The Garden Party, and Other Stories
In a very dainty, refined way Alice wet her finger and put the tissue
back from the first one. Life! How many there were! There were three
dozzing at least. And she held it up to the light.
Mrs. Stubbs sat in an arm-chair, leaning very much to one side. There
was a look of mild astonishment on her large face, and well there might
be. For though the arm-chair stood on a carpet, to the left of it,
miraculously skirting the carpet-border, there was a dashing
water-fall. On her right stood a Grecian pillar with a giant fern-tree
on either side of it, and in the background towered a gaunt mountain,
pale with snow.
“It is a nice style, isn’t it?” shouted Mrs. Stubbs; and Alice had just
screamed “Sweetly” when the roaring of the Primus stove died down,
fizzled out, ceased, and she said “Pretty” in a silence that was
frightening.
“Draw up your chair, my dear,” said Mrs. Stubbs, beginning to pour out.
“Yes,” she said thoughtfully, as she handed the tea, “but I don’t care
about the size. I’m having an enlargemint. All very well for Christmas
cards, but I never was the one for small photers myself. You get no
comfort out of them. To say the truth, I find them dis’eartening.”
Alice quite saw what she meant.
“Size,” said Mrs. Stubbs. “Give me size. That was what my poor dear
husband was always saying. He couldn’t stand anything small. Gave him
the creeps. And, strange as it may seem, my dear”—here Mrs. Stubbs
creaked and seemed to expand herself at the memory—“it was dropsy that
carried him off at the larst. Many’s the time they drawn one and a half
pints from ’im at the ’ospital... It seemed like a judgmint.”
Alice burned to know exactly what it was that was drawn from him. She
ventured, “I suppose it was water.”
But Mrs. Stubbs fixed Alice with her eyes and replied meaningly, “It
was _liquid_, my dear.”
Liquid! Alice jumped away from the word like a cat and came back to it,
nosing and wary.
“That’s ’im!” said Mrs. Stubbs, and she pointed dramatically to the
life-size head and shoulders of a burly man with a dead white rose in
the buttonhole of his coat that made you think of a curl of cold
mutting fat. Just below, in silver letters on a red cardboard ground,
were the words, “Be not afraid, it is I.”
“It’s ever such a fine face,” said Alice faintly.
The pale-blue bow on the top of Mrs. Stubbs’s fair frizzy hair
quivered. She arched her plump neck. What a neck she had! It was bright
pink where it began and then it changed to warm apricot, and that faded
to the colour of a brown egg and then to a deep creamy.
“All the same, my dear,” she said surprisingly, “freedom’s best!” Her
soft, fat chuckle sounded like a purr. “Freedom’s best,” said Mrs.
Stubbs again.
Freedom! Alice gave a loud, silly little titter. She felt awkward. Her
mind flew back to her own kitching. Ever so queer! She wanted to be
back in it again.
IX
A strange company assembled in the Burnells’ washhouse after tea. Round
the table there sat a bull, a rooster, a donkey that kept forgetting it
was a donkey, a sheep and a bee. The washhouse was the perfect place
for such a meeting because they could make as much noise as they liked,
and nobody ever interrupted. It was a small tin shed standing apart
from the bungalow. Against the wall there was a deep trough and in the
corner a copper with a basket of clothes-pegs on top of it. The little
window, spun over with cobwebs, had a piece of candle and a mouse-trap
on the dusty sill. There were clotheslines criss-crossed overhead and,
hanging from a peg on the wall, a very big, a huge, rusty horseshoe.
The table was in the middle with a form at either side.
“You can’t be a bee, Kezia. A bee’s not an animal. It’s a ninseck.”
“Oh, but I do want to be a bee frightfully,” wailed Kezia.... A tiny
bee, all yellow-furry, with striped legs. She drew her legs up under
her and leaned over the table. She felt she was a bee.
“A ninseck must be an animal,” she said stoutly. “It makes a noise.
It’s not like a fish.”
“I’m a bull, I’m a bull!” cried Pip. And he gave such a tremendous
bellow—how did he make that noise?—that Lottie looked quite alarmed.
“I’ll be a sheep,” said little Rags. “A whole lot of sheep went past
this morning.”
“How do you know?”
“Dad heard them. Baa!” He sounded like the little lamb that trots
behind and seems to wait to be carried.
“Cock-a-doodle-do!” shrilled Isabel. With her red cheeks and bright
eyes she looked like a rooster.
“What’ll I be?” Lottie asked everybody, and she sat there smiling,
waiting for them to decide for her. It had to be an easy one.
“Be a donkey, Lottie.” It was Kezia’s suggestion. “Hee-haw! You can’t
forget that.”
“Hee-haw!” said Lottie solemnly. “When do I have to say it?”
“I’ll explain, I’ll explain,” said the bull. It was he who had the
cards. He waved them round his head. “All be quiet! All listen!” And he
waited for them. “Look here, Lottie.” He turned up a card. “It’s got
two spots on it—see? Now, if you put that card in the middle and
somebody else has one with two spots as well, you say ‘Hee-haw,’ and
the card’s yours.”
“Mine?” Lottie was round-eyed. “To keep?”
“No, silly. Just for the game, see? Just while we’re playing.” The bull
was very cross with her.
“Oh, Lottie, you _are_ a little silly,” said the proud rooster.
Lottie looked at both of them. Then she hung her head; her lip
quivered. “I don’t want to play,” she whispered. The others glanced at
one another like conspirators. All of them knew what that meant. She
would go away and be discovered somewhere standing with her pinny
thrown over her head, in a corner, or against a wall, or even behind a
chair.
“Yes, you _do_, Lottie. It’s quite easy,” said Kezia.
And Isabel, repentant, said exactly like a grown-up, “Watch _me_,
Lottie, and you’ll soon learn.”
“Cheer up, Lot,” said Pip. “There, I know what I’ll do. I’ll give you
the first one. It’s mine, really, but I’ll give it to you. Here you
are.” And he slammed the card down in front of Lottie.
Lottie revived at that. But now she was in another difficulty. “I
haven’t got a hanky,” she said; “I want one badly, too.”
“Here, Lottie, you can use mine.” Rags dipped into his sailor blouse
and brought up a very wet-looking one, knotted together. “Be very
careful,” he warned her. “Only use that corner. Don’t undo it. I’ve got
a little starfish inside I’m going to try and tame.”
“Oh, come on, you girls,” said the bull. “And mind—you’re not to look
at your cards. You’ve got to keep your hands under the table till I say
‘Go.’”
Smack went the cards round the table. They tried with all their might
to see, but Pip was too quick for them. It was very exciting, sitting
there in the washhouse; it was all they could do not to burst into a
little chorus of animals before Pip had finished dealing.
“Now, Lottie, you begin.”
Timidly Lottie stretched out a hand, took the top card off her pack,
had a good look at it—it was plain she was counting the spots—and put
it down.
“No, Lottie, you can’t do that. You mustn’t look first. You must turn
it the other way over.”
“But then everybody will see it the same time as me,” said Lottie.
The game proceeded. Mooe-ooo-er! The bull was terrible. He charged over
the table and seemed to eat the cards up.
Bss-ss! said the bee.
Cock-a-doodle-do! Isabel stood up in her excitement and moved her
elbows like wings.
Baa! Little Rags put down the King of Diamonds and Lottie put down the
one they called the King of Spain. She had hardly any cards left.
“Why don’t you call out, Lottie?”
“I’ve forgotten what I am,” said the donkey woefully.
“Well, change! Be a dog instead! Bow-wow!”
“Oh yes. That’s _much_ easier.” Lottie smiled again. But when she and
Kezia both had a one Kezia waited on purpose. The others made signs to
Lottie and pointed. Lottie turned very red; she looked bewildered, and
at last she said, “Hee-haw! Ke-zia.”
“Ss! Wait a minute!” They were in the very thick of it when the bull
stopped them, holding up his hand. “What’s that? What’s that noise?”
“What noise? What do you mean?” asked the rooster.
“Ss! Shut up! Listen!” They were mouse-still. “I thought I heard a—a
sort of knocking,” said the bull.
“What was it like?” asked the sheep faintly.
No answer.
The bee gave a shudder. “Whatever did we shut the door for?” she said
softly. Oh, why, why had they shut the door?
While they were playing, the day had faded; the gorgeous sunset had
blazed and died. And now the quick dark came racing over the sea, over
the sand-hills, up the paddock. You were frightened to look in the
corners of the washhouse, and yet you had to look with all your might.
And somewhere, far away, grandma was lighting a lamp. The blinds were
being pulled down; the kitchen fire leapt in the tins on the
mantelpiece.
“It would be awful now,” said the bull, “if a spider was to fall from
the ceiling on to the table, wouldn’t it?”
“Spiders don’t fall from ceilings.”
“Yes, they do. Our Min told us she’d seen a spider as big as a saucer,
with long hairs on it like a gooseberry.”
Quickly all the little heads were jerked up; all the little bodies drew
together, pressed together.
“Why doesn’t somebody come and call us?” cried the rooster.
Oh, those grown-ups, laughing and snug, sitting in the lamp-light,
drinking out of cups! They’d forgotten about them. No, not really
forgotten. That was what their smile meant. They had decided to leave
them there all by themselves.
Suddenly Lottie gave such a piercing scream that all of them jumped off
the forms, all of them screamed too. “A face—a face looking!” shrieked
Lottie.
It was true, it was real. Pressed against the window was a pale face,
black eyes, a black beard.
“Grandma! Mother! Somebody!”
But they had not got to the door, tumbling over one another, before it
opened for Uncle Jonathan. He had come to take the little boys home.
X
He had meant to be there before, but in the front garden he had come
upon Linda walking up and down the grass, stopping to pick off a dead
pink or give a top-heavy carnation something to lean against, or to
take a deep breath of something, and then walking on again, with her
little air of remoteness. Over her white frock she wore a yellow,
pink-fringed shawl from the Chinaman’s shop.
“Hallo, Jonathan!” called Linda. And Jonathan whipped off his shabby
panama, pressed it against his breast, dropped on one knee, and kissed
Linda’s hand.
“Greeting, my Fair One! Greeting, my Celestial Peach Blossom!” boomed
the bass voice gently. “Where are the other noble dames?”
“Beryl’s out playing bridge and mother’s giving the boy his bath....
Have you come to borrow something?”
The Trouts were for ever running out of things and sending across to
the Burnells’ at the last moment.
But Jonathan only answered, “A little love, a little kindness;” and he
walked by his sister-in-law’s side.
Linda dropped into Beryl’s hammock under the manuka-tree, and Jonathan
stretched himself on the grass beside her, pulled a long stalk and
began chewing it. They knew each other well. The voices of children
cried from the other gardens. A fisherman’s light cart shook along the
sandy road, and from far away they heard a dog barking; it was muffled
as though the dog had its head in a sack. If you listened you could
just hear the soft swish of the sea at full tide sweeping the pebbles.
The sun was sinking.
“And so you go back to the office on Monday, do you, Jonathan?” asked
Linda.
“On Monday the cage door opens and clangs to upon the victim for
another eleven months and a week,” answered Jonathan.
Linda swung a little. “It must be awful,” she said slowly.
“Would ye have me laugh, my fair sister? Would ye have me weep?”