Saplings

  Persephone Book No 16

  Published by Persephone Books Ltd 2000

  First published in 1945 by Collins

  © The Estate of Noel Streatfeild 1945

  Afterword © Dr Jeremy Holmes 2000

  Reprinted 2002, 2005, 2008 and 2011

  Endpapers taken from ‘Aircraft’, a screen printed linen and rayon fabric by Marion Dorn for the Old Bleach Linen Company 1938, reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum

  eBook-Production: GGP Media GmbH, Pößneck

  ISBN 978-1-906462-16-1

  Persephone Books Ltd

  59 Lamb’s Conduit Street

  London WC1N 3NB

  020 7242 9292

  www.persephonebooks.co.uk

  SAPLINGS

  by

  NOEL STREATFEILD

  with a new afterword by

  DR JEREMY HOLMES

  PERSEPHONE BOOKS

  LONDON

  FOR MY MOTHER

  I

  As the outgoing tide uncovered the little stretch of sand amongst the pebbles, the children took possession of it, marking it as their own with their spades, pails, shrimping nets and their mother’s camp stool.

  It was early and the beach was almost deserted. There were a few bathers of the sort that swim for exercise, but the majority of the bathing machines and tents were empty. The sea was grey-blue, spangled with gold dancing specks. Far out the raft bobbed.

  The cool air, the fresh smell of the sea, the knowledge that it was another lovely day and there were no lessons and few restrictions, filled the children with that sort of happiness that starts in the solar plexus and rises to the throat, and then, before it can reach the top of the head, has to be given an outlet; anything will do, violent action, shouting or just silliness.

  Laurel, at eleven, was conscious of being happy. She was almost afraid of it. ‘I’ll never be as happy again.’ ‘When I’m quite old, as old as thirty, I’ll come back to this bit of Eastbourne. I’ll come on the same day in June and remember me now.’ Then, because of the tight, bursting feeling of pleasure, she turned two cartwheels and attempted to stand on her hands.

  Tony’s happiness was mixed with thoughts of his father. It had been simply gorgeous having this holiday. It was marvellous Nick Pulton having infantile paralysis and parents who flapped, having their boys sent home. He had known for certain he would be sent home, knowing Mum, it was a certainty she’d flap. Queer, this month in Eastbourne. One day they were in London, and the next they were here. It had been marvellous, for even after he was out of quarantine, just hanging around waiting for Laurel and Kim to finish lessons hadn’t been much catch. Besides, what a holiday! Like a birthday every day; there was nothing they asked Miss Glover for they didn’t have, and it was like old Foxglove to keep saying ‘yes’. But now Dad had come, that put the cap on it. He’d show Dad how fast he could reach the raft. It was just like Dad to want, on his very first day, to do something sensible like prawning at Birling Gap. Whoopee! What a day it was going to be! Tony seized Kim round the neck and threw him on the sand and rolled on top of him.

  Kim was singing to a tune of his own, ‘The sea, the sea, the lovely sea.’ His happiness was given a sharp edge by fright. The day was going to be scrumptious. Dad and Mum were here, and there was going to be a picnic and prawning; but first there’d be the bathe and Dad would make him swim to the raft. He had asked the Foxglove every day to let him and he had pretended to be fed up when he wasn’t allowed to, but actually he had only asked because he knew she’d say ‘no’. It had been all right at breakfast, because when he had told Dad he wanted to swim to the raft Mum had made a face. He liked that, it was nice when everybody looked at you. Still, could he swim to the raft? He could swim but it was an awful long way, simply miles. What a super day! What would it be like to drown? Then Tony knocked him down and happiness swamped him.

  Tuesday sat down and filled her bucket with sand. She hummed, a contented tuneless sound. She had asked Nan every day when Dad and Mum would come, and Nan had said ‘soon, dear’. Tuesday did not know that for a fortnight she had felt insecure because she was in one place and her father and mother in another, nor why today she was happy. Because she was only four and people underrated her intelligence and spoke in front of her, she was the one of the children who was aware that Nan and Miss Glover and the servants at home were afraid of something. Because they were afraid Tuesday was afraid. She wanted everybody where she could see them. If Laurel or Tony or Kim were out of sight she was in a ferment. ‘Where’s Laurel, Nan?’ ‘Where’s Kim?’ At night she woke up and listened to Nan’s snores and sometimes she cried. Nan said it was the change of air and she needed one of her powders. Tuesday had swallowed a whole box of her powders during the fortnight she had been at Eastbourne. Today she hummed; a tiny stretch of sand shared with the others, Mum and Dad on the parade, Miss Glover in the hotel sewing, and soon Nan would come with her bag bulging with the bottles of milk and the buns. In ecstasy Tuesday seized her spade and smashed the sand pie she had just turned out of her pail.

  Tony and Kim, exhausted, stopped punching each other and lay side by side panting. Tony rolled on to his elbows and looked at the raft.

  ‘It isn’t as far when you’re in the sea, and I’ll be there as well as Dad.’

  Kim raised his voice.

  ‘Nobody won’t have to help me. I could swim twice as far as that.’

  Laurel as well as Tony was listening but neither answered. To be afraid of things was natural and so was pretending you were not. They had tried curing fright that way themselves.

  Laurel threw herself on to her hands. She spoke while she was upside down.

  ‘I do hope Mum won’t want us to look all posh at lunch.’

  Tony tried to catch a sandfly as it popped out of the sand.

  ‘I should think she would. Everybody will speak to her in the lounge and we’ll have to keep saying how d’you do.’

  Tuesday glanced up from her sand pie.

  ‘And look up and smile when we’re spoke to.’

  ‘Which we all do, goodness knows,’ Laurel pointed out.

  ‘If we didn’t we jolly well ought to,’ said Kim. ‘I was first told that when I was so little I was in a pram.’

  Laurel sat down to rest. She hugged her knees and pictured them round the hotel table. She was conscious people stared. It was because they were so fair and Kim like a picture. Just being looked at did not matter in itself, because if they were all being ordinary it did not last long. It was when Kim showed off it was so awful, because then it was more than staring. It was when Mum was there, she thought Kim showing off funny. Grown-up people being so stupid about Kim was puzzling. Even Dad really didn’t understand. He snubbed him and then he showed off more. It came of looking like he did and people pawing him at first, and then not exactly pushing him away but not liking him as much. He was all right really, she and Tony hardly had to sit on him at all.

  As if Kim felt her mind was on him he turned to her.

  ‘I think Mum will want us all blue. You and Tuesday in those blue frocks and Tony and me in our blue shirts.’

  Tony made a grab at another sandfly.

  ‘If you suggest that, and I’ll find out if you do, you’ll prawn in Coventry this afternoon.’

  Kim made a proud face.

  ‘I wouldn’t care, I’d talk to Mum and Dad.’

  Tony’s voice was relentless.

  ‘Mum won’t be prawning, she’ll be sitting on the beach and that means nearly all the time Dad’ll have to sit with her, so if you do talk to them you’ll not be able to prawn.’

  For Kim the beauty of the morning was gone, he want
ed to hurt everybody. The others were being beastly as usual.

  Laurel, watching him, leant forward and patted his knee.

  ‘But nothing awful has happened yet, Kim. All you have to do is just not to talk about clothes to Mum.’ The world had seemed so black that Kim could not believe that the way back to gaiety was as easy as Laurel made out. She grasped just what he was thinking. She spoke slowly. ‘That’s absolutely all you’ve got to do. Not talk about clothes to Mum.’

  Tuesday, raising her head from her bucket, saw Nannie coming down the beach. She scrambled to her feet and went to meet her.

  Nannie was what she called ‘on the spread’. The grey coat and skirt which she wore out of doors no matter how hot the day, had been let out in every seam, as lighter and rather shiny strips showed, but further space would be needed and a new coat and skirt was planned. Nannie’s face was reminiscent of a grazing cow’s. It had a placidity which seemed unshakable, and eyes large, grave, and unclouded by thought.

  ‘How’s Nan’s pet?’ she said to Tuesday, and threw her eye over the other three. Nannie had a lot in common with sea captains. She stood, as it were, on a bridge and looked down and around, and was able at once to detect if all was not normal. Now, as she plodded down a bank of shingle in her flat, wide black shoes, one hand holding a leather bag of milk and buns, and the other her own bag with her needlework, she was registering rather than thinking. ‘Something’s upset Kim but it’s passing off. I’ll send them up to put on their bathing things; never does children any good to get sitting about.’

  The children had changed into their bathing things when Alex and Lena found them.

  ‘I say, Dad, you’ve been simply ages,’ Tony complained. ‘You can almost walk to the raft.’

  Laurel looked anxiously at her mother.

  ‘There isn’t any shade but it isn’t really hot, we put your stool here because it’s nice on the sand.’

  The sight of his father made Kim’s inside feel as if it were turning over. He strutted up and down shouting.

  ‘Yes, we can almost walk to the raft, and I wanted to swim miles and miles.’

  Tuesday got to her feet but she said nothing. This was perfection, everybody together.

  Alex grinned at his children.

  ‘Do you know what your mother and I thought when we looked down on you from the parade? That you could easily be mistaken for four shrimps; you’re almost exactly the same colour as the sand.’ He glanced at the raft, which now looked like a jam pot surrounded by wasps. ‘Not much of a swim for you, Tony, old man, but about right for Kim.’

  Kim strutted and wagged his head from side to side.

  ‘I can swim miles and miles.’

  ‘Well, you’re not going to, darling,’ said his mother. ‘You’re only a little boy of seven.’

  Kim stopped strutting and came hopefully to his mother. Laurel knew what would happen. Kim would manage to look tired and Mum would say he was not to bathe, and Dad would make him just the same. Then Mum would mind Dad doing something she did not like, and Dad would have to be extra nice to her all day and perhaps not be able to prawn at all. Her thoughts ran round like mice behind wainscoting, but she could not think of the sensible thing to say. It was Nannie who, without apparently thinking at all, found exactly the phrase needed.

  ‘The children ought to bathe now, sir.’ She turned to Lena. ‘I reckoned to have them out of the sea by eleven-thirty ’m, otherwise the buns and milk will sit in the way of their lunch, seeing we’re having it early.’

  Tony went to the bathing tent while his father changed. He ran his fingers up and down one of the supporting poles.

  ‘I thought, as Kim’s swimming to the raft the first time, I’d swim one side of him.’

  ‘He can swim all right. What he needs is confidence, if we make a song and dance about it he’ll feel he’s managed something that can’t be done every day.’

  Tony fingered the supporting pole as if in it he could find the way to say what was on his mind.

  ‘I think he’s in a bit of a funk really.’

  ‘Of course he is. So were you and so was I the first time. It’s just old Kim’s got a comic way of showing it. You and I are more alike; you couldn’t get your first swim over quick enough when you knew you’d got to do it, neither could I when I started. Old Kim would put it off if he could.’

  Tony stopped fingering the supporting pole. How grand Dad was! He knew lots of things you never thought he knew, and he talked sense, as if you weren’t a child.

  ‘I say, Dad, one day while you’re here could we have a boat and fish?’

  ‘Shouldn’t wonder, but I may have to go up to London a good many days.’

  ‘Oh, I say, Dad, this is your holiday, and you absolutely promised...’

  Alex took Tony by the shoulders and turned him to face him.

  ‘As a matter of fact I’m going to have a word with you later today, but in the meantime you’re to keep that I may have to go up and down under your hat.’

  ‘But, Dad...’

  ‘Can’t help myself. I’ve got some new gadgets to make. Means all sorts of shifting about.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘It’s all a bit hush.’

  Tony stared up at his father feeling excited and important.

  ‘In case we fight Germany?’

  ‘That’s it. But mind you, not a word about war or my going to London in front of your mother. Come on now, and if you should be swimming to the raft the same time as myself and Kim I shan’t notice.’

  All hope was dead. Kim watched Laurel shoot through the water and in panic saw her reach the raft, looking, in his eyes, as she poised to dive, no bigger than a doll.

  ‘Come on, old man,’ said Alex taking his hand. ‘We can walk almost half-way.’

  Kim hesitated. His mother, who would have helped, was out of earshot of pleading, but she was watching. He waited until he was well above his knees in water, then he snatched his hand from his father’s and pretended to slip and hurt himself. He uttered loud cries:

  ‘Oh, Dad! Oh, my foot! My foot!’

  Lena got off her camp stool.

  ‘Alex, bring him to me.’

  Nannie did not raise her head from her sewing. She judged by the tone of Kim’s voice.

  ‘It’s all right ’m. Such play acting!’

  Tony, who had been hovering on the rocks, splashed towards Kim. Alex took charge. He picked Kim up and pushed him into deep water, then let him go. Spluttering, certain he was about to drown, Kim swam.

  They sat on the raft.

  ‘Pretty good,’ said Laurel. ‘He swims all right, doesn’t he, Dad?’

  Alex nodded. He disliked that trait in Kim which had made him pretend to slip. He and the children had for the moment the raft to themselves; he did not want to moralise but he had to say something.

  ‘You’ve got quite good style, Kim, but it was a pity you made an ass of yourself at the start. No harm in feeling in a bit of a funk, but pretending you’ve hurt yourself to hide you’re funky is a fool of a way to go on.’

  Because Kim was bound to argue Tony and Laurel both started to speak. Tony got his words out first.

  ‘But you oughtn’t to say you’re in a funk, ought you?’

  ‘Miss Glover says that it’s bad manners to talk about how you feel,’ Laurel added. It was not accurate reporting of Miss Glover’s words, but it would do to stave off a scene with Kim.

  Alex weighed his words, trying not to sound ponderous.

  ‘Not much point in making a song and dance about anything, but if you feel you’ve got to say something it’s better to speak the truth. It takes a brave person to funk something and admit it, brave that is, of course, if they do it just the same, funk or not.’

  Laurel stood up.

  ‘Watch me, Dad, I’m going to do a back dive.’

  Tony slid gently into the water.

  ‘Come on, Kim, I’ll give you a start while I count five and then I’ll race you in.�€
™ Then, seeing hesitation on Kim’s face, he seized his legs and pulled him off the raft. ‘Come on, the tide’s almost full out. Soon the raft will be on the beach.’

  Alex kept his eye on Kim but stayed on the raft. The bit of sermonising he had just done reminded him of something when he had been about Tony’s age. He had nicked some money he was given for a school charity to pay a fine for a hole he had made in one of the school windows. Somehow the fact he had not passed the subscription on, came out, and rather than confess to the window he had written home that he had spent the money on sweets. It was the end of term and back home the true story had been gouged out of him. The resulting pi-jaw had been shared by all the family. It was on speaking the whole truth, and making a clean breast of things. His father had finished up by saying: ‘Apart from what’s right and what’s wrong, you’ll be surprised to find what a difference a complete confession makes. It’s like having had a tremendous walk home in wet clothes, and then letting the whole lot drop off.’ Perhaps because of the metaphor chosen, a discomfort and a relief with which they were all familiar, he had never forgotten that lecture. He mentally shook his head at himself. He had not made much of a shot at what he had wanted to say. The kids clearly had hardly listened. He couldn’t blame them. What ill-chosen words! Not even sense, if you worked them out. Disgusted with himself he dived off the far side of the raft and, for exercise, swam out seawards.

  Laurel, back on the raft, attempted some more backward dives. Each month or two she tried to be first-class at something. She had discovered that if you were admittedly good at something, it seemed to allow you to be just ordinary about everything else. ‘Ginnie dances beautifully.’ ‘Alison is a wonderful skater.’ ‘Have you heard Pauline play her violin lately? She’s going to be first-class they say.’ ‘Betty has a wonderful style at tennis.’ Oh, just once to know all the mothers and nurses and governesses were saying as she passed: ‘That’s Laurel, she’s marvellous at . . .’ Being good at something was like walking in a fog, it made you a shadow, nobody noticed your looks or your character or what you wore. Being in a funk of things, what Dad was jawing at Kim about, was queer. Dad meant a funk properly, not the sort of things she funked, like that awful eternity, or Kim being quicker at answering at lessons than she was, or minding being the plainest. Those weren’t the sort of things Dad meant, but they were the things that made you go all damp and made your teeth chatter, and if that wasn’t funk, what was?