The Peppermint Pig (3 page)

Theo was snorting with laughter. He said, gasping and snorting, ‘Of course you won’t go if you die, unless you go nailed down in your coffin! But what’s wrong with Norfolk? It sounds a good place to me, a good deal more interesting than London, according to Mother.’

CHAPTER TWO

A
ND SO IT
turned out to be.

A week later, the four children travelled to Norfolk alone. Mother said it would be easier to clear up the house with them out of the way and she and Father would follow as soon as they could. Until then, the aunts would look after them. ‘Be good now,’ Mother said. ‘Your Aunt Sarah has very high standards.’

Aunt Sarah met them when they changed trains at Norwich. Almost dark then, it was quite dark when they reached the Town and the first interesting thing they saw when they came out of the station was a brightly lit butcher’s shop, decorated for Christmas with holly and a crib in one window and a live monster in the other – Grummett’s Christmas Beast, a great bullock with bloodshot eyes and tight dark
curls between fierce, curving horns, stamping about in his pen and blowing out foggy breath.

‘Poor creature,’ Lily said. ‘Oh, the poor thing! I think it’s dreadful to put him on show when he’ll be killed before Christmas.’

‘Silly-Lily,’ George said. ‘You eat meat, don’t you?’

Poll and Theo were enchanted. Not only by the Beast, but by the chance to press their noses against the window and peer at the very same butcher who had chopped off their grandmother’s finger.

‘
Is
it the same one, Aunt Sarah?’ Theo asked. ‘You were there, weren’t you?’

He looked at Aunt Sarah hopefully. Perhaps she would have a better story than even Mother had told them. She might know what had happened to the chopped finger!

Poll had been thinking along the same lines. She said suddenly, ‘If he sold it to eat, I expect it would taste like a sausage with bone in it.’

‘More meaty’ Theo said. ‘They put bread in sausages.’

‘Shut up,’ George muttered, looking anxiously at Aunt Sarah. She was tall, like Lily, and as solemnly pretty. Her high, handsome forehead, usually smooth as pale silk, was crinkled now with shock or distress.

She said, ‘I’m surprised you know about that. My poor mother! No, it’s not the same butcher, dear. He passed on some years ago. Although it says Grummett and Son over the shop, he had no boy of
his own and the business belongs to Saul Grummett now. His nephew.’

‘Not
Saul
Grummett?’ Theo cried. This was getting better and better! ‘The one who tried to shoot Mother?’

This was one of her very best stories. Mother had had many young men after her before she got married and Saul Grummett was one. He was a bit of a fool, Mother said, always pestering her, though she’d made it clear she’d have nothing to do with him. Then, one market day, he’d come after her in the Town Square and shouted, ‘If you won’t marry me, I’ll shoot myself and by God I’ll take you with me.’ Mother stood still. Saul meant what he said – he might be a fool but he was a dangerous fool – and everyone in the busy Square knew it. He faced Mother, the gun trembling in his hands, and you could have heard a pin drop. Mother looked down the gun barrel and said, ‘Go and put your father’s gun back before he misses it, Saul Grummett. And while you’re about it, get your mother to put you safely to bed. I wouldn’t have you if you were stuffed with gold.’

Theo said, ‘Dad says, if he’d been Saul Grummett, he’d have let her have it with both barrels.’ He stopped and added, uncertainly, ‘That was a joke, of course.’

Aunt Sarah had closed her eyes as if she had a bad headache. Opening them, she said, ‘Grummett is a
common name in Norfolk and that was a different Saul Grummett. He is dead too, the poor, innocent soul, and glad to be in his grave, I would think, if he knew you were spreading this shameful story around. Though it’s not to
his
shame, altogether. I must say, I’m surprised at your mother.’

She breathed deeply to steady herself, then smiled in a determined way, as if it was her duty to smile and she would do her duty whatever it cost her. She said, ‘Look at the pretty crib, children. Grummett always makes a beautiful Christmas crib.’

Theo and Poll inspected the crib without enthusiasm. Mr Grummett, a whiskery gentleman, saw their innocent faces looking in at his window and smiled cheerily. George was frowning. When they moved on, up the street, he held Poll and Theo back and whispered, ‘Keep your big mouths quiet, will you? Aunt Sarah is nice, but she doesn’t like blood-and-guts talk and it’s not fair to tease her.’

‘I don’t care,’ Theo said. ‘She’s niminy-piminy.’

‘Well, then. It’s not fair to Mother! Aunt Sarah will think…’

‘Think what?’

But George was still hesitating. As they passed under a street lamp, Poll and Theo saw his face, screwed up and bothered. At last he said, ‘Oh, never mind. But you know Mother hates being what she calls beholden to people. Well, we’re beholden to Aunt Sarah now.’

Poll said, ‘Why?’ at once, but George didn’t answer because Aunt Sarah had turned back and was calling, ‘Come along, we’re nearly there, children.’

‘There’ was a line of neat brick cottages built in a terrace. Aunt Sarah said, ‘This is our house, and the one next door is where you are going to live. Aunt Harriet has set tea for you there. We thought it would be nice for you to have tea in your own home after your journey.’

The door was open. Aunt Sarah led them through a short, dark, narrow passage to a back room, lit by a brass oil lamp with a white shade hanging above a round table. The room was so small and the table so big that they had to edge round it to kiss Aunt Harriet when she appeared at the door of the scullery.

‘Come in, my chicks. Welcome home,’ Aunt Harriet cried. She was as tall as Aunt Sarah but her face was brick red and bony instead of soft and pale, and she had sharp, merry eyes, crow-footed with smiling. She hugged them all hard, till they gasped. She said, ‘What bean poles!’ to George and to Lily, and to Theo, ‘Gracious me, still knee high to a grasshopper! You’re the one takes after your dear little mother, I can see that with half an eye.’ Theo scowled and Poll was angry on his behalf because she knew how sensitive he was about being so small, but when Aunt Harriet put a finger under her chin
and said, ‘Well, cherry pie, got a smile for Aunt Harry?’ she couldn’t help smiling up at the weather-beaten face that beamed down at her.

Theo said, ‘Where’s the bathroom?’

‘If you want to pay a visit,’ Aunt Sarah said, ‘the closet is out in the yard. Take a candle. And there are wash stands upstairs. Hang your coats in the passage and go up to wash before tea.’

Aunt Harriet took Theo out through the scullery; Aunt Sarah led the others upstairs. There were two doors at the top, one on each side of the stairs. ‘Theo and George will sleep in the back bedroom,’ Aunt Sarah said. ‘Your mother in the front, and Poll in the boxroom. Lily will stay next door with Harriet and me. Is that all right, Lily? Shall you mind being apart from the others?’

‘Oh, no,’ Lily said. ‘I’d
like
that, Aunt Sarah!’

Poll was surprised that she sounded so eager but Aunt Sarah looked pleased. She touched Lily’s cheek gently. The flame of the candle bent in the draught and grew tall, filling the front room with huge shadows. Aunt Sarah opened a low door, down two steps in the corner, and said, ‘Here is your room, Poll, my dear.’

It was tiny. An old iron bed, a chest of drawers under the window and a tin bath hanging on the back of the door. ‘Big enough for a little one,’ Aunt Sarah said, smiling.

She set the candle down on the wash stand in
what was to be Mother’s room and poured water from the ewer into the basin. ‘Wash your face and hands properly now, not just a lick and a promise, you’re covered in smuts from the train. Your trunk has arrived but you need not change your clothes till tomorrow. Just come down when you’re ready.’

She left them alone. Lily and Poll washed in cold water and dried on a rough, sweet-smelling towel. Poll whispered, ‘It’s a
little
house, isn’t it? Our house in London was huge. Where will Ruby sleep?’

Lily said, ‘Sssh…’ and glanced over her shoulder. She whispered back, ‘Ruby’s not coming.’

George was scrubbing his face with the flannel. He put out his hand for the towel and said, ‘We can’t afford a maid now, don’t be stupid, Poll.’

‘I’m not stupid. Why can’t we afford it?’

George sighed. He and Lily looked at each other over Poll’s head and she was suddenly angry because they seemed to know something she didn’t know.

George said, ‘I did try to explain…’

‘
Mother
should have done,’ Lily said. ‘Why everything is always left to me, I don’t know! Listen, Poll! Dad hasn’t any money now he’s not working and he won’t have for ages and ages. All our furniture has to be sold to pay for his ticket to America – that’s why he and Mother have stayed behind now and Aunt Sarah will have to pay for
us
, for the present. The rent for this house, and our
food, and – oh – everything!’ She spoke in a low, scolding voice as if all this was in some way Poll’s fault. Poll stared at her, sullen-faced, hating her. Lily said frantically, ‘Don’t you understand? If it wasn’t for Aunt Sarah, we’d be in the workhouse!’

‘Don’t frighten her, Lily,’ George said. ‘It’s not quite true, anyway. Mother will have a bit of money left from the sale. And she can do dressmaking – she says lots of her old customers will be glad to know she’s back in the Town. But Aunt Sarah will have to help to begin with. She doesn’t mind, Dad says she likes to help people, but it’s only fair to be grateful. So try to be good, Poll.’

‘I’m always good,’ Poll said stiffly.

‘Try to be better, then.’ George grinned at her. ‘Don’t kill yourself over it, just think before you speak. Count ten. That’ll do for a start.’

‘If you don’t,’ Lily said, ‘you may still end up in the workhouse.’

They went downstairs. The back room was cosy after the chill of the bedrooms. Aunt Harriet sat in front of the fire, skirt hitched to the heat, making toast with a three-pronged brass fork. There was toast and dripping for tea, potato cakes with golden syrup and fat, sticky biscuits full of caraway seeds. Aunt Sarah poured tea. It was very weak, the kind of tea Mother called ‘water bewitched’. Poll thought of saying this, then counted ten and decided she had better not mention it.

She looked at her aunts. Aunt Sarah had a sweet, gentle face but it was somehow stern, too. Aunt Harriet’s face was much jollier. She had thin hair, fine as spider’s thread, twisted up in a skimpy bun on top of her head and a loud abrupt laugh, like a man’s. Impossible to imagine Aunt Sarah laughing, Poll thought; it would make her face too untidy! But she smiled at them all with great kindness. She said, ‘We must discuss your education, children. I expect the first thing you will all want to know is where you are going to school.’

It was the last thing Poll wanted to know. School was being rapped over the knuckles with a ruler and being stood in the corner, Dunce’s Cap on and fenced in with a blackboard that would fall over if she moved as much as an inch. But when she had counted to ten, she knew she had better not say so. She munched toast and dripping and sighed.

Aunt Sarah said, ‘George will go to the Grammar School, of course. Theo to the Boys’ School just round the corner, and Poll to my school.’

Aunt Sarah was Headmistress of the Girls’ School and Aunt Harriet taught there as well. Her eyes crinkled into bright slits as she said to Poll, ‘I wish you could be in my class, cherry-pie, but I only teach babies.’

Aunt Sarah said, ‘It is Lily we must think about. What do you want to be when you grow up, my dear?’

‘Mother thinks I should be a nurse. Or go into the Post Office. But I would like to be an actress, really.’ Lily blushed. ‘It is my greatest wish.’

Poll was astonished to hear her say this to Aunt Sarah. It always made Mother angry! ‘If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride,’ was what Mother said.

But Aunt Sarah was smiling. ‘That is a fine ambition, Lily. You get it from your Father, of course. He was always so fond of the theatre. There is a private school in Norwich with a good reputation for drama, perhaps we can manage to send you there. You will have to work hard, of course. George, too. There is nothing you can’t do, if you work hard enough. You can become a great actress and George can get a scholarship to Cambridge and become a Professor…’

As she spoke she stopped smiling and her eyes seemed to look beyond them, out through the walls of the little, hot room, and Poll was reminded of her father, dreaming of making his fortune in America. Aunt Sarah was gazing into the future as he had gazed into the fire, seeing them, not as they were now but as they would be one day if she had a hand in it, grown up and out in the world, famous people…

Aunt Harriet laughed her loud, cheerful laugh. ‘And what about Theo here? He’s not going to come to much if he doesn’t eat more. One potato cake,
and half of that left on his plate! No wonder he looks pale as lard.’

‘I’m not hungry,’ Theo said.

‘You need a good purge, my boy! A good dose, that’ll bring the colour back into your cheeks. Senna tea or prune paste, which would you rather have?’

Theo shook his head, looking as if he might be sick any minute.

‘Not tonight, Harriet,’ Aunt Sarah said. ‘The boy needs his sleep more than anything. They all do.’

‘I’m not tired,’ Poll said, though she was. So tired, suddenly, that she could barely keep her eyes open, too tired to protest when Lily led her upstairs and helped her undress in that strange little room with the tin bath on the back of the door that looked like a humpy whale in the candlelight. ‘It’s like going to bed in a cupboard,’ she said, when Lily tucked her up and kissed her goodnight, and Lily laughed and kissed her again and whispered, mouth so close that it tickled Poll’s ear, ‘I’m sorry I teased you about the workhouse, darling Poll, I didn’t mean it, not really.’

Poll thought about it, though, when she woke: about being poor and shut up in a bleak building with bars on the windows, and eating workhouse gruel, and wearing grey workhouse uniform, and walking out two by two in a long crocodile, but she said nothing about it, not even to Theo. It began to seem like a rather shameful dream she had had, and like a
dream it would have faded away in the end if they had not met Mrs Marigold Bugg.