think you look rather silly.’
‘That boy of yours has no sense of humour, Myra,’ said Uncle Sydney to his mother. ‘No sense of humour at all. A pity.’
Aunt Nina, Father’s sister, was quite different.
She smelt nice, like the garden on a summer’s day, and she had a soft voice that Vernon liked. She had other virtues—she didn’t kiss you when you didn’t want to be kissed, and she didn’t insist on making jokes. But she didn’t come very often to Abbots Puissants.
She must be, Vernon thought, very brave, because it was she who first made him realize that one could master The Beast.
The Beast lived in the big drawing-room. It had four legs and a shiny brown body. And it had a long row of what Vernon had thought when he was very small, to be teeth. Great yellow shining teeth. From his earliest memory, Vernon had been fascinated and terrified by The Beast. For if you irritated The Beast, it made strange noises, an angry growling or a shrill angry wail—and somehow those noises hurt you more than anything in the world could, they hurt you right down in your inside. They made you shiver and feel sick, and they made your eyes sting and burn, and yet by some strange enchantment, you couldn’t go away.
When Vernon had stories read to him about dragons, he always thought of them as like The Beast. And some of the best games with Mr Green were where they killed The Beast—Vernon plunging a sword into his brown shining body whilst the hundred children whooped and sang behind.
Now that he was a big boy—he knew better, of course. He knew that The Beast’s name was Grand Piano, and that when you deliberately attacked its teeth that was called ‘playingthepiano!’ and that ladies did it after dinner to gentlemen. But in his inmost heart, he was still afraid and dreamt sometimes of The Beast pursuing him up the nursery stairs—and he would wake up screaming.
In his dreams The Beast lived in the Forest, and was wild and savage, and the noises it made were too terrible to be borne.
Mummy sometimes did ‘playingthepiano’ and that Vernon could just bear with difficulty. The Beast, he felt, would not really be waked up by what she was doing to it. But the day Aunt Nina played was different.
Vernon had been conducting one of his imaginary games in a corner. He and Squirrel and Poodle were having a picnic and eating lobsters and chocolate éclairs.
His Aunt Nina had not even noticed that he was in the room. She had sat down on the music stool and was playing idly.
Fascinated, Vernon crept nearer and nearer. Nina looked at last to see him staring at her, the tears running down his face and great sobs shaking his small body. She stopped.
‘What’s the matter, Vernon?’
‘I hate it,’ sobbed Vernon. ‘I ’ate it. I ’ate it. It hurts me here.’ His hands clasped his stomach.
Myra came into the room at that minute. She laughed.
‘Isn’t it odd? That child simply hates music. So very queer.’
‘Why doesn’t he go away if he hates it?’ said Nina.
‘I can’t,’ sobbed Vernon.
‘Isn’t it ridiculous?’ said Myra.
‘I think it’s rather interesting.’
‘Most children are always wanting to strum on the piano. I tried to show Vernon “Chopsticks” the other day, but he wasn’t a bit amused.’
Nina remained staring at her small nephew thoughtfully.
‘I can hardly believe a child of mine can be unmusical,’ said Myra in an aggrieved voice. ‘I played quite difficult pieces when I was eight years old.’
‘Oh, well!’ said Nina vaguely. ‘There are different ways of being musical.’
Which, Myra thought, was so like the silly sort of thing the Deyre family would say. Either one was musical and played pieces, or one was not. Vernon clearly was not.
Nurse’s mother was ill. Strange unparalleled nursery catastrophe. Nurse, very red-faced and grim, was packing with the assistance of Susan Isabel. Vernon, troubled, sympathetic, but above all interested, stood nearby, and out of his interest, asked questions.
‘Is your mother very old, Nurse? Is she a hundred?’
‘Of course not, Master Vernon. A hundred indeed!’
‘Do you think she is going to die?’ continued Vernon, longing to be kind and understand.
Cook’s mother had been ill and died. Nurse did not answer. Instead she said sharply:
‘The boot-bags out of the bottom drawer, Susan. Step lively now, my girl.’
‘Nurse, will your mother—’
‘I haven’t time to be answering questions, Master Vernon.’
Vernon sat down on the corner of a chintz-covered ottoman and gave himself up to reflection. Nurse had said that her mother wasn’t a hundred, but she must, for all that, be very old. Nurse herself he had always regarded as terribly old. To think that there was a being of superior age and wisdom to Nurse was positively staggering. In a strange way it reduced Nurse herself to the proportions of a mere human being. She was no longer a figure secondary only to God himself.
The Universe shifted—values were readjusted. Nurse, God, and Mr Green—all three receded, becoming vaguer and more blurred. Mummy, his father, even Aunt Nina—seemed to matter more. Especially Mummy. Mummy was like the princesses with long beautiful golden hair. He would like to fight a dragon for Mummy—a brown shiny dragon like The Beast.
What was the word—the magic word? Brumagem—that was it—Brumagem. An enchanting word! The Princess Brumagem! A word to be repeated over to himself softly and secretly at night at the same time as ‘Damn’ and ‘Corsets’.
But never, never, never must Mummy hear it—because he knew only too well that she would laugh—she always laughed, the kind of laugh that made you shrivel up inside and want to wriggle. And she would say things—she always said things, just the kind of things you hated. ‘Aren’t children too funny?’
And Vernon knew that he wasn’t funny. He didn’t like funny things—Uncle Sydney had said so. If only Mummy wouldn’t—
Sitting on the slippery chintz he frowned perplexedly. He had a sudden imperfect glimpse of two Mummies. One, the princess, the beautiful Mummy that he dreamt about, who was mixed up for him with sunsets and magic and killing dragons—and the other—the one who laughed and who said, ‘Aren’t children too funny?’ Only, of course, they were the same …
He fidgeted and sighed. Nurse, flushed from the effort of snapping to her trunk, turned to him kindly.
‘What’s the matter, Master Vernon?’
‘Nothing,’ said Vernon.
You must always say ‘Nothing.’ You could never tell. Because, if you did, no one ever knew what you meant …
Under
