The Garden Party and Other Stories - Katherine Mansfield [51]
At that ‘she’ looked up; she simply withered her mother. ‘Why can’t you leave me?’ she said furiously. ‘What utter rot! How dare you make a scene like this? This is the last time I’ll come out with you. You really are too awful for words.’ She looked her mother up and down. ‘Calm yourself,’ she said superbly.
Mrs Raddick was desperate, just desperate. She was ‘wild’ to go back with Mrs MacEwen, but at the same time…
I seized my courage. ‘Would you – do you care to come to tea with – us?’
‘Yes, yes, she’ll be delighted. That’s just what I wanted, isn’t it, darling? Mrs MacEwen… I’ll be back here in an hour… or less… I’ll – ’
Mrs R. dashed up the steps. I saw her bag was open again.
So we three were left. But really it wasn’t my fault. Hennie looked crushed to the earth, too. When the car was there she wrapped her dark coat round her – to escape contamination. Even her little feet looked as though they scorned to carry her down the steps to as.
‘I am so awfully sorry,’ I murmured as the car started.
‘Oh, I don’t mind,’ said she. ‘I don’t want to took twenty-one. Who would – if they were seventeen! It’s’ – and she gave a faint shudder – ‘the stupidity I loathe, and being stared at by fat old men. Beasts!’
Hennie gave her a quick look and then peered out of the window.
We drew up before an immense palace of pink-and-white marble with orange-trees outside the doors in gold-and-black tubs.
‘Would you care to go in?’ I suggested.
She hesitated, glanced, bit her lip, and resigned herself. ‘Oh well, there seems nowhere else,’ said she. ‘Get out, Hennie.’
I went first – to find the table, of course – she followed. But the worst of it was having her little brother, who was only twelve, with us. That was the last, final straw – having that child, trailing at her heels.
There was one table. It had pink carnations and pink plates with little blue tea-napkins for sails.
‘Shall we sit here?’
She put her hand wearily on the back of a white wicker chair.
‘We may as well. Why not?’ said she.
Hennie squeezed past her and wriggled on to a stool at the end. He felt awfully out of it. She didn’t even take her gloves off. She lowered her eyes and drummed on the table. When a faint violin sounded she winced and bit her lip again. Silence.
The waitress appeared. I hardly dared to ask her. ‘Tea – coffee? China tea – or iced tea with lemon?’
Really she didn’t mind. It was all the same to her. She didn’t really want anything. Hennie whispered, ‘Chocolate!’
But just as the waitress turned away she cried out carelessly, ‘Oh, you may as well bring me a chocolate, too.’
While we waited she took out a little, gold powder-box with a mirror in the lid, shook the poor little puff as though she loathed it, and dabbed her lovely nose.
‘Hennie,’ she said, ‘take those flowers away.’ She pointed with her puff to the carnations, and I heard her murmur, ‘I can’t bear flowers on a table.’ They had evidently been giving her intense pain, for she positively closed her eyes as I moved them away.
The waitress came back with the chocolate and the tea. She put the big, frothing cups before them and pushed across my clear glass. Hennie buried his nose, emerged, with, for one dreadful moment, a little trembling blob of cream on the tip. But he hastily wiped it off like a little gentleman. I wondered if I should dare draw her attention to her cup. She didn’t notice it – didn’t see it – until suddenly, quite by chance, she took a sip. I watched anxiously; she faintly shuddered.
‘Dreadfully sweet!’ said she.
A tiny boy with a head like a raisin and a chocolate body came round with a tray of pastries – row upon row of little freaks, little inspirations, little melting dreams. He offered them to her. ‘Oh, I’m net at all hungry. Take them away.’
He offered them to Hennie. Hennie gave me a swift look – it must have been satisfactory – for he took