The Garden Party, and Other Stories
straight, her knees pressed together, and to make vague motions with
her arms as if she expected to be wafted out to sea. But when a bigger
wave than usual, an old whiskery one, came lolloping along in her
direction, she scrambled to her feet with a face of horror and flew up
the beach again.
“Here, mother, keep those for me, will you?”
Two rings and a thin gold chain were dropped into Mrs Fairfield’s lap.
“Yes, dear. But aren’t you going to bathe here?”
“No-o,” Beryl drawled. She sounded vague. “I’m undressing farther
along. I’m going to bathe with Mrs. Harry Kember.”
“Very well.” But Mrs. Fairfield’s lips set. She disapproved of Mrs
Harry Kember. Beryl knew it.
Poor old mother, she smiled, as she skimmed over the stones. Poor old
mother! Old! Oh, what joy, what bliss it was to be young....
“You look very pleased,” said Mrs. Harry Kember. She sat hunched up on
the stones, her arms round her knees, smoking.
“It’s such a lovely day,” said Beryl, smiling down at her.
“Oh my _dear_!” Mrs. Harry Kember’s voice sounded as though she knew
better than that. But then her voice always sounded as though she knew
something better about you than you did yourself. She was a long,
strange-looking woman with narrow hands and feet. Her face, too, was
long and narrow and exhausted-looking; even her fair curled fringe
looked burnt out and withered. She was the only woman at the Bay who
smoked, and she smoked incessantly, keeping the cigarette between her
lips while she talked, and only taking it out when the ash was so long
you could not understand why it did not fall. When she was not playing
bridge—she played bridge every day of her life—she spent her time lying
in the full glare of the sun. She could stand any amount of it; she
never had enough. All the same, it did not seem to warm her. Parched,
withered, cold, she lay stretched on the stones like a piece of
tossed-up driftwood. The women at the Bay thought she was very, very
fast. Her lack of vanity, her slang, the way she treated men as though
she was one of them, and the fact that she didn’t care twopence about
her house and called the servant Gladys “Glad-eyes,” was disgraceful.
Standing on the veranda steps Mrs. Kember would call in her
indifferent, tired voice, “I say, Glad-eyes, you might heave me a
handkerchief if I’ve got one, will you?” And Glad-eyes, a red bow in
her hair instead of a cap, and white shoes, came running with an
impudent smile. It was an absolute scandal! True, she had no children,
and her husband.... Here the voices were always raised; they became
fervent. How can he have married her? How can he, how can he? It must
have been money, of course, but even then!
Mrs. Kember’s husband was at least ten years younger than she was, and
so incredibly handsome that he looked like a mask or a most perfect
illustration in an American novel rather than a man. Black hair, dark
blue eyes, red lips, a slow sleepy smile, a fine tennis player, a
perfect dancer, and with it all a mystery. Harry Kember was like a man
walking in his sleep. Men couldn’t stand him, they couldn’t get a word
out of the chap; he ignored his wife just as she ignored him. How did
he live? Of course there were stories, but such stories! They simply
couldn’t be told. The women he’d been seen with, the places he’d been
seen in... but nothing was ever certain, nothing definite. Some of the
women at the Bay privately thought he’d commit a murder one day. Yes,
even while they talked to Mrs. Kember and took in the awful concoction
she was wearing, they saw her, stretched as she lay on the beach; but
cold, bloody, and still with a cigarette stuck in the corner of her
mouth.
Mrs. Kember rose, yawned, unsnapped her belt buckle, and tugged at the
tape of her blouse. And Beryl stepped out of her skirt and shed her
jersey, and stood up in her short white petticoat, and her camisole
with ribbon bows on the shoulders.
“Mercy on us,” said Mrs. Harry Kember, “what a little beauty you are!”
“Don’t!” said Beryl softly; but, drawing off one stocking and then the
other, she felt a little beauty.
“My dear—why not?” said Mrs. Harry Kember, stamping on her own
petticoat. Really—her underclothes! A pair of blue cotton knickers and
a linen bodice that reminded one somehow of a pillow-case.... “And you
don’t wear stays, do you?” She touched Beryl’s waist, and Beryl sprang
away with a small affected cry. Then “Never!” she said firmly.
“Lucky little creature,” sighed Mrs. Kember, unfastening her own.
Beryl turned her back and began the complicated movements of some one
who is trying to take off her clothes and to pull on her bathing-dress
all at one and the same time.
“Oh, my dear—don’t mind me,” said Mrs. Harry Kember. “Why be shy? I
shan’t eat you. I shan’t be shocked like those other ninnies.” And she
gave her strange neighing laugh and grimaced at the other women.
But Beryl was shy. She never undressed in front of anybody. Was that
silly? Mrs. Harry Kember made her feel it was silly, even something to
be ashamed of. Why be shy indeed! She glanced quickly at her friend
standing so boldly in her torn chemise and lighting a fresh cigarette;
and a quick, bold, evil feeling started up in her breast. Laughing
recklessly, she drew on the limp, sandy-feeling bathing-dress that was
not quite dry and fastened the twisted buttons.
“That’s better,” said Mrs. Harry Kember. They began to go down the
beach together. “Really, it’s a sin for you to wear clothes, my dear.
Somebody’s got to tell you some day.”
The water was quite warm. It was that marvellous transparent blue,
flecked with silver, but the sand at the bottom looked gold; when you
kicked with your toes there rose a little puff of gold-dust. Now the
waves just reached her breast. Beryl stood, her arms outstretched,
gazing out, and as each wave came she gave the slightest little jump,
so that it seemed it was the wave which lifted her so gently.
“I believe in pretty girls having a good time,” said Mrs. Harry Kember.
“Why not? Don’t you make a mistake, my dear. Enjoy yourself.” And
suddenly she turned turtle, disappeared, and swam away quickly,
quickly, like a rat. Then she flicked round and began swimming back.
She was going to say something else. Beryl felt that she was being
poisoned by this cold woman, but she longed to hear. But oh, how
strange, how horrible! As Mrs. Harry Kember came up close she looked,
in her black waterproof bathing-cap, with her sleepy face lifted above
the water, just her chin touching, like a horrible caricature of her
husband.
VI
In a steamer chair, under a manuka tree that grew in the middle of the
front grass patch, Linda Burnell dreamed the morning away. She did
nothing. She looked up at the dark, close, dry leaves of the manuka, at
the chinks of blue between, and now and again a tiny yellowish flower
dropped on her. Pretty—yes, if you held one of those flowers on the
palm of your hand and looked at it closely, it was an exquisite small
thing. Each pale yellow petal shone as if each was the careful work of
a loving hand. The tiny tongue in the centre gave it the shape of a
bell. And when you turned it over the outside was a deep bronze colour.
But as soon as they flowered, they fell and were scattered. You brushed
them off your frock as you talked; the horrid little things got caught
in one’s hair. Why, then, flower at all? Who takes the trouble—or the
joy—to make all these things that are wasted, wasted.... It was
uncanny.
On the grass beside her, lying between two pillows, was the boy. Sound
asleep he lay, his head turned away from his mother. His fine dark hair
looked more like a shadow than like real hair, but his ear was a
bright, deep coral. Linda clasped her hands above her head and crossed
her feet. It was very pleasant to know that all these bungalows were
empty, that everybody was down on the beach, out of sight, out of
hearing. She had the garden to herself; she was alone.
Dazzling white the picotees shone; the golden-eyed marigold glittered;
the nasturtiums wreathed the veranda poles in green and gold flame. If
only one had time to look at these flowers long enough, time to get
over the sense of novelty and strangeness, time to know them! But as
soon as one paused to part the petals, to discover the under-side of
the leaf, along came Life and one was swept away. And, lying in her
cane chair, Linda felt so light; she felt like a leaf. Along came Life
like a wind and she was seized and shaken; she had to go. Oh dear,
would it always be so? Was there no escape?
... Now she sat on the veranda of their Tasmanian home, leaning against
her father’s knee. And he promised, “As soon as you and I are old
enough, Linny, we’ll cut off somewhere, we’ll escape. Two boys
together. I have a fancy I’d like to sail up a river in China.” Linda
saw that river, very wide, covered with little rafts and boats. She saw
the yellow hats of the boatmen and she heard their high, thin voices as
they called....
“Yes, papa.”
But just then a very broad young man with bright ginger hair walked
slowly past their house, and slowly, solemnly even, uncovered. Linda’s
father pulled her ear teasingly, in the way he had.
“Linny’s beau,” he whispered.
“Oh, papa, fancy being married to Stanley Burnell!”
Well, she was married to him. And what was more she loved him. Not the
Stanley whom every one saw, not the everyday one; but a timid,
sensitive, innocent Stanley who knelt down every night to say his
prayers, and who longed to be good. Stanley was simple. If he believed
in people—as he believed in her, for instance—it was with his whole
heart. He could not be disloyal; he could not tell a lie. And how
terribly he suffered if he thought anyone—she—was not being dead
straight, dead sincere with him! “This is too subtle for me!” He flung
out the words, but his open, quivering, distraught look was like the
look of a trapped beast.
But the trouble was—here Linda felt almost inclined to laugh, though
Heaven knows it was no laughing matter—she saw _her_ Stanley so seldom.
There were glimpses, moments, breathing spaces of calm, but all the
rest of the time it was like living in a house that couldn’t be cured
of the habit of catching on fire, on a ship that got wrecked every day.
And it was always Stanley who was in the thick of the danger. Her whole
time was spent in rescuing him, and restoring him, and calming him
down, and listening to his story. And what was left of her time was
spent in the dread of having children.
Linda frowned; she sat up quickly in her steamer chair and clasped her
ankles. Yes, that was her real grudge against life; that was what she
could not understand. That was the question she asked and asked, and
listened in vain for the answer. It was all very well to say it was the
common lot of women to bear children. It wasn’t true. She, for one,
could prove that wrong. She was broken, made weak, her courage was
gone, through child-bearing. And what made it doubly hard to bear was,
she did not love her children. It was useless pretending. Even if she
had had the strength she never would have nursed and played with the
little girls. No, it was as though a cold breath had chilled her
through and through on each of those awful journeys; she had no warmth
left to give them. As to the boy—well, thank Heaven, mother had taken
him; he was mother’s, or Beryl’s, or anybody’s who wanted him. She had
hardly held him in her arms. She was so indifferent about him that as
he lay there... Linda glanced down.
The boy had turned over. He lay facing her, and he was no longer
asleep. His dark-blue, baby eyes were open; he looked as though he was
peeping at his mother. And suddenly his face dimpled; it broke into a
wide, toothless smile, a perfect beam, no less.