by Rumer Godden
‘When the roof is made,’ said Nona, ‘I’ll buy you a bottle of ginger beer.’ But how was the roof to be made?
‘It should be tiles,’ said Tom. He had drawn tiles in the plan, tiles like little scallops in rows; now he had to think how he could make them.
There was an old tea chest in the garage. It was stamped in big black letters. Tom looked at it. ‘It’s the right thickness,’ he said. He took it to pieces and from two of the sides he cut panels and glued them into place against a ridgepole.
Nona looked at the great black letters. ‘But . . .’ she began in dismay.
‘But what?’ asked Tom, as if he could not see anything wrong.
‘It looks horrid!’ said Nona. ‘Not a bit like tiles. And why have you put the lettering outside?’
‘Why not?’ asked Tom.
‘It shows.’
‘It won’t show,’ said Tom.
‘But it does,’ said Nona, almost tearfully.
‘Wait and see,’ said Tom.
He sounded as if he knew exactly what he was doing, but Miss Flower could not help being anxious too. ‘Will it be all right?’ she whispered to Miss Happiness. ‘Will it?’
‘I think it will,’ said Miss Happiness.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Mr Tom has made the house beautifully. He will make a beautiful roof as well. We should trust Mr Tom,’ said Miss Happiness.
Miss Flower wanted to trust Tom but she thought it wise to do some wishing as well. ‘I wish the house could have a pretty roof. I don’t see how it can but I wish it could,’ she wished.
‘How much money have you got?’ Tom asked Nona.
She had four shillings, and Tom went with her to the bookshop, where they bought a large sheet of stiff drawing-paper. Then they bought a pot of dark blue poster paint. Mr Twilfit did up the paper in a roll. ‘It’s for the dolls’ house,’ Nona told him.
‘It’s getting on, hey?’ asked Mr Twilfit.
‘Very well, thank you,’ said Tom coldly, and Mr Twilfit’s eyebrows went up and down as he watched Tom walk away out of the shop.
When they got home Tom stretched the paper on his work-table and he and Nona painted it evenly, a deep blue. In the afternoon when it was dry he sat Nona down at the playroom table and told her to cut the paper into long strips, two inches wide. ‘Measure carefully,’ and he said cheerfully, ‘You can manage it.’
Nona looked at the beautiful paper and was not at all sure she could manage it. ‘W-won’t you do it, Tom?’ she asked.
‘You must do some of the work,’ said Tom severely. ‘I have to bike down to the wood shop. I need a piece of wood.’ He took some more money from Nona and went off.
Nona sat and looked at the paper – she was very afraid she would spoil it. Very carefully she measured off two inches at each side, making dots to mark the width . . . But how can I keep the cutting straight? thought Nona. Still very carefully, with the big scissors, she started to cut across from dot to dot and, sure enough, the strip was uneven and wandered up and down.
‘Silly billy! You’ll never do it like that.’ Anne had come quietly into the playroom to practise.
‘Then how?’ asked Nona desperately, looking at the dreadful jagged strip she had made. ‘Oh, Tom will be so cross,’ and she looked as if she were going to cry.
‘Look. Fold it,’ said Anne, putting down her music.
‘Oh, Anne, please help me.’
‘You must measure,’ said Anne.
‘But I did. Two inches.’
‘Right,’ said Anne. ‘But you need a knife, not scissors.’ She took a knife from Tom’s work-table and cut off the uneven piece Nona had left, then measured two inches again, marking with dots as Nona had done, folded the paper, and then slit along the fold; a smooth two-inch strip came off. ‘Now try,’ said Anne.
‘Oh, Anne. You do it.’
‘I haven’t time.’
‘P-please, Anne. I don’t want to make Tom cross.’
‘Well, I’ll fold it. Then you try,’ said Anne. ‘Come on. It’s easy.’
It was easy – ‘when you know how,’ said Nona. With Anne folding the paper and holding it steady, Nona was able to cut off an even strip.
‘And strip after strip,’ said Miss Happiness in pride.
‘Anne, you have such very clever, neat hands,’ Nona was saying.
‘So have you, Miss Nona,’ said Miss Flower.
When Tom came back the strips were laid out on his table, even and smoothly cut, and he was pleased. ‘But now we have to scallop them,’ he said. ‘Anne, you’re the neatest one. You do them.’ He did not beg Anne, he ordered her. ‘I wish I were a boy,’ thought Nona.
‘What about my piano practice?’ Anne said it as if she would far rather make the scallops.
‘Practise afterwards,’ said Tom. ‘Get the scissors, Nona.’
‘They’re here,’ said Nona, hoping Tom would not look in the wastepaper basket and see the strip she had spoiled.
Anne folded each strip four times and with the scissors cut one edge into even scallops. As soon as they were cut, Nona unfolded the strip and, with a deeper blue pencil, Tom marked a line between each scallop: scallop after scallop, strip after strip. It took longer to mark the lines than to cut the scallops, and when Anne went to the piano to practise, Tom, with Nona to wait on him, was still at work.
After tea Anne helped again. Nona brushed the back of the strips with glue, making them really sticky, and Anne and Tom stuck them one at a time on to the roof panels; they began at the bottom and glued them each a little above the first so that the scallops overlapped. As one row of scallops rose above the other, they began to look very like tiles, and when the roof was covered bottom to top, back and front, Nona and Anne clapped.
‘I told you we could trust Mr Tom,’ said Miss Happiness.
As Anne and Tom started to make a tiny tiled roof for the niche, Nona slipped out and all by herself went to the grocer. She had to cross the road but, holding her purse very tightly, she crossed it. She was not nearly as afraid now as she had been that first day when she set out for Mr Twilfit’s shop. At the grocer’s she spent two of her last three ninepences on two bottles of ginger beer; the grocer gave her coloured straws for nothing. On her way home, as she was not sure Anne liked ginger beer, she stopped at a flower barrow and bought a spray of white blossom; she had no money to buy any more.
Miss Happiness and Miss Flower were puzzled when they saw Nona arranging the ginger beer on a tray. ‘We should have served tea,’ said Miss Flower, and she said longingly, ‘In the tea ceremony.’ ‘Ceremony’ is a word Japanese dolls use a lot; it means doing something in a very respectful and special way.
‘In England it is the ginger beer ceremony,’ said Miss Happiness, and she comforted Miss Flower. ‘See, our Miss Nona knows how to arrange flowers almost as we do; she does not put too many in the vase.’ Miss Happiness did not know that there had been only one ninepence left.
‘And plum blossom means hope,’ said Miss Flower.
‘It is hope,’ said Miss Happiness. ‘Look, Flower, look!’
Nona had put the dolls on the pretty tray she was carrying to the playroom. She had stopped just inside the door, looking. Now Miss Flower looked too, and ‘Aaah!’ whispered Miss Flower.
On Tom’s work-bench stood the little house with its tiled roof, its tiny hall and the screen walls that slid, its two side walls and the niche. There was, of course, no chimney, but where the chimney might have been Tom had put a twig of green leaves for a bough.
‘How happy and gay they all are!’ said Miss Happiness.
‘One person isn’t happy,’ said Miss Flower, and suddenly she had a doll shiver. ‘Listen,’ said Miss Flower.
‘Belinda, have some ginger beer.’
‘I’m busy.’
‘Belinda, come and see the Japanese house with its new roof.’
‘I’m very busy.’
Belinda was still feeling left out. The next time she went into the playroom she gave Tom�
��s work-table a good shake, but Tom had made the house so well that nothing moved or broke. ‘I wish Japan were at the bottom of the sea!’ said Belinda; but it was not Japan that made her miserable, for as soon as she heard the story of Peach Boy again or thought about Little Peach she felt warm and comfortable; it was when she thought about the Japanese dolls’ house – ‘and Nona!’ said Belinda, gritting her teeth – she felt so jealous and cold and hard that she might have been a small iron Belinda.
Chapter 5
Nona was still not very happy about going to school. ‘Why, Nona?’ asked Mother. ‘Belinda doesn’t mind and she is younger than you.’
‘It’s all right for Belinda,’ said Nona. ‘She has lots of friends.’
‘You can have friends.’
‘No I can’t,’ said Nona tearfully.
‘Why not?’
The tears overflowed. ‘There’s only one girl I like and she sits next to me,’ sobbed Nona.
‘If you like her why should you mind?’ asked Mother, mystified, which means she could not understand at all; it certainly was difficult to understand. ‘Why should you mind?’ asked Mother.
‘She’s too pretty and stuck-up to speak to me.’
‘She means Melly,’ said Belinda. ‘Melanie Ashton. You know, her mother keeps the hat shop.’
‘But Melly’s a nice little girl.’
‘She won’t speak to me.’
‘Perhaps she’s shy.’
‘No, I’m the one who’s shy,’ wept Nona.
Except for Melly, school was not really so dreadful now. Nona was learning to write and paint and sew, as Mother had said. When she read aloud now it was not in a sing-song, and nobody laughed at her English. Then one day, on the new page of her reading book, she came across a tiny poem. It was so small it might have been made for a dolls’ house:
My two plum trees are
So gracious . . .
See, they flower
One now, one later.
Underneath was written: ‘Haiku. Japanese poem.’4
‘Are all Japanese poems as little as that?’ Nona asked Miss Lane. ‘Are they all as little?’
‘Not all, but a great many,’ said Miss Lane.
‘Could I copy it?’ asked Nona, and began to tell Miss Lane about Miss Happiness and Miss Flower.
‘Is the house finished?’ asked Miss Happiness.
‘Oh no!’ cried Miss Flower, and ‘Now I have to make the steps,’ said Tom.
The steps were four pieces of wood, the same length but different widths. Glued one on top of the other, they made a set of steps leading up to the front door. ‘You can put dolls’-house tubs of flowers each side,’ said Tom.
‘Is the house finished now?’ asked Miss Happiness. No, it was not finished yet.
Tom stained the frames and the angle pieces a beautiful dark brown. He had painted the walls and the underside of the roof an ivory colour, but the niche he painted pale jade green. Last of all the house was dusted and cleaned, carried into Nona’s room from the playroom, and put on the window-sill. ‘Now show that to Mr Twilfit!’ said Tom.
‘First it must be furnished,’ said Nona. ‘I need scraps of cotton and silk.’
‘You haven’t got any,’ said Belinda.
That was only too true. The pieces in Mother’s scrap-bag were bits of flannel and oddments from old cotton dresses. There was some velveteen, but velveteen is thick and heavy for a small doll. ‘I need thin bright silk in different colours,’ said Nona.
‘Well, you can’t have it.’
‘I know I can’t,’ said Nona mournfully. She had spent that week’s ninepence on extra things for Tom. ‘And I need a lamp and a low table, and the book says Japanese people keep their quilts in cupboards with sliding doors. How can I . . .’ Nona broke off and sat quite still. ‘A cupboard with sliding doors,’ she whispered.
‘Nona, I’m talking to you,’ said Mother. ‘I’m asking you if you want any more pudding?’ These days Nona often had more pudding, but now she did not answer.
‘Nona. Are you dreaming?’ Yes, Nona was dreaming – of Melly’s pencil-box.
It was a new pencil-box of plain light wood. It had a compartment down the middle and, most fascinating of all, it had a roll top of slatted wood that rolled back as soon as you touched it. ‘It would make a perfect little cupboard,’ dreamed Nona, ‘empty and standing on its side. Perfect!’ And then a daring thought came to her: I wonder if Melly would swap it? – Nona had not been in school very long but already she knew all about swapping. Swap, but for what? It would have to be something very beautiful. After lunch Nona went slowly upstairs and pulled out her drawer; next morning when she went to school she wore her silver bangles.
‘Oh, how pretty!’ said Melly.
Nona had seen Melly looking at the bangles and had pulled the cuff of her blouse back so that they would show more as she let her hand lie on the desk. They clinked gently against one another and their silver shone above the wood of the desk. ‘You like them?’ whispered Nona.
Melly nodded, and her curls bobbed. Nona slid off the bangles and when Miss Lane was busy she passed them to Melly. ‘Very pretty,’ whispered Melly, looking at them.
‘You can put them on if you like.’
Now that they had spoken Nona could not think why she and Melly had not spoken before.
Perhaps Mother had been right and Melly was shy; she blushed as she slid the bangles on. They looked beautiful on her pink and white wrist, and ‘Very, very pretty,’ whispered Melly.
Nona felt an ache in her heart; she had had her bangles almost since she was a baby and they reminded her of Coimbatore, but she had the dolls to think of now. ‘I’ll swap them if you like,’ said Nona.
Melly’s grey eyes widened. ‘But . . . they’re silver!’ she said.
‘Yes, but I’ll swap them.’
‘For what?’
‘For your pencil-box,’ said Nona lightly, but her heart was beating.
‘Melly Ashton, Nona Fell, are you talking?’ asked Miss Lane, but the two heads, Nona’s dark one and Melly’s with its golden curls, were bent over their desks, and their pens scratched away. Yet, if Miss Lane had noticed, she would have seen that Melly’s pencil-box was on Nona’s desk and Nona’s bangles were on Melly.
Standing on its side in the Japanese doll’s-house the pencil-box did look like a real cupboard. ‘The quilts shall go in the bottom – when I have the quilts,’ said Nona. ‘The bowls in the top – when I have the bowls.’ The rolltop slid backwards and forwards like a real cupboard.
‘It might have come from Japan,’ said Miss Flower, and Miss Happiness said, ‘It has “Made in Japan” stamped on it. I saw it.’
‘Nona, you are to go into the drawing-room. Mother wants you,’ said Anne.
‘You have done something,’ said Belinda. ‘Mrs Ashton is there.’
‘Who is Mrs Ashton?’ asked Nona.
‘Melly’s mother,’ said Anne.
‘What have you done?’ asked Belinda.
Mrs Ashton was sitting on a chair by the fire when Nona came in. In her hand she held the bangles.
‘They’re quite valuable,’ she was saying to Mother. ‘Real silver. I’m sure you wouldn’t want Nona to give them away and I couldn’t possibly let Melly accept them.’
‘But I didn’t give them,’ said Nona. ‘I swapped them.’
‘Swapped them?’
‘For Melly’s pencil box.’
‘A pencil box?’ Both the mothers stared at Nona as if she were ill.
‘But you could buy a pencil box for a shilling or two, you silly child.’
‘Not that one,’ cried poor Nona. ‘There isn’t another one like that. Oh, don’t you see? That’s the only one that will do.’
Mrs Ashton was very like Melly, with the same golden hair and grey eyes, the same smile. Nona had spoken to Melly, and now she found courage again. ‘If you would come upstairs,’ she said, ‘I could show you,’ and she slipped her hand into Mrs Ashton’s. It was th
e first time Nona had put her hand into anyone’s since she had left Coimbatore.
Mrs Ashton looked at Mother, who nodded. ‘Show me,’ said Mrs Ashton.
‘But Mother will make you give it back,’ said Belinda. ‘You needn’t think she won’t.’ And sure enough, ‘You must give it back,’ said Mother.
‘But Mrs Ashton wasn’t cross,’ said Nona.
‘All the more reason,’ said Mother.
‘And Melly didn’t mind.’
‘But you are not allowed to swap things at school, not expensive things,’ said Mother. ‘I’m sorry, Nona, but you must keep the rules.’
Very slowly Nona took the pencil box out of the house.
‘It is right and proper,’ said Miss Happiness with a sigh. ‘She must keep the rules.’
Miss Flower did not answer. She was too sad.
Indeed it seemed that the dolls’ house was not getting on at all. On the way to school Nona and Belinda passed a shop where, in the window, four dolls’-house tea sets in delicate flowered china were set out. ‘What about those?’ asked Belinda.
‘It’s bowls, not cups, I need,’ said Nona.
‘There’s a sugar bowl.’
‘Only one.’ Each set had two cups, a teapot, a milk jug and a sugar bowl.
‘You could knock the handles off the cups,’ said Belinda cheerfully.
‘And give them something chipped!’ said Nona. She knew without being told that Miss Flower would not like that. ‘Anyway, they are four shillings and sixpence each,’ she said.
Another shop had table mats in fine, fine bamboo. ‘Like dolls’-house matting,’ said Nona, ‘and Japanese houses always have matting on the floor.’ But the mats were a shilling each, ‘and I should need two,’ said Nona. In the same shop as the tea sets was a round dolls’-house table in dark wood. ‘If Tom cut the legs shorter it would look Japanese. Oh, I don’t know where to begin!’ said Nona, and pressed her face against the glass of one shop, then another. In the end she bought the table, and Tom, with his smallest saw, cut the legs down for her so that the table was only an inch from the floor. It was just right for a Japanese table, but it looked bleak and plain in the empty room. ‘It will never be furnished,’ said Nona.
