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CHAPTER 3

A new nursemaid came, a thin white girl with protruding eyes. Her name was Isabel, but she was called Susan as being ‘more suitable’. This puzzled Vernon very much. He asked Nurse for an explanation.

‘There are names that are suitable to the gentry, Master Vernon, and names that are suitable for servants. That’s all there is to it.’

‘Then why is her real name Isabel?’

‘There are people who when they christen their children set themselves up to ape their betters.’

The word ape had a distracting influence on Vernon. Apes were monkeys. Did people christen their children at the zoo?

‘I thought people were christened in church.’

‘So they are, Master Vernon.’

Very puzzling—why was everything so puzzling? Why were things more puzzling than they used to be? Why did one person tell you one thing and another person something quite different?

‘Nurse, how do babies come?’

‘You’ve asked me that before, Master Vernon. The little angels bring them in the night through the window.’

‘That Am-am-am—’

‘Don’t stammer, Master Vernon.’

‘Amenkun lady who came—she said I was found under a gooseberry bush.’

‘That’s the way they do with American babies,’ said Nurse serenely.

Vernon heaved a sigh of relief. Of course! He felt a throb of gratitude to Nurse. She always knew. She made the unsteady swaying universe stand still again. And she never laughed. His mother did. He had heard her say to other ladies, ‘He asks me the quaintest questions. Just listen to this. Aren’t children funny and adorable?’

But Vernon couldn’t see that he was funny or adorable at all. He just wanted to know. You’d got to know. That was part of growing up. When you were grown up you knew everything and had gold sovereigns in your purse.

The world went on widening.

There were, for instance, uncles and aunts.

Uncle Sydney was Mummy’s brother. He was short and stout and had rather a red face. He had a habit of humming tunes and of rattling the money in his trouser pockets. He was fond of making jokes, but Vernon did not always think his jokes very funny.

‘Supposing,’ Uncle Sydney would say, ‘I were to put on your hat? Hey? What should I look like, do you think?’

Curious, the questions grown up people asked! Curious—and also difficult, because if there was one thing that Nurse was always impressing upon Vernon, it was that little boys must never make personal remarks.

‘Come now,’ said Uncle Sydney perseveringly. ‘What should I look like? There—’ he snatched up the linen affair in question and balanced it on top of his head. ‘What do I look like—eh?’

Well, if one must answer, one must. Vernon said politely and a little wearily:

‘I think you look rather silly.’

‘That boy of yours has no sense of humour, Myra,’ said Uncle Sydney to his mother. ‘No sense of humour at all. A pity.’

Aunt Nina, Father’s sister, was quite different.

She smelt nice, like the garden on a summer’s day, and she had a soft voice that Vernon liked. She had other virtues—she didn’t kiss you when you didn’t want to be kissed, and she didn’t insist on making jokes. But she didn’t come very often to Abbots Puissants.

She must be, Vernon thought, very brave, because it was she who first made him realize that one could master The Beast.

The Beast lived in the big drawing-room. It had four legs and a shiny brown body. And it had a long row of what Vernon had thought when he was very small, to be teeth. Great yellow shining teeth. From his earliest memory, Vernon had been fascinated and terrified by The Beast. For if you irritated The Beast, it made strange noises, an angry growling or a shrill angry wail—and somehow those noises hurt you more than anything in the world could, they hurt you right down in your inside. They made you shiver and feel sick, and they made your eyes sting and burn, and yet by some strange enchantment, you couldn’t go away.

When Vernon had stories read to him about dragons, he always thought of them as like The Beast. And some of the best games with Mr Green were where they killed The Beast—Vernon plunging a sword into his brown shining body whilst the hundred children whooped and sang behind.

Now that he was a big boy—he knew better, of course. He knew that The Beast’s name was Grand Piano, and that when you deliberately attacked its teeth that was called ‘playingthepiano!’ and that ladies did it after dinner to gentlemen. But in his inmost heart, he was still afraid and dreamt sometimes of The Beast pursuing him up the nursery stairs—and he would wake up screaming.

In his dreams The Beast lived in the Forest, and was wild and savage, and the noises it made were too terrible to be borne.

Mummy sometimes did ‘playingthepiano’ and that Vernon could just bear with difficulty. The Beast, he felt, would not really be waked up by what she was doing to it. But the day Aunt Nina played was different.

Vernon had been conducting one of his imaginary games in a corner. He and Squirrel and Poodle were having a picnic and eating lobsters and chocolate éclairs.

His Aunt Nina had not even noticed that he was in the room. She had sat down on the music stool and was playing idly.

Fascinated, Vernon crept nearer and nearer. Nina looked at last to see him staring at her, the tears running down his face and great sobs shaking his small body. She stopped.

‘What’s the matter, Vernon?’

‘I hate it,’ sobbed Vernon. ‘I ’ate it. I ’ate it. It hurts me here.’ His hands clasped his stomach.

Myra came into the room at that minute. She laughed.

‘Isn’t it odd? That child simply hates music. So very queer.’

‘Why doesn’t he go away if he hates it?’ said Nina.

‘I can’t,’ sobbed Vernon.

‘Isn’t it ridiculous?’ said Myra.

‘I think it’s rather interesting.’

‘Most children are always wanting to strum on the piano. I tried to show Vernon “Chopsticks” the other day, but he wasn’t a bit amused.’

Nina remained staring at her small nephew thoughtfully.

‘I can hardly believe a child of mine can be unmusical,’ said Myra in an aggrieved voice. ‘I played quite difficult pieces when I was eight years old.’

‘Oh, well!’ said Nina vaguely. ‘There are different ways of being musical.’

Which, Myra thought, was so like the silly sort of thing the Deyre family would say. Either one was musical and played pieces, or one was not. Vernon clearly was not.

Nurse’s mother was ill. Strange unparalleled nursery catastrophe. Nurse, very red-faced and grim, was packing with the assistance of Susan Isabel. Vernon, troubled, sympathetic, but above all interested, stood nearby, and out of his interest, asked questions.

‘Is your mother very old, Nurse? Is she a hundred?’

‘Of course not, Master Vernon. A hundred indeed!’

‘Do you think she is going to die?’ continued Vernon, longing to be kind and understand.

Cook’s mother had been ill and died. Nurse did not answer. Instead she said sharply:

‘The boot-bags out of the bottom drawer, Susan. Step lively now, my girl.’

‘Nurse, will your mother—’

‘I haven’t time to be answering questions, Master Vernon.’

Vernon sat down on the corner of a chintz-covered ottoman and gave himself up to reflection. Nurse had said that her mother wasn’t a hundred, but she must, for all that, be very old. Nurse herself he had always regarded as terribly old. To think that there was a being of superior age and wisdom to Nurse was positively staggering. In a strange way it reduced Nurse herself to the proportions of a mere human being. She was no longer a figure secondary only to God himself.

The Universe shifted—values were readjusted. Nurse, God, and Mr Green—all three receded, becoming vaguer and more blurred. Mummy, his father, even Aunt Nina—seemed to matter more. Especially Mummy. Mummy was like the princesses with long beautiful golden hair. He would like to fight a dragon for Mummy—a brown shiny dragon like The Beast.

What was the word—the magic word? Brumagem—that was it—Brumagem. An enchanting word! The Princess Brumagem! A word to be repeated over to himself softly and secretly at night at the same time as ‘Damn’ and ‘Corsets’.

But never, never, never must Mummy hear it—because he knew only too well that she would laugh—she always laughed, the kind of laugh that made you shrivel up inside and want to wriggle. And she would say things—she always said things, just the kind of things you hated. ‘Aren’t children too funny?’

And Vernon knew that he wasn’t funny. He didn’t like funny things—Uncle Sydney had said so. If only Mummy wouldn’t—

Sitting on the slippery chintz he frowned perplexedly. He had a sudden imperfect glimpse of two Mummies. One, the princess, the beautiful Mummy that he dreamt about, who was mixed up for him with sunsets and magic and killing dragons—and the other—the one who laughed and who said, ‘Aren’t children too funny?’ Only, of course, they were the same …

He fidgeted and sighed. Nurse, flushed from the effort of snapping to her trunk, turned to him kindly.

‘What’s the matter, Master Vernon?’

‘Nothing,’ said Vernon.

You must always say ‘Nothing.’ You could never tell. Because, if you did, no one ever knew what you meant …

Under the reign of Susan Isabel, the nursery was quite different. You could be, and quite frequently were, naughty. Susan told you not to do things and you did them just the same! Susan would say: ‘I’ll tell your mother.’ But she never did.

Susan had at first enjoyed the position and authority she had in Nurse’s absence. Indeed, but for Vernon, she would have continued to enjoy it. She used to exchange confidences with Katie, the under-housemaid.

‘Don’t know what’s come over him, I’m sure. He’s like a little demon sometimes. And him so good and well behaved with Mrs Pascal.’

To which Kate replied:

‘Ah! she’s a one, she is! Takes you up sharp, doesn’t she?’ And then they would whisper and giggle.

‘Who’s Mrs Pascal?’ Vernon asked one day.

‘Well, I never, Master Vernon! Don’t you know your own Nurse’s name?’

So Nurse was Mrs Pascal. Another shock. She had always been just Nurse. It was rather as though you had been told that God’s name was Mr Robinson.

Mrs Pascal! Nurse! The more you thought of it, the more extraordinary it seemed. Mrs Pascal—just like Mummy was Mrs Deyre and Father was Mr Deyre. Strangely enough Vernon never cogitated on the possibility of a Mr Pascal. (Not that there was any such person. The Mrs was a tacit recognition of Nurse’s position and authority.) Nurse stood alone in the same magnificence as Mr Green, who, in spite of the hundred children (and Poodle, Squirrel and Tree), was never thought of by Vernon as having a Mrs Green attached to him!

Vernon’s inquiring mind wandered in another direction. ‘Susan, do you like being called Susan? Wouldn’t you like being called Isabel better?’

Susan (or Isabel) gave her customary giggle.

‘It doesn’t matter what I like, Master Vernon.’

‘Why not?’

‘People have got to do what they’re told in this world.’

Vernon was silent. He had thought the same until a few days ago. But he was beginning to perceive that it was not true. You needn’t do as you were told. It all depended on who told you.

It was not a question of punishment. He was continually being sat on chairs, stood in the corner, and deprived of sweets by Susan. Nurse, on the other hand, had only had to look at him severely through her spectacles with a certain expression on her face, and anything but immediate capitulation was out of the question.

Susan had no authority in her nature, and Vernon knew it. He had discovered the thrill of successful disobedience. Also, he liked tormenting Susan. The more worried and flustered and unhappy Susan got, the more Vernon liked it. He was, as was proper to his years, still in the Stone Age. He savoured the full pleasure of cruelty.

Susan formed the habit of letting Vernon go out to play in the garden alone. Being an unattractive girl, she had not Winnie’s reasons for liking the garden. And besides, what harm could possibly come to him?

‘You won’t go near the ponds, will you, Master Vernon?’

‘No,’ said Vernon, instantly forming the intention to do so.

‘You’ll play with your hoop like a good boy?’

‘Yes.’

The nursery was left in peace. Susan heaved a sigh of relief. She took from a drawer a paper-covered book entitled The Duke and the Dairymaid.

Beating his hoop, Vernon made the tour of the walled fruit garden. Escaping from his control, the hoop leapt upon a small patch of earth which was at the moment receiving the meticulous attentions of Hopkins, the head gardener. Hopkins firmly and authoritatively ordered Vernon from the spot, and Vernon went. He respected Hopkins.

Abandoning the hoop, Vernon climbed a tree or two. That is to say, he reached a height of perhaps six feet from the ground, employing all due precautions. Tiring of this perilous sport, he sat astride a branch and cogitated as to what to do next.

On the whole, he thought of the ponds. Susan having forbidden them, they had a distinct fascination. Yes, he would go to the ponds. He rose, and as he did so, another idea came into his head, suggested by an unusual sight.

The door into the Forest was open!

Such a thing had never happened before in Vernon’s experience. Again and again he had secretly tried that door. Always it was locked.

He crept up to it cautiously. The Forest! It stood a few steps away outside the door. You could plunge straightway into its cool green depths. Vernon’s heart beat faster.

He had always wanted to go into the Forest. Here was his chance. Once Nurse came back, any such thing would be out of the question.

And still he hesitated. It was not any feeling of disobedience that held him back. Strictly speaking, he had never been forbidden to go in the Forest. His childish cunning was all ready with that excuse.

No, it was something else. Fear of the unknown—of those dark leafy depths. Ancestral memories held him back …

He wanted to go—but he didn’t want to go. There might be Things there—Things like The Beast. Things that came up behind you—that chased you screaming …

He moved uneasily from one foot to the other.

But Things didn’t chase you in the daytime. And Mr Green lived in the Forest. Not that Mr Green was as real as he used to be. Still, it would be rather jolly to explore and find a place where you would pretend Mr Green did live. Poodle, Squirrel, and Tree would each have houses of their own—small leafy houses.

‘Come on, Poodle,’ said Vernon to an invisible companion. ‘Have you got your bow and arrow? That’s right. We’ll meet Squirrel inside.’

He stepped out jauntily. Beside him, plain to Vernon’s inner eye, went Poodle, dressed like the picture of Robinson Crusoe in his picture book.

It was wonderful in the Forest—dim and dark and green. Birds sang and flew from branch to branch. Vernon continued to talk to his friend—a luxury he did not dare to permit himself often, since someone might overhear and say, ‘Isn’t he too funny? He’s pretending he’s got another little boy with him.’ You had to be so very careful at home.

‘We’ll get to the Castle by lunch time, Poodle. There are going to be roasted leopards. Oh! Hullo, here’s Squirrel. How are you, Squirrel? Where’s Tree?’

‘I tell you what. I think it’s rather tiring walking. I think we’ll ride.’

Steeds were tethered to an adjacent tree. Vernon’s was milk white, Poodle’s was coal black—the colour of Squirrel’s he couldn’t quite decide.

They galloped forward through the trees. There were deadly dangerous places, morasses. Snakes hissed at them and lions charged them. But the faithful steeds did all their riders required of them.

How silly it was playing in the garden—or playing anywhere but here! He’d forgotten what it was like, playing with Mr Green and Poodle, Squirrel and Tree. How could you help forgetting things when people were always reminding you that you were a funny little boy playing make believe.

On strutted Vernon, now capering, now marching with solemn dignity. He was great, he was wonderful! What he needed, though he did not know it himself, was a tom-tom to beat whilst he sang his own praises.

The Forest! He had always known it would be like this, and it was! In front of him suddenly appeared a crumbling moss-covered wall. The wall of the Castle! Could anything be more perfect? He began to climb it.

The ascent was easy enough really, though fraught with the most agreeable and thrilling possibilities of danger. Whether this was Mr Green’s Castle, or whether it was inhabited by an Ogre who ate human flesh, Vernon had not yet made up his mind. Either was an entrancing proposition. On the whole he inclined to the latter, being at the moment in a warlike frame of mind. With a flushed face he reached the summit of the wall and looked over the other side.

And here there enters into the story, for one brief paragraph, Mrs Somers West who was fond of romantic solitude (for short periods), and had bought Woods Cottage as being ‘delightfully remote from anywhere and really, if you know what I mean, in the very heart of the Forest—at one with Nature!’ And since Mrs Somers West, as well as being artistic, was musical, she had pulled down a wall, making two rooms into one and had thus provided herself with sufficient space to house a grand piano.

And at the identical moment that Vernon reached the top of the wall, several perspiring and staggering men were slowly propelling the aforesaid grand piano towards the window since it wouldn’t go in by the door. The garden of Woods Cottage was a mere tangle of undergrowth—wild Nature, as Mrs Somers West called it. So that all Vernon saw was The Beast! The Beast, alive and purposeful, slowly crawling towards him, malign and vengeful …

For a moment he stayed rooted to the spot. Then, with a wild cry, he fled. Fled along the top of the narrow crumbling wall. The Beast was behind him, pursuing him … It was coming, he knew it. He ran—ran faster than ever—His foot caught in a tangle of ivy. He crashed downwards—falling—falling—