Читать книгу The Picts and The Martyrs: or, Not Welcome at All - Arthur Ransome - Страница 7

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“I’ve the sheets off,” said Cook. “But I won’t make the bed till you shift them death heads. And I’m thinking if Miss Turner’s to be in the spare room, I’d best make up your mother’s bed for ...”

“Dorothea won’t want it,” said Nancy. “The Dogs’ Home is just right. We’re taking hammocks for them. And you’ll give them the camping kettle and our big saucepan and a couple of mugs, and stores.... All right. All right. We’ll clear the spare room in two jumps of a weasel. Give us time to pack ...”

Cook looked at Dorothea.

“We’re going to be very comfortable,” said Dorothea.

“I don’t know what to do,” said Cook. “There’s this room a nightmare, and I must run a duster over the drawing-room. A body could write their name in the dust on the piano.”

“Piano,” exclaimed Nancy. “Jibbooms and bobstays! She’ll be making us play the beastly thing. Come on, Peggy. You go and get the drawing pins out on the other side ... carefully, or we’ll tear it. We’ll want a Jolly Roger or two to cheer up the Picts’ Home.”

“You be getting them things down,” said Cook, “and I’ll have your dinner on the table. Days like this a body wants two pairs of legs and a dozen arms ...”

“It isn’t really that you want,” said Nancy, pulling out drawing pins from the skull and crossbones over the head of the bed in which the Great Aunt was to sleep. “It’s time. It always goes too fast or too slow. Here’s the G.A. coming and minutes fly like seconds and yet when we’re at school waiting for the end of term the days drag out like years. Look out, Peggy. Hold your side up till I get out this last pin ...”

Dick had gone off to his room that was really Captain Flint’s, and was collecting everything that was his and putting it on the bed. Dorothea was putting back into her suitcase the things she had taken out the night before.

“We won’t lug the suitcases up the wood,” said Nancy. “Take just the things you can’t do without. We can stow the suitcases here.”

“The suitcases’ll be pretty useful,” said Dorothea. “Like a chest of drawers.”

“All right,” said Nancy. “Of course it would be pretty awful if she started prowling round the box-room and found them here. We’ll get them up somehow.”

“Torn,” said Peggy. “Can’t be helped. Anyway the big one’s all right.” She folded the remains of the Jolly Roger that had been on the foot of the bed. “What about the flags?”

“They’ll want the scarab flag for their boat. They won’t want the other.”

“Come and eat your dinner,” called Cook from downstairs and at the same time banged loudly on the dinner gong.

Lunch in the Beckfoot dining-room was like the last meal in a house before people are moving to a new one. The dining-room looked the same as usual, but it was as if the carpets were up, and the furniture half packed, and a van waiting outside for the rest of it. They could hear Cook pushing the spare-room bed about (at least that was what it sounded like) while she was hurriedly making it up anew for the unwelcome visitor. Nancy and Peggy were snapping out single words, “Hammocks” ... “Hammer” ... “Nails” ... “Bedding” ... “Grog” ... “Pemmican” ... “Tin opener” ... their minds darting this way and that through the memories of camping expeditions, trying to be sure that nothing should be forgotten that the Picts would need. Dorothea was looking ahead into the housekeeping that she would be doing for the first time. Dick was thinking of the hut as a forest base for a naturalist. He was almost sure that was a woodpecker he had heard ... But neither Dick nor Dorothea got very far with their thoughts. Those single, practical words, snapped out by the experienced Amazons, kept breaking in with new ideas. Five minutes after they had finished not one of them could have said off hand what they had eaten or whether they had eaten anything.

“We’ve got to get Cook working on their stores,” said Nancy. “She must have done that room by now.” For a few minutes the noises from upstairs, of brushes banging against walls and catching against chairs and bed-legs, had come to an end. Suddenly there was a new noise of drawers being pulled open and banged shut.

“She’s done,” said Peggy. “She’s just looking in the chest of drawers to see there’s nothing of Dot’s left behind.”

They went up and found Dorothea’s suitcase on the landing outside the spare-room door. Cook was looking anxiously round.

“If there’s owt amiss, Miss Turner’s the one to see it,” she said.

“There’s nothing amiss,” said Nancy. “It’s the same dull room it always was. And after all the work we put into it, cheering it up for Dot.”

“She likes a box of biscuits by her bed. And a glass and a jug of water,” said Peggy.

“Flowers,” said Nancy. “We’ll do that. At least ... You go and pick some flowers for her, Dot; Peggy and I have got to raid the kitchen ...”

“That you haven’t,” said Cook. “I’ll get that kettle for them in a minute. Happen it will be better if they’re out of sight.”

“We’ll come with you,” said Nancy. “They’ll want all our camping things. Give them just what you give us when we camp on Wild Cat Island. Fill up the puncheon for them. Lucky you made a lot of lemonade before they came ...”

“What flowers shall I pick?” said Dorothea.

“Deadly nightshade would be best,” said Nancy. “Only there isn’t any. Or garlic ... that’s got a lively smell. No. The whole thing is to keep her happy. Better give the beast roses.”

Dorothea came back with the roses and met Nancy staggering across the hall with a bundle of brown netting.

“Hammocks!” said Nancy, and dumped them on the floor. “I’ll get you some vases. Hi! Peggy! Take down the Jolly Rogers from Dick’s bed. She’s bound to poke her nose in and want to know what Uncle Jim was doing with them. I say, Dot, when you’ve plunked the roses in her room ... Some on the dressing-table ... Some on the mantelpiece and some with the biscuit tin by her bed ... just make sure Dick’s got all his things ... Coming ... COMING! Jibbooms and bobstays! We’ve only got four hours left ...” She was gone and back again in a moment with three glass vases for the flowers. “Water in the bathroom,” she said. “I’ve got to keep an eye on Cook and the stores.”

Ten minutes later not a trace of Dick and Dorothea was left in the rooms that had been theirs. The spare room, gay with roses, was ready for a guest of a very different kind. Even the two suitcases were down in the hall, with the hammocks, kettle, hammer, a tin box of nails and a huge pile of rugs.

In the kitchen Cook was filling tins with tea and sugar and Peggy and Nancy were packing things into knapsacks. “And a cake,” said Cook. “And a beef roll to start on, and a dozen eggs. Dearie me, I wish I knew if I’m doing right or wrong.”

“Right. Right. Right,” said Nancy. “There’s nothing else to be done and you know it. Look here, if you and Peggy and I all fairly bust ourselves being angels she’ll simply have to let Mother alone. But if Dick and Dot are here she’ll be down on Mother and down on us and down on them and we’ll never be able to hold in and everything’ll be ten million times worse.”

“Well, I’m doing it for the best,” said Cook. “And if it turns out bad ...”

“It won’t. Their house is splendid. They’ll be better off there than here. And you’ll be able to smuggle grub to them. Where are our mugs and the camping spoons and knives and forks?”

MOVING HOUSE

“Out of my kitchen all the lot of you,” said Cook. “We’ll be having her here before they’re out of the house. Miss Peggy, come out of my larder ...”

“All right, we’ll leave the rest of the stores to you. We’ll be getting on with all the other things. Giminy, there’ll be a lot to carry. And we can’t use dromedaries either. Nobody could push a bicycle up that path ... Come on the Picts. Everybody cart what they can.”

For the next few hours even the Great Aunt herself was forgotten in the rush of house moving. They had not far to go, but every single thing had to be carried by hand. There were the two packed suitcases, that the four of them, two to a suitcase, found quite enough to manage, going up the steep place through the hazels where the overflow from the beck had washed the path away. There were the hammocks, a three-legged stool, a Tate & Lyle sugar case for a table, a hurricane lantern, the scarab flag, the folded paper skull and crossbones, the big camp kettle, a huge saucepan, a teapot, mugs, spoons, knives, forks, plates and more stores than would go into all four knapsacks. There was the little barrel, filled with lemonade, that had to be slung from a pole and carried up by Nancy and Peggy, who explained that in the ordinary way they carried their grog slung beneath an oar.

Down at Beckfoot, as they came dashing in for fresh loads, they found Cook getting hotter and hotter, shaking out rugs, dusting and generally trying to do twenty-two things at once.

“And what about your tea?” she said late in the afternoon, as Nancy went off for the last time with a knapsack in each hand.

“No time,” said Nancy. “We’ll hang on till supper. There’s an awful lot more to do.”

“And them two?”

“They’re all right. Rigging hammocks with Peggy.”

“You’ll be back before Miss Turner comes?”

“Back and beautiful,” said Nancy. “Be an angel, Cooky, and save time by digging out our best frocks.”

Up at the hut in the wood, the pile of things dumped outside it was dwindling. The two hammocks had been slung under the big cross-beams. Stores and crockery had been allowed to share the shelf high above the fireplace with Dick’s microscope and books. The huge skull and crossbones had been fixed up on the wall. A soap box, in a corner well away from the fire, was being used as a larder. The sugar case made a table and store cupboard in one.

“We’ve forgotten something,” said Dorothea. “What about our sleeping bags? They’re put away somewhere with our tents.”

“Have you ever tried to get into a sleeping bag in a hammock?” asked Nancy. “It can’t be done ... not unless you’re a sort of eel. That’s why we brought the rugs.”

Dick was looking at the hammocks. He was wiping his spectacles. Dorothea knew that he was trying to work out the scientific way of getting into a hammock slung far above the floor. But he did not say anything, and neither did she. That sort of thing they would have to find out for themselves.

“Barbecued billygoats,” said Nancy. “Who slung those hammocks?”

“I did,” said Peggy. “Is anything wrong?”

“Let go this end of this one,” said Nancy, “while I do the other, and then make it fast again with a bowline. Then they can undo them and roll them up during the day. We’ll roll them up now.”

“No, no,” said Dick. “Please leave them so that I can have a good look and be able to do it to-morrow.”

To-morrow. By that time they would have slept in those hammocks ... if they could ever get into them. Dorothea looked hurriedly away.

“It’s a lot better than the igloo,” said Nancy. “And it’ll be better still when you’ve lived in it a bit.”

“Let’s start the fire again and make tea,” said Dorothea.

“What’s the time?” said Nancy.

Dick pulled out his watch. “Twenty-two minutes to six.”

“Good-bye, Picts,” said Nancy. “She’ll be here before we’re ready if we don’t go.”

“Do you think she’s really going to make it very awful?” said Dorothea.

“Pretty awful, I expect,” said Peggy. “She usually does.”

“It would have been a jolly lot worse for everybody,” said Nancy, “if she’d found visitors in the house with Mother away. We’ve saved that anyhow, thanks to you people not minding being kicked out.”

“We’re going to be all right,” said Dorothea. “But what about you?”

“We’ll keep her purring somehow. Come on, Peggy. You’ve got a smear right across your face. Hurry up. Soap and water. White frocks. Oh gosh, and party shoes. Come on. Look here, we’ll never be able to give her the slip to-night, but one of us ought to be able to dodge out in the morning. One of us’ll have to, or you won’t have milk for breakfast. Good-bye. Picts for ever!”

“Picts and martyrs!” said Dorothea.

“Now to meet the lioness,” said Nancy, and, with Peggy close behind her, was gone.