Backwater

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 halfhearted 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 boardinghouses face towels and blistered window frames.

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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 dinnertime, 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 faraway 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