Читать книгу The Children at Green Meadows - Enid blyton - Страница 3

“Mother! Mother! Where are you?” called Francis. “Do come here a minute. I’ve found the very first snowdrop out in the garden.”

His mother came out of the back door, drying her hands on a cloth. “Oh, Francis—did you have to call me just when I was so busy washing up?”

“Yes, I did, Mother,” said the boy. “You’re always busy, anyway, so it wouldn’t matter when I called you. I wish you weren’t so busy. Fancy not even having time to look at a snowdrop! See, there it is!”

His mother looked down and saw the tiny white flower with its pretty drooping head. It grew in a mass of tangled grass, in a corner of the garden. She bent down and shook it gently.

“I know why you do that!” said Francis. “I knew you would. It’s lucky to ring the bell of the first snowdrop you see in the New Year, isn’t it?”

His mother laughed. “That’s what country folk say, Francis—and goodness knows we could do with a little good luck!”

She looked round the big, rambling garden and slipped her arm through the boy’s. “I’m not too busy to walk round to see if anything else is coming up,” she said. “It’s St. Valentine’s Day, the day all the birds marry—hark at them singing! Even the starling up on the chimney is doing his best—he never has learnt that he can’t sing properly!”

Francis was glad to have his mother for a few minutes. He remembered a time when she was always ready to run into the garden, to play, to plant seeds, to weed—when she laughed a lot and looked young and happy. Now things were very different, and it was quite a treat to have his mother to himself for a few minutes.

“There’s a crocus peeping up,” she said. “And look, over there is actually a violet—in that sheltered corner at the foot of the wall. Let’s see if there are any primroses in the dell at the bottom of the garden.”

There weren’t. It was too early. His mother stood in the dell under the silver birch trees, and fell silent. Francis looked at her. He touched her gently.

“What are you thinking about? Why do you look like that?”

“I was just remembering how this garden looked four years ago,” said his mother. “It was beautiful, Francis! You were almost eight then—you must remember it too.”

“Yes. The grass was cut, the beds were weeded, there were thousands of flowers,” said the boy, looking back through the years. “The house was different too, Mother. We didn’t have half the rooms shut up like we do now—and you weren’t so busy always—and ...”

He stopped because he saw tears in his mother’s eyes. “Why are we so poor now?” he asked. “Why don’t we get a gardener to put the garden right? Why do you do all the work in this big house? Is it because of Daddy?”

“Partly,” said his mother. “Daddy was badly hurt in the war, you know, and he can’t work any more, so we haven’t much to live on. Granny let us have this house when we were first married, Daddy and I—it’s hers, you know—and I was glad, because I was brought up here as a little girl. I knew every corner.”

“Well—why can’t we let Granny have it back, and go and live in a smaller place?” said Francis. Then, looking round the old garden he knew so well, he suddenly changed his mind. “No. No, I didn’t mean that. I couldn’t bear to leave Green Meadows! It’s our home—Granny’s home, yours, and mine.”

“I feel the same,” said his mother, “but things are getting so difficult that I feel we shall have to leave soon, Francis—if only we could sell the house! But it is in such a bad state now that nobody wants it—it’s too big a house nowadays, you see. And anyway, Granny won’t hear of selling it—so I really don’t know what we are to do.”

She went to the old wall that ran all round the garden, and looked over it. Not far off an enormous building was going up—a great block of flats. Another one, almost finished, was just behind it.

“Not many years ago this was all countryside,” she told Francis. “That’s why this house was called Green Meadows—when it was first built we could see nothing but green fields all round, stretching right to those hills over there. Now all the fields are going to be a housing estate—look at those blocks of flats!”

“Well—it will mean that more children come to the village,” said Francis. “That will be more fun for us. But I suppose we’ll be a town then. We’ve already got more shops, and a brand-new post office.”

His mother turned to go in, suddenly remembering the washing up she had to do. She gave Francis a pat on the arm. “Don’t you worry about it, now. These are grown-up worries, not yours. I don’t know why I told you so much. I’m all muddled somehow. I want to go on living here in Green Meadows, which I love so much—but not in this mess and muddle, not when I have to do so much that I’ve hardly time for you and the other two children. And...”

Francis finished for her. “And anyway Granny won’t sell the house, so we’ve got to make the best of it! I wish I could make the garden nice for you, Mother—but it’s so big! I’m a Scout, you know, and I’m willing to help any way I can. And Clare is a Brownie, and Sam’s a Cub—you can always ask us to do anything!”

“I do!” said his mother. “But I’m not going to put old heads on young shoulders. Go and ask Daddy if he wants anything, Francis. There! I’ve asked you do something already!”

She went slowly indoors. Francis watched her. She looked sad and her merry smile hardly ever came now. “I wish I was grown up!” thought Francis. “It takes so long to grow up! I can’t earn a penny—all I can do is to run errands and clean the shoes and things like that. Any Scout can do that. I want to do something that will really help!”

But he knew he couldn’t. Grown-ups had to manage their own affairs. He went to find his father. It wasn’t difficult because he lived all day long in a wheel-chair and was never far away.

“Do you want anything, Dad?” asked Francis. “How’s your back?”

“Same as usual,” said his father. “Can’t you go and help your mother a bit, Francis? I hate to sit here and see her tearing about hard at work all day long—I feel so useless. Go and help her.”

“She sent me to ask you if you wanted anything,” said Francis, with a good-tempered grin. “When’s the doctor coming again, Dad? Isn’t the new treatment any good?”

“Not a bit. Nothing ever will be, I’m sure,” said his father. “If only you were older, Francis! Your mother’s got too much on her shoulders.”

“I’ve just been thinking exactly the same thing,” said Francis. “Mother’s been talking to me and telling me a lot this morning. I don’t want to leave Green Meadows, Dad, but for Mother’s sake I think we should. She’ll kill herself! She has so much to do. Won’t Granny sell the house, won’t she really?”

“No, she won’t,” said Daddy, shortly. “Now that she has come back to live with us here she seems to love the old place more than ever, tumble-down though it is. Let’s not talk about it, or I shall get angry.”

Francis heard his mother calling and went off. What a tangle! He couldn’t see what in the world was to be done! Granny was a difficult person to get on with—very touchy and thinking far too much about herself. All three of her grandchildren were afraid of her sharp tongue—and yet at times she could be so unexpectedly kind.

There was the sound of running feet on the path outside. The back door burst open and in came Clare and Sam. Clare was nine, big for her age, curly-haired and merry-eyed. Sam was seven, small and solemn, and seldom laughed—but when he did it was always a surprise, because his laugh was loud and very sudden. It made everyone else laugh too.

“We’re back, Mother!” called Clare. “We had a jolly good meeting at the Brownies.”

“So did we at the Cubs,” said Sam. “I’m the smallest there, but I’m not the worst. I’d better not tell you who is the worst.”

“He’s bursting to tell us,” said Clare. “Don’t be a tell-tale, Sam. Anyway, we know the answer. Mother, can I have something to eat? I don’t think I can wait till dinner-time. It’s ages since breakfast!”

An old lady came into the kitchen. She jingled as she came, for she wore several chains about her—a long gold one that reached to her waist and was fastened to a gold watch tucked into her belt—a silvery one with a locket on it, round her neck—and a chain bracelet on each of her wrists, fastened by tiny padlocks.

“I always know when you are coming, Granny!” said Clare. “You jingle like the coal-man’s horse!”

“I don’t think that’s very polite,” said Granny. “I’m not in the least like the coal-man’s horse.”

“Clare thinks the coal-man’s jingling horse is lovely,” explained Sam at once. “So do I. I’d like to jingle when I walk about, too. I think ...”

“That’s enough,” said Granny. She turned to her daughter, the children’s mother. “No wonder you haven’t finished yet!” she said. “I saw you wandering about in the garden with Francis, talking away like anything! Why don’t you finish everything first—then you might have time for a rest in the afternoon.”

Granny took up a duster and a tin of polish and began rubbing the furniture hard. That was exactly like Granny—to scold and then to do what she could to help. The three children ran out of the room. They felt sure that Granny would think of something unpleasant to say if they stayed there!

Francis opened a door on the landing upstairs. The room inside was quite empty, but it had a window-seat under the big bow window. “Come on,” said Francis. “Let’s sit down and eat our biscuits here, and pretend it’s our old playroom again!”

It had once been their playroom, but, like so many of the other rooms, its furniture had been sold and the room left empty and unused. The children often crept in there and sat on the window-seat.

“It’s got such a nice feel about it, this room,” said Clare, nibbling her biscuit. “It’s a happy room, even though it’s got nothing to be happy about now. I expect it keeps remembering all the old dolls and teddy bears and trains that Granny and her brothers played with....”

“And that Mummy and her brothers and sisters had....”

“And the ones we had, too, when we still had this room for our own,” said Francis. “You don’t remember that very well, Sam. You were too little.”

Clare looked out of the window. “Look at that enormous block of flats,” she said. “The one that’s finished. Someone must have moved into one of the flats, because I can see two children. It seems funny to see those great buildings instead of green fields. Oh, well—I don’t expect they’ll make much difference to us!”

Ah, you wait and see, Clare! You’ll be surprised!

There was always plenty for the three children to do at Green Meadows. Out of school hours there were endless jobs to be done. Even Sam helped.

Their mother never nagged them to do their jobs, however tired she was. But Granny did! She was always after them, asking if this had been done and that had been done—and who was supposed to get the wood in for the fire, and why had it been left to the last moment?

Francis and Sam were patient, but Clare was hot-tempered. Often she came storming to find her mother.

“Mother! Granny says I don’t think about you enough! Just because I forgot to wind up the clocks last night! I do think about you, and Granny’s not to say that!”

“Oh darling—you haven’t been rude to Granny, have you?” her mother would say. “Her tongue may be sharp but her heart is kind. It’s only because she’s worried about me that she says these things. I know you think of me—that’s all that matters, isn’t it? That I shall know?”

“Yes, I suppose it is,” Clare would say, and smile and give her mother a hug. And then the very next day Granny’s tongue would upset her again, and there would be another storm.

“I don’t believe Granny loves any of us,” Sam said solemnly one evening. “She scolds us all, Daddy and Mother too—but there’s only one person she doesn’t scold, so she must love him very much.”

“Who’s that?” said Clare, surprised. “You don’t mean Dr. Miles, do you? She’s fond of him because she thinks he tries to help Daddy.”

“No. I mean Mr. Black,” said Sam. Everyone roared with laughter. Mr. Black was Granny’s cat, an enormous fellow with great yellow eyes, a wonderful tail, and fur like thick shiny silk. He was as black as soot. He had been called Blackie when he was a kitten—but he grew up so big and solemn and high-and-mighty that Granny felt she couldn’t call him by such an ordinary name as Blackie.

So she called him Majesty because he looked so majestic. He didn’t answer to that name at all, of course, because he didn’t know it. So then the family called him Mr. Black, and that was all right. It sounded enough like “Blackie” to him, and he came when he was called.

He belonged to Granny, and she loved him with all her heart. Blackie adored her too, and always slept in a basket in Granny’s room.

He was a very spoilt cat. The three children made a great fuss of him, for they were all fond of animals. Sometimes they talked about Thumper, a beautiful Great Dane who had belonged to Granny some years back. His great paws thumped about the house all day long. As Clare said, you always knew where Thumper was, you couldn’t help it, he stamped about so!

“He was so lovely,” said Clare, remembering. “He was as big as I was, but he was as gentle as a kitten.”

“Kittens aren’t always gentle,” said Sam, who liked every statement to be quite correct. “When Mr. Black was a kitten he bit me.”

“Do you remember when Thumper wagged his big tail to greet a visitor one afternoon, and swept all the cakes off the cake-stand on the little table?” said Francis.

Sam thought that was very funny. He gave one of his sudden roars of laughter. “I wish I’d seen that,” he said. “What happened to Thumper? I don’t remember. And why aren’t we allowed to talk about him to Granny?”

“Well, it cost an awful lot to feed a big dog like that,” said Francis. “Pounds and pounds a year. So one day Granny decided it wasn’t fair on the family to keep him any longer.”

“Oh,” said Sam, looking solemn again. “What did she do with him, then?”

“She sold him,” said Francis. “He was a very valuable dog, and she got a lot of money for him. After that she didn’t have to feed him, of course, so she saved a lot of money too. Granny loved Thumper. More than she loves Mr. Black.”

“Did she cry?” asked Sam, looking very serious.

“She cried for two whole days,” said Francis. “She couldn’t stop. She said we weren’t to take any notice of her, she would get over it. You don’t remember that, Sam.”

“Granny’s fond of animals,” said Clare. “She’s told us about heaps she had when she was a child. She was lucky. All we’ve got is Mr. Black, and he doesn’t really belong to us.”

“No, he’s Granny’s,” said Sam. “I wish we had animals of our own. I’d like a rabbit. And some mice. And plenty of hens. I’d like a monkey too, and perhaps a small bear.”

“I’d like dogs,” said Francis. “Plenty of them! And puppies and kittens.”

“I’d like birds,” said Clare. “Pigeons that fly about the garden. There’s an old pigeon-house here still lying broken down in one corner, isn’t there? I expect Granny kept pigeons there once. She had a horse too, called Clover.”

“If we were well-off we could have heaps and heaps of animals,” said Sam. “I like them better than toys. They are alive, and they can love you. I love my toys—but I’m never really certain they ever love me back!”

“Sometimes,” said Clare, suddenly, looking at Francis out of the corner of her eyes, “sometimes I think you must have a dog of your own, Francis!”

“Well, I haven’t,” said Francis, shortly. To Sam’s enormous surprise he went bright red, and turned his face away.

“You’ve gone red,” said Sam. “You’re hiding something from us! You always go red when you do that. So do I.”

“Let’s go out and do something,” said Francis, getting up. “I’ve finished my biscuit.”

He went out of the room. They heard him going down the stairs. Sam looked solemnly at Clare. “What did you mean when you said you sometimes thought that Francis had a dog of his own, Clare? He hasn’t, has he?”

“No. Not really,” said Clare. “But it’s funny, Sam—when Francis thinks he’s alone and nobody’s watching him, he holds out his hand, and says ‘Come on, Paddy—walkie—walk!’ Just like that—as if a dog was behind him.”

Sam thought about this. “He’s pretending a dog,” he said. “I know he wants one badly. So do I. When do you see Francis doing this?”

“Oh, often,” said Clare. “Sometimes I’m in the garden, behind the hedge—and Francis comes along by himself and talks to his dog then. The other day he threw a ball for him, and said ‘Bring it back, Paddy—that’s right! Good dog!’ And he bent down and patted the air!”

“I’m not going to say anything about his dog to him,” said Sam. “If he’d wanted to share him with us he would have told us about him. Does the dog go to bed with him, and sleep on his feet, I wonder?”

“I don’t know,” said Clare. “You sleep in the same room. You can watch and see.”

“I’m always asleep when Francis comes to bed,” said Sam. “Always. Even if I try to keep awake I can’t. And anyway I’m not going to pry into Francis’s secret. And don’t you either, Clare! See?”

“You stop telling me what I’m to do or not to do!” said Clare. “A little shrimp like you! I wish I hadn’t told you about the pretend dog now. I shan’t say anything about it to Francis—unless he teases me about something, and then I’ll tease him back—about Paddy!”

“That would be mean of you!” called Sam, as Clare walked out of the room. She slammed the door. Sam didn’t mind. He was used to Clare’s sudden little flares of temper. She would have forgotten it the next time he saw her, and be as friendly as ever.

He thought about Francis’s pretend dog. Poor old Francis! How he must want a dog of his own to invent one like that! He was like Granny—he really loved animals. He patted every dog he saw and spoke to it. He fed the wild birds in the garden. Every cat came to him as soon as it saw him. The milkman’s horse walked right across the road, cart and all, if he heard Francis’s voice!

“And when he went to the Zoo and Francis spoke to the monkeys in the cage, they left everything they were doing and came crowding to the wire,” Sam remembered. “They put their tiny paws through the wire and tried to take his fingers—though he hadn’t any food to give them! They chattered like anything too—I was sure they were telling him they wanted to be friends.”

The door opened and Granny looked in. “Sam! What are you doing here all alone?”

“Just thinking,” said Sam.

“You think too much,” said Granny. “You’re too serious altogether! It’s not good for you to sit up here, mooning away by yourself.”

“I wasn’t mooning,” said Sam, getting up. “What is mooning, Granny? Is it anything to do with the moon?”

“Oh, don’t be silly, Sam!” said Granny. “Do go on down and give a hand somewhere.”

“Well, here’s a hand!” said Sam, and suddenly slipped his into Granny’s. “Shall I do something for you? Then you won’t feel so cross.”

Granny looked down at the hand in hers, and gave a sudden laugh. She squeezed Sam’s hand. “You’re a caution!” she said. “No, please don’t ask me what a caution is! It’s something quite nice when I call you one. Let’s go and dig some potatoes, shall we? The potato basket is getting empty.”

“I’ll dig them. Don’t you bother,” said Sam. “I’ll get the spade and the trug now.”

He went off to the old stables that belonged to Green Meadows. The horse-stalls were still there, and the harness room led off one end, a place where the family put all their junk. It was always exciting to Sam to look through the junk and rubbish piled in the corners and on the shelves.

He stood in the stables and looked round, pretending that he could hear the stamp-stamp, clop-clop of horses’ hooves. Did Francis pretend a horse too that lived in the stables? Over the mangers were little brass plates, green with age, still bearing the names of long ago horses.

“Dapple”. That was a pretty name for a horse, Sam thought.

“Clopper”. “Benjy”. “Captain”. They all sounded nice. He must ask Granny about them. Perhaps they were horses she knew back in history, when she was a little girl.

“Sam! I thought you were going to dig potatoes!” Oh dear—that was Granny’s voice! Sam picked up the trug and the spade and fled into the garden. He came to the potato patch and began to dig vigorously. He liked it. The birds sang madly all round him, and the sun was warm on the back of his neck. He pursed up his lips and tried to whistle, a thing he had never been able to do, much to his shame.

A loud whistle came suddenly from his lips, startling Sam very much. He pursed up his mouth and tried again. Another whistle, as loud as the blackbird’s near by, came at once. Sam went red with delight. He could whistle at last!

“It’s my lucky day!” thought Sam. “I can suddenly whistle. Now I shan’t be the only Cub that can’t!”

And, whistling loudly and tunelessly, Sam dug up half a row of potatoes at top speed! Who would ever have thought that whistling was such a help to hard work?