William Gerhardie - The Polyglots

Thence to a lightness; and by this declension,

Into the madness wherein now he raves.

IT WAS THE 11TH OF APRIL, NORA’S BIRTHDAY. AUNT Molly had been away in Japan a week and she had taken Bubby with her, leaving Harry and Nora in the charge of ‘Aunt’ Berthe — for their own father, she felt was altogether too incalculable a factor to be relied on in these matters. The children played nicely together, and were not a nuisance. In the morning, before lunch, Berthe would take them out into town for an airing and they would walk in front of her, buttoned up in their warm padded coats and warm gaiters, Harry holding Nora by the hand. They would come back to say they had seen a big dog in the street; or Harry would climb the steps to my attic, where I was in the habit of working—‘There’—and give me a big nail. Three times a week Harry went to the newly-organized school for Anglo-American children, and sometimes Nora was sent with him for company. He would walk in, with that old man’s smile on his face, holding her by the hand, and she would sit at a desk next to a little boy (who pinched her occasionally), her legs dangling down, and draw something with the stump of a pencil. And when she twitched, because the little boy at her side was pinching her, Harry, sitting behind, put up his hand—‘Please, teacher’—so putting a stop to it. She had been taught what to say when she wanted to rise and go out, which she did now with an air of independence, putting up her hand and saying: ‘Please, teacher, may I?’ and the teacher graciously nodded her head. But when she returned to the room, Harry, appreciating the position of things, put up his hand—‘Please, teacher’—and, strolling over to his little sister, gravely buttoned up her knickers in front of the class.

I was working on my thesis A Record of the Stages in the Evolution of an Attitude , when I heard his steps; the door opened and Harry swung in in large hefty strides, looking mighty serious.

‘There you are,’ said he, producing an old rusty screw out of his pocket, ‘this is for you.’

‘Why aren’t you at school?’

‘Don’t you know?’ he said, astonished. ‘It’s Nora’s birthday. Why don’t you come down to have chocolate?’

‘I am busy.’

‘Well, never mind,’ said he, ‘I can take the present down to her.’ He went over to my typewriter and began fiddling with the keys. ‘I want,’ he said, ‘to type a letter to Mummy.’

‘Well.’

He typed:

My dear Mummy how ar you getting on don has bit a bit of

anti Berts nos of uncl is goto sell don. Nora ceeps geting eer ache I can reed books naw. nora can say her abc and can kant up to a hundrid wee hav a grama fon I can draw a kite and an open and klosd umbrela I hav got a woch. do you no hoo hav mee it. well i will tell you anti Bert gav mee it and I can tell the time. I—

He got stuck with the keys, having pressed several at once. ‘Come, tell me what to say and I’ll type it.’

He strolled about, swinging, his hands in his breeches-pockets.

‘Well?’

He smiled that old man’s smile of his, and then began:

My dear Mummy I am very good and have you not forgotten to get that chocolate from the station — have got quite a lot of toys and a bucket and spade. I’ve made a motor with two chairs and a shawl and all my toys are inside. I play very nicely and I am good. Auntie Berthe sleeps where you put the head and I sleep where you put the feet. I see all kinds of pictures in Auntie Berthe’s room on the wall and Auntie Berthe’s got a lamp with a glass on and lamp glass in crackling. I’ve got a water-can and some scales with a little drawer. Ginger always comes up, I always see Don. Ginger bite me. I written this letter myself. There is a little girl called Laurie and behind the barn there is a place with some bricks like a frame and it was all bumpy before and there were no seats before for Laurie to sit on because she was the teacher and all that bumpy earth. This morning I got up early and made it very flat and have put seats there so Laurie can sit down. It looks so nice now it’s flat. Every afternoon we go for long walks and when we get home very tired we have lots of cups of tea and plenty to eat. When I went to the Sunday school treat I got most of the sweets and the others only had two each. I got twenty. And I fished a Noah’s Ark out of a brown tub. Auntie Berthe was hiding behind some bricks the other day. While Auntie was hiding I took the big milk can of lemonade and drank it all up and nearly choked; was all sick back into the can. Auntie laughed so much and Nora stopped crying and laughed at me being sick all over the can. Auntie Berthe’s given me a nice looking glass and some nails. I told Daddy when he’s finished making furniture I told him to make my peddling motor, put a screen on it at the back and tyres on the wheels. Auntie Berthe has got a dark brown cupboard with a big looking glass on it. Auntie Terry’s case that Daddy gave her that she does her nails with I play with. I break nothing. Give my love to Bubby. A thousand pounds of love to you, Mummy. I’ve got real marbles.

Your son Harry Charles.

There followed nine big crosses purporting to be kisses.

I leaned back, exhausted, and yawned, and then gazing at Sylvia’s picture on my table, took it up and, automatically, from habit, kissed it.

He looked at me brightly.

‘Silly!’ he said.

He pondered a moment, looking round, and then suddenly asked:

‘Why is everything?’

By George! he was taking after me.

‘But why is it,’ he said, ‘—everything?’

I pondered a moment, stuck for an answer, and then answered him:

‘Because … why shouldn’t it be?’

He was satisfied — completely so.

‘Harry, your wi m e!’ Nora called from the steps.

‘Silly!’ he said, ‘they tell ’er it’s wine because she’s only a baby. It’s cod-liver oil. Come down,’ he said, ‘Nora has a lot of people for her birthday.’

‘People?’

‘Children, not people; not grown-ups people.’

‘Oh!’

In the dining-room, as we got down, there were many children. As fresh ones arrived, each, very pleased with itself, handed Nora its little present, which she snatched from them without as much as a ‘thank you’.

‘And who is this little boy?’ I asked Harry.

‘This is Billy — who pinches her.’

Nora looked round and smiled, her open mouth full of chewed cake.

‘And don’t you fight the boys when they annoy your little sister?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Don’t want to get into trouble,’ he said, looking at Nora the while, who was eating a long chocolate bar all by herself, till Sylvia observed: ‘Won’t you let Harry have a taste?’

‘Well, Harry, you know what it tastes like,’ she said, turning away.

When we settled down to chocolate, Uncle Lucy was not amongst us. For hours on end he would sit now in his study, brooding, brooding without cease, and we, stirred by curiosity, would open the door and peep inside. This popping in and out of heads irritated him not a little. Once, while going out with him, and passing a Lutheran church on the door of which hung a notice of the hours of service, Uncle Lucy precipitated his steps, concluding that the building was a bank and the notice the current statement of the rates of the money exchange. There was nothing very peculiar about that, but standing on the steps close up to the notice. Uncle Lucy still thought the building a bank, and said he wanted to go in and change 300 yen. He confessed to me one night as he was locking the front door that he must test the door twelve times to know that it was locked; and in the middle of the night, sometimes, he would feel the need to go and test it once again: or — he felt — irrationally — his youngest child might die. Seeing a dachshund across the street, he said, ‘It would be nice to creep down on all fours and to bark like a dog — or else stand on one leg and crow like a cock.’ And when Nora now went in to him to say that chocolate was on the table, her daddy ‘did stand,’ she said, ‘on one leg and said he was a stork,’ and she laughed and thought he was joking. After this, one by one, we all began to peep into his room to see if he was all right. ‘Don’t pop in peeping at me every minute,’ he cried. ‘I might be some uncommon animal in a zoo — people peeping at me through the hole every minute!’