by Rumer Godden
CHAPTER IX
WHAT happens when a sin is committed? Usually the sinner flourishes.
Lovejoy bought the fork and trowel from Mr. Dwight and dug up the ground, doing her best, with the small fork, to make the earth smooth and fine, like the beds in the Square gardens. She sowed the cornflowers at either end of the garden, trying to put the seeds in rows like cabbages in an allotment, but they got lost in the furrows; she sowed them as evenly as she could and scattered earth over them. There had been three-and-eightpence in the candle box and from the one-and-fivepence she had over she bought grass seed to grow in the centre. “How much would I need,” she asked Mr. Isbister, “to make that much grass?” She showed him the length and width with her arms.
Mr. Isbister paused and then grunted, “Half an ounce.”
Lovejoy knew how to sow grass. She had watched the men doing it when the new council flats were made; they had lawns, not asphalt, and she had seen the men sow the seed and then stretch nets over the places to keep off the sparrows and children. Lovejoy, of course, had no net but that was soon solved. She had stolen the money, so it seemed to make no difference now if she stole a net, and she took the cat net off a perambulator when the baby was put outside to sleep. First she unfastened the net—if anybody comes I can pretend I’m looking at the baby, she thought; they’ll scold me but that’s all they can do—then she waited, looking up and down the Street and into the baby’s house through the windows; the moment came; she dexterously peeled the net off, slid it under her coat, and sauntered away.
That gave her a bad few minutes in bed that night. People put nets over perambulators in case cats—Mrs. Cleary’s or Miss Arnot’s, perhaps—sat down on the babies’ faces and smothered them. “Old women’s tales,” said Vincent, but Lovejoy could see how a cat could sit on a baby who had no net; the warmth, the soft pillow, would tempt it. The thought of the weight—of Istanbul, for instance, on a baby’s face—filled the night with horror; she saw the baby choking in the tabby fur, beating with helpless fists, writhing, and no one would hear. In the night she decided to take the net back; I should be a murderer, thought Lovejoy, but in the light of morning she went firmly to the garden shop and spent twopence on a dozen small wooden name-pegs, took them to the garden, and, after sticking them where the grass was sown, stretched the cat net over them; when it was done it looked so professional that she was charmed.
“If it was stolen, it couldn’t have been a good garden,” Tip was to say.
“It was a good garden,” said Lovejoy, which was true. It all seemed to come together under her hand—“And why not?” asked Lovejoy defensively. It was not her fault, she argued, if she stole. The comics were unguarded on the stand, the little boys looked away from their ice-cream cornets, Sparkey had stood right out on the pavement to look at the flowers on the packet, the baby was left out with the net, the candle box was open. “What do you expect?” asked Lovejoy furiously.
Now the garden was ready to grow. In the earth the seeds were changing into plants—“or presently they’ll change,” said Lovejoy when she dug one up with her finger and found it was still the same.
“Hey! give them time,” said Mr. Isbister.
“But how much time?” asked the impatient Lovejoy.
At night now, when she went to bed, she did not lie awake feeling the emptiness; she thought about the garden, the seeds, their promised colours. She had never before thought of colours—except in clothes, thought Lovejoy; now she saw colours everywhere, the strong yellow of daffodils, the blue and clear pink—or hideous pink—of hyacinths, the deep colours of anemones; she was learning all their names; she saw how white flowers shone and showed their shape against the London drab and grey. She was filled with her own business. She had never had her own business before; directly after breakfast, on her way to school, she went to the garden and was thinking about it all day long.
Each day she discovered something new. In Woolworth’s she haunted the garden counter. It was piled high with packets of seeds and she needed seed; she had ambitions beyond cornflowers now. It’s no use trying to swipe a whole packet, thought Lovejoy longingly but she found that if she handled them as if she were turning them over, she could, by pinching sharply and quickly, make a little hole in the paper and sometimes a seed, or a few seeds, trickled out. It took time. She did not dare to go often in case the girls grew suspicious; though there was always a crowd round the counter, they might notice her; there was danger too from the people on each side, but with cunning and caution Lovejoy managed it. The packets looked as though a mouse had nibbled them, or a bird had pecked them. “But no birds come in here,” said the manager. By the time she got them home Lovejoy did not know what the seeds were; she kept them in an old pillbox of Mrs. Combie’s and slept with it under her pillow at night. When she had a dozen she sowed them an inch apart. She had no idea how close to put them or how big they would be but—“Love-in-a-mist, mignonette, alyssum,” as if they were a charm she said them when anything unpleasant came into her mind; there were several sharp-edged things that came: “If I had a little girl I’d come from John o’Groat’s . . .” “You’ll be landed, Ettie . . .”
Sometimes Lovejoy was back in the church with the candles shining and the statue looking into her; it never looked at her, always into her, and she wriggled uncomfortably because, unaccountably, it seemed to find something in Lovejoy that matched it. How did it know that inside the hard, tough Lovejoy was something as gentle as those eyes? The something that worried about the baby not having a net, for instance? Lovejoy resented it; she felt as if she were being poked by a sharp pointed stick.
A murderer, they say, always goes back to the scene of his crime; Lovejoy went back to the church; she slipped in up the side aisle and stopped, quivering with shock. “Coo!” whispered Lovejoy. “Coo!” The hairs seemed to rise on the back of her neck and her legs felt cold. The statue was covered up.
Standing there, Lovejoy looked slowly round; all the statues were covered up; the altar candles, the vases of flowers were gone, everything was swathed in purple, and the hooded figures were frightening. Lovejoy had never heard of Holy Week but she felt as if a cataclysm had happened, and a tumult of grief and fear lifted up in her. “Coo!” she said again. “Cripes!”—and turned and ran.
When she came out she did not go to the garden; she had a sudden odd distaste for it and she walked down the Street, kicking her shoes crossly on the pavement.
The distaste did not last; she went to Woolworth’s and from a packet she stole a big round seed; “And I know what it is,” she told Mr. Isbister triumphantly. “It’s a nasturtium, Golden Gleam.” The nasturtium took the feeling of sadness and wrong away. With all the troubles that rose up in Lovejoy’s mind at night, she had only to put out her finger and touch the pillbox and begin to intone, “Nasturtium, love-in-a-mist, mignonette, alyssum,” and she was asleep.
“What have you been doing with yourself?” asked Vincent. “You look”—and he considered her—“fatter,” said Vincent, but that was not quite the right word. “And younger,” he said suddenly.
“I don’t know what’s happened to that child,” said Mrs. Combie. “She’s dirty.”
That was a nuisance Mrs. Combie had never had with Lovejoy but, oddly, she was glad. “Perhaps she is a child after all,” she said. Then, in the midst of this happiness, the postcard came.
•
It came at breakfast time and was addressed to Mrs. Combie. Expect me Thursday. Love to my baby. Bertha.
The postmark was Harrogate. “That’s where she has been,” said Mrs. Combie. “Harrogate’s a good-class place.” She turned the postcard over to look at the picture, which showed a panorama of good-class hotels in the distance, green lawns and red and yellow flower beds near to. The Valley Gardens, read Mrs. Combie with admiration. “So much for Cassie,” she said.
Her whole face looked smoothed as she poured herself out another cup of tea; her hand was steady and her eyes looked happy. Then she
was afraid, thought Lovejoy.
She, Lovejoy, felt as if a thunderbolt had gone through her she was so surprised—surprised at herself, not at the postcard. When Mrs. Combie had read it out, it felt like—an interruption, thought Lovejoy. I shan’t be able to garden, she had thought at once, and into her mind had flashed the undeniable thought that when her mother was there she, Lovejoy, spent most of her time waiting—waiting still as a mummy, hushed as a mouse, for her mother to wake in the mornings; waiting to go out while her mother talked to Mrs. Combie or Vincent or anyone—anyone! thought Lovejoy, annoyed—waiting in the shops while her mother tried on clothes; waiting in Mr. Montague, the agent’s, waiting room, or outside dressing-room doors, outside pubs, or in restaurants; waiting at home, sitting on the stairs. Why did people take it for granted that children had all that time to waste? I want to garden not wait, she thought rebelliously.
It was only for a moment; as if a spell had lifted and come down again, a moment later she was shocked. Garden! when Mother . . . she thought and she began to quiver.
“When is she coming? When?”
“Thursday,” said Vincent.
“This Thursday? That’s tomorrow.”
“Yes, Maundy Thursday,” said Mrs. Combie.
“Why do we shut on Good Friday, Ettie?” said Vincent. “On a holiday somebody might come. Do you think your mother’ll bring you an Easter egg?” he said teasingly to Lovejoy, but Lovejoy had wrinkled her forehead and the old peaked look had come back.
“Coming at Easter,” she said, and she looked from Vincent to Mrs. Combie. “That’s queer. We never could get away at Easter time.”
CHAPTER X
MRS. MASON had been home for three weeks—“Three years,” said Cassie, and Lovejoy did not contradict her—when Vincent announced he was taking Lovejoy for a walk.
Now and again, on a Sunday, Vincent went for a walk; it was almost an expedition as far away as he could get in spirit from the Street; “I need—I need to breathe a different air,” said Vincent. “Somewhere—elegant,” he said, breathing through his nostrils as he did when he was offended. It was no use taking Mrs. Combie; loyal as she was, elegance was wasted on her; the perfect companion for these walks was Lovejoy. “She doesn’t know anything,” said Vincent, “but she has feeling,” and together they visited St. James’ or Berkeley Square or Bond Street and looked, not enviously but most fastidiously, into the windows of the little shops; Lovejoy would instruct Vincent about the clothes and he would instruct her about the furniture, the china and glass, and the pictures. Sometimes they walked in streets of private houses, catching glimpses of expensive rooms, of a moulded panel, a curtain, a lampshade made of silk or lace, a vase of flowers.
As Lovejoy walked along, her head just touching Vincent’s sleeve, the only thing she wished was that she and Vincent were more fitted to be where they were. Vincent, in his outdoor clothes, looked small and shabby and dusty; his overcoat was worn to threadbare places, its tweed had lost its shape and sagged, his hat and scarf were stained, and he had not any gloves. Lovejoy knew that her own coat, the dog-tooth check, was too short; her socks were short too and left too long an expanse of leg between; if she moved her elbows at all the coat split, and the red shoes hurt her so much that she had to go along like a crab, but while she had any clothes left at all Lovejoy would not have forgone those Sunday walks.
“It’s not Sunday,” she said now in surprise when Vincent asked her. Mrs. Combie was surprised too, but, “Come along,” said Vincent firmly. He and Lovejoy went on a bus all the way to Hyde Park Corner and walked down Knightsbridge to Sloane Square; when they came back Mrs. Mason had gone.
“She had a telegram from the Blue Moons,” said Mrs. Combie. Vincent opened his lips but shut them again; Mrs. Combie and Lovejoy were looking at each other with radiant faces. “She went at once,” said Mrs. Combie.
“Of course,” said Lovejoy.
The Blue Moons! Lovejoy had forgotten how the Blue Moons governed their life—mine and Mother’s, she thought, lifting her chin proudly. She had often resented them but now they were dear, familiar, the dear Blue Moons. The stiffness went out of her bones, the pain and jealousy out of her heart. “Where? Where are they?” she asked.
“Brighton. She said it was a wonderful booking; they hadn’t one for Easter, that’s why she was so worried.” Mrs. Combie’s face looked easy and clear; she seemed to feel the same as Lovejoy. “Tell you what,” said Mrs. Combie, “you and me’ll go down and see her one weekend. She gave me fifteen pounds. Now go and tidy the bedroom, dearie; I must help Mr. Vincent with the lunches.” Neither of them had noticed that Vincent had gone into the kitchen without saying a word.
The bedroom needed tidying; it looked as if a whirlwind had been through it and had swept it almost bare; Lovejoy’s clothes were thrown down in a corner of the cupboard, but her handkerchiefs were gone. “She even took my toothpaste,” she said afterwards, “and my shoe cream and my soap.” The cupboard doors were open, the drawers wide, bits of paper and old tickets and labels lay on the floor; the wastepaper basket was full of bottles and there were wisps of hair and cotton wool, red with lipstick, on the dressing-table; Lovejoy thought of how it had all been carefully made ready, and tears pricked her eyes.
The room still smelled of her mother; when Lovejoy burrowed her face against that spot on the armchair, instead of hard plush she seemed to be burrowing against the warm, soft flesh she knew so well, which smelled of scent—gone a little stale, thought Lovejoy—of scent and powder and perspiration—Cassie had taught Lovejoy never to say sweat—of clothes and the warm elastic of stays, of cigarette smoke and drink; it was not altogether a pleasant smell, but it was the smell of Lovejoy’s babyhood, of her kitten-dance time, when she had been sweet and the world was safe.
“And when’s your mother going to buy you all those new clothes?” Cassie had asked.
Lovejoy could still hear Cassie asking it and she bit her lip as she stared at the wall.
“Your clothes are perfectly good,” Mrs. Mason had said.
“Yes, but Mother, I’ve grown,” said Lovejoy and she had shown how the pleated skirt and the check coat were far, far too short.
“They must be let down,” said Mrs. Mason sharply.
“It’s here, as well,” said Lovejoy, showing how tight and stretched the coat and suit-jacket were under her arms.
“You must manage.”
“But I can’t breathe,” said Lovejoy.
Mrs. Mason had not even objected to the plimsolls; she had not seemed to notice them. “It doesn’t matter what you look like,” she had said.
“Doesn’t matter!” That was blasphemy to Lovejoy. She had had to persist, but when she showed how the red shoes had given her corns Mrs. Mason was angry. “You seem to think I’m made of money,” she said.
“I don’t,” said Lovejoy, “but what can I do?”
“And what can I do?” asked Mrs. Mason.
Everything had been—queer, thought Lovejoy. At the Agency, Montague and Blewitt’s, Mrs. Mason and Lovejoy had always gone straight in. “Mr. Montague’s expecting you,” the secretary would say and smile. Mr. Montague had a photograph of Lovejoy in her kitten dress on his office wall—or used to have, thought Lovejoy; she was not sure because everything seemed changed; they had gone to see Mr. Montague four times in these three weeks and had not seen him once. The last time Mrs. Mason would not let Lovejoy go in with her but told her to wait in the street—because of my clothes, thought Lovejoy, and her lips shook; but there had been something even worse than the clothes.
When Lovejoy took her nose away from the armchair she smelled another smell; on the table was a tumbler with a little whisky in it and an ashtray that held the butt of a dead cigar; the smell of them was stronger than the smell of her mother. Lovejoy took the tumbler and ashtray and put them outside the door; then she opened the window wide.
“Who is this gentleman that comes to see your mother?” Cassie had asked.
“C
olonel Baldcock,” said Lovejoy stiffly.
“As much Colonel as that cup!” said Cassie, and for once Lovejoy had agreed with her.
The other gentlemen had gone away; the colonel did not go away, and Mrs. Mason told Lovejoy to call him Uncle Francis.
“I won’t,” said Lovejoy.
Children are shocked when they first see grown people lovemaking but Lovejoy’s ideas were, in some ways, the reverse of most children’s. “But it’s grown-ups who kiss,” she was to say to Tip in surprise. To her it was an entirely grown-up occupation, like being cuddled and held on knees. “That’s not for children!” she was to say, shocked in her turn. It was for ladies and gentlemen, she knew that; then why did it seem so terrible when the lady was her mother and the gentleman was Uncle Francis? And the strange part, she said to herself now, as she began to make the bed, the strange part is that she didn’t like him either. Who could like him? thought Lovejoy, seeing again his red wet forehead and thick fat hands. He was thick all over, she thought, wrinkling her nose in disgust, and his clothes were horrid and he smelled, like the old ashtray and the dirty glass. Then why, she thought in anguish, did she let him stay and put me out?
Lovejoy had fought; she had brought out all her reserves. “I’ve got a secret,” she had said.
“Have you, lovey?” asked Mrs. Mason idly.
“It’s a garden.” Lovejoy had said it with a rush because she had not really wanted to tell about it, even to her mother. Suppose she wants to see it? she had thought. She need not have worried.
“Think of that!” said Mrs. Mason and put up a hand to hide a yawn.
“You go to the pictures,” the colonel said and gave Lovejoy ninepence. It was hard to refuse that, but Lovejoy put it coldly on the table.
He tried to wheedle her. “Go and buy yourself a nice ice cream.”
“I don’t like ice creams,” said Lovejoy, which was a lie.
Well, he’s gone now, she thought. She had finished the room and she picked up the tumbler and ashtray and took them downstairs.
