Eva Ibbotson - A Glove Shop In Vienna

Jeremy wouldn’t have dreamt of kicking anything. Indeed, after a while the mere effort of sitting up straight was all that he could manage, for the great car was almost hermetically sealed against draughts and long before they drew up at the tall house in the hushed street, Jeremy was feeling agonisingly, almost uncontrollably car-sick.

Grandmother had cut short a committee meeting to greet him and was waiting in the hall, beautiful and composed with her upswept silver hair, and it was she herself who showed him round the house.

Jeremy had never seen a house quite like it. It was so quiet you couldn’t hear your feet at all in the deep, deep carpets, nor any noises from the street. All the windows had two pairs of curtains — a thin white pair and a thick velvety pair tied back with cords — and even then there were shutters so that outside it could have been any kind of weather or any time of day.

And everywhere, on the mantelpieces, on the walls, in alcoves all up the stairs were museum-ish sort of things: Chinese dragons, and carved statues and dark pictures of people stuck with arrows.

Jeremy’s own rooms were at the top of the house, a whole suite of them: bedroom, bathroom and sitting-room all to himself.

‘No one will disturb you up here,’ said Grandmother briskly.

‘No one?’ said Jeremy in his thread of a voice, averting his eyes from a grinning bronze head on the bookcase behind which, he was pretty certain, THINGS were already mustering for the night.

‘No one,’ said Grandmother — and sent for the housekeeper to help him unpack.

At his grandmother’s, Jeremy had a lovely time. He knew he was having a lovely time because everyone constantly told him so.

‘It isn’t every boy gets a car like this to ride around in,’ said Clarke, the chauffeur, who often had instructions — when Grandmother had one of her committees — to take Jeremy for a drive. Very interesting drives they were, too — or would have been: to Buckingham Palace or Hampton Court or Richmond Park, except that long before they got there, Clarke would be obliged to draw up in an empty side street and stand with his back turned while Jeremy was violently and humiliatingly sick.

‘I bet there’s not many little princes eat better than you do in this house,’ Mrs Knapp the housekeeper would say, helping Jeremy to get ready for lunch.

And Jeremy, agreeing, sat very straight, his damask napkin sliding relentlessly across his knees, and chewed gratefully on dark slices of grouse in quivering aspic; swallowed, meticulously, his Russian caviare; didn’t even splutter when what looked like a perfectly ordinary doughnut turned out to be filled with liquid fire.

In the hot, softly-lit department store where Grandmother bought him more grey suits and good white shirts and stripy ties, the assistant was almost overcome by Jeremy’s good fortune, as was the waiter in the restaurant with the gold tables and potted palms where she took him when she met her friends afterwards for tea.

And Jeremy really was grateful, everyone agreed on that. Even Grandfather, in the few moments he spent in his own house, found nothing to complain of in the docile, quiet little boy. Except at bedtime…

‘Getting that child upstairs to his rooms — you’d think he was going to his execution,’ said Mrs Knapp. But otherwise his good manners, his evident gratitude pleased everybody. Clearly, he was a child who appreciated gracious living.

It was because of this that Grandmother, after a few weeks, felt compelled to give him a word of warning.

‘We are fortunate, Jeremy, in having been able to give you a good time during your stay with us. Now, however, I’m afraid the time has come for you to move on.’

She waited for a sign of regret but Jeremy’s eyes — those huge, dark, incurably underprivileged-looking eyes, remained obediently on her face.

‘As you know, your mother wanted you to divide your time equally between us and your other grandmother.’

Jeremy nodded.

‘I want you…’ She broke off, unable to find suitable words. ‘You will find… things different there. Mrs Drayton is…’ Again, rejecting the unmentionable word ‘poor’, she floundered. ‘You must not be spoilt or difficult to please, Jeremy. You must try to adapt yourself.’

And so, for the last time, Jeremy was packed into the big, closed car and Clarke drove him slowly across London to Nana’s house.

Mrs Drayton, waiting at the window, saw the great car inch into the street with a stab of apprehension. It was so huge, so opulent and in the back Jeremy, poker-straight in his grey suit, looked as remote and aloof as some miniature diplomat isolated from the world. How would he get on here? Though she had managed without lunches now for over three weeks, the pile of coins she had saved towards Jeremy’s entertainment seemed laughable.

But when she opened the car door she forgot her fears.

‘Car-sick?’ she said. ‘You poor chap! Your father was just the same.’

And calmly inviting the lordly Clarke in for a cup of tea, she drew Jeremy gently into the house.

‘Nice little place you’ve got here,’ said the chauffeur, and there was no trace of condescension in his voice.

Jeremy, looking round, agreed wholeheartedly. It was just

one room and not all that big, with a single window opening out into the bustling, sunny little street, but this one room was so: cunningly worked out! Red and white checked curtains slid back and behind them there was a little cooker and a sink. In one corner was a dresser with blue and white cups and a geranium; and the sofa they were sitting on turned itself most intriguingly, as Nana showed them, into her bed.

‘Where will I sleep, Nana?’ asked Jeremy when Clarke had gone.

Nana, who had been unpacking his case, straightened herself and looked at him anxiously. ‘Well, love, I’ve made up a bed for you behind the screen there.’

The screen had pictures of parrots and humming-birds on it and Jeremy had already admired it. Now he peered behind and found a camp-bed, a proper khaki one like explorers had, with crisp white sheets turned back.

‘You mean I’m going to sleep in the same room as you?’ he said slowly. ‘You’re going to be in the same room as me all night?’

Nana reddened. This was worse than she had feared. ‘I’ve only the one room, you see,’ she said quietly. ‘But you won’t see me—’ She broke off. ‘Jeremy, what is it?’ She pulled him towards her. ‘There, don’t cry, my pet. Maybe I can go and share with Mrs Post upstairs.’

Jeremy looked at her through his tears. ‘Oh, gosh, Nana, you are silly!’ he said. ‘I want to share a room with you more than anything else in the world.’

There now began for Jeremy one of those periods which makes old gentlemen say that the sun always shone when they were young, the grass was greener and the sky a never-to-be-forgotten blue.

He and Nana lived off the land. Each day they took the cocoa tin from behind the spotted dog on the mantelpiece and counted out their spending money. Lots of money, it seemed to Jeremy: pennies, three-penny bits — far more money than he had ever seen in his other grandmother’s house. Then they did something called budgeting. Jeremy liked budgeting very much because what it really meant was deciding things. For example, you’d decide to go to the park and feed the ducks and take a packet of sandwiches — that was clear. But a deck-chair for another ninepence each? Or sitting on the grass and having the money for an ice-cream?

That was an easy one, but others gave Jeremy many deliciously complicated moments of deep thought. A ride on the tube all the way to the Natural History Museum? Or get off two stops away and walk the rest, which meant sevenpence over, and that was a comic under his pillow at bedtime? Nana never interfered but sometimes when the agony of choice was almost too much she might nudge him gently towards a solution.