by Dirk Bogarde
‘Dead,’ I said. ‘All its juices have been sucked out. That’s what spiders do, you know that. They wrap up the victim and then suck out the juices.’ I said it twice because I liked the sound it made saying it.
My sister suddenly sighed. ‘Oh look! Now see what you’ve done! Just because you are old Mister Know-Ail you’ve made me nervous and look what’s happened! It’s all broken.’ She was holding some ashes, like off a cigar butt, in her hand. ‘It would have been all right if you hadn’t worried me with all that sucking part.’ She threw the dusty pieces into the grass.
I told her that it wasn’t my fault at all. It was a dead old moth and had been sucked empty and that it had just been hanging in the web in the hot sun, so what else could she expect? Dead as a door knob. And she started to brush down her cotton shorts and asked why door knobs were always dead when they were never alive in the first place. I said I didn’t actually know, and sat up, resting on my elbows.
Far below, right beyond Long Barrow, you could see all the elms, still and dark in the sunlight, marking the lane down to Milton Street, and in Milton Street the squinty red roofs of the village and one, a bit bigger and in the middle, had ‘The Friar’s Head’ painted in big white letters across the tiles. That was where we had to go for the bread, because there was a bake-house behind the pub and Winnie Moss did a bake on Wednesdays. Today was Wednesday, and we had to get a honeycomb as well, and Bert Moss, who ran the Friar’s Head, kept bees and was pretty famous for his honey, and I was just hoping that the coppers which Lally had given me to pay for the loaf (best brown I had to ask for), and the comb, hadn’t fallen out of my pocket, lying about in the grass. But it was all right actually, I had wrapped them in a piece of last week’s Larks, so they made a bulgy packet and I could feel them through the flannel of my shorts.
So that was all right. We half ran, half walked in a sort of staggery way down the front, the very front, of the Long Man. I went down his left leg and my sister went down his right one, but we never trod on his face part. There wasn’t a face really, just the outline, but it felt rather rotten to do that. We did once see one of those awful hiker people sliding down his face, or the place where his face would have been, and my sister was so angry she actually shouted, ‘Hoy! Don’t do that!’ The man looked a bit startled and when we began reaching down for handfuls of rabbit droppings to throw at him he hurried off down with his rucksack bumping about, and a fearful woman in a pink shirt and a beret shook a stick at us but she went off with him, so that was pretty good. We had to pick up rabbit droppings because there wasn’t anything else – no flints (which would have really hurt them) but perhaps they thought they were flints, or stones anyway, and didn’t realize they were only dried-up droppings.
We went down the Giant’s legs because if you tried to go down the staffs, one in each hand, it was too narrow and steep. On his legs the earth was chalky and weedy. Too weedy, our father said, and one day, what with all the sheep and these wretched hiker people clambering around, there probably wouldn’t be a Long Man, or a Giant, left. He said he’d put it in The Times and make a fuss. But anyway, we went down the legs (which was really forbidden) and into the gully at the bottom and then across the cornfield, through the gate and into the lane, just as old Mr Lush came slowly past on his tricycle like a big old stag beetle. He lived up in Wilmington. He’d lived up in Wilmington all his life and had never been anywhere else, except once when he’d gone down to Hastings after the Boer War. He was too old to be in our father’s war, so he just stayed where he was in Wilmington and did some thatching and pruned his orchard and went on his tricycle from time to time to the Friar’s Head, where he had a special seat which was all shiny from his bottom. He was always in black: a black suit, black cap, black gaiters and black boots. He never wore a collar or anything like that, just a red handkerchief with white dots on it. You could see him for miles because he always rode in the middle of the road, and he was perched quite high up on the tricycle, so you really couldn’t miss him. The carters got pretty fed up with him because he was slower even than their horses, and sometimes when a car came along they honked and honked but he took no notice because he was stone deaf. Lally said that one day someone would lose their patience and he’d end up in a ditch. Dead. But he said to Winnie Moss, who told me, that he liked to have a lot of space right and left of him when he was riding on account of he didn’t want to scratch the paint off his tricycle on the hedges. I mean, you couldn’t argue with a man who had only been to Hastings once in his whole life.
We waved to him and he nodded at us but he didn’t take his hands off the handlebars in case he fell off. We were ahead of him, so if he was going to the Friar’s Head, and it was about the right time in the morning, we’d get there first, thank goodness.
‘He hasn’t even got a cycle lamp!’ said my sister. ‘Did you notice? No cycle lamp, it’s terribly dangerous.’
‘I bet he never goes out at night, or in the dark. He wouldn’t dare, being deaf and so slow . . . and it’s a good mile from Wilmington.’
‘If the policeman saw him I bet he’d get a good wigging.’
‘He’s too famous. No one would dare touch him.’
‘That Mr Hitler would. Lally’s one. She never says, “I’ll fetch a policeman if you don’t behave.” Remember? Years ago when we were little? Now it’s always this Mr Hitler, who isn’t a bit frightening. But her brother Harold, he’s a policeman, and he’s very frightening. He’s huge and frightening.’
She walked along nodding her head and muttering away to herself. I walked on beside her thinking how hot it was and why my plimsolls were starting to rub my heel, and then it was all right because we were in front of the pub, and went through the gate into the yard where Winnie Moss was hanging out some tea towels. Winnie Moss was very nice, with round glasses and elastic stockings. She flapped dry one of the towels with Glass printed on it and said she knew what we were there for, and that she’d taken her bake out of the oven and it was cooling, and, talking of cooling, would we like a glass of Eiffel Tower lemonade? She wouldn’t be a tick.
We sat down on some empty crates in the shade. There was a lovely smell of spilled beer, yeast and washing. Then Bert Moss pushed open the gate carrying a big trug basket full of new potatoes. He had a fork in one hand, so we knew he’d been in the vegetable garden, and he waved it at us and said that Ben Lush had just arrived so he couldn’t stop for a chat but he’d be back as soon as he’d got Ben settled. He stamped his feet on the mat outside the kitchen door to get the earth off his boots, just as Winnie Moss same out with a jug of water and two glasses and the bottle of Eiffel Tower lemonade powder and a spoon in the pocket of her pinafore.
‘I reckon Miss Jane wants her honey like usual? I’ll tell Albert. He’s got me some ‘taters and here’s the lemonade.’
Bert Moss pushed his cap to the back of his head and scratched his ear. You could see he was a bit fussed because he just dumped the muddy fork against the door jamb and clods of chalky earth fell off, and he said, ‘I know as I’m out here and you are out here, but who is minding, I’d very much like to know?’
Winnie Moss was spooning out the lemonade powder into the glasses set on an empty crate. ‘Enid is minding the bar. Now, you two, don’t want it too strong, do you? Too acidy.’ And she filled the glasses with water from the jug while Bert Moss grumbled off into the house. ‘You want another glass, and you’re welcome. Here is the bottle and one teaspoon.’ Then she hurried after Mr Moss calling out to him not to drop muck all over her brickwork because she had just Ronuk’d it and we had need of a honeycomb. Then it was all quiet, and I unlaced my plimsolls to rub the blistery part on my heel. My sister was sitting sipping her yellow lemonade very slowly. She said that if you drank too quickly in the heat you could have a heart attack and die. And why was it so yellow and the lemonade our mother and Lally made was sort of grey? I didn’t know, except that Eiffel Tower brand, in its little square bottle, was probably French and very expensive. She s
aid that if it was you wouldn’t get it at the Friar’s Head because our father said it was a cheap sort of pub. And not really as good as the Star in the market square. So it stood to reason. I didn’t argue because 1 didn’t really know what standing to reason meant. Neither did she, but she’d heard grown-ups use it and thought it would be a jolly good shut-up. Which it was. Winnie Moss came back wiping the flour off her hands with the ‘best brown’ in a paper bag and said to tell Miss Jane that all she was baking now was best brown and no white, never no more, and to leave this one to settle a bit before cutting. It was just out of the oven, and the door of the oven was wide open, to cool it, and you could see the curve of the pink bricks and smell the crustiness and wood ash.
‘Upon my soul,’ she said. ‘I really did do a baker’s dozen today, one over the odds, but there’s a big order from over at Arlington. I do believe there’s a wedding, maybe a funeral. Anyway, no one we know, so no need to fret. And paid in advance, which will go a long way to getting Mr Moss his fourth hive. Quite taken up with honey, he is.’
Then Bert Moss came back, and took the fork. He was wearing a pair of slippers and had the honeycomb wrapped up in a bag. ‘Mind how you go with this, it’ll run everywhere if you crack it. Tell your farthar it’s the usual old blend as he says. Thyme, gorse, clover and goodness knows what else. We haven’t seen him, not all this summer?’ I said no, because he was visiting in Germany with my mother, and Bert Moss stopped scraping the mud off the prongs and said that was very interesting. I told him that they’d gone to look at some new machines for printing newspapers and he wanted to buy them for The Times. So he wouldn’t be at the cottage except perhaps for a week, later on. Bert Moss asked where he was in Germany because he had been a prisoner of war himself and was he anywhere near where he had been. I didn’t know. I mean, you do get asked difficult questions by people. But my sister, always trying to be a bit showy-offish, said she couldn’t remember the name exactly but it was the same as the scent that people put on their handkerchiefs when they had a cold or a bad headache. Bert Moss just looked worried and said he’d never heard of a German town called Vick, but after all he’d only been a prisoner.
Then Winnie Moss came out and said that the money I’d given her was exact to the ha’penny, and did my sister mean Cologne. And we both remembered that that was right. It was hopeless walking home with my sister, she was so sarcastic and pleased with herself because she had remembered the rotten place and I had forgotten. But honestly, who would remember a name like Cologne? Unless they had headaches or something. So I just carried the honeycomb carefully and didn’t speak. Not one single word. And serve her right. Only she just went on singing ‘All the King’s Horses’, but she didn’t know all the words, so she just la-la’d all the way back until we got to Great Meadow and turned into the field. And I really would have quite liked to have given her a terrific bonk on the head.
But I didn’t.
It really was so hot that we ducked under the trailing brambles and old man’s beard at the start of the gully and walked up to the cottage in the cool, speckly shade. My heel hurt a bit, so I took off my plimsolls because I knew where all the stony bits of the path were, so that was all right. My sister had stopped singing about all the King’s horses and all the King’s men, thank goodness. But I could tell she was having a good think. I knew that because she was biting away at her bottom lip, and that was never a good sign. She was working something out, and when she asked could she carry the honeycomb, I knew that her think would be a bit worrying.
‘I’ve been carrying this ever since we left the Friar’s Head. Hours ago. Now you say you’ll carry it! Just when we can see the roof of the cottage! We are almost home.’
‘Well, I asked you . . .’
‘You are hinting. ’
‘You are vile! I won’t say another word. Not another.’ And she tripped over a bit of dead tree. ‘Not a word. And it was something lovely. For you.’
‘What was?’
‘My think.’
‘Well, say then. Go on. Say. What? Tell.’ I was getting a bit puffed and the sweat was running down my back. I knew I should be thinking ‘perspiration’ but I was too tired. So I just thought ‘sweat’.
‘Well, you remember that dear little shell-thing I got in the crackers at Christmas?’
‘No.’
‘You do!’
‘Do not. Don’t remember. What little shell-thing?’
‘A dear little Japanese shell and when you drop it into a tumbler of water it just bursts open, and the most lovely, amazing flowers start growing. Just in a tumbler of water. Really magic flowers. You do remember? We had them last year too, only this year I got it.’
I did remember, of course, as soon as she said it, but I was hot and a bit fed up because then all I had got was a wooden whistle and a paper hat. But I was sure she had opened her shell and put it in water already, so there was no need to show her that I was interested. So I didn’t bother. I just shrugged and said I bet she had already used it up.
‘I haven’t, I haven’t! It’s still in the shell, all shut. With a bit of sticky paper covered in squiggly writing. Our father says it’s Japanese.’
‘Well, so what about it? That was at Christmas, now it’s July. Perhaps it’s gone off, or something, and it’s too hot to argue and my heel hurts.’
‘You and your old heel. But what I was thinking was that if I gave you my sweet little Japanese shell, for keeps, we could go down to Baker’s and buy one big bottle of Tizer. Just for us! Wouldn’t you love that? I mean wouldn’t you really? A big cold Tizer?’
You see? So awful. Really cheaty. She was so secret. So I said I thought it was a rotten idea, and that if she wanted a whole bottle of Tizer why didn’t she go down to the village and buy herself one. Mind you, I knew that she never would. Not on her own, on account of the heifers down in the corner, only, she thought they were bulls, all swishing their tails and putting the fear of death into her. She was quiet for a bit, chewing her lips, as we started up the slope at the end of the gully, and Great Meadow was all yellow with buttercups. I put on my plimsolls again and she said, shaking her head in a waggly way, that she hadn’t any Saturday money left, she’d spent hers, and all she had left was her ‘sweet little shell, unopened’.
I ask you! You do see what I mean? A real cheat. So I said, holding the honey very carefully and starting for the garden fence, ‘I’ve only got threepence left of my Saturday money, and I’m saving that up for the August Fair, so that is that.’
‘Threepence! That’s all we need! Threepence, and I’ll give you my dear little shell in exchange!’
‘I don’t want your rotten old shell from Christmas!’
She began to whine again, like they do, and said it was too hot, and she began to scuff through the buttercups and things, which meant that she’d get her socks all runkled and grass-stained, and a good ticking-off from Lally. If we ever got home.
As we started clambering over the rickety iron fence by the privy, she said in a sad soppy voice, ‘Fancy not wanting that dear little shell. You could afford it, easily. And then we could have all the Tizer together and not share with anyone, and we could both watch the lovely flowers opening. Together. I mean, it is sharing, isn’t it?’
And I said to shut up and there was a lot of ginger beer in the kitchen. She huffed and puffed and pulled the heads off some cow parsley and threw them up in the air.
‘Tizer is best. It’s fizzy. And cool, and lovely. I think you are vile. And mean too. Mean and vile.’
And then she ran off down to the lean-to singing her ‘All the King’s Horses’ song. I ask you. Trying to make me buy her rotten old shell for threepence when she had got it for nothing in a cracker. Girls are really quite rotten sometimes.
Because it was so hot we had only cold for lunch. Lally wore short sleeves, so you could tell how hot it was because she never would have worn short sleeves in the house, not ever.
It was going to be ham and potato s
alad and lettuce and half a tomato each. And there was a bottle of Heinz mayonnaise, only a titchy one, because my father didn’t like anything in bottles, except if it was to drink, so they had to be hidden when he was at the cottage. Like the bottle of Daddies Sauce. But Lally said that when the cat’s away the mice will play. That reminded me that I’d better give a bit of lettuce (the outside leaves) to the Weekend, which I had taken to the brick shelf halfway up the stairs on account of it was too hot in the lean-to. It was quite dark in the hallway, after the sunlight, and Lally called out to come and wash my hands, and I was just starting up the stairs when there was the most terrible clatter and something jumped right over my head and the whole Weekend went smashing to the ground and the glass just shattered and there was sawdust everywhere. I saw Sat and Sun running about quite terrified and heard Lally crying out, ‘Oh! Oh! It’s that dratted cat! Shoo, shoo!’ But I was trying to catch the mice, only I couldn’t. They were too fast and went scampering down the stairs, and Lally banged a saucepan to frighten Minnehaha out of his wits, and she frightened Sat and Sun too, but of course she didn’t mean to do that. It was just all terrible. I stood in the hallway and she said had they escaped and I just chucked the bits of old lettuce into their broken cage and started to pick up the glass bits.
‘It’s a good job it’s a cold lunch today. Get this cleared up. Sawdust and bits of carrot . . . I’ll get you a bucket, and mind your hands – we don’t want blood everywhere.’
So I just picked everything up, very slowly: the food bowl, the water bowl, the little wheel they used to exercise in, the straw from their nest. And it was all blurry, and I had to keep wiping my face, and my nose was running a bit. But I didn’t make a noise or anything. It was no good looking for Sat and Sun because they had gone for good, and I’d never find them in all of Great Meadow. So that was that. Then I put everything into the bashed cage, and carried it and the bucket of glass to the kitchen. My sister said what a dreadful smell and she was having her lunch and Lally said, ‘Outside with that, young man.’ So I just wandered into the front garden and everything went a bit swimmy. I mean, I couldn’t really see very well, but I didn’t want them to notice in the kitchen, so I went right down to the Daukeses’ hedge and emptied the glass right in the middle of it.
