief-stricken or agreeably excited by the scene which she had been watching from her attic window, and they swallowed it gratefully. The evening had passed extraordinarily quickly, and yet it seemed a long time since they had been sitting in the dimness exclaiming with admiration at Christopher’s film of Bruges.

  He himself, warmed and soothed by the brandy, was now able to think with satisfaction of the impression made by the screen appearance of Ydette, upon the audience.

  “Didn’t you think Ydette looked wonderful?” he said to Nora, as they were rushing back in the car, with Adriaan driving, towards Zandeburghe.

  “I wouldn’t quite say ‘wonderful’. But I do see what you mean about her being photogenic. When she’s on the sc
reen one doesn’t look at anyone else.”

  “That’s exactly it. And that’s star-quality.”

  “It really is rather exciting, I suppose, isn’t it? What are you going to do about it?” Nora drawled; she was still congratulating herself on having escaped any close contact with the deathbed of the poor old bathing-hut-man, and she also felt confident, now, that Christopher’s interest in Ydette was not sentimental.

  “Not as much as I hoped to, I’m afraid,” he said, lowering his voice because of his father’s silent presence on his other side. “I had hoped to get her to come to a movie, with Dogfight for chaperone, once or twice, but there isn’t time now—these things need leading up to, if you want to avoid misunderstandings, of the obvious kind.”

  “Dogfight! I don’t see what use she would be.” Nora’s suspicions revived somewhat. “I would have chaperoned you, if you’d asked me.”

  “It’s too late now. They’ll be in a tizzy for days about the old boy’s dying and if I asked Ydette to go to a movie I should think that would just about finish me with them. No, all I can do now is to keep in touch with her—Dogfight can do that, she’s got a thing about her already, and you know how she gets into a stew and bores us all stiff round about October with her annual fuss about Christmas cards. She can put that to some use this year by sending one to Ydette. And I shall get news from——” He nodded towards the squat and silent figure at the wheel.

  “What about?” it enquired, having observed the gesture reflected in the driving-mirror, and thereby causing Christopher some confusion, “what am I to give you news of, my dear Christopher? Ydette Maes?”

  “I should like to know how she’s getting on, from time to time, yes,” he said stoutly, recovering himself. “I think she could be made into a really big star one day, she’s got all the possibilities——”

  “Except sex appeal.” Adriaan’s voice sounded even more sardonic than usual.

  “Oh … well … perhaps not … I don’t know—she’s very young still …” (What a hopeless person Adriaan was in any situation requiring a little tact; couldn’t he feel that Christopher’s father, sitting silent on the other side, was stiff with disapproval and suspicion?)

  “She always will be,” the sardonic voice pronounced; “if you’re counting on that Beauty-and-the-Beast, Snow-White and the Dwarfs atmosphere she carries around with her suddenly disappearing when she’s eighteen, and being replaced by the normal thing, you’re going to be disappointed. Like to take a bet?”

  “Christopher may be disappointed for other reasons than a little girl’s failure to develop sex appeal.” It was Everard’s voice at its most schoolmasterly and biting. “He may fail to get his degree.”

  Neither young man made any response, Christopher because he was embarrassed and Adriaan because he thought that it would be more amusing to let the acid sentences (‘a squashing’, as they used to call it at Port Meredith) fall into an unbroken silence.

  Everard regretted them as soon as uttered, partly because they were so unnecessarily severe as to sound spiteful, but even more because he did not want to give any impression of being other than mildly interested in Christopher’s plans for his ‘star’. Everard felt that if he were ever to be questioned about his own views on the plan; if ever he were asked to express an opinion about Ydette Maes—he might do something irretrievably silly—lose his temper, and roar out something about a man wanting to keep some of his life to himself, or even begin—overcome by the almost uncontrollable misery that he had felt from time to time since the afternoon’s sight-seeing with May at Doorwaden—to weep.

  And although he did not permit that thought to come out into the open, he was disturbed by the knowledge that his son was interested in the girl who so resembled Margarith. Anxiety about such situations was sometimes called ‘vulgar’, yet he knew from his own wretched experience that their ‘vulgarity’ did not prevent their developing, and ending in mutual misery and regret; indeed, they grew and developed just because they were Vulgar’; in the accurate sense of the Latin; they were situations ‘common’ to mankind. How extraordinary, how eerie, if his own experience were one day to be repeated in the life of his son!

  He tried to dismiss the thought; it would be years before Christopher possessed any power to ‘do’ anything for Ydette Maes—if he ever did—and thank God the day after tomorrow they were all going home.

  The car bounced and bounded on, Adriaan taking pleasure both in shaking the nerves of his passengers and in showing off his driving, and Nora, who was prone to car-sickness, also consoled herself by reflections about their return to England. The holiday hadn’t been much of a success, so far as she was concerned, but of course she was getting rather beyond the age for family holidays anyway. … The best things in it had been Antwerp Cathedral—that really had been a cause for saying “Laus Deo!”—and getting to know Ydette.

  She admitted it at last; she was fond of Ydette; oh, only as one would be of a puppy or a kitten, of course; Ydette wasn’t the type with whom one could have a friendship; friendship was reserved for people like Hilary and Evelyn, who possessed brains. Allowances must be made, of course, for Ydette’s having been educated (if it could be called educated) at a Church School, and for her having grown up in what has been called ‘the most Catholic city in Belgium’, but even when those allowances had justly been conceded, Nora could not feel that Ydette possessed, as she herself and her friends all possessed, a clear, logical, scientific and historical conception of what the world is. It made Ydette very difficult to talk to and to understand—really, Nora would not have been surprised to learn that she believed in fairies! Presumably she believed in angels, and, if angels, why not fairies? Yet Nora, in spite of all these difficulties, liked her.

  Nora’s thoughts began to play about the subject of education, and suddenly, while she was sitting there being banged about and bounced up and down by Adriaan’s driving, there came overmasteringly upon her a conviction of her own intellectual capacities that actually heated her blood: warmth spread throughout her body, accompanied by such a feeling that she was able to achieve any task connected with learning to which she might apply herself that she felt a sense of exultation. This must be, she decided, what people meant when they said of something, “It’s marvellous”—and it was, too; she had never felt it before, it was like being slightly drunk. Her next feeling was one of pity: for people like Ydette, who, being unintellectual, could never experience it.

  “Don’t forget to tell me how my starlet’s getting along, when you do write,” said Christopher to Adriaan as they stood on the deck of the Channel-boat some days later.

  “Are you really serious about all that?” Adriaan’s light tone successfully masked, he thought, the dismay which caused a downward plunge in the muscles of his stomach.

  “I really am. I think she can be made into a new Garbo … always provided, of course, that she’s teachable. So much will depend on that.”

  “It will indeed. And I will bet you any money that you like that she isn’t,” said Adriaan, very spitefully indeed.

  Christopher shrugged. “We’ll see. Anyway, we shall be over again this time next year, and I shall be able to see how she’s shaping.”

  The silent, ugly laughter on the other’s face, at the unintentional double-meaning, was the last thing that remained with him as the bells and siren sounded, and those who were seeing the passengers off returned to the quay, and the vessel drew away from the port of Ostend.

  Slowly the coast of Flanders—the wide grey sands where the yellow waves were breaking, the long stone groins, the fringe of white and pink hotels—began to grow small and dwindle into the sea-mist. Everard stood by the rail, watching them recede. Margarith. Margarith. I don’t even know if you are alive or dead. Good-bye, my darling.

  1 Ladyfied; stuck-up.

  A FEW DAYS before Christmas of that year, when the gliding movement of the dykes had been stilled by the fierce frost creeping across the flat sea-plain unprotected by
any hills; and the water lay in streaks of cloudy white between the old houses of the City and across the dim fields, and the polders in the open country shivered in the relentless wind, there arrived at the house in the Sint Katelijnstraat a Christmas card from England for Ydette.

  It represented two sly but bold-looking robins who, judging by their bloated silhouettes and comatose stance upon the snow-covered bough which supported them, had been generously anticipating their Christmas dinner. In the background, a church had attracted through snowdrifts some eight or nine feet deep a congregation in stove-pipe hats, muffs and crinolines, whose footprints were lightly and neatly outlined on the white background. In one corner a cluster of bells tied with frosted ribbons in which a sprig of holly was thrust rang out the notes of ‘Silent Night, Holy Night!’ evidently to encourage a coach drawn by eight horses, rearing spiritedly in spite of being almost saddle-deep in snow, which was careering away into the distance, beneath a sky promising yet heavier downfalls. Inside was written,

  Dear Ydette—To wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Hopping you are quite well and your aunts are quite well. Please remember me kindly to Madame van Roeslare when you see her and pat Klartie for me. Christopher says remember about being a film-star.

  With love

  from

  Ida Ruddlin (I hope you remember me).

  The Link House,

  Ashbourne, Sussex, England.

  Yes! Ydette remembered the little Ida. She admired the Christmas card, and stood it up on her tall old wardrobe with her few other small treasures, and sent off in return a card carefully chosen from the shop in the Markt near the corner of the Steenstraat, showing the Holy Child and His Mother, containing just her name and a polite little message in French.

  The year glided by, and next December there came two more fat robins, engaged this time in dubiously watching the cavortings of a small dog with a curly tail who had evidently buried a bone six feet deep in snow. The message said: