Noel Streatfeild - White Boots

Harriet’s father was called George Johnson. He had a shop. It was not a usual sort of shop, because what it sold was entirely dependent on what his brother William grew, shot or caught. There had been a time when the Johnson family were rich. They had owned a large house in the country, with plenty of land round it, and some fishing and shooting. The children’s great-grandfather had not been able to afford to live in the big house, so he had built himself a smaller house on the edge of his property and let the big house. When his eldest son, the children’s grandfather, came into the property he could not afford to live even in the new smaller house, so he brought up the children’s father, and their Uncle William, in the lodge by the gates. But when he was killed in a motor accident and the children’s Uncle William inherited the property he was so poor he could not afford to live even in the lodge, so he decided the cheapest plan would be to live in two rooms in the house on the edge of the property that his grandfather had built, and to let the lodge. When he had thought of this he said to his brother George, the children’s father, “I tell you what, young feller me lad”… he was the sort of man who spoke that way… “I’ll keep a nice chunk of garden and a bit of shootin’ and fishin’ and I’ll make the garden pay, and you can have the produce, trout from the river, and game from the woods, and keep a shop in London and sell it, and before you can say Bob’s me Uncle you’ll be a millionaire.”

It did not matter how often anyone said Bob’s your Uncle for George did not become a millionaire. Uncle William had not married, and lived very comfortably in his two rooms in the smaller house on the edge of his estate, but one reason why he lived so comfortably was that he ate the best of everything that he grew, caught or shot. The result of this was that George and Olivia and the children lived very leanly indeed on the proceeds of the shop. It was not only that William ate everything worth eating, which made life so hard for them, but people who buy things in shops expect to go to special shops for special things, and when they are buying fruit they do not expect to be asked if they could do with a nice rabbit or a trout, especially when the rabbit and the trout are not very nice, because the best ones have been eaten by an Uncle William. The children’s father was an optimist by nature, and he tried not to believe that he could be a failure, or that anything that he started would not succeed in the end; also he had a deep respect and trust for his brother William. “Don’t let’s get downhearted, Olivia,” he would say, “it’s all a matter of time and educating the public. The public can be educated to anything if only they’re given time.” Olivia very seldom argued with George, she was not an arguing sort of person and anyway she was very fond of him, but she did sometimes wonder if they would not all starve before the public could be taught to buy old, tired grouse, which had been too tough for Uncle William, when what they had come to buy was vegetables.

One of the things that was most difficult for Olivia, and indeed for the whole family, was that what would not sell had to be eaten. This made a great deal of trouble because Uncle William had a large appetite and seldom sent more than one of any kind of fish or game, and the result was that the family meals were made up of several different kinds of food, which meant a lot of cooking. “What is there for lunch today, Olivia?” George would ask, usually adding politely: “Sure to be delicious.” Olivia would answer, “There’s enough rabbit for two, there is a very small pike, there is grouse but I don’t really know about that, it seems to be very, very old, as if it had been dead a long time, and there’s sauerkraut. I’m afraid everybody must eat cabbage of some sort today, we’ve had over seven hundred from Uncle William this week and it’s only Wednesday.”

One of the worst things to Harriet about having been ill was that she was not allowed to go to school, and her mother would not let her help in the house.

“Do go out, darling, you look so terribly thin and spindly. Why don’t you go down to the river? I know it’s rather dull by yourself but you like watching boats go by.”

Harriet did like watching boats go by and was glad that her father had chosen to have his shop in outer London in a part through which ran the Thames, so she could see boats go by. But boat watching is a summer thing, and Harriet had been unlucky in that she was ill all the summer and was putting up with the getting-well stage in the autumn, and nobody, she thought, could want to go and look at a river in the autumn. In the summer their bit of the Thames was full of pleasure boats, and there were flowers growing on the banks, but now in October it was cold and sad and grey-looking, and only occasionally a string of barges or a small motor launch came by. But it was no good telling her mother about the river being dull; for one thing her mother knew it already and would only look sad when she was reminded of it, and for another her mother heard all the doctor said about fresh air and she did not; besides she was feeling so cotton-woolish and all-overish that she had not really got the energy to argue. So every day when it was not raining she went down by the river and walked drearily up and down the towpath, hugging her coat round her to keep out the wind, wishing and wishing that her legs would suddenly get strong and well again so that she could go back to school and be just ordinary Harriet Johnson like she had been before she was ill.

One particularly beastly day, when it looked every minute as if it was going to rain and never quite did, she was coming home from the river feeling and looking as blue as a lobelia, when a car stopped beside her.

“Hallo, Harriet. How are you getting on?”

Harriet had been so deep in gloom because she was cold and tired that she had not noticed the car, but as he spoke she saw Dr Phillipson, who ordered the fresh air, and quite suddenly everything she had been thinking about cotton-wool legs and fresh air and not going to school came over her in a wave and she did what she would never have done in the ordinary way, she told the doctor exactly what she thought of his treatment.

“How would you be if you were made to walk up and down a river in almost winter, all by yourself, getting colder and colder, and bored-er and bored-er, with absolutely nothing to do, and not allowed to stop indoors for one minute because you’d been ill and your doctor said you’d got to have fresh air? I feel simply terrible, and I shouldn’t think I’ll ever, ever get well again.”

The doctor was a nice, friendly sort of man and clever-looking. Usually he was too busy to do much talking, but this time he seemed in a talking mood. He opened the door of his car and told Harriet to hop into the seat beside him, he had got a visit or two to do and then he would take her home.

“I must say,” he agreed, “you do look a miserable little specimen; I hoped you’d pick up after that convalescent home the hospital sent you to.”

Harriet looked at him sadly, for she thought he was too nice to be so ignorant.

“I don’t see why I should have got better at that convalescent home.”

“It’s a famous place.”

“But it’s at the top of a cliff, and everything goes on at the bottom of the cliff, sea-bathing and the sands and everything nice like that. I could never go down because my legs were too cotton-woolish to bring me back.”

The doctor muttered something under his breath which sounded like “idiots”, then he said:

“Haven’t you any relations in the country that you could go and stay with for a bit?”

“No, we’ve only Uncle William; he’s only got two rooms and use of a bathroom and one of his two rooms is his kitchen. He shoots and catches and grows the things Daddy sells in the shop. Mummy says it’s a pity he wouldn’t have room for me because he eats all the best things, so all that food would do me good, but I don’t think it would because I’m not very hungry.”