Opposite the Cross Keys (10 page)

‘He likes you,' Tom assured me. ‘Pillow likes you. I can see that.'

‘How can you tell?'

‘If he didn't, he'd 'a spit in your eye.'

Maud went into the scullery and came back with a tin which had criss-crossed Union Jacks and Danish flags printed on the sides, and on the top, portraits of King Edward and Queen Alexandra. The portraits were a good deal the worse for wear already, so that it didn't matter when she took a metal meat skewer out of the chest of drawers and punched several holes in the lid.

She had lined the tin with some newspaper crumpled up, only that didn't suit Tom, who first buttoned Pillow carefully back in his pocket and then went out into the garden and came back with a handful of grasses and poppies to serve in its place. He also brought back a large worm the colour of mahogany which he sliced up on one of the plates and tipped into the tin in case Pillow felt peckish on the journey to his new home.

I could tell by the look in Maud's eyes that there was going to be no question of leaving the toad behind at the bus stop. How clever Tom was! Anyone could get rid of a toad, so long as that was all it was, a toad. But once give it a name … ! To abandon Pillow would be tantamount to abandoning a newborn infant on the steps of the Norfolk and Norwich.

When his preparations were complete, Tom placed Pillow gently in his makeshift nest and quickly shut the lid. One of the skewer holes had gone right through the middle of King Edward's nose, making him look very silly. Maud let out a sigh, and said it was time to get ready to go. She went upstairs, through that mysterious door at the side of the fireplace, and came down changed back into her navy costume, with her straw hat on. The sight of her, returned to her St Giles self, brought home to me as nothing else that the day was really and truly over, that there would never be another day like it.

Old as I was for such carryings-on, I began to cry and cry for the perfection that would never come again. Mrs Fenner remarked, with moderate sympathy, ‘Put a cork in it, gal Sylvie. Tin't the end o' the world.' But it was, and I went on crying. Tom's eyes, too, were wet with tears, but that might have been for Pillow, not me. He could have been regretting his generous impulse in giving away such a toad of toads.

Charlie came in, looking glum; this time with his cap on, which made him look different, lumpish. His mother poured him out a cup of tea, and cut some more bread for him.

‘No jam?' He took a discontented bite out of the bread and looked down at the peculiar wetness on his plate. ‘Wha's that?'

‘Oh, that? Tom just cut up a worm.'

‘Christ!' But it didn't stop him from finishing the bread, swilling it down with the brewed tea. Perhaps he knew his mother was joking. Perhaps she was.

He looked at me with small curiosity. ‘Wha's she going on like that for?'

Maud said, ‘She don't want to go home.'

Charlie said, ‘She must be mad.'

‘You're in a lovely mood,' Mrs Fenner observed. ‘What you bin up to now?'

‘Playin' pontoon at Jacko Brown's, if you want to know. Lost ninepence.'

‘More fool you.'

‘You wouldn't say that if I'd 'a won.'

‘True enough,' Mrs Fenner conceded. ‘But you didn't, bor. Wha's the good o' talking if?'

What indeed was the good of talking if? Or of crying over it? The living-room at Opposite the Cross Keys had grown darker as the sun moved round, shadowy; and the Fenners too seemed to have grown shadowy, borne away on the turning world. Mrs Fenner kissed me, and when, with my St Giles manners, I went over to the rocking chair to shake Mr Fenner's hand and say thank you for a lovely day, to my surprise he bent down and kissed me too, and told me to be sure and come again. His moustache was much pricklier than my father's. It could easily have been horsehair.

Charlie gave me a nod, and Ellie a poker-faced stare. Tom was not somebody you said goodbye to.

Back in Norwich, at my insistence we called in at May Bowden's before going home. I was anxious for Pillow, shut up in the tin. Maud's attempted reassurance, that toads could see in the dark, only deepened my anxiety. How doubly awful to be able to see in the dark and find that there was only the dark to see!

Maud was in a good mood. We hadn't bumped into anyone we knew on the longish walk from the bus depot to St Giles: no one had seen me in my mucky Salham St Awdry state, so that although she would rather have procured me a bath and fresh clothing before tackling May Bowden about taking Pillow in as a lodger, she gave in to my importunings without too much fuss. It was, after all, only May Bowden, who didn't know clean from dirty.

May Bowden was out in her garden, which, to tell the truth, wasn't much of a garden at all, being mostly cobblestones, beach pebbles tedious to walk on and death to ladies' high heels. One corner was taken up by a construction which looked more like a pile of rubble left behind by the builders than a rockery, which is what it was supposed to be; another by what Maud called May's mosquito nursery, a small pool which, every spring, covered itself with slime and an occasional lily pad, never a water-lily.

The house, Virginia creeper-clad, with two single-storeyed wings projecting at right angles from its main bulk, surrounded the garden on three sides. Under the dining-room window, in the centre, was a large rose bed where, in season, debilitated roses bloomed consumptively. Due to the way the house was built, in one of the old Norwich courtyards – courts, as they are called locally – surrounded by tall houses of earlier and later construction, few sunbeams found their way into the garden, where such as did collapsed exhausted, at the end of their range. Ferns were what grew there best, laurels, and some other vegetable matter of dubious pedigree, of which the best that could be said for it was that it was at least green.

Looking at the garden with eyes unaccustomedly critical, I worried about what Pillow would think of it, after what he had been used to. However, I didn't worry too much, because I was a great believer in the power of love. I was convinced that my loving care would more than make up for the wide open spaces of St Awdry's.

May Bowden smiled when she saw us coming, which, whilst it boded well, was aesthetically a pity. It was not her best expression. Her false teeth were so large and shiny, with such a lot of pretend gum showing, they would have made her look like the Wolf in
Red Riding Hood
if it hadn't been for the rouge on her cheeks and the lipstick on her lips. As it was, she looked like a raddled old woman with more money than sense.

I was practically certain May Bowden did not get her face powder off cream bonbons bought in the Market Place, because when she bent down and kissed me, which she did from time to time, she didn't smell of vanilla, but of Parma violets. Sometimes, when she kissed me, some of the powder got on to the front of my dress, and I could smell it for a long time afterwards. I once invited Maud to have a sniff, it smelled so nice, but all I got back was, ‘Lucky she didn't smear you with her hair. We'd 'a had a fine job getting
that
out!'

May Bowden's hair was a bright red which Maud said came out of a bottle; but my father said he remembered old Mr Bowden, and he had had red hair too, so it couldn't have: to which Maud's dour retort had been to the effect that in that case they must both have used the same bottle.

Old Mr Bowden, who died before I was born, had been a boot-mender who had been so good at his trade that he had ended up owning a boot and shoe factory which he had sold to a large company for a lot of money. The company had stuck a new front on to the factory, but round at the side you could still read, shadows on the dingy bricks,
Bowden & Co. Quality Footwear for Ladies, Gentlemen, and Infants. Artisans' Boots. Only the Best Suffices
.

With the money from the sale of the factory Mr Bowden had built a lot of horrid little rows of houses in the streets down by the river, and named them after the women in his life, such as Ivy Terrace and May Terrace, named after his wife and his daughter. Nobody knew who Daphne Terrace and Sophie Terrace and Beryl Villas and Millicent Villas were named after, but, as my father said, you had to give a man the benefit of the doubt. When Mr Bowden died, his wife having predeceased him, he left all the houses, and all the rents that came out of them, to his daughter May.

Maud said that he had ground the faces of the poor, to say nothing of making them ill by putting in bad drains, and no good would ever come of money got in that way. As May Bowden had promised to leave all her money to me when she died, I hoped it was only Maud being niggly: that the money hadn't been got as sinfully as she made out.

May Bowden came to the garden gate, pinning a lock of her bright red hair back into place as she came. She wore her hair in a style I was familiar with from old photographs, flat on top as though permanently squashed by the wearing of heavy hats. She leaned over the gate to look at the cowslip ball and the tin with King Edward and Queen Alexandra, both of which I was carrying in the box in which the roast chicken had been packed.

‘You dear child!' she trilled, showing all the false teeth at once. ‘You've brought me cowslips!'

It was embarrassing to have to explain that the cowslips were spoken for. ‘But I'll be sure to bring you some back next time,' I promised, looking sideways at Maud. Mr Fenner, after all, had invited me to come again soon. But all Maud did was to say brutally, ‘They'll be over by then.'

‘Things are always over when it's my turn.' May Bowden spoke without self-pity, but I felt awful. I put the box down on the ground, picked up the tin, and held it out to her.

‘I've brought you back something much better than cowslips!'

May Bowden was in no hurry to take my gift. The stare she directed at King Edward with a hole skewered through his nose held none of the respect she was accustomed to accord royalty.

She said coldly, ‘I'm not short of tins, thank you.'

‘Not the tin! What's inside!'

Carefully, as Tom had done, I raised the lid of the tin, just enough to get my hand inside, and pressing lightly on the toad's back so that it couldn't make a sudden leap for freedom. Despite the discomforts of the journey, it still felt cool and contented. Its head popped up between my thumb and forefinger, so sweet, so good-humoured, that May Bowden was instantly conquered.

‘A frog!' she exclaimed. ‘Just like in the fairy stories!'

Maud sniffed. ‘If you think that one's going to turn into a prince you've got another think coming! It's not a frog. It's a toad.'

‘His name's Pillow,' I intervened hastily. ‘I thought he could live in your garden and eat up all the bad insects and things. Adding unwisely, ‘And I could come and visit him, being just next door.'

May Bowden withdrew the hand which had been about to lift Pillow out of his makeshift nest. Her countenance had become narrow and suspicious.

‘Let's get one thing straight, young lady. Is it your toad or mine? Or are you simply proposing that I should let you use my amenities for your own purposes?'

I gulped. Maud opened her mouth to speak, and shut it again without saying anything. Put on the spot, I assumed my most endearing smile and said, ‘It's yours. I already told you.'

‘Let him choose where he wants to be.'

May Bowden lifted Pillow out of the tin and placed him tenderly on the cobblestones. The toad's bright eyes rolled from side to side. He took in his new quarters and made a quick decision. Finding the beach pebbles, apparently, a lot easier going with four legs than human beings with two, he bounced over to the rockery and, after another brief pause for inspection, clambered over a giant conch shell and a couple of broken bricks to disappear into a clump of fresh young ferns which had not yet unfolded all their croziers.

‘No time lost making himself at home!' May Bowden's voice vibrated with satisfaction. She hugged me to her beaded bodice, gave me another of her Parma-violets kisses. In so doing she must have caught a whiff of Salham St Awdry, because she straightened up abruptly. ‘You need a bath, child.'

Maud said, ‘Come on, Sylvie. She's got her present. You don't have to stay to be insulted.'

‘Sylvia knows how grateful I am,' May Bowden responded with dignity. ‘She also knows I know that when she smells like a manure heap it's not her who's to blame.' Her delight in the gift getting the better of her malice: ‘He shall be my watch toad. I shall teach him to croak when anyone comes to the door.'

‘Not that sort you won't,' Maud returned with satisfaction. ‘All that sort o' toad does is make a kind of cough.'

‘In that case I shall buy him some cough drops.' A sudden anxiety: ‘I suppose there
is
enough food here in the garden to keep him properly nourished?'

‘If there isn't,' Maud suggested nastily, ‘feed him a couple of black beetles or a few maggots. Whatever you happen to have in the house.'

May Bowden ignored the affront. She kissed me again, despite the smell, which made Maud hopping mad. So mad that she couldn't wait to lam into me the moment we were away, crossing the courtyard towards our own back door.

‘A fine thing!' she exploded. ‘My brother go to all that trouble to get you a toad –' she made it sound as if he had scaled Everests, swum Hellesponts – ‘an' first chance you get, you go and give it away to that old bag of rubbish.'

‘I didn't!' I hissed, keeping my voice down in case May Bowden had her antennae raised. ‘All the time I was saying “It's yours” I kept my fingers crossed.'

‘You old artful, you!' I preened at her admiration. She put an arm round my shoulders and gave me a small hug. ‘Tha's all right, then.'

My parents were not yet back. The house was dark. Maud hung the cowslip ball on the hallstand, to surprise my mother on her return.