Bilgewater Read online

  “No. Never. Never like this. Whatever happened over the road?”

  “Nothing.” (Grace Gathering’s voice.) “Nothing. She was looking weird. She simply ran away.”

  “Ran away! Whatever from, dear sakes?”

  “I don’t know. We were coming forward over the grass—Ma and father and I and one or two. Some people of my parents, and Jack Rose—he’d been playing one-handed—and she suddenly became oh, absolutely—well, mad.”

  “Mad?” said Paula and I closed my eyes and started shaking.

  “Mad? Marigold’s not mad. That’s one thing certain. Now look you ’ere young woman, I explained that to half a clutch of psychiatrists in Newcastle years back. Marigold’s not mad. She’s too sane, that’s what’s wrong with our Marigold. She sees clear and pure and sometimes it’s a bit more than she nor anybody can bear.”

  “Oh but—”

  “You watch your step calling Marigold mad.”

  “Oh I didn’t—”

  “You come precious near it. Precious near. Marigold’s not just anyone, you know. Ho no. Just anyone can be mad. Almost everyone is a bit mad, seems to me. Not our Marigold. Just you mind—”

  (Oh Paula I love you so.)

  “Mad indeed, I never did!”

  “But I never—” Poor old Grace. The flood gates were open.

  “I’ve known Marigold since the minute her mother went and died on her and let me tell you she’s the best and most uncommon creature.”

  (Why couldn’t she have told that to me? Good gracious!) “All that eye-trouble, all that disapoplexia and what’s thiz. Having to be read to. I’ve brought her up. I know her. She’s the finest, straightest, brilliantest, no fancy nonsense neither.”

  I could just imagine what Paula must be looking like.

  “Sorry. All right. Goodness me. I’m only saying what it looks like. Everybody says—Oh no! All right. Stop for heaven’s sake. What I was going to say was that whatever you’ve done for her character you haven’t exactly done much for her looks, have you?”

  There was a sort of yell and so I opened the door and Grace who had been leaning against the other side of it fell backwards on to my floor and lay there. Paula and I looked down at her and even on the floor she looked graceful. Well named. She smiled up.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Well hullo,” said she.

  We established without the least self-consciousness our first familiarity. I helped her up. “For instance,” she said. “where did she get those pyjamas?”

  Paula made a wild noise and thundered off out of sight. A door slammed.

  “You know,” said Grace, “you ought not to wear viyella pyjamas in brown and pink stripes and buttoned on the right. With a woven draw string.”

  “I’ve had them ages.” I looked down and saw my legs sticking out from the knee downwards. My legs have been changing lately and it occurred to me, looking down that there was a lot more of them than there used to be. A good deal of arm hung out of each sleeve, too. “They’ve got flies,” said Grace.

  “They’re from the Boys’ Side. I expect Paula was using them up.”

  “Does Paula do all your clothes? Choose them?”

  “Well she doesn’t choose them exactly. When I need more she just looks round for something. There’s usually something that’ll do. She’s very keen on being tidy and clean but—”

  “I don’t know what you mean by ‘do’. If those pyjamas ‘do’.”

  “Well nobody sees what you wear in bed do they?”

  Grace looked at her pink fingernails for a minute. Then she walked to the window and drew back the curtains and flung the window up wide. She walked back and put out the light which I’d switched on. Seeing the bundle of clothes and the high-heeled blue shoes in the grate she walked over and stirred them with her foot. “That’s good,” she said. “Look, go and get washed.”

  “I got washed.”

  “When?”

  “In the night.” Then I remembered that I had merely examined the facilities.

  “Wash again,” said Grace.

  “With a clean towel,” she called down the landing, “and a nail brush and do your teeth.”

  I still couldn’t use the toothpaste because of James Joyce but I washed all over. I got a new piece of purple-brown coal-tar which is so beautiful, in yellow paper, and I filled the basin utterly with hot water. I soaped myself all over to the knees then rinsed it off. Then I lifted one foot at a time into the basin and coal-tarred them, getting well in between the toes. A kind of ritual cleansing. I cut my toe nails with some scissors lying about and rubbed myself all over with one of father’s brown towels with a red stripe at each end until I was very pink and blotchy. I had a very good go at my neck.

  I wrapped the pale brown towel around me and another one out of the cupboard, picked up the pyjamas, and went back to the bedroom where Grace was reclining gazing unashamedly into the windows of the big dormitory.

  “They need some blinds in there,” she said, “it’s not a pretty sight. Good Lord—look at you! You look like a digestive biscuit. Give me those.” She took the pyjamas by the tips of her fingers and dropped them on the heap in the grate. Then she shovelled the whole lot on to a bit of paper which seemed to be the lining of one of my drawers and made a big parcel. “Get some others,” she said, “and come on. It’s a quarter past four.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Shopping. Look—that’ll do. That jersey and skirt thing and there’s some pants—glory! Elastic legs! Shangri La.”

  “No—Lyme Regis.”

  “Well come on then—I hope the shops don’t shut on Tuesdays.”

  “What shops?”

  “Clothes shops.”

  She sailed through the dying chrysanthemums with the bundle under her arm and me running behind. Faces appeared all along the Boys’ Side and there were some whistles. We met father at the gates who said. “Hello dear? Better then? Is this Grace?”

  “We have to fly,” said Grace, flowing on.

  “To fly. Dear me. I’m not sure that’s very wise.”

  We reached the street behind the High Street which is called Arthur Street—not a very well-thought-of street, full of purple brick houses with bay windows picked out in Bird’s Custard brick. In one of these several pictures were displayed and some pink frilly curtains and the back of a hair dryer. A cardboard banner cried out CYNTHIA.

  “I didn’t know there was a hairdresser here.”

  “I found it last week.”

  “You’ve hardly been here a week. Hey—listen. I’ve never been to a hairdresser.”

  “She wants it cut,” said Grace, “and shaped. Do you know how to layer?”

  “Aye I do.” said Cynthia who was muscular and had a bristling chin, “So don’t come it over me. You lot” (it was the Dartington voice) “think we don’t know owt up ’ere.”

  Grace, as bland as chestnuts, said, “A good lot off don’t you think? Quite short and with a shape.”

  Great crunching noises took place around the back of my neck and orange blotches began to drop all over the floor. “Look,” I said, “Paula—”

  “Forget Paula. It’s looking wonderful.”

  “Wonderful!”

  “Yes wonderful.”

  Crunch crunch crunch.

  “Aye it is that,” said Cynthia. “Shall I wash it.”

  “No time. We’ve clothes to buy.”

  “Come back tomorrow. I’ll set it up lovely in big rollers and give it a nice bit of back combing. It’s a grand colour.”

  “Look,” said Grace, and there I was with a sort of rusty flower on my head all curly bits. My face had a different shape and looked less bemused and I had grown a neck. My skull had a clean, oval shape. “You can cut hair,” said Grace to Cynthia and the two of them nodded to each other
in mutual respect. A little later we were tearing down the promenade to Marks and Spencers and Grace was dropping the parcel of my old clothes into a litter bin that stood by the door. I said, “What about Oxfam?” But “Pity Oxfam,” said Grace, “what have the destitute done to deserve those pyjamas?”

  She sped about the counters picking up garments, dropping them in a heap beside the central cash desk. Now and then she looked at me and went off and burrowed for something else.

  “We’re on closin’,” said the saleswoman.

  “Won’t be long,” said Grace. There was a good deal of rattling of doors and bolts and counters began to be covered with dust sheets for the night.

  “What size shoes d’you take?”

  “Oh—fives.”

  “Look Miss, we’re really shutting.”

  “These would do. Yes—I really think these would do.”

  “What—for me? Look Grace, where’s the money—? And wouldn’t I break my neck?”

  They were very high-heeled shoes but not like the old blue stilettos. They were criss-cross chestnut plastic with rounded toes and a strap over the top. They were a bit the colour of my hair. They had a lovely slinky way of going in near the instep. I got hold of one and it smelled wonderful.

  “Miss—I’m sorry. If you don’t finish I’ll have to call in the authorities. My last bus to Dormanstown leaves in five minutes.”

  “All right,” said Grace. “How much?”

  There were five or six great big Marks and Spencers bags on the desk. “Will you take a cheque?”

  “Eh? How old are you? Have you got a credit card?”

  Grace produced one, then another.

  “Yes—oh all right,” she said. “Miss the Archers at this rate, Er—Madam. It’s twenty-six pounds.” We were out in the street with all the bags and I had to clutch at the litter bin.

  “I haven’t got twenty-six pounds,” I said.

  “I have,” said Grace. “I got it for you.”

  “Wherever from?”

  “Hastings-Benson,” she said. “Sweet old thing. He’ll get it back from your Papa. I told him to put it around that you were a disgrace.”

  “A disgrace,” I said when I was alone at home again. “A disgrace.” Grace had swept away towards her own home and I had carried the great big crackling packages in. Before opening them I had had to eat. I had not eaten for twenty-four hours. I was faint, I was tottering. I stood in the kitchen and went all the way through a loaf of bread and a chunk of cheese and a bottle of milk and a bag of apples. Then upstairs again, tenderly, gently I drew out of the first bag the first garment.

  Pair of jeans.

  Next: skinny tee shirt.

  Next: three-quarter length sage-green skirt, velvet, tight round hips.

  Next: orange jersey colour of new hair.

  Next—shoes. I put my face in them.

  I put on the jeans and the jersey. Then I took them off and put on the velvet skirt and the shirt. Then I played around with a number of variations, as in chess. Then I put on the shoes and rose miles in the air. I looked in the glass, walking as far back from the mirror as I could and a tall thin girl with rather good legs and noticeable hair looked back at me. Her face was exalted. It was the face that was most surprising. I looked down and saw my glasses lying by the bed—great thick lumps. They had been lying by the bed since last night. I had been out shopping and had not even noticed. I had not needed them at all.

  CHAPTER 10

  So began my half term of happy friendship with Grace Gathering.

  “Whom do you think of marrying?” she asked out of the blue at the week end, decorating a long green talon.

  We were over in the Head’s House in her bedroom in the attics. Posters covered the walls. There was a hi-fi and coloured rugs, a bed draped with shawls and things and a row of old dolls. The dressing-table had an army of bottles of make-up and jars of cream. A mobile was stuck to the ceiling with bluetack. In my unprecedented jeans and shirt I sat at the dressing-table undoing bottles and smelling them and I grinned.

  “What’s the matter? Haven’t you thought?”

  “I haven’t. But I was laughing at ‘whom.’”

  “Whom?”

  “‘Whom do you think of marrying.’ I was wondering how many people with green nails say ‘whom.’”

  She looked blankly at me.

  “All right,” I said, “I just find it interesting. I’ve lived more in civilised society than you have.”

  “I wouldn’t call Green’s House society. It’s hardly in the world. It’s the most unworldly place—I don’t know how you stick it. I’m the normal one.”

  “I suppose so.”

  I looked round her room again. From television plays and a few people’s conversation I could tell that it was normal, but to me it was as familiar as a Tibetan monastery. In fact I would perhaps have felt a Tibetan monastery more ordinary, for my room and my father’s room across the road were as bare as cells, with iron beds, grey blankets, one table each and a common denominationallong shelf of boolo. The grate into whieh I had flung my clothes had never needed a fire. Well, it may have needed a fire but it had never been given one. I had never had dolls and if anyone had bought me a mobile I would not have known what to do with it.

  There was however my upright piano and a picture of Winston Churchill in a sort of Chinese boiler suit. I don’t know how that had got there, I had certainly had nothing to do with it. Looking round Grace’s room with its huge poster of some young man gazing into a pool with indeterminate flowers growing all over the place and a slinky female eyeing him from across the bank I thought perhaps that I might take Winston Churchill down.

  “D’you like it?”

  “What?”

  “Narcissus.”

  “Who?”

  “The picture. Hasn’t he got a marvellous spine?”

  I looked quickly at the row of knobs and away. I still couldn’t look at naked boys. I wondered for about the millionth time why Grace had been expelled from both Cheltenham and Dartington Hall.

  “Go on. Look. He’s heavenly.”

  “Not exactly heavenly,” I said taking a quick glimpse through one eye.

  “Put your glasses on. You can’t see that close up without them. When are you going to get some decent ones?”

  “I might. It’s a bit of a waste—”

  “Look—make your father buy you some. Edmund says he could. You don’t have to wear all that National Health wiring. Get some gold ones. They’re marvellous. People are buying them and putting plain glass in. They’re dead fashionable.”

  “Dead fashionable,” I said.

  “What?”

  “It’s just—funny. With ‘whom.’”

  “Look Bilge,” she said, “do shut up about words. Think of what you look like. You may have poor eyes but other people haven’t. It’s anti-social. You look a million times better especially since you washed your hair, too, but you’ve got to keep at it. Looking good.”

  “Oh, it isn’t worth it.”

  “Of course it is. Look—who do you think of marrying?”

  “‘Who’ this time. Farewell Dartington Hall.”

  “They say worse things than ‘who’ at Dartington Hall.”

  I left the dressing-table and lay on the floor and rolled about on it banging my head now and then into the sheepskin rug. I have noticed in literature that the physical movements of the young are seldom accurately described. Then I got up and pressed my face into the attic window. Boys walked below in twos and threes in their black blazers. It was windy. Leaves flew and spun. The pages of the exercise books under their arms whitened and flapped. The smaller boys ran and knocked each other about. Sometimes a master in a black balloon of a gown crossed the green grass towards the cloisters. A bell rang somewhere and the boys—some of them—began to run.
Saturday morning school had a more light-hearted look about it than on weekdays and I watched it with, well—love, I think—as my mind went about.

  “You know,” I said, “I don’t much care for you saying ‘Edmund.’”

  She painted another long nail and said, “You simply have not a clue about men, have you? You have no feeling for men.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  Jack Rose’s figure appeared below, unmistakable in a First XV blazer and the Captain’s segmented cap of black and white diamonds. He loped on his powerful legs and the minions scattered at his approach like Don John of Austria’s. I got hold of Grace’s window catch and clung on to it for support until my heart had stopped thundering.

  “I wouldn’t say that.” This is the best conversation, I thought, the best and most promising and the most real that I have ever had in my life—and bother Paula and chess and character-building and silence. I have arrived. I am normaI. I am like the others.

  I wonder then, why am I saying nothing about where I am going at Half Term?

  But I was not ready to go looking for an answer to this. I was not ready even to think about it myself. I had heard nothing more about it since Jack Rose had asked me the first week of term and though I had asked my father if he had had a letter from Mrs. Rose and if so, please could he open it, I had the most extraordinary impediment in my speech about discussing things further. Father and I had hardly been apart from each other for a weekend in my whole life. To go to Jack Rose’s without father, without anyone, seemed so unlikely and fanciful that I rather wondered if I had imagined the invitation altogether. The afternoon of its being handed out by Jack had been a very weird one—Terrapin sitting concussed in the changing rooms, not speaking. I had become a little concussed myself perhaps, just looking at him. I remembered telling Terrapin. Perhaps I had invented the whole thing just to annoy him? After all it was the afternoon of my nervous breakdown on the Headmaster’s lawn.

  But though I put the Half Term visit out of my mind I found that my interest in my new image had grown to immense proportions. Not a shop window down the High Street or the Prom. was free of my gaze and I looked endlessly at my hands. I twirled my feet. I wore the new shoes every day—even at school. I began to give a sort of toss to my head, quite spontaneously, at no fixed moment, accompanied by a half-closing of the eyes.