Patricia St John Series

by Patricia St John

  “Bye, Lucy,” called Don, hobbling to the car. “I'll be seeing you!” A few moments later they were off, and I watched his waving hand until it disappeared around the corner, then I slowly walked back into the house. Gran stood in the doorway looking very pleased with herself.

  “Lucy,” she said, “I phoned Miss Bird this afternoon. I thought you might like to get away for a little holiday over Easter. She says she can fit you into a Guide camp in Derbyshire for a week. Would you like that?”

  I stared at her blankly. If she'd said this to me yesterday, I would have gone crazy with excitement; but now—if I went away to camp, I would never dam the stream or watch for squirrels in the early morning with Don. And if I wasn't there, he'd never be able to say he was my friend.

  “I don't know, Gran,” I answered slowly. “It's not as if they are girls from my school, is it? It was different sharing a tent with Mary. I wouldn't know any of these girls, would I?”

  “I guess you'd know them pretty well by the end of the week,” retorted Gran, “but it's up to you. We don't want to get rid of you, do we, Grandpa? I just thought the holidays were a bit lonely for you here, but maybe you could ask your friends up.”

  “I'm not lonely, Gran,” I answered quietly. “I'd rather stay here for Easter. It's fun, and I … well, I just don't want to go away.”

  So I stayed and waited to see what would happen next, and four or five days later Don reappeared on a bike with his foot well bandaged. We were all having tea when he turned up, so he came in and joined us. He got on very well with my grandparents. He had never had any, he explained, because his dad had been an orphan and his mother had come from South Africa, and he seemed to take it for granted that he could share mine. He ate a great deal and then suggested we go to look at the stream.

  It was the first of several happy mornings and evenings. This was the best time to watch wildlife, he explained, and anyhow, he had a job working for his dad during the day. He was saving up for a new bike. He was always anxious to get back by 9 A.M. and seemed to think the hotel might collapse if he was late. But we dug out a pool big enough to wade in from the streambed and dammed it, and I would often hear his bicycle bell soon after sunrise. I would dress and creep down, explaining to a sorrowful Shadow that he could not come, and then Don and I would run out and crouch in bushes to watch birds, squirrels, and rabbits. Once, on a never-to-be-forgotten early morning when we were climbing a tree and not watching at all, we suddenly saw a fox playing with her three roly-poly cubs. They tried to bite her tail but she cuffed them onto their backs, where they lay waving their little paws in the air and rolling over each other.

  Don and I didn't really talk about personal things. He told me about birds and foxes and fossils, and radar, and what his dad said and did; I told him about the books I'd read. It was halfway through the holidays before Don asked the question I dreaded, the question that always came up in the end and that I had never been able to answer. Now that I could answer, it was almost worse.

  We were wandering home on a quiet, grey April evening, noticing things as usual. Don was peering around through a pair of binoculars that his dad had given him for his birthday.

  “I can see that thrush right up close,” he said excitedly. “I can almost count the speckles on her breast. Dad knew I wanted binoculars, and he bought me a really good pair. Lucy, what happened to your dad? Did he die too?”

  Suddenly I realized that I no longer dreaded this question. I wanted to share my tangled thoughts with someone to whom I could speak quite freely without fear of hurting his feelings.

  “Sit down on this log, Don,” I said, “and I'll tell you all about it.”

  I told him everything, all about my past and the letter and creeping downstairs, all about Gran and Grandpa and their fears, all about the big questions that kept me awake at night, like “When he comes, what shall I do?”

  “What would you do, Don, if your dad was a wicked man in prison, and yet he wanted you?” I asked finally.

  And Don, tossing back his thick brown hair from his forehead, replied without hesitation. “I would find him, somehow, somewhere, and I would say to him, ‘I don't care what you've done, Dad—I'm still your boy!’”

  Badger Watching with Don and Mr. Smith

  We went home, and Don, after having a bun and a cup of tea, bicycled away into the dusk as usual—but once again, something had happened. Somehow, through that single sentence of Don's, I suddenly knew what to do. All my confused sense of right and wrong, my wondering who to stay loyal to, seemed to have come to rest in that single sentence, as though it were a compass pointing me home. Somehow I must find my father, or wait till he found me, and tell him that, whatever he'd done, I was still his girl. For the first time, I felt I was really starting out in the right direction instead of running around in circles. For the first time since I read that letter, I fell asleep the moment my head touched the pillow.

  Two days later it was Good Friday, and Gran, Grandpa, and I went to the service in the little Norman church nearby, its grey walls now surrounded by a sea of golden daffodils. I quite liked going to church; I liked wearing my best clothes and singing hymns, and I loved the musty smell and the simple beauty of the arches and pillars. During the sermon I usually made up stories while Grandpa snoozed and Gran listened. That day, though, it was a different sort of service. There was no sermon, just hymns and prayers, and I found myself listening, really listening. Then we sang a hymn I'd known since I was small, and I found myself thinking, really thinking, about the words:

  “He died that we might be forgiven;

  He died to make us good.”

  If that was true, bad people could change and even prisoners could be forgiven. While I was still thinking this out, the service ended, and we streamed out of the cool church into the green and gold of the April morning. I wondered what it was like to come out of prison … to be forgiven. I walked home very quietly, still thinking hard.

  That afternoon I helped Grandpa in the garden. I felt I needed to find out everything I could from him, and besides, I liked talking to Grandpa.

  “Did my mother like gardening, Grandpa?” I began.

  “Well, now, I don't think she did much. She loved wild, growing things, and wandering about, but she liked reading better than working in the garden. Our Alice was a great one for book learning.”

  “And I'm really like her, Grandpa?”

  He smiled very tenderly. “You might be her all over again, pretending to do a bit of weeding, and sitting back and talking instead. That was her way! It was ‘Dad this,’ and ‘Dad that’! I never got any work done when she was about.”

  “But aren't I like my father, Grandpa? Surely you can't be like only one parent?”

  His smile faded. “I don't think you're like him at all, Lucy, and even if you are …” He paused, trying to think of the right words. “It's like this, or so it seems to me. If you cross a weak plant with a healthy plant, and then you take the seedlings and give them manure, and water them, and shelter them, and keep the slugs off them—well, they'll grow up to be healthy plants. The weak strain will die out. We've tried to give you plenty of sunshine and shelter, Lucy…”

  “And you've kept the slugs off me,” I added with a giggle. “But Grandpa, don't bad people ever turn good? I mean, don't people ever change?”

  Grandpa considered this for a long time. “Well,” he said at last, leaning on his spade, “even the Bible says something about not gathering grapes from thistles. Flowers are flowers and weeds are weeds, but people can change, by the grace of God. But prison's a poor soil, Lucy! They mostly come out worse than they went in! But there is the grace of God. You'd better ask your Gran about it.”

  He gave a deep sigh and stooped to his seedlings, and I sighed, too, and pulled up a few more weeds. Grandpa's answer had given me little hope or comfort. Then I glanced up and noticed a heap of manure beside the toolshed and gave a little cry of pleasure. Two white narcissi appeared to be springing out of
it. Such beautiful flowers out of such dirty, smelly manure! I said to myself. It's like the grace of God. Ugly things can turn beautiful. I think bad people can become good.

  I saw little of Don after Easter, for he had been very busy helping his father, saving up for his new bike. He had earned quite a lot of money by taking luggage up in the elevator, working in the garden, cleaning the car, and running errands for Mr. Smith.

  “Who is Mr. Smith?” I asked casually. It was a warm, sleepy afternoon, and Don and I sat dangling our feet in the pool, drinking our tea and exchanging news. The daffodils were nearly over, but soon the bluebells would be out.

  Mr. Smith, explained Don with his mouth full, was the new man who had come to live at the hotel about ten days before. He'd taken an attic room and was going to stay until the summer. He was a nice man, who had travelled in lots of countries—he'd been in an avalanche and seen a bullfight—but he wasn't very strong and he had a bad cough. Don liked talking to him but wasn't allowed to disturb him much because he was always busy.

  “What does he do?” I asked.

  “He writes books,” replied Don casually. “He's got a whole shelf of them, but he won't let me read them. He says—”

  “Writes books!” I gasped. “Do you mean to say he writes real books—to be printed, and people read them?”

  “Of course! What else would you do with books? Eat them?”

  I gazed at Don in wonder. He ran errands for a real live author, whose books were printed! I thought of the notebooks in my bedroom, filled with pages of happy scribbles. But would I ever write anything that could be printed? And who would tell me how to set about it?

  “I would like to meet Mr. Smith,” I said boldly.

  “Actually,” replied Don, “he'd like to meet you. I told him how you wrote stories and poems and things, and he said he was interested in children who wrote things, and he'd like to see some of your pieces. Perhaps he'll come up to the woods with me one day when he's better, but I won't be coming for a few days. Dad thinks there are some badgers in a little wood off the Tewkesbury Road, and we're going there to watch. They come out when it's getting dark.”

  “Wish I could see them,” I said.

  “OK,” said Don good-naturedly, “but you can't come until I know they exist. If they are really there, we'll try and fix something. Badgers are worth seeing.”

  He was as good as his word. He came pedaling up the hill, very breathless and excited, about five days later, and burst into the kitchen where Gran and I were spending a peaceful afternoon baking for the church fête.

  “Please, Mrs. Ferguson,” he announced, “can Lucy come? Mum says she can have tea with us at home, and then she can come and see the badgers. We saw hundreds of them, Mrs. Ferguson! Well, I mean, we saw at least seven! It was pitch dark, and we watched them dancing and boxing.”

  “May I ask how, in the pitch dark?” asked Gran, smiling.

  “Well, it got pitch dark as we watched,” explained Don, “and it was pitch dark coming home in the car. When we first saw them, it was sunset—the sky was all red, and for ages we waited for them to come. You have to keep very, very still, Lucy. You mustn't move for about an hour.”

  “That must be very difficult for you!” remarked Gran, for Don could never keep still. “And who's going with you? Your father will take you and bring Lucy back, will he?”

  Don shook his head. “Dad's busy tonight,” he explained. “He's got lots of guests. Mr. Smith says he'll come with us. He's got a car, and he'll bring Lucy back by nine. OK, Mrs. Ferguson? Oh, what fantastic cakes! Are you having a party, Mrs. Ferguson?”

  “Not really,” smiled Gran, “but perhaps we'll have one now. Sit down, you two, and have some cake and lemonade. I want a word with Grandpa.”

  She was gone for quite a while, and I discovered later that she had sent Grandpa hurrying off to check up on Mr. Smith from Don's parents. As he seemed to be satisfactory in every way, she returned at last and gave permission for me to go. I was wildly excited, already standing with one foot on the pedal of my bike, but whether it was because I was going to see a badger or meet a real live author, I was not quite sure.

  Then we were off, speeding under the larch trees, and I remember thinking there was no joy in the world like the joy of going downhill on a bicycle with the wind singing in my ears and my hair blowing backward. At the bottom of the hill, we skimmed into the town and pushed our bikes across the cobbles of the old marketplace between the overhanging timbered houses. Don's hotel lay at the far end, and we went around the back to his parent's flat.

  “Here's Lucy, Mum,” said Don abruptly, disappearing into the next room and leaving me smiling shyly at a stout, comfortable-looking woman who greeted me with a smile just like Don's. She told me to sit down while she finished getting tea ready. We were having it early because of the badgers, whose habits had to be timed very carefully, so I sat on the sofa while Don rushed around making preparations for the expedition. You'd have thought we were going to the North Pole from the fuss he made. Then suddenly the door opened and a voice said quietly, “So you are Lucy, who writes poetry. Good evening, Lucy. I'm Mr. Smith.”

  I leaped to my feet and then tried hard not to show my disappointment. I don't know what I expected an author to look like, but certainly not like the man in the doorway—tall and thin with bowed shoulders, bald on the top of his head, and with a general look of weariness and ill health. But I recovered myself quickly, for his face was very kind, and he looked at me with real interest. I smiled and shook hands and told him I was Lucy, that I did write stories and poems and things but they weren't very good.

  “They'll improve if you just keep writing,” said Mr. Smith. “You must bring them here one day and let me see them. I believe it's teatime now. I'm invited, too, as it's a sort of badger celebration party. Let's go in together.”

  It really was a party, with ham and salad, fruit and ice cream, and cake. Don's dad made all sorts of jokes, and we laughed so much that it was nearing sunset when Mr. Smith, Don, and I finally set off in a great hurry, armed with a flashlight, binoculars, peppermints, and a rug for Mr. Smith, as he wasn't very strong. It was about a twenty-minute drive through country lanes, but I hardly noticed where we were going because Mr. Smith started talking to me about the books and poems I'd read, almost as though I were an equal. I found myself talking, too, as I'd never talked to any other grown-up before, until I remembered poor Don in the back, who was bouncing up and down and dying to tell us all about badgers.

  “They have their babies down in the setts about February,” he began, when he could get a word in edgeways. “Here, this is where we stop, Mr. Smith, up this little lane. You can leave the car in front of the farm. We go across that field and through that wood, and we'll have to hide in the nettle patch; the sett is just under those bushes. You'll need that rug, Mr. Smith, because of your cough.” Don was hurrying across the field where the daisies were already closing their petals. As we approached the nettle patch, he went down on all fours and motioned for us to follow.

  We crept through nettles and brambles like Red Indians stalking their quarry until we found ourselves in a rather uncomfortable little hollow, where we crouched and tried not to scratch our nettle stings. It was rather cold and the dew was falling. I'm sure Mr. Smith was longing to light a cigarette, but Don had already explained that this was absolutely forbidden, as the badgers would almost certainly catch the scent and decide to spend the evening at home.

  We lay so still that we could hear all sorts of unfamiliar little sounds: the flight of wings as birds flew home, the thud of a rabbit's back legs in the field behind us. It was getting dark, and I suddenly felt glad that Mr. Smith was with us. Don was leaning forward, breathless and absorbed.

  And then it happened. A rustle in the dead leaves, a black nose with a gleaming white stripe—a large badger rose up in the dusk, sniffing the air. It bounded a few paces, and another appeared. Then they turned face-to-face and rose on their hind legs in a kin
d of slow twilight dance, then another and another, an old fat badger, then two small, round, playful cubs, tumbling about clumsily. We watched like statues till the light had gone, and there was nothing more to be seen or heard but ghostly shapes and queer little coughs and snufflings and the rustling of dead leaves.

  Then Mr. Smith sneezed, and in one second we were alone with the chilly night, the damp ditch, and the stinging nettles.

  “I'm so sorry!” said Mr. Smith.

  “Don't worry,” said Don generously. “It was too dark to see them anymore in any case. Wow! I'm really aching! Weren't they fantastic, Mr. Smith? Aren't you glad you came, Lucy? Bet you never saw anything as good as that before! Here, have a peppermint, everybody, to warm you up! Don't step in that cowpat, Mr. Smith. Race me to the gate, Lucy!”

  He was in very high spirits and chattered the whole way home, but I only half listened. I knew that I would never forget that evening as long as I lived. We had reached my gate and the moon was flooding the garden, making Grandpa's prize tulips look like pale lanterns.

  “Good night, Lucy,” said Mr. Smith, “and tomorrow write about tonight. Write about the birds flying home and the smell of wet grass. Write about what you felt when the first badger appeared. Write about the moonlight on the tulips. Write it all, and let me see it.”

  “All right,” I said, jumping out of the car, “I'll try. Good night, and thank you very much!”

  And they left me standing at the gate, wondering how Mr. Smith knew that was exactly what I was going to do anyway.

  The Adventure Begins

  At the end of the holidays, Don and I were spending our last evening together in the bluebell wood when Don made a disastrous suggestion to me.

  We had been talking about my father again, for Don kept thinking what he would do if his dad was in prison.