Chapter Five
'OF course most of these things are rather too young for you, said Ann. 'Steve just never threw any of his old toys away. She opened the door of the big cupboard. 'You're sure you — Penn murmured. He stood awkwardly behind Ann, stooping with an air of ineffectual helpfulness, while she rummaged in the cupboard.
It was the following Saturday. Afer breakfast Ann had asked Penn if he would like to look through Steve's old room to see if there was anything there that might amuse him. She couldn't think why she had not thought of this before, she said.
Penn was fascinated and troubled by this suggestion. Steve's room, till so called, the first-floor room over the front door, next to where Grandma had been, which was now only occasionally in use as an emergency spare room, had always been an object of somewhat, eerie interest to Penn. He had never entered it before.
He looked round it now while Ann began to spread out the contents of the cupboard on the floor. It was a big room, airy and plain and modem, not like most of the cluttered-up rooms at Grayhallock.
It had a big window and a window-seat and the view of the beeches. Still, it wasn't worth a dash compared with his own tower room. His tower room was much smaller, only half the size of the lower tower rooms which Ann and Randall had, and a third the size of this room. But it was so marvellously high up, with windows on both sides so that he had what he called the light view and the dark view. The light view was the south view towards the invisible yet somehow present sea over the flat faded Marsh where low aeroplanes continually nosed in towards Ferryfield Airport, and this could not be seen at all from Steve's room. The dark view was the northern view over a big hop field which he had watched become in these last months the greenest thing he had ever seen, to another darker plantation of mixed conifers beyond, as if the North itself were coming into their backyard. He wondered why Steve had not had the tower room. Perhaps he hadn't been let. In those days, he had gathered from Nancy Bowshott, there had been 'living-in servants', and perhaps one of these 'servants' had occupied the undignified but wonderful little room.
'Well, it's a lot of junk really, said Ann. 'But do just root about for yourself, Penny. Those are Steve's books in that bookcase. And the cupboard's all yours. I'll leave you to it, shall I?
Penn, who was Penny in Australia but preferred to be Penn in England, knew that Ann called him Penny out of the kindness of her heart to make him feel at home, but he wished she wouldn't, especially since Miranda had said mockingly, 'But it's a girl's name! —’Thank you so much, Ann, he said. 'Please don't wait. I'll just look round. If you're sure you don't mind —’
'Of course I don't mind' said Ann. she looked at him in a sad affectionate way. 'I wish I'd thought of it before. It's a good idea. Though I don't think you'll find much. It's child's stuff'. She lingered at the door. 'Penny, are you sure you want to stay with Humphrey in London?
Humphrey Finch, who had been 'very nice to him last Sunday, had said he'd be glad to have him to stay in London and show him round. Everyone had seemed rather dubious about this, which was odd, as they'd been saying for ages, though without doing anything about it, that it was a pity he wasn't seeing anything of London. Humphrey Finch was nice, but Penn was sorry he hadn't been able to talk more to Colonel Meecham who had an M.C. Seton Blaise was nice too, but it hadn't got towers like Grayhallock. What he had liked best was the lake where, while Humphrey questioned him about his family, he had seen a kingfisher cross the water like a metallic blue bullet.
, Yes, I'd love to go, if that's all right.
'Well, yes, fine, said Ann. She still lingered. 'Ah well. I must go and do the bonfire.
Penn closed the door firmly behind her. He was not at an age to be indifferent to loot. He felt, in any case, moved and excited, indeed thrilled in a dark way, at the idea of looking at Steve's things. His cousin whom he had never met, nearly two years his senior, had been an object of veneration to Penn from long ago, filling in his thought the place of the elder brother for whom, over-provided as he was with younger siblings, he frequently yearned. He had so much looked forward to meeting Steve one day, upon the constantly talked-of but constantly deferred, English visit. He had imagined that, somehow, they would do remarkable things together. He had been exceedingly shaken by his cousin's death. It had been, indeed, his first experience of mortality.
He decided to look at the books first. The results were disappointing. Besides Shakespeare and all that, there were a large number of books on birds, but nothing about aeroplanes or ships or motor-bikes. Well, there was one book about sailing ships. And there was a book on veteran cars which looked promising. He put that on one side. Books about climbing there were, only Penn who had no head at all for heights was not interested in climbing. There were some boys' school stories and adventure stories, but no science fiction. There were two rather technical books about horses, but Penn, to the scandalized amazement of his English relatives who imagined Australians were always galloping across endless plains, was not able to ride a horse, and had no desire to learn, in spite of the offered loan of the Swanns' pony. The rest seemed to be mainly text-books, Latin grammars and such. There were a few Penguin novels, but they looked dull English teaparty stuff.
He turned his attention to the contents of the cupboard. Steve had evidently not shared Penn's passion for electrical gadgets. There was nothing electrical to be seen at all, except for an electric train set of very simple design. There were several mouth organs and several sorts of pipes of different sizes, but Penn had no musical talents. There were number of teddy bears and things which he treated with stiff detachment, and quantities of board and counter games. There was a chess set, but Penn was not acquainted with chess. A box full of whistles and screws puzzled him until he decided they were devices for imitating bird calls. There was a big electric torch, but the battery was dead. There really seemed to be nothing at, all that was worth taking away as loot. He opened a final big wooden box. It was full of the largest number of lead soldiers he had ever seen.
Penn had always had a passion, never by his impecunious family anything like fully indulged, for lead soldiers. He had wanted to be a soldier himself until he had decided more lately that he wanted to be a motor-mechanic, or as, ashamed of his cowardice, after realizing that his English relatives for some reason disliked this phrase, he now termed it, 'an engineer'. Not over-bright at school, he had usually managed to get good marks in History because of a passionate interest ill matters of weapons, uniforms and machinery of war, to which a few other facts about what was going on managed to adhere. He delved into the box.
Black Watch, Rifle Brigade, the Blues, the Royal Marines, Gurkhas, Sappers, Scots Greys. He began to set them out on the floor. Then he stopped. 'Child's stuff, Ann had said. He looked at the soldiers and sat back on his heels. Of course, he never played with soldiers now at home. He even stood by in a good-natured way while Timmie and Bobby mis-called, ill-treated and broke up his once-precious battalions. He began to put Steve's soldiers back into the box. Then he was taken by a sudden rush of emotion as if, he didn't know why, he might even weep.
Penn had so long and so desperately looked forward to coming to England, he had scarcely admitted to himself, let alone to his family, that when the time carne to leave home he could hardly bear it. The aeroplane flight and the excitement of arriving had consoled him of course. But since then everything had been depressing and disappointing. Grandma dying had been so awful. And he found his English relatives alien to a degree which, he felt, they themselves quite failed to realize. He was perfectly aware, of course, that they all felt that his mother had married not exactly beneath her, but, well, unsuitably, regrettably. He was aware more obscurely that they were all, well, a little disappointed in him. He was not a patch on Steve, of course; he was prepared to admit this himself. And if his Uncle Randall sometimes seemed positively to dislike him; it was perhaps only natural, since Penn was alive while Steve was dead.
He had not minded, what they reproached themselves about most, their not having got him into a school. He was really rather relieved about this, since what an English school suggested to him most of all was the idea of being beaten: an experience which he had never had and the possibility of which he regarded with a mixture of fear and thrilled awe. He had not minded mooching about at Grayhallock — he was better at amusing himself than they imagined — though he would be sorry to go home without having seen a bit more of England. But he was depressed by the countryside which they all thought so pretty, and constantly exclaimed about instead of taking it for granted. He disliked its smallness, its picturesqueness, its outrageous greenness, its beastly wetness. He missed the big tawny air and the dry distances and the dust; he even missed the barbed wire and the corrugated iron and the kerosene tins: he missed, more than he would have believed possible, the absence of the outback, the absence of a totally untamed beyond.
He was not able, and this was what depressed him most of all, in any way to settle down with his English relations. Grandpa and Ann liked him of course, and he was fond of them, but it was all so awkward. He could not see into their ways. It irked him that even Ann, who was so kind, did not treat Nancy Bowshott as an equal. This instance of lass-prejudice so constantly before his eyes incited him to such a degree that he had adopted an air of
