Christmas with the Savages

by Mary Clive

  At last, however, I did get some sort of letter finished and I brought it over to Lady Tamerlane, who looked at it without surprise, though equally without admiration. She put it into an envelope which she had already addressed for me and then tossed it into a tray on top of her own letters. The never-failing Mr O’Sullivan would remove them, stamp them and see that they caught the next post.

  Lady Tamerlane at once began writing again, but I tried to linger.

  ‘Shall I arrange your papers for you?’ I asked.

  ‘Run along, Everline,’ said Lady Tamerlane, not even thanking me for my kind offer, and with unwilling feet I left the realm of faery and went back to the nursery wing.

  There I found the other children rather inky but still partially dressed as Red Indians. They were sitting in the passage playing grandmother’s garden-party, a game of which they were very fond. It began:

  ‘My grandmother gave a garden party and invited Pincher.’

  ‘My grandmother gave a garden party and invited Pincher and Charles I.’

  ‘My grandmother gave a garden party and invited Pincher, Charles I and Tommy Howliboo.’ And so on.

  One might have thought it was a peaceful sort of game, but presently the list included ‘Lionel and the King of the Donkeys …’, and Harry would say, ‘Lionel-the-King-of-the-Donkeys’. Lionel threw himself on top of Harry and there was a fight in which everybody joined, and which only ended when Harry’s head bumped a door handle and broke it in half. We cooled down at once and looked at the two pieces in dismay.

  ‘Let’s say you slipped up and bumped against the handle by mistake,’ said Rosamund.

  We agreed to this sensible suggestion and we sat down again and began asking each other riddles and catches. Most of them were designed to make the person say that they were a donkey. Rosamund produced a new one which none of us had heard before. ‘What is the difference between a piano, a cigar and your face?’ The answer was, ‘A piano makes music, a cigar makes you sick, and your face makes me sick’. Rosamund knew a lot of riddles. I never could discover where she got them from. Perhaps she made them up. Somebody has to.

  The passage we were sitting in had nothing much in it except some fire extinguishers and some hot-water pipes running along the skirting which we kept trying to perch on, not very successfully, as they were too narrow and too hot. For want of anything better to do, we began examining the extinguishers. They were of two sorts – fat blue bottles about the size of croquet balls, which I think you were supposed to hurl into the flames like grenades, and tall red metal cans. It was obvious that we could not break one of the blue bottles without being found out, but Lionel, after reading the directions on one of the red tins, said:

  ‘I wonder if this is in working order. I think we ought to test it. Very dangerous having fire extinguishers that don’t work. Most unwise. Extremely rash.’

  We crowded round.

  ‘The way that this particular breed of extinguisher operates,’ said Lionel, looking again at the directions, ‘is to point the nozzle of the hose at the appropriate object and then with the hammer strike a smart blow on mark “A”.’

  He unwound the hose and took the little gold hammer out of its socket.

  ‘Don’t do it!’ ‘Do do it!’ we clamoured.

  ‘If the nozzle is pointed out of the window, the apparatus can be tested in perfect safety,’ said Lionel grandly.

  Peter said that he thought he heard Grandpapa’s bath chair being pushed under the window and we craned our necks out to look: but it was much too wet for anyone, even a gardener, to be about. Immediately below the window there were nothing but laurel bushes and ivy and an ancient seat under an iron trellis.

  ‘It’s only the ivy bower below,’ said Lionel. ‘That doesn’t matter. I won’t squirt much, only a little to see if it is in good order.’

  Rosamund told us afterwards that she meant to ask him if he knew how to turn the thing off, but she forgot to say it. Instead she remarked, ‘I wonder if we oughtn’t to test all the extinguishers all over the house.’

  Peggy was Lionel’s favourite for the time being, and he gave her the nozzle to point out of the window. She held it at arm’s length while Lionel raised the hammer.

  ‘Stand back and watch the effect,’ he said, and struck a smart blow with the hammer on mark ‘A’.

  Nothing happened. Lionel hit it again. Nothing.

  ‘I’m deeply afraid it’s empty,’ said Harry.

  Lionel shook the thing and we could hear the water slopping about inside.

  ‘And it won’t be water,’ said Lionel, ‘it will be some sort of deadly poison. It’s an infernal machine.’

  Peggy held the nozzle still further away from her face.

  ‘Simply bash it,’ said Rosamund. ‘Take a run at it. One, two, three, bash!’

  Lionel retreated to a distance and then rushed forward and with the gold hammer hit mark ‘A’ as hard as he could. There was a loud squish-hiss and Lionel sprang back even faster than he came, for the infernal machine began in a gush, not, unfortunately, from the nozzle, but from where the hose joined the tin. We had failed to notice that the rubber at the joint had perished.

  Deadly poison squirted in all directions (except out of the window).

  ‘Help!’ we screamed, leaping up and down, ‘Flood! Fire! Plague! Pestilence! Famine!’

  Nana Glen appeared, took one look and sent her nursery maid running off for Mr O’Sullivan, and we capered about yelling while the extinguisher continued to play like a fountain.

  ‘Will it go on for ever?’ asked Peter, rather appalled.

  ‘Yes it will,’ cried Rosamund. ‘It’s like the burning bush, only water.’

  In another moment Mr O’Sullivan had appeared among us, looking even taller than usual in his shirtsleeves, and without stopping to ask silly questions he had picked up the fountain and heaved it out of the window. We heard it crash on to the ivy bower below, and peering out we could see it continuing to play, spraying the lovers’ seat with poison.

  ‘Ho, ho, and who did that?’ asked Mr O’Sullivan, looking from the drenched passage to the row of frightened but exhilarated children.

  ‘Lionel!’ we cried. ‘Lionel did it!’ Lionel was never punished, not even put into disgrace, so we had no compunction about giving him away.

  ‘You all helped,’ said Lionel unsportingly.

  Peggy said in a very gentle voice, ‘I don’t see why Grandmama need be told.’

  Everyone saw the point of that, and the nursery maid was sent to see if the wet had soaked through into the passage below, and when she came back and reported that it had not, we surrounded Mr O’Sullivan.

  ‘Oh, please don’t tell Grandmama, Mr O’Sullivan. Please don’t tell.’

  Mr O’Sullivan looked solemn, so very solemn that we knew he was going to help.

  ‘Get one of your girls to mop up the passage,’ he said to Nana Glen, ‘and I’ll move the bag of tricks out of the cosy corner before anyone sees it.’

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ we cried. ‘Thank you! Thank you!’

  Mr O’Sullivan said nothing more, but he stooped and picked up one of the blue glass extinguishers and made pretence to throw it at Lionel’s head. Lionel ducked in terror, and Mr O’Sullivan put the bottle back in its wire holder and disappeared down the back stairs, chuckling to himself.

  ‘You’d better all come along into the nursery,’ said Nana Glen, adding, ‘though I’m sure we don’t want Lionel.’

  ‘The same to you with knobs on,’ retorted Lionel. ‘I shall go down to Mamma.’

  ‘May I come with you?’ I asked daringly.

  Lionel looked annoyed, but said, ‘All right,’ so we set off together, Lionel talking at a great rate. He told me about battles and killings, but whether he was telling me about the Ancient Greeks or about the history of his own imaginary country, I had no idea. Not that I cared anyway. I wasn’t listening. What I enjoyed was leaving the other children behind and going off with a big boy like Li
onel.

  Downstairs we wandered about from room to room. At every writing table there was a grown-up writing letters who glanced at us as we came by and then looked away again. At last one of the letter-writers turned out to be Lionel’s mother. She laid down her pen and stroked his hair and said:

  ‘Anything wrong in the nursery?’

  ‘Yes, there is,’ said Lionel in a loud, complaining voice. ‘They’ve all got this insane craze for persecution. There’s been nothing like it since the Early Christians.’

  ‘What have they been doing?’ asked his mother with anxiety.

  Lionel looked sideways at me and then said cautiously:

  ‘A deed without a name.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said his mother, and I could see that she was longing to get back to her letter. ‘Could you and Evelyn play a game together?’

  ‘No,’ said Lionel. ‘But if you gave us some writing paper we could draw pictures.’

  Every child knows that drawing pictures on the writing paper is against the rules, but Lionel’s mother, after a glance round to see that no one was looking, handed us each a sheet.

  ‘Black-edged, please,’ said Lionel. ‘It makes a sort of frame.’

  On all the writing tables in the house there were a few sheets of black-edged paper in case any of the visitors should be in mourning. So we each got a black-edged sheet and a magazine to prop it on and a pencil with a beautiful smooth point, and we settled ourselves down to draw.

  The only things I knew how to draw were fairies, so I drew the fairy queen with fairies all round her.

  Lionel finished first and showed his picture to his mother.

  ‘Whatever is it meant to be?’ she said. ‘It looks like some sort of fountain, only why is everyone running away from it?’

  Lionel showed it to me.

  ‘Do you know what it is, Evelyn?’

  I knew perfectly well, but I didn’t dare say. I shook my head and said, ‘I think you have drawn it beautifully, Lionel. I wish I could draw as well as you do.’

  ‘Well, as none of you seem able to guess,’ said Lionel, ‘I’ll tell you what it is. It is a very dangerous sort of fountain which spurts deadly poison.’

  ‘Really!’ said his mother. ‘It doesn’t sound at all a safe sort of thing to have about.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ said Lionel.

  ‘Perhaps someone will throw it out of the window,’ I suggested.

  ‘Almost certainly they will,’ said Lionel. He suddenly decided to like me. ‘When it stops raining I will show you my Secret Place,’ he said.

  I fully understood that this was a very great honour and I thanked him profusely. All through dinner I looked forward to going off with Lionel and leaving the other children behind, but to my disappointment the rain continued to come down as hard as ever, and we had to think of something to do indoors. What with the babies and what with the nurses, there really was not room for us in the nursery, so out we came into the passages again, still wearing our Indian headdresses, and played hide-and-seek. We were told not to go into any of the bedrooms nor downstairs, but there were so many passages that we got along very well and enjoyed ourselves with the exception of Betty, who took all games in deadly earnest and was as frightened as if she were being chased by real Indians. Peter, too, was troubled and anxious as he had been told the story of the lady who hid in a chest and then couldn’t open the lid, and hundreds of years later they found her skeleton. The only chests in the passages were chests of drawers which he could not possibly have shut himself into, but he was worried all the same.

  Just when hide-and-seek was beginning to pall, Rosamund appeared with a finger on her lip, and such an important expression on her face that we saw at once that she had made an exciting discovery. She held up her other hand for silence and said impressively:

  ‘We are in luck. The key is in the door of the lumber room. Come, braves and squaws, and attack the wigwams of the enemy.’

  Till that moment I had never heard of the lumber room, but I joined in the rush with the rest. Sure enough, the key was in the lock, and Rosamund, who had made the discovery, was allowed to turn it, and open the door and walk in first. We pushed in behind her.

  As soon as we got inside it became perfectly clear why the door was generally kept locked. In the middle of the floor was a glass dome, looking rather like a small greenhouse, which acted as a skylight to the billiard room which was just below. Suppose a child were to fall, or be pushed, against the glass, he would probably fall through it, down into the billiard room.

  ‘I wonder what Aunt Muriel’s Husband would say if Betty came hurtling through the skylight just when he was in the middle of a stroke,’ said Harry.

  ‘Is he there now?’ said Betty, trying to squint through one of the little stars in the frosted glass.

  We all leant against the glass trying to look through, but it fortunately supported us. Some of us thought we could see everything in the room below, including all the uncles playing billiards: others confessed that they could see nothing whatever.

  The lumber room was full of things such as birdcages and tin baths and also old furniture, some of it broken and shabby and all of it dusty. Many of the pieces would nowadays be considered extremely smart, but in those days they were out of fashion. However, Chippendale or Regency meant nothing to us, and we clambered about happily, pretending we were in a forest tracking palefaces, until Rosamund, always adventurous, pointed to a ladder and said ‘Excelsior!’

  The rest of us turned round and looked. On either side, high up in the wall, were two doors leading into that gap between ceiling and roof that there sometimes is in houses. A plank stretched from one to the other. It was high above our heads and went over the glass dome which, as you remember, was in the middle of the room. The ladder rested on the plank, and by going up it you could obviously get through one of the doors and explore the garret.

  Giggling and nervous we followed each other up the ladder. There was an awkward place at the top where we had to get off the ladder and on to the plank, but we all managed it, even Betty, who was so anxious not to be left behind and to show that she was as good as any of us and better, that she nearly shot right over it.

  The garret was very dark except near the doorway. There were beams across the floor rather like railway sleepers and if you missed one and your foot slipped down between them, there was a crackle of breaking plaster.

  ‘Don’t do that, Peter,’ said Peggy severely, as Peter fell off his beam for the second time. ‘You will go right through and Grandmama will be puce if she looks up and sees your foot sticking through her bedroom ceiling.’

  ‘I don’t believe Grandmama’s bedroom is underneath,’ said Peter, ‘and anyway she wouldn’t be sitting in her bedroom in the middle of the afternoon.’

  ‘She might have gone to fetch something,’ said Harry, who was always ready for an argument. ‘Bother!’ He bumped into a beam which barred his way and fell on to the plaster with both feet. ‘Oh, don’t leave me behind.’

  ‘Forwards!’ cried Lionel, who had got well ahead and was never one to wait for stragglers. ‘Follow the trail. Death to the palefaces.’

  For a time we stumbled along in the dark, climbing over and under the supports of the roof, until we were tired of it. The little ones at the back got very behind and called, ‘Wait! Oh, do wait!’ without any effect, but at last there was a glimmer of light and a halt.

  I caught up with Lionel and Rosamund and found that they had stopped under a skylight and there was another skylight in the floor. We got on our hands and knees round it and peered down on to a strip of passage that at first seemed so strange and entrancing that we wanted to jump down to it at once. But Betty recognized a washing hamper and we realized that we were only looking down on to the familiar passage outside the nursery maids’ bedrooms. Harry brought out of his pocket a lot of tiny sandbags belonging to his toy soldiers.

  ‘Let’s drop them on people’s heads,’ he said. One of the panes of glass w
as open and we piled the ammunition round it. As soon as we heard footsteps we tipped them over without waiting to see who was below.

  ‘Crumbs! It’s Nana!’ said Peter.

  For a moment Nana Glen stood below speechlessly, staring up at us, sandbags all round her on the floor. Speechlessly we stared down on her. Then, without exchanging a word, she turned and was off.

  ‘She’s gone to fetch Grandmama!’

  In fearful haste we left the skylight and plunged into the darkness again.

  ‘Not so fast! Don’t leave me behind!’ wailed the little ones, falling on to the plaster at almost every step.

  ‘Come on,’ said the big ones angrily. ‘Let’s get down the ladder before anyone comes.’

  But when we got to the crack of light that showed that our tour was at an end and that we had reached the other door, there was a stop. The big ones fumbled but could find no handle. The little ones came up and asked:

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Actually, it’s fastened by a hook on the outside,’ remarked Harry. ‘I remember noticing it as I was coming up the ladder.’

  ‘Then why on earth didn’t you say so before?’ asked Rosamund crossly (and she had some reason to be cross).

  ‘I thought everyone knew,’ said Harry.

  We stood in a huddle and rattled the door.

  ‘Hist!’ said Rosamund, who thought that an unusual situation needed unusual language, ‘one cometh up the ladder.’

  We kept quiet and listened, and we could certainly hear a person getting off the ladder and coming across the plank. Then the door was unlatched and the light streamed in, and to our thankfulness the face that we beheld was that of Mr O’Sullivan. We welcomed him with enthusiasm.

  ‘Now you’ve done it,’ he said with a wink.

  We then perceived that he was not alone. Below, standing among the dusty lumber, was the Savages’ mother. She was a very nervous lady, and when she was frightened she became very angry (as most of us do). She looked up at us with a white, grim face.