The Garden Party - Katherine Mansfield (the beach read .txt) š
- Author: Katherine Mansfield
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When that family was sold up she went as āhelpā to a doctorās house, and after two years there, on the run from morning till night, she married her husband. He was a baker.
āA baker, Mrs. Parker!ā the literary gentleman would say. For occasionally he laid aside his tomes and lent an ear, at least, to this product called Life. āIt must be rather nice to be married to a baker!ā
Mrs. Parker didnāt look so sure.
āSuch a clean trade,ā said the gentleman.
Mrs. Parker didnāt look convinced.
āAnd didnāt you like handing the new loaves to the customers?ā
āWell, sir,ā said Mrs. Parker, āI wasnāt in the shop above a great deal. We had thirteen little ones and buried seven of them. If it wasnāt the āospital it was the infirmary, you might say!ā
āYou might, indeed, Mrs. Parker!ā said the gentleman, shuddering, and taking up his pen again.
Yes, seven had gone, and while the six were still small her husband was taken ill with consumption. It was flour on the lungs, the doctor told her at the timeā¦Her husband sat up in bed with his shirt pulled over his head, and the doctorās finger drew a circle on his back.
āNow, if we were to cut him open here, Mrs. Parker,ā said the doctor, āyouād find his lungs chock-a-block with white powder. Breathe, my good fellow!ā And Mrs. Parker never knew for certain whether she saw or whether she fancied she saw a great fan of white dust come out of her poor dead husbandās lipsā¦
But the struggle sheād had to bring up those six little children and keep herself to herself. Terrible it had been! Then, just when they were old enough to go to school her husbandās sister came to stop with them to help things along, and she hadnāt been there more than two months when she fell down a flight of steps and hurt her spine. And for five years Ma Parker had another babyāand such a one for crying!āto look after. Then young Maudie went wrong and took her sister Alice with her; the two boys emigrimated, and young Jim went to India with the army, and Ethel, the youngest, married a good-for-nothing little waiter who died of ulcers the year little Lennie was born. And now little Lennieāmy grandsonā¦
The piles of dirty cups, dirty dishes, were washed and dried. The ink-black knives were cleaned with a piece of potato and finished off with a piece of cork. The table was scrubbed, and the dresser and the sink that had sardine tails swimming in itā¦
Heād never been a strong childānever from the first. Heād been one of those fair babies that everybody took for a girl. Silvery fair curls he had, blue eyes, and a little freckle like a diamond on one side of his nose. The trouble she and Ethel had had to rear that child! The things out of the newspapers they tried him with! Every Sunday morning Ethel would read aloud while Ma Parker did her washing.
āDear Sir,āJust a line to let you know my little Myrtil was laid out for deadā¦After four bottilsā¦gained 8 lbs. in 9 weeks, and is still putting it on.ā
And then the egg-cup of ink would come off the dresser and the letter would be written, and Ma would buy a postal order on her way to work next morning. But it was no use. Nothing made little Lennie put it on. Taking him to the cemetery, even, never gave him a colour; a nice shake-up in the bus never improved his appetite.
But he was granās boy from the firstā¦
āWhose boy are you?ā said old Ma Parker, straightening up from the stove and going over to the smudgy window. And a little voice, so warm, so close, it half stifled herāit seemed to be in her breast under her heartā laughed out, and said, āIām granās boy!ā
At that moment there was a sound of steps, and the literary gentleman appeared, dressed for walking.
āOh, Mrs. Parker, Iām going out.ā
āVery good, sir.ā
āAnd youāll find your half-crown in the tray of the inkstand.ā
āThank you, sir.ā
āOh, by the way, Mrs. Parker,ā said the literary gentleman quickly, āyou didnāt throw away any cocoa last time you were hereādid you?ā
āNo, sir.ā āVery strange. I could have sworn I left a teaspoonful of cocoa in the tin.ā He broke off. He said softly and firmly, āYouāll always tell me when you throw things awayāwonāt you, Mrs. Parker?ā And he walked off very well pleased with himself, convinced, in fact, heād shown Mrs. Parker that under his apparent carelessness he was as vigilant as a woman.
The door banged. She took her brushes and cloths into the bedroom. But when she began to make the bed, smoothing, tucking, patting, the thought of little Lennie was unbearable. Why did he have to suffer so? Thatās what she couldnāt understand. Why should a little angel child have to arsk for his breath and fight for it? There was no sense in making a child suffer like that.
ā¦From Lennieās little box of a chest there came a sound as though something was boiling. There was a great lump of something bubbling in his chest that he couldnāt get rid of. When he coughed the sweat sprang out on his head; his eyes bulged, his hands waved, and the great lump bubbled as a potato knocks in a saucepan. But what was more awful than all was when he didnāt cough he sat against the pillow and never spoke or answered, or even made as if he heard. Only he looked offended.
āItās not your poor old granās doing it, my lovey,ā said old Ma Parker, patting back the damp hair from his little scarlet ears. But Lennie moved his head and edged away. Dreadfully offended with her he lookedāand solemn. He bent his head and looked at her sideways as though he couldnāt have believed it of his gran.
But at the lastā¦Ma Parker threw the counterpane over the bed. No, she simply couldnāt think about it. It was too muchāsheād had too much in her life to bear. Sheād borne it up till now, sheād kept herself to herself, and never once had she been seen to cry. Never by a living soul. Not even her own children had seen Ma break down. Sheād kept a proud face always. But now! Lennie goneāwhat had she? She had nothing. He was all sheād got from life, and now he was took too. Why must it all have happened to me? she wondered. āWhat have I done?ā said old Ma Parker. āWhat have I done?ā
As she said those words she suddenly let fall her brush. She found herself in the kitchen. Her misery was so terrible that she pinned on her hat, put on her jacket and walked out of the flat like a person in a dream. She did not know what she was doing. She was like a person so dazed by the horror of what has happened that he walks awayāanywhere, as though by walking away he could escapeā¦
It was cold in the street. There was a wind like ice. People went flitting by, very fast; the men walked like scissors; the women trod like cats. And nobody knewānobody cared. Even if she broke down, if at last, after all these years, she were to cry, sheād find herself in the lock-up as like as not.
But at the thought of crying it was as though little Lennie leapt in his granās arms. Ah, thatās what she wants to do, my dove. Gran wants to cry. If she could only cry now, cry for a long time, over everything, beginning with her first place and the cruel cook, going on to the doctorās, and then the seven little ones, death of her husband, the childrenās leaving her, and all the years of misery that led up to Lennie. But to have a proper cry over all these things would take a long time. All the same, the time for it had come. She must do it. She couldnāt put it off any longer; she couldnāt wait any moreā¦Where could she go?
āSheās had a hard life, has Ma Parker.ā Yes, a hard life, indeed! Her chin began to tremble; there was no time to lose. But where? Where?
She couldnāt go home; Ethel was there. It would frighten Ethel out of her life. She couldnāt sit on a bench anywhere; people would come arsking her questions. She couldnāt possibly go back to the gentlemanās flat; she had no right to cry in strangersā houses. If she sat on some steps a policeman would speak to her.
Oh, wasnāt there anywhere where she could hide and keep herself to herself and stay as long as she liked, not disturbing anybody, and nobody worrying her? Wasnāt there anywhere in the world where she could have her cry outā at last?
Ma Parker stood, looking up and down. The icy wind blew out her apron into a balloon. And now it began to rain. There was nowhere.
7. MARRIAGE A LA MODE.
On his way to the station William remembered with a fresh pang of disappointment that he was taking nothing down to the kiddies. Poor little chaps! It was hard lines on them. Their first words always were as they ran to greet him, āWhat have you got for me, daddy?ā and he had nothing. He would have to buy them some sweets at the station. But that was what he had done for the past four Saturdays; their faces had fallen last time when they saw the same old boxes produced again.
And Paddy had said, āI had red ribbing on mine bee-fore!ā
And Johnny had said, āItās always pink on mine. I hate pink.ā
But what was William to do? The affair wasnāt so easily settled. In the old days, of course, he would have taken a taxi off to a decent toyshop and chosen them something in five minutes. But nowadays they had Russian toys, French toys, Serbian toysātoys from God knows where. It was over a year since Isabel had scrapped the old donkeys and engines and so on because they were so ādreadfully sentimentalā and āso appallingly bad for the babiesā sense of form.ā
āItās so important,ā the new Isabel had explained, āthat they should like the right things from the very beginning. It saves so much time later on. Really, if the poor pets have to spend their infant years staring at these horrors, one can imagine them growing up and asking to be taken to the Royal Academy.ā
And she spoke as though a visit to the Royal Academy was certain immediate death to any oneā¦
āWell, I donāt know,ā said William slowly. āWhen I was their age I used to go to bed hugging an old towel with a knot in it.ā
The new Isabel looked at him, her eyes narrowed, her lips apart.
āDear William! Iām sure you did!ā She laughed in the new way.
Sweets it would have to be, however, thought William gloomily, fishing in his pocket for change for the taxi-man. And he saw the kiddies handing the boxes roundāthey were awfully generous little
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