Charlotte Sometimes

by Penelope Farmer

  •

  In the bedroom, Emily had taken all the marbles from the solitaire board, put them in a glass tooth tumbler, and filled it up with water. She had set the tumbler on the table between their beds and now sat on her own bed, gazing at it. After all this time she had not even undressed herself; indeed she had on her outdoor coat as they used to in their bedroom because it was so cold without heating of any kind.

  Charlotte went over and gazed with Emily. The marbles looked huge in the tumbler, huge and shiny and defined. But they looked part of the water, too, as if by some alchemy it had formed itself into solid bubbles, veined with color, not reflecting color like soap bubbles.

  “Why did you do that?” she asked Emily. “Put the marbles in water, I mean?”

  “I just felt like it.” Emily added defiantly, “I think they’re pretty. Stones look prettier under water. I didn’t see why marbles shouldn’t look prettier, too.”

  “I think they’re beautiful,” said Charlotte. “And how huge they look!”

  But when she put her fingers into the water and pulled a marble out, it was small by comparison with those still in the glass, and unimportant, too. It was like the difference between what you long for and what you find—the difference, for instance, between Arthur’s image of war and his experience of it. It was like other times, her own and Miss Agnes’s proper childhood times that seemed so near to her memory and yet so far away. It was like everything that made you ache because in one sense it was so close and in another unobtainable. Charlotte picked up the glass, held it to the light, and gazed into it obliviously. For that moment everything else around her, everything else that had happened, seemed to splinter in her head and fall away.

  “Hey,” cried Emily crossly. “Hey, what are you doing? That’s mine.”

  “They’re not your marbles,” Charlotte pointed out, still gazing. “They’re Miss Agnes’s marbles.”

  “It was my idea to put them in water. Give them to me.” Emily leaped up, suddenly frenzied. Charlotte had already lowered the glass in order to set it back on the table when Emily snatched at it. The water slopped dangerously; the glass hung between hands for a fraction of time before falling with a crash to the floor. Marbles rolled everywhere with little hollow sounds. Emily and Charlotte trod on water and wet glass and looked at each other, dismayed.

  They cleared the glass first and mopped the water up as neatly as they could. Then they hunted for the marbles. The floor was so uneven that they had rolled everywhere, were caught in the cracks of floorboards, wedged between pieces of furniture, hidden under beds and in the corners. Wood grain patterned their hands as they crawled about; little drafts of air from under the door drilled their ears and faces.

  Charlotte was lying flat, reaching under a bed, her hair catching on the springs, when Emily said nearby in a small cold voice, “Of course, you’re not really a bit like Clare.”

  “What? What?” asked Charlotte, peering out.

  “I said you weren’t really a bit like Claire.”

  “I never thought I was,” said Charlotte, not quite truthfully. “It was you that said so.”

  “You’re not a bit like her. Clare wouldn’t have let me listen to the séance last night. She’s much too honorable; she’s much too stern. I wish you hadn’t let me either.”

  “So do I,” cried Charlotte. “Oh, so do I. You’re not the only one.”

  Chapter 17

  AT ELEVEN o’clock on a gray and gloomy Friday morning, the armistice came, announced by guns and bells. The school bell added itself almost immediately, summoning everyone to the assembly room. There Miss Bite addressed them in her usual stiff manner. The war, she said, was an example for their sex. It had been won by and for such women as she hoped all of them would in time become.

  “You girls,” she said, “will grow up in a different world. Women have proved their worth not by such foolish tricks as throwing bricks through windows and chaining themselves to railings, as did some misguided women before the war, but as doctors, soldiers, sailors, as administrators, and civil servants, as drivers, postmen, shopkeepers, and policewomen. The vote is no longer to be denied you now, nor your value as English citizens. So let all of you,” Miss Bite declaimed, “let all of you grow up to be worthy of this trust, to take your place and play your part as your fellows have done in the course of a just and noble war.”

  All this was very stirring and impressive. Most, including Charlotte, were impressed but no doubt rejoiced more at the concluding announcement: that the rest of this day was to be a holiday. Only Charlotte and Emily, who had nowhere to go home to but Flintlock Lodge, did not much rejoice.

  In the streets there were already signs of celebration. Boy Scouts charged by on bicycles, furiously ringing their air-raid alarm bells. People leaned from the open tops of buses, cheering or waving flags or banging tin trays or ringing more bells. One man had a huge bell, twice the size of the school bell, from which they expected as huge a sound. But it must have been cracked, for it had no ring, no resonance. It made only a dull, small, thudding sound.

  In their road were no buses and scarcely any people. Flintlock Lodge was so gloomy and quiet that no one might have heard the news at all, except Miss Agnes, who apologized for the lack of excitement.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Chisel-Brown are elderly, of course,” she said, “and peace will not bring Arthur back, so you would not expect them to be as pleased as younger folk.”

  After lunch she offered to take Charlotte and Emily for a walk herself, but at this, Emily made faces at Charlotte, nudging her, and as soon as they were out of earshot in the garden, she burst out, “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m not going. You can go for a walk with her if you like, but I’m going across the river to see what’s happening in the town, so boo and snubs to you and utterly squash.”

  She was lit up and excited. She ran round the house and out of the drive before Charlotte could say anything and went on running ahead of her till they reached the bridge, both very out of breath and Emily triumphant.

  “There, I knew you couldn’t stop me,” she said. “Now let’s go and see what there is to see.”

  It had begun to rain gently. There was nothing here except the gray, empty river and the gray, empty allotments of the deer park on the far side of it where grass had been before the war and would be again by Charlotte’s time. There were ugly little sheds and fences everywhere and rows of cabbage and potato plants. These were mostly just withered yellow leaves and jagged yellow stalks, reminding Charlotte of the stumps of trees in the brown magazine photographs she had looked at sometimes at Flintlock Lodge when there had been nothing else to do; remote, brown pictures of the battlefields of France.

  As they came toward the gate that led out of the deer park, they heard music. Through the bars of the gate they saw movement, too, but could scarcely believe in what it seemed to be until they pushed the gate open onto the street, a little cul-de-sac leading down from the main road. There, unmistakably, stood a shabby barrel organ with an old man at its handle dragging out a confusion of notes. There two old women danced stiffly to the tune the notes added to, round and round and round.

  They wore long black coats and long black skirts. One of them, who laughed, had a man’s cap jammed straight across her head, with a hatpin spiking it, and had only, it seemed, two teeth, brown stumps, more like little trees than teeth. The other revealed no teeth at all, if she had any. Her mouth was clapped shut and sloped inward from nose and chin. She wore a strange black bonnet like a crest, fixed on with strings beneath her chin. Its line across her head showed no more sign of hair than her mouth showed signs of teeth, yet she hopped and danced with the greater energy, though the other’s face was livelier.

  The old woman with the cap grabbed Emily, the old woman with the bonnet grabbed Charlotte, and they found themselves, astonishingly, dancing, too. Charlotte was rigid, scared by such an alien clutch. She was conscious of the harsh cloth of the old woman’s sleeve beneath her hand,
of the sour smell of it wafting to her displeasingly as they turned about. Emily, on the other hand, appeared unconcerned, laughing, jumping furiously. The old man turned the handle of his barrel organ faster and faster; the notes plopped out faster and faster; they danced faster and faster, twisting, twirling round. Ever afterwards Charlotte had the impression that at the height of it the old woman with the bonnet let go her hand and flung her right into the middle of the hurly-burly crowd that passed along the main street at the far end of the cul-de-sac, though the road must have been much too long for it to have happened in that way. She remembered looking back as she and Emily were swept up in the crowds. The barrel organ tune had slowed by then, she guessed, for the two old women danced stately as courtiers and just as expressionless. She could not hear the music any more.

  Then all, to Charlotte, seemed like a dream. She never knew if she’d dreamed, for instance, or really seen that truck full of girls all yellow—yellow faces, hands, and caps and overalls. It was like being in a river, holding things dry above her head, only it was mind and sense she tried to hold, not clothes. It was like having a prison round her of coats and backs and uniforms. She was buffeted by the backs and wet by the steady drizzle; yet felt curiously dazed and bodiless as if so many sensations made it impossible to isolate any. She might have been floating, not walking along. The crowd might have been floating, too. It swayed just like a moderate sea, all the faces making waves that broke and joined and fell apart again.

  Charlotte began to realize how wet she was getting. Her hair had come loose from its braid and swung like whips about her face. The noise began banging at her head, the bells and drums and whistles, the dominant motor horns. Nothing was silent—people, traffic, houses. The traffic sprouted myriad arms, all waving flags or banging instruments. The houses leaned over them with windows like opened mouths, belting out music from gramophones.

  Only Charlotte felt she made no sound. But when the crowd reached the town hall, a stout red ornamented place, it stopped and waited, and gradually, as voices joined voices, the singing began to merge until everyone was singing “God Save the King,” Charlotte and Emily, too.

  Despite all her efforts Charlotte was quite submerged now in the feeling of it, her mind as well as body. She felt small shivers run up and down her spine. She was neither Clare nor Charlotte any more, but one piece only of the singing, victorious crowd. After the mayor had spoken from the town hall balcony, his voice sounding from it little as a pin, she linked hands with Emily and someone she did not know, sang “Land of Hope and Glory,” then “Auld Lang Syne,” swaying back and forth, the movement as potent as the song.

  The rain had almost stopped. As dusk fell, lights began to jump from windows all about. Up till now, though hemmed in, jostled, banged, Charlotte had been more excited than fearful, the crowd’s warmth and friendliness carrying her along. But now, suddenly it did not seem so warm and friendly. Its edges splintered; it broke to ragged gaps where people danced. And when there was singing again, it came in spurts, in dashes, one song against another, and none of them “Land of Hope and Glory” or “God Save the King.” Men climbed on windowsills, onto the horse trough by the town hall steps. Some, inevitably, fell in. Charlotte and Emily could hear loud splashes, laughter, angry voices, too. Emily also laughed, rather hysterically, Charlotte thought. The faces round her seemed to leer like masks, the light—part dim, part bright—catching half-faces, noses, eyes, or teeth, never all at once. She felt herself pushed about, first one way, then another, in the crush of people, all straining to see what was happening where they were not, their flags brandished now like spears or swords. About her suddenly men loomed tall as towers.

  Above the din of voice and instrument, Emily screamed, “Clare, I want to get out—oh, please take me out of here.” She had been clutching Charlotte more and more tightly, the clutch jerked at and tugged by the movement of the crowd, but at that moment someone pushing right between them broke it altogether—and when Charlotte turned to Emily, she saw no sign of her. She called frantically, her voice tiny in this din. She pushed and wriggled and kicked and knocked, but every time she saw a gap and pulled herself into it, the gap was sure to close. She squirmed between legs and bodies, said, “Please, oh please,” many times, uselessly—“Oh, please let me through.” But it was not a question of people moving aside for her, only of her ability to hammer out a way between them, the pleas just a concession to her ordinary good manners. Terror for Emily destroyed the timidity she usually would have felt.

  “Mind out there. Hey, hey what do you think you’re doing!” The voices battered at her, the shadows jumped, the light around broke furiously. But she was out, free at last, gasping and crying in the air, tears pouring down her face, not rain, and still there was no sign of Emily. She wandered among the fringes of people, not wanting to plunge into the crowd again, which she judged would not help at all. She stood on tiptoe or bent down to look between legs, crying out, “Emily, Emily,” dazed and horrified, perhaps too dazed to realize how remarkable it was that she actually found Emily again so quickly; for suddenly Charlotte felt a tugging at her back, and when she turned about, there was Emily. Tears marked her face, but she stopped crying the moment she saw Charlotte; became more indignant than frightened.

  “Whyever did you let me go like that?” she asked. “I thought I’d never find you.”

  For a while they walked around in quieter streets, up the hill and along the terrace, where also walked sad-looking solitary men with lighted cigarettes that made little red stops in the dark. Then they went home on foot. It was quite different from their last street walk at night, with its mysteriousness and sense of separate life. There had been no light then other than the moon, but now street lamps were lit and windows had no blackout blinds, nor were most curtains drawn tonight. The lights of the city made the sky glow like an enormous bowl placed over a candle flame.

  •

  Of course there was a row back at Flintlock Lodge, an enormous one. That night they were sent straight to bed, but the following morning were spoken to severely and sorrowfully by several people, including Miss Agnes, who had been hurt, not to say worried, by their disappearance. Charlotte felt bad about her, being fond of Miss Agnes by now. She, as the eldest, received chief blame for what they had done—but for once she did not mind, the result of their adventure being the best thing that could possibly have happened to them.

  Though it was Saturday morning, she and Emily were sent to school to see Miss Bite, who spoke to them more severely and sorrowfully than anyone and told them in her distant, steely way how disappointed she was and shocked by their behavior. Had it not been for their motherless state, she would even have considered expelling them. In any case, she could no longer trust Clare and Emily Moby to behave themselves in lodgings and had informed Mr. and Mrs. Chisel-Brown to that effect and would now take them back to school to be closer to her eye. So many girls had been sent home with flu, she said, that there were spare beds in almost every dormitory.

  After such a solemn interview, Miss Bite would certainly have been surprised, and even more shocked, to see Charlotte and Emily hug each other joyfully as soon as they were alone, neither a bit ashamed, though Charlotte usually shamed so easily. They thought it would surely only be a matter of time now before Clare and Charlotte would each be in their own times again.

  •

  At Flintlock Lodge Mrs. Chisel-Brown appeared as indifferent to their going as she had been to their coming. Mr. Chisel-Brown, however, seemed to have regained all his fire, all his puffed-out look, listing to them, through Miss Agnes, every one of their misdeeds, both those they knew about, like Emily’s cheekiness in saying good night and their invasion of the séance, and others that Charlotte had not been aware of committing, like leaving his newspaper untidily folded and treating unkindly the hairy little dog.

  Only Miss Agnes was sad. She had seemed to avoid them in their disgrace, to be rather stiff and embarrassed, even lowering her eyes from them
at mealtimes. But when they were due to leave, she came up to their room a little furtively and stood in the doorway, her thick brows knitted, her cheeks pink. In her hands she held her own silk-clad doll, Arthur’s box of soldiers, also the solitaire board and the cloth bag that held the marbles. Dear Clare, she knew, had liked the doll, dear Emily the soldiers, and both of them had liked playing solitaire, whereas doll, soldiers, and solitaire were quite wasted on herself and on Mr. and Mrs. Chisel-Brown. So she wondered if Clare and Emily would care to accept them as gifts in memory of their stay at Flintlock Lodge. They were not, though, to mention this to either Mr. or Mrs. Chisel-Brown.

  “Don’t they know you’re giving them to us?” asked Emily, naughtily. “Would they be cross?” Miss Agnes blushed and giggled. She wore a frilly blouse, the frill copying unkindly her uneven line of teeth.

  “Of course, dear, I would not give you these things if they were not sure to agree. Come and see me, dear,” she said then to Charlotte pleadingly. “I shall miss you—both of you. I did enjoy talking to you—reminding myself of . . . of . . . oh, please come, please come.” Charlotte promised she would, but felt terrible about it, since she hoped so soon to be back where visiting Miss Agnes would be quite impossible. Nor would the real Clare have anything to say to Miss Agnes in her place.

  “I bet Mr. and Mrs. Chisel-Brown didn’t really know about us having those things,” said Emily afterwards. “I bet they didn’t really know.”

  Part Three

  Chapter 18

  CHARLOTTE and Emily were put together into the same bedroom, though they had expected to be separated. Still better, they were also put into Oak tree, the largest room in the school. It had eight beds, and one of them was Bunty’s. Bunty was subdued since her father’s death, but only by her own standards, not by anyone else’s. Ruth was also there, recovered from flu. She had been at home for some time convalescing, so Charlotte had not seen her since the night she had climbed into the school. She tried to avoid her now, blushing at the thought of it, trying to imagine what Ruth might say.