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The sky was grey in England and James didn’t like that. He would have preferred to keep his coat on, but reluctantly gave it up it to the uniformed man who took their coats away.
If he were younger he could have sat next to Mother for warmth, perhaps even climbed into her lap. But he was conscious that he was now regarded as too old to do so in public, particularly in the waiting room of this grand hotel, not while dressed in his best.
“Elizabeth!” His aunt’s voice rang out as she sailed into the room like a battleship.
Mother’s face lit up in a rare smile. “Eleanor!” She rose, with a burst of spirit that made her movements quick like in the old days, and was quickly enveloped in her older sister’s embrace. She seemed more delicate, almost wraithlike, next to the healthy, pink face that belonged to Aunt Eleanor.
Aunt Eleanor had a pat on the head for each of the boys. "Charles! I haven’t seen you at all since you were a little baby. And James – she beamed - he looks so like you, Elizabeth –" James squirmed out of her grasp. He’d expected to be asked for a handshake, not have the air squeezed out of him by someone he’d just met.
Eleanor Lacey clucked maternally and kept an arm around her sister’s small frame as she ushered her towards the dining-room. The cold hands, the bones like those of a small animal’s palpable under the winter clothes, helped her to guess some of the details of the story she read between the lines of her sister’s last letter. “Your hands are like ice. Are you quite well, my dear?” Her eyes held a question.
Father, and Charles, were already shaking hands with Uncle, Aunt Eleanor’s husband. James had been apprehensive about meeting a Baron - he had no idea what that was nor how one should behave when shaking hands with one - but he seemed quite an ordinary sort of fellow whose palm was pleasantly warm without being sweaty. He met the eyes of the children and when he smiled he had wrinkles at the side of his eyes, which made James feel better at once.
*
James met his cousins for the first time - Peter, Evan, Margot, and Algernon (in that order), all decked out in an abundance of finery and ribbons that made him feel rather shabby. Charles was soon getting on terrifically with the older two Lacey boys. Nine-year-old Charles was not going back to India after this trip – he was to stay behind in England and go to school, and while he would be sad to leave India and his shared bedroom with James, he was also quite excited about it. The older boys’ talk was of school and games, which James found hard to follow.
When it was time to sit down, James found himself at the end of the table laid for the younger children. Margot was six years old, like him, and extremely chatty. All through the meal she radiated a polite but intense curiosity about India. Were there really tigers? How big were they? Could you fit a tiger into this dining-room? Had he ever seen a tiger? Did the tigers eat people? Did the crocodiles?
Her big brown eyes widened as James told her about the tigers, the crocodiles, and the bears. He chivalrously delayed consuming the jam biscuit on his plate to tell her about the snake he had seen which was the length of his arm. It was deadly, and had been beaten to death with a shovel by the gardener.
She gave a small scream, “O!” and clutched the nearest arm – an arm that, she realised, had just reached over to help itself to James’ biscuit. “Algernon Montgomery, that was not your biscuit! I’m sorry, my baby brother forgets his manners.”
The culprit, Algernon Montgomery, was not really a baby anymore (though his older siblings still referred to him as one). James noticed his other hand already had a biscuit in it and glared at him, putting out a hand to snatch his biscuit back.
An experienced youngest child, Algernon’s response was to stuff the biscuit into his mouth for safekeeping. He grinned at James with his mouth full. James made a face at him. Not at all perturbed, Algernon added, with a happy smile, once he could speak again, “Biscuits! I love biscuits.” Luckily, there were more and James managed to rescue one for himself before they all disappeared.
Mother, belatedly looking over from afar, saw what she believed to be a picture of harmonious division of biscuits. “Thank you for looking after Algernon, James,” she smiled.
James did not usually have to look after other people. He did not think that he was going to like it.
*
They were invited to stay with the Laceys while Father settled affairs in London and corresponded with his brother, who would be Charles’ guardian while he was at school. Mother travelled up a day later, first having been taken to see a specialist doctor in London, so they were taken in hand by Aunt Eleanor, though James now registered that her full name started with a 'Lady'. After giving Charles and James a long list of "don't"s, she quite happily left them to their own devices with her brood.
Often left behind by his older brothers as they tore around the grounds, running or playing ball better and faster than himself, Algernon was delighted to have found a temporary sibling who was a boy and about the same size as himself. He attached himself to James at once and gave him no choice. "Will you play with me?" Repeated a dozen times throughout the day. And that was that.
James’ aunt and mother, once she'd made the journey, seemed to spend a great deal of time talking by themselves. James was disappointed that his mother seemed to have less time for him, but he was swept off by the excitement of exploring the house in the company of Margot and Algernon. Margot gave him guest-of-honour status at her dolls’ tea table, while Algernon was determined to conduct him around and introduce him to everyone.
James noted that everyone in the house had a smile and a greeting for the “baby”, thanks to an easy, unforced way he had of showing appreciation and a winning smile that he used early and often in his favour. He also had a well-timed "Please?" with the right note of pleading - a consummate youngest child, well-loved and spoilt by all the staff, one who knew that everyone thought he was adorable and shared the same views. James found this exasperating.
There were benefits, of course - Cook saved small treats for Master Algernon (“his favourite!”) and they shared during tea. James, of course, was pleased to benefit from association. They were assured a glass of milk if they called in for it at the kitchen.
Jones, the gardener, was a jolly figure who had children of his own and let the children have a small bed of their own for planting. None of the Lacey boys were particularly interested in growing plants aside from Algernon, who showed an enthusiasm that he found gratifying. He let Margot and James do some raking of the soil as well, showed them some worms, and they helped him water the plants in the greenhouse.
*
When Evan and Charles had the chess set out, Peter tried to lead the younger children (who were prone to getting in the way and upsetting the chess players) into playing the new game that had been brought by James’ father as a gift to the Lacey children.
“It’s called... Snakes and Ladders,” he said, reading off the name on the board.
“I love Snakes and Ladders,” piped up Algernon, optimistically.
This consisted of a wooden board divided into a hundred squares, coloured white, green, or containing a picture. Snakes and ladders criss-crossed the board. It was played with dice, which determined the number of squares that a player should advance. If one landed on the foot of a ladder, one could ascend to the square with the bigger number, but if one landed on the head of a snake, the snake swallowed the player sending him down to the square indicated by its tail. One particularly vicious snake sent a player from square 98 back to 13.
At first, the children were engaged by the game’s simplicity, giggling as a few rapid ascents on ladders propelled them up the board. But as their counters then slid down the throats of snakes, frustration mounted rapidly. “I don’t like this game,” said Algernon, his lower lip quivering as he rolled a two. “I’m trying very hard but I’m still not good at rolling what I want.”
“It’s chance,” said his older brother, as the snake’s head on square 68 sent him back to the start of the game. “You can’t learn to be good at it. It’s dice. You're either lucky, or you're not.”
“Dice… is… NOT… FAIR,” wailed Algernon. He had a very loud voice.
James contemplated the difference between the injustice and the equality of chance, but did not have the words to form his thoughts. Snakes and ladders was confusing because, according to the pictures on the board, virtue should lead to reward and vice to downfall, but the element of chance trumped the lesson. In the end it all seemed to be greatly due to luck. He wasn’t sure what meaning the game had if you couldn’t win by skill, and was inclined to agree with Algernon that it wasn’t fair.
Shortly after, there was a tussle, the board was sent flying, jam sandwiches were sent from the kitchen to restore equilibrium in the house, and the game was stowed carefully away.
*
Having been turfed out on a fine day because they were making too much noise in the house, the children taught each other games outside at the far end of the flower garden, near the bridge that spanned a ditch dividing it from a field with sheep.
They were joined by Sam and Jenny, the gardener’s children. A herd of children let loose in the garden could not do anyone any harm. They were told they had the run of the field that lay beyond the ditch, but to give the neighbouring field at the far end a wide berth. It belonged to the nearby farmer who kept a bull in it and had a barbed wire fence.
Not planning to go far, they played tag on the near side of the bridge. When they needed a breather, they took turns, one at a time, to be the Grandmother. Grandmother would stand with her back turned from the others, who had to creep closer as quietly as they could before she turned around, at which they had to freeze in place. If Grandmother caught them mid-movement, they had to return back to their starting point. The first person to succeed in touching Grandmother would be the next Grandmother. It was a little childish for the older boys, but they humoured the young ones.
“Hullo,” said Charles. “What are those dogs up to?” It was an unfamiliar, distant, high-pitched noise of dogs, and the noise of men shouting from far off.
“Oh – It's the Hunt,” said Peter. “They don’t usually come here, though – the foxes are miles away, in the copse, and this land isn’t good riding, too many ditches. Sometimes you can hear them.”
James was confused. “What’s that?” he asked. Some explanations were given. “The foxes eat the farmers’ chickens. The men hunt them, with dogs and horses, to keep their numbers low.”
James mentally put this into the same category as tiger hunts. He understood tiger hunts - when a tiger became a maneater, it had to be shot.
“Well, alright then,” said Evan impatiently. “Tag! You’re it!”
*
They took turns to be the Blind Mouse. The Blind Mouse closed his or her eyes, and had to rely on sound to run after the other children and catch them.
“You’re not supposed to open your eyes,” said James to Algernon, both out of breath from running.
“Sorry,” puffed Algernon, who after all was five, stocky, and red in the face from running valiantly after the others despite his disadvantage as the smallest. “I can’t run with my eyes closed.”
“Let’s use a blindfold,” said Evan, who was ten. “So that there’s no cheating, even by accident.”
A blindfold was procured and the game proceeded.
“Hey,” shouted Charles, when he was the next Blind Mouse, “You’re not allowed to run far away and leave me alone!”
They made a rule that if the Blind Mouse was not touched for some time, then the other players had to shout, “Here!” to show their location. Of course, the children soon realised that immediately after shouting, “Here!” they had to change their location as quickly as they could. There were giggles and shouts as they gave false leads and teased the blindfolded with sound.
All went well till, when James was Blind Mouse, he received a tap on the shoulder accompanied by a giggle. Up till then, he had been lunging in the direction of the tap, but he reasoned that whoever gave a tap would be intending to misdirect him. So he responded differently this time – he threw himself in the opposite direction from the tap.
This had a result he did not quite expect: his head collided violently with somebody, and they both yelled, lost balance and rolled into the ditch. As he got the blindfold off, loud howls in his ear told him that the somebody in the ditch with him was Algernon.
The ditch was not very deep, but it was very muddy.
Charles and Evan regarded them with critical eyes. “You are a right mess, Algernon Montgomery,” announced Charles.
Algernon, who had borne the brunt of the mud, was plastered with it. The cause of the hearty yelling which emanated from him appeared to be a bump that was forming on his forehead.
James found his corresponding bump as well and started to sniffle, a little.
Each was hauled out by his elder sibling.
“You have to get into the house by the side-door before Mother sees you,” said Evan, steering the muddy duo to face the correct direction.
James watched in disbelief as Algernon, clutching at the nearest clean fabric, which happened to be part of James’ shirt, wiped his nose upon it with the utmost self-assurance as if it were his due.
*
The children were stopped in their tracks as they bore witness to a scene they did not expect. There was a flutter of wings as a bird shot up from the ditch, alarmed.
Down the ditch, streaking at top speed for its very life, came an animal bedraggled beyond all recognition. It was Reynard, mud-stained, its fur sodden and its brush barely clearing the ground, but still running for its life. They had forgotten about the hunt. No fox had ever come that way before. There was no cover. Sheer desperation had driven it down the ditch after a run of many miles and it had nowhere else to go.
The older boys shouted with excitement, but Margot whispered, “The poor thing! They’ll kill it!”
Focused on the threat of death from behind, it was at first too tired to have spotted them. Then, spooked by the children’s shouts, the fox froze for an instant, fixed them with a stricken look and swerved almost under their feet, running up the bank towards the sheep field. It was the first James had seen, and a lot smaller than the devious chicken-killing thief he had built up in his mind from the stories. The desparate, accusatory glare on its mask haunted James even after it had gone. The detour cost it its lead.
Up floated the cries of the pack and the sound of men on horses, faint but gaining, and then the huntsman crested the hill.
“Ditch!” shouted Peter in warning, and pointed to the fox. The pack, travelling on scent till then, sighted it and changed its note with excitement.
The fox streaked across the field to the one with the bull, and was brought up short by the fence. For a moment it looked as if the end would come there and then. The leaders of the pack were gaining, so close that surely it could feel their hot breath at its heels.
At the last minute, it found a hole under the fence barely big enough, got through and escaped.
“Oh, God!” exclaimed Evan. “The barbed wire!”
The leading pup, a youngster more eager and better winded than the others, and scenting victory, had foolishly tried to jump the fence and got a serious belly wound. It was a painful scene even from a distance, with sound filling in the gaps of imagination where sight could not.
“Bad show. Don’t look, kids,” said Peter, who saw the huntsman shake his head. Putting an arm around Margot and Algernon, who was frightened by the other children's reactions and had already started crying afresh, he started the walk to the house.
The pack went on and the noise of the hunt resumed. They were halfway back to the house when they heard a shot behind them.
“Did they get the fox?” he asked, not really understanding then, though he did later.
“No, silly,” said his brother. “They don’t shoot the fox. The dogs eat him. That’s the rules of the sport.”
“Oh,” said James, remembering the look of utter exhaustion of the hunted animal. “That doesn’t seem very fair, Charles. I hope the poor fellow got away.”
“What a fellow you are, James,” said his brother, with a quizzical look at him. “You don’t have to feel sorry for foxes.”
*
Eleanor and Elizabeth watched, unnoticed, from an upstairs window, as their muddied offspring trooped into the house after one more excursion.
“Just like us when we were little,” said Eleanor. “Never a dull moment.”
“Is Algernon all right?” asked Elizabeth with some concern. “I can hear him howling from here. And that’s a lot of mud.”
“He’s had worse,” smiled Eleanor, who after all was parent to three boys (and a girl). “Cook will get those clothes off in the kitchen before he treads mud into the house.”
They looked at each other, remembering their own childhood which had been less carefree, more restricted, but during which they were close, inseparable. When they met it was as if Elizabeth had never left – though oceans, children, titles and husbands now lay between the past and the present.
“I’ll miss you,” said Eleanor. “Have you set your mind on going back? After all, it was those damned fevers that --” She could not help giving a slight shudder.
Elizabeth’s eyes were bright. “Well, what is to happen, will happen, whether here or not, and India is where I should be, with Gerald, when it does. Much as I love and miss you, Eleanor, I’m as much at home wherever he and James are, and I won’t lack for anything, spending the time with them. I may still have some years. We have a good physician, they see many of the same cases there. The specialist here agrees with his diagnosis. I'm well taken care of. I’ll… I promise to write.”
Eleanor was an outspoken, affectionate and loyal correspondent and had been Elizabeth’s rock from afar through the years they had been apart. Through the turbulent early years, when she had sailed to a foreign land to marry a man she’d never met, when she was homesick for her childhood after marriage, through early frustrations with Charles, the recurrent fevers and when she’d lost the baby. Through the frightening early years of James’ childhood – born unexpectedly in a dak bungalow and initially sickly and not expected to live. But live he did. And was now grown so big. It was a delight to see him in the flesh after all those years when all there was to see was her sister’s handwriting – after all that time spent reading between the lines, imagining her and the boys in India.
“Charles looks just like Gerald, and James looks just like you did at that age, you know,” said Eleanor, to fill the silence. “Is he as big an adventurer as you wished all your life you could be?”
Elizabeth laughed. “I’ve had a lifetime's worth of adventure, I think. I hope he’ll get as much as he wants, when he’s ready for it.”
“You didn’t think of sending him to school with Charles?”
“I am not ready for that, Eleanor!... I think James needs both his parents for a little longer. Perhaps it’s I who need him.”
Having spent as many years separate as together, they knew that the parting to India would simply precede a longer and more permanent separation, the early signs of which had sent the Bigglesworths back to England as a family – ostensibly to accompany Charles and settle him down ready for school, but also, in reality, so that Elizabeth would be able to visit her sister for what would likely be one last time before she became too weak to travel. It was a reunion but also a farewell, and between fond remembrances they shed the tears they needed to shed.
*
When the weather was too cold for outdoors, they stayed in the house.
James got to try out the magnificent train set, one of the highlights of his visit. It held their attention well for hours - apart, of course, from the times when Algernon insisted on telling the story differently, and demanding the engine that James was holding on to, "now, now, now, NOW!"
James was sorely tempted a few times to lash out, but during those times he dropped the engine and went to pore over the bookshelf instead. It was an interesting selection; one book in particular had beautiful pictures which he'd have liked to explore further - but every time he was about to turn them over, he found himself led away by the hand, "I want to play with this! Play with this now, now, NOW!" And, just as James was getting huffy - "Please?" in a way you couldn't say no to.
Algernon's older brothers, who normally found themselves humouring their youngest sibling, were pleased to have someone else to entertain him. Margot, who hadn't yet become grown-up enough to be decorous, was pleased to have a playmate who was courteous at sharing and who did not dismiss her story ideas as being "just like a girl", which her older brothers sometimes did. They happily played together, sending her dolls on adventures with the trains.
During a particularly boisterous game in the playroom, when the older children had retreated elsewhere, Margot was playing the washerwoman by the river, Algernon the tiger whose role was to snatch and eat her, and James the hunter who had to shoot the tiger. Cushions formed the stepping-stones in the river, which was the nursery floor, and the river would carry away anything that fell into it.
In the course of the ensuing battle, the tiger, fully absorbed in the role entrusted to it, leapt on the hunter. James, armed with a cushion as a stand-in for a rifle, had not expected to receive 40 pounds of charging cousin headfirst in the chest and was knocked over backwards. To add insult to injury, the tiger assiduously bit him in the heat of the moment, upon which the hunter’s instincts of self-preservation kicked in and he dealt the tiger such a great whack in self-defense that it began howling and had to be comforted by both hunter and washerwoman.
There was a pregnant pause as the tiger discovered a new scrape on its knee. It scrunched up its face and opened its mouth wide. James, by now familiar with the signs of imminent wailing, headed off the wail by bursting into laughter, and they all laughed.
Once they had recovered, Margot was tiger next, James the washerwoman and Algernon the hunter. The roles grew increasingly nominal as each of them picked up cushions for defence and attack and took to whacking each other into the river.
The parlour maid who was sent to call them to tea shrieked at the mess when she opened the door. Cushions were strewn all over. They stopped in mid-tumble, slightly flustered. “We’ll tidy up when we’re done,” promised Margot.
In the end Margot and Algernon forgot, attention and energy fully focused on the next game, and it was James, who felt that being a guest conferred some responsibility, who did most of the tidying.
*
Before they knew it, the visit was over.
“Goodbye,” said James and Charles. James had a funny feeling in his stomach. He knew that shortly after, he’d be saying goodbye to Charles as well, and perhaps to his mother (he knew of her illness), and it seemed as if the goodbyes would never stop once he started saying them.
“Goodbye,” chorused Margot and Algernon. For the parting, both were decked out in the same smart clothes they had been wearing on the day he’d first met them. James thought Algernon’s suit rather ridiculous. (Later, when he looked back on that period in his life, he couldn’t remember him wearing anything else, though clearly he must have done for all the play they had in between that first and last day.)
“You look silly,” he told Algernon.
Algernon grinned broadly and made a face at him.
Aunt Eleanor insisted on squeezing both James and Charles tight in her arms, one after the other, and kissed them, much to James’ distaste. Her gaze lingered on James, who struck her with his blend of being at once serious and lively, unusual for a child his age… remarkably like his mother, so vivacious before India and the deadly illness brought on by repeated bouts of fever. She sighed and dabbed her reddened eyes with her handkerchief.
“We’ve had a lovely time, my dears. Do come back and visit us again. You're welcome to stay with us.”
*
As their carriage was pulling away from the big house, Mother stroked James’ hair absently.
James asked, “Will we see them again?”
Mother said, “Perhaps you will, one day. If only we lived close enough to see them more often.” She smiled mistily at Father, who squeezed her hand, acknowledging that the decision she had made to join him in his return, to say goodbye to England and the sister whom she loved a second time, was much more difficult than she would admit. She blew her nose.
“How do you like your cousins, James?”
“It was nice, playing with Margot and Algernon. We had fun.”
“Still wish you had a younger brother?” she teased. He'd used to ask, when he was younger, if there would be any more babies.
James replied quickly. “No. I like being the youngest. Looking after people is hard work. And noisy.”
His mother laughed through her tears. “You can write them sometimes. We can send it with my mail to Aunt Eleanor.”
James never did write. The visit, pleasant as it had been, was tinged with a feeling of foreboding he could not define, and eclipsed by all that happened in the days that followed. Back in India, he grew up apprenticed to the local adventurers and did not lack for playmates of his own age. He remembered his cousins and aunt only as one remembers a dream.
THE END