Circus Shoes

by Noel Streatfeild

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  Circus Shoes

  Noel Streatfeild

  1

  Aunt Rebecca

  Peter and Santa were orphans. When they were babies their father and mother were killed in a railway accident, so they came and lived with their aunt. The aunt’s name was Rebecca Possit, but of course they called her Aunt Rebecca. The aunt had been lady’s maid to a duchess. This was a good thing, because when the duchess died she left her an annuity, and, as Aunt Rebecca had no money and neither had the children, it was important. In other ways it was not so good. Being lady’s maid to a duchess had made Aunt Rebecca suppose that only dukes and duchesses, and perhaps kings and queens, could be right. She never did or said anything without first thinking how ‘Her Grace’ would have said or done it. As the duchess’s sayings and doings had been rather a bore, Aunt Rebecca’s were too.

  What Aunt Rebecca said and did would not have mattered much to Peter and Santa because, of course, they were interested in their own things, but most unluckily the duchess had a great many grandchildren who had often been to stay at Plyst (pronounced ‘Pleat’), where the duchess had spent most of her time. How Peter and Santa suffered from the duchess’s grand-children!

  ‘I don’t believe anything nice ever happened to that awful Lady Marigold or Lady Moira or those horrible Manliston children,’ Santa grumbled.

  Peter said: ‘It’s all very well for you to make a fuss, but you don’t have that dreadful Lord Bronedin pushed down your throat all day.’

  Santa had fair hair which hung right down to her waist. It curled a little bit, but not enough, so it had to be what Aunt Rebecca called ‘helped’. Santa hated her hair. She wanted it cut short, or at least put in plaits, but instead she was made to wear it loose, because the duchess had said: ‘A woman’s glory is her hair.’ She had also said: ‘How hair looks depends on the brushing it gets. Six hundred strokes a night. That’s my rule.’ Which from Santa’s point of view was a very annoying statement.

  Though Peter did not realize it, the worst thing Lord Bronedin did to him was over education. Lord Bronedin went to a preparatory school and to Eton. Aunt Rebecca could not possibly afford either, but she would not send Peter to an ordinary school. Instead she sent him to be taught privately. Of course, the annuity would not pay for a proper tutor, but it paid bits to various people who knew a little. There was Mr Stibbings. He was a retired parson. He knew a lot of Latin but could not teach it. Peter went to him for an hour after tea twice a week. Then there was Madame Tranchot. Both Peter and Santa went to her. She gave French lessons at two shillings a lesson. For the ordinary subjects, like reading and arithmetic, there was a friend of Aunt Rebecca’s, called Mrs Ford, whose husband had been a schoolmaster. Mrs Ford did not know much herself, but she had her husband’s books and taught from them.

  Santa, besides going to Madame Tranchot, shared Mrs Ford with Peter and did music as well. She learnt the violin, not because she was musical, but, of all silly reasons, because Lady Marigold had learnt to play a fiddle. Aunt Rebecca being poor, those violin lessons were a shocking waste of money. Santa was taught by a Miss Lucy Fane, the violin was bought on the hire-purchase. Somebody had once told Miss Fane that she looked like a Rossetti picture, and she had never forgotten it. She dressed to look Rossetti-ish, but as she nearly always had a cold she put a red shawl round her shoulders, which spoilt the effect. Partly because Miss Fane always had colds and was too sniffy to teach, and partly because she could not teach anyway, Santa never learnt much, and would not have learnt much even if she had had an aptitude for playing the violin, which she certainly had not. Miss Fane liked pieces which she described as ‘that dear little slumber song’, and she liked hymns. Santa could never remember how her fingers went in the ‘dear little slumber songs’, so she took to hymns, or rather to one hymn. It was called ‘Art thou weary, art thou languid?’ It was easy fingering and expressed so exactly how she felt about violins that in the end she knew that tune quite well.

  Of course all these lessons from people who did not know much, or if they knew anything could not teach, meant that Peter and Santa grew up most ignorant children. They were even more ignorant than you would expect from their dreadful education, and that was because they had no friends and no relations. Of course, many friends and relations might just as well not be there for all the good they do anybody, but most people have some nice ones as well. Peter and Santa had nobody. At least nobody they had ever seen. They knew that somewhere they had an uncle. They knew this because each Christmas he sent Aunt Rebecca a Christmas card. But they never knew what was on the card or anything about him, for the moment it arrived Aunt Rebecca turned very red and, making clicking disapproving noises with her tongue against her teeth, hurried upstairs and stuck it in the mirror on her dressing-table, where it stayed until the new one arrived the next Christmas. Peter and Santa thought it odd that she stuck it up at all, seeing she was not pleased to get it, but she got very few cards and they guessed it was vanity. After all, a card is a card, whoever it comes from.

  Because they had no friends and no relations, Peter and Santa did none of the things most children do. They never went to parties, or even out to tea, because Aunt Rebecca did not think anybody in the neighbourhood fit to know one, or the nephew and niece of one, who had been maid to a duchess. They had no aunts or uncles who said: ‘What about a pantomime?’ or: ‘I’d like to take the children to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ They had no cousins to go and stay with in the country or by the sea. They knew nobody but their aunt, Mr Stibbings, Madame Tranchot, Mrs Ford, and Miss Fane, and a very dull lot they were.

  Their aunt and the people who taught them being no companions for Peter and Santa, they were tremendous friends with each other. Naturally they quarrelled now and then, but really they both hated the other one to be out of sight.

  Aunt Rebecca’s house was in London, on the south side of the river in a little street not far from Battersea Bridge. A nice place to live, as it is near the park. Battersea Park is in many ways the best park in London, because of the river. But it was not as much use as it might have been, to Peter and Santa, as one of the worst things the duchess had said was that children did not walk about alone in London. As Aunt Rebecca had the cooking and housework to do she could not get out much, so it really meant that they stopped indoors most of the time, and got pale and thin like bulbs grown in a cupboard.

  The worst part of Peter’s and Santa’s lives, which was a part they did not know themselves, was that Aunt Rebecca’s foolish ways of thinking were catching. It is almost impossible to live with somebody who thinks you are too grand to know anybody and not get a bit that way yourself. Peter would have liked to go to school like other boys, but he supposed Aunt Rebecca was right not to let him. Santa would have liked to go to the girls’ school, but she never suggested it because she felt it was not suitable for her. This feeling of being rather superior was added to by the clothes they wore. The duchess had often said to Aunt Rebecca:

  ‘Whatever you do, buy the best, Possit. Cheap stuff never pays.’

  Of course Aunt Rebecca could not buy the best, but what she bought was good. The duchess’s grandchildren had lived in riding things at Plyst, but were well dressed when in London. Aunt Rebecca took the idea of smart clothes in London very seriously, and dressed Santa as well as she could in nicely tailored coats, a matching hat, and, what Santa hated, always gloves. The same London dressing happened to Peter. Lord Bronedin had looked a perfect disgrace in the country, but he had good clothes for London. Poor Peter was never allowed to wear old clothes, but
always well-brushed suits, and in winter a good overcoat. So neither of them ever knew the glory of putting on the sort of clothes which you can do anything in because it does not matter what happens to them. Their clothes, of course, affected everything they did, including the games they played. You cannot play anything but quiet games, in clothes that have to be thought about all the time.

  What with one thing and another Peter and Santa were becoming rather odd children; then one day at the end of March, when Peter was twelve and Santa just eleven, Aunt Rebecca died, and, as is the way of such things, Aunt Rebecca’s annuity died with her.

  2

  The Christmas Card

  Peter and Santa felt miserable. In their way they missed Aunt Rebecca, for odd, funny things, and they both knew how the other was feeling so there was no need to keep talking about it. Inside, though they did not talk about that either, they were both worrying. After all they were not babies, they knew what happened to annuities when people died, and though, of course, they also knew that somebody or other is bound to look after children, they knew too it might not be the sort of looking after they would care for. The worst of it was there had to be a time of hanging about. The moment Aunt Rebecca died Mr Stibbings had written to the duchess’s executors, explaining what had happened, and about Peter and Santa, and asking if something could be done until they were old enough to earn their own livings. Meanwhile it was decided, if the executors said no, they were to go to an orphanage.

  The letter came a week after Aunt Rebecca died. It arrived at tea-time. Mrs Ford, Madame Tranchot, and Miss Fane were all there, but no one liked to open the letter because it was, of course, addressed to Mr Stibbings. It was put on the mantelpiece and they all stared at it. Peter and Santa could not eat any more tea because they wanted so badly to know what it said, which was a pity because there was some particularly good hot buttered toast.

  ‘Do you think,’ Peter suggested, ‘that I had better take it round to him?’

  Mrs Ford looked at Madame Tranchot, who looked at Miss Fane. All their faces said the same thing. ‘Don’t let him do that because I want to know what is in it.’ But none of them liked to say quite that. Mrs Ford got round the difficulty by starting to cry.

  ‘It does seem hard that what concerns the nephew and niece of my oldest friend …’ here she gave a big sniff – ‘should be discussed behind my back.’

  Peter kicked Santa under the table. She saw he was angry and embarrassed about the crying and might be rude. She thought quickly.

  ‘How would it be if Peter and I went round and told him it was here?’

  Everybody thought that a good idea. So Peter and Santa, without giving anyone a chance to change their minds, rushed out. Outside Mr Stibbings’s house they stood still for a moment. Santa panted, for they had run all the way:

  ‘I feel awful inside. Do you?’

  Peter nodded.

  ‘Like waiting at the dentist’s. I wish we knew what it said. Just suppose it’s an orphanage.’

  Luckily Mr Stibbings was in and said he would come at once. But Mr Stibbing’s ‘at once’ was almost as slow as other people’s ‘presently’. Although it was April and not a bit cold, it was astounding how he fussed before he would go out. It was nearly five minutes before he found his scarf, though Peter and Santa helped look, as well as Mr Stibbings’s housekeeper. In the end the housekeeper remembered he had worn it in bed one night, and she ran upstairs and found it tied in a black wool bow to one of the bed knobs. When all the scarf (and it was a very long one) was wound round Mr Stibbings, Peter held out his overcoat.

  ‘Here you are, sir.’

  Mr Stibbings looked over his glasses in a hurt way.

  ‘All right, my boy. All in good time. Speed is the curse of the age.’

  Peter looked so much as if he was going to say something which might sound rude, and, anyway, Santa knew that Mr Stibbings was the sort of man whom hurrying made slow, that she broke in. She asked about an ostrich egg on the hall table. It did what she wanted, in that it stopped Peter speaking or Mr Stibbings feeling annoyed at being rushed, but it took six minutes before they got away from ostriches, and Mr Stibbings dressed and out of the front door.

  ‘You are a fool,’ Peter whispered. ‘Fancy asking about that then.’

  Santa did not answer, because she knew Peter knew why she had done it, and that, in a way, he thought it a good idea. It came natural to him to answer back and it never helped in the end.

  When they got back to the house Mr Stibbings opened the letter. He opened it very slowly, because whatever he did he was slow at. Then he put his spectacles straight. Then he did what the children thought an awfully mean thing. He read the letter to himself. Peter turned red and looked so angry that Santa slipped round to him and whispered: ‘Don’t ask what’s in it, because they will.’ She jerked her head at the three women at the table.

  She was quite right; even before the letter was finished Mrs Ford was crying. Directly Mr Stibbings stopped reading she said in a choked voice:

  ‘That I should live to see the day when what concerns the welfare of the nephew and niece of my oldest friend was kept from me!’

  Luckily Mr Stibbings hated crying as much as Peter and Santa did. He made the sort of cough people make when they are looking for the right words. Then he turned to the children.

  ‘My dear young people, I fear it is not good news. It seems that all the money the duchess left is held in trust for a grandson who is a minor. He is …’ He opened the letter again and started to look through it; but before he found the name Peter broke in:

  ‘I know. It’s that Lord Bronedin.’

  Mr Stibbings looked up surprised.

  ‘That’s quite right. The name is Lord Bronedin. You know of him?’

  Peter and Santa made each other a very understanding face. Then Peter said:

  ‘I’d just about say we do.’

  Mr Stibbings was too interested in other things to ask them what they meant; instead he sat down in the arm-chair and looked as people look when they know nobody is going to like what they have to say. He rearranged his spectacles to a better position on his nose, put the tips of his fingers together, then looked at the children.

  ‘I was afraid that this was the reply we should receive. But thanks to those whom I may call your good friends …’ he turned to the three women – ‘other arrangements are in train. We have arranged for you, Peter, dear boy, at Saint Bernard’s Home for Boys. You Santa, are going to Saint Winifred’s Orphanage.’

  ‘What!’ Santa was so startled that the word came out in a shout. ‘We aren’t going together?’

  Mrs Ford made clicking sounds with her tongue.

  ‘Don’t shout, dear. There are different homes for boys and girls.’

  Santa turned to her.

  ‘Not always there aren’t.’

  ‘Grammar! Grammar!’ Mrs Ford wagged her finger at her. Then she took out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes. ‘This is not the arrangement I wished for …’

  Santa was so upset she felt she would scream if she had to hear about being the niece and nephew of her oldest friend again. So she interrupted.

  ‘If you don’t like the arrangement, don’t let it happen. It needn’t. There must be somewhere we could go together if only you looked for it.’ She came to Mrs Ford and shook her arm to be sure she was listening. ‘Peter and I couldn’t live in two different places, you must see that.’

  Miss Fane leant across the table. She held out her hand, palm upwards, as if she expected Santa to put her hand into it.

  ‘I understand how you feel, little one. Separation is terribly hard. But, believe me, your violin will help.’

  Santa stamped her foot. She sobbed while she spoke:

  ‘How can you say that? Why should it make it better if I played “Art thou weary?” six hundred times a day?’ She turned desperately to them all. ‘You must find a place for us. Here you sit, and all you say is it can’t be helped. But it’s got to be helped.
I won’t live somewhere else than Peter. And he wouldn’t either. Would you, Peter?’

  They all looked at Peter. He was leaning against the mantelpiece. His hands were in his pockets and he was staring at the floor, not seeming interested in what was going on. Santa could not see him clearly because she was crying so hard that everything was out of focus. But she felt a cold feeling inside. Peter was not going to fight. Ordinarily he was so much more quickly angry than she was that if he were going to be angry he would have been by now. Mr Stibbings looked at him with approval.

  ‘Peter is sensible, Santa. He knows what must be must be.’

  Peter looked up, then he came over to the table and stood beside Santa.

  ‘That’s right, sir.’ As he spoke he dug his elbow into Santa’s side. If ever a dig in the ribs meant ‘Don’t be a fool, trust me’, that one did. He turned to Mrs Ford: ‘I shouldn’t worry. I expect it won’t be bad at Saint Bernard’s Home for Boys and Santa will get used to Saint Winifred’s Orphanage. Won’t you, Santa?’

  After the dig in the ribs Santa felt better, and she knew, from the way he said that, she would not mind when she understood, that he had a plan, and she guessed it would help if she seemed to cheer up. She dried her eyes.

  ‘No. I suppose it will be all right. It was just I was so surprised. I had never thought of us not going together.’ As she said this she could not help a wobble in her voice. She was sure Peter meant to do something, but after all they were only children, and probably police and people like that would be on the side of Mr Stibbings, Mrs Ford, Madame Tranchot, Miss Fane, Saint Bernard’s and Saint Winifred’s. She tried to look brave, but she did not feel it.

  Peter pulled two chairs up to the table. He pushed Santa into one and he sat on the other.

  ‘There’s just one or two things, sir. When do we go?’

  Mr Stibbings looked at Mrs Ford, Mrs Ford looked at Madame Tranchot, Madame Tranchot looked at Miss Fane. They all looked embarrassed. Mr Stibbings cleared his throat.