Read Black Beech and Honeydew for Free Online Page B
Authors: Ngaio Marsh
and the familiar sound of her voice. The platform heaved under one’s legs. I cannot remember, on any occasion, the drive out to St Clair and suppose I must always have fallen asleep. One entered the house through a conservatory smelling of wet fern. We were near the sea and the last thing one heard was the roar of surf on a lonely coast.
One day, at St Clair, it rained so heavily that I was not allowed to put my nose out-of-doors. Under the dining-room bay-window seat was a system of lockers. Mivvy said they were full of old magazines and suggested that I might like to explore them. They were of two kinds. The Windsor, which was lettuce green with the Castle, I think, in brown, and The Strand with a picture of that thoroughfare on the cover. All day I hunted and devoured, tracing the enchanting series from one edition to the next. The rain beat down, not on the windows of a New Zealand house but across those of a gas-lit upstairs room in a London street. It glistened on the roofs of hansom-cabs and bounced off cobblestones. It mingled with the cries of newsboys and eccentric improvisations upon the fiddle. A solitary visitor was approaching: there was a peremptory double-knock at the street door. Someone came up the stairs and entered.
‘Hullo,’ said Mivvy, looking over my shoulder, ‘you’ve discovered Sherlock Holmes.’
CHAPTER 2
The Hills
Miss Sibella E. Ross was a gentlewoman of Highland descent. She was also a cousin of my adored Dundas. Her shape was firm, her bust formidable, her eyes blue and, like her face, surprisingly round. Her teeth were slightly prominent. She lived with her highly respected family in a large house generally known, though not I think to the Rosses, as ‘The Tin Palace’, since it had been constructed in pioneering days from galvanized iron and had a tower. In premises conveniently adjacent, Miss Ross kept school: a select dame school for about twenty children between the ages of six and ten years. Miss Ross’s family and immediate friends called her Tibby and her ex-pupils referred to her school as Tib’s.
To this establishment I was sent when I was, I suppose, six years old. I have no doubt whatever that it was a wise decision but the experience in its initial stages was hellish.
In the morning I was put into a horse-drawn bus where there were already three fellow pupils. We were met at the other end by Miss Irving, the governess at Miss Ross’s, and escorted to school.
‘Good morning, children.’
‘Good morning, Miss Ross. Good morning, Miss Irving.’
For the first time I found myself one of a group of children and, for the first time, I was conscious of being tall for my age. This made the simple business of standing up to answer questions an embarrassing ordeal. Miss Ross had invented an ‘honour’ system which decreed that at the end of the morning each child must stand up and proclaim how many times he or she had spoken unlawfully in class. When myimmediate neighbours discovered, with the terrible prescience of children, that this observance frightened me, they determined, gleefully, to enhance its terrors by forcing me to talk. They would hiss questions. If I didn’t answer, they would make jabs at me, for all the world as hens peck at a sick bird. They would peck and jab until I made some kind of response and then stare accusingly at me when the moment for public confession arrived. One could not always ask to ‘leave the room’ at the crucial moment. I cannot think that this was a good practice: it engendered, in a single operation, elements of guilt, fear, loneliness and inferiority, and, indeed, provoked a sort of Freudian extravaganza in the reactions of a little girl who was unprepared for it. The follow-up treatment took place in playtime and was set in hand by the nine-year-olds. They organized themselves and their juniors into something that was called a ‘secret army’ and from it excluded two stalwart little boys and myself. The boys were called
One day, at St Clair, it rained so heavily that I was not allowed to put my nose out-of-doors. Under the dining-room bay-window seat was a system of lockers. Mivvy said they were full of old magazines and suggested that I might like to explore them. They were of two kinds. The Windsor, which was lettuce green with the Castle, I think, in brown, and The Strand with a picture of that thoroughfare on the cover. All day I hunted and devoured, tracing the enchanting series from one edition to the next. The rain beat down, not on the windows of a New Zealand house but across those of a gas-lit upstairs room in a London street. It glistened on the roofs of hansom-cabs and bounced off cobblestones. It mingled with the cries of newsboys and eccentric improvisations upon the fiddle. A solitary visitor was approaching: there was a peremptory double-knock at the street door. Someone came up the stairs and entered.
‘Hullo,’ said Mivvy, looking over my shoulder, ‘you’ve discovered Sherlock Holmes.’
CHAPTER 2
The Hills
Miss Sibella E. Ross was a gentlewoman of Highland descent. She was also a cousin of my adored Dundas. Her shape was firm, her bust formidable, her eyes blue and, like her face, surprisingly round. Her teeth were slightly prominent. She lived with her highly respected family in a large house generally known, though not I think to the Rosses, as ‘The Tin Palace’, since it had been constructed in pioneering days from galvanized iron and had a tower. In premises conveniently adjacent, Miss Ross kept school: a select dame school for about twenty children between the ages of six and ten years. Miss Ross’s family and immediate friends called her Tibby and her ex-pupils referred to her school as Tib’s.
To this establishment I was sent when I was, I suppose, six years old. I have no doubt whatever that it was a wise decision but the experience in its initial stages was hellish.
In the morning I was put into a horse-drawn bus where there were already three fellow pupils. We were met at the other end by Miss Irving, the governess at Miss Ross’s, and escorted to school.
‘Good morning, children.’
‘Good morning, Miss Ross. Good morning, Miss Irving.’
For the first time I found myself one of a group of children and, for the first time, I was conscious of being tall for my age. This made the simple business of standing up to answer questions an embarrassing ordeal. Miss Ross had invented an ‘honour’ system which decreed that at the end of the morning each child must stand up and proclaim how many times he or she had spoken unlawfully in class. When myimmediate neighbours discovered, with the terrible prescience of children, that this observance frightened me, they determined, gleefully, to enhance its terrors by forcing me to talk. They would hiss questions. If I didn’t answer, they would make jabs at me, for all the world as hens peck at a sick bird. They would peck and jab until I made some kind of response and then stare accusingly at me when the moment for public confession arrived. One could not always ask to ‘leave the room’ at the crucial moment. I cannot think that this was a good practice: it engendered, in a single operation, elements of guilt, fear, loneliness and inferiority, and, indeed, provoked a sort of Freudian extravaganza in the reactions of a little girl who was unprepared for it. The follow-up treatment took place in playtime and was set in hand by the nine-year-olds. They organized themselves and their juniors into something that was called a ‘secret army’ and from it excluded two stalwart little boys and myself. The boys were called