The Rope and Other Stories Read online

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes, now!’

  ‘Shouldn't I go and change out of my school clothes first?’ asked William.

  Aunt Rosa stared at him suspiciously. ‘You're not usually so fussy…’

  William waited.

  ‘All right then,’ said his aunt. ‘Change, but be quick about it. I'll be getting you the barrow and the shovel out of the shed.’

  She went into the garden, followed by Bessy; and William went swiftly upstairs. The door of his aunt's room was shut, but he opened it without hesitation. He knew he was safe, for he could hear the rattle of the wheelbarrow down the garden as his aunt manoeuvred it out of the shed; and Bessy would be there with her, too.

  The gold chain had not been put away: it lay just as before on the top of the dressing-table. He felt like crying as he picked it up: he had so longed to have it.

  He disturbed nothing else, and shut his aunt's bedroom door as he left. Then he went on to his own room. One hand held the gold chain – he would not put it down for an instant; with the other hand he burrowed into his suitcase and brought out the nest egg. He turned the egg so that its air-hole was uppermost. Then, with the fingers of his other hand, he found the free end of the gold chain, and held it exactly above the air-hole. He began to lower it towards the air-hole, to feed it through; and it went through! He had foreseen correctly: the size was right.

  He went on dropping the gold chain, link by link, through the air-hole of the nest egg. The links fell and fell and fell until there were no more, and the whole chain had disappeared inside the nest egg; and still the egg was not full. He shook the nest egg, and he could hear the supple chain shifting and settling inside its new home.

  ‘William!’ his aunt shouted from the garden. He put the nest egg into his pocket and then had to take it out again, because he had forgotten that he was supposed to be changing into rough clothes. He changed quickly and, with the nest egg in a pocket, went down to the job in the hen-house. ‘For goodness' sake, boy!’ said his aunt. ‘I thought you were never coming! Here's the barrow and shovel. Clean the shed right out and barrow the soiled straw to the compost heap. Then fresh straw from the shed. I want to see the job well done. Oh! – and mind the nest egg!’

  She left him to his work. The re-strawing took some time, but William did well. His aunt had grudgingly to admit that, when she inspected the inside of the hen-house. She also noted the presence of the nest egg, just where it should be.

  And William left it there.

  Aunt Rosa's discovery of the loss of the gold chain was not made until the following morning. William was woken by his aunt shaking him. ‘I know you've taken it!’ she was crying. ‘You've stolen my gold chain!’ Bessy stood in the doorway of the bedroom watching the scene and growling softly.

  William managed to say, ‘I haven't stolen it.’

  Of course, she did not believe him. She turned out all the pockets of his clothes. She unpacked his suitcase all over the floor. She took the mattress and all the bedding off the bedstead and searched them. She searched everywhere; and all the time she ranted at him and cuffed him and slapped him.

  It was all no more than William had expected, but it was hard to bear. Doggedly he repeated, ‘I haven't stolen it.’

  He was late for school, of course; and he had to deliver a letter from his aunt to the headmaster. Later, the headmaster summoned him. ‘William, do you know what was in the letter from your aunt?’

  ‘About me?’ said William. ‘I can guess.’

  The headmaster sighed. He said, ‘I have written a note in reply to your aunt. I have suggested a time when she can call on me to discuss – things. William, you must be sure to deliver this note to your aunt; she is expecting to hear from me…’

  The other boys were curious about William's interview with the headmaster. He told them nothing. The witty boy suggested that the head had noticed feathers beginning to sprout on Henny-penny's legs. This boy found two sparrow feathers in the playground and stuck them in William's hair when he was not looking.

  At the end of the school day, William took the headmaster's note with him back to Aunt Rosa's house; but Aunt Rosa was out. There was a message for him on the kitchen table saying that there was no tea for him today, and that she would be back during the evening.

  He did not mind about the food; but – later – he did mind about not being able to get into his bedroom. Bessy lay along the threshold, watching him and growling. She would not let him pass. He said aloud, ‘You don't want me here; but I don't want to be here. So we're quits.’ That made him feel better about Bessy.

  He took the headmaster's note from his pocket, put it on the floor and pushed it with his foot towards Bessy. She seized it angrily in her teeth and tore it into shreds.

  He went downstairs and into the garden, to the bottom of it. All the hens were out in the orchard, and he could see the cockerel among them. He went to the hen-house, opened the door, and looked in. The fresh straw smelled pleasantly; and there was his dear nest egg…

  He stooped and crept inside the hen-house, and pulled the door after him as closely shut as possible. He fumbled in the straw for the nest egg and found it, and shook it gently, to hear the comforting sound of the chain moving inside.

  He settled in the fresh straw on the far side of the hen-house from the roosting perch. At first he sat there; then, beginning to feel drowsy, he lay down in the straw. He fell asleep with the nest egg up to his cheek.

  He slept deeply, dreamlessly, and better than he had ever slept in Aunt Rosa's house.

  So he never noticed the fading of daylight, and the hens and cockerel that came stooping in through their pop-hole, into the hen-house for the night. They saw William there, and were disturbed at the sight; but he made no movement or sound, and they reassured themselves. One by one they flew up on the perch, and roosted there, and slept.

  He never heard later the voice of his Aunt Rosa calling distractedly up and down the garden and in the orchard, as she had already done inside the house. Neighbours were consulted and gave advice; at last the police were summoned; there was a great deal of telephoning. William slept through it all, his nest egg to his face.

  With the first of daylight the hens and cockerel left the hen-house for the run, and then – since no one had thought of shutting them up last night – for the orchard. The cockerel often stopped to crow; but William did not hear him. He slept on.

  The sun was high in the sky before William woke. At first he did not remember where he was. In his own old room at home? In Aunt Rosa's cold house? Neither. He was in a hen-house: he had slept there, the whole night through, with the hens and with his old enemy, the cockerel. He laughed aloud. He felt lighthearted, as he had not done for many weeks. He also felt very hungry.

  The hens and cockerel had gone; it was time for him to go, too. He did not know what was going to happen next; but at least he had had a long night's sleep in freedom; and he had his precious nest egg safe in his pocket.

  He let himself out of the hen-house. He began walking up the garden path towards the house – towards Aunt Rosa's house. As he came nearer, his spirits sank lower: he was walking towards a prison.

  Aunt Rosa would be waiting for him. And there she was – a figure standing on the garden doorstep; and – but no! it was not his Aunt Rosa. It was his father.

  With a wild cry William ran into his father's arms, and his father picked him up and hugged him safe. ‘William! William!’ he repeated, over and over again.

  It was some time before any scolding began: ‘Why on earth did you run away? You bad boy – you silly boy! Where did you go! Your aunt was out of her mind with worry, so she telephoned me and I drove all through the night to come. William, you should never, never have run away like that!’

  ‘But I didn't run away,’ said William. ‘I was here all the time.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Just in the hen-house at the bottom of the garden.’

  William's father began to laugh
. ‘And you've straw all over your clothes!’

  He took his son indoors to Aunt Rosa – Aunt Rosa, sleep-starved, haggard with many fears, and by now, fortunately, speechless with fatigue. He explained that William was back. (‘But I've never been away,’ protested William. ‘The hen-house isn't away.’)

  William's father said that, now he was here, he might as well take William off Aunt Rosa's hands. She nodded. It wasn't that he wasn't grateful to her - Aunt Rosa nodded again – but he needed his son to be with him, after all. William was all he had now. ‘And somehow we'll manage,’ said William's father. ‘I'm not sure how, but we shall manage.’

  Then Aunt Rosa said she was going to bed; and she went, with Bessy following her. Bessy had had an extraordinarily disagreeable night, with upsets and unwanted visitors.

  William's father telephoned the police and told the neighbours about William's return. Then he took over Aunt Rosa's kitchen and made an enormous breakfast for himself and William. After that, they packed everything into William's suitcase, got into the car, and drove off. They did not wake Aunt Rosa to say goodbye, but William's father left a note on the kitchen table.

  When the car had taken them well away from Aunt Rosa's house, William said, ‘I liked her hen-house and her hens.’

  His father said, ‘But Rosa said you were frightened of the cockerel.’

  ‘I was afraid of him,’ said William, ‘but I liked him, too. He was only fierce when he was defending his hens, his family.’

  His father glanced down at something William had just taken out of his pocket. ‘Did Rosa give you that dummy egg?’

  ‘No,’ said William. ‘I took it.’

  His father frowned. ‘That's stealing.’

  ‘I just needed it.’

  ‘It's still stealing. You'll have to send it back.’

  ‘It might break in the post. Couldn't we send the money instead?’ William had a brilliant idea. ‘You could stop it out of my pocket money, and you could tell Aunt Rosa that. That would really please her.’

  So it was settled. But, after a while, hesitantly, William asked, ‘Did Aunt Rosa ever say I'd stolen anything?’

  ‘No,’ his father said, quite positively. ‘But then, she didn't know about this egg, did she?’

  William thought: she'd tell the headmaster, but she wouldn't dare tell my dad about the chain. Because he knew it was my mum's, and I'd given it to my mum. I wasn't stealing. I just took back.

  He tilted the egg in his hands, to feel the movement inside it. He said, ‘I shall always keep this egg. On my mantelpiece.’

  ‘You do that,’ said his father. ‘Only we shall have to find somewhere to live with a room with a mantelpiece in it.’

  ‘We'll manage somehow,’ William said comfortably. ‘You said so.’

  Inside Her Head

  It was a hot, hot afternoon, and for once Elm Street was empty of children. A good many of the Elm Street lot had gone away on summer holidays; the rest had gone round the corner to the Lido to splash and swim and eat ice-cream with their toes in the water. Except for one.

  Except for Sim Tolland.

  Sim Tolland was at home having chicken-pox. He lay in bed with the window down as far as possible: the heavy, still air lay – so he thought – like an enormous plank balanced across the top sash. Only a sheet covered his sweaty, spotty body. He felt awful. The chicken-pox made him feel awful, and the heat of the bedroom – which was the heat of the bedroom plus the heat of the downstairs rooms which had risen to join it – also made him feel awful. And he felt particularly awful when he thought of the others at the Lido or by the sea or in a cool, green countryside.

  His mother poked her head round the bedroom door, gave a quick glance to check that his lemonade jug was full, and said, ‘Mrs Crackenthorpe to see you.’ She went away again.

  Old Mrs Crackenthorpe, from the other end of Elm Street, was known to have a soft spot for Sim Tolland. Sim groaned. This was even more awful than awful.

  He heard the slow heavy tread on the stairs, the little gasps of effort. Mrs Crackenthorpe eased herself into the room and on to a chair. She perspired gently.

  ‘I've had chicken-pox, dear,’ she said. She took something from a brown-paper bag. ‘Jelly babies to cheer you up. You need jelly babies.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Sim. ‘But just now I couldn't

  ‘It's the heat, dear.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sim.

  ‘And the chicken-pox.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sim.

  They fell silent, while Mrs Crackenthorpe tried carefully to think of some other way of cheering up Sim Tolland. At last she said, ‘I didn't bring any comics or anything for you to look at. I thought you wouldn't want to read.’

  ‘I don't,’ said Sim, and then added quickly, ‘And I don't want to watch any more telly. Or listen to things.’

  Mrs Crackenthorpe was still following her own train of thought. ‘I didn't want to read, either. When I had chicken-pox. And it was very hot weather, too, just like now. Here, in Elm Street.’

  It was, after all, unexpectedly soothing to listen to old Mrs Crackenthorpe rabbiting on.

  ‘Nobody much ever came to see me,’ Mrs Crackenthorpe was saying sadly, ‘because of the chicken-pox. It was dull. I was an only child – just about your age, or younger; and I'd never really had friends, anyway.’ (Sim thought of his friends, all the Elm Street lot, coolly enjoying themselves elsewhere: he could have wept.) ‘I didn't have friends because my mother liked to keep herself to herself. You know. She was very particular about me. So it was dull for me that summer.’

  In the silence that followed, Sim could see that Mrs Crackenthorpe was pondering something difficult. She came to a decision. She began: ‘When you're in bed, you think a lot.’ She tapped the side of her head just above her ear. ‘Inside your head. I mean, right inside your head. Oh, you'd be surprised!’

  ‘Yes?’ said Sim.

  ‘In the middle of the night, when you can't sleep for the heat and the chicken-pox, and it's so dull…’

  ‘Go on,’ said Sim.

  ‘Well, to begin with, there was the elm tree –’

  ‘The elm tree stump,’ corrected Sim. It was well known in the Street as the meeting place for the Elm Street lot – always had been. It had always been there: a stump.

  But Mrs Crackenthorpe was surprisingly firm. ‘A tree,’ she said. ‘In those days, when I was a child in Elm Street, it was a tree – not a cut-down stump. A tree, taller than the houses, reaching from side to side of the street. Green leaves. When there wasn't a breath of wind anywhere else, there was always a breath up among those leaves. The leaves –’ She searched for a word. ‘The leaves rustled. It sounded cool up there, where the leaves rustled. So I thought.’

  Sim thought of green leaves and cool breezes. Greenness; coolness… ‘Yes…’

  ‘So one night I decided to go up there.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Decided to climb up there,’ said Mrs Crackenthorpe. ‘And I did.’

  ‘Decided or climbed?’

  ‘Both.’

  There was a disbelieving silence from Sim's bed.

  ‘I was a little girl then,’ said Mrs Crackenthorpe. ‘Plump, of course, but light, small, neat. Do you know, I'd never even thought of climbing a tree before?’

  This was another extraordinary thing for Sim to have to believe.

  ‘My mother always liked me to keep my clothes clean, you see. She insisted. But that particular night they'd gone to bed, and I lay awake, too hot and chicken-poxy to sleep. I could see the elm tree from my window. I could see the leaves at the top moving in the breeze that was always there. The moon shone through the leaves. Bright moonlight, or I don't think I'd have dared…’

  ‘Dared…’ repeated Sim Tolland. He looked at Mrs Crackenthorpe sitting there, overflowing the bedroom chair; then he closed his eyes for a moment to try to imagine her a plump, small, neat little girl, daring…

  ‘Just in my nightie,’ said Mrs Crackenthorpe.
‘Not even bedroom slippers. I went downstairs and into the street, all moonlit, and to the tree and up it –’

  ‘How “up it”?’ interrupted Sim. ‘A tree like that doesn't have branches near the ground. They start high up – too high for you to reach, if you were a little girl.’

  ‘Let me think, then,’ said Mrs Crackenthorpe. ‘A ladder?’

  ‘No,’ said Sim. ‘You couldn't have lugged a ladder out. Not if you were just a little girl.’

  ‘You're right, of course,’ said Mrs Crackenthorpe, dashed. Then she brightened: ‘How about this, then? There happened to be one of those very tall vans with a sort of roof-rack and sort of rungs up the side of the van to the roof-rack – you know! And this van – well, it happened to be parked just under the elm tree.’

  ‘Well…’ said Sim.

  ‘A real bit of luck for me, that van,’ said Mrs Crackenthorpe, over-riding any possible objection or doubt from Sim. ‘So I just climbed up the side of this van to its roof. From there I could easily reach the lowest branch of the tree, and climb on to it. Then up and up, from branch to branch. I turned out to be a natural climber. From branch to branch,’ Mrs Crackenthorpe repeated dreamily, ‘up and up, breezier and breezier, cooler and cooler…’ She was fanning herself deliciously with the brown-paper bag from which she had taken the packet of jelly babies.

  She stopped suddenly, as a thought occurred to her: ‘Oh dear! Do you think I ought to have taken a cushion with me?’

  ‘Whatever for?’ said Sim.

  ‘To sit on, of course. The branches would have been uncomfortable without a cushion. So I did take a cushion. And do you know how high I climbed with that cushion?’

  ‘No. How high?’

  ‘To the top. To the very top. I wasn't afraid – not one bit. I climbed to where the branches grew quite thin and whippy. I settled that cushion in the elbow of a branch and I settled myself on it, and I was comfortable and cool – so cool. All night long I stayed there. Do you think I might even have dozed off up there? I wasn't a bit afraid, you know.’

  ‘No,’ said Sim. ‘Too risky. You might have fallen.’