The Garden Party, and Other Stories
But at that moment the shopman appeared. “Oh, I forgot. They’re none of
them paid for,” said Bobby, looking frightened. Isabel gave the shopman
a note, and Bobby was radiant again. “Hallo, William! I’m sitting by
the driver.” And bareheaded, all in white, with his sleeves rolled up
to the shoulders, he leapt into his place. “Avanti!” he cried....
After tea the others went off to bathe, while William stayed and made
his peace with the kiddies. But Johnny and Paddy were asleep, the
rose-red glow had paled, bats were flying, and still the bathers had
not returned. As William wandered downstairs, the maid crossed the hall
carrying a lamp. He followed her into the sitting-room. It was a long
room, coloured yellow. On the wall opposite William some one had
painted a young man, over life-size, with very wobbly legs, offering a
wide-eyed daisy to a young woman who had one very short arm and one
very long, thin one. Over the chairs and sofa there hung strips of
black material, covered with big splashes like broken eggs, and
everywhere one looked there seemed to be an ash-tray full of cigarette
ends. William sat down in one of the arm-chairs. Nowadays, when one
felt with one hand down the sides, it wasn’t to come upon a sheep with
three legs or a cow that had lost one horn, or a very fat dove out of
the Noah’s Ark. One fished up yet another little paper-covered book of
smudged-looking poems.... He thought of the wad of papers in his
pocket, but he was too hungry and tired to read. The door was open;
sounds came from the kitchen. The servants were talking as if they were
alone in the house. Suddenly there came a loud screech of laughter and
an equally loud “Sh!” They had remembered him. William got up and went
through the French windows into the garden, and as he stood there in
the shadow he heard the bathers coming up the sandy road; their voices
rang through the quiet.
“I think its up to Moira to use her little arts and wiles.”
A tragic moan from Moira.
“We ought to have a gramophone for the week-ends that played ‘The Maid
of the Mountains.’”
“Oh no! Oh no!” cried Isabel’s voice. “That’s not fair to William. Be
nice to him, my children! He’s only staying until to-morrow evening.”
“Leave him to me,” cried Bobby Kane. “I’m awfully good at looking after
people.”
The gate swung open and shut. William moved on the terrace; they had
seen him. “Hallo, William!” And Bobby Kane, flapping his towel, began
to leap and pirouette on the parched lawn. “Pity you didn’t come,
William. The water was divine. And we all went to a little pub
afterwards and had sloe gin.”
The others had reached the house. “I say, Isabel,” called Bobby, “would
you like me to wear my Nijinsky dress to-night?”
“No,” said Isabel, “nobody’s going to dress. We’re all starving.
William’s starving, too. Come along, _mes amis_, let’s begin with
sardines.”
“I’ve found the sardines,” said Moira, and she ran into the hall,
holding a box high in the air.
“A Lady with a Box of Sardines,” said Dennis gravely.
“Well, William, and how’s London?” asked Bill Hunt, drawing the cork
out of a bottle of whisky.
“Oh, London’s not much changed,” answered William.
“Good old London,” said Bobby, very hearty, spearing a sardine.
But a moment later William was forgotten. Moira Morrison began
wondering what colour one’s legs really were under water.
“Mine are the palest, palest mushroom colour.”
Bill and Dennis ate enormously. And Isabel filled glasses, and changed
plates, and found matches, smiling blissfully. At one moment, she said,
“I do wish, Bill, you’d paint it.”
“Paint what?” said Bill loudly, stuffing his mouth with bread.
“Us,” said Isabel, “round the table. It would be so fascinating in
twenty years’ time.”
Bill screwed up his eyes and chewed. “Light’s wrong,” he said rudely,
“far too much yellow”; and went on eating. And that seemed to charm
Isabel, too.
But after supper they were all so tired they could do nothing but yawn
until it was late enough to go to bed....
It was not until William was waiting for his taxi the next afternoon
that he found himself alone with Isabel. When he brought his suit-case
down into the hall, Isabel left the others and went over to him. She
stooped down and picked up the suit-case. “What a weight!” she said,
and she gave a little awkward laugh. “Let me carry it! To the gate.”
“No, why should you?” said William. “Of course, not. Give it to me.”
“Oh, please, do let me,” said Isabel. “I want to, really.” They walked
together silently. William felt there was nothing to say now.
“There,” said Isabel triumphantly, setting the suit-case down, and she
looked anxiously along the sandy road. “I hardly seem to have seen you
this time,” she said breathlessly. “It’s so short, isn’t it? I feel
you’ve only just come. Next time—” The taxi came into sight. “I hope
they look after you properly in London. I’m so sorry the babies have
been out all day, but Miss Neil had arranged it. They’ll hate missing
you. Poor William, going back to London.” The taxi turned. “Good-bye!”
She gave him a little hurried kiss; she was gone.
Fields, trees, hedges streamed by. They shook through the empty,
blind-looking little town, ground up the steep pull to the station.
The train was in. William made straight for a first-class smoker, flung
back into the corner, but this time he let the papers alone. He folded
his arms against the dull, persistent gnawing, and began in his mind to
write a letter to Isabel.
The post was late as usual. They sat outside the house in long chairs
under coloured parasols. Only Bobby Kane lay on the turf at Isabel’s
feet. It was dull, stifling; the day drooped like a flag.
“Do you think there will be Mondays in Heaven?” asked Bobby childishly.
And Dennis murmured, “Heaven will be one long Monday.”
But Isabel couldn’t help wondering what had happened to the salmon they
had for supper last night. She had meant to have fish mayonnaise for
lunch and now....
Moira was asleep. Sleeping was her latest discovery. “It’s _so_
wonderful. One simply shuts one’s eyes, that’s all. It’s _so_
delicious.”
When the old ruddy postman came beating along the sandy road on his
tricycle one felt the handle-bars ought to have been oars.
Bill Hunt put down his book. “Letters,” he said complacently, and they
all waited. But, heartless postman—O malignant world! There was only
one, a fat one for Isabel. Not even a paper.
“And mine’s only from William,” said Isabel mournfully.
“From William—already?”
“He’s sending you back your marriage lines as a gentle reminder.”
“Does everybody have marriage lines? I thought they were only for
servants.”
“Pages and pages! Look at her! A Lady reading a Letter,” said Dennis.
“_My darling, precious Isabel_.” Pages and pages there were. As Isabel
read on her feeling of astonishment changed to a stifled feeling. What
on earth had induced William...? How extraordinary it was.... What
could have made him...? She felt confused, more and more excited, even
frightened. It was just like William. Was it? It was absurd, of course,
it must be absurd, ridiculous. “Ha, ha, ha! Oh dear!” What was she to
do? Isabel flung back in her chair and laughed till she couldn’t stop
laughing.
“Do, do tell us,” said the others. “You must tell us.”
“I’m longing to,” gurgled Isabel. She sat up, gathered the letter, and
waved it at them. “Gather round,” she said. “Listen, it’s too
marvellous. A love-letter!”
“A love-letter! But how divine!” _Darling, precious Isabel._ But she
had hardly begun before their laughter interrupted her.
“Go on, Isabel, it’s perfect.”
“It’s the most marvellous find.”
“Oh, do go on, Isabel!”
_God forbid, my darling, that I should be a drag on your happiness._
“Oh! oh! oh!”
“Sh! sh! sh!”
And Isabel went on. When she reached the end they were hysterical:
Bobby rolled on the turf and almost sobbed.
“You must let me have it just as it is, entire, for my new book,” said
Dennis firmly. “I shall give it a whole chapter.”
“Oh, Isabel,” moaned Moira, “that wonderful bit about holding you in
his arms!”
“I always thought those letters in divorce cases were made up. But they
pale before this.”
“Let me hold it. Let me read it, mine own self,” said Bobby Kane.
But, to their surprise, Isabel crushed the letter in her hand. She was
laughing no longer. She glanced quickly at them all; she looked
exhausted. “No, not just now. Not just now,” she stammered.
And before they could recover she had run into the house, through the
hall, up the stairs into her bedroom. Down she sat on the side of the
bed. “How vile, odious, abominable, vulgar,” muttered Isabel. She
pressed her eyes with her knuckles and rocked to and fro. And again she
saw them, but not four, more like forty, laughing, sneering, jeering,
stretching out their hands while she read them William’s letter. Oh,
what a loathsome thing to have done. How could she have done it! _God
forbid, my darling, that I should be a drag on your happiness._
William! Isabel pressed her face into the pillow. But she felt that
even the grave bedroom knew her for what she was, shallow, tinkling,
vain....
Presently from the garden below there came voices.
“Isabel, we’re all going for a bathe. Do come!”
“Come, thou wife of William!”
“Call her once before you go, call once yet!”
Isabel sat up. Now was the moment, now she must decide. Would she go
with them, or stay here and write to William. Which, which should it
be? “I must make up my mind.” Oh, but how could there be any question?
Of course she would stay here and write.
“Titania!” piped Moira.
“Isa-bel?”
No, it was too difficult. “I’ll—I’ll go with them, and write to William
later. Some other time. Later. Not now. But I shall _certainly_ write,”
thought Isabel hurriedly.
And, laughing, in the new way, she ran down the stairs.
The Voyage
The Picton boat was due to leave at half-past eleven. It was a
beautiful night, mild, starry, only when they got out of the cab and
started to walk down the Old Wharf that jutted out into the harbour, a
faint wind blowing off the water ruffled under Fenella’s hat, and she
put up her hand to keep it on. It was dark on the Old Wharf, very dark;
the wool sheds, the cattle trucks, the cranes standing up so high, the
little squat railway engine, all seemed carved out of solid darkness.
Here and there on a rounded wood-pile, that was like the stalk of a
huge black mushroom, there hung a lantern, but it seemed afraid to
unfurl its timid, quivering light in all that blackness; it burned
softly, as if for itself.
Fenella’s father pushed on with quick, nervous strides. Beside him her
grandma bustled along in her crackling black ulster; they went so fast
that she had now and again to give an undignified little skip to keep
up with them. As well as her luggage strapped into a neat sausage,
Fenella carried clasped to her her grandma’s umbrella, and the handle,
which was a swan’s head, kept giving her shoulder a sharp little peck
as if it too wanted her to hurry.... Men, their caps pulled down, their
collars turned up, swung by; a few women all muffled scurried along;
and one tiny boy, only his little black arms and legs showing out of a
white woolly shawl, was jerked along angrily between his father and
mother; he looked like a baby fly that had fallen into the cream.
Then suddenly, so suddenly that Fenella and her grandma both leapt,
there sounded from behind the largest wool shed, that had a trail of
smoke hanging over it, “_Mia-oo-oo-O-O!_”
“First whistle,” said her father briefly, and at that moment they came
in sight of the Picton boat. Lying beside the dark wharf, all strung,
all beaded with round golden lights, the Picton boat looked as if she