The Swish of the Curtain

by Pamela Brown

  “If we had some money we could go on the pier, if there is a pier,” remarked Nigel.

  “There is an Amusement Park, but no one gets any amusement out of it because all the machines are broken,” Sandra said, as they dumped their bikes on the greensward behind a row of stripey bathing huts.

  They scrunched along the pebbly beach with numerous stops to empty their shoes.

  “Is it more painful to get the beach in one’s shoes or to take one’s shoes off altogether?” asked Vicky.

  “I shall have to,” giggled Maddy, guiltily running up from the water’s edge. “My shoes have sprung a leak.” She squelched along in her sopping sandals to demonstrate.

  “Why is it,” asked Sandra, exasperated, “that whenever you go near water you get your feet wet?”

  “I suppose my feet are attractive to water.”

  “Are the cliffs climbable?” Bulldog wanted to know.

  “No!” said Jeremy definitely.

  “You whopper,” Lyn accused him. “They are marvellous for climbing.”

  “Do let’s go up.”

  “Oh, really,” Jeremy sighed, “you people are too energetic for words.”

  “Don’t worry,” Maddy comforted him; “I’ll push you from behind.”

  With much panting and puffing and slithering and giggling they began to climb, hanging on to tufts of grass, each other, and anything else that came their way.

  “Ow!” squealed Maddy suddenly, when they were half-way up, and, letting go, slid bumpily down to the foot.

  “That,” she said ruefully, “was a thistle.”

  “We’ll wait for you,” said the others as she began to reascend, more cautiously this time.

  Having gained the top they flung themselves down on the green springy turf with sighs of relief.

  “I’m hungry,” said Bulldog. “Where are the eatables, Vicky?”

  Vicky produced three slabs of chocolate, saying, “Let me see, there are eight squares in one bar, three bars, that makes twenty-four squares all together. That’s four bits each.”

  Nigel gave an exclamation of disgust at her arithmetic. “All right,” he said. “Be polite, help everyone first, and see what you get.”

  “Don’t bother,” interrupted Sandra. “We’ve got some grub of our own, so has Lyn,” and they produced apples and lollipops. For the next few minutes there was silence except for Maddy’s running commentary on how to eat a lollipop.

  “The uses of the sticks are various,” she ended, as she scrunched up the last piece of the bright red sweet. “One can use them as nail cleaners, or for sticking in the ground, or even for sticking into people.” She demonstrated on Nigel, who, taken by surprise, choked over his chocolate, and had to retire behind a bush to recover.

  “Does anyone mind if I do some acrobatics?” asked Vicky, when only apple cores and sticky papers remained.

  “Of course not; go on.”

  “Do show me how to do something,” asked Maddy, as Vicky did a series of hand-stands, cartwheels, back-bends, and splits.

  “Can you stand on your head?” Vicky wanted to know as she crab-walked perilously near the edge of the cliff. “Sort of,” said Maddy, putting her head on the grass. Kicking her legs up in the air, she came down with a thud on the other side.

  “You’ll break your neck if you do it that way,” Vicky warned her. “Go up slowly, put your hands on the ground, and press with them when you feel as if you are going over.” Maddy obeyed and gradually straightened herself in the air.

  “If you must wear pink knickers,” remarked Jeremy, “you needn’t display them so blatantly.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” said Vicky, “’cause if you laugh you’ll wobble.”

  Maddy promptly quivered and collapsed. “You are a stooge, Jeremy,” she gasped.

  They lay on their fronts and gazed out over the sea, which was like blue crêpe rubber; a little white-sailed yacht was tacking idly around in the soft breeze.

  “It’s one of my ambitions to win a yacht race,” said Nigel, picking grass stalks and dropping them over the edge.

  “What’s your biggest ambition?” Sandra asked him.

  He replied unhesitatingly, “To be an artist.”

  “Would you wear red shirts and long hair?”

  “No, Maddy, not that sort of artist, it doesn’t pay. I want to go to an art school and learn commercial art, but Dad wants me to be a barrister.”

  “That’s like me,” put in Jeremy. “I want to study music, but I’ve got to go into father’s office.”

  “What do you play?” asked Vicky.

  “Violin chiefly, piano a bit.”

  “What a shame you can’t take it up; still, you can play in your spare time.”

  “Yes,” said Jeremy cynically, “I can play ‘Minuet in G’ at Ladies’ Institute concerts.”

  He was sitting up now, his face pink, and was throwing stones into the sea. Lyn patted him on the shoulder.

  “Now, now, don’t get het up. You shouldn’t have brought up the subject of careers, Vicky; it’s our sore point. I want to be an actress, and Sandra wants to have her voice trained, and both our parents object because, they say, we’re not good enough and we haven’t got a chance.”

  “That’s silly,” said Nigel; “you have to start at the beginning some time.”

  “I know. But there is some excuse for our parents because they’ve never seen what we can do. They’ve only seen me as Puck when we did a scene from Midsummer Night’s Dream at a school concert, and Sandra had to sing a ridiculous song about a clock. It was all ding-dongs and tick-tocks. I’m not saying we’re good, ’cause we’re not, but we could learn.”

  Lyn herself was getting “het up” now, and her eyes were sparkling as she rolled over on her back.

  “Oh, I can imagine it all – Sandra doing her trills to Jeremy’s violin accompaniment, and me taking bows in front of the curtain. I think,” she said slowly, “that my real ambition is for an audience to be so carried away by my acting that they stand up and applaud. I should be dressed in a heavy velvet frock, with long and glittering earrings, and I should curtsey and kiss my hand to the gallery, then I should—”

  Here she was interrupted by a giggle from Maddy.

  “What are you sniggering about?”

  “I was just thinking,” said Maddy gleefully, “that if I was sitting in the gallery and saw you behaving in such a lah-di-dah way I should flip an orange pip at you.”

  “You’ve no artistic temperament,” Lyn snubbed her.

  “All these ambitious people get me down,” said Bulldog, shaking his head pityingly. “I think it’s rot.”

  “Haven’t you any ambition?” said Lyn condescendingly.

  “No; I’m quite happy being what I am at the moment.”

  “So am I,” Lyn argued, “but I should hate to go on being this for ever.”

  “I’d love it.”

  “But as it’s impossible, what do you want to be?”

  Bulldog shrugged his shoulders and blinked his hazel eyes at the sun. Lyn still pressed him for an answer.

  “Would you like to be an engine driver – or – a hairdresser? Tell me what sort of thing you would like to do.”

  Bulldog was getting uncomfortable under this inquisition. He thought carefully.

  “I’d like to invent something,” he decided.

  “What?”

  “Just something.”

  “He’s hopeless, leave him alone,” said Vicky.

  Nigel reminded her smilingly, “I’ve never heard you put forth any very ambitious ideas; at least, not since you told the rector’s wife you’d like to be a cannibal.”

  “Well, I have got an ambition, so there,” said Vicky, tossing her auburn curls.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s hard to explain. It’s an acrobatic feat.” She wrinkled her brow and meditated. “Well, imagine a bench about two feet high and me standing on top of it with my back to you. Then I put my arms over my head and bend
slightly backwards till I’m like this.” She got up and demonstrated. “Then I give a spring off the bench, land on my hands with my feet in the air, and come down on my feet facing the bench.”

  “It sounds lovely,” Sandra said politely.

  “It sounds impossible,” corrected Nigel.

  “It’s not impossible; I’ve seen it done.”

  “Why can’t you do it?” Maddy inquired curiously. “You can do all the positions that come into it.”

  “I know. I get as far as the back-bend on the bench, and I daren’t give the spring. Time and again I funk it.”

  Lyn said comfortingly, “You only need practice. You’ve just got to pluck up courage once and it’s done, but Sandra and Jeremy and I have got tons of things to stop us.”

  “And what about you, Maddy?” Nigel asked. “What’s your ambition?”

  As he spoke she was burrowing her head into a soft patch of grass; she did not answer, but, pressing her hands on the ground, kicked up her heels, and, straightening her body, stood perfectly still on her head for about a minute. She came down flushed and triumphant, and said, “Don’t clap me; I know I’m good.”

  “I was asking,” went on Nigel, “what your ambition is.”

  “It isn’t. It was. That was it.” Maddy beamed cryptically.

  They looked puzzled.

  “It was my ambition to stand on my head properly, and I’ve done it, so I needn’t have another one.”

  “Don’t be so lazy,” said Lyn. “Find another one.”

  “I’d like to see Mrs. Potter-Smith with her false teeth out.”

  “What a disgusting thought. Try again,” Jeremy advised her.

  “I’d like to have my name in the newspaper.”

  “Right-o. Let me murder you and it will be.” Jeremy flung himself on her and tickled her into hysterics. She ruffled his hair and pulled his nose until he chased her, and the two other boys joined in.

  When they rejoined the girls, with Maddy a kicking, struggling prisoner, Sandra was saying, “…and one of the bedrooms will be pink and one blue.”

  “Whatever are you talking about?” Nigel asked.

  “We’re describing what our houses will be like when we are married.”

  “If you are married,” said Jeremy rudely. “And anyhow, I thought you wanted careers.”

  “I want a career, then a home.”

  “You’re greedy,” Jeremy told her, “and I don’t think women ought to have careers.” He knew that this always made Lynn see red, and winked at Nigel, who said seriously, “A woman’s place is in the home.”

  “The time has gone when women spent their lives being unpaid housekeepers,” replied Lyn cuttingly.

  The ensuing argument was heated and furious, and the situation was becoming rather tense when Maddy spotted an ice-cream man on the beach and challenged the others to a race down the cliff to buy some. Nigel was first, and treated everyone to twopenny pink cones. They also inquired the time, and found that, unless they wished to be late for lunch, they must fly.

  As they struggled up Campbell Hill, Maddy complained to Jeremy, “I feel sick, and if I pedal much harder my bike will take to the air and fly.”

  “Then your name would be in the paper,” replied Jeremy. He put his hand on her carrier and pushed her in front of him.

  3

  MADDY THROWS A STONE

  The next fortnight of the Easter holidays was a round of gaiety. The Halfords were shown every nook and cranny of Fenchester, and visited every place of entertainment. In the morning the seven of them went for bicycle rides or skated on the roller rink, in the afternoons they went to the cinema or saw the sights of the town, and sometimes in the evenings they even blew their pocket-money on supper at a café. Then, one morning, when they assembled as usual outside the Faynes’ gate, Bulldog said, “I’m broke.”

  “Same here.”

  “And me.”

  “So’m I.”

  Apart from three halfpence that Maddy produced they were completely bankrupt.

  “Whatever shall we do?”

  “Make some money,” suggested Vicky.

  “Mother told me last night that I wasn’t to spend another penny,” confessed Lyn sulkily; “nor Jeremy.”

  “We have been living at rather a pace,” said Nigel. “I suppose we must calm down a bit.”

  They walked disconsolately down the road. Even Pojo’s head was hanging dejectedly.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Je ne sais pas.” Lynette aired her French accent.

  “Where’s that?” Maddy asked innocently.

  “Oh, Timbuctoo.”

  “We’ve been everywhere and done everything,” Jeremy complained, kicking a stone along the gutter.

  “Jeremy, walk properly. Here comes Mrs. Bell,” Lyn admonished him.

  “What’s she?” Vicky wanted to know.

  “She’s the vicar’s wife. You saw her in church last Sunday.”

  “Is she nice?”

  “Yes, and she thinks we are, so we always try and keep up appearances when we see her,” Sandra informed her.

  Mrs. Bell was overjoyed to see the children. She beamed all over her pleasant round face and hurried to meet them.

  “Well! If it isn’t my young friends. And I’ve been longing to be introduced to you, my dears.” She addressed the Halfords. “I’m glad you’ve made friends so soon. Mrs. Potter-Smith was telling me about you. Now, I wonder if you would like to come to tea on Saturday.”

  “We’d love to.”

  “Very well, come at three, and don’t bother about wearing anything special.”

  They heaved a sigh of relief, and Sandra, polite as usual, thanked her and asked after the vicar.

  “And how is your dear mother? I hear she’s an invalid,” Mrs. Bell said to Vicky.

  “She’s a bit better than usual, thank you.”

  “Well, I’ll just drop in on my way up the road, and ask her about Saturday. Good-bye, dears.”

  After they had chorused their farewells Nigel remarked, “Isn’t it funny—”

  “I’m laughing like anything,” said Madelaine rudely.

  “—that Mrs. Bell and Mrs. Potter-Smith both gush, but Mrs. Bell is a dear, and Mrs. P.-S. is a gorgon.”

  “Mrs. Bell doesn’t use Californian Poppy, and try to wear lipstick, and call us ‘laddies’,” Jeremy reminded him.

  “She calls us ‘dears’.”

  “We may be dears. You never can tell, but we’re not laddies.”

  “Have you been there before to tea?” Vicky asked.

  “Tons of times, and had a marvellous tea, and the garden’s ripping,” replied Lyn enthusiastically.

  “What’s today? – Wednesday. Goodness! We’ve been here a fortnight. And what day do we start school?” Bulldog questioned.

  “The third of May. That’s a week next Tuesday.” Sandra groaned at the thought.

  “We start on the second,” said Nigel, “so let’s make the best of our time.”

  They had now reached the main road that led into Fenchester High Street.

  “Where shall we go?”

  “We’ve seen the ruins of the castle, we’ve seen the Peckton Art Gallery, we’ve been in the museum, we’ve been up the water tower, we’ve seen all the films, and we’ve had a boat on the river, and we’ve explored the barracks.”

  “And we’ve no money.”

  “Isn’t there a quay somewhere? We could go and look at the ships.”

  This was Bulldog’s suggestion.

  “It’s so smelly down by that part of the river,” Sandra demurred.

  “I like that smell,” said Maddy, sniffing reminiscently. “It’s like tinned sardines.”

  “There’s a Dutch ship there that brought a cargo of tulip bulbs,” Jeremy informed them.

  “Oh, do let’s go.” Bulldog, a keen gardener, was excited at the thought of real Dutch tulips.

  “Do you want to go?” Nigel asked Lyn.

  Lyn didn’t, b
ut she could see that he wanted to, so she shrugged her shoulders.

  “I don’t mind. Do what you like.”

  “What about you, Victoria Jane?”

  “I don’t want to particularly. Let’s vote.” Her suggestion was accepted.

  “Hands up for going.” The boys and Maddy raised their hands, the question was settled, and they started for the mercantile part of the river; the boys walked on ahead, talking male sort of talk about cars, rugger, and wireless, while the three elder girls walked behind, looking in shop windows as they passed. Maddy walked on her own, hopping from the kerb to the gutter, and keeping an eye open for cigarette cards.

  They walked through the main street where officers’ wives and the élite of Fenchester were crowding in the cafés for their eleven o’clock coffee. Maddy stood by the doorway of one and gazed inside longingly until the girls caught her up.

  “Mmm, hot chocolate and sticky cakes and Demerara sugar.”

  “Come on, you little gourmand. We’ve no money.”

  They dragged her away.

  Gradually the street narrowed into poorer residential quarters, and when they had turned down a little street on the right-hand side they could smell the “sardine” smell. They went on to the iron bridge, over which heavy lorries were constantly dashing, and looked down into the muddy oil-patched water.

  “Let’s play Pooh Sticks,” suggested Maddy.

  “What’s that?”

  “You each find a bit of orange peel” – she picked a piece from the grating of a drain – “and you throw it over one side.” She dropped it and ran across the road. “The one whose piece comes out the other side first is the winner.”

  They played Pooh Sticks until they had used all the available orange peel, and then went on along the wharf. There were sailing barges of all nationalities with red and brown sails, and often they had to step aside to allow a barge horse to pass along the tow path. The Dutch ship was being unloaded when they found it, and a funny little boy with a round tanned face and a red-tasselled cap was carrying immense boxes on his shoulders to a lorry waiting near by. Nigel spoke to him.

  “Good-morning. Isn’t it a lovely day?”

  The boy merely grinned, showing two rows of even, white teeth.