Patricia St John Series

by Patricia St John

  An hour later, when Mrs. Owen had kissed us good night and Janet had fallen asleep beside me, I lay awake, staring out of the window at the starry sky that looked so wide without any roofs and spires massed against it. I felt quite bewildered by all that had happened, and it seemed ages since the taxi had turned the corner, hiding Mrs. Moody from view. Once again my eyes filled with tears of loneliness, and I wanted to go home—and yet there were those strange words that seemed to comfort me a little: “These things I have spoken to you . . . that your joy may be full.”*

  What things? I wondered.

  I wished I’d listened.

  * John 15:11

  The Other Side of the Mist

  When I awoke the next morning, Janet, fully dressed, was roaming around the room getting ready for a Saturday at home, and the moment she saw my eyes open she started talking. Her shyness seemed to have vanished overnight, and while I dressed, she sat on her bed jigging up and down and telling me about all their games and secrets. By breakfast time I had stopped wondering what people did all day in the country. In fact, I couldn’t think how these children managed to crowd so much adventure into twelve short hours.

  Breakfast was over, and everyone had helped and seemed to enjoy it. Janet and Frances fought for the job of feeding Lucy, and I was afraid she might be pulled in half. But Mrs. Owen put her head around the door and reminded them that it was Frances’s turn.

  The boys had gone off to bring in firewood, Mrs. Owen had gone into the kitchen, and it was suddenly very quiet. There was no sound at all except the gurgly sounds of Lucy eating her breakfast. I stood looking out of the window; it was a drizzly day, and I could see nothing beyond the garden gate except yellow fields and black trees. The distance was blotted out by mist, and I wondered what I would see when it lifted. I was startled out of my daydreams by the touch of Mrs. Owen’s hand on my shoulder.

  “Elaine,” she said, “when you’ve made your own bed, will you come and help me with the little ones’ beds? And then the children want to go out and play, and I expect you’d like to go with them.”

  I looked up surprised and not very pleased. For one thing, I did not see why I, as a visitor, should be expected to make my own bed—Mrs. Moody always made it at home. Also, what would we do out-of-doors on a cold, damp day like this? But I had learned, in my short life, to keep silent about what I thought, so I followed Mrs. Owen upstairs and started to make the beds. But I had been used to central heating and fireplaces, and I found the bedrooms horribly cold. I shivered and looked sulky.

  “It is cold in the country compared with London,” said Mrs. Owen, “but you’ll soon get used to it. You need to run about and keep moving, and you’ll get as rosy as Janet. This is the bleakest time of the year, you know, Elaine, but spring is on the way. Every day is getting longer and lighter, and we shall soon have the flowers coming out. You’ll love it then.”

  And then suddenly she started talking about my mother at school, and that was really interesting. I listened eagerly and laughed, and felt quite disappointed when the noise downstairs in the hall told us that the children were ready to go out.

  Johnny came crashing upstairs in his boots. “Mummy,” he shouted, “I found a dead rabbit and we’re going to have a funeral. Have you got a shoe box?”

  “Really?” said Mrs. Owen rather anxiously. “Not a very dead rabbit, is it, Janet?”

  “No, Mummy,” answered Janet reassuringly, “a just-dead one—it was still warm.”

  “Well, don’t touch it,” said their mother, hurrying down with newspapers and a broken cardboard box. “Wrap it in this paper and some big leaves, and put it in here. There, now, don’t touch it again; and Johnny, wash your hands.”

  “I’m not playing funerals,” announced Peter grandly. “It’s a game for babies. I’m going tree-climbing.”

  “Oh, no, Peter,” cried Janet, “we always play something with the little ones first. You needn’t be in the procession. You can go and dig the grave and ring the bell, and I’ll be the priest. We must do what the little ones like sometimes. We’ll climb trees afterward.”

  Janet, as I discovered later, adored funerals and wouldn’t have missed it for anything, and the moment Peter had gone off to do as he was told, she started organizing things.

  “Get leaves and jasmine, everyone,” she ordered, “and make the box pretty.”

  She was interrupted by Robin bursting in. He didn’t know what a funeral was, but he was terrified of missing it.

  “You can drive the shoe box, Robs,” said Janet kindly. “Jumbo can be a black horse with plumes, and we’ll tie the box to his tail with string. I’ll be the taxi driver and come behind with Francie and Johnny in the wheelbarrow. Oh, there’s Elaine too! I forgot her. You can walk behind and carry flowers, Elaine.”

  “There aren’t any,” I said coldly. I thought they were all quite mad.

  “Get a yew bough, then,” said Janet, pointing to the tree by the gate, “and let’s start. Peter’s getting angry.”

  We went very slowly because Jumbo, a strange, shapeless, stuffed woollen animal with four legs, a trunk, and a tail sticking in all directions, was being walked step by step down the path with the box thumping behind him. Peter banged the dinner bell impatiently from behind a hedge.

  I was surprised at what I saw around the corner of the hedge. There was a neat little animal cemetery with tiny graves surrounded by pebbles and marked with wooden crosses. On some the names had been carved with a penknife and filled in with ink. There were graves for thrushes and rabbits, a squirrel, a mouse, and Blackie the kitten, and at the far end a freshly dug hole lined with laurel leaves and all ready for the poor rabbit, who was laid carefully inside. Frances sprinkled a few daisies, then it was covered up. Janet said a few words about rabbits and they all sang a hymn.

  “Come along now,” said Janet. “We’ll find Peter and go to the tree. We’ve got some plans to make.”

  She picked up the wheelbarrow and gave Robin and Jumbo a ride, and I followed. Only Frances lingered, making daisy chains for the new grave. She loved the little cemetery, for to Frances the grave was nothing but a door into heaven where nothing was hurt or killed or destroyed. But of course I knew nothing about this at the time.

  Mugs of hot chocolate and ginger biscuits were served out of the kitchen window at this point, and then we all set out again, leaving Robin under the kitchen table with the cat and collecting Cadwaller from his place. Cadwaller was not allowed at funerals, for once he had tried to eat the rabbit who was about to be buried.

  Peter had gone on ahead and we hurried after him, joined at the gate by Frances. We ran along a muddy path and found him already seated on a low bough of a beech tree, dangling his legs and carving the bark with his penknife. He called to us to hurry, saying that he would be working on his rabbit hutch all afternoon, and there was no time to spare.

  “Frances first,” ordered Peter, lying flat on his tummy along the branch. Janet gave her a lift, and Peter seized her hands and pulled. Once astride the branch, tiny Frances climbed hand over hand up into the tree like a nimble squirrel. Johnny did the same.

  I was seized with horror, for I’d never climbed a tree in my life and was certain I never could.

  “Come on, Elaine,” said Peter kindly. “You can easily reach alone. Jump, kick your legs, and wiggle around.”

  But I knew I could do nothing of the kind. I would make a fool of myself and get hurt. I turned my back on him.

  “No, thank you,” I called over my shoulder. “I don’t like climbing trees; it’s babyish. I’m going home to unpack.”

  I did not turn around to look at them, but there was complete silence for a moment or two. Then Peter said, “Oh, never mind her, Jan; she’s too stuck-up for us. Jump, and I’ll give you a pull.”

  I walked home slowly, half blind with tears I was too proud to let fall. These children, I thought, will never like me. I would never like them or their silly baby games, and I felt terribly sorry for myself.
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  “I hate the country, and I hate Peter,” I muttered to myself. “I shall write to Mummy and tell her I’m very, very unhappy, and I want to go home at once. I won’t stay in a place where I’m unhappy. Why should I?”

  I had reached the top of the little slope, and I glanced backward. The four children were sitting on a high bough dangling their legs like a row of happy monkeys. They were all very close together and probably all talking at once. How stupid they were!

  But as I looked, I noticed something else. The sun had begun to scatter the mist and was shining brightly, revealing a beautiful country landscape with the sea in the distance. On a holly tree nearby, a robin puffed out his breast and sang for joy, and his breast was as scarlet as the berries. Everywhere I turned I could hear chirps and twitterings of the birds waiting for spring. For a moment I felt almost happy.

  But how could I be happy when no one bothered about me, and I couldn’t do what I liked? My eyes were blinded with tears—yet the robin kept on singing.

  The Foot of the Rainbow

  I shall never forget my first Sunday in the country.

  Sundays at home had been rather miserable. Mrs. Moody went to a meeting somewhere, wearing a big black hat, and came back in a bad mood. Mummy nearly always stayed in bed all the morning and went out after tea. I had often found it a long, lonely, boring day.

  But here everyone dressed up in their brightest and best clothes, and I learned to my surprise that we were all going to church. We set out at a quarter to eleven along a muddy footpath that led through fields, with the birds singing in the mist. Peter had gone ahead with his father, and I was glad of that for I really disliked him very much indeed. Janet skipped nearly all the way, and Johnny and Frances clung to their mother’s hands, both talking hard all the time but not expecting any answer.

  I walked apart on my own, wishing I didn’t have to go to church. I was sure it would be really boring. We soon reached the wooden gate where people were waiting to greet Mrs. Owen, whom they all knew and loved. While they were chatting, I noticed something that made me gasp.

  The old churchyard was covered with masses of snowdrops. I moved off to see them more closely, and forgetting everyone, I bent down to examine them. They were spotlessly white and so beautiful. They were clumped particularly thick around an old gravestone, and I started reading the words on it:

  “David Davies—1810–1880. In . . .”

  But the next words were completely worn away. Only with difficulty could I make out the end:

  “. . . is fullness of joy.”

  I had heard those words before! They were like the verse Mr. Owen had read at the tea table. What could the missing words be? Where could this “fullness of joy” be found?

  But as I stood there dreaming, Janet suddenly gave me a friendly thump on the back. “Come on, Elaine,” she said. “We’re going in.”

  We marched to our pew and Johnny smiled at everyone. After a certain amount of shoving and scuffling, we all settled down, and the service began.

  I didn’t even try to listen. I kept repeating over to myself the words I had read in the churchyard—“fullness of joy . . . fullness of joy.”

  I felt that these words held some tremendous secret, and perhaps the missing words were the key. In where, or in what, could “fullness of joy” be found? And what was “fullness of joy” anyway? Nothing I had ever known in my dull, lonely little life, and yet something I was crying out to know. Then, as I stood there, something happened. The sun pierced the mist outside, and the church was suddenly filled with a golden light, warming and blessing us all. Everyone lifted their faces in amazement at this miracle of sunlight, and I glanced at Janet, who was singing at the top of her voice.

  Just for a moment I thought I knew what “fullness of joy” must be like. It would change everything, even the ugly things, and make all the ordinary things precious and beautiful. But just as I made that discovery, a cloud blew across the sun, and the church was plunged into shadow again.

  By the time we came out, it was raining again, and we raced home at top speed. Cadwaller came bounding to meet us and tried to leap up and greet us with muddy paws on our best coats, and we were all very warm and rosy by the time we reached home.

  After dinner it was still raining, so we settled in front of the fire to play games or read until we went out again to Sunday school at a quarter past three. The box of chocolates I had brought were handed around, and I was glad to see it, for at home my mother was always giving me sweets and chocolates, and I ate them whenever I liked. But here they seemed to appear only after Sunday dinner or around the fire after supper, and seemed a special treat.

  It took a long time to decide who was to have which chocolate, but at last quiet settled over the room. I was at a table writing to Mummy, but I couldn’t think of much to say. “Dear Mummy,” I started, “please come and take me home again. I don’t like it here, and the children don’t want to play with me, and it’s horribly cold.” I sat biting my pen and gazing out into the garden, wondering what to put next. The rain was still falling, but it was a bright, thin rain with the promise of sunshine behind it. As I watched I suddenly noticed one of the brightest rainbows I’d ever seen in my life. The children round the fire with their backs to the window noticed nothing, and I did not say anything. It was my rainbow, and I wanted it to myself.

  I had read stories about treasures hidden at the foot of rainbows, and the foot of this rainbow was just up the hill. It seemed to touch the earth behind an old stone wall, and although I no longer believed in fairy stories and hidden treasure, I thought it would be fun to run and stand in the light with the colors breaking all over me.

  I got up quietly, shut my writing pad, and walked to the door. To my great relief, no one asked me where I was going—they were not very interested in me. My coat was hanging in the hall and I slipped it on, turned the front door handle very softly, and escaped.

  I trotted up the hill feeling the soft rain on my face, with the rainbow, which was fading a little now, still ahead. By the time I reached the wall where its foot had rested, it had disappeared altogether and the sun had come out.

  I stood still, looking up at the wall where the foot of the rainbow had been. It had ivy hanging over it like green curtains, and it looked secret and exciting. I followed it until it turned a corner, and then again around another corner, and this time I found a green wooden gate. By peering through the cracks in the boards, I could see a little gray stone house set in a garden, and the windows of the house were all shut tightly with dark blinds drawn down over them.

  I pressed down the latch of the gate very carefully, but it was locked. The house seemed quite empty, and perhaps no one lived here. The garden where the rainbow had rested was a secret, deserted garden, and I suddenly wanted to get inside more than anything else in the world.

  There were tall trees growing all around the inside of the wall with branches trailing over it. Peter and Janet would have clambered over in a minute, but to me it looked almost impossible. I wandered along, searching for footholds, and very soon I came to a hawthorn bush with a broken bit of wall behind it, and there were easy footholds. I scrambled to the top quite easily, swung on an apple bough that seemed stretched out to welcome me, and landed with a thud on the muddy lawn. It was the first time in my life I had ever tried to do anything like that, and if anyone had been watching me I wouldn’t have even dared to try.

  I stood very still, rather frightened by what I had done and at first hardly dared to move. But the voices of the birds encouraged me, for the garden was full of them. It was an untidy garden covered with dead leaves. The flower beds were choked with weeds, but the snowdrops grew in clumps everywhere.

  I stepped forward cautiously and examined the house. Yes, it was quite empty. The windows were locked and dark, and there were great dusty cobwebs clinging across the front door. It seemed no one had lived there for a long time.

  Then I turned to the garden again, wondering just where the
foot of the rainbow had rested, and suddenly I knew—there, on a rising mound of lawn, clear of leaves, where a few yellow buttercups were still curled in tight balls.

  I had often seen snowdrops for sale on street carts and around the roots of trees in the parks, but I had never seen them like this. I doubted if they grew anywhere else in the world except in “my garden,” and I sat there for a long time, with the pale January sun warming my damp hair and turning the flowers a brighter gold. Never, never had I been in such a wonderful place.

  Gradually I grew bolder, and I explored my kingdom from end to end. I decided to tell no one; I would come here and play all alone, and then it wouldn’t matter that I couldn’t climb trees or play their silly games. And one thing I had discovered helped me a great deal. Lying against the back of the house was a half-rotten piece of ladder, which I dragged across the lawn and propped against the wall. It took my light weight quite well, and I was able to get out of the garden quite easily.

  I had no idea how long I’d been there, or what would be said about where I had been, but the sun was beginning to set behind the western hills and the birds had nearly all stopped singing. Only a late blackbird, perched on an apple tree, sang on.

  “Fullness of joy” it seemed to sing, “fullness of joy . . . fullness of joy.”

  Stirrings Under the Snow

  The family had started tea when I got home, and Mr. Owen had gone out to look for me. The children, as usual, were in a great state of excitement.

  “Where have you been?” shouted Janet. “Daddy’s gone to look for you, and you missed Sunday school.”

  “We thought you had drowned in the river,” remarked Johnny cheerfully.