A Postillion Struck by Lightning (18 page)

She really was cheeky. But we didn't like to say so because she was a good friend of the Vicar's and was very churchy, what with her organ and doing the flowers and reciting poems at the Church Teas. So we just didn't say anything; except behind her back.

When we were crossing the river by the wooden bridge my sister said: “She really is the nosiest woman in the world. She spoiled our postcard! Fancy reading someone's postcard and telling them everything in the middle of the shop! Like that time when she told Lally there was some sad news for her in a telegram and Lally went all white and she said, I'm afraid your brother's had a little operation and he's quite poorly.' Do you remember? Right in front of everyone else and Lally nearly had a turn there and then. And anyway it was only his appendicitis or something. I think she's nosy and mean.”

The postcard was of a big white church and it said: “Having a
lovely time. Home on Sunday evening. Hope you are being good. Love from Daddy and Mummy,” and that was all, but it was very nice, or would have been if Miss Maltravers hadn't spoiled it.

“I know what we should do,” said my sister, trying not to spill the milk as we scrambled on to the main road and across it up to the iron gate. “We should send her a postcard from Eastbourne or somewhere, and say on it ‘Miss Maltravers has dandruff and that's why her hair falls down all the time.' That would teach her a really good lesson. It would frighten her to bits, I bet.”

It was cool in the kitchen and the table was all laid for lunch with a big jug of ginger beer waiting. Lally was very indignant.

“Jerusalem! She is a nosy parker, what's it got to do with her if I get a catalogue from Debenhams, I'd like to know? I'd like to give her a piece of my mind, I really would. Drat the woman, she really gives me the pip!” But she took her catalogue and went off up to her room to have a look at it, and presently we could hear her singing away “It Happened In Monterey” at the top of her voice, so we felt that she must have found something she liked, because she only sang songs like that when she was particularly pleased. That song was her next favourite one after “The Song Of The Dawn” and she only liked them because this John Boles sang them and she thought he had nice legs or something funny like that. We thought he was a bit soft-looking really, and rather like Fred Brooks, the bus conductor, when she took us to Eastbourne to see a Talkie at the Palace. It was very much forbidden to go to the Pictures and our Parents always said No, but this time, while they were away, Lally had longed to go and see John Boles singing and she had taken us as a treat.

“It's deceitful, I know,” she said in the bus, “and I shall get punished for my sins, but what else do I do? I can't leave you both outside, can I? And I've set my heart on it and it is Perfectly Suitable because it's all music and dancing and there is nothing in it to give you a fright. And it's all in colour and you can hear it too. So we'll pretend it's a treat, but if you mention it by so much as a whisper, I'll be sent packing and you'll have someone else to run errands for.”

It was very curious to sit in the dark and see all the colours and the lovely costumes, and even funnier to hear it like the wireless only much louder. But we didn't think much of John Thingummy —except he was just like Fred Brooks which annoyed Lally very much.

“If young Fred Brooks had legs like those and a voice like that he could carry me off tomorrow and I wouldn't raise a whimper!” she said, putting her hand on her hip and doing her Haughty Look.

A long time ago she had taken me to see a film in a Picture Palace in London, and it was all about a little boy who got stuck on a sinking ship in a storm. It was very thrilling and I was enjoying it very much until someone locked him in a cabin trunk just as the ship began to go down, and I got so frightened that I ate half the skip off my school cap and swallowed it. And was very sick later. “The child is bringing up tweed and cardboard! I wonder why?” said our mother. And then Lally confessed and got a ticking off. So our mother said Never Again because I was too impressionable or something. So Lally had to go alone on her days off, except this time at Eastbourne when we were deceitful. We never told of course, and we had rather a difficult time not talking about John Whatsisname and Mexico and how they got the colours on the screen to move and sing and all at the same time. But we managed in the end, although we all felt a bit guilty about having been anyway. It didn't matter so much about the songs, I mean we could sing them quite easily all over the place because Lally had records of them which she used to play on her little black portable gramophone. So that was quite easy, and we knew all the words backwards because she only had eight records and we got very used to them.

Sometimes, in the evenings if she didn't feel like reading to us from
A Peep Behind the Scenes
, which was a terribly sad book and made us all sob like anything when it got to the part where the little girl's mother dies in the caravan in the circus and only the clown is there to hold her hand, we used to have a Little Concert. We wound up the black portable and started off always with “It Happened In Monterey” and then “The Song Of The Dawn” and then one or two more and always finished off with “Spread A Little Happiness” which made us all feel cheerful. While we were listening to the concert, of course, there was a job to do. That was the trouble. You always knew when Lally said, “What about a little cheer up, a Little Concert?” And then we had to clean the lamps, cut the rhubarb for the rhubarb and ginger jam, shell peas or something like that. I mean you never just sat there and thought about nothing or anything like that. But it was very nice and sometimes, not always, we were allowed a special treat
and we put on a record called “Laughing Gas” which was all about a man reading a Will and someone turns on the laughing gas and they all start laughing. It was terribly funny and we almost made ourselves ill. Sometimes we used to roll on the floor, it was so funny, and Lally said that we'd do ourselves a mischief but we only got hiccups. She didn't let us play it too much for that reason.

But whatever the concert was, we always ended with “Spread A Little Happiness” and that put us all in a thoughtful mood—until we both started remembering the Gas song, and started to giggle and got sent to bed sniggering and hiccuping.

Having supper with our parents in the big room was very good. We all sat down together at the big round table. Our father did the carving and Lally served the vegetables or I did, or my sister did, and everyone was very happy and said what we had each been doing during the day.

The room was whitewashed, like the kitchen, with an ingle-nook fireplace which had two big wooden seats in it on each side of the fire, a polished brick floor and lots of fat wickerwork armchairs with feathery cushions. The lamp with the honeysuckle hung over the table, and there was another one near our father's chair where he could read more easily. There were lots of old jugs full of flowers, even in winter, and a clock with a boat in a storm on it and a slow swinging pendulum. This was really our Parents' private place to be, and we were only allowed there really if there were friends to tea or something, or if they had dinner with us all, otherwise we all spent our time in the big white kitchen, with the copper-fire and Minnehaha, the cat, for company. We liked it better there because we could do what we liked and it was difficult in the big room because people were reading or talking.

When our parents came back from Paris we had a chicken from The Court, and stuffing and new potatoes from the garden, and our father had brought back two big bottles of wine, and some rather smelly cheese, which he liked especially, and some mustard. So it was quite French and even Lally had a little sip of wine and everyone was very pleased to be together again.

“Hope you both behaved yourselves,” said our mother, not meaning it, and Lally said that we had been Treasures and very
helpful, which always made us pleased although we knew she didn't mean that either.

“Because if not,” said our mother, “it'll be a dreadful waste of two lovely presents from Paris.” And after dinner, when we had cleared away and helped with the washing up, we went back into the big room and there were the packages on the table, almost like Christmas.

My sister's package was, I noticed, a bit bigger than mine, but I had two to her one. And Lally had two as well. So it was all going to be fair. Lally got some stockings and a bottle of something which smelled of lemons and would make a bit of a change from Devonshire Violets; my sister had furniture for her dolls' house, and I got a wind-up racing car, blue and red, with a driver sitting inside and a paperweight thing which was a glass ball full of water and the Eiffel Tower with a little flag on top, and when you shook it hard it made a terrific snowstorm. It had “Paris” written in blue writing on the base.

It was very nice in the big room with them both back. Even though it was very nice too with Lally and the cat, and going to the Picture Palace, which we had promised not to mention, and making jam and even having to go shopping every day almost. But it was a good comfortable feeling all being together again, and even Minnehaha came in and jumped on to my father's lap while he was reading his letters. Lally was having a very nice time talking like anything to our mother. She said she didn't count talking to children much, and missed the real Grown Ups, but all she was talking about was rotten old Miss Maltravers and being so nosy so it really wasn't different conversation, just the same as with us, but to someone else.

“She quite spoiled the children's postcard, you know. Reading it out like that.”

“I don't think she meant to be nosy,” said our mother. “After all, anyone can read a postcard if they want to. They aren't supposed to be private, otherwise you would put them in an envelope, surely?”

Lally sniffed a bit and wouldn't give in. “And telling everyone about my catalogue from Debenhams.
That's
cheeky, I must say !”

“But I expect that had the name printed on the outside, didn't it? So she wasn't really being nosy. After all, it is a small village, she doesn't get much fun, I imagine, or excitement for that matter.” Our mother was always very reasonable, and put like
that, Miss Maltravers didn't seem to be so awful, especially if anyone could read anyone's postcard if they liked. I didn't know about that bit. But Lally was not best pleased.

“Well,” she said, gathering up all the wrapping paper from the gifts and making a neat little pile on the table, “if she thinks it's exciting to read other people's letters, that's her business I suppose. But the next time I write off for anything, I'll tell them to put it in a plain envelope. I don't want the whole of Sussex to know I have it in mind to get a new coat for the winter, that's MY business. Come along you two …” she said, “give your parents a bit of a rest and get up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire toot-sweet, it's well past time.”

The O.M. glimmered in the shade under the trees. It was beautiful, and we were all very proud of it. Our father most of all. It was his favourite thing, our mother said, next to
The Times
which is where he worked. She said he liked it better than us all put together, but we knew that wasn't true. It's just that she got a bit fed up having her hair blown all over the place when she had just had it “done”, and getting cold in the winter, and wet in the rain. The O.M. was all made of aluminium and was, our father said, an Open Tourer. It went very fast indeed, at least when he was driving it it did, and we got quite cold and wet sometimes when he couldn't be bothered to stop to put up the hood and the side windows.

My sister, Lally and I sat in the back together, under a black leather cover thing, with a separate windshield which had three sides and didn't keep the wind off us at all. We were quite warm under the black cover, but our heads poked out and got very cold, and red, so our father bought us each a leather helmet which covered us almost completely, with ear-muff things and goggles. Lally grumbled a bit about getting her hair in a mess and one day had it all cut off, like a boy's, to save the trouble.