Kipling and Trix

How Fear Came-3

This time though, whatever happened, he wasn’t going to cry.

*

When they first came to Lorne Lodge it had been easy to fit under the table and more cheerful than the cold playroom down in the basement.

‘We’re going to have this as our secret place. We’ll call it “The Even Threshholds,”’ Ruddy instructed. ‘Mama used to say. “Children, be careful, don’t run. You’ll trip on that uneven threshold.”’

He said the words again. He could hear his mother’s voice.

He frowned. It’d sometimes used to sound as though she didn’t like Bombay, which couldn’t be right.

But all that was years and years ago. Now they were so much taller, the struts of wood between the legs rather got in the way. Still, once in a while, Ruddy would hold up a fold of the furry table-covering invitingly and Trix would slip, with a giggle, under his arm. Their noses wrinkled at the dust and the heavy smell of food that enfolded them once the door of their tent was let fall but as they settled themselves among the crumbs that Janey had missed, they were smiling at each other.

‘We’re almost too big to fit under here, you know, Ruddy.’ Trix couldn’t find a place to put her legs without kicking him.

‘Don’t say that. Trix, it’s our own place that we’ve made. It’s ours.’

Picking up her brother’s agitation, Trix fell silent. After a pause she began again timidly, ‘We can’t stay down here too long anyway this afternoon. Auntie wants to take me out with her at three o’clock. We’re going to visit Mrs. Chippington from the church.’

‘You go then, go now, if you like her so much, her and her horrible friends in their stinky old black dresses. I can tell myself stories. I don’t need you to be here.’

Trix felt her eyes fill with tears. Her chin was wobbling so much it made her mouth twist as if wires were pulling it. ‘Oh Ruddy, don’t be angry with me. She’s not so bad.’

‘Not so bad? I hate her bloody to hell.’

His ferocity entered Trix like a knife. She couldn’t bear it. Shrinking, she whispered, ‘Don’t. Please don’t be angry with me.’

‘I’m not angry with you. Yes I am.’ With a great effort: ‘I want you to stay with me, not go with her.’

Trix was crying soundlessly into the fists she had bunched up against her face. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she heaved out between her sobs.

‘Well, you said we were getting too big for this. Perhaps you’re right. I don’t think I like it under here any more,’ and he was crawling away from her out into the drab light of the dining room.

Ruddy looked slightly ashamed of himself as Trix emerged but he couldn’t resist inspecting his sister’s face, to see how his rejection had registered. The little girl turned to adjust the fold of chenille, brushing them back into place.

Ruddy’s face hardened.

‘You’d better go and wash your face if you don’t want her noticing and asking questions. But perhaps you’d like a chance to tell tales about me like her disgusting son.’

Trix took the blow in silence.

Ruddy would be cross with her all afternoon. She could always go and help Auntie Sarah though. It was no good fighting her. Trix could see that, why couldn’t Ruddy? When they first came to live here, when she was tiny, his hugs made her feel safe. He was older, he knew what to do.

But now she sometimes felt like the older one. She could see that Auntie Sarah would always win. And though Ruddy often talked about Mama and wondered why she had sent them to live with Auntie, there really didn’t seem to be any feelings about Mama, or any picture of her, left inside Trix.

Leaving the room, she turned back towards Ruddy hoping to be friends again, but he would not raise his eyes to hers.

That night the fire dream came back again. Trix was sitting at a table. But she seemed to have shrunk. She could barely see over it. There was something soft under her, like a cushion. And there was a fire, a huge fire, right there inside the house.

A fire that stretched out its arms for her.

However much she tried, she couldn’t make a sound. Always, when she tried to get down and run away, in the dream, Auntie stopped her, shouting, ‘Be good or I’ll give you a kiss and send you to Hell!’ Now Trix fought with all her strength, fists pounding.

‘Child, child, whatever’s the matter?’ Auntie was sitting bolt upright, wide awake beside her. ‘You’re thrashing about enough to wake the dead.’

‘I’m going to get burned. Let me go,’ Trix gasped.

Auntie Sarah’s shadow, hair twisted up in spikes all round the head, reared up on the bedroom wall as the candle she had hastily lit spluttered.

‘It’s only a dream, Trixie. Go back to sleep.’

Trix shuddered as Auntie reached over to pat her before rolling onto her side.

‘There now, settle down, do.’

Trix wanted to keep herself awake but her eyes insisted on closing.

The minute she woke up next morning, Trix could hear the thrush singing out in the pear tree. She wanted to run straight out into the garden and join him. The song kept on all the time she was washing her face and hands and pulling on her clothes.

Auntie called her to stand in front of the looking-glass to have her hair brushed. When she’d finished tying the dark blue ribbon for weekdays Auntie remained, winding Trix’s curls into ringlets around her finger while she spoke.

‘Always remember, Trixie, that it’s the Lord who is made angry by sin and it’s only His anger we have to fear. The wicked will have to live in the flames of Hell but so long as you keep on as a good girl, you’ve nothing to worry about. That’s what I’ve always taught you, right from when you were small, you silly girl.’

Trix smiled politely. If she just smiled and didn’t say anything, Auntie might talk about something else.

* * *

Month after month, every week had the same pattern but Trix didn’t mind that. She liked knowing that there would be lessons with Auntie Sarah every morning in the dining room. That Auntie’s friend, Mrs. Possiter, would visit on Tuesdays and that on certain afternoons Auntie would go out to join other ladies busy at the church. The Missionary Society had so many bazaars, the ladies always seemed to be sewing horrid fussy things, to sell at them.

Time spent with Ruddy was different. Then it was safe to come alive. Trix loved the dark late winter afternoons together in the basement. Once the gas was lit, the room no longer seemed so dull and dingy. It felt almost snug.

She could hardly wait to talk to him. Yet glimpsing the evening star, brilliant and lonely in the darkening sky, she caught her breath.

Flat on his stomach, Ruddy was training two black beetles to climb over the mountain trail he had built. His nose was almost touching them.

‘Do look, Ruddy. Out of the window. The star.’

He didn’t give any sign that he’d heard.

‘What’s the matter? Why don’t you come and look?’

‘No point. You know I won’t be able to see it. Stop making a fuss.’

She remembered too late. It wasn’t the first time she’d found Ruddy couldn’t see what she could. Would he have to wear spectacles when he was grown up, she wondered. For now though, he didn’t like talking about it. He just got angry.

Trix waited. She wanted him in a good mood, ready to listen.

‘Remember, it’s my turn today. Come on, do sit up and listen,’ she finally burst out.

He waved a booted foot in her direction.

‘You are a beast, Ruddy. I’m telling you something really interesting.’

‘No, come on. Sit up. It’s my turn, be fair. I heard Auntie’s friend telling her this story today, after the Ladies’ Meeting at church. About a girl who wanted to get married –’

She broke off as Ruddy rolled over. He sat up and looked at her.

‘Girls aren’t interesting,’ he put out his hand before she could launch herself at him. ‘I don’t mean you, Trix, I mean stories about girls.’

‘It is a good story. I know it is. All right, I won’t tell it to you. But when I’m older, you’ll see. Everyone will read my stories because they’re real and true, not just made up ones like yours.’

But she could tell he didn’t want to have a quarrel.

‘Let’s do “planning the house we’re going to have when we go home to Bombay,”’ he offered.

That winter it was their best game. It didn’t matter any more that she couldn’t remember.

‘My bedroom will have white muslin curtains with flowers and flowers in all the vases, not like those dead twigs in front of the fireplace upstairs, and I’ll have a special room to make my stories up and do my writing in,’ she began.

‘And my study will be at the other end of the house and we’ll meet in the middle to read our stories together. My faithful servant will sleep across my doorway and I’ll have a desk as big, as big as – as the altar in church,’ he finished grinning.

‘Mine will be made of rosewood.’

Trix wasn’t going to be floored.

‘If we’re reading out poems, we shall lie on couches, but for stories we’ll sit in carved armchairs, old carved chairs, like Aunt Georgie’s.’

‘We’ll walk up and down the whole house, talking really loudly.’

‘It will be the biggest most beautiful house in the whole of India.’

‘And Janey will come with us and be in charge of all the other servants but never have to do anything herself.’

*

Every Christmas a man came for Ruddy and took him to London.

‘It’s all very well for the grand Mrs. Burne-Jones to send for Rudyard. She is your mother’s sister, I suppose. And he’s a boy and older. But I always tell her you’d rather stay here with me. That’s right, isn’t it Trixie?’

Trix nodded dumbly. She didn’t want Ruddy to go and leave her. But she knew that she didn’t at all want to go to London herself, to stay with a strange aunt and uncle.

This year, though, there was no escape.

‘I suppose it’s all your idea, Miss Trix. Not good enough for you here in Lorne Lodge. Oh no, you both want to be off with your grand relations in London.’

Trix flinched but her face remained blank. She looked across at Ruddy.

Auntie followed her gaze.

‘I see, it’s you we have to thank, Master Kipling, for upsetting us all. You’ve been putting ideas into your aunt’s head, with your letters.’

Ruddy could only stare.

‘I’ve had a letter from Mrs. Burne-Jones myself.’ She shook the stiff criss-crossed sheet at them. ‘Not that I don’t expect one, at Christmas, to thank me for all I do for you.’

Both children remained silent and alert.

‘She’s sending her man to collect Rudyard for his Christmas visit again. But she wants Trix too this time. ‘If necessary I will come myself for Trix,’ that’s what she says. No thought of what it means to anyone else. You won’t enjoy being away from home, Trixie, but she doesn’t think of that.’

‘Aunt Georgie is the kindest person in the world,’ Ruddy shouted, interrupting her. ‘Trix will love her and love staying at The Grange.’

‘That’s enough from you, Rudyard. No-one asked for your opinion.’

Ruddy seemed to fold into himself. His fists were clenched as he turned and made for the door. In a moment they could hear his boots clattering up the stairs.