by Jane Gardam
‘No, the beach. Could we?’ Margaret asked fast.
‘It looks rather crowded.’
‘Could we go on the pier?’
‘Wouldn’t the woods be cooler? It would be better to sit out of the crowds in the cool.’ He looked at Lydia with a quick and meaning eye and she at once set off towards a little hut where you could buy a ticket for a penny ride down to the lower promenade in a box like a greenhouse on a metal rope. The cable-car-greenhouse was at the top, ready and waiting, and Lydia stepped into it. ‘Hurry now,’ called the man at the wheel and Marsh and Margaret had to follow her. In a stiff row the three descended to the sands of the lower promenade and stepped out into the jostle of the crowds around the entrance to the pier. A penny for the pier it said under a flutter of flags, and sixpence for the pierrots. The pierrots danced and sang for sixpence every hour. ‘Oh, could I? Could I?’ Margaret clung to Marsh’s arm.
‘What, the pier? The pierrots?’
‘Could I see the pierrots?’
She knew at once she had been mad.
‘Dancing?’ he said.
‘Yes’ (hopelessly). The Saints were not even allowed a wireless set. Spectacles of all kinds were suspect, even God’s own. Mind the Book and not the sunset.
‘“It is the noise of them that sing do I hear,” said Moses, “he saw the calf and the dancing and Moses’ anger waxed hot.” Where?’
‘Exodus,’ said Margaret. Once very long ago walking with her mother on the sands she’d seen them—the pierrots—a line of painted people, black and white frills and flounces, rose-red lips, twelve legs and shiny pointed feet all kicking in a line and something had happened like—
‘Exodus where?’
‘Exodus—’ like her mother picking her up and hugging her and swinging her and laughing and her own arms stretching to the wonderful happy noise.
‘Exodus where?’
When she’d been still quite a baby. ‘Exodus thirty-two somewhere. I hate Moses.’
‘What!’
‘I hate Moses. What about David?’
‘How dare you, Margaret!’
‘Psalms 150 verses three to six. And what about two Samuel six fourteen?’
‘That will do.’
‘David danced before the Lord with all his might.’
Lydia scratched her head and then put her hand across her mouth which was grinning and Margaret waited for the end.
‘You may go to the pierrots,’ said Marsh. Even Lydia gasped.
He took a penny and a sixpence from his pocket and said, ‘You may go to the pierrots. You cannot tell Vanity if you have never seen it. The penny is for the turnstile and the sixpence for the performance.’
‘’Ere,’ said Lydia, ‘you mean she’s to go by ’erself. And me not. She’s only eight.’
‘She will be quite safe.’
‘What in all them lot? Chris’ they’re day trippers ’alf of them from Easington and Shields.’
‘They are God’s children. They won’t harm her. She is in God’s path.’
‘I’d not bank on that.’
‘That,’ he said, ‘is where you must be set right and whilst Margaret is on the pier you and I will go somewhere quiet and talk about it. Perhaps in the woods?’
‘I’m not going in no woods.’
‘Mrs Marsh says that you often take Margaret into the woods.’
‘I’m not going in no woods with you. I’ll leave me place rather than go in any woods with you.’
People were beginning to take an interest. Marsh, fingers between neck and collar said, ‘Very well.’ He looked about. ‘Very well, we will just walk about. Beside the pier. Margaret will be almost within sight on the pier and we shall be walking below.’ He took Lydia’s plump arm just above the elbow and began to guide her down the steps on to the sands. Margaret saw Lydia looking still very uneasy, truculent even, often looking back. Her big face was angry, as if it were all Margaret’s fault. ‘Serves her right,’ Margaret said and went on to the pier, putting down the penny at the turnstile and all by herself walking through. ‘She’s got what she deserves so there,’ she said as she played the game where you don’t step on the lines which is exceptionally difficult on a pier.
And Marsh and Lydia picked their way through the buckets and spades and litter and bodies. When they reached the edge of the sea he let go her arm and they stood looking at the long spars of rock sticking out at an angle from the beach, bright green with seaweed near at hand, black and shiny with wet further out, backed by sudden plumes of spray where the waves hit them further out still. It was a dangerous coast as flat and shallow-looking as a rice paddy but seldom without a wreck sticking up in it somewhere. Even today, as hot as the rest of this burning summer, it was cool by the sea, with few swimmers. Lydia watched the waves spout up beyond the tilted long rocks and rubbed her arm where Marsh had held it. They made an odd couple—one dapper, one gross, and each dressed as if to prove something. They were too heavy for the landscape. Collage on aquatint.
Marsh coughed and said, ‘Lydia, let me ask you something.’
She sniffed and humped away, paddling a foot in a pool in the rocks. ‘Let me ask you,’ he said as she teetered further out, raising his voice a little, ‘Have you observed the baby?’
‘Hobserved the baby?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know what yer talking about.’
‘Have you taken notice of the baby?’
‘Well acourse I ’ave.’
‘You have observed how it cries?’
‘I’ve ’eard it, if that’s what you mean. What you talking about? O’ course it cries.’
‘Ah,’ he put up a finger, ‘quite so. Exactly. Of course it cries. It is natural for it to cry.’
‘Well that’s all right then, in’ it?’ She walked carefully out on the rocks, sat down on one and took off her shoes.
‘It is all right that we understand each other,’ said Marsh. ‘But not exactly all right in any other sense.’
‘I don’t know what the ’ell you talk about,’ she stretched out a leg and began to scrabble up her thigh for suspenders.
‘STOP!’ Marsh’s Sunday voice boomed. ‘Lydia, I am talking to you. This is a very serious matter . . . ’
‘Well, I can listen while I tek me stockin’s off. If you think there’s somethin’ wrong with t’baby yer daft. It’s grand. Me Mam’s had eight. I should know. I was t’first.’
‘Lydia—please. Leave your legs alone—I am talking of original sin.’
‘Eh?’
‘The baby crying.’
‘Horiginal what?’
‘Sin. Sin. I am trying to tell you about sin. You know what sin is, Lydia?’
She held a stocking up in the air and regarded it. It had a big sag at the open end. The toe drooped. The rest of it still seemed to hold a leg. Lydia did not often do much about her personal laundry. The queer brown leg hung above the sea and Lydia said, ‘In’ it a grand shape?’
‘Sin,’ said Marsh coming closer. ‘Have you ever thought about sin, Lydia?’
Still watching the stocking she said, ‘Yer cracked.’
‘Lydia, Lydia—whenever you have thought about sin I expect you have had a picture in your mind of—lust.’
‘Lust?’
‘Well—young men on sandhills. The back rows of the cinema. Scarlet women. Now I want you to realise that there is more to it than this. You have heard me preach on Sundays. Have you, I wonder, begun to understand just what I have been trying to say?’
Lydia took off the other stocking and splashed her toes in a pool.
‘Sin,’ said Marsh, ‘invades every corner of our being. We are born in sin. When you hear the baby cry you hear the cry of sin. Anger, concupiscence, frustration. I will explain. When Margaret was a little girl we had a lawn-mower. If you undid the screws on the lawn-mower the blades came off. Margaret had learned how to unscrew the lawn-mower and she used to trot across the grass and give the screws to her mother as if s
he had done something clever. We used to say, “No, don’t touch the screws, Margaret, and put them back.” Then she began to undo the screws and put them in the flower bed. We used to go to the flower bed and bring them back and show her how carefully they needed to be screwed back on. One day she took off the screws and put them in her pocket. “Margaret,” we said gently—she was about three years old—“Naughty Margaret. Put back the screws.” But she laughed and laughed and ran down the back garden behind the greenhouse and when we fetched her back she was laughing as hard as could be. I carried her back to the lawn-mower—I remember she patted my face all the way. Laughing. Now what do you think I did?’
‘Ran her over with the bloody lawn-mower bein’ you,’ said Lydia.
Marsh closed his eyes for a moment and then picked his way over the seaweedy rocks and stood close to her. He watched her big yellowish feet splashing. He slithered a bit in his shoes.
‘What we did was this. Mrs Marsh and I took Margaret aside and explained to her very quietly and slowly, in baby language, exactly why she must never take out the screws again. We reasoned with her. We asked her to give us back the screws. We smiled at her. After a while she took them out of her pocket and gave them to us and watched us put them back on the lawn-mower. And then we kissed her. And I mowed the grass. And what do you think she did next?’
‘She fell asleep. Dead bored.’
‘No, Lydia. The very next day we saw her go to the lawn-mower when she thought no one was looking, and taking off the screws and with a very serious face she trotted to the dustbin and THREW THE SCREWS INSIDE! And then she began to put a lot of things on top of them so that we couldn’t find them. What do you think this story shows?’
‘She didn’t like you,’ said Lydia.
‘No, Lydia, think harder.’
Lydia said nothing.
‘She liked long grass p’raps,’ said a voice. A boy with a shrimping net was seen to be standing nearby. Lydia began to howl with laughter. ‘Come over here,’ said Marsh and led the way further out to sea. The boy with the net followed and was soon joined by his sister and then by a stout man with braces and trousers wisely rolled up to the knee. ‘The child,’ said Marsh trying to disregard his audience and concentrate on his pupil, ‘was in the hands of sin.’
‘Oh git on,’ said Lydia. The girl splashed the boy who held the net and soaked him and he lammed her with it. She began to cry. ‘You see,’ said Marsh, pointing to the children.
‘See what?’ said the fat man.
‘The force of sin.’
‘Shut yer face,’ said the man. ‘You don’t talk to my kids like that. Talk to yer missus how yer like, but you don’t bother my kids . . . ’
‘I was not talking to . . . ’
‘You was.’
‘My friend . . . ’
‘You’re no friend of mine, mate. What you think you are anyway, Jesus Christ or somethin’?’
‘I am your friend,’ said Marsh with hostility, ‘I am talking about sin.’
‘Funny place to do it,’ said the man. ‘In the middle of the sea. In yer best shoes an all. Come ’ere,’ he grabbed his children. ‘What you want talking to ’im. He’s rockers. Git back to yer mother. The tide’s comin’in.’
Marsh said, ‘My friend, I only wanted to show you—’ and stepping forwards off the rock slipped, and fell face down in the water. Lydia’s laughter could be heard right over on the beach although it had now become unaccountably much further away. When, still laughing, she had helped him up they seemed further off still and the man and his children were gone back and mingled with the crowds on the shore. ‘We’d better look sharp,’ she said. ‘We’ll finish up drowned.’ Marsh, sopped all down his front, didn’t disagree and let her lead him back through water now nearly up to their knees until they were safe in the shallows. ‘Eeeh dear,’ she said. ‘We’re ’avin’ a right day. We’ll have to get you home somehow, too. Look. Go into a gents, somewhere.’ He stood blank.
‘You go off into a gents,’ she said again, ‘and I’ll go after Margaret.’
‘Sin!’ she added. ‘Screws!’
He walked thoughtfully out of the water and the boy came up again and watched him. He did not laugh. Several other people were laughing round about but soon they stopped. There was a rather sweet seriousness and unself-consciousness in the small dripping man, and at length a voice, not unkind, shouted, ‘You’ll have done yer watch in, colonel.’ Marsh unhooked the gold watch and chain from his front and examined them. ‘Serves him right,’ said a less kind voice further off. ‘Takin’ his girlfriend out there in the current. Undressing on the rocks.’ Marsh flushed and Lydia laughed again.
‘I don’t think she was naughty,’ said the boy.
‘What?’ Marsh’s alertness sprang back. Up shot his brows.
‘The one you were saying about. I don’t think that girl was naughty. Hiding them screws. I think she’d just be playing something.’
‘You come away from ’im,’ yelled the father, coming up.
‘He don’t know much about playing, son,’ said Lydia. To the people on the beach she added, ‘Poor sod.’
‘Why shouldn’t she play with things? Hide and Seek?’ said the boy.
‘My child,’ said Marsh and was off.
He talked.
The boy—a heavy child with a ruminating face—interrupted. Then a woman began. Soon Marsh was surrounded by a little group and when Lydia who had gone off to find Margaret reached the steps up from the beach people were looking back to the group and quite a few were getting up and going over to increase it. Someone asked her if it was an accident. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Though he’d not say so.’
‘Some soap-box bloke,’ said someone else. ‘One of these Bible-blokes.’
‘No, it’s not. It’s the Black Shirts.’
‘It’s the Kensitts.’
‘It’s only the old Sally Army.’
‘It’s Punch and Judy.’
‘It’s yer father,’ said Lydia to Margaret who at last emerged dazedly from the pierrots. ‘He’s found hisself a new Turner Street. E’s set for t’rest oft afternoon. What say we go off, you an’ me, down the woods?’
6.
They hurried through the woods to the bridge and the tree, passing the bandstand in the hollow with barely a glance, down the rough bank to the dry bed of the stream. Lydia had had to put her shoes back on for the walk along the promenade and was grateful to reach the tree to flop down and take them off again. Margaret sat beside her. They were both out of breath as if they had completed an urgent journey. As they recovered, Margaret first, they looked about them into the trees.
‘Off yer go then,’ said Lydia.
‘Where?’
‘Wherever it is yer go.’
‘Don’t you mind?’
‘No—yer safe ’ere. Not like with yon riff-raff ont’ pier.’
‘No, I mean don’t you mind being alone?’
‘No. I’m grand.’
‘But I’ve had the pierrots. I’ll keep with you if you like. I’ve had my treat.’
Picking her teeth Lydia looked at Margaret suddenly, took hold of her chin and then patted her face. ‘Go on. Have another treat too,’ she said. ‘Yer bonny.’
‘It’s not a treat,’ said Margaret.
‘Well it’s not lectures about lawn-mowers.’
‘What?’
‘Nowt. You git off now.’
‘Oh—you mean in case he comes?’
‘I mean nowt of the sort. We’ve only got ten minutes. In case who comes?’
‘That man—you know! You only got your hands round my throat that’s all. You know—don’t pretend.’
They both wondered quickly at how close they had grown and the things their friendship could bear. ‘You go on about that man,’ said Lydia not quite meeting Margaret’s eyes, ‘I’m just here easin’ me feet.’
‘Father . . . ’
‘He’s right. He’s grand. Don’t you fret. He’s settin�
� them all straight. An’ll not be ten minutes.’
Halfway up the bank Margaret called, ‘You’ll be lonely if he doesn’t come,’ but Lydia turned her back and leaned against the tree, twirling her toes. Margaret at the top of the bank could still see the toes moving. She thought, should I have said come too, and then realised no. Most certainly not.
Excitement took over as she came out of the trees—a reminiscent excitement. The light over the vast yellow lawn flooded into view and she remembered. It was like a curtain going up, but quite different from the pierrots.
There was the mansion and there again was the man under the trees seated at his painting. It was later in the afternoon than it had been the other time and there were shadows on the grass and down the side of the great house. She noticed a large, rather ramshackle conservatory to one side of it with arched panes of glass, finials and spikes and white wrought iron and a mass of dark within. As she stood just out of sight at the lawn’s edge the door of the conservatory was flung open and a troop of people burst out. They began to walk two by two across the grass. They were both men and women, about twenty of them trooping together raggedly, talking and laughing. Some of them were holding hands and swinging their arms. ‘Like school,’ she thought. ‘Like a baby school! But they’re grown-ups. Some of them are even old.’
The troop came marching over the grass towards her for a little way, then veered off in the direction of the artist, who paid them no attention. As they drew nearer to him and to Margaret she could hear them laughing and chattering and saw that they all wore the same sort of clean but faded clothes—lineny, cottony, thin sort of clothes, washed but not ironed, washed away into pale pinks and blues and lavenders and whites. Almost a uniform. But not a costume. The pierrots had had a costume—all shiny and ironed. A lot of these had white puffy hair all clean but not arranged. They stopped and gathered round the artist and the chattering grew louder as they pushed forward, closed in, though he still appeared to take no notice, looking up now and then as usual at the house, dabbing minutely with the long brush. The people in the cluster in their pale clothes looked like hydrangeas, thought Margaret, like our hydrangeas in the back garden where I played hunt the thimble with the lawn-mower screws and they all went mad. She felt that the people were perfectly lovely—happy and good-tempered, needing each other and hand in hand.
