‘I can write,’ he said angrily. ‘But I s’pose a gennelman can keep a sectary for his corspondant.’
Nobody paid any attention to him. They were all thinking how mean they had been about the house. Five pounds in all for it, and every penny provided by grandfather. Nothing even done about learning tennis except practice at the table sort.
Susan looked worried.
‘Poor grandfather! What a shame! If Jim and I get birthday money we’ll put some in. Won’t we, Jim?’
Jim nodded.
‘Everything that’s over from my cricket pads.’
Pinny looked up.
‘I shall see what I can do.’
‘Oh, no, you mustn’t, Pinny,’ Mrs. Heath objected.
‘Why on earth should you?’
‘Ah, well.’ Pinny smiled at them all. ‘Many hands make light work, you know.’
Dr. Heath got up.
‘So they do, Pinny, bless you. But much more important than the money is the tennis practice. We’ve been slacking. I shall put that right to-day. Who’d like to come with me to Nobby’s after lunch?’ He knew the answer before he asked the question. All the children liked going to Nobby’s.
Nobby Clark was a carpenter. Nobody called him Mr. Clark, or Mr. Charles Clark, which was his full name. Everybody just called him Nobby. Once, years before, Dr. Heath had pulled him through pneumonia. He was really very grateful for being kept alive when he might have been dead, but he had an odd way of showing it. He was not a man who looked grateful very easily.
Nobby did his carpentering in a shed at the back of his house. He must have cleaned the shed sometimes or the shavings would have been up to the roof, but it never looked as though he did. There were the most useful things to be had on the floor for the picking up. Decent blocks of wood that Jim, who was clever with his penknife, could make into things. Shavings of all sorts that if taken home carefully and painted, made grand bracelets and necklaces for savages on desert islands and ladies going to Court. Sometimes there were things that had been cut off furniture, which, although it was difficult to know just how they would come in, were worth taking home in case. The foot of a chair with a castor on it; a bit of a door; odd pieces that had carving on them. All the time the children were in his shed Nobby kept up a continual grumble:
‘Put that down. Let that be.’
They paid no attention to him whatsoever because they knew he could not want the things they took or he would not let them take them out of the shed. Sometimes he did stop them. Jim once found a most beautiful round bit of wood, shaped like a log. He had seen an interesting bit of carving someone had made out of a piece of root, using its natural bumps and bits to turn it into a frog and a sort of gnome. He had thought that he might do the same thing with this bit as it had a bump on one side. Nobby, however, took it from him just as he was leaving.
‘Give that here, Jim. That’s a bit what’s going to make a ball on Mrs. Higgins’s gate-post. Since they come into a bit of money they’ve changed their house from No. 27 to The Cedars, and they want balls on the gateposts. Lot of foolishness!’ Nobby spat into a corner, which was a way he had when he felt contemptuous. The children knew, of course, it was rude of him to spit, but at the same time they thought it was a grand way of showing what you felt.
That morning Dr. Heath stopped the car outside Nobby’s house and they all went down to his shed. Nobby was sawing a length off a plank. His back was to the door and he never looked round. Anybody who did not know him would have thought he was deaf and had not heard five people come in. That was just his way. He knew anybody who was likely to call by their footsteps. Still sawing, he said suddenly:
‘My rheumatics is cruel. It’s all along of what was done to me with my pew-monia.’ He spat.
‘Sorry to hear that, Nobby.’ The doctor sat down on a bench which was against the wall. ‘I did my best, you know.’
Nobby nodded gloomily.
‘You may have.’ He went on sawing and apparently noticing nothing. Then he barked suddenly: ‘Put that down, Jim. Let those shavings be, Nicky, messing yourself up.’ Then he added: ‘Some of us can’t seem to do right whatever we does.’ Dr. Heath, who was used to Nobby, knew that this last sentence was meant for him, and not for the children; but he only smiled.
‘Look, Nobby, I want these kids of mine to get some tennis practice. I thought of fixing up a length of board down that wall where we tried to have a rockery.’
Nobby laid down his saw. He went to a flap of wood which let down on hinges from the wall. He used it as a sort of desk. He found an envelope and a scrubby end of pencil.
‘What length of boarding did you reckon to have? Let that bit of wood be, Jim, that’s the leg of Mrs. Foster’s four-poster.’
Dr. Heath took an envelope out of his pocket, on which he had calculations.
‘Well, I don’t want to cut back the ribes which is one end, nor the lilac-trees which are the other. My wife is very fond of those. But I must have twenty-seven feet to start them off on the proper width. I walked it. I think I’ve got twenty-seven feet there.’
Nobby gazed at the ceiling, looking rather like the frog footman in Alice in Wonderland. When he looked at a ceiling he seemed to be able to see other people’s houses and gardens.
‘Thirty feet, easy.’ He spoke as if he had just measured it. ‘How high was it you was wantin’ it?’
The doctor filled his pipe.
‘Not less than twelve feet. Don’t want to spend all our days going round to the next house to collect the balls. Even at that height we’re bound to make a bit of a nuisance of ourselves. That’s a lot of wood, I’m afraid.’
The children gathered round to listen, except David, who was digging through the shavings in the corner of the room. His digging was rather dog-like. He used both hands scooping the shavings out, so that they fell in a shower behind him. The others were suddenly anxious about the practice boards. From their father’s tone it sounded as if they might be too expensive to have.
Nobby kept licking his end of pencil and making tremendous calculations. At last he looked up.
‘Those planks what I had over from Mr. Miles’s garidge would about do us, I reckon.’ He looked over at David. ‘Steady, there, steady, no need to muck the whole place up.’ He returned to his envelope. ‘The wood. My time. Fixing ’em. Say twenty-five shillings.’
‘That’s ridiculously cheap,’ said the doctor. The children sighed with relief and went back to nosing amongst the shavings. ‘There’s no need to do yourself.’
‘Who said anything about doing theirselves?’ Nobby grumbled. He put the bit of paper away in his pocket and the pencil behind his ear and took up his saw again. ‘Put that down, Susan. That’s the side for one of her ladyship’s new kennels. If you don’t like the price, doctor, you can leave it.’ He began to saw his plank in an angry way. ‘I’ll be along Saturday,’ he added.
Nobby came on Saturday and built a practice wall. Of all the things he ever built he grew to be fondest and proudest of that wall. In after years, whenever he was passing, he would walk into the garden. Disregarding all such things as herbaceous borders, rhododendrons in full flower, the holly at Christmas scarlet with berries, he would make straight for the practice board. He would stand in front of it gazing at it in silence for a moment or two. Then an odd sound, which was like a groan but was really admiration, would burst from him:
‘Lovely bit of work!’ Then he would turn and walk straight out of the garden again.
As soon as the wall was finished Dr. Heath got some white paint and made it ready to practise on. The children stood round and wished they might do the painting.
‘You can’t,’ their father explained. ‘You see, I am going to paint a white line right across, just the height and just the width of a singles tennis-court.’
‘If you drew it in pencil,’ Jim suggested, ‘I could do the putting on the paint.’
Dr. Heath shook his head.
‘Not this time, old man
. You shall next time. The paint’s bound to wear off. Want to get it accurate to start with, so it’ll do us for always.’ He measured carefully, and then painted a line right across the middle. ‘This is the net,’ he explained. ‘We’ve a singles court here. Twenty-seven feet wide that has to be. Posts ought to be three feet outside the net. We can’t do that. Only got thirty feet.’
‘One and a half feet each side, then,’ said Susan.
Jim dug his elbow into her.
‘Don’t show off.’
She dug her elbow into him.
‘All right. Remember that next time you bring home a cup for swimming.’
Dr. Heath was awfully happy. He loved messing about with paints and brushes when he had a chance. He made his net the correct three feet high in the middle and he painted two posts the proper three feet six inches. Right down the centre he put in the line to divide the service courts. Of course, none of this was necessary: all that was needed was a white line straight across for a net, but he enjoyed fussing and measuring. It was the same fun to him that jig-saw puzzles are to other people.
When he had finished painting the wall he painted a base-line. It was not really much good painting it, as by the time the practice wall was up there was only forty feet of garden left. Of course Dr. Heath painted the line its proper thirty-nine feet from the net, but obviously nobody could really serve from outside it as their racket would hit the wall behind them. All the same it looked very smart and professional when it was done.
It was getting quite late when the last line was finished. Pinny had come out some time before and fetched David to bed. They all felt, however, that their wall must be admired. Susan collected Mrs. Heath. Jim went for Annie. Nicky galloped upstairs and told Pinny to look out of the window. All the audience behaved splendidly.
‘You never did that yourself, did you, darling?’ Mrs. Heath said admiringly to her husband. ‘It looks like the work of a professional.’
‘Never keep a dog if you can bark yourself,’ Pinny called from the window. ‘It’s beautiful work, doctor.’
Annie looked at it with her head on one side. Then she nodded:
‘If doctoring fails you could get a job as handy-man about a circus.’
They all went in after that. They felt nobody could say anything better.
CHAPTER III
THE COMMITTEE
It was a gorgeously warm day. The children were sitting on the steps into the garden waiting for their father to give Jim a lesson. Susan sighed.
‘It’s queer, seeing how hard we’ve worked, how little we seem to know.’
‘I don’t know.’ Nicky got up. She took the racket from Jim and swung her arm back and then brought it smoothly forward. She held it out.
‘Look at that. I should have hit the ball right in the middle, wouldn’t I? You can’t say I haven’t learnt something.’
Jim snatched his racket back.
‘Shut up, you little show-off. Anybody can do that.’
Nicky sat down.
‘All right, do it yourself. You couldn’t yesterday.’
Jim jumped up. He swung his racket all right and brought it forward just as Nicky had done. But somehow it was obviously not at an angle that would have hit any ball straight. Susan got up and inspected it.
‘You’d have hit that one on the wood,’ she said regretfully, hating to side with Nicky against Jim. Nicky looked aggravating.
‘Look at your shoulders, dear,’ she said pertly. ‘Both facing front.’
Jim grunted and twisted his body so that his left shoulder turned towards an imaginary net.
‘All right, you only know it like a parrot.’
David looked up from the motor-car he was playing with.
‘Nicky has a nat’ral aptichude.’
Nicky knelt down beside him and gave his motor-car a little push.
‘Have I? What is that?’
David took the motor-car from her and put it back where it had been before.
‘That car was doing seventy up the Great West Road. You mustn’t move it.’
Nicky turned to the twins.
‘What’s an “aptichude”?’
Neither of them had the least idea.
‘I should think it’s another word for conceit,’ Jim suggested. ‘And about right, too.’
‘It’s a funny thing, you know’—Susan hugged her knees—‘I never knew till the tennis wall went up that daddy knew such a lot about games.’
Jim picked up a handful of small stones. He tried to hit a daisy on the lawn.
‘You knew he was good at tennis until his leg.’
Nicky lay down flat on her back on the path. She turned her feet over on top of her and held her ankles.
‘I didn’t know he knew much about all the other games.’
Susan shook back her plaits.
‘I don’t mean him exactly knowing things. I mean him wanting things. Of course, I knew he was Cambridge and liked them to win the boat race. But I didn’t know he minded about England winning anything.’
Jim had not managed to hit his daisy, so he picked up another handful of stones.
‘I don’t think he does really. I mean, not because it’s England. I think it’s because we used to win everything and now we can’t.’
Susan nodded.
‘Daddy says English people used to win the tennis tournaments at Wimbledon.’
Nicky rolled over on her face.
‘I don’t expect we ever did really. I think the Americans have always won.’
‘I get sort of nervous,’ Susan said anxiously, ‘that daddy will get any ideas about us.’
Jim hit his daisy and put down the rest of the stones and leant against the step.
‘So do I,’ he agreed gloomily. ‘I don’t think anybody English has ever broken a world’s swimming amateur record. I heard daddy ask Pinny yesterday to clean my cups.’
‘Goodness!’ said Susan. ‘You don’t think he wants you to do it?’
Nicky giggled.
‘He’ll be very disappointed if he does.’
David gave her a push with his foot.
‘Will you get off the Great West Road! You’ve stopped my motor-car.’
Dr. Heath came out of the house. He looked at his watch.
‘Sorry, Jim, old man, I did want to give you a decent lesson to-day, seeing it’s so near the end of the holidays, but the patients would talk.’ He went down to the practice board with Susan and Jim.
Nicky swivelled round on her behind so that she got off David’s Great West Road. It was nice lying on the path, though the pebbles dug into her through her jersey which was a bit uncomfortable, but not enough to matter. It was lovely to find a hot day. It had not been really hot since last summer. She was glad that Jim was having the lesson. It was lucky that he had to have most of daddy’s time. It would be awful when the term began. She wished people were not so keen on stupid things. Why shouldn’t you run with the ball at netball? It was much less trouble than tossing it up and down. As long as you got the ball back over the net at tennis why should anybody care how you held your racket? Even Annie was fussy, worrying about the way you stood to juggle. As if juggling could ever matter. Grown-up people were very silly. Always making rules that somebody had to learn. She heard Jim’s lesson as though it were a wireless playing in the next garden. Quite nice, but nothing to do with her.
‘Do hold your racket tight, old man. It’s swivelling at each stroke. Don’t jab. Don’t stand too close to the ball. That’s it. Swing right back. That’s better. You hit that one square. Don’t forget your follow through. Don’t snatch at it. Stop a moment, old man. You must follow through.’
‘Why?’ Jim’s voice sounded angry. ‘When I hit it and it’s gone, what does it matter what the racket is doing afterwards?’
Nicky heard her father laugh.
‘It’s just one of those rules. You’ll have to take it for granted that I’m right at the moment. You can prove it for yourself on a court in the su
mmer holidays.’
‘It seems very silly to me.’ Jim sounded crosser than ever.
‘I expect it does, old man. Honestly, it’s true, though. If you finish a stroke the moment you’ve hit, the ball loses pace, direction, and you’ve no control over it.’
There was a sound of the tennis-racket being banged on the grass. Nicky sat up hopefully, wondering if Jim was going to get into a proper temper. He looked as though he might. His face was very red. He was beating quite a hole in the lawn with the edge of the racket.
‘Well, I don’t see. It’s silly doing things you can’t understand.’
Nicky looked at her father to see if he was angry too, but he had not seemed to notice that Jim was cross. He had taken his pipe out of his pocket and was filling it with tobacco.
‘Come on, Jim. Let’s have another try. Now a nice steady swing back. Mind your feet.’
Jim stopped playing and looked at his feet.
‘There’s nothing wrong with them. And I don’t see why it would matter if there were. You don’t kick tennis-balls.’
Nicky wriggled a little nearer. She enjoyed other people’s arguments.
‘Well, have a look.’ Dr. Heath stood as Jim had been standing. ‘How can you hit the ball when you’re facing it? You must get your left shoulder round. You can’t do that with your feet the opposite way on. If you think all the time: “Are my feet right?” you needn’t bother about the rest so much, because if your feet are right your body will be.’
‘And if he holds his racket tight,’ Nicky prompted.
Jim glared. Her father turned to her.
‘Jim is just as capable of remembering that as you are. If you want to watch the lesson you may, but don’t interrupt.’
After that Nicky tried to look intelligent. She did not succeed very well. It was not very interesting. Jim was only right all over about once in twenty strokes. Sometimes it was his feet. Sometimes his follow through. Sometimes he snatched. To Nicky it was rather like hearing a person practising chopsticks, playing it over and over again and always wrong. She was very good at chopsticks, both the treble and the bass. She always had a feeling when people played it wrong that she would like to knock them off the piano-stool and do it instead. She longed to take the racket and say: ‘Let me do it.’ Instead, she slipped off into the house while no one was looking. She went to the kitchen and had a long talk with Annie about seals.