White Boots (7 page)

Lalla gave a pleased skip.

“Good. I shall come down and talk to him.”

On the days when Aunt Claudia was out alone, Lalla often came down and talked to her step-uncle. Uncle David was a long, thin man with dark hair and blue eyes. He had always wanted to have a daughter, so he was pleased that Aunt Claudia had a baby girl ward. From the very beginning he had been fond of Lalla, and as she grew older and became more of a companion, he got fonder still; but he had to keep what friends he and Lalla were a secret from Aunt Claudia, for from Aunt Claudia's point of view he was not a suitable friend for Lalla, for he had a great failing. No matter how often Aunt Claudia explained to him about Lalla's father, nor how often she repeated to him the praise and nice things people at the rink said about Lalla, she could not make him take Lalla's skating seriously. He was the sort of man who thought skating, like games, was a lovely hobby, but a nuisance when you tried to be first-class at it. Obviously feeling as she did about skating for Lalla, Aunt Claudia did not like that sort of talk in front of her, so she did not let her see more of her step-uncle than she could help.

Uncle David was sitting on the leather top of his fender,
drinking a whisky and soda, when Lalla came in. He was pleased to see her.

“How's the seventh wonder of the world this evening?”

Lalla did not mind being teased by Uncle David. She sat down next to him on the top of the fender, and told him about her afternoon and how she had met Harriet.

“You can't think how nice she is. She's just the same age as me, but taller, but that's because she's been in bed for months and months, so her legs have got very long. She is so thin.” Lalla held up her hands about twelve inches apart. “Even the thickest part of her is not thicker than that, and she's got the most gorgeous mother called Mrs Johnson and she's got three brothers and a father. Oh, I do envy her, I wish I had three brothers.” She looked up anxiously at Uncle David. “I want awfully for her to come to tea with me, and me to go to tea with her; Nana thinks I won't be able to because she isn't rich like we are. Can you think of any way which would make her being poor not matter to Aunt Claudia?”

Uncle David was a sensible sort of man; he never treated Lalla as if, because she was a child, she was more silly than a grown-up. He lit a cigarette while he thought over what she had said.

“What's the father?”

Lalla lowered her voice.

“Nana doesn't know, but it's some sort of a shop.”

Uncle David whispered back:

“You and I don't care how anyone earns their living, do we, as long as it's honest? But I don't think your aunt's going to cotton on to a shop.”

“I think it's rather an odd sort of shop. Harriet said they only sold things that their Uncle William grew or shot or caught on his land in the country. And that was why they were so poor, because her Uncle William eats a lot so they only get what's left.”

Uncle David was gazing at the carpet, as if by looking at it very hard he could see into the past.

“William Johnson. William Johnson. That strikes a note. I suppose Harriet didn't say what her father's Christian name was?”

“It's George. Harriet said that Alec's, the eldest of her brothers, real name's George, but he's called Alec because he couldn't have the same Christian name as his father.”

Uncle David got up and began pacing up and down the carpet.

“William and George Johnson. Shiver my timbers, but that strikes a note somewhere.” Suddenly he swung round to Lalla. “I have it! You ask your Harriet where her father went to school. There were a couple of brothers at my prep. school, William and George. If it's the same we might be able to do something.”

Lalla looked puzzled.

“Would it make it better that Harriet's father has a shop because he went to the same school as you?”

Uncle David nodded.

“I can't tell you why, but it does.” He looked at the clock. “You'd better be skipping, poppet, don't want to blot your copybook by your being caught in here.” He gave her a kiss. “I like the sound of your Harriet; I'll have a word with Nana about her, and if it's the same George that I knew, I'll talk your aunt into letting you know her. It's time you had somebody of your own age to play with.”

Lalla rushed up the stairs, her eyes shining, and flung her arms round Nana's neck.

“Oh, Nana, if only it was tomorrow afternoon now. Uncle David thinks he was at school with Harriet's father, and if he was he's going to make Aunt Claudia let me know her. Isn't that the most gorgeous thing you ever heard?”

HARRIET'S FATHER HAD been at the same school as Uncle David. It did not take Lalla long to find this out, but it took what seemed to Lalla months and months, and was really only three weeks, before Uncle David had managed to see Harriet's father. Although Lalla thought Uncle David was being terribly slow, he was really doing his best. First of all he went to Nana and asked what she thought of Harriet, and on learning that Nana had liked both her and Olivia, he made enquiries about the Johnsons and the shop. He tried to find some way in which he could meet George Johnson in the ordinary way, for he was certain that if he could produce Harriet's father as an old school friend, and not as somebody who kept a peculiar sort of shop, it was much more likely that Aunt Claudia would think
Harriet a good friend for Lalla. Meanwhile, whatever Aunt Claudia might think, Lalla and Harriet met every day at the rink, and every day they became greater friends.

Apart from meeting Lalla, Harriet was beginning to enjoy the rink. Every afternoon, just before the session started, she arrived, saw Sam, collected her skates and boots, put them on and was waiting, her eyes on the entrance, for Lalla and Nana several minutes before they could possibly arrive. If there had been no Lalla, Harriet would have taken twice as long learning to enjoy skating. Probably, if there had been no Lalla, she would still have been at the stage of creeping on to the rink, afraid to move far for fear of being knocked down. Because of Lalla's lessons she had discovered quickly that moving about on ice was not really frightening, and that even cotton-woolish legs like her own could make skates move in the direction they wanted them to. Lalla was determined to make Harriet a skater. She could not spare much time from her own practice to give her a lesson, but she took her round with her to get her used to moving on skates, and she saw she only rested when there was dancing, and spent the afternoon moving round by herself.

“I know it's dull just moving along like that, but you've got to do it, Harriet, or you'll never get on to anything more interesting. Your legs look heaps better since you've come skating, honestly they do.”

Harriet knew that not only her legs, but all the rest of her looked better since she had come skating. Everybody at home
remarked on it, and Dr Phillipson, when he came to see her, was so pleased that he said he should visit Mr Matthews an extra time as a thank offering. Harriet thought that was a very odd sort of thank offering, because she would not have wanted a visit from the doctor as a thank-you present herself; but she was glad Dr Phillipson was so pleased that he wanted to thank Mr Matthews, and if Mr Matthews liked a visit from the doctor she was glad he should have it. The person who was most proud of Harriet looking so much better was Alec. He felt as though it was he who was making her well, for after all it was his two shillings which paid for the skates, and so when it was wet and cold while he was on his paper round he did not mind as much as he might have done.

“It'd be much worse the weather being awful,” he told Toby, “If Harriet wasn't getting any better, I should feel then it was all for nothing.”

Toby peered at Alec through his spectacles.

“Mathematically speaking, if Harriet was not getting well, that fact would be cancelled out by the two shillings weekly towards vegetables for the spring.”

Alec told Toby to shut up with his mathematical nonsense, but all the same he agreed with him about the two shillings a week. Two shillings a week adds up quickly when it is put in a money-box. Besides, to Alec it was more than two shillings a week, it was adventure, the capital that was to start him out on a magnificent career. On scraps of paper in his pockets, in his
bedroom and in his desk at school were plans of how he intended his father's shop to look. There were arrows pointing to piles of fruit and vegetables. Each plan covered a different season of the year, and each was so ambitious that had he been able to buy all the things for his plan his father's shop would have looked like an exhibition of fruit and vegetables at a flower show. His vision of what he would buy in the spring was helped by Mr Pulton, who sometimes said to him when he paid him on Saturdays:

“Twelve shillings for your sister's skates, and two shillings for your dreams.”

The way Mr Pulton said “two shillings for your dreams” dedicated the two shillings for the money-box. Although he wanted many things Alec was not tempted to spend because, apart from wanting a full money-box for himself, he would have felt he had let himself down in Mr Pulton's eyes if he knew he had been buying anything.

What with Harriet's skating, and Alec's paper round, there was a lot to talk about in the evenings. After the first week's skating Harriet looked so much better that the indignity of going to bed at half-past six with Edward came to an end, and she was allowed to stay up till seven o'clock. Edward was rather annoyed about this.

“I liked Harriet coming to bed the same time as me. I don't think there ever ought to be a minute in anybody's day when they can't be talking to somebody. Now there's me all alone,
waiting and waiting for somebody to talk to, and I don't like it.”

One night when Harriet had been skating just over three weeks, George came in from a meeting of the ex-serviceman's association to which he belonged. He told Harriet that he had met Lalla's step-uncle there, and what a nice man he seemed to be. Of course everybody in the Johnson family had known every single thing about Lalla since the first day Harriet had met her, and each day had been a continuation of the Lalla story. What Lalla had worn, what Lalla had said, how Lalla had skated, and what Nana had said. The only part of the Lalla story the Johnsons had not heard was the part that Harriet did not know, which was that the reason it was taking so long for Lalla to come to Harriet's house or Harriet to go to Lalla's, was because Lalla's Uncle David thought Aunt Claudia might not approve of a shop, for of course Lalla had not told Harriet that. If the Johnsons had known that Aunt Claudia might not have approved of the shop they would have thought it very funny, first because they would have thought it silly of Aunt Claudia to be so snobbish, and secondly because they did not like the shop themselves.

“He hasn't changed much,” George told Harriet. “I remember him perfectly. He told me that Lalla has done nothing but talk about you, and he thought I was going to turn out to be the George Johnson he had been at school with, and that he came to the meeting tonight especially to meet me. He's going to talk to Lalla's Aunt about you because he thinks it
would be nice now that you're skating every afternoon if you could sometimes go to tea with Lalla, and that she might sometimes come here.”

After Harriet had gone to bed, and while the boys were out of the room, George told Olivia a few other things.

“He remembered William quite well too, he asked after him and called him by a nickname which I had forgotten; he called him ‘Guzzle Johnson'.”

Olivia laughed.

“I wish I could tell the children, they would simply love to call him Uncle Guzzle.”

George did not answer that, because he knew that Olivia knew he was fond of William and would not have him called “Uncle Guzzle” by anybody.

“I gather that Lalla Moore's aunt likes the child's nose kept to the grindstone; she's got the makings of a champion skater, and she's not been allowed friends because there's not much time for them.”

Olivia thought of the conversation she had had with Nana.

“Poor little pet, she had to start skating when she was three. Imagine, she was pushed there in a pram.”

“It's difficult, I gather, for David King to interfere, being only a step-uncle, but he's very fond of the child and would like to her to have a better time. I rather gather he's going to suggest to his wife that Harriet would be a good influence for Lalla, skating enthusiast and all that.”

Olivia, who had not seen Harriet skating since she started, laughed.

“Poor darling Harriet… a skating enthusiast! When she is on the ice she grips Lalla as if she was the only branch to catch hold of before she dropped over a cliff.”

Uncle David, having seen George, did not waste his time. That very evening he told Aunt Claudia about him.

“Met a nice fellow today at a meeting. I was at school with him. Seems his child is a skating friend of Lalla's.”

Aunt Claudia was surprised.

“Really! I never knew she had any skating friends.”

“This child, Harriet Johnson, had been ill and was advised to take up skating for her health; never been able to talk of anything but skating since.”

Aunt Claudia looked thoughtful. A child who had been ordered to take up skating by her doctor, and had become keen in spite of having to skate whether she liked it or not, sounded an excellent friend for Lalla. Uncle David had not said how long Harriet had been skating, so she pictured her an experienced skater being trained under a good instructor and entering for tests, though, of course, taking them a long way behind Lalla, and not passing them with the same distinction. Later that evening she said:

“I shall ask Nurse about this child, Harriet Johnson. A skating friend might be useful to Lalla. She's getting on well and they are naturally proud of her, but sometimes I think she isn't as
ambitious as she ought to be. If Nurse says this child is suitable in every way she shall be asked to tea and I will have a look at her.”

Uncle David wished Lalla had been there to wink at, but he answered gravely:

“Any child of George Johnson's is sure to be suitable in every way. Nice fellow.”

Every day after breakfast Lalla's governess arrived. She was called Miss Goldthorpe. Alice Goldthorpe had been the sort of girl who had, when young, been expected to finish up in a blaze of glory as headmistress of a big school; but Alice Goldthorpe had never wanted to be head of anything. What she liked was teaching, and she detested the bother of having teachers under her and being asked to decide things. Because of this she had taught in a great many schools, for sooner or later in whatever school she taught somebody noticed how brilliant she was, and tried to make her take a grander position. Each time this happened, with a shudder of horror at the thought of a grander position, Alice Goldthorpe said she was sorry but she would have to leave. Then she would go to a scholastic agency and ask them to find her a new school in which to teach.

One day two things had happened to Alice Goldthorpe: she noticed she was getting fat round the middle, which is called middle-age spread, and an uncle died and left her some money. In his will the uncle said it was enough money to keep the wolf from licking the paint from off her front door, but not enough
to allow her to fritter away her life doing nothing. Alice Goldthorpe had laughed when she read the will, because even had the uncle left her lots of money nothing would have induced her to do nothing. All the same she was grateful for a little bit of money, because it meant that she could look round and find the sort of teaching that she would like to do. Some school where nobody would send for her to say something which began with, “Miss Goldthorpe, I have been noticing your work, and it's most satisfactory, most.” Safe with her uncle's legacy Miss Goldthorpe went to the scholastic agency which always found her schools to teach in, and asked them to find a school which would never want her to take a grander position, and she said she could wait while they found it, because now she had got money behind her.

The head of the agency, although Miss Goldthorpe gave her trouble by changing schools so often, had grown fond of her and was pleased to see her. She was especially pleased to hear about the money that would stop a wolf from licking her front-door paint. She had jumped up and fetched a letter, and had told Miss Goldthorpe that she believed she had exactly the job for her. The letter was from Aunt Claudia, explaining about Lalla, how she was to be a champion skater and asking if the agency could find a really good governess to undertake her education. Aunt Claudia wanted a governess who would see that in spite of spending her afternoons on the rink Lalla did as many lessons as other children of her age, and passed
the necessary examinations at the right time, and – and this was underlined – the governess must be someone who, having accepted the position, was prepared to stick to it. Aunt Claudia did not want to entrust her niece's education to someone who was always moving on.