The Wizard of London (23 page)

Sarah
leveled grave eyes on her friend. “You knew about this, didn’t
you?” she whispered, as she passed the bowl of boiled carrots to Nan, who
served herself and passed it to Amanda Truitt. Sarah handed a piece of carrot
to Grey, who took it and held it in one claw while taking neat bites out of it.

Nan
nodded, just a little. Sarah smiled. “It’s all right,” she
continued. “I know why you didn’t tell.”

Of
course she did; she had listened in that same closet herself, more than once.
But Nan was relieved that she didn’t take it amiss.

It
was hard to sleep that night, knowing that the treat really was in store. Nan
expected she would be quite busy the next day, not with her own packing, but
with helping to pack up the little ones’ things. It wasn’t as if
she had much of her own, after all.

But
at midmorning she got a surprise, as Mem’sab took her away from folding
little pinafores and pressing small shirtwaists, to go back to her own room
where Sarah was packing. There was an enormous stack of clothing on her bed.

“I
have several friends with little girls a bit older than your age, Nan,”
Mem’sab said without preamble. “So I canvassed them for outgrown
clothing for the summer. Some of it won’t fit, of course, and some will
be unsuitable, but we should find some things in these piles that will do. So
let’s begin trying them on you.”

Some
of the clothing made Nan blink. She could not ever imagine herself in a dress
so covered with frills she thought she looked like a right Guy in it, nor in
the item of embroidery and lace so delicate she was afraid to touch it, lest
her rough hands snag on it. But a fair amount fit her reasonably well, and was tough
enough to survive her, for when Nan played, she played hard, and with the
determination of someone who had the fear she might never be allowed to play
again. She played cricket with the boys as often as dolls with the girls. When
they were through, Nan had a wardrobe only a little less extensive than
Sarah’s.

After
she had packed up these new things, she returned to help with the littlest
ones, and the next day, when they all filed out to take the omnibus to the
train station, with a cart to follow with all of their luggage, it was with
startlement that she realized she had just as much as anyone else.

Neville
had something new as well, a fine new round cage to travel in with a handle on
top, as did Grey. Both cages had cloth covers over them, more to prevent the
curious from looking in and poking at them, than to prevent the birds from
doing anything or seeing things that might affright them, as there wasn’t
much that would frighten either of them. Grey settled onto her perch with a
sigh of resignation, but Neville grumbled.

“They
won’t let y‘ on the train loose, Neville,” Nan explained to
him with patience. “Look! Grey knows, and she’s bein’
good!”

Grey
gave Neville the same look Mem’sab gave naughty boys. Neville bristled
for a moment with resentment, then shook himself, hopped onto the perch, and
muttered once more as Nan closed the cage door and dropped the cover over the
top.

The
omnibus ride to the station was uneventful except for the excitement of the
children. Sahib had closed the warehouse for an hour or two and brought his
workers down to help with the luggage at the station. He and Selim would remain
living at the school with two of the servants to tend to them and keep the
school up; he would only be coming down on the weekends. Seven pushcarts heaped
with luggage were all duly checked in and tagged with their destination, and
the children all filed into the bright red railway carriages practically
vibrating with anticipation. The birds, of course, came in the carriage; one
conductor looked as if he might demand that they ride with the luggage, but a
gimlet stare delivered by Mem’sab made him change his mind.

The
seats right next to the windows were the most desired, but no one disputed the
right of the girls and their birds to have two of them. Sitting across from one
another on the high-backed wooden benches, with the cages held on their laps,
Nan and Sarah pulled up the covers on the window side of the round brass cages
so that the birds could see out.

The
train pulled out of the station with a metallic shriek of wheels, the final
warning hoot of the whistle, and a lurch. It quickly picked up speed to the
point where Nan was a bit uneasy… she had never traveled this fast
before. She hadn’t known you could. She wasn’t entirely sure you
ought to. She had to keep glancing at Mem’sab, sitting beside Sarah,
calmly reading a book, to reassure herself that it was all right.

The
city gave way to the suburbs, houses each with its own patch of green lawn, set
apart from its neighbors rather than crowded so closely together that the walls
almost touched, or actually did touch. And then, out of the suburbs they burst,
into green space that Nan immediately and automatically identified as
“park,” except that it went on as far as the eye could see, it was
somewhat overgrown, divided by fences, walls, and hedges, and—and there
were animals in it. Herds of sheep, of placid cows, even of goats. All of them
browsing, or occasionally raising their heads to watch the train pass.

Nan
was beside herself; this was the first time she had ever seen a cow, a sheep,
or a live goat. Until this moment, they had only been images in a picture book.
She was surprised at how big the cows were, and when she saw the woolly sheep
with their half-grown lambs frisking alongside, her fingers itched to touch
them. Horses, of course, were everywhere in the city and she knew horses quite
well, but it was the first time she had ever seen a foal, and the lively
awkward creatures made her exclaim and forget her fear of how fast they were
going.

Grey
was excited and interested; atypically, she said nothing in
words
,
instead, “commenting” on the passing scenery with little mutters,
whistles, and clicks. Sarah, too, kept her attention riveted on the landscape,
which surprised Nan, considering how far her friend had traveled, until Sarah
said, in a surprised voice, “This is nothing like Africa—”

“It
ain—isn’t?” Nan replied.

Sarah
shook her head. “The trees are different; the leaves are smaller, the
trees aren’t as tall or as green. There are big vines with huge leaves
everywhere in the jungle. The bushes are different, too. Even the cattle are
different; the cattle in Africa are leaner, with longer horns. We don’t
have sheep. The goats are the same, though.”

Grey
whistled.

Neville
yawned, doing his best to look blasé. Nan laughed.

“Nothing
flusters his feathers,” Sarah said fondly. “You’d think he
journeyed by train every day.”

“Well,
he has done just about everything else,” Nan replied reflectively.
“An’ it’s not as if he don’t know what countryside looks
like. Reckon he’s flown out to look at it a time or two.”

All
four of them continued to watch the landscape fly past with great interest. Nan
wondered fleetingly what a longer trip would be like; they were due to arrive,
so Mem’sab said, before noon, and would be at Highleigh Park by that hour
at the latest. Did you eat on the train? She supposed you could sleep on it,
the seat was more comfortable than many other places she had slept. But what
did you do about a loo? Did the train stop so that everyone could traipse out,
use one, and come back aboard?

This
was not a “special,” and it made several stops along the way. The
little towns and villages surrounding the railway station were picture-book
perfect, so far as Nan could tell; so perfect it was hard to believe people
actually lived in them. She wondered what life would be like in one, so small
that everyone knew everyone else, and all about everyone else’s business,
too.

Finally,
at just about the point where she was beginning to wish she could get up and
move about, the conductor announced their village. “Maidenstone Bridge.
Maidenstone Bridge!” And to Neville’s disgust, Nan dropped the
cover over him again and prepared to leap to her feet to get out, for she had a
sudden panicked image of herself
not
managing to disembark before the
train pulled out of the station, and the train leaving with her trapped on it.

She
needn’t have worried. The train remained in the station for a good long
while after they all poured out and their luggage was sorted out and piled,
once again, on pushcarts. But as Nan surveyed the quiet village street, without
seeing a sign of an omnibus, she had another feeling of repressed panic. Now
what? Were they supposed to walk to this place pushing the handcarts before
them?

That
was when the first of the wagons came around the corner.

There
was a veritable parade of them, big commodious farm wagons, and when the first
driver hailed Mem’sab, it became clear the carts had come for them. One
came with an empty bed for the luggage, and the rest had been padded with a
thick layer of hay for the children to sit on. With the wagons came a set of
burly farm workers, smelling of tobacco, horse, and hay, who tossed the
children up into the back of the wagons as if they weighed nothing. When they
came to Nan and Sarah, they lifted each of them, cage and all, over the back of
the wagon to settle at the rear. A more dignified charabanc had been provided
for Mem’sab, the teachers and some of the servants, though the ayahs were
happy enough to be helped in alongside their small charges in a third wagon
just for the little ones.

Wisely,
the farmers had separated the boys and the girls into separate wagons. They
boys were able to tumble about in the hay and roughhouse as much as they
pleased without getting into too much trouble over it.

In
Nan’s opinion, they were missing the best part of the journey with their
skylarking. There was so much to look at, she felt as if her whole body was
filling up with new sights. It was all like something out of one of her books;
all those things that had been described in words now suddenly had
things
attached to them. The lane they traveled down, with thick hedgerows on either
side, was nothing like the thoroughfare called a “lane” in London,
and now she understood, really, how one could get tangled in a hedgerow and be
unable to get through it. When they traveled down a part of the lane where the
trees formed a dense green archway above it, so it was as if they were
traveling in a long, living tunnel, she was practically beside herself with
pleasure as she recalled just such a description in another book. The
horses’ hooves had a different sound on the soft dirt of the road than
they did on the paved streets of London, and the scents! She had never smelled
so many wonderful things! Flowers, and new-cut hay, a fresh green scent of
water utterly unlike the smelly old Thames, wood smoke and things she
couldn’t even begin to identify. Birds sang and twittered everywhere, the
hedges were alive with little birds, and there were rooks twanging in trees
everywhere. Even Neville forgot to look bored.

And
then, they found themselves passing beside a wall, a very tall cream-colored
brick wall topped with an edge of white stone, exactly like the one around the
school, except this went on for a very long distance. It was covered in ivy,
and craning her neck, Nan saw a gate in the wall, a gate made of wrought iron
like the one at the school. The charabanc ahead of them turned and went into
the gate, as a man stood there holding the gate open. Right inside the gate
there was a house of black timbers and white plaster with a thatched roof, and
at first Nan was horribly disappointed, wondering how all of them were supposed
to fit into that house, because it didn’t look as if it had more than two
or three bedrooms at best—

But
the charabanc and then the wagons kept going, and that was when the word
“gatehouse” connected in her mind with the house at the gate, and
she stared at it in awe, realizing that here was a house
just
for a
man and his family to live in so he could
tend the gate
. And that was
all
he did!

The
cavalcade continued on up a twisting lane that led through wooded and meadowed
land that looked exactly as well groomed as a park, and then turned a
corner—

And
there it was, and Nan blinked in surprise and even shock at the place that
would be their home for the next month.

It
was a chaotic, glorious pile of a place, a mishmash of styles and eras, and if
Nan could no more have named those styles and eras, she could certainly tell that
the blocky stone tower with its slitlike windows that anchored the left was
nothing like the mathematical center of more cream-colored brick and tall,
narrow windows, which was in turn, nothing at all like the florid wing thrown
up on the right. The only unifying force was that except for the square tower,
it was all built of the same mellow cream-colored brick of the wall, and that
was all.

And
it was
enormous
. Easily three times the size of the school.

Nan
looked around her, and so did the rest of the children, eyes as wide as they
could stretch—at manicured parkland that could easily hold three Hyde
Parks and then some—at the huge pile of a building, that promised endless
opportunities for exploration—at the glimpse of gardens in the rear, and
beyond that, a hint of water. And for the first time they all understood that
all of this was, within reason,
theirs
for the month, to run in, play
in, explore, hide, make up stories in and act them out—

And
it was Nan who summed up all their feelings in a single word.

A
word which burst out of her like a cannonball out of a gun.

“
Cor
!”
she shouted in glee.

Mem’sab, being
handed down out of the charabanc, merely looked up and smiled.