Theatre Shoes (2 page)

“And she chose Daddy,” said Holly.

“No. She chose somebody else. A very important man. Your mother was very young and perhaps a little afraid of your grandmother, and she did not say ‘I won't marry him, I love somebody else,' so preparations for an enormous wedding went on, and then, when everybody was in the church, including the bridegroom, a message came to say that she was sorry, she was not going to be married that day, and never to that bridegroom. She was going to marry your father.”

“And so she did,” said Holly.

“Yes, but it wasn't as easy as all that. Your grandmother was very angry and she never saw your mother again.”

“What, because she married Daddy?” said Mark. “I should think she ought to have been jolly pleased to have Daddy in the family.”

“I know, perhaps she should. Perhaps she's sorry now, but at that time she felt she'd been made to look foolish, and she lost her temper. Very understandable, you know.”

“I don't think it was very understandable,” said Sorrel. “To be angry at the time was all right, but fancy never seeing our mother again!”

“The Channel Islands are a long way off. Your mother only lived four years after she married your father. I expect your grandmother was heartbroken when she died. I feel sure she was.”

Sorrel eyed the Bishop suspiciously.

“Why do you want us to like our grandmother?”

There was quite a pause before he answered.

“Because we have been writing to her. You are going to live with her.”

Questions burst from them all.

“Where does she live?”

“Does she act now?”

“When are we going?”

“I don't think she is acting in anything at the moment. You are going next week. She lives in London.”

CHAPTER II

IN THE TRAIN

It was when they were in the train travelling to London that Hannah broke the news. The train was an inconvenient place to talk in because there were fourteen people in their carriage. Ten quite sitting, two partly sitting and two standing up. Sorrel and Mark were on the same side, Sorrel was a quite sitter and Mark a part sitter. Hannah and Holly faced them. Both Hannah and Holly would have been quite sitters if it were not for Hannah's curves, which took up nearly two seats. On the non-Holly side of Hannah there was a thin woman, who looked as if she were wearing tin underclothes, she was so stiff and held-in looking. She was clearly a woman who knew her rights, and her most immediate right was, having paid for a seat, to have the proper space for one person to sit on. She fought so hard to prevent even a quarter of an inch of Hannah bulging into her piece of seat that she dare not open a book or take out a piece of knitting for fear she should relax and Hannah's curves win. Because of this woman Holly had to do all the giving way to Hannah's curves, and she had less than a quarter of a seat and was pushed so far forward that she was almost in the middle of the carriage.

The train had been bumbling along for about half an hour when Hannah, taking a deep breath as if she were going to blow up a balloon, said:

“You aren't any of you going back to school.”

They were all so surprised that for a moment they did not speak. After all, it was almost term time, and up to that minute it was as certain they were going back as it was certain that Christmas was coming. It was all kinds of stupid things which did not matter at all which struck them first.

“But we've got the uniform,” said Sorrel, “and we haven't the coupons for anything else.”

Mark was frowning.

“I left a pencil case in the bootroom.”

Holly was gazing up at Hannah.

“We'll have to go back. They're expecting us. Matron said so when she kissed me good-bye.”

“That's for your Granny to decide.”

Hannah spoke firmly because inside she thought the children's grandmother was making a mistake and she knew that the Bishop thought the same thing. When the letter came asking had notice been given the schools that the children were not returning, and if not please would somebody do it at once, the Bishop had written to grandmother. He pointed out that the children were happy at their schools and too many changes at once were upsetting. He wrote very nicely, of course, saying it was not his business to interfere, and he only dared as an old friend of the children's father's family. Grandmother had written back also very nicely, but also a very dignified letter. It was good of the Bishop to trouble himself, but she was arranging to have the children educated in London.

“Where are we going to school, then?” Sorrel asked.

Hannah did her very best to sound as if she approved.

“Your Granny's having you educated in London.”

“But where?” Sorrel persisted.

“Now, how should I know?” Hannah sounded cross. “We'll learn soon enough when we get there.”

Sorrel said no more. She stared out of the window. It was, of course, nice to be going to see London. It was exciting in a way to be going to meet her grandmother, but on the whole everything was pretty dismal. She liked Ferntree. Since grandfather had died and they had heard about London she had felt a sinking-lift feeling inside, not all the time, of course, but quite often, and the cure for the lift feeling was thinking of Ferntree. When she and Holly got back there everything would be ordinary again. Of course there would still be no vicarage and only grandmother to go to in the holidays, but it would be easier to sort things out at Ferntree. It did not, Sorrel decided, matter very much if bits of your life became peculiar as long as there was something somewhere that stayed itself. Up till this minute Ferntree had been the something somewhere. To her horror, thinking about no more Ferntree made her eyes suddenly full of tears. She was horribly ashamed. Crying in a train! What would people think of a girl of eleven crying in a train! She sniffed, pushed up her chin, threw back her plaits and, as a way of getting rid of the tears, shook her head, then she muttered, “Smut in my eyes,” and turned to Mark.

Mark was making awful faces at his shoes. It was the only way to stop himself from crying. Not going back to Wilton House! He thought of his friends, of his chances for the second football team, of how one of the boys had said he would bring him back a forked bit of wood off a special sort of tree which only grew in the woods near his home and made a simply super catapult.

“I daresay,” Sorrel said to him in a wobbly voice, “schools are all right in London.”

Mark gulped and made even worse faces.

“Pretty sickening it being this term. I was going to have a special do for my birthday.”

Sorrel's voice wobbled more than ever.

“I expect we wouldn't mind so much if it wasn't there's been such a lot of changes. I mean, our coming to grandfather and then the Germans landing at home so we couldn't go back there even for a holiday.”

Mark tried so hard that a woman with a baby in the corner looked at him and nudged her husband.

“Shocking faces that kid makes.”

“Then Dad …” said Mark.

Sorrel knew that their father was the last person they dared think of, so she scuttled on, stammering she spoke so fast.

“Then grandfather dying and us having to leave the vicarage.”

Mark's tears were gaining.

“And now not going back to school.”

Hannah could not lean forward because the thin woman with her rights kept her wedged, instead she pressed Sorrel's toe with her foot.

“What about us having a nice bit of something to eat. You'll none of you guess what I've got in our basket.”

The basket was on the rack. Neither Sorrel nor Mark felt like eating, but they were glad of something to do.

“If Holly gets up,” said Mark in a sniffy voice, “I can climb on her bit of seat and get the basket down.”

An American soldier was standing by the window chewing gum. He gave a slow smile.

“All right, son, I'll pass it.”

He took the basket off the rack and put it half on Hannah's knees and half on the skinny knees of the woman with her rights. It would have seemed an accident, only as he turned away to loll back against the window he gave Sorrel and Mark a very meaning wink.

That wink somehow cheered things up. A world where grown-up people could do funny things like that could not be as depressing as it had looked a few minutes ago.

Hannah, quite disregarding her next-door neighbour, opened the basket. The woman with her rights spoke as if each word was a cherry-stone she was spitting out.

“Do you mind moving that basket on to your own knees.”

Hannah beamed at her as if she were being nice.

“I'm sorry, I'm sure, but fixed like we are it's hard to know whose knee is whose.” The rest of the people in the carriage, because of too little space and too much tobacco smoke, had been half asleep. Now, as if Hannah's voice was the breakfast gong, they all sat up and looked interested. Hannah was pleased; she liked conversation to be general. She drew everybody in with a glance. “We had an early breakfast and we're a bit low-spirited. Nothing like something to eat as a cure for that.”

In her basket Hannah had egg and cress sandwiches, and in a little box some chocolate biscuits. Eggs were not a surprise because at the vicarage they had kept hens, but chocolate biscuits!

The sight of real egg and chocolate biscuits both at the same minute excited the other passengers so much that in no time they were talking like old friends. Of course the conversation was mostly food, but food was what grown-up people liked talking about, so that was all right; anyway the general buzz made a cheerful atmosphere, and that, together with eating, made Sorrel and Mark feel a lot better, and the finish to feeling better was put by the American soldier. Like a conjurer pulling a rabbit out of a hat, he suddenly produced three enormous sweets out of his pocket and gave them one each. Sorrel was worried about taking them.

“Are you sure you can spare them?” she asked anxiously. “I mean, as big as this they must be a lot of your ration.”

The soldier did not seem to be a man who said a lot.

“Forget it.”

It was when the American's sweet was in their mouths and they could not speak that Hannah had her talk with a nice-looking woman in tweeds. It began by the woman asking where they were going and Hannah not only told her, but told her all the other things, starting with their mother and going through the Channel Islands, their father and then grandfather, finishing with who their grandmother was. The woman was interested and asked about schools. Hannah explained about Ferntree and Wilton House. The woman shook her head and said “bad luck,” and then she said:

“Changing about is a nuisance, especially if there were any thought of scholarships later on.”

“I never heard talk of that,” said Hannah.

The tweed woman leant forward and smiled at Sorrel and Mark.

“Just as well. It's so easy to miss a chance by shifting about at the wrong age.”

The conversation about education finished there and shifted to the baby of the woman in the corner, but it did not finish in Sorrel's mind. “It's so easy to miss a chance.” Did grandmother know that Mark was going into the Navy? Mr. Pinker, headmaster of Wilton House, had known. Had he been teaching Mark thinking of his entrance exam.? Of course Mark would not be the right age to go in for his examinations yet, but how awful if he ought to be being specially prepared. Daddy had written to Mr. Pinker and he knew all about it, but would the new London school? Sorrel looked at Mark and saw he had either not listened to the tweed woman or was not interested, he was placidly sucking and playing with an indiarubber band. She looked at Holly, but of course Holly was not bothering, she was far too young; in fact, in spite of the smallness of her piece of seat, she seemed to be nearly asleep, though she was still enough awake to suck at her sweet. Sorrel looked at Hannah. Hannah was an angel, but not the person to understand about examinations. She looked on education in the same way as she looked upon food rationing, something the Government insisted on and therefore you had to do, but she did not think personally education was important except perhaps reading, writing and being able to add and, if put to it, subtract.

It is queer how all in a minute you can understand what growing up means. Sorrel did not look very grown-up, she was small for her age. She was wearing a rather short cotton frock. She usually had bare legs, but to travel in she was wearing white socks and her brown school walking shoes. Looking at her you might have made a guess that she was ten and not a person who was going to be twelve in April. But at that minute inside she was far more than her age. Grandfather was dead, Daddy was a prisoner in the hands of the Japs, at least that was what she was going to believe; Hannah was grand for most things, but not everything, and Mark and Holly were still too young to feel responsible. It was up to her to take a little of her father's place. Of course grandmother might be absolutely perfect, one of those sort of grown-up people who always did sensible things without any fuss, but then she might not. She pushed her sweet into her cheek and turned to Mark.

“When we get to grandmother's, if you and Holly don't like things awfully, you will tell me, won't you?”

Mark had been thinking of catapults; he came back to the train with a jump. Sorrel had to repeat what she had said. He fixed puzzled eyes on her.

“What sort of things?”

Sorrel wished she had not said anything, it was so difficult to explain.

“Just things. I mean, I want you to know I'm there.”

Mark thought she was being idiotic.

“Of course you'll be there; where else would you be?” He went back to thinking about catapults.

CHAPTER III

NUMBER 14

They drove to grandmother's in a taxi. The children stared out of the windows. After Martins London seemed a busy place. Buses dashing everywhere and crowds of people on the pavements. They asked Hannah every sort of question because she had once been to London for the day and so they thought she ought to know all about it. Where was Madame Tussaud's? Where was The Tower? Where was Westminster Abbey? Where was the Zoo? Hannah had no idea where any of these places were, but neither had she any intention of admitting it. She looked out of the window with a thoughtful, pulling-things-out-of-her-memory expression, and said: “We're not so far now.” As the station they had arrived at was Paddington and they were making for a square near Sloane Street they never went anywhere near any of the places, but by the time the taxi stopped they were all too full of interest in what they were seeing to remember what they had not seen.