‘So, do you have a name?’ Griselda asked, smothering Herbert’s face with the toe of her shoe.
‘It’s Phoebe.’
Griselda thought about it. ‘Yuck. What a horrid little name. Who came up with that?’
Phoebe shrugged. ‘I think I did, Miss Bone – when I was five. I saw on your register that you’d crossed out my name and put Girl so I thought that I’d make up another name and add a little description of myself in case you ever,’ her voice shrank, ‘forgot me. I chose Phoebe because silent letters are always exciting and I mentioned snowdrops in the description because they’re my favourite flowers.’ She paused because Griselda’s jaw had gone very stiff and Phoebe wasn’t sure whether this was because Griselda had forgotten her again, mid-conversation, or whether it was because she had said something ridiculous. She decided to offer up one more sentence, so that became clearer. ‘I also added puddles because they’re good for stomping in.’
Slobber let out a long, disgusted burp.
‘Silent letters? Snowdrops? Puddles?!’
Griselda took her foot off Herbert, who promptly flopped over, then she rolled her shoulders back. ‘You are the runt of my litter, but what I cannot understand is how someone as forgettable as you can be so absolutely infuriating. It is an extremely dangerous combination—’ she paused as she searched for an appropriate metaphor ‘—like a banana skin left on a supermarket floor, a forgettable piece of waste that can cause a surprising amount of bother.’
Phoebe gulped.
Griselda pressed on. ‘Your senses are unravelling, Runt. Your thoughts are spiralling into madness . . . And it is my job – no, my duty – to set things right.’ She thrust her clipboard back inside her briefcase. ‘This is a war and I will not rest until I have blasted daydreams, skipping, doodling and hide-and-seek from our country!’
Phoebe wondered where on earth all the daydreams and skipping would be banished to. Norway, perhaps? She’d seen photos of people skipping around statues of trolls in her encyclopedias. But she knew the contents of Griselda’s briefcase – leg irons to prevent children from skipping, a neck brace to straighten necks that daydreamed towards windows, and duct tape to seal up nooks and crannies used in hide-and-seek – so she knew better than to question her.
Griselda blew her whistle sharply. ‘I have decided to cancel the Christmas holidays and continue with lessons to prevent the collapse of your mind into absolute childishness.’
‘But—’ Phoebe started, as she thought of the secret Christmas she and Herb had planned in the attic.
Griselda blew her whistle again. ‘No buts, Runt – embrace this change. Look nobly to your future. There is algebra there – and fractions, grammar and spelling.’
Shoulders sagging, Phoebe bent to pick up Herbert.
‘Leave the footrest!’ Griselda barked. ‘It has legs of its own and will catch us up.’
Then Griselda was off, dragging Phoebe into the orphanage by the scruff of her neck, and as Phoebe’s trainers skidded over the floorboards, she thought that as Christmas Eves went, this was by far one of the very worst.
They hurried through the hall, past the sculpture of Drool on a large round table, the portraits of Slobber hanging from the walls and the old grandfather clock in the corner of the room. Griselda flung open a door which had once led into a sitting room with sofas, patterned curtains and a beautiful grand piano. All that was now gone and in its place was a classroom: a blackboard at the front, four bare walls, windows blocked by blind-slats and row upon row of empty desks. Griselda hurled Phoebe forward as if she was tossing a stick for a dog.
‘Sit!’ she barked.
Phoebe wove her way between the desks to one beside the window. The blinds were down, closing off the view into the garden, but one slat had caught in the string and through the gap Phoebe could just make out the snow sparkling on the lawn and a robin perched on the wall. She shook off her coat and then swallowed as she realized she was wearing a jumper rather than a suit jacket. Griselda, standing so solidly and so squarely at the front of the room that she looked like a fridge encased in pinstripe, had very strict rules about uniform.
‘A jumper?’ Griselda roared as she looked Phoebe up and down. ‘Have I not made it absolutely clear that orphans are to wear suit jackets at all times? Even in bed!’
Phoebe shrank into her seat and tried to muster up a believable excuse. ‘I thought that since it was cold and there was snow out maybe—’
Griselda punched her knuckles into the desk. ‘It does not matter if you are cold, Runt! Suit jackets mean business. They speak of purpose and policies and power. I sleep in a business suit, I shower in a business suit, I exercise in a business suit.’ She was swelling inside her jacket as she reached her full crescendo. ‘I was born in a business suit, Runt!’
Phoebe tried to imagine a baby in pinstripe then gave up and nodded meekly.
‘We will start with grammar,’ Griselda spat. ‘With some good, clean sentences to stamp this childishness out.’
She raised the whistle to her lips, blew hard, and seconds later Slobber burst into the room, thrashing his head from side to side before leaping up onto Griselda’s desk.
Griselda wedged a piece of paper into Slobber’s mouth. ‘Go on, then, boy. Give it to the Runt.’
The pit bull terrier hurtled across the room like a runaway cannonball. Phoebe clutched at the edges of her seat as Slobber thumped the paper down in front of her, took a quick nip at the back of her ankle then tore back to his mistress.
Griselda settled herself in the chair behind her desk, whistled for Herbert to resume his role as her footrest, and then pulled out a bone from her briefcase and chucked it to Slobber.
‘Complete the sentences, Runt. I do not want to see a single mention of silent letters, snowdrops or puddles and if you so much as mention a dragon,’ Slobber looked up from slathering over his bone and shot Phoebe a warning look, ‘it will be the kennels for you tonight.’
Phoebe tugged the pencil from her hair. The urge to doodle a dragon in the corner of her page was almost unbearable, but she bit down on her lip and read the first sentence:
1. Snow falls
2. Rain feels
3. Food is
4. Children are
5. Dogs like
There were so many things Phoebe could put at the end of each sentence, but which words would please Griselda most? She took a deep breath, twizzled her pencil and then started writing:
1. Snow falls quietly, but if you listen hard there is a bit of noise. Sort of whispery.
2. Rain feels very nice to splash in.
3. Food is mostly good, but Brussels sprouts are terrible. Jelly is sometimes funny.
4. Children are a bit small, but they are often fierce and very brave.
5. Dogs like dancing.
‘Excuse me, Miss Bone,’ Phoebe said. ‘I’ve done the sentences.’
Griselda leaned forward, her boots sliding further into poor Herbert’s back, and for a second she looked almost startled to see Phoebe there at all. She shook her head.
‘What a forgettable child you are, Runt. I turn my head for a moment and it’s as if you never existed. And yet there you are with your blinking eyes and ridiculous hair. So,’ Griselda stood up and Herbert gave a little gasp before scurrying into the corner, ‘you have written the answers.’
‘I’ve written some answers,’ Phoebe replied nervously.
Griselda took a stride out from behind her desk, her clipboard in her hands. ‘There was only one suitable response to each sentence so I very much hope you have answered correctly, Runt.’ She scanned Phoebe’s sheet of paper. ‘Snow falls quietly, but if you listen hard there is a bit of noise. Sort of whispery.’ Griselda made a strange retching sound and Phoebe suddenly wondered whether she was going to be sick. ‘Whispery isn’t even a word!’ She carried on down the list. ‘Rain feels very nice to splash in?! Food is mostly good, but Brussels sprouts are terrible. Jelly is sometimes funny?! Children are a bit
small, but they are often fierce and very brave?!’ She shook her head. ‘Dogs like dancing?! DANCING?! Have you ever, in your life, seen a dog dance, Runt?’
Herbert made a sharp exit from the classroom then Slobber surged towards Phoebe, jumped onto her desk and wrestled the exercise sheet to the ground. He crunched it into a ball and then swallowed it – whole.
‘There are no such things as dancing dogs and whispering snow!’ Griselda boomed.
Phoebe’s eyes slipped to the doorway, where she could just make out Herbert doing a quiet waltz in the hall, but no amount of dancing could cheer her up now.
Griselda rapped her clipboard. ‘Snow falls down. Rain feels wet. Food is necessary. Children are annoying. And dogs like bones. That is how the sentences go, Runt!’
Phoebe hung her head.
‘I was going to try you with some mathematics,’ Griselda muttered, ‘but I can see this is a slippery slope. Perhaps some time in the kennels will sort you out?’
Phoebe shivered as she remembered the time Griselda had caught her doing a cartwheel in the corridor and had sentenced her to an overnight stay in the kennels. There had been thunder and lightning that night, and while Phoebe found watching storms from the attic skylight extremely exciting, it hadn’t been quite the same as sitting one out in a kennel.
She shook her head. ‘Please don’t send me to the kennels, Miss Bone. What if I promise to do better?’
Griselda licked her fingers then ran the saliva back through her hair. ‘You find jelly funny. You think children are brave. You believe in dragons! And the only thing I have to say about that is KENNEL TIME.’
‘But – but it’s almost Christmas,’ Phoebe pleaded.
Griselda cracked her knuckles. ‘A horrid time of year – too much smiling and not nearly enough biting.’
‘But – but . . .’ Phoebe thought of her branch in the attic with its tinfoil stars. ‘What if I made some decorations for us, and we got some tinsel – it might make Christmas feel a little less horrid?’
Griselda shuddered. ‘Tinsel is disgraceful.’ Tucking her clipboard under her arm, she pulled a dog lead from her pocket, widened the loop and forced it down over Phoebe’s neck and shoulders until it was snug around her stomach. She yanked hard and Phoebe squealed. ‘To heel again, Runt!’
Phoebe ran to keep up as Griselda tore from the classroom and paced across the hall. Slobber paused to lick a portrait of himself mauling a pug in the park and Phoebe glimpsed Herbert scuttling behind Griselda’s study door, on which a gold plaque read:
JOIN THE WAR AGAINST CHILDISHNESS – YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU!
Griselda quickened her stride. ‘Chop, chop, Runt! I’ve got an appointment with my photocopier and I haven’t got all day.’
‘If – if I carried out some extra chores,’ Phoebe panted as she skidded over the floorboards, ‘perhaps I could spend the rest of the day in the attic, in Herbert’s dog basket? I’d be completely out of your way.’
Griselda stopped for a moment. ‘I might not notice you – you are an extremely unnoticeable person after all – but I would know that somewhere in my house there was a stupid little girl thinking that jelly is sometimes funny. And the horror of that would cause both Slobber and me unnecessary irritation.’
And though Herbert was doing a desperate body shake beyond the study door, Phoebe couldn’t help the little tear that trickled down her cheek.
Griselda dragged Phoebe round the side of the orphanage, swerving to miss a clump of snow that toppled down from the roof. She paused beneath the fire-escape ladder and Phoebe swallowed as Griselda drew herself up, grey and bulging like an angry cloud. Had she spotted Phoebe and Herbert’s footprints on the rungs?
But Griselda was eying the heap of snow that had fallen from the roof. ‘If you can complete the sentence about snow correctly,’ she muttered, ‘I shall allow you back into the orphanage tomorrow. But if you fail, it will be the kennels for the rest of the holidays.’ She consulted her clipboard. ‘So, Runt: snow falls—’
Phoebe tried hard to focus her mind on an answer filled with suits and systems, but when she looked at the snow sparkling around them, she couldn’t stop the words tumbling out: ‘Snow falls with a flumping noise as it slides off the tiles and hits the ground.’
There was a stony silence.
‘Flumping?!’ Griselda snapped her clipboard in two over a pinstriped leg. ‘I was braced for more dragons and puddles but tearing down the English language and replacing it with made-up words?!’
Slobber lowered his head to the ground then charged into Phoebe who staggered back against the orphanage wall.
Griselda took a step forward so that her nose was only centimetres away from Phoebe’s. ‘I tried to ignore “whispery” back in the classroom, but hearing you sabotage our language for the second time today has confirmed my worst thoughts.’ A vein that Phoebe had never noticed before began to throb in Griselda’s forehead. ‘You are a Word Murderer, Runt, and that is the reason nobody wants to adopt you! They might just about get by with you being so forgettable, but no amount of earplugs would be able to drown out the poison that drips from your mouth! You bring sensible verbs crashing to their knees and heaven only knows what wicked plans you have for our nouns and adjectives . . . Only a long stint in the kennels will smash this childishness out of you!’
Phoebe tried to protest, but Griselda was already marching her over the gravel towards the row of kennels – each one small and wooden with a slanted roof – that lined the wall encircling the orphanage. Griselda tugged the lead off, flung Phoebe inside and fastened a metal cuff around her ankle. Phoebe’s mouth widened as she realized that the cuff was attached to a chain, which in turn was fixed to the inside of the kennel. Whatever plans she had been making to sneak up the fire escape into the attic that evening had been ruined. She was trapped inside the kennel and her and Herbert’s secret Christmas was no more.
‘Close your mouth, Runt; it looks like an open toilet bowl.’ Slobber sniggered as he and Griselda turned to leave. ‘Now where’s that wretched footrest gone?’
Phoebe huddled inside the kennel and sniffed as a tear smudged down her nose. Then, as Griselda and Slobber disappeared into the orphanage, there was a rustling from a rhododendron bush in the garden and a chestnut sausage dog scampered towards the kennel.
‘Oh, Herb,’ Phoebe sobbed as he climbed inside the kennel and snuggled into her chest. ‘I used to think that at some point my Miracle Day would come – that I wouldn’t be forgotten by absolutely everybody in the world – but no one’s going to want me if I’m a Word Murderer.’
Herbert licked Phoebe’s cheek then he scrambled off her lap and, on top of the rags behind her, he did the most joyful can can he could muster.
Phoebe blinked through her tears. ‘I’m so glad I have you, Herb.’
She reached for a blanket and wrapped it around her then she sat with the sausage dog at the entrance of the kennel, and while families laughed and sang and played beyond the orphanage wall, Phoebe and Herb watched their Christmas Eve drain away.
Phoebe nibbled on the chunk of dry bread Slobber had tossed her for supper. ‘The world looks almost blue now the sunlight’s gone,’ she whispered.
Herbert looked on in silence and Phoebe closed her eyes and listened sadly to the tawny owl calling from the graveyard. When she opened them again, though, she smiled – because tiny white flecks were now drifting down from the sky.
‘It’s snowing, Herb! Jack and I always used to say that fresh snow on Christmas Eve means magic is on its way.’ She felt an unexpected tingle as the word ‘magic’ tiptoed out of her mouth.
They watched the darkening sky grow speckled as more and more snowflakes tumbled down. Phoebe stuck out a hand and let them fall into her palm, each jewelled pattern more beautiful than the one before, then she glanced at the cuff around her ankle.
‘There’ll be enough snow to build a snowman, Herb – and I reckon this chain’s long enough for me to climb outside . . .’
>
Herbert tiptoed out of the kennel first, then Phoebe followed, bundled up in the old dog rags. They rolled a ball of snow back and forth until it was large enough for a body and though Phoebe’s hands were numbed through they kept on building, pushing great handfuls of snow together to build the snowman’s head.
After a while, Phoebe stood back and beamed. ‘He’s the most splendid snowman I’ve ever seen!’
The sausage dog did a quick flamenco dance to show that he agreed.
‘But he needs a face,’ Phoebe added. ‘To make him even more splendid.’
She looked at the buttons on her blazer, chewed hard on her lip as she thought about what Griselda might say, then yanked them off anyway and pressed them into a smile on the snowman’s head. She tugged the pencil out of her hair and slotted it in for a nose, then arranged the reel of thread in one eye and the paperclip in the other. She climbed back into the kennel with Herbert and they watched their snowman standing proud among the falling flakes.
‘He’s like a guardian, Herb – someone to watch out for us this Christmas. He’s not going to make us complete sentences or wage a war on doodling; he’s just going to be still and silent and,’ Phoebe struggled for the right words, ‘possibly a little bit magical, too.’
And as both the girl and the sausage dog looked, they had the strangest feeling that maybe there was something more to their guardian than first met the eye.
Winter Magic Page 25