The Peppermint Pig Page 14

  Lily said, ‘Dad likes walnuts, we’d better save some for him. I wonder if he’ll be home in time to see me in the school play. Oh, I do hope so. Why are you pulling that face, Poll?’

  ‘I’m not pulling a face.’

  ‘Yes you are.’

  ‘I am not!’

  Lily said angrily, ‘Do you think I’m not going to be worth seeing? Is that it?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  But it was partly that. It seemed to Poll, suddenly, that everyone was always looking forward to something wonderful that might never happen. Lily to being a famous actress, Mother to Dad coming home, Theo to being grown up, not an odd and lonely little boy but a person with friends, Father to making his fortune…

  It was a dangerous way to go on. The only safe things to be happy about were things that were over and gone. Poll felt cold; as if she had been turned to cold stone.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ George said. Then, more urgently, ‘What’s the matter, Poll?’

  They were all staring at her. She couldn’t speak. Aunt Sarah had stopped and was coming back. She said, ‘What’s wrong with you, Poll? You look as if you’d seen a ghost.’

  ‘I can’t move,’ Poll whispered. If she took one more step something dreadful would happen.

  ‘Go on,’ Aunt Sarah said to the others. She knelt, in the dust, in her best dress, and put her arms round Poll.

  Poll leaned against her. After a minute, Aunt Sarah said, ‘Just growing pains. That’s all wrong with you.’

  Poll said, ‘All this – all this looking forward…’

  She couldn’t explain more than that. But it was no good telling Aunt Sarah. She was worse than anyone, looking into the future and hoping for so much for them all. ‘I’m frightened,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, you have to be brave to look forward,’ Aunt Sarah said. ‘Come on now, hold my hand.’ She stood up and brushed her dress down and looked at Poll keenly, as if she saw into her mind. ‘Things do go right sometimes,’ she said.

  And one most important thing did. Poll went out to tea one day after school and when she came home Father was sitting by the fire, cracking walnuts.

  She stood in the doorway and stared. For a second he looked like a stranger, quite an old man with grey in his hair, and the next he was just as he had been before he went away. He held out his arms and she ran and sat on his lap and hid her face in his shoulder. He said, ‘Oh, my baby!’ but she couldn’t speak. She was too embarrassed even to look at him and he held her tight and went on talking. They were all talking: she heard his voice, and Mother’s, and George’s, and Lily’s, and Theo’s, all running into and over each other like instruments in an orchestra playing a fine, happy tune. Father’s fingers stroked the back of her head, feeling the bone of her skull and the hollow at the back of her neck in the way he had always done. She began to feel foolish, sitting there with her face hidden, but dared not look up in case they all laughed at her.

  At last, Mother said, ‘Lily, come into the scullery and help me get supper. I want some potatoes peeled. George, you’ve got homework, haven’t you? Take it into the front room and get on with it and don’t waste any more time. And Theo – you run next door and tell them Father’s ship docked earlier than expected and he decided to turn up without sending a telegram. Just to catch us all on the hop! Isn’t that typical!’

  Doors closed. Silence, except for the creep and hiss of the fire and small, squeaky sounds as Mac dreamed in his basket. Father lifted her head away from his shoulder and said, ‘Well, what’s been happening to you?’

  She tried to think. So much – but she could only remember one thing. A little pig, sitting in a pint beer mug and squealing. A bigger pig, trotting behind Mother when she went shopping. A naughty pig, stealing Hot Cross Buns and next-door’s gooseberries. A famous pig, the talk of the Town, sitting good as gold in the drawing-room of the Manor House with his head in his hostess’s lap. A portly pig, snoozing on the doorstep in the sun…

  Johnnie, the peppermint pig, gone now like this whole, long year of her life, but fixed and safe in her mind, for ever and ever.

  She said, Johnnie’s dead.’

  Father looked at her, puzzled, but smiling. He cupped her chin in his hand and said, ‘My darling, who’s Johnnie?’