Suddenly the woman looked at him and said: ‘Why aren’t you drinking your coffee?’
‘I never drink coffee,’ said William. ‘I don’t like it.’
She looked at the man and sighed.
‘He’s right, you know,’ she said. ‘One shouldn’t drink stimulants of any sort if one wants to keep the psychic faculties unclouded. He’s quite right.’ She turned to William again. ‘What do you drink?’
‘I drink liqu’rice water mostly,’ said William.
‘Liquorice water,’ she said vaguely. ‘I must try it.’
Then she began to talk to the man again. William, who had finished his eggs and a large part of the bread and butter, murmured something about going home to breakfast, but neither of them took any notice of him. So he departed quietly homeward, where he made an excellent breakfast of porridge, scrambled eggs, toast, butter, and marmalade.
Rather to his surprise, he was not kept in that day (William was kept in so regularly that, when he wasn’t, he always felt as if he’d been let out an hour earlier than the right time), and he made his way at once to Honeysuckle Cottage. The man was seated at an easel in the little orchard, and the woman was in the kitchen, just putting on the kettle. Dishes, crockery, utensils of every sort, lay on table and chairs, and even on the floor. Never before had William seen a kitchen in such a state of disorder, and his heart warmed to it. It was, he felt, a kitchen that he would like to live in. Absent-mindedly he began to eat sultanas from an open canister that was perched precariously upon the soap dish. The woman turned to him, and again accepted his presence unquestioningly.
‘Have we enough things for tea,’ she said, ‘or shall we have to wash some?’
They began to hunt among the crockery for cups and plates. William found two clean cups and his hostess washed a third in a primitive fashion under the tap. Then she seemed to forget about the tea, and wandered vaguely out into the garden. William accompanied her. She sat down on a deck-chair on the little lawn and William sat at her feet. Suddenly she looked at William and said: ‘Do you see nature spirits?’
William stared at her in amazement.
‘Perhaps you know them better as fairies,’ she said. ‘Do you ever see fairies?’
‘Do I—?’ repeated William, and his voice died away in horror . . .
‘Children,’ went on the lady, apparently unaware of the monstrous insult she had just offered him, ‘children often do see them, though my great friend Elissa Freedom—you may have heard of her, she’s well known in the psychic world—says that she didn’t see them as a child, though she sees them now quite plainly. I really must show you some of her photographs. They’re most interesting. Not small, like the conventional nature spirit, though there are those, too, I’m sure. She has a lovely one of a birch tree with the outline of a nature spirit standing near it. About the size of a child . . . faint, you know, but quite unmistakable. She says that everything in nature has its attendant spirit. Of the same colour generally. Even,’ she gazed around the little garden, then pointed to the heap of grass cuttings that stood by the greenhouse, ‘even that heap of grass cuttings has its attendant spirit. Green, nebulous, unmistakable. My friend Elissa would probably see it as she sat here with us. I wish you could see her photographs. I’ve brought a camera with me, but so far I haven’t had any success.’
‘Uh-huh,’ agreed William, completely mystified.
‘That of course, is why Tristram and I have come here,’ she went on. ‘Tristram is my twin brother. You know him, of course?’
‘Oh yes,’ said William. ‘I know him.’
After all he’d had breakfast with him only that morning.
‘We want to cultivate our psychic faculties. My brother will—er—surrender himself to psychic influences in the hope of doing inspirational painting, and I am going to try to cultivate my psychic vision till I can see a nature spirit. All the authorities say that to retire into the country is the best way to cultivate the psychic faculties. That, of course, is why we have come here. I take it that you are interested in the psychic side of life?’
‘Uh-huh,’ agreed William again.
He hadn’t the remotest conception what the psychic side of life was, but he was quite ready to be interested in whatever the lady was interested in. She was unlike anyone else he had ever met, and William always liked people who were unlike anyone else he had ever met.
‘Have you ever had any experiences?’
‘Me?’ said William. ‘Oh yes, lots.’
But before he could tell her any of his favourite imaginary exploits (she’d have been disappointed because, though thrilling and blood curdling enough for anyone, there was nothing psychic about them) the church clock struck five, and she rose slowly from her deck chair.
‘It’s tea time, I suppose,’ she said. ‘I don’t remember whether I put the kettle on or not. Do you?’
William said that she had, and they went in to find the kitchen floor a swamp of boiling water. The lady contemplated the phenomenon with mild interest.
‘I suppose it must have boiled over,’ she said. ‘It’s funny how they do that, isn’t it? I know there’s a reason, but I’ve never really understood it. I suppose it’ll dry all right, if we leave it, won’t it? Let’s find some plates and things now.’
It was delicious sloshing about the water-logged kitchen floor. William surreptitiously poured a little more on it from the kettle to make it yet more enjoyable. He jumped in it, and trailed round, dragging his feet. He splashed it up with first one foot and then the other, and sailed a little cream carton (which he found in the blacking box) in it, making magnificent waves and finally wrecking it against the feet of the gas stove. Meantime the lady, who did not seem to mind his doing this in the least, was vaguely searching for clean crockery among the stacks of clean and dirty crockery that stood indiscriminately everywhere. When she found some she carried it into the little dining-room. Finally she examined the kettle.
‘There isn’t enough left to make tea,’ she said, ‘and, of course, one really shouldn’t drink stimulants when one’s trying to acquire psychic vision.’ She turned suddenly to William. ‘What did you say you drank?’
‘Me?’ said William. ‘Liqu’rice water mostly.’
‘Liquorice water? I don’t think I’ve ever tasted it. Where do you get it? Would the Stores supply it?’
‘I make it,’ said William modestly.
He pulled a bottle out of his pocket and with an air of great gallantry poused some into a saucer for her to drink. She tasted it with a critical frown. The critical frown vanished.
‘It’s very nice,’ she said. ‘A pure herbal drink, of course.’
‘Uh-huh!’ said William, who hadn’t the remotest idea what herbal meant.
‘You must show me how to make it,’ she said.
‘I’ll make you some,’ said William. ‘Give me twopence, an’ I’ll run ’n’ get some liqu’rice from the shop.’
She gave him sixpence, because, as she said, one might as well have a good supply, and, very importantly, William made a jug of liquorice water in the kitchen. He was more thrilled by this than by anything else that happened in this fascinating household. He’d never before met a grown-up who did not look upon liquorice water as a messy juvenile concoction to be thrown away with contumacy whenever discovered.
Tea was ready at last, and Tristram came in from his easel in the orchard. His sister poured him out a cup of the liquorice water.
‘I thought, Tristram,’ she said, ‘that during this retirement from the world we should give up stimulants. They dull the psychic faculties, you know, so we’re having liquorice water. Taste it and see if you like it.’
Tristram tasted it.
‘Delicious,’ he said, ‘quite delicious.’
‘The boy made it,’ said his sister, ‘but I daresay the Stores could get it for us. The boy always drinks liquorice water and he says that he has had psychic experiences.’
William, who had come to the c
onclusion that ‘psychic’ was a synonym for ‘exciting,’ swallowed a large piece of bread and butter in order to embark upon some of his imaginary exploits against Red Indians, and world famous gangs of criminals, but Tristram was delivering a monologue full of incomprehensible art terms.
‘Have you had any success?’ said his sister when he stopped for breath.
‘N-not exactly,’ he confessed. ‘I—I surrender myself and try to paint what comes into my head, as it were, but I can’t help realising that it isn’t as good as the work in which I don’t surrender myself.’
William, going into the kitchen after tea, was horrified to find a woman from the village there, mopping up the kitchen floor and glaring at the chaos around her.
‘You get out of here,’ she said sharply to William, seeing in him instinctively an enemy of law and order.
The lady appeared in the doorway.
‘Oh, you’ve come,’ she said vaguely, ‘they said at the Post Office they’d find someone.’
‘Yes, they found me,’ said the woman grimly, ‘and a nice state the place is in!’
‘IT’S VERY NICE,’ SHE SAID. ‘A PURE HERBAL DRINK, OF COURSE.’
The lady looked round it with quite amiable interest.
‘Yes, I suppose it is,’ she said vaguely, ‘I really hadn’t thought of it.’
The fascination of the inside of the cottage had completely disappeared for William with the advent of the ‘woman,’ but the outside remained. The activities of the sister (whose name, William had discovered, was Miss Auriole Mannister) were not very exciting. She sat gazing wistfully about the little garden, her camera posed for action upon whatever nature spirit should appear to her. She asked William to leave the garden undisturbed to her between four and five o’clock, explaining that she was concentrating on that hour, because she thought that her psychic functions were most active then. She asked him diffidently, and as if he had quite as much business there as she had. It never seemed to occur to her or to her brother to wonder where he came from, or to question his right of entry to either cottage or garden. William was very careful to absent himself from the garden from four to five, the more so as he was finding the artist in the orchard even more interesting than the vision-seeker in the garden. The artist sat before his easel with a palette in his hand and a large box of paints by his side, executing on his canvas a series of amazing strokes that were evidently meant to represent the orchard, but that reminded William of the nightmare he had had after last year’s November the fifth’s firework display. The artist noticed the expression with which William was watching it and said in his gentle melancholy voice:
‘It’s not meant to represent what one sees, you know. It’s meant to represent the emotions the sight of it rouses in one.’
‘Yes,’ said William, trying to sound as if he understood.
The thrill of watching these displays gradually wore off, of course, and yet something about them was vaguely inspiring. William had always considered that he could paint as well as anyone but he hadn’t realised that painting pictures—real pictures—was quite as easy as that, simply splodging paint about anyhow. It simplified the art considerably. William felt inspired to make attempts himself. He surreptitiously tore pages out of his exercise books at school, and took them to the cottage with him. There, furtively and under cover of examining the paint boxes, he ‘borrowed’ paint very cautiously, till he found that the artist took the situation as a matter of course. If William happened to be using the paint tube he wanted, he would wait quite patiently till William had finished with it. If William put it down on the wrong side of his chair, he would ask for it very politely.
Gradually William came to look upon himself as a finished artist. Certainly he considered that his pictures were just as good as Tristram’s, except that perhaps they were a little more like the object he was copying. He boasted of his skill to his friends till Ginger, nettled by his boastful claims, said: ‘All right, draw us something then an’ let’s see.’
‘All right, I will,’ said William. ‘I jolly well will. What’ll I draw you?’
‘Draw us a sign to put up at the ole barn.’
‘All right. What’ll I paint on it?’
‘A lion.’
‘All right. I’ll do it to-night an’ I’ll show it to you to-morrow an’ then you’ll jolly well see!’
So William began his lion that evening. The artist was working indoors in water colours and he had prepared some large white squares to paint upon. They were quite a nice size for a sign for the old barn. Seeing William furtively reaching out a hand to abstract one, the man passed him one absently and both of them set to work. Once Miss Auriole looked in and whispered: ‘How are you getting on, Tristram?’ and Tristram said: ‘I’m surrendering myself utterly, but I don’t know what the results will be.’
‘I do hope it will be all right,’ said his sister rather doubtfully, and added: ‘I’m waiting and watching with my camera outside.’
William finished his lion before he went home to bed. He considered it an excellent lion. It looked as spirited and wild and ferocious as a lion ought to look and seldom does. When he had finished it, he went out to look at Miss Auriole. She was asleep in a deckchair in the orchard with her camera on her knee.
Then he went home to tea and didn’t realise till he was in bed that he’d left his lion behind in the little studio.
He explained to Ginger the next morning.
‘I’ve done it an’ it’s a jolly good lion.’
‘Where is it?’
‘I’ve not got it. I forget an’ left it there.’
‘Oh, yes!’ jeered Ginger.
‘Well, you come round with me after school an’ jolly well see!’
‘All right,’ said Ginger, ‘I’ll b’lieve when I see it.’
‘Yes, I bet you will too.’
After school William took Ginger round to the cottage. They entered the garden cautiously. William had not before taken any of his friends to the cottage. He had felt a sort of responsibility towards this trusting couple, and had shielded them, as far as possible, from boys in the plural. Ginger looked about the garden with interest.
‘A jolly good place for Hide and Seek,’ he said.
William was creeping towards the study window.
‘My paintin’s in here,’ he said, then he stopped.
Through the study window he could see his two friends and a strange man with a beard standing round the little desk. He retreated.
‘We’ll wait till they come out,’ he said.
‘Let’s have a game of Hide and Seek,’ said Ginger.
‘All right. I’ll hide. You count.’
‘One . . . two . . . three . . .’
William crept down to the bottom of the lawn where the heap of grass cutting stood, and with a dexterous movement inserted himself into the very middle of it. Soon he heard Ginger shout ‘Com—’ and stop suddenly. Then he heard the sounds of the lady setting up her deck-chair on the lawn. Ginger had evidently vanished abruptly on sight of her. William remained in his grass heap wondering what to do. It was the hour during which the lady had asked him to leave her undisturbed. William felt reluctant to intrude upon it. She had, he felt, treated him with such consideration that she deserved consideration in return. For a moment he meditated remaining where he was till the end of the hour. But he was already tired of swallowing grass cuttings and he didn’t like the taste of them. Then the memory of the lady, fast asleep in the deck-chair the day before, returned to him. If he waited just a few minutes, it would be all right. She’d be fast asleep. He waited till he imagined that he heard deep breathing, then rose from the heap, fled behind the greenhouse and out through a hole in the hedge. Simultaneous sounds of a gasp and a click pursued him. Scattering grass cuttings at every step he hastened down to the road. There he met his mother. She gazed at him in horrified amazement.
‘William! What have you been doing?’
‘Me?’ said William in innocent surpr
ise. ‘Nothin’. Why?’
‘You’re covered with grass.’
‘Oh that,’ said William casually. ‘Oh, I dunno. I s’pose I sat down in a field or somethin’.’
‘What nonsense! Come home with me at once.’
Despite his protests, she took him home and brushed him and washed him till there was not an atom of grass left on him. Feeling depressed by this process, he set out again to find Ginger. He found him hanging about the gate of the cottage.
‘Hello!’ he greeted William. ‘I’ve been lookin’ all over for you. I had to go ’cause she came out. Where were you hidin’?’
‘In the grass.’
‘Well, let’s try’n’ get your paintin’ now.’
They entered the little garden again.
Tristram was just joining his sister on the lawn.
‘Tristram!’ she greeted him excitedly, ‘I’ve seen one. Oh, my dear! It was so thrilling. I was sitting here as usual with my camera, watching and waiting, when suddenly from that grass heap there detached itself a faint green wraith—a shadowy spirit. For one second I saw it standing by the heap as plainly as I see you now, and then it disappeared.’
‘You got a snap of it, I hope,’ said Tristram anxiously.
‘Yes, my dear. Oh, I hope so. If what I saw comes out, I can die happy. And what about yours, my dear?’
Tristram’s face clouded over.
‘It’s no good. Tosher says that none of them will do for the journal. He says that they aren’t inspirational enough.’
‘Oh, Tristram! I’m so sorry.’
‘It is a great disappointment, I won’t deny it,’ said Tristram, his long melancholy face more melancholy than ever. ‘I’d so completely surrendered myself to influence.’
‘Oh, dear, I am sorry . . . where is he? Has he gone?’
‘No, he’s still in the study. His train doesn’t go till half-past.’
‘Let’s go out for a walk, dear. It will do you good. He won’t mind being left till his train goes, I’m sure.’
William's Happy Days Page 19
