The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden Read Free Book Online Page A

. before Eliot, I thought. Vicky went back to Monsieur Armand, Willmouse stayed in his cherry bank atelier, Hester and I rambled alone. Joss got up
in the mornings now as early as Monsieur Joubert; almost before it was light she was out on the bank—she too was painting two pictures—and she went early to bed. “There is no
light then. I might as well go to bed,” she said. The other people in the house hardly saw her at all.
    As Hester and I dawdled at the cove we would watch her. She had none of the trappings Monsieur Joubert had, not even a camp stool; she sat on an upturned wooden box and held her board on her
knee. She had not any proper canvas, only a piece of linen stretched on the board, but Monsieur Joubert showed her a way of washing it over with two or three coats of white—“not paint,
tempera,” said Joss—to make it smooth. He had given her a flat tin box filled with jars of tempera and, “One day, he will help me with oils,” she said. Worst of all she had
no umbrella and she had to sit out in the heat with only her old straw hat to shade her and that had been bent when it was packed so that the straw had split; I could not imagine Joss consenting
under any other circumstances to wear it. Every now and then she climbed down the bank and wetted her handkerchief to spread on the crown; even so, she was sickly pale at the end of the day.
    “Monsieur Joubert ought to send you in.”
    “He doesn’t notice me,” said Joss with pride. She knew how to please him and she only interrupted her work to join us when we went to pay our evening visit to Mother. We were
allowed to go and see Mother every day now and, “I’m painting,” Joss told her and Mother looked relieved.
    “And what are you doing, Cecil?”
    “Nothing.”
    “But you are looking after the Littles?”
    “Yes,” I said grudgingly. I had to. Joss was as good an elder sister as any, but, when she was painting, Vicky or Willmouse could have fallen into the Marne and she would not have
known.
    “Only they wouldn’t,” said Hester.
    “No, but Willmouse goes off every evening alone and he shouldn’t.”
    Every evening when he had finished his work Willmouse put his things away: his box of scraps, his sewing-box, Miss Dawn and Dolores, and their new confections; then he tidied himself, which was
only a form because he was always tidy—even his scarecrows managed to be neat; he would wash his face and hands, sleek down his hair with his private bottle of eau-de-Cologne and, like any
old gentleman, go for a little walk. A new barge, the Marie France 47, had anchored above the cove; he liked to walk up and look at that.
    “Why don’t you go when we go?”
    “I like to go by myself.”
    “You can’t always do what you like.”
    “I can,” said Willmouse.
    I let him. It was too hot, everything was too strained, to bother.
    Before Eliot. We were back to that time, yet we were not back. It was the same, and it was not the same. A curious tenseness was in the house. Eliot when he came from Paris looked bone tired and
haggard, and he was so curt with Mademoiselle Zizi that her eyes looked bigger than ever with perpetual tears. She was very silly. She kept searching his face, beseeching him with those big eyes
instead of leaving him alone; we scurried out of his way as soon as we saw that tiredness in his face.
    For three days he did not come at all. Mademoiselle Zizi went to the telephone four or five times. We heard her ask for the same Paris number, then wait, listening, while that far-off bell rang
and rang. There was never any answer. If the office telephone went she would leap out of her chair; then she would sink back again as she heard Madame Corbet’s, “Hôtel des
Oeillets. Oui, madame. Oui. Certainement.”
    Then there was Paul. I could bear his having tried to make Joss come to him, that was to be expected of Paul; if he had hit me that night, as I think he meant to with the bottle, I could have
expected that