The Runaways (4 page)

He himself sat opposite them behind a large black teapot and presided with a wonderful benignity. When breakfast was over they helped him to wash up, a process which involved the removal of the cuckoo clock and Andromache and her kittens to the floor, the placing of the frying pan and crockery and knives and forks in the sink, the turning of the cold tap on full blast, the emptying of the kettle of boiling water on top of the resultant whirlpool, the
stirring
of the mixture as though it were a Christmas pudding and then its removal to the draining board where it was left to dry by itself, because Andromache had all the drying-up cloths to make the basket soft for her kittens.

When they had finished Ezra asked, ‘Will you be stoppin’ for dinner?’

‘What’s for dinner?’ asked Timothy.

‘Fried steak an’ onions an’ rhubarb pie,’ said Ezra.

‘Yes,’ they said in chorus.

‘Then be off with you an’ let me get to me pastry,’ said Ezra. ‘An’ don’t speak to them bees. Not yet.’ They obeyed him instantly because obedience, which had seemed so difficult at Grandmama’s, came easily here, and they were out in the yard before they realised they had got there. But Nan came back to ask, ‘Will the elderly gentleman be back to dinner?’

‘Couldn’t say,’ said Ezra. ‘Over and above that little matter o’ the groceries, the master ’ad a call to make in town.’

Nan ran back to the others, feeling uneasy, and found them grouped about the well looking uneasy too. Though they brazened it out about dinner, the mere suggestion that they might not be stopping for it had upset them terribly. ‘I shall stay here until Father comes home,’ said Betsy suddenly. ‘And then I shall go on staying here, with Father.’

‘Sh!’ the others hissed at her. It seemed to them dreadfully dangerous to put it into words like that, for lately the things they didn’t want to happen were the things that happened, and the logic of this was that if you pretended not to want what you really wanted dreadfully, you would be more likely to get it.

‘But I think it would be all right to explore the garden,’ said Nan. ‘Only not to want too much to play in it every day.’

‘Come on,’ said Robert.

It was a wonderful garden, quite different from Grandmama’s. Hers had been a sort of continuation of the house, dreadfully tidy and a place where you had to step carefully and not touch things. This garden was also a continuation of the house, but untidy, unexpected, comfortable and homely. They explored the kitchen garden first and it seemed made for them. The grass paths between the miniature box hedges were just the right width for children running in single file, and the tangle of apple trees, currant and gooseberry bushes, flowers, weeds, vegetables, and herbs, that the paths
intersected, was so wild that leaping through it couldn’t make it much wilder than it was. Betsy, who loved picking flowers, picked a bunch of periwinkles and primulas, but there were so many that no holes were left. When the children reached the top of the garden they stood at a little distance from the beehives and surveyed them with awe, but they did not speak. Even if Ezra had not forbidden them to do so, they would not have presumed, for there was a strangeness there. It was like standing on the frontier of a foreign country. You would have to know something of the customs and a few words of the language before you dared to go over.

An exciting tunnel of yew trees beside the house led to the front garden. At the lower end of the sloping lawn was a mulberry tree, its lower limbs held up by stakes of crotched wood. Its branches grew out from the main trunk in such a way that to climb the tree would be as easy as running upstairs. Timothy, who loved climbing trees, dared not look too long and they all ran determinedly past it to the part of the garden down below that they had not seen properly last night. They found it now to be a rough grassy slope planted with rhododendrons and azaleas and flaming with glorious colours. The path, with steps here and there, descended steeply among them and as they came down they could look right over the wall of the stableyard and see the river and the bridge and the stretch of the moor beyond. The road down which they had driven last night was looped like a ribbon round the shoulder of a hill that was blue and green with bluebells and bracken. Stone walls divided the wilderness into fields in which sheep were feeding, and cows and a few ponies.

They sat down under a flame-coloured rhododendron and gazed, with the sun on their faces, and then they shut their eyes and listened. They could hear the voice of the little river as it tumbled over the stones in its shallow bed, the sheep bleating, the humming of the bees, but at first nothing else, and then suddenly there was the sound of a pony’s trotting feet and their eyes flew open. The little trap was coming down the hill at a brisk pace, Rob-Roy in fine fettle and the elderly gentleman apparently in fine fettle too, for he was sitting very upright with a tall hat set upon his head, his whip held upright like a king’s sceptre. As he rattled over the bridge they saw he was swaying a little as though in time to music. Could he be singing? It didn’t seem possible that so terrible and statuesque a person could be doing such an unsuitable thing, yet as the trap disappeared from sight and slowed up on the hill they heard the strains of
The British Grenadiers
floating up to them. They jumped up and raced down to the arched door in the wall, pulled it open and ran down the steps to the stableyard as he drove in, Absolom at their heels. The moment the elderly gentleman had pulled Rob-Roy to a standstill they had surrounded him.

‘Ah,’ he said, grimly surveying their eager anxious faces. ‘You slept well, I see. Breakfasted well also, I trust. I see no signs of fatigue or starvation upon your grubby faces. Robert, look after your pony. You three, carry up the groceries. The luggage follows in the carrier’s cart.’

He stalked up the steps to the garden door with his hands folded in the small of his back and the three followed. His hack looked very grim, yet he had returned with a great many groceries, far more than he and Ezra
would need, and peeping into one bag Nan saw that it was full of dog biscuits. And what did he mean by the luggage following in the carrier’s cart? As they went up through the garden the church clock struck one, a gong boomed inside the house and he said, ‘Ah! Luncheon! I breakfasted early. What’s for luncheon?’

‘Fried steak and onions and rhubarb pie,’ said Nan.

‘Ah,’ said the elderly gentleman. ‘There is in my pocket a packet of peppermint lozenges for indigestion should the need for them subsequently arise.’

Ten minutes later they were all sitting round the table in the cool panelled dining room, with steaming plates of steak and onions before them. Ezra, with a large apron tied over his shepherd’s smock, was handing spring greens and baked potatoes. Absolom was under the table with a dog biscuit. Hector was on top of the marble clock on the mantelpiece with a dead mouse. The dining-room window looked out on the village street and the scent of the flowers that were growing in the garden of the cottage opposite came in warm gusts through the window.

At first there was no conversation because everyone was too hungry, but presently Ezra asked, ‘Will the young ladies an’ gentlemen be stoppin’ for tea?’

‘Use your intelligence, Ezra,’ said the elderly gentleman severely. ‘Did you not take note of the muffins and strawberry jam I brought back from town? You know my personal abhorrence of muffins and strawberry jam.’

‘Very good, sir,’ said Ezra and left the room with a broad grin on his face.

‘Ezra’s mental processes are always somewhat slow on the morning after an evening’s visit to the Wheatsheaf,’ explained the elderly gentleman. ‘I trust you were not disturbed in the night? He has, I fear, this one
regrettable
failing. In all else he is the soul of rectitude.’

The children laid down their knives and forks and gazed at the elderly gentleman in astonishment. A failing? Did he consider it a failing to sing and dance in the moonlight? ‘It was grand in the night,’ said Timothy. ‘We sang and danced too. It was grand.’

It was the elderly gentleman’s turn to be astonished. ‘You danced in the night?’ he ejaculated. ‘What am I clasping to my bosom? Four young bacchanalians? It will be but a short period now before my grey hairs are brought with sorrow to the grave. It surprises me that your grandmother and the excellent Miss Bolt have survived so long. It does not surprise me that my suggestion of shouldering the burden in their place should have been received with such profound and touching gratitude. Never in my sixty-five years of mortal life have I seen my poor old mother so
favourably
impressed by a humble suggestion of my own. Ah, here comes Ezra with the rhubarb tart. Place it in front of Miss Nan, Ezra. If we are to have a mistress of this house, an infliction which by the mercy of God we have hitherto escaped, at least let her relieve us of some labour. What are you gaping at, Ezra? I have thought the strong family likeness between Miss Betsy and myself should have informed you that these young people are my relatives. They are my nephews and nieces, the children of my youngest brother. They are
to live with us for the present. I feel for you, Ezra. I feel for myself. This has come upon us for our sins. Nan, my dear, why are you crying? If there is one thing I dislike more than a child it’s a crying child, and let me tell you, my dear…’

He got no further, for sobbing with joy Nan had flung herself into his arms. Betsy followed, scrambling up on his left knee, Nan being now settled on his right, held within the curve of his right arm. For a few moments there was pandemonium, the boys cheering, Ezra laughing and stamping his wooden leg on the floor, Absolom barking and Hector hooting and flapping his wings.

‘That will do,’ said the elderly gentleman sternly. ‘The rhubarb tart grows cold. I am partial to rhubarb tart. Nan, return to your duties. Betsy, get down. Boys, hold your tongues. Hector, hold your beak. Ezra, you may go. Down, Absolom.’

In a moment order was restored and they were all eating rhubarb tart in a wonderful golden silence, one of those musical silences rich with the chiming of unheard bells and the ring of silent laughter. When the tart was finished the elderly gentleman, now so marvellously transformed into Uncle Ambrose, got up and said, ‘Your joy, children, has been premature. I intend to impose conditions upon your sojourn with me. You will keep them or go to your Uncle Edgar, who lives in Birmingham and will dislike you even more than I do myself. Come into my study.’

He left the room with Hector on his shoulder and they followed him gravely, but with their joy no whit diminished. They were prepared to fulfil any conditions and they knew very well that Uncle Ambrose did not
dislike them. Does a man buy muffins and strawberry jam for those whom he dislikes? In the study Uncle Ambrose stood with his back to the fire and motioned the children to sit down. He looked very awe-inspiring, he was so tall, and Hector on his shoulder made him look taller than ever, for Hector had a way of elongating himself when he wanted to look alarming. By stretching he could add five inches to his height, and when he did this on Uncle Ambrose’s shoulder, the feathers on the top of his head nearly touched the ceiling.

‘It appears,’ said Uncle Ambrose, ‘that you children wish to live with me. Why, I cannot imagine. It also appears that I am willing that you should do so, and that not only to relieve my poor old mother of the exhaustion of your society. I must tell you that I have a devouring passion, not for children themselves, for I abominate children, but for educating them. For thirty years I educated boys. When I retired from my labours I had caned more boys into bishoprics and the Cabinet, and on to the Woolsack, than any headmaster living. My boys lived to bless me for their sore backsides and I’ve lived to miss them. Yes, I’ve missed my boys these last five years. You live with your Uncle Ambrose only on condition that he educates you. Is that understood?’

Nan replied steadily, ‘You can do what you like with us so long as you let us stay with you and each other and Absolom. Grandmama was going to send me and Robert to boarding school, and give Absolom away because of fleas, and that’s partly why we ran away. We have to stay with each other.’

‘Nan to boarding school?’ ejaculated Uncle Ambrose.
‘By Hector, no! I don’t hold with boarding schools for girls. Home’s the place for girls, though they should have a classical education there. I have always
maintained
that women would not be the feather-headed fools they are, were they given a classical education from earliest infancy.’ He shot out a finger at Betsy. ‘Can she read?’

‘No,’ said Nan.

‘What’s her age?’

‘Six,’ said Nan.

‘Six and not read? I could read Homer at four. She’ll read him by eight. As for you, Robert, the excellent Miss Bolt tells me that you can read and write, but no more. Do you suppose I will send you to boarding school, to bring shame upon the name of Linnet, until I have given you a thorough grounding in at least the rudiments of a gentlemanly education? I shall not. Now, children, which is it to be? Education or your Uncle Edgar at Birmingham?’

They replied in unison, ‘Education,’ but they all looked a little pale and Timothy enquired in a brave but slightly wavering voice, ‘For how long every day are we to be educated?’

‘Nine till one,’ said Uncle Ambrose promptly.

‘Not nine till one for Betsy?’ asked Nan.

‘Certainly. Why not? She shall have milk and a ginger biscuit at eleven.’

‘Will there be homework?’ asked Robert, and he looked a bit miserable, for he hated learning anything.

‘For yourself and Nan, yes. It will be of an hour’s duration, 6 p.m. until 7 p.m., and will take place under
my personal supervision, and if you do not come home in time for it you will go supperless to bed. For the rest of each day you will be free to go where you like and do what you like. Only don’t disturb me, for in the intervals between my parochial duties I am writing a book, a study of the Dialogues of Plato, and if you don’t know who he is you soon will. Your education will start tomorrow at nine sharp. Now we will each have a peppermint lozenge.’