‘Of course, Stoke Mandeville,’ said Mother, which was not far from Topmeadow. ‘That’s where they teach people to move again; walk and swim and use wheelchairs. Perhaps it means she is getting better.’

  ‘He bought the House Next Door just to be near her – this great big house,’ said Belinda. ‘Miss Tiffany Jones has come here too, and will look after it. She’s his sister, his much older sister. She used to look after him when he was a little boy. That’s why he can’t say “boo!” to her.’

  ‘Belinda, you are not to repeat gossip,’ said Mother.

  ‘It isn’t gossip. He can’t,’ said Belinda. ‘Their cook told Mrs Bodger.’

  ‘Then Miss Tiffany Jones is the little girl’s aunt,’ said Nona. ‘I don’t think I would like her for my aunt.’

  ‘She’s a proper old cat,’ said Belinda.

  ‘Belinda!’ Mother was horrified.

  ‘But she is, Cook told Mrs Bodger so.’

  The cook’s name was Mrs Mount; the other maid was Eileen. The house-man was called Selwyn, ‘and you don’t call him Mister,’ said Belinda. The chauffeur was Benson; ‘you don’t call him Mister, either.’ They were all complete except for the little girl.

  Then, on a bitter January day, the Rolls drew up at the next-door gate and out got a girl and a woman. Belinda and Nona, who were just coming back from the shops, clutched one another.

  The girl walking up the path looked about the same age as Nona. She was wearing a green velvet coat and hat, white boots, fur-topped, and white fur tippet, white gloves and a white shawl wound round her neck and over her mouth. ‘As well as the tippet!’ said Belinda.

  The girl was as pale as Mr Tiffany Jones, and down her back hung a long fall of fair hair. It gave her the look of being drowned, thought Nona.

  She and Belinda looked to where the woman was taking a rug and parcels from the chauffeur. She was a big solid-looking woman with a big face and iron-grey hair, and she was dressed in an iron-grey coat and hat. ‘She looks iron all over,’ said Nona.

  ‘Is she the nurse?’ asked Belinda in a whisper. ‘That girl’s too old to have a nurse. That must be a governess.’

  ‘She doesn’t look like a governess,’ said Nona uncertainly. ‘Perhaps she’s a kind of maid.’

  Miss Tiffany Jones had come out on the steps to meet them. ‘Come in! Come in! Come along in!’ she called in her imperious voice. ‘Hurry up, Matson,’ she called to the woman. As with Selwyn and Benson, Miss Tiffany Jones did not say Mrs or Miss. It seemed rude to Belinda to call people by their surnames, but ‘Come along, Matson. Hurry up out of the cold,’ called Miss Tiffany Jones.

  ‘They are coming as fast as they can,’ murmured Belinda. She and Nona had gone into their own garden and were looking through the hedge.

  Selwyn came out to carry the suitcases. ‘Welcome home, Miss Gem,’ he said respectfully as if he were talking to a grown-up.

  ‘Jem; that’s a boy’s name,’ said Belinda.

  ‘Not J-E-M, silly; G-E-M,’ said Tom, who had come up behind them.

  ‘Never heard of it,’ said Belinda, as if she had heard of everything.

  ‘It certainly goes well with Tiffany,’ said Mr Twilfit when he heard it. Nona and Belinda had gone down to the bookshop to tell him that Gem had arrived. Tiffany’s, he explained to them, was a famous jeweller’s and goldsmith’s in New York. ‘Does it belong to Gem’s father?’ asked Belinda, her eyes round.

  ‘Hardly probable,’ said Mr Twilfit; ‘might be some connection, though.’

  ‘I think “Gem” is a pretty name,’ said Nona.

  ‘Gem Tiffany Jones. It’s the richest name I ever heard.’

  *

  ‘Belinda,’ said Mother a day or two later. ‘Belinda, you are not to go next door.’

  ‘Oh Mother, why not? Mr Tiffany Jones smiles at us.’

  ‘I know,’ said Mother, ‘But Miss Tiffany Jones doesn’t.’

  Mother had spoken to Miss Tiffany Jones when she met her in the road. ‘I hope you are going to like living in Topmeadow.’

  ‘After London?’ Miss Tiffany Jones gave a queer little laugh that did not sound amused. ‘Like living in a suburb, and not even a London suburb?’

  ‘But Topmeadow’s a lovely place,’ said Belinda.

  Miss Tiffany Jones did not speak to Mother again, nor nod to any of them or smile, and, ‘You are not to go next door,’ said Mother to Belinda.

  ‘Which means not hanging round the gate,’ said Anne, and Belinda blushed.

  ‘I want to make friends,’ said Belinda.

  Belinda was friends with everyone: with the shop people, the postman, the laundryman, the Vicar; with Sir William Mortimer who was Topmeadow’s Member of Parliament and with the old chestnut seller who had his stand in winter at the corner of the road.

  Nona had only three friends, and she had made them through Miss Happiness and Miss Flower. Nona was friends with Melly, the girl she sat next to at school, Miss Lane who taught there, and Mr Twilfit.

  These were Nona’s friends, but to Belinda everyone was a friend, and it was an astonishing idea to her for the Fells not to make friends at once with the Tiffany Joneses, but Mother was quite firm.

  ‘You are not to go next door, Belinda.’

  ‘What? Never?’ asked Belinda.

  ‘Not unless you are asked,’ said Mother.

  ‘But suppose they never ask me?’

  ‘Then you can never go,’ said Tom.

  Chapter 3

  The weather grew colder and colder, until one day snow began to fall. It fell all the morning and by the afternoon the road, the roofs and gardens, the whole of Topmeadow, was white with snow. Then the sky cleared, the sun came out, the frost sparkled and Nona brought Miss Happiness and Miss Flower out to see the snowy world. The dolls wore warm coats over their kimonos, coats wadded and quilted with cotton wool. Over their painted sandals they had warm white socks and Tom had made them tiny clogs, cut from a cork and tied on with cords of embroidery cotton. Their heads were protected by round flat hats tied under their chins. Nona brought them down as far as the low wall that bounded the Fells’ garden from the road; she made them walk up and down along the wall; their feet left footprints in the snow, smaller than a bird’s.

  Belinda came to look. ‘What are you doing, Nona?’

  ‘Miss Happiness and Miss Flower have come out to admire the snow.’

  ‘Is that what they do in Japan?’

  ‘My book says so.’

  ‘You might have told me,’ said Belinda. ‘I would have brought Little Peach.’

  Little Peach was a Japanese boy baby doll, no bigger than my thumb. He had come to Belinda in a peach as Peach Boy in the Japanese fairy tale had come (the fairy tale of Little Peach or Peach Boy can be found in every Japanese fairy-story book). Now Belinda ran up to her bedroom and fetched him. Little Peach’s hair was cut round, his legs were curved like a baby’s and he had no clothes; Belinda had lost his coat and trousers and had not had time to make him any more – Belinda never had enough time – but she had wrapped him in a handkerchief. Now, ‘You keep him,’ she said to Nona.

  Nona was used to keeping Little Peach – Belinda always had so many other things to do – and now Nona tied him on Miss Flower’s back in the way that Japanese girls often carry their baby brothers. She had just begun to make them walk up and down the wall again, when the next door gate opened and out came Mr Tiffany Jones. He stopped when he saw them, then came closer, bending his height down to look. ‘How very pretty,’ said Mr Tiffany Jones, gazing down at Miss Happiness, Miss Flower and Little Peach. ‘May I touch?’ And when Nona shyly nodded, he picked up Miss Happiness.

  ‘Why, you have made them tanzen – proper Japanese coats – and tabi,’ he said, touching the socks. Tabi means ‘footbag’ in Japanese and tabi are like bags with one toe for the big toe. Nona, of course, had not been able to separate the dolls’ toes but their warm white socks did look like tiny bags.

  ‘Lucky little dolls, they are beautifully warm,’ said Mr Tiffany Jones, gently putting Miss Happiness down. ‘What are they called?’

  Nona told him their names and, ‘They have come out to admire the snow,’ Belinda explained. ‘Japanese people do.’

  ‘So they do,’ said Mr Tiffany Jones. ‘And I believe they make up poems about it – or say one,’ and, standing in the road in all his elegance, Mr Tiffany Jones recited:

  ‘All heaven and earth

  is flowered white,

  hidden in snow,

  unceasing snow.’

  ‘Why, that’s a haiku!’ cried Nona, delighted. A haiku is one of the smallest Japanese poems, only seventeen syllables long, just right for dolls, and if Miss Happiness’s and Miss Flower’s little plaster faces could have smiled, they would have given the honourable gentleman a smile and they would have bowed to him – Japanese people bow a great deal, and they speak of people as ‘honourable’.

  ‘How do you know about Japanese things?’ said Belinda to Mr Tiffany Jones. ‘Nona knows, and Mr Twilfit, but how do you?’

  ‘Well, I go to Japan sometimes,’ said Mr Tiffany Jones. ‘As a matter of fact, I’m going there tomorrow for three or four days.’

  ‘Did he say three or four days?’ asked Belinda, when he had gone on down the road. ‘But . . . Japan’s on the other side of the world.’

  ‘Nowadays people fly all over the world very quickly,’ Nona told her, and Father said that too. Mr Tiffany Jones, Father said, was an important person in business. ‘He might very well fly to Japan for just one meeting,’ said Father.

  Before Mr Tiffany Jones had walked away, he had bent down and picked Miss Flower up to look at her. ‘Charming,’ he said, touching Miss Flower’s red hat with a gentle finger, and, ‘I wish my little girl could play like this,’ he said, and he had not sounded important, only wistful.

  ‘You know,’ said Mother a few days afterwards, ‘I am beginning to feel sorry for that little girl.’

  ‘What little girl?’ Nona and Belinda did not quite follow Mother. ‘What little girl?’

  ‘Gem; I’m sorry for her.’

  ‘Sorry! For Gem?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mother.

  ‘But . . . she has everything,’ said Nona.

  ‘Look at the things she has,’ said Belinda.

  One thing that particularly filled Belinda with envy was Gem’s pony. Almost every day the riding master from the stables near the Park would ride up to the House Next Door, and beside his horse trotted a white pony, glossy white, with a long white mane and tail, the daintiest pony imaginable. ‘Half Arab, he told me so,’ said Belinda.

  The pony had a new saddle and bridle with a scarlet headband, a white sheepskin under the saddle; ‘And he’s Gem’s own. They just keep him at the stables. If I had a pony like that,’ said Belinda, ‘I would be happy forever.’

  ‘Would you, I wonder,’ said Mother, ‘if you had to be Gem?’

  When Nona and Belinda came to think of it, Gem did lead a queer restricted life. Belinda tried to imagine what it would be like not to be free to run in and out of the house and garden. Gem was older than Belinda, but she was not even allowed to run as far as the pillar-box at the corner to post a letter; Selwyn posted the letters. She never went on errands to the shops as Belinda loved to go. ‘They give me sweets and apples,’ said Belinda, and Mr Hancock, the fishmonger, sometimes let her ring up the cash register for him. Gem never went to the Park to meet other children for games – she walked there beside Matson – and Mr Tiffany Jones was right, she never seemed to play. ‘Why doesn’t she play?’ asked Belinda. ‘He said he wished she could. Why doesn’t she?’

  Nona did not know but, ‘Perhaps she needs a Japanese doll,’ said Miss Happiness and Miss Flower. They could talk to one another but, of course, nobody else could hear.

  The children had discovered that Matson was Gem’s especial maid. ‘A maid for what?’ asked Belinda.

  ‘To keep her rooms tidy,’ suggested Anne.

  ‘Doesn’t she have to tidy them herself?’

  That made Belinda envious.

  ‘And to look after her clothes,’ said Anne.

  ‘Does she have so many clothes?’

  That was another thing: Gem never seemed to wear the comfortable, ordinary clothes Nona and Belinda wore – jeans, or shorts and jerseys, an anorak with a hood, a kilted skirt, hair tied up in a ponytail. ‘She’s always dressed up,’ said Belinda; dressed in elaborate dresses with ruffled petticoats, in coats with white collars or trimmed with fur, in tailored suits. For riding, Gem wore jodhpurs, a white silk shirt, yellow waistcoat, smart tweed jacket, velvet cap and dear little jodhpur boots. She had fur-trimmed boots and hats, spotless white gloves, and she had a real fur coat, ‘like a lady’s, only little,’ reported Belinda.

  More and more Gem seemed like a girl in a book, ‘and not a very truthful book,’ said Nona, because nowadays not even princes and princesses were treated like this. ‘Princesses have to be friendly and smile and wave,’ said Belinda. Gem never smiled or waved; like her aunt, she did not seem to want to know the Fells. They never saw her stand at her windows and watch Nona’s and Belinda’s or peer through the hedge as they did. If she met them on the road she looked the other way. Of course, she may not have been free to wave or smile; everywhere she went Matson followed her, ‘like a policeman,’ said Belinda. ‘Only, policemen are nice,’ said Nona. Soon Nona and Belinda found themselves saying, ‘Poor Gem.’ How odd it was that Gem should be poor when she was so very rich.

  Mr Tiffany Jones came back from Japan and, ‘Did he bring the little Miss a Japanese doll?’ Miss Happiness and Miss Flower asked anxiously. No, it seemed he had only brought Gem a Japanese lantern. It was a beautiful lantern, big, of misty white paper with a black band top and bottom; when it was lit it glowed yellow. Nona, Belinda and the dolls could see it hanging up in Gem’s sitting-room window; it looked most poetical – but Miss Happiness and Miss Flower were curiously disappointed.

  Belinda’s best present at Christmas had been a pair of roller skates. Up till then she had used Tom’s old ones, dreadful ones that had the old kind of steel wheels, ‘horribly noisy,’ said Anne, and were rigid, without ball bearings, the grips worn out. They were always coming off and bringing Belinda down. The new ones were beautiful, with leather heel grips, ball bearings and hard rubber rollers; they were swift, almost noiseless, and on them Belinda felt she flew. ‘But if they are fast, they can be dangerous,’ Mother told her. ‘You can go as fast as you like in the Park or round the tennis court, but you are not to go fast on the road.’ She let the children skate on the pavement of their own road because it was quiet, but they were not allowed to go up to the shops at its end; Mother did not know that they often skated round the corner into the next road that led to the Park. ‘You may skate slowly, on our pavement, but if you go fast, I shall have to stop it,’ said Mother.

  On those new skates, Belinda could not help going fast – at least, she could not resist it. Besides, she and Tom had a secret game: they raced on opposite pavements, each side of the road. Tom gave Belinda a start and they skated to the far end, away from the shops, and back again to the house. Tom had to turn round a pillar-box at the corner of his pavement, Belinda round a lamppost. They both went furiously fast. ‘But only when we see the road is empty,’ said Tom. ‘Or almost empty,’ said Belinda, who was not as careful as Tom. ‘One or two people don’t matter.’

  Sometimes they did matter. Once one of the people was Miss Tiffany Jones. Belinda had not realized who she was, and shot past her, making Miss Tiffany Jones almost jump out of her skin. ‘Child! You must not skate like that, on a public road,’ she cried. Belinda, dragging her skate sideways, had managed to stop.

  ‘How dare you!’ scolded Miss Tiffany Jones. ‘I don’t know where you come from – ‘she seemed curiously blind to the Fells next door – ‘but if I see you again, I shall tell the police. Why! You might give someone a heart attack!’

  Scarlet in the face, her head sheepishly down, Belinda skated slowly away and stole in at her own gate, and for two whole days she did not skate on the road at all. She even carried her skates to the Park, but Belinda was not very old, and when you are young, you forget. Besides, by far the most exciting place for skating was the road. On the third day she was back again, but she kept a wary eye out for Miss Tiffany Jones.

  ‘There’s ice on the roads,’ said Father next morning at breakfast. ‘Be careful how you walk.’

  ‘And how you skate,’ said Mother. ‘Better keep off the road, Belinda. If you get a patch of ice, you might skid and not be able to stop.’

  ‘I can always stop,’ said Belinda, ‘and if I can’t, it’s more fun.’

  ‘Not fun for other people,’ said Anne.

  ‘Oh, I can always dodge them,’ said Belinda airily.

  It was wonderful skating that day. Tom and Belinda stayed in the Park all the morning; it was almost lunchtime when they came back, and the pavements were empty. They were on the road leading to their own, and ‘Let’s race home,’ said Belinda.

  ‘What about the corner?’ asked Tom. The corner to their own road was sharp.

  ‘Oh, there won’t be anybody there,’ said Belinda. ‘We can swing round the lamppost.’

  ‘All right. Give you forty yards to start,’ said Tom, and when they were stationed, ‘Ready! Steady! GO!’ called Tom.

  Belinda’s skates were so good and she was skating so well, that she was able to keep well ahead of Tom. She could hear him, though, coming behind her and, ‘I’m going to get there first,’ she said through her teeth. The air was so cold and she was going so fast that her cheeks stung and her eyes were watering, but – faster – faster – faster – thought Belinda.

  She reached the corner, swung round the lamppost to turn, but did not really look as she gathered speed again; nor did she listen or she would have heard Tom grind to a halt and shout, ‘Look out! Belinda, look out!’

  Then suddenly in front of her she saw the Tiffany Joneses, Mr, Miss and Gem, their backs towards her, walking towards their front gate. They were strung so much across the pavement, that there was no room for Belinda to pass. She tried to brake, but she was going too fast; she tried to steer towards the wall, and met exactly what Mother had warned her about, a patch of ice. The skates flew sideways, she spun round twice and, pell-mell, crash, went into the back of Gem and sent her flying. Worse than that, skidding after her, Belinda lost her own balance, veered backwards and forwards, clutching Gem; the skates flew up, one roller catching Mr Tiffany Jones on the shin where he had whipped round to look. Then Belinda fell flat on her back on the ice, bringing Gem down on top of her.

 

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