Great Meadow (2 page)

‘About kith and kin,' she said, settling herself down beside me under the elderberry bush up by the privy. ‘It's a bit muddly. How many
ought
you to have, then?'

‘As many as you like. I mean, it doesn't matter. They just happen.'

‘But we've only got two grandparents, haven't we, so that's a bit wonky, isn't it. Anyway, they're our mother's and they live in awful Scotland in the mist or something.'

‘Our father hasn't got any. Only Granny Nutt, and she doesn't count really.'

‘Why?'

‘Because she's not really our grandmother, she's our father's aunt. But she just says she's our grandmother so that we don't feel out of it.'

‘Out of what?' said my sister, eating a handful of elderberries and spitting the pips out all over my bare knee. So I hit her and she started coughing.

‘It's very silly to do that to a person who is eating things. They could choke.'

‘Well, you spat all over my knee. Look. Pips everywhere.'

‘I don't like the pips. Do you mean our father is a orphan then? These aren't ripe yet.'

‘Yes. Except we don't know if his father is dead or not. Just disappeared in the jungle or somewhere. Perhaps he is. Then
he
would be an orphan. And you have to say “an” orphan, not “a”.'

‘Why?' said my sister.

‘I don't know. But you have to. It's the rules.'

‘You just make up your own rules. I know. Oh! It's such a rotten day. The witch being dead, Brian Scott Bromley coming to stay, and we haven't got enough kith and kin and I bet you Brian Scott Bromley's new mother is wicked. Bet you.'

‘Why should she be?'

‘Because she's his stepmother, silly, and stepmothers are. That poor Snow White girl had a dreadful one. And she turned into a witch pretty quickly.'

From the elderberry bush you could see almost all the
back of the cottage and the orchard part. Only it wasn't really an orchard, just about four or five big old trees – and the apples were getting quite red already except for on the Granny Smith, and they never got red, just yellowy-green, and there was a big bunch of mistletoe on one. Lally said we'd have a bit in the house for Christmas, because this year, which was terrifically good, we were going to have Christmas at the cottage, and not in boring old London, for a treat.

I felt quite cheerful thinking of that and I began not to mind Brian Scott Bromley coming, because at least he wasn't coming at Christmas.

‘Isn't it funny,' said my sister, undoing her sandal and pulling at her sock, which had got all ruckled under her foot. ‘Isn't it funny about Mrs Fluke and Mrs Pratt going to the churchyard?'

‘I don't see why. People do at funerals and things.'

‘But being a witch, she ought to have been buried at the crossroads, with a huge big wooden stick stuck in her.'

‘You heard what Lally said. She isn't a witch. We just made her one.'

‘And what about the haunting Miss Annie said about? At Hallowe'en? If they had stuck a stick in her she wouldn't be able to haunt, would she.'

‘It's all silly. You know Miss Annie isn't right in the head.'

‘The top storey,' said my sister, and pulled off her other sandal. ‘Oh dear! I do wish this Brian wasn't coming. I wonder what happened to all her cats?'

I wondered too. There would be no one to feed them
now and that made me feel a bit miserable, especially as Fred the Fish just shoved all the guts and things into a bucket and no one would have taken them to the cats who, probably, were starving. I felt miserable and forgot about Christmas because it was ages and ages away and this was today. And I should have asked him for them for our cat, Minnehaha.

‘Perhaps we could go up to the caravan, with Brian Thingummy. And see.'

‘See what?' My sister looked quite worried and waved a sock in the air.

‘About her cats? If they were all starving or something.'

‘I wouldn't dare. I wouldn't simply dare go up there ever again. You can go. With Brian.'

‘Well . . .' I said, not feeling very comfortable. ‘Perhaps I might then.'

It was shepherd's pie and runner beans for lunch, and Daddies Sauce. Which was a particular treat because it was never allowed in the dining-room when our parents were there, which seemed a pity because it had a quite interesting picture on it of a very happy mother and father and their children, and the father was smiling like anything and holding the bottle of sauce. That's why it was called Daddies, you see. But it was very good sauce anyway, and it went down a treat, as Lally said, with a bit of shepherd's pie. And then there was treacle tart for pudding, only because it was still summertime, and we'd had it hot the day before. We had it cold with clotted cream from the Court Dairy, and it was really pretty good, all sticky and crinkly.

I was quite enjoying everything until Lally said suddenly, ‘And I hope you've got the hole dug.'

‘Hole?' said my sister making a place with her spoon in the cream so that she could see the treacle on her bit of tart. ‘What hole?'

‘Don't come the Madam Ostrich with me, my girl. You know very well what hole.'

My sister shrugged, but her mouth was full so she couldn't say anything.

‘It's dug,' I said. ‘Up by the old bit of flint wall, where we did the last one.'

‘And not in the same place, I'm hoping?'

Well she knew it couldn't be in the same place because it would have been pretty awful if it had been, and we wouldn't have been allowed in ‘her' kitchen, as she called it. We might not have even had any lunch come to that. And she didn't really think that it was, because she was licking her spoon, not taking much notice. Except, had we dug the hole. Well,
we
had. I had, anyway.

Every Friday night, just as it was getting dark, we had to go up to the privy and cart away the big bucket of Night Soil. That's what it was called, but my sister called it the Bindie Bucket, which was her name for it, and if Lally heard us use it we got a box on the ears all right. We would push a big thick stick under the handle, lift it out of the privy, and hump it across the vegetable garden to the ‘hole', which had to be dug earlier in a special place.

If our parents were staying with us, when our father had his holiday from
The Times
, which wasn't very long,
he used to do it . . . but if we were just with Lally we had to. And it was pretty rotten, I can tell you.

We always had to do it in the dark, which was terribly silly because there was no one for miles and miles who could have seen us. And anyway, who would want to watch somebody emptying their privy? But our parents said it had to be done at night, and so at night it was. Because it was correct, or something. And because it was dark it was doubly difficult on account of we had to have a hurricane lamp to see the way. It was jolly difficult to hold on to the big pole with one hand and the hurricane lamp with the other to see that you didn't fall over the rhubarb or trip over the bean-sticks, because if you did it would have been pretty terrible, and I always had to lead. So we were extra careful.

‘While I'm drying up, after supper, you two nip off with the lamp and I'll keep young Brian here by me: he can help me with the drying. Can't have your Guest running about with the Night Soil, can we?'

‘Why ever not?' said my sister, scraping her plate quite hard.

‘If you go on doing that very much longer, Madde-moselle, you'll have the pattern off. Leave over, do! Such manners I've never seen.'

‘But why can't he?' said my sister. ‘He's a boy and I'm a girl.'

‘Goodness me today!' cried Lally. ‘Of course he can't. He's hardly been in the house a couple of minutes. It's
our
business, not his.'

My sister made a terrible choking noise and covered her
face with her napkin. Lally went quite red in the face when I started to snort and pushed my hand over my mouth.

‘And pray what's given us all the hysterics, may I ask?' said Lally getting redder than ever. She did if she felt she had said something funny without knowing.

‘Business has,' said my sister and almost fell off her chair. Lally gave her a terrific box on the ears and told us to mind our p's and q's and help her clear the table. But you could see she was a bit angry with herself for making us laugh and not really knowing why. That's what made us laugh all the more, so she sent us out into the garden until we could behave ourselves.

‘I've got the hiccups,' said my sister, ‘because of the Bindie Bucket . . . Anyway, one thing, she said No Baths tonight because of this Brian person. So that's good.'

‘Unless we spill it,' I said. 'Then we'd have to, wouldn't we?'

‘Don't say! It might happen. But it's good about no bath, isn't it.'

Every Friday we had to have our baths. First of all we had to go wooding to get enough sticks and stuff to keep the copper really hot, and that used to start just after washing up lunch. Well, first of all, before the wooding even started, I had to get the water up from the pump. Buckets and buckets to fill the copper, and it was huge. So big that when the wooden lid was on we used to stand the two Primus stoves on the top, and the little paraffin oven where Lally did her
cooking if we weren't using the range. Which we didn't much, in the summer. So you can see it was pretty hard to fill. There was a small firehole underneath, and that had to be filled with the wood all afternoon. So it was water in the top and wood in the bottom part.

Then we had to get the big tin bath out of the lean-to, and dust it round, and stand it on a big piece of linoleum on the bricks in front of the copper fire. Then there was the clothes-horse standing there with towels around it for airing, and also to keep off any draughts, the big bar of pink Lifebuoy soap, and the old loofah: and then we could have our baths.

First my sister, because she was the youngest, and when she was finished we topped it up with fresh hot water from the copper, because it was getting a bit cool by this time. I had mine while they went into the sitting-room and had cocoa and alphabet biscuits.

So you can see it was rather a lot of work. And even when I had had my bath there was more, because we had to half-empty the bath by bucket and saucepan, pouring it down the sink. Then Lally used to drag the bath to the kitchen door and tip it down the big drain, and all the steam went up in the air like clouds.

So it was a pretty busy sort of time. It wouldn't have done with a Guest to entertain, so that's why we were not having baths. Which was fearfully good. Our father had one this way once – but only once, because he tipped it over and the kitchen was flooded and the fire went out and Lally had a turn. He said he'd caught a chill and would rather be dirty, but we know that he
went down to the Star in the village and had his there. So did our mother. It really was a bit more sensible, but Lally was braver and had hers, and we used to sit in the sitting-room and hear her singing, la, la, la, and splashing about and it sounded very nice and happy.

So, you see, Friday was really rather a busy day, and especially this time because we were alone with Lally: our father had had his holiday and gone back to
The Times
, and our mother went with him to London for company. But we just stayed for two more weeks and then it was back to dreadful school, only, we didn't think of that so as not to spoil the last days. Except Brian Scott Bromley would do that anyway, so what was the use?

He wasn't really so awful as a matter of fact. I mean, not like Alice McWhirter, who only had a father and was
really
awful. But he was pretty funny and used very difficult words which even Lally couldn't understand. When he arrived on the six o'clock bus he was wearing his school uniform, with his cap on, and lace-up shoes, and we thought that was pretty peculiar for a holiday. Lally said, ‘Shush,' when we mentioned it to her and that he hadn't settled down with his new mother and that it all took time.

He had sandy-reddish hair and a very pale face, glasses and red lips, and got up at the table every time that Lally did, even to get a spoon from the drawer, until she told him not to, very nicely. We thought that perhaps he was going to be sick or wanted to be excused or something, but she said it was just manners and a pity we hadn't learnt some, but perhaps
a few of his might brush off on us. Which we hoped they wouldn't because good manners seemed pretty exhausting.

The next day he looked a bit better because he had on a pair of shorts and a shirt, but still the lace-up shoes. He seemed to quite enjoy coming with us to see all our favourite places, like the gully and the smugglers' cave up near Windover Hill, only he said it wasn't one, but ‘in all probability' was part of the old windmill, or had been a store for ‘ammunition' during the Great War. You see, these were the sorts of words he used: ‘probability' and ‘ammunition' and lots more. And he read rather grownup books like
Ivanhoe
, which I thought was very dense, but he liked the river part where we took him, and even helped my sister pick a few waterlilies, the little yellow ones. He didn't seem to mind very much when his lace-up shoes got all muddy, although he did say, quite loudly, ‘Oh! Hells bells!' Which we thought pretty interesting.

‘I'm not quite sure what to call the woman at your house,' he said when we were walking up from the river.

‘What woman?' said my sister.

‘Well . . . the only one there. She cooks, and we had supper and so on last night and she asked me to help with the drying-up. That one.'

‘Oh. That's just Lally.'

‘But who is she? I mean, what's her name?'

‘Lally,' said my sister. ‘She looks after us.'

‘But she isn't Miss or Mrs Lally, is she?'