abear them about’. In other words, the best things.
And in the centre of this realistic nursery universe, dominating everything, was Nurse herself. Person No. 1 of Vernon’s Trinity. Very big and broad, very starched and crackling. Omniscient and omnipotent. You couldn’t get the better of Nurse. She knew better than little boys. She frequently said so. Her whole lifetime had been spent looking after little boys (and incidentally little girls too, but Vernon was not interested in them) and one and all they had grown up to be a Credit to her. She said so and Vernon believed her. He had no doubt that he also would grow up to be a Credit to her, though sometimes it didn’t seem likely. There was something awe-inspiring about Nurse, but at the same time infinitely comfortable. She knew the answer to everything. For instance, Vernon propounded the riddle about the diamonds and the crosses on the wallpaper.
‘Ah, well!’ said Nurse, ‘there’s two ways of looking at everything. You must have heard that.’
And as Vernon had heard her say much the same to Winnie one day, he was soothed and satisfied. On the occasion in question, Nurse had gone on to say that there were always two sides to a question and in future Vernon always visualized a question as something like a letter A with crosses creeping up one side of it and diamonds going down the other.
After Nurse there was God. God was also very real to Vernon mainly because he bulked so largely in Nurse’s conversation. Nurse knew most things that you did, but God knew everything, and God was, if anything, more particular than Nurse. You couldn’t see God, which, Vernon always felt, gave him rather an unfair advantage over you, because he could see you. Even in the dark, he could see you. Sometimes when Vernon was in bed at night, the thought of God looking down at him through the darkness used to give him a creepy feeling down the spine.
But on the whole, God was an intangible person compared with Nurse. You could conveniently forget about him most of the time. That was, until Nurse lugged him deliberately into the conversation.
Once Vernon essayed revolt.
‘Nurse, do you know what I shall do when I’m dead?’
Nurse, who was knitting stockings, said: ‘One, two, three, four, there now, I’ve dropped a stitch. No, Master Vernon, I’m sure I don’t.’
‘I shall go to Heaven—I shall go to Heaven—and I shall go right up to God—right up to him I shall go, and I shall say: “You’re an ’orrible man and I ’ate you!”’
Silence. It was done. He had said it. Unbelievable, unparalleled audacity! What would happen? What awful punishment terrestrial or celestial would descend upon him? He waited—breathless.
Nurse had picked up the stitch. She looked at Vernon over the top of her spectacles. She was serene—unruffled.
‘It’s not likely,’ she remarked, ‘that the Almighty will take any notice of what a naughty little boy says. Winnie, give me those scissors, if you please.’
Vernon retired crestfallen. It was no good. You couldn’t down Nurse. He might have known.
And then there was Mr Green. Mr Green was like God in that you couldn’t see him, but to Vernon he was very real. He knew, for instance, exactly what Mr Green looked like—of middle height, rather stout, a faint resemblance to the village grocer who sang an uncertain baritone in the village choir, bright red cheeks and mutton chop whiskers. His eyes were blue, a very bright blue. The great thing about Mr Green was that he played—he loved playing. Whatever game Vernon thought of, that was just the game that Mr Green loved to play. There were other points about him. He had, for instance, a hundred children. And three others. The hundred, in Vernon’s mind, were kept intact, a joyous mob that raced down the yew alleys behind Vernon and Mr Green. But the three others were different. They were called by the three most beautiful names that Vernon knew: Poodle, Squirrel and Tree.
Vernon was, perhaps, a lonely little boy, but he never knew it. Because, you see, he had Mr Green and Poodle, Squirrel and Tree to play with.
For a long time Vernon was undecided as to where Mr Green’s home was. It came to him quite suddenly that of course Mr Green lived in the Forest. The Forest had always been fascinating to Vernon. One side of the Park bordered on it. There were high green palings and Vernon used to creep along them hoping for a crack that would let him see through. There were whisperings and sighings and rustlings all along, as though the trees were speaking to each other. Half-way down there was a door, but alas, it was always locked, so that Vernon could never see what it was really like inside the Forest.
Nurse, of course, would never take him there. She was like all nurses and preferred a good steady walk along the road, and no messing your feet up with them nasty damp leaves. So Vernon was never allowed to go in the Forest. It made him think of it all the more. Some day he would take tea there with Mr Green. Poodle and Squirrel and Tree were to have new suits for the occasion.
The nursery palled on Vernon. It was too small. He knew all there was to know about it. The garden was different. It was really a very exciting garden. There were so many different bits of it. The long walks between the clipped yew hedges with their ornamental birds, the water garden with the fat goldfish, the walled fruit garden, the wild garden with its almond trees in spring time and the copse of silver birch trees with bluebells growing underneath, and best of all the railed-off bit where the ruins of the old Abbey were. That was the place where Vernon would have liked to be left to his own devices—to climb and explore. But he never was. The rest of the garden he did much as he liked in. Winnie was always sent out with him but since by a remarkable coincidence they always seemed to encounter the second gardener, he could play his own games unhindered by too much kind attention on Winnie’s part.
Gradually Vernon’s world widened. The twin star, Mummy-Daddy, separated, became two distinct people. Daddy remained nebulous, but Mummy became quite a personage. She often paid visits to the nursery to ‘play with my darling little boy’. Vernon bore her visits with grave politeness, though it usually meant giving up the game that he himself was engaged upon and accepting one which was not, in his opinion, nearly so good. Lady visitors would sometimes come with her, and then she would squeeze Vernon tightly (which he hated) and cry:
‘It’s so wonderful to be a mother! I never get used to it! To have a darling baby boy of one’s very own.’
Very red, Vernon would extricate himself from her embrace. Because he wasn’t a baby boy at all. He was three years old.
Looking across the room one day, just after a scene like the above, he saw his father standing by the nursery door with sardonic eyes, watching him. Their eyes met. Something seemed to pass between them—comprehension—a sense of kinship.
His mother’s friends were talking.
‘Such a pity, Myra, that he doesn’t take after you. Your hair would be too lovely on a child.’
But Vernon had a sudden feeling of pride. He was like his father.
Vernon always remembered the day that the American lady came to lunch. To begin with, because of Nurse’s explanations about America which, as he realized later, she confused with Australia.
He went down to dessert in an awe-stricken state. If this lady had been at home in her own country, she would be walking about upside down with her head hanging down. Quite enough, this, to make him stare. And then, too, she used odd words for the simplest things.
‘Isn’t he too cute? See here, honey, I’ve gotten a box of candy for you. Won’t you come and fetch it?’
Vernon
