heaven was worth being poor for was a question which required further thought.
Maud came over to the bed to take The Frog Prince away. I reached up my arms, pulled her down and kissed her.
âI do love you,â I said.
Maud said, âI love you too.â That is, what she actually said was, â Now what is it?â but I knew what she meant.
I first went to Salham St Awdry to stay, not just going there for the day, more than a year later, in July, when I was getting over chickenpox. In those days, children who had contracted the disease were deemed infectious so long as any scabs remained in place, so that although I felt, and was, perfectly well, I was forced to stay away from school and forbidden all companionship of my own age, the only permissible alternatives either to stay indoors or else be smuggled out, hat pulled down over face to conceal the tell-tale evidence, to deserted places like Mousehold Heath on the edge of the city, where there was nothing to do but sit and listen to the gorse pods popping in the heat of the summer afternoon.
It was intolerable, and so was Dr Parfitt, a foolish old man whose yellow-stained moustache completely hid his mouth and came down to his chin, almost. He wore the moustache, he said, because it trapped the germs to which his profession particularly exposed him. Whenever he ran into my father, he invariably exhorted him, for his healthâs sake, to grow his moustache longer. He was, however, puzzled by his female patients, finding it hard to account for the fact that, although on the whole moustacheless, they tended to outlive his male ones.
My mother said it was Dr Parfitt who first mooted the desirability of getting me away to the country â presumably, contact with country children didnât count. It may have been he, or it may have been my mother, driven to distraction by my bored naughtiness; but I am pretty sure it was Maudâs idea. What she wanted was to get me away from May Bowden.
May Bowden was my one refuge during this trying time. When I called on her she would take me into her dining-room and bring out several small cloth bags, drawn up at the neck with a cord, whose contents she would shake out on to the green chenille cover of her dining table.
There were buttons and brooches and all manner of small trinkets, some worthless, some, as I now think, of beauty and price. One morning when I pricked my finger on a hat-pin shaped like a dagger she took me into the kitchen to wash and bandage the wound. Because I had been so brave, she said â I carefully omitting to point out that I was years beyond fussing over such small mishaps â I might choose any one thing to take home and keep.
I chose a tiny carved mouse, curled nose to tail, no bigger than a button. And that was what it was, my father told me when I showed it to him, one of the Japanese toggles called netsuke. It was valuable, he said, and I ought to give it back, but my mother said May Bowden would only be offended, and it wasnât as if she couldnât afford it. What had begun to worry my mother a little â she spoke diffidently, for she had difficulty in speaking ill of anybody â was whether it was safe for me to be alone in the house with that dotty old maid.
It did not take much in the way of brains to discern behind this misgiving the fine Italian hand of Maud. Maud even tried to stop me visiting Pillow in the garden, asserting it to be cruelty to wild animals to treat them as pets, brushing aside my insistence that, on the contrary, the little creature looked forward to my coming. When none of her devices succeeded she changed tack, and began to speak of asking Tom whether he couldnât find a she-toad to keep poor lonely Pillow company. I was not deceived. What really moved her, I could swear, was a wicked desire to see her rivalâs garden awash with baby toads, a mini-plague such as, on a grander scale, had afflicted the Ancient Egyptians. I
Maud came over to the bed to take The Frog Prince away. I reached up my arms, pulled her down and kissed her.
âI do love you,â I said.
Maud said, âI love you too.â That is, what she actually said was, â Now what is it?â but I knew what she meant.
I first went to Salham St Awdry to stay, not just going there for the day, more than a year later, in July, when I was getting over chickenpox. In those days, children who had contracted the disease were deemed infectious so long as any scabs remained in place, so that although I felt, and was, perfectly well, I was forced to stay away from school and forbidden all companionship of my own age, the only permissible alternatives either to stay indoors or else be smuggled out, hat pulled down over face to conceal the tell-tale evidence, to deserted places like Mousehold Heath on the edge of the city, where there was nothing to do but sit and listen to the gorse pods popping in the heat of the summer afternoon.
It was intolerable, and so was Dr Parfitt, a foolish old man whose yellow-stained moustache completely hid his mouth and came down to his chin, almost. He wore the moustache, he said, because it trapped the germs to which his profession particularly exposed him. Whenever he ran into my father, he invariably exhorted him, for his healthâs sake, to grow his moustache longer. He was, however, puzzled by his female patients, finding it hard to account for the fact that, although on the whole moustacheless, they tended to outlive his male ones.
My mother said it was Dr Parfitt who first mooted the desirability of getting me away to the country â presumably, contact with country children didnât count. It may have been he, or it may have been my mother, driven to distraction by my bored naughtiness; but I am pretty sure it was Maudâs idea. What she wanted was to get me away from May Bowden.
May Bowden was my one refuge during this trying time. When I called on her she would take me into her dining-room and bring out several small cloth bags, drawn up at the neck with a cord, whose contents she would shake out on to the green chenille cover of her dining table.
There were buttons and brooches and all manner of small trinkets, some worthless, some, as I now think, of beauty and price. One morning when I pricked my finger on a hat-pin shaped like a dagger she took me into the kitchen to wash and bandage the wound. Because I had been so brave, she said â I carefully omitting to point out that I was years beyond fussing over such small mishaps â I might choose any one thing to take home and keep.
I chose a tiny carved mouse, curled nose to tail, no bigger than a button. And that was what it was, my father told me when I showed it to him, one of the Japanese toggles called netsuke. It was valuable, he said, and I ought to give it back, but my mother said May Bowden would only be offended, and it wasnât as if she couldnât afford it. What had begun to worry my mother a little â she spoke diffidently, for she had difficulty in speaking ill of anybody â was whether it was safe for me to be alone in the house with that dotty old maid.
It did not take much in the way of brains to discern behind this misgiving the fine Italian hand of Maud. Maud even tried to stop me visiting Pillow in the garden, asserting it to be cruelty to wild animals to treat them as pets, brushing aside my insistence that, on the contrary, the little creature looked forward to my coming. When none of her devices succeeded she changed tack, and began to speak of asking Tom whether he couldnât find a she-toad to keep poor lonely Pillow company. I was not deceived. What really moved her, I could swear, was a wicked desire to see her rivalâs garden awash with baby toads, a mini-plague such as, on a grander scale, had afflicted the Ancient Egyptians. I
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