Читать книгу The Family at Red Roofs - Enid blyton - Страница 3

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The little white-washed house on the green hillside seemed to smile in the warm sunshine of the bright May day. It sat there snugly in its big patch of gay garden, a white cherry tree out in the front garden, and a golden laburnum hanging over the gate. The gate was painted green and white, and there was a name on it—Red-Roofs.

It was easy to see how it got its name, for the pretty gabled roofs were a deep, warm red. Four tall chimneys stood there, but no smoke came from them to-day. The casement windows were closed to the warm sunshine, and no curtains hung behind them. The brass door-knocker was dull and tarnished.

Red-Roofs was empty. It looked sweet and smiling enough from a distance, but if anyone stood at the front gate it had the lost, forlorn look that all empty houses have.

Up the winding hillside lane came a little family party, talking excitedly.

“That must be the house! Look, Mother, it is, isn’t it? It’s got red roofs, so it must be the house.”

“Daddy, it’s pretty big, isn’t it? It will take us all nicely, I should think!”

“What a darling house! Oh, I do hope we can have it! Here we are at the front gate—and, oh, look at this laburnum cascading down like golden rain!”

Six people stood at the front gate. One of them, the smallest, hung over the green and white gate, her eyes wandering all over the little white house. She was Shirley, the nine-year-old, youngest of the family of Jacksons. We can see them all plainly as they stand there.

Mr. Jackson is tall and broad-shouldered, ruddy-faced, with a twinkle in his eye. Mrs. Jackson, is small, hardly up to his shoulder, with rather an anxious little face and kind blue eyes. Then there is a big girl, taller than her small mother, her dark curly hair blowing in the wind. She is Molly, sixteen years old, and the eldest.

The two boys are as pleased as the others about the house. There is fourteen-year-old Peter, tall and well made like his father, but with serious eyes. Michael is much smaller, only eleven, serious-faced and a little sulky-looking. There they all stand at the gate, their eyes fixed on the smiling white house.

“It’s much nicer than the house we live in now,” said Shirley, climbing up the gate. “Oh, do let’s have this one and live in it, Daddy, please do!”

“Have you got the keys, Dick?” said Mrs. Jackson to her husband. “Let’s go in and see it. I must say it looks just the kind of thing we want. After living for so long in a poky little house in a noisy street, with only a back yard for a garden, this would be marvellous!”

There was a jingling of keys as Mr. Jackson took them from his pocket. He looked for the right front-door key. He had two or three, for the family had come out that Saturday afternoon to look over other houses besides Red-Roofs. He disentangled it from the rest and pushed open the front gate.

The path to the front door was made of crazy paving, in the cracks of which small flowering plants pushed up. Shirley was careful not to tread on them. The front door was painted green like the gate, and the brass knocker was in the shape of a smiling head.

There was a porch over the door to keep off the rain from waiting visitors. Mr. Jackson put the key into the lock and turned it. The door opened into a small square hall, quite empty except for a few bits of straw and a scrap of torn paper. The children’s feet clattered cheerfully over the red tiles.

Then there came a torrent of shouted exclamations and remarks. “I say, what a darling sitting-room—with doors opening on to the back garden! Come and look, Mother! You’d love this!”

“What a nice big dining-room! We could all have our meals here without being crowded. It’s got built-in bookshelves, too—how lovely!”

“Bags I those for all my books!” said Peter at once.

“And bags I the cupboard underneath for my toys!” said Shirley.

“I like the brick fireplaces,” said Mr. Jackson, running his hand over the red bricks that made the fireplace. “They look so cheerful and cosy, and they send out such warmth, too, because all the bricks round get hot as well.”

But nobody was interested in the fireplaces at that moment. Mrs. Jackson was in the small, bright, cheerful kitchen looking anxiously to see if the larder was nice and big and cold, and if the stove looked easy to manage. She liked the kitchen. It was tiled in black and white, and the last tenant had left the black and white linoleum on the floor. It would be nice if they could buy that.

There came a clattering of shoes on the wooden floors upstairs and more shrieks of delight.

“Mother! There’s a lovely bedroom for you and Daddy—ever so big—with a basin for running water!”

“And could Shirley and I have this bedroom at the back?” called Molly. “Mother, it’s got apple trees in full bloom touching the window—and they do smell delicious. And there is a climbing rose round the window, too—it will soon be out! Oh, Shirley, wouldn’t it be lovely to have a bedroom like this, instead of ours looking out on the dirty street where the trams rush up and down!”

“We could look out each morning up the green hillside,” said Shirley, “and hear the birds sing instead of the bells of the trams ringing!”

The boys had found a nice big bedroom which they at once marked for themselves. It looked out over the front garden, straight on to the dazzling white blossoms of the cherry tree. It must have been used as a kind of study, because there were built-in cupboards and shelves there, as there were down in the dining-room. The boys immediately thought how marvellously they could arrange all their crowded belongings.

“There’s another bedroom, too,” said Molly, going round a corner of the passage. “Two more bedrooms—both tiny, but perfectly sweet. Shan’t we feel grand to have five bedrooms after having only three! Mother, look—what shall we do with these bedrooms? Shall Shirley and I have separate rooms, do you think?”

“We shall see,” said her mother. “Anyway, I hope we shall be able to afford help in the house now, so we shall want a room for a maid—and it would be nice to have a tiny spare room to put up a friend now and again. I have lots of old friends I would like to see again.”

The children explored the cream-painted bathroom, the linen cupboard with its wooden shelves, and the little loft up in the roof, where trunks and boxes could go. Then out they went into the garden.

It was a funny, sloping garden, with little green lawns set round the flowery beds, a tiny copse of fruit trees at one side, crazy-paving paths here and there, and a rather neglected kitchen garden which Mr. Jackson at once made up his mind to tackle—if only they could have the house!

“It’s a very nice little place, isn’t it, dear?” said Mrs. Jackson, smiling up at him. “Just what we want. And it’s not too far from the shops and the children’s schools. Perhaps it’s a bit far for Shirley to walk to the High School. We might have to buy her a bicycle.”

“Oooh!” said Shirley in joy. “I should be like Prudence then! She’s got a lovely bicycle, hasn’t she, Molly?”

Molly nodded. Prudence Williams was the girl she sat next to at school. Her people had plenty of money, so Prudence had a good many things that the Jacksons hadn’t. But then Prudence and her brother Bernard were the only two children and, as Mrs. Jackson often said, the bigger the family the less each child could have. Still, the Jacksons didn’t want their family to be any smaller. They couldn’t spare a single member of it!

Mr. Jackson looked up the green hillside. There would be fine walks here. He could keep a dog at last. He wanted Red-Roofs as much as the children did. He took from his pocket the paper that gave particulars of the house and its rent and rates.

“It’s expensive,” he said, looking down at his wife. “Two pounds ten shillings a week—and you’ve got to remember that Molly won’t be leaving school and earning money for a while yet, if she wants to take her Kindergarten exams and train as a teacher at the High School. She will be three years more doing that—she can’t start till she’s over seventeen, anyhow. And there’s Peter wanting to be a doctor. He may get that scholarship if he works hard—but it’s likely we shall have to save up a good bit to help him along for many years.”

“Yes, I know,” said Mrs. Jackson, the worried look coming over her face again. “We’ve got to do the best we can for our children—but all the same I do think they deserve a nicer home than we’ve got at present. It was all right when we first went there, you and I—a quiet little road and nice people there—but now that it’s all been built up round about and the neighbourhood has gone down and down, it’s not so good. Well—if we can’t afford Red-Roofs, let’s go and see one or two more houses, not so expensive.”

“Oh, Mother!” cried four bitterly disappointed voices. “Daddy! Do say we can have this house, oh, do!”

Mr. Jackson wanted Red-Roofs as much as anyone else. He looked up at the little white-washed house with its glowing red roofs.

“Well,” he said, and jingled the money in his pockets, “well—we’ll risk it. Nothing venture nothing have! I’m hoping to have a big rise in the firm soon, and be head of my department—then Red-Roofs would be a nice house to ask my friends to. I must say I like it very much myself.”

Shirley flung herself on him. “Oh. Daddy! Can we have it, then? When will it be ours? Can we go and say we want it? When can we move in?”

“We’ll go right back to the house agents now,” said Mr. Jackson firmly. “We’ll decide it this very day. Come along. I’ll lock up the front door again and we’ll go.”

So off they all went, swinging the little green and white gate open, turning round to look at the pretty house as they went. It seemed to smile and say, “I shall soon be yours! How nice to own a family like you! I shall like you all.”

They went down the hill to the town that lay at the bottom, stretching along the valley. The Jacksons lived at the other end of the town, the dirty, busy end. This was the quiet, pleasant end. They found the house agents’ office and trooped in.

It was not very long before everything was settled. There were documents to sign, references to be given and so on—but the Jacksons went away with the keys of Red-Roofs in their possession, and that was all they cared about!

“We shall move in next month!” said Molly, pleased. “What an excitement it will be! I’ll help you to pack everything, Mother. How long have you taken the house for, Daddy?”

“Three years,” said Mr. Jackson, “and maybe at the end of that time I shall be able to buy it, instead of renting it.”

“We’re going to have fun at Red-Roofs,” said Molly. “We really are!”