A Little, Aloud

by Angela Macmillan

‘It isn’t because he’s poor,’ said Phyllis; ‘it’s because we’re fond of him.’

  ‘I’ll find some things that Phyllis has outgrown,’ said Mother, ‘if you’re quite sure you can give them to him without his being offended. What are you writing, Bobbie?’

  ‘Nothing particular,’ said Bobbie, who had suddenly begun to scribble. ‘I’m sure he’d like the things, Mother.’

  The morning of the fifteenth was spent very happily in getting the buns and watching Mother make A. P. on them with pink sugar.

  Afterwards the children went up to the village to collect the honey and the shovel and the other promised things.

  The old lady at the Post-office was standing on her doorstep. The children said ‘Good morning,’ politely, as they passed.

  ‘Here, stop a bit,’ she said.

  So they stopped.

  ‘Those roses,’ said she.

  ‘Did you like them?’ said Phyllis; ‘they were as fresh as fresh. I made the needle-book, but it was Bobbie’s present.’ She skipped joyously as she spoke.

  ‘Here’s your basket,’ said the Post-office woman. She went in and brought out the basket. It was full of fat, red goose-berries.

  ‘I dare say Perks’s children would like them,’ said she.

  ‘You are an old dear,’ said Phyllis, throwing her arms around the old lady’s fat waist. ‘Perks will be pleased.’

  ‘He won’t be half so pleased as I was with your needle-book and the tie and the pretty flowers and all,’ said the old lady, patting Phyllis’s shoulder. ‘You’re good little souls, that you are. Look here. I’ve got a pram round the back in the wood-lodge. It was got for my Emmie’s first, that didn’t live but six months, and she never had but that one. I’d like Mrs Perks to have it. It ’ud be a help to her with that great boy of hers. Will you take it along?’

  ‘Oh! ’ said all the children together. ‘Oh, isn’t it nice to think there is going to be a real live baby in it again!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Ransome, sighing, and then laughing; ‘here, I’ll give you some peppermint cushions for the little ones, and then you run along before I give you the roof off my head and the clothes off my back.’

  All the things that had been collected for Perks were packed into the perambulator, and at half-past three Peter and Bobbie and Phyllis wheeled it down to the little yellow house where Perks lived.

  The house was very tidy. On the window ledge was a jug of wildflowers, big daisies, and red sorrel, and feathery, flowery grasses.

  There was a sound of splashing from the wash-house, and a partly washed boy put his head round the door.

  ‘Mother’s a-changing of herself,’ he said.

  ‘Down in a minute,’ a voice sounded down the narrow, freshly scrubbed stairs.

  The children waited. Next moment the stairs creaked and Mrs Perks came down, buttoning her bodice. Her hair was brushed very smooth and tight, and her face shone with soap and water.

  ‘I’m a bit late changing, Miss,’ she said to Bobbie, ‘owing to me having had a extry clean-up to-day, along o’ Perks happening to name its being his birthday. I don’t know what put it into his head to think of such a thing. We keeps the children’s birthdays, of course; but him and me – we’re too old for such like, as a general rule.’

  ‘We knew it was his birthday,’ said Peter, ‘and we’ve got some presents for him outside in the perambulator.’

  As the presents were being unpacked, Mrs Perks gasped. When they were all unpacked, she surprised and horrified the children by sitting suddenly down on a wooden chair and bursting into tears.

  ‘Oh, don’t!’ said everybody; ‘oh, please don’t!’ And Peter added, perhaps a little impatiently, ‘Don’t you like it?’, while his sisters patted Mrs Perks on the back.

  She stopped crying as suddenly as she had begun.

  ‘There, there, don’t you mind me. I’m all right!’ she said. ‘Like it? Why, it’s a birthday such as Perks never ’ad, not even when ’e was a boy. And then she went on and said all kinds of nice things.

  At last Peter said: ‘Look here, we’re glad you’re pleased. But if you go on saying things like that, we must go home. And we did want to stay and see if Mr Perks is pleased, too. But we can’t stand this.’

  ‘I won’t say another single word,’ said Mrs Perks, with a beaming face.

  ‘Can we have a plate for the buns?’ Bobbie asked abruptly. And then Mrs Perks hastily laid the table for tea, and the buns and the honey and the gooseberries were displayed on plates, and the roses were put in two glass jam jars, and the tea-table looked, as Mrs Perks said, ‘fit for a Prince. Oh Bless us! ’e is early!’

  Perks had indeed unlatched the latch of the little front gate.

  ‘Oh,’ whispered Bobbie, ‘let’s hide in the back kitchen, and YOU tell him about it. But give him the tobacco first, because you got it for him. And when you’ve told him, we’ll all come in and shout, “Many happy returns!”’

  It was a very nice plan, but it did not quite come off. To begin with, there was only just time for Peter and Bobbie and Phyllis to rush into the wash-house, pushing the young and open-mouthed Perks children in front of them. There was not time to shut the door, so that, without at all meaning it, they had to listen to what went on in the kitchen.

  ‘Hullo, old woman!’ they heard Mr Perks’s voice say; ‘here’s a pretty set-out!’

  ‘It’s your birthday tea, Bert,’ said Mrs Perks, ‘and here’s a ounce of your extry particular. I got it o’ Saturday along o’ your happening to remember it was your birthday to-day.’

  ‘Good old girl!’ said Mr Perks, and there was a sound of a kiss.

  ‘But what’s that pram doing here? And what’s all these bundles? And where did you get the sweetstuff, and –’

  The children did not hear what Mrs Perks replied, because just then Bobbie gave a start, put her hand in her pocket, and all her body grew stiff with horror.

  ‘Oh!’ she whispered to the others, ‘whatever shall we do? I forgot to put the labels on any of the things! He won’t know what’s from who. He’ll think it’s all us, and that we’re trying to be grand or charitable or something horrid.’

  ‘Hush!’ said Peter.

  And then they heard the voice of Mr Perks, loud and rather angry.

  ‘I don’t care,’ he said; ‘I won’t stand it, and so I tell you straight.’

  ‘But,’ said Mrs Perks, ‘it’s them children you make such a fuss about – the children from the Three Chimneys.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ said Perks, firmly, ‘not if it was a angel from Heaven. We’ve got on all right all these years and no favours asked. I’m not going to begin these sort of charity goings-on at my time of life, so don’t you think it, Nell.’

  ‘Oh, hush!’ said poor Mrs Perks; ‘Bert, shut your silly tongue, for goodness’ sake. The all three of ’ems in the wash-house a-listening to every word you speaks.’

  ‘Then I’ll give them something to listen to,’ said the angry Perks, and he took two strides to the wash-house door, and flung it wide open.

  ‘Come out,’ said Perks, ‘come out and tell me what you mean by it. ’Ave I ever complained to you of being short, as you comes this charity lay over me?’

  ‘Oh! ’ said Phyllis, ‘I thought you’d be so pleased; I’ll never try to be kind to anyone else as long as I live. No, I won’t, not never.’

  She burst into tears.

  ‘We didn’t mean any harm,’ said Peter.

  ‘It ain’t what you means so much as what you does,’ said Perks.

  ‘Oh, don’t! ’ cried Bobbie, trying hard to be braver than Phyllis, and to find more words than Peter had done for explaining in. ‘We thought you’d love it. We always have things on our birthdays.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Perks, ‘your own relations; that’s different.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Bobbie answered. ‘Not our own relations. When it was my birthday Mother gave me the brooch like a buttercup, Mrs Viney gave me two lovely glass pots, and
nobody thought she was coming the charity lay over us.’

  ‘But they’re not all from us –’ said Peter, ‘only we forgot to put the labels on. They’re from all sorts of people in the village.’

  ‘Who put ’em up to it, I’d like to know?’ asked Perks.

  ‘Why, we did,’ sniffed Phyllis.

  Perks sat down heavily in the elbow-chair and looked at them with what Bobbie afterwards described as withering glances of gloomy despair.

  ‘So you’ve been round telling the neighbours we can’t make both ends meet? Well, now you’ve disgraced us as deep as you can in the neighbourhood, you can just take the whole bag of tricks back w’ere it come from. Very much obliged, I’m sure. I don’t doubt but what you meant it kind, but I’d rather not be acquainted with you any longer if it’s all the same to you.’ He deliberately turned the chair round so that his back was turned to the children. The legs of the chair grated on the brick floor, and that was the only sound that broke the silence.

  Then suddenly Bobbie spoke.

  ‘Look here,’ she said, ‘this is most awful.’

  ‘That’s what I says,’ said Perks, not turning round.

  ‘Look here,’ said Bobbie, desperately, ‘we’ll go if you like – and you needn’t be friends with us any more if you don’t want, but—’

  ‘We shall always be friends with you, however nasty you are to us,’ sniffed Phyllis, wildly.

  ‘Be quiet,’ said Peter, in a fierce aside.

  ‘But before we go,’ Bobbie went on desperately, ‘do let us show you the labels we wrote to put on the things.’

  ‘I don’t want to see no labels,’ said Perks. ‘Do you think I’ve kept respectable and outer debt on what I gets, and her having to take in washing, to be give away for a laughingstock to all the neighbours?’

  ‘Laughing?’ said Peter; ‘you don’t know.’

  ‘You’re a very hasty gentleman,’ whined Phyllis; ‘do let Bobbie tell you about the labels!’

  ‘Well. Go ahead!’ said Perks, grudgingly.

  ‘Well, then,’ said Bobbie, fumbling miserably, yet not without hope, in her tightly stuffed pocket, ‘we wrote down all the things everybody said when they gave us the things, with the people’s names, because Mother said we ought to be careful – because – but I wrote down what she said – and you’ll see.’

  But Bobbie could not read the labels just at once. She had to swallow once or twice before she could begin.

  ‘Mother’s first. It says:

  ‘“Little Clothes for Mrs Perks’s children.” Mother said, “I’ll find some of Phyllis’s things that she’s grown out of if you’re quite sure Mr Perks wouldn’t be offended and think it’s meant for charity. I’d like to do some little thing for him, because he’s so kind to you. I can’t do much because we’re poor ourselves.”’

  Bobbie paused.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Perks, ‘your Ma’s a born lady. We’ll keep the little frocks, and what not, Nell.’

  ‘Then there’s the perambulator and the gooseberries, and the sweets,’ said Bobbie, ‘they’re from Mrs Ransome. She said: “I dare say Mr Perks’s children would like the sweets. And the perambulator was got for my Emmie’s first – it didn’t live but six months. I’d like Mrs Perks to have it. It would be a help with her fine boy. I’d have given it before if I’d been sure she’d accept of it from me.” She told me to tell you,’ Bobbie added, ‘that it was her Emmie’s little one’s pram.’

  ‘I can’t send that pram back, Bert,’ said Mrs Perks, firmly, ‘and I won’t. So don’t you ask me—’

  ‘I’m not a-asking anything,’ said Perks, gruffly.

  ‘Then the shovel,’ said Bobbie. ‘Mr James made it for you himself. And he said – where is it? Oh, yes, here! He said, “You tell Mr Perks it’s a pleasure to make a little trifle for a man as is so much respected,” and then he said he wished he could shoe your children and his own children, like they do the horses, because, well, he knew what shoe leather was.’

  ‘James is a good enough chap,’ said Perks.

  ‘Then the honey,’ said Bobbie, in haste, ‘and the boot-laces. He said he respected a man that paid his way – and the butcher said the same. And the old turnpike woman said many was the time you’d lent her a hand with her garden when you were a lad – and things like that came home to roost – I don’t know what she meant. And everybody who gave anything said they liked you, and it was a very good idea of ours; and nobody said anything about charity or anything horrid like that. And the old gentleman gave Peter a gold pound for you, and said you were a man who knew your work. And I thought you’d love to know how fond people are of you, and I never was so unhappy in my life. Good-bye. I hope you’ll forgive us some day –’

  She could say no more, and she turned to go.

  ‘Stop,’ said Perks, still with his back to them; ‘I take back every word I’ve said contrary to what you’d wish. Nell, set on the kettle.’

  ‘We’ll take the things away if you’re unhappy about them,’ said Peter; ‘but I think everybody’ll be most awfully disappointed, as well as us.’

  ‘I’m not unhappy about them,’ said Perks; ‘I don’t know,’ he added, suddenly wheeling the chair round and showing a very odd-looking screwed-up face, ‘I don’t know as ever I was better pleased. Not so much with the presents – though they’re an A1 collection – but the kind respect of our neighbours. That’s worth having, eh, Nell?’

  ‘I think it’s all worth having,’ said Mrs Perks, ‘and you’ve made a most ridiculous fuss about nothing, Bert, if you ask me.’

  ‘No, I ain’t,’ said Perks, firmly; ‘if a man didn’t respect hisself, no one wouldn’t do it for him.’

  ‘But everyone respects you,’ said Bobbie; ‘they all said so.’

  ‘I knew you’d like it when you really understood,’ said Phyllis, brightly.

  ‘Humph! You’ll stay to tea?’ said Mr Perks.

  Later on Peter proposed Mr Perks’s health. And Mr Perks proposed a toast, also honoured in tea, and the toast was, ‘May the garland of friendship be ever green,’ which was much more poetical than anyone had expected from him.

  FRIENDSHIP

  Elizabeth Jennings

  Such love I cannot analyse;

  It does not rest in lips or eyes,

  Neither in kisses nor caress.

  Partly, I know, it’s gentleness

  And understanding in one word

  Or in brief letters. It’s preserved

  By trust and by respect and awe.

  These are the words I’m feeling for.

  Two people, yes, two lasting friends.

  The giving comes, the taking ends.

  There is no measure for such things.

  For this all Nature slows and sings.

  READING NOTES

  After the poem was read out loud, an elderly woman in a library group became rather quiet. Later she explained that her best friend now lived in Canada and they had not seen each other for nearly twenty years. The poem reminded her how much she missed their old, easy, day-to-day friendship. ‘This poem says everything,’ she said: ‘It’s preserved / By trust and by respect and awe.’ She stayed behind to copy it out and send to Vancouver. The group talked about what makes a great friendship; about what happens when friends fall out and about how you have to work at keeping a friendship going. They wondered about the word ‘awe’. Was it an appropriate word in this context? In the end, most thought it was.

  In The Railway Children, Phyllis says to Perks: ‘We shall always be friends with you, however nasty you are to us.’ Even though Phyllis is rather silly, the group wondered about the truth of this remark and also considered how easy it is for good intentions to be taken the wrong way.

  In the Eye of the Beholder

  A WORK OF ART

  Anton Chekhov

  (approximate reading time 9 minutes)

  Sasha Smirnov, the only son of his mother, holding under his arm, something wrapped up in No. 223
of the Financial News, assumed a sentimental expression, and went into Dr Koshelkov’s consulting-room.

  ‘Ah, dear lad!’ was how the doctor greeted him. ‘Well! How are we feeling? What good news have you for me?’

  Sasha blinked, laid his hand on his heart and said in an agitated voice: ‘Mamma sends her greetings to you, Ivan Nikolaevitch, and told me to thank you . . . I am the only son of my mother and you have saved my life . . . you have brought me through a dangerous illness and . . . we do not know how to thank you.’

  ‘Nonsense, lad!’ said the doctor, highly delighted. ‘I only did what anyone else would have done in my place.’

  ‘I am the only son of my mother . . . we are poor people and cannot of course repay you, and . . . we are quite ashamed, doctor, although, however, mamma and I . . . the only son of my mother, earnestly beg you to accept in token of our gratitude . . . this object, which . . . An object of great value, an antique bronze . . . A rare work of art.’

  ‘You shouldn’t!’ said the doctor, frowning. ‘What’s this for!’

  ‘No, please do not refuse,’ Sasha went on muttering as he unpacked the parcel. ‘You will wound mamma and me by refusing . . . It’s a fine thing . . . an antique bronze . . . It was left us by my deceased father and we have kept it as a precious souvenir. My father used to buy antique bronzes and sell them to connoisseurs . . . Mamma and I keep on the business now . . .’

  Sasha undid the object and put it solemnly on the table. It was a not very tall candelabra of old bronze and artistic workmanship. It consisted of a group: on the pedestal stood two female figures in the costume of Eve and in attitudes for the description of which I have neither the courage nor the fitting temperament. The figures were smiling coquettishly and altogether looked as though, had it not been for the necessity of supporting the candlestick, they would have skipped off the pedestal and have indulged in an orgy such as is improper for the reader even to imagine.

  Looking at the present, the doctor slowly scratched behind his ear, cleared his throat and blew his nose irresolutely.