The Runaways (11 page)

‘Uncle Ambrose does feed us,’ said Timothy. ‘Betsy and I had raisins inside our baked apples. They were jolly good.’

‘Hold your tongue!’ said Robert angrily.

‘What did you wake me up for then?’ demanded Timothy.

‘Don’t quarrel, please,’ said Nan peaceably. ‘Don’t you realise, Robert, that Birmingham is all tramlines, shops and streets? No woods, no moors, no sheep, no pony, and no bees. No Lady Alicia, or Ezra or Abednego or Moses. And would you really like to have no Uncle Ambrose?’ Robert made no answer, but she could see he had washed his ears. ‘And no adventure,’ she went on. ‘Don’t you realise that we have started on a big adventure? Today something very exciting has begun to happen. We’re going to do something very important here. Don’t you know that?’

Robert grunted and put on his pyjamas. His ears were the only part of himself that he had washed, he could bring himself to oblige Uncle Ambrose no further, but he was smiling as he got into the little bed lent by Lady Alicia, snuggled down into the feather mattress and pulled the patchwork counterpane under his chin. ‘Good old Nan,’ he said. ‘You’re right.’

There was a tap at the door and Ezra entered with two steaming bowls on a tray. ‘The master says,’ he informed, ‘that ’e don’t want ee to go to bed ’ungry, an’ gruel, ’e says, made without sugar, is not supper. Now sup it up, me dears. ’Tis nasty but nourishin’.’

They supped it, Nan for love’s sake, but Robert because he was starving.

chapter seven

nan's parlour

The next day was Saturday and, as the cats had foretold, it rained. The children, accustomed to the wet seasons and dry seasons of India, weather as predictable as the layers in a sandwich cake, couldn't get used to this
mixed-grill
English weather when you didn't know what you were going to bite into next. Yesterday had been warm and sunny and today the southwesterly gale from the sea was emptying buckets of water over a drowning world. Robert, with a heroism that astonished no one more than himself, got up early, put on his wet weather outfit of mackintosh, boots, and sou'wester, and went out into the garden to collect snails. He had a very special reason for wanting to earn a lot of money rather quickly and he remembered what Uncle Ambrose had said about early rising. But once he was out of doors he found it was fun collecting snails in the wet. There was so much water about that it was like being a diver at the bottom of the sea. It would be fun to be a diver and he was willing to bet the threepence he was likely to earn by the snails, that they earned a good deal more an hour than he was doing.

The three other children, their faces pressed against the streaming window pane in the intervals of dressing,
saw his dripping figure against a background of trees lashed by the wind, but the moors and the distant hills had disappeared behind curtains of rain. Their world had contracted and Lion Tor and Linden Manor seemed very far away. It was almost as though they had dreamed the adventures of yesterday.

‘I expect we'd all better earn our livings today,' said Timothy, watching Robert. ‘No more sweets till we do.'

Breakfast in front of the kitchen fire with Ezra was a cheering experience, but when they went into the library for lessons Uncle Ambrose was in such an
extraordinarily
sunny mood, as he waved them to their chairs, that their hearts sank. Their forebodings were correct, for he worked them hard that morning. It was ghastly and yet at moments it was briefly rather glorious, like toiling up a mountainside with your lungs bursting and your legs aching, but now and then being confronted with a wonderful view. Years later they discovered that Uncle Ambrose in his working days had been
considered
one of the greatest educators in England, and they knew how privileged they had been to be grounded by him. But today their future sentiments were unknown to them and the grounding seemed gritty. But elevenses helped and when it was dinner time once again they were astonished, for the hours had flown. Never had hash and treacle tart tasted so good. They all helped Ezra wash up and then Robert put on his
mackintosh
and went down to the stable to polish Rob-Roy's harness, Timothy sat on the kitchen floor cleaning shoes, Nan sat on the settle darning socks, and Betsy helped Ezra prepare the fruit for a plum cake for Sunday.
Upon this domestic scene Uncle Ambrose, his afternoon nap accomplished, entered. The seat of the settle was high and Nan's feet, he noticed, did not touch the floor. Nor was the light in her corner good enough for darning.

‘Nan, my dear,' he said gently, ‘will you come with me? Bring your work with you.'

She put the socks into her work-basket and went with him with that feeling of trust and peace that the very sight of him inspired in her. Halfway down the dark cobwebbed passage that led from the kitchen to the library he stopped, and she saw to her surprise that there was a door there that she had not noticed before. The passage was panelled with dark wood, and the door, made of the same wood, was invisible unless you knew it was there. Uncle Ambrose lifted the latch and she followed him in. The room inside was a small panelled parlour. There was a bright wood fire burning in the basket grate and on the mantelpiece above were a china shepherd and shepherdess and two china sheep. Over the mantelpiece was a round mirror in a gilt frame. A rug lay on the polished floor, coloured blue and pink like a pigeon's breast. There was a
little armchair, a small writing desk with drawers in it, a shelf of books above and a chair with gold legs in front of it. The latticed window had a window seat and looked out on the terrace in front of the house, but the climbing rose outside grew round it so thickly that Nan had not noticed it when she had been in the garden two days ago. The curtains at the window and the cushions in the armchair were sprigged with carnations and forget-me-nots.

‘Ezra lit the fire for you this morning,' said Uncle Ambrose.

‘For me?' whispered Nan.

‘This is your parlour,' said Uncle Ambrose.

‘My parlour?' whispered Nan.

‘My dear,' he said, ‘you are the lady of the house. Every mistress of a household has her parlour. It's an odd thing, but when I came here, having no wife or daughter, I yet furnished this little room. It cried out to me that I should furnish it. I am not a man of whims and fancies and I was slightly ashamed of myself, even alarmed, feared a softening of the brain, but I am ashamed no longer. I had, I think, a premonition of your coming. Your temperament, my dear, is reflective, as mine is, and as you grow older you will increasingly need
somewhere
to go when you wish to be private. I suggest that the younger children and myself enter this room only with your permission.' Nan knew that if she were to try and speak she would cry, which Uncle Ambrose would dislike intensely. Dropping her work-basket and darning on the floor, she turned to him impulsively and he bent down and permitted her to hug him briefly. ‘Lady Alicia used this room, I fancy,' he said.

‘Lady Alicia,' asked Nan, astonished.

‘She is a daughter of a previous vicar,' explained Uncle Ambrose. ‘He was a widower and she was an only child. When she was eighteen she married the squire of Linden Manor and thereafter her father kept bees to comfort him. I am the third vicar in succession to maintain his bees. You are wondering why I fancy that Lady Alicia used this room as a girl. To the right of the fireplace, hidden in the panelling, there is a cupboard and in it I found some children's books with her name in them. She must have forgotten to take them to the Manor with her when she married. They are now on that shelf above your desk. Well, my dear, I will leave you to the enjoyment of your parlour.' He bowed to her as though she were Lady Alicia herself and left the room.

Nan sat down in the little armchair and folded her hands in her lap. A parlour of her own! She had never even had a bedroom of her own, let alone a parlour. It was quiet in here, the noises of the house shut away, the sound of the wind and rain outside seeming only to intensify the indoor silence. The light of the flames was reflected in the panelling and the burning logs smelt sweet. Something inside her seemed to expand like a flower opening and she sighed with relief. She had not known before that she liked to be alone. She sat still for ten minutes, making friends with her room, and then she got up and moved slowly round it, making friends with all it held.

The shepherd had a shepherd's pipe in his hand, the shepherdess had a crook wreathed with flowers and a pale blue frock looped up over a flowered petticoat,
and the sheep had blue ribbons round their necks. The little mirror over the mantelpiece was so old that when she looked in it, the face she saw seemed not her own. It smiled at her from a long way away, a much older face, making her think of Lady Alicia when this had been her room. Nan moved on to the desk, sat down in the chair and let down the flap. Inside was a row of little pigeon-holes and they contained pale pink notepaper and envelopes, a crystal inkpot with ink in it, a pen and two small keys on a ring. Fastened to the inside of the lowered flap was a sheet of pink blotting-paper and across one corner of it Uncle Ambrose had written in his beautiful pointed handwriting, ‘Nan Linnet', and at that, since he was not here to see her, Nan did cry. She cried out all her longing for her father, the burden of being the eldest and responsible for the other children, the relief of having found a home at last, and her love for Uncle Ambrose, and when she had finished she blew her nose and felt marvellous. The three little drawers below were empty and she was pleased, for she wanted to keep her work-basket in them, and her darning, and the few little treasures she had, such as her mother's fan and coral necklace, that she was always afraid Betsy would borrow and lose. Then she looked at Lady Alicia's books in the shelf on top of the desk. They were
Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales, Gulliver's Travels, The Fairchild Family
and the
Pilgrim's Progress.
She took them up one by one, turned the yellowing pages and looked at the old fashioned pictures. Lady Alicia had written her maiden name in them,
Mary Alicia Trumpington,
in a large young hand. Nan could not imagine how she could have borne to leave
them behind when she married and went away. Only four of them. Were there any more in the cupboard that Uncle Ambrose had not taken out?

It took her quite a long time to find the cupboard, it was so well hidden in the panelling, and she would not have found it at all had not her exploring fingers felt the small keyhole. The cupboard was locked, but she remembered the two keys on the key ring in her desk and fetched them. One of them, not the bright one that was the desk key but the other, unlocked the cupboard door. It seemed empty, but kneeling down Nan felt with her hand inside it, and her fingers touched
something
in the darkest corner. She took it out and looked at it. It was a notebook with covers of hard marbled board and inside the yellow pages were covered with fine copperplate handwriting. On the fly-leaf of the book was written,
Emma Cobley. Her book.

Nan got up and her instinct was to drop the book as though it was a snake, but she held on. On the floor by her chair was her work-basket and the darning, but they would have to wait while she looked at this book. As she turned to sit down she found herself looking in the glass again for Lady Alicia, but the far-off smiling face was not the same, it was that of a dark-skinned girl with bright eyes like Emma Cobley's. Nan sat down in the armchair with shaking knees, but nevertheless she opened the book and began to read.

Uncle Ambrose went back to the kitchen where Timothy was still laboriously cleaning shoes, but he did not know how to do it and he was not getting on very well. There were black lines under his eyes and Uncle
Ambrose's heart smote him. This child, he feared, was not as strong as the others and would need special care. ‘We'll finish these in my library,' he said. ‘I'll help you.' Timothy could not believe his ears and neither could Ezra, for as far as he knew the Master had never cleaned a shoe in his life. He watched with his eyes nearly
dropping
out of his head as Uncle Ambrose scooped up an armful of boots and shoes from the floor and left the room with his dignity no whit abated, Timothy scurrying after with the box of brushes and polishes.

But in the library, with newspaper spread on the table and the boots and shoes arranged in rows, it transpired that Uncle Ambrose had cleaned shoes as a boy and had not forgotten the trick of it. He showed Timothy exactly how to set about it and he cleaned away himself with great concentration. Hector paced up and down the table like Napoleon on the deck of the
Bellerophon
, the cover of a tin of polish in his beak.