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The Spike or Victoria College Review 1938

Belinda

page 23

Belinda

In Wellport it rained for days on end. If a Southerly Buster blew up on Monday, everybody said, "Well, it can't clear before Wednesday, anyway," and that was that. They took out their black and their red umbrellas, their rubber boots that came up and turned down round the ankles, and their raincoats. What raincoats, too! They scrubbed your ears and chin, trailed and slapped about your legs, and let in on the shoulders. And then, when the rain had stopped, about Thursday, they hung over the wash-house door for days and made puddles on the floor.

So you see what sort of philosophy the Wellport people had.

But of course everyone did not have umbrellas, the same as they cannot all have engagement rings, when they might like to . . . And some raincoats let in more than others. It is not everyone who minds this; it only affects the thin, lonely ones. But they have the Wellport philosophy so bred in their bones that they take it all submissively, as they take the rain. What else is there to do? It is only some who can have the Edisonian "fight" in them.

. . . . . . .

Belinda worked in Meltzer's slipper factory. Every day for three years since she had been fourteen she had carried her lunch there in a little fibre case. The girls used to eat it sitting on the footpath in the sun, but in winter-time Wellport did not often see the sun for long, and then it was miserable trying to warm one's starving body in the pale rays.

Now Belinda did not live up on the hilly part of the town behind the wharves, but round in one of the little rocky bays where the karaka trees grew and the biting southerly wind blew in all day long and seemed to eat in under your very nails. The house had a coloured glass pane over the door and was called "Spray Cottage," and every few weeks Father—who was slowly, slowly dying—white-washed the rocks up the path-side. Italian fishermen had their boats anchored in the little bay, and their beautiful bronzed children who leaped and shrilled in the summer-time seemed to do nothing but weep in winter out of their big, heavy eyes, like flowers ready to fall.

Not many of the people living round this way worked in the town. They kept away from it, and simply lived from day to day, eating fish, washing clothes, and trailing along the little strip of bare, clean sand, looking for wood. A red bus travelled round, though; it left the post-office in town every night at a quarter past five.

So every night Belinda, who arrived there at ten past, waited for her sister.

It was raining solidly. She stood on the steps a little sheltered, holding her damp fibre case and watching the people hurrying by. Her sleeves were too short and showed a thin bare wrist pink with cold and the rubbing of the hard old coat. Her slight legs were pressed together; the feet looked timid and afraid.

She was thinking about her coat. One did not mind it; one just slipped down further into it.

It was not one of her own, but an old one of Maimie's. She had needed a new coat, had planned it and imagined herself in it. But this old grey thing had been hanging behind the lobby door—there it was, waiting for her. Of course it had "just fitted." That was inevitable. And anyway, it had to be worn, for Father was not working . . . No, there was no use in trying to get away from it; things would never be light and gay, one could not enjoy the morning or the shells or anything again until—Father was dead. The sense of his slowly dying was ever present in the back of one's mind. There was something so dreadfully pathetic about him. And yet one could not show him ... It haunted Belinda.

The umbrellas were tilted against her for the rain was from the south. Belinda could not see the faces; only occasionally, when someone without an umbrella hurried by, did she look quickly, and then quickly away again. She was looking for something. What was it?

page 24

II

Roger had a good job. He liked it and he was well-paid. So were the typists; he often speculated with the other fellows in the same building how much of it they put on their backs, and in their mouths. It was not rude; things were just like this nowadays.

There was one thing about Roger—he had not married. And everyone knew exactly-that is, thought they knew—why, except himself. There was some delicate feeling for—. No, he could not explain it.

The rain beat on his shoulders and wet the paper he was taking home to Mater, for he had no umbrella. (Good Lord, he hated the brutal things, always blowing inside-out in this darned place). He caught sight of her standing on the steps, and was going by in his usual fashion when he suddenly looked up impersonally into her face. Then he half expected her to open out like a dark young flower. She was trying to push up from her bud, but something would not let her. Ah! At last Roger knew it was something beautiful like this he wanted. He wanted to take home the bud, cherish it and make it flower.

Fifty years hence they'd still be talking. He had a kind of kink. Wouldn't marry a girl of his own class and ended up with this funny little thing, out of nowhere. But it was in the family; oh yes, didn't you know? Old Harcourt was very queer. .

Well, not her exactly, perhaps, but now he knew.

A red postal van nearly bowled him over on the corner. By gum! That was his second close shave that day. He must look after himself more.

A girl who had been walking behind crossed over and went down the other street against the rain. She had just spent five minutes over her face at the narrow glass in the dressing-room. She had seen his look; she felt she was slighted, wounded. Men were selfish. They had too much their own way. Why could they pick and choose and obey their little whims while the girls were pushed round and then left? Or was it that she was just. . ?

When Belinda's sister came at a quarter past they climbed silently into their bus without having spoken a word to each other. Maimie took out her knitting. Her chest sat out in her rather tight coat, and she wore an engagement ring. Belinda had a sneaking opinion, which she would never have disclosed, that it was rather like a stickily over-iced cake. That's what came of having one's own ideas. But of course when you knew Harold . . .

The driver ripped his gears and the inside of the bus, with its windows coated by people's breath, filled with blue smoke. Maimie knitted with the placidness of those who have plenty of comfortable things to think of at the moment, and plenty of flesh on their bones. But Belinda cherished in her heart a fairy story, lovely and complete as the shortest day. "He looked; he looked at me."

—C.F.