Sensible Life

by Mary Wesley

  Flora digested this piece of misinformation, sure that at some time Irena had told her that she saw the future in her crystal. But meeting Irena’s smiling eyes she decided that perhaps she had only imagined this. “Are you coming to the picnic?” she asked.

  “No.” Madame Tarasova looked down at her hands.

  “I have tried to persuade her.” Felix bent to retrieve his shoes and began putting them on. “But she refuses.”

  “Why?”

  Madame Tarasova shrugged. “It would not amuse me. I am too busy. I have work to finish before the English families leave the day after tomorrow.”

  “That’s not true. I helped deliver all your parcels,” protested Flora.

  “Put on your shoes,” said Felix. “Come, Flora, we will walk back to the hotel together.” He put on his jacket. “Your shoes look sad alone,” he said. “Thank you for an enjoyable conversation.” He took the hand Irena Tarasova held out to him.

  “They will survive,” said Irena crisply.

  In the street Felix took Flora by the hand. “Look at the moon,” he said. “It will be full for the picnic.”

  Flora had been about to allude to Irena’s shifty misuse of the truth but now she dared not speak. Never in her life had she been so happy. Felix was holding her hand.

  “I tried to persuade her to come to the picnic,” he said, “but she won’t; too many of the women are clients. I hate this émigré mentality, half-servile, half-snob. Presumably in her Holy Russia she would have come to the picnic? She seems to have had some connection with the Tsar’s court; my sisters tell me she is forever talking about it.”

  “Of course she has.” Flora was glad to tell Felix about her friend. “Her father was the court tailor who made all the lovely uniforms.”

  “Who told you?” Felix paced slowly, holding Flora’s hand in his.

  “I think she did. No, it was Alexis, her husband.”

  “I don’t think she would like you to tell everybody that her father was a tailor.”

  “I’m sorry. I have only told you.”

  “Good.”

  “I suppose it’s something to do with wearing silk underclothes—”

  “Um, yes.” Felix had heard the tale of the charitable underclothes and their reception from Anne, who had heard it from Cosmo. “Yes,” he said gravely, “I see the connection. I confess I wear warm pants in winter.”

  “And silk in summer?” Flora absorbed this information.

  “Cotton, actually.” Felix laughed and squeezed Flora’s hand. “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “I am going to bring my gramophone to the picnic. I thought it would be fun to dance. Will you keep a dance for me?”

  Flora had difficulty breathing; she felt she might suffocate. She managed to gulp, “Yes.”

  “And a concertina.”

  “What’s a concertina?”

  “A squeeze box.” Felix squeezed Flora’s hand again. “You squeeze and stretch and twiddle with your fingers and it makes music. It’s rather like making love but you wouldn’t know about that.”

  Flora felt she did know and that she might die of it.

  FIFTEEN

  THE CHARABANCS ARRIVED AT the Marjolaine as ordered. Actually a rendezvous at the Britannique would have been more convenient, its driveway being wider. Also, from the Marjolaine the bus must double back past the Bristol, which possessed more parking space, to reach the coast road to the beach of Cosmo’s choice. But since the inspiration for the picnic, which in the memories of the Dinardois became known as “le pique-nique des Anglais”, had come from the Marjolaine, so from the Marjolaine they would set forth.

  From ten o’clock onwards families arrived bearing food. One family called Stubbs, whom nobody had hitherto spoken to much, brought armfuls of rugs and several groundsheets and, as if this were not enough, went back to their hotel to collect a cooking pot and a portable stove which burned methylated bricklets under its matching kettle.

  Mrs. MacNeice brought a basket of potatoes to roast in their jackets and a fine supply of tomatoes. Her husband Ian brought a case of wine and a box of glasses.

  Mrs. Ward brought a hamper filled with oranges, apples, bananas and lettuce; her husband Freddy staggered under the weight of a crate of lemonade.

  Anne and Elizabeth arrived with an armful of baguettes hot from the baker, a basketful of ham, garlic sausage, pate and several pounds of unsalted butter.

  All the mothers carried thermoses of tea and one father brought a couple of ripe camemberts. Felix caused surprise by contributing a pair of dressed chickens. “We can make a spit and roast them.”

  “Has anybody brought matches?”

  “Corkscrews?”

  “Napkins?”

  “Who on earth is going to eat all this food?”

  “Plates?”

  The Stubbs family had tin plates; there would not be enough to go round, but it would be friendly to share.

  “Oh.”

  “Knives and forks? Spoons? We shall need spoons.” The Stubbs family had these too and a competent-looking first-aid box. They had not thought it necessary to bring food. Just as Joyce’s mother, Mrs. Willoughby, was showing her contribution, bars of plain chocolate, Denys and Vita arrived bearing, each, a large flat box. When they lifted the lids they displayed a pair of open fruit tarts from the patisserie decorated with sticks of angelica and whipped cream.

  “So suitable for a sandy beach,” said Tashie to Mabs without lowering her voice. They stopped giggling when Mrs. Leigh hissed, “Shut up, girls, manners.”

  Rosa strolled out of the hotel at ten to eleven with an armful of giant thermoses full of black coffee and a packet of sugar. At five to eleven Cosmo and Blanco raced up from the quay carrying a large cardboard box tied up with strong string.

  “What have you got there? What were you doing in St. Malo? What is it? Tell us, do.”

  “A secret.” They kept the box shut. “No peeping.” At half a minute to eleven Angus Leigh, to the fury of his wife, who knew he did it to annoy her and never in their long years of marriage got used to it, strolled up. He carried The Times newspaper of the previous day, field glasses, and in his coat pocket a flask of whisky.

  At precisely eleven Mrs. Stubbs, owner of knives, forks, spoons, groundsheets and rugs, started a roll call. Was everybody there? Had they got warm jerseys, bathing dresses, buckets and spades, spare socks? “In that case, start getting into the buses. Don’t push, dears, don’t jostle, but look sharp.”

  “Whose picnic is it? Isn’t she bossy!”

  Later, when discussing the picnic, Mrs. Stubbs was dubbed a natural leader by the more charitable; indeed, long after memories of the picnic had blurred, she was referred to as the Natural Leader. “Oh look, there’s the Natural Leader,” people would say at point-to-points, concerts, Wimbledon or the winter sales, giving their companion a reminiscent nudge. “Do you remember Dinard in the twenties?”

  All the youngest children got into the first charabanc with Mrs. Stubbs and their mothers. Most of the fathers chickened out, piling into the charabanc which held adults and adolescents. They sat in a group looking guilty, but openly congratulated one another when in the nursery bus, as it was immediately dubbed, Mrs. Stubbs organised a singsong (to keep the little ones quiet) so that the charabanc carrying adults and adolescents trundled in the wake of shrill voices singing Knick Knack Paddy Wack, John Brown’s Body, and It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.

  Mabs and Tashie, who had pushed their way to the back of the bus, sweeping Flora along with them, looked down their noses and pretended not to hear. Flora, perching between them, kept quiet, considering herself fortunate to be distanced from her parents who sat immediately behind the driver. She did not question whatever instinct it might be which had caused Mabs and Tashie to befriend her, but was glad that from where they sat she had a view of Cosmo and Blanco two seats ahead and, across the aisle from them, Felix with his sister Anne. Nobody asked her what was in the wic
ker basket she had put under the seat. Since she was so small and insignificant, it was naturally supposed that anything she carried had no significance either. In any case, she was so overawed by the proximity of Mabs and Tashie that she kept even quieter than usual.

  As they drove out of Dinard, along the road which led through St. Enogat and St. Briac to the beach, Cosmo and Blanco joked with Anne and Felix about Blanco’s Cousin Thing (or Chose).

  “Why can’t you get to know him? Why don’t you visit him? Surely, Fauntleroy, it would be correct to try.”

  “I did write to him once. It was when I understood about being his heir. I asked him whether I could meet him. He never answered. My mother invited him to stay; he never came. I wanted to get to know him all right, but nothing doing. So now I plan a tease.”

  “What sort of tease?”

  “I thought I would send him the occasional postcard just to remind him of my existence.”

  “Wish you were here?” asked Mabs.

  “Something more subtle. I thought something on the lines of: I shall be passing your way soon, or I contemplate calling on you ’ere long.”

  “Signed or anonymous?”

  “Initialled.”

  “Unsigned would be more cryptic, more sinister,” said Felix.

  “True.” Blanco considered this. “I thought, posted from different countries—”

  “What about in lots of different languages?” suggested Tashie.

  “I don’t know any.”

  “We do, though. Look what we have in this bus: English and Dutch, and Flora speaks French, I’ve heard her, and Italian, don’t you?” Tashie leaned down to look at Flora, who nodded mutely. Everybody turned in their seats to look at her.

  Seeing Flora flush Elizabeth volunteered: “We all speak German and I have Spanish.”

  “You are learning Russian, too, aren’t you?” Mabs also looked down at Flora. “Quite the infant phenomenon, aren’t you. Anyone got a pencil and paper? We can write the messages for you, Hubert, as we go along.”

  “Thanks,” said Hubert, used to being called Blanco.

  Felix produced an envelope and Anne a fountain pen.

  “What about Russian?” Mabs persisted.

  “Can’t spell in Russian,” Flora muttered.

  “I can ask Madame Tarasova,” said Blanco, enjoying himself.

  They wrote the messages in the different languages on the envelope. “He will think he is being pursued by plotting Bolsheviks,” said Cosmo. “Oh look, everybody, we are nearly there. The beach is over that hill. I hope the tide is out.”

  “What’s the name of Cousin Thing’s house,” asked Tashie, “and where is it, anyway?”

  “It’s called Pengappah, it’s somewhere in the West of England.” Blanco pocketed the envelope. “There are six baths in the bathroom, that’s all I know.”

  “Lord Fauntleroy of Pengappah sounds like a row of teeth.” Mabs laughed.

  “Shall you really send postcards?” Anne questioned.

  “It’s the sort of thing one does in the middle of a long winter term when Christmas is far away and you feel it will never happen,” said Blanco.

  “He might think it some sort of code,” said Tashie.

  “Or a preview of death,” said Mabs.

  “You mean premonition.”

  “Here we are,” shouted Cosmo. “Look. There’s the beach and, oh gosh, the tide is just right, going out.”

  “And Mrs. Stubbs is already organising the little ones to collect driftwood,” said Felix drily.

  “I’ll race you,” Tashie shouted in Mabs’ ear and they raced across the sand along the edge of the water, followed by a throng of small children.

  “Really, those girls!” said Milly Leigh, exasperated. “You are supposed to watch them,” she said to Felix, who with his sisters was helping to unload the picnic baskets.

  SIXTEEN

  FROM WHERE SHE SAT on the top of the cliff Flora had a panoramic view. Scarred across the beach the children’s fathers had dug a system of moated castles. These were intricately interconnected by fresh-water canals fed from a system of dams leading from the stream which, flowing down the valley, normally fanned out in glittering streaks across the sand.

  Having taken off their jackets and rolled up their trouser bottoms, the fathers worked barefoot in shirt sleeves. They laboured with enthusiasm and imagination and showed tolerance towards interfering children who hopped and skipped around, getting in the way.

  There had been tears when a child who had ventured off to the rock pools at the foot of the cliff brought back a bucketful of crabs and snails. He could not understand why he should not put them in the moats. Mrs. Stubbs, hearing screams, hurried down from the dune where she was organising the building of the bonfire, took the child by the hand and led it, carrying its bucket, back to the rock pool. “It is unkind to move the poor little crabs from their homes. Look, they will hide in the lovely seaweed. They would not be happy in the Daddies’ moat. They need salt water, dear.”

  Six or eight of the smaller adolescents played a frenetic game of rounders. Their feet scoured a rough circle in the pale khaki sand. Far out, following the tide as it receded, Cosmo and Blanco dug for sand eels.

  The high tide line had been cleared of driftwood by Mrs. Stubbs and her children. They heaped it into a pyramidal pyre. Everybody looked forward to its lighting.

  The picnic lunch which had been eaten immediately on arrival had rendered some of the elders somnolent. Angus Leigh slept with his hat over his eyes; Freddy Ward slept, too; Ian MacNeice was reading a book. Rosa and Milly, without waiting for a Stubbs suggestion, had collected the picnic debris and buried it in the fire where, later, it would make aromatic smells of burnt orange peel and not so nice banana. Now, with their backs to a rock protecting them from the wind, they sat chatting.

  Joyce, having seen Mabs and Tashie run, was now teaching them how to do handstands and cartwheels. All three girls hoped to persuade Felix to join in, but Felix had walked up the valley with Elizabeth and Anne to look for a farm which would sell fresh milk, milk for the little children having been inexplicably forgotten by the commissariat.

  From her elevated position Flora watched all this; she could, too, view the progress of her parents as they clambered round the base of the cliff. They would shortly reach a gulley which, as the tide receded, formed a small cove sheltered from the wind, well away from the crowded and desecrated beach.

  Hot breath on her neck apprised Flora of the arrival of the cure’s dog. She greeted him with affection but, sighting the movement on the beach, the dog galloped off to join in.

  “Tonton deserts you. He has a passion for company, a veritable beach dog. Everybody’s friend, as his master should be but is not.” Louis, the garde champêtre, crept up on Flora. “The cure heard that there were two charabanc full of people. What is going on?”

  “English families picknicking,” Flora answered guardedly.

  “English? I hate the English.”

  “One English papa is a general.”

  “I hate generals.” Louis lowered himself to sit on a stone near Flora.

  “There is a Dutch baron and some Dutch baronesses.”

  “I hate the Dutch; they have given sanctuary to the Kaiser.” Louis brought a pipe out of his pocket and filled it.

  Wrinkling her nose, Flora edged away.

  “Why are you not playing with the other children?”

  Flora did not answer. Below her she saw her parents reach the cove. Louis struck a match and lit his pipe. Tonton, having reached the beach, was bounding in friendly fashion among the picknickers, wagging his tail and jumping up. A small child shrieked in terror; the child’s father threatened Tonton with a spade. Tonton, moving away in a jolly, forgiving way, lifted his leg against a sandy battlement. Louis chuckled: “Un chien patriote.”

  Down below Denys and Vita kissed in the privacy of the cove. Denys held Vita close, Vita put her arms round Denys. Denys nuzzled Vita’s neck and beg
an bunching her skirt up over her bottom.

  “Some of the English are going to swim when they have digested their lunch,” Flora informed Louis.

  “That I must see.” Louis got up and began moving diagonally down the cliff. “Monsieur le cure is anxious about the proprieties. It is my job to see that the law is adhered to, no indecencies committed.”

  “I thought you were anticlerical.” Louis had explained this term one day the previous winter, when meeting her with Tonton. He had told her he hated all clerics and the cure in particular. Below her, Vita drew her dress over her head and stepped out of her knickers. Flora was quite glad that her mother was out of Louis’ sight. What funny things people did: she remembered Felix and Madame Tarasova shoeless. Not being fond of her parents she was not interested in what they took off, she was up here to keep others in sight. Down on the beach Tonton now ran in a crazy circle, his tail tucked between his legs. Louis paused in his descent to watch. As Tonton’s circle included one of the larger castles there was the risk that he might misjudge his leaps, but he leapt clear each time.

  “He is a clown,” Louis called back to her.

  Denys and Vita were lying down now; Flora thought they might find the sand wet and cold but see, Tonton had stopped in midrush to squat, strain and do his jobs against a sand battlement. Almost out of earshot Louis cried, “Bravo!”

  Sandcastling fathers shouted indignantly and children began pelting the dog with wet sand, which thumped against his woolly flanks. Flora gave a shrill whistle and started trotting down the cliff. Louis was out of sight, but she could see Felix, Elizabeth and Anne returning along the path by the stream carrying jugs of milk. Tonton came up from the beach and ran on past her, following Louis. Flora walked to meet Felix and his sisters. They put the jugs of milk to stand in the shallow water near the picnic site to keep cool.

  “There seems to be a move to go in and swim,” said Anne. “The tide is coming in. Shall you swim, Felix?”

  “The sea will be icy.”

  “It would be a good thing if some of us were at least prepared in case the small children get into trouble,” said Elizabeth.