Annie
IT WAS SO NICE LOOKING AT ANNIE. Her hair grew like luscious rough grass, it looked as if it had been cut any old how and was so full of life that it crackled. Her eyebrows were just as thick and black and met in the middle, her nose was flat and she had very pink cheeks. Her arms plunged into the washing-up water like pillars. She was beautiful.
Annie sings while she’s washing up and I sit under the table and try to learn the words. I’ve got to the thirteenth verse of Lord Henry and Fair Hilda and that’s where things actually start to happen.
The sound of a charger was heard in the hall and harpist and fiddler and wedding guests all were filled with such horror for yea it is told Lord Henry rode in clad as warrior bold. Lo! vengeance be mine and in blood for this day oh Hilda so fair you our love do betray pale ghost of a bride on your penitent knee the wrath of my upraisèd arm you shall see. It makes you shiver it’s so beautiful. It’s the same for Annie when she says: you must go out for a while because I want to cry it’s so beautiful.
Annie’s lovers often come clad as warriors bold. I liked the dragoon in red trousers with gold braid on his jacket, he was so handsome. He took off his sword. Sometimes it fell on the floor and I could hear it rattle from all the way up on my bunk – and thought of the wrath of his upraisèd arm. Then he disappeared and Annie got another lover who was a Thinking Man. So she went to listen to Plato and despised Daddy because he read newspapers and Mummy because she read novels.
I explained to Annie that Mummy had no time to read any books other than those she had to draw the jackets for so that she could find out what the book was about and what the heroine looked like. Some people just draw as they like and don’t give a fig for the author. That’s wrong. An illustrator has to think of the author and the reader and sometimes even of the publisher.
Huh! said Annie. It’s a rubbishy old firm that doesn’t publish Plato. Anyway, everything the mistress draws for she gets free and on the last jacket the heroine didn’t have yellow hair although it was yellow in the book.
Colour is expensive! I said and got angry. Anyhow, she has to pay fifty per cent for some of the books! It was impossible to explain to Annie that publishers don’t like to print in many colours and that they go on about two-colour printing although they know that one of the colours must be black anyway and that one can draw hair without using yellow and make it look yellow all the same.
Is that so? said Annie. And what has that to do with Plato if I might ask?
Then I forgot what it was I had to say. Annie always got things mixed up and was always right in the end.
But sometimes I bullied her. I made her tell me about her childhood until she started to cry and then I just stood in the window, rocking backwards and forwards on my heels and staring down at the yard. Or I stopped asking questions although her face was swollen and she threw the dustpan right across the kitchen. I could bully Annie by being polite to her lovers and asking them questions about things that interested them and just not going away and leaving them alone. And a very good way was to put on a haughty drawling voice and say: the mistress wants roast veal on Sunday, and then leave immediately as if Annie and I had nothing else to say to each other.
Annie got her revenge with Plato for a long time. Once she had a lover who was a Man of the People, and then she got her revenge by talking about all the old women who got up at four o’clock in the morning to deliver newspapers while the master lay lounging in bed waiting for the morning paper. I said that no old woman in the world who delivered newspapers worked all night making a plaster cast for a competition and that Mummy worked till two o’clock every night while Annie lay in bed lounging and then Annie said don’t mix me up in all this and anyway the master didn’t get a prize last time! Then I shouted that it was because the jury had been unfair and she shouted that it was easy to say that and I said that she didn’t understand a thing about it because she wasn’t an artist and she said that it was all very well to get all superior when some people hadn’t even been taught to draw and so we didn’t speak to each other for several hours.
When we had both had a good cry I went into the kitchen again and Annie had hung a blanket over the kitchen table. This meant that I was allowed to play houses under the table provided that I didn’t get in her way or block the pantry door. I built my house with logs and chairs and stools. I only did it out of politeness because actually you could build a much better house under the big modelling stand in the studio.
When the house was ready she gave me some crockery. I took this out of politeness too. I don’t like pretending to cook. I hate food.
Once there was no bird-cherry in the market for the first of June. Mummy has to have bird-cherry for her birthday otherwise she will die. That’s what a gipsy told her when she was fifteen years old and since then everyone has always made a terrible fuss about bird-cherry. Sometimes it comes out too early and sometimes too late. If you bring it into the house in the middle of May it goes brown round the edges and the flowers never really come out.
But Annie said: I know there is a white bird-cherry in the park. We’ll go and pick some when it gets dark.
It was terribly late when it got dark but I was allowed to go with her in any case and we didn’t say a word about what we were going to do. Annie took my hand; her hands are always damp and warm and as she moved there was a smell about her that was hot and a little frightening. We went down Wharf Road and across to the park and I was scared stiff and thought about the park keeper and the Town Council and God.
Daddy would never do anything like this, I said.
No he wouldn’t, Annie said, the master’s far too bourgeois. You just help yourself to what you want, and that’s all there is to it.
We had climbed over the fence before I had really grasped the unthinkable thing she had said about Daddy being bourgeois. I was so taken aback that I didn’t have time to be offended.
Annie strode up to the white bush in the middle of the grass and began picking. You’re doing it wrong! I hissed. Do it properly!
Annie stood upright in the grass with her legs apart and looked at me. She opened her big mouth and laughed so that you could see all her beautiful white teeth and she took me by the hand again and crouched down and we ran under the bushes and began to creep away. We sneaked up to another white bush and Annie was looking over her shoulder the whole time and sometimes she stopped behind a tree. Is it better this way? she asked.
I nodded and squeezed her hand. Then she started picking again. She reached up with her enormous arms so that her dress stretched tight all over and she laughed and broke off the boughs and the flowers rained all over her face and I whispered stop, stop, that’s enough, and I was so beside myself with fright and ecstasy that I almost wet my knickers.
If you’re going to steal you might as well steal properly, Annie said calmly. Her arms were full of bird-cherry, it lay across her neck and shoulders and she clasped it firmly with her red hands. We climbed back over the fence and went home and there was no sign of a park keeper or a policeman.
Then they told us that the bush we had picked from wasn’t a bird-cherry at all. It was just white. But Mummy was all right, she didn’t die.
Sometimes Annie would get mad and shout: I can’t stand the sight of you! Get out! Then I would go down into the yard and sit on the rubbish bin and burn old rolls of film with a magnifying glass.
I love smells. The smell of burning films, the smell of heat and Annie and the box of clay in the studio and Mummy’s hair and the smell of parties and bird-cherry. I haven’t got a smell yet, at least I don’t think so.
Annie smelt differently in the summer – of grass and even warmer. She laughed more often and you could see more of her arms and legs.
Annie could really row. She took a single pull and then rested on the oars in triumph and the boat glided forward over the sound so that there was a splashing round the bows in the still water of evening and then she took another pull and the boat splash
ed again and Annie showed how strong she was. Then she would laugh loudly and put one oar in the water so that the boat swung round to show that she didn’t want to go in any particular direction but was just amusing herself. In the end she just let the boat drift and lay in the bottom and sang and everybody on the shore heard her singing in the sunset and they knew that there she lay, big and happy and warm and not caring a fig for anything. She was doing just what she wanted to do.
Then she would stroll up the slope, her whole body swaying to and fro, and now and then she would pause to pick a flower. Annie used to sing when she was baking, too. She kneaded the dough, rolled it out, patted it, shaped it and threw her buns into the oven so that they landed exactly in the right place on the tray and then she slammed the oven door and cried, oh! it’s so hot!
I love Annie in the summer and never bully her then.
Sometimes we went to Diamond Valley. It’s a beach where all the pebbles are round and precious and beautiful colours. They’re prettier under the water but if you rub them with margarine they’re always pretty. We went there once when Mummy and Daddy were working in town and when we had gathered enough diamonds we sat and rested on the hill slope. In the early summer and autumn there are always streams coming down the slope. We made waterfalls and dams.
There’s gold in the stream, Annie said. See if you can find it. I couldn’t see any gold.
You have to put it there yourself, said Annie. Gold looks wonderful in brown water. It multiplies. More and more gold. So I went home and fetched all the gold things we possessed and the pearls as well, and put them all in the stream and they looked terribly beautiful.
Annie and I lay in the grass and listened to the sound of the stream and she sang Full Fathom Five. She stepped into the water and picked up Mummy’s gold bracelet with her toes and dropped it again and laughed. Then she said: I’ve always longed to have things of real gold.
Next day all the gold had disappeared and the pearls too. I thought it was odd. You never know what streams will do, Annie said. Sometimes the gold grows and grows and sometimes it vanishes under the ground. But it can come up again if you don’t talk about it. So we went home and made some pancakes.
In the evening Annie went to meet her new lover at the village swing. He was a Man of Action and could make the swing go right round and the only person who dared to sit on it while it went round four times was Annie.
The Iceberg
THE SUMMER CAME SO EARLY that year that it might almost have been called spring – it was a kind of present and everything one did had to be thought out differently. It was cloudy and very calm.
We and our luggage were the same as usual, and so were Old Charlie and Old Charlie’s boat, but the beaches were bare and forbidding and the sea looked stern. And when we had rowed as far as Newness Island the iceberg came floating towards us.
It was green and white and sparkling and it was coming in order to meet me. I had never seen an iceberg before.
Now it all depended on whether anyone said anything. If they said a single word about the iceberg it wouldn’t be mine any longer.
We got closer and closer. Daddy rested on his oars but Old Charlie went on rowing and said: it’s early this year. And Daddy answered: yes. It’s not long since it broke up, and went on rowing.
Mummy didn’t say a thing.
Anyway, you couldn’t count that as actually saying anything about an iceberg and so this iceberg was mine.
We rowed past it but I didn’t turn round to look because then they might have said something. I just thought about it all the way along Batch Island. My iceberg looked like a tattered crown. On one side there was an oval-shaped grotto which was very green and closed in by a grating of ice. Under the water the ice was a different green which went very deep down and was almost black where the dangerous depths began. I knew that the iceberg would follow me and I wasn’t the least bit worried about it.
I sat in the bay all day long and waited. Evening came but still the iceberg hadn’t reached me. I said nothing, and no one asked me anything. They were all busy unpacking.
When I went to bed the wind had got up. I lay under the bedclothes and imagined I was an ice-mermaid listening to the wind rising. It was important not to fall asleep but I did anyway, and when I woke up the house was completely quiet. Then I got up and dressed and took Daddy’s torch and went out onto the steps.
It was a light night, but it was the first time I had been out alone at night and I thought about the iceberg all the time so that I wouldn’t get frightened. I didn’t light the torch. The landscape was just as forbidding as before and looked like an illustration in which for once they had printed the grey shades properly. Out at sea the long-tailed ducks were carrying on like mad, singing wedding songs to one another.
Even before I got to the field by the shore I could see the iceberg. It was waiting for me and was shining just as beautifully but very faintly. It was lying there bumping against the rocks at the end of the point where it was deep, and there was deep black water and just the wrong distance between us. If it had been shorter I should have jumped over, if it had been a little longer I could have thought: what a pity, no one can manage to get over that.
Now I had to make up my mind. And that’s an awful thing to have to do.
The oval grotto with the grating of ice was facing the shore and the grotto was as big as me. It was made for a little girl who pulled up her legs and cuddled them to her. There was room for the torch too.
I lay down flat on the rock, reached out with my hand and broke off one of the icicles in the grating. It was so cold it felt hot. I held on to the grating with both hands and could feel it melting. The iceberg was moving as one does when one breathes – it was trying to come to me.
My hands and my tummy began to feel icy cold and I sat up. The grotto was the same size as me, but I didn’t dare to jump. And if one doesn’t dare to do something immediately then one never does it.
I switched on the torch and threw it into the grotto. It fell on its side and lit up the whole grotto, making it just as beautiful as I had imagined it would be. It became an illuminated aquarium at night, the manger at Bethlehem or the biggest emerald in the world! It was so unbearably beautiful that I had to get away from the whole thing as quickly as possible, send it away, do something! So I sat down firmly and placed both feet on the iceberg and pushed it as hard as I could. It didn’t move.
Go away! I shouted. Clear off!
And then the iceberg glided very slowly away from me and was caught by the off-shore wind. I was so cold that I ached and saw the iceberg carried by the wind towards the sound – it would sail right out to sea with Daddy’s torch on board and the ducks would sing themselves hoarse when they saw an illuminated bridal barge coming towards them.
And so my honour was saved.
When I got to the steps I turned round and looked. My iceberg shone steadily out there like a green beacon and the batteries would last until sunrise because they were always new when one had just moved to the country. Perhaps they would last another night, perhaps the torch would go on shining at the bottom of the sea after the iceberg had melted and turned into water.
I got into bed and pulled the bedclothes over my head and waited for the warmth to come back. It came. Slowly at first, but little by little it reached down to my feet.
But all the same I had been a coward, and all because of two inches. I could feel it in my tummy. Sometimes I think all strong feelings start in the tummy; for me they do at any rate.
The Bays
THE HOUSE IS GREY, the sky and the sea are grey, and the field is grey with dew. It’s four o’clock in the morning and I have saved three important hours which can be counted as extra. Or perhaps three and a half.
I have learned to tell the time, although I’m not yet quite sure about the minutes.
I’m also light grey, but inside, because I’m all vague and wobbly like a jelly-fish, not thinking but just feeling. If you sailed a hundred
miles over the sea and walked a hundred miles through the forest in all directions, you wouldn’t find a little girl at all. They just don’t exist. I know because I’ve found out. You can wait for them for a thousand years and they just don’t exist. The nearest thing to it you’ll find is Fanny who is almost seventy and collects pebbles and shells and dead animals and sings when it’s going to rain. She’s yellowish-grey just like the trampled scorched grass round the house, her face, her dress and her hands, everything about her is yellowish-grey and wrinkled but her hair is white and her eyes are whitish-blue and look straight past you.
Fanny is the only person who isn’t afraid of the horses. She shouts at them and turns her backside to them, and she does just what she likes. If anyone asks her to do the washing-up in the wrong tone of voice she goes into the forest and stays there for several days and nights and sings to make it rain.
She’s never lonely.
There are five bays where no one lives. Once you’ve been round the first you have to go into the second. The first is wide and full of white sand. It has a grotto with a sandy floor. The walls are always wet and there is a narrow opening in the roof. The grotto is longer than I am when I lie on my back and today it is icy cold. There is a narrow black hole right inside.
It was then that my secret friend crept out of the hole.
I said: what a beautiful and extremely pleasant morning it is.
And he answered: it’s no ordinary morning because I heard rumbling below the horizon.
He sat down behind me and I knew that he had changed his skin and didn’t want me to look at him. So I said rather indifferently: it rumbled on Friday, too. Have you seen Fanny?