Kipling and Trix

How Fear Came-2

‘There. You can kiss me if you like before you go to bed.’

But when he felt her arms closing round his neck he went stiff. Turning his head away, he felt the tickle of her kiss against his ear.

* * *

Trix could hear the tap of Auntie’s heels as she came hastening down the passage. Ruddy was right, she looked like a big black beetle scuttling along. Monday. Soon the horrible boiling smell would start. Auntie would be cross this morning. She always shouted, especially at Janey, on washing-day. It wasn’t fair. How could Janey do out the grates if the copper was to be lit first thing? But Janey just winked at Trix and went on with what she was doing. ‘Maid of all work? I should say so,’ she would joke, in the safety of the scullery, while Trix watched her cleaning the knives with a special powder.

Something had distracted Auntie. The footsteps paused. Was anything wrong? It couldn’t be Ruddy, this time, he’d already left. Lucky Ruddy, going out to a proper school. What else could have made her stop? Trix felt quickly for her hair ribbon. No, that was still tied.

She wrinkled her nose as Auntie hurried into the breakfast room and took a chair beside her. That black dress had such a funny smell. But she’d been wrong. Today Auntie was in quite a good mood.

On Mondays, lessons started with yesterday’s Collect. Auntie didn’t seem to know how easy it was for Ruddy and Trix to learn them. Easy peasy, even though she was so much younger. That stupid Harry didn’t want to learn things even though he was more than thirteen and really big now.

‘You’ll never get anyone to employ you with marks like that,’ she’d heard Uncle Pryse tell him in an angry voice.

Trix got to the end of the verses without a single mistake.

She relaxed.

‘What a good girl you are, Trixie,’ Auntie was smiling.

It was like the sun coming out.

*

‘Go on, Trix, try, you can’t really have forgotten Bombay,’ Ruddy coaxed.

It was late afternoon and they were sprawling outside on the grass in the narrow back garden. Where it touched the bare skin on their wrists, the juicy green tickled.

‘Wouldn’t you like to be out in the sunshine?’ Uncle Pryse had asked, dragging back the heavy bolt on the back door. ‘I’m a bit tired today, or I’d join you myself,’ he added, shuffling back to his chair.

If Harry had been at home, it wouldn’t have been so quiet and friendly in the garden. But Harry wasn’t expected back before dark.

‘I don’t care if Father wants me to practise my arithmetic before I go out. Fred’s bringing his terrier and we’re going ratting,’ Trix heard him tell Auntie Sarah. She never really tried to make him do what she said.

There was nothing to worry about. Trix knew that Auntie never got back from her Missionary afternoons before five.

‘Think of green, green that’s fuzzy. Green netting stretching in front of you. Close your eyes. You’re in the big red perambulator, inside the net to keep snakes out. Bouncing a bit because of the stones in the path. I’m running along beside you, holding out a flower for you.’

Trix looked uncertain. She could see this picture but she didn’t feel she was inside it.

‘Once I brought you a little green frog but Ayah made me put it back under some big leaves,’ he went on, encouraging.

‘Was she cross?’ She couldn’t remember it at all.

‘Ayah just laughed and said’ – he paused and screwed up his eyes – ‘she said “Ruddy Baba, sweetness, better a kiss for Baby than a frog to eat. And not even cooked.”’

Trix wanted Ruddy to stop. It made him happy, talking about India but she just couldn’t. She didn’t like it, when he spoke of Ayah and Bombay and tried to make her remember too. Like pushing her up against something hard.

‘Come on, Trix. I don’t believe you can’t remember. When I was your age I used to dream about India every night.’

Your age! He was only two years older. Well, two and a half. She turned on him, pink with anger.

‘I have dreams too. I dream about fire.’

* * *

‘Rudyard, give me that book. You’ve had your nose in it ever since you came home. That’s quite enough of that selfish reading for one day. There’s your sweet little sister, longing for you to pay her some attention. It’s time to play with Trix now, until bedtime.’

Sarah Holloway caught a look of fury before he turned away.

She could not take to this Rudyard with his heathen Indian name. If he’d been as mild and biddable as Trixie, they could have had such happy times together, the three of them singing those sweet hymns from Sunday school.

But Rudyard pursed up his lips when it came to singing. When he explained that ‘he couldn’t ’cos the words were just stupid’ she’d had to forbid him all books for a week. The idea, that he, child as he was, could presume to sit in judgement. He did consent to learn the Collect and the chapters that she gave him as punishments but outside the Bible he just would not go.

Trix, on the other hand was good as gold, all that she could ask. Always ready to lift her cheek to a kiss. As good as having a daughter of her own.

‘Trixie is such a sweet little pet, I’m thinking of asking her to call me “Mother”, she observed one evening to her husband. It was May but they really needed the fire, though she grudged the coals.

‘Heavens above, woman. You’ll do no such thing. What do you think the child’s family would make of it? And what about Ruddy? There’s an affectionate little chap and really intelligent.’

The animation in his voice put her out.

‘You never took such interest in Harry, your own son.’

The heavy eyebrows lifted and Pryse Holloway raised his head. ‘That is a dreadful thing to say, Sarah.’

A pause. She began to justify herself. ‘Well, I’m sure everyone notices. Mother and Aunt often say things.’

Pryse Holloway looked drawn. It was clear he had no desire for this conversation. He waited.

‘Harry feels it, you know. More than once he’s said to me that it upsets him. And after he’s been so unselfish, sharing his own room with Rudyard all this time –’

‘Why hasn’t Harry spoken to me directly?’ He didn’t hide his distaste. ‘Sarah, what have you made of him, with your tracts and ministers and pleasure in finding fault –’ His face was dark with blood but he kept on.

She was frightened but excited too, ‘Harry’s a good boy. Just because he loves his mother –’

The gnarled hand came down heavily on the table, though no further word was spoken.

She drew back but soon could not prevent herself.

‘That Rudyard is a little schemer. You can see he’s watching and scheming to get his own way every waking moment. Just look at him. Behind that forehead that you admire so much’ – Pryse had once remarked on the boy’s open brow – ‘there’s wilfulness, there’s wicked pride. It would be sinful to let them go unchecked.’

The old man sagged in his chair. ‘Have it your own way, Sarah. Harry’s an angel. Little Rud’s the other thing. But mark my words,’ – here he looked at her straight, till her gaze wavered and fell – ‘mark my words, if I find Harry tormenting the child again, I shall send Ruddy away.’

‘You can’t. You know we couldn’t manage without the money. Even if Harry brought something in. What are you saying?’ She was struggling for breath.

‘Believe me, I mean it.’

Slowly, leaning on the furniture, her husband got to his feet and left the room.

He wasn’t well, she told herself. None of it meant anything. That his health wasn’t good was quite true. Before the leaves had begun to turn at the end of summer, her husband was dead.

* * *

Ruddy was not going to look at Harry this time. Not directly into his face. He was strong, hating Harry and despising him. It didn’t matter that Harry was fourteen and he was only nine. It didn’t matter. However big he was, Harry was stupid.

If only they didn’t have to share this bedroom. Ruddy tried not to think of the nursery in Bombay, where Ayah moved quietly in the warm dark and he could hear Trix as she stirred in her own white cot across the room.

He was Harry’s prisoner.

He and Trix had a special name for Harry. They called him The Odious Boy. Ruddy squeezed his stomach right in and the pain went away again. He was not afraid.

The Odious Boy held out the book. Ruddy waited to see if it would be snatched away. After a pause, he reached out and took it into his hands. He stroked the raised patterns on the cover, knowing Harry was waiting. But he wasn’t going to say anything this time.

‘You don’t seem very pleased to have your book back,’ Harry mocked.

It was much better to keep quiet. To stay still and pretend that Harry wasn’t real. Otherwise that horrible game would start over again, the game Harry had played after he hid the Hero of the Mutiny, the lead soldier that was always placed first in the charge across the floor of their basement playroom. It had arrived with others in a box from a big shop in London. Harry kicked that box, with its shiny label on the lid, whenever he got the chance.

But one long wet Sunday afternoon he went further. The Hero could not be found, though Ruddy turned over every toy in the cupboard and Trix stuck exploring fingers under the edge of the carpets upstairs. Now she was older, she was often quite sensible.

‘What if I could find it for you? Want me to look too? Suppose you dropped it in the bedroom?’ Harry offered, appearing unexpectedly in the basement.

‘Oh Harry, thank you!’ Trix looked happy again.

But he was back far too soon.

‘You must’ve left it under your pillow,’ he said.

Ruddy flew at him, kicking.

Harry had no difficulty in holding him at arms’ length, while he grinned over at Trix.

‘He don’t really deserve to have it back, after all, eh, Trixie?’

Remembering that day, the hot tears, at last the begging, Ruddy did not speak. Instead he stepped aside, leaving Harry to sit smirking on Rud’s own bed. The Odious Boy knew he didn’t like him doing that.

Papa had sent him that book. Still stroking the board cover, Ruddy turned towards the chest of drawers against the far wall and sat down on the floor, his back against it. There was enough light there to look at the pictures. He’d wait for Harry to get bored and leave.

He betrayed himself with a gasp that he could not suppress. What he held in his hand was no longer a picture book. It flapped idly open on his knee as he looked up, in question.

Harry was ready.

‘Choice, ain’t they? Father always used to be on at me to improve my mind. I thought I should give myself something uplifting to look at since I’ve done with school lessons now.’

Harry went out to work these days.

‘We can’t afford for you to lose this job, get up this minute,’ his mother insisted, shaking him every morning.

Following Harry’s gaze, for the first time Ruddy observed the crooked line of torn pages stuck with pins that marched along the wall over Harry’s bed.

He knew he was beaten. Uncle Pryse would have been angry. But Uncle Pryse was dead.