Giant's Bread (3 page)

Winnie was packing her boxes. Nurse was in with her – a less awful Nurse now – almost a human Nurse.

‘Now you let this be a warning to you, my girl,' said Nurse. ‘No carryings on in your next place.'

Winnie sniffed something about no real harm.

‘And no more there wouldn't be, I should hope, with Me in charge,' said Nurse. ‘A lot comes, I daresay, of having red hair. Red-haired girls are always flighty, so my dear mother used to say. I'm not saying you're a bad girl. But what you've done is unbecoming. Unbecoming – I can't say more than that.'

And, as Vernon had often noticed after using this particular phrase, she proceeded to say a good deal more. But he did not listen, for he was pondering on the word Unbecoming. Becoming, he knew, was a thing you said about a hat. Where did a hat come in?

‘What's unbecoming, Nurse?' he asked later in the day.

Nurse, with her mouth full of pins, for she was cutting out a linen suit for Vernon, replied.

‘Unsuitable.'

‘What's unsuitable?'

‘Little boys going on asking foolish questions,' said Nurse, with the deftness of a long professional career behind her.

That afternoon Vernon's father came into the nursery. There was a queer furtive look about him – unhappy and defiant. He winced slightly before Vernon's round interested gaze.

‘Hullo, Vernon.'

‘Hullo, Father.'

‘I'm going to London. Goodbye, old chap.'

‘Are you going to London because you kissed Winnie?' inquired Vernon with interest.

His father uttered the kind of word that Vernon knew he was not supposed to hear – much less ever repeat. It was, he knew, a word that gentlemen used but little boys didn't. So great a fascination did that fact lend it, that Vernon was in the habit of sending himself to sleep by repeating it over to himself in company with another forbidden word. The other word was Corsets.

‘Who the devil told you that?'

‘Nobody told me,' said Vernon after reflecting a minute.

‘Then how did you know?'

‘Didn't you, then?' inquired Vernon.

His father crossed the room without answering.

‘Winnie kisses me sometimes,' remarked Vernon. ‘But I didn't like it much. I have to kiss her too. The gardener kisses her a lot. He seems to like it. I think kissing's silly. Should I like kissing Winnie better if I was grown up, Father?'

‘Yes,' he said deliberately. ‘I think you would. Sons, you know, sometimes grow up very like their fathers.'

‘I'd like to be like you,' said Vernon. ‘You're a jolly good rider. Sam said so. He said there wasn't your equal in the county and that a better judge of horse flesh never lived.' Vernon brought out the latter words rapidly. ‘I'd rather be like you than Mummy. Mummy gives a horse a sore back. Sam said so.'

There was a further pause.

‘Mummy's gotaheadacheanlyingdown,' proceeded Vernon.

‘I know.'

‘Have you said goodbye to her?'

‘No.'

‘Are you going to? Because you'll have to be quick. That's the dogcart coming round now.'

‘I expect I shan't have time.'

Vernon nodded wisely.

‘I daresay that would be a good plan. I don't like having to kiss people when they're crying. I don't like Mummy kissing me much anyway. She squeezes too hard and she talks in your ear. I think I'd almost rather kiss Winnie. Which would you, Father?'

He was disconcerted by his father's abrupt withdrawal from the room. Nurse had come in a moment before. She stood respectfully aside to let the master pass, and Vernon had a vague idea that she had managed to make his father uncomfortable.

Katie, the under-housemaid, came in to lay tea. Vernon built bricks in the corner. The old peaceful nursery atmosphere closed round him again.

There was a sudden interruption. His mother stood in the doorway. Her eyes were swollen with crying. She dabbed them with a handkerchief. She stood there theatrically miserable.

‘He's gone,' she cried. ‘Without a word to me. Without a word. Oh, my little son. My little son.'

She swept across the floor and gathered Vernon in her arms. The tower, at least one storey higher than any he had ever built before, crashed into ruins. His mother's voice, loud and distraught, burrowed into his ear.

‘My child – my little son – swear that you'll never forsake me – swear it – swear it –'

Nurse came across to them.

‘There, Ma'am, there, Ma'am, don't take on so. You'd better get back to bed. Edith shall bring you a nice cup of hot tea.'

Her tone was authoritative – severe.

His mother still sobbed and clasped him closer. Vernon's whole body began to stiffen in resistance. He could bear it a little while longer – a very little while longer – and he'd do anything Mummy wanted if only she'd let go of him.

‘You must make up to me, Vernon – make up to me for the suffering your father has caused me – Oh, my God, what shall I do?'

Somewhere, in the back of his mind, Vernon was aware of Katie, silent, ecstatic, enjoying the scene.

‘Come along, Ma'am,' said Nurse. ‘You'll only upset the child.'

The authority in her voice was so marked this time that Vernon's mother succumbed to it. Leaning weakly on Nurse's arm, she allowed herself to be led from the room.

Nurse returned a few minutes later very red in the face.

‘My,' said Katie, ‘didn't she take on? Regular hysterics – that's what they call it! Well, this has been a to do! You don't think she'll do a mischief to herself, do you? Those nasty ponds in the garden. The Master is a one – not that he hasn't a lot to put up with from Her. All them scenes and Tantrums –'

‘That'll do, my girl,' said Nurse. ‘You can get back to your work, and under-servants discussing a matter of this kind with their betters is a thing that I've never known take place in a gentleman's house. Your mother ought to have trained you better.'

With a toss of her head, Katie withdrew. Nurse moved round the nursery table, shifting cups and plates with unwonted sharpness. Her lips moved, muttering to herself.

‘Putting ideas into the child's head. I've no patience with it …'

A new nursemaid came, a thin white girl with protruding eyes. Her name was Isabel, but she was called Susan as being ‘more suitable'. This puzzled Vernon very much. He asked Nurse for an explanation.

‘There are names that are suitable to the gentry, Master Vernon, and names that are suitable for servants. That's all there is to it.'

‘Then why is her real name Isabel?'

‘There are people who when they christen their children set themselves up to ape their betters.'

The word ape had a distracting influence on Vernon. Apes were monkeys. Did people christen their children at the zoo?

‘I thought people were christened in church.'

‘So they are, Master Vernon.'

Very puzzling – why was everything so puzzling? Why were things more puzzling than they used to be? Why did one person tell you one thing and another person something quite different?

‘Nurse, how do babies come?'

‘You've asked me that before, Master Vernon. The little angels bring them in the night through the window.'

‘That Am-am-am –'

‘Don't stammer, Master Vernon.'

‘Amenkun lady who came – she said I was found under a gooseberry bush.'

‘That's the way they do with American babies,' said Nurse serenely.

Vernon heaved a sigh of relief. Of course! He felt a throb of gratitude to Nurse. She always knew. She made the unsteady swaying universe stand still again. And she never laughed. His mother did. He had heard her say to other ladies, ‘He asks me the quaintest questions. Just listen to this. Aren't children funny and adorable?'

But Vernon couldn't see that he was funny or adorable at all. He just wanted to know. You'd got to
know
. That was part of growing up. When you were grown up you knew everything and had gold sovereigns in your purse.

The world went on widening.

There were, for instance, uncles and aunts.

Uncle Sydney was Mummy's brother. He was short and stout and had rather a red face. He had a habit of humming tunes and of rattling the money in his trouser pockets. He was fond of making jokes, but Vernon did not always think his jokes very funny.

‘Supposing,' Uncle Sydney would say, ‘I were to put on your hat? Hey? What should I look like, do you think?'

Curious, the questions grown up people asked! Curious – and also difficult, because if there was one thing that Nurse was always impressing upon Vernon, it was that little boys must never make personal remarks.

‘Come now,' said Uncle Sydney perseveringly. ‘What should I look like? There –' he snatched up the linen affair in question and balanced it on top of his head. ‘What do I look like – eh?'

Well, if one must answer, one must. Vernon said politely and a little wearily:

‘I think you look rather silly.'

‘That boy of yours has no sense of humour, Myra,' said Uncle Sydney to his mother. ‘No sense of humour at all. A pity.'

Aunt Nina, Father's sister, was quite different.

She smelt nice, like the garden on a summer's day, and she had a soft voice that Vernon liked. She had other virtues – she didn't kiss you when you didn't want to be kissed, and she didn't insist on making jokes. But she didn't come very often to Abbots Puissants.

She must be, Vernon thought, very brave, because it was she who first made him realize that one could master The Beast.

The Beast lived in the big drawing-room. It had four legs and a shiny brown body. And it had a long row of what Vernon had thought when he was very small, to be teeth. Great yellow shining teeth. From his earliest memory, Vernon had been fascinated and terrified by The Beast. For if you irritated The Beast, it made strange noises, an angry growling or a shrill angry wail – and somehow those noises hurt you more than anything in the world could, they hurt you right down in your inside. They made you shiver and feel sick, and they made your eyes sting and burn, and yet by some strange enchantment, you couldn't go away.

When Vernon had stories read to him about dragons, he always thought of them as like The Beast. And some of the best games with Mr Green were where they killed The Beast – Vernon plunging a sword into his brown shining body whilst the hundred children whooped and sang behind.

Now that he was a big boy – he knew better, of course. He knew that The Beast's name was Grand Piano, and that when you deliberately attacked its teeth that was called ‘playingthepiano!' and that ladies did it after dinner to gentlemen. But in his inmost heart, he was still afraid and dreamt sometimes of The Beast pursuing him up the nursery stairs – and he would wake up screaming.

In his dreams The Beast lived in the Forest, and was wild and savage, and the noises it made were too terrible to be borne.

Mummy sometimes did ‘playingthepiano' and that Vernon could just bear with difficulty. The Beast, he felt, would not really be waked up by what she was doing to it. But the day Aunt Nina played was different.

Vernon had been conducting one of his imaginary games in a corner. He and Squirrel and Poodle were having a picnic and eating lobsters and chocolate éclairs.

His Aunt Nina had not even noticed that he was in the room. She had sat down on the music stool and was playing idly.

Fascinated, Vernon crept nearer and nearer. Nina looked at last to see him staring at her, the tears running down his face and great sobs shaking his small body. She stopped.

‘What's the matter, Vernon?'

‘I hate it,' sobbed Vernon. ‘I 'ate it. I 'ate it. It hurts me
here
.' His hands clasped his stomach.

Myra came into the room at that minute. She laughed.

‘Isn't it odd? That child simply hates music. So very queer.'

‘Why doesn't he go away if he hates it?' said Nina.

‘I can't,' sobbed Vernon.

‘Isn't it ridiculous?' said Myra.

‘I think it's rather interesting.'

‘Most children are always wanting to strum on the piano. I tried to show Vernon “Chopsticks” the other day, but he wasn't a bit amused.'

Nina remained staring at her small nephew thoughtfully.

‘I can hardly believe a child of mine can be unmusical,' said Myra in an aggrieved voice. ‘I played quite difficult pieces when I was eight years old.'

‘Oh, well!' said Nina vaguely. ‘There are different ways of being musical.'

Which, Myra thought, was so like the silly sort of thing the Deyre family would say. Either one was musical and played pieces, or one was not. Vernon clearly was not.

Nurse's mother was ill. Strange unparalleled nursery catastrophe. Nurse, very red-faced and grim, was packing with the assistance of Susan Isabel. Vernon, troubled, sympathetic, but above all interested, stood nearby, and out of his interest, asked questions.

‘Is your mother very old, Nurse? Is she a hundred?'

‘Of course not, Master Vernon. A hundred indeed!'

‘Do you think she is going to die?' continued Vernon, longing to be kind and understand.

Cook's mother had been ill and died. Nurse did not answer. Instead she said sharply:

‘The boot-bags out of the bottom drawer, Susan. Step lively now, my girl.'

‘Nurse, will your mother –'

‘I haven't time to be answering questions, Master Vernon.'

Vernon sat down on the corner of a chintz-covered ottoman and gave himself up to reflection. Nurse had said that her mother wasn't a hundred, but she must, for all that, be very old. Nurse herself he had always regarded as terribly old. To think that there was a being of superior age and wisdom to Nurse was positively staggering. In a strange way it reduced Nurse herself to the proportions of a mere human being. She was no longer a figure secondary only to God himself.