by Julian Gloag
And on the surface of the water were big white lilies on green mats. Suddenly he flung off the robe and leapt into the cool water among the lilies. The heat of his dance was cooled and he swam gently between the broad leaves. With great gentleness he placed his pomegranates on one of them. He was free. He knew that he had been very tired, but now he was not anymore. He lay on his back, smelling the smell of the lilies, hearing the faraway bell music, and the bright sun shone down. His body was washed and silver, and smooth.
The sun was very bright in the sky and as he watched it seemed to grow. It enlarged in the sky and was no longer soft, but hard and yellow. Hubert screwed up his eyes and tried to turn his head, but the water was suddenly resistant. The light was so bright he cried out, and with all his strength he tried to turn over—but something held him back. He struggled against the hand on his shoulder and put up his arms to shut out the light and drag back the vanishing garden.
“Hubert, come on. Wake up, Hu.”
“Don’t shine the torch in his face, silly.”
“But he won’t wake up.”
“Shake him.”
The light went out, but someone was shaking him hard. He opened his eyes.
“That’s enough—he’s awake now.” It was Elsa.
He saw nothing but blackness. He couldn’t remember at all. He was lying on the ground and it was hard. He was wet still from the pool. He could feel the stickiness of his shirt and there was a raw wetness between his legs.
“Let him get up. Come on, Hu, get up.”
He managed to whisper, “I can’t.”
Then a hand gripped his. It was Elsa’s; he knew because it was strong. She pulled him to his feet.
“What you want to go and fall asleep for?” said Dun.
He was dizzy—as dizzy as when he’d held his breath. He blinked hard. “There were robbers,” he blurted, “robbers waiting in the garden!”
“Robbers!” said Dunstan contemptuously.
“There were robbers!”
“Don’t be silly, Hu,” Elsa said.
“But there were, there were, there were!” As he said it he burst into tears and all the sleep-stilled shivers in his body attacked together.
His weeping silenced them all. Hubert never cried. Dunstan, or Dinah—even Elsa, yes. But Hubert!
They saw his bent head and heard the grate of indrawn grief and the cry of its expulsion, but none of them knew of any comfort.
He could not stop.
“Hubert?”
“Hu.”
Their voices were puzzled and gentle.
He stood alone in the grave and wept.
“What’s the matter, Hu?”
“Aren’t you feeling very well?”
And then, quite abruptly, he was empty and could cry no more. There was nothing to feel or to be afraid of. He was hollow. He could see now. He could see that the garden was just dark. It wasn’t sunlit, and there weren’t any robbers.
There were no pomegranates and no bells. And there wasn’t any pool—just an old hole in the lily bed. He put his hands on the sides and pulled himself out and stood up. He could hardly manage it, he was so weak. He was all right, except he couldn’t stop shivering.
“Aren’t you very well, Hu?”
“I’m all right.”
Elsa put her hand on his forehead. “Why, you’re frozen. You are a silly.”
“Is he ill?” asked Jiminee.
“You’re terribly cold, Hu,” Elsa said. “I think you better go to bed.”
“Why can’t we all go to b-bed?”
“Don’t be an idiot, Jiminee,” Dunstan said violently. “We got to finish it, haven’t we?”
“B-but, we have finished, Dun! It’s big enough now, isn’t it?” He shone his torch down into the trench. “That’s deep enough.”
“How do you know it’s deep enough?”
Diana answered him, “It’s deep enough, Dun.”
“Well,” he said, suddenly mild, “even if it is, we’ve still got to … got to fetch Mother.”
“Yes,” said Diana.
“But we need Hubert for that—and he’s going to b-bed. We can’t do it without Hu.”
“Oh, yes, Jiminee, yes we can.” Diana touched him gently on the shoulder as if to still his doubts. “Children,” she said, “children—it’s time now.”
“You’ll have to wait till I get Hu to bed,” Elsa said.
He didn’t protest. He let her put her arm round his waist and half carry him.
He could never have climbed the stairs by himself. And his fingers were so fat he couldn’t even undo the buttons on his shirt. Somehow he didn’t mind Elsa doing it—didn’t even mind her undressing him and taking off his wet pants and putting him into bed. He was all hollow still—like a tree trunk with nothing inside.
She did it all in the dark. He was glad of that—he didn’t want to remember that piercing sun. He just wanted to forget, to sleep.
But when Elsa had left him and said goodnight, he couldn’t seem to sleep after all. He thought he’d been cold, but now he was terribly hot—so hot he flung the bedclothes off—and still he was hot.
Hot and cold—one moment nothing would cool him, and the next an icy wind froze him through the blankets.
It was while he was shaking with this cold that he became aware of Jiminee by his bed.
“Hu?”
He tried to nod.
“Hu—there was something in the garden. It wasn’t robbers, b-but … wouldn’t you like to know?”
Hubert could hardly hear him—he was conscious only of the great hand, the hand of a giant snowman, that gripped him and shook and shook and wouldn’t let go.
“It was Blackie—it wasn’t robbers at all. Just B-Blackie. Somebody left the garden d-door open, and Blackie got in. He was sn-sniffing round b-by the wall. Elsa wasn’t half angry—b-but I didn’t leave it open. You didn’t either, d-did you, Hu. I think it was Dun. D-Dun’s always going off d-down there by himself.”
“But Dun’s afraid of Blackie,” Hubert managed.
“Well, he d-didn’t m-mean to. It was just an accident, I ’spect.”
There was a brief moment of peace for Hubert then. In a minute, he knew, he would be aflame. “Have you finished?” he said hoarsely.
“Finished? Oh, yes. It wasn’t b-bad at all. The others are just p-putting the earth back. I thought I’d come and tell you about B-Blackie. I say, do you know what D-Dinah says?”
But Hubert couldn’t answer. The heat had got him now. All he wanted was water, but he couldn’t speak. He knew the silvery water of the pool was not far away, but he couldn’t reach it. Struggle as he would, he’d never get it.
“… to build a tab-taber-tab-b-b-ber—a t-temple …”
He could see the white lilies floating and very faintly he even heard the bell music, bells and pomegranates …
“… like M-Moses m-made Aaron b-build …”
… pomegranates and bells …
“… Dinah says we ought to d-do it for Mother, you see …”
… scarlet and purple and blue—and golden bells.
SUMMER
10
The garden was locked from the inside, although Hubert had been careful to leave it open when they went to do the shopping. He and Elsa stood outside in a patch of shade cast by the plane trees. It was very hot. The tops of the trees moved languidly in a tiny breeze. The tar of the road gave up shimmering waves of heat.
They looked at each other in silence. Hubert shifted his grip on the handle of the shopping basket—his palm was sticky and crinkled by the wicker work. They would have to go the long way round to the front now.
It was very quiet in the road. School had broken up the day before, but most of the children came from the other side of West Avenue. Not many lived in the big, still half-smart terraces that opened out onto the park, and those that did mostly went to boarding schools. In the summer a lot of them went away to the seaside. Anyway, they wouldn’t mix with council-s
chool children.
Monmouth Terrace and Ipswich Terrace and Abergavenny had a look of summer desertion. Even the dogs lying in the shade of the doorways were almost invisible.
“Well?” said Elsa.
Hubert nodded, and they began to move. He had a half-sense of gladness that they couldn’t get in the back way. He knew Elsa felt it too. It gave them a little longer before they had to face Mrs. Stork. The constant fear that Miss Deke at school would find out had ended with the coming of the holidays. But there was still Mrs. Stork—old Talk-Stork, queen of Nosey Parkers. Every Thursday, Mrs. Stork’s day, Elsa had to invent an excuse to stay away from school and look after Willy so that Mrs. Stork wouldn’t get at him. Now that all the children were at home, Mrs. Stork would be bound to worm the truth out of one of them. She suspected something all right.
They should have got rid of her long ago. They shouldn’t have let her stay on so long. Never put off till the morrow what you can do today.
Hubert pushed his sandals down hard on the unpaved strip that ran by the wall and dust puffed up over his toes. It was no good thinking what they should have done.
They turned the corner into Ipswich Terrace. Here there were no trees along the street, except at the end, by the park, where every evening four or five smartly dressed ladies would stand and talk. Even when it rained they stood there. Hubert had seen them once with their bright faces sheltered from the rain by red and yellow and purple umbrellas, like a fair. They weren’t there now—just the sun. Hubert put his free hand on the top of his head and felt his hair. It was scorching.
The front door was shut, but as they walked up the path it opened abruptly and Gerty ran out to meet them. Two streaks of dirt framed her nose.
“Elsa! Dun says me and Willy mustn’t swing anymore!”
Elsa frowned. “What do you mean?”
“He says we mustn’t swing anymore—not in the garden. Tell him it’s not fair! We can, Else, can’t we?”
Elsa clenched the handle of her basket tightly and two small red spots showed on her cheeks, but her voice was calm. “Perhaps he had a reason, Gert. Didn’t he say why? Perhaps the swing isn’t safe anymore.”
“He didn’t say why, he didn’t! He just said we mustn’t.”
“You’re a little liar, Gerty Hook.” Dunstan spoke from just inside the doorway, so that only the whiteness of his face showed up in the shadow.
Gerty twisted round and stepped backwards into Hubert. He put his hand on her shoulder and felt her plump little body press against his. He resisted his own inclination to step back too.
“Dunstan—behave yourself!” Elsa’s chin was up, and the hesitancy of the last few weeks was gone. Suddenly Hubert was proud of her. “Go on,” he murmured.
“I won’t have you telling the little ones what they can do and what they can’t do.”
Dunstan stood unmoving in the doorway. Out of the dimness of the hall his words came clear and hard. “You won’t have it. You don’t seem to realise certain things. You don’t seem to realise the garden is a place of rest—not the place for Gerty’s silly shrieks and screams. You don’t seem to realise that—do you, Elsa?”
Elsa stepped forward, squinting to see better into the shadow. “I don’t want to listen to any more from you. You’re cheeky and—”
“Exactly—you never do want to listen. You have to decide everything. Well, perhaps it would interest you to know Diana agrees with me. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!”
Elsa was trembling with rage. “I don’t care what Diana says! It’s none of her business. If it was decided in a meeting … but you can’t go round giving orders. Who do you—”
“Don’t care! That’s just typical. I suppose you don’t care what Mother thinks?” For a moment the scorn had gone from Dunstan’s voice, then it returned redoubled. “Don’t care was made to care!”
Elsa turned her head and spoke directly to Gerty. “You and Willy can use the swing whenever you want, Gert.”
Gerty began to smile. She looked up at Hubert and slowly pushed his hand from her shoulder. With all the sedateness of a five-year-old she walked up the path and climbed the steps. As she passed Dunstan she looked him full in the face. “Yah boo!” she said, without breaking stride.
Dunstan lunged and grabbed her arm. He pulled her towards him and bent his face down very close to hers. “Listen, Gerty—you’re a liar. That makes you a sinner, and sinners have to pay. If you swing once more, God will punish you. He’ll tear out your insides, that’s what he’ll do—because you’re a sinner.”
Gerty struggled silently. For a moment Hubert was still, then he had dropped the basket and was running up the front steps. “Leave her alone!” he shouted. As Dunstan looked up in surprise, Gerty pulled herself free and vanished into the dark hall.
Hubert hit him in the face. Dunstan staggered back into the hall. The threadbare carpet slithered under his feet and he fell onto his back. The fall jolted the glasses from his nose and they hung swinging from one ear. Dazed and blind, but unblinking, he sat up, propping himself on his hands.
“It serves you right,” said Hubert, feeling the soreness of his fist. But it was an excuse the way he said it, not a justification. Suddenly his anger was out of reach. He glanced about the hall as if he would find it on the silver letter tray, which Mrs. Stork had forgotten to polish again, or in the frozen joviality of the galloping huntsmen on the wall.
Dunstan rose slowly and fumblingly replaced his glasses.
“It serves you right,” Hubert muttered again.
Dunstan stepped forward. “You knocked my glasses off,” he said, staring intensely at Hubert.
And Hubert looked away—up, down, to the floor boards that still carried the bright impression of Flight-Sergeant Millard’s boot.
“You knocked my glasses off.” Dunstan paused. “I shan’t forget that.” He turned and went swiftly to the stairs.
He was halfway up when Hubert called, “What about what you did to Gerty?” Why did it sound so feeble, when he was right? Dunstan didn’t even glance back.
Hubert stayed in the same position for a long time. Dunstan had hit Gerty and he had hit Dunstan. That was fair—well, it was fair. Yet lately Dunstan had a way of making what was fair and unfair seem unimportant—silly, somehow
“You shouldn’t have hit him, Hu.”
He half turned to Elsa. “It served him right.”
“Perhaps it did. But we’ve got to stick together, Hu. We mustn’t quarrel.”
“He hurt Gerty. And he locked us out of the garden, didnt he?” He was suddenly angry with her.
Elsa sighed. She went over to the hall table and picked up a letter. She glanced at it casually and slipped it in the pocket of her dress.
“A letter?” Hubert asked.
She nodded.
“Aren’t you going to read it?”
“Not now. There’s Mrs. Stork. You go and find where she is. I’ll take the baskets down to the kitchen.” She reached out and picked up the brass lady bell that stood by the letter tray. It made no sound—it had been clapperless for as long as any of them could remember.
“Else—do you think Diana really said the little one weren’t to use the swing?”
Elsa shook the bell. “Of course. You know Dunstan never tells a lie.” She laid it down carefully on the table and made a little dusting motion with her hand. “You better go and find Mrs. Stork now.”
Hubert bent down and straightened out the rug. “All right he said.
11
Jiminee was upstairs in Hubert’s workshop. He sat at the table by the window, absorbed in his drawing.
Hubert watched. It was strange how all the awkwardness in Jiminee vanished while he drew. The nervous stutter of his limbs was gone, and his hand moved with steady exacttude. Looking at Jiminee with a crayon in his hand, no one could call him loony anymore. Best of all he liked to work alone, but even when he yielded to the children’s urging—“draw for us, Jiminee, please draw us something!”—
and sat down with everyone looking on, the hesitant smile would disappear and, like magic, he would become another Jiminee.
Hubert didn’t want to interrupt. Watching his younger brother made him forget about Dunstan. Jiminee’s calmness filled the room and made it a peaceful place. And suddenly Hubert knew why Jiminee changed so when he drew—he was safe. He wasn’t running away, like he did when they plagued him in the breaks at school, or standing, white-faced and grinning, when they had cornered him at last; he was just safe and … untouchable, that was it. And Hubert remembered when Jiminee had first gone to school he wouldn’t go to the playground at breaks—that was before Miss Deke had made him go out and “mix with your fellows”—but would sit at his desk, drawing. One day, Bill Chance—they called him “Fatty” behind his back—had snatched Jiminee’s pencil away and done a war dance round the desk, holding the pencil just out of Jiminee’s reach. But no one else had joined in and eventually Fatty had handed the pencil back and gone away. After that nobody—except Miss Deke—ever bothered Jiminee when he was drawing.
Hubert drew in a deep breath, then let it out slowly and gently. “Jiminee,” he said, “have you seen Mrs. Stork?”
Jiminee paused, shook his head, and went back to his work.
“Who wants Mrs. Stork? Oh, it’s you, love.” Mrs. Stork appeared in the doorway of the spare bedroom. “Just giving this old room a bit of an air.” She flapped a piece of blue cloth that did duty as a duster and then raised it to pat at her shiny forehead. “It ain’t ’alf ’ot. What can I do for you?”
