Eight Days of Luke

CHAPTER ONE The First Trouble

Unlike most boys, David dreaded the holidays. His parents were dead and he lived with his Great Aunt Dot, Great Uncle Bernard, their son Cousin Ronald and Cousin Ronald’s wife Astrid; and all these four people insisted that he should be grateful for the way they looked after him.

David tried to be grateful. They sent him to a boarding school which, as schools go, was not bad. Most holidays they arranged for him to go on an Educational Tour or to a Holiday Camp, and these were usually interesting enough to make up for David’s not knowing any of the other boys who went on them. He did feel grateful when Cousin Ronald pointed out that he had opportunities which few other boys were given. But when he was at home in Ashbury and not on a Tour or Camp, he found it much harder to be grateful. And the older he grew, the harder he found it.

This particular summer no Tour or Camp seemed to have been arranged. Aunt Dot usually sent David a postcard before the end of term to tell him what Tour he was going on, and this time no postcard had come. David’s heart sank a little on the way home, when he thought about it; but he was in a very cheerful mood and did not think about it much. He had taken five wickets for four runs in the match against Radley House, and had capped this by bowling his own games master middle stump, first ball, in the staff match. It was enough to make anyone cheerful. Cousin Ronald was interested in cricket. He could tell Cousin Ronald about it.

The railway work-to-rule meant that David had to wait two hours for a train in Birmingham, but he was so happy thinking just how he would tell Cousin Ronald about those wickets that he did not mind at all. He merely bought some bubble gum and sat cheerfully chewing as he thought.

When his train drew in among the red houses of Ashbury, however, his heart sank another notch or so, and by the time he had changed from the Wednesday Hill bus to the Lockend bus, he was feeling definitely depressed. But as he stood up to get off the bus, he remembered that the Clarksons lived at the corner of the road, and cheered up a little. The Clarksons were the only children near and they were both younger than David, but they liked cricket and they were not bad fun, considering. The only trouble was that Aunt Dot said they were vulgar. David could never see why. He thought, as he climbed off the bus, that it was a habit of Aunt Dot’s to call things vulgar – like Kent at school calling everything spastic – and it didn’t mean a thing.

As he turned the corner, David took a look over the Clarksons’ front gate. There was none of the usual clutter of bicycles lying about, and someone had weeded the front drive and planted a lot of useless flowers. That was ominous. David’s heart went down another notch. He walked on up the road and opened the gate to Uncle Bernard’s big red house, where there were never any weeds, or bicycles, and lines of geraniums were drawn up like guards on either side of the drive. David went up the steps and opened the front door and the smell of the house hit him. David had lately developed a theory that the sense of smell was much more important to the human race than anyone believed. The house smelt thick and dampish, of polish and old cabbage, the most dismal smell David knew. Like a proof of his theory, his heart went down about seven notches with a rush.

The hall was empty. This meant that, because of the railway work-to-rule, his trunk had not arrived yet. That was a nuisance. David’s cricket bat and the only pair of trousers that still fitted him had been in that trunk. It meant borrowing a bat and being stuck with short, tight school trousers until it arrived. He was rather sadly looking at the empty space in the hall where his trunk usually stood, when the door of the study opened. Cousin Ronald, balder and stouter and busier-looking than ever, came hurrying out, and with him came a gush of cricket commentary from the radio in the study.

David remembered his six triumphant wickets. “Oh, Cousin Ronald, do you know what?” he said happily.

Cousin Ronald seemed dumbfounded. He stopped in his tracks and stared at David. “What are you doing here?” he said.

“It’s holidays. We broke up yesterday,” David said. “But do you know what—?”

“Oh, this is too bad!” Cousin Ronald interrupted peevishly. “And I suppose they’ve sent you home early because of some blasted epidemic and we’ll all catch it now.”

“No. Honestly,” protested David. “It’s just the end of term.” He was beginning to lose all his joy in telling Cousin Ronald about those wickets; but it was too fine not to tell, so he tried again. “And do you know—?”

“It can’t be the end of term!” said Cousin Ronald. “Not already, boy.”

“Well, it is,” said David.

“What a confounded nuisance!” Cousin Ronald exclaimed, and plunged back into the study again and shut himself and the cricket commentary away inside it.

More than a little dashed, David went slowly away upstairs, trying not to feel miserable, trying to think about the cricket books in his bedroom. He came across Uncle Bernard on the first landing. Uncle Bernard did not seem to see David. He just tottered away to the bathroom looking frail and vague. David was heartily relieved. When Uncle Bernard noticed him, he always noticed the colour of David’s fingernails, the length of his hair and the fact that his tie was comfortably in his pocket. It was much better not to be noticed by Uncle Bernard. David turned thankfully to go up the second flight of stairs and found Aunt Dot’s tall figure coming down them.

“David!” exclaimed Aunt Dot. “Whatever are you doing here?”

“It’s the holidays,” David explained once more. “We broke up yesterday.”

“Broke up yesterday!” said Aunt Dot. “I thought there was another week to go. It was extremely thoughtless of you not to let me know.” Since David knew that the school always sent Aunt Dot a list of terms and holidays, he said nothing. “What a nuisance!” said Aunt Dot. “Well, since you’re here, David, go and wash and I’ll see Mrs Thirsk. Supper’s in half an hour.” She came on downstairs. David, knowing what a point Aunt Dot made of politeness, stood aside to let her pass. But Aunt Dot stopped again. “Good gracious, David!” she said. “Whose clothes are you wearing?”

“No one’s,” said David. “Mine, I mean.”

“They’ve shrunk abominably,” said Aunt Dot. “I shall write to the school and complain.”

“Oh, please don’t,” said David. “It’s not the clothes – really. I think I grew very fast or something.”

“Nobody grows that fast,” Aunt Dot decreed. “Those clothes were a good fit at Easter. You must go straight upstairs and see if you have anything else to wear. You can’t come to supper looking like that.” And she sailed away downstairs.

David went on up to his bare, tidy bedroom. While he searched for clothes, he could not help forlornly wondering whether any of his school friends were having such a cheerless homecoming as he was. He rather thought that most of them had parents and brothers and things who were actually glad to see them. Some of the lucky so-and-sos even had dogs. David would have liked a dog above all things. But the thought of Uncle Bernard being asked to countenance a dog was almost frightening.

The only clothes he could find were smaller than the ones he had on. When Mrs Thirsk rang the gong, David was forced to go down to supper as he was. He met Mrs Thirsk in the passage and she looked him over with utter contempt.

“You do look a proper scarecrow,” she said. “Your Uncle’s going to have something to say about that hair of yours, if I know anything about anything.”

“Yes, but you don’t,” said David.

“Don’t what?” said Mrs Thirsk.

“Know anything about anything,” said David, and he escaped into the dining room, feeling a little better for having annoyed Mrs Thirsk. He had been at war with Mrs Thirsk from the moment he came to live in Uncle Bernard’s house. Mrs Thirsk hated boys. David loathed every inch of Mrs Thirsk, from her blank square face to her blunt square feet. So he smiled a little as he slipped into the dining room.

The smile vanished when he found Astrid there. Astrid was sitting beside the French window with her feet up, because, as everyone knew only too well, her health was bad. Astrid was quite pretty. She had fairish hair and big blue eyes, but her face was always pale and peevish, or it would have looked prettier. She dressed very smartly and told everyone she was twenty-five – she had been telling everyone this, to David’s certain knowledge, for six years now.

At the sight of David, she gave a cry of dismay. “Never tell me you’re back already! Oh, this is too bad! Ronald, you might have warned me!” she said, as Cousin Ronald came in.

Cousin Ronald was carrying a sheet of paper which David recognised as the list of holiday dates that the school had sent last autumn. “It came as a shock to me too,” he said. “But they do seem to give the twentieth here.”

“But you told me the twenty-eighth!” Astrid said indignantly.

Aunt Dot came in at this moment, with her diary open in front of her nose. David drifted away to the other end of the room. “Ronald,” said Aunt Dot, “I have the end of term down here clearly as the twenty-eighth. Why was I misinformed?”

“Trust Ronald to get it wrong!” said Astrid. “If we have to miss going to Scarborough because of this, I don’t know what I shall do. One of my heads is coming on already.”

David, having no wish to hear any more about Astrid’s head, reached out and gently twiddled the knobs of the radio on the sideboard. He was in luck. An announcer said, “Now, cricket. England in the Third Test are—”

“David!” said Aunt Dot. “People are talking. Turn that off at once.”

Sighing, David turned the knob and silenced the announcer. But, at the same moment, Cousin Ronald hurried across the room, saying irritably, “I tell you I’ve no idea how it happened!” and snapped the radio on again.

“Five wickets for fourteen runs,” said the radio.

“Quiet,” Cousin Ronald said severely. “I have to know how England are doing against the Australians.”

To David’s secret indignation, no one made the slightest objection. Everyone stopped talking while the radio told them that England were 112 for eight when rain stopped play. By this time Uncle Bernard had tottered in, still frail from finding David had come home, and Mrs Thirsk was bringing in a tray of thick brown soup. Everyone sat down and began to eat. The thick brown soup tasted thick and brown.

David was very quiet and very careful of his manners. He did not want Aunt Dot to notice he was still in the same clothes, and he did not want Uncle Bernard to notice him at all. For a while he was lucky. Uncle Bernard and Astrid were busy with their usual contest to see who could be illest. Uncle Bernard began it by asking Astrid in a gentle, failing voice how she was.

“Oh, not too bad, Dad-in-law,” she answered bravely. “It’s only one of my heads this evening. How are you?”

“I never complain,” said Uncle Bernard untruthfully, “but I am forced to admit that my lumbago is very troublesome tonight – though it’s these fluttering pains in my chest which are the greatest nuisance.”

“I get those too,” said Astrid. “Dr Ryder gave me some tablets for them, but they’ve made no difference. I’ve been fluttering away all afternoon. Do they make you breathless? I can hardly breathe with them.”

“I gasp for air all the time,” retorted Uncle Bernard, gently and sadly. “My lungs have been in a bad way for years.”

“Oh, so have mine!” cried Astrid, not to be outdone.

At this stage in the contest, David had awarded Astrid four points, and Uncle Bernard three, with a bonus point to Uncle Bernard for never complaining. He rather hoped Astrid would win for once.

“I don’t know how I shall get through the summer,” Astrid said. David gave her another half-mark for that. “These shooting-pains in my shoulders just get worse too.” That was another full point, making Astrid 5½. “Particularly,” she said peevishly, “as it looks as if we aren’t going to Scarborough after all.”

She looked at David then, and David, terrified that Uncle Bernard was now going to notice him, finished his soup as quietly as he could and wished he had not given Astrid that extra half-mark. But Uncle Bernard was moving in to score heavily and had no attention to spare for David just then.

“My dear,” he said, “I was always against your going to Scarborough. You’d never stand the journey.” That made another bonus point. “And for myself,” said Uncle Bernard, “you could take me to Scarborough any number of times and it would do me no good. It would do me no good even if I lived there permanently. No – I prefer to live out my few remaining days quietly here in Ashbury.”

That made a good eight points. Uncle Bernard had flattened Astrid and sat back to enjoy his victory. Astrid had not a word to say, but Aunt Dot, who was never ill and had no patience with anyone who was, snapped crossly, “I must say, Bernard, I wish you’d told me before that you didn’t want to go to Scarborough.”

“My dear, how could I, when I knew a holiday would give you such pleasure?” said Uncle Bernard, scoring a further bonus point for martyrdom and self-sacrifice – though David rather thought that the contest was now over and it was against the rules to go on scoring. But then, he remembered, Uncle Bernard never did play fair.

Meanwhile, Mrs Thirsk took away the soup-bowls and handed out plates of thick brown meat covered with thick brown gravy. David, nibbling it, wondered why people ever complained of the meals at school. School food never tasted this bad, and there was always plenty of it. Mrs Thirsk had never been known to provide enough for a second helping. David thought that perhaps she knew one helping was all anyone could take. Here he looked up and saw Uncle Bernard staring at him. Having polished off Astrid, Uncle Bernard was about to begin on David.

David tried to prevent him, by saying brightly to Aunt Dot, “Aunt Dot, may I go round and see the Clarksons after supper?”

“No, David,” Aunt Dot said, with satisfaction. “I’m glad to say those dreadful Clarksons have moved at last. They tell me the new people are a very much better class of person.”

“Oh,” said David. He felt as if his last hope of enjoying this holiday had now gone. But hope dies hard. “Have the new people any children?” he asked despairingly.

“Good heavens no!” said Aunt Dot. “The Frys are an elderly couple. Mr Fry retired some years ago.” David said nothing. The last hope was truly gone. There was nothing to do but sit and wait for the various miseries in store for him. And they were not long coming. “David,” said Aunt Dot, “I thought I told you to change your clothes.”

David tried to explain that he had now no clothes that fitted him any better. Aunt Dot swept his explanation aside and scolded him soundly, both for growing so inconsiderately fast and for arriving in advance of his trunk. It did no good for David to point out that people of his age did grow, nor to suggest that it was the railway’s fault about the trunk. “When I want your opinion,” said Aunt Dot, “I shall ask for it. This is most vexing. And tomorrow is Sunday, so that it will be Monday before Astrid can take you into town for new clothes.”

This brought Astrid and Cousin Ronald out against David too. “No one,” said Cousin Ronald, “no one objects less than me to spending money when it’s necessary, but this is sheer waste, David.”

Since David was now goaded to the point where he wanted to say that Cousin Ronald always, invariably, objected to people spending money, it was perhaps fortunate that Astrid got in first.

“Town always brings on my head!” she complained. “And shops make me feel faint. You might say you’re grateful, at least, David.”

“I am. Truly,” David protested. “But I can’t help growing.”

All this while, Uncle Bernard had been hovering on the edge of the action, waiting for an opening. Now, just as Mrs Thirsk came to bring pudding, he pounced. “Growing,” he said. “And I suppose you can’t help your hair growing either? You must have it cut at once, boy.” The odd thing about Uncle Bernard was that when he attacked David he never seemed in the least frail or ill. “Hanging round your ears in that unmanly way!” he said vigorously. “I’m surprised they haven’t made you have it cut at school.”

Mrs Thirsk shot David a malicious, meaning look, and David was naturally forced to defend himself. “The other boys all have hair much longer than this,” he said. “No one minds these days, Uncle Bernard.”

“Well I do mind,” said Uncle Bernard. “I’m ashamed to look at you. You’ll have it all off on Monday.”

“No,” said David. “I—”

“What?” said Uncle Bernard. “Do you have the face to contradict me? Boys do not decide the length of their hair, let me tell you. Their guardians do. And boys do not contradict their guardians, David.”

“I’m not really contradicting,” David said earnestly. Because Mrs Thirsk was there, he was desperately set on winning, but he knew that he dared not seem rude or ungrateful. “It’s just that I want to grow my hair, Uncle Bernard. And it’ll cost less money if I don’t have it cut, won’t it?”

“Money,” said Uncle Bernard unfairly, “is no object with me when it’s a question of right and wrong. And it is wrong for you to be seen with hair that length.”

“Not these days,” David explained politely. “It’s the fashion you see, and it really isn’t wrong. I expect you’re a bit out of date, Uncle Bernard.” He smiled kindly and, he hoped, firmly at Uncle Bernard, and was a little put out to hear Astrid snorting with laughter across the table.

“I never heard such a thing!” said Uncle Bernard. Then he went frail and added pathetically, “And I hope I shall never hear such a thing again.”

David, to his amazement, saw that he was winning. He had Uncle Bernard on the run. It was so unheard of that, for a moment, David could not think of anything to say that would clinch his victory. And while he wondered, Mrs Thirsk turned his success into total failure.

“Yes,” she said, “and did you ever see such a thing as this, either?” Triumphantly, she placed a small mat with crochet edging in front of Uncle Bernard. In the middle of the mat, very thoroughly stuck to it, was a wad of something pink and rather shiny, with teeth-marks in it.

Uncle Bernard peered at it. “What is this?” he said.

“David can tell you,” said Mrs Thirsk, throwing David another malicious look.

Uncle Bernard, frail and puzzled, looked up at David.

“It’s chewing gum,” David confessed wretchedly. How it had got stuck to the mat on his dressing-table, he could not imagine. He supposed he must have put it down there while he was hunting for clothes. But he knew it was all up for him now.

“Chewing gum? In my house!” said Uncle Bernard.

“How simply filthy!” said Aunt Dot.

Astrid and Cousin Ronald closed in again then too, while Mrs Thirsk, looking like the Triumph of Righteousness, briskly plonked a plate of stiff, cold chocolate pudding in front of David. Such of it as David managed to eat tasted as thick and brown as the rest of supper. As the row went on, as all four of his relations continued to clamour how disgusting he was and Mrs Thirsk to shoot smug looks at him, David resolved bitterly, vengefully, that if it was the last thing he did, he would tell Mrs Thirsk how rotten her food was.

It ended with David being sent up to bed. By that time he was quite glad to go.