Mouse

5

Mouse

    “Buh-but where are we going?” faltered Victoria, as, having dodged down Old Short Street and then the crooked street below it, they emerged onto The Walk and her Cousin Marianne headed briskly in the direction of Mr Jenks’s butchery.

    “The boathouse—you’ll see,” replied Mouse calmly.

    True, Mouse had forced a hideous brown pelisse—very likely an old one of Niners’s or even Captain Cutlass’s—on Victoria, but then, she would not have desired to wear her good clothes to the market in any case. “I thought we were in quest of oysters for your mamma?”

    “We are,” she agreed. “The alternative is to stay home and help Cookie and the great-aunties to pickle beets.”

    Victoria flushed. Operations had already commenced on the beets: Cookie had put the first batch on to boil well before dawn, and Great-Aunty Bouncer and Great-Aunty Jicksy, the latter now fully recovered from her cold, were sitting at the kitchen table peeling and slicing them, their hands stained bright vermilion. Great-Aunty Bouncer had already admitted, cackling, that it probably wouldn’t wear off for a week—no.

    “I said I should come with you!” she said crossly. “But how far is it?”

    “Not far,” said Mouse, passing the butchery with a cheery wave to Mr Jenks. “Along here,” she explained as they carried on to the end of The Walk, where it devolved into rough gravel and then nothing but the pebbly beach. Numbly Victoria stumbled in her wake. Mouse went straight to a little wooden structure, one of several standing along the shoreline, and opened its door. A small boat was revealed. She pushed it out onto the pebbles.

    “Buh-but— Are we going in that?” gulped Victoria.

    “Of course!” panted Mouse, grinning. “It’s much quicker by water!”

    “Buh-but— Where are these oysters?” croaked Victoria.

    “Just before Sunny Bay. The rocky part of the shore.”

    “But that is part of Viscount Stamforth’s property!” she gasped in horror.

    “I dare say it is, given that he owns most of the country this side of Brighton, but so what?” replied her cousin cheerfully. “And I don’t think he can own the shore, can he?”

    Ignoring this last, Victoria gasped: “You cannot mean to steal his oysters! What if we’re caught?”

    Mouse considered it. “It depends by whom. If it should be the short, plump woman with a funny accent Captain Cutlass and I have met several times, she will probably help us.”

    “A—a funny accent?” she croaked, turning all colours of the rainbow. “Was—was she a dark lady, of perhaps thirty years of age?”

    “Yes. Though I would have said less than thirty. Why?”

    “Mouse, it must have been Lady Stamforth herself!” gasped Victoria.

    “Not in what she was wearing, I do assure you,” replied Mouse drily. “Well, it wasn’t as bad as what Captain Cutlass was wearing, I’ll grant you that! Does the Viscountess have a funny accent?”

    “Yes, for she is half-Portuguese, and grew up abroad. I have not spoken to her myself, but Mamma has, at several parties in Brighton.”

    “I dare say it was some servant of hers, in that case,” said Mouse calmly. “She helped us gather chestnuts and oysters, a couple of times. Then another time it was a thin, dark man in his mid-years—not a viscount, before you start, he was in gaiters, a very worn coat, and patched breeches—and a burly fellow with a patch over one eye in an even more worn coat and similar breeches. As they had shot-guns, I leave it to your imagination to decide what they were up to in Viscount Stamforth’s chestnut wood! They did not help gather, merely advised us on the best spots and wished us luck.”

    Victoria just looked at her limply.

    “Come on. Push!” said Mouse, pushing energetically.

    Victoria was so thoroughly disconcerted by it all that she did. They had the boat at the water’s edge when a husky voice said from behind them: “Lemme launch ’er, dearies,” and Victoria leapt and yelped.

    A ragged, whiskery ancient in battered sea-boots had appeared from goodness-knew-where and now stood sucking his pipe and looking at them with interest.

    “Hullo, Mr Rattle!” beamed Mouse.

    “Ah,” he replied, briefly removing the pipe. “’Oo’s this, then?”

    “This is our cousin, Victoria Formby,” explained Mouse.

    Limply Miss Victoria accepted an introduction to Mr Rattle, late of His Majesty’s Royal Navy.

    Ordering the two girls into the boat, Mr Rattle then pushed them off, and stood waving, as Mouse expertly rowed out to sea.

    “Hang on tight!” she ordered cheerfully, as they reached the point. Victoria had not needed the injunction: she was already hanging on like grim death. The little boat rounded the point, heading west, and rocked madly. Victoria shut her eyes.

    “’S’all—right!” gasped Mouse, pulling with all her strength. “Tide’s—on—turn!”

    And suddenly the mad rocking stopped, and they proceeded on smoothly. Cautiously Victoria opened her eyes. “Where are we?”

    “Just about there. This rocky shore is the bit before Sunny Bay, see?”

    Victoria did see. She was absolutely positive it was all Lord Stamforth’s land!

    “It’s quite safe, there are no dangerous currents round here. Here we go!”

    Victoria watched the subsequent grounding of the boat and her cousin’s removal of her shoes and, shockingly, not ladies’ stockings but boys’ heavy knitted stockings, with a sort of numbed horror.

    “The alternative is to wade in one’s shoes and suffer from wet feet for the rest of the day,” noted Mouse.

    “When Mamma and I came on a picknick to Sunny Bay, a gentleman carried me from the little boat,” said Victoria very, very faintly.

    “Then it’s a pity we don’t have a gentleman or two in our pockets,” replied Mouse, but quite kindly. “You’ll have to get out, I need to pull the boat up onto the beach and I can’t do it with you in it.”

    So Victoria removed her shoes and stockings, clambered out of the boat, shrieking and gasping at the cold, and, holding her skirts up very high, paddled ashore.

    Mouse pulled the boat well up, to boot digging its little anchor well into the sand. “Here,” she said heavily, passing her cousin a rag with which to dry her feet. Clearly this whole expedition had been a mistake and she should have taken Captain Cutlass’s advice and left Victoria behind, never mind if she fell prey to the tender mercies of the beet picklers, but Ma had privily reminded her, after finding Victoria in lone state in the front parlour struggling with Pride and Prejudice the other afternoon, that they must not neglect their cousin and that the girl looked as if she could do with some fresh air.

    “You may sit in the boat, if you like,” she added kindly.

    Thankfully Victoria clambered back into the little boat.

    The baskets were soon full of likely-looking ones, enough to slake even Little Joe’s appetite for oysters, so Mouse returned to the boat and the pouting Victoria.

    “Hurry up, Mouse!” she hissed crossly. “I am positive I heard voices just then!”

    “Up there?” said Mouse, squinting up at the slope behind them. “You can see the chestnut woods up there: see? But you can’t get up to them this way. Hop out, we need to push, but if you jump in once it’s moving I can do the rest.”

    Having once again removed her shoes and stockings, Victoria managed this manoeuvre, though she could never afterwards have said how, exactly.

    “But this is the wrong way!” she gasped as they headed not towards home but for the further point.

    “Sunny—Bay!” grunted her cousin. “Picknick!”

    But it was not the weather for— And they had not permission— Oh, no!

    The boat rocked again, Victoria gasped and grabbed at the sides, Mouse rowed hard, and very soon they were in calm waters.

    “It’s safe to open your eyes again,” said Mouse on a dry note.

    Victoria did so, and winced. They were in a charming little bay, well sheltered by sufficiently high points at either arm, and to the rear by a gentle slope. Set against this slope on wide rolling lawns was a small wooden house, about the size of a farmhouse. Sunny Bay House, the property of Viscount Stamforth. She had been here as one of a large party on a sea-going yacht who had come round from Brighton and landed to picknick in the bay with the express permission of his Lordship. She did know that the house normally stood empty except for sometimes in summer, when friends of his Lordship’s family might occupy it, but strangely this was but small consolation.

    “It’s empty,” said Mouse cheerfully.

    “How can you be sure?” asked Victoria very, very faintly.

    “The curtains and blinds are all drawn and the chimneys aren’t smoking. Come on, you’ll have to paddle again.”

    Faintly Victoria protested it was not the weather for picknicks, but was ignored, with a passing reminder that the alternative was the beet pickling. And the boat was pulled ashore, and wet feet dried again. Mouse then announced she would fetch some dry firewood from Sunny Bay House’s stable block.

    “What?” faltered Victoria.

    “Fetch some— Oh. It’s ours, Victoria, Captain Cutlass and I put it there earlier in the year. The stable is never used,” she added heavily. “And would Lord Stamforth know or care if we did steal his firewood?”

    “Thuh—there are severe penalties for stealing a landowner’s wood, Cousin!” she stuttered. “Papa’s man caught a fellow one year, but Papa said he would let him off with a caution, for he did not agree with the severity of the law in this instance.”

    “Good for him!” said Mouse fiercely.

    “I dare say, but good gracious, Mouse! We are trespassing, and how could you ever prove the wood is yours if we are caught?”

    Not bothering to say it technically wasn’t theirs, as they’d stolen it from Lord Stamforth’s stand of chestnuts in the first instance, Mouse replied heavily: “No-one ever comes here at this time of year, Victoria.”

    Mouse had competently built the fire and lit it with her tinder-box, their toes were toasting—and Victoria had cheered up perceptibly, even though the old rug they were sitting on was not very clean—when voices were heard.

    “Don’t panic,” said Mouse as Victoria began to panic. “It’s them, I expect! Yes!” she cried, waving, as a group of three persons came round the house and onto the field.

    Victoria sagged in relief. They could not possibly be members of Lord Stamforth’s family! There was a plump, dark-haired woman in a battered chip hat and a very old frock-coat—a man’s coat, not a lady’s—over a pinned-up black skirt which revealed a startling scarlet petticoat, a hatless young woman with shiny black hair in a long, thick braid, wearing a dingy grey pelisse topped by a heavy knitted brown shawl, and a small girl of perhaps nine or ten years of age, distinguished chiefly by the wearing of a red muffler wound round the head as well as the neck and by copious quantities of mud on the skirts.

    “Hullo, Nan!” cried Mouse.

    “Hullo, Mouse!” cried the older woman. She came up to them, smiling. “We deed not theenk we would see you, so late een the year!”

    “No, it’s too late for chestnuts; but we’ve been getting oysters round on the rocks,” explained Mouse. “This is my cousin, Victoria.”

    “Hullo, Victoria!” beamed the woman, pronouncing the name with a long “I”: “Veectoria”, really. “I am Nan, and thees ees my sister: her name ees vairy hard for the English tongues, so you may call her Rita! And thees ees my Rosebud!”

    “That is too soppy,” said Rosebud with a scowl.

    “Eendeed eet ees,” agreed the pretty, plump Nan happily, “and Jack ees so much preferable!”

    “Aye. Call me Jack,” ordered the child tersely.

    Victoria blinked. “Er—of course, if you wish, Jack.”

    “Did you get some good uns, Mouse?” added the child.

    “Yes, huge! Want to look?”

    Happily the grubby little girl went to look at the baskets of oysters in the boat.

    Nan spread out their own rug and she and Rita sat down on it by the fire. “Shall I put a leetle more wood on, Victoria?” asked Rita shyly.

    Victoria jumped. “Um, well, yes, if you think so.” She watched limply as Rita added more branches from Mouse’s pile. She was, really, the most exotic creature she had ever laid eyes on! The hair incredibly black, and so shiny, and she had huge, slanted black eyes and a pouting, curved, ruby-red mouth; and, though her skin was a pale olive, darker than her big sister’s, her cheeks were dusted with an apricot-pink blush. They certainly must be some of Lady Stamforth’s Portuguese servants: nothing that exotic-looking could ever have been spawned from English stock!

    “There!” beamed Nan. “Now we may have our snack, I theenk?”

    The bundle Mouse had brought proved to be merely a giant slice of cold meat-and-tater pie and a slab of cheddar, but Nan and Rita had the most amazing selection of foods! One packet was full of what at first glance looked like tiny cold pies, but they were not, they were little fried bundles containing—well, neither of the cousins could honestly have said what. A mixture of something very spicy.

    “Eet’s a mixture of rice and—what ees dal, again?” said Nan to her relatives.

    “Lentils or pulses,” said the child with a sigh.

    “Oh, yes,” she said placidly. “These are red lentils, I theenk. Weeth spices. You see?”

    They were about to agree that they saw when Jack added helpfully: “Jeeruh, mainly.”

    “Yes, but I do not theenk there ees an English word,” returned Nan.

    Mouse and Victoria nodded feebly.

    “These are good, too,” said Jack, unwrapping another bundle and urging it upon them.

    “Potato balls,” explained Rita. “English people do not always like them.”

    Mouse tried one immediately. “Mm!” The flattened, fried balls had some sort of faintly spicy, crunchy coating.

    “Een thees pot there ees beet peeckle, but English people often do not like eet, either,” murmured Nan, taking a potato ball and spooning out some pickle onto it.

    Mouse’s and Victoria’s eyes met. Simultaneously they collapsed with shrieks of laughter, Mouse then explaining very unsteadily that one of the reasons they had chosen today for their expedition was to escape the beet pickling that was going on in the kitchen.

    “We know exactly what you mean!” agreed Nan, shuddering.

    “I like this pickle,” noted Jack, spooning a large amount onto her little fried savoury pie.

    “Yes, but eet’s different from the English beet peeckle,” explained Rita.

    After that of course the girls had to try it.

    “It’s wonderful!” gasped Mouse in astonishment. Unlike the Formby beet pickle, which was very plain, done sliced in vinegar and sugar, the beets in this pickle had been finely chopped or minced, and the mixture was thick and very sweet but with an admixture of sour that she was not absolutely sure was vinegar, and also very, very spicy: there were definitely cloves and cinnamon in it, but she could not have said what all the other exotic tastes were. And in addition to the beets, some raisins were included.

    “Indeed! I would not have said it was beets at all, apart from the colour,” agreed Victoria.

    “There ees another peeckle een thees other jar,” admitted Rita, “but vairy few English people care for eet.”

    This pickle was bright yellow and oily-looking, and consisted of fair-sized pieces of cauliflower mixed with a few slices of lemon.

    “Ma’s fish soup is that colour,” admitted Mouse, eyeing it cautiously.

    “Rita, eet may be too hot for them,” murmured Nan.

    Mouse tried it anyway. “Ooh! Very hot—but good!” she gasped.

    Blushing awkwardly, Victoria refused the yellow pickle.

    Jack then unwrapped some small, very English pork pies and although normally Miss Victoria Formby would have spurned this fare as fit only for working people she was very glad to have Rita—fending off Jack and her pocket-knife—cut them in half and share them round. Jack ate hers with cauliflower pickle and Nan hers with beet pickle but Victoria, for one, was very pleased to see Rita eating hers without exotic pickle of any sort.

    Mouse had merely shoved some apples in her pockets as a dessert, but Nan, Rita and Jack had brought three packets of delicious snacks. There were some custard tarts, some fried curly pastries dusted with icing sugar, and some curious pale pink triangles: some sort of sweetmeat.

    “The tarts are English, the fried pastries Portuguese, and the peenk barfees Indian: and so, you see, they represent our entire heritage!” said Nan gaily, not perceiving that her sister was giving her a warning look.

    The Formby girls, however, however, noticed nothing odd about a serving-woman’s using the expression “our heritage” and asked eagerly about the strange pink sweetmeats, whereupon Nan explained that they were merely milk, boiled down, sweetened with sugar, and flavoured with rosewater—and she had forgot the word for the colouring. The girls ate them dazedly. It was scarce conceivable that such a simple-sounding receet could result in something so entirely delicious!

    “We thought you must be some of Lady Stamforth’s Portuguese servants,” admitted Mouse, smiling at them.

    “You are vairy nearly almost correct!” returned Nan with her soft, gurgling laugh. “We are but half-Portuguese—at least, Rita and I; Jack ees one quarter, of course. But although I was born een Portugal, my brothers and sisters and I grew up een India, where our father took us when I was vairy leetle.”

    “In the Portuguese settlement on the West coast of India, would this be?” Mouse asked with great interest.

    “Yes. I spoke two Indian languages as well as Portuguese by the time I was five; and een fact English ees really only my fourth language!” she said gaily.

    “It sounds really fascinating!” said Mouse eagerly.

    “Indeed! I suppose you saw, um, snake charmers and—and elephants?” asked Victoria.

    “Eennumerable snake charmers, my dear, each one more rascally than the last, and thousands of elephants!”

    “I used to help look after our elephants,” said Rita with a little sigh. “I was tairribly fond of them…”

    “Yes, but you know they would have hated cold, wet England,” said Nan with an anxious look.

    “It must have been a wrench, indeed, when her Ladyship decided to leave India,” said Victoria kindly.

    Jack swallowed quickly. “No! She wasn’t a ladyship, then!”

    “No, but never mind,” said Nan quickly. “Eet was certainly a wrench, but there was no help for eet.”

    “And we have been vairy happy een England,” said Rita, patting her hand.

    “Of course!” she smiled. “And Jack would not ever have been born had I not come to England.”

    “No,” agreed Jack, looking fixedly at the last pink barfee.

    Politely Nan offered it to the Formbys but they disclaimed all interest in it, and Jack was allowed to finish it.

    “What is the thing you miss most about India?” Mouse then asked thoughtfully.

    Victoria pinkened. “Mouse!” she hissed.

    “Mm? Oh—I’m sorry,” she apologised. “I get absorbed in the subject—it’s a Formby family trait—and overlook what feelings I may be trampling upon. Forget I asked.”

    “No, no! Een any case I am just the same!” admitted Nan with a laugh.

    “Yes, she ees,” agreed Rita.

    “Eet ees vairy easy to say what I miss most—though I dare say you may not believe me, because eef you have not been there, you cannot imagine eet: eet ees,” said Nan, her lustrous dark brown eyes very far away: “the smells.”

    The English girls looked at her blankly. “The smells?” croaked Mouse.

    “Yes…” She sighed deeply. “Smoke from the dung fires, and spices frying, and fruit rotting, and incense from the temples and shrines… And the scent of the flowers,” she said, smiling at the puzzled English faces. “But eet’s so vairy much more than just pretty flowers!”

    “Fruit rotting?” croaked Mouse.

    “Yes. Not like a rotten apple. I cannot possibly describe eet… Tropical fruits smell nothing like your English fruits, at all.”

    “She claims,” said Jack on a detached note, “that they smell rotten in any case.”

    “Yes, an almost rotten smell ees vairy typical of tropical fruits,” Rita agreed. “The people eat the mangoes when they are een season and just throw the stones and skins to the ground… I miss the smells, too, but I miss the elephants more. Ours were so friendly and gentle.”

    “If a horse or dog can have a personality I suppose an elephant can,” allowed Jack fairly.

    “You—you don’t mean they were like pets?” croaked Mouse.

    “But of course,” said Rita serenely.

    The girls looked weakly at Nan. “Yes. Vairy deesteenct personalities,” she confirmed, smiling.

    Jack appeared to consider this closed the topic of India, for she then put Mouse under close interrogation about Captain Cutlass’s whereabouts today and the doings of the rest of the family. And, since the day was now well advanced, they all gathered up their baskets and made their farewells, with many kind messages of remembrance to Captain Cutlass.

    “Were they not so exotic?” sighed Victoria, hardly noticing the rocking of the boat. “I have never seen anything like those eyes and hair of Rita’s!”

    “Yes, though I would say Nan is prettier,” replied Mouse.

    “She is very beautiful, but not near so extraordinary-looking! Were they with Nan before?”

    “A couple of times, yes, but the first time we met her she was by herself. Gathering mushrooms: she had a basketful of them,” explained Mouse.

    “Ugh, Mouse, would she know an English mushroom from a toadstool, though?”

    “She ain’t dead yet!” replied Mouse with a laugh. “No, well, perhaps the husband sorted them out, or mayhap they were for the cook at the castle, and she sorted them out!”

    “Ye-es… Would they not have a French chef?”

    “No notion! It’s not me that’s seen her Ladyship!” Mouse reminded her cheerfully.

    Victoria went rather pink. “Only at a distance. It was a very large reception and she was at the far side of the room with”—she swallowed—“His Grace of Wellington.”

    “Really? You have seen Wellington?” cried Mouse with shining eyes.

    “Ye-es… Papa does not wholly approve of his politics,” she said uncertainly.

    “Nor do I, but that don’t mean he is not the greatest soldier of our time, and the Hero of Waterloo! What is he like?” she asked eagerly.

    “Well, as I say, dear Cousin,” she faltered, “it was a very large reception. And of course we were not presented to His Grace. Um… Tall. And one could perceive the famous hooked nose, even, um, even from across the room.”

    “Fat or thin?” asked Mouse, grinning at her.

    “Very slim and upright,” said Victoria, blushing.

    “His caricatures don’t do him justice, then!” she said with a laugh.

    “No. Um, actually, if it is not to be fanciful, Nan rather reminded me of Lady Stamforth. Um, well, the same sort of figure, and the same dark curls.”

    “That is not unlikely, if they are both half-Portuguese!” said Mouse cheerfully.

    “Yes. –I thought they were very nicely spoken, for servants.”

    “Once one got past the foreign accents?” replied Mouse with a twinkle in her eye. “Well, yes. I expect they are indoor servants. Did you like them?”

    “Yes, I did,” said Victoria bravely.

    Mouse’s eyes twinkled again, but she merely replied: “Good.”

    As the boat neared the shore on its return journey Victoria, who had fallen silent, sighed and said: “Mouse, you are so intrepid.”

    Mouse blinked. “Me?”

    “Yes. I would have expected it of Captain Cutlass. But you know how to row a boat and—and everything!”

    Mouse smiled. “Thank you, but it’s far from everything!”

    “You have hidden depths,” she pronounced solemnly.

    “No!” said Mouse with a startled laugh. “I am just lucky to have grown up in a family that loves boats and encourages their girls as much as their boys to puddle about in ’em!”

    Victoria shook her head firmly, unconvinced.

    Mouse waited but, as she had expected, Victoria did not follow this up by a request to learn to row. Her shrewd grey eyes twinkled, but she said nothing.

    “Should have drowned her while you had the chance,” noted Captain Cutlass next morning, Victoria having reminded Mouse that she had “absolutely promised” to come shopping today.

    “Ssh! –I suppose I can’t get out of it,” she admitted glumly.

    “Short of changing your entire nature—no,” recognised Captain Cutlass, tying a muffler round her neck. “I’m off!”

    The expected dawdling along The Front duly took place, Mouse trying valiantly to conceal her boredom. She was aware that her cousin was looking hopefully for fashionable young gentlemen, but as it was fairly clear that there was nothing to be done about it, did not worry her head over it—in especial as, on a grey, windy day in Waddington-on-Sea, there were no young gentlemen visible.

    Eventually Victoria gave up on The Front and headed for the shops in the High Street. Mouse followed along resignedly. There were some interesting shops in Waddington-on-Sea: a second-hand bookseller’s whose offerings were all sadly in want of Pa’s ministrations, and some fascinating emporia that were definitely on the junk side of curiosity—but none of them were in the High Street, and certainly not at the fashionable end of it. Victoria became transfixed by a piece of lace and some lilac kid gloves in Mr Gates’s window. Mouse already knew that as Victoria was the sort of girl who threw her pin money away on rubbish as soon as it was received she did not have the money for these items. She waited resignedly for the inevitable decision to go in and just—

    Victoria had almost persuaded herself to go in when an excited little voice squeaked: “Hullo, Mouse! Hullo, Victoria!” And there was a beaming Jack, today very respectable in a shortish brown pelisse over a grey gown, with a grey winter bonnet over her brown curls. Though the red muffler featured at the neck. The appearance of the person whose hand she was holding mitigated somewhat against the impression of respectability, however. He was a wide-shouldered, burly man with a patch over one eye. His chin was square, pugnacious and very, very blue, and his nose did not give the lie to the pugnacity of the chin. Broken at least three times, would have been Mouse’s guess. His clothes were unremarkable, and quite neat and clean, if shabby, as was his low-crowned beaver. He removed this and made a clumsy bow, revealing a head covered by a red-spotted kerchief.

    Mouse had brightened very much, not noticing that Victoria was shrinking. “Why, hullo, Jack! We did not expect to see you again so soon! Are Nan and Rita in town too?”

    “No, just me,” admitted Jack regretfully. “This is Mr Poulter. These are Mouse and Victoria: see! I said we would meet them!”

    Beaming, Mouse held out her hand.

    Mr Poulter was gripping Jack’s hand with his left. He released her, transferred the beaver into that hand, wiped the right down the side of his breeches, and shook hands carefully. “Pleased to meet yer, Miss.”

    In spite of the growly voice, Mouse smiled upon him, reminded him that they had met before, and prompted her cousin to shake hands.

    A lady, of course, did not shake the hand of a person of the opposite sex, let alone one of his class. “Yuh-yes,” faltered Victoria. “How do you do?”

    Mr Poulter shook hands, replying cheerfully: “Not so dusty, Miss, considerink. Poor sort of place, ain’t it? But then, I’m a man as is used to London town, and seeing things busy about ’im!”

    “Indeed, it cannot compare to London,” agreed Victoria faintly.

    The burly Mr Poulter looked at her with considerable amusement but refrained from comment.

    “Are you going to go into this shop?” asked Jack with friendly interest.

    “Well, the gloves are pretty,” she said wistfully.

    “Victoria, I don't think you have enough pin money left,” said Mouse detachedly.

    “No.” Sadly Victoria turned away from the window.

    “There’s much better shops up that way!” urged Jack. “Last time we were in town, I saw a whale’s tooth in a shop up there!”

    “Mr Timmins’s, I expect,” agreed Mouse. “I dare say we could stroll in that direction.”

    “Ooh, good!” Jack set off with a hop and skip.

    Hastily Mr Poulter replaced his hat and recaptured her hand. “Her ma done tole me, not to leggo of ’er for a h’instant,” he said heavily to the two girls.

    “Very wise!” agreed Mouse with a giggle.

    “Aye. Last time we come over, she ’ad a bucket—that were in summer,” he explained.

    “Yes?” said Mouse with a smile.

    “Some idjit, what I won’t name,” he noted awfully, “had told ’er that seaweed and ’orse muck was good for roses. What we got ’orse muck comink out our ears, up the castle,” he explained. “So first orf she drags me down the beach and fills the bucket with seaweed: it was so blamed ’eavy that she couldn’t lift it. Then she roars acos I tells ’er to dump ’alf of it. Then she roars acos I give ’er the choice of dumpink ’alf of it, or ’aving me carry it for ’er. So she chooses the lesser of the two h’evils, and guess what muggins ends up lugging the blamed thing the rest of the day?”

    Mouse collapsed in giggles. “But why did you take her down to the beach first instead of last, Mr Poulter?” she gasped, mopping her eyes.

    “Acos I thought as she wanted to play nice on the sands!” he replied aggrievedly.

    Mouse collapsed in giggles all over again.

    “Added to which, by mid-afternoon it’d begun to stink like nobody’s business, that seaweed were full of h’animiles!”

    “Yes!” she gasped helplessly. “It would be!”

    “Yer gotta watch ’er like a ’awk,” explained Mr Poulter redundantly. “She were such a pretty baby, too: real dainty, a real little rosebud, just like ’er name.”

    “Mr Poulter,” murmured Mouse, smiling very much, “it is a stage.”

    “Aye. So they say,” he said heavily.

    Jack, meanwhile, had spotted Mrs Glory’s, and was pulling strongly on his hand. Over the last several years, though Mouse could remember it in her youth as nothing but a pastrycook’s, this establishment had developed into a dainty tea shop for the delectation of the gentry. The lady mayoress was frequently to be found therein.

    “Gawdelpus,” muttered Mr Poulter in dismay as the net curtains, dainty skreens and etcetera burst upon his dazed mind.

    “The tea is quite acceptable,” offered Victoria helpfully.

    Mouse took a deep breath. “Victoria, I know you like the place, but we may come another d— What is it?” she said, as Jack gasped and recoiled.

    “Nothing!” she lied quickly, very red. “Come on, I know a better place that has meat pies!”

    Mr Poulter took a cautious look past the curtains and etcetera, and winced. “You can ’ave one small meat pie,” he said firmly.

    “As well as a bun?”

    Mr Poulter looked hopefully at Mouse. “Wotcher fink?”

    “A small meat pie and a bun sounds reasonable,” she said primly.

    “Good,” he said, sagging. “Last time I let ’er eat too much and she cast up ’er accounts on the way ’ome.”

    “That was that green apple!” protested Jack indignantly.

    “And the rest. Come on, think the place is up the far end of the street somewheres.”

    “Next the saddlery!” Jack reminded him.

    “Oh, right, so ’tis.”

    And the party proceeded on its way, Jack looking eager, Mr Poulter looking resigned, Mouse smiling, and Victoria looking dazed.

    “’Andy,” said Mr Poulter as they reached the saddlery and next it “J. Tewkesbury, Pastrycook.”

    “In what way?” asked Mouse with a lurking twinkle.

    “Like, first yer brings yer nag to the saddlery, then if it’s ’ad it, yer passes it on to Mr Tewkesbury, what turns it into a nice meat pie!”

    “Hah, hah,” said Jack stolidly. “I’ve got sixpence.”

    “I’m buying,” returned Mr Poulter calmly. “Pies all round, is it?”

    “No—please!” gasped Victoria.

    “I’ll just have a bun, thanks,” said Mouse with a grin.

    Mr Poulter pressed his nose to the window. “They got jam tarts. Like a jam tart, Miss Victoria?”

    Weakly Victoria gave in to the jam tarts, even though there was nowhere to sit in the little shop and they would have to eat in the street. What would Mamma say?

    The feast was consumed with noses pressed to the saddlery’s window. Jack then gave in entirely and hurried inside “to see the man at work”, only to reappear two seconds later, face very red.

    “Slung you out, did ’e?” said Mr Poulter.

    “No, a horrid boy did,” she growled.

    Mr Poulter sniffed. “Come on, then,” he said, grabbing her hand. “Dessay we might find this whale’s tooth.”

    Jack brightened. “Ooh, good!” And the party hurried on.

    The curiosity shop run by one, T. Timmins, was very small and dingy, down a small, dingy alley. Victoria held her skirts to her tightly but apparently found accompanying them inside to be preferable to standing alone on the pavement. Of course the whale’s tooth was priced far beyond the reach of any of them, but Jack was not here to buy, merely for the immense treat of seeing. Mr Timmins, a short, thin, elderly man of a somewhat dusty appearance—rather like his stock—fortunately did not seem to mind showing her. Naturally many other curiosities abounded, and soon Victoria was looking about her as eagerly as the rest of them.

    Mouse voted her own discovery, a moulting blue bird in a small gilded cage which did not sing, the best, but Mr Poulter maintained strongly that his find, a brass wheel about as wide as his hand and with a section of its rim missing, must be the best. Being as how it was ’ard to see what it once might of done, and it certainly didn’t do nothing now! Victoria’s find, a small varnished wooden box, was about to be voted down when Victoria pointed out proudly that it didn’t open! Nor it did, so it was voted very nearly as good as the non-singing bird and the functionless broken wheel. Finally, however, Jack found it. The exhibit. First in its class and Best in Show. It was a grimy lady’s glove. The left. With the thumb cut out of it. Even though Mouse admitted that Trottie True had once used a finger of an old glove with a pinhole in it as an emergency feeding bottle for a white mouse, she had to allow that the glove as it stood was unsurpassed and unsurpassable. Victoria then, giggling, held out a penny for it but as Mr Timmins maintained the thing was worth twopence, retracted the offer. And they reeled out of the shop and fell about on the pavement, sniggering helplessly.

    “Well!” said a cheerful male voice. “So it was you we spotted earlier! You are all very merry!”

    Jack yelped, Mr Poulter choked, Victoria gasped and clapped a hand to her mouth, and Mouse, mopping her eyes, looked round in astonishment as two fashionable young gentlemen came up to them.

    The taller, a good-looking brown-haired fellow with twinkling dark brown eyes, doffed his hat with elaborate courtesy and added to Jack: “Would this be the place with the famous whale’s tooth, Jack, old fellow?”

    Jack was very red. She gave Mr Poulter a desperate look.

    That worthy cleared his throat with a rumbling noise. “Just come over ’ere, young gents,” he said, grasping the young men by the elbows and drawing them both aside.

    A low-voiced colloquy then took place, punctuated by one or two yelps of laughter from the young gentlemen.

    “Mouse,” hissed Victoria in dismay, “I think they must be two of the gentlemen from the castle!”

    The fancy greatcoat the taller was wearing certainly indicated as much, not to say their neckcloths and boots. “Mm. Well, we cannot run, so we shall have to bear it.”

    “In a street like this? What would Mamma say?” she lamented.

    Apparently the suitability of the young gentlemen was not in question. Mouse raised her eyebrows, but said nothing.

    “I’ve told ’em to be’ave,” announced Mr Poulter, returning.

    “Indeed he has, and we have promised to be on our very best behaviour,” said the brown-haired young man solemnly. “Pray allow me to introduce myself.” He removed his hat again and bowed once more. “Richard Baldaya, very much at your service, young ladies.”

    “’Er Ladyship’s younger brother,” explained Mr Poulter glumly. “Dessay they’ll ’ave me guts for garters when we gets ’ome.”

    “You could not know we would bump into these two sillies!” cried Jack, glaring at them.

    Mouse looked dubiously from her to the young gentleman with the Portuguese surname, and back again. They were oddly alike: the same shade of glossy brown hair with golden lights in it, falling in little curls in just the same way over the brow—though Jack had wide grey eyes, not dark brown, and a round face, where the young man’s was much longer from temple to jaw. Er—no, it must just be a coincidence.

    “Um—yes, how do you do!” she said quickly. “I am Mouse Formby, and this is my cousin, Victoria Formby.”

    Mr Baldaya bowed politely to them both, but then said to Mouse with a twinkle: “Mouse?”

    “It is a pet name,” she said lamely. “We use it all the time in the family. My name is Marianne, sir.”

    “That is very pretty,” he said, smiling. He then, with quite unnecessary formality—it was clear he was greatly enjoying the situation—presented his friend, Mr Ramón Ainsley. Mouse could not forbear to stare, a little: Ramón? Mr Ainsley did have very dark eyes, but with a head of blazing red curls and a pale, rather freckled complexion. She would have put him down as being as English as she was herself.

    “No-one calls him that!” explained Jack quickly.

    “No, they call me Bungo, in the family,” he said with a grin. “Is that better or worse than Mouse, Miss Formby?”

    “About the same, I think!” she admitted with a laugh.

    “Mr Ainsley has been to India,” Jack then informed the company.

    “Aye,” he said with a rueful grimace. “Always wanted to join the East India Company, since I was a brat. So they sent me out, I came down with some frightful tropical fever, and they decided my constitution would never support the climate, and brought me home again. Offered me a position in the London office, very decent of them, but I turned it down: not my ambition to sit in a stuffy office in a stuffy city for the rest of my natural.”

    Victoria had now realized—not that it was not dreadful enough, meeting Lady Stamforth’s brother under such circumstances—just who this Mr Ainsley must be. “They—they do say the climate of India is most deleterious to the English constitution, sir,” she faltered.

    “Exact, Miss Formby,” he said with another grimace.

    “So what shall you do now, sir?” asked Mouse politely, feeling very sorry for him and not worrying her head at all over who his family might be.

    “We-ell… Lord Stamforth is trying to encourage her Ladyship to write a memoir on her youth in India, and there is some notion that I might edit it for her.”

    “That sounds fascinating!” said Joe Formby’s daughter eagerly. “And has she found a publisher yet?”

    “Uh—no. Well, privately published, think the notion is.”

    “But there is a growing market for such memoirs!” she cried. “Why, just the other day Ma was reading the journal of a lady who went out to India by way of Egypt, and even though it was not at all well written, it was already in its fifth printing!”

    “There you are,” said Mr Baldaya, grinning at his friend. “Now persuade Nuh—uh—persuade her to get down to it, in between all the dashed rout parties and dances with Old Hooky!”

    “Yes. Well, I shall sort through your papa’s sketches, perhaps that will encourage her, but I must say, if her Ladyship do not have the impulse, the thing will not work, Richard.”

    “She seemed keen when Lewis proposed it. My plan would be to stop her dashing up to London next year: keep her nose to the grindstone!”

    “She won’t let ’is Lordship go up to town by ’isself,” stated Mr Poulter definitely.

    Mouse could see that Victoria was now looking quite at a loss. “Er—yes,” she said, clearing her throat. “Possibly you could write a draft, Mr Ainsley, and then her Ladyship could fill in the details?”

    “That is an excellent idea!” he smiled.

    “Aye, that’s the ticket!” agreed Mr Baldaya.

    “I shall try it,” said Mr Ainsley determinedly. “Thank you so much for your helpful suggestions, Miss Formby.”

    “Me?” croaked Mouse. “Not at all, sir!”

    “Assure you,” he said, offering her his arm. His dark eyes sparkled. “Dare say her Ladyship will be happy to express her thanks in the prefatory matter.”

    “Of course!” said Mouse cordially. “Three pages of elaborate encomium, not a single word of which shall be less than five syllables, surmounted by a scroll and finished with a lozenge bearing your joint coats of arms!”

    “That’s the ticket!” agreed Mr Ainsley ecstatically.

    Mr Baldaya watched with a little startled frown on his handsome face as his red-headed friend and Miss Mouse walked off together laughing and chatting amiably. But made a quick recover and offered his arm to Miss Victoria.

    Very naturally Mrs Glory’s tea house impeded their progress back to the Front with a demand to be patronised, and even though the two young men had already taken tea therein and even though Mr Poulter’s party had had pies, buns or jam tarts, they yielded to force majeure and went in—though not without a warning to Miss Jack that she might eat one small cake or tart. Mr Baldaya and Mr Ainsley then insisted on escorting the young ladies back to their door—Mr Baldaya this time firmly taking Mouse’s arm and pre-empting his friend.

    “Mouse,” said Victoria in a hollow voice as they went into the parlour to remove their bonnets: “do you realize who they were?”

    Mouse had gone over to the front windows. “Mm?” she said vaguely, watching as Mr Baldaya, laughing very much, bowed Jack and Mr Poulter into Old Short Street. “Young gentlemen from Stamforth Castle, obviously.”

    “Mouse! In addition to Mr Baldaya’s being her Ladyship’s brother himself,” she said impressively, “I am very sure that Mr Ainsley is the gentleman whose sister is married to the Marquis of Rockingham!”

    This effort fell flat. “She’d be a marchioness, then,” said Mouse.

    “Mouse! How can you! Lord Rockingham is one of the greatest gentlemen in the land!”

    “And you have glimpsed him across the width of an huge reception room,” said Mouse drily.

    “What? No! I have never laid eyes on him in my life! Be serious!”

    “Um, I’m sorry, Victoria. They seemed all right to me,” she offered lamely.

    “All right! They must be two of the most eligible gentlemen in England, and to meet them, so!” she cried in anguish.

    “The street was shabby, I suppose, but anyone may look in a curiosity shop, after all. Or do you mean in Mr Poulter’s company?”

    “That as well,” said Victoria grimly. “Mamma will be unspeakably horrified!”

    “Really? She must be a most unusual mamma, then, for are they not more like to be thrilled when an unwed daughter meets the brothers of a viscountess and a marchioness? –Or possibly, in order of precedence, vice versa.”

    “You are not being serious!” wailed Victoria.

    Mouse stuck her little pointed chin out. “No, because I don’t see there is anything to fuss over. If we had not been there, and with Mr Poulter and little Jack, we should never have met them at all. Would that be better?”

    Victoria bit her lip. “Well, no.”

    “Quite. But if you don’t think your mamma would approve, don’t tell her.”

    Victoria put her bonnet on a table and sat down slowly. After a moment she said: “I suppose I could gloss over it. Mouse, which did you think was handsomer?”

    “There can be no question: Mr Baldaya,” said Mouse in a colourless voice. “Red hair and freckles are seldom attractive, whether on a man or a woman.”

    “Um, yes. Well, Mr Ainsley is not an antidote,” she conceded. “And just fancy: writing a book with Lady Stamforth!”

    Mouse sniffed slightly. “If it comes off. I should hate to be dependant on the whims of a fashionable woman for my occupation for the next twelvemonth.”

    “Would it—would it take so long?” she faltered.

    “At least, I should imagine. Writing a book is not a fast process.”

    “I see. Mr Baldaya is very handsome, do you not think?”

    “Not very, no. Actually, I would have expected a gentleman who is half-Portuguese to have much more exotic looks.”

    Victoria’s face fell. “Oh. I suppose you are right. He does look almost English, really.”

    “Yes,” said Mouse flatly, going out.

    Victoria blinked, very disconcerted indeed to find that Mouse, whom she had begun to think was almost normal, if intrepid, did not seem to share her wish to gossip about the two eligible young men, at all!

    “It serves you out for sauntering out elegantly, Mouse,” concluded Captain Cutlass sourly that evening, in the wake of Victoria’s endless descriptions of Mr Baldaya’s good looks and the noble connections of both young gentlemen. The which reports, it must be admitted, had been received with breathless interest by the great-aunties and, though they concealed it rather better, scarcely less by Julia and Lash, in especial once it dawned that Mouse’s cheeks were very pink and she was remarkably silent.

    The two girls had come into the kitchen to fetch the tea-tray. “Aye, that it do!” chuckled Mrs Dove, her mountainous person shaking. “Now,” she said, putting a plate of sliced cake into Mouse’s hand: “you take this through, Mouse, deary—and nobody don’t need to favour that Dog Tuesday with none of it, neither: the little brute ’ad two breakfasses today!”

    Obediently Mouse took the plate and disappeared with it.

    “So,” said Mrs Dove with heavy significance, leaning a massive hand on the table.

    “What?” replied Captain Cutlass tiredly.

    “One of ’em’s struck ’er all of a ’eap, though at the moment I’m not taking no bets whether it were the red-’ead or the pretty one!” She shook silently.

    “Rats, Cookie! You’re as bad as Victoria! And for pity’s sake don’t encourage the aunties about it! New Short Street can have nothing whatsoever to do with the brothers-in-law to fine lords, and you know it! Give me that tray, and stop making mountains out of molehills!” She snatched up the tray, heavy though it was, and marched out with it, scowling horrifically.

    “Hm,” said Mrs Dove. “Well, you’ve been in a mood this last week or so, and whatever your ma may claim, personal I wouldn’t say it was just because old Dr Adams is on ’is last legs. But don’t worry, I won’t mention it to none of them—nor Mouse’s fancy, neither, poor little soul. –Won’t need to,” she finished drily.

    She was, of course, perfectly correct, and over the next few days the house became virtually uninhabitable as the great-aunties re-hashed every last detail of Victoria’s report of the two young gentlemen, interrogated the only too cooperative Victoria and the red-cheeked Mouse in the case that any small crumb might have escaped them, and indulged themselves in ever more unlikely flights of fancy.

    Julia was at last driven to inform them roundly that if the young gentlemen had not thought of it for themselves, the instant they got back to the castle their surroundings and their relatives together would forcibly have reminded them of the distance between Stamforth Castle and New Short Street. Lowering herself so far as to shout, as Aunty Bouncer misguidedly opened her mouth: “The social distance!”

    “Aye. Well, one might be a young gent with backbone, Julia,” she offered feebly.

    “Huh!” Her eye fell on the volume of Pride and Prejudice and she added bitterly: “Given that one of the finest writers of our time only managed to characterise one type of young gent as too proud to look at a comfortably-off gentleman’s daughter and t’other as a characterless worm of the type that lets his friend persuade him the girl isn’t good enough for him against his own inclinations, what hope is there of that?”

    Aunty Jicksy eyed her peer cautiously, clearing her throat. “None, Julia. Sorry. We got carried away,” she admitted glumly.

    “Yes. It’s been a week and damned Baldaya has not called, do I need to remind you? Mouse is looking miserable enough without you two adding fuel to any misguided hopes the poor girl might have conceived!”

    Glumly the two old ladies conceded she was right. And they were sorry.

Next chapter:

https://thefortunateformbys.blogspot.com/2023/10/market-day.html