by Joan Aiken
‘I suppose it’s a bit of a nuisance for females,’ Simon suggested, thinking of Sophie’s white cambric skirts. The man’s face fell.
‘For females? You think it is? Yes, perhaps – perhaps.’ He sighed. ‘Still, you yourself don’t object to it – that’s very gratifying. It’s always gratifying to find a kindred spirit. Do you, I wonder, play chess?’
‘Yes, I do, sir,’ said Simon, who had been taught to play by Dr Field.
‘You do? But that’s capital – famous!’ The old gentleman looked radiant. ‘We must certainly meet again. You must come and play chess with me. Will you?’
‘Why, certainly, sir,’ said Simon, who began to believe the old gentleman must be a trifle cracked. Still, he seemed a harmless old boy, and quite kindly disposed. ‘When shall I come?’
‘Let me think. Not tomorrow night, dinner with the Prince of Wales. Night after, Royal Society, lecture on moss. Night after that, tennis with the Archbishop. Indoor, of course. Night after, Almack’s with Henrietta. Devilish dull, but she enjoys it. Night after, ball at Carlton House. Stuffy affairs, can’t be helped, must put in an appearance. Night after, billiards with the Lord Chief Justice. How about today week?’
‘That would be quite all right for me, sir,’ said Simon. ‘Where shall I come?’
‘Oh I’m always around and about,’ the man said, waving a hand vaguely. ‘Anyone will tell you where to find me. Any time after nine. That’s excellent – really delightful.’ He pulled on a rope and his cradle moved away.
‘Excuse me, sir – whom shall I ask for?’ Simon called after him.
‘Just ask for Battersea,’ the man’s voice came faintly back.
Battersea? Battersea? He must be cracked, Simon decided. No doubt by that day week he would have forgotten all about the invitation. Perhaps Sophie would know who he was, and whether the invitation should be taken seriously or not. Sophie was so shrewd and cheerful and kind-hearted – what a comfort it was to have found her again!
Leaving the tunnel, Simon swung on towards Vauxhall Bridge, whistling happily. If only he could find Dr Field, life in London would not be so bad!
5
NEXT DAY, CHANCING to wake early, Simon looked out of his front window into Rose Alley and saw his unfortunate donkey, Caroline, struggling to pull an outrageously heavy milk-cart loaded with churns, and being encouraged thereto by the shrewish dairy woman, who was beating her with a curtain-pole.
Simon threw on his clothes and ran down to the street.
‘Hey!’ he shouted after the milkwoman. She turned, scowling, and snapped: ‘Penny a gill, and only if you’ve got your own jug.’
‘I don’t want milk,’ Simon said (indeed it looked very blue and watery), ‘I want my donkey.’ And before she could object, he kicked a brick under the wheel of the cart and slipped the relieved Caroline out from between the shafts. In two days she seemed to have grown noticeably thinner and to have acquired several weals.
‘I’m not leaving her with you a minute longer,’ Simon told the woman. ‘You ought to be ashamed to treat her so.’
‘I suppose you are the President of the Royal Humane Society,’ she sneered. Then she turned and bawled, ‘Tod! Bring the mule.’
‘Coming, Aunt Poke,’ called a voice, and the boy Tod appeared leading a scraggy mule with one hand and holding his trousers round his neck with the other. He put out his tongue at Simon and remarked, ‘What price cat’s meat?’
It was still very early, and Simon decided this would be a good time to make inquiries about Dr Field at the shops in the neighbourhood. There was a greengrocer’s next to the dairy, adorned with piles of wizened radishes and bunches of drooping parsley. He saw Mrs Grotch, Aunt Tinty, watering these with dirty water from a battered can. Guessing that he would get no help from her he passed to the next shop, a bakery.
‘Can you tell me if a Dr Gabriel Field ever bought bread here?’ he asked, stepping into the warm, sweet-smelling place.
‘Dr Field?’ The baker scratched his head, then called to his wife, ‘Polly? Know anything about a Dr Field?’
‘Was he the one that lanced Susie’s carbuncle?’ The baker’s wife came through into the shop, wiping her hands on her apron.
Just at that moment Simon heard a voice behind him. Tod, having harnessed the mule to his Aunt Poke’s milk-float, had wandered along the lane and was spinning a top outside the door and singing in a loud, shrill voice:
‘Nimmy, nimmy, not,
My name’s Tom Tit Tot.’
Whether this song had any effect on the baker and his wife or whether they had just recollected a piece of urgent business, Simon could not be sure, but the baker said hastily, ‘No, there’s no doctor of that name round here, young man,’ and hurried out of the shop, while his wife cried, ‘Mercy! my rolls are burning,’ and bustled after him.
Simon walked the length of the row of shops asking at each one, but all his questions, perhaps because of Tod, were equally fruitless, and at length, discouraged, he set off for the Academy, while Tod turned a series of cartwheels along Rose Alley – keeping his trousers on only with the greatest difficulty – and launched a defiant shout of ‘My name’s Tom Tit Tot’ after Simon, which it seemed wisest to ignore.
It was still only half past seven, so there was time to call at the Cobbs’ and ask if Caroline might be boarded at the stables there.
The Cobbs were at breakfast and received Simon with great cordiality, offering him marmalade pie, cold fowl, and hot boiled ham. Mrs Cobb, a stout, motherly woman, insisted on his having a mug of her Breakfast Special to see him through the day. This was a nourishing mixture of hot milk and spices, tasting indeed so powerfully of aniseed that Simon thought it would see him through not only that day but several days to come.
‘Ah, it’s a reg’lar Cockle-Warmer, Flossie’s Breakfast Special,’ Mr Cobb said fondly and proudly. ‘You see, young ’un, my wife was a Fidgett, from Loose Chippings; those Fidgett girls know more about housewifery and the domestic arts by the time they marry than most women learn in a lifetime.’
Simon was very interested to hear that Mrs Cobb came from the same part of the country as himself, while Mrs Cobb was amazed to learn that Simon had passed the early part of his life at Gloober’s Poor Farm.
‘And you such a stout, sensible lad, too!’ she exclaimed. ‘I thought they all turned out half-starved and wanting in the head, poor things. O’ course we’ll keep the donkey here, and gladly, won’t we Cobby! The lad won’t mind if little Libby has a turn-out on her now and then, I daresay?’
As little Libby Cobb was only two, and looked extremely seraphic, in complete contrast to Miss Dido Twite, Simon had not the least objection to this.
He bade farewell to the Cobbs, hastened down to the Academy, and set to work in the Mausoleum, drawing a bronze figure with a trident. He had not, however, been at this occupation very long when Dr Furneaux appeared and whisked him away to another room where an old lavender-seller had been established with her baskets on a platform to have her portrait painted by a dozen students.
They had been working for a couple of hours and Dr Furneaux was giving a lecture from the platform (largely incomprehensible because he had somehow got his whiskers smothered in charcoal dust and kept breaking off to sneeze) when two people entered the room.
Glancing round his easel Simon recognized the boy Justin, whom he now knew to be young Lord Bakerloo, the Duke of Battersea’s nephew, and his tutor, the pale-eyed Mr Buckle. Justin looked wan but triumphant; his right arm was heavily bandaged and he carried it in a sling.
Buckle addressed Dr Furneaux in low tones. Meanwhile, Justin had caught sight of Simon and nodded to him familiarly.
‘Brought it off!’ he confided, gesturing with his bandaged arm (which appeared to give him no great pain). ‘Done old Fur-nose brown, I have. Can’t paint with my dib-dabs in a clout, can I?’
‘Did you take a toss?’ Simon asked, remembering the headlong way Justin had galloped across the twilit park.
‘Walker!’ Justin replied, laying the first finger of his left hand alongside his nose. ‘That’d be telling.’
‘Yes, indeed, most regrettable,’ Mr Buckle was saying sorrowfully to Dr Furneaux. ‘But we must be thankful the accident was no worse. The doctor fears Lord Bakerloo will not be able to use his right hand for at least a month.’
‘My dear Justin – my poor Justin!’ Dr Furneaux exclaimed warmly, darting to Justin, who winced away nervously. ‘Ziss is most tragic news! A painter has no business wiss riding on a horse – it is by far too dangerous.’
‘I’m not a painter, I’m a Duke’s grandson,’ Justin muttered. But he concealed from Dr Furneaux his look of satisfaction at being told not to return until his arm was completely healed.
When evening came, and the students departed to their homes, Simon returned to Mr Cobb’s yard, where he was to meet Sophie, and occupied the interval by blacksmith’s work. He had just finished bending an iron rim on to a wheel when she arrived.
‘Why!’ cried Mr Cobb. ‘Is this your friend! It’s the bonny lass as waits on her Grace. Dang me, but you’re a lucky young fellow!’
Sophie had brought a basket of fruit and proposed that she and Simon should walk into Battersea Park and eat their supper sitting on the grass. But the hospitable Mr Cobb would not hear of such a plan.
‘Look at the sky!’ he admonished them. ‘Full to busting! There’s enough rain up there for a week of Sundays. You’ll just be a-sitting down to your first nibble when it come peltering down on you. No, no, you come upstairs and eat your dinners comfor’ble under a roof; Flossie would never let me hear the last of it if I let two young ’uns go off to catch their deaths of pewmony.’
Sophie protested that it was putting the Cobbs to a deal too much trouble, but as the sky was indeed very threatening they finally accepted, and in return offered to mind Miss Libby Cobb while her mother slipped round the corner to buy two pounds of Best Fresh and a gallon jar of pickled onions.
Young Miss Cobb proved remarkably easy to amuse; she and the kitten chased one another till both were exhausted, and when that happened Simon or Sophie had only to imitate the noise of some animal to put her in fits of laughter. Meanwhile, Sophie told Simon all that had happened to her since he had run away from Gloober’s Poor Farm.
‘I was lucky,’ she said. ‘You remember I always liked needlework and Mrs Gloober used to get me to do her mending? Then she began buying fashion magazines and bringing them home for me to make up her dresses. One time I was at work on a blue peau-de-chameau ball-dress with vandykes of lace and plush roses, when her Grace the Duchess came in to inspect the Poor Farm and saw the dress. Next day a pony-trap came over from Chippings Castle: the Duchess’s compliments and she’d take the little girl who was so clever with her needle to be a sewing-maid. Mrs Gloober was very angry but she didn’t dare refuse because the Duchess was on the Board. But she packed me off without a thing to wear. Since then her Grace has been so kind to me, and now I’m her lady’s-maid. When their Graces came up to London for the summer I came with them.’
Then Simon in turn told his story, finishing with the mysterious disappearance of Dr Field and the odd and suspicious behaviour of the Twite family.
Meanwhile, Miss Libby Cobb had again started in pursuit of the kitten. At this moment she caught her foot in a thick rag rug, the pride of Mrs Cobb’s heart, tripped and fell against the door opening on to the stair-head. Not firmly latched, it flew open, and there was a thump and a shout. Sophie sprang to catch Libby before she could tumble downstairs, and exclaimed:
‘Why, it’s Jem! Whatever are you doing there, Jem?’
Jem indeed it was, but in no condition to answer. He must have been just outside the door when Libby fell against it, and the unexpected push had sent him down the stairs. He lay groaning at the bottom.
‘We’d best get the poor fellow up here,’ Simon proposed but before they could do so Mrs Cobb returned from her shopping and let out a shriek of dismay.
‘Eh, Jem my man, never tell me you’re in the wars again, just when I’d set you right with a tar poultice! What happened?’ she asked, as she and Simon between them supported the unlucky Jem up the stairs.
‘The door flew open and knocked me down,’ he muttered.
‘And what was you doing then – listening at the keyhole?’ Jem turned pale. ‘Nay, only my joke, lad, never heed it. I do believe all the ill-luck in Battersea falls on your poor head. Come you in and lie down on Libby’s bed while I put a bit o’ vinegar on it.’
While Mrs Cobb ministered to the afflicted Jem, Sophie flew about very capably and set to cooking the Best Fresh, and Simon made a monstrous heap of toast and extracted the stopper of the pickled-onion jar. Soon they sat down to a very cheerful meal with the Cobbs.
Sophie and Mrs Cobb had a fine time exchanging gossip, for Mrs Cobb, it appeared, had been a parlour-maid at Chippings Castle before she got married.
‘Ah, you’re in clover working for her Grace,’ she declared. As sweet a lady you’ll not find this side of Ticklepenny Corner, poor thing. It’s a shame she never had no little ones of her own. If she’d ’a had, I’ll be bound they’d be worth twenty of the puny little whey-faced lad they call Lord Bakerloo. He’s the Duke’s nevvy, you see,’ she went on (like all old retainers, she loved talking about the Family). ‘The Duke’s younger brother, Henry, he married his own cousin, and they had Justin, that was born abroad in Hanoverian parts and sent back to England as a babby when both his parents died. Deary dear, it was a sad end, poor young things, and a sad beginning too – there was a plenty trouble when they married.’
‘Why?’ asked Sophie.
‘Because they were cousins, and she was half French, and a wild one! Her ma was Lady Helen Bayswater – that’s the present Duke’s aunt. She fell in love with a French painter, escaped from France in the revolution they had, and married him in the teeth of her family, as you might say. Famous, he was, but not grand family.’
‘Was the name Marius Rivière?’ asked Simon.
‘That’s it! I never can get my tongue round those Frenchy names! He married Lady Helen and they had the one daugher – what was her name? It’ll come to me in a minute – and for some time they was at daggers drawn with the old Duke. They say Rivière had been great friends with all the family before, and painted pictures of ’em, but the marriage broke it up. Then Lady Helen’s daughter met her cousin, his present Grace’s younger brother, and they fell in love, and the trouble began all over again. They ran off to Hanover where his regiment was, and got married. And that was the last that was heard, till word was sent they was dead, and Mr Buckle fetched back the poor babby. By that time the old Duke was dead, and his present Grace had always been fond of his brother, and stood by him, so he brought up Justin.’
‘It’s rather sad,’ Sophie said. ‘Poor Justin. You can understand why he always looks so miserable. Specially if he has been looked after by that sour Mr Buckle all his life.’
‘Do you know,’ exclaimed Mrs Cobb, who had been scrutinizing Simon and Sophie as they sat side by side in the window-seat, ‘you two are as alike as two chicks in a nest! I declare, you might be brother and sister. Are you related?’
They stared at one another in astonishment. Such an idea had never occurred to them. How strange it would be if they were!
‘We don’t know, ma’am,’ Sophie said at length. ‘We came to the Poor Farm at different times, you see. I was brought up by a kind old man, a charcoal-burner in the forest, till I was seven, and then the Parish Overseer came and took me away and said I must be with the other orphans. But the old man was not my father, I know. I can remember when he first found me.’
‘Who looked after you before that then, child?’
‘An otter in the forest,’ Sophie explained. ‘I can still recall how difficult it was to learn human language, and how strange it seemed to eat anything but fish.’
‘An otter! Merciful gracious!’ Mrs Cobb flung up her hands. ‘An
otter and then a charcoal-burner! It’s a wonder you grew up such a beauty, my dear! I’d ’a thought you’d have had webbed feet at the very least!’
‘They were both very kind to me,’ Sophie said, laughing. ‘I was dreadfully sad when the Overseer came and took me to Gloober’s.’
‘I don’t wonder, my dear, from what I’ve heard of the place.’
‘If Simon hadn’t taken care of me there I don’t know how I’d have got on for the first few years. Later it wasn’t so bad, when I learned dressmaking, and Mrs Gloober found I could be useful to her.’
‘But you like it better with her Grace?’
‘Oh yes, a thousand times! Her Grace is so kind! Sometimes she seems more like an aunt or a godmother than a mistress! Mercy!’ Sophie suddenly cried, jumping up as the solemn note of the Chelsea church clock boomed out the hour. ‘Ten o’clock already! It’s time I was getting back to make her Grace’s hot posset. She always likes it soon after ten.’
‘I’ll see you home,’ Simon said. They bade goodbye to the kindly Cobbs, who invited them to come again whenever they had an hour to spare. Halfway down the stairs they were halted by a hoarse shout from above, and turned to see Jem looking through the bedroom doorway, his hair all in spikes and his eyes staring with sleep.
‘Soph – please –’ he mumbled. ‘Could – give – note – Mr Buckle?’ He thrust a piece of crumpled paper into Sophie’s hand.
‘He’s half asleep. It’s the poppy syrup I gave him,’ said Mrs Cobb concernedly, and steered him back to bed.
‘I’ll deliver your note!’ Sophie called, but Jem was already unconscious again. Sophie tried to straighten out the paper which appeared to be a sugar bag. The large sprawling script on it covered both sides:
Mister Bukkle. Sum one cums from u no where. Jem.
‘Oh dear,’ Sophie said, ‘now I’ve read it – but I didn’t mean to. In any case, I haven’t the least notion what it means. I hope Mr Buckle will understand it.’
‘By the way,’ Simon said. ‘I had a queer invitation after I saw you last. You remember that odd-spoken old gentleman who was slung up in the top of the tunnel and spoke so sharply to Midwink? When I was on my way back he invited me to go and play chess with him one evening next week. Should I take the invitation seriously, or is he a bit cracked? Who is he, anyway?’
