9
The sun shone through the apple trees, making the small half-ripe apples look as though they were coated with enamel.
It was quite clear that if they did go away together, the four of them, she, Eve, Gerald and Harriett to Brighton or somewhere, they would be able to forget. You could tell that from the strange quiet easy tone of Harriett’s and Gerald’s voices. There would be the aquarium. She supposed they would go to the aquarium with its strange underground smell of stagnant sea air and stare into the depths of those strange green tanks and watch the fish flashing about like shadows or skimming by near the front of the tank with the light full on their softly tinted scales. Harriett sat steadily at her side on the overturned seed-box, middle-aged and responsible, quietly discussing the details of the plan with Gerald, cross-legged at their feet on the grass plot. They had not said anything about the reasons for going; but of course Gerald must know all that. He knew everything now, all about the money troubles, all the awful things, and it seemed to make no difference to him. He made light of it. It was humiliating to think that he had come just as things had reached their worst, the house going to be sold, Pater and mother and Sarah going into lodgings in September, and the maddening helpless worry about mother and all the money for that. And yet it was a good thing he had known them all in the old house and seen them there, even pretending to be prosperous. And yet the house and garden was nothing to him. Just a house and garden. Harriett’s house and garden, and he was going to take Harriett away. The house and garden did not matter.
She glanced at the sunlit fruit trees, the thickets of the familiar kitchen garden, the rising grass bank at the near end of the distant lawn, the eloquent back of the large red house. He could not see all the things there were there, all the long years, or know what it was to have that cut away and nothing ahead but Brighton aquarium with Harriett and Eve, and then the school again, and disgraceful lodgings in some strange place, no friends and everybody looking down on them. She met his eyes and they both smiled.
“Keep her perfectly quiet for the next few weeks, that’s the idea, and when it’s all over she’ll be better than she’s ever been in her life.”
“D’you think so?”
“I don’t think, I know she will; people always are. I’ve known scores of people have operations. It’s nothing nowadays. Ask Bennett.”
“Does he think she’ll be better?”
“Of course.”
“Did he say so?”
“Of course he did.”
“Well, I s’pose we’d really better go.”
“Of course, we’re going.”
“I’m going to look for a place in a family after next term. I shall give notice when I get back. You get more money in a family Eve says, and home life, and if you haven’t a home they’re only too glad to have you there in the holidays too.”
“You take my advice, my dear girl. Don’t go into a family. Eve’ll find it out before she’s much older.”
“I must have more money.”
“Mirry’s so silly. She insists on paying her share of Brighton. Isn’t she an owl?”
“Oh well, of course, if she’s going to make a point of spending her cash when she needn’t she’d better find a more paying job. That’s certain sure.”