The Picts & the Martyrs. Arthur Ransome

Dorothea. “And I’ll soon learn.”

      “Of course they’ll manage,” said Nancy. “And old Cook’ll smuggle things out to them. It isn’t as if they were going to be a hundred miles away. Come on. No, don’t put any more on the fire. We can light it again if we want it. And look out for broken ankles hurtling down the path.”

CHAPTER V

      TRANSFORMATION SCENES

      “I’VE THE sheets off,” said Cook. “But I won’t make the bed till you shift them death heads. And I’m thinking if Miss Turner’s to be in the spare room, I’d best make up your mother’s bed for … ”

      “Dorothea won’t want it,” said Nancy. “The Dogs’ Home is just right. We’re taking hammocks for them. And you’ll give them the camping kettle and our big saucepan and a couple of mugs, and stores…. All right. All right. We’ll clear the spare room in two jumps of a weasel. Give us time to pack … ”

      Cook looked at Dorothea.

      “We’re going to be very comfortable,” said Dorothea.

      “I don’t know what to do,” said Cook. “There’s this room a nightmare, and I must run a duster over the drawing-room. A body could write their name in the dust on the piano.”

      “Piano,” exclaimed Nancy. “Jibbooms and bobstays! She’ll be making us play the beastly thing. Come on, Peggy. You go and get the drawing pins out on the other side … carefully, or we’ll tear it. We’ll want a Jolly Roger or two to cheer up the Picts’ Home.”

      “You be getting them things down,” said Cook, “and I’ll have your dinner on the table. Days like this a body wants two pairs of legs and a dozen arms … ”

      “It isn’t really that you want,” said Nancy, pulling out drawing pins from the skull and crossbones over the head of the bed in which the Great Aunt was to sleep. “It’s time. It always goes too fast or too slow. Here’s the G.A. coming and minutes fly like seconds and yet when we’re at school waiting for the end of term the days drag out like years. Look out, Peggy. Hold your side up till I get out this last pin … ”

      Dick had gone off to his room that was really Captain Flint’s, and was collecting everything that was his and putting it on the bed. Dorothea was putting back into her suitcase the things she had taken out the night before.

      “We won’t lug the suitcases up the wood,” said Nancy. “Take just the things you can’t do without. We can stow the suitcases here.”

      “The suitcases’ll be pretty useful,” said Dorothea. “Like a chest of drawers.”

      “All right,” said Nancy. “Of course it would be pretty awful if she started prowling round the box-room and found them here. We’ll get them up somehow.”

      “Torn,” said Peggy. “Can’t be helped. Anyway the big one’s all right.” She folded the remains of the Jolly Roger that had been on the foot of the bed. “What about the flags?”

      “They’ll want the scarab flag for their boat. They won’t want the other.”

      “Come and eat your dinner,” called Cook from downstairs and at the same time banged loudly on the dinner gong.

      Lunch in the Beckfoot dining-room was like the last meal in a house before people are moving to a new one. The dining-room looked the same as usual, but it was as if the carpets were up, and the furniture half packed, and a van waiting outside for the rest of it. They could hear Cook pushing the spare-room bed about (at least that was what it sounded like) while she was hurriedly making it up anew for the unwelcome visitor. Nancy and Peggy were snapping out single words, “Hammocks” … “Hammer” … “Nails” … “Bedding” … “Grog” … “Pemmican” … “Tin opener” … their minds darting this way and that through the memories of camping expeditions, trying to be sure that nothing should be forgotten that the Picts would need. Dorothea was looking ahead into the housekeeping that she would be doing for the first time. Dick was thinking of the hut as a forest base for a naturalist. He was almost sure that was a woodpecker he had heard … But neither Dick nor Dorothea got very far with their thoughts. Those single, practical words, snapped out by the experienced Amazons, kept breaking in with new ideas. Five minutes after they had finished not one of them could have said off hand what they had eaten or whether they had eaten anything.

      “We’ve got to get Cook working on their stores,” said Nancy. “She must have done that room by now.” For a few minutes the noises from upstairs, of brushes banging against walls and catching against chairs and bed-legs, had come to an end. Suddenly there was a new noise of drawers being pulled open and banged shut.

      “She’s done,” said Peggy. “She’s just looking in the chest of drawers to see there’s nothing of Dot’s left behind.”

      They went up and found Dorothea’s suitcase on the landing outside the spare-room door. Cook was looking anxiously round.

      “If there’s owt amiss, Miss Turner’s the one to see it,” she said.

      “There’s nothing amiss,” said Nancy. “It’s the same dull room it always was. And after all the work we put into it, cheering it up for Dot.”

      “She likes a box of biscuits by her bed. And a glass and a jug of water,” said Peggy.

      “Flowers,” said Nancy. “We’ll do that. At least … You go and pick some flowers for her, Dot; Peggy and I have got to raid the kitchen … ”

      “That you haven’t,” said Cook. “I’ll get that kettle for them in a minute. Happen it will be better if they’re out of sight.”

      “We’ll come with you,” said Nancy. “They’ll want all our camping things. Give them just what you give us when we camp on Wild Cat Island. Fill up the puncheon for them. Lucky you made a lot of lemonade before they came … ”

      “What flowers shall I pick?” said Dorothea.

      “Deadly nightshade would be best,” said Nancy. “Only there isn’t any. Or garlic … that’s got a lively smell. No. The whole thing is to keep her happy. Better give the beast roses.”

      Dorothea came back with the roses and met Nancy staggering across the hall with a bundle of brown netting.

      “Hammocks!” said Nancy, and dumped them on the floor. “I’ll get you some vases. Hi! Peggy! Take down the Jolly Rogers from Dick’s bed. She’s bound to poke her nose in and want to know what Uncle Jim was doing with them. I say, Dot, when you’ve plunked the roses in her room … Some on the dressing-table … Some on the mantelpiece and some with the biscuit tin by her bed … just make sure Dick’s got all his things … Coming … COMING! Jibbooms and bobstays! We’ve only got four hours left … ” She was gone and back again in a moment with three glass vases for the flowers. “Water in the bathroom,” she said. “I’ve got to keep an eye on Cook and the stores.”

      Ten minutes later not a trace of Dick and Dorothea was left in the rooms that had been theirs. The spare room, gay with roses, was ready for a guest of a very different kind. Even the two suitcases were down in the hall, with the hammocks, kettle, hammer, a tin of nails and a huge pile of rugs.

      In the kitchen Cook was filling tins with tea and sugar and Peggy and Nancy were packing things into knapsacks. “And a cake,” said Cook. “And a beef roll to start on, and a dozen eggs. Dearie me, I wish I knew if I’m doing right or wrong.”

      “Right. Right. Right,” said Nancy. “There’s nothing else to be done and you know it. Look here, if you