Flowers on the Grass (26 page)

“It’s not your idea of heaven, obviously,” Dickie said huffily.

“Never mind. Everyone’s heaven is different. That’s what the place is—the favourite idea in each person’s mind. A kid I knew once said to me—nice boy; I was nearly his stepfather— he said: ‘I think heaven is a big kind of stableyard with everyone in loose boxes all round, doing just what they like.’ You ought to get out of your box, Dickie. You’re anticipating. There’s plenty of time for heaven when you’re dead.”

“Who knows? There’s the other place,” said Dickie, seeing it as something like a coloured documentary film of a steel foundry.

“Not for you,” Brett said. “Hell’s only an idea in the mind, too. You make it yourself. There’s none in yours.”

“Oh, rot,” said Dickie, embarrassed’. “I’m no ruddy saint.”

“I never said you were. The saints had plenty of hell in their minds. They wouldn’t have been saints otherwise, because it would all have been too easy.”

Dickie was not feeling so happy now. He took another gulp of whiskey, but his swallow rejected it, like peppery soup. It was bitter in his mouth and he could taste the celluloid mug now that the first sting of the spirit had worn off. “What do you want me to do?” he asked flatly.

“Lord,” said Brett. “I don’t want you to
do
anything. I’m only talking, not giving advice. I never do that. Everyone’s got to run their lives as they want. No good ever came of meddling. People ought to leave each other alone. You want to watch out who you marry, Dickie. They don’t grow on every bush—wives who’ll leave you alone.”

“Oh, I shan’t marry. I could never cope with living up to what girls expect of you.”

“There you are! That’s what I meant. They’re always trying to change you, to trap you within the limits of their
minds, just as this Belsen has trapped you and narrowed your horizons. God, it’s worse than working in films.”

“Oh
no
!” cried Dickie, horrified at the comparison. “Because everyone in films is half out of his mind with worry or jealousy. Everyone here is happy and friendly. It’s the Gaydays atmosphere.”

“Don’t be wet.”

“But it is!” Dickie sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bunk.

“I daresay, but one doesn’t say such things.”

“You do here.” Dickie put his mug on the shelf. He wished he had not had the whiskey. He had a taste in the mouth and he felt bleak and cold. “I think I’ll go to bed.” He dropped to the floor, stumbled, and turned to look at Brett stretched contentedly on the bed with his mug on his chest and a pipe in his mouth.

“Good night, dream boy,” Brett said.

“You’re not allowed to smoke in the cabins,” said Dickie and thumped the notice on the wall. The woman next door banged again and shouted something. Brett laughed, and Dickie went out.

The cold starry air made him feel better. The wind had dropped, the main lights were out, and only here and there a cabin window laid a panel of yellow across the concrete path. The camp was sleeping and quiet, black and white under the moon. Dickie loved to walk round like this when no one else was about. It made him feel like a night nurse, glad with the responsibility of being the only one awake. He warmed with tenderness towards the people behind the cabin walls, tired out after a day that he had helped to make happy. A woman in an overcoat and metal curlers stole from under a porch and made for the doors marked Girls and Boys, and Dickie drew back into the shadow between two cabins until she had passed. Farther on, the watchman going round in gym shoes walked with him for a block, talking of the night, but after that he walked alone.

He went right round the camp that was dearer to him than home, trying to reassure himself with the familiar things: all the places of pleasure, purposeless in the night, waiting for life to flow back into them and the pleasure to go on.

The tennis courts with each net neatly furled—Pete was strict with the groundsmen about these things. The playing
field, full on the edge of the sea; the putting course, smooth as baize, the concrete of the roller-skating rink white as ice. The slides and ladders in the children’s playground threw skeleton shadows on the pale grass, and in the swimming pool the moon lay on the water like a mirrored face. He sat down on the cold parapet and trailed his fingers in the water. It was warmer now than when he had bowled down to it between the gaping faces, as he would do next week and the week after and the week after that, right through the days of warm water until the autumn chill again.

Unreal? All this an escape dream? If so, what was there real for him?

“…is half-past seven and it’s Easter Sunday. Good morning, campers, and a very happy Easter to you! The sun is shining, so don’t delay, get up and enjoy this lovely fine day!” Dimly through sleep came Ada’s voice, breaking the day through the loudspeakers.

Fully awake, Dickie was immediately conscious that something was wrong. Why didn’t he feel the happiness that always flowed into him as Ada’s voice brought him the promise of another day? Then he remembered. Not real.

He paused while he was shaving to stare at himself in the glass and wonder if it was the face of a fool. He thought of the day before him and wondered whether the things to which he had looked forward yesterday were worthwhile today. If Brett was right and the whole job was not worthwhile after all, what was there to be proud of in having got it and kept it for three years? It was all a second-rater like himself was fit for.

Usually, while the Catholics were in church, he waited outside in the station wagon. Today he sneaked in behind them and slid into a back pew, not following the service, but standing and kneeling and sitting when everyone else did; not knowing how to pray, but putting two shillings in the plate and hoping that miraculously the little bell would tinkle away his troubled thoughts.

He went out before the end in case one of the Catholics should see him there and track him down to convert him, although he had nothing to be converted from, for he had no religion beyond knowing that God existed. His mother had taught him: “Your religion is in the life you lead,”
and “I would rather say my prayers in an open field,” which saved her the trouble of going to church or saying prayers at all, since there were no fields at Hammersmith except Brook Green, and you would probably be arrested if you knelt down there.

Breakfast had started when they returned, and when he went into the roar and clatter of the dining-room and saw the women in their bright dresses and the men with their shirts open-necked, the collar thrown over the jacket, sure enough, he was happy again. Dickie wished he had put five shillings into the plate instead of two.

The people who greeted him as he passed among the tables were real enough. They were eating bacon and eggs and they were happy. Everything was all right, as it had always been. He wished that it was his turn to announce, so that he could hear the affectionate roar of “Hey, hey, Dickie!” and be completely reassured.

Kenny, in the middle of the room, waited for the cry of “Hiya, Kenny!” to subside, and then with the slight American accent that he affected over the microphone read out the list of birthdays and wedding anniversaries and made the people stand up, chewing, to be cheered red in the face and have their hands shaken by everyone within reach. Most popular of all was the announcement: “And now, campers, I want you to meet a very lovely little lady and a handsome young man, who are, yes, a little bird told me they are—wait for it—on their honeymoon!”

It seemed that the ceiling and floor must fly apart at the shriek of delighted voices and the stamping of feet. “Stand up, Mr. and Mrs. Davies—Peggy and Stan to you, folks. Stand up and let’s give you a big hullo!”

They had to obey, looking anywhere but at each other, a shining boy with crimpy hair and a girl with the wrong colour lipstick, biting most of it off in her embarrassment. Kenny went along to kiss her, putting up his hands in pretence that the young man was going to attack him. Whistles and catcalls came from all over the room, and the children cheered as if they knew what it was all about. It was quite indecent really, yet somehow perfectly proper.

Dickie was enjoying it, until Brett, who was sitting at the next table, tipped back his chair to talk over his shoulder. “You see. Just what I said. Not true. That kind of thing can’t really
happen at breakfast. It’s all just a dream. Pinch yourself and everything will be all right.”

“Oh shut up,” said Dickie. “They love it. Can’t you see?”

“You make them love doing what’s unnatural. It’s genius, but is it right? It reminds me too much of youth rallies in the dictator states. Hitler would have been quite capable of holding a Jugend Verzammlung at breakfast-time.”

Dickie went about his morning’s duties uncertainly, with his grin assumed like a false moustache and dropped again when no one was looking, trying not to see everything he did through Brett’s eyes. He despised himself for being influenced by him, yet he could not help it. The man had shaken him. He wasn’t right, of course, but he had seen more of the world than Dickie. Could he be right, and was Dickie only daydreaming here, wasting his time on a thing that, in the phrase the camp had used last year, long after London had finished with it, couldn’t matter less?

He had signed his yearly contract. He must stay now for the full season, but if he could not shake off these misgivings how on earth could he get through the summer? And if he decided that it was not worth coming back next year,
what
could he do? It was unthinkable. He had nothing in the winter. If his summers were to be taken from him, too, there would be no purpose in his life at all. He could not remember whether anyone had ever thrown himself under a train at Earl’s Court. If one could make one’s mark on the world no other way, it would be something to make station history with the last act of one’s life.

Going into the Olde Taverne before lunch, he found Brett with a pink gin in his hand, although beer was the drink there, typically talking to the barman instead of fraternising with the tankard-holders. That was the trouble. If only he would take more part in the life of the camp, find out how people felt instead of just how they looked, he might think differently.

Dickie suddenly had an idea. He ran a hand through his fluffy hair and grinned his first spontaneous grin that day. “Hang on a minute,” he called to Brett. “I’ll be right back.”

When he ran back from Captain Gallagher’s office, the bounce was in his feet again. “Brett, old man,” he said, “I want you to do something for me.”

“Sure. Buy you a drink? One of these? It’s mostly water.”

“No thanks. I wouldn’t mind a ginger ale, but that’s not what I meant. Look, Brett. You’re an artist. I thought it would be fun if you judged the beauty competition this afternoon.”

“You thought wrong, chicken. Nothing would induce me.”

“You must. I’ve told the Old Man you would. He’s got it down on the list for announcing at lunch. He’s tickled to death.”

“Then he’s as silly as you are. I’m leaving by the two-ten. Going to York to do a bit of sight-seeing.”

“Who’s silly now?” cried Dickie with glee. “That’s the weekday train. The Sunday one’s not till four.”

Brett groaned. “Why did I never learn how to use a timetable? O.K. I’ll do it. Lord, you’re getting me as organised as the rest. Don’t tell me I’m getting the Gaydays spirit. I’d shoot myself. I’d better have another of these, Fred.” He gave his glass to the barman. “Cheerio,” he said gloomily when it came back. “Happy camping.”

The beauty contest was held in the theatre. It was as much a show for the campers as a serious competition. The important thing was to get as many girls as possible up on to the stage, no matter what they looked like, just so long as they were girls.

The Blue Boys ranged among the audience, pouncing on anyone presentable. Some were keen and had come all ready in swim suits under their dresses, like people who leave their music in the hall. Others were not so keen and had to be dragged, pushed or even carried in to the stage to make up the numbers. WTien there were still not enough girls giggling and eyeing each other at the side of the stage, the Blue Boys ranged again, hunting down any woman under forty who had the right number of arms and legs and features in more or les§ the right place.

Les Cowan stood at the microphone, keeping the patter going, enticing the girls with the prospect of a free week in London for the finals between all the winners at the end of the season. “There’s a smasher!” he would cry, pointing to a shrinking girl in the audience, and the Boys would descend on her like hounds on a carted stag. Dickie, eager to do his best on any occasion, made it a point of honour with himself to produce more girls than anyone else. He desperately wanted the show to be a success today, with Brett sitting in judgment
not only over the girls but, it seemed to Dickie, over the whole camp and even over Dickie himself.

When the other Boys had given up, Dickie was still arguing with a lint-haired girl with pale, startled eyes and a queer hunched figure, who sat gripping her chair, shaking her head, while the people all round urged her to go with Dickie.

“Now we’ve got the girls,” said Les, “all we need is the judge. So, campers, let me introduce you to the gentleman who has sportingly agreed to agitate—beg pardon—arbitrate between this lot of lovelies. Smashers, though, aren’t they, eh?” he appealed to the audience, who responded.

“Ladies and gentlemen, that celebrated artist, Mr.”—he glanced at a paper—“Mr. Daniel Brett, who has been up here making sketches of you lucky campers, so don’t be surprised if you find yourselves in the Academy.” Laughter, during which Brett, looking rather hunted, walked on to the stage with his hands in his pockets and sat down at the table trying to look as if he was not there.

“Half a mo’!” Dickie was still struggling with the linthaired girl.

“Go on, Lil,” her mother said. “They’re all waiting for you.”

“Yes, go on, Lily,” said her father. “They can’t eat you.”

“Go
on, Lil”
said her much prettier schoolgirl sister, who was too young to enter the contest, but knew she could have won it. “You are a drip.”