Life and Death of Harriett Frean. Sinclair May

All afternoon she had been with the children, playing Oranges and lemons, A ring, a ring of roses, and Here we come gathering nuts in May, nuts in May, nuts in May: over and over again. And she had helped her mother to hand cake and buns at the infants’ table.

      The guest-children’s tea was served last of all, up on the lawn under the immense, brown brick, many windowed house. There wasn’t room for everybody at the table, so the girls sat down first and the boys waited for their turn. Some of them were pushing and snatching.

      She knew what she would have. She would begin with a bun, and go on through two sorts of jam to Madeira cake, and end with raspberries and cream. Or perhaps it would be safer to begin with raspberries and cream. She kept her face very still, so as not to look greedy, and tried not to stare at the Madeira cake lest people should see she was thinking of it. Mrs. Hancock had given her somebody else’s crumby plate. She thought: “I’m not greedy. I’m really and truly hungry.” She could draw herself in at the waist with a flat, exhausted feeling, like the two ends of a concertina coming together.

      She was doing this when she saw her mother standing on the other side of the table, looking at her and making signs.

      “If you’ve finished, Hatty, you’d better get up and let that little boy have something.”

      They were all turning round and looking at her. And there was the crumby plate before her. They were thinking: “That greedy little girl has gone on and on eating.” She got up suddenly, not speaking, and left the table, the Madeira cake and the raspberries and cream. She could feel her skin all hot and wet with shame.

      And now she was sitting up in the drawing-room at home. Her mother had brought her a piece of seed-cake and a cup of milk with the cream on it. Mamma’s soft eyes kissed her as they watched her eating her cake with short crumbly bites, like a little cat. Mamma’s eyes made her feel so good, so good.

      “Why didn’t you tell me you hadn’t finished?”

      “Finished? I hadn’t even begun.”

      “Oh-h, darling, why didn’t you tell me?”

      “Because I—I don’t know.”

      “Well, I’m glad my little girl didn’t snatch and push. It’s better to go without than to take from other people. That’s ugly.”

      Ugly. Being naughty was just that. Doing ugly things. Being good was being beautiful like Mamma. She wanted to be like her mother. Sitting up there and being good felt delicious. And the smooth cream with the milk running under it, thin and cold, was delicious too.

      Suddenly a thought came rushing at her. There was God and there was Jesus. But even God and Jesus were not more beautiful than Mamma. They couldn’t be.

      “You mustn’t say things like that, Hatty; you mustn’t, really. It might make something happen.”

      “Oh, no, it won’t. You don’t suppose they’re listening all the time.”

      Saying things like that made you feel good and at the same time naughty, which was more exciting than only being one or the other. But Mamma’s frightened face spoiled it. What did she think—what did she think God would do?

      Red campion—

      At the bottom of the orchard a door in the wall opened into Black’s Lane, below the three tall elms.

      She couldn’t believe she was really walking there by herself. It had come all of a sudden, the thought that she must do it, that she must go out into the lane; and when she found the door unlatched, something seemed to take hold of her and push her out. She was forbidden to go into Black’s Lane; she was not even allowed to walk there with Annie.

      She kept on saying to herself: “I’m in the lane. I’m in the lane. I’m disobeying Mamma.”

      Nothing could undo that. She had disobeyed by just standing outside the orchard door. Disobedience was such a big and awful thing that it was waste not to do something big and awful with it. So she went on, up and up, past the three tall elms. She was a big girl, wearing black silk aprons and learning French. Walking by herself. When she arched her back and stuck her stomach out she felt like a tall lady in a crinoline and shawl. She swung her hips and made her skirts fly out. That was her grown-up crinoline, swing-swinging as she went.

      At the turn the cow-parsley and rose campion began: on each side a long trail of white froth with the red tops of the campion pricking through. She made herself a nosegay.

      Past the second turn you came to the waste ground covered with old boots and rusted, crumpled tins. The little dirty brown house stood there behind the rickety blue palings; narrow, like the piece of a house that has been cut in two. It hid, stooping under the ivy bush on its roof. It was not like the houses people live in; there was something queer, some secret, frightening thing about it.

      The man came out and went to the gate and stood there. He was the frightening thing. When he saw her he stepped back and crouched behind the palings, ready to jump out.

      She turned slowly, as if she had thought of something. She mustn’t run. She must not run. If she ran he would come after her.

      Her mother was coming down the garden walk, tall and beautiful in her silver-grey gown with the bands of black velvet on the flounces and the sleeves; her wide, hooped skirts swung, brushing the flower borders.

      She ran up to her, crying, “Mamma, I went up the lane where you told me not to.”

      “No, Hatty, no; you didn’t.”

      You could see she wasn’t angry. She was frightened.

      “I did. I did.”

      Her mother took the bunch of flowers out of her hand and looked at it. “Yes,” she said, “that’s where the dark red campion grows.”

      She was holding the flowers up to her face. It was awful, for you could see her mouth thicken and redden over its edges and shake. She hid it behind the flowers. And somehow you knew it wasn’t your naughtiness that made her cry. There was something more.

      She was saying in a thick, soft voice, “It was wrong of you, my darling.”

      Suddenly she bent her tall straightness. “Rose campion,” she said, parting the stems with her long, thin fingers. “Look, Hatty, how beautiful they are. Run away and put the poor things in water.”

      She was so quiet, so quiet, and her quietness hurt far more than if she had been angry.

      She must have gone straight back into the house to Papa. Harriett knew, because he sent for her. He was quiet, too. . . . That was the little, hiding voice he told you secrets in. . . . She stood close up to him, between his knees, and his arm went loosely round her to keep her there while he looked in to her eyes. You could smell tobacco, and the queer, clean man’s smell that came up out of him from his collar. He wasn’t smiling; but somehow his eyes looked kinder than if they had smiled.

      “Why did you do it, Hatty?”

      “Because—I wanted to see what it would feel like.”

      “You mustn’t do it again. Do you hear, you mustn’t do it.”

      “Why?”

      “Why? Because it makes your mother unhappy. That’s enough why.”

      But there was something more. Mamma had been frightened. Something to do with the frightening man in the lane.

      “Why does it make her?”

      She knew; she knew; but she wanted to see what he would say.

      “I said that was enough. . . . Do you know what you’ve been guilty of?”

      “Disobedience.”

      “More than that. Breaking trust. Meanness. It was mean and dishonourable of you when you knew you wouldn’t be punished.”

      “Isn’t there to be a punishment?”