‘OK,’ I whispered.
‘Thanks. You’re a pal,’ he said, and he squeezed my hand.
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Three little ones were sitting in a row on a bench.
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6
I woke up very early the next morning and lay listening to all the birds. We never saw so much as a sparrow at home, but here there seemed to be great flocks of swallows and starlings, blackbirds and blue tits, all trilling and chirping outside the window.
This was home now. I leaned up on one elbow and peered around the poky little room, wondering how Jodie and I could fix it up. I traced the bobbly pattern on the wallpaper with my fingertips. It was partly peeling away. I edged my fingers underneath and found layers of paper and then plain whitewashed wall. There was a little dent, a hole for a nail.
I wondered if some small kitchen maid had once slept in this room. Perhaps she had a little looking glass hanging on the wall. Or maybe she kept an old brown photo of her parents and all her brothers and sisters to remind her of home. Maybe it was a 81
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religious picture, a guardian angel spreading feathery white wings above a little child in a pinafore and button boots.
I played I was the kitchen maid – Flossie? Mary-Ann? Kezia! – lying on one side of the little iron bed, with my best friend Pansy, the parlour maid, curled up close beside me. We had to scramble out of our nightgowns as soon as the grandfather clock in the corridor struck six. We stood shivering in our shifts, sponging our faces with cold water, and then struggled into our ugly uniforms and starched aprons.
I wanted Jodie to wake up and play Servant Girls with me. I crawled into her bed. She cuddled me sleepily but wouldn’t even open her eyes.
‘Play with me, Jodie, please! I want you to be Pansy the parlour maid.’
‘ Who? Give it a rest, Pearl. It’s way too early, too early,’ she mumbled into her pillow.
I picked up Mrs Wilberforce’s beautiful copy of The Secret Garden and lay on my tummy reading instead. I wasn’t sure I really liked Mary but she was very interesting. I loved her sweet maid, Martha. I muttered her words out loud, not quite sure what a Yorkshire accent sounded like.
‘What are you muttering about?’ said Jodie.
‘I’m reading The Secret Garden. Do you think there might be a secret garden here? There are lots of high walls overhung with ivy. Maybe we’ll find a locked door and then a key and we’ll have our own secret place?’
‘Yeah, yeah, whatever,’ Jodie mumbled. ‘You and your boring old books. What time is it? Do you think Mum and Dad are up yet? I’m absolutely starving.
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You wouldn’t go and make some toast for us, would you, Pearl? And a cup of tea?’
I crept off to the kitchenette obediently, like a real Kezia the kitchen maid, and started making breakfast. I found a kettle and all the cups and plates in a cardboard box.
Mum had already stowed the bread in its enamel bin and put the milk and butter in the tiny fridge.
I wondered whether to take Mum and Dad a cup of tea too, but I wanted to savour this special time with Jodie. I always liked it so much better when there were just the two of us. I dug my finger into the butter and then the sugar while I was waiting for the kettle to boil. I licked the lovely big dollop of sugary butter and then started guiltily when I heard the floorboards creaking in the passage.
‘Naughty naughty!’ said Dad, bursting in on me.
‘Lucky your mother didn’t catch you!’
‘You won’t tell her, Dad, will you?’ I said, giving him a hug.
‘Well, I won’t have to tell her if you leave the butter all over poky little holes! Smooth it over, lovey. With a knife, not your finger! And is that toast? Don’t fill yourself up too much. Your mum’s going to be making eggs and bacon in the big kitchen and then we’ll all eat in the dining room.’
‘With the other children?’ I said.
‘Yep, though there’s only a handful still here.
Imagine keeping your kids at school all through the holidays!’ Dad tutted and shook his head. ‘Make your mum and me a cuppa too, sweetheart.’
Dad went off to take Mum her tea in bed. I carefully carried our two cups back to our bedroom.
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Jodie had gone back to sleep, curled up in a little ball under the duvet.
‘Jodie? Jodie!’
She played dead, eyes closed, utterly still, even when I tickled her. I knew she was playing but I panicked all the same, shaking her frantically.
‘Jodie!’
‘Yeah?’ she said, opening her eyes and grinning.
‘Don’t do that!’
‘Sorry, sorry, just kidding.’ She sat up and drank her tea and ate her toast. She ate mine too because I was too het up to be hungry. I’d see Harley at breakfast, the strange badger boy. We had our special secret.
‘Jodie, can I wear your red shoes today?’ I asked.
‘No, I’m wearing them.’
‘Just at breakfast, for a treat.’
‘They’re way too big for you.’
‘I could stuff the toes with tissues. Please. ’
‘OK, OK, so long as you’ll be my willing slave for the rest of the day.’
‘I’m always your willing slave,’ I said, thrusting my bare feet into Jodie’s shoes and tottering around in my nightie.
‘You look like Minnie Mouse,’ said Jodie. ‘You’re not meant to stick your bum out like that. Sort of swish your way along, like this.’ She jumped out of bed and demonstrated a model’s walk, though she had to zigzag nimbly around all the cardboard boxes.
‘Should we start getting everything unpacked and sorted?’ I said.
‘No! Not yet. Come on, let’s get dressed.’
‘Can I borrow one of your skirts too?’
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She peered at me. ‘What is this, Pearl?’
‘I’m just sick of looking babyish.’
But I looked even more of a baby in Jodie’s clothes, like a little girl dressing up. I gave her back her red shoes, sighing, and got dressed in my own skirt and top and sandals.
Dad was wearing a bright checked shirt and denim jeans so stiff and new he could barely bend his legs. He had his workman’s belt buckled round his waist, its leather pouches filled with wrenches and hammers and screwdrivers. He had his new working boots on too, very big and purposeful.
‘Oh, Dad, you look like Bob the Builder!’ said Jodie, laughing at him. Then she saw his face and realized she’d hurt his feelings. ‘Only teasing! You look way cool, ever so hunky. Watch out for that Miss French. She’ll be nudging up to you and pinching your bum.’
‘You stop your nonsense, saucebox,’ said Dad. He gave her a kiss and blew me one too. Then he sniffed the air. ‘Can you smell bacon? Come on then, girls, let’s go and eat.’
We went down the corridor and turned the corner. There was a big panel of bells set into the wall with copperplate handwriting underneath: Drawing Room; Sitting Room; Master Bedroom; room after room after room.
‘There’s nowhere near a hundred rooms though,’
I said.
‘What are all the bells?’ said Jodie.
‘It’s the servants’ bells. They ring in the rooms and it rings here.’
‘Still?’ said Jodie. ‘So will they ring for Mum and Dad?’
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‘Who knows?’ said Dad. ‘Still, it’s not like Mr Wilberforce treats me like a servant. I don’t have to bow and scrape to him.’
‘Oh let’s, it’ll be fun,’ said Jodie, bowing extrava-gantly.
She pushed
open the door. We stepped into a vast kitchen with a stone-flagged floor and a big wooden table and a huge dresser with shiny pans hanging off hooks, just like the picture of a Victorian kitchen in my history book.
Mum was turning eggs in a sizzling frying pan on the vast kitchen range. Her white nylon overall and white cap and black and white trousers looked far too modern.
‘You should be wearing a long dress and a big starched pinafore, Mum,’ I said.
‘What?’ said Mum, checking another pan of bacon. ‘Come on, crisp up, you devils.’
‘Is that burning smell the toast?’ said Jodie.
‘Oh no!’ said Mum. She pulled the smoking grill pan away from the heat, glaring at Jodie as if it was her fault. ‘Look, clear off into the dining room, you two, and let me concentrate. Joe, give me a hand, for pity’s sake. I’ve gone all to pieces. I can’t seem to manage a simple fry-up for a dozen. I’ll be given the sack before the week’s out at this rate.’
‘Now, keep your hair on, sweetheart, it looks absolutely delicious. No one does a fry-up like my Shazza.’
‘Sharon,’ Mum said, but she gave him a quick smile. Then she gestured at us. ‘Go on, scat. See that everyone’s helped themselves to cornflakes and juice. I laid it all out on the side table.’
I followed Jodie to the end of the kitchen, up a 86
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flight of stairs and out through double doors into the main Melchester College dining hall. It was a very big room of benches and long trestle tables, with one separate table right at the other end. I tiptoed along as if I was in church. Jodie strode forward confidently, swinging her arms. There were four grown-ups sitting at the separate table: Mr Wilberforce, Miss French and two strangers, one a young man and one a young woman.
Miss French waved to us cheerily. ‘Good morning, girls!’ She breathed in appreciatively. ‘Mm, I can smell that bacon sizzling!’
‘Jodie, Pearl, this is Miss Ponsonby, our under-matron. We all call her Undie here,’ said Mr Wilberforce.
We tried not to snigger.
‘She keeps a kindly eye on our resident young-sters during the holidays,’ said Mr Wilberforce. ‘And this is our gardener, Jed Breaksmith.’
‘I thought you
were the gardener,
Mr
Wilberforce,’ said Jodie.
‘It’s my hobby. It’s young Jed’s daily grind,’ said Mr Wilberforce.
‘I keep him in his place. I have to stop him going crackers with the pruning shears,’ said Jed, grinning. He barely gave me a second glance but he looked Jodie up and down.
‘Hello there!’ he said. He was very good looking in a weird wild way. His black hair was long and tangled, several strands threaded with silver and glass beads. I thought he looked like a pirate, dark and threatening, and ducked my head. Jodie smiled straight back at him.
‘Hi, Jed,’ she said, like they were the same age.
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‘Hello, Jodie, hello, Pearl,’ said Miss Ponsonby, nodding at us the wrong way round. Undie! She was less interesting than Jed, a pale young woman with straight mousy hair and an anxious expression. ‘Perhaps you’d like to sit with the other children?’
There were four of them. Three little ones were sitting in a row on a bench, kicking their legs.
Harley was hunched up on the opposite side of the table. He still seemed extraordinarily tall, even sitting down. The sleeves of his shirt showed a lot of long thin wrist. His hair was thick and bushy and stood out around his head like a mane. His face was long and thin and pale and serious. He was reading a book and eating cornflakes. His eyes darted across the page while he chewed thought-fully. He didn’t look up.
Perhaps he was deliberately ignoring me. I swallowed hard and went and sat beside the three little children. We nodded at each other shyly. They looked too young to be at any school, let alone boarding school.
‘Hello,’ said the biggest. He was a little boy with big brown eyes and the longest lashes I’d ever seen.
His skin was ebony, with a beautiful sheen.
‘I’m Zeph,’ he said.
I smiled at him timidly. The next child was even shyer than me. She bent her head, her glossy black hair falling in her eyes.
‘She’s Sakura,’ said Zeph. ‘And that’s Dan.’
Dan was so small he could barely sit up straight on the bench. He rested his chin on the tabletop, his blue eyes solemn, milk all round his mouth.
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went into a lions’ den and he was very brave and I’m a bit brave. I don’t cry hardly at all,’ he said in a high reedy voice.
‘I’m Pearl. I’m not even a little bit brave,’ I said.
Harley looked up.
He seemed genuinely
surprised to see me there. He waved his long fingers and pointed to the bench beside him. But Jodie got there first, slotting herself neatly into the space with one swing of her legs. She slid a juice down to me at the littlies’ end and kept one for herself.
‘Hi, I’m Jodie. Who are you?’ she said.
‘I’m Harley.’
‘Your first name, silly!’ said Jodie.
‘It is my first name.’
‘So what’s your last name? Davidson?’ said Jodie, cracking up laughing.
‘Oh, you’re so incredibly amusing. Like that’s the very first time anyone’s made that joke,’ said Harley.
‘Hey, hey, she’s just being friendly,’ said Dad, hovering near us. It was obvious he wasn’t quite sure where he should sit.
‘Dad!’ said Jodie, jerking her head, making it obvious he should go and sit with the grown-ups.
She smiled at Harley. ‘Hi there, Harley Not Davidson. OK, that’s my dad, and my mum’s cooking our breakfast, and that’s my little sister, Pearl.’
‘She’s not that little,’ said Harley, nodding at me.
‘Well, you’re certainly not little,’ said Jodie. ‘How tall are you.’
Harley swallowed the last of his cornflakes. He looked weary. ‘Six foot four,’ he said.
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‘Wow! And how old are you?’
‘Thirteen.’
‘So you’re still growing?’ said Jodie.
‘Unfortunately.’
‘ Guinness Book of Records, here we come!’ said Jodie. ‘Are your mum and dad giants too?’
‘Shut up, Jodie!’ I hissed.
She blinked at me in surprise. ‘Why?’
Harley sighed. ‘OK, life history: I don’t really know about my dad. He cleared off when I was three. He seemed tall, but all dads do when you’re that age. My mum’s five seven, five eight. That’s tall for a woman, I suppose.’
‘So why aren’t you staying with your mum for the holidays?’ said Jodie.
‘Jodie, stop badgering the lad!’ Dad said.
Harley and I looked at each other. He smiled.
I smiled too.
‘What?’ said Jodie.
Harley shrugged his shoulders. They looked as thin and spindly as a wire coat-hanger. ‘Maybe I’m not quite ready to tell you my life history,’ he said.
‘Oh, I’ll tell you mine,’ said Jodie.
She started yacking away, telling him about Moorcroft, boasting about the times she bunked off and all the different things she did with Shanice and the others. Dad frowned at her. Zeph and Sakura and Dan stared at her round-eyed. Harley seemed to be hardly listening, glancing wistfully at his book. Then Mum came swinging through the doors with her big tray, and Jodie had the sense to shut up at last.
Mum waved her hand at Dad, almost pushing him to go and sit at the top table with the others.
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She served them first
, each plate a work of art: egg, bacon, sausage, tomato, fried bread and mushroom.
Miss Ponsonby looked fussed and said she really couldn’t tackle a big cooked breakfast and could she just have a boiled egg please? ‘Of course,’ said Mum, but she looked daggers at her. However, Dad and Miss French and Jed and Mr Wilberforce all tucked in enthusiastically.
‘I’ve already had my bowl of rabbit droppings –
ha ha, muesli – at home, but I feel I’m duty bound to try out your home cooking, Mrs Wells,’ said Mr Wilberforce, happily stuffing a sausage into his mouth. He peered over at the plates Mum was serving to us children.
‘Good heavens, I’m not sure the budget will run to such gorgeous big grills for the little ones,’ he said.
‘I’d like to feed them up and make a bit of a fuss of them during the holidays,’ said Mum, putting vast plates in front of all of us.
I got one too, even though Mum’s always despaired that I’m finicky with food, unable to swallow runny egg or bacon fat or tomato skin.
Sakura looked equally wary. She sat staring at her food for a long time until Jodie slid along the bench and cut it all up for her in case she couldn’t manage it herself.
‘Eat it all up now, yum yum!’ Jodie commanded.
Sakura picked up her fried bread with her thumb and forefinger, smeared the tip with yellow yolk and nibbled at it delicately. Dan was anything but delicate. He held his fork in one hand but ate determinedly with the other, shovelling it up and aiming at his mouth, not always accurately. Zeph 91
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ate properly with a knife and fork but played his own little game with his meal, separating each sort of food so that they didn’t touch. He finished one before starting the next. I imagined his stomach with a layer of dark brown mushroom, light brown fried bread, red tomato, pink bacon and yellow egg, like those tubes of coloured sand you get from the Isle of Wight.
Harley wolfed his own plateful. Mum glanced at him approvingly as she doled out racks of toast.
‘That’s right, lad, you set them a good example,’
she said.
She gave him a second glance, taking in his length, and looked astonished. I frowned at her, willing her not to say anything about him being a growing lad. Mum frowned back at me, taking in my still-heaped plate.