The Garden Party | Page 9

It was an absolute scandal! True, she had no children,
and her husband...Here the voices were always raised; they became
fervent. How can he have married her? How can he, how can he? It
must have been money, of course, but even then!
Mrs. Kember's husband was at least ten years younger than she was,
and so incredibly handsome that he looked like a mask or a most
perfect illustration in an American novel rather than a man. Black hair,
dark blue eyes, red lips, a slow sleepy smile, a fine tennis player, a
perfect dancer, and with it all a mystery. Harry Kember was like a man
walking in his sleep. Men couldn't stand him, they couldn't get a word
out of the chap; he ignored his wife just as she ignored him. How did

he live? Of course there were stories, but such stories! They simply
couldn't be told. The women he'd been seen with, the places he'd been
seen in...but nothing was ever certain, nothing definite. Some of the
women at the Bay privately thought he'd commit a murder one day.
Yes, even while they talked to Mrs. Kember and took in the awful
concoction she was wearing, they saw her, stretched as she lay on the
beach; but cold, bloody, and still with a cigarette stuck in the corner of
her mouth.
Mrs. Kember rose, yawned, unsnapped her belt buckle, and tugged at
the tape of her blouse. And Beryl stepped out of her skirt and shed her
jersey, and stood up in her short white petticoat, and her camisole with
ribbon bows on the shoulders.
"Mercy on us," said Mrs. Harry Kember, "what a little beauty you are!"
"Don't!" said Beryl softly; but, drawing off one stocking and then the
other, she felt a little beauty.
"My dear--why not?" said Mrs. Harry Kember, stamping on her own
petticoat. Really--her underclothes! A pair of blue cotton knickers and a
linen bodice that reminded one somehow of a pillow-case..."And you
don't wear stays, do you?" She touched Beryl's waist, and Beryl sprang
away with a small affected cry. Then "Never!" she said firmly.
"Lucky little creature," sighed Mrs. Kember, unfastening her own.
Beryl turned her back and began the complicated movements of some
one who is trying to take off her clothes and to pull on her
bathing-dress all at one and the same time.
"Oh, my dear--don't mind me," said Mrs. Harry Kember. "Why be shy?
I shan't eat you. I shan't be shocked like those other ninnies." And she
gave her strange neighing laugh and grimaced at the other women.
But Beryl was shy. She never undressed in front of anybody. Was that
silly? Mrs. Harry Kember made her feel it was silly, even something to
be ashamed of. Why be shy indeed! She glanced quickly at her friend

standing so boldly in her torn chemise and lighting a fresh cigarette;
and a quick, bold, evil feeling started up in her breast. Laughing
recklessly, she drew on the limp, sandy-feeling bathing-dress that was
not quite dry and fastened the twisted buttons.
"That's better," said Mrs. Harry Kember. They began to go down the
beach together. "Really, it's a sin for you to wear clothes, my dear.
Somebody's got to tell you some day."
The water was quite warm. It was that marvellous transparent blue,
flecked with silver, but the sand at the bottom looked gold; when you
kicked with your toes there rose a little puff of gold-dust. Now the
waves just reached her breast. Beryl stood, her arms outstretched,
gazing out, and as each wave came she gave the slightest little jump, so
that it seemed it was the wave which lifted her so gently.
"I believe in pretty girls having a good time," said Mrs. Harry Kember.
"Why not? Don't you make a mistake, my dear. Enjoy yourself." And
suddenly she turned turtle, disappeared, and swam away quickly,
quickly, like a rat. Then she flicked round and began swimming back.
She was going to say something else. Beryl felt that she was being
poisoned by this cold woman, but she longed to hear. But oh, how
strange, how horrible! As Mrs. Harry Kember came up close she
looked, in her black waterproof bathing-cap, with her sleepy face lifted
above the water, just her chin touching, like a horrible caricature of her
husband.
Chapter 1.
VI.
In a steamer chair, under a manuka tree that grew in the middle of the
front grass patch, Linda Burnell dreamed the morning away. She did
nothing. She looked up at the dark, close, dry leaves of the manuka, at
the chinks of blue between, and now and again a tiny yellowish flower
dropped on her. Pretty--yes, if you held one of those flowers on the
palm of your hand