by Nina Bawden
Mother said, ‘Poll and I don’t have sugar in tea, Lady March, but if you want it, Poll can run to the kitchen.’
Lady March didn’t take sugar. She poured tea and offered them bread and butter and cake. The bread and butter had been cut a long time and was curling at the edges and the jam had a film of dust over it as if the dish had been left standing uncovered by the side of a fire, but the cake was all right; a rich, dark, fruit cake that no one could spoil. Poll ate three slices and answered Lady March’s questions. Yes, she was very much better. No, she wasn’t back at school yet, but she would be next week. Yes, she was looking forward to it – she heard herself saying this with surprise and wondered if she could really mean it.
When the conversation about school was finished, Lady March talked to Mother about patterns and materials and the latest Paris fashions. Poll sat in a big chair, pins and needles in her dangling feet, and tried not to yawn. At last tea was over, and when Lady March took Mother upstairs to look at the gown that had to be altered, Poll escaped into the garden with Johnnie. She went round the side of the house into the stable yard and peeped through the window into the kitchen. The man who doubled as coachman and butler was sitting with his feet on the table, the two young maids sat either side of him, and a fat woman in a black dress and apron presided over the teapot. There was a splendid spread on the table: muffins, a crusty new loaf, cheese, butter, jam, and several sorts of cake. Poll thought of Lady March’s tea tray laid out with stale bread and dusty jam and felt herself swelling with anger in a way she had not done for ages. The last time was before she ran off to see Annie Dowsett; before she was ill…
The other side of the yard there was a rose garden and beyond that a small wood, full of foxgloves. Full of maybugs, too; the air whirred with them. Poll knocked one down with her hat and picked it up as it lay stunned on the ground. Its little horny feet tickled her palm. She put it into her handkerchief pocket and went on knocking down the flying beetles until she had a buzzing, angry pocketful. She felt the weight of the pocket in her hand and thought of Lily who was scared of maybugs, who went wild if one came into the bedroom at night because she was afraid it would get into her hair.
She went back to the stable yard and looked in the kitchen window again. They were still sitting there, stuffing themselves. One of the girls said something and they all roared with laughter, wet, greedy mouths open. The man belched loudly and slapped his stomach.
The window was open at the bottom. Poll loosed the thread of her handkerchief pocket and emptied the maybugs over the sill with a jerk of her wrist. Fright, or rage, at being shut up made them buzz louder than ever now they were free, and within seconds the girls and the fat cook were on their feet screaming, beating frantic hands in the air, running round the room, banging into each other, knocking chairs over. The man jumped up too. He saw Poll at the window and she put her thumbs in her ears and waggled her fingers and stuck out her tongue at him before she ran off.
Johnnie was sitting patiently on the path in front of the house. Poll reached him as her mother and Lady March came out of the door. Mother was saying, ‘I’ll speak to Mrs Dowsett, then, and bring Annie to see you…’
But Lady March was looking at Poll. She said, in a surprised voice, ‘Why, the child looks quite different. Much better than she did earlier on, don’t you know?’
Mother smiled. ‘You wouldn’t think she’d ever been ill to look at her.’
‘Oh, I’m better,’ Poll said. ‘I started to be better about two minutes ago and I’m quite better now.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
THEO SAID, ‘IF Mother grumbles about someone to start with you can be sure she’ll end up taking their part. I bet you anything Lady March will be someone she has to take care of, like Annie Dowsett.’
Annie was often in their house now. She was shy with George and Lily and Theo but she worshipped Mother, following round at her heels ‘just like the old pig,’ Lily said – though she was careful not to let Mother hear this. ‘Annie’s a good girl,’ Mother said. ‘She just needs encouragement.’
When Annie left school at Christmas she was going into service with Lady March at the Manor House. ‘That’s a good turn done for them both,’ Mother said when she arranged this. ‘The poor old soul needs someone who doesn’t look down on her. I told her, if I were you I’d get rid of those flipperty-gibbet girls and get someone respectful. And it’ll be a fine place for Annie. My mother went to the Manor House as kitchen maid and ended up cook, no reason why Annie shouldn’t do just as well. She’s got a nice light hand with pastry already.’
‘I can cook too,’ Poll said. ‘I can make lovely buns, better than Annie’s. I wish I could leave school and go and be a cook too.’
‘Don’t let your Aunt Sarah hear you say that,’ Mother said. ‘She’d think it a disgrace for her niece to go into service, she’d never hold up her head again!’
‘Grandma Greengrass was a cook. And your mother. Why can’t I be?’
‘You’re luckier. You’ve got a chance to rise up.’
‘I think Annie’s lucky,’ Poll said enviously. ‘I wish I could leave school. School’s boring. I hate it.’
She was only there mornings because she was still thought to be delicate and although she was quite glad to be back at first, for a change, that wore off quite soon. Her classroom looked over Farmer Tuft’s meadow. The window was too high to see out but it was open at the bottom in fine weather and Poll, dreaming at her desk throughout the maths lesson, could hear Farmer Tuft’s cows plucking the squeaky grass, and the frogs in the pond, splashing and croaking. A willow tree hung over the pond and she could see a magpie in its top branches. One for sorrow, Poll thought, watching its long tail flick up and down, but her only sorrow at the moment was Vulgar Fractions.
‘I’m afraid Poll will never be a worker like Lily and George and she isn’t naturally clever, like Theo,’ Aunt Sarah said. ‘I really don’t know what we’ll do with her!’
‘Plenty of time,’ Aunt Harriet said. ‘Leave her be, she’ll make something of herself yet.’
‘If you’ve got nothing better to do, Poll,’ Mother said, ‘you can find a bit of emery paper and clean that steel fender.’
Poll found something better to do. In the afternoons, while everyone else was locked up in school, she kept out of Mother’s way and roamed, free as air. She went to Bride’s Pit and if there were no gipsies there, poked the water buttercups away with a stick and picked up the horrid black leeches that crawled on the sandy bottom near the edge of the water. Or explored the woods, kicking puff balls into dust clouds and keeping a sharp look-out for Keeper Green. Sometimes, if it was hot and she was feeling lazy, she just crossed the Square and went down Tank Lane and climbed an old elm tree and watched the world go by.
Not that many people came down Tank Lane. Tramps sometimes; Mr Snoop the postman with the two cows he grazed on the lush roadside verges; the rabbit-skin man, a long stick with rabbits skewered on it over his shoulder; Percy the washerwoman’s son who helped his mother by fetching and carrying the washing in a wooden box on wheels. Percy was dumb except for a queer noise he made in his throat, midway between a croup and a crow – hooup, hooup – as he pushed his old box along, dipping his head up and down like a bird drinking. He passed up and down Tank Lane several times most afternoons while Poll kept watch in the elm tree and the squeal of his cart wheels and his croupy sing-song were part of the dreaming summer days like the feel and the pungent smell of the hairy elm leaves when she squeezed them between her hot fingers.
She saw Lily once, wheeling her bicycle with the handsome wooden-legged Vicar limping beside her and giggled privately when Mother said, later on after supper, ‘What are you so cock-a-hoop about, Lily? You look like a cat that’s been at the cream.’
Another day, she saw Theo and Noah Bugg. They were walking along like friends, heads together, and she noticed, surprised, that Theo was almost as tall as Noah now. She heard Noah laugh and say, ‘You’ll have to thi
nk of something else then won’t you, if you want to keep on.’ Theo said something she couldn’t catch, and Noah laughed again. ‘Give over then, Greengrass. S’all one to me!’ He walked off, whistling, and Theo stood and stared after him. When Poll called out softly he looked up and turned red as a poppy.
‘You spying on me?’ he said, as she slid down the tree.
‘What are you blushing about?’
‘I’m not.’
‘Yes you are. I can see your face, can’t I?’
‘You scared me, that’s all.’
‘No it isn’t.’ She saw his sly, silly smile, his eyes puckering up at the corners. ‘He’s still teasing you, is he?’
‘Blackmailing’s the word!’
‘Because of that egg you stole? But that’s stupid!’
‘You didn’t think so at the time,’ he reminded her. ‘You were scared he’d tell Aunt Sarah and that she’d be so disgusted she’d cast us all off. Hell fire for thieves and liars. The workhouse, anyway!’
He was laughing at her. She said, ‘That’s not fair,’ and gave an indignant sniff, like her mother. ‘I was only young then. I didn’t know any better. It’s not fair blaming me!’
He kicked a loose stone on the road. ‘I’m not, really. You were right in a way. Not about the workhouse, of course, or him telling Aunt Sarah – he’d be too scared for that – but he might have told Mrs Bugg and it would have upset Mother if she’d spread the tale round. Like Mrs Bugg said, blood will out. I mean, there was that trouble when Dad left his firm and I thought, suppose Mrs Bugg knows and wants to make something of it? It ’ud give her a fine chance if she knew I’d been caught stealing too! Well, not too, because Dad didn’t take any money but you know what I mean.’
‘No I don’t,’ Poll burst out. ‘You’re just muddling me up like you always do. Muddling yourself as well, I should think.’
‘You un-muddle me, then!’
He looked so wretched that she felt sorry. Poor Theo! He was older than she was, and cleverer, but sometimes it seemed that being clever just made him unhappy. She said, ‘Well, it was such a long time ago, wasn’t it? Ages and ages. If Noah went sneaking now, no one would listen.’
He shook his head. ‘It’s not as simple as that, I’m afraid. Trouble is, once you start a thing, you get caught up and it all gets more complicated.’ He squatted on his haunches, picked up several small flints, threw them up and caught them on the back of his hand. When he had done this four times he dribbled the flints through his fingers and said in a sad, hollow voice, ‘Aunt Sarah would say, what a tangled web we weave when once we practise to deceive…’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
He looked at her, then stood up, and sighed. ‘I’ve said things to Noah that I shouldn’t and that I wouldn’t like to get out. Just to keep him quiet in the beginning, and then as a sort of game.’
‘A game?’ She was quite bewildered now.
‘A story, then.’
‘What about?’
‘If I told you, you’d hate me. I hate myself.’
‘Because of a story? Stories can’t hurt anyone.’
‘Lies can, though. If you tell…’ He looked at her desperately. ‘Please, Poll, don’t ask me to tell you. I’d rather die. Really!’
‘You’re always saying that!’ She thought for a moment. ‘Was it lies about me?’
‘No.’
‘Will you tell me sometime?’
He screwed his eyes up. ‘I might. Yes, I expect so.’
‘That’s not good enough!’
‘I’ll tell you before – before your next birthday.’
‘Promise?’
‘I promise.’
He spat on his finger, dried it on his jacket, then drew it across his throat with a gurgling sound.
Poll smiled. ‘All right.’ He blinked at her and she added generously, ‘And I promise not to ask before then!’
She would be ten in September. It was only July now and as they walked home it began to seem a long time to wait. She wished she had insisted he must tell her earlier, next week perhaps, but she had promised now. And his serious look made her feel serious too, old and responsible, so that when he said, ‘I’ve got a penny, Poll, what would you like? Sherbet suckers or Cupid’s Whispers? We’ve time to go to the shop before tea,’ she was hurt. Did he think she was a baby to be bribed with sweets? She said haughtily, ‘I don’t want anything, thank you, you can keep your rotten old penny and your rotten old secret, I don’t suppose it’s even worth knowing,’ and ran on ahead, tight-lipped and angry.
Although she continued to feel deeply injured and let Theo know it, pretending she hadn’t heard whenever he spoke to her and being extra nice to Lily and George in his presence to make the point sharper, she couldn’t keep it up. Theo was so quiet, so meek and withdrawn, that there was no fun in tormenting him. And besides, so much was happening just at this moment, the summer suddenly exploding like a firework into a sparkling burst of excitement, she had no time left to brood.
The end of term first; a week later, the Sunday School Treat to the sea in two hay wagons drawn by spruced-up shire horses, coats gleaming like satin; and then, at the beginning of August, the King’s Coronation.
That was a perfect day from beginning to end. Trestle tables were set up in the Square, the whole Town had a huge meal of roast beef and plum pudding, and afterwards there were races and games in the big Vicarage garden. Poll and Annie were among the girls chosen to dance round the maypole, wearing white dresses with fluttering ribbons, and Lily played the harmonium, brought out of the Church Hall for the occasion. There were races for everyone: egg-and-spoon and three-legged for the children and a comic obstacle course for grown-ups that Aunt Harriet won, losing her hat as she wriggled through an open-ended beer barrel and beating Mrs Snoop the postman’s wife in a close finish. George had too much beer with his beef and had to lie down most of the afternoon but recovered in time for the fancy dress ball in the Assembly Rooms in the evening. The chandeliers tinkled and the floor shook with thumping feet; everyone danced, even Aunt Sarah did a dignified waltz with the Headmaster of the boys’ school and Lily’s copper curls flew as she whirled round in the arms of one young man after another. Poll, watching her, thought she had never seen anyone look so happy and beautiful. She was so happy herself it made her heart sore, a bruised ball of joy in her chest, and when she won first prize for the Little Boy Blue costume Mother had made her, and everyone clapped with delight, it was all she could do not to cry.
One moment it seemed that the lovely evening would go on for ever; the next, they were out in the still, starry night, going home. Poll clutched her prize, a big box of chocolates tied with striped ribbon, and Mother carried the hunting horn Aunt Sarah had lent to go with Poll’s costume; a real hunting horn that had belonged to a long-dead great uncle. Aunt Harriet picked up her skirts and skipped like a girl, and Lily danced backwards in front of them all and said breathlessly, ‘Did you hear what the Vicar said to old Mr Pocock this afternoon? He said, “That girl’s got nice legs,” and he meant me, I heard him!’
Aunt Sarah said, ‘I thought that dress was too short! You must lengthen it before she wears it again, Emily.’
Mother nodded meekly, but her eyes shone. She put the hunting horn to her lips, and, standing in the middle of the wide Market Square, blew a long wailing blast that echoed back from the houses and silenced them all. Poll looked at her family as the beautiful, sad, haunted sound died away and felt weak with happiness because she loved them so much. She saw Theo smiling at her as if he knew how she felt; she smiled back and forgave him for ever.
She said, ‘This is the best day of my life,’ and they all smiled at her.
Aunt Harriet said, ‘Bless you, Poll, this is nothing. You just wait till you’ve seen a good Harvest Fair!’
George went harvesting and Poll and Theo carried his dinner out in a basket and sometimes stayed to watch the field finished. As the cutter clattered round, the square o
f wheat in the middle grew smaller and smaller until the terrified rabbits sheltering there came shooting out, ears laid back, zig-zagging wildly over the stubble while everyone shouted and chased them with sticks. Theo once caught a small rabbit but Poll never did and in the end the farmer gave her a dead one to take home to her mother. There was dust on its eyes and dark blood at the side of its mouth and it stretched out across her arms, stiff and straight as if it was running still. Poll saw the farmer’s wife watching and said, ‘Poor rabbit’ in a sad voice and stroked its long ears and the farmer’s wife smiled.
They had rabbit stew for supper that night, fragrant with herbs from the garden. Theo said, ‘Smells almost as good as a gipsy stew. D’you know how gipsies cook hedgehogs? They roll them in clay and bake them in ashes and the skin comes off with the clay, prickles and all, clean as a whistle.’
The gipsies came into Town several days before the Harvest Fair and camped in the Priory ruins. They kept themselves apart from the other Fair people and spoke their own language: Poll and Theo lingered round their caravans just to hear the flood of strange, bubbling words, although the gipsies often fell silent if they came too close and stared at them with dark, gleaming eyes. But they were friendly enough when they came to the door, selling wooden pegs, and cotton lace, and birds for the pot that they always called ‘pigeons’. ‘Pigeons my foot!’ Mother said, when one of them offered her a cock pheasant, but the man laughed and said it was a Japanese Peacock.
After the gipsies, the rest of the Fair began to arrive and the Market Square filled up with great wagons and caravans carrying tents and side-shows and merry-go-rounds. Some of the caravans were painted with pictures to show what was inside: sword-swallowers and Fat Ladies and two-headed calves. The Fire Eater was the best, a giant dressed in red satin knee breeches and lace-ruffled shirt, spouting yellow flame from his mouth, but when Poll and Theo hung round, hoping to see him, the only person who got down from the caravan was a short, bald man with a squint.
