Miss Happiness and Miss Flower (8 page)

It is lonely for a little girl to lie awake in the dark when everyone is sleeping, and then Belinda remembered she was not the only one who was alone.

Miss Happiness was alone in the Japanese dolls’ house, and what of Miss Flower? Miss Flower was worse than alone in Belinda’s dolls’ house. Belinda had thrown her in and
slammed the door. I threw her quite hard, thought Belinda. Did she break? And suddenly Belinda was more miserable than ever, so miserable that she could not stay in bed any longer; she had to see
what had happened to Miss Flower. ‘What did I do to Miss Flower?’ asked Belinda, and more tears ran down her face. She got out of bed and tiptoed into the playroom.

When the dolls’-house door banged shut on Miss Flower I think she fainted. That was just as well, for when Belinda found her she was lying on her back with one foot in
the air, her head under a broken chair and her hand in the dolls’-house wastepaper basket in which there was an earwig. Her kimono and hair were covered with dust, and the chip had opened
again under the white paint into a trickle of plaster, but Miss Flower knew nothing until she felt a gentle hand come in and lift her. It was so gentle that she thought it was Nona’s; she
never dreamed it could be Belinda.

Very gently Belinda lifted Miss Flower, put her leg straight, dusted her hair and clothes and shook the earwig off on to the carpet. Then she stood holding Miss Flower in her hand and wondering
what to do next. Suddenly she tiptoed into Nona’s room, where the Japanese dolls’ house was shut and dark on the window-sill.

As Belinda slid the screen walls back they did not make a s-s-sh like a sigh, but a s-s-sh as if there were a secret – as indeed there was; for carefully, with two fingers, Belinda opened
the pencil box cupboard and took out the pink quilts; carefully she unrolled them – and how clumsy her fingers were, though she tried to be careful. She unrolled the quilts beside Miss
Happiness, and carefully put Miss Flower in and covered her. Then she slid the screens shut and tiptoed back to bed.

She was quite comfortable now and she went to sleep at once.

It was a very strange thing. When Belinda had gone to bed nobody had seemed to like her. Now in the morning everybody liked her very much.

Nona came running into her room. She looked a new Nona now with her eyes shining and her hair flying, her cheeks pink. She jumped on Belinda’s bed and in a moment they were hugging one
another. ‘I never thought we would do that!’ said Belinda.

Mother came and gave her a kiss. Father ruffled her hair on his way to the bathroom and at breakfast everyone seemed to take her part.

‘I had Miss Happiness
and
Miss Flower. It wasn’t fair,’ said Nona.

‘We should have seen Belinda wasn’t left out,’ said Anne.

‘I’ll make you a Japanese dolls’ house if you like,’ said Tom, but as the days went on Belinda did not really want a Japanese dolls’ house, though she liked playing
now and then with Nona’s. ‘But I wish there were something for me,’ said Belinda.

It was summer now. They all wore thin clothes and sun hats, went bathing and ate ice cream. The shops were full of cherries, then of peaches; perhaps it was the peaches that
gave Nona her idea.

Miss Happiness and Miss Flower spent much of their time in the garden and took it in turns to carry the paper sunshade. Nona put clover for chrysanthemums in the flower vase in the niche –
chrysanthemums are Japan’s own flowers – and planted them in the egg-cups by the steps. The tiny willow tree blossomed.

Miss Happiness and Miss Flower had summer kimonos of pale blue, and Anne wove them two flat hats of yellow straw. Mr Twilfit, Mrs Ashton and Melly often came to visit them. Miss Lane sent a
scroll for summer, with a lotus flower and a butterfly. In the evenings the garden lantern shone pale in the dusk. ‘How beautiful it is,’ said Miss Happiness, and Miss Flower had a
moment of being frightened; her chip had been painted over again but she still could not forget the night in the dusty dolls’ house. ‘Miss Nona has opened our travelling box again. Why?
Why?’ she asked; but Nona was only studying the piece of paper that said ‘I send you Miss Happiness, Miss Flower and Little Peach.’

‘Mother, did you ever write to Great-Aunt Lucy Dickinson?’ asked Nona.

‘Why! I forgot!’ said Mother.

‘Could a letter get to America fast?’ asked Nona.

‘Of course it could, by air.’

‘If I write to Great-Aunt Lucy Dickinson, will you help me to buy the stamp? It’s a secret,’ said Nona.

The stamp cost one shilling and threepence, nearly two whole ninepences. This is the letter Nona sent:

That was how she spelt ‘private’; as you know, she had not been at school very long. She wanted the answer marked ‘private’ so that no one else would
open it. Then she added something else:

After Nona had posted the letter she began to look in the shops to see how big the peaches were.

It was three weeks later, a hot sunny morning, and they all had peaches for breakfast.

‘Christopher Columbus!’ said Tom. ‘Is it someone’s birthday?’

‘Yes,’ said Mother, and Nona giggled.

Miss Happiness and Miss Flower were at breakfast too. They had paint-water tea on their table, tomatoes which were berries and white cotton rice; they ate with new pine needle chopsticks. There
were fresh trefoil flowers in the vase – trefoil looks like dolls’-house yellow chrysanthemums – and everything was extra fresh and tidy. ‘
Is
it a birthday?’
asked Tom.

Miss Happiness and Miss Flower had their heads bent over their rice, but their glass eyes looked as if they were twinkling.

The biggest peach was Belinda’s. It was so big that it looked as if it were spilling over her plate. ‘Hey, I ought to have that one!’ said Father.

‘It’s Belinda’s,’ said Mother, and Nona gave another giggle.

Mother showed Belinda how to slip her knife in to slit it, but as Belinda touched it, the peach seemed to wobble, then came in half. Belinda’s eyes grew rounder and rounder; for there, in
the middle of the peach, was a boy doll baby.

‘A
Japanese
boy doll baby,’ said Miss Happiness and Miss Flower.

He was little and fat, perhaps two inches high, wearing nothing at all, but with black hair – there was a piece of paper over it to protect it from the peach juice but Belinda snatched it
off. His eyes were black glass slits and he had a smile just like Miss Happiness.

Belinda stared and stared. Then, ‘How?’ she cried. ‘How?’

‘Never mind how,’ said Mother, and Nona said, ‘Who is it?’

With her eyes like bright blue saucers Belinda whispered, ‘It’s . . . It’s Little Peach.’

Names.
The names of Japanese girls always end in ‘ko’.

‘Happiness’ can be translated as ‘Sachi’, so her name in Japanese would be ‘Sachiko’.

‘Flower’ is ‘Hano’, so Miss Flower’s name would be ‘Hanoko’, or, with the title ‘Miss’, ‘Hanoko san’.

Star Festival.
In Japanese this is called ‘Panabapar’ and is held in the evening of the seventh day of the seventh month.

As Nona said, it is in memory of two lovers separated on earth. Their spirits are in two stars and on this night they are allowed to meet across the Milky Way.

The wish papers are sold in the shops; they are of soft paper coloured yellow or red or green and are twisted up and hung on the good luck bamboos. Often children just brush the words
‘River of Heaven’.

Kneeling.
No Japanese girl of good manners would remain standing when there were elders or guests present. She would also kneel to serve tea or food.

The cushions are flat, stuffed with wadded cotton, almost like little eiderdowns.

Haiku.
The haiku is a tiny verse form in which Japanese poets have been working for hundreds of years. They have only seventeen syllables (a syllable is a word or part
of a word that makes one sound: for instance, ‘shut’ is one syllable, ‘sha-dow’ is two); as you can imagine they are very difficult to write and to translate.

As Miss Lane said, there are different haiku for different times of year (though on the scrolls a
proverb or a single word is often used instead of a poem). In case you
want to make up haiku or use them on scrolls, I give four different ones for Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter:

But you may like to make up your own.

Firebox.
Each Japanese room has one of these, called a hibachi. They are lacquered wood outside, earthenware lined, and they glow with a few
pieces of charcoal in a bed of ashes. The doors slide open and you can warm your hands or boil a kettle for tea or rice. Very often in real houses the fireboxes are sunk in the floor.

Flower Arranging.
Japanese girls of good family spend some months in learning how to arrange flowers, for Japanese flower arrangement – Ikebana – is an
art.

In one side of every room is the tokonoma or niche. It is a place of honour as the fireplace is in Western homes. Its floor is raised higher than the rest of the room and it is here that the
flowers are placed, only one or two, with twigs and leaves arranged in a pattern . . . and every flower or branch has its meaning.

The Lamp.
The house lamp was made from a cotton reel. Tom stained the empty reel dark brown to make the stand, then ran a flex up through the hole in the reel; a small
size bulb fitted into the top, and Nona made a shade of tracing paper and joined it into a circle with sticky-tape. Tom cut a groove round the top of the cotton reel on which it could stand, and
the lamp was done.

1
. See note:
Names
,
here
.

2
. See note:
Star Festival
,
here
.

3
. See note:
Kneeling,
here
.

4
. See note:
Haiku,
here
.

5
. See note:
The Lamp,
here
.

6
. See note:
The Firebox,
here
.

7
. See note
Flower Arranging,
here
.

R
UMER
G
ODDEN
was one of the UK’s most distinguished authors. She wrote many well-known and
much-loved books for both adults and children, including
The Dolls’ House
and
The Story of Holly and Ivy. The Diddakoi
won the Whitbread Children’s Book Award in 1972.

She was awarded the OBE in 1993 and died in 1998, aged ninety.

G
ARY
B
LYTHE
is a successful illustrator best known for
The Whale Song,
which won the prestigious Kate Greenaway Award,
and
I Believe in Unicorns
by Michael Morpurgo. He lives in Merseyside.

Also by Rumer Godden

The Diddakoi

The Story of Holly & Ivy

The Dolls’ House