Noel Streatfield                     

Ballet Shoes

The Fossil Family Makes a Vow

Pauline had a cold, and she was left at home when Nana took Petrova and Posy for their walk. She was in that state of having a cold when nothing is very nice to do. Sylvia had got her a piece of linen and some coloured thread, and she could have started on the dressing-table cover she was going to give Nana for her birthday. Cook had invited her to come to the kitchen and make toffee. Clara brought in a page of transfers, and suggested she stuck them on a book to ‘Give to a poor child in hospital.’ Nana, who remembered how one felt with colds, gave her some brass polish and the sets of brass out of the doll’s house.
  ‘I expect those to shine when we get in,’ she said firmly. ‘Much better to have something to do. No good sitting around thinking how miserable you fell.’
  The last being an order, and as Nana expected things done when she said they were to be, Pauline finished them first. She found them quite fun to do, but she worked at them so hard that in half an hour they could not shine more than they did. Pauline put them back in the doll’s house, and thought for a moment of rearranging the drawing-room, but decided it would not be any fun without the others. She looked at the clock and wished it was tea-time, but it was only three. She took out the linen, and even threaded a bit of thread; but somehow she did not feel sewish, so she put it back in her drawer. She decided as there was not anything else to do she had better go and make toffee; but she felt hot, and not very much like eating toffee, and what is the gun of making toffee unless you want to eat it. She sat down on the landing of the second floor and sniffed and thought how beastly colds were. At that moment the door behind her opened and a head popped out. It had a shawl round it, and for a moment Pauline was not sure who it was. Then she recognized that it was one of the lady doctors – the one whose name was Jakes. Doctor jakes looked at Pauline.
  ‘My dear child, what are you doing there by yourself?’
  ‘I’b god a coad,’ Pauline explained stuffily, for she had come down without her handkerchief. ‘And the others hab god out withoud me, and I habbent god edything to do.’
  Doctor Jakes laughed.
  ‘You sound as though you have got a cold. So have I, as a matter of fact. Come in. I’ve got a lovely fire, and I’ll lend you a large silk handkerchief, and I’ll give you some ginger drink which is doing me good.’
  Pauline came in at once. She liked the sound of the whole of the invitation. Besides, she had not seen the inside of the two doctors’ rooms since they had been boarders’ rooms instead of homes for gum’s fossils. As a matter of fact, this one had changed so she felt it was a new room altogether. It had owned a rather shabby wall-paper; but when the boarder idea started it was distempered a sort of pale primrose all over. But the primrose hardly showed now, for the whole walls were covered with books.
  ‘My goodness!’ said Pauline, walking round and blowing her nose on the scarlet silk handkerchief Doctor Jakes provided. ‘You must read an awful lot. We have a big book-shelf in the nursery, but that’s for all of us and Nana. Fancy all these just for you!’
  Doctor Jakes came over to the shelves.
  ‘Literature is my subject.’
  ‘Is it? Is that what you’re a doctor of?’
  ‘More or less. But apart from that, books are very ornamental things to have about.’
  Pauline looked at the shelves. The books certainly were grand-looking – all smooth shiny covers, and lots of gold on them.
  ‘Ours aren’t very,’ she said frankly. ‘Yours are more all one size. We have things next to each other like Peter Rabbit and Just So Stories, and they don’t match very well.’
  ‘No, but very good reading.’
  Pauline came to the fire. It was a lovely fire; she stood looking at the logs on it.
  ‘Do you think Peter Rabbit good reading? I would have thought a person who taught literature was too grand for it.’
  ‘Not a bit – very old friend of mine.’
  Pauline looked at the shawl.
  ‘Why do you wear that round your head?’
  ‘Because I had earache with my cold. Have you got earache with yours?’
  ‘No. Just my nose.’
  Pauline remembered the ginger drink, and looked round for it. Doctor jakes remembered it at the same time. She put on the kettle.
  ‘Sit down. This drink is made with boiling water, and takes quite a time. Have you a holiday from school because of your cold?’
Pauline explained that they did not go to Cromwell house any more, and why?
  ‘You see,’ she said, ‘Gum said he’d be back in five years, and he isn’t.’
  ‘And who exactly is Gum?’
  Doctor Jakes poured things out of various bottles into two glasses.
  Pauline hugged her knees.
  ‘Well, he’s called Gum because he’s Garnie’s Great-Uncle Matthew. He isn’t really a great uncle of ours, because we haven’t any relations. I was rescued off a ship, Petrova is an orphan from Russia, and posy’s father is dead, and her mother couldn’t afford to have her, so we’ve made ourselves into sisters. We’ve called ourselves Fossil because that’s what Gum called us. He brought us back instead of them, you see.’
  ‘I see. Rather exciting choosing your own name and your own relations.’
  ‘Yes.’ Pauline saw that the kettle was nearly boiling and looked hopefully at the glasses. ‘We almost didn’t choose Posy to be a Fossil. She was little and stupid then, but she’s all right now.’
  Doctor Jakes got up and took the kettle off the fire and poured the water on the mixture in the glasses. At once there was the most lovely hot sweet smell. Pauline sniffed.
  ‘That smells good.’
  Doctor Jakes put the tumblers into silver frames with handles, and passed one to Pauline.
  ‘I do envy you. I should think it an adventure to have a name like that, and sisters by accident. The three of you might make the name of Fossil really important, really worth while, and if you do, it’s all your own. Now, if I make Jakes really worth while, people will say I take after my grandfather or something.’
  Pauline sipped her drink. It was very hot, but simply heavenly – the sort of drink certain to make a cold feel better. She looked across at Doctor Jakes over the rim of the glass, her eyes shining.
  ‘Do you suppose me and Petrova and Posy could make Fossil an important sort of name?’
  ‘Of course. Making your name worth while is a very nice thing to do; it means you must have given distinguished service to your country in some way.’
  Pauline gave another gulp at her drink. She frowned thoughtfully.
  ‘I don’t think we do the things that make names important. I sew, and Petrova’s awfully good at works of things – she can mend clocks and she knows heaps about aeroplanes and motor-cars. Posy doesn’t do much yet.’
  ‘There’s time. You probably won’t develop a talent till you are fourteen or fifteen. Are you good at lessons?’
  ‘Well, we were. Petrova was very good at sums, and said poetry the best in the class; but it’s different now we learn with Garnie. You know, she has to teach Posy too, and she has to do the baby things, like learning her letters and it takes a lot of time. Petrova does sums well still, but Garnie just puts R.R.R; she never teaches her a new one. I say poetry sometimes, but not very often now.’
  ‘What sort of poetry do you like?’
  ‘All sorts. We learnt ‘Oh to be in England’ and ‘The Ancient mariner’, and I had just started ‘Hiawatha’.’
  ‘Do you ever learn any Shakespeare?’
  ‘No. I should have started ‘As You Like It’ the next term if I had stayed at Cromwell House.’
  ‘You should learn him. He wrote a good few parts for children. If you are fond of reciting, that’s the stuff to work at.’ She went over to her shelves and picked out a book, and opened it. ‘Listen.’
  She read the scene in ‘King John’ between Prince Arthur and Hubert. Pauline did not understand it at all, but Doctor Jakes was one of those people who really can read out loud. Pauline forgot to drink her ginger, and instead, listened so hard that at last Doctor Jakes vanished, and in her place she saw a cowering little boy pleading for his eyes.
  ‘There.’ Doctor Jakes closed the book. ‘Learn that. Learn to play Prince Arthur so that we cringe at the hot irons just as he does, and then you can talk about reciting.’ She got another book, found the place and passed it to Pauline. ‘You read me that.’
  ‘It was Puck’s speech which begins ‘Fairy, thou speak’st aright.’ Pauline had never seen it before, and she halted over some of the words, but she got a remarkable amount of the feeling of Puck into it. When she had finished, Doctor Jakes nodded at her in a pleased way.
  ‘Good! We’ll read some more one day. I’ll make a Shakespearean of you.’
  Pauline heard the front door slam and got up.
  ‘There’s the others, I must go. Thank you very much for the ginger drink.’

Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield, 1936. Published by Puffin Books.