No one ever came. Miss Mantripp was quite alone in the world, Mother said, and when the old woman called that afternoon, bringing the lace, Mother greeted her in her gentlest voice and sat down by the fire.
Miss Mantripp was wearing her black dress and a huge, ancient straw hat that was nibbled into small holes round the edges as if the mice had been at it. Standing behind her chair, Poll nudged Lily and giggled, but Mother froze them both still with a look.
The lace might have been good once but it was now just very old lace and rotten in places. Mother rolled it up very carefully and said it would be a shame to cut into lovely material but she had a good piece of grey washing silk upstairs, and if Miss Mantripp would like a blouse she would only charge her a shilling to make it.
The old woman looked pleased. ‘That would be very nice, Mrs Greengrass. To tell you the truth, I only brought you the lace because I thought you could do with the work, but it would really have broken my heart to see it cut into.’
She beamed at them all very sweetly and graciously and Mother said, with a catch in her voice that was either held-back laughter or tears, ‘You’re very kind, Miss Mantripp. Would you care to stay and have tea with us?’
‘I wouldn’t want to intrude, Mrs Greengrass.’
‘It’s no intrusion, Miss Mantripp. We would all be delighted.’
Mother put the best damask cloth on the table, eggs to boil on the hob, and cut thin bread and butter. Miss Mantripp sat primly at table, huge hat bobbing
slightly as she made polite conversation. ‘Have you settled in comfortably Mrs Greengrass? The cottages are very small, are they not? Although I suppose it depends what you’re used to. After all the years I spent with her Ladyship I find it most strange to have no indoor sanitation. The arrangements here are most upsetting to a refined person. Each outside privy backing on to the one that belongs to the cottage next door! I am sure that you find it as distressing as I do, Mrs Greengrass?’
‘Well,’ Mother began, doubtfully smiling. ‘I’m not really sure what you mean.’
‘People sitting back to back,’ Miss Mantripp explained in low, horrified tones. ‘Back to back and –
NO RELATION!’
Theo, who was ladling eggs out of the saucepan, gave a strangled cry and dropped one. He said, ‘Oh Mother, I’m sorry.’ His face was scarlet, not because of the dropped egg, but with the struggle to prevent himself laughing.
Mother said, ‘Never mind, Theo. Johnnie will clear up the egg.’ Her voice was almost natural but the wild smile she swept in Miss Mantripp’s direction was not. She turned it into a gasping laugh and said, ‘So useful having a pig in the house! It saves so much bending.’
Theo said, ‘I’ll put another egg on to boil.’
‘No thank you, Theo…’ But he had already vanished into the scullery, closing the door after
him. Mother said, ‘Drat the boy. Poll, go and tell him there’s no need to bother. I don’t really want an egg.’ Then, as Poll got down from the table, she added, ‘Make sure you tell him that, won’t you?’ speaking emphatically as if this was a very important message Poll had to deliver.
‘Yes, I’ll tell him,’ Poll said.
Theo was leaning against the wall in the larder, wiping his streaming eyes. ‘I thought I’d die laughing,’ he said. ‘I expect I will die, next time I sit on the privy! Of course
we
sit back to back with our aunts so I suppose she would think that wasn’t so dreadful since they’re our relations. Though I’m not sure it’s not
worse.
Can you imagine Aunt Sarah…’
‘Don’t be rude,’ Poll said coldly.
Theo pulled a face. ‘I didn’t start it… There’s no more eggs in the bowl. Mother better have mine.’
‘She doesn’t want one. She told me to tell you.’
‘But that’s silly. It was me broke the egg. So it’s only fair…’
Poll said, ‘
No
.’
Theo looked at her. ‘What’s up?’
She said slowly, ‘I don’t think Mother would like that. You making a fuss over who was to have the last egg. I expect there aren’t any more because she could only afford to buy half a dozen. But she wouldn’t want Miss Mantripp to know that because
she
might feel bad, being a visitor.’
Theo shrugged his shoulders. ‘If you say so. But it seems a bit daft.
She’s
daft, isn’t she? Going on like that about privies. At the
tea table
! I really don’t think I can sit there, eating an egg, she’ll just start me off again, laughing.’
‘Don’t be so mean!’ Poll felt very sad, suddenly, she wasn’t sure why. A mixture of no more eggs in the larder and little Miss Mantripp being so funny and kind. ‘It was nice to bring that old lace along, even though it was rotten. It’s awful to make fun of her.’
‘Hey!’ Theo said. ‘Hey! What’s got into you, all of a sudden?’
Saturday was market day. Mother had started on Miss Mantripp’s blouse and was anxious to get it finished and out of the way before other customers came. ‘Although it would be a good thing for them to see I’ve got something to do,’ she said. ‘People are quicker to place orders if they know someone else has already done so. I think I shall sit sewing in the front room all morning, looking busy. Poll and Theo, you can go shopping. There’s not much we need, just two loaves of bread and perhaps half a pound of butter from the market stall near the church. It’s always nice and fresh there.’
‘We’re out of eggs,’ Theo said.
‘Are we? Well, eggs are dear just now. But you can have a penny for sweets.’
Theo frowned. Poll said, ‘Can we take Johnnie? He loves market day.’
The pig grunted, hearing his name, and trotted along at their heels as he always did behind Mother when she went shopping. In the baker’s he sat patiently while Poll bought the bread and the baker came round the counter and patted him and said what a good pig he was, just like a dog. ‘He’s better than any old
dog
,’ Poll said scornfully. ‘Pigs are more intelligent than dogs, that’s a scientific fact,’ and the baker laughed and gave her a sticky bun, free.
She offered to share it with Theo but he shook his head. He hadn’t spoken since they left home. Poll said, ‘Is your throat sore? Or has the cat got your tongue?’
She bought Cupid’s Whispers with the penny; little flat sugary sweets with rhymes written on them. Then they went to the dairy stall near the church. Poll asked for the butter while Theo stood, gazing at the things set out on display. Blocks of lovely yellow butter, oozing drops of water, round cheeses cut to show their creamy insides, pieces of bacon for boiling, a basket of big, brown, speckled eggs…
There was a faraway expression in Theo’s eyes as if he were lost in some dream. He put out his hand and took one of the brown eggs and put it in his pocket. He looked at Poll and saw she was looking at him, eyes round and startled. Theo grinned foolishly
and her hand flew to her mouth to stop herself giggling. Theo felt his face growing hot. The woman who kept the stall smiled at the two pretty, fair children and said, ‘Have you got all you want now?’
‘Oh,’ Poll said. ‘Oh yes, thank you.’ Then, in a loud bustling voice like a scolding old woman, ‘Where’s Johnnie got to?
There
you are, you troublesome pig! Come on, Theo, stir your lazy stumps, we haven’t got all day you know.’
She set off at a great pace down the cobbled path that led to the church, through the gate into the churchyard, not stopping until she reached the flat tombstone everyone in the Town called the Soldier’s Grave, although the inscription was too worn to show who was buried there. Poll sank down on the stone, puffing her cheeks out and fanning herself with her hand as Theo and Johnnie came up to her. ‘Well,’ she said, still acting her old-woman part. ‘Well, I never did! Really!’
‘I feel quite faint,’ Theo said. ‘At least, I feel very peculiar.’
‘Then you’d better sit down. Be careful you don’t sit on the egg, though.’
Theo sat down. He took the egg out of his pocket and stared at it as if it was the first egg he had seen in his life.
‘I really don’t know why I did that,’ he said, and he sounded and looked so amazed that Poll started to laugh. He watched her for a minute and then
began to laugh too. They swayed helplessly, clutching their stomachs and Johnnie sat looking up at them, intelligent, slitty eyes twinkling.
Several people, passing through the churchyard, saw the two Greengrass children sitting side by side on the Soldier’s Grave and laughing fit to burst with their pet pig watching them, head on one side, as if wondering what they were laughing at. Some smiled as if they wondered too, but only one person stopped. He had followed them from the Square and was standing a little way off, hands in his pockets and a thoughtful look on his face. When Poll and Theo grew quieter, he sauntered forward, kicking a stone. It landed in a spurt of dust by Theo’s right foot and Theo looked up.
‘I doubt if your aunt would find it so funny,’ Noah Bugg said.
Poll and Theo sat silent.
Noah shook his head sadly. ‘Thievin’,’ he said. ‘Stealin’ from a poor market woman. What’s funny in that?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Theo said.
Noah laughed. Rooks flew with clapping wings out of the dark trees above them and cawed overhead.
Poll and Theo looked at each other. Then at Noah. They saw that his pale green eyes had darker green flecks round the pupils and that his gingery
eyebrows above them were curiously bushy and stiff, as if he were a grown man, not a boy.
Theo looked at his boots. ‘Just one egg.’
‘One or a dozen, what’s the difference?’ Noah asked as if he really wanted to know.
Theo scuffed his boots in the dust and Johnnie got up from his haunches as if he thought it was about time they went home.
Noah’s gooseberry eyes gazed into distance. ‘’Course, we
could
ask Miss Greengrass. I reckon that’s the sort of question she’d find pretty interestin’.’
Theo sighed.
‘I mean, she took us in Sunday School last year. Sometimes the Bible and sometimes what she called Morals. About tellin’ lies and stealin’, and that. Mind you, I don’t know as she’d
like
it if I asked her, exactly. Not seeing as it was her own nephew.’ He looked at Theo, eyes bright and spiteful. ‘My mother says your precious family thinks such a lot of themselves. A cut above other people!’
Theo lifted his head. ‘Tell my aunt, then. Go on, go ahead! Or I’ll tell her myself. I don’t care!’
He stood up, smiling calmly at Noah who took a step back, drawing those strange, heavy eyebrows together. ‘Come on, Poll, time we were moving. You’ll get a chill if we sit here much longer.’
She shook her head dumbly. She was shivering, but not with the cold. All the things she had ever
heard or been told these last months, that she had not paid much attention to or only half understood, had suddenly come together in her mind and made frightening sense. They were dependent on Aunt Sarah until Father came home, or made his fortune in America and sent money back, and so they had to be good. If they weren’t, Aunt Sarah might decide not to keep them and they would have to go to the workhouse. And Aunt Sarah’s standards of goodness were unusually high. She had said,
stealing is always wrong, even a sweet or a hairpin
…
Poll said, ‘She’ll care, Aunt Sarah will care, she
will
, Theo!’
He shook his head, frowning to warn her, make her see it would be all right if they brazened it out, that if Noah believed they weren’t worried he would most likely do nothing. He was only tormenting: he’d be far too scared of Aunt Sarah to go sneaking to her…
But Poll was scared
now
. She burst out, ‘Oh, please. Please, Theo, do stop him.’
He looked at her, not understanding her terror, but impressed all the same. Poll was frightened –
Poll
, who was so much braver than he was about almost everything! It made him feel old and protective. Of course, there was one way to settle the matter. If only he were bigger – or not quite such a coward! He hesitated, measuring himself against Noah, and knew that even if he could screw
up his courage to impossible limits the fight would be over in seconds. Noah was only a few months older than he was but it might just as well have been years: he was a child beside this strong, well-grown boy!
Theo said, resigned, ‘Look, I’ll put the egg
back
. Will that do? If you like, I’ll tell the woman I’m sorry’.
Noah shrugged his shoulders and grinned.
Poll jumped up from the Soldier’s Grave and pleaded with him. ‘Don’t tell Aunt Sarah, please, Noah.’
‘Worth a lot, is it? Well, it depends…’
His green eyes narrowed, sharp as flints, and she shrank against Theo.
He said, ‘Leave her alone, Noah, she’s only a girl, no need to bully her.’ Then, to Poll, ‘I’ll see to this. You go on, I’ll catch up when I’m ready.’
There was a note of command in his voice she had not heard before. She picked up the shopping basket, retreated as far as the churchyard gate, Johnnie trotting beside her, and stood, looking back. The boys were out of earshot but she could see that Theo was doing all the talking, waving his hands about energetically, and that Noah was listening with a surprised but interested expression. She took a Cupid’s Whisper out of her pocket, reading the rhyme before she ate it.
Cherry Ripe, With lips so red, With curls so bright, You’ll soon be wed
. Sucking the
sweet, she crouched down and put one arm round Johnnie’s neck for additional comfort, hugging his warm, solid body and thinking, with part of her mind, that it was amazing how fast he seemed to be growing. Much too big for the copper hole now, he would soon be too big to be allowed indoors all the time. Mother complained that he got under her feet sometimes in the kitchen, and said that when the weather got warmer she would make up a bed for him in the old hen house at the end of the garden. Poll rubbed her chin against the bristly hairs of his neck and sighed. ‘Oh, poor Johnnie.’
It seemed that ages passed but it was only five minutes by the church clock when Noah nodded at Theo and walked away and Theo came slowly towards her.