‘Tony, it’s ‘eaven!’
‘Queer feelin’ in yer inside, when you’re swung right out!’
‘I’d like it level with the top. Let’s go once more!’
‘Right-o!’
Twice more they went – half his profit on balloons! But who cared? He liked to see her face. After that, six shies at the milky ones without a hit, an ice apiece: then arm-in-arm to find a place to eat their lunch. That was the time Bicket enjoyed most, after the ginger-beer and sandwiches; smoking his fag, with his head on her lap, and the sky blue. A long time like that; till at last she stirred.
‘Let’s go and see the dancin’!’
In the grass enclosure ringed by the running path, some two dozen couples were jigging to a band.
Victorine pulled at his arm. ‘I would love a turn!’
‘Well, let’s ‘ave a go,’ said Bicket. ‘This one-legged bloke’ll ‘old my tray.’
They entered the ring.
‘Hold me tighter, Tony!’
Bicket obeyed. Nothing he liked better; and slowly their feet moved – to this side and that. They made little way, revolving, keeping time, oblivious of appearances.
‘You dance all right, Tony.’
‘You dance a treat!’ gasped Bicket.
In the intervals, panting, they watched ever the one-legged man; then to it again, till the band ceased for good.
‘My word!’ said Victorine. ‘They dance on board ship, Tony!’
Bicket squeezed her waist.
‘ I’ll do the trick yet, if I‘ave to rob the Bank. There’s nothin’ I wouldn’t do for you, Vic.’
But Victorine smiled. She had done the trick already.
The crowd with parti-coloured faces, tired, good-humoured, frowsily scented, strolled over a battlefield thick-strewn with paper bags, banana peel, and newspapers.
‘Let’s ‘ave tea, and one more swing,’ said Bicket; ‘then we’ll get over on the other side among the trees.’
Away over on the far side were many couples. The sun went very slowly down. Those two sat under a bush and watched it go. A faint breeze swung and rustled the birch leaves. There was little human sound out here. All seemed to have come for silence, to be waiting for darkness in the hush. Now and then some stealthy spy would pass and scrutinize.
‘Foxes!’ said Bicket. ‘Gawd! I’d like to rub their noses in it!’
Victorine sighed, pressing closer to him.
Someone was playing on a banjo now; a voice singing. It grew dusk, but a moon was somewhere rising, for little shadows stole out along the ground.
They spoke in whispers. It seemed wrong to raise the voice, as though the grove were under a spell. Even their whisperings were scarce. Dew fell, but they paid no heed to it. With hands locked, and cheeks together, they sat very still. Bicket had a thought. This was poetry – this was! Darkness now, with a sort of faint and silvery glow, a sound of drunken singing on the Spaniard’s Road, the whirr of belated cars returning from the north – and suddenly an owl hooted.
‘My!’ murmured Victorine, shivering. ‘An owl! Fancy! I used to hear one at Norbiton. I ‘ope it’s not bad luck!’
Bicket rose and stretched himself.
‘Come on!’ he said: ‘we’ve ‘ad a dy. Don’t you go catchin’ cold!’
Arm-in-arm, slowly, through the darkness of the birch-grove, they made their way upwards – glad of the lamps, and the street, and the crowded station, as though they had taken an overdose of solitude.
Huddled in their carriage on the Tube, Bicket idly turned the pages of a derelict paper. But Victorine sat thinking of so much, that it was as if she thought of nothing. The swings and the grove in the darkness, and the money in her stocking. She wondered Tony hadn’t noticed when it crackled – there wasn’t a safe place to keep it in! What was he looking at, with his eyes so fixed? She peered, and read: ‘Afternoon of a Dryad. The striking picture by Aubrey Greene, on exhibition at the Dumetrius Gallery.’
Her heart stopped beating.
‘Cripes!’ said Bicket. ‘Ain’t that like you?’
‘Like me? No!’
Bicket held the paper closer. ‘It is. It’s like you all over. I’ll cut that out. I’d like to see that picture.’
The colour came up in her cheeks, released from a heart beating too fast now.
‘’Tisn’t decent,’ she said.
‘Dunno about that; but it’s awful like you. It’s even got your smile.’
Folding the paper, he began to tear the sheet. Victorine’s little finger pressed the notes beneath her stocking.
‘Funny,’ she said slowly, ‘to think there’s people in the world so like each other.’