The Peppermint Pig

by Nina Bawden

  ‘Don’t frighten her, Lily,’ George said. ‘It’s not quite true, anyway. Mother will have a bit of money left from the sale. And she can do dressmaking – she says lots of her old customers will be glad to know she’s back in the Town. But Aunt Sarah will have to help to begin with. She doesn’t mind, Dad says she likes to help people, but it’s only fair to be grateful. So try to be good, Poll.’

  ‘I’m always good,’ Poll said stiffly.

  ‘Try to be better, then.’ George grinned at her. ‘Don’t kill yourself over it, just think before you speak. Count ten. That’ll do for a start.’

  ‘If you don’t,’ Lily said, ‘you may still end up in the workhouse.’

  They went downstairs. The back room was cosy after the chill of the bedrooms. Aunt Harriet sat in front of the fire, skirt hitched to the heat, making toast with a three-pronged brass fork. There was toast and dripping for tea, potato cakes with golden syrup and fat, sticky biscuits full of caraway seeds. Aunt Sarah poured tea. It was very weak, the kind of tea Mother called ‘water bewitched’. Poll thought of saying this, then counted ten and decided she had better not mention it.

  She looked at her aunts. Aunt Sarah had a sweet, gentle face but it was somehow stern, too. Aunt Harriet’s face was much jollier. She had thin hair, fine as spider’s thread, twisted up in a skimpy bun on top of her head and a loud abrupt laugh, like a man’s. Impossible to imagine Aunt Sarah laughing, Poll thought; it would make her face too untidy! But she smiled at them all with great kindness. She said, ‘We must discuss your education, children. I expect the first thing you will all want to know is where you are going to school.’

  It was the last thing Poll wanted to know. School was being rapped over the knuckles with a ruler and being stood in the corner, Dunce’s Cap on and fenced in with a blackboard that would fall over if she moved as much as an inch. But when she had counted to ten, she knew she had better not say so. She munched toast and dripping and sighed.

  Aunt Sarah said, ‘George will go to the Grammar School, of course. Theo to the Boys’ School just round the corner, and Poll to my school.’

  Aunt Sarah was Headmistress of the Girls’ School and Aunt Harriet taught there as well. Her eyes crinkled into bright slits as she said to Poll, ‘I wish you could be in my class, cherry-pie, but I only teach babies.’

  Aunt Sarah said, ‘It is Lily we must think about. What do you want to be when you grow up, my dear?’

  ‘Mother thinks I should be a nurse. Or go into the Post Office. But I would like to be an actress, really.’ Lily blushed. ‘It is my greatest wish.’

  Poll was astonished to hear her say this to Aunt Sarah. It always made Mother angry! ‘If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride,’ was what Mother said.

  But Aunt Sarah was smiling. ‘That is a fine ambition, Lily. You get it from your Father, of course. He was always so fond of the theatre. There is a private school in Norwich with a good reputation for drama, perhaps we can manage to send you there. You will have to work hard, of course. George, too. There is nothing you can’t do, if you work hard enough. You can become a great actress and George can get a scholarship to Cambridge and become a Professor…’

  As she spoke she stopped smiling and her eyes seemed to look beyond them, out through the walls of the little, hot room, and Poll was reminded of her father, dreaming of making his fortune in America. Aunt Sarah was gazing into the future as he had gazed into the fire, seeing them, not as they were now but as they would be one day if she had a hand in it, grown up and out in the world, famous people…

  Aunt Harriet laughed her loud, cheerful laugh. ‘And what about Theo here? He’s not going to come to much if he doesn’t eat more. One potato cake, and half of that left on his plate! No wonder he looks pale as lard.’

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ Theo said.

  ‘You need a good purge, my boy! A good dose, that’ll bring the colour back into your cheeks. Senna tea or prune paste, which would you rather have?’

  Theo shook his head, looking as if he might be sick any minute.

  ‘Not tonight, Harriet,’ Aunt Sarah said. ‘The boy needs his sleep more than anything. They all do.’

  ‘I’m not tired,’ Poll said, though she was. So tired, suddenly, that she could barely keep her eyes open, too tired to protest when Lily led her upstairs and helped her undress in that strange little room with the tin bath on the back of the door that looked like a humpy whale in the candlelight. ‘It’s like going to bed in a cupboard,’ she said, when Lily tucked her up and kissed her goodnight, and Lily laughed and kissed her again and whispered, mouth so close that it tickled Poll’s ear, ‘I’m sorry I teased you about the workhouse, darling Poll, I didn’t mean it, not really.’

  Poll thought about it, though, when she woke: about being poor and shut up in a bleak building with bars on the windows, and eating workhouse gruel, and wearing grey workhouse uniform, and walking out two by two in a long crocodile, but she said nothing about it, not even to Theo. It began to seem like a rather shameful dream she had had, and like a dream it would have faded away in the end if they had not met Mrs Marigold Bugg.

  That was only their fourth day in Norfolk but they had done so many things it seemed they had been there for weeks. Aunt Sarah had taken them on a tour of the Town, shown them the Assembly Rooms, the wide, paved Market Square, the beautiful church with a roof that was full of flying wooden angels, and the family graves in the churchyard. Mother’s parents were buried there, and old Granny Greengrass. Theo asked, ‘Where’s Grandpa Greengrass?’ but Aunt Sarah didn’t answer. Instead, she hurried them back into the church and showed them the little stone statue of the Swineherd with a baby pig tucked under each arm, and told them the story they already knew, about how he had found a great treasure under an oak tree and built the church spire as a gesture of gratitude. ‘His duty to God,’ Aunt Sarah called it.

  Aunt Sarah was all duty; Aunt Harriet all temper and fun. A walk with Sarah was always a lesson; with Aunt Harriet it was an adventure. She marched them over open bare heathland and through woods and ploughed fields where they had no business to be. She had no patience with private property: notices that said TRESSPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED were invitations to her and she always carried a penknife in her pocket to help herself to whatever was going, even if it was only a turnip.

  She bought hoops for the two younger children: a wooden hoop for Poll and an iron one, with a hook called a skimmer, for Theo. ‘Wooden hoops are for girls, iron hoops for boys, don’t ask me why,’ Aunt Harriet said. Poll couldn’t make up her mind which she liked best. A wooden hoop was free-running, which was more exciting in some ways because it had a wild life of its own as it bounced in and out of the ruts in the road, but an iron one made a lovely hissing sound that turned into a singing hum if you ran fast enough. The day they met Mrs Bugg they had bowled their hoops for miles, Aunt Harriet breathless behind them, and were crossing the Square on their way home, dusty and happy and hungry for tea.

  Mrs Marigold Bugg was tall, the same thickness through from shoulders to knees. As she came towards them she seemed to sway rather than walk, with a boneless, wavy motion that made Poll think of a caterpillar. Aunt Harriet took Poll’s hand and quickened her step, and Poll had the feeling she would have marched them straight past without speaking if Mrs Bugg had not said, ‘Good afternoon, Miss Harriet, what remarkably mild weather we’re having.’

  Aunt Harriet stopped. They talked for a minute about the warm weather. Then Mrs Bugg said, ‘So these are poor Emily’s little ones!’ She gave Poll and Theo a smile that had no friendliness in it. ‘Your mother and I are old friends. It broke my heart to hear of her trouble.’

  Aunt Harriet said, ‘This is Mrs Bugg, children. She and your mother were dressmaking apprentices together.’

  Mrs Bugg weaved her head backwards and forwards. Poll thought – not a caterpillar, a snake! A snake that is going to strike! The snake hissed, ‘Poor little fatherless things!’

  Aunt Harriet held Po
ll’s hand so tight that the bones ground together and she had pulled the corners of her mouth down in the way she did when she was angry.

  But it was Theo who spoke. ‘We’re not fatherless, Mrs Bugg. My father is going to America to make his fortune.’

  Mrs Bugg’s thin, pale lips smiled as if she knew better. She said, in a voice that tried to be sad but had a gleeful sound running through it like a stream bubbling, ‘Poor, brave little boy! Poor Emily, too, how will she bear it? She was always so proud. And it must be a worry, Miss Harriet, for you and your sister. All this on your plate when you have enough there already! I would never have believed James would do such a thing, but I suppose blood will out.’

  She was over-acting as Lily did sometimes, Poll thought, but Mrs Bugg wasn’t as pretty. In fact she was hideous, with her small, green, pin-point eyes and her small, swaying, snake’s head. And in spite of her kind concern she was glad that Father was going away and meant them to know it. Oh – she was rude! Poll looked at Aunt Harriet hopefully, expecting her to be rude back, as she could be when roused, but although her aunt’s pulled-down mouth showed her temper there was no sign of it in her voice. ‘Sarah and I are only too glad to have James’s children living so close for a while. It will be a sad day for us when he sends for them to go to America.’

  ‘Do you really think that he will?’

  Aunt Harriet laughed as if this was a ridiculous question, not worth an answer, and said, ‘It’s nice to talk, Marigold, but I mustn’t keep the children hanging about, they’ll get cold. I hope your father is well, and young Noah. I thought he looked poorly last time I saw him, as if he was outgrowing his strength.’

  She didn’t wait after that but swept the children away, walking so fast that they had to run to keep up with her and not slowing down until Theo tugged at her coat sleeve and gasped, ‘Aunt Harry, what did she mean, blood will out?’

  Aunt Harriet said, ‘Oh, she’s a silly, sour creature, don’t bother your head with her blather.’

  ‘She couldn’t never have been Mother’s friend,’ Poll said. ‘She’s too mean and she’s old.’

  ‘Only a couple of years older than your mother. If she looks more it’s because she’s had a hard time of it. Husband and two babies dead of consumption, only Noah left now. But you’re right, she and your mother were never friends, really. Especially not after your mother and father were married. Marigold would have liked James herself, that’s the truth of it, but he barely knew she existed. The day of the wedding she went to her bed for a month and refused to get up until her father took a strap to her. After that she quite lost her looks – not that they were all that much to begin with…’

  Theo said, ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘You’ve had all the answer you’re going to get,’ Aunt Harriet snapped, letting her temper loose suddenly like an angry dog she had been holding back on a lead until now. ‘Children should be seen and not heard, don’t you know that?’

  They said nothing. When Aunt Harriet looked and sounded this way it was best to keep quiet. Or else change the subject. Poll said, in an affected, surprised voice, ‘Look – there’s Lily! Without her coat on!’

  Lily was running towards them, pinafore fluttering, copper curls bouncing. ‘There you are! Where have you been all this time? Mother and Father have come, they’ve been here simply ages.’

  Father’s boat was sailing on Christmas Eve. Only two days away but they would have all tomorrow together. He made it seem like a long, lovely holiday. ‘We’ll do a grand tour,’ he said, ‘see all there is to see. Hire a trap from The Angel and do things in style.’

  And as the church clock struck ten, he was there at the door with a smartly painted trap and a shiny black pony. They were all dressed in their best: Mother in her bustled coat trimmed with jet beads at the edges, the boys in Norfolk jackets and knickerbockers, the girls with lace petticoats over their flannels, stiff, new, buttoned boots and creamy wool coats that had little fur collars. Father handed them into the trap, tucked the rug over their knees and said, ‘My three girls look like princesses.’

  It was a fine day with a pale wintry sun and a new, frosty nip in the air. As the trap rattled along a little breeze blew back the sweet, leathery smell of well-polished harness and the dusty, warm, oily smell of the pony. To Poll’s ear, his hooves beat out the tune, Father is going away tomorrow, Father is going away…

  The Town Square was bustling with people. Father and Mother greeted those that they knew, bowing to right and to left as if they were royalty. ‘There’s Miss Gathergood, James,’ Mother said. ‘Gracious me, hasn’t she aged? And Pamela Slap – and old Mr Mullen I used to work for. The buttonholes I’ve made for that man! Stop the trap, dear, we can’t pass without speaking, and he will be interested to know you are off to America. Sit up straight, children, do me credit now. Poll, don’t look so miserable. Have you a stomach ache?’

  Poll shook her head. She did have a pain but it wasn’t that kind. Nor was it something she could speak of to Mother because she was partly the cause of it, sitting there in her best clothes and looking so cheerful and pretty and proud as she told Mr Mullen that Father was leaving them. Smiling as if she were happy about it!

  ‘So I’ll be a grass widow, Mr Mullen. Not for long, of course, but I dare say time will hang heavy sometimes.’

  ‘If it does,’ Mr Mullen said, ‘maybe I can put something your way.’ He looked at her solemnly and the children looked at him. They had heard about old Mr Mullen, who kept a general store and employed several girls to make dresses for his customers in a big room above it. ‘A slave driver,’ Mother had called him, ‘a wicked old devil,’ but he looked a meek, harmless man with a pink, knobbly nose and a mole on his chin that had several black hairs growing out of it. He said, ‘Business hasn’t been the same since you left, Mrs Greengrass. Sixteen years – and Lady March still says no one can fit a dress as you did.’

  Mother pursed her lips to stop herself smiling. ‘Well, I’ll have to see, Mr Mullen, it’s early days yet. These four young ones keep me busy, you know, so I can’t promise anything.’

  ‘Don’t overdo it, Mother,’ Lily said when Mr Mullen had lifted his hat and walked on. ‘Or he’ll think you don’t want to work for him.’

  ‘He’ll pay me better if he thinks I don’t need it,’ Mother said. ‘I know the old rascal. And that Lady March! Mean as two sticks and not only with money. Never a word of praise to your face.’

  Father laughed. ‘Plenty behind your back though, it seems. And you look pleased about it, so don’t pretend not to be.’

  ‘It’s nice to be remembered,’ Mother said smugly.

  And she was, it appeared. Now the trap was stationary, several people came up to them, were introduced to the children, talked of old times. Most of them had not seen Mother and Father since they were married – was that really 1886, really so long ago? – or at least since the older two children were babies and Mother had brought them to stay with the aunts for a holiday. Lily and George listened to these conversations more patiently than Theo and Poll, who began to feel that the last precious day with their father was slipping away like sand through their fingers. The young pony was fidgeting too, tossing his head up and down and clattering his bit. Poll started humming under her breath and twisting her head round. Her father saw this and nodded to Mother to finish what she was saying. Poll said, interrupting, ‘Look, there’s that Mrs Bugg, Theo.’

  She was coming towards them with her strange, swaying walk, a tall boy beside her. Mother said, ‘Wait, James, we can’t drive off now, she’ll think we are cutting her. I must have a word with the poor soul, if only a minute.’

  Mrs Bugg had called Mother poor, Poll remembered. Poor Emily. But Mother had sounded kind, Mrs Bugg hadn’t…

  She put her hand on the side of the trap. She looked at Mother with her pin-point green eyes. Then at Father. She said, ‘So you’re leaving the country, James.’

  Father smiled. ‘On business, Mrs Bugg.
How are you keeping? And Noah?’

  Noah was a long, rangy boy with a small head and small ears, like his mother. His eyes were green too, but larger and lighter, like ripe dessert gooseberries.

  Mrs Bugg said, ‘Speak up, Noah.’

  He said, ‘Mornin’,’ and hung his head.

  Mother said in an encouraging voice, ‘Noah must be the same age as Theo. I remember when Sarah came to stay after Theo was born she said you’d just had a boy. They’ll be in the same form at school, I expect. Do you like school, Noah?’

  He looked up at her through his long lashes and tittered.

  Mrs Bugg said, ‘He and your Theo don’t look the same age, though. You’d hardly credit it, really. My great boy and your little pale fellow. You must have been worried sick many a time, wondering if you were going to rear him.’

  Noah tittered again, hand in front of his mouth, gooseberry eyes watching Theo who turned away, pretending not to be listening.

  ‘Theo’s small but he’s strong, he’ll grow when he’s ready’ Mother said. ‘Are you still working at Mullen’s, Marigold? Is he still an old devil? No sign of it when we spoke a few minutes ago, we were far too grand with each other. Yes, Mr Mullen, yes, Mrs Greengrass. Lifting his hat, mild as milk, and I suddenly thought how he used to lose his temper with us, rushing into the sewing-room shouting and swearing and waving his stick because we girls were making more noise than he liked, and how we used to tease him sometimes, and it was all I could do to keep a straight face!’

  ‘I’m afraid I have to nowadays,’ Mrs Bugg said. ‘In my position I can’t afford to laugh at old Mullen any more than I can afford to dress up to the nines every day and go swanking about in a carriage.’