Great Meadow (13 page)

I
ask
you! You do see what I mean? A real cheat. So I said, holding the honey very carefully and starting for the garden fence, ‘I've only got threepence left of my Saturday money, and I'm saving that up for the August Fair, so that is that.'

‘Threepence! That's all we
need!
Threepence, and I'll give you my dear little shell in exchange!'

‘I don't want your rotten old shell from Christmas!'

She began to whine again, like they do, and said it was too hot, and she began to scuff through the buttercups and things, which meant that she'd get her socks all runkled and grass-stained, and a good ticking-off from Lally. If we ever got home.

As we started clambering over the rickety iron fence by the privy, she said in a sad soppy voice, ‘Fancy not wanting that
dear
little shell. You could afford it, easily. And then we could have all the Tizer together and not share with anyone, and we could both watch the lovely flowers opening. Together. I mean, it
is
sharing, isn't it?'

And I said to shut up and there was a lot of ginger beer in the kitchen. She huffed and puffed and pulled the heads off some cow parsley and threw them up in the air.

‘Tizer is best. It's fizzy. And cool, and lovely. I think you are vile. And mean too. Mean and vile.'

And then she ran off down to the lean-to singing her ‘All the King's Horses' song. I ask you. Trying to make me buy her rotten old shell for threepence when she had got it for nothing in a cracker. Girls are really quite rotten sometimes.

Because it was so hot we had only cold for lunch. Lally wore short sleeves, so you could tell how hot it was because she never would have worn short sleeves in the house, not ever.

It was going to be ham and potato salad and lettuce and half a tomato each. And there was a bottle of Heinz mayonnaise, only a titchy one, because my father didn't like anything in bottles, except if it was to drink, so they had to be hidden when he was at the cottage. Like the bottle
of Daddies Sauce. But Lally said that when the cat's away the mice will play. That reminded me that I'd better give a bit of lettuce (the outside leaves) to the Weekend, which I had taken to the brick shelf halfway up the stairs on account of it was too hot in the lean-to. It was quite dark in the hallway, after the sunlight, and Lally called out to come and wash my hands, and I was just starting up the stairs when there was the most terrible clatter and something jumped right over my head and the whole Weekend went smashing to the ground and the glass just shattered and there was sawdust everywhere. I saw Sat and Sun running about quite terrified and heard Lally crying out, ‘Oh! Oh! It's that dratted cat! Shoo, shoo!' But I was trying to catch the mice, only I couldn't. They were too fast and went scampering down the stairs, and Lally banged a saucepan to frighten Minnehaha out of his wits, and she frightened Sat and Sun too, but of course she didn't mean to do that. It was just all terrible. I stood in the hallway and she said had they escaped and I just chucked the bits of old lettuce into their broken cage and started to pick up the glass bits.

‘It's a good job it's a cold lunch today. Get this cleared up. Sawdust and bits of carrot . . . I'll get you a bucket, and mind your hands – we don't want blood everywhere.'

So I just picked everything up, very slowly: the food bowl, the water bowl, the little wheel they used to exercise in, the straw from their nest. And it was all blurry, and I had to keep wiping my face, and my nose was running a bit. But I didn't make a noise or anything. It was no good looking for Sat and Sun because they had gone for good, and I'd never find them in all of Great Meadow. So that
was that. Then I put everything into the bashed cage, and carried it and the bucket of glass to the kitchen. My sister said what a dreadful smell and she was having her lunch and Lally said, ‘Outside with that, young man.' So I just wandered into the front garden and everything went a bit swimmy. I mean, I couldn't really see very well, but I didn't want them to notice in the kitchen, so I went right down to the Daukeses' hedge and emptied the glass right in the middle of it.

No one really cared. That was the worst part. They just sat there eating their cold ham and talking about going down to the post office after lunch to see if there were any letters and save the van a journey up the hill. And I just sat on a big flowerpot and looked at the broken cage and thought of all the happy times I'd had with Sat and Sun, just watching them really. When I thought of all the snow and ice in the winter and how terrible it would be for them I felt awful. And what was worst of all, I looked up, and sitting on the top of one of the posts in the fence was Minnehaha, looking all of a mess. Watching me. So I just chucked their food bowl at him. Hard. It didn't hit him, only the post, and it skipped off into Great Meadow and so did he. And I just sat. It was a really rotten morning.

Then I heard Lally coming down the path. I knew it was her because she was singing ‘Moonlight and Roses' quite loudly. I knew she was singing loudly so I'd hear and have time to wipe any snot away, but there wasn't any. I don't blub so anyone can see. So that was all right.

‘Well, so that's where you've got to!' she said, as if she didn't know all the time, because she could have seen me plain as plain from the window over the sink. But I didn't say anything, and when she said, ‘No lunch then?' I just shook my head, and she said that perhaps I'd better go and have a look for Minnehaha because he was in rather a state after jumping through the kitchen window and taking the fly-paper with him. We always had fly-papers hanging about the place, like long twisty strips of old apple peeling, and that was why he looked a bit of a mess sitting on the post. But I just shrugged. Lally said she couldn't stand about all day and that it would take hours to cut all his fur off and she wasn't about to do it so I'd better start looking for him, and by the by, she'd opened the last jar of our mother's own piccalilli and if I wanted some I'd better make haste before Miss Fernackerpan took the lot. So I got up. It was easier to do what she wanted than to sit there really. And it was a bit worrying about Minnehaha and the fly-paper. I'd have to cut all his fur off and that would be very difficult.

1
The ‘cottage', 1930. Rented for 7/6 a week.

2
My father, just after joining
The Times,
1912.

3
With my parents at Sainte-Cécile, France, 1922.

4
At Wimereux, with my boat made by my father, 1926.

5
My sister posing for a ‘Drink More Milk' campaign, about 1927.

6
With Mama on the beach at Deauville, 1926ish.

7
With the new Salmson, a French car which my father loved and drove at Brooklands. Summer, 1926.