Grace Hardie (6 page)

‘We're going to have another baby.' Grace was not much interested in the trees, but was proud that she had news to tell. None of the Hardie children had known in advance about Jay's arrival in the family, but this time they had been entrusted with the secret. ‘It's coming in September.'

‘Sooner than that,' said Andy, and Grace pouted a little because he did not seem surprised.

‘No, September,' she repeated. ‘Mama told me.'

‘Reckon she got tired of waiting, then. I heard Mr Hardie talking in the stable yard when I went to tell him about your brothers. He was sending a message down to Dr Sidley's place. “Ask the doctor to come at once to deliver the baby,” he said.'

Grace considered the message with interest. Ever since she had heard the news from her mother, she had wondered how the new baby was going to arrive. She had asked Nanny Crocker, who talked about gooseberry bushes; and she had asked Miss Sefton, who told a different story, something about a stork. She asked her father as well; but he would only say ‘Aha!' – not the triumphant Aha with which he was accustomed to greet some new discovery or achievement, but a mysterious, secret-keeping Aha. As for her mother, she only smiled and would not say anything at all.

Grace had even asked Jay, who after all had been a baby himself more recently than anyone else in the family. But Jay was three years old by now and had forgotten how it felt to be born. He pretended to remember, acting out a vigorous demonstration of how he had bounced into the nursery like a ball before unwinding his head and arms and legs and fingers and toes one at a time, but Grace didn't believe him. Ever since Jay had learned to talk he had practised his new accomplishment non-stop, making no distinction between the true facts of everyday life and the more interesting products of his imagination. Grace enjoyed his pretendings; but had learned that it was not safe to believe them.

This new idea, though, made more sense. It was reasonable that the doctor should deliver new babies to his customers, just as the fishmonger delivered the weekly fish order. And that would explain why Mama had said that although she had ordered a girl baby this time, she could not be sure that she would get one. Grace knew that the
fishmonger's basket quite often arrived at the kitchen door with a note on the top saying, ‘Sorry no sole, have sent plaice instead', or something of that sort.

Everyone in the family took it for granted that Grace was hoping for a baby sister instead of another brother – and they were right, but not for the reason they thought. It wasn't that she wanted to play girls' games with a companion. Instead, she hoped that if there was another girl in the family, she herself would be allowed to become one of the boys. The new little girl could be the one to be dressed in frilly clothes and told to keep clean and forced to have her hair tied in rags to make ringlets. Grace felt sure that the reason why her brothers didn't play with her nowadays was only because they thought that a six-year-old was too young to join in their games. But she was growing older and bigger all the time. Soon she would be able to climb trees and catch balls as well as they could. Anyone who wanted to fuss over a girl could have the new baby instead.

For the moment, though, she decided to go back to the house. Watching the arrival of the new baby would be more exciting even than playing with her brothers. But as she scrambled to her feet she was frozen into stillness by a sound which she had never heard before.

It was a snarling, hissing, spitting sound: the sound of a wild animal preparing to defend itself by attack. There were other noises as well – the trampling of feet through the undergrowth of the wood. If one of the boys was coming this way, he might be in danger from whatever beast was lurking in the shadows. Grace knew that she ought to call and warn him; but instead she clutched Andy's hand, unable to move.

‘No!' It was Frank's voice which shouted the single word, from a long way away. The sound of moving feet had already stopped, so that for a fraction of a second the
wood was silent, as if everyone in it were holding his breath. Then the air was filled with a sound more terrible than anything Grace had ever heard in the six years of her life: a high-pitched wail of agony, followed by a growling, choking sound which seemed to go on for ever. Grace flung herself into Andy's arms with her hands pressed over her ears.

‘What's happening?' she cried. But Andy didn't know, and by now the wood was silent again, offering no answers.

It was David who on the first day of the holidays had suggested that they should all search out their bows and arrows. David was the cleverest of the four elder Hardie boys, and had brought home the best set of examination marks on his school report. But he was not a fast runner like his twin brother, Kenneth; nor was he a good cricketer like Frank and Philip. He had had enough of racing and team games during the school term, and he wanted to play something at which he could be best.

‘We ought to wait for Grace,' objected Philip as they lifted their bows off the rack in the carriage house.

‘She's with Miss Sefton. We can play Robin Hood another day. Why don't we get some practice? Just shooting at a target, to see who hits it most.'

Accepting the idea, their eldest brother took charge. Frank was twelve years old: a carefully efficient boy. He insisted on inspecting each bow to make sure that there was no danger of any accidental snapping when it was drawn for the first time after a three-month gap. It was Frank, too, who decided that it would be a waste of time to make a proper archery target. Instead, they should go down to the wood, choose a tree, and see who – taking one step backwards after each attempt – could hit it from the furthest distance away.

The contest was interrupted by two messages brought from the house by Andy Frith, the gardener's son. Philip, who often helped in his father's plant experiments by pricking out seedlings or hand-pollinating flowers which were to be crossed with each other, was asked to go at
once to the glasshouse to draw the shades. Frank was given a greater responsibility. He was to look after three-year-old Jay, who arrived bubbling with excitement at his unexpected release from the nursery to play with the big boys.

‘I'm a Red Indian!' he announced, sticking a pigeon's feather into his fair hair; and the others agreed that they would be Red Indians as well, at least until Philip returned to continue the target competition. They set off in single file in search of cowboys to fight. It was perhaps because Jay was the smallest, with eyes nearest to the ground, that he was the first to see a quick movement in the undergrowth. ‘It's a tiger, it's a tiger!' he shouted.

‘Can't be,' said Kenneth scornfully. ‘Expect it was a squirrel.'

‘It might be a fox.' David moved forward cautiously with his bow at the ready.

‘It was Pepper.' Frank was more realistic. But Jay was not to be talked out of one of his pretendings.

‘It's a tiger,' he insisted. ‘Going to
eat
Pepper. Or the baby rabbits.'

‘It's more likely to eat
you
,' suggested David, and Jay shivered in delighted anxiety.

‘Tiger hunt!' he demanded. ‘Want a tiger hunt.'

‘This way, then.' Kenneth set off in pursuit.

‘Hold on.' Frank, as always, took charge. ‘If you chase it, it will just run away. We have to make a circle and drive it into the centre. Kenneth, you go to the oak tree and work in from there. David, you start at the ditch.'

‘What about me?' Jay did not intend to be left out. It was his tiger.

Frank considered how best to keep the three-year-old out of the way. ‘You can be the bait,' he said. ‘We'll tie you to a tree and then when the tiger comes to eat you up we'll be able to kill it.' He laughed at the anxiety on Jay's face. ‘I'm only pretending, silly. It isn't a real tiger.' But
he recognized that to his little brother a pretended tiger was as dangerous as a real one. ‘All right. You can be the look-out.' He lifted Jay up to sit astride a strong branch of a tree. ‘Tell us if you see the tiger coming this way.'

‘Can tigers climb trees?'

‘Not English tigers,' said Frank reassuringly, and went off to direct his twin brothers in the chase. Pepper – because of course it was Pepper – proved to be a cooperative participant in the game. Instead of running away he was ready to play, teasing the boys by first disappearing and then jumping out in front of them, climbing a young sapling with an agility which would have alarmed Jay if he had seen it, and breaking off from the role of quarry to stalk a field mouse with an intent quietness rivalling that of his hunters.

After a little while, however, he abandoned the mouse and turned in the direction of the house, threading his way in a leisurely manner between the trees.

‘Tiger approaching oak tree!' called Frank. ‘Kenneth, cut it off.'

Kenneth stepped forward, his bow at the ready. The cat hesitated and turned away, only to find his way blocked by David. Either alarmed or angry, he bolted away towards a more heavily wooded area. A squeak of horror revealed that he had climbed the very tree in which Jay was keeping watch.

‘To the rescue!' shouted Frank, and the three brothers, from different directions, rushed forward without attempting to keep their footsteps quiet. The twins were the first to arrive. Pepper, realizing that there was one boy above in the tree as well as the two on the ground, froze into stillness with claws gripping the tree trunk.

Kenneth, carried away by the excitement of the hunt and intent on saving his little brother, was the first to fire his arrow. Even with an unmoving target his shot went
wide, posing as much danger to Jay as to the cat. But Pepper seemed to recognize that the game had become dangerous. He turned his head and snarled at the two nine-year-olds, spitting at them with a ferocity that made him seem the wild animal which they had been pretending him to be. David was just as excited by the chase as his impulsive twin, but faced their quarry with more care, moving his feet until his balance was steady and biting his lip with concentration as he drew the bow and took aim.

‘No!' shouted Frank, recognizing as he arrived on the scene that their game was out of hand. But he was too late. David's arrow had already left the bow, and he was too close to miss.

None of the four brothers ever forgot the sound of the agonized yowl with which Pepper fell to the ground. The wailing continued for a few seconds as he tried to free himself from the arrow lodged in his eye, but then gave way to a lower sound; a rattling growl which forced its way up from his stomach as his body jerked convulsively.

‘Stop it!' pleaded Kenneth, unable to bear the sound of Pepper's agony. Frank was silent, aghast at what had happened, and Jay was crying. David, slowly lowering his bow, was only just making the transition from pride at hitting his target to a realization of what he had done. But to Kenneth every jerk and groan of the wounded cat went straight to his heart until he could stand it no longer. He knew what ought to be done, because he had often heard his father describe how it had been necessary on one of his expeditions in China to shoot a mule badly injured in a landslide. ‘Stop it!' he cried again – and then, because Pepper continued to writhe on the ground, he picked up a log of wood and hit the cat three times hard on the head.

The silence as the wailing came to an end was absolute. No birds sang in the trees; no breeze stirred the leaves. Even Jay, wide-eyed with shock, had ceased to cry. When
Philip, who had heard Pepper's first squeal of pain from as far away as the glasshouse, came running to see what had happened, his footsteps were heard approaching through an emptiness so intense that the boys felt alone in the world.

‘What's going on?' he asked, not immediately catching sight of Pepper's body; but nobody answered. Frank and David and Kenneth were facing the same appalling question, which they did not need to put into words: what were they going to say to Grace?

They were all tempted by the same thought. If they promised each other not to tell, Grace would never discover what had happened. She would assume that Pepper had got lost or had had some kind of accident.

But Frank's nature was too honest for him to consider any deceit for more than a few seconds; and the twins, knowing this, realized also that Jay was too little to keep a secret. They would have to confess.

There was no need to do so in words. Seeing Philip's eyes flicker with surprise, David and Kenneth turned and found that their sister had arrived on the scene herself. She was wearing the linen smock and black stockings which were her schoolroom uniform. Why had Miss Sefton chosen today to release her from lessons! And how long had she been there?

It was not a question which any of them could put to her, for their mouths were too dry to speak. Only Philip, innocent of guilt, was able to swallow the lump in his throat. ‘I only just came,' he said.

Grace looked at her eldest brother, knowing that he would have been in charge of whatever had been going on; and Frank recognized his responsibility.

‘It was an accident,' he said. ‘We didn't mean – we're very sorry, all of us.'

Grace, still without speaking, looked down at Pepper's
body, and at the arrow. For a moment her eyes seemed to move in circles, as though the world had gone out of focus. Then she stared first at David's bow and afterwards at the bloodstained lump of wood which Kenneth was still holding. Her face was white, making her eyes look blacker than usual and, although she did not appear to be conscious of the fact, she had begun to gulp for breath in a way that often presaged one of her bouts of illness.

Frank realized that it was up to him to break the silence. There was nothing to be done for Pepper, but some kind of positive action might be helpful to Grace. He had noticed that Andy was standing a little way behind her, half hidden by the trees. ‘Bring us a spade,' he ordered; and then announced to the others, ‘We'll have a proper funeral.'