Great Meadow (7 page)

It did. And everyone roared with laughter and waved their arms in the air, which only goes to show that grown-ups can be pretty silly sometimes. I felt quite sorry for him, but I was very glad then that I didn't win a prize in my goatskin, and I told our mother that if we had to do it again next year I would go as something quite good and exciting. Like a deep-sea diver.

The night before we had to catch the Green Line bus from Victoria, the packing began. It was all right for Flora because she was already packed on account of coming from Scotland to visit us, so she had an advantage. But she sort of hung about watching us pack our things, which was a bit irritating because she would keep on asking why we were taking this and that just for a short journey and a short holiday. So I just told her to M.Y.O.B., which she didn't understand until I said, quite loudly so that she did, ‘It means Mind Your Own Business. That's what it means!' and she just shrugged and told me not to be so huffy and I nearly hit her with my box of Venus pencils, but they might have got broken so I didn't.

My sister was putting all her treasures, as she called them, into a little attaché case which our father had given her because the handle had broken. She was a bit silly about calling them ‘treasures' because they weren't at all valuable and treasure is. Her things were potty, really a set of cigarette cards of' Famous Cricketers' for example, and a mussel shell from the Cuckmere, and a whole set of Tiny Tots transfers which she had never even used because she said it would spoil them if you stuck them on things. Honestly! It was a bit annoying because I had used mine all up, and she had ‘Christian Names' (and their meaning), ‘Pantomimes' and ‘Methods of Transport', and she kept them in a book, but what good they were to her I never could understand because they were all back-to-front. Girls are a bit soppy sometimes.

I just had a rather decent penknife with
R.M.S. Majestic
painted on it, and my Venus pencils in a cardboard box, quite long, and smelling of cedarwood, a drawing-block I quite liked because it fitted in a jacket pocket and you could do ‘quick sketches' in the field, our father said – he used one in his war and he was doing serious drawings of fighting in the Great War for
The Times
, so he should know what he was talking about – and then, of course, top of the list, there were Sat and Sun, my mice, in their neat wooden cage. It had a glass front you could slide out for cleaning, and a wheel, for running, and a little house in the corner where they made their nest. Flora wanted to know why they were called Sat and Sun and I said they just were, and everyone in the family knew them just as the Weekend. She looked very thoughtful. But it shut her up.

They had to live in their cage in the morning room. I wasn't allowed to have them in my bedroom, worse luck, on account of the smell, which I didn't mind but Lally and our mother did. When Lally saw me putting newspaper all over the dining-table, as I had to every time I cleaned them out, she made a heavy sighing sound and dumped a big pile of folded shirts and things on the wickerwork chair by the Ideal boiler.

‘For mercy's sake! What will we do supposing the conductor on the bus says no mice allowed? What then, I would like to know? How are you going to get yourself, and the Weekend, all the way back to Hampstead from Victoria with not a penny in your pocket? Tell me that or forever hold your tongue.'

Well, I knew she didn't mean it because she knew the
Weekend was coming with us and I was going to have to hold it on my knee all the way to Seaford, but she was just being pretend angry and she knew very well that the conductor would be jolly interested in Sat and Sun because one was black and one was white. And if he wasn't I'd make him, by telling him that he could have one of their babies if he liked, a black or a white, and Lally said, when I told her, that she hoped the Miracle wouldn't happen on the bus or at the rest-stop because
she
would have nothing to do with a litter of pink white mice all blind and naked. It was a bit upsetting really, and I was worried that she might be right, and then what would I do? No one to help, and it might be a terrible shock to them. So I didn't say anything, but just found the Jeyes Fluid and a brush and got ready to do a bit of cleaning before the long journey.

It was pretty exciting sitting in the Green Line bus – we weren't usually allowed to do this on account of germs and things. But Lally said that in the very cold weather, like December, and with a sharp frost, it would not be so dangerous, the germs would be killed off. So we felt quite safe as we left Victoria Coach Station and went across the river heading to Sussex.

I had to sit beside Flora, which was all right because she didn't seem to mind about the Weekend on my knees, and Lally and my sister sat together behind us with the attaché case and a little wicker basket in which we knew were the sandwiches, Thermos flask and some fruit which we would have when we got to Felbridge in an hour's time. About.

It was quite a decent omnibus. It had an orange and brown ziggy-zaggy carpet, so as not to show the dirt,
Lally said, and curtains at the windows to keep out the sun if you had to. The people travelling with us seemed to me to be quite all right. I mean, what you could see of them, because they were all wrapped up with woollen scarves, travelling-rugs and tweedy coats. Some of the men wore caps which they didn't take off even when the omnibus had started on the journey. Quite rude really. But when I looked round at them all, sitting in their seats like brown paper parcels, they all smiled back and nodded at me, which made it all feel rather comfortable. After all, we were all going on a journey, and it's better to have pleasant people with you on that sort of a thing than grumpy ones. What was especially good was that no one seemed to be interested in the Weekend. I mean, I didn't show anyone, but no one even looked curious, like most grown-up people do. They were quite busy unwrapping their mufflers and looking for the return half of their tickets, and unbuttoning coats, and that sort of thing. So I just said nothing, only smiled, in case they might decide that there was a funny smell. Or something. You can't ever be sure. Anyway, there wasn't. Just the jeyes Fluid.

The conductor was very nice indeed too. I mean, he didn't say anything, hardly looked at me really, so he couldn't have seen the cage on my knees, and just asked Lally for the tickets and told her we'd have to change at Lewes.

So that was all right, and when she said that she hoped very much indeed that we could catch our connection from there to Seaford, he said that he hoped we'd get there himself. He hadn't actually got a connection to catch there but he did have a ‘connection', if we knew what he
meant (which we didn't), because his sister would be waiting at the bus station for the package he was bringing her on account of not trusting the Royal Mail at Christmas.

‘Oh my word!' said Lally kindly. ‘You would be vexed should we be late, just as we shall be vexed if we don't get to Seaford. I only hope you are not conveying anything perishable, like fish or something, that would be very alarming.'

And he just laughed and said, ‘Fish to Seaford is as coals to Newcastle, upon my word!' and then he said no, he was taking her some special wool for a rug she was hooking to go beside her bed. She'd run out of orange and could only get the true colour she needed in Selfridge's.

‘Fancy!' said Lally, not much caring really.

‘Making a sunset effect,' said the conductor and went away whistling. So that was quite all right, and he never so much as glanced at the Weekend on my knees.

In a while we started off. A terrific swerving, clouds of black smoke, and rows of pale faces staring up as we set off on the journey.

Outside the bus everything was frosty and grey-coloured with wispy drifts of misty-fog floating over the hedges and through the branches of the trees. It looked quite as if someone was cooking a huge cabbage in a steamer, or else boiling up all the household sheets in the copper. Outside looked exactly like our scullery. Only not as warm. There were dribbles of water running down the windows, and the inside of the bus felt really quite cold suddenly, which it would do of course, because we had now left the city and were out in the countryside. Well, almost countryside. There were rows of houses with sheds leaning against
them, or old bicycles, or rabbit hutches, and there were lace curtains at all the windows and pointy gables and titchy little gardens with sundials in the middle or tin baths hanging on the walls. And then, quite suddenly, they began to trail off. The lamp-posts ended, the road got narrower, and all at once we were out in the real country. You could see that easily through the dribbles down the window and the steam bits. I wiped them away with my sleeve, and outside it was all white, drifting mists, black trees and, now and again, a miserable horse standing with bowed head close to the hedges. Sometimes, in a quite wide field, there would be a herd of cows standing together, switching their tails, breathing out snorts of cloud, and then they would all begin to break away and clomp across the frozen grass because a man was coming towards them with a horse and cart full of bales of hay. It was very interesting. If you liked that kind of thing.

Then we got to the rest-stop at Felbridge and that was almost half the journey over. The café was by the side of the road with a big car park for the bus. It was surrounded by sad-looking birch trees and drooping rhododendrons and dead bracken, and everywhere the grass was spiked with ice, or frost. When the bus stopped everyone scrambled off and hurried across the car park to the lavs, and when we got into the actual café it was much better and smelled of varnish and wood and HP Sauce and fried eggs, so that you really felt quite hungry.

It was very warm, and the huge tea urn was hissing away just like a railway engine at a station, but Lally gave me a shove and told me not to dawdle, which I wasn't anyway, and bagged a table and dumped her wicker basket
on the top. She told us all to sit round and make it look full up. Which it was with four of us and the Weekend beside my chair. I was a bit worried that the heat might draw out the smell, but it didn't seem to, and I had covered the whole of the cage in what Lally called ‘stout brown paper', so that no one would guess what it had inside. People would think that it was just a plain, ordinary, old brown paper parcel and not get the wind up. You can't tell with grown-ups.

I tore off one corner of the paper before I set it on the floor just to see if everyone was all right inside. And everyone was: I just saw a pink foot and a little sniffling nose and felt very comforted to think that they were having an adventure like us. They had sawdust all over their floor, and a whole folded page of the
Daily Mail
to sop up anything which might have made a stink. They hadn't died of fright or anything, which they easily could have, with all the banging about and bumps and swinging, and then Lally told me to put them down quick sharp or risk a sharp cuff, so I did. No point in getting a good cuffing, as she called it, in front of hundreds of strange people. She could cuff pretty hard when she wanted to.

The sandwiches were all spread out neatly on little paper napkins. Four each: bloater paste, egg and cress, Kraft cheese, and chicken and ham paste. It was quite good really. And when the Thermos came out, and the four cups were unwrapped and set about, and the sugar counted out carefully, one lump each, in a napkin, it all seemed Christmassy already. It really was a winter picnic. I rather liked it. We were never allowed to have tea out of the big hissing urn on account of ‘foreign bodies' and chipped
cups and ‘how-long-do-you-think-it's-been-stewing-I'd-like-to-know?'

So we just had home-made, and it was pretty awful. It always tasted of tin, but our father said it was tannin but didn't explain what that was. Anyway, it was pretty rotten, but hot. We couldn't dawdle really, had to eat quite fast because the rest was only for half an hour and some people hadn't even got their tea from the urn and were eating fat bun-things with white sugar on top. I liked the look of them, and I would have asked if I could have bought one, only Flora began to rustle about in her satchel-thing. It had a strap and hung over her shoulder and had a big ink blot on it, so I knew it was her best for school.

I was pretty interested really because I thought that perhaps she might be fishing about for a piece of Edinburgh rock, and that put me off thinking about the sugar-bun, and then Lally said, very kindly, ‘What are you looking for, Flora dear? A hanky?' She was always kind to guests and used her Patient Voice. They were not what she called ‘her children', like we were, so she took particular care to be absolutely lovely to them and that way she could be pretty rotten to us because we belonged to her and she was trying to make us into little ladies and gentlemen. Except, I wasn't interested. Which is why she could give you a cuff.

Anyway, Flora was mucking about, tumbling things over in her satchel and beginning to whine. Girls always do, it seems. Her face screwed up like an old glove, all bumps and creases.

‘Whatever is it, Flora?' said Lally in her Patient Voice.

‘Oh! Oh, dearie me! Dearie-me-today!' wailed Flora. ‘I
can't find my wee black cat and it brings me luck and I've had him all my life and if I can't find him, then I'll just die. Here at this very table.'

That won't do. Won't do at all,' said Lally a bit sharply.

My sister didn't say anything. She just sat quietly chewing her egg and cress and swinging her legs. If she hadn't been so busy chewing her sandwich she would have had a rather nasty smile on her face, but she just chewed, and bits of cress slid down her chin, and she went on chewing away watching wretched Flora.

Suddenly Lally grabbed the satchel and pulled out a terrific clutter of matchboxes, hair slides, a bit of ribbon, half a stick of liquorice, an empty scent bottle and a hair brush full of blond hair. And there, among the bristles and the old bits of Flora's hair, was her black cat.