The Quivering Tree by S. T. Haymon Page B

looked taken aback, I thought, but pleased in her shy way, as if she too had noticed the word. Miss Locke, intent on forcing her napkin back through its ring, her straight nose and brow inclined over her task, glanced up to comment mockingly, ‘A model child!’
    She made me blush all over again, of course: at that time almost anything could set me off. Miss Gosse said, smiling affectionately at her friend: ‘You mustn’t mind Miss Locke, Sylvia. She’s a great tease!’
    I ran upstairs, put on my blazer and opened the left-hand drawer of the chest of drawers to take out Alfred’s pound note.
    It wasn’t there.
    It wasn’t anywhere. I had tucked the money inside the folds of the handkerchief Alfred had brought me back from Switzerland. With its blue gentians embroidered round the edges it was my favourite, and I had selected it especially. I could not possibly have been mistaken.
    On the chance, nevertheless, that I was mistaken, I pulled all the handkerchiefs out of the sachet, pulled out everything in the drawer, everything in all the drawers. Then I levered out each one in turn and examined the space behind, coated with fluff and a dead ant or two. On the chance that the note had dropped down to the floor, I squeezed myself into the narrow space between the chest of drawers and the window. There was so little room to move that when I turned round my nose pressed up against the window, up against the quivering leaves, only the glass between us. I could tell by the way the leaves stared at me that they knew. They knew who had stolen my money.
    As I did myself, for that matter. Who else could it have been? I slid the drawers back into place, slammed the handkerchiefs and clothes in all anyhow, and sat down on the bed to consider what I was going to do about it. Actually, I knew even before I sat down what the answer would be.
    Nothing.
    I saw myself crossing the landing, going downstairs, along the hall and through the door into the dining-room, to tell Miss Gosse and Miss Locke that their housekeeper had stolen a pound note from my drawer when she had come into my room to tidy it up or make my bed – I saw myself, my eye! Either they wouldn’t believe me, or they would – which, if anything, would be worse. In the latter case they would feel obliged to sack the woman, send away the servant upon whom all their creature comforts depended. Bad as it was to steal – they wouldn’t be able to deny that, that was something at least – I was the one who would come in for the real blame, the tale-bearer who, taken up with her own selfish concerns, had turned their cosy world upside down.
    Either way I would have to go. Go to ghastly London, to that ghastly house – I had never seen it, but I knew exactly how it must be. And only a matter of minutes before I had called Chandos House home.
    It was! It was!
    I dug deep into my blazer pocket to finger the ninepence that was there untouched, and my shilling pocket money. I picked up my last and definitive shopping list from the top of the chest of drawers, crumpled it up and threw it into the wastepaper basket. I wondered fleetingly if, when I telephoned Alfred as promised, I shouldn’t tell him what had happened, and decided that I couldn’t possibly. For a second or two I thought about my dead father, just long enough to hope he had something interesting on in heaven that morning and so wouldn’t be looking down and getting upset about what had happened to me. In case, however, he was looking, I put on the best face I could contrive to show how well I was coping with the disaster. Not even crying – at least, not so that you’d notice.
    I went down the road to the call-box at the crossroads and got through to my brother at his office. We spoke for a very short time, not because he was not glad to hear from me – the warm concern in his voice almost broke down my defences – but because Saturday