Garden Party and Selected Short Stories

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• Publisher: Alma Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781847497291
• eBook ISBN:
  9780714549026
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

Prelude

I

THERE was not an inch of room for Lottie and Kezia in the buggy. When Pat swung them on top of the luggage they wobbled; the grandmother’s lap was full and Linda Burnell could not possibly have held a lump of a child on hers for any distance. Isabel, very superior, was perched beside the new handyman on the driver’s seat. Holdalls, bags and boxes were piled upon the floor. “These are absolute necessities that I will not let out of my sight for one instant,” said Linda Burnell, her voice trembling with fatigue and excitement.

Lottie and Kezia stood on the patch of lawn just inside the gate all ready for the fray in their coats with brass anchor buttons and little round caps with battleship ribbons. Hand in hand, they stared with round solemn eyes, first at the absolute necessities and then at their mother.

“We shall simply have to leave them. That is all. We shall simply have to cast them off,” said Linda Burnell. A strange little laugh flew from her lips; she leant back against the buttoned leather cushions and shut her eyes, her lips trembling with laughter. Happily, at that moment Mrs Samuel Josephs, who had been watching the scene from behind her drawing-room blind, waddled down the garden path.

“Why nod leave the chudren with be for the afterdoon, Brs Burnell? They could go on the dray with the storeban when he comes in the eveding. Those thigs on the path have to go, dod’t they?”

“Yes, everything outside the house is supposed to go,” said Linda Burnell, and she waved a white hand at the tables and chairs standing on their heads on the front lawn. How absurd they looked! Either they ought to be the other way up, or Lottie and Kezia ought to stand on their heads, too. And she longed to say: “Stand on your heads, children, and wait for the storeman.” It seemed to her that would be so exquisitely funny that she could not attend to Mrs Samuel Josephs.

The fat creaking body leant across the gate, and the big jelly of a face smiled. “Dod’t you worry, Brs Burnell. Loddie and Kezia can have tea with by chudren in the dursery, and I’ll see theb on the dray afterwards.”

The grandmother considered. “Yes, it really is quite the best plan. We are very obliged to you, Mrs Samuel Josephs. Children, say ‘thank you’ to Mrs Samuel Josephs.”

Two subdued chirrups: “Thank you, Mrs Samuel Josephs.”

“And be good little girls, and – come closer” – they advanced – “don’t forget to tell Mrs Samuel Josephs when you want to…”

“No, Granma.”

“Dod’t worry, Brs Burnell.”

At the last moment, Kezia let go Lottie’s hand and darted towards the buggy.

“I want to kiss my granma goodbye again.”

But she was too late. The buggy rolled off up the road, Isabel bursting with pride, her nose turned up at all the world, Linda Burnell prostrated and the grandmother rummaging among the very curious oddments she had had put in her black silk reticule at the last moment for something to give her daughter. The buggy twinkled away in the sunlight and fine golden dust up the hill and over. Kezia bit her lip, but Lottie, carefully finding her handkerchief first, set up a wail.

“Mother! Granma!”

Mrs Samuel Josephs, like a huge, warm, black silk tea cosy, enveloped her.

“It’s all right, by dear. Be a brave child. You come and blay in the dursery!”

She put her arm round weeping Lottie and led her away. Kezia followed, making a face at Mrs Samuel Josephs’s placket,* which was undone as usual, with two long pink corset laces hanging out of it…

Lottie’s weeping died down as she mounted the stairs, but the sight of her at the nursery door with swollen eyes and a blob of a nose gave great satisfaction to the S.J.s, who sat on two benches before a long table covered with American cloth and set out with immense plates of bread and dripping and two brown jugs that faintly steamed.

“Hullo! You’ve been crying!”

“Ooh! Your eyes have gone right in.”

“Doesn’t her nose look funny.”

“You’re all red and patchy.”

Lottie was quite a success. She felt it and swelled, smiling timidly.

“Go and sid by Zaidee, ducky,” said Mrs Samuel Josephs, “and Kezia, you sid ad the end by Boses.”

Moses grinned and gave her a nip as she sat down, but she pretended not to notice. She did hate boys.

“Which will you have?” asked Stanley, leaning across the table very politely and smiling at her. “Which will you have to begin with – strawberries and cream or bread and dripping?”

“Strawberries and cream, please,” said she.

“Ah-h-h-h.” How they all laughed and beat the table with their teaspoons. Wasn’t that a take-in! Wasn’t it now! Didn’t he fox her! Good old Stan!

“Ma! She thought it was real.”

Even Mrs Samuel Josephs, pouring out the milk and water, could not help smiling. “You bustn’t tease theb on their last day,” she wheezed.

But Kezia bit a big piece out of her bread and dripping, and then stood the piece up on her plate. With the bite out it made a dear little sort of a gate. Pooh! She didn’t care! A tear rolled down her cheek, but she wasn’t crying. She couldn’t have cried in front of those awful Samuel Josephs. She sat with her head bent, and as the tear dripped slowly down she caught it with a neat little whisk of her tongue and ate it before any of them had seen.

ii

After tea, Kezia wandered back to their own house. Slowly she walked up the back steps and through the scullery into the kitchen. Nothing was left in it but a lump of gritty yellow soap in one corner of the kitchen window sill and a piece of flannel stained with a blue bag in another. The fireplace was choked up with rubbish. She poked among it but found nothing except a hair-tidy with a heart painted on it that had belonged to the servant girl. Even that she left lying, and she trailed through the narrow passage into the drawing room. The Venetian blind was pulled down but not drawn close. Long pencil rays of sunlight shone through, and the wavy shadow of a bush outside danced on the gold lines. Now it was still, now it began to flutter again and now it came almost as far as her feet. Zoom! Zoom! A bluebottle knocked against the ceiling; the carpet-tacks had little bits of red fluff sticking to them.

The dining-room window had a square of coloured glass at each corner. One was blue and one was yellow. Kezia bent down to have one more look at a blue lawn with blue arum lilies growing at the gate, and then at a yellow lawn with yellow lilies and a yellow fence. As she looked, a little Chinese Lottie came out onto the lawn and began to dust the tables and chairs with a corner of her pinafore. Was that really Lottie? Kezia was not quite sure until she had looked through the ord...

Table of contents

• Prelude