by Mary Clive
‘Don’t look round,’ muttered both the aunts together, but I did and saw coming towards me a bald head and bushy moustache. It was Aunt Muriel’s Husband. For a ghastly moment I thought he had come to accuse Peggy and me, and I was just about to explain that it had all been Rosamund’s idea when I saw that he was not looking at either of us. His eyes were fixed on the boomerang. I cheered up still more when I saw one of the aunts make a face at the other one, and I understood that they did not like him any more than we did.
‘Well, it’s a long time since I’ve had the pleasure of handling a boomerang,’ said Aunt Muriel’s Husband, stretching out his pudgy hand for it. ‘Though of course when I was in Australia one got pretty used to the things.’
‘It’s Mrs Peabody’s,’ said one of the aunts, putting it behind her back. ‘We’re just going to return it to her.’
‘I noticed you weren’t being very successful with it,’ said Aunt Muriel’s Husband. ‘I daresay you’d like me to show you how it’s done.’
‘Perhaps another time,’ said the aunt, moving towards the house.
‘Of course it’s only a knack,’ said Aunt Muriel’s Husband, getting between her and the door. ‘Some people pick it up very quickly and, on the other hand, of course, some people never seem able to get the hang of it. I happened to get the idea almost at once, that’s all. In fact the natives were amazed. The first time I ever threw one was at a laughing jackass. As a matter of fact, that’s a very amusing story. Did I ever tell you that story?’
‘Yes,’ said the aunt, rather rudely I thought. ‘You have.’
‘Well, since you all seem interested in boomerangs,’ he went on, suddenly pulling it from her hand, ‘I don’t mind showing you just how it’s done. Of course I haven’t practised for years, but once you’ve got the knack you never absolutely lose it. Can the young idea see? I don’t suppose really they’ll pick it up – people don’t often – but they may as well learn the right way of doing it. Now, it’s a question of wrist, how you flick your wrist. They say there’s a special shape of bone needed but I don’t know about that. Well, what is it?’
Peter was standing right in front of him and stammering.
‘D-do you think you ought to th-throw it? It’s Mrs Peabody’s. And she told us to take great care of it.’
Aunt Muriel’s Husband laughed a loud haw-haw.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t suppose there are five other men now in England who have handled boomerangs as much as me. All you have to do is jerk it with the special flick of the wrist and it flies in a circle and comes safely back again into your own hand.’
A window in the house was opened and we saw Mrs Peabody looking out. He nodded to her and then flung the boomerang from him with great force. It whizzed through the air with the most desperate straightness, and crashing into the trunk of a cedar tree, smashed into smithereens.
‘Crumbs,’ said Peter.
5. Savage by Name and Savage by Nature
Compared to my calm schoolroom at home, the Tamerlane nursery was a very riotous place. The trouble was caused, needless to say, by the Savages. There were so many of them that even when most of them had decided to keep quiet, there would surely be one who felt like making a disturbance. Often, however, it was all of them together. I will tell you about my second teatime, and then you will see the sort of way in which they used to behave.
Harry was just finishing one of his stories which the other children half believed, although by that time they might have learnt that they were pure make-up.
‘… Last year, when me and Mr O’Sullivan went shooting, he shot five and I shot fifty.’
‘Fifty what?’ asked Lionel.
‘Birds,’ said Harry, who did not know much natural history.
‘Why didn’t we see them?’
‘We sent them to a hospital at once, so they wouldn’t go bad.’
‘Where is your gun?’
‘Broken. I threw it away.’
‘I don’t believe you can shoot any more than a tomcat.’
‘And I don’t believe you can shoot any more than a William dog,’ retorted Harry.
By this time they had settled down to tea and Nana Glen, pouring out at the big-children’s table, told Harry to sit straight on his chair and not to gulp down his milk.
‘Need I, Nana?’ he asked, looking across at his own nurse at the centre table. She was busy cutting fingers of bread and butter for the baby and did not pay much attention.
‘Harry always reminds me of the children of Israel eating the Passover in haste, with his loins girded and his staff in his hand,’ she said indifferently.
Harry smirked triumphantly over the top of his cup and made a loud sucking noise. All the children giggled and the mouths of the nursery maids twitched. Nana Glen looked severe, specially when Betty spluttered her milk over the tablecloth.
‘Hooray! Toast and strawberry jam,’ said Rosamund, ‘we can have Twixes.’
‘Oh no, not Twixes,’ and ‘Yes, good, we’ll have Twixes,’ said Betty and Harry together.
‘What are these Twixes?’ I asked Lionel in my best society voice. I tried to hold my cup in two hands as I had sometimes seen my mother’s visitors do, but Nana Glen said, ‘Hold the handle, Evelyn, only babies hold their mugs that way. You’re a big girl.’
‘Twixes are bilge,’ said Lionel.
‘Sour dates,’ retorted Harry. He really meant sour grapes but, as I have said, he was very bad at natural history.
‘Twixes are little animals rather like squirrels,’ explained Rosamund. ‘Harry and I have them in our knives. If you spread strawberry jam on toast and then spread butter on the top of it, they make the mixture taste absolutely luscious.’
‘Oh, I must try.’
‘I’m afraid it’s no use your trying,’ said Harry, wagging his head and looking as though he were deeply grieved. ‘You, poor soul, haven’t got a Twix in your knife. Only me and Rosamund have got Twixes in our knives. I am sorry to say that if you try to do it, it will only taste quite ordinary. Not the real Twix taste.’
‘Let me see your Twix,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe you’ve got one.’
Harry stared into my eyes, and then said, still sadly and solemnly:
‘As I feared. Quite the wrong sort of eyes. You’ll never be able to see them. I was afraid you wouldn’t be able to.’
I began to feel angry and tried to get Lionel on to my side, but he was busy with his own knife mixing butter and golden syrup into a cream which was called ‘thunder and lightning’ and made everything near it very sticky.
‘They haven’t got Twixes, have they, Lionel?’
‘Of course they have. Excellent things Twixes. Always keep one handy. A Twix in time saves nine.’
‘Betty hasn’t got a Twix in her knife because she’s too young,’ said Rosamund.
Betty rose to the bait. ‘It’s all make-up,’ she shouted. ‘I don’t believe it. You’re untruth-tellers, both of you.’
‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d ever tasted Twix toast,’ said Harry, who appeared to become sadder and sadder every moment. ‘But you never have, and I don’t suppose you ever will.’
Betty snatched Harry’s knife away. ‘Now I’ve got a Twix in my knife!’
Rosamund laughed a very put-on sort of laugh. ‘I greatly fear the Twix ran out of it as soon as you picked it up.’
‘It didn’t! I can see it still there!’ screamed Betty.
Harry peered closely at her knife and then shook his head. ‘That’s not a real Twix,’ he said; ‘that little misery couldn’t make Twix toast.’
‘I’ll tell you what, Betty and Evelyn,’ said Rosamund in a very kind and gentle voice which took in nobody, ‘if you really want to know what Twix toast tastes like, let me spread some for you with my knife. I don’t mind doing it a bit.’
But, of course, neither Betty nor I could stand that and there was a general clamour.
‘Minnie says,’ said Harry, ‘that when Gran
dmama can’t make herself heard at a dinner party, Grandpapa shouts down the table, ‘Silence in the pig market. Let the old hen speak first.’
‘Is that true, Minnie?’
‘Of course,’ said Minnie. ‘She does, doesn’t she, May?’
‘Of course,’ said May.
We had so little idea of what the grown-ups did when we weren’t there that we believed her.
Lionel, who had gobbled up his thunder and lightning and was more or less covered with treacle, now stood up and said, ‘Shall I show you a Chinese torture?’
Peter, who was next to him, said, ‘Don’t let him, Nana.’
‘Lionel, sit down,’ said Nana Glen.
‘Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater. Had a wife and couldn’t keep her. He put her in a pumpkin shell. And there he kept her very well,’ chanted Lionel.
The other Savage children joined in, and I am sorry to say that Peggy and I couldn’t help adding our voices to the uproar. The Howliboos began to whimper.
‘I haven’t. I didn’t,’ screamed poor Peter in a fury of rage, hitting out wildly at Lionel and sending a plate of scones flying.
‘Lionel! Stop it this instant,’ said Nana Glen, who loved Peter very much and didn’t love Lionel at all.
‘Pumpkin Eater! Pumpkin Eater!’ shouted Lionel, standing on the sofa. The Howliboos were all howling together, Peter was screaming with rage and the rest of us were laughing and cheering.
Nana Glen sprang up, seized Lionel by the back of his collar and (I think) his hair and dragged him off the sofa and out of the room. She banged the door shut behind him and came back to her place grimly.
For a moment there was a surprised silence. The Howliboos turned their little heads about in relief and Baby Savage, who had been eating hard, flung both her buttery hands round her Nana’s neck.
‘If you love me tell me so, but don’t grease my jacket,’ said Nana Savage ungratefully, pushing her off and going on with her own tea.
‘Really! Can no one control that boy?’ said Nana Howliboo.
Neither of the other two nurses answered. Nana Glen was too cross and Nana Savage didn’t care.
Crash! Besides the door into the passage, the nursery had two other doors leading into bedrooms. Lionel had tiptoed through the sacred Howliboo night nursery and now bounced in upon us again screaming, ‘Pumpkin Eater! Pumpkin Eater!’
The nursery maids rose from their places and chased him out, but as fast as they slammed one door behind him he rushed in at another. There were no keys, and he tore through the room again and again, the nursery maids trying to hold the doors but never knowing which he was going to attack next. In the middle of the uproar, and just as Lionel had thrown a cushion into the middle of the food, there came a heavy knock on the door which led into the passage.
No one had heard any footsteps so we all jumped, and Lionel popped under the table where he was well hidden by the long tablecloth.
Slowly, slowly the door opened and, to our astonishment, who should come in but Father Christmas.
We big ones naturally guessed at once that it must be someone dressed up; but it didn’t look like anyone we knew and it did look exactly like Father Christmas. Betty was sitting opposite to me and I saw her round face go absolutely white as if she were about to faint, while Peter blushed purple.
‘It’s Mr O’Sullivan,’ said Rosamund uncertainly.
‘Or is it … ? Can it be … ?’
Father Christmas now raised his hand and began counting the children in a queer deep voice.
‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten … ten?’ Here he stopped. As Lionel was under the table of course we were one short. Father Christmas counted again, but it still came to ten.
Then he pronounced in a slow, solemn voice:
‘The child under the table,
I give you fair warning,
Will find nothing in his stocking
On Christmas morning.’
This was too much for Lionel who suddenly scrambled out and slunk on to his chair, trying to pretend he had been there all the time.
‘Eleven!’ said Father Christmas and slipped out of the room, shutting the door behind him.
‘Quick!’ cried Rosamund. ‘Which way did he go?’
There was a rush to the door, but by the time we had got it open there was no one to be seen in the passage.
‘I think it was Mr O’Sullivan,’ said Rosamund again.
‘I think it was Grandmama,’ said Peggy.
‘Grandmama doesn’t have a beard.’
‘Neither does Mr O’Sullivan.’
‘If it wasn’t really Father Christmas,’ said Peter, ‘how did he know that Lionel was under the table?’
How, indeed? We were all puzzled and turned to the grown-ups.
‘Nana, who was it?’ ‘Minnie, May, who was it?’ ‘You’ve got to tell us who it was.’
But they only laughed, and I can’t tell you anything more about it because the mystery was never solved.
The next disturbance came when we were getting ready to go downstairs. It was Betty being tiresome, and she chose to do it with her bedroom door open so as to attract as much attention as possible.
This was rather a way of hers and was considered very unsporting by the others. Betty and Rosamund always wore either pink or blue sashes on their white frocks, and Rosamund had dressed first and had put on the pink sash which had been laid ready for her. Suddenly Betty said that she couldn’t wear pink, she wouldn’t wear pink, nothing in the world would make her wear pink. Nana Savage would probably have given in, only Rosamund would not, of course, change to blue, and if they had gone downstairs with different sashes awkward questions would have been asked. Besides, Betty was shouting so loudly that everyone was hearing about it. ‘Oh, very well,’ said Nana Savage, ‘go down and ask your mother if you need wear pink.’
Bold as brass, Betty stumped off downstairs, followed by the rest of us longing to see what would happen. The library looked even grander than before, the grown-ups round the fire seemed even older and more remote.
However, Betty walked down the middle of the room in a very don’t-care way and, when she got to the circle of elders, said in the coarse voice which she used when she wanted to assert herself:
‘Need I wear a pink sash? I ’ates pink.’
Her mother, who was among the group of ladies, said:
‘Oh, Betty! Don’t talk like a fishwife.’
Betty put on an aggrieved whine.
‘But I don’t know what a fish knife talks like.’
There was a sort of rustle among the ladies, but Betty’s mother said seriously:
‘Why don’t you like pink?’
‘Because,’ replied Betty, frowning at her angrily, ‘it upsets my applecart.’
At this there was a loud roar – a roar of laughter really, only Betty took it to be a roar of rage. She thought she must have gone too far this time and have said something really terrible. Suddenly losing her nerve, she turned and bolted out of the library.
When she returned later on it was with a very red face and a pink sash.
That evening our games were organized by the youngest uncle who was called Uncle Jack. They were nice games, as they didn’t need any practice, and even I could play them as well as anyone.
We finished up with one called bullet pudding. There was a heap of flour on a plate and a marble on the top of it, and we all took turns to cut a slice off the flour with a knife. The heap of flour got smaller and smaller until it collapsed altogether and the marble rolled into the flour. Then the person who had knocked it down had to pick up the marble in his teeth, and if you can, without dribbling, bury your face in a heap of flour and pick up a marble between your teeth, you are cleverer than we were. Our faces and hair were soon plastered with dough and the din was terrific. Betty was giving her famous screams – when she was excited she always screamed like a train going through a tunnel. The grown-ups, who were standing round us, laughed, too, La
dy Tamerlane as much as anyone. She was a person who hardly ever said ‘Don’t’. Having herself been one of a family of fifteen she was resigned to the behaviour of children.
When we got back upstairs the nurses took a very different line. Even Nana Savage was startled from her usual calm when she saw us coming in with our faces whitened like clowns.
‘Look at yourselves!’ she said. ‘They wouldn’t accept you in the workhouse.’
‘I don’t want to be accepted in the workhouse,’ said Rosamund pertly.
‘Hadn’t somebody better start running the bathwater?’ said Harry primly. He was fascinated by the weighing-machine in the bathroom.
The nursery wing was lucky in having a bathroom of its own, but using it was a serious undertaking, as the water came out of the tap in a thin red trickle, and it took a long time to get enough water for even a shallow bath. The other peculiarity of the bathroom was that round the wall ran an extremely hot pipe which one forgot about until one bumped into it.
‘If I’d known they were going to play that dirty game,’ said Nana Glen, ‘I wouldn’t have put Peter in his black velvet.’
Nana Howliboo, whose babies were safely in bed, smiled like a Cheshire cat.
‘Once velvet is soiled you can’t ever remove the marks,’ she said. ‘I’d never put a boy in velvet myself.’
‘You may think everything is all wrong,’ explained Harry earnestly, ‘but everything is really all right. Uncle Jack made us do it.’
‘Then Uncle Jack should know better at his age,’ said Nana Glen.
‘What is Uncle Jack’s age?’ said Rosamund. ‘Is he older than you or younger than you?’ She had a craving to find out the nurses’ real ages, rather as though it would give her some magic hold over them. But Nana Glen was not to be drawn and merely snorted.
‘And Grandmama egged him on,’ said Peggy.
