Free Bilgewater by Jane Gardam Page B

the sky, a cold, windy place, extremely dangerous and there must have been more hockey balls than stones rotting away on the sands below. To keep depressives and the victims of Miss Bex’s sense of humour from leaping over the haycocks into space there was a droop of wire nailed to a few posts before you actually reached the edge. The haycocks were in front of it and it was from between the haycocks and the wire that I heard laughing as I trailed about the field as a last resort, looking for Grace.
    â€œHullo,” I said.
    Grace, Beryl, and Aileen were reclining about behind the hay smoking cigarettes. Grace was painting her fingernails and the three figures looked very much at home, like old marbles on a mountain, Grace particularly though she can’t have seen the place in her life before that morning. Perhaps because of the meagre amount of hay or the very narrow slip of cliff-top she looked gigantic, titanico. Big dirty brown Beryl looked impressive, too, and Aileen, less abandoned, had arranged herself to best advantage, cross-legged with a twirling toe. She was tapping ash and as usual yawning but the yawn when she saw me appearing round the haycock turned into a sort of disgusted grimace.
    â€œWhat on earth are
you
doing?”
    â€œGood heavens!” said Beryl and began to laugh. Although they are in a lower form they are as I say old—perhaps even eighteen—and have always found me noxiously beneath them. What I think of them has never been made manifest because I have always tried to keep the same blank, dotty expression on my face for everyone. Being thought dippy until I came out top in the A levels had been muddling for people, and it was an idea that died hard. “Well she’s
academic
,” they said. There was a fashion at the time for people being “not academic.” “Very clever you know, but not
academic
.” I was academic—but barmy just the same.
    â€œWhatever do
you
want?”
    â€œI came out to have a word with Grace.”
    â€œWith
Grace
!”
    â€œYes. I wanted to see her.”
    Grace carefully painted a little fingernail, smiling at it.
    â€œWell, here she is,” Beryl laughed and leaned on Grace with a languid shove. They all went off into hysterics.
    â€œWatch out,” said Grace, “I’ve smudged it.”
    â€œYou can’t wear nail varnish at school.” I said and heard my voice sounding just like Bex.
    â€œMy, my,” said Aileen.
    â€œWell come on then,” said smelly Beryl, “let’s hear what you’ve got to say.”
    â€œNothing,” I said. “Well, just to see how she’s getting on.”
    I noticed that we were all talking about Grace as if she were a queen of some sort, someone you couldn’t speak to direct.
    â€œ
Really
!” they said. They were nearly weeping with laughter. I suppose I was looking worse than usual. I was wearing tennis ankle socks and sort of slippers as I hadn’t been able to find any tights that moming, Paula being too busy with both Terrapin and Rose in the sick room to bother about my clothes. Jack Rose’s parents were never off the phone about the severed artery in his head. My new winter gym slip was about seven sizes too big for me, too, and I’d dropped my glasses that morning and one of the joints was all done up with a clutch of Elastoplast. The glasses seemed to have grown loose all over as a result and kept sliding down my nose.
    â€œI think she fancies you,” said Beryl. “She’s a bit foony.”
    â€œLike her uncle Puffy Coleman,” squeaked Aileen.
    â€œOr her uncle Hastings-Benson. Bendson. Nobody’s safe with him.”
    Beryl tittered and Grace extended her hand over the cliff edge after screwing the brush slowly into the nail-varnish bottle. She held the hand to dry above the creeping sea.
    â€œDon’t step back,” said Aileen.
    I didn’t. But I went away.
    Â 
    Yet to my