Marking Time by Elizabeth Jane Howard Page B

Norma said, ‘he bites people. When he’s upset.’
    Lydia withdrew a little. ‘I’m sure it won’t be years,’ she said. ‘Neville, where’s the cake?’
    Neville held out his hand, but before he could get it anywhere near Lydia, Robert had snatched it, and seemed literally almost to swallow it whole. Norma looked at him with disgust. ‘You
got worms,’ she said. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’
    ‘ ’Aven’t.’
    ‘You
’ave
. I shall tell Miss in the ’ouse.’
    ‘
Worms?
’ Neville said. ‘Where? I can’t see a single worm.’
    ‘They’re in his stomach,’ Norma said. ‘’E never stops eating. ’E needs a good dose.’
    Tommy, who had watched the appearance and disappearance of the cake, had now put his head into his sister’s lap which muffled his sobbing.
    ‘What a pity they’re inside you,’ Neville said to Robert. ‘It means you can never get to know them.’
    ‘’E got stung by a chicken,’ Norma said, ‘trying to take an egg off of a nest.’
    ‘Chickens don’t sting,’ Lydia said. ‘It must have been a bee. What does your father do?’ she added, feeling she should change the subject.
    ‘ ’E drives a bus.’
    ‘Gosh! Does he really?’
    ‘I said ’e did.’ She pulled up her dress which was made of blue shiny stuff, like satin, and wiped Tommy’s nose on her knickers. ‘What do you do down ’ere,
then?’ she said.
    ‘We go to the beach and have picnics and swim—’ Lydia began.
    But Robert interrupted her. ‘
I
bin to the seaside,’ he offered. ‘I bin, and I touched the sea with both ’ands.’
    ‘Yes, and you was sick in the bus on the way ’ome,’ Norma said crushingly. She had been absently picking at bits of Tommy’s very short tufted hair; it was extremely
short, almost like mown grass, Lydia thought. Robert’s was just the same. She caught Lydia looking at Tommy’s head. ‘Nits,’ she said. ‘Miss in the ’ouse said
they ’ad nits, so she cut it and then she washed them in some ’orrible stuff – didn’t ’alf stink.’
    ‘You ’ad them as well,’ Robert said, and she flushed.
    ‘I never,’ she said.
    ‘What are nits?’ Neville asked. He squatted down beside Norma. ‘Have you got any left? Can I see one?’
    ‘No, you can’t. They’ve all gone. You’re rude,’ she added.
    ‘You’re rude,’ Robert echoed; they both glared at Neville.
    Lydia said, ‘He didn’t mean to be, did you, Neville?’
    ‘I’m not absolutely sure,’ Neville answered. ‘I might have, and I might not.’
    ‘Shall we play a game?’ Lydia said; things didn’t seem to be turning out too well.
    ‘There ain’t nowhere to play,’ Robert said.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Ain’t no pavements. No canal – no nothing. Just
grass
,’ he finished with intense scorn.
    ‘What do you do at a canal?’
    ‘We go up on the bridge and when the bargees go through underneath we spit. We call them and they look up and we spit right in their eyes.’
    ‘
That’s
rude,’ Neville said triumphantly. ‘That’s
in
be
liev
ably rude.’
    ‘No, it isn’t,’ Norma said. ‘Mum says they’re only diddies. Serve ’em right. It’s a boy’s game, anyway.
I
don’t do it.’
    ‘What’s diddies?’
    ‘Gypsies. I thought everyone knew that. Don’t you know that?’
    ‘We know different things,’ said Neville. ‘We know an enormous amount of different things.’
    ‘Let’s go to the pond,’ Lydia said desperately; she couldn’t think why they couldn’t all be friends.
    They agreed, rather reluctantly, to go to the pond which lay at the bottom of a steep slope in the field next to Mr York’s house. It had rushes growing round it, and at one shallower
corner the earth was encrusted with the hoofmarks of the cows coming to drink.
    ‘Look, there are dragonflies,’ Lydia said rather hopelessly: she had a feeling that they wouldn’t much like them.
    ‘If they come near me I’ll kill ’em,’ Robert said. He scratched a scab off his knee and ate it. The