The Bell Family

by Noel Streatfeild

  ‘It’s quite true, Paul, darling. You do look as if you’d won a prize.’

  Paul was so happy he didn’t mind what anyone said. It was all over. The nightmare thought of having to give up the idea of being a doctor. There was no need to write to Grandfather ever, all his worries were over. He passed Alex his cup of tea.

  ‘It’s a bit of all right that the school will pay for Jane.’

  Angus was still in the same mood he had been at his birthday party, but this time he thought he understood.

  ‘Seeing Jane dance has made me feel most peculiar.’

  Jane was almost too happy to eat.

  ‘Imagine, I thought I should feel after the play that nothing nice could ever happen again. Galosh, galosh, I feel too gay to live.’

  Ginnie heard Esau snuffling beside her.

  ‘Mummy, as Jane’s won a scholarship, could Esau sit on a chair at the table, and have a plate, and anything he likes to eat, just like us?

  Cathy saw eight imploring eyes turned on her, and shook her head.

  ‘No, darlings, not even for fifty scholarships, but he shall have a slice of cake and a spoonful of ice cream on the floor.’

  Alex looked at Ginnie, his eyes twinkling.

  ‘I thought Miss Virginia Bell gave a very distinguished performance this afternoon.’

  All the family began to laugh. Paul said:

  ‘On behalf of the governors … sorry, I ought to have curtsied….’

  Jane took up the imitation.

  ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, you oughtn’t to have laughed….’

  Ginnie interrupted her:

  ‘If anybody’s going to say that speech, it’ll be me.’ Then she paused and a slow grin came over her face. ‘If you want to know Miss Virginia Bell doesn’t know what she said. Was I very awful?’

  Alex leant over and patted her hand.

  ‘Not awful at all, just a little original perhaps, but we wouldn’t change her, would we, Cathy?’

  Cathy looked happily round the table.

  ‘We wouldn’t change any of them. We know we’re lucky parents, don’t we, Alex?’

  10

  News for Esau

  IT WAS PLANNED that Jane should join Sadler’s Wells School in January. She thought the term at St Winifred’s would drag most terribly while she was waiting for January to come, but actually it passed quicker than any other term had ever done. Everybody seemed pleased about her scholarship, and were extra nice to her, then suddenly it was the end of the term, and she was flying round saying good-byes, and finding to her surprise what a lot of people there were she was sorry to say good-bye to. Ginnie, watching her, said:

  ‘It’s all very well for you, you’re leaving. I suppose if I were leaving I’d find a lot of people I’d think I was sorry to say good-bye to, but when you’re staying on for years and years, like me, you just know you don’t care if you never see them again.’

  Just before the end of term the most exciting thing happened. The family were at breakfast when Mrs Gage brought in the post. As usual, it was nearly all for Alex, though there were two envelopes, which Alex said looked suspiciously like bills, for Cathy, and one typed envelope for Paul. Paul opened his envelope and then he made the most extraordinary sound, rather like the sort of noise a pressure cooker makes. His family stared at him.

  ‘What’s up, old man?’ Alex said.

  ‘What’s in your letter, darling?’ Cathy asked.

  Paul’s face was scarlet with excitement.

  ‘Guess?’

  It was so long since Esau’s photograph had been taken that it took three guesses before Angus got the right answer.

  ‘I know. Esau’s won fifty pounds.’

  Never was there such excitement. Ginnie jumped up and knelt in front of Esau.

  ‘Darling Esau, aren’t you a proud boy, I’m worshipping you.’

  Jane joined her and threw her arms round Esau’s neck.

  ‘You’re the most exquisite dog in the world.’

  Angus got up and crouched down beside them.

  ‘You gorgeous boy! Do you know you’re richer than anybody else in the family this morning.’

  Cathy raised her voice.

  ‘No one admires Esau more than I do, but this is breakfast time, and you three ought to be sitting on your chairs at the table.’

  Jane looked reproachfully at her mother.

  ‘Such a mother to make her family stick to rules on the day their dog’s won fifty pounds.’

  Angus was indignant.

  ‘It’s per-post-trous!’

  ‘If Miss Virginia Bell was Esau,’ Ginnie remarked, ‘she’d turn round and take a nip out of Mrs Bell’s leg for saying that.’

  As soon as the family were back in their chairs the question arose as to how the money was to be spent. Angus refused to budge from his point that the money was Esau’s, and that he alone should decide on the spending.

  ‘I like that,’ said Paul, ‘it’s my camera, isn’t it? From the way you talk you’d think Esau got himself photographed and sent it in.’

  ‘I helped bath him for the photograph,’ Jane pointed out, ‘so I think I ought to have a little say.’

  Ginnie passed her cup for more milk.

  ‘I believe it was Miss Virginia Bell who said he’d look nice on the church steps.’

  ‘You gorgeous boy!’

  Alex decided that perhaps he had better make a suggestion.

  ‘I think you’ll agree, won’t you, Paul, that though you took the photograph the enterprise was a family one?’ Paul nodded, for of course he meant to share the money. ‘Then what I suggest is this. There are six of us. And six eights are forty-eight. That would mean we could each have eight pounds spent on us, or we could spend our eight pounds on the house. The two pounds over would belong to Esau, he could have a new collar, a new lead and it would keep him in horse meat for quite a while, and …’

  He was interrupted by loud protests from all round the table.

  ‘Really, Daddy,’ said Jane, ‘and you a clergyman! Here’s poor Esau only having two pounds out of his win, while we get eight each, and then you suggest he spends it on horse meat, which he’d have anyway.’

  Angus was so angry he was spluttering.

  ‘Such meanness! Horse meat! Which he doesn’t like but has to have. And a collar and lead! He simply loathes his collar and lead!’

  Ginnie looked at Alex in a most reproving way.

  ‘Take it back, Daddy. You’ll never be able to look your family in the face again unless you do.’

  Cathy had an idea.

  ‘I tell you what. Certainly let Esau have his two pounds, but why not let him buy something nice for Mrs Gage with it? After all, it was she who saw the advertisement in the paper.’

  In the end, after a great deal of argument, a plan was arrived at. Mrs Gage should have a superb Christmas present, partly paid for by Esau but partly by everybody else. Cathy’s eight pounds would buy her a new dress. Alex wanted to spend his on repairs to the house, but Cathy said he needed new shoes and new socks. Paul’s eight pounds would buy him an overcoat.

  ‘Please, darling,’ said Cathy, ‘your present one is so thin and old it worries me every time I see you in it.’

  There was no argument as to what Jane’s eight pounds was to be spent on. Sadler’s Wells School wore a very pretty green and blue uniform, her eight pounds would go towards that. It was more difficult deciding about Ginnie and Angus. Ginnie disliked clothes and Angus was still so angry at the family’s treatment of Esau that he refused to discuss what was done with his money. In the end Cathy half persuaded them.

  ‘Look, darlings. I know you think it’s an awful waste of money, but you both need such a terrible lot of clothes. Would you be very generous and let me have six pounds from each of you, to spend on you, then you’ll have two pounds over for Esau’s present to Mrs Gage, and for any special food for Esau that you think he ought to have?’

  Christmas was always, of course, a lovely
time, but that Christmas was one of the gayest and happiest. They chose a coat for Mrs Gage out of Esau’s money, and money added by all the family. Mrs Gage always said she fancied red, but they knew her wardrobe well, and there certainly was not a red coat in it. It was a splendid red coat, with a fur collar, not, as Cathy said, very grand sort of fur, but still fur. Mrs Gage was thrilled, in fact she was so thrilled that for quite a time she could not say anything intelligible, only a string of things like ‘Well, I never!’ ‘Chase me Aunt Fanny round the gas works.’ ‘Smashin’ bit of fur.’ ‘Oh, wait till Mr Gage sees this.’ ‘What I needs is an invite to Buckingham Palace.’

  Cathy was thrilled with her new frock. To Jane’s disgust she refused to buy anything silly and garden-partyish, but it was a very pretty colour, a sort of blackberry.

  ‘Much nicer than anything Aunt Rose has,’ said Ginnie approvingly. ‘I can’t wait for her to see it, I bet she’s jealous.’

  Cathy said she did not think that Aunt Rose would be jealous of a frock that cost less than eight pounds, but it certainly made a lovely change from the old black.

  The only person who did not perhaps enjoy the prize money was poor Esau himself. He always had his plate of turkey on Christmas Day, and Cathy said she thought that ought to be enough special Christmas fare. Paul and Jane felt that was being a bit mean, so they persuaded her to let him have kidneys for breakfast, and a large slice of Christmas cake for tea. Mrs Gage, to say thank you for the coat, hung up a sock in the kitchen for him, out of which stuck an enormous meaty bone. Esau ate the bone before breakfast. After breakfast, when the family were not looking, Ginnie gave him a bulging paper bag.

  ‘There’s two pounds of sugar biscuits in there. You eat just as many as you like, and exactly when you like.’

  Angus took Esau into his bedroom to give him his present.

  ‘Nobody but me thinks you’ve been meanly treated. I think it’s terrible what’s happened, so this is for you. It cost fourteen shillings. You needn’t take just one like we have to, you can eat them all at once if you like.’

  Angus’s present was a large box of chocolate creams. It was noticed on Christmas evening that Esau seemed a bit drowsy, and there was no doubt the next morning that he had spent a miserable night being very, very sick.

  It seemed to the children they scarcely had time to thank for Christmas presents before it was term time again. Of course to Jane the new term was more exciting than holidays, but the others did not feel that way. Ginnie particularly disliked the beginning of term. She did not want to go to Sadler’s Wells School, in fact there was nothing she would have loathed more, but all the same it seemed drab going to St Winifred’s alone. Perhaps it was going there alone, still wearing the unglamorous St Winifred’s uniform, while Jane danced off in her lovely new blue and green, but something made Ginnie think about herself. This was very unlike her for she was not at all a thinking-about-yourself person, but once she started she thought about herself in a big way. The result of her thinking was that she decided it was time she became the shining light of the family. There were Paul and Jane with scholarships, and there was Angus with a choir school scholarship, and dancing lessons from Grandfather, and there was she with nothing at all. Ginnie was not depressed by her thinking, merely determined to change the position. Somehow, some way, Miss Virginia Bell would shine, and when she did it would be such a bright shining that she would become the most important person in the family.

  Ginnie’s first idea of a way to shine came to her as the result of a talk by one of the school governors. Miss Newton thought that particular governor a woolly thinker, and a shocking bore, but Ginnie seized on what he said, and decided it was exactly the sort of idea she was looking for. The next morning she came down to breakfast wearing an earnest expression, which she hoped her family would notice. As is the way of families they were all thinking about their own things, and never looked at Ginnie, so at last she burst out:

  ‘Don’t any of you notice anything different about me this morning?’

  ‘Are you fatter?’ Paul suggested.

  Alex asked why she should look different. Ginnie paused, to be sure they were all listening.

  ‘Yesterday we had a pep talk about Service.’

  Angus was puzzled.

  ‘Service in church?’

  Ginnie sighed at his stupidity.

  ‘Don’t be so ignorant, my boy, Service to your country. It was one of the school governors, and he said none of us were too small to start dedicating a part of each day to Service. I started dedicating yesterday.’

  Alex tried not to smile.

  ‘What form did your dedication take, Ginnie?’

  ‘I put all I had, which was two pennies, into the lifeboat box.’

  ‘Why did you choose the lifeboat box?’ Jane asked.

  Ginnie was not going to say it was the first collecting box she saw.

  ‘Why not? Somebody has to pay for lifeboats, don’t they?’

  ‘Is that all you have to do?’ Jane asked. ‘A different little bit of service every day?’

  Ginnie produced an exercise book on which she had been sitting.

  ‘This is my Dedication book. Do you see, I wrote the date yesterday, and underneath “Dedication Day” Then on this side I put “Life Boat. 2d. all I had.”’

  ‘If you want something for today,’ Cathy suggested, ‘I could give you some boxes of bits to sort. I want some pieces for patching.’

  Ginnie closed her book.

  ‘Sorting bits at home isn’t Service of the sort the man meant. I mean, it wouldn’t look important enough in my book.’

  Paul jumped on that.

  ‘What is it, a prize you’re going in for?’

  ‘Not a prize, just honour. The governor said that he would like to look at our books in the autumn, and see which girl had given the best Service. I mean it to be me.’

  Ginnie kept her book faithfully, but she found it extraordinarily difficult to find outstanding Service that wanted doing.

  ‘I want to rescue someone from drowning, or catch a burglar, or something like that,’ she complained. ‘But everybody round us is so dull, they never want those sort of things done for them.’

  Alex was a little worried about Ginnie’s book.

  ‘This looking for dashing things to do is all wrong,’ he said to Cathy. ‘I wish she’d see there are all sorts of things which need doing under her feet, there’s no need to go looking for them.’

  ‘I know,’ Cathy agreed; ‘but I think it’s only a temporary craze, and sooner or later she’ll give up bothering with her Dedication book. She’s really a very helpful child, some day she’ll see that helping me is just as worth while as catching burglars.’

  Sadler’s Wells School was a big surprise to Jane. She had thought that in a dancing school, dancing would be the most important subject, and that all other lessons would come second. One week in the school, and she saw how wrong her ideas were. Dancing was important of course, but so were all the other subjects she learned.

  ‘You can’t think how ordinary a school it is in a way,’ she told her family. ‘You see, we’re all only there on approval, so they want us to be good all round in case we won’t make dancers.’

  Angus, who was not at all pleased with dancing classes only, said:

  ‘I wouldn’t call it ordinary if I could go there instead of to the choir school. I wouldn’t think any school’s just ordinary where I was sent to see ballet as part of things learnt, and you do have lessons every day.’

  But Jane stuck to her point.

  ‘You wait until you get properly into the school, and you’ll see what I mean. I suppose it’s because I’m not allowed to practise at home, and because I know I’m being properly taught at school, but in some ways I think less about dancing now than I did when I was at St Winifred’s.’

  It was the summer term before Ginnie saw what she thought was an opportunity for a dramatic entry in her Dedication book. She was waiting in the queue for the b
us that would take her to St Winifred’s, when Miss Bloggs got off her bicycle and stopped beside her.

  ‘Good morning, Ginnie, dear, is your father in? I have to see him urgently.’

  ‘Not this morning, he isn’t. He’s gone to a meeting. Mrs Gage said she would do his study. She said he created when he was in, but what the eye didn’t see the heart wouldn’t grieve about. But I know Daddy’s eye will see when he gets in, because Mrs Gage always moves something, and then Mummy has to find it.’

  Miss Bloggs made worried tch-tching noises.

  ‘Oh, dear! The entertainers who were coming to give my old people at the Darby and Joan Club their anniversary treat have fallen through. I don’t know what to do, the old people are invited for next Saturday, and they are so looking forward to the afternoon.’

  ‘Couldn’t you just give them more to eat?’ Ginnie suggested. ‘If it was me, I’d rather have that than an entertainment.’

  ‘I dare say you would, dear, but not my old people. You see, many of them have no teeth. Still, never say die, something may turn up. But I feel a little discouraged, people are less voluntary-service minded than they were.’

  Ginnie stared at Miss Bloggs, while an idea blossomed like a flower in her brain. How splendid ‘Organised concert for old people’ would look in her book. That was the sort of entry that ought to make her dedication book the best in the school. Without thinking very much she said grandly:

  ‘Don’t worry, Miss Bloggs, I will arrange the concert for you.’

  Miss Bloggs was amazed.

  ‘You, Ginnie! How?’

  Ginnie was uncertain how, but she was sure she could arrange it with Miss Newton.

  ‘There’s the school choir, and the folk dancers, and the verse speakers. The only thing is, it’s me who has to arrange it all, or at least it has to count as me arranging it.’

  Miss Bloggs could hardly believe her luck.

  ‘Really, Ginnie? You mean your school will give the entertainment? How kind.’

  Ginnie, carried away, sounded not only confident, but regal.

  ‘Nothing easier. Miss Newton will be pleased.’

  Miss Bloggs, with a sigh of relief, prepared to get back on her bicycle.