The Peppermint Pig (6 page)

‘Come on, Theo,’ Poll cried. She dashed at the ice and it slid squeakily away under her, throwing her flat on her back, legs in the air. Theo pulled her up, laughing. ‘You’ve got to start slowly. Try a proper slide, watch the others.’

There were two slides for the bigger children who didn’t have skates: a short one, by the fence, and a longer one that went the full length of the pond,
under the trees. Theo made for this one and Poll followed him. He said, ‘It’s only for boys, can’t you see? That’s the girls’ slide over there, by the fence.’

Poll saw at once that the boys’ slide was not only longer but better: made faster by strong, hob-nailed boots. She pulled her mouth down and went towards it but stopped when she got there. The boys were all bigger than she was, and very much bigger than Theo. They let him join in, though; he took his turn and shot down the slide, a fearful joy in his eyes. He tottered a bit at the end but kept on his feet. ‘Oh, it’s
fast
,’ he said, as he passed Poll to take his place in the line. Poll watched him angrily. Why shouldn’t she join in too? There was no law, was there, saying
NO GIRLS ON THIS SLIDE
? She pushed her way in, before Theo, and took off with a running start, cold air solid in her mouth, ice glassy smooth under her feet, slipping backwards. There was a marvellous moment halfway when she knew she was going to make it and from then on it was almost like flying: a lovely, free feeling. She ran back to the start and went down twice more, straight and quick as an arrow. No one tried to stop her and though some boys laughed, she was too happy to care. Then, the fourth time, as she came to the end, someone said, ‘She’s better than the little runt, anyway.’

Noah Bugg was standing there, grinning and looking at Theo who had just fallen at the end of the slide.

Noah sang out, ‘Greengrass, Greengrass, why don’t you grow?’ There was a sly smirk on his face. He sang it again, louder, and as Theo got up and came towards Poll, several boys took up the chant.
Greengrass, why don’t you grow
…

Poll said, ‘I wouldn’t stand for that.’ Theo turned away, shrugging his shoulders, but she had seen his mouth start to tremble. She shouted at Noah, ‘You skinny bully, you
caterpillar
,’ and charged him, head down. She hit him in the stomach, he grunted and fell and she fell on top of him. He tried to get up but she grabbed his hair with both hands and thumped his head up and down. He put his hand under her chin, pushing her off him, rolled her over, and held her flat on the ice. Slush trickled down her neck; she could feel it soaking through her clothes. She couldn’t move but Noah’s laughing face was above her so she spat into it as hard as she could and said, ‘Damn you, you rotten
bug
, damn and blast you to hell…’

Someone said, ‘Noah!’ and the grin went from his face as if a curtain had fallen and covered it. He got up awkwardly and shuffled to the side of the pond, red hands dangling.

Aunt Sarah said, ‘Get up, Poll. It’s time you went home, I think.’

She waited, calm and aloof as a statue, while Poll scrambled up. Most of the boys seemed to have melted away; the few that were left stood in a group at the end of the slide, watching in silence. They were
all scared of Aunt Sarah, Poll thought, and no wonder! There was something frightening about a person who never scolded, never even seemed to get angry, but who could make you feel just by the tone of her voice that you really had behaved very badly. ‘Get up, Poll,’ as Aunt Sarah said it, was worse than several hours of Aunt Harriet’s nagging.

Aunt Sarah said nothing else all the way home. Theo didn’t speak either, until they were in the house and Aunt Sarah had gone through to the kitchen. Then he caught Poll by the arm, turned her to face him, and whispered softly and savagely, ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll fight my own battles in future.’

He marched upstairs and his bedroom door slammed. Poll would have liked to run and hide and cry privately, but she was too wet and shivery. She gulped down the tears in her throat, lifted her chin, and went to the kitchen where Mother had a good fire and water heating up ready. She gave Poll a look and said, to Aunt Sarah, ‘I thought Someone might need a bath!’

Aunt Sarah said, ‘Poll has inherited one thing at least from our side of the family. Harriet’s temper!’

Her smooth face was serious but there was a smile in her voice. She said, ‘Get those wet clothes off at once, Poll.’

The hip bath from the back of Poll’s bedroom door was in front of the fire and a screen, made of thick cotton and stuck all over with picture postcards, stood
round it to keep off the draughts. Poll’s skin was red and stinging in patches with the cold slush that had seeped through her clothes but after a minute or two in the lovely hot water she felt very comfortable and began to enjoy sitting in the little house the screen made, with the fire in front, the smell of bread cooking in the oven beside it, and the murmur of voices as Mother and Aunt Sarah sat over their tea. One of the postcards on the screen was a yellowing photograph of a fat old woman sitting on a donkey that Father and Mother had sent to Aunt Sarah when they went to Yarmouth on their honeymoon, and another, a coloured picture of Niagara Falls that had come from Uncle Edmund when he first went on his travels. All the Gaiety Girls were there, and Dan Leno, a comic face with fuzzy, gummed-on hair, but Poll’s favourite was a Christmas card of a snow-covered house, the roof sprinkled with frosting that sparkled beautifully in the light from the fire. The house had a paper front door that opened to show a red-carpeted hall with holly and a lit tree. Poll opened and closed the door and thought of Theo who had warned her not to do that too often in case it came off, and wondered if he were still angry with her. It didn’t seem fair if he was, she had only been taking his part, but nothing about Theo was simple.

She said, ‘Mother, you know that gold Dad brought home for us to make Christmas cards with? Is it valuable?’

There was a little pause. Mother and Aunt Sarah had been talking and Poll had broken into their conversation. Mother said, with a laugh, ‘Of course, Poll. All gold is valuable.’

‘Even tiny bits?’

‘You know how small a gold sovereign is!’

Poll was pleased with this answer because it proved Theo was right. She would tell him so as a sort of peace offering and they could be friends again without her having to say she was sorry. She slipped low in the water and felt very settled and happy.

Mother was saying, ‘… when all’s said and done, you can’t help but be sorry. Poor Old Rowland, he set so much store by that boy of his! A mistake to have only one child, all your eggs in one basket, and he admits that he’d spoiled him. Apparently there had been trouble before, though not on this scale. Just petty pilfering when he was no more than a bit of a lad, nothing serious.’

‘If Mr Rowland thought that, then he made a rod for his own back and I’ve no sympathy for him,’ Aunt Sarah said. ‘Stealing is always wrong, even if it is only a sweet or a hair pin, and no child is too young to understand that. A lesson learned young is a lesson for life! I hope you agree with me, Emily.’

‘Yes, Sarah. Of course.’ Mother’s voice sounded humble but when she came round the screen to open the oven door, her face didn’t look it. She was smiling
and her eyes danced as she tapped the bread with her knuckles to see if it was done.

The loaves rang with a hollow sound. Poll saw that one of them had run over the edge of its tin. ‘Please, Mother, can I have run-over and butter?’

Aunt Sarah said, ‘New bread is indigestible. Very bad for children.’

Mother winked at Poll and held up a warm towel. Poll got out of the bath. Mother dried her, pulled her nightgown over her head and put an old shawl round her shoulders. She folded the screen and Aunt Sarah helped her lift the bath and pour the water away down the sink in the scullery.

Aunt Sarah said, ‘I’m glad Mr Rowland came, anyway. It showed respect for James.’

‘That wasn’t his only reason for coming.’ Mother put the bath on the floor of the scullery and wiped it out energetically. She straightened up, very pink in the face. ‘He asked me if I was in need of money. Of course I said no.’

Aunt Sarah didn’t answer for several minutes. Mother went on polishing the inside of the hip bath and Aunt Sarah put on her outdoor clothes. She finished smoothing her gloves on and then said, speaking quickly and a bit breathlessly as if she felt she should have said this at once and not waited, ‘Yes, of course. There is no reason why he should help.’

‘Except that it’s hard on you, having to pay for my pride?’

Mother came into the kitchen, eyes on Aunt Sarah, and Aunt Sarah smiled at her, not her normal pained and dutiful smile but an open and happy one that made her look very much younger and prettier. She said, ‘Nonsense, Emily dear,’ and kissed Mother’s cheek.

When she had gone, Poll said, ‘Why didn’t Aunt Sarah ever get married?’

‘Too much sense.’

‘Don’t be silly. I mean,
really
.’

Mother cut the crisp, run-over bread from the side of the tin, spread it with butter and gave it to Poll. ‘Well, it’s true in a way. You won’t find many women clever as Sarah in a long day’s march and even fewer men. If you did find one who measured up to her, I dare say she’d frighten him off! But that’s not the whole of it. Sarah had only just started teaching when Granny Greengrass got paralysed and Sarah had to look after her as well as putting in long hours at school. And Mrs Greengrass was a lot of work, let me tell you, a huge big woman, going on for six foot and nearly as wide and with a voice like a gong. She ruled the house from her bed – you could hear her from the end of the street, shouting out orders! But it was Sarah who carried them out, kept the house going, saw her young brothers through school. So what chance had she to get married? They needed her money, there was nothing much else coming in
except what Harriet got, pupil-teaching, which wasn’t enough to feed a bird, really. Not that Sarah minded, mark you! She said it was her duty and pleasure to care for her mother who’d worked hard enough in her time. Old Granny Greengrass had been chief pastry cook at the baker’s and a bit of a slave driver to those under her, but she drove herself, too. Worked hard and died hard, people said.’

‘How old were you when her finger got chopped off?’

‘Oh, just a little thing. But I heard about it, of course, and when she died it got me into a nice bit of trouble. Did I never tell you that tale?’ Mother looked at Poll and, when Poll shook her head, sat down on the other side of the fire. ‘Well, let me see, Sarah was about twenty-six then, so I’d be going on twelve. Old enough to know better, anyway. My mother had been helping Sarah with the old lady – there’s always a lot of work at a death bed – and when I came along to the house after school they were sitting down with a cup of tea in the parlour. So seeing the coast clear, I nipped upstairs. I’d never managed to get a good look at that chopped-off finger and I thought, now’s my chance! But I’d never seen anyone dead before either, and when I pulled the sheet back I got more than I bargained for. Her face was quite peaceful but when I touched her she was cold and stiff as a board and that scared me! I left her uncovered and ran down into the garden and stayed there until it began to get
dark. Then I went in as if nothing had happened. I don’t know where Mother was, but Sarah was sewing in the kitchen. She said, “Have you been upstairs, Emily?” I said, “No.” She asked me again, “Are you quite sure?” and when I said yes, she gave me a straight look and went back to her sewing. I thought I’d creep out but as I was going she said, “Emily, would you go and get my silver thimble? I left it upstairs on the chest in the front room.” Well, that was where old Mrs Greengrass lay dead, and it was dark now. I thought I would die of fright, but I was no match for Sarah, and upstairs I went…’

Poll felt her skin creep. ‘That was mean of Aunt Sarah.’

‘Not really. I only had to tell her the truth and she would have let me off, but since I had stuck to my lie I had to be punished. You know your Aunt Sarah! She’d die rather than do a wrong thing herself and she expects the same standards in others. A bit hard to live up to, but we’ll all have to do our best, living next door and under her eye.’ She looked at Poll grimly. ‘What made you get in a fight?’

Poll was taken aback: she had thought that was forgotten. ‘What did Sarah say?’

‘Just you’d been scrapping but you’d been provoked.’

‘They laughed at Theo.’ Poll flushed with anger. ‘That Noah Bugg! He called him a runt!’

Mother sighed.

‘Will Theo ever grow, do you think? It makes him so miserable.’

Mother said, ‘If that’s the only cross he ever has to bear in his life, he’ll be lucky’ and although she often made forbidding remarks of this kind, meaning nothing much by them, Poll felt scared suddenly. Perhaps it was the thought of a little girl being sent up, in the dark, to where a dead woman was lying, or perhaps it was just the growing dark in the kitchen, but it seemed to Poll, as her mother got up to light the oil lamp, that the world was full of unknown dangers, shapeless but menacing, like the shadows in the corners of the room.

CHAPTER FOUR

A
WEEK PASSED
– and something much worse did happen to Theo than being teased by Noah Bugg. Aunt Sarah knitted him a pink woollen vest and he had to wear it to school.

It was made of thick, soft wool and knitted in a pretty, lacy pattern. Mother said, ‘Sarah must have sat up till all hours, it is good of her. She says she’ll have another one ready time this one needs to be washed.’ She saw Theo’s sickly grin and added in a coaxing voice, ‘Your Aunt Sarah is worried about you getting a chill, this bitter cold weather.’

‘I’d rather get a chill than wear that,’ Theo said. ‘It’s a girl’s vest. I’d rather die.’

He meant it: he felt really desperate. Mocking laughter filled his dreams; tormenting boys danced round him, gimlet-eyed.
We can see what you’re wearing, Baby Theo Greengrass!
He prayed for a miracle – for
the house to burn down and the hateful vest with it while they were all safely out – but his prayers were not answered. The first day of school, the humiliating garment was laid out on the chair at the end of his bed. He put it on and came down to breakfast wishing the earth would open and swallow him.