The Peppermint Pig (7 page)

Poll tried to comfort him. ‘No one will see the vest under your clothes. No one will know.’

‘I’ll know!’ He pushed the porridge round his plate, the tears springing.

Mother looked at him helplessly. She said, ‘Sarah’s so good to us, Theo. I can’t tell her you wouldn’t wear it.’

‘All right, all
right
. I’m wearing the beastly thing, aren’t I?’ Tears fell into his uneaten porridge and Poll began to cry too, in sympathy.

Mother said, ‘Oh, you two!’ She got up from the table, went to the scullery and began to throw dirty pots into the sink, making more noise than seemed necessary. George, off to school early, hitched his satchel up on his shoulder and said, ‘For Heaven’s sake, Theo, can’t you see you’re upsetting her? Don’t be so childish.’

‘I
am
a child,’ Theo said, sullenly hiccuping, but George had already gone. He went out of the front door, calling back, ‘Mother, the milkman’s here.’

She came from the scullery, drying her hands and muttering under her breath. She forgot to pick up the
blue and white jug from the table and when she reached the door, she called Poll to bring it.

The milkman was saying, ‘… so the old sow farrowed early. D’you want a peppermint pig, Mrs Greengrass?’

Poll looked at him, thinking of sweets, but there was a real pig poking its snout out of the milkman’s coat pocket. It was the tiniest pig she had ever seen. She touched its hard little head and said, ‘What’s a peppermint pig?’

‘Not worth much,’ Mother said. ‘Only a token. Like a peppercorn rent. Almost nothing.’

‘Runt of the litter,’ the milkman added. ‘Too small for the sow to raise. He’d only get trampled on in the rush.’

Mother took the pig from him and held it firmly while it kicked and squealed piercingly. She tipped it to look at its stomach and said, ‘Well, he seems strong enough. And even runts grow.’

The milkman took the jug from Poll and went to his cart to ladle milk out of his churn.

‘Oh,’ Poll said. ‘Oh,
Mother.
’ She stroked the small, wriggling body. Stroked one way, its skin felt silky to touch; the other way, stiff little hairs prickled her fingers. He was a pale apricot colour all over.

The milkman came back. Mother said, ‘Will you take a shilling?’ and he nodded and grinned. Poll took the milk to the kitchen and flew upstairs for her
mother’s purse. ‘Theo,’ she shouted, ‘look what we’ve got!’

An old pint beer mug stood on the dresser. Mother laughed suddenly and popped the pig in it. He made such a fearsome noise that they put their hands over their ears. Poll picked him out and said, ‘Whatever made you do that?’

‘I just thought he would fit, and he did!’

Poll put him down and he scampered desperately round the kitchen, dainty feet skittering on slippery lino. He shot into the scullery and went to ground in the little hole under the copper.

Mother said, ‘Leave him now, poor little fellow, he’s scared to death. He’ll settle down while you’re at school.’

Poll groaned tragically. ‘Must we go? Oh, I can’t bear it, I can’t bear to leave him.’

‘He’ll be here when you come home dinner time,’ Mother said.

Poll counted the hours. Not just that day, but the next and the next, the thought of the baby pig, waiting at home, distracted her attention so she had no time left to be naughty: by the end of the first week, she had not once been rapped over the knuckles or stood in the corner. She made a best friend called Annie Dowsett who was older than she was and who told her how babies were born. ‘The butcher comes and cuts you up the stomach with his carving knife,’
Annie said. ‘But don’t tell your mother I told you.’ Poll didn’t really believe this, because if it were true, women would never have more than one baby but it was an interesting idea all the same and she began to feel she quite liked this new school. She even liked her teacher, Miss Armstrong, who had a long, mild sheep’s face, and was proud that her aunt was Headmistress with her name on a brass plate on the outside of the building. Everyone was a little scared of Aunt Sarah but not of Aunt Harriet, who was called Miss Harry to her face and Old Harry behind her back, who romped in the playground with the little ones until her wispy hair came down under her hat, and always brought potatoes to school to bake in the stove for the children who lived too far away to go home for their dinner.

Even Theo was happier because of the pig. The excitement of its arrival carried him through the first day, and although after that the horrible shame of the pink, girlish vest hidden under his clothes still haunted him sleeping and waking, especially when he caught Noah Bugg’s rolling, gooseberry eye in the classroom, he managed to live with it. No one, he told himself, was likely to fall upon him and tear his clothes off, and even if he was sometimes tormented because of his size, he was used to that, and it was a comfort to run home and pick up the pig and whisper in his floppy ear, ‘Peppermint pig, peppermint pig, I’m a peppermint
boy
, so there’s two of us, runts in this family.’

Mother called the pig Johnnie, saying (rather oddly, the children thought) that he reminded her of her grandfather, and it wasn’t long before he answered to his name, grunting and running whenever they called him. At night, he slept in the copper hole on a straw bed; during the day he trotted busily round behind Mother or sat on the hearth rug staring thoughtfully into the fire.

Lily said, ‘You can’t keep a pig indoors, Mother!’

‘Oh, we had all sorts of animals in the house when I was young,’ Mother said. ‘Jackdaws, hedgehogs, newly hatched chicks. I remember times you couldn’t get near our fire.’

‘But not
pigs
,’ Lily said.

‘I can’t see why not. You’d keep a dog and a pig has more brains than a dog, let me tell you. If you mean pigs are dirty, that’s just a matter of giving a pig a bad name to my mind. Why, our Johnnie was housetrained in a matter of days and with a good deal less trouble than
you
gave me, my girl!’

Poll giggled and Lily went pink.

Mother said, ‘Give a pig a chance to keep clean and he’ll take it, which is more than you can say of some humans. You tell me now, does Johnnie smell?’

If he did, it was only a mixture of bran and sweet milk, which was all he ate to begin with, although as he grew older, Mother boiled up small potatoes and added scraps from the table. She said there was no waste in a house with a pig and when the summer
came they would go round the hedgerows and collect dandelions and sow thistle so he would have plenty of fresh food and grow strong and healthy ‘What he eats is important,’ she said. ‘Pigs are a poor person’s investment.’

‘What’s investment?’ Poll asked.

‘Oh, nothing,’ Mother said quickly. ‘Never you mind.’ Poll said, ‘We aren’t poor.’ She thought of Annie Dowsett who wore a woman’s cut-down dress and cracked boots and was one of the children Aunt Harriet baked a potato for every day. She wondered if she should tell Mother what Annie had said about how babies were born and decided against it: children were not supposed to know that sort of thing. She said, ‘Annie Dowsett’s poor.’

‘There are degrees,’ Mother said, speaking absently, and with the creased, worried look on her face that was often there now and that the children had come to recognize as a sign to keep quiet and not ask for anything.

Even letters from Father did not seem to cheer her up as they should have done. Uncle Edmund had left the fruit farm in California to run a saloon in Colorado, and Father had gone with him. The saloon belonged to a woman called Bertha Adams, and for some mysterious reason Uncle Edmund was calling himself Adams, too. ‘I don’t like it,’ Mother said to Aunt Sarah. ‘It smells fishy to me.’

‘How can Colorado smell fishy?’ George asked. ‘It’s nowhere near the sea, is it?’

Aunt Sarah gave him a look and he went back to his book.

‘It seems the fruit farm didn’t belong to Edmund after all,’ Mother said. ‘James says he was manager, but there had been some trouble.’

‘I don’t doubt that,’ Aunt Sarah said. ‘It’s an old story, isn’t it? What I don’t understand is how James let himself be taken in. He knows Edmund! And whatever else you might say about James, he has a good head on his shoulders.’

‘And a hopeful heart in his breast,’ Mother said. ‘The two organs are often at war with each other.’

She put Father’s letter behind the clock on the mantelpiece, looked at her reflection in the mirror above it and ran her hands through her short, crisp curls. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘
Well
. If James isn’t going to make our fortune just yet, I had better do something about it.’

She went to Mullen’s shop in the Market Square, dressed in her best coat with the jet trimming and her best hat. When she came back she looked smaller than usual, and tired. Poll and Lily watched her as she unpinned her hat and took it off with a sigh.

Lily said, ‘Are you going to work at Mullen’s, Mother?’ She shook her head and sat down by the fire. Johnnie came and leaned against her and she
pulled his ears gently. She said, ‘There’s my good pig.’

Lily said indignantly ‘Why not? He said he’d give you a job, didn’t he?’

‘He offered me one. He wanted me to take charge of the workroom, set me over Marigold Bugg. I didn’t like that idea for a start, bound to make trouble, but that wasn’t all in his mind. When we went into it, I saw what he meant to do. He didn’t say so outright, but I know the old devil! He doesn’t like Marigold – she hasn’t the grit to stand up to him and though she’s a good worker, best cutter he’s got, it makes him look down on her. Once he’d got me in to do the cutting and fitting, he’d get rid of her, and what would she do then, the poor creature? That great boy to care for, and her old father who’d be in the workhouse if she couldn’t keep him, and not a soul in the world cares for her.’

Poll said, ‘But you don’t like Mrs Bugg, Mother? You couldn’t possibly like her!’

‘Since she counts me her friend, that makes it worse, doesn’t it? I’d be letting her down twice over, if I took her place.’

Lily said, ‘Poor Mother,’ and went over to hug her. Poll wished she had thought of doing that and sat feeling left out while Mother held Lily’s hand against her cheek and smiled up to her.

‘Oh, Lily’ she said, ‘whatever Marigold is like now, we were girls together and I can’t forget that. She wasn’t so pursed-up then, she still had a bit of
spunk in her. When we were apprentices, we lived in, you know, and old Mullen was mean about food. Many a time there was just spotted dick for dinner and we threw it out of the window for the hens to pick over and crept down the back stairs to the grocery to get bread and cheese from the young man on the counter. “You’ll have me hung,” he’d say but he always stumped up and back we’d go to the workroom, aprons bulging. One time Marigold almost got caught. She came face to face with old Mullen and he said, “What are you up to, Miss? What have you got in your apron?” I was behind her, nearly dying of fright, but Marigold stuck her nose in the air and said, “I’m surprised at you, Mr Mullen, asking a lady such an indelicate question,” and swept straight past him, oozing outrage and virtue! Oh, it doesn’t sound so funny perhaps, but we had a good laugh over the look on his face and it makes me sad to see the meek way she speaks to him now…’

She gave a long sigh, looking into the fire, and then her face twisted suddenly and she turned to Lily and said, almost desperately, ‘Remember, Lily, that’s the worst thing about poverty! Not hunger or leaky boots but the way it drains out your spirit! However things turn out, you must never let that happen to you. Promise me!’

Poll said, bewildered, ‘I would hate to be hungry,’ and her mother gasped and jumped up from her
chair and put her arms round her, holding her so close and tight that Poll could feel her heart fluttering.

‘Oh my lamb, of course you’re never going to be. Did I frighten you? That was stupid, there’s nothing to be frightened of. Everything is going to be quite all right, you must believe me.’

Lily laughed. ‘Poll knows Aunt Sarah wouldn’t let us starve. She’s just acting up, you know what she is! Don’t worry, Mother.’

Poll heard her mother’s stays creak as she drew a deep breath and released it slowly. She let Poll go, smiled at Lily and said in a quiet, even voice, ‘Yes, of course, dear. Of course we all know that. I was just being silly.’

She had a notice printed to send to old clients and stuck one in the window.

EMILY GREENGRASS
Begs respectfully to inform the Ladies of this
District that she has Commenced
DRESS AND MANTLE MAKING
and hopes, by strict personal attention, to merit
a share of their Patronage and Support
.
Having been sole manageress of the Dressmaking
Department of a well-known local store for a number of
years, she feels confident of giving satisfaction to her
Customers in all orders entrusted to her.
A GOOD FIT AND LATEST STYLE
GUARANTEED

No one answered, or came for several days, and then one afternoon old Miss Mantripp, who lived in the cottage at the end of the terrace, knocked at the door and asked if Mother could make her a blouse out of some lace she had ‘put by’ for a special occasion.

‘It’s very good lace, Mrs Greengrass,’ she said. ‘The end of a bolt brought from Paris that her Ladyship gave me. I would have made it up myself but my eyes are too bad now for delicate work. I hope you’ll take good care of it.’

Miss Mantripp was about four foot six inches tall and bent over so that she appeared even smaller. She was a retired lady’s maid, living on a tiny pension her employers had given her, and the children thought she was an extraordinary person. If anyone spoke to her early in the day, when she was shaking her rug at the door, or shuffling along to the shops in an old coat and slippers, all she would ever say was, ‘Don’t talk mornings,’ in a gruff, grumpy voice. But as soon as midday had struck she took off her shabby clothes, put on a black dress with pearl buttons and sat in her window with the curtains drawn back, looking out at the Square and waiting for visitors.