Bliss, and Other Stories

the vegetable garden and the rhubarb beds. On one side the grass patch was bordered by the scullery and wash-house and over this whitewashed lean-to there grew a knotted vine. She ha

red ribbon tie-ups on the shoulders screaming so dreadfully that half the street rushed in. And how the child's leg had swelled! "T-t-t-t!" Mrs. Fairfield caught her breath remembering. "Poor child, how terrifying it was." And she set her lips tight and went over to the stove for some more hot water. The water frothed up in the big soapy bowl with pink and blue bubbles on top

e from the stove to the dresser, looking into the pantry and the larder as though there were not an unfamiliar comer. When she had finished, everything in the kitchen had become p

! Are you there

r. Do you

ushed in, very flushed, dragg

e valuable, because they were hanging in Chung Wah's fruit shop for months before. I can't make out why Stanley wants them kept. I'm sure he thinks them

ssage?" suggested Mrs. Fairfield;

iness friends, and that awful enlargement of Isabel lying on the mat in her singlet." Her angry glance swept the placid kitchen. "I know

it, took a hammer and a big nail out

nough! Hand me th

r mother was wiping ove

es." And she frowned at the top of her mother's head and bit her lip with impatience. Mother

side by side. She jumped off the ch

them except Pat and the servant girl-have I got a spider's web on my face, mother? I've

s there, nodding and smiling. They heard the latch of the scullery door lift and she came in. She had no

o eat, mother? This is the first time I've been in the ki

d, spreading a clean napkin over a corner of t

Linda waved the knife at her. "Beryl, do

rything to me. I can't imagine people coming out from town to see us in that dreadful jolting bus, a

d Linda. "Pat can drive you

s something at the back of Beryl's mind, someth

putting down her empty cup and standing up and stretchin

thousand

oud from eve

. ." But when she reached the dining-room she stopped

she muttered savagely, digging the stiff br

t she could never do without. She needed the sweet smell of her flesh, and the soft feel of her cheeks and her arms and shoulders still softer. She loved the way her hair curled, silver at her forehead, lighter at her neck, and bright brown still in the big coil unde

thing for me to

the garden and give an eye to your chil

u know Isabel is much mor

is not," said

ull hours ago," said Linda, windi

den. She did not believe that she would ever not get lost in this garden. Twice she had found her way back to the big iron gates they had driven through the night before, and then had turned to walk up the drive that led to the house, but there were so many little paths on either side. On one side they all led

could not see a leaf on the syringa bushes for the white clusters. The roses were in flower-gentlemen's button-hole roses, little white ones, but far too full of insects to hold under anyone's nose, pink monthly roses with a ring of fallen petals round

es and a bed of pelagoniums with velvet eyes and leaves like moths' wings. There was a bed of nothing but mignonette and anot

. She sat down on one of the box borders. By pressing hard at first it made a nice sea

ck flowery orchard grass. As she lay waiting for things to stop spinning, she decided to go up to the house and ask the servant girl for an empty match-box. She wanted to make a surprise for the grandmother. . . . First she

s for the grandmother, and th

t a match,

lieve a match is just

opened the box and came

child! How you

re," she thought, scrambling up

ade of grass banked up high. Nothing grew on the top except one huge plant with thick, grey-green, thorny leaves, and out of the middle there sprang up a tall stout stem. Some

hing like it before. She stood and stared. An

at is it?"

lmed in the air, and yet holding so fast to the earth it grew from, it might have had claws instead of roots. Th

oe, Kezia," sa

ver have a

down at her, and half shut her