The Children's Book Read Online Free Page B

hair falling over their shoulders, one dark, one tawny, younger than Philip, younger than Tom, but not by much. A little girl in a robin-red apron, who shoved past the others, and grabbed Olive’s skirts. A little boy, with blond curls, and a Fauntleroy lace collar, who clung to the mulberry lady’s skirts, and hid his face in them. Olive buried her nose in the neck of the baby, Robin, who was reaching for her poppies and hat-pin.
    “I am like a tree with birds in it. This is Philip, who has come to stay for a little while. Philip, the two big girls are Dorothy and Phyllis. This is my sister, Violet Grimwith, who makes everything work here—everything that
does
work, that is. This little demon is my clever Hedda, who cannot keep still. The one being bashful is Florian, who is three. Come out and say hello to Philip, Florian.”
    Florian held on to Violet Grimwith’s skirts, and was distinctly heard to say, into the cloth, that Philip smelled bad. Violet picked him up, shook him, and kissed him. He kicked at her hips. Olive said
    “Philip has left home, and come a long way. He needs a bath, and some clean clothes—and a bed made up in Birch Cottage, if Cathy could see to that. And Ada might perhaps fill a bath for him—go with Ada, Philip, first things first—and when you are refreshed, we will see about supper and plan-making.”
    Violet Grimwith said she would look out something for Philip to wear. She thought he was too big to get into anything belonging to Tom. But there might be a shirt, in Humphry’s weekend drawer, and even maybe breeches …
    Philip mutely followed Ada, who was the cook, into the servants’ part of the house, and then through the back, into the stable-yard and across to the guest cottage, which had a downstairs room with a sink and a pump, and an upstairs loft, reached by a ladder, where Cathy could be heard, thumping bedclothes. Philip stood awkwardly. Ada fetched a tin bath, two jugs of hot water, a jug of cold water, soap and a towel. Then she left him. He took off the top layer of his clothes, and tentatively mixed some of the hot and cold water in the bath. Then he took off theremaining protection of his underpants and singlet. He was not used to baths. He was used to a quick sluicing under a cold communal pump. He lifted a leg to straddle the rim of the bath. Violet Grimwith came in without knocking. Philip reached for the towel to cover himself, and stumbled with a splash into the water, barking his shin on the edge. He made a choked, wailing cry.
    “You don’t need to mind me,” said Miss Grimwith. “Let me see that scrape. There’s nothing I haven’t seen. I’ve nursed all their little wounds, all their lives, I’m the one they turn to, when they
need
to, and so I hope will you, young man.”
    Much to his alarm, she advanced on him, bearing the soap, and a cannikin of warm water, which without warning she poured over his thick hair, so that jets sprang into his eyes and over his shoulders.
    “Shut your eyes,” she advised him. “Keep ’em tight shut, I’ll get to the
roots
of it, I will.”
    She applied soap and water to his hair as she spoke, pommelling and twisting and then massaging the skin of his scalp, probing with thin fingers for the taut muscles in his neck and shoulders.
    “Let go,” said the surprising woman. “We’ll have every cranny clean and lively, wait and see.”
    She spoke to him as though he was a baby, or just possibly a fully grown and complicit man. Philip decided to keep his eyes shut, in every sense of shut. He tightened his sphincters, pushed his chin into his chest, and felt the fingers and palms slap and maul him. Under the water they came, accidentally or on purpose, briefly fluttering against what he thought of as his whistler.
    “Muck of ages,” said the sharp voice. “Surprising how it accumulates, muck. Now you’re a nice pinky-pig-pink, not elephant-hide. You’ve got a fine thatch of hair, now the dust’s out, and the other