An Episode of Sparrows

by Rumer Godden

  “I don’t want any tea.”

  “Don’t you feel well?” asked curious Cassie.

  “Quite well,” said Lovejoy but she felt neither well nor ill; she felt nothing, nothing at all; she might have been dead. “You can come down or go to bed,” said Cassie.

  Lovejoy came down, but in the kitchen they had started again. “The whole of Dad’s money gone!” said Cassie.

  “We’ll get it back,” Vincent shouted at her.

  “There’s a place called Queer Street,” said Cassie.

  Lovejoy left the kitchen so that she would not have to hear any more. Her fingers, gripped in her pocket, found the pillbox. Thoughtfully she took it outside and emptied it down the gutter.

  The seeds fell down like rain; she wondered if they would stick in the gutter and grow, and she thought of nasturtiums flowering on the pavement edges and at once the familiar feeling stirred in her, the garden feeling. But what’s the use of that now? Lovejoy was thinking wearily when a boy came up from the shadow by the side door. It was Tip.

  Lovejoy stiffened. “What do you want?” she said, backing against the house wall.

  Tip did not see why she should flinch and back away like that. He had not hurt her, while she had left a half-circle of bleeding little purple marks on his hand; “The first thing she ever did for me she bit me,” he was to say afterwards. The bite ached still. Nor did he at all understand why he was doing what he did now. “I came to bring you this,” he said and held out the garden fork. “I couldn’t find the trowel,” said Tip, “but we’ve got a little old shovel you could use.”

  Lovejoy made no attempt to hold the fork; as she walked away to the edge of the pavement she let it drop from her hand into the gutter; then she sat down on the curb and began to cry.

  Tip was one of those boys who are so big and strong that people do not really look at them; they look at their boots, their big young knees and shoulders, their jaws, perhaps, but not at them. “What a young tough,” people said of Tip, but Mrs. Malone, who knew him better than anyone else, said, “He’s not tough. He’s gentle.” Few people divined this. Yet Lovejoy divined it, at once.

  To Lovejoy, Tip was a bitter-enemy boy, the biggest and worst of the ones who had smashed her garden, and yet she, who never cried in front of anyone, who had not cried then, was moved to cry now, in front of him. He did not jeer at her, nor did he go away embarrassed; he picked up the fork and sat down on the curb beside her.

  The curb of a busy street may seem a poor place to talk but on an early May evening, almost warm enough for summer, when people are taking their ease outside, there is something relaxed about it; if the street is familiar it can even be peaceful. The stone Tip and Lovejoy were sitting on was warm, it was the right height from the gutter to be comfortable. Scraps of conversation fell into their talk as people passed, but that only made it seem more private; a Sister of Charity came by with her quiet skirt and noisy beads and she smiled down on them; the man with the two dogs passed on the opposite side of the road; a gang of big boys stayed, shouting and laughing on the corner at a group of girls. A little farther up the Street, Yvette and Susie Romney were practising handstands against a wall. Pooh! I could show them, thought Lovejoy. The pink and white of their thighs flashed each time their legs went up and their skirts fell back. One of Mrs. Cleary’s and Miss Arnot’s cats—not Istanbul but a white blear-eyed cat—came down the Street, arching its back against every pillar, and mewing as it stalked the smell of the fried fish and chips that two big girls were eating out of a newspaper as they walked. A few smaller children, up late, were playing hopscotch. Lovejoy heard all this and saw it as if she were in a dream; she was too tired, too dead to think or feel or care for herself or Vincent or Mrs. Combie, but she felt Tip beside her and she noticed him acutely.

  She saw the shabby blue jeans, the way his wrists came far out of his grey-coloured sweater—it was halfway up his arms—the way his shoes were rubbed and the heels worn down. He did not seem to mind any of these things; she thought that her plimsolls, the threadbare plaid of her coat might seem to him entirely natural and that gave her a feeling of ease. She noticed other things: how hard and bony Tip’s arms were, where hers showed round and soft; the funny look of his cheek that was bony too and freckled, freckles all over it, thought Lovejoy; his hair was rough; Lovejoy’s head only came up to his shoulder, and when he turned to look at her his eyes were dark blue. A boy with blue eyes? thought Lovejoy, surprised. She had never thought of a boy’s eyes as having a particular colour before; for Lovejoy that made him seem suddenly human.

  As for Tip, he only stole glances at her but she seemed to him small and curiously clean, and he noticed that her hair was beautifully brushed.

  They sat together and the tears dried on Lovejoy’s cheeks; fixing her eyes on the hopscotch, watching it without seeing it, she told Tip about the garden, beginning with the packet of cornflower seeds and going on to the buying of the fork and trowel—she left out the candle box—but Tip did not seem to be listening.

  “Who brushes your hair?” asked Tip.

  “I brush it.” Tip, thinking of the screams and protests of his young sisters Josephine and Bridget when his mother brought out the family hairbrush, marvelled, but Lovejoy was telling him about Mr. Isbister and the grass seed, and the net—leaving out how she took it; she told about the seeds—leaving out how she stole them from Woolworth’s—and of how the grass and the cornflowers had come up. There she stopped.

  Tip listened, hitting his leg thoughtfully with the fork. Boys have to hit something, thought Lovejoy irritably. “That’s how I made the garden,” she said, staring across the road. “My garden,” and she gave a little hiccup of misery.

  “Make another.”

  It sounded so unsympathetic that Lovejoy sat up indignantly until she saw Tip was better than sympathetic, he was interested. “You were silly to make it there,” he said. “Make another somewhere else.”

  That was what Mr. Isbister was to say. He was quite angry. “Catford Street?” he said. “What d’you expect? Cats—boys, frost, drought—or a dang—great thunderstorm. Make a garden, you’re in for it. Then don’t come mewling here,” said Mr. Isbister.

  “But is it any good? Do things ever grow?” asked Lovejoy.

  Mr. Isbister grunted and said, “Look.” He had been putting in cuttings of geraniums, plain little pieces of plants with three or four leaves.

  “They haven’t got a root,” said Lovejoy.

  “They make one,” said Mr. Isbister. “Stick ’em in the ground, they grow.”

  “Just bits of plant?” asked Lovejoy incredulously.

  “Bits of plant,” said Mr. Isbister, poking at them with his finger. “That’s earth,” he said, “and not boys, cats—hailstones—can—beat that, all the time.” And he said what Tip said now. “Make another.”

  “You were silly to make it there,” said Tip.

  “But where else can I make it?” Lovejoy’s voice was as sharp and irritated as Cassie’s. “There isn’t anywhere,” she said scornfully. “Nowhere that boys don’t spoil. It wasn’t a very good garden,” she said, “not what I wanted but—” Her voice trembled as if she were going to cry again.

  “What kind of garden do you want?” asked Tip hastily. He only asked to divert her but it brought an answer from Lovejoy, an answer she had not dreamed of before.

  “I want an Italian garden,” said Lovejoy.

  There was one walk she had been with Vincent—long ago, while I was still looking for a garden, thought Lovejoy now. It was a street along the river, with gardens, embankment gardens, thought Lovejoy, in front. Its houses were dark red. “What is it called?” she had asked Vincent.

  “Cheyne Walk,” said Vincent.

  Most of the houses had small private gardens. “That’s what I want,” Lovejoy had said, looking into them, “a small private garden.”

  Those in Cheyne Walk were not very private; they could be looked into easily; Lovejoy had thought, I’d wa
nt mine to be more private than that. They were all different; some had small lawns, edged with coloured cobbles; some had clipped bushes, in some there were beds of daffodils and wallflowers; one had a rock garden built of rough stone; one or two had round beds with rosebushes cut back; some had empty beds, ready for planting or sowing—in April, thought Lovejoy. She had stopped to study one of these carefully; the soil was finely raked and black-looking. “Is that good garden earth?” she asked.

  “I suppose it is,” said Vincent. “Come along.”

  Then they had found a garden they both liked.

  It was different from the others. It was worked out in stone and it was shapely; in the middle was a small stone urn filled with earth and standing on a pedestal; round the pedestal was a square of grass, clipped smooth and green, and this was bordered with narrow flowerbeds that were edged with fluted stone.

  “The flowerbeds in the Square Gardens don’t have stone edges,” said Lovejoy.

  “The Square Gardens are ordinary gardens,” said Vincent with scorn. “This is Italian.”

  Vincent had schooled Lovejoy into thinking that everything superbly good was Italian, that everything Italian was superbly good, and she looked at the garden with awe.

  “Italian gardens,” said Vincent, who had never seen one, “are stone and green, with fountains and vases and walks, not just flowers.”

  This instant, as she sat beside Tip on the curb, that came into Lovejoy’s mind.

  “I want a garden with stone,” she said. “With a vase in the middle and walks—”

  When she said “stone” Tip looked up. He stopped beating his leg with the fork. “I know where,” he said.

  •

  “But we’re going into the church,” said Lovejoy and stopped. She was wary of going into Our Lady of Sion now.

  “That’s all right, it’s my church,” said Tip serenely.

  “Yours?” Lovejoy was astounded.

  “Yes,” said Tip firmly, “where I go.”

  “Go to church?”

  “Yes. Don’t you?”

  “I’ve never been,” said Lovejoy, and she looked at him as if he were a phenomenon. “I’ve never known anyone who went to church,” she said.

  Tip was suddenly moved to take her hand. “C’mon,” he said.

  Lovejoy followed him up the church steps to the landing where the rusty bell was; Father Lambert had put it into a cage because the boys slipped in and rang it.

  “Look,” said Tip, and, going to the top of the opposite flight that led down into the church, he hoisted himself up, in the footholds made by the broken bricks, till he was sitting on the wall above. “Can you do that?” he asked.

  “Of course,” said Lovejoy and came up after him, more nimble than he.

  “Turn yourself round,” said Tip, “and come down.” He disappeared behind the wall. “Slide down,” he said. “Feel with your toes.” There were some broken bits like ledges in the wall. “You kin put your feet on them,” whispered Tip. “Gimme your foot and I’ll show you. No, the other one. Now down. Hold on tight.” It was hard to hold to a ledge, hanging by a hand while the other groped for the next ledge; below was a heap of sharp rubble and stone that would hurt if one fell on them, but Lovejoy came on down. “Steady! Let yourself down now. You’re there!” whispered Tip and she dropped lightly beside him. “Good girl,” he said. “Bridget wouldn’t have done that, but that’s what you have to do, see? Look carefully, and when no one’s there, get over the wall. It’s difficult going back; you have to climb up by the bricks.”

  “I can do it,” said Lovejoy.

  She looked round. They were in a space behind the church that once, long ago, had been a graveyard. At one side was the Priest’s House, but the two windows that looked on it were blank and curtained. “It’s Father Lambert’s bedroom,” whispered Tip. “He’s only in it at night, and the room above’s a storeroom; I know. I’ve carried books up there.” At the back a long blank wall ran the length of the graveyard. “That’s Potter’s garage,” whispered Tip, “and that’s the dairy.” He nodded towards a wall on the third side with high gratings. “Nobody can get up there to look,” he said, “and nobody comes here. Most people don’t even know it’s here. They don’t look over the wall. They don’t think of it because it’s the church, see, but you could make a garden here, if you kin find a place,” he added—the space was piled with rubble and debris. “There’s a lot of stone,” said Tip, looking at it.

  There was more stone than Lovejoy had ever seen, bits of broken pillars, cornices; a great tombstone with cherubs on it—“Supernatural babies,” whispered Lovejoy—had been laid against the wall. There were flutings and chippings and pieces, bits of faces, and hands and wings, and flowers. “They’re from the old church,” whispered Tip—instinctively they whispered here. “One day they’re going to build it new.”

  “The aeroplane isn’t nearly up,” said Lovejoy comfortably. She was quite alive again. She could see already that this was a much better place for a garden. Protected by the church, it would be safe. Lovejoy had never heard the word “sanctuary” but she knew she had found a safe place. She felt like Christopher Columbus when he had landed on the shores of the Bahamas, and perhaps to have discovered in Catford Street a quiet, empty place for a garden was a feat almost as unlikely.

  She took two steps over the rubble, and then stood still. The last sun was slanting exactly where she needed to look; at the back of the church hut, between stumps where a second row of the old pillars had been, was a space, empty and sunny; it was strewn with chips of glass and stone but it was earth; she could see its darkness. It was perhaps seven feet by four, the size of a hearthrug, but big enough, and at one end, as if it had been placed in readiness, was, not a vase but a bit of a small broken-off column, whiter than the stumps of the big pillars—“Pure marble,” whispered Tip, who had come up; marble and fluted, “Like a piece of Edinburgh Rock,” whispered Lovejoy, and, as if to prove the ground was fertile, up the little column grew a stem with green leaves, broad and shining, in the shape of hearts. “What is it?” Lovejoy was to ask Mr. Isbister when she took him a leaf.

  “You never seen ivy?” asked Mr. Isbister incredulously. Lovejoy could not remember that she had.

  But now it did not matter to her what the stem was; she simply gazed.

  CHAPTER XIII

  WHEN Lovejoy looked at the plot, measuring it with her eye, considering what to do with it, she found out a surprising thing; where before she had groped uncertainly, now she knew something about gardens; she began searching among the stone until at last she picked up a piece of fluted carving. “We must edge the beds with stone like this,” she said.

  “That’s a bit of grave,” objected Tip.

  “The grave’s all smashed,” said Lovejoy, unconcerned, “and look.” She had found another broken grave spread with fine marble chips. “We can make paths with this,” she said.

  She had said “we.” Tip began to feel uneasy. He had shown her where she could make a garden, that was enough. “You do what you like,” said Tip. “’S your garden, not mine.”

  “We’ll make a lawn here,” said Lovejoy as if he had not spoken, “and flowerbeds here, between the stone edges and the grass. Let’s clear some of the bits.” She squatted down and began picking up the stones. “We mustn’t make a noise so don’t throw anything, put it down gently,” she commanded. Tip did not move. “Help me,” said Lovejoy.

  “Who d’you think I am?” said Tip. Lovejoy did not answer.

  “I’m not going to make no sissy garden,” said Tip. “I showed you where it was, what else do you want?” And he turned to go back to the wall.

  He expected an outcry; when anyone crossed Bridget or Josephine Malone—or Clara or Margaret or Mary, any of his five sisters—there was always an outcry; that was a good name for it, a howling, it might almost have been called a bawling, that could be heard right down the Street; but Lovejoy said nothing. She stayed where she was, picking up the sto
nes, only her head sank lower and the two sides of her hair swung forward, hiding her face and showing her neck; with her finger she poked in the earth.

  The effect was curiously powerful. Tip went a few steps and looked back; the silence tugged at him; she seemed so small and solitary among the stones that he could not bear it; he tried to go, he went a step more, then he came back. “All right, then, I’ll help you,” said Tip angrily.

  She kept him till it grew cold and eerie in the graveyard. “My mum’ll lam me,” he said.

  “Does she lam you?” asked Lovejoy wistfully.

  “Don’t they care how late you are?” he asked.

  “No,” said Lovejoy briefly and worked on. Tip began to think there were advantages in being Lovejoy; she could stay out as late as she liked, she was free of church; he began to look at her with a mixture of disapproval and respect.

  They worked on; he had to admire the way she did it, soundlessly moving and clearing the stone and glass. “Keep any little bits that will do for edging,” she said, but to almost every bit Tip found she said, “No, that won’t do.” It was hard work. Tip’s back had begun to ache when at last she stopped. “You’ve got spunk, I’ll say that for you,” said Tip, when she stood stiffly up.

  “It isn’t nearly done,” was all she said. “You’ll come tomorrow?”

  “Me? No fear,” said Tip.

  She looked at him.

  “I’ve things to do,” said Tip loftily.

  Lovejoy bent her head again in that quivering silence.

  “I promised the others,” said Tip not quite as loftily.

  “I was going to move that big stone there an’ I can’t by myself,” said Lovejoy sorrowfully. “An’ that iron bar, I can’t get that up.” It was a lament. “You told me to make another garden,” said Lovejoy. “How can I all alone? It was going to be so lo-ve-ly.” In the darkness her whisper seemed to go on and on like a sad little ghost. Tip tried to shut it out but he could not.

  “Oh, all right,” he said crossly, “I’ll come for a little while.”