The Children of Green Knowe Collection

by Lucy M. Boston

  Then there came a flash of lightning in which the whole scene was clearer than the sharpest thought. By its terrible flicker Tolly saw in the middle of the lawn a tree where no tree should be – a tree shaped roughly like a stooping man, that waved its arms before it and clutched the air with its long fingers. In the clap of thunder which followed, Tolly, frozen with terror, raised his thin child’s voice in screams of ‘Linnet! Linnet!’

  Perhaps he had no need to call, for as the thunder died away in distant precipices of sky, Linnet’s voice like an anxious bird was beating the air, calling: ‘St Christopher, St Christopher, come quickly, St Christopher!’

  Other voices joined hers, Toby’s and Alexander’s, piercing and boyish, and other unknown children’s.

  Suddenly their cries ceased. Did that mean it was already too late, that in the darkness any moment he would be pounced upon and feel the tightening of the leafy fingers? Or had St Christopher heard? Was he already stirring the creepers and moving out from the house?

  Moaning winds were rushing and leaping round the circle of the garden, leaving a silence in the centre where something dreadful was certainly taking place. It felt like the pressure of opposing thunderstorms before they break. The air was prickly and the suspense so great that Tolly could not breathe, could hardly stand, his heart nearly choked him. At last a great forked lightning zig-zagged out of the sky, so bright that Tolly could not see anything else, with instantaneous thunder crashing and rolling, enough for ten lightnings. The air was full of a smell of burning.

  ‘Ah!’ said Linnet, Toby and Alexander from the shadows.

  ‘Ah!’ said lots of other happy voices. ‘Green Noah’s gone.’

  As Tolly reached the house, not knowing if he walked or ran, the door opened with a flood of warm light and Mrs Oldknow came out to look for him.

  ‘Tolly, Tolly! Are you all right? What’s happened? Has anything been struck?’

  ‘Green Noah’s gone,’ said Tolly, falling in a dead faint in her arms.

  ‘Shall I carry him in, ma’am?’ said Boggis, appearing with his lantern. ‘I came up to see if you were all right.’

  He carried Tolly in and laid him in a big armchair. Then he fetched a jug of cold water and Mrs Oldknow splashed some on Tolly’s face.

  ‘He’s had a fright, that’s what it is,’ said Boggis. ‘A rare fright by the look of it. I’ll go out and see if I can find anything burning, or anyone about. You’ll be all right till I come back.’

  When Tolly opened his eyes again, the first person they rested on was Toby, who was standing with Alexander by the fireplace.

  ‘Feste’s calling you,’ said Tolly faintly.

  ‘I know,’ said Toby. ‘He trumpeted his loudest when old Noah was struck. I was just waiting for you to come to yourself again. I’ll go now.’

  ‘I wish I could see Feste,’ said Tolly, turning a tired head on his cushion. Toby gave him his most brilliant smile.

  ‘Perhaps Christmas Day is your lucky day,’ he said.

  ‘You should try wearing his clothes,’ said Alexander.

  Linnet and Mrs Oldknow were kneeling by the arm of his chair. He smiled happily at them; then he remembered how silly he had been and his smile went crooked and funny. Linnet pulled what she thought was a terrifying face and wiggled her fingers at him, and they both laughed. Toby went out, passing Boggis in the doorway, who came in without appearing to see him, or Alexander or Linnet. Tolly was sitting up looking nearly himself again, but Boggis was looking very queer.

  ‘Sit down, Boggis,’ said Mrs Oldknow. ‘You look upset. What is the matter? I hope there’s nothing serious?’

  Boggis wiped his bald head with a coloured handkerchief.

  ‘There’s nothing burning now,’ he said with an effort at calmness, ‘but there’s been a tree struck. There’s a charred stump lying on the edge of the lawn – can’t think where it fell from. And there’s things moving.’

  ‘What things, Boggis?’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to say, ma’am. Things as didn’t ought to.’

  ‘Stone things,’ said Linnet in a whisper to Tolly, laughing all over her face.

  Mrs Oldknow poured out a brandy and gave it to Boggis. ‘Drink that,’ she said. ‘I know you are a teetotaller, but it will do you good. Tolly’s had some.’

  Boggis poured it down his throat and smacked his lips.

  ‘And I saw something queer too,’ he said, beginning to twinkle again. ‘I met someone in the garden, and who do you think it was? Now who do you think?’ Mrs Oldknow and Tolly made no suggestions.

  ‘Well, believe it or not, if I could believe my own eyes I’d say it was my grandfather Boggis as died sixty years ago. And as drunk he was! – as drunk as a lord and singing hymns to God Almighty!’

  This time it was Mrs Oldknow who laughed. Tolly turned to share the joke with Alexander and Linnet, but they had vanished.

  ‘Dear old grandfather Boggis,’ said Mrs Oldknow. ‘I liked him very much when I was a child. He was so funny when he was drunk! I was never frightened of him. So he’s celebrating tonight, is he?’

  Soon Tolly was comfortably tucked up in bed and felt at peace with everything. Old Noah was gone for good and all. It even seemed almost a pity.

  ‘What shall we do now?’ he asked Mrs Oldknow. ‘Will you change the name of the house back to Green Knowe?’

  ‘No, I’ve come to like Green Noah better. We’ll plant a new one. We will have Noah and Mrs Noah, one each side of the flood-gate, and I’ll get Father Patrick to come and bless them.’

  *

  NEXT MORNING TOLLY helped Boggis to clear away what was left of Green Noah. He was sawn up and split and taken into the house for firewood. ‘We’ll burn it on Christmas day,’ said Mrs Oldknow.

  ‘I’d be scared to do it,’ said Boggis. ‘Too much like hell fire for me! Might burn the house down with his last breath.’

  ‘I think his last breath has been singed out of him. There’s no sap in the wood at all.’

  When old Noah was neatly stacked in short logs in the corner of the fireplace, there was the pear tree to plant. Tolly wanted it somewhere near St Christopher. They planted it in front of one of the old chapel windows in the wall, because Mrs Oldknow said she would like to see the children’s faces poking through the blossom when it came into flower. ‘It always was a hide-and-seek window,’ she said.

  The delivery van arrived, and there was much secrecy and winking and running to and fro on the part of Boggis, but a basket had arrived labelled ‘Live Birds. URGENT’, which so excited Tolly that he noticed nothing else. It was found to contain two partridges, a cock and a hen, neat plump little creatures of great charm but rather nervous.

  Tied to the basket was a card that said: ‘I have sent a mate with her in case there are none in your district.’ As there were two, they were put in a large coop at the foot of the tree. Tolly fed them and gave them water. He thought they were pretty and funny beyond belief and he was very proud of his present.

  Before tea, when it was getting dark, he tied a label on the coop, on which he had printed as well as he could in different coloured crayons:

  T A L

  with much love

  from

  T

  Then he covered the coop with a sack to keep the partridges warm for the night.

  When Boggis came in to wish them good night and a Merry Christmas tomorrow, Mrs Oldknow and Tolly gave him a bulky parcel for his great-grandson Percy.

  ‘What are you giving him, Boggis?’ said Tolly.

  Boggis’s face was just a red, teasing twinkle.

  ‘I always give him the same every year,’ he said. ‘A box of Liquorice Allsorts.’

  ‘Boggis!’ said Mrs Oldknow.

  ‘Oh, he likes that, ma’am. He knows it’s coming. He looks forward to that.’

  Tolly did the animals’ tree last of all. Mrs Oldknow had given him several triangles of cheese that he pierced with a wire and hung up on a branch. He had burnt holes in the coconut
with a red-hot poker, and that was hung up too. He put the nuts and almonds and raisins in a hollow in the trunk; a mound of crumbs and grated cheese on the ground; another of ants’ eggs and another of pine-kernels; the truffles in a saucer near the pile of twigs where once Truepenny had disappeared; a big cabbage for the rabbit and Watt; and some oats in a wooden bucket. Then he laid trails of birdseed from the four corners of the garden to the yew tree, scattered very sparingly so that the field-mice could not have had enough before they got as far as the party.

  *

  THAT NIGHT THERE was neither thunder nor snow, but a bright moon and keen frost. Before starting to walk to Midnight Mass with Mrs Oldknow, Tolly had been privately to look at St Christopher. The moon shone full on his weathered stone face. He looked as if he had not moved since the beginning of time. As they set off with their moon shadows playing on the path round their feet, Tolly wondered if Linnet was looking out of the top window.

  His shadow had long legs that he was rather proud of.

  ‘Granny,’ he said, ‘your shadow looks just like a partridge.’

  ‘I’ve often thought you don’t always know whose shadow comes out with you.’

  They were going to the church where Toby and Alexander had sung in the choir, where St Christopher had knelt unseen among the cypresses and tombstones.

  The footpath went along beside the river, through wide flat meadows. It was surrounded by miles and miles of silent moonlight. There was almost no view but sky. Tolly had not yet been to the church; he imagined it as the most beautiful and exciting end to a thrilling walk. In fact he was confusing it in his mind with that other church where Alexander had experimented with echoes and which he had called JOYOUS GARD. In the moonlight the frozen meadows looked like sheets of frosted glass and the river like gold, old gold full of black creases like Linnet’s bracelet when they were cleaning it. The cold made an eerie humming in the telegraph wires, a sound that grew suddenly alarmingly loud if Tolly put his ear against the post. There were no lights showing from any cottage window, nor any living creature out in the countryside but themselves. It was a long walk: it took them an hour and felt like a pilgrimage, but they saw nobody else going the same way. Tolly began to feel that he and his great-grandmother were going secretly to meet Toby and Alexander and perhaps their father and mother; that it was to be a mysterious and delightful family affair.

  When they came inside the church, the first impression that he received was the mixed smell of incense and clammy mould, with the mould predominating. There were a few other people there, dingy, unromantic townsfolk, no children at all. The church was battered and dank, festooned with cobwebs round the windows, carpeted like a kitchen with brown coconut matting and bleakly lit with electric light. It is true that on the altar there were candles and chrysanthemums, but he could not help feeling that it was ugly and disappointing. There was a huge picture hanging on the wall on his left that was so horrifying that he kept one hand up to the side of his face like a blinker in case he should see it by accident. When they stood up to sing, the organ wheezed out as if it were the funeral march for a cat. Tolly was afraid to hear his own voice above the faint caterwauling that dragged after it. He was tired and felt suddenly very sad. Finally he fell asleep against Mrs Oldknow’s shoulder.

  When he opened his eyes, the electric light was out and far more candles were burning. The church looked new. The stone, instead of being grey, stained with black damp, was a nice sandy colour. The pews had gone. The pillars rose out of the floor like treetrunks, leaving the nave spacious and gay. Instead of the wheezy organ there was a sound of fiddles and trumpets. People came in walking freely as if to a party, and stood in groups here and there.

  Tolly turned round at a clinking sound close behind him, and there was Toby walking in with his mother on his arm. He was wearing his sword. When he had placed his mother near Mrs Oldknow he bowed formally to them and went out again. His place was taken by someone who could only be a Boggis, who stood respectfully just behind young Mrs Oldknow. She smiled at the old lady and at Tolly, raising one eyebrow at him as if to say, ‘You here too?’

  When at last he could take his eyes off her and look towards the choir, the boys were just coming in. There were six of them in surplices with white frills round their necks. Two little boys came first. One was laughing and turned to look at them as he went by. Alexander and a stranger came next, and then Toby and another, and after them the men. But Tolly was looking at the first little boy who just could not be solemn, for he knew now that it was Linnet, dressed in boy’s clothes, in church, in the choir. He looked anxiously at Mrs Oldknow, fearing to see a look of angry shame come over her face, but she was looking at her book and smiling. He nudged his great-grandmother but she only laid her fingers on her lips and put her hand through his arm.

  The singing was beautiful. Tolly knew it was part-singing, but he could only hear all four notes when there was a pause and they all hung together on the air. It gave him pleasure almost painful. Sometimes Toby sang solo for a few minutes and sometimes Alexander. His voice flew up to the roof as easily as a bird. Tolly feared it would make him cry, but that passed off when he saw Linnet hitching up her trousers. They were probably Alexander’s and too big for her.

  Then, gazing round the church, he saw, or thought he saw, through the wavering candle shadows, leaning against the wall, as much a part of it and as little noticed as if he were at home, St Christopher himself. Linnet was almost opposite him. She made signs that Tolly did not understand until he craned up to see better. Then he saw, pressed against the stone ripples that washed St Christopher’s feet, the little black-and-white dog Orlando, fixing obedient eyes on his mistress and thumping the floor with his tail. Tolly gave a little squeak of laughter, but it was luckily drowned in the peal of bells that broke out.

  Mrs Oldknow said: ‘Wake up, Tolly. A Happy Christmas to you! We are going back in my friend’s car, so you will soon be in bed. Did you have nice dreams?’

  Tolly looked quite bewildered. ‘Yes, Granny,’ he said. ‘Were you asleep too?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘I hardly know.’

  *

  TOLLY SLEPT ALL THE way home and must have put himself to bed sleep-walking, for he remembered nothing about it. The first thing that he knew was that he was awake in his bed and that it was Christmas morning. The room was still half dark, but right in front of his eyes something was hanging from the bottom of the bird-cage. This was his stocking, with a right-angled corner sticking out at the calf and an elongated toe. The chaffinch was already out, hanging on to the stocking and tugging at the label. It followed Tolly back to bed, and when he had lit the candle they unpacked the stocking together.

  There was a flashlight refill from Boggis. A telescope from his father. In his bedroom he could only use the wrong end but it was almost better. He looked at the rocking-horse and it would have fitted into a matchbox. He found Toby’s sword, the right size for a chaffinch. The chaffinch was hard to find, no bigger than a ladybird. In the looking-glass opposite his bed he saw himself as if across a wide valley, miles and miles away. And if the things in the room were small, their doubles in the doll’s house had reached vanishing point.

  The thing that stuck out of the calf of the stocking was a tin box shaped like Noah’s Ark, filled with biscuits, each of which was glazed with brown sugar and had on it a picture of an animal in white sugar. He found a hare, a squirrel, a fox, a deer, a dog, a hedgehog, a peacock, a fish, an owl and, of course, a horse. Tolly couldn’t bear to eat any of them except the owl. He bit its head off in one bite, then held it out in his lips to the chaffinch, who pecked at it once or twice, then gave a sharp, determined tug and flew away with the piece.

  After that they shared the fish, and then the peacock. Next came two boxes of Bengal matches, one green and one red. Tolly struck one, and saw the chaffinch cock a startled eye like a bright round emerald.

  ‘Now I’ll make you see red,’ said Tolly, striking a red one.
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br />   But the chaffinch did not like that at all. He drew all his feathers tight round him in a fright and flew off to the cage.

  The toe of the stocking had a banana, a tangerine and an apple. Last of all Tolly opened an envelope tied to the top. He expected – for no one can help expecting a little – that it would contain a postal order, perhaps for two-and-six or even five shillings. It contained a Christmas card with a picture of two curly white china dogs with black faces.

  Underneath was written in his great-grandmother’s hand:

  Their names are

  Wait and See

  Tolly laughed, but he felt sure it meant something more. He put his legs out of bed to start to get dressed, but at first he could not see his clothes. Someone had thrown what looked like an old curtain over them. Tolly snatched it off and was about to throw it on the floor when he stopped at the sight of silver buttons all down one side. The stuff was green silk, faded yellow in some places and stained black in others. He held it at arm’s length, turning it about to see what it was. It was not a woman’s blouse. It was some kind of coat with big skirt pockets outlined in tarnished cord. Tolly put it on and looked at himself in the mirror. His own black eyes looked straight back at him and immediately he knew what he was wearing. His heart felt as if it would jump out of his mouth. ‘You should try wearing his clothes,’ Alexander had said.

  The coat was much too big for him, but he rolled up the sleeves, dropped the apple from his stocking into the deep pocket, and off in his bare feet he went, down the twisting wooden stairs that, with practice, had come to seem so easy and rapid, along the cold brick floor of the entrance hall, running as fast as he could across the hurting gravel drive, hardly noticing the strange morning twilight, only pausing outside the stable. Here he took a long breath and walked with what he hoped was Toby’s step into the shadowy stall, closing his eyes for fear of disappointment.