White Boots (21 page)

“What did you do for outgrowing your strength?”

“Saw a doctor. He cured me.”

At Lalla's gate Olivia kissed her goodbye.

“I have enjoyed my afternoon. I wish sometimes you could arrange for Miss Goldthorpe to give us another afternoon out.”

That night Lalla slept really well. As she was slipping into sleep she thought, “How silly I've been. It isn't that I can't do those loops. It's I need a tonic. I'll tell Nana to buy me a bottle.” And then, cosily, “And if she won't Harriet's mother will. It's nice going out with Harriet's mother, I hope I'll be allowed to do it again.”

There were no secrets between Miss Goldthorpe and Nana, so Lalla had told Nana about the matinée. At breakfast the next morning she told her what Olivia had said about outgrowing her strength. Nana tried not to look ruffled, but inside she felt it. She might tell Miss Goldthorpe something ought to be done about Lalla, who was not eating and did not look well, but that did not mean she wanted Lalla asking for a bottle of tonic. Children should not think about their health, that was for grown-ups to do for them. She gave Lalla halibut oil in the winter to keep off colds, and salts now and then in the summer if she had spots, and she made her take the tonic the doctor ordered after her influenza, but health talk from children was not right and she did not hold with it. Then she looked at Lalla and her heart softened. Harriet's mother had done her good.
She seemed much more herself this morning, and was eating a good breakfast without being told.

“That tonic was for the influenza and wouldn't do good for anything else. You'll have to see the doctor.”

Lalla helped herself to honey.

“I wish I could see Harriet's doctor. Ours is so old and grumpy. Harriet's one said she would get well if she skated. I should think a doctor who said that would know something gorgeous to make you stop outgrowing your strength.”

After breakfast Nana saw Uncle David walking up and down the lawn smoking. Nana did not hold with gardens in early March, but it was a lovely morning, a good moment to catch him alone, for Lalla was working in her garden, and Aunt Claudia was still in bed. Nana dressed as warmly as if it were a cold day in mid-winter, and went out.

Uncle David was glad to see Nana because he had just been talking to Lalla, and was thinking about her.

“That child of yours has been looking under the weather lately. What are you doing to her?”

Nana glanced up at Aunt Claudia's windows to be sure they were shut.

“That's what I've come out about, sir. She's got another of these tests coming on for the skating. That Mr Lindblom doesn't want her to take it, but Lalla won't be put off.”

Uncle David made a despairing gesture with his shoulders.

“Blast that skating! But I can't do a thing unless Lalla asks me
to; if I interfere on my own I shall be eaten alive, not only by Mrs King but by Lalla, and as well I'd lose the child's trust.”

“I know, sir. But it seems Mrs Johnson has told Lalla she might be outgrowing her strength, not that she is, but thinking it might be that and not something she can't do at the skating seems to have cheered her up. Childlike she fancies a bottle of medicine would put her right, and she's taken to the idea that she would like to be given it by the doctor that looks after Harriet and ordered skating for her.”

“You think it would be a good idea?”

Nana did not think it a good idea that Lalla should want to see a doctor. She did not believe in illness unless there was something to show for it like spots or a temperature. But Lalla was not herself, not eating properly, getting thin. If Nana had her way she would have suggested a fortnight by the sea at Easter, nothing like sea air for building children up; but Lalla would refuse to miss her lessons on that nasty cold ice.

“I don't know what to say, sir, I'm sure. I try to treat her like I'd treat any child, which is what her mother would have wished, but with the skating and all I can't. Maybe if she's taken a fancy to Harriet's doctor it can't do any harm, though I doubt it does any good.”

Uncle David smiled sympathetically.

“Don't worry too much. I'll have a talk with her and try and find out what's on her mind.”

Lalla, as instructed by Alec, was raking between the rows of
strawberries. The March wind had put colour into her cheeks and the good smell of growing, coming out of the earth, made her eyes shine, but she still did not look as she ought to look. Uncle David's eyes twinkled when he saw what she was doing.

“You know, poppet, I'll never believe you planted those strawberries. I bet Simpson put them in.”

Lalla leant on her rake.

“You wrong, he didn't.”

“But neither did you.”

Lalla gave an imitation of Nana.

“Those who ask no questions won't be told no lies.”

Uncle David laughed.

“I've just seen her. I told her you looked as if she was starving and beating you, and she tells me you think Harriet's doctor would be the one to cure you. Is that right?”

Lalla laid down her rake and joined Uncle David.

“Yes.”

Uncle David took her hand. They walked down the path.

“What's the matter with you?”

Before yesterday afternoon Lalla would not have answered that, but now, certain a bottle of tonic from the right doctor was all she needed, she explained about the loops that would not come right; how she even tried to do them in her sleep; how fussed she had been, but now that she knew that nothing had gone wrong with her skating, but only outgrown strength, she was not worrying any more.

Uncle David watched Lalla while she talked. She was not big for somebody of eleven, in fact she was short for her age; he doubted if any doctor would think outgrown strength was the trouble.

“I expect you've been overworking. Isn't the child wonder taking another skating test?”

“Yes. The inter-gold in May.”

“I dare say the doctor will suggest less tests. It's a way they have.”

Lalla stood still, all the pink made by the wind leaving her face, and the gayness disappearing from her eyes.

“Then I won't see him. I've got to pass that test, absolutely got to.”

“Why this May? Wouldn't next year do?”

Lalla tried hard to explain.

“No. It must be now, so I know I can do it. If I have to wait I'll think and think I can't. And I simply couldn't bear that.”

Uncle David gave her a friendly pat on the back.

“What rot! You know you and your aunt between you are making martyrs of yourselves for this skating; simply couldn't bear it because you might be told not to take a test for a month or two. Really, Lalla!”

Lalla kicked a stone off the path.

“Silly Uncle David, you don't understand.” Lalla's voice wobbled. “It was awful that time I failed my silver, more awfuller than anybody knew. People looked sorry; nobody ever looked
sorry for me before and I hated it. When people look at me without looking proud of me I feel I'm not Lalla Moore any more.”

Uncle David lit another cigarette. He lit it very slowly to give him time to think of what he had better say.

“It sounds as though we must try and fix for this doctor of Harriet's to give you a bottle of champion-skater mixture, if that's what you want. But you've got your ideas all upside down. The Lalla I know is an amusing child, and I believe could make her mark in the world without ever putting skates on again. There's a saying ‘There are more ways than one of killing a cat', and I think there are more talents than one belonging to Lalla Moore, but I know neither you nor your aunt will believe it.”

Uncle David knew it was impossible to get Aunt Claudia to agree to Lalla seeing a new doctor; he would be asked what Lalla's doctor had to do with him. Aunt Claudia usually left Lalla's health to Nana, and sent for the doctor only when Nana asked her to. She might have noticed Lalla was looking peaky and be thinking of her seeing the doctor, but she certainly would not want Uncle David suggesting it. The only thing to do was to ring up Olivia and ask her to arrange it.

Olivia did arrange it. She saw Dr Phillipson and told him all about Lalla, and he and she made a plan. It was arranged that the next Saturday Miss Goldthorpe, instead of taking Lalla to a theatre, should take her to see a film at a local cinema, and afterwards they would have tea at the doctor's house.

That next Saturday Miss Goldthorpe talked to Mrs Phillipson in the drawing room while Dr Phillipson talked to Lalla in her surgery. He explained it could be only talking; Lalla was not his patient, but he might find out what sort of medicine she needed just by talking. He was, Lalla found, easy to talk to and enormously interested in skating. He wanted to know all about her training from the very beginning, all about tests, what you had to do at them; it was almost as if he wanted to skate himself, everything she said absorbed him. To make figures clear to him Lalla drew them for him. The last she drew was loops.

“These are what I have to do in May and they've been going wrong; I've fussed and fussed because I'm not used to not being able to do a figure. So that's why Goldie has brought me to tea because I was sure a man like you who thought of skating to cure Harriet's legs being cotton-wool, would know what to give me for outgrown strength which makes my loops go wrong.”

Dr Phillipson seemed to be studying Lalla's drawings. Inside his head he was wondering how best to help her. It seemed as if what she most needed was to believe it was any reason, except that they were too difficult, which was making her fail at loops. After a bit he sat down, took a piece of notepaper and began writing.

“I can't guarantee this, but have it made up, take it regularly, and it should do the trick.”

Lalla looked at the sheet of paper. Most of it she couldn't
understand for it was written in doctor-writing, but at the top was printed in big letters, “Skating Mixture for Lalla Moore. One tablespoon to be taken daily before visiting rink.”

The medicine worked. Lalla felt better, and so worried less, and so her loops were better. Then, so slowly she hardly noticed it, the effect of the medicine began to wear off. Max Lindblom could have explained that if she was judging the medicine by her loop tracings it was bound to stop helping her, for her loops were as good as she was going to get them for the present, and no medicine would make them any better; but Lalla had not told Max about the medicine; she wanted him to think she did her loops marvellously without help, so when they stopped getting better she could not talk to him or anybody about it, but just felt more fussed and bothered than ever, all by herself. As each day she got more miserable and more anxious her tracings got worse and worse, and as the tracings got worse so did Lalla's health. She slept worse because she spent her night practising, and in the morning felt too tired to eat or do lessons, and the result was she grew crosser and crosser, and if anyone even hinted that she might leave taking her test until the autumn, she was angry for hours, so though everybody was sorry for her, nobody knew how to help her.

“She's like a reel of cotton come unfixed in a workbasket,” Nana said, “tied into knots round everything, you don't know where to start to look for an end to start rewinding.”

Aunt Claudia was as bothered about Lalla as everybody else, but her bothering over her, though she did not know it, got Lalla into a worse state even than doing a bad tracing. Aunt Claudia thought Lalla was suffering from quite unnecessary nerves.

“Cheer up, dear, it's not like the Lalla Moore I know to worry. Where's that champion grim got to, I wonder?”

Lalla usually refused to answer, but sometimes she would be rude.

“Don't talk like that! I'm not a baby.”

That would make Aunt Claudia try to be especially understanding.

“Of course you aren't. Eleven and a half is a big girl. Don't think I mind for myself if you're a little rude, I know that's just a sign that you have temperament, and a skater must have that, but my Lalla mustn't forget a great skater has also to be her country's ambassadress.”

Once Aunt Claudia suggested that perhaps Lalla should see the doctor.

“You're getting thin, darling. Perhaps the doctor would give you something to make you fatter.”

“My goodness! I thought you wanted me thinner. All those months no potatoes, no cakes, no nothing nice. Now you want me to see a doctor because I've got thinner. Well, I won't see him, so there. I'm not Alice in Wonderland eating things all the time to make me grow littler and bigger.”

Aunt Claudia did not mention a doctor again to Lalla, but she did to Nana.

“I think Lalla ought to see a doctor. She seems a little nervous, but I won't worry her until after her test.”

Nana said politely, “Just as you say, ma'am,” but her tone showed that she did not think much of what Aunt Claudia had said.

Aunt Claudia was not particularly worried about the test, because she did not know how Lalla was doing, for the moment the effect of the medicine began, as Lalla thought, to wear off, she told her she was not to come to the rink. Nana heard her tell Aunt Claudia this and was terribly shocked.