But every day at breakfast over the eggs, bacon and tomatoes—knowing voices began their day’s talking, the weary round of words and ugly laughter went steadily on, narrow horrible sounds that made you feel conscious of the insides of people’s throats and the backs of their noses—as if they were not properly formed. The talk was like a silly sort of battle.... Innuendo, Miriam would say to herself, feeling that the word was too beautiful for what she wanted to express; double entendre was also unsatisfactory. These people were all enemies pretending to be friends. Why did they pretend? Why not keep quiet? Or all sing between their eating, different songs, it would not matter. She and Eve and Harriett and Gerald did sometimes hum the refrains of the nigger minstrels’ songs, or one of them would hum a scrap of a solo and all three sing the chorus. Then people were quiet, listening and smiling their evil smiles and Miss Meldrum was delighted. It seemed improper and half-hearted as no one else joined in; but after the first few days the four of them always sang between the courses at dinner. Gerald did not seem to mind the chaffy talk and the vulgar jokes, and would generally join in; and he said strange disturbing things about the boarders, as if he knew all about them. And he and Harriett talked to the niggers too and found out about them. It spoilt them when one knew that they belonged to small London musical halls, and had wives and families and illnesses and trouble. Gerald and Harriett did not seem to mind this. They did not seem to mind anything out of doors. They were free and hard and contemptuous of everyone except the niggers and a few very stylish-looking people who sailed along and took no notice of anybody. Gerald said extraordinary, disturbing things about the girls on the esplanade. Miriam and Eve were interested in some of the young men they saw. They talked about them and looked out for them. Sometimes they exchanged glances with them. Were she and Eve also “on show”; waiting to be given “half an inch”; would she or Eve be “perfectly awful in the dark”? Did the young men they specially favoured with their notice say things about them? When these thoughts buzzed about in Miriam’s brain she wanted to take a broom and sweep everybody into the sea.... She discovered that a single steady unexpected glance, meeting her own, from a man who had the right kind of bearing—something right about the set of the shoulders—could disperse all the vague trouble she felt at the perpetual spectacle of the strolling crowds, the stiffly waiting many-eyed houses, the strange stupid bathing-machines, and send her gaily forward in a glad world where there was no need to be alone in order to be happy. A second encounter was sad, shameful, ridiculous; the man became absurd and lost his dignity; the joyous sense of looking through him right out and away to an endless perspective, of being told that the endlessness was there and telling that the endlessness was there had gone; the eyes were eyes, solid and mocking and helpless—to be avoided in future; and when they had gone, the sunset or the curious quivering line along the horizon were no longer gateways, but hard barriers, until by some chance one was tranquilly alone again—when the horizon would beckon and lift and the pathway of gold across the sea at sunset call to your feet until they tingled and ached.
Life was ugly and cruel. The secret of the sea and of the evenings and mornings must be given up. It would fade more and more. What was life? Either playing a part all the time in order to be amongst people in the warm or standing alone with the strange true real feeling—alone with a sort of edge of reality on everything; even on quite ugly common things—cheap boarding-houses face towels and blistered window frames.
8
Since Mr. Green and Mr. Parrow had left, they had given up going to pier entertainments and had spent most of their time sitting in a close row and talking together, in the intervals of the black and white minstrel concerts and the performances of the town band. They had drifted into this way of spending their time; there was never any discussion or alteration of the day’s programme. It worked like a charm and there was no sign of the breaking of the charm. Miriam was sometimes half afraid just as they settled themselves down that someone, probably Gerald or Eve might say ‘Funny, isn’t it, how well we four get on,’ and that strange power that held them together and kept everything away would be broken before the holiday came to an end. But no one did and they went on sitting together in the morning on the hot sand—the moving living glinting sand that took the sting as soon as you touched it with your hand out of everything there might be in the latest letter from home—hearing the niggers from ten to eleven, bathing from eleven to twelve, sitting afterwards fresh and tingling and drowsy in canopied chairs near the band until dinner-time, prowling and paddling in the afternoon and ranging themselves again in chairs for the evening.
They said nothing until almost the end of their time about the passage of the days; but they looked at each other, each time they settled down, with conspiring smiles and then sat, side by side, less visible to each other than the great sunlit sea or the great clean salt darkness, stranded in a row with four easy idle laughing commenting voices, away alone and safe in the gaiety of the strong forgetful air—talking things over. The far-away troublesome crooked things, all cramped and painful and puzzling came out one by one and were shaken and tossed away along the clean wind. And there was so much for Gerald to hear. He wanted to hear everything—any little thing—“Just like a girl; it’s awfully jolly for Harry he’s like that. She’ll never be lonely,” agreed Miriam and Eve privately.... “He’s a perfect dear.” One night towards the end of their time they talked of the future. It had begun to press on them. There seemed no more time for brooding even over Eve’s fascinating little pictures of life in the big country house, or Miriam’s stories and legends of Germany—she said very little about Banbury Park fearing the amazement and disgust of the trio if anything of the reality of North London should reach them through her talk and guessing the impossibility of their realising the Pernes—or Gerald’s rich memories of the opulence of his early home life, an atmosphere of spending and operas and banquets and receptions and distinguished people. During the evening, in a silent interval, just as the band was tuning up to begin its last tune, Gerald had said with quiet emphasis, “Well, anyhow, girls, you mark my words the old man won’t make any more money. Not another penny. You may as well make up your minds to that.” Then the band had broken into their favourite Hungarian dance. Three of them sat blissfully back in their deck chairs, but Miriam remained uncomfortably propped forward, eagerly thinking. The music rushed on, she saw dancers shining before her in wild groups, in the darkness, leaping and shouting, their feet scarcely touching the earth and a wild light darted about them as they shouted and leapt. “Set Mirry up in some sort of business,” quoted her mind from one of Gerald’s recent soliloquies. She knew that she did not want that. But the dancing forms told her of the absurdity of going back without protest to the long aching days of teaching in the little school amongst those dreadful voices which were going, whatever she did for them, to be dreadful all their lives. Nothing she could do would make any difference to them. They did not want her. They were quite happy. Her feelings and thoughts, her way of looking at things, her desire for space and beautiful things and music and quietude would never be their desire. Reverence for things—had she reverence? She felt she must have because she knew they had not; even the old people; only superstition ... North London would always be North London, hard, strong, sneering, money-making, noisy and trammy. Perhaps the difference between the north and the south and her own south-west of London was like the difference between the north and the south of England.... Green’s “History of the English People” ... spinning-jennys began in the Danish north, hard and cold, with later sunsets. In the south was Somersetshire lace. North London meant twenty pounds a year and the need for resignation and determination every day. Eve had thirty-five pounds and a huge garden and new books and music ... a book called “Music and Morals” and interesting people staying in the house. And Eve had not been to Germany and could not talk French. “You are an idiot to go on doing it. It’s wrong. Lazy,” laughed the dancers crowding and flinging all round her. “I ought,” she responded defiantly, “to stay on and make myself into a certificated teacher.” “Certificated?” they screamed wildly sweeping before her in strange lines of light. “If you do you will be like Miss Cramp. Certificates—little conceited papers, and you dead. Certificates would finish you off—Kill—Kill—Kill—Kill—Kill!!” Bang. The band stopped and Miriam felt the bar of her chair wounding her flesh. The trail of the dancers flickered away across the sea and her brain was busily dictating her letter to Miss Perne: “and therefore I am obliged, however reluctantly, to take this step, as it is absolutely necessary for me to earn a larger salary at once.”
CHAPTER IX
1
The Henderson party found Mr. Green and Mr. Parrow waiting in the dim plank-floored corridor leading from the station to the main building of the Crystal Palace. When the quiet greetings were over and they had arranged a meeting-place at the end of the evening in case any of the party should be lost, they all tramped on up the resounding corridor. Miriam found herself bringing up the rear with Mr. Parrow. They were going on up the corridor, through the Palace and out into the summer evening. They had all come to go out into the summer evening and see the fireworks. All but she had come meaning to get quite near to the ‘set pieces’ and to look at them. She had not said anything about meaning to get as far away from the fireworks as possible. She had been trusting to Mr. Parrow for that. Now that she was with him she felt that perhaps it was not quite fair. He had come meaning to see the fireworks. He would be disappointed. She would be obliged to tell him presently, when they got out into the night. They were all tramping quickly up along the echoing corridor. No one seemed to be talking, just feet, tramp, tramp on the planking, rather quickly. It was like the sound of workmen’s feet on the inside scaffolding of a half-built house. The corridor was like something in the Hospital for Incurables ... that strange old woman sitting in the hall with bent head laughing over her crochet, and Miss Garrett whom they had come to see sitting up in bed, a curtained bed in a ward, with a pleated mob cap all over the top of her head and half-way down her forehead, sitting back against large square pillows with her hands clasped on the neat bed-clothes and a “sweet, patient” look on her face, coughing gently and spitting, spitting herself to death ... rushing away out of the ward to wait for mother downstairs in the hall with the curious smells and the dreadful old woman.... What was it, chick?... Sick, mother, I felt sick, I couldn’t stay. It was rage; rage with that dreadful old woman. People probably told her she was patient and sweet, and she had got that trick of putting her head on one side. She was not sweet. She was one of the worst of those dreadful people who would always make people believe in a particular way, all the time. She had a great big frame. If she had done anything but sit as she sat, in that particular way, one could have stayed.
They were all standing looking at some wonderful sort of clock, a calendar-clock—‘a triumph of ingenuity,’ said Mr. Green’s bright reedy voice. The building had opened out and rushed up, people were passing to and fro. “We don’t want to stay inside; let’s go out,” said Gerald. The group broke into couples again and passed on. Miriam found herself with Mr. Parrow once more. Of course she would be with him all the evening. She must tell him at once about the fireworks. She ought not to have come, if she did not mean to see the fireworks. It was mean and feeble to cheat him out of his evening. Why had she come; to wander about with him, not seeing the fireworks. What an idiotic and abominable thing. Now that she was here at his side it was quite clear that she must endure the fireworks. Anything else would be like asking him to wander about with her alone. She did not want to wander about with him alone. She took an opportunity of joining Eve for a moment. They had just walked through a winter garden and were standing at the door of a concert room, all quite silent and looking very shy. “Eve,” she said hurriedly in a low tone, “d’you want to see the beastly fireworks?”
“Beastly? Oh, of course, I do,” said Eve in a rather loud embarrassed tone. How dreadfully self-conscious they all were. Somebody seemed to be speaking. “What sticks my family are—I had no idea,” muttered Miriam furiously into Eve’s face. Eve’s eyes filled with tears, but she stood perfectly still, saying nothing. Miriam wheeled round and stared into the empty concert room. It was filled with a faint bluish light and beyond the rows of waiting chairs and the empty platform a huge organ stood piled up towards the roof. The party were moving on. What a queer place the Crystal Palace is ... what a perfectly horrible place for a concert ... pianissimo passages and those feet on those boards tramping about outside.... What a silly muddle. Mr. Parrow was waiting for her to join the others. They straggled along past booths and stalls, meeting groups of people, silent and lost like themselves. Now they were passing some kind of stonework things, reliefs, antique, roped off like the seats in a church. Just in front of them a short man holding the red cord in his hands was looking at a group with some ladies. “Why,” he said suddenly in a loud cheerful voice, stretching an arm out across the rope and pointing to one of the reliefs, “it’s Auntie and Grandma!” Miriam stared at him as they passed, he was so short, shorter than any of the ladies he was with. “It’s the only way to see these things,” he said in the same loud harsh cheerful voice. Miriam laughed aloud. What a clever man.