Bliss | Page 4

straight, and pulled down her crumpled clothes. She stood blinking on the lowest veranda step watching Kezia who seemed to come flying through the air to her feet.
"Ooh!" cried Kezia, flinging up her arms. The grandmother came out of the dark hall carrying a little lamp. She was smiling.
"You found your way in the dark?" said she.
"Perfectly well."
But Lottie staggered on the lowest veranda step like a bird fallen out of the nest. If she stood still for a moment she fell asleep; if she leaned against anything her eyes closed. She could not walk another step.
"Kezia," said the grandmother, "can I trust you to carry the lamp?"
"Yes, my granma."
The old woman bent down and gave the bright breathing thing into her hands and then she caught up drunken Lottie. "This way."
Through a square hall filled with bales and hundreds of parrots (but the parrots were only on the wallpaper) down a narrow passage where the parrots persisted in flying past Kezia with her lamp.
"Be very quiet," warned the grandmother, putting down Lottie and opening the dining-room door. "Poor little mother has got such a headache."
Linda Burnell, in a long cane chair, with her feet on a hassock and a plaid over her knees, lay before a crackling fire. Burnell and Beryl sat at the table in the middle of the room eating a dish of fried chops and drinking tea out of a brown china teapot. Over the back of her mother's chair leaned Isabel. She had a comb in her fingers and in a gentle absorbed fashion she was combing the curls from her mother's forehead. Outside the pool of lamp and firelight the room stretched dark and bare to the hollow windows.
"Are those the children?" But Linda did not really care; she did not even open her eyes to see.
"Put down the lamp, Kezia," said Aunt Beryl, "or we shall have the house on fire before we are out of packing cases. More tea, Stanley?"
"Well, you might just give me five-eighths of a cup," said Burnell, leaning across the table. "Have another chop, Beryl. Tip-top meat, isn't it? Not too lean and not too fat." He turned to his wife. "You're sure you won't change your mind, Linda darling?"
"The very thought of it is enough." She raised one eyebrow in the way she had. The grandmother brought the children bread and milk and they sat up to table, flushed and sleepy behind the wavy steam.
"I had meat for my supper," said Isabel, still combing gently.
"I had a whole chop for my supper, the bone and all and Worcester sauce. Didn't I father?"
"Oh, don't boast, Isabel," said Aunt Beryl.
Isabel looked astounded. "I wasn't boasting, was I, Mummy? I never thought of boasting. I thought they would like to know. I only meant to tell them."
"Very well. That's enough," said Burnell. He pushed back his plate, took a toothpick out of his pocket and began picking his strong white teeth.
"You might see that Fred has a bite of something in the kitchen before he goes, will you, mother?"
"Yes, Stanley." The old woman turned to go.
"Oh, hold on half a jiffy. I suppose nobody knows where my slippers were put? I suppose I shall not be able to get at them for a month or two--what?"
"Yes," came from Linda. "In the top of the canvas hold-all marked 'urgent necessities.'"
"Well, you might get them for me, will you, mother?"
"Yes, Stanley."
Burnell got up, stretched himself, and going over to the fire he turned his back to it and lifted up his coat tails.
"By Jove, this is a pretty pickle. Eh, Beryl?"
Beryl, sipping tea, her elbows on the table, smiled over the cup at him. She wore an unfamiliar pink pinafore; the sleeves of her blouse were rolled up to her shoulders showing her lovely freckled arms, and she had let her hair fall down her back in a long pig-tail.
"How long do you think it will take to get straight--couple of weeks--eh?" he chaffed.
"Good heavens, no," said Beryl airily. "The worst is over already. The servant girl and I have simply slaved all day, and ever since mother came she has worked like a horse, too. We have never sat down for a moment. We have had a day."
Stanley scented a rebuke.
"Well, I suppose you did not expect me to rush away from the office and nail carpets--did you?"
"Certainly not," laughed Beryl. She put down her cup and ran out of the dining-room.
"What the hell does she expect us to do?" asked Stanley. "Sit down and fan herself with a palm-leaf fan while I have a gang of professionals to do the job? By Jove, if she can't do a hand's turn occasionally without shouting about it in return for... "
And he gloomed as the chops began to fight the tea in