who will guide and protect you, and will you ever safely reach the happy bourn? Happy you have been this afternoon, but with so tentative, so frail, so pedantic a happiness, and now you are confused and disturbed even by that small happiness you have enjoyed. What chances have you of survival? Will the wind blow you away? Will you land on stony ground?
Ada will survive, we may feel sure, for she is robust, and she has confidence and courage: had she not, even in extremity, offered Alice a bite of her bun? Well may she dare and risk and conquer and multiply. But Bessie is delicate and she may wilt and fade before she reaches her goal. Is there enough persistence in her for the hard road ahead, for the steep climb and the airless altitudes, for the as yet undreamed of perils of those heady upper reaches?
They walk home, along the riverbank and the towpath. And the weeks pass, and the months pass, and the summers pass, and their bodies bloom: see them as they walk, the school blouse lifting, the ankles narrowing, the hips swaying, the lips reddening through art or nature, the little bead necklet added to the throat, the butterfly brooch to the lapel, the bracelet to the wrist, as they walk through the seasons of their young life and their young hope (does hope too take the subjunctive?) towards whatever it is that awaits them—fame, love, loss, triumph, distress. And still it takes no shape as they walk towards it, it will not show its features to them, they wonder if it will ever show its features. Maybe it will for ever vanish out of sight, just ahead of them, around the corner, beyond the branches, behind the trees, lost in the reeds and the willows. What is it, what will it be, will they ever see it face-to-face? Along this stretch and other stretches they will walk in constant flux towards it: their glands secrete and betray and settle, they lose weight and gain it and lose it again, they tan and they pale, they skip, they loiter, they recite Virgil and Verlaine and Lamartine, they quarrel and are reconciled, they laugh and they weep and they sulk, they crop their hair and then try to grow it again, they experiment with hemlines and covet forbidden nail varnish and lipstick and smart sandals, they break out in spots and are suddenly smooth again, they blow hot and they blow cold, they catch trolley buses and trains and see silent movies and go to a theatre matinée and appear as Helena and Hermia in the school play and they write verse and join a debating society and win prizes and honourable mentions and receive decorous floral valentines. See them now, as they walk into view again along the banks of the Hammer, as they pass the clearing where two long years ago Joe Barron and Alice Vestrey surprised them at their French verbs.
Do they remember that distant afternoon? Perhaps they do, for it is towards Joe Barron’s house that they now are walking, where he now awaits them. They are grown girls now, and they no longer wear striped school shirts. They have just taken their School Certificate, in History, Latin, English and French, and school may no longer be their refuge and their sole field of endeavour and display. It is summer still, and the sun still shines, and the water curls and the midges hover, and spikes of foxglove lean to the water in this semi-rustic semi-industrial hinterland between townships, in this pause between past and future. The marbled white survives, and so does the friendship of Bessie and Ada. They have survived coolnesses and rivalry and the increasingly relentless ratcheting of Bessie’s superior intellectual performance. They have chosen their own paths, and those paths will now diverge. Ada, obligingly, has an out-of-town admirer: she has met a young man down south with whom she corresponds. She will go to teacher training college in Saffron Walden. She will teach for two or three years, then she will marry her admirer. This is what she plans. Her future has a face. If her exam results are
Ada will survive, we may feel sure, for she is robust, and she has confidence and courage: had she not, even in extremity, offered Alice a bite of her bun? Well may she dare and risk and conquer and multiply. But Bessie is delicate and she may wilt and fade before she reaches her goal. Is there enough persistence in her for the hard road ahead, for the steep climb and the airless altitudes, for the as yet undreamed of perils of those heady upper reaches?
They walk home, along the riverbank and the towpath. And the weeks pass, and the months pass, and the summers pass, and their bodies bloom: see them as they walk, the school blouse lifting, the ankles narrowing, the hips swaying, the lips reddening through art or nature, the little bead necklet added to the throat, the butterfly brooch to the lapel, the bracelet to the wrist, as they walk through the seasons of their young life and their young hope (does hope too take the subjunctive?) towards whatever it is that awaits them—fame, love, loss, triumph, distress. And still it takes no shape as they walk towards it, it will not show its features to them, they wonder if it will ever show its features. Maybe it will for ever vanish out of sight, just ahead of them, around the corner, beyond the branches, behind the trees, lost in the reeds and the willows. What is it, what will it be, will they ever see it face-to-face? Along this stretch and other stretches they will walk in constant flux towards it: their glands secrete and betray and settle, they lose weight and gain it and lose it again, they tan and they pale, they skip, they loiter, they recite Virgil and Verlaine and Lamartine, they quarrel and are reconciled, they laugh and they weep and they sulk, they crop their hair and then try to grow it again, they experiment with hemlines and covet forbidden nail varnish and lipstick and smart sandals, they break out in spots and are suddenly smooth again, they blow hot and they blow cold, they catch trolley buses and trains and see silent movies and go to a theatre matinée and appear as Helena and Hermia in the school play and they write verse and join a debating society and win prizes and honourable mentions and receive decorous floral valentines. See them now, as they walk into view again along the banks of the Hammer, as they pass the clearing where two long years ago Joe Barron and Alice Vestrey surprised them at their French verbs.
Do they remember that distant afternoon? Perhaps they do, for it is towards Joe Barron’s house that they now are walking, where he now awaits them. They are grown girls now, and they no longer wear striped school shirts. They have just taken their School Certificate, in History, Latin, English and French, and school may no longer be their refuge and their sole field of endeavour and display. It is summer still, and the sun still shines, and the water curls and the midges hover, and spikes of foxglove lean to the water in this semi-rustic semi-industrial hinterland between townships, in this pause between past and future. The marbled white survives, and so does the friendship of Bessie and Ada. They have survived coolnesses and rivalry and the increasingly relentless ratcheting of Bessie’s superior intellectual performance. They have chosen their own paths, and those paths will now diverge. Ada, obligingly, has an out-of-town admirer: she has met a young man down south with whom she corresponds. She will go to teacher training college in Saffron Walden. She will teach for two or three years, then she will marry her admirer. This is what she plans. Her future has a face. If her exam results are
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