Great Meadow (17 page)

After supper I went out into the front garden and stood
between the rows of carrots and beetroot, listening to the shots from Long Bottom. It was still quite light. We hadn't even lit the lamps yet. The sky was a lovely faded colour, the bats were wheeling about in the still air and right behind the cottage, miles away beyond Firle Beacon even, a huge pale yellow moon was rising and Lally said it was the harvest moon and emptied her dust pan and all the supper crumbs into the larkspur.

And down the lane, going towards Court Farm and Litlington, we could hear the big waggon creaking and crunching. There were laughter and shouts and then some of the ladies started singing ‘Ramona' together, and we just stood and listened to them until they drifted quite away.

And it was all still again.

I had a funny sort of feeling that something quite curious was happening when it was our mother, and not Lally, who opened the curtains in my bedroom and told me to get up and get dressed quickly. She was wearing her long floaty dressing-gown with feathery stuff down the front, and her boudoir cap, all covered in little rosebuds. She never walked about the house dressed like that. And she had no make-up on, and she looked very worried.

I'll go and wake your sister. Lally's not at all well.' She went away, and I felt pretty frightened. I had never heard of Lally being ‘not at all well' in my life before, so I got up and dressed and went down to the bathroom to clean my teeth, but I didn't bother about washing the back of my neck and so on because no one had told me to and I forgot. My sister came in in her liberty bodice and bloomers, which was a bit peculiar because usually she wouldn't even let me see her rotten old knickers, even though I didn't really care anyway. She squeezed out some Euthymol on her brush and we spat and rinsed together and the water was running, and everything suddenly seemed unhappy and funny.

‘I wonder what's wrong with her. Lally, I mean?'

I combed my hair with water and saw a bit of a spot at the side of my nose. ‘She had a headache last night. Remember? And we didn't play anything after our homework. Remember? She said she felt “peaky”. It's very frightening. If she's ill, I mean.'

My sister poked the tube of toothpaste at me. ‘You are really
vile.
You've squashed it in the middle again, it's all bulgy.'

I told her I was worried so I had forgotten and then we heard our mother calling up from the hall that she had telephoned Dr Henderson and she'd be coming as soon as possible.

‘Oh dear!' said my sister. ‘The doctor! How really terrible! It must be bad.'

Then our mother came in and told us to hurry up. She had a cup of tea in her hand and was taking it along the corridor to Lally's room, which had a very shut door. ‘Go downstairs to the morning room, the kettle's boiling. I'll be down in a minute.'

And my sister wailed and said she had to get her gym-slip on, so our mother called out, ‘Go and do it, and
you
' – she meant me – ‘put on your tie.' Then she went into Lally's room and shut the door gently.

It was a bit peculiar. Our mother was being just as bossy as Lally, and she sounded very different from her usual voice . . . busy-sounding. Normally we used to get up, dress and wash, and Lally would be checking that things were aired or ironed or had clean collars. Then we'd go down to breakfast and have tea and eggs and bacon, and toast or something, and the foul Bemax or Virol. It would be all normal and comfortable and ‘have you got your exercise books, pencil box, geography book and the penny for the poor orphan children in Africa?' That was for my sister, who went to the convent, not to my school, and I reckon that those nuns must have sent simply hundreds of poor African orphans up the cardboard
ladder to heaven. I mean, every time you put a penny in the orphan box, one of the nuns would shove your paper-cut-out orphan up another rung of the ladder. Our father said it was a terrible ‘con trick', which we didn't understand, but he said it nicely, and was laughing when he said it, so it didn't seem serious, especially when he said that St Martha's and St Ursula's must have saved entire tribes between them. That made it feel really ‘worth while', as Lally said.

After all that we had to go up to the lav to ‘have a try', then wash our hands and go up to our parents' room, knock on the door, and when someone said ‘Come in' we went in to say ‘Good morning'. Usually our father was in his bathroom, shaving, and our mother was sitting at a little table in the bay window with her tea and the
Daily Sketch,
which was ‘suitable' for ladies and quite small to hold to read. It was all very comfortable and safe.

But today didn't feel safe at all and our father was sitting in the morning room, which was most unusual except on Saturdays, reading his
Times
and eating a piece of toast. He said that he had made some tea and if we needed more water there was plenty in the kettle and we'd have to wait for our mother to come down to feed us because he just didn't know what we ate and anyway hadn't the time. Then he rustled away at the paper and my sister said, ‘We normally have eggs and bacon, or a sausage, and toast and marmalade'. And he just said, not lowering the paper at all, ‘Do you now?' Which was a bit rude and dismissy really. Anyway, our mother came into the room and said to sit down and she'd get us some breakfast and then she told our father that Lally was quite
wretched, but that Henderson was coming over as soon as she could.

It was a pretty rotten breakfast, while our father was reading and chewing his toast with terrible crunching sounds. Lally would have given him a rap on the knuckles for that, but our mother was too busy burning the bacon, and the eggs were all sort of brown and frilly round the edges and her feathery sleeves kept catching on the frying-pan handle. She was pretty cross, you could tell easily.

So we just sat still and didn't say anything, except my sister, who said could we go up and see Lally before we went to school? Our father put down his paper and said as soon as the doctor came, but not before, and just at that moment the bell rang and my mother rushed out of the kitchen and the frying-pan fell on the floor, but it was only hot fat (we had the eggs and the bacon on our plates), so our father picked it up and said there was less panic in all of Printing House Square, which is where he worked. Then our mother came back and said that Dr Henderson was better left alone, and she'd speak to her when she came down and what had happened to the frying-pan? And our father told her she had knocked it down. And you could tell that they were both pretty fed up.

When Dr Henderson banged on the door and came in she was very nice to my sister and me, and smiled and arranged her tie. She and my mother went into the hall to have a private sort of talk. Our father folded his paper and said he must be off, so we sat there in the empty morning room with a terrible smell of burning bacon everywhere, which would never have been allowed if Lally had been there. Only she wasn't.

‘You can go and see her, just for a moment, but no kisses, and
don't
go into her room. We don't know if it's flu or something, so just put your heads round the door and remember she's very tired. Don't fuss her. The doctor is coming again this afternoon. To keep an eye on her. Off you go.'

So we did, except that I got my Vim tin which I was starting the save-up-for-Christmas business with, and I tried to shake out some coppers, but it was quite difficult because the ‘tin' was really only made of cardboard, and just the top and the bottom were the tin parts, and I had cut a slit in the side to put in the pennies and pieces that people gave me when I asked. (My father said I was begging, but I really wasn't, I was just asking, for a penny or two. If I was really lucky it was a threepenny bit, and once I got a whole sixpence, by mistake. But too late. It slid into the slot and it was all for Christmas presents, not daft orphans.)

So I had to break the whole tin to open it, because the cardboard was all twirly and tight, and I couldn't get the money out through the slit even with a knife blade. There was quite a lot spilled on the table: one sixpence and three threepenny bits and a lot of coppers. My sister said, ‘What are you doing? Supposing we get the burglars in? Then what? You'll lose everything.' I told her not to be so silly and she said / was silly: no one would think of looking in a rotten old Vim tin for money, so what would I do now? I said I'd hide it all in Jesus on the altar in my bedroom, because he was quite hollow all the way up and no one would dream of stealing anything from Jesus. But my sister said that they would, once they saw that he had
yellow hair and a black beard, and that when I had painted him I had got him all muddled. I said M.Y.O.B. and took a sixpence and some coppers out of the money which I hid inside Him, and asked Him to keep an eye on it while I was at school.

It was quite a lot really after I'd taken out the sixpence. About two shillings in pennies and halfpennies and the threepenny bits. I was jolly pleased, because it was only March, so goodness knows how rich I'd be by December for the presents. It would be quite easy: I'd just keep it all in Jesus and then put it in another Vim tin when there was an empty one. Anyway, we went off to school.

Our mother was busy in the kitchen doing her eyelashes in her compact-mirror, with a very squinty face. She said, be careful, and mind about the roads, and that she hated being seen by people so early in the morning without ‘her face' on, and not to kiss her because she had just done her lipstick. So we just went off, and coming back from school that afternoon I went into the chemist's on Heath Street and bought a titchy little bottle, green glass and quite flat, like a pocket watch. It had an old-fashioned lady with a basket on it and it was called ‘Essence of Devon Violets'. The lady behind the counter said it was just the ‘trick' for the sick-room, refreshing and ‘dainty'. It cost sixpence or a bit more, but it was better than that old Cologne stuff Winnie Moss was so braggy about. Lally could put it on her handkerchief and then rub it on her forehead. If it was hot. Which, our mother said, it was. She was running a very high fever and the doctor would be here immediately, so to go up, not to go too near, and give her the Devon Violets. But that was all, because she was very miserable.

Her room was stuffy, and she looked sad and flat-looking lying in her little bed, all rumpled and sweaty. Her hair was shiny wet on her head, and it was so thin you could see the pink parts of her showing, and she was wearing a pair of our father's pyjamas because she had soaked all her nightdresses she said, and not to come too near because she feared she had flu or something. I put the Devon Violets on her bedside table and said that the smell would cheer her up, and she whispered that I was a dear boy, and to look after my sister and she'd be right as rain tomorrow. A good night's rest was all she needed, and when was the doctor coming? Then my sister pushed round the door, and said she missed her, or something silly, and Lally waved us away and said to close the door and go and help our mother. So we did. My sister said, going down the stairs so that Lally couldn't possibly hear, ‘I think she's got a dreadful germ from all those terrible people she sits with at the pictures on Sunday! She goes every Sunday, on her day off. Sometimes she goes simply miles away, to Golders Green! To the Ionic, sometimes to the Lido. Once she even went as far as awful Camden Town to see a flick. It's very dangerous and I think it's God's curse.'

I said don't be so daft, hundreds of people go to the pictures on Sunday, only,
we
aren't allowed. Lally loves them and tells us all the stories, and my sister said she was sick to death of the stories but hoped she hadn't brought back something ghastly from all those awful people, because only wicked people broke the law. Our father had said so. And the African orphans sometimes had leprosy, and their arms and feet fell off and terrible things happened
to them, the nuns said, because they lived in Idleness and Ignorance, and that's what going to the pictures on Sunday was.

I didn't argue, it was useless. She just went on down into the hall at the exact moment that Dr Henderson arrived looking a bit flustered in her man's suit, with her black bag and her tie all fluttering.

‘Have you been up to Miss Jane's room? I trust not?' she said rather crossly, and I said we had only put our heads round the door and I'd given her a present, but no touching. She just pushed past rather rudely and told me to call our mother, who was at the top of the stairs anyway, looking very pretty, in a very nice frock with buttons down the front, with her eyelashes ‘mascara-ed' and her hair all combed and tidy.

They went off along the corridor to Lally's room, while we wandered into the morning room and wondered who would make the tea. My sister said we could lay the table and that would make it feel a bit more like nearly-time-for-tea. So we put down the cups and saucers and I said that I thought that Lally had liked the Devon Violets, and my sister said it was a very nice thing to do, which made me feel quite cheerful. I felt even better when we found there was half a Fuller's Walnut in the cake tin. And a
whole
jar of fish paste, anchovy, unopened, so there would be plenty for us both, because I knew that my mother detested fish paste and poor Lally was much too ill anyway to eat a thing. Then we heard voices and Dr Henderson came in with our mother. They were a bit funny looking, which was quite frightening, and Dr Henderson said we weren't to go up to Miss Jane again and then, the worst
part, she said, ‘Margaret, I think you should try to get the children away if you can. Any chance of getting them down to the cottage? Fresh air? It would be wise.'

And my mother looked at us and said, ‘Lally is
very
ill indeed. She has scarlet fever, and it is very infectious. So things are going to be rather difficult. You'll have to understand that, and try and help me.'