The Garden Party and Other Stories - Katherine Mansfield [19]
Linda frowned; she sat up quickly in her steamer chair and clasped her ankles. Yes, that was her real grudge against life; that was what she could not understand. That was the question she asked and asked, and listened in vain for the answer. It was all very well to say it was the common lot of women to bear children. It wasn’t true. She, for one, could prove that wrong. She was broken, made weak, her courage was gone, through child-bearing. And what made it doubly hard to bear was, she did not love her children. It was useless pretending. Even if she had had the strength she never would have nursed and played with the little girls. No, it was as though a cold breath had chilled her through and through on each of those awful journeys; she had no warmth left to give them. As to the boy – well, thank Heaven, mother had taken him; he was mother’s, or Beryl’s, or anybody’s who wanted him. She had hardly held him in per arms. She was so indifferent about him that as he lay there… Linda glanced down.
The boy had turned over. He lay facing her, and he was no longer asleep. His dark-blue, baby eyes were open; he looked as though he was peeping at his mother. And suddenly his face dimpled; it broke into a wide, toothless smile, a perfect beam, no less.
‘I’m here! that happy smile seemed to say. ‘Why don’t you like me?’
There was something so quaint, so unexpected about that smile that Linda smiled herself. But she checked herself and said to the boy coldly, ‘I don’t like babies.’
‘Don’t like babies?’ The boy couldn’t believe her. ‘Don’t like me? He waved his arms foolishly at his mother.
Linda dropped off her chair on to the grass.
‘Why do you keep on smiling?’ she said severely. ‘If you knew what I was thinking about, you wouldn’t.’
But he only squeezed up his eyes, slyly, and rolled his head on the pillow. He didn’t believe a word she said.
‘We know all about that!’ smiled the boy.
Linda was so astonished at the confidence of this little creature… Ah no, be sincere. That was not what she felt; it was something far different, it was something so new, so… The tears danced in her eyes; she breathed in a small whisper to the boy, ‘Hallo, my funny!’
But by now the boy had forgotten his mother. He was serious again. Something pink, something soft waved in front of him. He made a grab at it and it immediately disappeared. But when he lay back, another, like the first, appeared. This time he determined to catch it. He made a tremendous effort and rolled right over.
VII
The tide was out; the beach was deserted; lazily flopped the warm sea. The sun beat down, beat down hot and fiery on the fine sand, baking the grey and blue and black and white-veined pebbles. It sucked up the little drop of water that lay in the hollow of the curved shells; it bleached the pink convolvulus that threaded through and through the sand-hills. Nothing seemed to move but the small sand-hoppers. Pit-pit-pit! They were never still.
Over there on the weed-hung rocks that looked at low tide like shaggy beasts come down to the water to drink, the sunlight seemed to spin like a silver coin dropped into each of the small rock pools. They danced, they quivered, and minute ripples laved the porous shores. Looking down, bending over, each pool was like a lake with pink and blue houses clustered on the shores; and oh! the vast mountainous country behind those houses – the ravines, the passes, the dangerous creeks and fearful tracks that led to the water’s edge. Underneath waved the sea-forest – pink thread-like trees, velvet anemones, and orange berry-spotted weeds. Now a stone on the bottom moved, rocked, and there was a glimpse of a black feeler; now a thread-like creature wavered by