پیتر و زغال سنگ

Chapter two

Peter and the coal

‘You’ve often wanted something to happen,’ said Mother, lighting the candle again. ‘And now it has. This is an adventure, isn’t it? I told Mrs Viney to leave our supper ready. I suppose she’s put it in the other room. Let’s go and see.’

They looked in the other room, but found no supper.

‘What a horrible woman’ said Mother. ‘She’s taken the money, but got us nothing to eat at all!’

‘Then we can’t have any supper,’ said Phyllis, unhappily.

‘Yes, we can,’ said Mother. ‘We can unpack one of the boxes. There’s some food from the old house.’

They found candles in the box, and the girls lit them. Then Bobbie fetched coal and wood, and lit a fire. It was a strange supper - tomatoes, potato chips, dried fruit and cake. And they drank water out of tea-cups. After supper, they put sheets and blankets on the beds, then Mother went to her own room.

Very early next morning, Bobbie pulled Phyllis’s hair to wake her. ‘Wake up’ she said. ‘We’re in the new house, don’t you remember?’

They wanted to surprise their mother and get the breakfast ready, but first they went to look outside. The house seemed to stand in a field near the top of a hill, and they could see a long way.

‘This place is much prettier than our house in London,’ said Phyllis.

They saw the railway line at the bottom of the hill, and the big black opening of a tunnel. Further away, they could see a high bridge between the hills, but the station was too far away to see.

‘Let’s go and look at the railway,’ said Peter. ‘Perhaps there are trains passing.’

‘We can see them from here,’ said Bobbie.

So they sat down on a big, flat, comfortable stone in the grass. And when Mother came to look for them at eight o’clock, they were asleep in the sun.

‘I’ve found another room,’ Mother told them. ‘The door is in the kitchen. Last night, we thought it was a cupboard.’

There was a table in the little square room, and on the table was their supper.

‘There’s a letter from Mrs Viney,’ explained Mother. ‘Her son broke his arm and she went home early. She’s coming again later this morning.’

‘Cold meat and apple pie for breakfast!’ laughed Peter. ‘How funny!’

But their supper made a wonderful breakfast.

All day, they helped Mother to unpack and arrange everything in the rooms. It was late in the afternoon when she said, ‘That’s enough work for today. I’ll go and lie down for an hour, before supper.’

The children looked at each other.

‘Where shall we go?’ said Bobbie, although she already knew the answer.

‘To the railway, of course’ cried Peter.

At the bottom of the hill there was a wooden fence. And there was the railway, with its shining lines, telegraph wires and posts, and signals. They all climbed on to the top of the fence. Suddenly, they heard a noise, which grew louder every second. They looked along the line towards the dark opening of the tunnel. The next moment, the railway lines began to shake and a train came screaming out of the tunnel.

‘Oh’ said Bobbie, when it had gone ‘It was like a great wild animal going by!’

‘It was very exciting’ said Peter.

‘I wonder if it was going to London,’ said Bobbie. ‘London is where Father is.’

‘Let’s go down to the station and find out,’ said Peter.

They walked along the edge of the line, beneath the telegraph wires, to the station. They went up on to the platform, and took a quick look into the Porter’s room. Inside, the Porter was half asleep behind a newspaper.

There were a great many railway lines at the station. On one side of the big station yard was a large heap of coal, which the steam trains used for their engines. There was a white line on the wall behind, near the top of the heap. Later, when the Porter came out on to the platform, Peter asked about the white line.

‘It’s to show how much coal there is in the heap,’ said the Porter. ‘So we shall know if anybody steals some.’ The Porter was smiling, and Peter thought he was a nice, friendly person.

And so the days passed. The children did not go to school now, and Mother spent every day in her room, writing stories. Sometimes she managed to sell a story to a magazine, and then there were cakes for tea. The children did not forget their father, but they did not talk about him much, because they knew that Mother was unhappy. Several times, she had told them that they were poor now. But it was difficult to believe this because there was always enough to eat, and they wore the same nice clothes.

But then there were three wet days, when the rain came down, and it was very cold.

‘Can we light a fire?’ asked Bobbie.

‘We can’t have fires in June,’ said Mother. ‘Coal is very expensive.’

After tea, Peter told his sisters, ‘I have an idea. I’ll tell you about it later, when I know if it’s a good one.’

And two nights later, Peter said to the girls, ‘Come and help me.’

On the hill, just above the station, there were some big stones in the grass. Between the stones, the girls saw a small heap of coal.

‘I found it,’ said Peter. ‘Help me carry it up to the house.’

After three journeys up the hill, the coal was added to the heap by the back door of the house. The children told nobody.

A week later, Mrs Viney looked at the heap by the back door and said, ‘There’s more coal here than I thought there was.’

The children laughed silently and said nothing.

But then came the awful night when the Station Master was waiting for Peter in the station yard. He watched Peter climb on to the large heap of coal by the wall and start to fill a bag.

‘Now I’ve caught you, you young thief’ shouted the Station Master. And he took hold of Peter’s coat.

‘I’m not a thief,’ said Peter, but he did not sound very sure about it.

‘You’re coming with me to the station,’ said the Station Master.

‘Oh, no’ cried a voice from the darkness.

‘Not the police station’ cried another voice.

‘No, the railway station,’ said the man, surprised to hear more voices. ‘How many of you are there?’

Bobbie and Phyllis stepped out of the darkness.

‘We did it, too,’ Bobbie told the Station Master. ‘We helped carry the coal away, and we knew where Peter was getting it.’

‘No, you didn’t,’ said Peter, angrily. ‘It was my idea.’

‘We did know,’ said Bobbie. ‘We pretended we didn’t, but we did.’

The Station Master looked at them. ‘You’re from the white house on the hill,’ he said. ‘Why are you stealing coal?’

‘I didn’t think it was stealing,’ said Peter. ‘There’s so much coal here. I took some from the middle of the heap, and I - I thought nobody would mind. And Mother says we’re too poor to have a fire, but there were always fires at our other house, and -‘

‘Don’t’ Bobbie whispered to Peter.

There was a silence, and the Station Master thought for a minute. Then he said to Peter, ‘I won’t do anything this time. But remember, this coal belongs to the railway, and even from the middle of the heap, it’s still stealing.’

And the children knew he was right.