Edie did not say anything. Henry explained to her. "It's a speedboat. And that's the lad that's been born."
"Yes, I can see that."
"But why did Mr. McLintock laugh? It's not funny."
"No, it's not funny. It's a lovely picture. It's just that… well… speed doesn't mean a speedboat in the song. It means that the boat's going very fast over the water, but it's not a speedboat. And the lad that was born to be king was Bonnie Prince Charlie, and he was grown up by then."
All was now explained. "Oh," said Henry, "I see."
She gave him back the drawing. "But it's still a good picture, and I think it was very rude of Mr. McLintock to laugh. Put it in your bag and take it home for your mother to see, and Edie will go and start getting your tea."
While he did this, she heaved herself to her feet, put her spectacles back on the mantelpiece, and went out of the room through a door at the back that led to her kitchen and bathroom. These were modern additions, for when Edie was a little girl, the cottage had consisted solely of two rooms. A but and ben it was called. The living room, which was the kitchen as well, and the bedroom. No running water, and a wooden lavatory at the end of the garden. What was more astonishing was that Edie had been one of five children, and so seven people had once lived in these rooms. Her parents had slept in a box-bed in the kitchen, with a shelf over their heads for the baby, and the rest of the children had been crowded into the other room. For water, Mrs. Findhorn had made the long walk each day to the village pump, and baths were a weekly affair, taken in a tin tub in front of the kitchen fire.
"But however did five of you get into the bedroom, Edie?" Henry would ask, fascinated by the logistics of sheer space. Even with just Edie's bed and her wardrobe, it still seemed dreadfully small.
"Oh, mind, we weren't all in there at the same time. By the time the youngest was born, my eldest brother was out working on the land, and living in a bothy with the other farm-hands. And then, when the girls were old enough, they went into service in some big house or other. It was a sore wrench when we had to leave, tears all over the place, but there was no space for us all here, and too many mouths to feed, and my mother needed the extra money."
She told him other things, too. How, on winter evenings, they would bank up the fire with potato peelings and sit around it, listening to their father reading aloud the stories of Rudyard Kipling, or Pilgrim's Progress. The little girls would work at their knitting, making socks for the menfolk. And when it came to turning the heels, the sock was given to an older sister or their mother because that bit of the knitting was too complicated for them to do.
It all sounded very poor, but somehow quite cosy too. Looking about him, Henry found it hard to imagine Edie's cottage the way it had been in olden days. For now it was as bright and cheerful as it could be, the box-bed gone and lovely swirly carpets on the floor. The old kitchen fire had gone too, and a beautiful green tile fireplace stood in its place, and there were flowery curtains and a television set and lots of nice china ornaments.
With his drawing safely stowed, he buckled up his satchel once more. Speed Bonnie Boat. He had got it wrong. He often got things wrong. There was another song they had learned at school. "Ho Ro
My Nut Brown Maiden." Henry, singing lustily with the rest of the class, could just imagine the maiden. A little Pakistani, like Kedejah Ishak, with her dark skin and her shining pigtail, rowing like mad across a windy loch.
His mother had had to explain that one to him.
As well, ordinary words could be confusing. People said things to him, and he heard them, but heard them just the way they sounded. And the word, or the image conjured up by the word, stuck in his mind. Grown-ups went on holiday to "My Yorker" or "Portjig-gal." Or "Grease." Grease sounded a horrid place. Edie once told him about a lady who was very cut up because her daughter had married some fly-by-night who was not good enough for her. The poor lady, all cut up, had haunted his nightmares for weeks.
But the worst was the misunderstanding that had happened with his grandmother, and which might have come between them for ever and caused a lasting rift, had not Henry's mother finally found out what was bothering him and put it right.
He had gone to Pennybum one day after school to have tea with his grandmother, Vi. A gale was blowing and the wind howled around the little house. Sitting by the fire, Vi had suddenly made an exclamation of annoyance, got to her feet and fetched from somewhere a folding screen, which she set up in front of the glass door that led out into the garden. Henry asked her why she was doing this, and when she told him he was so horrified that he scarcely spoke for the rest of the afternoon. When his mother came to fetch him, he had never been so glad to see her and could not wait to scramble into his anorak and be out of the house, almost forgetting to thank Vi for his tea.
It was horrible. He felt that he never wanted to go back to Pennyburn, and yet knew that he ought to, if only to protect Vi. Every time his mother suggested another visit, he made some excuse or said he would rather go to Edie's. Finally, one night while he was having his bath, she came and sat on the lavatory and talked to him… she brought the conversation gently around to the touchy subject and at last asked him straight if there was any reason why he no longer wanted to go to Vi's.
"You always used to love it so. Did something happen?"
It was a relief at last to talk about it.
"It's frightening."
"Darling, what's frightening?"
"It comes in, out of the garden, and it comes into the sitting-room. Vi put a screen up but it could easily knock the screen over. It might hurt her. I don't think she should live there any more."
"For heaven's sake! What comes in?"
He could see it. With great tall spotted legs, and a long thin spotted neck, and great big yellow teeth with its lips curled back, ready to pounce, or bite.
"A horrible giraffe."
His mother was confounded. "Henry, have you gone out of your mind? Giraffes live in Africa, or zoos. There aren't any giraffes in Strathcroy."
"There are!" He shouted at her stupidity. "She said so. She said there was a horrible giraffe that came out of the garden, and through the door and into her sitting-room. She told me so."
There was a long silence. He stared at his mother and she stared back at him with her bright blue eyes, but she never smiled.
At last she said, "She wasn't telling you that there was a giraffe, Henry. She was telling you that there was a draught. You know, a horrid, shivery draught."
A draught. Not a giraffe but a draught. All that fuss about a stupid draught. He had made a fool of himself, but was so relieved that his grandmother was safe from monsters that it didn't matter.
"Don't tell anybody," he pleaded.
"I'll have to explain to Vi. But she won't say a word."
"All right. You can tell Vi. But not anybody else."
And his mother had promised, and he had jumped out of the bath, all dripping wet, and been gathered up into a great fluffy towel and his mother's arms, and she had hugged him and told him that she was going to eat him alive and she loved him so, and they had sung "Camptown Races," and there was macaroni and cheese for supper.
Edie had cooked sausages for his tea and made potato scones, and opened a can of baked beans. While he ploughed his way through this, sitting at her kitchen table, Edie sat opposite him, drinking a cup of tea. Her own meal she would eat later.