A PERFECT PIRATICAL PLAYROOM
Stuart began: “We shan’t care to be disturbed, so we’d better build
under water. That stretch of river between Cliveden and Cookham would
make quite a good ceiling. Nor will we take it on a repairing lease,
but leave the Thames Conservancy responsible for damages.”
Merle at this juncture wanted to know how he saw the Thames
Conservancy; in her eyes, it wore very bright blue with lots of gilt
buttons, and was always sitting round a table.
“One person?” asked Peter curiously.
“Yes. One wide person that could be stretched all round the table and
be joined with a button when it met itself.”
Stuart reminded them that, so far, the room consisted of a ceiling
floating on a vacuum, and that if they dawdled so long over Thames
Conservancies, they’d never get the walls up before dinner.
“It’s my dinner-hour now,” said Peter, thinking herself a British
workman. And Merle remarked that putting up walls was a tough job, and
she hadn’t got the right tools, and must fetch her mate.
“We can’t tell yet just how big the Room will need to be, so I vote for
elastic-sided walls.”
“Like boots,” Peter murmured. Then roused herself to ask for the height
of the Room.
Stuart looked worried, and confessed that he could never gauge heights
without the assistance of a giraffe: “Not high heights.”
“A giraffe?”
“I was once told that a giraffe measures twenty-five feet. So in my
mind’s eye I always pile giraffe upon giraffe, until I get what I want.
One giraffe, added to another ... and another....”
“There, there then, my beautiful,” Peter assured him soothingly, for
the multiplicity of giraffe had caused a wild look to creep into his
eyes; “you shall have a giraffe in the Room, of course you shall.
Anyhow, Merle will want a domestic animal to cuddle on her lap. A
giraffe will do nicely, besides being useful for measuring purposes.”
“We can tell the time by it, as well,” Stuart announced in eager
defence of his pet. “The tide of the ceiling rises and falls about an
inch every six hours; and when it falls, the animal’s head will be
wet, and so he’ll always have a cold in his nose, and borrow all our
handkerchiefs, and not return them. He says he can’t help it; people
don’t realize what a struggle it is to keep one’s head below water.”
“But he’ll want a companion of some sort,” remarked Merle. And because
she secretly hoped for a canary, she proposed a tortoise.
“What about a gift-horse? There’s something mysterious about a
gift-horse, because nobody may look it in the mouth. No, not even a
dentist.”
“But we will!” Stuart cried, in defiance of copy-book precept; “we’ll
keep things in its mouth, for the sake of looking at them there;
cigarette-cards and photograph albums.”
... A little wind flapped aside the blind, giving a momentary glimpse
of sea-lapped rocks and battlements: a castle of enchantment aglow in
the ebbing light. Merle immediately decided to have it transported
to the Room, for her special use and benefit. Not to be outdone,
Stuart and Peter ordered each a castle of like design and pattern; he
stipulating, however, for a border of Norfolk Broads in lieu of the
Atlantic. And because his manner was wont to become suddenly absent
and remote whenever he chanced to speak of his Sailing Paradise, they
quickly granted him his desire, and changed the subject, lest he should
elude them altogether.
Indeed, Peter was in a terrible tangle; for she had discovered that
inside her castle was a room--_the_ Room, in fact; and this Room in
its turn held a castle, the same castle--which held another Room,
containing a castle, which----
“Look here,” said Stuart firmly, recalling his mind from halyard and
jib, “this must be attended to at once. It’s only a recurring decimal,
and if we quickly put in the dot to stop the leakage, there’s no need
that it should ever recur.”
Peter demanded carelessly: “Know anything about plumbing?”
Stuart scratched his head. And the girls looked mournfully one at the
other.
“Now I ask you, what is the use of a male in the house?” and: “If it
were a _real_ man, of course----”
“Damn it!” he exploded. “If you’d wanted to marry a plumber, both of
you, you might have mentioned it before the ceremony.” And he added
sarcastically: “I daresay St. Quentin knows a lot about plumbing.”
“Or Baldwin,” suggested Merle, who had recently met Mr. Carr at a
dinner-party, and derived from him a quantity of pure happiness.
Stuart recovered his good-humour in the joy of a fresh idea: “We’ll run
St. Quentin and Baldwin together, and keep the essence in a sentry-box
in the Room, for the performing of odd jobs. And we’ll call him--” here
a rapid hunt for suitable nomenclature, “we’ll call him Squeith.”
“Combination of St. Quentin and Keith,” commented Peter. “Very good if
Baldwin’s name happened to be Keith, but as it isn’t----”
“I’m not going to be put off by a little thing like that. Squeith has
got personality. Squeith pleases me. And Squeith shall immediately be
set to work on that recurring decimal.”
It was perceived that even while they chattered, Room and castle had
already recurred seven times, ending on a Room. And Peter said she
would sleep in the last Room but one--the fifth, to be exact,--before
the dot was put in.
“And then Squeith can take the animals for a run,” quoth thoughtful
little Merle, who remembered that giraffes and gift-horses require a
certain amount of exercise. “He can put them on a leash if he likes.”
Stuart grumbled: “He’s sure to come home without them. Or they’ll
come home without him. Yes, it’s no good frowning at me, Merle,--I
_will_ bully Squeith. You’d better have your Balm-for-Wounded-Feelings
factory moved into the Room; ‘Nothing but the Best Balm supplied.
Beware of Counterfeit. We only use British Bull’s-grease and Home-grown
Sympathy.’ I’ll write your advertisements.”
Whereat Peter exclaimed jealously that if Merle had a factory, she
would have trains; she must have trains, instantly--“just as if I
could ever live in a Room without trains. An Outer Circle line running
the whole way round, close under the walls; with real tunnels and
signal-boxes. And you can advertise your Balm inside the darkest
tunnel, where it won’t disturb the landscape. My railway shall start
from Euston, of course----”
--“And end at Euston,” Merle reminded her, laughing, “if it’s a Circle
railway.”
“Quite right. The lines shall be laid for the purpose of taking
passengers from Euston to Euston. I’ve always longed for just such a
gloriously unpractical service of trains.”
And here Stuart interposed with the offer of his almost forgotten
_Wagon-lit_, the tame red _Wagon-lit_ with trustful brown eyes,
hitherto kept in the back garden among the washing.
“Want a present too,” Merle pleaded.
He gave her a clothes-line, so that she could be perpetually wringing
out her soul, and hanging it up to dry. In return for which piece
of impertinence, she presented him with a nice easy rack, which he
could work himself, like a barrel-organ, by turning a handle; and
thus practise for half an hour every morning after breakfast, the
self-torture he so affected.
“He shall have an obstacle race as well,” put in Peter lavishly;
“running just inside my Outer Circle radius. With hurdles and barriers
and sacks and barbed wire. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Stuart
darling?”
“We should have to provide a barber to barb the wire. One can’t buy it
barbed.”
“Very well; I don’t mind a few shops. Just a barber and--and a
post-office, because of bull’s-eyes----”
“Stamps?” enquired Stuart anxiously.
“No. _Only_ bull’s-eyes. Why do you think I wanted a post-office?”
Merle thought that a Moonshade Shop might be useful: “It looks as if
the moonshine in the Room were likely to be strong, and Peter and I
must think of our complexions. Moonshades and paralunes.” And she
imagined them pretty filmy things, woven of dyed spider-webs, with
opalescent handles and spikes.
Then they added to the row, a Railway Shop, which, combining butcher
and baker and fishmonger in one, provided those peculiar comestibles to
be met with at station-buffets and in dining-cars alone. In particular,
there existed the notorious Railway-fish, white and sticky, of which
large numbers should swim in a sunken tank in the Railway Shop, till
such time as required for consumption.
Then, as if one shop bred another, it was discovered that these wary
fish could not be caught save with a bent pin on a piece of string;
thus involving the erection of a Bent-pin Shop.
“Because in the usual farthing-change packets, they only give you
straight pins,” said Peter, knitting her brows; “and straight pins
aren’t a bit of good for Railway-fish.”
“What about a pub. or two?” Stuart proposed carelessly.
Merle scented danger: “No, dear.”
“Just one,” he pleaded; “a nice little public-house bearing the sign:
Private. There’s the ‘Cat and Adage,’ been lying about since the
evening we first met, Peter.”
“Oh, if it comes to that,” she bragged, “I’ve got plenty of pubs
myself: The ‘Benison,’ for instance, inspired by A. C. Benson’s life
of Tennyson. That would be non-alcoholic, of course; with a permanent
impression in the window, of birds dark against a peaceful sunset.”
Stuart approved of the ‘Benison.’ “I like its nice rich ripe
blessing-of-the-Archbishop-of-Canterbury flavour. And Squeith can
patronize it for his morning glass of milk-and-soda. I’ve thought of
another one----”
“_No_, Stuart!” Merle threw into her voice all the pent-up anguish of
an inebriate’s wife.
Stuart and Peter looked rebellious.
“I’m not going to have my nice tidy Room littered up with pubs.” Merle
declared passionately. “You must keep them in the conservatory or the
lumber-closet. I shall have quite enough dusting on my hands, as it is,
what with three castles----”
“One of them recurring,” put in Peter.
“Yes, and two Eustons and the giraffe and a Norfolk Broad and a
sentry-box and I don’t know what else. Whatever I shall do on
Thursdays----”
“Thursdays?”
“Thursdays?”
“The day the Room gets turned out,” Merle enlightened their double
ignorance.
“Oh!”
“It seems rather a shame that Merle should be bothered with all that,”
Stuart mused thoughtfully. “What about having a property Womanly-Woman
to see to the dusting?”
Peter assented rather reluctantly; she was quite sure that the
Womanly-woman would make her wear gloves. “Oh well! if she became at
all obstreperous, we could always break her up, and re-form her as
something else. An Ancient Retainer, say; or a Rabbit. These Plasticine
figures are awfully useful.”
“There’d be a bit of Womanly-Woman over from a Rabbit; enough to make a
tea-spoon, or a halo, or any domestic trifle of that description.”
“Then are we to have no real human people in the Room, except just
ourselves?” Merle queried. “No--children?”
Stuart shook his head. “No children. Only childishness.” For he
recognized, deep down in his heart, that real children would stigmatize
the Room and all it contained, as “silly rot.” And demand bricks and
Noah’s Arks and Tiddley-winks. And somehow the knowledge hurt; because
he knew with what fatal ease he too could slide outside and say the
same: “Silly rot--silly rot----” “It isn’t! Rot, if you like--not
_silly_ rot!”... but even now he was slipping.... “It isn’t! it
isn’t--Peter....”
Peter guessed what was happening: “No, of course it isn’t,” quickly.
And to divert him, contributed to the Room a sailing-boat, a rustic
sailing-boat, stationary, and overgrown with ivy and clematis. And
from the stern should depend a tiny toy sailing-boat, price sixpence
halfpenny, which they could really sail on a piece of string. “And
we’ll name it the ‘Strike-me-pink,’” cried Peter fiercely.
“And paint it green,” added Stuart, feeling better. And then, in
opposition, he offered a nautical summer-house, with decks, and ropes,
and a burgee fluttering bravely from the mainmast.
The Room might by now be considered almost complete in its furnishings.
With a Heaven-born inspiration, Merle placed in its exact centre a
small bamboo table, rather rickety, on which reposed a vase of flowers.
“Don’t you think,” Peter demanded doubtfully, “that it looks a wee bit
out of place among all those castles and animals and things?”
“Not at all;” Merle was inclined to be huffy. “Merely the feminine
touch about the home;” and she considered the possibility of draping
Euston with an antimacassar.
* * * * *
... Bit by bit, as the red ball of the sun quenched its fires in the
chill Atlantic, so the dingy little number nine bedroom of the Ocean
Hotel, grew darker and darker still. At last nothing could be descried
save the grey outlines of the tin basin; a glimmer across the cracked
looking-glass; on and around the bed, three figures, dimly sprawling.
* * * * *
But in their own Playroom, the trio disport themselves as lords and
emperors. Boundless space is theirs; time without limit; while facts
they prick and shrivel like toy-balloons.
Peter, astride of the engine which draws her _wagon-lit_, is whizzing
round and round the Outer Circle, all the signals in her favour, that
naught shall arrest her triumphant speed.
Merle, discovering that Stuart has, after all, succeeded in importing
his private public-house, enters through its swing-doors, nothing loth
to demand a strawberry-ice-cream soda. The while Stuart dangles his
legs from the notched parapet of his castle; and noting Squeith in the
act of hailing the bell-buoy who sells the morning muffins, impishly
frustrates all such traffic by a sudden alteration of the time to
half-past five p.m.
“Tea is on the table,” he chants, a super-leprechaun; “and Squeith has
missed the muffin-man again! Poor Squeith! for him _always_ the muffin
that is stale; for him it is always yesterday.”
“And for us?” cries Peter, making a trumpet of her hands, as she
travels past at sixty miles an hour. And just catches his shouted
reply, wind-borne: “For us it is always to-morrow!”
“But it can’t be to-morrow without a to-day, can it?” argues Merle,
returning refreshed from the ‘Benison.’
“Why, yes; it can be the-day-after-to-morrow from yesterday!”
* * * * *
... The housemaid tapped, and entered with the hot water.
“Shall I light the gas, Miss?”
“Yes, please;” Peter’s voice seemed to come from very far away.
While the housemaid hunted for the matches, a figure rose nonchalantly
from the floor, and stole out into the passage. So that the flare of
light revealed merely two sleepy-eyed girls lying across the bed.