Eight Days of Luke

David could hardly believe his ears. “You mean not go to Mr Scrum?”

“I mean not go to Mr Scrum,” said Cousin Ronald.

“Oh, brilliant!” said David. His relief and delight and gratitude were so enormous that he could almost have hugged Cousin Ronald. “Thanks!” What a good thing it had not been a curse! Now he was free to do what he liked and see as much of Luke as he could. “That’s marvellous!” David beamed round the table at his relations. They looked solemnly and reproachfully back.

“David,” Cousin Ronald said reproachfully. “I hope you realise that we are all making a considerable sacrifice for your benefit. Scarborough meant a lot to us. We will say no more about your rudeness at lunch, but what we would like to hear from you in return is a proper expression of thanks to us for all we have done for you.”

Under such a speech as this, most people’s gratitude would wither rather. David’s did. “I said Thanks,” he protested. “But I’ll say it again if you like.”

“What you say is beside the point, child,” Aunt Dot told him austerely. “All we want is that you should feel in your heart, honestly and sincerely, what it means to be grateful for once.”

“Then what do you want me to do?” David asked rather desperately.

“I sometimes think,” said Uncle Bernard vigorously, “that you were born without a scrap of gratitude or common good feeling, boy.”

“But I do feel grateful,” said David. “I’m ever so grateful for not going to Mr Scrum, really!”

“Grateful for not going to Mr Scrum!” said Astrid. “Listen to him! Does it matter to him that we’re deprived of our holiday? Not a bit. David wouldn’t turn a hair if I were to drop dead at his feet.”

“Yes I would. Anyone would,” said David. He thought about what he would feel if Astrid did actually chance to drop dead at his feet. “I’d be very surprised, and I’d think you were pretending at first. But when I began to believe it I’d get a doctor to make sure you really were dead.”

“Aren’t we chivalrous!” Astrid said crossly.

“No, I’m not,” David said, as Mrs Thirsk came in with the next course. “But you’re not a damsel in distress.”

Astrid went very red and glared at David all the time Mrs Thirsk was handing out plates with dark meat on them covered with dark gravy. The meat was dark because it was burnt. It tasted terrible, so terrible that even Uncle Bernard noticed.

“This meat is burnt,” he said fretfully. “I don’t think it’s eatable.”

Everyone except David thankfully laid down their knives and forks. David was so hungry after rebuilding the wall that he had practically eaten all his anyway, and it seemed a shame to leave the rest.

“That boy has no discrimination,” said Uncle Bernard, as Mrs Thirsk came back to see what was the matter.

“Mrs Thirsk—” began Aunt Dot.

“I can’t think how it happened!” said Mrs Thirsk. “It was beautiful five minutes ago. And when I came back after taking the soup, there it was, black! And it was on the table. No heat near it.”

“It has been near a very great heat for a considerable time, I should say,” Uncle Bernard said, prodding it. “I can’t find your explanation adequate, Mrs Thirsk.”

“Adequate or not, it’s the plain truth!” said Mrs Thirsk. She gave David a malignant look as she said it, as if she would have liked to put the blame on him if she could.

“The soup was burnt too,” said Astrid.

“That was right as rain when it left my kitchen,” claimed Mrs Thirsk. “You may say what you like, but I can’t understand it.” And for five more minutes, at the top of her voice, Mrs Thirsk went on not being able to understand it, either the soup or the meat.

“Let’s have the pudding anyway,” said Cousin Ronald hungrily, and Mrs Thirsk went angrily away to get it.

The pudding was burnt too, and Mrs Thirsk could not understand that either. “It was right as rain,” she said. “Good as gold it was. Now look at it!”

“Oh let’s not have all that again,” said Cousin Ronald. “Bring us some bread and cheese, and do try not to burn that if you can.”

Luckily, it was beyond Mrs Thirsk’s skill to burn bread and cheese, so everyone began hungrily to eat that. David was pleased. It looked as if he might, for once, get enough to eat in this house. The bread was a little stale, but wonderfully filling, and the cheese was the strong orange kind which David particularly liked.

“You know,” Cousin Ronald said, taking nearly half the strong orange cheese, “Mrs Thirsk is a rotten cook, Mother. Couldn’t we get someone else?”

That was a lovely idea. David’s heart once again warmed towards Cousin Ronald, even though he had taken so much cheese.

“I invite you to try to get someone else, Ronald,” said Aunt Dot, finishing that idea for good and all. “David, please stop that unmannerly stuffing. Even if you can’t find it in your heart to be grateful, you need not pretend that we starve you.”

This was the signal for all four of them to turn on David again. The truth was that David’s announcement over lunch had made them all feel very much ashamed, and they could not forgive him for it. So they told him all over again how ungrateful he was, until David could bear it no longer.

“I don’t know why you think I’m not grateful,” he said. “I was grateful, until you all started going on at me. But I’m not any longer. Nobody could be.”

“Well!” said Aunt Dot.

“Let’s go to Scarborough after all,” said Astrid.

Cousin Ronald pushed his chair back and stalked to the French window. “That settles it,” he said. “I’m going into the garden.” And he went.

The other three stayed where they were. David was wishing heartily that it was actually possible to take back one’s words, when Mrs Thirsk came in, ready to put herself in the right again at David’s expense, bearing like a flag a white towel with red and black grime all over it.

“Look at this—” she began.

She got no further, because Cousin Ronald shot back into the room, groaning with rage, carrying something like a green sausage someone had stamped on. “My marrows!” he said. “Just look what this brat has done to my marrows!”

David was sent up to bed again. The one bright spot he could see, as he climbed the stairs and slammed the door of his room, was that Cousin Ronald had not noticed anything wrong with the wall. Otherwise, everything was horrible. It was just not fair. He was quite ready to be grateful, if only they left him alone – but that was the last thing they would do.

David sat on his bed and looked longingly at the window. Luke was probably waiting for him at the end of the garden by now. It was a hot, golden evening. Midges circled just outside, and swallows swooped in the distance. David thought of all the things he and Luke might be doing and was miserable. And because he had nothing else to do, he took out the box of matches and fiercely struck one. Serve them right if he burnt the house down!

Almost at once, he heard a faint thumping and rustling from outside the window. David was at the window after the first thump. Luke was climbing up the creepers like a monkey.

“Oh, brilliant!” David said, and all his misery vanished.

Luke looked up as David spoke, rather red in the face, and grinned. The movement shifted his weight. “Help!” Luke said. There was a sharp ripping noise, and the creepers began leaning away from the house, carrying Luke with them. David leant out as far as he dared and seized Luke’s desperately waving arm. After a good deal of heaving, he managed to pull Luke in over the windowsill, both of them laughing rather hysterically – the way you do when you have had a fright. “Thanks,” said Luke.

“Look at the creeper!” David said, and both of them went off into muffled giggles again. The creeper was hanging away from the house in a great bush, and its leaves were turning a scorched and withered brown. David was secretly appalled at the mess, but Luke was not in the least worried.

“More faking necessary,” he said. “Hang on to me while I get hold of it.” So David gripped Luke round the waist and Luke leant as far out of the window as he could. Somehow, he managed to grab the creeper and hook it back on the nails it had been tied to, where it hung, still limp and brown and withered, it is true, but nothing like so obviously broken.

Then they turned back into the room, and David, to his horror, found the match he had struck lying on the floor still burning. He rushed and stamped it out.

“You see,” said Luke, “you only have to kindle a flame to fetch me. Now, what’s the matter? In trouble again?”

“I’ll say I am!” said David. He gave Luke the history of supper, and Luke laughed. He laughed about the marrows, the towel and the burnt food. He lay comfortably on David’s bed, with his dirty shoes on Mrs Thirsk’s white bedspread, and laughed even when David said passionately, “I’m sick of having to be grateful!”

“Quite right,” he said, scratching at the burn on his face, which seemed to be healing nicely.

“It’s all very well to laugh,” said David. “You don’t have to stand them all going on at you.”