Flowers on the Grass (27 page)

The Blue Boys were on the stage lining up the girls and pinning numbers onto them, which involved a certain amount of scuffle and giggle, and Barney having to slap his own hand frequently and chide it as if it were a dog.

“Come on, Dickie!” Les shouted. “Last orders, please. Bring ’em back alive!” Dickie picked up the girl and carried her, kicking and muttering and thumping him in the chest, up the steps to the stage, where he deposited her right side up and retired panting but triumphant. The girl stood there scowling with her toes turned in, Barney pinned a number on her green blouse, chucked her under her lowered chin, and sent her off parading round the stage after the others.

Most of them, especially the tall girls, and the ones who regretted having worn swim suits now that they found them selves exposed to public view, walked badly, with bent knees and caved-in chests. Dickie’s Lily stooped worse than any of them, and he saw with a pang that she had a very slight hunchback.
Never mind. The audience applauded every girl and she would get her powder compact for having been in the competition, and probably live in the memory of her brief glory for weeks to come, and let Brett call that a daydream if he liked. It was, and a good one.

In turn, the girls came singly before Brett, who frowned, blinked, bit his pencil, and scratched his head with it, getting no help from the audience, who applauded each girl impartially and hooted at every swim suit, as if they could not see hundreds any day round the swimming pool. The Boys and Girls watched from the side of the stage, Shirley Ann a little blasé, as one who had been through this and triumphed. Barney was trying to lay bets, unsuccessfully, for there was a dark girl who would obviously win on face and a blonde who would obviously be second on figure. The others were nice girls, but no oil paintings, and were only made to revolve in front of Brett to spin the thing out until it was time for the Easter-egg hunt.

When it was Lily’s turn, she came forward like Mimi going to the guillotine in the third act of
The Only Way
. Having flashed one terrified look at Brett, she dropped her angora eyes and stood looking down at her feet, her light hair sticking out from her head, hands held straight down the sides of her tight brown skirt. She wore no stockings, and from where he stood Dickie could see her legs trembling with nervousness. Brett had a faraway look, as if he had already decided on the winner. Still, he might have given the girl a break. Dickie felt responsible for her, and wished he had not made her come on to the stage with that back.

He smiled at her when she came to the side, but she would not look at him. She would not look at anyone, and stood apart while the other girls jostled together, waiting for the marks to be counted, talking to each other over-affably and pretending they did not care.

Kenny played “She’s My Lovely” on the accordion. The girls were lined along the back of the stage, still pretending not to care; Barney prepared to lead forward the dark, juicy-lipped girl; Les stood sideways to the microphone and whispered tensely into it: “And the winnering number is_______”

“F-fourteen,” said Brett, stammering a little. For a moment no one could see who it was, then Les, with the furrow in his brow as deep as the Grand Canyon, said: “Fifteen, is it? Fifteen?” Because fourteen was Lily’s number.

“Fourteen,” said Brett belligerently, got up and left the stage.

There was nothing for it. The audience, though startled, broke into applause, and Les had to lead Lily forward, her pale eyes staring in unbelief, her jaw slightly dropped at the shock of it. The other girls were furious, and drifted off the stage, muttering. Les said all the usual things about lovely little ladies, and hoped, creakingly, that she would win the finals, while Lily stood stumpily beside him with her queer colouring, and her hands still hanging straight by her skirt.

Dickie tracked Brett to his cabin, where he found him cleaning his teeth as if he had just been through a distasteful experience.

“Why did you do it?” Dickie asked. “Why did you choose her? You’ve made a farce of the whole thing.”

Brett rinsed his mouth, spat and wiped his toothbrush on a towel. “I was sorry for her,” he said.

“You!” Dickie held on to the sides of the door, blocking the light. “I thought you were a mizzo-whatnot.”

“I am, in the mass,” Brett said. “Not individually. Get out of the light. I want to pack.”

“But look here,” said Dickie, “if you’re going to choose just any girl you’re sorry for what’s the point of the competition?”

“Don’t ask me. I asked myself that hours ago, and got no answer. It’s your fault anyway. You shouldn’t have dragged the wretched girl on to the stage.”

“Are you trying to teach me my job?” asked Dickie, who was cross and confused. The competition had gone wrong, and nothing ever went wrong at Gaydays. His own plans had gone wrong. Brett had turned them upside down.

“Not your job,” Brett said. “Just the most elementary psychology.”

“It’s yours that’s wrong. How do you think that girl is going to like being made to look a fool at the finals?”

“Well, it’s your fault,” Brett repeated. “You shouldn’t have asked me to judge.”

“I wish to God I hadn’t. I believe you did this on purpose to be awkward, to spoil the competition and upset the atmosphere of the camp.”

“Yes,” grinned Brett, and before Dickie could decide whether he meant this seriously one of the camp messengers
came running by, saw Dickie and skidded to a stop with a squeak of his rubber soles. “Dickie! Quick!” he panted, as if the Furies were after him. “The Old Man wants you. He wants you now. Quick!” he repeated, although Dickie barely hesitated a moment for when Captain Gallagher summoned you, you had to go at the double, as if you were a Dartmouth cadet.

Dickie entered the office jauntily, trying to look innocent, but his grin faded when he saw the Captain’s face. It had that liverish, putty colour which boded ill. He was not sitting safely behind his desk, but standing up by one of the big charts on the wall, tapping a ruler into the palm of his left hand, like a schoolmistress waiting before the blackboard to cane the boy who had flipped the blotting-paper pellet.

“Well, Dickie,” he said in a clipped, consciously Service voice, “you’ve done it this time.”

“Me
, sir?” Dickie feigned surprise. “I haven’t done anything.”

“Oh, I see. It wasn’t you, I suppose, who urged me to let That Man judge the beauty contest. Oh no! Couldn’t have been you.” His sarcasm was stodgy as an ill-cooked pudding. It lay on the air like indigestion, and the Captain left it there and tried something else. “Yes, Dickie,” he said sorrowfully, “I was there, watching from the gallery. You must have known he couldn’t be trusted. That was light of you, Dickie. You can’t
be
flippant about your job, you know. It matters.”

Dickie could not frame words. He stood vaguely to attention and stared at a notice by the electric light switch, which said: “A Penny Saved Is a Penny Gained. Switch me OFF.”

The Captain flung down the ruler and sat at the desk, drawing a sheet of paper towards him and making earnest pencil marks on it as if he were planning an exercise for the Home Fleet. “What you’ve got to
do”
he said, emphasising his words with jabs of the pencil, “is to think up some excuse to get the girl out of the finals.”

“Oh, I can’t, sir——” But Captain Gallagher pointed his pencil over his shoulder to a notice which said: “Can is a shorter word than Can’t. Use it.”

“It would be more cruel to let her go on with it,” he said. “And what would the London judges think? We have a reputation to keep up. Everything at Gaydays, including the
campers, is the
best
. See what you can do, will you, there’s a good chap?” This last was said with a deceptive geniality which meant, Dickie knew, Or else.

He went away down the concrete paths, unable to react properly to campers who hailed him, or small boys who tweaked his jersey as they ran by. He was bent on finding Brett, for he knew he could not tackle Lily. Brett must do it. He had made everything wrong for Dickie; now he must put it all right.

“Looking for your friend?” asked the fat woman in the next cabin as Dickie rattled at the locked door of B39. “He’s gone, dear, didn’t you know? Packed his traps, said goodbye to us, given tbe kids a bar of chocolate, kind as you like, and gone.”

“Hey, hey, Dickie!” A pigtailed girl came along with her mouth full of sweets. “Why aren’t you on the Easter-egg hunt? It’s super fun. I’ve found six.” Dickie smiled at her and walked on, barely noticing that she was clinging to his arm, trying to match her steps to his.

So it was over. He couldn’t say anything to Lily; he knew that. So he would have to go. “The job matters,” the Captain had said, and oh God, didn’t he know now just how much, faced with the idea of losing it! The seeds of doubt that Brett had sown were blown away long before they could germinate. Brett was a fool, trying to pose as a cynic because he did not know what Dickie knew. This place was important. It was necessary to his life. But too late. The very thing that had proved to him where his treasure lay was taking it away from him.

“Not that way, Dickie. Come
on
!” The little girl tugged at the sleeve of his blue jersey, and looking down, he saw it no longer as a part of himself, but just as a garment, the kind of things that other people wore, and were bright to see.

“Come on?” he said vaguely. “Whereto?” But there was no going anywhere, for round the corner, like an overblown cabbage in a dark-green overcoat with flapping pockets, came Lily’s mother, and blocked their path.

“Aha!” she cried. “I’ve been looking for you. What’s all this I hear?” Whatever she had heard, Dickie did not want to discuss it. He would rather not know that she existed.

“Well, you see ...” He stood drawing his foot along a crack in the concrete while the pigtailed girl pulled steadily
at his left arm, trying to get him moving again. “Well, you see …”

“Oh yes, I
see
all right,” boomed Lily’s mother, as if she were part of the camp’s loudspeaker system. “All too clearly do I see. Two-piece bathing costume indeed! If you think Dad and I are going to let Lily parade herself in London in a brazier and pants, well, you’ve got another think coming.”

“You mean you’ll not let her go in for the final?” Dickie lifted his head. The grin growing all over his face, he could feel the muscles lifting of their own accord, and the small girl nearly fell over as he yielded suddenly to her pull.

“Come on!” he shouted and raced her down the path, feet hardly touching the ground, pigtails flying out like whips. He did not know where he was going. He just wanted to race round the camp as if he had been away and was come home. He did not care where they went, but the small girl did. As she pulled him into the café, someone greeted him: “Hullo, smiler!” Others called to him: “Hey, hey, Dickie! Come and sit here, Dickie! What’s new, Dickie? Look, there’s Dickie.”

“Hey, hey!” he called, as the child dragged him towards the ice-cream bar, and he couldn’t have stopped grinning if he had wanted to. Everything was going to be all right. Everyone was happy, and it was only the beginning of his summer.

When Pamela was at the High School, each term had a personality of its own: a flavour, a smell, a colour in the mind’s eye; but now, at Rosemount, the whole school year was like wet sand.

At the High School the winter term was brown with the smell of October bonfires in a corner of the hockey field, and the fog in your throat as you pounded up and down on the left wing. It was dark when you went home to tea, most people wore two pairs of knickers and you were allowed to wear a jersey instead of the uniform blouse under your tunic. The spring term was the green buds in botany classes, which you put in jars by the window to see whose came out first. Your lacrosse stick smelled of linseed oil, nobody came or left and the term was over almost as soon as it began. Summer was the white of umpire’s coats and bowling screens and the grey-green smell of mowings behind the scorer’s table, and chlorine and rubber bathing caps and the hollow echoes of Miss Ringer’s voice, challenging you to try the high board. Blue poplin dresses and chewing grass in outdoor history lessons and finding with dismay that the endless halcyon days had suddenly accelerated into a fever of exams..

But at Rosemount, which was called on the prospectus “a Co-educational Progressive Community”, the terms were all the same, because there was no hockey, no cricket, no lacrosse, no change of uniform to mark the season, for you wore what you liked when you liked, exams were called intelligence tests and held spasmodically according to Peter’s whim, and if you wanted to take Matric or School Certificate you had to get extra coaching in the holidays. The terms all smelled of boiling rice and Alice’s carnation scent, and differed only in that the summer term was the worst because it was the longest.

It stretched before Pamela like eternity. Going north in the train, she thought it typical of the upside-downness of life that the higher up England you went the lower fell your heart.

It was a terribly long journey, so your heart had a long way to fall. Long and dull, and the book that Estelle had given her had become unreadable even before Hitchin. Pamela had known it would, but had not liked to say so, for it was all about modern ballet, and Estelle was very keen for her to know about that. It was boring in a train by yourself. Looking out of the window was fun for a while, but what was the point of seeing a man fall off a bicycle, or a street decorated with flags if there was no one in the carriage to whom you could turn back and tell about it?

Next door eight girls were going up together to another boarding school. Whenever the train stopped, you could hear their talk and laughter through the partition, and the man in Pamela’s carriage, who looked like a monkey himself, said to his wife: “Like a cage of monkeys.”

At stations the girls all crammed their heads out of the window to shriek at the one who had dashed out to try and buy chocolate or cakes or magazines. When Pamela went down the corridor at lunch-time she saw that they all had sandwiches and oranges and bottles of lemonade. She would have liked to picnic with them like that, but she was a rich man’s daughter now and must go along and eat grilled halibut and rhubarb tart among the elderly people in the dining car.