The Garden Party and Other Stories

As the morning lengthened whole parties appeared over the sand-hills and came down on the beach to bathe.  It was understood that at eleven o’clock the women and children of the summer colony had the sea to themselves.  First the women undressed, pulled on their bathing dresses and covered their heads in hideous caps like sponge bags; then the children were unbuttoned.  The beach was strewn with little heaps of clothes and shoes; the big summer hats, with stones on them to keep them from blowing away, looked like immense shells.  It was strange that even the sea seemed to sound differently when all those leaping, laughing figures ran into the waves.  Old Mrs. Fairfield, in a lilac cotton dress and a black hat tied under the chin, gathered her little brood and got them ready.  The little Trout boys whipped their shirts over their heads, and away the five sped, while their grandma sat with one hand in her knitting-bag ready to draw out the ball of wool when she was satisfied they were safely in.

The firm compact little girls were not half so brave as the tender, delicate-looking little boys.  Pip and Rags, shivering, crouching down, slapping the water, never hesitated.  But Isabel, who could swim twelve strokes, and Kezia, who could nearly swim eight, only followed on the strict understanding they were not to be splashed.  As for Lottie, she didn’t follow at all.  She liked to be left to go in her own way, please.  And that way was to sit down at the edge of the water, her legs straight, her knees pressed together, and to make vague motions with her arms as if she expected to be wafted out to sea.  But when a bigger wave than usual, an old whiskery one, came lolloping along in her direction, she scrambled to her feet with a face of horror and flew up the beach again.

“Here, mother, keep those for me, will you?”

Two rings and a thin gold chain were dropped into Mrs Fairfield’s lap.

“Yes, dear.  But aren’t you going to bathe here?”

“No-o,” Beryl drawled.  She sounded vague.  “I’m undressing farther along.  I’m going to bathe with Mrs. Harry Kember.”

“Very well.”  But Mrs. Fairfield’s lips set.  She disapproved of Mrs Harry Kember.  Beryl knew it.

Poor old mother, she smiled, as she skimmed over the stones.  Poor old mother!  Old!  Oh, what joy, what bliss it was to be young…

“You look very pleased,” said Mrs. Harry Kember.  She sat hunched up on the stones, her arms round her knees, smoking.

“It’s such a lovely day,” said Beryl, smiling down at her.

“Oh my dear!” Mrs. Harry Kember’s voice sounded as though she knew better than that.  But then her voice always sounded as though she knew something better about you than you did yourself.  She was a long, strange-looking woman with narrow hands and feet.  Her face, too, was long and narrow and exhausted-looking; even her fair curled fringe looked burnt out and withered.  She was the only woman at the Bay who smoked, and she smoked incessantly, keeping the cigarette between her lips while she talked, and only taking it out when the ash was so long you could not understand why it did not fall.  When she was not playing bridge—­she played bridge every day of her life—­she spent her time lying in the full glare of the sun.  She could stand any amount of it; she never had enough.  All the same, it did not seem to warm her.  Parched, withered, cold, she lay stretched on the stones like a piece of tossed-up driftwood.  The women at the Bay thought she was very, very fast.  Her lack of vanity, her slang, the way she treated men as though she was one of them, and the fact that she didn’t care twopence about her house and called the servant Gladys “Glad-eyes,” was disgraceful.  Standing on the veranda steps Mrs. Kember would call in her indifferent, tired voice, “I say, Glad-eyes, you might heave me a handkerchief if I’ve got one, will you?” And Glad-eyes, a red bow in her hair instead of a cap, and white shoes, came running with an impudent smile.  It was an absolute scandal!  True, she had no children, and her husband…Here the voices were always raised; they became fervent.  How can he have married her?  How can he, how can he?  It must have been money, of course, but even then!

Mrs. Kember’s husband was at least ten years younger than she was, and so incredibly handsome that he looked like a mask or a most perfect illustration in an American novel rather than a man.  Black hair, dark blue eyes, red lips, a slow sleepy smile, a fine tennis player, a perfect dancer, and with it all a mystery.  Harry Kember was like a man walking in his sleep.  Men couldn’t stand him, they couldn’t get a word out of the chap; he ignored his wife just as she ignored him.  How did he live?  Of course there were stories, but such stories!  They simply couldn’t be told.  The women he’d been seen with, the places he’d been seen in…but nothing was ever certain, nothing definite.  Some of the women at the Bay privately thought he’d commit a murder one day.  Yes, even while they talked to Mrs. Kember and took in the awful concoction she was wearing, they saw her, stretched as she lay on the beach; but cold, bloody, and still with a cigarette stuck in the corner of her mouth.

Mrs. Kember rose, yawned, unsnapped her belt buckle, and tugged at the tape of her blouse.  And Beryl stepped out of her skirt and shed her jersey, and stood up in her short white petticoat, and her camisole with ribbon bows on the shoulders.

“Mercy on us,” said Mrs. Harry Kember, “what a little beauty you are!”

“Don’t!” said Beryl softly; but, drawing off one stocking and then the other, she felt a little beauty.

“My dear—­why not?” said Mrs. Harry Kember, stamping on her own petticoat.  Really—­her underclothes!  A pair of blue cotton knickers and a linen bodice that reminded one somehow of a pillow-case…”And you don’t wear stays, do you?” She touched Beryl’s waist, and Beryl sprang away with a small affected cry.  Then “Never!” she said firmly.

“Lucky little creature,” sighed Mrs. Kember, unfastening her own.

Beryl turned her back and began the complicated movements of some one who is trying to take off her clothes and to pull on her bathing-dress all at one and the same time.

“Oh, my dear—­don’t mind me,” said Mrs. Harry Kember.  “Why be shy?  I shan’t eat you.  I shan’t be shocked like those other ninnies.”  And she gave her strange neighing laugh and grimaced at the other women.

But Beryl was shy.  She never undressed in front of anybody.  Was that silly?  Mrs. Harry Kember made her feel it was silly, even something to be ashamed of.  Why be shy indeed!  She glanced quickly at her friend standing so boldly in her torn chemise and lighting a fresh cigarette; and a quick, bold, evil feeling started up in her breast.  Laughing recklessly, she drew on the limp, sandy-feeling bathing-dress that was not quite dry and fastened the twisted buttons.

“That’s better,” said Mrs. Harry Kember.  They began to go down the beach together.  “Really, it’s a sin for you to wear clothes, my dear.  Somebody’s got to tell you some day.”

The water was quite warm.  It was that marvellous transparent blue, flecked with silver, but the sand at the bottom looked gold; when you kicked with your toes there rose a little puff of gold-dust.  Now the waves just reached her breast.  Beryl stood, her arms outstretched, gazing out, and as each wave came she gave the slightest little jump, so that it seemed it was the wave which lifted her so gently.

“I believe in pretty girls having a good time,” said Mrs. Harry Kember.  “Why not?  Don’t you make a mistake, my dear.  Enjoy yourself.”  And suddenly she turned turtle, disappeared, and swam away quickly, quickly, like a rat.  Then she flicked round and began swimming back.  She was going to say something else.  Beryl felt that she was being poisoned by this cold woman, but she longed to hear.  But oh, how strange, how horrible!  As Mrs. Harry Kember came up close she looked, in her black waterproof bathing-cap, with her sleepy face lifted above the water, just her chin touching, like a horrible caricature of her husband.