‘But she didn’t, Aunt Amabel. It was my idea. Mrs Brown said she did not think you would approve, but that, of course, we could if you said yes. Oh, please!’
‘But you two children would be quite alone! I don’t think that would be at all suitable.’
‘We shouldn’t really be alone,’ said Rosemary. ‘At least not more alone than if we were playing in a room here. You see, there is Mrs Walker in the basement, and Mr and Mrs Tonks on the first floor, and the Smithers on the second, and Miss Tidmarsh just below. And we would promise to be sensible!’
‘There are other people in the house, then? That does make a difference, of course. As a matter of fact I have to have lunch with Lady Bermondsey tomorrow, and I was wondering…’
‘And besides,’ said John, ‘Daddy says that you can’t have one-sided hospitality – it isn’t democratic.’
‘So like him,’ said Mrs Parker tartly. ‘But all the same, if you don’t think Mummy would mind…?’
‘Then I may go? Tomorrow? Oh, thank you, Aunt Amabel!’
‘I’ll take great care of him,’ said Rosemary. ‘And thank you for a lovely day!’
Mrs Pendlebury Parker laughed and called to John, who was already halfway out of the door:
‘Lancelot, tell Jeffries that he had better take Mrs Brown and Rosemary home at five o’clock in the car. I don’t see how they could manage with the cat, otherwise.’
11
Showing Off
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Rosemary and her mother thanked Jeffries, the chauffeur, and got out of the car at number ten, Tottenham Grove. Rosemary rather hoped that one of her friends would see them, but the only person to notice was the boy delivering evening papers, and he only noticed Carbonel in her arms.
He sang out rudely:
Does your mother want a rabbit?
Skin her one for ninepence!
She felt Carbonel stiffen angrily.
‘Well, darling, did you enjoy it?’ said her mother when they reached their room and she was taking off her hat.
‘Mummy, it was lovely! I liked John awfully, and the garden, and the scrumptious pudding. And Mrs Pendlebury Parker was very kind! But you only had rice and stewed fruit. I saw when we came to see you.’
‘It was very nice rice pudding,’ said Mrs Brown as she ran her fingers through her hair. ‘And as for Carbonel…!’
There was a knock on the door.
‘Oh dear, that sounds like Mrs Walker again. Come in!’ she called.
‘Oh, there you are, dear,’ panted the landlady.‘These stairs will be the death of me! I just came up to see if the cat was here. It’s a funny thing, I’d just put down a plate for ’im this morning with some nice bits of liver, and ’im purring for it like a steam engine, when ’e suddenly lifts up ’is head and gives a little mew, angry like, and off he goes up the area steps as if the dogs was after ’im! And I ’aven’t seen him since. I wouldn’t like…’
‘Don’t worry, Mrs Walker,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘A most extraordinary thing! He suddenly turned up at Mrs Pendlebury Parker’s house this afternoon. It must be every bit of six miles.’
‘Well I never!’ said Mrs Walker.
Rosemary looked at Carbonel, but he still ignored her, as he had done all afternoon. She was not feeling very comfortable about her own behaviour over the Summoning Words. Was she right to have used them as she did? But as sometimes happens when we are afraid we are in the wrong she took refuge in being cross. She had been looking forward to a good long talk all day, but when she saw him going off with Mrs Walker without so much as a glance in her direction, she said to herself that she didn’t care in the least, and that she would not talk to him if she could, and perhaps that would teach him!
By bedtime she would have given a good deal to have seen him curled up on the eiderdown. She could have said the Summoning Words, but she felt a little shy of using them again, and besides, it seemed wasteful to use magic to fetch him from the basement. Rather like hiring a taxi to go to the corner of the road. She knew he would come back in the end, so there was nothing to do but wait patiently.
When her mother had gone next morning, Rosemary tidied up the flat with special care, and then she hurried off to the shops. She bought a pound of sausages, the thin kind, a large tin of baked beans, two cream buns, two gob-stoppers for dessert, a bunch of cornflowers, and two ounces of sprats as a peace offering for Carbonel. The cornflowers were only twopence because they were just beginning to go white at the edges. She would like to have set it all out on her best doll’s tea service, but she was not sure if John would laugh, so she decided not to. She poked her head into the wardrobe to see if the broom was all right and, thinking it must be rather dull for the poor thing, she took it out and laid it carefully on her bed with the precious twigs on the pillow.
At 11 o’clock she was watching for John through the window, but it was a large black car that stopped at the door, not the smaller grey one in which they had come last night. John was already on the way upstairs when she ran down. She could see Mrs Walker on the floor below peering suspiciously after him.
‘I say, I am glad you’ve come! I was afraid something would happen to stop you.’
‘It’s all right, Aunt Amabel has gone on in the car to a committee. Jeffries is coming about three o’clock to take us both back to Tussocks to tea. It’s all arranged. I say, where is the cat and the broom?’
‘Carbonel has gone off on his own. He does sometimes, you know. I’m afraid he is cross with me about that spell yesterday. But there is the broom… oh, please be careful!’
John had picked it up without ceremony, and was examining it with an incredulous expression.
‘What a mouldy old thing!’ he said cheerfully.
‘It’s not!’ said Rosemary hotly. ‘And if it was it would be very unkind to tell it so. You must be very gentle with it.’
‘Well, how do I make it take me for a ride?’
‘You don’t make it. You ask it very politely, in rhyme.’
‘Do you mean to say that I’ve got to make up poetry?’ said John in the same voice he would have used if he had been asked to jump over the moon.
‘I’ll do it, because it is my broom,’ said Rosemary. ‘At least, I’ll try. It must be only a tiny ride because of not wearing out the magic. I should think round the sitting room.’
They fetched a piece of paper, and after much argument and biting of the pencil they produced a rhyme that they both secretly thought rather good.
‘Now, stand astride the handle, say it aloud, and then hold tight!’
John did as he was told and said loudly:
Round and round the sitting room
Kindly take me, magic broom.
With a jerk that nearly threw him off, the broom rose into the air with John astride, and swept into the sitting room. Round and round it went, about three feet from the floor. It was not very comfortable, because unless he kept his legs straight out in front they bumped into the furniture. As it was, he knocked the cornflowers over, so that the water streamed over Mrs Brown’s best tablecloth that Rosemary had taken without permission. The broom took the corners with a violence that would not have disgraced a Dodg’em. But John held on and went careering round with shining eyes, making penetrating jet plane noises.
Rosemary was delighted. Now he would have to believe that the story she had told him was true! Round and round went the broom. Presently John stopped making jet noises, and a little later he stopped smiling.
‘I say, Rosie!’ he called, ‘I think I’ve had enough. How do I stop it?’
‘Oh, dear!’ said Rosemary. ‘We didn’t say in the rhyme how many times round we wanted it to go.’
‘Well, hurry up and tell it now… I’m not feeling very well.’
‘I’ll try,’ said Rosemary anxiously, ‘but I shall have to get some paper. I can’t do poetry without.’