‘I can’t go another step!’ said Rosemary. ‘It feels hours since we had our sandwiches. I tell you what. We passed a tea shop a little farther back where p’raps we could sit down and have ices. I’ve got sixpence of my shilling left, and threepence of my pocket money.’
John was only too willing, so they retraced their steps and went into the tea shop. It was called the Copper Kettle, and there was a beautifully polished kettle in the window flanked by plates of homemade cakes. Lunch had been cleared away, and a young woman in a chintz overall was laying tables for tea. The walls were panelled with what looked like oak, and it was cool and pleasant inside. The large strawberry ices slid like nectar down their thirsty throats. The children found that by putting the broom on the floor underneath the table, and slipping off a sandal each, so that their bare feet rested on the handle, they could both hear what Carbonel had to say at the same time. He sat under the table to be as inconspicuous as possible.
‘I’ve just thought of something awful!’ said Rosemary. ‘Suppose the artistic lady didn’t want to use the cauldron as a coalscuttle at all? Then it doesn’t matter what sort of fires all those people have, and our whole day has been wasted.’
‘Golly!’ said John, so appalled by this idea that he stopped with a spoon full of ice-cream halfway to his mouth. ‘You mean that they may be using the cauldron for… well, standing ferns… or bathing the baby?’
‘Not in the shops we went to,’ said Carbonel from under the table. ‘Most of them had a cat of some kind, and I took the precaution of getting into conversation in most places. Quite civil most of them were. One of ’em even gave me her saucer of milk which, considering that strawberry ice-cream doesn’t seem to be coming my way, is just as well.’ And if a cat could sniff, that is what Carbonel would have done.
‘But Carbonel, darling! Would you like ice-cream?’ asked Rosemary in distress.
‘Not a bit. But I should like to be asked,’ he said in an injured voice.
Rosemary held a dab of ice-cream under the table on her finger. Carbonel licked it off, but it made him sneeze.
‘We seem to have spent an awful lot of money,’ said John.
‘I didn’t seem able to engage people in conversation unless I bought something,’ said Rosemary. ‘Do you think your sister will like nine photographs of the cathedral?’ she asked anxiously.
‘The postage would cost one and sixpence, so I shall do them up in brown paper and send them for tuppence ha’-penny. She will probably think I’ve gone potty,’ he added gloomily, scraping the last drops of runny ice-cream from the edges of the dish. ‘Well, what on earth do we do now?’
16
The Cauldron
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There was a gloomy silence while they tried to think what would be the best thing to do. Rosemary was the first to speak.
‘Well, I think…’ she began. But she never said what she thought, because it was then it happened.
Shopping ladies with parcels were beginning to come in for an early tea, and the chintz-overalled waitress was hurrying past their table with a tray laden with tea things when she caught her foot against the broom, tottered for one horrifying moment and fell with a crash. The shopping ladies stopped talking and turned round. John and Rosemary jumped up and helped her to her feet. Rosie began to pick up the broken china, and tried to rescue the cakes and buttered toast that were lying forlornly in a lake of tea.
‘I’m so awfully sorry!’ said Rosemary in distress. ‘I do hope you did not hurt yourself? Do sit down for a minute.’
‘We will clear it all up,’ said John. ‘I’m afraid it was our fault.’
‘I should think it was!’ said the waitress crossly. ‘And I don’t know what Maggie will say to all this broken china! Why couldn’t you put your walking stick in the umbrella stand by the door?’ She rubbed her bruised shin as she spoke.
‘Look!’ whispered Rosemary to John. ‘Look over there!’
John turned and stared in the same direction as Rosemary. Peering anxiously round the door that led to the kitchen was a plump, elderly woman with hair plaited in two buns, one over each ear. She was wearing an apron, but under it was an obviously hand-woven jacket.
‘Are you all right, Florrie?’ she said anxiously, and then she saw the mess on the floor and gave a moan. ‘The china, Florrie. How could you!’
By this time the broken tea things had been collected on the tray.
‘Please sit down, ladies,’ she went on. ‘I will bring you more tea in a minute. Florrie, you had better get a cloth.’
‘Let me get it, because it was our fault,’ said Rosemary. ‘Don’t do that!’ she said to John, who had dug her rather hard in the ribs. But all that John said was, ‘Look at Carbonel!’
The black cat was standing near the door that led to the street, his tail straight up in the air and his back arched, kneading the matting with his front paws and making strange crooning noises in his throat.
‘What is the matter with him?’ asked Rosemary anxiously. But John was staring as fixedly as Carbonel.
‘Over there in the corner! The umbrella stand!’
In the corner by the door, holding two umbrellas and a walking stick, was a fat black pot with three legs, and a handle over the top.
‘It’s the witch’s cauldron, isn’t it?’ breathed Rosemary.
The cat was quiet now. He turned and stalked towards them with his head held high.
‘Of course it is,’ said John. ‘I’d know it anywhere, even got up like that!’
Its well-rounded sides gleamed with black lead, and the copper band round it had been polished till it glowed.
‘Besides,’ he went on, ‘there is the patch in the bottom where it began to leak. Well, what are we waiting for? You had better pick it up and get out while this to-do is going on.’
Rosemary was shocked.
‘We can’t just take it! That would be stealing. We must think of a plan for getting it honestly somehow. But first we must help to clear up. You collect the buttered toast that skidded over there, and I’ll go and fetch another cloth.’
She hurried through the door into the kitchen. The waitress passed her coming out with a dustpan and brush, and only the one she had referred to as Maggie was there. She looked up as Rosemary came in.
‘Go away, little girl. As if you had not done enough damage for today!’
‘I know,’ said Rosemary penitently. ‘It’s because I’m so sorry about it that I thought I’d come and get a cloth and help to clear up. I will polish the floor again when it’s dry if you will let me.’
‘It’s not the floor that matters, it’s the china.’
There was a quiver in the woman’s voice, and to Rosemary’s horror her round face suddenly crumpled and she began to cry.
‘Oh, don’t!’ said Rosemary. ‘Don’t cry, please! Whatever is the matter? Do tell me, and then I’m sure it will make you feel better. I’ve got a clean hankie somewhere, I know I have.’
The woman did not take the handkerchief, but she stopped crying and wiped her eyes with her own.
‘It’s the china,’ she said jerkily, as she dabbed at her face. ‘The girls we have hired to wash up broke so much that we decided to try and manage without them, and besides that we couldn’t really afford to go on paying their wages. Business has been so bad lately. Florrie and I are on our feet all day, but it is no use. And because there were only the two of us we needed so much more china because the washing up was slower.’
‘But why don’t you buy some more?’ asked Rosemary.
‘Because we haven’t enough money, and neither of the china shops will give us any more credit. But I don’t know why I’m telling you all this!’ She gave a watery smile and dabbed at her face again with her handkerchief. ‘There is a big Women’s Institute rally this afternoon at the Temperance Hall, and I’d hoped for quite a lot of customers. The cakes are made all ready. But what is the use of customers if we have not enough china for them to eat off?’ Miss Maggie sniffed ominously again.