Eva Ibbotson - A Glove Shop In Vienna

‘I think there are those pavements with cracks on them on the way to the Museum,’ she would say, and Jeremy would perceive immediately that this meant playing ‘the first to step on a crack is a nitwit’, and decide in favour of walking and a comic at bedtime.

To Jeremy it seemed as if Nana knew — and owned — the whole of London; perhaps the world. There was St James’s Park where they sat for hours, laughing at the Canadian geese and the little ducklings making ripple arrows on the butter-smooth waters of the lake. Once Nana said there would be a surprise when they came round the corner — and there was a whole band of soldiers in scarlet and gold playing wonderful thumping music. A band they didn’t even have to budget for, because it was free!

Then there were the pigeons in Trafalgar Square — they were free too — more pigeons than Jeremy had ever seen. If you stood still and held out the scraps that Mr Oblinsky had saved for Nana, you could cover yourself in pigeons. You could even have pigeons sitting on your head !

Sometimes they would find a bench in a nice crowded place like Leicester Square and play people-spotting, and the good thing about Nana was that she never cheated to let you win. If she saw more men with curly black beards in the set time, or more women with grey hair and poodles, well then she said so and ate the bull’s-eye peppermint they kept for a prize without fuss.

And when they got back at the end of such a busy day there was still lots more to do. Jeremy would unfold the card-table, set it under the window and lay it while Nana cooked. The food at Nana’s was fantastic ! Whole plates of potato cakes or cinnamon toast or an apple peeled and quartered, with little triangular bits of cooking cheese stuck in each bit so as to make

a boat with sails.

And the odd thing was that while staying at his other grandmother’s he’d been the lucky one, here it was agreed by Mr Oblinsky, and Mrs Post who lived upstairs and by the people in the shops that it was Nana who was the lucky one. Terribly lucky, having Jeremy to stay!

Now, when Jeremy returned to school, he had three weekly letters to write. The one to his mother was shy and stilted because she had become as distant and longed-for as a mirage. The one to Grandmother, Mrs Tate-Oxenham, was the ‘proper’ letter, the one with the cricket match and his form position and the achievement of Rutledge minor in the 100-yards. But the weekly letter to Nana sprawled and spread and was one long question. Had she been to see the pigeons lately? Was the geranium growing? How was Mr Oblinsky’s cough?

During the autumn term the school gave a long weekend off at the end of October. Once again Jeremy divided his time between his grandmothers and once again it was to ‘Grandmother’, to Mrs Tate-Oxenham, that he went first.

At Grandmother’s, Jeremy began being lucky straight away because she took him to something called a ‘Private View’, which was a lot of people standing very close together, drinking and smoking, in a room with pictures on the walls. The next day she had a bridge party and Jeremy was allowed to walk carefully about the room offering trays of canapes to the ladies as they played.

The day after that he went to Nana’s.

At Nana’s the folding table was set out with newspaper spread over it, and on it sat two big turnips and the kitchen knife.

‘It’s Hallowe’en,’ explained Nana when she had hugged him. ‘We’re going to make the most horrible turnip lanterns in the whole street!’

And they did. They were so horrible that when they’d propped them on the window-sill with candles in them, Mr Oblinsky, returning from work, almost fainted; and all the children passing by said ‘Cor!’ and stopped to look.

The next day they got up very early, walked to the Common and found the last of the year’s conkers buried under a pile of leaves. When he got back to school, Jeremy didn’t string up the conkers to fight with but kept them in his pockets and weeks later when he took them out he didn’t see them as hard and dry and shrivelled, but as shining and fresh as they had been on that October morning.

For the Christmas holidays, Jeremy was to fly out to Africa.

As the time drew near he became almost demented with excitement. Three weeks, two weeks, one week — and then he would see her. His mother …

The suitcases were packed; the grey-suited, ecstatic little boys were hurling themselves into their parents’ cars — when the telegram came.

A garbled telegram but one thing was clear. There had been some political trouble in the copper mines. Rioting had broken out in the villages and Jeremy was not to go.

He sat hunched on his suitcase, his legs dangling over the bright airline labels, and listened politely while this was explained to him, and even the arrow-swift boys running through the hall to their Christmas freedom stopped when they saw his face.

‘Where shall I go then?’ he said at last in his mouse of a voice. ‘Where shall I spend Christmas?’

Matron peered again at the telegram, which had undergone some strange sea-changes in its journey from the dry and dusty plains of Central Africa. ‘Wait a minute,’ she said, ‘I’ll go and talk to Mr Danworth.’

When she came back from the headmaster’s study she was brisk and decisive. ‘It’s all settled, Jeremy, and there’s nothing to worry about. You’re to go to your grandmother’s. To Mrs Tate-Oxenham’s. There’s lots to see in London at Christmas; she’ll give you a lovely time. We’ve sent a telegram and Mr Danworth is sending you up in his own car with Ted to drive you,’ continued Matron — and all but bundled him out, because there was something in his eyes she preferred at that festive season not to see.

The Head’s car was not as bad as Grandmother’s and Ted — who acted as boilerman, groundsman and general factotum at the school — was a more approachable character than Clarke. All the same, to Jeremy, sitting wraith-like and silent beside Ted, the inevitable happened soon enough.

‘Please could you stop the car?’ he asked.

Outside it was freezing cold with a gusty, boisterous wind straight off the snow-spattered hills. First it shook Jeremy, his teeth chattering with cold and nausea and despair. Then it blew through the car and scattered the papers on the dashboard…

‘Darn it! I’ve lost the address,’ said Ted when they had driven on again. ‘Your grandma’s address. Must have blown away when we stopped back there. You remember it?’

‘I’ve got two grandmothers,’ said Jeremy, his voice almost inaudible.

‘Well, the one we’re going to, silly.’ Searching his mind for what he had overheard in the school office, Ted elaborated. ‘The rich one. The one who’s going to give you a lovely time.’

A slight tremor ran through Jeremy’s skinny frame.

‘The rich one?’ he repeated wonderingly. ‘Are you sure I’m going to the rich one?’

‘Well, it stands to reason, doesn’t it? You wouldn’t want to bother the other one, not at Christmas time?’

Something had happened to Jeremy, something which made Ted turn his head for a second and give him a puzzled look.

‘Oh, yes, I know the address of the rich one,’ said Jeremy, his voice suddenly loud and strong. ‘I know the address of her all right.’

And so it was that Nana, sitting quietly by the window and foolishly imagining, as people will at Christmas time, that the person they love best will somehow defy space and time and come to them — looked up, and gasped and saw that it had happened. That Jeremy was running towards her into the house…