All that day the council house where the Sparrows and Parkers lived stayed empty, without the disturbance of life; spick and span – except, of course, for the larder. For a while, bacon fat crept slowly down the walls where it had splashed, and over the floor. Then it congealed.
The family began coming back at the end of the afternoon. Usually Peggy and Amy, accompanied to the front gate by their friends, were first. They let themselves in with the key from old Mrs Pring. But today Bill Sparrow with his own key overtook them before they reached Mrs Pring’s. So they all came home with him – all of them.
Sid came next.
Today Mrs Sparrow was the last to arrive. She had had household shopping to do on the way home.
Mrs Sparrow walked in through the back door into the kitchen, and immediately Sid darted out of the larder at her.
‘It’s all right, Mum! Honest, it is! I’ve almost finished!’
‘What’s all right? What is it?’
‘There was a bowl of dripping in the larder and it must have got knocked off the shelf –’
‘What!’
‘The larder door hadn’t been shut, and the kitchen window was open –’
‘I never left the kitchen window open!’
‘– So it must have been a cat, mustn’t it? One of Mrs Pring’s. But I’ve been cleaning the mess up. Honestly. I’ve nearly finished.’
She looked into the larder and groaned. ‘It’s not nearly right, Sid. Still, you’re a good boy.’
Sid reddened. He said: ‘I’m sorry about the mess, and the work there still is.’
His mother said wearily: ‘Get that cat to say it’s sorry; not you. Not your fault.’ She looked around. ‘No one put the kettle on?’
‘We forgot …’
She began to notice other things out of the ordinary. Shrill voices and laughter came from the living room.
‘Who’s there? That’s not just Peggy and Amy. They’ve got the other two as well! Why haven’t those two gone home to their own teas?’
She marched out of the kitchen to the living room and flung the door open. She was right. Round the table, leaning excitedly over it, were Peggy, Amy, Dawn Mudd and Peter Peters. At first Mrs Sparrow did not understand what she was looking at. The table was covered with long tubes made of rolled-up newspaper. As she stared, there was a scrabbling and a shaking inside one of the tubes, and then a tiny head with pop eyes looked out at one end.
‘That’s one of those gerbil-things,’ Mrs Sparrow said in the voice of a sleepwalker.
The gerbil seemed not to like her tone, for it withdrew into the tube again. Meanwhile, another gerbil sat up on its hind legs behind another tube, on which it rested one front paw, as if to begin public speaking. It held its other paw against its white shirt front.
The gerbil cage stood, open, at the back of the table, under the window.
In an easy chair, to one side of the fire, sat Bill Sparrow with the evening paper.
‘Bill!’
He said, ‘Sid was quite right. The Pet Department wouldn’t take them at any price. I had to bring them home again.’
Amy rushed at her mother, to clasp her round her knees. ‘Oh, Mum, they’re lovely – lovely! And Sid’s been letting us play with them while he cleared up for you in the larder!’
Dawn Mudd had picked up a gerbil by its tail and was looking intently at its underside – or trying to. The gerbil was trying to bite Dawn Mudd. Dawn said, ‘Mrs Sparrow, I can’t make out what sex they are. But if they’re different sexes, you’ll be in luck. They’ll mate, and have babies.’
‘Babies! Babies! Babies!’ crowed Amy.
CHAPTER THREE
In the circumstances, surely Mrs Sparrow could not go on saying that she would not have gerbils in the house! But she did. As soon as she could think of a way, she was going to get rid of them.
In the meantime, there they were.
As long as they were there, the gerbils belonged to Sid. But, from that very first afternoon, Peggy was the one who loved them. Sid would be doing his homework, or out playing football, or just watching television. (‘Why does he want them then, when he seems hardly to bother with them?’ his mother asked his stepfather. ‘I remember my white mice,’ said Bill Sparrow.) While Sid busied himself with these things, Peggy sat with her head between her hands, her elbows on the table, watching the gerbils as they flickered to and fro in their cage.
Sometimes – for Sid trusted her – she would carefully undo the fastening of the cage door and take out a gerbil, fastening the door again with equal care. She would let the gerbil pour itself from her right hand into her left, and then her right hand was ready to receive it again, and then her left, and then her right again, in an endless handy-dandy. The softness and lightness and warmth of the little, quick-moving body against her fingers and in the palms of her hands delighted Peggy.
She always knew which gerbil she was playing with. Sid had named the two of them (as was his right) after one of his favourite foods. Cold boiled cabbage and potato, fried up with cold meat or sausage, did not seem in itself at all gerbil-like; but the name sounded right: bubble and squeak.
Bubble and Squeak.
But which was Bubble, which Squeak? Even sharp-eyed Dawn Mudd couldn’t always spot the darker brindle that (Peggy said) marked Bubble. Even Dawn couldn’t always swear which gerbil had the longer tail by (Peggy estimated) just three millimetres. Dawn complained that the gerbils whisked about so in their cage.
But Peggy always knew which was which.
‘Do you think they know their own names?’ asked Dawn Mudd. And Amy chirruped through the bars: ‘Bubble and Squeak! Bubble and Squeak!’
Peggy ran her fingernail across the front of the cage. Both gerbils sat up on their hind legs, attentive. Between the fingertips of her other hand Peggy held a peanut. One of the gerbils did a sudden scurry to the cage front. ‘Squeak!’ Peggy whispered. ‘Come on, Squeak – Squeak – Squeak!’ She offered the peanut through the bars. Squeak took it and at once veered away. Turning the nut round and round between his paws, he began to nibble at it with great rapidity.
‘Dear Bubble, wouldn’t you like a nut too?’ This was Amy.
The other gerbil had already moved up to the bars, and took his nut.
‘He’s the quiet one,’ said Peggy.
‘He?’ said Dawn Mudd, raising a subject that interested her.
‘Well,’ said Peggy, ‘they must be the same sex, because Jimmy Dean’s cousin said they’d never had babies. And if they’re the same sex, I think they’re boys. Bubble and Squeak are boys’ names.’
That was that.
Sid may not have loved his gerbils in the way that Peggy did, but he was conscientious about them. He changed their food and water daily, and cleaned out their cage every weekend. He exercised them often. What they seemed to enjoy was the freedom of a limitless plain – the living-room table would do – with a great many tunnels. To begin with, the children made the tunnels out of newspapers rolled up, with rubber bands to keep the rolling-up in place. Then they began to collect the cardboard inner tubes of toilet rolls from the lavatory and of kitchen rolls from the kitchen. The longer tubes were kept for the table; the shorter ones went straight into the cage.
Besides using the tubes as runways, the gerbils gnawed them to bits. If they didn’t gnaw cardboard, they gnawed the bars of the cage or of the restored treadmill. The cardboard they gnawed filled the cage with cardboard crumbs, and the crumbs pushed themselves out through the bars of the cage on to the table or the floor; so did the gerbil bedding. Someone had to clear up the mess. After that first night’s experience, Mrs Sparrow refused to do any more clearing up after gerbils. Sid did it. He used the vacuum cleaner regularly nowadays. He did not object. He rather enjoyed the job of emptying the cleaner. Once it went wrong, and he mended it.
‘You can’t say he doesn’t work at it,’ said Bill Sparrow. ‘You might do worse than keep those gerbils, you know.’
‘You’re soft,’
said Alice Sparrow. ‘I don’t like them. I don’t trust them.’
It turned out that she was right not to trust them.
The gerbil cage was kept on the living-room table, until the table was needed. Then Sid or Peggy would lift the cage on to the wide windowsill. When the table was clear again, the cage was put back. But sometimes, of course, the children forgot to do that. It did not seem to matter much if the gerbils stayed on the windowsill, anyway. There was even room, after dark, to draw the curtains across the window, between the back of the cage and the window itself.
The curtains were rather handsome scarlet ones that Mrs Sparrow had made herself. When they were drawn behind the cage, their folds brushed against the bars at the back.
One morning Mrs Sparrow was down first, as usual, to get breakfast ready. She had raised the blind in the hall, she had brought the milk in from the doorstep, she had gone into the living room to draw the curtains back –
There was a kind of screech from downstairs, and then the repeated screaming of ‘Sid! Sid! Sid!’
It was frightening.
In his school trousers and his pyjama top, Sid flew downstairs. His mother met him at the bottom of the stairs. Tears were streaming down her cheeks; she also looked unspeakably angry. ‘Come and see what your – your THINGS have done!’
She dragged him into the living room. The room was still in semi-darkness because the curtains had not yet been drawn back. But the gloom was shot by strong beams of light coming through two large ragged holes in the curtains. The holes were just behind the cage, and by the light through them Sid could see that the inside of the gerbil cage was littered with scraps and crumbs of scarlet. One gerbil, sitting up watchfully, seemed to be wiping its mouth free of a scarlet thread.
‘They’ve eaten my best curtains,’ said Mrs Sparrow.
Peggy had followed Sid, and now Amy and Bill Sparrow were crowding to see, Amy holding tight to Bill.
Amy peeped and peered. ‘I didn’t know gerbils ate curtains.’
‘They don’t eat them,’ said Peggy. ‘They just gnaw at them.’
‘They’ve ruined them,’ said Mrs Sparrow.
‘Can’t you mend them?’ asked Bill Sparrow.
‘Can’t I mend them!’
‘I’ll mend them,’ said Sid. ‘I’ll draw the edges of the holes together. I saw you mending that tear in my duffel coat, when it had caught on the barbed wire. I’ll buy red cotton exactly to match, and I’ll mend it. Peggy’ll help me, won’t you, Peg?’
‘Yes,’ said Peggy; ‘but – but –’
‘But you can’t,’ said their mother. ‘Your duffel coat was just torn: there was nothing missing. These curtains have been gnawed away. Big bits are missing, all chewed up at the bottom of those wretched creatures’ cage.’
‘I’ll do something, Mum!’ cried Sid. ‘I could buy some more of the red stuff to patch the holes with. I’ve pocket money saved up. I could buy you new curtains. Mum, I tell you what –’
‘No,’ said his mother, ‘I’m not thinking of the curtains now.’
‘But, Mum, listen –’
‘No,’ said his mother, ‘no, no, NO! Not another day in this house, if I can help it! They go!’
‘But, Mum –’
‘THEY GO!’
She would listen to no more from any of them.
That day (as her family discovered only later) Mrs Sparrow went out of her way to work to call at the newsagent’s. They kept a Wanted and For Sale noticeboard in their window. The board was covered with postcard notices which people paid to be pinned up there for a week, or two weeks, or – rarely – three.
Mrs Sparrow paid in advance for three weeks, and her notice went up:
FREE
TWO VERY ATTRACTIVE GERBILS
WITH CAGE, FOOD AND BEDDING.
And Mrs Sparrow added at the bottom her own name and the address.
CHAPTER FOUR
The advertisement worked. The very next evening people called.
Mrs Sparrow had hoped for this, of course, and she was determined that no one in her family should spoil her chances. She had arranged to be home early from work, before any of the others. Any ring or knock at the front door that evening would be answered by her, and by her alone.
But if Sid were in by the time any caller came … She worried about how she could possibly get the gerbils out of the house, to new owners, without Sid’s knowledge. She did not fear that Sid could stop her handing them over; but might he follow the new owners to their home – oh, then what?
She planned to get Sid upstairs for the evening. She spread dressmaking things all over the big table in the living room. (The gerbils went on to the windowsill. No point in worrying about the curtains any more, now.) She would do dressmaking all evening. They would think it peculiar, but she didn’t mind that. She would give Bill and Amy and possibly Peggy a snack tea by the fire. She would make some good sandwiches and a mug of tea for Sid to take upstairs to his room. Sid could do his homework on his table there.
But what about Peggy? And might Peggy tell Sid?
She was getting the sewing machine on to the table, and worrying about Peggy, when the front doorbell went.
There were two little boys there. Brothers, by their appearance. They seemed to be between Peggy and Amy in age. They said they had come for the free gerbils.
‘Wait there!’ cried Mrs Sparrow. She darted back into the living room, snatched up the cage, an unopened packet of gerbil food and the plastic bag of bedding, and was back on the doorstep again. ‘You’d better get home with them at once. Quick! Don’t stop to talk to anybody on the way. Don’t stop at all.’
The little boys were delighted, but flustered. They were afraid the excited lady might change her mind. They hurried to the gate, carrying the cage between them.
‘Cross the road and walk back on the other side!’ Mrs Sparrow called after them. She had just remembered that the Parker children always walked home on this side of the road.
‘Why?’ asked one brother.
‘Never you mind!’
They were opening the front gate.
‘Wait!’ called Mrs Sparrow.
‘Yes?’
She had felt an unexpected spasm of concern for the little creatures in the cage. She took a duster down to the gate and draped it over the cage. It would protect the inmates from the cold. (It would also disguise the cage a little.) ‘You know how to look after these gerbil-things?’ Mrs Sparrow asked.
‘Oh, yes! We had gerbils once. We had a gerbil farm.’
They hurried through the gate and across the road and away.
Boys, cage and gerbils – they had vanished.
Mrs Sparrow went in again and shut the front door. She went into the kitchen and sat down on a chair, feeling a little faint. She glanced at the clock. The children were certainly on their way home now.
Nearly home …
Soon they would be walking up the last stretch of road, as the two brothers with the cage would be walking down it. On opposite sides of the road, it was true; but would that help much? Would Sid notice the cage? Or Peggy? Or Amy? Would they cross the road to talk to the two boys? Would the boys allow themselves to be talked to – their cage to be examined? Would Sid or Peggy recognize the gerbils? Oh, no, no, no!
Mrs Sparrow groaned aloud.
There was nothing more that she could do.
She cleared her dressmaking things from the table and began getting tea for them all.
Meanwhile, just as she had supposed, her children were walking up the road, drawing closer and closer to the two little boys, a gerbil cage swinging between them, who were going down it on the other side.
Today Sid, with Jimmy Dean, came first. They happened to be fighting the whole way. For a great deal of the time, Sid’s head was under Jimmy’s arm. He saw nothing.
The elder girls, when they came, were talking gossip about other girls; and Amy was listening to them intently. Only little Peter Peters, trailing behind, saw the
boys on the other side of the road. He saw the cage, even under the duster.
‘Look!’ he said.
But no one looked.
It was some time after they had all got home that Sid, in the living room, realized: ‘Where are my gerbils?’
His mother clenched her fists under her overall, cleared her throat, and told him. The telling took a little while, because Sid knew nothing of the advertisement in the first place.
Sid listened. He stood quite still and silent, staring at his mother, expressionless.
Peggy also listened. At the end, with deceptive mildness, she asked: ‘Who were the boys? Where do they live?’
But Mrs Sparrow was not deceived. ‘Oh, no, you don’t!’ she said. ‘I don’t know who they are, and I don’t know where they live. And they’ll be far away by now. Probably home already.’
Sid turned round and rushed out of the house.
‘Sid! Sid!’ called his mother.
Peggy sat down on the bottom step of the stairs and buried her face in her crossed arms.
Bill Sparrow was pushing his bike through the front gate. ‘Here!’ he grumbled, as Sid shoved past him.
Sid began running down the road.
Amy had followed him out. She came up to Bill Sparrow. Her eyes were very wide. ‘The gerbils have gone,’ she said. ‘Mum’s given Bubble and Squeak to two bad boys. They’ve stolen them.’
‘Oh,’ said Bill Sparrow. She followed him while he put his bike away. She touched his left hand with her right one – it was her signal. He stuck out a finger. She wrapped her hand round it, and they walked indoors together.
‘Sid’s gone out without his tea or his anorak or anything,’ said Mrs Sparrow as soon as she saw her husband. In spite of the gerbils, she did not look triumphant.
‘Sid’ll be back,’ said Bill Sparrow. ‘We might as well have tea.’
‘Will he come back with Bubble and Squeak?’ asked Amy.
‘No,’ said her mother.
‘Where’s Peggy?’ asked Amy.
‘She’s upstairs. She doesn’t want any tea. And don’t ask any more questions.’ As his wife stood making the tea, Bill Sparrow massaged her shoulders. He did this when she complained of backache.