The Greengage Summer

by Rumer Godden

  Joss was too angry to notice that he spoke in English.

  “Don’t worry,” she said bitingly, “we are not staying.” To us she said sharply, “Come on. We will take the luggage first and come back for Mother.”

  She walked past Eliot to the door, her painting things under her arm; she had picked up two suitcases; Vicky, carrying Nebuchadnezzar’s basket, was holding to one of them. The rest of us followed, loyally staggering too. Paul went to open the door, but Eliot stepped forward.

  “Where are you going this time of night?”

  “To the police.” Joss’s nostrils were pinched with temper.

  “The police? Why?”

  “Because of you French,” said Joss furiously.

  “I’m not French, I’m English,” said Eliot.

  Mother must have heard that. She gave a moan and said, “Please.” Eliot looked past us to her, and his face changed. “Zizi,” he said, “she’s ill.”

  He went quickly to Mother, bent down and took her hand, feeling it as he questioned her, but after that ‘Please’ Mother did not speak again, and her head rolled against the chair.

  “She’s very ill, Zizi,” he said. “We must help.”

  “But . . . our dinner.” Her English was pretty and clipped.

  “All the same.”

  “But we shall be late!”

  “All the same.” It sounded like a command. “Irène,” he called to Madame Corbet, “ring Doctor Giroux”; and to Mauricette, “Open the rooms.”

  I heard Madame Corbet pick up the telephone, the maid shrugged and went to the keyboard. Paul took the suitcases from Joss, but Mademoiselle Zizi stayed where she had been, at the foot of the steps, her beautiful dress held up.

  CHAPTER 3

  TO WAKE for the first time in a new place can be like another birth. I think that to me it was perhaps more startling than to most people because for as long as I could remember I had woken each morning in the same bedroom in Belmont Road, that essentially English bedroom with its wallpaper faded to a grey-blue pattern; to the same white curtains and blue linoleum, the brown rug worn in places so that the white showed through the brown; to the same white-enamelled iron beds, paisley eiderdowns, and the pictures that were framed prints from old supplements to the Illustrated London News. Uncle William and Mother had had those pictures when they were children, but Joss had taken them down and put up a Chinese painting instead; she took that with her to Willmouse’s room, and I brought the prints back. ‘Cecil is sentimental,’ said Joss.

  There, in the early mornings, lying between sleeping and waking, I could hear and identify all the so ordinary early morning sounds: the milkman’s pony, the paperboy’s quick steps, the thud as the paper dropped through the letter-box into the hall, the postman—though there was not often anything for us—the cheeping of sparrows, the clock on the town hall with its chimes, Mother’s squirrel-quick little footsteps as she went downstairs to pull the damper out so that the water would be hot for our baths.

  This morning my ears were filled with a high clear sound broken into small sharp edges; it was a little while before I knew it was from birds. The room was filled with dim light; the ceiling was high and the walls far away, for it was a big room. I made out the top of a green shutter and then saw that the shutters ran from the ceiling to a floor of plain polished boards without a rug. I was in an immense bed and beside me lay Willmouse.

  We had slept without pillows; mysteriously there had been none on the beds and we were too shy to ask; besides, ‘oreiller’ was a difficult word to pronounce. I remember how surprised we were when we found the pillows in the wardrobe. I never knew why Toinette kept them there.

  The sheets felt dry and hot as if their cotton were brittle. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and slipped down; the boards were cool under my feet as I walked to the window. After a few moments I found how the shutters opened and threw them back.

  I was looking into the tops of the trees; at first I thought the house was ringed with them, then I saw that it was only a poplar in front of the window, filling the room with its sound, and beyond it a single great tree that I thought was a willow, though I had not known willows could grow as tall; through its hanging branches I could see, further away, serried rows of fruit trees, some of them heavy with fruit. Perhaps it was this first sight that made me always think of the garden at Les Oeillets as green, green and gold as was that whole countryside of the Marne where, beyond the town, the champagne vineyards stretched for miles along the river, vineyards and cherry orchards, for this was cherry country too, famous for cherries in liqueur. Mother had been thinking of the battlefields; she had not thought to enquire about the country itself; I am sure she had not meant to bring us to a luxury corner of France where the trees and the vines changed almost symbolically in the autumn to gold.

  We were not to see that, nor did I know anything about it as I stood by the open window, yet, from the garden, I had a foretaste of that green and amber time and a sense of the countryside in the haze that lay around the town. I could not see the town behind the trees, only a glimpse of houses climbing a hill that had a building on it, a ruined castle or château with ramparts and a tower. The houses were yellow-white, jumbled below the ramparts. I guessed they spread down to what must be a river, for there was the chugging sound of a boat. The chugging was near; the river, I thought, must be on the other side of the orchard.

  Our rooms were on the second floor, and if I looked directly down I could see a flight of iron steps with a scrolled iron railing leading from a terrace along the house into a garden that seemed to be made of gravel and small flowerbeds. I was to learn that Robert, the silent, cross gardener, spent all his time raking the gravel smooth, tidying the beds. There was a round bed in the middle which held an iron urn planted with geraniums and smaller plots along the sides were bedded with flowers that even in that early light had violent colours. It looked a garden from one of our French grammar books, hideous and formal, but beyond it a low box hedge bounded a wilderness of grass and shrubs and trees, bamboos, a monkey puzzle smothered in creepers, and tangles of roses. Overgrown paths wound among them where white statues glimmered; some of the statues were broken, their arms and legs hacked off; one was lying on its side. Beyond the wilderness was what seemed to be an orchard, and in its high wall a blue door. As I looked at the door a barge hooted from the river.

  The garden was light, but it was a young light without sun, clear and stained green by the shrubs and trees. The peace I had felt at the gates of Les Oeillets filled me again and I could have whistled like the birds for well-being and joy. Then, as I stood there in my pyjamas looking down, a man came down the iron steps. He was an old man with white hair and a small white beard; from above he looked nearly square. He wore blue cotton trousers, a white coat and a beret—men wearing berets still looked strange to me. He was carrying many things: something that looked like an easel with long legs, a camp stool, a case, and a bulging white cotton umbrella, the kind of umbrella people put up outside their bathing chalets on the beach at Southstone. He seemed in a hurry; I watched him scurry across the gravel, disappear in the wilderness, and caught a glimpse of him among the fruit trees. Then he was at the far blue door, where he had to put everything down to open it.

  “That was Monsieur Joubert,” said Eliot when I asked him. “Monsieur Joubert going out to catch the first light.”

  “Who is Monsieur Joubert?”

  “A painter.”

  A painter! Joss would like to hear that.

  “A very famous painter,” said Mademoiselle Zizi. “Even an ignorant little English girl should have heard of Marc Joubert.”

  “He didn’t look famous,” I said in defence. “He was wearing funny clothes and he looked . . .” I tried to think how to express his scurrying haste. “. . . anxious.”

  “He probably was,” said Eliot. “It’s only for a short while that the light stays like that. I have a belief,” and I remember Eliot sounded defiant, as if a bel
ief were a strange thing to have, “that as soon as a human goes out into the morning it is spoilt . . . except a Monsieur Joubert or,” and his eyes looked at us thoughtfully, “perhaps children.”

  “Do you like children so much?” asked Mademoiselle Zizi.

  “I don’t know any,” said Eliot.

  Now I watched Monsieur Joubert without knowing his name. The blue door shut with a distant bang and I heard another sound close beside me, in the next room, and I knew what had wakened me. It was Joss in the little room off our bedroom—she had chosen it though they had meant it for Willmouse; the sound was Joss having an attack.

  ‘Nerves,’ Mother used to say of these, but Uncle William said they were bilious. Probably both were right. The attacks came at the most inconvenient times and, as I listened, the day began to foreclose on me; it must, I knew, be a difficult day, frightening, probably humiliating, and now Joss was useless. I went in, and she was as I knew I should find her, retching, her skin a curious green-yellow, her eyes looking as though they were bursting with pain. Now she would have to be in a darkened room for days, and I would have to be responsible for everything.

  “Perhaps it was the soup,” I said as I held her head.

  “I—didn’t—eat the soup.” Though she was being sick as she said it I knew she was offended. That made me remember I was offended too. The maid Mauricette had brought up the soup in bowls on a tray after we had been bundled off to bed, Joss and I with Hester and Willmouse and Vicky . . . “and we are not Hester and Willmouse and Vicky,” said Joss.

  “I’m sorry. I made a mistake,” Eliot said when I pointed this out to him—Joss refused to mention it. “You must remember we were all a bit confused.” Eliot could be very charming; he smiled at Joss and put his hand on hers. “You won’t forgive me?”

  “No,” said Joss and took her hand away.

  Now, “Shall I get Mother?” I asked Joss.

  “Don’t be silly. There is a nun in her room.”

  “A nun?” Prickles of superstition swept over me. “Then . . . is she dying?”

  “Don’t be si-lly,” but Joss’s voice was fainter. “Lots of hospital nurses are nuns—especially in France.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The Madame told me . . . I went in last night,” but she had sunk from the washing-stand on to the bed and could not talk any more. In a moment she had to struggle up again. I helped her, and when it was over she lay back, her skin clammy, her eyes closed. The washing stand had only a heavy china basin and jug; there seemed to be no slop pail, only a strange object like an enamelled footbath or a doll’s bath, on legs—we had not met a bidet before—and it was too shallow. “If you could get a basin or a bucket,” Joss whispered, “I could manage in bed.”

  “From where?” I said, appalled.

  “Downstairs. There must be one. Go and look.”

  “In someone else’s house?”

  “It isn’t a house. It’s an hotel.”

  “Supposing I meet someone . . .”

  “You could ask them.”

  I shrank from it, but I had to go. “What is the French for bucket?” I asked.

  The stairs creaked as I came down, though I crept carefully, I remember the surprise of the bullet-holes; in the daylight I saw that the pale green paint was pocked with them. “Of course,” Mademoiselle Zizi often explained. “They machine-gunned the stairs.”

  “And the marks are still there!” the visitors used to say in wonder.

  “As you see,” and Mademoiselle Zizi would smile with pride.

  “If it were my house,” Joss said, “I should have filled them up at once.”

  Now I came down cautiously because of the two dogs, but when I saw them I felt a coward. They were in the hall, chained each on a low bed; they knew I had been accepted the night before and they lifted their faces and moved their tails.

  I had had another timid idea that Madame Corbet would be in the office, but the grille was locked, the counter bare, and the hall was empty. Next to it on the right was a large open room with a bar and, at the garden end, what must have been a conservatory, leading through glassed doors to the terrace. The big room had small iron tables, and chairs painted green, coat stands, tubs bound with brass and filled with sand for cigarette ends. The bar was covered with white dustsheets. On the left of the hall were doors and a sign that said ‘Restaurant’. At the back was a baize-covered door that must, I thought, lead to the kitchen.

  When I had pushed it open I did not have far to go. At the end of a short passage was a table stacked with flower vases and bowls. I took a bowl and, almost before the door had stopped swinging, was back into the hall, where I patted the dogs. I had turned upstairs, when the white door on the landing opened and a man came out. He was wearing a silk patterned dressing-gown—like an actor’s, I thought—leather slippers, and was smoking a cigarette. It was Eliot.

  We both stopped abruptly. I knew how I must look, my raincoat bundled round me, blue-and-white-striped pyjamas showing, bare feet, and my hair tied back with a blue ribbon like a baby’s. Then I forgot about myself, staring at him. This was another Eliot than the kind Englishman of last night; someone cold and . . . ruthless, I thought. That was a strange word to come into my head when I did not know the meaning of ‘ruth’. ‘Eliot’s eyes are not blue,’ Hester was to say. ‘They are green-grey, like pebbles.’ Now, close to him on the stairs, I saw they were grey and coldly angry. “What are you doing down here?”

  I showed the bowl. “Joss, my sister, is ill.”

  “God! Children!” he said. He put his hand behind him and closed the door, leaning against it. Then he was more kind. “Eaten too much?” he asked, but I, remembering Joss’s offendedness, was stiff.

  “She is not that sort of sister,” I said and went on upstairs.

  It was a day or two afterwards that, when for some reason we wanted Eliot, I said, “I shall fetch him,” and crossed the hall to the landing and the white door.

  “Where are you going?” asked Hester.

  “To his room.”

  “That is not Eliot’s room,” said Hester. “That is Mademoiselle Zizi’s.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “WHO LET that man into my room?” asked Joss.

  It was after tea on that first strange day—“Only there wasn’t any tea,” said Vicky; we had not learned about the French children’s goûter yet—it was what should have been after tea, that Eliot looked at us sitting forlornly round a table in the bar and asked, “Shouldn’t there be one more of you?” Then he had asked me to take him upstairs to see Joss.

  She lay stiff and flat in the bed while he was in the room; her hair was spread on the pillow and in the gloom of the closed shutters her sick face looked small as a turnip-goblin’s. She might have been any age, and he was as familiar as he would have been with someone as young as Vicky.

  “Are you a better girl?”

  She answered him in monosyllables. “Yes.”

  “Cheer up. You will be well soon.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there anything you want? You can have it, you know.”

  “No.”

  I think Eliot did not know quite what to do. “You are not worrying too much about your mother? We are taking care of her.” No answer. Presently he went out and Joss reared up on her pillow.

  “Who let him in?”

  “I . . . did.”

  “How dared you?”

  “But . . . he is in charge of us.”

  “Cha . . .” She looked at me in astonishment. “Who said so?”

  “Mother. She asked him.”

  “She always was an idiot!” said Joss.

  The sickness had started again. I waited while she retched miserably into the bowl by the bed. At last she lay back exhausted and, wearily accustomed, I brought her face flannel and wiped the sweat off her face and hands, and dried them. I knew her skin hurt by the way she winced, but as soon as she could speak she croaked, “You must . . . tell Mother.”


  I stood by the bed holding the towel and cleared my throat. It seemed to have a frog in it too. “I can’t tell Mother,” I said. “Joss, they . . . they have taken her to the hospital.”

  Joss had been too ill to know, but it had been a split day, split between Les Oeillets and Belmont Road.

  As soon as I was dressed I had gone and knocked softly on Mother’s door. It had opened and Joss had been right—the nun was there. She was dressed in white, with a black veil, girdle and crucifix. I had not been close to a nun before and gazed at her startled. She put her finger to her lip and shook her head. Pinpricked all over with fear, I tiptoed away.

  Then Hester and Vicky came in asking for breakfast. “There isn’t any,” I said, quailing, but they insisted there was plenty downstairs, and in the end I had to take them and find the dining-room. Willmouse had gone there already. In the big room I tried to be as travelled and self-contained as even Joss could have wished, but there was Hester’s clear unabashed voice and Vicky’s obstinacy about food; she was as stubbornly British as John Bull. “I want breakfast,” she said. I gave her coffee and a croissant. “This isn’t breakfast,” said Vicky, “I want a n’egg.”

  “You can’t have eggs for breakfast in France.”

  “Of course you can,” Eliot was to say. “Lots of people ask for them.” He added that I was not to be a travel snob, but I was a travel snob and an age snob too. Vicky was, of course, too much for me; as usual, she got her own way, and I had to ask not only for an egg but for babyish milk and jam.

  It was Paul who brought them—I soon learned that Mauricette would seldom bother herself to wait on us. Paul deliberately put the milk and jam at my place. “Essuie-toi l’bec avec ta bavette,” he said. I did not guess he had said ‘Wipe your mouth on your bib’ until I got upstairs and looked up ‘bavette’ in our pocket Larousse, but I knew it was something derogatory and I looked sternly at this Paul.

  He was a tall, thin, dirty and greasy boy dressed in blue cotton trousers and a ragged shirt. He wore the white apron and the grey-white canvas shoes—we had not learned yet to call them espandrilles—he had worn last night. His shirt had the sleeves rolled up; his elbows looked as sharp as knives, and when he turned his back the shoulderblades stuck out. He had lank, yellow hair, with a lock falling over his forehead, and his face had hollows in the cheeks. I did not know about Paul in those days, but even then, in my carelessness and ignorance, I was worried by his face. We had come to see the battlefields and, though we did not know it, this face was a part of them.