The Feast by Margaret Kennedy Read Free Book Online Page A

Pendizack I daresay she’ll let you join.’
    Poor Hebe, sitting alone in the carriage, too proud to leave her hard-won seat, a target for adult criticism, was tantalized by all this fraternization going on in the corridor. She felt that everybody was extremely disloyal. And she knew the bitterness experienced by all leaders. She had rushed in, she had been brave, she had got herself pinched, she had gained her point—only to find that her supporters had fled.
    She fished a small notebook and pencil out of her handbag . The notebook contained the rules of the Noble Covenant of Spartans. She had just decided to add a new one, although it could not become a law until the others had voted on it. After sucking her pencil for a while she wrote:
    R ule 13.—When a Spartan has done a daring thing for the benefit of all Spartans, even if he is not Leader that week, everyone else must back him up.
9. The Importance of Being Somebody
    Mrs. Thomas was washing up the supper dishes. Nancibel came downstairs wearing a white dress with a red belt, red sandals and a red snood. She was still saving up for a red bag.
    ‘You going out?’ said her mother, turning round.
    ‘Yes. I’m going a walk with Alice. But I’ll help you with those first. I’m in no hurry.’
    ‘Don’t splash your dress. It looks nice. But I wish you’d wear your nylons.’
    ‘Oh Mum! Nobody does, not in the summer. I’m saving them for dances. Give me a cloth. I’ll wipe.’
    ‘Your legs is all bruises.’
    ‘They show through nylons. It’s those coke scoops banging against my shins.’
    ‘I meant to tell you that old Sour Puss, that Miss Ellis, came in to-day for the honey. Stuck here talking till I thought she’d taken root. I don’t know how you stand her, really I don’t.’
    Nancibel laughed.
    ‘She’s been having kittens all day because Mrs. Siddal says she’s got to empty slops.’
    ‘Having kittens? Whatever d’you mean?’
    ‘Oh, you know … slang! What we used to say in the war. It’s R.A.F. slang really, means getting upset.’
    ‘Sounds common to me. I can’t understand half what you girls say these days. But this Miss Ellis? She strikes me as being a very nosey sort of person.’
    ‘Nosey as they come,’ agreed Nancibel. ‘here’s nothing she doesn’t know about the guests at Pendizack, believe me. She says that clergyman’s daughter that came this morning—you know, the one I told you about, supper … she says this girl sits in her room all the time grinding up a bit of broken glass with a nail file, and she’s got the powdered glass in a pill box; and Ellis makes out she means to murder somebody. You know … feed it to them.’
    ‘She would! She wanted to know every last thing about you. Wasn’t I worried about you? And how thankful she is she’s got no daughter because the girls don’t seem to care what they do these days. And we know what men are, she says. Only want one thing from us poor women. I felt like saying rubbish! There’s only one thing us poor women want from the men. But what’s she know about it, anyway? I bet there was never a queue outside her door.’
    ‘Oh, she knows more than you’d think,’ said Nancibel, hanging up the dish cloth. ‘She tells me the story of her life, sometimes, while she watches me do the work. It’s a different story every time, only for one thing. That everybody has given her a raw deal. That’s the same every time.’
    ‘You don’t mean to say she ever …’
    ‘She did? Or she says she did. And I was quite sorry for her the first time she told me because it seems the fellow ran off. But then it came out that he was her sister’s boy to start with, and she pinched him. And really, Mum, I don’t want to be spiteful, but I hate to think what her sister must be like if she’s less attractive than Miss Ellis. Well … you’ve seen Miss Ellis!’
    ‘I have. And she put me in mind of nothing so much as a toad. But that’s nothing,’ declared Mrs. Thomas.