Читать книгу The Island of Adventure - Enid blyton - Страница 4

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Mr. Roy, the holiday master, worked the children hard, because that was his job. He coached them the whole of the morning, going over and over everything patiently, making sure it was understood, demanding, and usually getting, close attention.

At least he got it from everyone except Jack. Jack gave close attention to nothing unless it had feathers.

“If you studied your geometry as closely as you study that book on birds, you’d be top of any class,” complained Mr. Roy. “You exasperate me, Jack Trent. You exasperate me more than I can say.”

“Use your handkerchief,” said the parrot impertinently.

Mr. Roy made a clicking noise of annoyance with his tongue. “I shall wring that bird’s neck one day. What with you saying you can’t work unless Kiki is on your shoulder, and Philip harbouring all kinds of unpleasant creatures about his person, this holiday class is rapidly getting unbearable. The only one that appears to do any work at all is Lucy-Ann, and she hasn’t come here to work.”

Lucy-Ann liked work. She enjoyed sitting beside Jack, trying to do the same work as he had been set. Jack mooned over it, thinking of gannets and cormorants, which he had just been reading about, whilst Lucy-Ann tried her hand at solving the problems set out in his book. She liked, too, watching Philip, because she never knew what animal or creature would walk out of his sleeve or collar or pocket. The day before, a very large and peculiarly coloured caterpillar had crawled from his sleeve, to Mr. Roy’s intense annoyance. And that morning a young rat had left Philip’s sleeve on a journey of exploration and had gone up Mr. Roy’s trouser-leg in a most determined manner.

This had upset the whole class for ten minutes whilst Mr. Roy had tried to dislodge the rat. It was no wonder he was in a bad temper. He was usually a patient and amiable man, but two boys like Jack and Philip were disturbing to any class.

The mornings were always passed in hard work. The afternoons were given to preparation for the next day, and to the writing-out of answers on the morning’s work. The evenings were completely free. As there were only four boys to coach, Mr. Roy could give them each individual attention, and try to fill in the gaps in their knowledge. Usually he was a most successful coach, but these holidays were not showing as much good work as he had hoped.

Sam, the big boy, was stupid and slow. Oliver was peevish, sorry for himself, and resented having to work at all. Jack was impossible, so inattentive at times that it seemed waste of time to try and teach him. He seemed to think of nothing but birds. “If I grew feathers, he would probably do everything I told him,” thought Mr. Roy. “I never knew anyone so mad on birds before. I believe he knows the eggs of every bird in the world. He’s got good brains, but he won’t use them for anything that he’s not really interested in.”

Philip was the only boy who showed much improvement, though he was a trial too, with his different and peculiar pets. That rat! Mr. Roy shuddered when he thought of how it had felt, climbing up his leg.

Really, Lucy-Ann was the only one who worked properly, and she didn’t need to. She had only come because she would not be separated from her queer brother, Jack.

Jack, Philip and Lucy-Ann soon became firm friends. The love for all living things that both Jack and Philip had drew them together. Jack had never had a boy for a friend before, and he enjoyed Philip’s jokes and teasing. Lucy-Ann liked Philip too, though she was sometimes jealous when Jack showed his liking for him. Kiki loved Philip, and made funny crooning noises when the boy scratched her head.

Kiki had been a great annoyance to Mr. Roy at first. She had interrupted the mornings constantly with her remarks. It was unfortunate that the master had a sniff, because Kiki spoke about it whenever he sniffed.

“Don’t sniff!” the parrot would say in a reproving tone, and the five children would begin to giggle. So Mr. Roy forbade Kiki to be brought into the classroom.

But matters only became worse, because Kiki, furious at being shut away outside in the garden, unable to sit on her beloved master’s shoulder, sat in a bush outside the half-open window, and made loud and piercing remarks that seemed to be directed at poor Mr. Roy.

“Don’t talk nonsense,” said the parrot, when Mr. Roy was in the middle of explaining some fact of history.

Mr. Roy sniffed in exasperation. “Where’s your handkerchief?” asked Kiki at once. Mr. Roy went to the window and shouted and waved at Kiki to frighten her away.

“Naughty boy,” said Kiki, not budging an inch. “I’ll send you to bed. You’re a naughty boy.”

You couldn’t do anything with a bird like that. So Mr. Roy gave it up and allowed the parrot to sit on Jack’s shoulder once more. Jack worked better with the bird near him, and Kiki was not so disturbing indoors as out-of-doors. All the same, Mr. Roy felt he would be very glad when the little holiday school came to an end, and the four boys and one girl went home, together with the parrot and the various creatures owned by Philip.

Philip, Jack and Lucy-Ann left the big slow-witted Sam and the peevish little Oliver to be company for one another each day after tea, and went off on their own together. The boys talked of all the birds and animals they had known, and Lucy-Ann listened, stumbling to keep up with them as they walked. No matter how far they walked, or what steep hills they climbed, the little girl followed. She did not mean to let her beloved brother out of her sight.

Philip felt impatient with Lucy-Ann sometimes. “Golly, I’m glad Dinah doesn’t tag after me like Lucy-Ann tags after Jack,” he thought. “I wonder Jack puts up with it.”

But Jack did. Although he often did not appear to notice Lucy-Ann and did not even speak to her for some time, he was never impatient with her, never irritable or cross. Next to his birds, he cared for Lucy-Ann, thought Philip. Well, it was a good thing somebody cared for her. She didn’t seem to have much of a life.

The three children had exchanged news about themselves. “Our mother and father are both dead,” Jack said. “We don’t remember them. They were killed in an aeroplane crash. We were sent to live with our only relation, Uncle Geoffrey. He’s old and cross, always nagging at us. His housekeeper, Mrs. Miggles, hates us to go home for the holidays—and you can tell what our life is like by listening to old Kiki. Wipe your feet! Don’t sniff! Change your shoes at once! Where’s your handkerchief? How many times have I told you not to whistle? Can’t you shut the door, idiot?”

Philip laughed. “Well, if Kiki echoes what she hears in your home, you must have a pretty mouldy time,” he said. “We don’t have too grand a time either—but it’s better than you and Lucy-Ann have.”

“Are your father and mother dead too?” asked Lucy-Ann, her green eyes staring at Philip as unblinkingly as a cat’s.

“Our father’s dead—and he left no money,” said Philip. “But we’ve got a mother. She doesn’t live with us, though.”

“Why not?” asked Lucy-Ann in surprise.

“Well, she has a job,” said Philip. “She makes enough money at her job for our schooling and our keep in the hols. She runs an art agency—you know, takes orders for posters and pictures and things, gets artists to do them for her, and then takes a commission on the sales. She’s a very good business woman—but we don’t see much of her.”

“Is she nice?” asked Jack. Never having had a mother that he could remember, he was always interested in other people’s. Philip nodded.

“She’s fine,” he said, thinking of his keen-eyed, pretty mother, feeling proud of her cleverness, but secretly sad when he remembered how tired she had seemed sometimes when she had paid them a flying visit. One day, thought Philip, one day he would be the clever one—earn the money, keep things going, and make things easy for his hard-working mother.

“And you live with an uncle, like we do?” said Lucy-Ann, stroking a tiny grey squirrel that had suddenly popped its head out of one of Philip’s pockets.

“Yes. Dinah and I spend all our hols with Uncle Jocelyn and Aunt Polly,” said Philip. “Uncle Jocelyn is quite impossible. He’s always buying old papers and books and documents, studying them and filing them. He’s making it his life-work to work out the history of the part of the coast where we live—there were battles there in the old days, and burnings and killings—all most exciting. He’s writing a whole history—but as it seems to take him a year to make certain of a fact or two, he’ll have to live to be four or five hundred years old before he gets a quarter of the book done, it seems to me.”

The others laughed. They pictured a cross and learned old man poring over yellow, musty papers. What a waste of time, thought Lucy-Ann. She wondered what Aunt Polly was like.

“What’s your aunt like?” she asked. Philip screwed up his nose.

“A bit sour,” he said. “Not too bad, really. Too hard-worked, no money, no help in the old house except for old Jo-Jo, the sort of handyman servant we’ve got. She makes poor Dinah slave—I won’t, so she’s given me up, but Dinah’s afraid of her and does what she is told more than I do.”

“What’s your home like?” asked Lucy-Ann.

“A funny old place, hundreds of years old, half in ruins, awfully big and draughty, set half-way up a steep cliff, and almost drowned in spray in a storm,” said Philip. “But I love it. It’s wild and lonely and queer, and there’s the cry of the sea-birds always round it. You’d love it, Freckles.”

Jack thought he would. It sounded exciting to him. His home was ordinary, a house in a row in a small-sized town. But Philip’s house sounded really exciting. The wind and the waves and the sea-birds—he felt as if he could almost hear them clamouring together, when he shut his eyes.

“Wake up, wake up, sleepy-head,” said Kiki, pecking gently at Jack’s ear. He opened his eyes and laughed. The parrot had an extraordinary way of saying the right thing sometimes.

“I wish I could see that home of yours—Craggy-Tops,” he said to Philip. “It sounds as if things could happen there—real, live, exciting things, thrilling adventures. Nothing ever happens in Lippinton, where we live.”

“Well, nothing much happens at Craggy-Tops either,” said Philip, putting the little squirrel back into his pocket, and taking a hedgehog out of another pocket. It was a baby one, whose prickles were not yet hardened and set. It seemed quite happy to live in Philip’s pocket, along with a very large snail, who was careful to keep inside his shell.

“I wish we were all going home together,” said Jack. “I’d like to see your sister Dinah, though she does sound a bit of a wild-cat to me. And I’d love to see all those rare birds on the coast. I’d like to see your old half-ruined house too. Fancy living in a house so old that it’s almost a ruin. You don’t know how lucky you are.”

“Not so lucky when you have to carry hot water for miles to the only bath in the house,” said Philip, getting up from the grass where he had been sitting with the others. “Come on—it’s time to get back. You’re never likely to see Craggy-Tops, and you wouldn’t like it if you did—so what’s the good of talking about it?”