A Postillion Struck by Lightning (11 page)

“He's down the hole with our mother.” I explained he just climbed down. We passed the torch to him, it was so deep down in the hole that just his hand came through the floor. “Your mother's all right,” he said and took the torch and disappeared into the dark. We were a bit worried; the three of us just sat round the hole and waited. Lally was fanning herself with her hands. “I can't take these shocks,” she said. “They get my heart quick as a dart,” and puffed away. My sister was kneeling down, peering over the floor. All the boards were broken round the edge where our mother had gone through.

“This house is too old,” said Lally, getting some of her breath back. “Those boards are rotten through and through, it's a wonder she wasn't killed I declare. Like bits of sponge cake they are, and covered with that rug you'd never see a sign. Too old. The whole place is too old.”

After a while we got ladders and things and helped them up
again; our mother was very stiff but all right except for a big bump on her head, but she kissed us both and said there was nothing to worry about, and then our father came up looking quite excited and said the hole was a sort of tunnel all lined with bricks … but that it was blocked up with rubble at one end. He seemed more excited about the brick walls of the tunnel which he said were all made of very thin bricks which meant that they were Tudor, or something, or earlier. Then Lally made our mother have a lay-down, as she called it; and when there were really no bones broken and everything was tidied up we were allowed to go down ourselves.

It was very creepy. It was dark and damp and there were little puddles on the muddy floor … and it was quite round, like a railway tunnel, but very much smaller … only wide enough for two to walk side by side. It went quite a long way until the rubble started and our father said we must be beyond the cottage by now and in the Great Meadow, or nearly. Lally didn't like it much at all. She didn't even like going down the ladder to start with, and when she found an old muddy Wellington boot lying in the slime of the floor she nearly had a turn and our father helped her out again and up the ladder. But it was just an old Wellington, I mean nothing to do with smugglers or anything exciting like that.

After a while we had all the floor-boards mended, and people came and examined the tunnel and said that it probably started in the middle of the little church and came down under our house and then went on down the hill under the meadow to the village. But we never really found out. And in time we all forgot about it, except on winters nights when I thought we heard ghostly rumbling noises of barrels being rolled under the house. But it was only ever the wind in the elms. Anyway it was quite exciting to have a part of a real smugglers' tunnel under your own hall. Except of course that our mother could have been killed or broken her legs or something, and afterwards Lally used to walk on tiptoe crossing the hall to the sitting-room in case it all fell down again. But it never did.

At Twickenham, after Walnut Cottage, there were three other favourite places; although Walnut, with its garden and the greenhouse and a great long shed which Mr Jane used for “pottering” in, was really the most favourite. I did like the toy shop in Church Street, the boat-yard near the bridge where we used to get punts from, Eel Pie Island, and Marble Hill.

Marble Hill was lovely. It was a big white house, not as big as Hampton Court, but white and gleaming in the sun. There was a great park all about it, and real hills which you could run up, and trees and, best of all, a lake-thing full of lilies and goldfish. Not many people used to go there. Perhaps because of the White Ladies in the lake. They were huge. Bigger than me or even bigger than our father—and they were all sitting on white rocks combing their hair, or pulling their friends out of the water. It really was very strange to look at. These big ladies, and some were gentlemen, were sort of all having a day by the seaside, only in the lake. The ones in the water, well, the parts of the ones which were in the water, were all green with slime, and they reached their hands up to the ones who were all busy combing their hair, for help.

My sister thought they were all drowning, or had fallen in among the lilies and fishes; she liked them as much as I did. But she said they were rather rude, simply because they hadn't got any clothes on, and she was worried about the gentlemen ones who wore a sort of leaf thing and were all trying to climb the white rocks. Lally said that it was a fountain and made from marble in Italy and was very famous and beautiful if you liked that sort of thing. But Mrs Jane didn't, and wouldn't really look at them, when she came sometimes with us, and just went on with her knitting in a chair.

We used to go there quite often, to get a breath of air, as Lally said, and also to meet some of her other friends who also had children with them, but much younger than we were … usually in prams. It was quite a long way from Twickenham and we took a bus from The Green and clambered up on the top deck and sat on the slatty seats looking over the side. It was rather like
being on a boat. And sometimes, in wet weather, we had a canvas apron thing which we pulled over our knees, which made us feel very snug and safe.

From the top of the bus you could look down on people in the street, and they never knew, and also, which was more fun, you could see into people's gardens all along the way, and sometimes into their rooms. Which was very private, rather like spying. You could see people washing up, or sewing things at a machine, or having their teas, and they never ever knew that we were both watching them all. Mrs Jane said they ought to have curtains up, but that would have spoiled the fun really. It was just that they didn't know we were watching that was so interesting. Once we saw a very fat man dancing all by himself; he twirled round and round, and had his arms up in the air. I think that he was singing too, because his mouth kept on opening and shutting like a fish. We were always told it was rude to stare, but on top of a bus it was hard not to. You couldn't just look ahead all the time like Mrs Jane who was terrified that the wind would take her hat off, even though it was pinned hard into her bun. She used to get quite cross with Lally for letting us spit on the people in the street. Well, not actually spit
on
them, rather we used to drop a bit of a gobbit on the ones who had hats on. Never on people who hadn't.

“They really are getting out of hand,” she used to say to Lally. “Why don't you stop them? It's disgusting what they're doing.”

“It's only a bit of spittle, Mother,” said Lally. “Your hat won't blow off, you know … you'll have arm-ache if you go on holding on to it like that.”

“And if it does blow off? What then? It's my best you know. We aren't all made of money like some I wouldn't like to mention not half an hour from Twickenham Green. You've got spoiled in your ways, my girl. When I was in Service it took me a year to save up for a new hat… I am not about to forget that, my girl.” When she said My Girl to Lally we knew that she was really a bit vexed. And Lally knew it too, because she shook a fist at us and told us to stop, or else we'd get a good hiding.

Going home was rather nice too, nearly as exciting as going to Marble Hill. We got off at The Green and walked down under the chestnut trees, across the main road, and then down the street to the Cottages. They were right down at the bottom; you could see them from a long way off because of the big walnut tree and
the little white fence round the clinker rockery in the front garden full of London Pride. Sometimes Mr Jane would be home first; we always knew because his bicycle was propped up against the shed in the little yard at the back through the green door.

“Father's home,” said Mrs Jane, pulling out her hat-pin and smoothing her bun, and went into the kitchen. We washed our hands at the scullery sink, a big yellow stone one, with a pump and a tin bowl and a pink cake of soap which smelled of disinfectant, combed our hair, and went into the kitchen for tea.

The kitchen was really quite small with a little window which looked out into the garden but which was so full of geraniums and wandering sailor that you could hardly see out. There was a range with a brass tap and knobs on the oven doors, a big table where we all ate, beside the staircase, and a small cross-legged bamboo table where Mr Jane ate alone by the fire. He was very deaf and didn't like having to make conversation. He hardly ever spoke at all, actually. Sometimes he said in a very rumbling voice, “Thank you, Mother,” or “I think I'll be going up then,” or sometimes when he found something interesting in the local paper he'd say, “I see they're at it again.” But you never knew who they were or what they were up to. So you couldn't answer him even to be polite. No one ever seemed to talk to him really. But, sometimes, when we were in bed, we could hear Mrs Jane's voice telling him what we had all been doing during the day. We never heard him, only her, because she had to talk very loudly. Their room was next door to ours so we were able to hear everything pretty clearly. I felt rather uncomfortable and tried to make coughing noises so that she'd perhaps hear that we were awake. But she never did, and after a while I didn't bother any longer.

Over the range there was a stuffed pike and a very brown picture of two people praying in a sunset, and above our table there was a much bigger picture of ladies in night dresses lying all over a staircase with bowls of fruit and flowers scattered everywhere. The one I liked best was next to the scullery door. It was very sad. A man in a kilt with a bandaged arm was crying on a lady's shoulder, and she looked awfully pale. Or glad. Or something. But my sister and I both thought it was dreadfully sad except that there was a rather silly looking baby in it too, and we felt that rather spoiled it all. But the room, with the gas lamps
flickering and the range glowing all red, was very cosy indeed and if there had to be a winter it was better to have it in the kitchen at Walnut than anywhere else.

Lally was setting the table, laying out the plates and the white cups with the gold clover leaf on them. Not Best today, because we were Family. I took down our plates; my sister had a picture of a bunch of roses on hers, and mine had a view of the pier at Worthing. We always had these special plates and washed them up ourselves afterwards.

“Your favourites today!” said Lally, bringing in a china bowl filled with freshly boiled winkles, which she placed on the table with a brown loaf of bread, butter and a scatter of hat-pins to eat the winkles with. Mrs Jane was busy filling the big blue teapot.

“I can't abide those silly little things,” she said, indicating the winkles with a nod of her head, “too fiddly and nothing on them to fill a person. Give me a nice fat bloater any day.” She swung the kettle back over the fire and stood the teapot in the hearth to “draw” as she called it, and set a large plate of bloaters before Mr Jane. He looked up from his paper slowly.

“What's that then?” he asked.

“It's your tea, what else,” shouted Mrs Jane kindly.

“Bloater is it?”

“That's what it is. You know you like them so don't make a fuss.”

“It's the bones,” he mumbled.

“You trim your moustache and you wouldn't have trouble with bones,” said Mrs Jane, cutting him three large slices of bread. “Now, you be a dear soul and get them behind you and never you mind the bones. The children wanted winkles and you can't manage them with the pins and all. A bloater's filling and good,” she finished briskly. “Won't go to the barber and won't let me use the scissors on him,” she said to Lally, “… and now he complains about the bones because his whiskers are too long. He's a stubborn man. Always was, and always will be, please God.”

After the winkles, which took quite a long time to eat because you had to pull them out of their shells with the hat-pins and sprinkle them with vinegar, we had home-made raspberry jam and a large piece of seedcake, and that was tea. Afterwards we all helped with the washing up in the scullery and set the crockery back on its shelves again and Lally cleared the table so that she
could do some mending while Mr Jane snored quietly in his big chair, his paper over his face to keep out the light.

“When he wakes up after his nap,” said Mrs Jane, “you can ask him to show you his bit of Zeppelin if you like. He may not feel up to it, on the other hand he may, there's no telling. But keep a sharp eye open for when he starts to stir and if he
doesn't
start to read his paper, you can ask him.”

A little while later the paper slid off his face, he rubbed his eyes, shook his head a bit, and folded his arms on his rather large stomach.

“Dropped off,” he said.

“Yes, dear soul, you did. Snoring like a grampus you were.”

“Snoring was I?” He looked vaguely curious.

“Like a grampus,” cried Mrs Jane, folding up the newspaper and putting it under a cushion. “Now why don't you take the children out to see your bit of Zeppelin? Do you good to get a breath of fresh air … it isn't dark yet and it's not that far to the shed.” She was being very bossy and almost pulled him out of his chair which he clearly didn't want to leave. Muttering under his breath he took his keys off the mantelshelf, pulled his red and white spotted handkerchief tight round his neck and, pulling me gently by the hair, he went to the scullery door. He smelled nicely of cough-drops, as he always did.

“Not far to the shed!” he said grumpily.

“No it's not! You need a bit of exercise,” called Mrs Jane, stacking up his cup and saucer and plate.

“Not far to the Palace either,” he said, “and I been there twice today on my bike. Once there and once back. I have had all the exercise I need for one day.”

“You haven't been twice to the Palace, Father, you've been there once. The next time you were coming
from
the Palace home. So it stands to reason you only
went
once. Unless you forgot something and had to go back?”