PUFFIN BOOKS
The Little Gentleman
Praise for The Little Gentleman:
‘Exquisitely illustrated by Patrick Benson… a gem of a story for sharing… Pearce writes with enormous depth' – Guardian
‘Typically for Pearce, this is not only a story of page-turning compulsiveness, written with elegance and wisdom, but is also rich in history. Pearce's powers have not lessened' – Sunday Times
‘A rare treat and a reminder of just how rich storytelling can be' – Sunday Telegraph
‘A joyous, beautifully written little book. This has the feel of a classic from the start' – TES
‘Beautifully written, lightly philosophical and the strangest of stories… This is a book to put into the Christmas stockings of every discriminating, fluent pre-teen reader' – Observer
‘A deeply moving meditation on the transience and mutability of childhood… and on the painful truth that the highest expression of love is not to possess but to relinquish' – Guardian
‘Captivating' – The Times
‘The beguiling story sees lonely Bet befriend a 300-year-old mole who tells a terrific tale of old' – Funday Times
Books by Philippa Pearce
A DOG SO SMALL
THE BATTLE OF BUBBLE AND SQUEAK
THE LITTLE GENTLEMAN
THE ROPE AND OTHER STORIES
TOM'S MIDNIGHT GARDEN
THE WAY TO SATTIN SHORE
WHAT THE NEIGHBOURS DID
For younger readers
LION AT SCHOOL AND OTHER STORIES
Picture books
AMY'S THREE BEST THINGS
Illustrated by
PUFFIN
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
www.penguin.com
First published 2004
Published in this edition 2005
3
Text copyright © Philippa Pearce,2004
Illustrations copyright © Patrick Benson,2004
All rights reserved
The lines quoted on pages 17–8 are from The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms With Observations on their Habits by Charles Darwin
The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-14-193039-8
To Sally, Ben, Nat and Will
with love
and
to Celia
with thanks for the naming of Moon
Chapter 1 The Log and the Stump
Chapter 2 Bet
Chapter 3 The Book and the Listener
Chapter 4 Go-Between
Chapter 5 Mrs Allum Stands to Reason
Chapter 6 Mud and Blood
Chapter 7 Trust
Chapter 8 Shock
Chapter 9 The Little Gentleman
Chapter 10 The Bag of Tricks
Chapter 11 Things Happen
Chapter 12 A Useful Curiosity
Chapter 13 Holy Mole
Chapter 14 The Experiment
Chapter 15 Chthonic
Chapter 16 The Right Size
Chapter 17 Come Hell or High Water
Chapter 18 Green Grow the Rushes
Chapter 19 A Private Intention
Chapter 20 Miss Z
Outside the cottage, lengthways against the wall, lay the ancient ladder with its tell-tale broken rung; the accident had been some days ago. Inside the house, on his bed, lay Mr Franklin, with his leg now in plaster, waiting.
He was listening for Mrs Allum to go: the creak of the front door opening, pause as she got herself out and clicked the door shut behind her. Then the thump of footsteps to the front gate –
He was so impatient that he was already levering himself up to reach his crutches, seriously disturbing his late aunt's white cat, who had been asleep beside him. He hopped to the window and cautiously slid his head round the side to peer out.
His stealthy glance was at once met and held by the gaze of Mrs Allum's pale, silent, silent-footed granddaughter. He had quite forgotten about this child, whose name he did not even know. He only knew that she turned up regularly with her grandmother for the house-cleaning. He could not guess whether her stare now was hostile, or inquisitive, or just casual.
The child had been there when Mrs Allum had found Mr Franklin with a broken leg at the foot of the wrecked ladder. In a great fluster Mrs Allum had arranged for the ambulance to hospital. Then, while they waited, she had asked her employer why he was climbing ladders at his age, anyway.
He had said evasively, ‘To get a better view.’
Mrs Allum had said nothing, but sniffed.
After the ambulance, Mrs Allum had gone back to her cleaning, until Mr Franklin should be home again from the hospital. He now was, so that, at least, was straightforward. To her, what Mr Franklin might have been up to was mysterious without being interesting. She had her own work and her own worries.
Mr Franklin ventured another look through the window. Mrs Allum was easing herself into the driving seat of her old car; the child was inside already.
An anxious moment… Then the car started, the gears grumbled, and they were slowly off. Soon they would be at the corner, where the track met the long lane. As always, Mrs Allum hooted at the corner, although no one could be coming. There was never any traffic, and the nearest house – and distantly at that along the main road – was the Allums' own.
He was by himself at last.
He opened the window wide and leaned out, twisting himself to one side as he did so. In this awkward and uncomfortable position, he could see beyond the track and right across the rough pasture that stretched down to the river, its boundary. He could see the old grey pony grazing and dozing; and there were the trees massed on the higher ground of the further river bank, and between the pony and the trees, but on the nearer bank –
Yes, just there! There was the great log, once dredged up from the river – the log on which he so often sat, as if on a park bench put on the river bank for his exclusive use.
There seemed to be nothing else of interest; but he studied this particular view intently.
The late-afternoon sunlight was confusing to his eyes. Without moving from the window, he stretched out an arm and opened a top drawer in his chest of drawers, and took out his binoculars. He had bought these, when he first moved into the cottage, to watch the life on the river – moorhen and heron and (if he were ever very lucky) kingfisher.
Now he studied the river bank around the log for something more… well, out of the ordinary.
No, nothing – unless… There seemed to be something like a small stump, probably only a few inches high, just to one side of the log. He had not noticed it before.
He stared at the stump, willing it to be something more than just a stump, imagining from moment to moment that it very slightly moved.
Then, suddenly and unmistakably, it moved.
It had turned slightly… Was it away from the cottage, or towards it?
Surely towards it?
‘Come on!’ muttered Mr Franklin. ‘Come on! What are you waiting for?’
He was so agitated that his trembling fingers missed their hold on the binoculars and they fell. By the time that he had managed his crutches and his plastered leg so that he could scrabble on the floor and get the binoculars to his eyes again, there was no trace of a stump to be seen near the log.
Mr Franklin stared and stared, although the uselessness of that was plain to him.
At last he twisted himself back from the window into the bedroom, and then hopped back to sit on the side of the bed, exhausted. ‘I shall need help,’ he said aloud. He was not thinking of the extra cleaning and cooking and washing and washing-up that Mrs Allum was already doing for him in his semi-invalid state. He needed other help of a particular kind.
Mrs Allum had had a good many children, and by now several grandchildren. Elizabeth, or Bet, was one. She was the unluckiest, for her mother had been very young at her birth, and her mother and father had split up soon afterwards. She had been handed over to her grandparents to bring up. She lived alone with them. Her mother had gone.
This family history was unknown to Mr Franklin; and, anyway, he had felt no interest at all in Bet until now. But here and now he needed someone of her age to help him: she seemed a child surely old enough to be reliable when necessary, yet young enough – this was essential – to have a truly open mind. Another grown man or woman would be of no use to him: they would only laugh at his story, think him simply cracked in the head.
He needed the help of someone young enough to credit the possibility of the apparently impossible.
It was some time before the idea of Mrs Allum's granddaughter floated into Mr Franklin's mind. He had barely noticed the child before. She came with her grandmother only after school and during holidays.
He had seen her helping her grandmother about the cottage, particularly by reaching to high shelves or squeezing into narrow corners. (Mrs Allum was short and stout.) He had also sometimes seen the girl dusting his aunt's books, and once or twice had caught her peering into them. He had not minded that, as Mrs Allum had assured him that she was careful.
But did she actually read anything in the books? Or did she open them only from the idlest curiosity, perhaps in the hope of pictures inside?
He set himself to find out this girl's suitability for what needed to be done.
With his plastered leg up on a chair, Mr Franklin faced the child, who stood beside her grandmother; Mrs Allum sat. He came to the point at once: ‘Can you read?’
The girl was startled and – as was her habit – left a silence before her reply. Into this silence Mrs Allum popped her own answer: ‘She can. Of course, she can. So can I, too, even if I'd rather not.’
‘Read aloud?’ asked Mr Franklin of the child.
‘That's easier than reading inside your head,’ said Mrs Allum scornfully.
‘I wonder if your granddaughter –’
‘Bet,’ said Mrs Allum. ‘Bet, short for Elizabeth.’
‘I wonder if Bet would mind showing me how well she reads aloud. I need someone to do that for me.’ He added, ‘Perhaps we could agree some payment?’
Mrs Allum waved this aside almost angrily, and then said, ‘You broke your leg, not your glasses, Mr Franklin.’
‘I said I needed someone to read aloud for me, not to me,’ retorted Mr Franklin.
Baffled, Mrs Allum now left the conversation to the other two; she did, however, remain in the room as observer.
Mr Franklin had a book ready for the test. ‘A book about worms,’ he said. ‘Earthworms. It's not particularly a book for children, so you may find it difficult. Let's start on the first page, from the paragraph beginning Earthworms abound in England… But first I want you to read that paragraph over to yourself, inside your head, very carefully. No hurry. Make sure you understand it, or you won't be able to make a listener understand it.’ He hesitated. ‘You know what abound means?’
‘Plenty of ‘em,’ said Bet.
‘Right. So read from Earthworms abound…’ He handed the book over.
To his surprise the girl read aloud not too badly, stumbling only over an unfamiliar word and running out of breath on some of the longer sentences.
Patiently he corrected her pronunciation, and pointed out that commas and full stops and colons and semicolons might give a chance to pause, even take breath. ‘And this time,’ he said, ‘read the whole thing much more slowly, so that any listener can follow the reasoning of it. And read more loudly, too.’
She began again more slowly, but he stopped her almost at once. ‘More loudly, too, remember – much more loudly, especially to begin with.’
Now Mrs Allum protested again: ‘Mr Franklin, sir, next thing that girl will be shouting. You're not deaf, Mr Franklin.’
‘I said that Bet would be reading aloud for me, not to me,’ he repeated.
Mrs Allum sighed softly.
Bet read the whole long paragraph again and again until Mr Franklin was as near satisfied as he could hope to be. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘this is all I want you to do. Take the book – carefully, mind – into the pasture. You know where I mean? The old meadow opposite?’
Bet nodded.
‘There's a big log there, on its side. You may have seen me sitting on it, before I broke my leg. Sitting there, reading.’
Bet nodded.
‘Well, I want you to do the same. Sit there, with a book – this book – and read aloud from it, just as you were doing now. Pay no attention to anybody or to anything that may happen. Just read.’
Bet asked, with the book in her hand, ‘Now?’
‘Why not?’ Mr Franklin said. ‘Yes, now.’
Together Mr Franklin and Mrs Allum watched Bet as she set off across the pasture, followed some ten paces behind by the white cat. Mr Franklin clicked his tongue in annoyance. ‘I should have told her: not the cat.’
‘What harm can that poor old Moon do?’ (Such had been the name given to her cat by the late Miss Franklin.)
Mr Franklin did not answer.
Meanwhile, crossing the meadow, with nothing but the book to worry about – and that was no worry: she liked books – Bet felt unusually free and happy.
For a child, Bet had to do a good deal of housework. When Mrs Allum went cleaning in other people's houses, she took Bet with her. ‘A green girl,’ she would say, ‘but another pair of hands.’ At home, in her grandparents' house, it was the same; and her grandfather, as well, expected to be waited on.
Now she was away from everybody, taking her seat on a log on a river bank in the sun with a book on her knee. She was supposed to read aloud from the book; her finger was between the pages, at the very paragraph she had been told to read.
She opened the book fully.
Supposed to read… Told to read…
Supposed she played contrary? Suppose she tricked them, only pretending to read? She could do that.
‘I could, she said aloud, but quietly.
What finally decided Bet to read was her own curiosity. She was to read aloud for Mr Franklin; but to whom? Not to the cat, Moon, now on the log beside her: he could have been read aloud to indoors at any time. Not to the only other occupant of the meadow, the old grey pony on the furthest side, well out of earshot.
Perhaps the reading would produce the listener.
She began slowly, loudly to read: ‘Earthworms abound in England…’