Opposite the Cross Keys by S. T. Haymon Page A

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.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Not that sort you won’t,’ Maud returned with satisfaction. ‘All that sort o’ toad does is make a kind of cough.’
    â€˜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?’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.
    Perhaps doubly put on her mettle by May Bowden’s aspersions, she not only supervised my bath as if I were still a baby, but insisted on washing my hair, which I could well have done without. When at last I was allowed into my bed, hair damp, my clothes whisked away for laundering before my mother could see them, she brought me, as custom dictated, a book for bedtime reading, for once not consulting my wishes in the matter. The book was The Frog Prince .
    I was, however, too sleepy, and said so. What I didn’t say was, that for all her soaping and shampooing, I could still, when I turned my nose into the hollow of my upper arm, smell Opposite the Cross Keys on my skin: the sweet-sour smell of poverty.
    Between waking and sleep, I could not decide whether to feel glad or sorry I wasn’t poor. True, it meant I shouldn’t inherit the kingdom of heaven (by ‘poor in spirit’ I understood too poor even to afford the bottle of Johnnie Walker my father kept out on the sideboard to offer visitors). But whilst it would be galling, on the Last Day, to find the gates of the Celestial City closed against me, I should at least have had May Bowden’s money on earth by way of compensation. Whether