Free The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark Page A

ashamed of her outburst, Collie had more loudly accused Jarvie of putting spiritual obstacles in her path "just when you know I'm growing in grace." Jarvie had then said something scornful about the Baptists as opposed to the true spirit of the Gospels. This religious row, with elaborations, had now lasted more than two weeks but the women were doing their best to conceal it. Collie now said to Jarvie, "Are you going to waste your coffee with the milk in it?" This was a moral rebuke, for milk was on the ration. Jarvie turned, smoothed, patted and pulled straight the gloves on her lap and breathed in and out. Jane wanted to tear off her clothes and run naked into the street, screaming. Collie looked with disapproval at Jane's bare fat knees.
        Greggie, who had very little patience with the two other elder members, had been winning her way with Felix, and had enquired what went on "up there, next door," meaning in the hotel, the top floor of which the American Intelligence was using, the lower floors being strangely empty and forgotten by the requisitioners.
        "Ah, you'd be surprised, ma'am," Felix said.
        Greggie said she must show the men round the garden before they set off for Richmond. The fact that Greggie did practically all the gardening detracted from its comfort for the rest of the girls. Only the youngest and happiest girls could feel justified in using it to sit about in, as it was so much Greggie's toiled-at garden. Only the youngest and happiest could walk on the grass with comfort; they were not greatly given to scruples and consideration for others, by virtue of their unblighted spirits.
        Nicholas had noticed a handsome bright-cheeked fair-haired girl standing, drinking down her coffee fairly quickly. She left the room with graceful speed when she had drunk her coffee.
        Jane said, "That's Joanna Childe who does elocution."
        Later, in the garden, while Greggie was conducting her tour, they heard Joanna's voice. Greggie was displaying her various particular items, rare plants reared from stolen cuttings, these being the only objects that Greggie would ever think of stealing. She boasted, like a true gardening woman, of her thefts and methods of acquiring snips of other people's rare plants. The sound of Joanna's afternoon pupil lilted down from her room.
        Nicholas said, "The voice is coming from up there, now. Last time, it came from the ground floor."
        "She uses her own room at week-ends when the recreation room is used a lot. We're very proud of Joanna."
        Joanna's voice followed her pupil's.
        Greggie said, "This hollow shouldn't be there. It's where the bomb dropped. It just missed the house."
        "Were you in the house at the time?" said Felix.
        "I was," said Greggie. "I was in bed. Next moment I was on the floor. All the windows were broken. And it's my suspicion there was a second bomb that didn't go off. I'm almost sure I saw it drop as I picked myself up off the floor. But the disposal squad found only the one bomb and removed it. Anyway, if there's a second it must have died a natural death by now. I'm talking about the year 1942."
        Felix said, with his curious irrelevancy, "My wife Gareth talks of coming over here with UNRRA. I wonder if she could put up at your club in transit for a week or two? I have to be back and forth, myself. She would be lonely in London."
        "It would have been lying underneath the hydrangeas on the right if I was correct," Greggie said.
     
        _The sea of faith__
        _Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore__
        _Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.__
        _But now I only hear__
        _Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,__
        _Retreating, to the breath__
        _Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear__
        _And naked shingles of the world.__
     
        "We'd better be on our way to Richmond," Felix