White Boots

by Noel Streatfeild

  “Now come along and wash, we don’t want your aunt to see you swelled up like that. It would never do. You know, dear, you’ve been a bit of a madam lately, as often I’ve told you. You had to know best, you wouldn’t listen to that Mr Lindblom when he said you weren’t working at those nasty brackets, but you’ll be able to try again, won’t you?” Lalla agreed that she would in the autumn. “Well then, what are these tears for? If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

  Lalla choked back a sob.

  “But I’m not used to trying again, I’m used to doing things right away.”

  “I know, dear, but pride comes before a fall. Now come along, let me get you tidied up, and then you run down to your aunt and tell her quietly what’s happened, and that you’re expecting to do well in the autumn, and I’m sure she’ll be very nice about it.”

  Lalla was at her basin turning on the water to wash her face.

  “You don’t think that, Nana, you’re only saying it to make me feel better. She’ll be awful about it, you know she will.” Lalla’s lips began to wobble again. “Oh, what will I do if she says Harriet can’t come here any more? Harriet only comes here to make me work harder, and now I’ve failed at my very first test after she’s come. I just couldn’t bear it if I had to go back to doing things alone again.”

  Nana was laying a frock on the bed so her back was to Lalla. Lalla could not see, but her face was worried. It was only too likely that Aunt Claudia would say that lessons with Harriet were to stop; she had always said that a child like Lalla was best kept by herself, not mixing with other children, and now at last, when they had managed to get her a friend, look what had happened. To Nana that Lalla had not passed her test mattered nothing, unless it meant that Lalla once more was made to work alone.

  “Did Wilson say what time your aunt would be in?”

  “She just said she’d be in for lunch.”

  Nana looked at the clock.

  “It’s only just gone half-past twelve, she’s not often in before one. Do you know what I’d do if I was you? I’d telephone your Uncle David at his office and tell him what’s happened, and ask him the best way of explaining things to your aunt. Gentlemen, having business heads and all, are good at knowing how things had best be put.” She gave Lalla a little push. “Run along down, dear, and do it right away before he goes out to his lunch, you can tidy for your aunt after.”

  Uncle David was just leaving his office when the telephone rang. He was going to signal to his secretary to say he was out, when he heard that it was Lalla. His cheerful voice came down the line.

  “How’s the child wonder this morning?”

  “Not a wonder any more.” Lalla’s voice rose in a wail. “Uncle David, I’ve failed.”

  Uncle David laughed.

  “Failed in your figures? Isn’t that shattering!”

  “I knew you’d laugh, but Aunt Claudia won’t. And Nana said I was to ask you how best it was to be put, so Harriet wouldn’t be sent away.”

  At once Uncle David grew serious. He had not thought of that. He had been glad that he had arranged that Lalla had Harriet to learn things with and play with, and had not thought of it coming to an end, but now he saw what Nana meant. How best could it be put?

  “Half a moment, poppet, while I think.” He sat down at his desk, the receiver in his hand, and doodled on his blotting paper, which always helped him to get ideas. He drew Lalla on skates. Then he drew Aunt Claudia. As he drew Aunt Claudia he knew the only thing that would make it safe that Harriet was not sent away. He spoke carefully, because it was a difficult thing to explain. “You know how important Aunt Claudia thinks this skating of yours is, and she’s brought you up to think as she does. But, of course, really skating is like a game; it’s grand to be a first-class tennis player or cricketer, but it isn’t wrong for somebody not to want to be first-class.”

  “But I do want to be a first-class skater. I’m going to be the greatest skater in the world.”

  “Do you think Harriet’s going to help you to be that?”

  Lalla remembered all the times that Harriet had tried to make her practise.

  “It wasn’t her fault I failed, she tried to make me practise my brackets and I wouldn’t.”

  “Harriet sounds fine. I should think you’d listen to what she said next time, wouldn’t you? If I were you, if Aunt Claudia says that Harriet is to go away, I should tell her that if Harriet goes you don’t want to skate any more.” He heard Lalla gasp. “Well, it wouldn’t be as much fun, would it? It’s nearly summer and you don’t skate much in the summer anyway, and I think you would find that Aunt Claudia wouldn’t want you to stop skating, and when she hears you would rather not skate than let Harriet go she will let Harriet go on working with you. In the autumn you can work so hard that you can show her what a help Harriet’s been.”

  Lalla came back to her bedroom looking solemn. She told Nana what Uncle David had advised. Nana made fussed noises with her tongue against her teeth.

  “What a thing to ask a child of your age to say! Don’t want to skate any more! Whatever next! Still, you don’t skate regular in the summer. Mind you, he’s right, there isn’t no more reason why you should skate than why I should ride a donkey.”

  That made Lalla laugh.

  “Silly Nana! Think of you on a donkey!” Nana was putting Lalla’s frock on. When Lalla’s head came out through the top she was serious again. “Do you know, I think Uncle David really and truly doesn’t think it matters if I skate. I thought before, when he said things like that, he was teasing, but I think he really doesn’t think it matters. That makes me feel very peculiar.”

  Nana buttoned the frock.

  “He’s right, dear, you won’t be eleven till the autumn. There’s no reason a child of your age should be set on anything. Of course, with your father behind you and your aunt so fond of the skating and all, it’s got into you.”

  Lalla moved to the dressing-table for Nana to brush her hair.

  “I feel like Alice in Wonderland felt when she fell down the rabbit hole. I mean, it’s like me having fallen down a rabbit hole and found things were different at the bottom. At the top everybody knew I had to be a great skater, and at the bottom people like you and Uncle David say it doesn’t matter much.” Nana’s bell rang three times. Lalla looked at Nana. “I’ll make Aunt Claudia let Harriet stay. But you and Uncle David aren’t going to make me think skating doesn’t matter, so there.”

  Aunt Claudia had a lot of afternoon engagements, and had hurried home for a quick lunch before changing for them. She had no time to waste, but when she saw Lalla she wanted to hear how many marks she had got in her test.

  “Did you do well, darling?”

  Lalla, having screwed herself up to confessing, did not waste time.

  “Very badly. I failed.”

  The word “failed” made Aunt Claudia flinch as if someone had thrown a stone at her.

  “Failed! But, Lalla, that’s impossible.”

  “It was not impossible at all, and if you want to know I failed badly. They let Max have my marks. I only got forty-one, and the reason I didn’t pass was because I was bored with brackets and wouldn’t work at them. Max tried to make me, and Harriet tried and tried but I wouldn’t.”

  Aunt Claudia had come in thinking what a lovely day it was; she was happy and she felt that Lalla was deliberately spoiling everything for her. She so believed in Lalla’s skating future that she found it hard to take in what she had said. Failed! Failed badly! Forty-one marks, it was impossible. Everybody knew the child had a brilliant future. Then she remembered that in the afternoon she was going to a bridge party, with some of the people she had persuaded to take tickets for Lalla’s first skating exhibition. Since that night they had been interested in Lalla and had asked after her. She had told them that this morning Lalla was to take her silver test, and that she was extraordinarily young to try for it, and they had said they hoped she would pass, and she had laughed and had said: “I don�
�t think we need worry about that.” They were sure to ask how Lalla had done. It made her feel quite ill to think that she would have to admit that Lalla had failed. As she thought of her bridge party her voice grew cold and hard.

  “Come into the drawing room. We’d better have a talk about this.”

  Lalla was frightened by the tone in Aunt Claudia’s voice, and it made her sound a little rude.

  “Talk as much as you like. I’ve told you what happened, and it’s me that minds most, not you.”

  In the drawing room Aunt Claudia dragged a full description of the figure test out of Lalla. Because she had taken an interest in skating when Lalla’s father was learning, and because of Lalla, she knew more or less what Lalla was talking about. She grasped how bad Lalla’s tracings must have been, and she felt convinced that Lalla could have done them perfectly if only she had worked. Obviously something must be done to make her work in future. She had got to get through these tests before she could enter for the open championships, with all the fun and the excitement that those would mean.

  “I must see Max Lindblom; you must, of course, have extra lessons so that you pass easily in the autumn, and I must arrange somehow for your lessons to continue throughout the summer.”

  “You can’t. Max goes home to Sweden every summer. He sees his family then.”

  “We shall see. Then clearly you’re having too many distractions. I was never sure if it was a good idea having Harriet to work with you; I knew what it would be, you’d play about and fritter away your time. I’ll telephone to Mrs Johnson and explain that the arrangement must finish.”

  Lalla was trembling inside and this made her speak in an extra loud voice, so that it would not tremble too.

  “If you do that, I won’t skate any more.”

  Aunt Claudia was as surprised as she would have been if a worm had turned round in the garden and told her to look more carefully where she walked. She repeated what Lalla had said in a shocked voice.

  “You won’t skate any more!”Then, as the words made sense, “Lalla! Child! You don’t know what you’re saying. That isn’t my Lalla speaking. Why, ever since you were a baby you’ve thought of nothing but skating. I can see you now, insisting on holding your first little boots and skates when you were so small you had to ride in a perambulator. Not skate any more! Silly child. Why, you couldn’t live without skating.”

  Lalla had heard what skating meant to her ever since she could remember, but as Aunt Claudia spoke she felt glad to hear it again. It made her feel more ordinary than hearing Nana and Uncle David say that it was possible she could give it up. But she was not going to give in about Harriet.

  “I only said I wouldn’t skate any more if you took Harriet away.”

  Aunt Claudia had been badly frightened. She had been looking forward for so long to the fun that she was going to have when Lalla was a star that even the suggestion that it might not happen made her feel as if the sun had gone in for ever. She did not want to give in to Lalla, but, small though Lalla was, she could see that she meant what she said. The only thing to do would be to agree that Harriet went on sharing Lalla’s classes and speak to Harriet. Harriet must be made to feel her responsibilities. She was getting this wonderful chance of sharing Lalla’s expensive classes and she must understand that she was only being allowed these privileges if they were good for Lalla.

  “Come here.” Lalla came unwillingly. “Don’t look cross, darling. You know I’m only thinking of you. I know what a great gift you have and what a wonderful future you’re going to have, if only you work. Everything we’ve planned is for that. We’ll say no more about today as a set-back, but we won’t let it happen again, will we? We’ll just be more determined than ever…” She was going to say “more determined than ever that Lalla should be world champion,” but Lalla was sure the quotation was coming and said it for her.

  “That my square-turn’d joints and strength of limb, will make me a champion grim. I know I’ve been a carpet knight today, but I won’t be any more if you won’t say anything more about Harriet going away.”

  Aunt Claudia kissed her.

  “That’s the spirit, now run along up to the schoolroom, it’s lunch time.”

  The rest of that skating season passed quickly. If Max was upset that Lalla had failed to pass her test, he did not tell her so. In spite of Aunt Claudia suggesting that Lalla should have extra lessons, he refused to give them to her; in fact, before the season came to an end, he stopped giving her lessons. He said she could just enjoy herself on the ice and forget about figures because she was getting stale. In the autumn, when he came back from two months in Sweden, they would get down to her training and work really hard. To Harriet he said:

  “And you too must work in the autumn. After Christmas you will be taking your preliminary and bronze tests. I think it good that you and Lalla should both be working for tests at the same time.”

  Harriet was terribly pleased Max thought she was good enough even to try to pass a test. She had not thought of herself as the sort of skater who would enter for tests. She decided, if she was going to try for them, she was not going to wait for the autumn to start working. The rink would be closed for a month, but right up to the day it closed, and on the day it opened again, she would be there for her usual afternoon practice. She was surprised that Max thought it a good idea for her and Lalla to work for tests at the same time, but perhaps Max did not know that Lalla always wanted an audience, and that you couldn’t watch her bracket tracings and practise figures yourself at the same time. Then, of course, Max did not know what Aunt Claudia had said. Harriet had not understood absolutely everything that Aunt Claudia had said herself, but she had understood how lucky she was to be allowed to work with Lalla, and that in exchange she must see that Lalla passed her silver test in the autumn with almost full marks. Harriet did not need to be told to want Lalla to pass with a lot of marks in the autumn; she wanted it without any telling, but she did wish Aunt Claudia did not think she could arrange it. Lalla had worked really hard for a bit after she failed in her test, which was why Max told her not to work any more in case she got stale, but Lalla was not the sort of person to go on working like that. If ever she thought she knew a figure and did it well, she would go mad-doggish and probably not work again for weeks and weeks.

  Luckily that summer lots of nice things happened which stopped both Lalla and Harriet thinking about skating tests. Miss Goldthorpe’s Saturday afternoons were lovely. She arranged trips by river steamer to Greenwich, and in Uncle David’s motor launch to places like Windsor and Hampton Court. She took them to Wimbledon to watch the tennis championships, and to matinées of Shakespeare’s plays in Regent’s Park. Sometimes she invited Alec, Toby and Edward to come too, which she could do without permission because they were her parties. At first, after she had failed at her test, Lalla did not want to see Toby in case he said something rude like “I warned you”.

  “You can tell him I passed my free,” Lalla told Harriet, “but I didn’t exactly pass the figures.”

  Harriet had not had to say anything. Her family were not interested in skating tests unless they worried Harriet. Harriet went skating to grow strong and look less like a daddy-long-legs, and Lalla because it was going to be her profession, and that was the end of that. Everybody knew they both went to the rink every afternoon, and both had lessons from somebody called Max Lindblom, so there was nothing to talk about.

  That summer Alec’s dream began to come true. In consultation with Toby he spent the money he had made on his paper round on fruit and vegetables bought at Covent Garden. He and Toby would get up very early and go to Covent Garden on the Underground. They would be there so early that they saw the fruit and vegetables arrive, smelling quite different from Uncle William’s fruit and vegetables. They would watch the stuff unloaded and sometimes, when it was carried on a cart drawn by a pony, Alec would nudge Toby and say: “That’s the sort of pony and cart I’m going to have.”They could not go to Covent Garde
n every day because getting up so early made them sleepy at school, and Alec terribly stupid on his evening paper round, so that unless he was careful he put the wrong papers in the wrong letter-boxes. But they usually managed to go on Tuesdays and on Fridays. Tuesdays to get some of the good stuff that had not been picked on Sundays, and Fridays because Saturdays were holidays and it was possible to make up sleep missed by getting up early. Toby made an arrangement with George about Alec’s fruit and vegetables. They were sold separately from Uncle William’s, and the money they made was put on one side for Alec. George found the arrangement worrying at first because he never could do accounts but Toby helped him.

  “If you have five pounds of Alec’s strawberries at two shillings a pound, and ten pounds of green peas at one and twopence, and five pounds of broad beans at one and fourpence, and you’ve sold all the strawberries except half a pound, all the broad beans except two pounds and all the peas except one pound, you have to give Alec twenty-three shillings and sixpence, and you are holding four shillings and tenpence in convertible stock. It’s quite easy, Dad.”

  George never found it easy, but he did see that for some reason the shop was doing better. Having good vegetables and fruit on regular days brought people into the shop who might not otherwise have come, and when they were there, seeing a rabbit hanging up or some trout in a basket, made them wonder whether they could use rabbit or trout. In the same way they might come in to buy Alec’s good green peas and then notice some unripe peaches which had fallen off Uncle William’s wall, and think, “Well, stewed peaches will make a change.”

  Of course there were days when what Uncle William sent nobody could possibly buy. He had read somewhere that there was a form of edible toadstool which was nourishing, so several days running he went out with a sack and picked every toadstool he could find. He sent the sacks to George with a note saying, “Sort these out, I believe some of them are good for eating, somebody ought to know.” George, trusting his brother William, did try to sort the first lot of toadstools but luckily Olivia spotted what he was doing.