by Dirk Bogarde
Lally was in her room and the door was closed so that her voice sounded far away. “We’ll see about that when the time comes. If you’ve done those wicks and the chimneys you’d better set the table for supper. The Prince of Wales will be here presently …” I went back to the kitchen and started smoothing out the tablecloth. “She hasn’t forgotten about the bird, she’s just not going to say anything definite,” I said.
My sister scattered some plates about and got the pickles down and the butter and the cocoa jug. “Well, let’s let the other one go first thing in the morning, that’ll remind her of her promise,” she said and smiled a smug looking smile. “Perhaps we could get two canaries next time … real ones I mean. And then we could build an aviary place and have a real tree and things inside so that they could have a nest and eggs and everything. And we could sell the babies and make a lot of money, that would be nice, wouldn’t it?” But I was too busy thinking about Twickenham to answer her.
Very early the next morning we took the cage out into the garden under the apple tree and I opened the door. The canary just skittered and fluttered and banged itself against the wires and Lally told us to come away and leave it alone. Which we did. And when we turned round it had gone! Just like that. It didn’t fly away over the fields singing and singing for joy. Just vanished. There was nothing in the cage except a few crumbly feathers.
“I never saw it go!” said my sister. “It must have been in a terrific hurry to escape.”
I felt quite miserable really. I had been so proud of it. But of course if it was really a dyed linnet it was better to let it go because it would never have got tame; wild birds never do in cages. My sister tried to cheer me up; she could be quite nice sometimes when she was feeling in the mood, which wasn’t often; and sometimes it was because she wanted me to do something for her which she knew she couldn’t do for herself. And she was in one of those moods this morning, I could feel it.
“Come on,” she said, taking my arm, “let’s go down to the gully, I’ve got something marvellous to show you. You will be surprised. Come on.” And because I hadn’t anything else to do at that moment I went with her. We clambered up the hill outside the fence, to the top, and reached the big wood where the gully was hidden. It was cool and green and damp smelling under the trees; the sides of the gully were all big lumps of chalk with funny roots tangling about and long trails of ivy and deadly nightshade. It was very quiet in there; you could just hear the wind moving about in the tops of the trees and the noise of our feet slithering in the muddy ruts of the floor.
There were voles down there, and hedgehogs too. We used to hear them at dusk squeaking and rusding about in the leaves looking for slugs. Which we thought rather disgusting. And once we found a great toad with golden eyes bulging in a little cave place in the chalk. It was almost as big as a plate and when we carried it back to the house and showed Lally she covered her face with her hands and threw the darning at us. “Take the horrible thing away!” she cried. “It’ll give you warts you’ll see. Take it out this instant.” She was really awfully silly about toads. She didn’t mind anything else almost, except cows, but she was scared out of her wits by a humble, nice looking old toad.
But there weren’t any toads down in the gully this morning. And we twisted along through the old cart ruts and brambles until my sister told me to stop, and there in front of me was a great pile of old tin cans and bits of bedsteads and rusty wire. It was just an old rubbish dump. Nothing exciting at all.
“I can’t possibly be surprised by an old rubbish dump,” I said. “And anyway, I’ve seen it before. It’s been here for years and years.”
My sister was rooting about in the tins and bits of old iron bedsteads, there were tangles of old chicken wire and an oil stove with a broken door lying in a clutter of pram wheels and shards of a broken plough.
Suddenly, amidst all the clanking and clonking my sister gave a cry and called out: “Shut your eyes. This is the surprise!” So I shut my eyes and heard her breathing and bonking and then she said I could open them and I did and there she was holding up a silly old tin box. There was nothing surprising about it at all. Just a biggish sort of biscuit tin with “Hundey and Palmers” written on it, that’s all.
“Look!” she said. “Isn’t it sweet, though?”
“It’s a biscuit tin. I’ve seen hundreds and hundreds of them and I don’t think it’s a bit of a surprise.”
She came clambering over the pile of old junk holding her rotten old tin. “But it’s practically new!” she said. “There’s almost no rust on it. And it’s got a nice lid which fits. It’s just what I want to make my scent with.” And she set it down carefully in the muddy chalk.
“What do you mean, your scent?” I asked. She really could be very dotty sometimes, and I knew that somewhere she was getting me to do something for her. She was singing away and opening and closing the lid of her tin and tearing off the remains of the paper label.
“It’s such a marvellous find. I discovered it yesterday all by myself. I was down here and I just saw it glinting in the sun, so I came all the way down, not a bit frightened really, and when I saw it I was so happy. Because now I can make my scent if you’ll help me just a bit. All you have to do,” she said quickly in case I started to clamber up the gully and leave her in the junk heap, “all you have to do is to knock some lovely holes in the sides, and a few on top, and then I will have a wonderful stove thing to boil up the rose petals and so on.” She sat there looking up at me, her eyes wide with pleasure. I think she could almost smell her beastly scent already.
“Then what do you do? If I do knock holes in it?” I asked.
She crossed her legs importantly and hugged herself with her skinny brown arms. “Well,” she said thoughtfully. “Well then when you do, I’ll put it on some big stones, and then I’ll make a fire inside with some logs, and put on the lid and then I’ll have a stove. See? And the draught will come down through the holes and make the fire burn … and then it’ll go up and heat the can of water and rose petals on top. And when it’s all boiled it’ll be scent.
I thought about this for a time. It seemed a bit dense really; but I had nothing else to do and no money to spend down at Bakers and I was still feeling a bit miserable about the canary linnet and the empty cage. So I agreed to help her and we knocked holes in the tin with a hammer and a quite big nail. I made a sort of ring pattern on each side and a bigger one on the lid. She went off collecting the stones to set it on so that we could get a good draught under it, and gathered some dead sticks and bits of bark to start the fire. And then came the boring part really; collecting the rose petals and the flowers to boil up. We got quite a lot. And some nasturtiums and a few sweet-peas which were growing all round the privy. And then she filled a cleanish tin can with water, poured in the petals and set it on the stove.
I must say that her idea worked a bit better than I thought. But it did take rather a long time to get the fire alight and we wasted hundreds of matches and used two pages of an old comic before it started to burn, and when it did there was so much smoke that my sister started coughing and groaning with her eyes pouring with tears; she looked just like a dreadful old witch. If Angelica had been there she really would have had to believe it, Catholic or not, because she was just like one. I got fed up with the smoke, and after all it wasn’t my scent and I had helped her, so after a while when the smoke was rather thick and she was still spluttering and coughing away, I went off on my own under the trees and soon reached the end of the gully which came out at the very bottom of Great Meadow near the road to the village. People said that the gully was once part of an old smugglers road which led from a tunnel under our house and right down to the Magpie Public House in the village. Some people said that it went on from there all the way to the cliffs at Birling Gap where they landed all the rum and stuff on the beach and brought it up on ponies to our house where they hid it in the tunnel under our hall.
Once our mother was crossing the h
all with a bowl of flowers to set on the sitting-room table and there was an awful crash and a screech and when we all ran into the hall there was no sign of our mother at all. Just a big hole in the floor-boards. Our father was very shocked, indeed. We all were.
“Margaret!” he yelled out, “Margaret, what’s happened, where are you?” And then far away under the hole, or so it seemed, we heard our mother’s voice calling up, “I’ve fallen through the floor. I’m in a hole down here.”
Our father was peering over the edge of the hole and Lally was wringing her hands and saying, “Oh poor Lady! Poor soul! O! What’ll we do?” My sister was too terrified to cry, but hearing our mother’s voice was a bit reassuring.
“Margaret, are you hurt?” called our father, starting to struggle down the edge of the hole.
“No, just bruised, I think,” came our mother’s voice. “Try and get a torch or a light, it’s terribly dark down here.”
Lally ran off for a torch and our father threw down a box ot matches and started scrambling through the hole calling out to her all the time, “I’m coming down, dear, I’m coming down.” It was all very exciting once we knew she wasn’t dead or covered in blood. At last he was hanging by his hands and I heard our mother saying in a very muffled sort of voice, “I’ve got your legs, darling,” or something and then he disappeared too. Just then Lally came back with the torch from the kitchen and gave a great cry when she saw no father and just the empty hole.
“Where’s he gone?” she cried. “Oh Lord have mercy.”
“He’s down the hole with our mother.” I explained he just climbed down. We passed the torch to him, it was so deep down in the hole that just his hand came through the floor. “Your mother’s all right,” he said and took the torch and disappeared into the dark. We were a bit worried; the three of us just sat round the hole and waited. Lally was fanning herself with her hands. “I can’t take these shocks,” she said. “They get my heart quick as a dart,” and puffed away. My sister was kneeling down, peering over the floor. All the boards were broken round the edge where our mother had gone through.
“This house is too old,” said Lally, getting some of her breath back. “Those boards are rotten through and through, it’s a wonder she wasn’t killed I declare. Like bits of sponge cake they are, and covered with that rug you’d never see a sign. Too old. The whole place is too old.”
After a while we got ladders and things and helped them up again; our mother was very stiff but all right except for a big bump on her head, but she kissed us both and said there was nothing to worry about, and then our father came up looking quite excited and said the hole was a sort of tunnel all lined with bricks … but that it was blocked up with rubble at one end. He seemed more excited about the brick walls of the tunnel which he said were all made of very thin bricks which meant that they were Tudor, or something, or earlier. Then Lally made our mother have a lay-down, as she called it; and when there were really no bones broken and everything was tidied up we were allowed to go down ourselves.
It was very creepy. It was dark and damp and there were little puddles on the muddy floor … and it was quite round, like a railway tunnel, but very much smaller … only wide enough for two to walk side by side. It went quite a long way until the rubble started and our father said we must be beyond the cottage by now and in the Great Meadow, or nearly. Lally didn’t like it much at all. She didn’t even like going down the ladder to start with, and when she found an old muddy Wellington boot lying in the slime of the floor she nearly had a turn and our father helped her out again and up the ladder. But it was just an old Wellington, I mean nothing to do with smugglers or anything exciting like that.
After a while we had all the floor-boards mended, and people came and examined the tunnel and said that it probably started in the middle of the little church and came down under our house and then went on down the hill under the meadow to the village. But we never really found out. And in time we all forgot about it, except on winters nights when I thought we heard ghostly rumbling noises of barrels being rolled under the house. But it was only ever the wind in the elms. Anyway it was quite exciting to have a part of a real smugglers’ tunnel under your own hall. Except of course that our mother could have been killed or broken her legs or something, and afterwards Lally used to walk on tiptoe crossing the hall to the sitting-room in case it all fell down again. But it never did.
Chapter 6
At Twickenham, after Walnut Cottage, there were three other favourite places; although Walnut, with its garden and the greenhouse and a great long shed which Mr Jane used for “pottering” in, was really the most favourite. I did like the toy shop in Church Street, the boat-yard near the bridge where we used to get punts from, Eel Pie Island, and Marble Hill.
Marble Hill was lovely. It was a big white house, not as big as Hampton Court, but white and gleaming in the sun. There was a great park all about it, and real hills which you could run up, and trees and, best of all, a lake-thing full of lilies and goldfish. Not many people used to go there. Perhaps because of the White Ladies in the lake. They were huge. Bigger than me or even bigger than our father—and they were all sitting on white rocks combing their hair, or pulling their friends out of the water. It really was very strange to look at. These big ladies, and some were gentlemen, were sort of all having a day by the seaside, only in the lake. The ones in the water, well, the parts of the ones which were in the water, were all green with slime, and they reached their hands up to the ones who were all busy combing their hair, for help.
My sister thought they were all drowning, or had fallen in among the lilies and fishes; she liked them as much as I did. But she said they were rather rude, simply because they hadn’t got any clothes on, and she was worried about the gentlemen ones who wore a sort of leaf thing and were all trying to climb the white rocks. Lally said that it was a fountain and made from marble in Italy and was very famous and beautiful if you liked that sort of thing. But Mrs Jane didn’t, and wouldn’t really look at them, when she came sometimes with us, and just went on with her knitting in a chair.
We used to go there quite often, to get a breath of air, as Lally said, and also to meet some of her other friends who also had children with them, but much younger than we were … usually in prams. It was quite a long way from Twickenham and we took a bus from The Green and clambered up on the top deck and sat on the slatty seats looking over the side. It was rather like being on a boat. And sometimes, in wet weather, we had a canvas apron thing which we pulled over our knees, which made us feel very snug and safe.
From the top of the bus you could look down on people in the street, and they never knew, and also, which was more fun, you could see into people’s gardens all along the way, and sometimes into their rooms. Which was very private, rather like spying. You could see people washing up, or sewing things at a machine, or having their teas, and they never ever knew that we were both watching them all. Mrs Jane said they ought to have curtains up, but that would have spoiled the fun really. It was just that they didn’t know we were watching that was so interesting. Once we saw a very fat man dancing all by himself; he twirled round and round, and had his arms up in the air. I think that he was singing too, because his mouth kept on opening and shutting like a fish. We were always told it was rude to stare, but on top of a bus it was hard not to. You couldn’t just look ahead all the time like Mrs Jane who was terrified that the wind would take her hat off, even though it was pinned hard into her bun. She used to get quite cross with Lally for letting us spit on the people in the street. Well, not actually spit on them, rather we used to drop a bit of a gobbit on the ones who had hats on. Never on people who hadn’t.
“They really are getting out of hand,” she used to say to Lally. “Why don’t you stop them? It’s disgusting what they’re doing.”
“It’s only a bit of spittle, Mother,” said Lally. “Your hat won’t blow off, you know … you’ll have arm-ache if you go on holding on to it like that.”
“And if it does blow off? What then? It’s my best you know. We aren’t all made of money like some I wouldn’t like to mention not half an hour from Twickenham Green. You’ve got spoiled in your ways, my girl. When I was in Service it took me a year to save up for a new hat… I am not about to forget that, my girl.” When she said My Girl to Lally we knew that she was really a bit vexed. And Lally knew it too, because she shook a fist at us and told us to stop, or else we’d get a good hiding.
Going home was rather nice too, nearly as exciting as going to Marble Hill. We got off at The Green and walked down under the chestnut trees, across the main road, and then down the street to the Cottages. They were right down at the bottom; you could see them from a long way off because of the big walnut tree and the little white fence round the clinker rockery in the front garden full of London Pride. Sometimes Mr Jane would be home first; we always knew because his bicycle was propped up against the shed in the little yard at the back through the green door.
“Father’s home,” said Mrs Jane, pulling out her hat-pin and smoothing her bun, and went into the kitchen. We washed our hands at the scullery sink, a big yellow stone one, with a pump and a tin bowl and a pink cake of soap which smelled of disinfectant, combed our hair, and went into the kitchen for tea.
The kitchen was really quite small with a little window which looked out into the garden but which was so full of geraniums and wandering sailor that you could hardly see out. There was a range with a brass tap and knobs on the oven doors, a big table where we all ate, beside the staircase, and a small cross-legged bamboo table where Mr Jane ate alone by the fire. He was very deaf and didn’t like having to make conversation. He hardly ever spoke at all, actually. Sometimes he said in a very rumbling voice, “Thank you, Mother,” or “I think I’ll be going up then,” or sometimes when he found something interesting in the local paper he’d say, “I see they’re at it again.” But you never knew who they were or what they were up to. So you couldn’t answer him even to be polite. No one ever seemed to talk to him really. But, sometimes, when we were in bed, we could hear Mrs Jane’s voice telling him what we had all been doing during the day. We never heard him, only her, because she had to talk very loudly. Their room was next door to ours so we were able to hear everything pretty clearly. I felt rather uncomfortable and tried to make coughing noises so that she’d perhaps hear that we were awake. But she never did, and after a while I didn’t bother any longer.