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

too; but he had sneaked out and left me. In our code that was mean.
    “Mauricette says you were drunk,” said Hester.
    “So that was what was the matter with you,” said Willmouse.
    “She says you shouldn’t be with Paul.” Hester was troubled.
    “He is a horrid boy,” said Vicky. “He gave me a bit of frog to eat and said it was chicken.”
    “Did you eat it?”
    “You can eat them,” said Vicky, as if that settled it.
    Neither of the Littles liked Paul. Hester, of course, took a more lenient view. “But you were not there,” I said. “You don’t know how awful he was,” I said.
    “More awful than you and Joss?”
    “Yes,” and then, thinking of what Paul had been through, the camps and the Hôtel-Dieu, the half-negro sister, I had to say, “I don’t know.”
    I did not want to see all these things in Paul, but since coming to Les Oeillets I seemed to see a long way into people, even when I did not wish it. “You think of no one but
yourselves,” Mother had said on that long-ago day on the beach, and how much more comfortable that had been. I seemed to see into everyone and, “There isn’t anybody good,” I
said in misery.
    “Yes, there is,” said Hester; “Monsieur Joubert.”
    Perhaps even he was not completely good but he was . . . kept good, I thought; we could see him now, with Joss faithfully behind him, both of them busy. “I wish I had painting or dressage
or something,” I said, and asked, “How can you be good if you are just lying about?”
    “Mother says not everyone can have things.”
    “Then they can’t be good,” I said firmly.
    Hester was looking at the river, at the water eddying down. There was a long silence, then, “Cecil, is Eliot good?” she asked.
    The question seemed to fall with a plop into the peaceful water.
    “We love him,” I said uncertainly. Can one love someone who is not good? That was as much a reversal of our ideas as that the Black Virgin was beautiful.
    Is Eliot good? It was a question I would rather not have answered and I was glad when the water-whirls took it away.

 
    CHAPTER 12
    I T WAS the third week of August, and the same high summer weather; even in the cove it was hot; hardly a breeze disturbed the willows so that they hung
dustily green, not showing their silver; the grass was dusty and untidy, filled with the litter left by Sunday walkers and picnickers; the bulrushes were untidy too; they were ripe and powdering,
and if we accidentally brushed a spear-rod a stain of brown was left on our skin and clothes. In the orchard the greengages were almost over and at dinner small white grapes appeared on the table.
“Are they champagne grapes?” we asked—we had become most conscious of champagne—but Mauricette shook her head. “These are from the Midi. Ours are not ripe till the end
of September,” and she said, “But you will be here for the vintage, of course.”
    We did not dispute that. It seemed to us we were here for ever. Mother was better but still not out of bed, not even sitting up. Next month the holidays would be over, but there were still three
and a half weeks to go and at Les Oeillets each day was like a year. Twenty-three days; twenty-three years. Who bothers what will happen in twenty-three years?
    I remember thinking that as I was lying on my stomach in the sun at the edge of the cove, looking down into the water where hundreds of tiny fish were nibbling at nothing that I could see. If I
threw in a crumb they would all dart round it, taking bites, as something sensational would divert us. I supposed a fish’s only sensation was food . . . food and death, I thought, watching a
big fish hovering over them. Sometimes someone from the town or the hotel would bring a fine net and scoop these little fish up, a hundred or so of them, to fry crisp and season with salt and
lemon, and eat with slices of brown bread and butter. I had eaten dozens; now I, part of their fate, hung over them and they did not even see