Читать книгу Coot Club - Arthur Ransome - Страница 4

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Thorpe Station at Norwich is a terminus. Trains from the middle of England and the south run in there, and if they are going on east and north by way of Wroxham, they run out of the station by the same way they ran in. Dick and Dorothea Callum had never been in Norfolk before, and for ten minutes they had been waiting in that station, sitting in the train, for fear it should go on again at once, as it had at Ipswich and Colchester and the few other stations at which it had stopped. The journey was nearly over. They had only a few more miles to go, but Dorothea, whose mind was always busy with scenes that might do for the books she meant to write, was full of the thought of how dreadful it would be if old Mrs. Barrable, with whom they were going to stay, should be waiting on Wroxham station and the train should arrive without them. She would go back to her boat, for she was living in a boat somewhere down the river, and Dick and Dorothea, even if they did manage to reach Wroxham by some later train, would never be able to find her. So when Dick had wanted to get out of the carriage and go along the platform to watch the engine being coupled on at the other end of the train, Dorothea had been very much against it. If Dick were to get out, she would have to get out too, lest one should be left behind and the other carried on to Wroxham alone. And if she got out, why then the train might go on without either of them and their luggage might end up anywhere. She looked at the two small suit-cases on the rack (“Don’t let them bring much luggage; there isn’t room,” Mrs. Barrable had written). So Dick and she had wasted ten whole minutes sitting in the carriage, looking out of the open window at the almost empty platform.

A whistle blew, and the guard waved a green flag.

“Bring your head in now, Dick,” said Dorothea, “and close the window.”

But before Dick had time to pull the window up, they saw a boy come hurrying along the platform. He was heavily laden, with a paper parcel which he was hugging to himself so as to have that hand free for a large can of paint, while on the other arm he had slung a coil of new rope. He was hurrying along beside the train, looking into the windows of the carriages as if he were searching for someone he knew. And Dorothea noticed that, though it was a fine, dry spring day, he was wearing a pair of rubber knee-boots.

“He’ll miss it if he doesn’t get in,” said Dick.

“Hurry up, there, if you’re going,” a porter shouted and at that moment, just after he had passed their window, the boy stumbled over a rope’s end that had fallen from his coil. Down he went. His tin of paint rolled on towards the edge of the platform. His parcel burst its paper. Some blocks and shackles flew out.

The train had begun to move. A porter far down the platform was running towards the boy, who had jumped up again almost as if he had bounced, had grabbed his blocks and crammed them in his pockets, and had stopped the escaping paint-tin with his foot just before it rolled between the platform and the train. In another moment he had the tin in his arms and was running beside the carriage.

“Don’t try that now,” shouted a ticket inspector.

“Wait for the next,” shouted the porter, who was running after the boy.

“Heads!” called the boy.

The next moment the paint-can came flying through the open window between Dick and Dorothea. The coil of rope whirled round and shot in after it. The door was opened and the boy flung himself in head first and landed on all fours.

Dorothea pulled the door to. Dick said: “They always like it shut,” and reached out and closed the handle.

The porter, left far behind, stopped running.

“Just in time,” said the boy. “I didn’t want to miss it. Lucky for me you had your window open.”

“Haven’t you hurt yourself?” said Dorothea.

“Not I,” said the boy, dusting his hands together, hands that looked so capable and hard-worked that Dick, at the sight of them, wanted to hide his own.

Dorothea looked at him while he picked up his paint-can, badly dinted but not burst, took his blocks and shackles and a packet of brass hinges and a bag of brass screws out of his pockets, to see that he had lost nothing by his fall, and then carefully re-coiled his shining new rope on the seat. He looked, she thought, most awfully strong, and his hands, and the blue knitted jersey, and those boots and rope and things made her almost think he might be a sailor, but his jacket was quite like Dick’s own, and his flannel shorts ... hundreds of boys wore flannel shorts.

The train pulled out of Norwich, and Dick, looking from the window, noticed a bit of a ruin, with a narrow arch in it, left at the side of the line.

“Pretty old,” he said to Dorothea.

Dorothea, somehow feeling that this needed explaining to the strange boy, said, “Our father’s an archæologist.”

“Mine’s a doctor,” said the boy.

And then the train was running close beside the river, and they saw a steamer going down from Norwich. They crossed a bridge, and there was a river on both sides of the line, the old river on the left curving round by the village of Thorpe with crowds of yachts and motor boats tied up under the gardens, and, on the right, a straight ugly cutting. In another minute they had crossed the old river again, and the train was slowing up at a station. Close by, across a meadow, they could see a great curve of the river, and three or four houseboats moored to the bank, and a small yacht working her way up.

“Interested in boats?” said the boy, as the others hurried across the carriage.

“Yes, very much,” said Dorothea. “Last holidays we were in a houseboat frozen in the ice.”

“They’re always getting frozen in, houseboats,” said the boy. “Done much sailing?”

“We haven’t done any at all,” said Dick. “Not yet.”

“Except just once, on the ice, in a sledge,” said Dorothea.

“It wasn’t really sailing,” said Dick. “Just blowing along.”

“You’ll get lots of sailing at Wroxham,” said the boy, looking up at the big black and white labels on the two small suit-cases.

“We’re going to live in a boat,” said Dorothea “She isn’t at Wroxham. She’s somewhere down the river.”

“What’s her name?” said the boy, “I know most of them.”

“We don’t know,” said Dorothea.

“Mine’s Titmouse. She’s a very little one, of course. But she’s got an awning. I slept in her last night. And she can sail like anything. This rope is for her. Blocks, too. And the paint. Birthday present. That’s why I’ve been into Norwich.”

Dick and Dorothea looked at the blocks and fingered the silky smoothness of the new rope. It certainly did seem that they had come to the right place to learn about sailing.

Dorothea already saw herself and Dick meeting Nancy and Peggy Blackett and the Walkers, too, with whom they had spent a happy month on the shores of a wintry lake, and surprising them with the news that she and Dick could count themselves sailors more or less. After that winter holiday they had set their hearts on learning, but it was no good going north at Easter, for the Blacketts were away with their uncle, and the Walkers were in the south with their father, who was home in England on leave. They had given up all hope of getting any sailing before the summer. And then, half-way through the Easter holidays, the letter from Mrs. Barrable had come in the very nick of time. Mrs. Barrable, long ago, had been Mrs. Callum’s school-mistress, but she painted pictures and was the sister of a very famous portrait painter. And she had written to Mrs. Callum to say that her brother and she had chartered a small yacht on the Norfolk Broads, and that her brother had had to go off to London to paint portraits of some important Indians, so that she was all alone in the boat with her pug-dog William, and that if Dick and Dorothea could be spared she would like to have their company. Just then they could very well be spared, as their father had to go to a conference of archæologists upon the Roman wall and, of course, wanted their mother to go with him. Everything had been arranged in a couple of days, and here they were, and already, before they had got to Wroxham, they had met this boy who seemed more of a sailor even than John or Nancy. Things were certainly coming out all right.

“Hullo,” said Dick, soon after they passed Salhouse Station. “There’s a heron. What’s he doing on that field where there isn’t any water?”

“Frogging,” said the strange boy, and then, suddenly, “Are you interested in birds, too?”

“Yes,” said Dick. “But there are lots I’ve never seen, because of living mostly in a town.”

“You don’t collect eggs?” said the boy, looking keenly at Dick.

“I never have,” said Dick.

“Don’t you ever begin,” said the boy. “If you don’t collect eggs, it’s all right ... you see we’ve got a Bird Protection Society, not to take eggs, but to watch the birds instead. We know thirty-seven nests this year....”

“Thirty-seven?” said Dick.

“Just along our reaches.... Horning way....”

“Our boat’s near there,” said Dorothea.

“By the way,” said the boy, “you didn’t see two girls in this train—twins? No? They were in Norwich this morning, but I expect they drove back with their father. Otherwise they’d have come this way. We always do. Going by bus, you don’t see anything of the river worth counting.”

“There’s a hawk,” said Dick.

“Kestrel,” said the boy, looking at the bird hovering above a little wood. “Hullo! We’ll be there in a minute.”

The train was slowing up. It crossed another river, and for a moment they caught a glimpse of moored house-boats with smoke from their chimneys where people were cooking mid-day meals, an old mill, and a bridge, and a lot of masts beyond it. And then the train had come to a stop at Wroxham station.

The strange boy was looking warily out of the window.

On the platform he saw an old lady looking up at the carriage windows. He also saw the station-master. He chose his moment and, slipping down from the carriage with his paint-can and coil of rope, was hurrying off to give up his ticket to the collector at the gate. But the station-master was too quick for him.

“Hum,” he said, “I might have guessed it was you, when they rang me up from Norwich about a boy with a ticket for Wroxham jumping on the train after it had fairly got going. Told me to give you a good talking to. Well, don’t you do it again. Not broken any bones this time, I suppose?”

The boy grinned. He and the station-master were very good friends, and he knew that the railway officials in Norwich had not meant him to get off so easily.

“I was on the platform in time,” he said. “Only I was looking for Port and Starboard, and then I slipped, and the train started, and I simply had to catch that train.”

“Port and Starboard?” said the station-master. “I saw them go over the road-bridge with Mr. Farland more than an hour ago. They’ll have had their dinners and be on the river by now.... Yes, madam. Let me give you a hand.” He was talking now to Mrs. Barrable, the old lady, who had just found Dick and Dorothea. The station-master reached up to help Dorothea down with her suit-case.

“Well, and here you are,” said Mrs. Barrable, kissing Dorothea and shaking hands with Dick.

“And who was that other boy?” she asked.

“We made friends with him in the train,” said Dorothea. “He knows a lot about boats.”

“And birds,” said Dick.

Mrs. Barrable watched him as he hurried through the gate and down the path to the road. “Haven’t I seen him before?” she said. “And who are the Port and Starboard he was asking about?”

“That’s Tom Dudgeon, the doctor’s son from Horning,” said the station-master. “You’ll maybe have seen him on the river in his little boat. He’s not often away from the water in the holidays. And Port and Starboard, queer names for a couple of girls....” But there was the guard, just waiting to start the train, and the station-master never finished his sentence.

“Busy man,” said Mrs. Barrable. “Come along, Dick. Written any more books, Dot? You really have done well in keeping your luggage down. We’ll easily find room for these. I’ve got a boy with a hand-cart to take your things to the river. We’re going down by water. Longer but more fun. There’s a motor-launch going down to Horning, and the young man says he’ll put us aboard. The Teasel’s lying a good long way below the village. But we must have something to eat first, and I must get you some boots like those that boy was wearing. You’ll want them every time you step ashore.”