by Hilary McKay
One pound and sixpence.
Enough to make a start.
But where to start?
Stockings, she thought, remembering Vanessa, who had not been polite about her old woolly ones, darned by Clarry with lumpy black knots. Vanessa’s stocking tutorial had been surprisingly useful. She had demonstrated with her own collection: silk stockings for best (five shillings and sixpence a pair), cream lace for second best (less expensive than silk), and black for everyday. (“Only two shillings! Have a pair! Have two, and some silk ones! Or lace, at least! Go on, Clarry, please!”) But Clarry had shaken her head and said no.
I’ll buy my own stockings! Clarry thought as she walked into town, and here was a haberdasher’s, and there, by great good luck, was a box on the floor full of lace stockings—cream, white, and black—all jumbled together and smelling rather musty.
BARGAINS!
read the label on the box.
“I just this minute put them out,” the shop assistant told her. “We had a pipe burst and the stock got damp. Three pairs for two shillings!”
“How much for one pair?”
“One pair!” sniffed the assistant. “You don’t want just one pair. You won’t find a bargain like this in a hurry!”
“I suppose not.”
“Once in a lifetime,” said the assistant fervently. “You’ll need to match them yourself, though!”
That was easier said than done, but at last Clarry untangled her way to three matching pairs, and the assistant rolled them up and put them in a bag, assuring her, “They’ll wash!” when she sniffed them.
“Of course they will,” said Clarry, and went skipping into the street, and there right opposite was the stationer’s that had sold the silver ink, and before she knew it, she was opening the door, because ever since the silver ink, she had thought about gold, and now she had a pocket full of money, and the stockings had been such a bargain.
They not only had gold ink, they had purple scented with violets. Or so it said on the box.
“Does it really smell of violets?” she asked the bored shopgirl, who was watching her.
“ ’Course it does.”
“Could I smell it?”
“I suppose.”
“Goodness!” said Clarry, when the bottle had been opened. “It really does! How gorgeous!”
“We got a pink one too, smells of roses,” offered the girl, and that bottle was opened too. Clarry was swept away with the thought of sending a letter to Rupert and him opening it up and smelling flowers. Roses, such as grew in the garden in Cornwall.
Or violets. Violets grew there too.
“I’ll have both!” she said recklessly, handing over the money.
“What about the gold? I can let you have it for a shilling if you buy the other two.”
Clarry hovered in agony.
“Or ninepence. Half price.”
Half price was irresistible. Clarry nodded.
“I like them flower ones,” said the girl chattily, once she had got Clarry’s money safely in the till. “We sell ’em for love letters.”
“Love letters!” exclaimed Clarry. “I wasn’t going to . . .”
“I used the violet myself when I wrote to the front,” continued the girl, ignoring her. “When. Not anymore.”
“Oh no!” said Clarry.
“Oh yes.”
“I’m very, very sorry.”
“Found himself a French girl! A French mamzelle! After all those letters! And tobacco! And cake! I’m done with him! You be careful!”
“It’s my cousin I write to.”
“Makes no difference. What are you doing now?”
“I’ve got to buy clothes,” said Clarry. “To wear to Oxford.”
“Is it an interview?”
“Sort of.”
“You need a hat!” said the girl. “A proper one. Not that school mushroom thing you’re wearing now. Shall I come with you?”
“What about the shop?”
“I’ll put ‘Closed’ on the door,” said the girl. “It’s my aunt’s shop. She’s round the back. She’ll never notice, not for five minutes. I haven’t bought a hat for ages! Come on! I’ll show you my favorite place. They’ve got a sale in the basement.”
“How do you know?”
“They always have!” said the girl, hurrying her out of the door. “What color d’you fancy? Blue?”
“Not really.”
“Black? Black comes in for funerals.”
For some reason this made them both stagger with laughter.
“Orange!” said Clarry, swinging her bags and suddenly enjoying herself very much.
“Gold, not orange,” said the girl knowledgeably. “They call it gold in hats! You couldn’t, though, not for an interview. Gray?”
“I might as well just wear my mushroom!”
They found a deep raspberry-pink velvet beret that Clarry thought was the most beautiful hat she’d ever seen. It fitted her perfectly.
“Twelve shillings!” said Clarry. “Is it worth twelve shillings?”
“It’s ever so pretty. You could wear it with all sorts.”
“All right,” said Clarry recklessly, diving for her money. “I’m doing it! There!”
Five minutes later it was hers, two weeks’ work in a black and white striped bag.
“Gosh, goodness, it doesn’t leave much,” said Clarry, inspecting the change in her purse.
“How much?”
“Two shillings and some pennies. But I’ll get another six next week.”
“Pennies?”
“Shillings.”
“Oh, well, then,” said the girl, as if Clarry had announced she was coming into a fortune next week. “Let’s go and get a cake! What’s your name? I’m Vi. Violet.”
“Like the ink!”
“Like my nan,” said Violet. “Forget the ink!”
“All right. I’m Clarry. Can we afford cakes?”
Violet gave her a quick glance then, but said good-temperedly, “I can if you can.”
“I think I can,” said Clarry, and so they bought jam tarts and some very odd lemonade in Clarry’s first tea shop ever. It came to eightpence each, plus a penny for the waitress, which Violet insisted on paying.
“Have a pair of lace stockings!” offered Clarry impulsively. “Go on, I’ll never need three!”
“Don’t mind if I do!” said Violet. “Same time next week?”
“What? Shopping? I will if I can. I’ll probably have to scrub out the kitchen next Saturday, though.”
Violet stared at her in such surprise that Clarry was alarmed and asked, “What is it?”
“Scrubbing out the kitchen!”
“I only didn’t do it today because Mrs. Morgan didn’t come.”
“I thought you were posh!”
“Me? Posh?”
“That hat! Twelve shillings! Twelve shillings! Twelve! All that ink! Giving away lace stockings!”
“Oh,” said Clarry, very startled to find that she had not appeared as sensible and economical as she thought. “Was that a lot for that hat?”
“Just a bit!”
“I’ve never been shopping before.”
“I can tell.”
“Thank you very, very much for closing up the shop!”
“Oh, Lord, I forgot the shop!” cried Violet, and turned and ran.
Thirty
CLARRY’S LIVER, COMPLETE WITH CHURCHYARD grass snippings and cough syrup, was a great success.
“Very acceptable,” said her father, after ungallantly letting Miss Vane try it first.
“Delicious!” agreed Miss Vane. “Well done, Clarry! Didn’t I tell you that cooking would save it from going off?”
“Yes, you did,” agreed Clarry cordially, content herself with baked potatoes and spring greens.
“I can’t think why you won’t try it yourself.”
“I’m vegetarian now,” explained Clarry.
“Since when?”
“Since yesterday,
” said Clarry.
She didn’t manage to meet Violet the next week, and the following Saturday things were somehow different from that first wild glorious shop. Violet became very bossy, saying things like “You can’t charge her that!” to perfectly reasonable shop assistants, and “You can’t go in there!” to Clarry.
“Why can’t I go in there?” asked Clarry.
“You’ve only got twelve shillings.”
“But look at that dress!”
It was gray striped with cream, and had a cream muslin bodice laced with gray.
“It’s plain as plain. It’s nothing of a dress! It’s been hanging in that window for weeks.”
“Then they must want to sell it.”
“I thought you’d want pink, like that hat.”
“The hat’s enough pinkness for one person to wear at a time!”
“And that dress is seventeen shillings!” said Violet disapprovingly. “You said you’d only got twelve. I can’t lend you anything, you know!”
“I didn’t ask you to!” said Clarry indignantly. “Do you think they’ll let me try it on?”
Violet shrugged.
“Well, I’m going inside to look at it properly,” said Clarry, and as soon as she stepped through the door she was pounced on, and urged into the dressing rooms, where it was discovered that it fitted her perfectly.
“It’s been too long in the window, it’s faded down one side,” observed Violet, who had followed Clarry into the shop after all.
“Not very much,” said Clarry, and then absolutely scandalized Violet by offering twelve shillings for it now, and another five in two weeks’ time, and meanwhile they could have her little silver watch, as proof that she’d come back.
They must have wanted to sell it. Instead of chasing Clarry out of the door, as Violet half hoped they would, the manager came over, inspected the watch, and agreed. Then they wrapped the dress, took the twelve shillings, the watch, and Clarry’s name and address, and handed her the box.
“You’ve got a nerve!” said Violet, when they finally emerged onto the street. “And you are posh, whatever you say! Where’d you get your money from? Your millionaire dad?”
“I work after school and Saturday mornings,” replied Clarry, too happy with her dress to be offended by this. “I stay with three children till their mother gets home and teach them things for their homework.”
“What sort of things?”
“Oh, anything they need. Math and French and Latin.”
“What was all that about scrubbing kitchens, then?”
Clarry looked at Violet, and saw that somehow she had hurt her.
“You can do Latin and scrub kitchens,” she said.
“Huh,” said Violet.
“You can borrow the pink hat whenever you like.”
“How many love letters have you written with that ink?”
“Two,” said Clarry, “but they’re not love letters. I’m sorry about that person you wrote to in France.”
“Oh, him.”
“Miss Vane organizes a Red Cross group in Saint Christopher’s Church hall. Wednesday nights and Saturdays. Lots of girls knit socks and mittens and things. And they put little folded messages inside them before they send them off, to cheer up the soldiers. Often they get letters back.”
“Oh.”
“And they have tea and do games at the end. And make jokes. Like pretending they know who they’re knitting for. They say, ‘This is for Albert. Don’t tell his mum!’ and make up stories as if they know them.”
“Do you go?”
“Sometimes. I’m knitting a scarf. I’m a bit slow, though. They always need more people. Shall I call for you, next time I’m going?”
“Don’t know. If you like.”
“Wednesday, then, at seven o’clock.”
“I’ll think about it,” said Violet, and she didn’t say another word all the way back to the shop, where, just before she opened the door, she hugged Clarry hard and said, “Sorry!”
So Clarry went home with a new friend, as well as a new dress, and the following week she wore it with the pink beret and the successfully washed lace stockings to Peter’s speech day. There she watched as her brother limped onto the stage eight times to deafening applause, and collected prizes that included the gilt cup for Best Science Essay; the debating society’s Voice of the Year Award; an enormous dictionary in two volumes, which was the traditional gift to the editor of the school magazine; and an Oxford scholarship.
“I tried to make Father come,” whispered Clarry, when she had a moment with Peter.
“Never mind him,” said Peter, not whispering at all. “I knew he wouldn’t from the start.”
“He . . .”
“Just for once, Clarry, could you not make any excuses for him? I like your hat!”
Clarry, who had been so anxious to get everything right that she had brought his postcard with her for reference, sighed with relief. “And my dress?” she asked. “It’s new as well.”
“Oh. Sorry. I didn’t notice it. Yes. Good dress.”
“Vanessa liked it too,” said Clarry happily. “Did you hear her whistle through her fingers when you went up onstage?”
“Was that Vanessa?” Peter grinned.
“Yes, she’s over there with Simon, come and say hello.”
Vanessa flung her arms around Peter the moment she caught sight of him. “You and Simon!” she cried. “What a pair! Let’s take Clarry round the school now you’ve finished. She’s never been here before. Where shall we show her first?”
“The chimney we cleared with her rocket,” said Simon. He had collected nothing onstage but the leaver’s certificate that everyone had been given.
“Is he all right?” Clarry asked Peter privately.
“Of course,” Peter replied, knowing that Rupert’s spare key to the cricket pavilion hung around his bony friend’s neck.
Then, while other guests were in the library drinking sherry with the headmaster, Peter, Simon, and Vanessa raced Clarry around the common room, the quad, the stage on which the three little maids had sung together, and the chapel, inside and out, so she could marvel at the height of the pinnacled roof where Rupert had long ago stood in triumph, supported by nothing but sunlight and cheek.
“I wish he was here now,” said Clarry, and found she was clutching Simon’s hand.
“So do I,” he said.
Thirty-One
SIMON BONNINGTON, BONNERS, THE BONY one, the one who hated outdoors, found football painful, detested mud, had secret bed socks all through boarding school, who once wrote a letter to the Old Fish, the headmaster, about the lack of soap in the school toilets, who could have had almost another year brushing down Lucy, writing bad poetry, staring into the mirror, tidying his bedroom, and annoying his relations, and during that year the war might have ended . . .
Instead of these things, enlisted in the army.
When they asked him his age, after weighing him (132 pounds), measuring him (6’3”), and doing various other checks to see if he was real, he said, “Nineteen.”
The doctor peered up at Simon’s great height and stubbled chin (he had shaved twice a day since he was fourteen but it was still never enough), and raised an eyebrow.
“All right, twenty-one,” said Simon, grinning.
“What have you been up to, then?”
“I don’t know, really,” said Simon, truthfully enough. He had considered this question beforehand. Did Lucy count as farmwork? Did “Three Little Maids” count as stage?
“I live with my mum,” he said, and then, having nothing to lose, “And my great-aunt! And my sister.”
Simon sensed amusement in his audience, which he never could resist. Also nervousness made him reckless. What else could he offer?
“I can sing,” he suggested. “I’m a . . . a . . . a . . . bloody good singer! Don’t you want me?”
But it was all right, they did.
Start to finish, the whole thing, including me
dical and a short (but much applauded) rendering of “On a Tree by a River” (“I sing it with my mum”), took eight minutes.
“Keep your head down, dicky bird,” they advised him as he left.
Thirty-Two
PETER’S FATHER SAID, “A DOCTOR! a medic! a medical degree! Where on earth do you get your ideas from?”
Peter thought of his mother, whom no one had been able to help, of the soldiers returning with injuries that would be with them for life, of his own badly set leg. However, he had lived too long with his father’s complete lack of interest to try to explain these things.
“Just thought I might,” he said, and shrugged.
“And how do you propose to manage? You won’t be earning for years!”
Peter said quite the opposite, he’d a job for the summer already, porter at the local military hospital, with a letter of introduction from Oxford asking if he could spend his free time observing on the wards.
“Well, it seems that I have no say in the matter,” said his father peevishly. “I did hope you’d find something meaningful to do. We could have found a place for you in the office, in time. I hope it’s not just another of your fads!”
Their conversations always seemed to end with one or the other of them slamming out of the room. This time it was Peter, who stomped upstairs and related the conversation to Clarry.
“I used to think you’d work in a museum,” said Clarry. “Researching, and writing books. Perhaps Father did too.”
“He didn’t. He thought I’d work in his beastly office.”
“Oh, well, he can’t make you,” said Clarry. “I expect you’ll be a good doctor. I’m so glad you’ll be here this summer. I’m glad you’re here now! Miss Vane brought us a great bag of watercress this morning, and a poor little duck!”
“A poor little what?”
“Duck. A duck to cook. To celebrate you doing so well. It’s still got all its feathers and beak and feet and everything. It still is a duck. Will you come and help me?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Stand guard while I bury it in the churchyard.”
“Oh, all right,” said Peter.