Leslie Hartley - The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley

‘Yes. Do you think I ought to take off my knickers, too? You see I only got wet as far as my ankles. I should have to take off my combinations.’

Hilda considered. ‘I don’t think you need this time.’

Eustace swivelled round and tested the water with his toe.

‘Ooo!’

‘Come on, be brave.’

‘Yes, but you must put your feet in too. It won’t be half the fun if you don’t. Besides, you said you would, Hilda.’ In his anxiety to share the experience with her he turned round again. ‘Please! You got much wetter than I did.’

‘I got warm running. Besides, it’s only salt water. Salt water doesn’t give you a cold.’

‘Oh, but my water was salt, too.’

‘You’re different,’ said Hilda. Then, seeing the look of acute disappointment on his face, she added, ‘Well, just to please you.’

Eustace wriggled delightedly, and, as far as he dared, bounced up and down on the bath edge.

‘Take off your shoes and stockings, then,’ It was delicious to give Hilda orders. Standing stork-like, first on one foot, then on the other, Hilda obeyed.

‘Now come and sit by me. It isn’t very safe, take care you don’t lose your balance.’

Soon they were sitting side by side, looking down into the water. The clouds of steam rising round them seemed to shut off the outside world. Eustace looked admiringly at Hilda’s long slim legs.

‘I didn’t fill the bath any fuller,’ he said, in a low voice, ‘because of the marks. It might be dangerous, you know.’

Hilda looked at the bluish chips in the enamel, which spattered the sides of the bath. Eustace’s superstitions about them, and his fears of submerging them, were well known to her.

‘They won’t let you do that at school,’ she said.

‘Oh, there won’t be any marks at school. A new system of plumbing and sanitarization was installed last year. The prospectus said so. That would mean new baths, of course. New baths don’t have marks. Your school may be the same, only the prospectus didn’t say so. I expect baths don’t matter so much for girls.’

‘Why not?’

‘They’re cleaner, anyway. Besides, they wash.’ Eustace thought of washing and having a bath as two quite different, almost unconnected things. ‘And I don’t suppose they’ll let us put our feet in mustard and water.’

‘Why not?’ repeated Hilda.

‘Oh, to harden us, you know. Boys have to be hard. If they did, it would be for a punishment, not fun like this. . . . Just put your toe in, Hilda.’

Hilda flicked the water with her toe, far enough to start a ripple, and then withdrew it.

‘It’s still a bit hot. Let’s wait a minute.’

‘Yes,’ said Eustace. ‘It would spoil everything if we turned on the cold water.’

They sat for a moment in silence. Eustace examined Hilda’s toes. They were really as pretty as fingers. His own were stunted and shapeless, meant to be decently covered.

‘Now, both together!’ he cried.

In went their feet. The concerted splash was magnificent, but the agony was almost unbearable.

‘Put your arm round me, Hilda!’

‘Then you put yours round me, Eustace!’

As they clung together their feet turned scarlet, and the red dye ran up far above the water-level almost to their knees. But they did not move, and slowly the pain began to turn into another feeling, a smart still, but wholly blissful.

‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ cried Eustace. ‘I could never have felt it without you!’

Hilda said nothing, and soon they were swishing their feet to and fro in the cooling water. The supreme moment of trial and triumph had gone by; other thoughts, not connected with their ordeal, began to slide into Eustace’s mind.

‘Were you in time to do it?’ he asked.

‘Do what?’

‘Well, what you were going to do when you left me on the sands.’

‘Oh, that,’ said Hilda indifferently. ‘Yes, I was just in time.’ She thought a moment, and added: ‘But don’t ask me what it was, because I shan’t ever tell you.’

Mid-August was a dull time in my garden—the drought had seen to that. Flowers there were, but even the hardiest were only half their normal size; the Japanese anemones looked like shillings, not half-crowns. Because the garden lay beside the river, and sometimes, in wet seasons, under it, people thought the subsoil must be moist, but it was not; the rain ran off the steep slope without sinking in, the river drained the ground without irrigating it.

But the river-banks had just been in full glory, two interminable winding borders on which grew willow-weed and loosestrife, the lilac clusters of hemp agrimony, deep yellow ragwort, lemon-yellow chick-weed, the peeping purple of the woody nightshade, the orange drops of the ranunculus, the youthful, tender teazle-cones of palest pink contrasting with their hard, brown, dried-up predecessors of the year before—and, a newcomer to the district but very much at home, the tall white balsam. Did the other flowers realize their danger from this rampant stranger with its innocent baby-face? Did they foresee the day when it, and only it, would occupy their standing room, making a close-set jungle through which a man could hardly force his way—while the plants, if it was their shooting season, popped off their pods at him? Nor would the invasion stop at the river-bank; it would follow up its conquest through the meadows. And how would the fishermen fare, who even now had to hack out from the massed vegetation steps and nests for themselves on competition days? Only the water-lilies would be safe, and the armies of reeds and rushes—the sword-shaped ones of yellow-green, the round pike-shafts of bluish-green, tufted with pennons—for they would have the water to protect them.

On the garden and river-bank alike autumn had already laid its spoiling finger, bringing languor and disarray to the luxuriance of summer, making it flop and sprawl. To this the river itself bore witness, for on its grey-green surface floated the earliest victims of the year’s decline, yellow willow leaves tip-tilted like gondolas, that twirled and sported in the breeze, until the greedy water sucked them under.

But the flowers grew farther upstream. On my stretch of the river there were none; trees overhung it on both sides, on mine a copper beech, a mountain ash, a square-cut bay-tree, a silver birch, a box elder, and in the corner by the boathouse, threatening its foundations, a dome-capped sycamore. A low stone wall divided the river from the garden, which was narrow for its length and sloping steeply to the lawn; and from the outward-curving terrace in front of the house you could see the river, a mirror broken here and there by tree-trunks, and darkened by the reflections of the trees on the farther bank; or maybe by the image of a cow, suspended in mid-water upside-down, the shadowy feet seeming almost to touch the real feet. Sometimes these reflections were clearer than the things reflected, so little current was there in the summer, or breeze to ruffle them. But faithful likenesses though they were, they had no colour, except a darker shade of olive-green. The river imposed its own colour on everything it looked at, even the sky.

‘Shall I bathe?’ I thought. Flanking the boathouse was a flight of steps, ending in a large square flagstone, only a few inches above the water level. Ideal for a dive! And the water was deep almost at once, twenty feet deep, some said; I hadn’t plumbed it. It did invite me. I laid aside my pen, for I was writing in the open air, a thing I seldom do—the open air has so many distractions, so many claims on one’s attention: the river itself, for instance! But no, it was too late to bathe: the August sun hung over Follet Down, and my circulation wasn’t what it used to be. Tomorrow at midday, perhaps . . .