DEEP IN THE summer grass, Helen lay staring up at the sky, and its blueness was framed all round by buttercups, tall, like forest trees. She had never noticed before how exactly like trees they were; with branches forking this way and that from the main stem, each ending in a gigantic flower. This, of course, was unlike any known tree—there are no trees anywhere, now, that bear at the end of each bough a vast, single flower, five feet across, and golden like the sun. But there could have been such trees once, brilliant among the coal-forests, battling with the tree-ferns for living space under the ancient sun. Almost, as she peered through the pale stems into the impenetrable jungle only a few inches away, Helen expected to feel the ground tremble beneath the ponderous stirring of some giant reptile uncoiling in the sun; to hear across the millennia the distant, unimaginable cry of the pterodactyl.
Actually, of course, she was listening for Sandra. Any minute now Sandra would whistle their special whistle from the field gate, and then come bounding through the long grass to join Helen in her hiding place; and there, together, they would make plans about how Helen should cope with Clive’s visit this evening. Sandra, alas, wasn’t going to be able to stay until he came because of her piano lesson; but this only made her advice and moral support before-hand the more indispensable.
For Clive, at last, had been invited to supper, just as Granny had advised; and with both Granny and Mavis there to help entertain him, it mightn’t be so very ghastly. Not nearly so bad, anyway, as going to that awful Wimpy Bar again, and racking one’s brains single-handed for a new topic of conversation. Not that Mavis would be much help; but at least she would be there, an extra person; and Granny, of course, would never let one down. She had promised that she would help entertain Clive as well as cooking a nice supper for him, and so this she would certainly do, bringing up one topic of conversation after another, unflaggingly, until something took root and flourished in the little gathering; or, if the worst came to the worst, until it was time for him to go home. And Mummy wouldn’t be there. Helen had carefully chosen a day when Claudia would be out at some meeting or other; and with any luck Maurice would be out too. So far, he always had been on Saturdays. Although Helen herself found Maurice’s conversation thrilling after a fashion, she felt overwhelmed with embarrassment at the thought of explaining him away to Clive. And embarrassed about her embarrassment, too, for ought she not to be at least as broad-minded as Mummy about it all? Each generation was supposed to be more broad-minded than the last, and Helen felt that by feeling as she did about Maurice, she was obscurely letting down the side.
But what side? Which side was she really on? Why did Mummy’s kindness and sympathy so often give her this awful feeling? Because Mummy had really been awfully kind and nice about Clive being invited for just the evening when she, Claudia, wouldn’t be there; lots of mothers, Helen knew, would have been most put-out and offended at such an arrangement. But Claudia had seemed sincerely delighted to hear of the invitation, and had declared that she understood completely Helen’s wish to have her mother out of the way.
“But of course, darling! Naturally you want to have him to yourself—and I promise I’ll keep right away the whole evening. I don’t mind how late he stays, I’ll just slip up to bed when I come in and leave you to it. Mavis must stay up in her room for the evening, and I’ll drop a hint to Granny, too—she doesn’t always think of these things for herself. She doesn’t really understand, you see, what it is to be young—how an evening like this, at your age, with your first boy friend, can be the most wonderful experience of your whole life.”
After all this, of course, Helen hadn’t dared to mention to her mother that it had been specially arranged that Granny was to be present, the whole time; and she hoped, uneasily, that her mother would never find out. She wouldn’t be cross, exactly, but she would be surprised, in that awful, pitying way; and Helen would know that once again she had been a failure, a disappointment. And her failure would have been that most ignominious of all failures—the failure to feel wonderful feelings in a situation which demands them.
And yet Helen did have wonderful feelings—a strange secret pride stirred in her now, as she gazed into the blueness of the summer sky, and felt herself once again in touch with a secret source of glory, of which her mother knew nothing. Could be told nothing, either, for it was bound up, somehow, with all the things that Claudia thought a normal young girl should be bored by: with school, with poetry learned by heart for homework, and with the thud of tennis balls on summer turf; with giggling schoolgirl friends, and the sense of the summer term still only just beginning…. As Helen lay there, happiness flooded in from every corner of the sky, she could feel it pressing in on her from all directions; more and more of it in an unimaginable overflowing…. Top in English … top in Greek … perhaps to be chosen as Viola in the school play … and added to all this, in almost manic prodigality, Fortune had thrown in as well the deep grass, and the buttercups, and Granny’s baby chickens cheeping; and over it all the sky, all that boundless blue, a fitting lid for Helen’s happiness.
And in the midst of all this, here was Mummy thinking that the most wonderful experience in Helen’s life was going to be Clive’s dreadful visit this evening. She thought of his awkwardness, his paralysing inability to think of anything to say, and felt a familiar, terrible remoteness from her mother, like homesickness. She wished Sandra would come. Sandra had always been able to save her from this sort of feeling, as far back as she could remember; indeed, for so long had she and Helen been companions and playmates, far back into their childhood, that by now she was more like a sister than a friend. And yet it was the very fact that Sandra was not her sister—that Claudia was not her mother as well as Helen’s—it was this very fact that made her such a tower of strength when Mummy was being awful in this special way.
The apple blossom had all fallen now, and Helen turned on her side to gaze beyond the tops of the grass and buttercups towards the two gnarled trees, where the tiny knobbly new fruits were just beginning to form. It was in the nearer of these trees, Helen remembered, in the worn, kindly crook of its old branches, that she and Sandra used so often to sit, long ago, and play Blow up the World. They blew it up with hydrogen bombs, of course, which you were always reading about in the papers, and at once it was gone, there was no one left anywhere; no houses, no people; nothing; just Sandra and Helen. And it was then, in this empty world, that the game really began.
For, of course, the first thing they had to do was to build themselves a house each; even now, years later, Helen felt her heart beat faster as she recollected the delight of searching for building materials among the ruins of the world. Sometimes their tastes were simple and modest, and they would simply drag planks and joists and doors from the shattered houses of some nearby town, and reassemble them into a little hut in some sunny glade, with a stream tinkling through it, and berries nearby for the eating; but sometimes a savage architectural passion, akin to lust, would seize them, and they would piece together dwellings of fantastic splendour. Great oaken doors and marble pillars from the shattered mansions of the great they would drag, light as thistledown, across the jagged miles of ruins, and set them up afresh on their chosen site. Gorgeous fragments of stained glass, blue, and gold, and ruby red, they would pick out from the rubble of smashed cathedrals, and glue miraculously together to fit vast window-frames purloined from some broken palace. Once they even found the Marble Arch itself, lying miraculously intact across the ruined junction of Park Lane and Oxford Street; and they carried it home, effortlessly, on their shoulders, right across the ruins of London, and set it up as the portal of their newest and most glorious dwelling place. Oh, and the furnishing of these palaces! The carpets, and the cushions, and the dark, shining tables, that they dug up out of the ruins of Heal’s and Selfridges! And the tins of peaches, of apricots, of pineapples, that they found scattered along the deserted streets! Whole sweet shops they sometimes unearthed beneath the dust and broken bricks, filled with chocolates, and marsh-mallows, and jelly-babies. They found great hams, too, and sausages, and deep-frozen turkeys that only needed to be warmed up at their never-failing camp-fire, which burned brightly, and for ever, without ever scorching the flowers or the bright grass which grew, fresh and spring-like, to the very edges of the red-hot coals.
Sometimes, as they wandered on their plundering expedition among the ruined cities, they would meet two boys, survivors from the other side of the world; but the game was never quite the same when that happened. The boys were so dim, and faint, and characterless compared with Sandra and Helen; they contributed nothing. When they spoke, they spoke as Sandra or Helen would have spoken; they thought of nothing that Sandra and Helen had not already thought of; altogether, they might just as well not have been there at all. Only once had such a meeting been any real fun, and that was when they had come across two Chinese boys sitting on the ruins of the British Museum, piecing together the lost literature of their land by reciting to each other the bits they each remembered by heart. This set Helen and Sandra doing the same thing for the English speaking world, and soon they had restored the complete texts of Shakespeare, the Bible and the William books. They had been just about to revive the entire history and geography of their country by a similar method when Granny had called them in to tea, and it all had to stop. It was impossible to continue the talk over tea, because Granny always hated them playing Blow up the World in her presence. “It’s a dreadful game!” she used to remonstrate with them, “Really dreadful! ‘Blow up the World,’ indeed! What about all the rest of us, I’d like to know? And what do you suppose anybody would think if they were to hear you? They’d think you were a dreadful pair of little girls, quite horrid. Of course they would! Now, you just stop it, and come along and play something sensible …” and she would shoo them along into her room, and play ludo with them, or snakes and ladders … and somehow even these games were lovely too, in their way, especially with Granny playing as well, with such zest to win: clutching frantically at her grey curls when one of her counters was sent back to base, and murmuring magic spells into the dice box to make it give her a six.
So Helen and Sandra did not usually resent these arbitrary interruptions to their favourite pastime; particularly as they knew, and Granny knew, that as soon as they were on their own once more they would start Blowing up the World all over again, just as if nothing had happened. And so it had gone on for years—or could it actually have been only months? —until the dreadful afternoon—even now, Helen could hardly bear to recall it—when Mummy had found out about it all.
Not about the game itself; that wouldn’t have mattered at all, because Mummy wouldn’t have minded a bit, and anyway it was against her principles to interfere with children at play. No, what Mummy discovered was far more shattering; she discovered that Granny disapproved of the game: she actually caught Granny in the very act of telling them they were a pair of naughty little girls, and couldn’t they think of a nice game to play for once?
Mummy hadn’t said very much at the time; she had even smiled, and made some chilling little joke; but Helen had seen, with terror, that she had gone white and pinched round the lips, as she did only when she was very, very angry. And a few minutes later she had called Helen down to the drawing-room.
“Helen, darling,” she had said gravely, putting her arm round the child’s shoulders, “I don’t want you to be upset by what Granny said just now. It’s not naughty to play that game, you mustn’t ever think it is. Granny should never, never have told you that it was, but you must remember that she’s an old lady now, and has rather old-fashioned ideas. We musn’t blame her, but I’m more sorry than I can say that she should have put it into your head that such a game could be naughty. It isn’t naughty; it’s right and healthy that you should sometimes feel hate and aggression towards us all, that you should wish us all dead at times, and that you should act out your hostility in play. It’s right and natural; it’s what play is for. You must never, ever, feel guilty about having such feelings, or about expressing them….”
Even now, all these years later, Helen could still remember the sick, soiled feeling that had enveloped her as her mother finished speaking. Never, till that moment, had it occurred to her that one could feel guilty in this sort of way. Granny’s reprimands had conveyed nothing more than that grown-ups didn’t like the game, just as they didn’t like you dropping cups or walking mud into the sitting-room. Of course they didn’t like it—they shouldn’t like it—it wasn’t a grown-up’s game. Mummy oughtn’t to like it either—there was something weird, and sickly, and awful, about her elaborate approval of it.
And she was wrong—wrong—wrong! Wrong in her approval and also in all this about hate and hostility—of these, Helen knew instinctively, even then, the game contained nothing. It had needed no hatred, no aggression, to destroy the world, just its it had needed no strength to lift the Marble Arch on to their shoulders while the soft wind played among the leaves of the old apple tree. Nothing, nothing of these real-life qualities had been needed for their golden, fragile game, light as gossamer, and innocent as the summer air.
“You can’t expect Granny to understand as I understand,” Mummy was explaining benignly, “but I mean to have a little talk with her, and I can promise you that from now on you will be allowed to play your game as much as ever you like, anywhere, at any time, and no matter who’s listening! No one is going to say it is naughty, or try to stop you playing it. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mummy. Thank you.”
Helen hung her head, so that her mother should not see the slow, painful tears. The permission just granted was futile, useless, relevant to nothing; for Helen knew already that they would never play their game again. Never again, through all the long summers that were to come, through all the vista of the years, with leaves, and fruit, and blossom coming and going on the old apple tree, would she and Sandra sit together among the benign old boughs and Blow up the World.
A stirring of sound, a swish of footsteps through the long grass, roused Helen from her reverie. Sandra must have located her without the usual exchange of whistles; eagerly she rolled over and raised her head with a welcoming, conspiratorial grin.
But it was Maurice who was looking down at her, his eyes like blue slits against the bright afternoon. The smile that had been for Sandra was suddenly shocking, like wearing a bathing dress for an interview with the head-mistress. Appalled, Helen swiftly changed her expression to one of distant politeness.
“Hullo,” she said cautiously. “I thought you were Sandra.” Let him at least understand that that appalling unguarded smile hadn’t been meant for him.
But now she realised that he had never noticed it; was listening to nothing of what she was saying. He was staring down at her with an obsessed, unseeing look which somehow wiped out all her feelings of embarrassment; they were replaced, instead, by a tiny flicker of fear.
His first words took her utterly by surprise.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he burst out. “Why are you hiding here—spying on me?”
“I’m not! I didn’t—! What on earth are you talking about?” Helen sat bolt upright, scared and indignant: and now, to her inexpressible relief, she saw the grey and white zigzags of Sandra’s new summer dress flashing between the currant bushes in the garden just beyond the gate.
“Sandra!” she cried joyously “Sandra! I’m here! I’m in the field! Here!”
She kept up the shouting and waving far more assiduously than was necessary partly in order to make her friend hurry, and partly to avert the necessity for further conversation with Maurice until Sandra had joined them and made everything seem all right and ordinary again.
Always Sandra could do this. It was a gift, Helen often felt, greater than wit, or beauty, or brains; and it did not fail them now. Within less than a minute of her arrival, the three of them were sitting in a companionable little circle, talking about food. The food they liked, and the food they didn’t like, and in particular the mince that had appeared for school dinner practically every Monday this term.
“I’m sure it’s worse than anything you ever had in prison, Maurice,” declared Sandra provocatively. “Bread and water would be nectar in comparison!”
Helen had often envied Sandra her ability to talk so easily and unselfconsciously to Maurice about his criminal past. She was almost as good at it as Claudia herself, and it was certainly an unfailing recipe for putting him in a good mood. His strange, sombre look had vanished completely, and he answered Sandra with boyish zest:
“Bread and water?” He laughed at her good-humouredly. “That’s not what you get in modern prisons! At least, only in Punishment Block, and, believe me, I wasn’t daft enough to get myself in there very often. Only once, in fact, and then it wasn’t really my own doing. There was this chap, you see, and he’d got himself mixed up with a couple of other blokes who were smuggling cigarettes; and so when he and another fellow, this first fellow’s pal—”
“Maurice! You make my head go round, you really do, with all these chaps and fellows and blokes! Can’t you give them their names? We can never make out who was which, can we, Helen, in half your stories!”
“O.K.,” said Maurice obligingly. “Tom, Dick and Harry, then. Dick and Harry were—”
“No, what were they really called?” persisted Sandra. “And”—a new idea suddenly occured to her—“what did they call you? Don’t tell me they called you ‘Maurice’!” Her shrill cackle of schoolgirl laughter brought a sudden frown to his face.
“Well? And why not? What’s wrong with it?” he asked sharply: and Sandra hastened to quell her merriment and explain.
“Oh—I don’t know. It’s just funny, that’s all, it’s not like a criminal’s name, now is it? Criminals are called things like Jake, or Pete, or Dodger…. Not Maurice …!” and again she relapsed into helpless giggles. “It’s all wrong, Maurice, it really is,” she resumed her teasing. “You don’t look like a criminal either, if you don’t mind my saying so. The way you talk, too—the way you say things like ‘O.K.’ and ‘Righty Oh’. Whoever heard of a murderer saying ‘Righty Oh’! I don’t believe you’re a murderer at all, Maurice! I think you’re just pretending!”
Maurice had gone deathly white. The blue slits of eyes fastened themselves on Sandra until the teasing words faltered on her lips, and all the giggling drained out of her.
“And why the hell else would they have shut me up for seven years?” he lashed back at her, the words darting from his lips like a whiplash, like a striking snake: and before the startled girls could say another word, he was on his feet, he had left them, an undersized, somehow venomous figure striding, stumbling, and finally running out of the field and out of their sight.
For nearly a minute Helen would not look at her friend. She stared down at the crushed grass praying to herself: let Sandra not be as frightened as I am: everything will be all right, so long as Sandra isn’t frightened too.
And sure enough, Sandra wasn’t.
“Well, gosh, he’s a proper nut-case, isn’t he!” she observed respectfully; and somehow, within a minute, they were both blessedly giggling about Maurice and his weirdities. And about Mavis, too, and about all the other Poor Things, the whole hilarious procession of them, past, present, and to come. The whole silly, comical world seemed at this moment to be spread out before them in the golden afternoon sunshine like an amusing story book, for the exclusive delectation of Sandra and of Helen.