The Garden Party, and Other Stories
Yes, Aunt Josephine, you’re perfectly right. Father’s most frightfully
keen on meringues.”
They didn’t only beam. Aunt Josephine went scarlet with pleasure;
Auntie Con gave a deep, deep sigh.
“And now, Cyril, you must come and see father,” said Josephine. “He
knows you were coming to-day.”
“Right,” said Cyril, very firmly and heartily. He got up from his
chair; suddenly he glanced at the clock.
“I say, Auntie Con, isn’t your clock a bit slow? I’ve got to meet a man
at—at Paddington just after five. I’m afraid I shan’t be able to stay
very long with grandfather.”
“Oh, he won’t expect you to stay _very_ long!” said Aunt Josephine.
Constantia was still gazing at the clock. She couldn’t make up her mind
if it was fast or slow. It was one or the other, she felt almost
certain of that. At any rate, it had been.
Cyril still lingered. “Aren’t you coming along, Auntie Con?”
“Of course,” said Josephine, “we shall all go. Come on, Con.”
IX
They knocked at the door, and Cyril followed his aunts into
grandfather’s hot, sweetish room.
“Come on,” said Grandfather Pinner. “Don’t hang about. What is it?
What’ve you been up to?”
He was sitting in front of a roaring fire, clasping his stick. He had a
thick rug over his knees. On his lap there lay a beautiful pale yellow
silk handkerchief.
“It’s Cyril, father,” said Josephine shyly. And she took Cyril’s hand
and led him forward.
“Good afternoon, grandfather,” said Cyril, trying to take his hand out
of Aunt Josephine’s. Grandfather Pinner shot his eyes at Cyril in the
way he was famous for. Where was Auntie Con? She stood on the other
side of Aunt Josephine; her long arms hung down in front of her; her
hands were clasped. She never took her eyes off grandfather.
“Well,” said Grandfather Pinner, beginning to thump, “what have you got
to tell me?”
What had he, what had he got to tell him? Cyril felt himself smiling
like a perfect imbecile. The room was stifling, too.
But Aunt Josephine came to his rescue. She cried brightly, “Cyril says
his father is still very fond of meringues, father dear.”
“Eh?” said Grandfather Pinner, curving his hand like a purple
meringue-shell over one ear.
Josephine repeated, “Cyril says his father is still very fond of
meringues.”
“Can’t hear,” said old Colonel Pinner. And he waved Josephine away with
his stick, then pointed with his stick to Cyril. “Tell me what she’s
trying to say,” he said.
(My God!) “Must I?” said Cyril, blushing and staring at Aunt Josephine.
“Do, dear,” she smiled. “It will please him so much.”
“Come on, out with it!” cried Colonel Pinner testily, beginning to
thump again.
And Cyril leaned forward and yelled, “Father’s still very fond of
meringues.”
At that Grandfather Pinner jumped as though he had been shot.
“Don’t shout!” he cried. “What’s the matter with the boy? _Meringues!_
What about ’em?”
“Oh, Aunt Josephine, must we go on?” groaned Cyril desperately.
“It’s quite all right, dear boy,” said Aunt Josephine, as though he and
she were at the dentist’s together. “He’ll understand in a minute.” And
she whispered to Cyril, “He’s getting a bit deaf, you know.” Then she
leaned forward and really bawled at Grandfather Pinner, “Cyril only
wanted to tell you, father dear, that _his_ father is still very fond
of meringues.”
Colonel Pinner heard that time, heard and brooded, looking Cyril up and
down.
“What an esstrordinary thing!” said old Grandfather Pinner. “What an
esstrordinary thing to come all this way here to tell me!”
And Cyril felt it _was_.
“Yes, I shall send Cyril the watch,” said Josephine.
“That would be very nice,” said Constantia. “I seem to remember last
time he came there was some little trouble about the time.”
X
They were interrupted by Kate bursting through the door in her usual
fashion, as though she had discovered some secret panel in the wall.
“Fried or boiled?” asked the bold voice.
Fried or boiled? Josephine and Constantia were quite bewildered for the
moment. They could hardly take it in.
“Fried or boiled what, Kate?” asked Josephine, trying to begin to
concentrate.
Kate gave a loud sniff. “Fish.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so immediately?” Josephine reproached her
gently. “How could you expect us to understand, Kate? There are a great
many things in this world you know, which are fried or boiled.” And
after such a display of courage she said quite brightly to Constantia,
“Which do you prefer, Con?”
“I think it might be nice to have it fried,” said Constantia. “On the
other hand, of course, boiled fish is very nice. I think I prefer both
equally well.... Unless you.... In that case—”
“I shall fry it,” said Kate, and she bounced back, leaving their door
open and slamming the door of her kitchen.
Josephine gazed at Constantia; she raised her pale eyebrows until they
rippled away into her pale hair. She got up. She said in a very lofty,
imposing way, “Do you mind following me into the drawing-room,
Constantia? I’ve got something of great importance to discuss with
you.”
For it was always to the drawing-room they retired when they wanted to
talk over Kate.
Josephine closed the door meaningly. “Sit down, Constantia,” she said,
still very grand. She might have been receiving Constantia for the
first time. And Con looked round vaguely for a chair, as though she
felt indeed quite a stranger.
“Now the question is,” said Josephine, bending forward, “whether we
shall keep her or not.”
“That is the question,” agreed Constantia.
“And this time,” said Josephine firmly, “we must come to a definite
decision.”
Constantia looked for a moment as though she might begin going over all
the other times, but she pulled herself together and said, “Yes, Jug.”
“You see, Con,” explained Josephine, “everything is so changed now.”
Constantia looked up quickly. “I mean,” went on Josephine, “we’re not
dependent on Kate as we were.” And she blushed faintly. “There’s not
father to cook for.”
“That is perfectly true,” agreed Constantia. “Father certainly doesn’t
want any cooking now, whatever else—”
Josephine broke in sharply, “You’re not sleepy, are you, Con?”
“Sleepy, Jug?” Constantia was wide-eyed.
“Well, concentrate more,” said Josephine sharply, and she returned to
the subject. “What it comes to is, if we did”—and this she barely
breathed, glancing at the door—“give Kate notice”—she raised her voice
again—“we could manage our own food.”
“Why not?” cried Constantia. She couldn’t help smiling. The idea was so
exciting. She clasped her hands. “What should we live on, Jug?”
“Oh, eggs in various forms!” said Jug, lofty again. “And, besides,
there are all the cooked foods.”
“But I’ve always heard,” said Constantia, “they are considered so very
expensive.”
“Not if one buys them in moderation,” said Josephine. But she tore
herself away from this fascinating bypath and dragged Constantia after
her.
“What we’ve got to decide now, however, is whether we really do trust
Kate or not.”
Constantia leaned back. Her flat little laugh flew from her lips.
“Isn’t it curious, Jug,” said she, “that just on this one subject I’ve
never been able to quite make up my mind?”
XI
She never had. The whole difficulty was to prove anything. How did one
prove things, how could one? Suppose Kate had stood in front of her and
deliberately made a face. Mightn’t she very well have been in pain?
Wasn’t it impossible, at any rate, to ask Kate if she was making a face
at her? If Kate answered “No”—and, of course, she would say “No”—what a
position! How undignified! Then again Constantia suspected, she was
almost certain that Kate went to her chest of drawers when she and
Josephine were out, not to take things but to spy. Many times she had
come back to find her amethyst cross in the most unlikely places, under
her lace ties or on top of her evening Bertha. More than once she had
laid a trap for Kate. She had arranged things in a special order and
then called Josephine to witness.
“You see, Jug?”
“Quite, Con.”
“Now we shall be able to tell.”
But, oh dear, when she did go to look, she was as far off from a proof
as ever! If anything was displaced, it might so very well have happened
as she closed the drawer; a jolt might have done it so easily.
“You come, Jug, and decide. I really can’t. It’s too difficult.”
But after a pause and a long glare Josephine would sigh, “Now you’ve
put the doubt into my mind, Con, I’m sure I can’t tell myself.”
“Well, we can’t postpone it again,” said Josephine. “If we postpone it
this time—”
XII
But at that moment in the street below a barrel-organ struck up.
Josephine and Constantia sprang to their feet together.
“Run, Con,” said Josephine. “Run quickly. There’s sixpence on the—”
Then they remembered. It didn’t matter. They would never have to stop
the organ-grinder again. Never again would she and Constantia be told
to make that monkey take his noise somewhere else. Never would sound
that loud, strange bellow when father thought they were not hurrying
enough. The organ-grinder might play there all day and the stick would
not thump.
It never will thump again,
It never will thump again,
played the barrel-organ.
What was Constantia thinking? She had such a strange smile; she looked
different. She couldn’t be going to cry.
“Jug, Jug,” said Constantia softly, pressing her hands together. “Do
you know what day it is? It’s Saturday. It’s a week to-day, a whole
week.”
A week since father died,
A week since father died,
cried the barrel-organ. And Josephine, too, forgot to be practical and
sensible; she smiled faintly, strangely. On the Indian carpet there
fell a square of sunlight, pale red; it came and went and came—and
stayed, deepened—until it shone almost golden.
“The sun’s out,” said Josephine, as though it really mattered.
A perfect fountain of bubbling notes shook from the barrel-organ,
round, bright notes, carelessly scattered.
Constantia lifted her big, cold hands as if to catch them, and then her
hands fell again. She walked over to the mantelpiece to her favourite
Buddha. And the stone and gilt image, whose smile always gave her such
a queer feeling, almost a pain and yet a pleasant pain, seemed to-day
to be more than smiling. He knew something; he had a secret. “I know
something that you don’t know,” said her Buddha. Oh, what was it, what
could it be? And yet she had always felt there was... something.
The sunlight pressed through the windows, thieved its way in, flashed
its light over the furniture and the photographs. Josephine watched it.
When it came to mother’s photograph, the enlargement over the piano, it
lingered as though puzzled to find so little remained of mother, except
the earrings shaped like tiny pagodas and a black feather boa. Why did
the photographs of dead people always fade so? wondered Josephine. As
soon as a person was dead their photograph died too. But, of course,
this one of mother was very old. It was thirty-five years old.
Josephine remembered standing on a chair and pointing out that feather
boa to Constantia and telling her that it was a snake that had killed
their mother in Ceylon.... Would everything have been different if
mother hadn’t died? She didn’t see why. Aunt Florence had lived with
them until they had left school, and they had moved three times and had
their yearly holiday and... and there’d been changes of servants, of
course.
Some little sparrows, young sparrows they sounded, chirped on the
window-ledge. _Yeep—eyeep—yeep._ But Josephine felt they were not
sparrows, not on the window-ledge. It was inside her, that queer little
crying noise. _Yeep—eyeep—yeep._ Ah, what was it crying, so weak and
forlorn?