The Runaways (5 page)

Inserting finger and thumb into a waistcoat pocket, he produced a white package and handed it round. The peppermints were good, but a bit on the strong side and Absolom’s eyes watered before he could get his down. Hector did not try to swallow his. He said ‘Hick’, and sent it to the top of the grandfather clock.

‘I shall now take a short nap,’ said Uncle Ambrose. ‘Tea is at five, with muffins and strawberry jam. You may come to meals or not, just as you please, but if you do not come to meals you will go without them. Be off with you.’

They made off immediately. Nan, the last out, looked back as she closed the door. Uncle Ambrose had already disposed his great length in the biggest armchair and spread his large white silk handkerchief over his head. Hector had perched on the back of the chair and as Nan watched he slowly sank down and down into himself, his head sinking into his shoulders until he was nothing but a large round ball of feathers with two great eyes glaring out of it. Then one eye closed, but the other stayed open and winked at her. Then that closed too and Nan went out and shut the door softly behind her.

chapter three

emma cobley's shop

‘Today we will be back for tea,' said Robert as he opened the front door. ‘Do you suppose there'll be muffins every day?'

No one answered him, for the front door had opened on a new marvel, the porch with four stone steps leading down from it to the village street. It was a stone porch, deep and cool with seats on either side. They sat down instantly, two aside with Absolom between them, looked at each other happily and swung their legs. ‘Free to go where you like and do what you like.' Such a thing had never been said to them before. If a slight chill had touched their hearts at the thought of being classically educated it had been dispersed by that superb sentence. Wonderful adventures shone ahead.

‘Not far today,' said Timothy, ‘because of the muffins.'

‘A reconnaissance today,' said Robert. ‘Exploration of the terrain.' He was rather fond of using long words picked up from his soldier-father. He always hoped the younger children would ask him what he meant, but they never did. They were not interested in
self-improvement
and neither was Robert. It was just that he liked to feel grand. ‘Come on.'

They got up and climbed down the steps to the road. The door of the cottage opposite was open and just within it a very old man sat on a Windsor chair smoking a pipe. They smiled at him and he smiled at them and then they went on up the hill to the village green at the top. It was pocket-handkerchief size and had cottages grouped about it. One was an inn, the Bulldog, with a swinging sign of a fierce brindled creature, another had a pillar-box outside it and a window filled with
boot-laces
, bottles of boiled sweets, cakes of Windsor soap, birdseed, picture postcards, hairpins, onions, and a black cat asleep. Over the low green door beside the window was a board on which was painted,
Emma Cobley, Post and General Stores.
Also opening on to the village green was the lich-gate of the church and beyond it the churchyard.

From the green a lane led away uphill under arching trees and disappeared into a wood that looked as vast as a forest in a picture. Rising high into the sky, above the wood, was the great hill with the outcrop of rock on top, like a castle, with below it the rock like a lion keeping guard, that they had seen last night. The Bulldog was on one side of this lane and the angle of the other was formed by stone walls, with tall iron gates facing towards the green. Within the gates a moss-grown drive disappeared into a dark mass of evergreens. There were pillars on each side of the gates, with stone lions on top of the pillars and sitting on top of one of the lions was a monkey, who chattered at them angrily. Apart from the monkey there was no one about.

Robert summed it up. ‘There's the shop, the Bulldog, that wood, the hill with the rocks on top and whatever is inside those gates. Where shall we go first?'

‘I want some sweets,' said Betsy.

‘The shop, then,' said Robert. ‘Has anyone any money? You have, Timothy. You have the threepenny bit Hector hicked out.'

‘And you have a sixpence,' said Timothy. ‘The sixpence you were saving up to get a pony. You don't want it now you've got Rob-Roy.'

‘I might want it for something else,' said Robert, for he would be at times what country people call ‘very near'.

‘Don't be horrid, Robert,' said Nan. ‘You're the eldest. You pay this time and Tim next time. We shall need all of sixpence, for we must get a stamp and a postcard as well as sweets. I think it would be nice to send a postcard to Grandmama. I think perhaps we behaved badly when we were with her. We didn't see it at the time, but I think perhaps we did. I'd like to send her a postcard.'

Robert capitulated with good grace, for he didn't want to be horrid. ‘All right,' he said. ‘The shop. But it won't be much of an adventure.'

He was wrong. Little did they know as they approached Emma Cobley's low green door what her acquaintance was eventually to lead to. They got inside the shop with difficulty, for when they knocked nothing happened, and when they turned the handle and pushed the door nothing happened either. Then suddenly it gave way and to the furious jangling of a little bell, that was fixed upon its inside, they fell into a warm stuffy darkness strongly scented with soap and onions, and a great many other smells that could not be identified in the confusion of the moment. Then came a most dreadful sound, a noise of snarling hate that froze their blood in horror, and something leapt at them out of the darkness. It was as big as a calf and Absolom barked madly and Betsy screamed.

‘I've got it,' panted Robert, on the floor with his hands gripping a furry throat that seemed to sink in and in under his fingers.

‘So have I,' gasped Timothy, gripping a long rope-like tail. And then he yelled, for the creature had suddenly got free and was on his chest, thrusting sharp talons right through his sailor suit into his skin and gazing down into his face out of terrible blazing yellow eyes.

‘It's the cat,' said Nan suddenly. ‘Don't yell, Timothy, it's only the cat.' And bending over Timothy she picked the cat up in her arms, and suddenly he went all soft and purry, and everyone's curdled blood began to run freely in their veins again. ‘He was asleep and we
frightened
him. Poor cat. Don't growl, Absolom.'

‘He may be a cat now,' said Timothy morosely, for he had a lump coming up on the back of his head where it had hit the floor when the cat attacked him, ‘but he
wasn't when he jumped at me. He was as big as a tiger.'

‘Don't be a fool, Tim,' said Robert, and he said it all the more crossly because he was inclined to think that Timothy was right; he felt quite sure that his hands had not met round that great throat.

‘Well, he's a cat now,' said Nan, as she put him back in the window. ‘And this is a shop and we've come to buy sweets, a stamp and a postcard for Grandmama.'

‘There's no one to buy them from,' said Robert.

‘Yes there is,' said Timothy suddenly. ‘Look.'

They all swung round and their hearts were beating almost as hard as when the cat had jumped at them. When they had first fallen into the shop, the darkness, after the sunlight outside, had seemed complete, but now that their eyes were growing accustomed to the dim light they could see that the small low-ceilinged room had a counter in it piled high with boxes and bags full of every conceivable thing, and shelves all round the walls crowded with rows of bottles, and more boxes. Bunches of herbs hung from the ceiling and in the far corner behind the counter, perched on a high stool, was a little old woman knitting a red woollen muffler. Absolom, who was thoroughly upset, growled at her, but she took no notice.

‘Good day, my maids, good day, young masters,' she said in a bird-like chirping voice, nodding at them as pleasantly as though their entry into her shop had been a perfectly normal one. ‘And what would you be wanting?'

‘A picture postcard for our grandmother, please,' said Nan. ‘And a stamp. And some sweets. We've sixpence. Where is it, Robert?'

There were a few anxious moments while they all stood in a row in front of the counter and Robert searched the pockets of his sailor suit and found nothing, and then the old lady pointed with a
knitting-needle
to a corner of the room. It had fallen out of his pocket during the scrimmage with the cat and rolled away behind a box of potatoes. Robert, as he retrieved it, wondered how she had known it was there. How, amidst all the noise and confusion, could she have seen such a small thing as a sixpence fall out of his pocket and roll away? He felt a bit uncomfortable, but he brought it to her and she took it from him, put it into a tin box beside her and smiled at him. She had a small brown wrinkled nutcracker face and beady black eyes like a robin's. Their bright glance seemed to Robert to pierce right through his eyes and come out at the back of his head. Though she looked old, her voice was
remarkably
clear, and she seemed as full of vigour as Betsy. She wore an old-fashioned snow-white mob-cap, such
as the children had seen in pictures, a voluminous black dress and a little red shawl crossed over her chest.

‘Sixpence is a lot of money, dearie,' she said. ‘You must lay it out to the best advantage.'

She rolled up her knitting and got down from her stool and she was taller than she had looked sitting down, but small-boned, neat, and dainty. With quick darting movements she took a cardboard box from under the counter and laid out five postcards for the children's inspection. They were of the church, the inn, the shop, the dark wood with the great hill behind it, and the gateway with the pillars. Then she took a sheet of green ha'penny stamps (it only cost a ha'penny to send a postcard in those long ago happy days) out of a teapot with roses on it and tore one off.

‘Can't you make your minds up, my dears?' she asked them as they argued over the postcards. ‘Send your granny the church.'

‘The one of the inn is nice,' said Nan.

‘Look!' said Robert. ‘It's a different sign. Not the horrid bulldog. What is it?'

‘A bird,' said Timothy. ‘A wonderful bird!'

He bent to look closer, but Emma Cobley quickly took the postcard away and put it back in the cardboard box. ‘That's a very old postcard,' she said. ‘I'd forgotten I had it. Send your granny the church. That'll please her, your Uncle Ambrose being Vicar.' Then as she saw their astonished faces, she said, ‘Emma Cobley knows all about you. It was a boy from across the green who took the message to your granny last night to say you were safe. My door was open and I heard the vicar give
the message. And old Tom Biddle who was a-setting in his doorway opposite the Vicarage dining-room window while you were having dinner tells me you're to stop. Well, my dears, welcome to High Barton, but don't you never climb to the top of Lion Tor.'

‘Why not?' asked Robert.

‘It's a dangerous place for children,' said Emma, her bright glance piercing him again. ‘Something nasty might happen to you there. Now you've fourpence-ha'penny to lay out on sweets. There's a lot of sweets can be bought for fourpence-ha'penny.' And turning round she took from the shelves behind her one glass jar after another filled with sweets of every colour of the rainbow. They looked wonderful standing in a row on the counter, with the light from the window just touching them, far more magical than sweets usually look.