Kipling and Trix

How Fear Came-4

Down in the breakfast room Trix was sidling towards Auntie.

‘I won’t have to be away for very long, will I?’ she asked.

‘There now, that’s considerate. Not like some. You’ll miss me, won’t you, darling?’

Shivering, Trix replied, ‘Yes Auntie. Auntie, do I have to go?’

Auntie looked pleased, though she repeated mournfully, ‘It’s not for us to argue with the likes of Mrs. Burne-Jones.’

Trix couldn’t help noticing that Auntie told all her friends about ‘my letter from Mrs. Burne-Jones in London,’ but in a pleased voice, as though it had made her happy. Not angry at all.

She pushed that away and with it the thought of Christmas.

In early December, under the wing of Aunt Georgie’s outside man, the children took the train for London. They were going to stay at Aunt Georgie’s until after Ruddy’s birthday on December 30th.

Trix did wish that she was going to be ten like Ruddy.

He had told her about the big bell-pull.

‘Feeling it in my hand’s the first sign. I’m back at The Grange, with Aunt Georgie and Uncle Ned. I’ve got there. Everything’s going to be happy for days and days.’

‘You can pull it, Trix, because it’s your first time,’ he offered, as they climbed down from the hansom onto North End Road, where they stood stamping their cold feet as their bags were passed down and the driver was paid.

Trix hadn’t expected The Grange to be so big.

She would have trailed behind Ruddy but he took her hand and dragged her towards the tall front door where light gleamed behind the curved glass at the top.

Up the stone steps and though he wasn’t really much bigger, he was putting his arms round her to heave so that she could reach the iron handle. Even through her woolly winter gloves it was cold.

‘You go ahead, Master Rud, you’re getting to be a real strong ’un’, old John applauded.

The peal was still sounding when the wide panelled door flew open and a tiny dark-haired lady, not much taller than Ruddy, stood in the doorway holding out her arms.

‘My darlings, how lovely! Ruddy, dearest, and this must be Trix. How like your mother you are, darling.’

Aunt Georgie smelled of lilacs. Trix was kissed, she melted into the warm arching space of the hall and stood silent as unfamiliar hands unwrapped her scarf and deftly unbuttoned her overcoat. She hoped Aunt Georgie wouldn’t notice it was too short.

Her nose began to tickle.

‘What’s that, Ruddy?’ she whispered.

‘The tree, silly.’

And there in the drawing room stood a fir tree, high as a house. Little silver bells and golden chains hung on it, glittering and tinkling in the draught every time the door was opened. ‘Soup and chicken sandwiches first, don’t you think my dears? Why don’t you sit here by the fire and have a picnic?’

Trix felt her throat close and she shuddered. Auntie Sarah used a whole sheep’s head when she was making soup. Trix had seen one lying bloody and empty-eyed on the draining board, waiting to go in the big saucepan. She’d never been able to swallow the greasy grey porridge it turned into. Ruddy called it ‘dead dog in a puddle’. But when she looked across at him now in appeal, to her surprise she saw that he was beaming.

Then the tray was placed on a small inlaid table in front of her.

Was this clear golden liquid called soup too? She sipped. Perhaps Ruddy was right and she was going to like being here.

Before they went to bed, Uncle Ned, who was so tall he could reach all the red candles standing out on the branches, lit them and they sat in the fluttering light while Aunt Georgie read to them out of the Arabian Nights.

They were to sleep in the old night nursery.

‘You know where it is Ruddy. Go on, lead the way,’ Aunt Georgie said.

But when Trix entered the wide low room at the top of the house, she saw there were four beds tucked up under bright patterned coverlets, not two. Aunt Georgie noticed how surprised Trix was.

‘I thought you and your cousins would probably all like to sleep in the same room,’ she explained. ‘If I just put Ruddy in with Phil and you, Trix, in with Margaret, everyone would feel they were missing something. This way no-one’s left out.’

Trix quivered, not sure whether it would have been worse to have to share with this unknown Margaret or to be apart from Ruddy.

But Aunt Georgie was still speaking.

‘Margaret and Phil will be home tomorrow. But I thought Trix’s first evening with us should be a quiet one.’

‘Margaret and Phil? Oh hooray!’ Ruddy was bouncing on a field of scarlet and gold.

Aunt Georgie left a night-light burning on the table between them when she went downstairs.

‘D’you like it, Trix? It is just like I said, isn’t it?’

‘Mmm,’ Trix murmured, closing her eyes. It was all too strange. But she couldn’t say so, couldn’t say she wanted to go home.

Instead, she lay listening to Ruddy’s slow breathing, his little snorts. It seemed to remind her of something she almost knew, something that was happy. She wished they could always share a room.

Her new cousins seemed very noisy. Speaking both at once as they tumbled into the drawing room the next day, they flung themselves on Ruddy but did not cast a glance her way.

‘Children, children, aren’t you going to make cousin Trix welcome too?’ Aunt Georgie asked. ‘Come on now, Margaret.’

Close to panic, Trix realised that she didn’t know how girls talked to each other. Margaret was chattering at her nineteen to the dozen, as Auntie would say. Auntie Sarah wouldn’t like Margaret at all. Full of herself, that’s how Auntie Sarah would put it.

‘What’s your favourite instrument? And do you like skating?’ Margaret rattled off without a pause.

She didn’t wait for Trix to reply but shot off more questions. Worst of all, Ruddy seemed to like all that gabble and to like Margaret too. He was spluttering in excitement, talking just as fast, changing into a different Ruddy as she watched.

But Ruddy was really the only boy she knew. You couldn’t count Harry. How was she ever going to know what to say to big cousin Phil, who looked so grown-up in that striped waistcoat?

Trix regarded the three of them in silence, observing but feeling invisible, as though she was stuck behind a screen.

The Grange itself was unlike any other house Trix had ever seen. ‘Except it does remind me of the illustrations in my best storybooks,’ she decided. It was the high arches and the pillars, the feeling you were looking through rooms and rooms without coming to an end. Dark shining doors swung silently open at her touch. It was like the house in Beauty and the Beast. And perhaps a house could have too much space. There were days when she felt that her feet might not hold her to the floor and she would float helpless, weightless, up to the high wide ceilings.

There were flowers and leaves everywhere and not just in vases. This was something to do with Uncle Ned and his work.

‘He designed it all,’ Ruddy told her, with a grand gesture that took in the patterned paper covering every wall and the carpet that she’d been gazing at in wonder. ‘At least his friend, that fat one we call Uncle Topsy, has a company called Morris and Co. that makes beautiful things.’

Trix looked at him sceptically.

‘Uncle Ned does make designs as well as paintings,’ he added defensively. ‘Up in the studio, I’ve seen designs for stained glass.’

Trix shrugged and went back to studying the carpet. Such bright colours, pink, blue, green, all at once together and at the same time so – so carefully arranged. Like the curling, complicated willow leaves on the walls, they made her think of summer in a garden far away.

But here she was, in Fulham, with all these people she didn’t know. Uncle Ned was so dreadfully unlike anyone she’d ever met. Apart from the Reverend Mr. Sharpe at church, all Auntie Sarah’s friends were ladies. There were the men who stood behind counters and served Auntie in the shops, too. But Uncle Ned wasn’t at all like them.

The first time Trix heard Uncle Ned shout ‘It’s no good the light’s gone,’ as he burst into the drawing room, she shrank back. Trix looked quickly at Aunt Georgie. She was still smiling, but she did sound rather sharp when she spoke at first.

‘Ned, you’re frightening Trix. Do calm down.’ She turned towards Trix. ‘Uncle Ned’s come down from his studio because he’s had to stop painting for the day,’ she explained. ‘In order to paint he needs daylight. At this time of year he has to stop before he really wants to.’

It was a surprise, hearing Uncle Ned scolded, like a child, but after that she was less shy of him.

He sat down with them all and began drawing.

Trix had never seen an artist making something before. She had been deep in The Frog Prince, her new storybook, sent from India with Mama’s name in it. Trix had been dreaming over the picture of the Princess amazed to find the hopeful little frog at her door, but she laid it down. From across the room she watched the feathery beard bobbing and jerking as Uncle Ned turned first to look, then to draw.

‘Would he mind if I crept behind him?’ she wondered. It was his hand with the pencil, moving so surely over the paper, that she wanted to see.

No-one seemed to notice when she left her chair. Sliding behind the big Knole sofa, she side-stepped a low table piled with books and papers and came up behind him.

‘Hello, little bird,’ he murmured without pausing, ‘if you want to watch, fetch that stool and you’ll be more comfortable.’

After that, she sat herself down close to Uncle Ned whenever he came in to draw.

The day he took them up into his studio was the best. New smells, clean and sharp, that she’d picked up a whiff of downstairs, hit her as soon as the door ahead was opened. Like the smell of that gum on the pine tree in Auntie Sarah’s garden. She almost tripped, she was in such a hurry to see inside.

It was after tea, so Trix knew it was dark outside, but the spread of shining black glass at the end of the high room took her by surprise. No curtains. In the drawing room they’d just left, heavy folds of velvet were pulled close. But of course, when he was painting, during the day, Uncle Ned didn’t want to lose a scrap of light. Pieces of cloth, much bigger than any blanket, hung along the far wall. They seemed to be pictures of ladies and knights, made out of sewing or embroidery. Trix had just learned cross-stitch. She could see that these pictures must have taken somebody months and months, sewing all day.

While she stood taking in the place where Uncle Ned came to work, the others had rushed over to a long scarred table, littered with pieces of string, torn wrappings, brushes, cups and glasses that needed washing and tubes of what must be paint.

Uncle Ned noticed Trix staring at all the mess.

‘No-one’s allowed to clear up in here, not even your Aunt,’ he told her.

Margaret and the boys were already fingering the tubes of paint, choosing the ones they hoped they’d be allowed to use. Trix shook her head when Uncle Ned held out a brush invitingly. She was more interested in looking. It was the large paintings, stacked against the walls that attracted her. Some appeared finished, others were just faint outlines, like the idea for a new game. There were so many of them. So many beautiful ladies – such blues, such golds. Sinking to the floor, she sat back on her heels, so she could gaze more closely.