“Oh, Mama!” exclaimed mother. “You shouldn’t have given her soup so late at night.”
“Well, I asked you and you didn’t reply so I gave her soup. The child was hungry. I expect she could eat a wee bit of cold chicken now.”
“I’ll cut her a slice of the breast,” said grandpapa, taking up the carving knife and sharpening it.
There was cold chicken and salad and then there was orange sponge with cream on the top.
Mother looked at me eating and said, “Oh, well, I don’t suppose it will do her any harm.”
“It will do her a power of good,” declared grandpapa. “People should eat when they want and fast when they’re not hungry. That’s nature.”
When we had finished we went into the drawing-room. Mother said I couldn’t go straight to bed after an enormous meal so I sat in the corner of the big sofa. The ‘grans’ sat in chairs on either side of the fire with mother sitting between them on the hearthrug.
I could see now why she was always so happy to come to Craignethan: she loved them and they loved her. She wasn’t like mother, somehow; she was younger and prettier – even her voice seemed different. For a time I watched them and listened to their talk and then I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer. . . .
*
Suddenly I was awakened by the sound of a carriage driving up to the front door. I heard the horses’ hoofs on the gravel and the scrape of wheels.
“Who’s that?” I cried, sitting up and pointing to the window.
“Goodness, Sarah! Why haven’t you gone to bed?” exclaimed mother.
“You didn’t tell me to go to bed.”
“I know – but look at the time! It’s twelve o’clock.”
“What about the other people?” I asked.
“What other people?”
“The people who have just arrived in the carriage.”
There was a little silence. They were all looking at me.
“I heard them arrive,” I explained. “I heard the carriage drive up to the door. Hadn’t we better see who it is?”
“The child has been dreaming,” said grandpapa. “Dorrie had better put her to bed. We’d all be better in our beds,” he added, rising and putting the guard on the fire.
“But I wasn’t dreaming! I wasn’t really. I heard the carriage and the horses and the wheels on the gravel.”
“Come and see,” said grandpapa. He took me into the hall and opened the front door. “Look, child, there’s not a creature in sight! You were dreaming.”
I went out to the doorstep and looked about. The moon was bright above the sleeping hills . . . and there was no carriage, no horses, nothing.
“Are you satisfied, Sarah?” asked grandpapa, smiling down at me very kindly.
“I suppose . . . I must have been . . . dreaming.”
A big dark bird flew past on silent wings and disappeared amongst the trees.
“It’s an owl,” said grandpapa. “They live in the ruins of an old tower on the other side of the hill.”
“I’d like to see it.”
“Yes, yes, we’ll go and see it together, you and I.”
“Let’s go now. It’s so lovely – I want to see everything!”
“Not now, Sarah. I’ll take you this afternoon.”
“You mean to-morrow, Grandpapa.”
He smiled and replied, “It’s to-morrow now.”
“How can it be to-morrow now?”
“Well, it can’t be, strictly speaking. To-morrow never comes.”
“I don’t understand.”
He laughed. “We’ll thrash it out when we’ve had a good sleep. There’s your mother calling you to bed.”
I watched him shut and bolt the big wooden door and then ran upstairs.
My room at Craignethan was over the front door; there was a wide view over a rolling lawn to the distant woods and hills. It was a small room but very comfortable and I loved it.
Mother was there when I went up; she was unpacking my suitcase. She said, “What were you and Grandpapa talking about?”
“He said he would take me up the hill this afternoon.”
“You mean to-morrow.”
“He said to-morrow never comes.”
“Nonsense, you’re asleep on your feet,” declared mother. “Go and wash in the bathroom next door and then get into bed. You’ll see everything to-morrow.”
There was a mirror over the basin in the bathroom, so when I was brushing my teeth I saw myself clearly: a thin white face, with blue marks like bruises under the eyes, framed in dark, lifeless, straggly-looking hair. Not pretty! Then suddenly I stopped with the toothbrush in my mouth . . . because I had seen it! To-morrow never comes. When you go to bed at the proper time to-morrow is to-morrow, but when you wake in the morning it’s to-day.
Mother was wrong! It was an amazing discovery; never before had it occurred to me that mother could be wrong about anything.
The first few days at Craignethan were very happy; there was so much to see and I enjoyed going for walks on the hills with mother or grandpapa. I saw the old tower; it was a huge place with high walls, all tumbling down and covered with ivy. Grandpapa showed me the place where the owls had nested in the spring.
When mother and grandmama went to Ryddelton to do the shopping they took me with them and I enjoyed that too. However, after we had been there a week, I began to feel a little lonely and to wish I had someone of my own age to play with. Mother and the “grans” were happy together and talked a lot; they talked about people I didn’t know which wasn’t very interesting.
“How are the Loudons?” asked mother.
“Oh, they’re very well,” grandmama replied. “The boys are at school, of course. Bob is going to Sandhurst soon; he has always been keen on the Army.”
“Bob is a fine lad,” said grandpapa. “He’ll do well in the Service.”
“I don’t want our boys to go into the Army,” said mother. “I thought Lewis was——”
“No,” said mother firmly. “That was just a childish idea. I want Lewis to go to Oxford. He’s very clever.”
“I don’t know why people think that only morons should enter the Service,” said grandpapa sadly.
“I didn’t say that!”
“No, but you meant it.”
Grandpapa had been in the Army, of course. He was a colonel and “a very distinguished officer” (grandmama had told me that) and he certainly wasn’t a “moron.” He loved a joke and always made his jokes with a perfectly solemn face, so it wasn’t easy to know whether he meant them or not, but if you were doubtful you had only to look at grandmama; she always smiled at his jokes.
One day at lunch grandpapa said, “Listen, Dorrie, you must bring William Maitland next year; I want to have a look at my namesake. Bring Sarah, too, of course.”
“It would be too much for you,” objected mother.
“Not a bit of it; bring them both. They’ll amuse each other. By the way, what’s Sarah’s other name?”
“I’ve only got one,” I said regretfully.
“You ought to be Sarah Jane.”
“I don’t know why we didn’t call her Jane,” mother said. “It never occurred to us. Sarah was Henry’s mother’s name and we wanted a girl so she was Sarah before she was born.”
I wondered how I could have been Sarah before I was born.
It was a fine afternoon and grandpapa had promised to take me for a walk to the owls’ tower so I went and stood on the doorstep waiting for him to get ready.
Suddenly a few drops of water pattered down on to my head. I was surprised that it was raining for there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Then, when I looked up, I saw grandpapa leaning out of my bedroom window with my sponge in his hand.
“Sarah Jane,” said grandpapa solemnly. Then his head disappeared.
“But it isn’t real, is it?” I asked, as we walked up the hill together.
“Not really real,” he replied. “But pretending is fun. There’s nothing wrong in prete
nding as long as it doesn’t harm other people. Sarah Jane is a secret between you and me.”
That was our last day at Craignethan; we started home early next morning and father met us in London.
Chapter Four
St. Elizabeth’s was a big school on the way to Larchester; most of the girls were boarders but father arranged that I should go daily in the Larchester bus. At first I was frightened and unhappy – it was so different from Mrs. Powell’s – but fortunately I had been well grounded so I didn’t find the lessons difficult. After a bit I made friends with several of the boarders and we had them to tea on Sundays; they enjoyed going out to tea. Next year Lottie would come with me to St. Elizabeth’s but meantime she stayed on at Mrs. Powell’s.
It was a dull year but I was looking forward to September; grandpapa had written to say he hoped mother hadn’t forgotten her promise to bring William Maitland and Sarah Jane when she came for her usual visit.
Father said, “It will be too much for your parents, Dorrie. They’re apt to be boisterous when they get together.”
“But Papa wants them,” said mother doubtfully.
“It will be all right,” I declared. “We won’t be boisterous – honestly. Grandpapa will be very disappointed if you don’t take us to Craignethan.”
Fortunately mother thought so too.
I had told Willy all about Craignethan so he was looking forward to it as much as I was; we were both wildly excited when the day arrived for us to start on our journey. Father was still a little worried in case we should be “too much for the grans”: he told us that we must be good and quiet and not come into the house with muddy shoes or be late for meals . . . and of course we promised to remember.
“They’ll be out most of the time,” said mother cheerfully. “They can work off their high spirits running about the hills.”
This year the journey didn’t seem so long because Willy had been given a travelling chess-board for his birthday and we played in the train. Willy’s chess was dashing – like himself. His one idea was to take as many of his opponent’s pieces as quickly as he could, so his queen came out at the very beginning and rampaged round the board, slaying her enemies indiscriminately. If you didn’t know Willy’s game you were apt to be taken by surprise. I knew it, of course, and had discovered that the best defence was attack – so the slaughter was frightful. Our games seldom lasted more than fifteen minutes; then we set out the pieces and started again. We must have played nearly twenty games of chess going up to Scotland in the train.
I was thirteen and Willy was two years older, so grandpapa said we were old enough to look after ourselves and we could go wherever we liked provided we stayed together. Willy wanted to catch fish so grandpapa gave him a small trout-rod and spent a whole morning teaching him how to use it. After that we went out every day and walked for miles over the rolling hills. I took a book and sat amongst the heather while Willy fished the burns. He caught a lot of small brown trout; they were delicious fried in oatmeal for breakfast.
The hills were absolutely deserted, we never saw any shooting parties, in fact we never saw anybody except the shepherd with his dog. Sometimes we lay in wait for him and, if he wasn’t in a hurry, he would sit down for a “wee crack.” Willy always wanted to know things and the shepherd answered his questions in a friendly way. He said it was fine to be a shepherd in the summer months but not so good in winter when the hills were covered with snow. His name was Jock Fraser and he lived in “a wee cottage amongst the hills.”
“If ye follow yon burn ye’ll come tae it,” said Mr. Fraser, pointing. “Mebbe you’d call one afternoon; the wife would give you a cup o’ tea.”
“Wouldn’t it be a bother for her?” I asked.
“Nae boather, she’d like it fine. The days are a bit lonesome for her,” replied Mr. Fraser.
We were shy of calling on Mrs. Fraser so we put off the visit from day to day . . . but when it came to our last day we could put it off no longer.
“We must go,” I said to Willy. “Mr. Fraser said it was lonesome for her – it would be unkind not to go.”
Willy was very reluctant but I managed to persuade him to come with me; he took his rod and fished the burn which ran past the Frasers’ cottage while I went up to the door. There was a little girl with red hair sitting on the bank so I stopped and spoke to her and admired her doll, which was made out of an old black stocking.
“Do you know the story about little black Sambo?” I asked.
She shook her head so I sat down and told her the story.
When the story was finished she came and sat in my lap and I rocked her to and fro and sang to her. I was still playing with the child when Willy came up from the burn. He was a little cross because he had had no luck.
“I don’t know why you’re so potty about kids,” he said, standing and looking at me scornfully. Then he sat down and began to dismantle his rod.
So far there had been no sign of Mrs. Fraser. I had begun to think she must be away from home when the door opened and she came out with a dish-cloth in her hand.
“Is Mawgrit boathering you, miss?” she asked.
“Oh no!” I said. “We’re having fun.”
“What’s the name of that hill?” asked Willy, pointing to the hill at the back of the cottage.
She looked at the hill doubtfully and then replied, “You’ll need tae ask Jock.”
I said politely, “You’re Mrs. Fraser, aren’t you? We met Mr. Fraser on the hill and he told us you lived here.”
“Aye. Jock’s the shepherd.” She hesitated and then added, “Jock spoke about you. I’d ask you in for a cup of tea but maybe Mistress Maitland wouldna like it.”
I was a little surprised but said hastily, “Oh, it doesn’t matter a bit, Mrs. Fraser. We shall have to go home soon.”
“Would you care for a drink o’ milk?” she asked. “The cow calved three weeks syne and we’ve mair milk than we can use.”
Willy refused the offer – he didn’t like milk – but I accepted.
Mrs. Fraser fetched a cup of milk and stood and watched while I drank it.
“What lovely milk!” I said.
“Aye, she’s a fine cow,” said Mrs. Fraser proudly.
“Is she an Ayrshire?” asked Willy.
Mrs. Fraser hesitated.
“Perhaps she’s a Hereford?” I suggested.
“You’ll need tae ask Jock,” said Mrs. Fraser.
By this time I had finished the milk so I rose and handed her the cup. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Fraser,” I said. “I think we had better go home now. Could you tell me the time, please? We don’t want to be late for supper.”
“The clock’s gane agley – you’ll need tae ask Jock,” replied Mrs. Fraser.
Willy and I managed to stifle our giggles until we were half-way down the hill; then we burst out laughing. We laughed and laughed – and all the way home we asked each other silly questions: Willy said, “How old are you, Sarah?” I paused for a few moments and then replied, “You’ll need tae ask Jock.” It was my turn now so I said, “Will it be a fine day to-morrow?”
We were still laughing when we went into the drawing-room and found mother and the grans sitting there and talking.
“Hallo, you seem in good spirits!” said grandpapa.
“Where have you been?” asked mother.
“You’ll need tae ask Jock,” replied Willy, giggling.
“You’ve been to the Frasers’!” exclaimed grandmama. “I hope you didn’t go into the house.”
“No,” said Willy. “I was fishing and Sarah sat on the bank and played with the baby. I expect she’s got a flea off the creature; it had flea-bites on its legs.”
“Chickenpox,” said grandmama.
“Chickenpox?” exclaimed mother in dismay.
Grandmama nodded gloomily. “There are several children and they’ve all got it. Janet told me yesterday.”
“Goodness! Sarah will get it and give it to Lottie!” cried mother in horr
ified tones.
“Calm yourself, Dorrie,” said grandpapa. “Sarah may have got chickenpox but she won’t give it to Lottie.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Sarah will be here and Lottie will be at Fairfield.”
“Oh, Papa! I couldn’t go home without Sarah!”
“Why not?” asked grandpapa. “Do you think we couldn’t look after her properly?”
“It would be a nuisance for you,” said mother, frowning.
“We should love to have Sarah,” declared grandmama.
“But she may get chickenpox!”
“That is the whole idea,” grandpapa agreed.
Mother continued to raise objections to the plan but grandpapa pointed out that if I returned to Fairfield and developed chickenpox Lewis and Willy and Lottie would all be in quarantine and therefore unable to return to school. More likely than not, said grandpapa, they would develop the complaint one after another, in which case the whole family would be in quarantine for weeks.
This prediction scared mother so much that she gave in and agreed to leave me behind.
“You are a lucky dog,” said Willy as we went upstairs together. “Fancy being here, at Craignethan, instead of having to go back to school. I wish I had kissed the little brat.”
“I wish you had,” I told him with a sigh.
“Aren’t you pleased, Sarah?”
“It won’t be much fun without you.”
“Better than school, anyway,” declared Willy emphatically.
I said nothing. Of course it was very kind of the grans to offer to have me but I wasn’t looking forward to being left behind; I thought it would be dull without Willy . . . However I needn’t have worried; I was perfectly happy alone with the grans.
When mother had been there they had talked to her all the time but now they talked to me; they discussed things with me and listened to what I said. This made me feel important. It was quite a new feeling and very pleasant.
Grandpapa and I went for walks and had jokes together and, in the evenings, he taught me to play piquet. At first he beat me every time but soon I became quite proficient and was able to give him a good game.
Sarah Morris Remembers Page 3