Great Meadow (15 page)

I asked what had she done, and she said, ‘To what, pray?'

Mr Jane said, ‘Your ‘ead is what. Wait till Mother sees what you gone and done.'

And Lally said she was over twenty-one and she liked it and where was the mirror in this house?

So it was a bit boring really. I mean,
now
no one was interested at all in my voles and my sister made a sort of gasping sound and said, ‘Oh! What's happened? What did you do?' to Lally, who was poking bits of hair round her ears and she said she'd ‘merely had my hair cut'.

Then Mrs Jane came into the scullery where we all were and gave a terrible screech, and it was just one word, ‘Nelly!', very loud indeed. That was pretty terrible because ‘Nelly' was really Lally's family name, only, no one ever called her that unless it was truthfully serious. So this was.

‘What
have
you done, girl?' said Mrs Jane standing at the kitchen door with a colander of runner beans.

‘I've had my hair cut, Mother. You knew I was going to the Salon Elite, I asked you to make the appointment. Over at the Green.'

‘I can't believe it! Bless my sister's cats! You look just like a boy!'

And Lally just looked at herself in the mirror over the sink and smiled and smiled and said she knew that, it was all The Thing. You could see Mrs Jane was vexed, or worried, or something, because she just pushed Lally aside and set the colander in the sink and turned on the tap very fast, and you could see she was angry. And Lally said that
everyone
is doing their hair this way now, it was cooler and easier to manage. And Mrs Jane said, ‘Manage! I'll give you manage, my girl – with the back of my hand if you weren't over age!'

Lally said that she
was
over age so leave it be. Mrs Jane grumbled and rinsed the beans, and my sister and Mr Jane went out into the yard together. I was just hoping and hoping that there would be a quiet time when I could show the voles to someone. But no one was interested, so I didn't. Mrs Jane turned off the tap and asked whoever looked like that in Twickenham, she'd like to know. And Lally said, ‘Oh! Mother, do give over. Gooze next door looks like this.'

Mrs Jane said that Gooze-Next-Door was soft in the head, and had been all her life, and if that's how Lally wanted to look, that's just how she did.

So I just took my voles and went back to the long shed, where I could hear them all talking away like anything. It was pretty mouldy really: no one cared about my present or how kind it was of Mr Jane to think of Sat and Sun and that sort of thing. So I found a piece of rag and cleaned the glass front, and polished it up a bit, and I heard my sister shouting away at Mr Jane as they came down the path from the greenhouse.

‘I bet you will never guess what!' she said, and her face was all smiley and secret-looking, so I said I was busy cleaning the vole box so I could take it into the house and then she said (quite nicely actually), ‘Mr Jane has given me a whole bunch of grapes. He put a piece of red string round a bunch and said that it was mine. When they are ripe.
My
bunch is the red one. Wasn't that very
sweet
of him?'

So I said yes, and found a hole in the spotty brown paper on the back of the stuffed voles. Which was quite interesting, because if I could find a mothball I could drop one in, and then there would be no fleas or bugs and I'd be allowed to take it up to our room. So that cheered me up, and I was quite curious watching Mr Jane, who was opening some of his little wooden drawers full of screws and tacks and three-inch nails. Looking for something. I wondered if he had any mothballs. I mean, you never know.

My sister suddenly said, ‘I told Mr Jane that you would like a bunch of grapes too. From Hampton Court. So he's
looking for the string to tie on
your
bunch. I told him you'd be very happy if you had one.' So, you see, she
was
pretty decent really. I mean, if you ever found out. It was quite difficult sometimes, but she did make me feel I really and truly liked her. So I said, ‘Thank you,' and then asked Mr Jane if he had any mothballs. But he was a bit deaf and didn't hear so I shouted. My sister said, ‘Don't shout he's not deaf, you
are
rude.'

But he was staring at me, with a ball of raffia in his hand. ‘What say?' he called across the shed, so I said it again, and he shook his head and said to ask Mother. Then he said best go and have another look at the Hampton Court vine down at the greenhouse, and with a pair of scissors and the ball of raffia he wandered into the yard. We followed, only, I left the voles behind so they'd be safe. In the greenhouse he told me to choose my own bunch. I saw my sister's hanging up among the leaves with a long red wriggle of tape, so I chose one almost as big as hers, and Mr Jane tied a bit of the raffia round it. He was whistling under his breath and grunting a bit, but then it was done, and we looked at our bunches.

‘End of October, I reckon. You'll have to come back at the end of October. From Hampton Court, they are. Took the cutting years and years ago. Afore I spoke for Mrs Jane even. Been here umpteen years.'

When we were walking back down the path to the long shed, my sister said that did I know that he had actually stolen the bit of vine from King Henry's Palace. And it was hundreds of years old. I told her she was pretty decent to have remembered to get me a bunch, but she just shrugged and said that if I hadn't a bunch of my own
I'd have to share hers, Lally would see to that. So it was much better if I had my own. So she could have all hers for herself.

You see? Pretty rotten really. Girls are.

We all had supper in the kitchen. It was still light outside, so there was no lovely lamplight or a fire in the range. Not until the Last Day of Summer. We had boiled eggs for supper, with fingers, and Mr Jane had some savoury mince at his little bamboo table by the empty range, which had two gas rings on the top so that we had two kettles sighing away for the tea or washing-up. Lally and Mrs Jane seemed to have said sorry, or something, because they were quite nice to each other, and Lally said that we were having the eggs for supper on account of we'd had some pilchards for lunch, and if we so much as whispered
that
to our father we'd never be allowed to come to Walnut again.

‘He's so against anything in tins,' she said to Mrs Jane. ‘Ptomaine poisoning, he says. You don't know how long the things inside have been dead.' Mrs Jane said, ‘Oh well, bang goes my potted salmon. I thought of that for tomorrow, but what with pilchards today, and he's so against tinned things, it might be tempting fate.' So she'd think of a bit of salt beef and salad instead. Lally said that on Sunday she wouldn't be there, to keep an eye on things, so we could all have whatever we liked to eat and she wouldn't be witness. When she said that, Mrs Jane looked quite pale and said, where, pray, would she be on Sunday then? We were to stay until Monday? So what was she supposed to do, being left responsible for two energetic
children, and Lally said she had it in mind to go to the Regal in Richmond to see Bebe Daniels.

Mrs Jane set her cup down with such a bang that it splashed the cloth with tea. Even Mr Jane looked up from his plate and said that, yes, he'd quite finished, Mother, and it was very nice thank you. Lally said that was what she was doing on Sunday afternoon tea-time, going to see
Rio Rita
with Bebe Daniels and, her favourite, John Boles.

This gave Mrs Jane the most terrible shock, and she got to her feet so quickly that she knocked the milk jug over and I stuck my spoon right through the shell of my egg.

‘Father!' she shouted. ‘Our Nelly has lost her mind!' When she reached to get his plate he said no, he didn't want no more, but a nice cup of tea when it was to hand.

‘I don't know! I
really
don't know!' said Mrs Jane scraping the dirty plate with a fork and shaking her head. She looked so sad in her wraparound pinafore and her good shoes with the button straps, and her bun starting to squiggle down with all the head-shaking, and her pince-nez waggling. ‘It's the Lord's Day. You can't defy the Good Lord, my girl. And get that milk mopped up quick sharp.'

You see, she could'be just as bossy with her own daughter as her own daughter was with us.

But Lally was busy mopping up the milk anyway. ‘There's no need to throw a fit, Mother! It's the law now. It's allowed, Sunday cinemas . . .'

Mrs Jane started to clear up her plate and cup and saucer and stack them on a tray. My sister and I just stayed quiet. It was a bit funny hearing the grown-ups being so angry with each other. Then Lally said that if we had finished our supper perhaps we would be very kind and go and
lock up the hens, and she'd give Mrs Jane a hand in the scullery. Well, we had finished, and went down the path to the hen run. The sun was just flickering over the roof of the jam factory at the end of the garden and it was still very warm and little spirals of gnats were dancing about under the trees and the hens weren't really pleased about being shut up, so we had to shoo them into their house with a lot of flapping and my sister trod in their water bowl, so that was another accident.

‘Mrs Jane was really jolly cross. Did you see her bun? All shaking loose, and the way her glasses were all glittery. Like a terrible witch's. Awful!'

‘Witches don't wear glasses,' I said.

‘Well, you know what I mean anyway. And Mrs Jane is
so
sweet and pretty, she couldn't be a witch really, but she just seemed like one, she was so flustered.'

‘Well, I do think it's a bit awful. Going to the pictures on a Sunday, even if it
is
allowed.'

My sister bolted the hen house door and pushed the half-empty water bowl under the stand-tap with her foot. ‘Think of the germs too! Germy people everywhere.' She turned on the tap. ‘The “wrong sort” of people go to the pictures on a Sunday. I know that. It's so wicked that only really horrible people bother to go. No wonder Mrs Jane was so angry.'

‘Upset.'

‘Well, upset then. No wonder. Germy people breathing
everywhere.'

‘We
weren't asked. So you needn't worry. She's going all by herself, with no hair.'

‘I'm not worried. I wouldn't go anyway, even if she did
ask us. Silly old Bebe Daniels and that soppy man. I wouldn't go. I'd be petrified. It's vile, that's what.'

But I don't think she really meant it. I didn't say anything, and we walked back to the house and they were still talking quite loudly. We could hear them easily by the outside lav and the old enamel bath used for rainwater, next to Mr Jane's show auriculas.

‘I
really
don't know . . . everything is changing. I don't care if it is all The Thing to cut your hair off, and take a trolley bus, or whatever they call them, to Isleworth or Richmond, but I
do
care about the Lord's Day and His Rules, and I'm shocked. Very shocked in a daughter of mine. You wait till I tell Brother Harold. And Ruby. You wait, my girl.'

Well, we knew now she really was very angry because of the ‘my girl' part, and it was pretty worrying about Brother Harold and his frizzy-haired wife Ruby, because he was jolly big and a policeman, and Lally wasn't very keen on him, we knew. Perhaps it might put her off?

But when we got into the kitchen she was setting all the washed-up cups and plates back on the dresser and Mr Jane was dozing and Mrs Jane was folding the tablecloth, and we didn't say anything. Then Mrs Jane said, had we shut the hen run, and we said yes, and she thanked us and put the cloth in the table drawer and tucked her hair back into her bun.

‘Anyway, Mother,' said Lally, untying her apron at the back, ‘anyway, I could have gone and never mentioned it. Said I was going over to Teddington to see Mavis and Dolly, never mentioned going to the Regal, and you'd have been no wiser. I could just have told a lie. You'd
never have known/She hung the apron behind the door, and Mrs Jane sighed.

‘No. You never
lied
to me. That you didn't. Never you tell a lie, children,' she said, wagging a finger at us kindly, but you could see she was still sad-looking. ‘Nothing is worse than a lie. You tell a lie and it'll be round the world before the truth has got its boots on,' and she turned the gas off under the kettle.

But no one was interested in my voles. So I just shut up.

Our father was sitting on a little camp-stool in the long grass, with his travelling easel and his paintbox beside him. I was allowed to sit near him, but a bit behind him, not in the ‘eye line', because he said I fidgeted about and it put him off. So I sat very still, watching. And it was a quite good painting of the view down to the Daukeses' cottage, with trees and grass and everything, and in the distance the humpy shape of Windover Hill. I mean, you could easily see that and know where it was, and then, when he was washing out a brush in the jam-jar of turps, and wiping it on a piece of old curtain, I asked him if it had been very nice in Germany when they were there, and he said no, not very. When I asked him if he had bought the machine-things for
The Times,
he said no, too expensive, but another English paper had bought them instead. You could tell he was pretty fed up that
The Times
was not rich enough, but all he said was did I like the things our mother had bought in Germany, and so of course I said yes. What else do you say? I got three quite funny corks with carved people's heads on top. They were to stopper
our Tizer, she said. Only we never left enough Tizer to stopper. One of the faces was a chimney-sweep, with a top hat and a black face, another was a fat lady with a bosom and long blond plaits, and the last one was of a dreadful old man with a red nose and a mouth laughing with no teeth. They were all laughing, and they all had red noses and I thought they were pretty daft, but our mother had thought they would be ‘amusing'. So we said that they were. My sister got a very nice little box with a huge church painted on it, and when you opened the lid it played a tinkling tune which our father said was the German National Anthem and wasn't really suitable. It was pretty gloomy, but didn't go on for long. And they brought Lally a record for her ‘collection' and there was something called ‘I'm One of the Nuts from Barcelona' on one side and
‘Trink, Trink, Trink, Brüder Trink!'
which was pretty silly, and anyway we couldn't understand it. But she also got a nice little doll, all made of pine cones and feathers, which was quite interesting. If you liked little dolls. Which I didn't. But Lally made a lot of enjoying sounds, so I suppose that she did.