CLAUDIA NEED NOT have worried; Helen was quite as anxious to get in unnoticed that evening as Claudia could have been on her behalf. She had, indeed, gone to the trouble of avoiding the front of the house altogether, coming instead across the field at the back, slipping along under cover of the hedge, as wary, as purposeful, as any other of the creatures of the summer night. The long grass was already soaked with dew, and the wet, stiff roots felt squeaky against the crepe rubber soles of her sandals. But they did not actually squeak, and if they had they could hardly have given her away, amid the myriad other squeakings and tiny wailings of the night. No one but herself would hear them; indeed, no one, in all probability, could hear any of the night sounds as she heard them. At fifteen, she could still hear the squeaking of the bats as they darted and swooped above the hedge. “By the time you are grown up,” Granny had once told her, “you won’t hear them any more. Your ears will be less acute for the high sounds”—and ever since then, the sound of the bats on summer nights had held for Helen a beauty so magical, so agonising, that neither words nor tears could begin to touch it. Just sometimes, during the English lessons at school under Miss Landor, the answer seemed momentarily within reach:
“She dwells with Beauty; Beauty that must die;…”
Helen tiptoed on, through the long grass and the motionless, closed buttercups. The quietness of her movements seemed now to be less a precaution against being observed than a tribute to the loveliness of the summer night, and to the poem which swirled and throbbed in her mind—no, more in her throat, really, not her mind….
But all the same, she did need to be careful. It would never do to be discovered coming in at this hour. Helen paused at the gate into the garden, and reviewed the back windows of her home.
The whole of the ground floor was in darkness. Well, that was all right, then. She could just walk in through the back door, and slip up to her room, and no one need know anything at all about her outing this evening. No one would be able to ask her any questions—nothing.
But as she approached the darkened house, Helen began to feel qualms of doubt. True, these back windows—the kitchen the dining-room, and Daddy’s study—were all dark—but what about the front? Suppose they were all in the drawing-room for some reason this evening—visitors or something—and had simply forgotten to put on any of the hall or passage lights yet? And supposing, just as she was slipping through the hall towards the stairs, the drawing-room door were to burst open, with a great surge of noise, and light, and fuss; and to the ordinary fuss would now be added the fuss about why she was creeping in so furtively; and the visitors would all gather round, bright and grinning, so that for their sakes the disapproval and the questions would all have to be couched in the form of banter and spiky little jokes; but the flashing eyes and the tight lips would tell her that the real reckoning was still to come.
No. Some risks are not worth taking. And there were plenty of other ways, for one who had known the house all her life.
The ladder had not been used since last autumn. Since then it had lain its full length, neglected, against the wall under the kitchen window. As she eased it jerkily from its embedded position, the scent of the wallflowers she was disturbing was almost dizzying on the night air. She lifted the ladder clear, and then, very softly, began to manoeuvre it into an upright position. It was quite a heavy ladder, but Helen was skilful, after all the years of helping Granny with the plum and apple picking. Each year the knack came back to her as soon as her hands touched the rough curve of the rungs, and with a wonderful sensation of power she raised the unwieldy thing lightly, firmly, and set it with precision, and still silently, against the sill of the open landing window.
Lightly, a little out of breath, and full of triumph, she scampered up it, eased herself over the window ledge, and soon was standing safely on the upstairs landing, not two yards from the door of her own bedroom. Nearer still was the door of Granny’s room, and the white crack of light shining beneath it told her that her grandmother was within. But that was all right. Granny wouldn’t be shocked that a girl should be home as early as twenty past nine after a date with her boy friend; she would even conceive it right and proper that a girl should be back at such an hour. If only she’d been quite absolutely sure that her mother was out, Helen would have gone in then and there to tell her grandmother all about her evening—because really, Clive had been so awful, she was longing to get some sympathy from someone. But if Mummy was somewhere downstairs, she would be sure to hear them—Granny’s cackling laugh carried all over the house, even when she tried to suppress it, with a hand over her mouth, like a schoolgirl: For that matter, Helen knew that her own voice, when she was amused and excited—
“Helen? Is that you?”
Margaret’s voice calling from inside the lighted room put an end to Helen’s deliberations. She opened the door and put her head round. “Hullo, Granny? Are you busy? I’ve been out Weeding again.”
This was really Helen’s and Sandra’s own private word, but for some reason it seemed all right to use it in talking to Granny, too. Not because Granny approved of it particularly—she didn’t even approve of Helen’s referring to unattractive young men as ‘weeds’ at all, let alone coining a verb from so slangy and unkind a noun. And yet Granny’s faint disapproval of such language was not in the least destructive; on the contrary, it added a sort of extra piquancy to Helen’s use of such terms, which somehow they could both enjoy.
“You’ve been out with that boy again, do you mean? That Clive somebody? Did you have a nice time?”
Granny was smiling wickedly over her sewing. You could see that she knew Helen hadn’t had a nice time, and was dying to hear all the story, but nevertheless she crushed all her speculations and inquisitiveness into the decorous and conventional ‘Did you have a nice time?’ It was comfortable, somehow, to have her ask about it like that; it made the story seem absolutely new, and all Helen’s. If it had been Mummy, she would have set to work to interpret it all, to make Helen understand exactly why she had felt the way she did. And somehow, in the process, none of it would have been Helen’s any more—not the events, not the feelings—nothing. All would have been swallowed up in Mummy’s wisdom; there would have been nothing left of the evening but the interpretations.
But on the other hand, of course, Mummy would probably never have asked her any questions about the evening in the first place; she didn’t believe in prying into a teenager’s private affairs. Granny did. With a lovely, cosy feeling of being the source of desired information, Helen curled herself up in her grandmother’s big, comfortable armchair—the one Granny herself never sat in because it got in the way of her elbows when she sewed or knitted—and began to describe her evening—as amusingly as she could, and yet to bring out its awfulness as well.
Because it really had been rather awful. Clive had taken recently to meeting her every Wednesday as she came out of school, instead of arranging some meeting place somewhere in town; and this new system had for Helen two major disadvantages—no, three. First, it meant that the whole thing started impossibly early—a quarter past four: after three whole hours in his unrelieved company, it was still only quarter past seven, with the whole evening still looming hideously ahead. Second, it meant that she couldn’t go home and change; and though Clive had assured her, with many gulps of embarrassment, that he thought she looked just as pretty in her school summer dress and sandals, she naturally couldn’t believe that he meant it: or, if he did mean it, then (as Sandra had pointed out during one of their long discussions of the problem), then he must be a lunatic, and who wants to spend the whole of every Wednesday evening in the company of a lunatic?
The third objection was less tangible, but to Helen’s mind exceedingly strong. It was that she didn’t want Clive to impinge on her school existence at any point. Helen loved her school life, and this year her love of it had become a sort of intoxication. The brand-new subjects—Greek, chemistry, Roman history: the polished parquet floors, of which she seemed suddenly, after all these years, to have become aware: the strange dawning of the realisation that she could now understand algebra: the English lessons with Miss Landor: the amusing, lively set of which she and Sandra were now the ring-leaders: and now, in the summer term, there was added to all this the smell of mown grass on the tennis courts, and the enchanted ping of balls … all this was welded into a world of such enclosed, such magical happiness that the sight of Clive, ill at ease, nothing to do with any of it, standing first on one foot and then on the other outside the bicycle sheds while he waited for her, filled Helen with a peculiar intensity of dismay.
Leaning out of the fourth-form window, high up in the building, she and Sandra would watch him, when the last lesson of Wednesday afternoon ended, and would make elaborate, impossible plans about how Helen could get out of going out with him.
“I’ll go down and tell him that you’ve not been at school today, and I think you must be ill?” Sandra would propose hopefully; but all that that could lead to would be that Clive would telephone Helen at home, and she’d have to sound ill on the telephone—Oh, she’d be so feeble at that sort of thing she’d never manage to make it sound convincing. And then to have him ask her, next time they met, if she was better—ugh!
“Tell him your mother thinks you’re going out too much,” Sandra proposed another time; but they both knew that that was hopeless, even as she spoke. Because Helen’s mother loved her to go out a lot; had, indeed, been worrying ever since she was thirteen about the fact that she had no proper dates, no boy friends. The advent of Clive, a sixth former from the neighbouring grammar school, was like an answer to prayer for Mummy, Helen knew. Indeed, if she hadn’t known her mother to be a thorough-going rationalist, Helen would have suspected her of just this—of deliberately praying for Clive and having God answer her prayer, without either of them having consulted Helen at all. It felt just like that sometimes.
But of course it wasn’t Mummy’s fault really; it was Helen’s own fault. It was Helen, not Mummy, who hadn’t had the presence of mind to say “No, thank you,” when he first offered to walk home with her from the bus and carry her books: it was Helen, not Mummy, who had then failed to go indoors briskly after thanking him; and instead had let him hover about, and hover about, half in the house and half out, at intervals gulping, and saying Oh well, I suppose. Until at last (Helen could never for the life of her remember afterwards exactly how it had happened) it seemed that she had agreed to go out with him on the following Wednesday. And since then, Wednesday had followed Wednesday, Mummy had grown more and more obviously delighted, saying nice things about Clive whenever she could drag him into the conversation, and ostentatiously not asking Helen anything about the outings, referring to them only to say that the door would be left unbolted, so that Helen could come in as late as she liked, without waking anyone.
“And the trouble is, you see, Granny,” Helen concluded her account, “that now we have to go to the Wimpy Bar twice! It wasn’t so bad when I used to meet him at six—by the time we’d lasted out our Wimpys, and he’d asked me if I wanted some more coffee, and I’d said I didn’t, and he’d said Oh, go on, why not? and I’d said well I don’t know, I just don’t want another, and he’d said well did I mind him having another, and I’d said of course I didn’t, do go and get yourself one, and he’d had to wait for his turn at the counter again … Well, you know, after all that it wasn’t so ghastlily early as it had been, and we could begin to dawdle slowly along to be not too early for the film. But now he meets me at school, we go straight to the Wimpy Bar—there’s nothing else to do, you see—and we’re finished by five, in time for the first programme. So we come out of the cinema by about eight—when it’s still daylight, Granny! It’s awful, it gave me such a shock, I felt as if time had been standing still on purpose, and we’d got the whole thing to go through again! And sure enough, we did go to the Wimpy Bar all over again, and it was worse than ever, because of course this time there wasn’t anything to finish in time for. There was nothing to stop it going on for ever. For ever, Granny! Just think of it!”
Helen wriggled round and buried her face dramatically against the fat, dusty arm of the chair, while Margaret broke off a length of cotton and began threading her needle again, peering at it under the lamp.
As the silence continued, Helen changed her position a little so as to peep out with one eye from under her elbow. She could see that her grandmother was smiling, and she felt an answering smile—almost a giggle—quiver across her own face. Hastily she buried it once more in the chair.
“Well, it is awful, Granny, it really is,” she protested, just as if her grandmother had been disputing the point.
“I’m sure it is, dear,” Margaret was smiling more than ever. “It sounds perfectly appalling. I can’t think why you do it. Why do you go out with him, Helen?”
“Because.” Helen didn’t mean to be cheeky. She really was at a loss for how to continue the sentence after that word. Because Mummy is so pleased, so approving, about the whole thing? Because getting out of it now would involve such hurts, such embarrassments? Neither of these reasons seemed quite adequate, when set against her sufferings. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “Granny, what would you do?”
“I’d stop going out with him, of course,” said Margaret firmly, as Helen had known she would. “After all, Helen, what’s the point? You’re not getting anything out of it; and what about him? I mean, dear, are you sure you’re being quite fair to him, going on with it like this? It’s obvious that he must be rather fond of you—”
“Oh, but Granny, he isn’t! That’s the whole point! At least, I don’t think he is. I don’t see how he can be, I’m so boring when I’m with him, really I am, you can’t imagine. I’m just as bad as he is. He keeps asking me because—well, because he finds it just as difficult not to say ‘Well, next Wednesday, then,’ as I find it not to say ‘All right, I’d love to.’ It’s something to say, you see, when we say goodbye. He can’t think of anything else, and neither can I.”
Margaret sucked the end of her cotton thoughtfully.
“Why don’t you bring him home sometimes?” she suggested. “Then we could all meet him, and perhaps we could help you to get some sort of conversation going. That’s what’s the trouble—you neither of you have any conversation. When I was young, girls were trained to be able to make conversation. It was part of their education.”
“When you were young there weren’t boys like Clive,” said Helen confidently. “In those days, boys were all strong and masterful, and there were all those lovely Jane-Austen-y rules about how you had to behave, and how he had to behave, and everything. It must have been terribly easy for you.”
“Oh, but my pet, it wasn’t! You’ve no idea! We had just as many problems.” Margaret laid down her sewing, and frowned with the concentration needed to summon up some of those hideous episodes which would surely put her granddaughter’s troubles quite in the shade. “I well remember one boy—well, he was a young man, really, older than your Clive, just as I was older than you—we just were older in those days. Well, every time this young man came to call for me, he’d ask me what I wanted to do; and I never dared suggest anything, because I didn’t know how much money he wanted to spend. So we’d just stand there, with me saying ‘anything you like’ and him saying, ‘No, I want to do what you like’, until… until…” Margaret shook her head helplessly, baffled across the vista of the years. “I can’t think, now, how it ever did end … looking back, I feel as if it had gone on for ever, standing there in my best dress, in the afternoon sun, and saying ‘Whatever you like’ while he fiddled with the latch of the front gate.”
Helen laughed. “But, Granny, why didn’t you suggest going for a walk, or something? Something that couldn’t cost any money?”
“Ah, well, dear. I suppose I was very silly and inexperienced at the time, and I thought he might think it rather fast—rather presuming—of me to suggest an amusement that meant we would be alone together all the time, with only ourselves for company. I thought it would sound as if I thought I was sufficiently entertaining company for him to enjoy walking around with me for a whole afternoon. I was afraid I’d bore him dreadfully if he really got to know me. Oh dear, how silly we both were!”
Margaret was smiling reminiscently. She had clearly forgotten all about the splendid way girls were brought up in her day, and how they could always make conversation with young men. Helen smiled too.
“Oh, Granny, I know just how you must have felt! I’d have been like that too, I’m sure. What was his name? What’s happened to him?”
Margaret shook her head, smiling.
“I’ve forgotten, dear. I’ve absolutely forgotten. I wonder how long you’ll remember Clive’s name? Long enough to tell your children? Your grandchildren?”
Helen peered into the future, blank as a brick wall after A-levels and the end of her school life. She would remember everything, surely, for the simple reason that nothing beyond that wall would ever be so important again. She felt for a moment that she had only these three years left to live; she was older, far, than her grandmother who had at least ten, perhaps twenty, more years of living just as she did now. The terrible sadness, the shortness of life, of childhood, caught in her throat, and she felt that in her memories she would actually love Clive at last, awful though he was to live through here and now.
“I expect I’ll remember him,” she said. “But I must be sure and remember how awful he was, too. It’ll be such a comfort to my daughters when they have to go out with awful boys. Granny, shall I make us some tea? Or is Mummy in?”
Margaret knew exactly what Helen meant by these apparently disconnected alternatives; and for a moment she felt she should reprove the girl. Whatever unspoken understanding might flow between them, she and Helen should not put into words, ever, the fact that Claudia’s presence would utterly destroy the special quality of their evening tea-drinking. But she decided, thankfully, that it would be all right to let it pass, for really nothing had exactly been said—had it now?—not as a positive statement.
“No, your mother won’t be in till quite late,” said Margaret. “And nor will—er—Mavis.” For months Margaret had obstinately refused to refer to their visitor by her Christian name—she felt that all the while she said ‘Mrs Andrews’ she could feel that the woman was still a stranger, with no real place in the household. But what with Claudia accusing her of mealy-mouthed hypocrisy in using the title ‘Mrs’, and Margaret’s own feeling that the title ‘Miss’ was quite unnecessarily ostentatious and flamboyant in calling attention to the girl’s unmarried state, she had finally given in. ‘Mavis’ seemed the only solution.
Helen soon returned with the tea things and a tin of biscuits, as they sipped and nibbled they talked some more about Margaret’s distant boy friends, and about Helen’s prospects of some time finding one that she actually liked. Margaret assured her that this would happen when she was nineteen, not before; and Helen found this verdict deeply consoling. It seemed to take a great weight of responsibility off her shoulders here and now.
After that they played records on the gramophone—alternate pop songs and sentimental Irish ballads as first Helen and then her grandmother made the choice. It was funny, Helen thought, that it was so much pleasanter to play pop music to her grandmother, who often protested acidly about various items, and even put her hands over her ears, than to her mother who approved of pop music enormously, and always encouraged Helen to buy the latest hits. Another funny thing was that her grandmother, who so much disapproved of so much of it, could nevertheless recognise the voices of all the current singers, and could often be heard humming the latest tunes as she went about her work, whereas Mummy, for all her admiration and approval, never seemed to recognise one single name or tune.