I Know a Secret/Chapter 9

by Christopher Darlington Morley

A Story About Bar Beach

THE kittens always enjoyed stories about fish. They did their geography lessons much better after Fourchette showed them that the map of Long Island looks a good deal like a Japanese goldfish with a long streamy tail. The bays and harbours on the North Shore make it look, Fourchette said, like a fish that has had several bites taken out of its back. This also was an idea that pleased the kittens. Hops made up a rhyme that he was proud of:—

Various bays indent our coast,
But Hempstead Harbour we like most.

Then they were surprised when Escargot explained that the word indent really means to put a tooth into.

Fourchette believed that young people should study the geography of their own homes, and make maps of them, so the kittens soon learned how to draw a picture of Long Island. It looked something like this:—

The eye of the fish is Jamaica, where you change trains. The wavy line along the fish's middle is the Motor Parkway. Of course the little square under the tooth-marks is the Roslyn Estates.

Now it is quite true that Long Island does not look very large on a map of the world, though it is almost always marked. But the place you live in, wherever it is, is always big enough to begin your geography with. Escargot was very fond of pencil-and-paper games, and also very anxious to learn about America; so they used to get out the atlas and have great fun moving Long Island round the map. They discovered, for instance, that if you turn the Island around, and put its nose at the lower end of New York City (at the Aquarium, where a fish's nose would feel quite at home) it would stretch up the Hudson River almost to Albany. And then, going on, they would use Long Island as a kind of measuring stick, and travel across the country. Put Long Island's nose at Albany, then it reaches most of the way to Syracuse. And from Syracuse nearly to Buffalo; and from Buffalo to Ashtabula; from Ashtabula to Sandusky, from Sandusky to Fort Wayne. I am pleased to have it reach so exactly to Fort Wayne, because I had a very good roast-beef sandwich in the railroad station there, late one night, when I was tired and hungry.

When they discovered, in this game of pushing Long Island round the map, that it was about as large as the State of Delaware, they were so excited they wanted to write to the Governor of Delaware and tell him about it. And Escargot was much surprised when he learned that Long Island was almost as big as La Manche, his native "department" in France.

Hempstead Harbour, the one the kittens knew best, is the fourth tooth-bite from the left. And if you look very carefully at their map you will see a little spike sticking out in that harbour. That marks Bar Beach.

Bar Beach is a spit of sand and pebbles that juts out into the harbour. In fact it runs almost all the way across, leaving only a narrow channel between itself and Glenwood Landing where the boatyard is. Once upon a time it was quite a lonely beach. Only a few years ago you could drive along there, to the foot of Beacon Hill, and undress in the old Dodge car, and bathe quite privately. Now the gravel works have made a wilderness of the hillsides, and there is a new concrete road, and Bar Beach is built up with bungalows and bathing pavilions, and anyone who undresses in a car will get arrested. But one reason why living on Long Island is interesting is that you can see it changing so quickly, and changes always make people think. Ten years ago the Roslyn Estates were a forgotten little woodland, almost like the forest of Arden that Shakespeare wrote about. Ten years from now—in 1937—they will be a genteel suburb that shaves every morning.

Bar Beach comes into this story, because Bar Beach is famous for one thing; but you will have to be patient a few minutes to see just how.

There was a man who was particularly fond of the dark. He had a big front porch built on the side of a hill, so that it was high up among the trees, and from that porch, at night, he could see a fine speckle of stars. Every evening before he went to bed he used to go out, like the captain on the bridge of a ship, and make sure that the stars were all right. He did not know much about them, did not even know many of them by name, but still he was pleased that they were there. He liked to see how Cassiopeia and the Great Bear play tag with each other, going round and round the Pole Star. In winter he specially admired Orion with his dancing sprawl across the western sky. He had noticed that a line through Orion's Belt leads to the Dog Star, just as though the Dog was following his master on a leash.

One evening this man had been sitting at his desk for several hours. He went out, about midnight, for his usual look at the sky. If you live in the city you don't think much about the weather, but one of the pleasures of the country is keeping an eye on the changes of wind and cloud. To his surprise, when he went on the porch he found that everything had changed while he had been absorbed in his work. A wet autumn fog had come up, very thick. When he looked off the far end of the porch it was so dark he could see nothing. There were no stars at all. There was the rustle and drip of the wet woods, and far down in the harbour the tugs that tow the gravel barges were whistling anxiously to each other. Somewhere out in the Sound a siren was groaning like an unhappy cow. It was a good evening to be safe at home, and he thought comfortably of his couch in the corner of the room. There he could lie, with a warm light above his head, and read a detective story and perhaps eat a piece of cheese while he was reading. That was one of his bad habits.

But he was sorry not to see the stars. Somehow, while he had been at work he had counted on that last look at the clear sprinkled sky. Rather disappointed he felt his way carefully back along the porch. You always had to be careful on that porch, for the chairs had a habit of shifting themselves round in unexpected places. Also you never knew if a kiddie-car or a velocipede might not leap between your feet. You had to look out for Donny, too, who liked to sprawl in the fairway. Whenever you were groping round in the dark in any place where Donny might possibly be, it was wise to say something out loud, such as "Well, old quadruped, are you right under my feet?" If he was there, he would reply with a thumping of his flap-flap tail, and you could steer around him.

Feeling his way back along the porch—and it was very dark that night—the man bumped onto a chair that had no business there at all. He was annoyed, because he bashed his shin, and he put his hand down to find out what chair it was. On the seat was a very queer object. It was cool, queerly hard-soft, pebbly or prickly to feel, and of an odd shape with points rather like fingers. It surprised him very much. Feeling it, in the dark, he couldn't imagine, at first, what it might be. He took it indoors to look at it in the light.

It was a starfish—one of those queer little five-pointed creatures you find on the shore at low tide, scattered about like asterisks. The children had been down to Bar Beach that afternoon. It was November, and winter was coming, and they wanted to say good-bye to the beaches they would not visit again until next spring. They had brought home a star-fish.

And then it suddenly struck the man that this was queer. He had gone out looking for stars. He couldn't find any, but there, in the foggy darkness, he had put his hand right on a star-fish—the last thing you'd expect to find on your front porch. Sometimes he remembers that, in nights that are very black and thick. Even if you can't find a star, there may be a star-fish that will do just as well.

Bar Beach will never again be a lonely little bathing place. Along that shore the gravel barges and bath houses and hot dogs and ice cream cones will soon outnumber the clams and the crabs. But as long as the water of Hempstead Harbour stays clean and untainted, there will be star-fish there for children to find, among the wet pebbles when the tide goes down.